Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

They could all hear Andrew clanking and grunting as he wedged his way forward, threading through the maze of electrical and mechanical components that were the heart of the Spector. The specs were right, he told himself. At some junctures, there really was less than ten inches of space-barely enough for a human body. Some of the nodes and connectors he was passing were sharp-edged or jagged; others were just plain deadly. He knew that the high voltage, produced by the hydrogen reactor and relayed through some of these components, could kill him instantly if he came in contact with it, and there were points where the up-thrust gears and spokes of the tread system made it almost impossible not to touch a live spot.

Andrew was starting to sweat, and he knew he wasn’t halfway there yet.

“Huh,” Hayden said. “I’m looking at the results of the seawater analysis, and I’m picking up something…unusual.”

“What do you mean, ‘unusual?’” Simon moved over to see for himself.

“I’m not sure.” He glanced at Nastasia, who had just re-entered the bridge. She rushed to his station and looked at the data.

“Perhaps,” Hayden said in a concerned tone, “it’s some sort of chemical additive. It does, in fact, resemble the molecular components of a type of retardant.”

“Maybe there’s something wrong with the sampling system,” Nastasia said frowning. “This isn’t the kind of stuff you’d expect to see in Arctic water…though, I admit, it could explain the lack of ice.”

“What are you suggesting?” Simon asked Hayden. “That it’s a type of anti-freeze? That’s crazy.”

“I agree, crazy. But it sure as hell isn’t a compound that would exist naturally.”

Samantha was pacing directly over Andrew’s last known location. “Andrew?” she called down, worried about his safety. “Are you all right?” She turned back toward the rest of the team and said, “I’m not sure what’s going on down there, but this is taking far too long.”

Hayden nodded in reluctant agreement. “Let’s give him a bit more time. The space is impossible to maneuver.”

“Maybe everyone should suit up right now,” Max suggested without lifting his eyes from the holo-display in front of them. “If something comes for us, or we drift into an obstacle.”

The team members rose and moved quickly to the sleeping quarters at the aft of the Spector to put on the suits. Nastasia explained that the outfits were meant for deep subsurface work and were waterproof; they would stabilize the wearer’s metabolism while the batteries supplied enough heat to survive, at least for a few hours before they needed to be recharged. Without them-on land or underwater-it would be impossible to withstand the sub-zero temperatures of Antarctica. The safe phones that Andrew had given them weeks and thousands of miles earlier were going to be useless now; they would never stand the extreme cold. But each of them activated and tested the wrist communicators Andrew provided that resembled watches-the ones that would work at subzero temperatures.

As the team members pulled on the three separate layers of the suits and attached the communication devices to their wrists, the stark reality of being hundreds of feet below the ice became a real notion to them for the first time.

“Hayden, I need you in the front while I suit up,” Max said.

The inventor goggled at him. “No!” he blurted. “I mean…I…I’m not a pilot. I don’t actually drive these things, I just build them.”

“So who better to sit behind the console?” Max said, standing up. “Look, there’s nothing to it; we’re barely moving at the moment. Just watch this indicator and this attitude gauge, and adjust as needed. Easy as that.” He didn’t wait for an answer; he just stood up, pulled Hayden into the command chair, and slid back toward the ready room and beyond.

For the first time in his life, Hayden was in command of one of the ships he actually built. A sense of claustrophobia set in. He questioned why he had gotten himself involved in the operation in the first place. I’m a goddamn reclusive genius, he told himself, not Indiana Jones.

Meanwhile Andrew had wormed his way to the crucial juncture between the smart skin and the datastream connectors, just below the command console of Spector VI. Ironically, he was the only one not wearing one of the temperature-regulating eco-suits, but he was the closest to the freezing water rushing past, literally inches away and making the chamber icy cold. He shivered as he lay on his side, barely holding onto his flashlight, desperately wishing the fuselage lights hadn’t been turned off.

This is it, he told himself. His hands were only twelve inches away from the fiber optic connectors, each one as thick as a finger, but they were almost completely surrounded by silver contacts, sizzling with discharge from the smartskin. Any sudden move, any momentary contact, would end his life instantly.

Twelve inches, he told himself. Might as well be twelve miles. He pushed his body forward slowly, very slowly, stretching out one arm, extending three fingers to reach the connection. Careful…he told himself. Careful…

Above and behind him in the ready room, all but two members of the team had suited up and returned to their work on the bridge. Simon and Nastasia still remained.

Simon was cinching up his boots when he saw Nastasia struggling with the third layer of her rig, getting it twisted and putting it on half upside-down. He moved over and took the limp sleeve from her. “Let me help you with that,” he said.

“I think I am all right,” she responded.

He ignored the stubbornness and moved closer. “Here. The battery pack connects with the exterior suit like this,” he said. He took it gently from her fingers, reversed it, and plugged it effortlessly into the socket she’d been struggling with for ten minutes.

“Hmm,” she said, quirking her mouth. “I suppose I could use some help.”

He tried to untangle the connector as she pulled her hair up through the suit…and in that moment, Simon’s childhood flashed in front of him.

He caught a quick glimpse of a tattoo on Nastasia’s neck, right at the nape, just below the hairline. It was a hauntingly familiar design-identical to the one he had seen since he was boy on his father’s briefcase, identical to the one on the door to his father’s mysterious study in Corsica-the symbol that had haunted him all his life.

Simon had always associated the symbol with his father, but Oliver had never explained what it was. And now here it was again-on Nastasia’s neck. A chill ran through him.

Nastasia sensed something had changed. She turned back to him and frowned when she saw that he was white with shock.

“Are you all right?” she said. “You look as if you have seen a ghost.”

He stared at her for a long time and then nodded. “I’m fine.”

He noticed something more as she looked at him: her eyes. It wasn’t their shape as much as the color-a strange light blue, pale and almost colorless in certain kinds of light.

The only other person he knew who had eyes that color was his father.

Ryan interrupted the moment with a nervous call to Sam, who was still hovering over the open maintenance hatch. “Sam!” he said sharply. “What’s going on with Andrew downstairs?”

Before she had a chance to respond, Andrew’s voice came up through the deck-plates: “We’re good to go!”

They could hear him rattling and scraping, crawling back the way he had come. Hayden began to activate the holo-displays and monitors immediately, one after another, moving into the seat next to Max to begin the calibration process.

“Andrew!” Hayden shouted, “I’m not getting a thing! Which channel did you use, there’s no-”