Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

The vehicle’s door closed with a hissss, compressing the atmosphere in the airtight cabin even before the soldiers had taken their positions. The pilot, his eyes fixed on his guidance console, spoke the words: “Destination: Loading station. Via: Tunnel 3.”

In less than three seconds, the DIT Vehicle adjusted its wheels and rotated toward the direction of the specified tunnel. The movements were so fluid the crew could barely feel the turn of the wheel from inside the compartment; the first clue was the sudden, serious push of the invisible hand of momentum on Roland’s chest as the DIT accelerated swiftly and smoothly, like a rocket-powered tank, moving with eerie silence into Tunnel 3 without hesitation.

“Let’s have the readout of the drones,” Roland said, still restless. The DITV’s AI instantly connected him to the recon station they had just left.

One of the soldiers on board, deep-scanning their destination, raised his head. “Sir, I’m spotting an unusual type of submersible, in Fissure 9, not far from the loading station,” he said.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Roland shouted. “Are you sure it’s not one of ours?”

“Sir, the computers have cross-referenced all possible embedded codes given off by our subs. Nothing is showing up.”

Slanting forward and adjusting the handgun on his side, Roland said, “This better not be the Chinese! If it is, their goddamn military satellites have already followed the entry.”

“Sir, the submersible gave off no signals, not even to our own satellites,” the surveillance officer said. “If they did, we would have picked up the incision ourselves.”

“Nothing can be that stealth,” Roland said flatly. “Check for anomalies in the Southern Sea within the past month. Look for sighting, undocumented arrivals, unexplained sinkings-anything.” Something would give away the source of the intruder. It had to.

“Sir.” It was one of the soldiers, working on a handheld device the size of a lighter. “Central Command has given us three anomalies. The strategic AIs give low significance scores to two of them. The third is a freighter called the Munro; it foundered and sank at the sixtieth parallel at approximately 1100 hours yesterday. There are no codes assigned to it, but standard satellite surveillance logged a rendezvous with the Chilean Coast Guard just a few hours before it sank.”

“Sank?” the commander repeated, analyzing the situation. “Interesting. Send me the data.”

The tactical officer who had started the discussion touched his device in the corner, and Roland’s own handheld buzzed and showed him the Munro’s stats: length, draft, age, registration. “Sir,” the tactical officer said, “the boat has been traced back for two months. Origin seems to be a port in Portugal-Tavira-and seems to have docked several times, disappearing for a month in Argentina at San Sebastian, before making its way through the Straits of Magellan.”

“That’s our bogie!” Roland said. The size of the ship, the size of its hold, its utter lack of shipping manifest. Fishing boat my ass, he thought. They brought that damn intruder in from Portugal or farther north. “Check the probability of speed from the sinking of the boat to Fissure 9.”

“Sir,” responded the soldier…and a beat later with all efficiency, “Central Command suggests a possibility but low probability. The reason given is that the speed of the vessel would be too high to reach us in time.”

“Oh, I think that little bastard can go just about as fast as it wants,” he said and glared at the display that showed his intruder as a three-dimensional blob, moving closer and closer to the central lake so far below the ice. “I bet it can do almost anything.”

The Spector VI missed the wall of ice by thirty feet. Max could read that measurement quite clearly on the holo-display in front of him. That had been more than ninety seconds ago; now they were speeding away from the side of the tunnel at an oblique angle, moving laterally with great speed and carefully, carefully, even deeper into the tunnel.

On the bridge and in the ready room, the team members tried to gain their composure while Hayden hunched over the tactical console and focused frantically on controlling the new exterior functions of the Spector. Max, intense and committed as ever, simply concentrated on keeping them all alive.

Simon sat next to Max in the co-pilot’s chair and tried to watch the console, the holo-screen, and the crew all at once. He cast a long look over his shoulder and called out, “Is everyone okay?”

“We’re fine,” Ryan replied as he helped Samantha to her feet. The Spector was swaying side to side, fighting the invisible currents of the tunnel’s treated water. It was difficult to stand while the craft gained its equilibrium.

“We’re reaching the end of the tunnel,” said Max, frowning at the forward deep-scan. Not all that deep at the moment, he told himself. This ice interferes with all the passive scans. Might as well be concrete. Not knowing enough-hell, he corrected, not knowing much of anything in this environment-was frustrating and unfamiliar to him. Max was used to being on top of the situation; he was trained to think three steps ahead. But this constant, knife-edge improvisation was wearing on him.

“You have an idea what’s above us?” Hayden asked, still peering at his version of the scans.

“No,” Max said flatly. “My visibility is about three hundred feet. Yours?”

Hayden scowled. “No better.” He spun in his chair and confronted both Simon and Max. “But look,” he said. “The invisibility functions are up and running. All of them. We are now invisible to just about every sensor spectrum known to man: radar, sonar, visible light, infrared, acoustic, even mass spectrography.”

“Very impressive,” Max said.

“Yes it is,” Hayden replied, trying not to sound proud of himself. “But more important, it means we can use the active sensor array and not get caught.” He glanced sideways at the console and allowed himself a small shrug. “At least, we can do it in microbursts, fractions of a second every ten seconds, so that no one can get a lock on us.”

Max grinned as he piloted the vessel toward the end of the tunnel. “So lots of quick peeks are okay, but no staring allowed.”

Hayden nodded eagerly. “Exactly.”

Simon thought it through. “Okay,” he said. “We really do need to see farther and deeper than three hundred feet in any direction. Give it a try. And look for an approaching…anything…at the same time, okay?”

“Done,” Hayden said and spun back to his console. Another hologram block, this one far longer than it was wide, blossomed on the left side of the bridge. “Engaging deepscan burst…now,” he said.

The new image of the world around them snapped into place. The Spector was a tiny glowing button in the middle of a huge-an unbelievably huge-network of tunnels and basins, carved out of the ice of Antarctica. The channels and fissures and caverns and alcoves stretched off in every direction-above, below, forward, aft, left, right-in a 360-degree view that moved slowly as they skimmed down the tunnel.

Even Hayden was amazed. “Mother of god,” Hayden whispered, unaware he was speaking aloud at all. “What’s going on in this frozen hell?”

Simon and Ryan noticed the movements in the tunnels at the same instant. “Forward, about twenty degrees right and…am I reading the scale right?” Simon said. “About half a mile away?” He jumped up and pointed at the blue-diamond blob in one of the approaching tunnel projections.

“Right,” Hayden said. “About three thousand feet as the laser scans.”

“Oh my god,” Samantha said, putting her hand on her stomach, terrified. “Whoever’s out there-they can see us.”