“You didn’t let me finish,” said Jonah. “Remember the radioactive traces we found on the U-3531? Turns out our suspicions were right. The uranium ended up in a bomb— and its on board this ship. It’s programmed to go off autonomously once we reach the heart of Pyongyang. Himura says he couldn’t stop it even if he wanted to.”
“Then we wreck his computer,” said Alexis. “The transmitters were easy enough, right?”
“It won’t work. I took a couple pistol potshots at his biological computer thingy, but it’s too armored. Nothing short of a howitzer would even make a dent.”
Sun-Hi tugged on Jonah’s arm. “I have idea,” she said. “But as you say, you will not like it.”
“Can’t be any worse than letting a nuclear weapon go off,” Jonah said.
Sun-Hi unslung her backpack, revealing a powerful handheld radio within. “I can plug into the transmitter, call in a DPRK artillery strike on this ship.”
“A fucking artillery strike? On ourselves?” said Alexis. “You’re right — I do not like this idea.”
“How are they going to know which ship to hit?” asked Jonah.
Dalmar just pointed out of the small compartment portal towards the flaming, broken greenhouse in the stern. A massive pillar of black smoke rose from the still-burning jungle within. The Scorpion trailed them from a distance, her conning tower barely above the icy surface of the river.
“Got it,” said Jonah as he scratched his head. “Tell them to aim for the burning one.”
“But they might hit the Scorpion too!” said Hassan.
“Well, the Scorpion is quite a bit smaller,” said Alexis. “So, you know, they’ll probably miss it. But we’ll have to warn Vitaly all the same, tell him to give us some extra space.”
“Do it,” ordered Jonah, already retreating as Sun-Hi plugged in the radio and began to shout orders in rapid-fire Korean. “And then get off this ship as fast as humanly possible.”
“Where are you going?” demanded Alexis. “You can’t leave again, we just found you!”
“I’m getting Freya,” said Jonah. “And then I’m leaving, too. And for fucks sake, don’t wait for me this time.”
Jonah limped back into the ornate chamber, stepping once more onto the bamboo floor as the first artillery shell hit. He shielded his face with his hand as a massive section of the glinting aluminum wall burst inwards with an ear-shattering explosion. Geysers of icy water erupted around the sleek superyacht as she hurtled through a burgeoning hailstorm of artillery fire. A second shell pierced the thin hull, detonating deep in the deck, blowing apart a glass-enclosed collection of rifles and telescopes in a cloudy shower of smoke and debris. Below him, the grotesque Meisekimu pulsated beneath a layer of still-hot debris as she flashed disorganized purples, unable to connect with her transmitters.
There she was. Freya knelt over the organic computer as though oblivious to the barrage. She whispered to Meisekimu, comforting her. Himura’s ruined body lay silently crumpled face-down just a few feet away. Freya’s axe was still buried in his lower spine, a pool of sticky blood growing around his prone form. There were scuff marks and smeared red splattering across the floor — he’d fought hard and lost badly in a clash Jonah hadn’t even bothered to watch.
“Come on!” shouted Jonah, his voice muted in his own partially-deafened ears.
Freya didn’t budge. “I can’t leave,” she whispered as she stroked the glowing glass, eyes fixed on the shuddering organism encased beneath it. “She’s everything I’ve ever wanted. A flawless weapon. Himura was right about one thing; she can change the equation, tip the ecological balance.”
“She’s a death machine, programmed to blow sky high with a nuclear blast as soon as we hit Pyongyang.”
Another shell landed high in the superstructure before she could answer, shaking the yacht as the lights around them flickered and winked out. Jonah grabbed Freya and yanked her to her feet, but she twisted away, easily throwing off his hand.
“Come on, she’s not worth dying over!” he shouted.
“You don’t understand,”
Freya murmured. “Freya — we’re running out of time!”
She looked at him and shook her head, refusing to leave. The salvos were landing closer now, one after another slamming into the stricken ship from stem to stern. Whatever time they had left to escape had already expired.
“Freya—!” screamed Jonah, but it was too late. The nearest bulkhead burst apart at the waterline with two near-simultaneous explosions as a great wall of icy water poured in, sweeping across the ornate chamber. Jonah was ripped away from Freya by the leading edge of the wave and dragged under freezing water, his head slamming into a glass case. His mind reeled with the impact, his body trapped in a green abyss of swirling, airless motion. Spinning uncontrollably, he clawed at the water, trying to drag himself to the surface.
Finally, his face burst free of the swirling flood, open mouth taking in one fast, gasping breath before a pair of powerful hands grabbed him by the leg, climbing up his body. Himura’s twisted face suddenly rose from the froth, inches from his own. Instinct took over and Jonah slammed his fist into the Himura’s face, once, twice, three times as the dying man threatened to pull them both under. The arcing shells were coming faster now, hitting the stricken superyacht with one deafening explosion after another.
“I… knew… your… father,” Himura hissed through clenched, blood-flecked teeth. Stunned, Jonah grabbed at him, trying to hold onto Himura, but they were swept under and torn away from each other by a tsunami of floating debris, dragging Jonah ever deeper into the rapidly filling chamber.
He broke the surface one last time to find himself alone. Himura and Freya vanished into the flood. Jonah sucked in a deep breath before diving into the raging waters, his broken ribs screaming in his chest. The explosions were so close and fast he could barely separate one from the other as he forced himself deeper into the darkness, clawing against the violent currents. Twenty feet, thirty feet, Jonah pushed against the violent floodwaters until his ears pounded and his lungs burned like acid. The ship’s interior was already a tomb, a chaotic maelstrom of electric discharge and zero visibility, with Meisekimu’s crimson light throbbing within the eye of the storm like a dying heart.
And then his grasping fingers caught a jagged edge, a lattice of shattered metal and carbon fiber from where an artillery shell had blown a wide fissure in the hull. Jonah held himself fast against the incredible influx of floodwaters as his joints popped and muscles flexed. He fought the subzero deluge with every cell of his being, slowly forcing his body out of the gap. Emerging on the other side, Jonah was suddenly ripped away by the river, violently sweeping alongside the exterior hull as the superyacht slid past, its sharp propellers slicing through the waters just inches from his tumbling form.
He broke the surface between sheets of ice, spitting water and coughing as he threw one shivering arm over the cold, white blocks bobbing in the choppy wake. The wounded superyacht listed in the river before him, a collapsing mass of billowing flames and ruined metal. One artillery shell after another smashed into her fragile, exposed hull as her bow and helicopter pad slipped beneath the waters for the final time. A great wave washed over her, pouring through the shattered panes of her ruined greenhouse. She groaned, hull flexing as she filled, her massive propellers suspended briefly in the air as her bridge and antennae tower went under. And then she was gone, swallowed by the Taedong, leaving only a floating patch of still-burning debris and a growing fuel slick.