There was only one knock at the door. “Vacation’s over. Veyron just found the hive’s nest.”
Tom sat upright. He switched his bed side light on, and looked at Genevieve. Surprised to discover her languid body appeared even sexier than he remembered. She woke up immediately. “Good morning Sam. Where do you want me?” he asked.
“Dive room. Veyron’s come up with a plan. We dive in fifteen minutes.”
“Okay. See you there.”
Genevieve ran her hands down his arms until they linked with his. “Good morning,” she whispered.
Tom smiled at her. Glad she was still there. He mouthed the words, “Morning.” He rolled slightly on top of her and slid down the bed until their eyes were at the same height. Her blue eyes simply watched him in silence. Tom kissed her lips. Slow at first. Soft and gently. Tenderness then gave way to desire. She opened her mouth and his tongue explored her eagerly. His right hand let go of hers and he ran it down to the hollow of her lower back.
He then stopped. “I have to go.”
“Wait. One more kiss,” she demanded, wrapping her free arm around his neck.
He kissed her again. Long, passionate. She finished by biting the very side of his lip firmly, but with not quite enough force to draw blood.
He drew back in surprise. “What the fuck?”
She smiled. “If you tell anyone about this, I really will kill you. No matter how much I adore your beautiful hazel eyes.”
Chapter Eighty Three
Sea Witch II was a bright yellow Triton 36 000/3 submarine. It stood next to the moon pool on its twin hulls. It reminded Sam of a futuristic hovercraft. It had twin yellow hulls and a large borosilicate glass dome in the middle that housed up to three divers. Two pilot seats at the front of the bubble, and one passenger crammed behind to form the shape of a V. The dome provided 270 degree visualization. The unique glass had been slowly built over nearly eight months, using boron instead of soda-lime, which gave it the unusual property of compressing upon itself while it dives. The benefit of which, meant the bubble dome increases in durability the deeper it goes. On paper, this submarine was capable of reaching depths of 36, 000 feet — the same depths of the Mariana Trench.
Tonight, Sam had little need for such extreme hull strength. Their depth would max out at around 70 feet. Their mission was to locate the hive of deadly nanobot hybrid plankton. Once certain they had found the dangerous nest, they would implement Veyron’s plan to destroy it — he just hoped Veyron was right about his theory.
The cables and hooks were attached to the submarine, ready to maneuver the sub into the water for launch. Sam felt the sub shift as he strapped himself into the pilot seat. To his left, in the copilot’s chair, Tom had commenced the startup procedure. Behind them both, Veyron was double checking his calculations for his theory by hand. Sam looked at the two other men. “Are we ready to get this sub in the water?”
“I’m good,” Veyron said.
Tom flicked the running lights to on. “Systems all check out well. We’re good to go.”
Sam depressed the radio transmitter. “Maria Helena, this is Sea Witch II, we’re good for launch.”
“Copy that Sea Witch, safe journey and good hunting.” It was Matthew who replied, his professional monotone voice comforting in its familiarity.
Sam shifted slightly in his seat as the Sea Witch II rocked lightly in the seawater. He braced himself on the joystick, which was still set in a locked position.
“Maria Helena, we’re ready to release the tether and commence our dive,” Sam said.
“Copy that. Releasing the tether,” Matthew replied.
“Oh, and Matthew, make certain Elise is tracking the area. If the hive makes a run for it, I want her ready to track. It’s taken too long to find it, only to lose it now.”
“She’s on top of it. Good luck.”
Sam flicked the ballast switch. Water began flooding into the tanks, while air bubbles gurgled to the surface. “Okay, gentlemen. Let’s do this.”
The Sea Witch II dived to a depth of 60 feet. Sam stopped the water intake and leveled her into neutral buoyancy. In a heads-up display across the front of the dome, a GPS screen overlapped the Sonar maps of the seafloor. The location of the cave had already been entered and marked with the word cave. It was approximately 1500 feet away, nearly directly north of their current position. Sam didn’t want to risk bringing the Maria Helena any closer, in case it startled the hive into running before they were in a position to do anything about it. He then started the forward propellers, located at each end of the twin hulls. They whirred quietly as they moved towards the cave.
Tom grinned. “You’re certain that’s where they are?”
“Pretty certain,” Sam replied. “Elise found the entrance to this cave in our database from our Sonar study of the area a month back. The entrance is nearly thirty feet wide by ten feet high. It’s rectangular and almost looks manmade. We believe it might be the entrance to a massive underwater cavern. How far it goes, we’re about to find out.”
Veyron flicked on three separate switches at the back of the submarine. The switches were green and had been recently retrofitted to the Sea Witch II. A new sound started. It was an electrical hum. Soft at first, then progressively increasing in decibels.
Both Sam and Tom looked back at him.
Veyron smiled back at them, apologetically. “Sorry, had to be done.”
Sam shrugged his shoulders. Engineers could do anything they wanted to his submarine so long as they were inside it too. And Veyron wasn’t just any engineer. He was a world leader in mechatronics and submersibles.
Tom pointed at the seafloor ahead. It gradually sloped upwards. “Any reason you took us to 60 feet when we’re aiming for 30? What? Are you afraid they’ll see us coming?”
“Yeah, we are.”
Tom sighed. They were dealing with an unknown weapon they couldn’t necessarily see. No one had any idea how much it knew about its surrounding environment. The only thing for certain was that, up until now, they kept on underestimating it. “Say, just out of interest. Once we do find the hive’s nest, what’s your plan to destroy it?”
Sam increased their depth by 10 feet to match the natural contours of the seabed. “Veyron came up with the solution.”
“Well don’t hold out on me. What have we got?”
“When Veyron and I were onboard the Global Star, we heard a story from the foreman at the scrap metal salvage site. The man told us about how one of the workers fell into the bilge which contained the bioluminescent plankton. The worker complained that the plankton tried to kill him. He developed a rash. Soon he was unconscious. When the doctors put him through a magnetic resonance imaging machine he started to have a fit. When they tried it later, they couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary, with the exception of a brain tumor he didn’t know he had.”
Tom shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “That’s right, I remember you telling me the story. I thought it turned out to be nothing. The guy had a brain injury or epilepsy or something.”
Veyron shifted in his seat. “Yeah, it was a brain tumor.”
“Okay, so what’s the relevance?” Tom asked.
“Well, it wasn’t until we discovered that there were nanobots living symbiotically with the plankton that Veyron realized what happened,” Sam said.
Tom took a deep breath. “Of course, the MRI is a super magnet. It would have stripped and killed each of the nanobots. The guy probably metabolized them and pissed them out over the next few days.”
“Exactly.” Sam flicked through a series of paper. Searching for something. “So, what we really needed was a really big, portable MRI machine.”
Veyron grinned. “I believe it’s called an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP for short. And I’ve had one attached to the front of Sea Witch II.”