Suddenly a drone caught her eye on the horizon, sweeping lazily across the water, searching.
“I see,” she said.
“Captain?”
“They’re afraid of the drones, just like we are.”
“Drones will attack their own?”
“They will attack anything, they are the dogs of war.”
“So what shall we do?”
She had an idea. “Tell me, Banach, how many of those inflatable lifeboats do we have?”
The question startled him, and he had to think. “Three.”
“And what is the direction of the current?”
Banach went to the chart, did some calculations, and told her. “Just three knots, running southwest.”
“Tell our sergeant to prepare to launch one of those life rafts from torpedo tube number three.”
“Can I explain to him why?”
“I’d rather not say,” said Carlson. “In case it doesn’t work.”
She positioned the boat carefully so the wounded enemy with its periscope was down-current. She thought about timing, watched the random drones that were still in the sky, not having spotted either scope. She wanted to be close enough that by the time the drones spotted the raft, it was directly on top of the enemy, right on its scope ideally. If the drones got to the raft too early, it would be a waste. And then she would have to leave because the drones would eventually spot her scope. Doing the rough math in her head, she crept to about six hundred yards until she finally gave the order.
“Deploy the boat,” she said. She heard the clank of the hatch, the rumble of the torpedo tube ejecting its contents.
“The lifeboat is deployed,” said Banach, taking the report on his headphones as she watched through the scope.
A few seconds later it popped to the surface, a bright orange bundle. Immediately it began to inflate and unfold, growing to full size in seconds. It appeared motionless, but Carlson could see that it was in fact moving with the gentle current toward the enemy’s periscope. It looked almost comical, a big orange tent bobbing happily upon the sea. Triangular panels on the outside had a metallic sheen — radar reflectors, designed to make it highly visible to rescuers. She couldn’t take her eyes off it.
After all, it was designed to be seen.
And soon enough the drones saw it.
The first drone flew directly over it at high speed. Carlson panicked for a moment; it was too early. But the drone didn’t drop its bomb; instead it flew high into the sky. Alerting its brothers, she realized.
A swarm of four came in, flying at high speed and in a direct line. By now, the bright orange boat was directly against the enemy scope.
When the first bomb landed, the lifeboat simply evaporated, like an exploding balloon. Tiny pieces of orange fabric littered the ocean around them like confetti. The more substantial parts of the raft remained afloat, in a pool around the scope, and the drones poured their bombs upon them.
Whether a drone targeted the scope, or it was just a lucky shot that missed the life raft’s detritus, Carlson didn’t know. But the bomb landed directly atop the scope, shattering it, sending smoke and sparks into the sky. Too late, the enemy captain lowered it, undoubtedly with new fires and flooding to combat.
“Shall we finish her off with a torpedo?” said Banach.
“No,” said Carlson, although it pained her. She wanted to preserve her remaining four torpedoes. “They are damaged beyond repair. She is out of the fight. Even if she doesn’t sink.”
“Very good, Captain,” he said. The enemy ship was making a racket as she pulled away, damaged and clinging to life. Carlson could hear alarms onboard from her ship’s hydrophones — the enemy’s overworked pumps — and she imagined the screaming of burned men inside.
“Everything OK, Captain?” Banach had caught her in her reverie.
“Yes,” she said.
“You look angry.”
She nodded. In fact, she was. She knew she’d done the right thing in not finishing her off, in conserving those last four torpedoes, not using another on a ship that was already crippled beyond repair. They were the same four torpedoes that she still possessed, and it was looking like they might very well need them for the fight ahead. But it galled her that the Alliance submarine had gotten away with her life. Galled her that somewhere a submarine captain was sitting in an officers’ club, telling the story of his close call, his escape, his survival.
CHAPTER FIVE
Pete walked away from the control room, still trying to gain his bearings — and to recall some memories of what had happened to the Polaris, and his role in it. He climbed down a ladder as he headed aft to avoid McCallister, locked in a steel cage one level above.
Exiting the forward compartment through a watertight hatch, he stepped into the missile compartment: two parallel rows of missile tubes stretching into the distance like a forest of steel trees. There were few signs of the mutiny in here, save for a wisp of smoke that followed him from the forward compartment and the darkness caused by the partial power outage. But there were signs everywhere of a ship that had been stretched to its limit. A shower room, wedged between two missile tubes, was taped off with a sign: OUT OF COMMISSION. The floor was dusty and the stalls had no curtains. Next to it were two nine-man bunk rooms that were dark, their metal racks bare of any mattresses. It looked like the ship had been designed to carry far more men than she had now, and that she had been reduced, even before the mutiny, to the bare minimum complement. The few lights that remained energized blinked and buzzed, and the air smelled dank, like somewhere below him a bilge needed to be pumped. The Polaris, like her crew, had been at sea far too long.
He reached the end of the missiles and came upon two massive machines that were covered in indicators and dials. One had a large red tag hanging from a breaker that read OUT OF COMMISSION. Its twin looked functional, but wasn’t energized. Pete looked it over for a minute and found a small sign: OXYGEN GENERATORS. Behind the amnesia, his engineer’s mind went to work, looking at the dials and indicators, and soon enough put together a rough picture of how the machines functioned. They took the one natural resource that the submarine had access to in unlimited quantities: water. They placed a large voltage across that and tore the water molecules into their constituent parts: hydrogen and oxygen.
While the machine was turned off, a monitoring panel remained lit — a small diagram of the ship with a digital indicator for each of the three main compartments: forward compartment, missile compartment, and engine room. A selector knob allowed him to choose different attributes to measure: oxygen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. The oxygen level of the engine room and missile compartment was 20 percent — the number was in green, leading Pete to believe that was in the acceptable range. The forward compartment reading was lower and in bright red: 14 percent. Perhaps a result of the fire? The panel showed an open valve between the oxygen banks and each compartment, and Pete pictured an outlet somewhere dispensing the invisible, odorless air that they all needed to survive. But the oxygen banks, he saw, were severely depleted. One was completely empty, and the second was at less than one-quarter capacity. Could anyone onboard make that machine run and create new oxygen? Anyone who wasn’t locked in an escape trunk? He continued aft.
Pete surprised himself by arriving at medical. It seemed like a lot of his memories were like that, trapped right below the surface. If someone had asked him how to find medical, he never could have described it. But wandering through the ship, thinking about everything else, he had found his way there.