“Approaching Point Alpha…” said Moody, jerking him from his reverie. “We’re at the entry point.” It was like trying to pull a car into a one-car garage blindfolded.
“All stop,” said Hamlin.
“All stop, aye, sir,” said Frank, immediately ordering the bell.
He and Moody stood over the display and watched as the giant ship slowly drifted between the two bars on the screen, perfectly centered. In a box on the right hand of the screen, Pete saw the ship’s acceleration in all three dimensions, and watched carefully to see if he would need to add a small rudder angle to counteract a stray current.
“Nice driving,” said Moody, looking at him with a smile.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. The back of Frank’s neck turned red.
There was a moment of concern as they drifted inside the range and nothing happened. Pete worried that it had been disabled, either by the relentless destructive power of the ocean and nature, or by an act of war. But then suddenly, the lights in the control room dimmed, and a dozen new alarms went off as the ship was engulfed by a powerful magnetic field.
“The range is active!” said Moody. “It’s working!” Frank was leaning forward, cutting out the alarms that had sounded as a result. Pete could almost feel the effect upon them, stretching the magnetic field of the Polaris into line with brute, electric force, making them invisible in at least one, crucial way. Frank ably managed their depth as they continued to drift through, no easy feat as the ship’s speed continued to decrease, making ship control difficult.
“We’re clear of the range,” said Moody as they passed beyond the two bright lines on the console. Their speed had dropped to under three knots. Pete confirmed on the screen in front of him that they had drifted completely through.
“Ahead one-third,” said Hamlin. “Make your depth eight-five feet.”
They repeated the process of going to periscope depth. As the scope broke through, Pete immediately turned the ship’s single eye upward.
A dozen drones swooped around them in circles, their electronic brains excited by the recent sighting. They swooped, dived, and circled around, many of them virtually buzzing their periscope. But none of them attacked.
“Captain,” said Hamlin, “the ship has been successfully degaussed.”
“Very well,” she said. “Take us deep and report to my stateroom for debriefing.”
Carlson and Banach watched the Polaris slow and go deep in front of them, immediately after her strange, short trip to periscope depth. They’d done nothing at PD, didn’t shoot trash or broadcast a message. The only thing they seemed to accomplish was attract a swarm of drones, which quickly developed attack formations, forcing the Polaris underwater just in time.
More precisely, they listened, as they heard the hull popping of a ship descending and the slowing of the ship’s main reduction gear.
“What are they up to?”
Carlson shook her head. “I have no idea. They are very deep. Almost to the bottom.”
Banach took the two strides necessary to get to the other side of the control room, checked the chart. “Are they trying to lose us?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “They seem to have other things on their mind.”
“Can our friend onboard tell us anything?”
She shook her head, frustrated. “Haven’t heard from him lately. That would make this entirely too easy.”
She walked over to the cramped corner of the control room where Banach stood, where the chart was spread out. In the lower corner of the chart was Eris Island. They’d followed the Polaris up here, to the opposite corner, to a spot that was strangely featureless on the chart, devoid of geological marks or even soundings.
“Stay at this depth, and slow,” she said. “Let’s see what they are up to.”
They drifted closer, staying about a mile away, waiting to see what happened. She tried to visualize what they were doing as they slowed almost to a standstill, drifting forward at a speed of just a few knots. She thought about their man onboard, wondered if he was still alive. Maybe he’d been discovered in the ruckus that they’d overheard, exposed, perhaps even executed. No, she thought again, the Alliance prized themselves on their civility too much for that.
Suddenly, a noise spiked on their sonar. She could hear it right through the hulclass="underline" a dull ka-chunk.
Before she could say anything, a delicate alarm sounded next to the chart, a rarely heard alarm that took her a moment to recognize.
“Captain,” Banach said, “the inertial navigation system is failing.…”
She looked up at the central panel in front of the dive chair, where a number of other alarms had sounded. Some of the smaller circuit breakers on the ship had opened, and the electrical system was busily resetting itself into a safe mode.
Meanwhile the Polaris continued drifting slowly forward.
“Is it some kind of weapon?” asked Banach. “An electric pulse? Are we under attack?”
“No,” said Carlson. “I don’t think so. But we are at the edge of some kind of electrical field… a powerful one.”
They waited a few more minutes and then the ka-chunk sound repeated, and the alarm for their navigation system cleared. Breakers continued to reset around them, and she realized that the sound was similar to the one that had come to them on the bearing of the Polaris.
Once again the Polaris sped up and changed depth, ascending to periscope depth.
“Let’s follow them up this time,” she said, heading for the scope. Banach climbed into the dive chair and efficiently brought the ship shallow.
She raised the scope as they came up. Soon they were at periscope depth, and Carlson squinted at the bright equatorial light through the scope. The Polaris was a mile or so away, too far for them to see the scope.
But she could see the drones everywhere, attracted by their earlier trip to the surface. They were swooping overhead, many of them directly above where she thought the Polaris was sticking up her nose. They were no longer in the tight pattern of attack that she’d seen earlier. The drones were swooping and searching.
“Captain?”
“They’ve made themselves invisible to the drones,” she said, the solution suddenly dawning on her. “At least at periscope depth.”
“How?”
“Degaussing,” she said. “They must have passed an underwater degaussing range.” It made sense, in a way, this close to Eris Island, probably the outcome of another, earlier research product. She grudgingly respected the Alliance and its technology; it always seemed to work when they needed it. Her leaders, on the other hand, couldn’t provide her ship a microwave oven that would work without bursting into flames.
“So the drones use MAD?”
“Apparently,” she said, watching the drones fly obliviously over the Polaris. “At least for shallow boats.”