“Thanks,” said Pete, putting down the honeybees and taking a second shot from the doctor. But this time Pete drank a silent toast to himself: Here’s to finding out the truth.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The alcohol had the desired effect of clearing his head. Pete excused himself from the doctor’s stateroom after the second shot, pretended to head for his own stateroom, and then turned and walked into control, where Frank was standing watch.
He looked up at Hamlin, surprised. “Here to relieve me?” he asked.
“If you ask nice,” said Pete.
“OK: fuck you,” he said.
Pete walked around control and stood in front of Frank. He extended his hand. “It’s been a rough day,” he said. “I’m sorry if I stepped on your toes. I got whacked on the head down there pretty good — let me use that as my excuse.”
Frank looked at him warily but then took his hand. “Fine,” he said. “I appreciate that.” His grip was like a vise.
“And I am ready to relieve you,” said Pete. “Go grab some sleep, or get something to eat. Better yet, go to Haggerty’s stateroom: he’s handing out shots from his secret stash of scotch.”
“Now you’re really starting to get on my winning side,” said Frank. He pointed at the monitor in front of them. “We’re on course two-six-zero, heading for Eris Island at ahead flank.”
“Our shadow?”
“Right behind us, as always. She crept a little closer at about 0600, we caught a whisper of some kind of active transmission. But it was directly behind us and the recording sucks.”
“Interesting,” said Pete. It was his conversation from shaft alley.
“But now: status quo. Looks like she’s following us all the way to Eris Island. I wish Moody would let us shoot a torpedo right down her throat.”
“I’m sure she has her reasons.”
“Whatever,” said Frank. “I’m ready to be relieved.”
“I relieve you.”
“I stand relieved.”
“This is Lieutenant Pete Hamlin,” he said into a microphone over his head, recording the procedure for the ship’s digital deck log. “I have the deck and the conn.”
Frank stomped out of control without another word.
Control was quiet. Several alarms were still cut out, their lights a steady red on the main status board, the residual effects of the fire and the destruction in radio. Occasionally he felt a vibration and heard a slight whir, the sound of a hydraulic pump cycling to maintain pressure, or a fan cooling one of the ship’s many computers, some of which chirped quietly as their screens updated. But other than that, the big ship was silent. Pete waited a few minutes, to make sure he remained alone, and then he sat down in front of the main computer.
He scanned the deck near his feet, looking for the key slot McCallister had told him about. The deck was covered in smooth plastic tiles. He began pulling at the corners of them until one of them came up. Beneath it, as innocuous as the captain’s key itself, he found the keyhole. He inserted the key and turned it. As he sat up, the console in front of him was resetting, the normal sonar display disappearing. He put the key back around his neck and the tile back in place as the new display generated.
CAPTAIN’S MASTER TACTICAL ACCESS
Below that was an extensive menu of options. There were maintenance records, personnel files of everyone who’d ever been onboard, and access to the deck logs. It appeared to be the entire digital history of the command. Additionally he could access secret Navy and Alliance documents, detailed descriptions of the actual capabilities of the ship’s systems — capabilities far beyond the conservative constraints they operated by, like test depth and maximum speed. Pete clicked on the heading PATROL ORDERS and suddenly accessed a library of the ship’s entire tactical history, starting when Finn took command years before. He scanned all the way down to the present, to see the orders he’d brought with him. The parts they’d accomplished, like the degaussing run, were available. Subsequent sections were not.
Curiously, a single more recent order was highlighted as ACTIVE on the bottom of the list. Pete clicked on it. The order was in the form of a message written from Hana to the Alliance. She reported that she had captured two traitors, taken command, and that she was proceeding to Eris Island as ordered. Once there, she continued, she intended to seize the cure, by force if necessary, to keep it out of enemy hands.
If it looked at any point like the cure would be lost to the enemy, she wrote, she would destroy it. And the Polaris, too, if required.
The Alliance hadn’t responded.
Pete switched back to the main menu and searched for more message traffic. It looked like they hadn’t received any messages from the Alliance in weeks — and all their outgoing messages had gone unanswered. Hana’s message hadn’t even been transmitted — the radio room having been destroyed during the mutiny. Apparently Moody had created it just for the record, to demonstrate that what she had done was legal and justified.
A total lack of communication. What did it mean? He sat back and contemplated it. Were they the Alliance’s last hope? Or was the war over and they were just a fighting remnant, like one of those Japanese soldiers in the jungle fighting long after the emperor had told them to go home?
Pete began scrolling through the rest of the computer menus, looking for clues. There were highly classified reports of Alliance losses at sea, and on land. The drones had turned the ocean into a vast no-man’s-land, bringing commerce and trade to a complete halt. Pete tried to decipher who was winning the war, but it was impossible to tell in terms of victories and defeats. In dry, military language he could only tell that massive suffering had been unleashed on both sides.
He clicked on a digital map labeled TOP SECRET, and at first he thought it was a different rendering of the flu projections he’d seen in his own orders: there were bright splotches of color highlighted on both coasts of the United States. But when he looked closer, he could see it actually represented drone attacks. The drone attacks on land that were supposed to be impossible.
“I knew it!” a voice yelled.
Pete jumped out of the way just in time, as Frank swung a roundhouse punch at his head. “You hacked the main computer!”
Even though the blow just grazed him, it knocked Pete to the ground. He rolled as Frank stood over him. Pete noticed for the first time that there was dark, dried blood around the cuffs of Frank’s pants. It was the blood of his friend Ramirez. “I told Moody we couldn’t trust you!”
Pete kicked him in the balls.
Frank buckled over in pain. Pete rolled out from under him and got to his feet. He swung hard and connected with Frank’s jaw. Frank fell against the starboard periscope with a grunt. Pete’s hand felt like he’d hit a brick wall.
Pete readied himself to punch Frank again, this time with his left hand. He saw too late that Frank was reaching in his pocket. He saw a quick blue flash, and then felt blinding, electric pain as the Taser made contact with his chest.
Every muscle in his body contracted, incapacitating him. He fell over, unable even to brace his fall. His entire body was cramping, making it impossible even to yell in pain. When the agony stopped, Frank was standing over him again, the Taser pointed right at his head.
“It’s supposed to be a ‘nonlethal’ weapon,” he said. “But I’ve heard this thing can kill you if you get it right in the head enough times.”
Pete tried to respond, but his mouth wouldn’t move.
“We don’t really know anything about you, do we?” There was a deranged smile on Frank’s face. “I think we should tie you to a chair, zap you with this thing in the nuts a few times until you tell us who you are, where you really come from.”