The yoke jerked free, throwing Vitaly to the deck as Freya gritted her teeth and braced her feet, still trying to change the direction of the hurtling Scorpion. The wobble evened out as the submarine picked up speed once more, surging towards impact. Jonah and Alexis pried open the bulkhead door to the crew quarters, forcing themselves through before it could slam shut behind them.
“How long do we have?” said Alexis, breathless in the thick smoke.
“Two minutes before impact — tops,” said Jonah, gasping. He crawled forward in the dark, airless corridor, running face-first into Dalmar’s sprawled body. Sun-Hi wore an oxygen hood as she stood over the unconscious pirate, fruitlessly trying to drag his body away from the engine room and to safety.
Jonah ignored them both as he and Alexis pried open the bulkhead hatch to the engine compartment and forced their way in. Alexis led, feeling her way past the battery banks and the deafening engines.
“It’s down here!” she shouted, her voice all but lost to the roar. She slammed her palm against the metal deck grating to indicate the location of the server. Jonah wrapped his fingers around the metal and together they lifted, pulling the section of grating off, and leaning it against the battery bank. Both dropped into the crawlspace below, landing hard atop the thick electrical wires surrounding the hot, humming computer. Jonah tried to pull the wiring free, bare hands straining against the unyielding cables. Alexis unscrewed the thickest electrical cord and shoved it hard against the CPU. Jonah smelled ozone and burnt air as the arcing line connected, sending a spider web of electricity across the server as the dim lights around them flickered and died. The engines seized a second later, the churning din replaced with total silence as the Scorpion drifted unpowered beneath the waves. Jonah’s still-ringing ears picked up the faint grinding of the rudder and stabilizers shifting, no doubt altering their course away from the tanker.
Sun-Hi’s masked face appeared above them through the sooty clouds as she dropped two oxygen hoods to Jonah and Alexis. They both slipped them on. “What now?” said Alexis, voice muffled by thick plastic.
“We search every inch of the Scorpion, inside and out,” said Jonah. “We find what did this.”
Jonah swam alongside the matte-black hull of the submerged Scorpion, suspended in darkness. He let his powerful flashlight play against her sides, feeling the awkward position of the heavy crowbar in his weight belt. Vitaly had settled the Scorpion on a patch of muddy bottom just fifty feet from the surface of the storm-wracked harbor, uncomfortably close to the traffic above. There were dozens of churning ships above; the nearest silhouetted in the stormy moonlight, all weighed down with arms and men. It was a haphazard collection — destroyers and their escorts, minesweepers, patrol ships, fuel tanker, and troop-laden civilian pleasure-cruisers.
He inhaled against his scuba regulator, listening to the Darth Vader-like sound of hissing clean air. The crew was still stuck searching the submarine interior, which began with a very thorough examination of anything Freya had touched. He doubted she was responsible. After all, she would have died with the rest of them, but he wasn’t in the mood to take chances. His crew had shut down nearly every system with the sole exception of air filtration as they slowly brought the carbon monoxide down to a safe level.
Hassan had all but thrown a fit when he learned of Jonah’s plans to inspect the submarine’s exterior, giving him a laundry list of potential dangers relating to his broken ribs and punctured lung. But it’d likely take him weeks to completely heal, weeks they simply didn’t have. Jonah made a mental note to start training someone else as a diver, at least for the easy jobs like this.
He shone his flashlight across the last of the starboard hull, carefully looking for any unexplained objects or unexpected damage. It was all taking longer than he’d hoped. Large swaths of the sub were a mess of missing paint, deep scratches, and warped metal; the weeks since her recent retrofit had been absolutely brutal. He tried the receiver in his built-in radio, but heard nothing but warbling, artificial static in return. Whatever had taken over their computers was still jamming the signal.
Jonah did a lazy barrel roll as he contemplated the situation. The Scorpion had been significantly upgraded since falling into mercenary hands: computers, consoles, and general system automation reducing the necessary number of crew. By his calculations, she might have once sailed with forty men or more. But the new systems meant it could be manned by a handful, including some with no prior experience aboard any vessel much less a submarine.
He gave the massive propellers a wide berth as he passed, reminding himself that they still might churn to life on their own, sucking him into the blades. His light was powerful enough for a detailed inspection even at a distance, and he soon eliminated the stern and moved onto the port hull.
And then he saw it. A multi-segmented metallic device measuring nearly six feet in length clamped to the side of the submarine. The damned thing looked like a lamprey. It was almost more insectoid than mechanical, glinting as it slowly swayed in the current. Jonah swam close to it, feeling the heat rising from its reflective skin. He ran a cautious hand along the length of its exoskeleton; recoiling as the metal shivered to his sudden touch. Jonah slipped the edge of his crowbar between the device and the hull, preparing to pry it off when it suddenly disengaged on its own, wriggling away into the brackish waters. He was barely able to reach out and grab it by the tail, holding it fast before it could escape into the darkness and disappear forever.
Jonah dropped the flashlight, watching the bulb slowly rotate to the ocean floor as he was physically dragged away from the Scorpion. He cocked back the crowbar like a spear before jamming the end into the largest seam in the metallic exoskeleton. The thrashing device twisted in his grasp as he slowly drove the metal crowbar deeper and deeper into its soft carapace.
The device twisted, reared back and shuddered one last time before going limp in his hand. Jonah looked around, realizing with surprise that he’d been dragged nearly a hundred feet from the now-distant Scorpion. Fortunately, the abandoned dive light penetrated the dark waters like a fog-shrouded lighthouse. Just visible enough to lead him back to the stern of the submarine. Swimming down to retrieve the lost light, Jonah was able to take a closer look at the device. His flashlight glinted off its articulated shell, the sharp, tooth-like spikes from where it’d bitten into the side of his submarine. He supposed the real secrets probably lay inside its electronic guts — Vitaly could take a closer look once he was back inside. At least it wasn’t trying to wriggle free anymore. The crowbar seemed to have disabled it for good.
Jonah glanced down at his dive watch. He cocked his head to the side, confused. All the numbers were wrong, the tiny computer advising a decompression schedule three times faster than he’d anticipated — deadly if he followed its instructions. Cornered and wounded, the mysterious device had made one last effort to kill him.
Stepping down the last few rungs of the conning tower ladder, Jonah lowered himself into the command compartment, the lamprey-like metal device slung limply around his shoulders. He still wore his heavy wetsuit, but he’d left the bulk of his diving gear back at the lockout chamber. Alexis and Hassan were alone; both leaning against the command compartment as they spoke with one another in low tones.