Robert Williams: Ice Fortress

“I can’t apologize for the order, the safety of the men and women aboard this boat depended on it, but I can empathize, Mr. Alvarez.” Again Captain Jameson tried to ease the tension. If they were going to survive this, they needed to work together, as unpleasant as that might be for all concerned.

Juan’s eyes blazed with anger. “Nellie took two years to develop and she cost over five million dollars.” Passion for the little sub laced his words.

“And I’m responsible for a two and a half billion dollar state-of-the-art submarine and the lives of those onboard.

Those damn fish were targeting the only thing on this vessel not rigged to avoid sonar detection. That pet of yours was painting a target on our backs. I had to jettison it. I’d do the same again if it meant saving your life and the other lives I’m ultimately responsible for. That’s my job. There’s only one captain on this boat, Mr. Alvarez and you’d better start getting used to that.”

The conversation wasn’t going quite the way Frank Jameson intended, but he was a submarine commander, not a politician.

Leah felt the need to defuse the unresolvable conflict and wanted to be the first to acknowledge the dangerous elephant in the room. “Now that the alarms have been turned off and we’re not being shot at, for the moment, would somebody care to tell me why the hell somebody is trying to blow up an oceanographic research sub? And just as important as the why is the who .”

Leah’s eyes flicked back and forth between Jameson and Durand. Both men shared a troubled glance before Captain Jameson explained, “We don’t know for sure. Whatever is down here with us is damn near as undetectable as we are. Our sonar detected nothing until it launched its fish.”

“Who else has a submarine as advanced as this?” quizzed Leah, “I thought the Barracuda was the most advanced submarine in the world.”

Jameson paused to consider how much to share with his civilian passengers before continuing, “Every new sub is the most advanced in the world, until someone builds a newer one. It can’t be the Chinese. As much as they might like to carve out a chunk of Antarctic real estate for themselves, they don’t have the sub technology to blindside us like that. So, that leaves only one possible option, but it makes no sense… no sense at all…”

“The Russians,” Durand finished the captain’s sentence for him, “only the Russians have a sub that can operate in full stealth mode and if the captain’s, right then God help us all if we have a Yasen class sub hunting us.”

“Why?” Leah’s voice wavered, unsure if she really wanted to hear the answer to her question.

Jameson answered, “Because the Yasen class is the deadliest nuclear attack sub to launch since the height of the Cold War. It’s silent, fast and just one of them is loaded with enough cruise missiles and torpedoes to start its own war.

“So what do we do now?” This time it was Dave Sutton who asked the question on everyone’s lips.

The captain held up a hand and began counting off his long, slender fingers, “One, we can’t outrun it. The second we power up and make speed, it will most likely get weapons lock on us again, now that their computers have identified our acoustic signature once already, it will be a snap second time around.

“Two, we can’t go toe to toe and trade punches like Ali and Foreman in Rumble in the Jungle… we have no weapons. Our entire weapons systems were stripped out to make way for your science toys. We don’t have dick to fire back at them and even less in the way of countermeasures.”

“We’re a sitting duck,” Durand added, as if they might have missed the take away lesson from the captain’s colorful metaphor.

Leah’s brow pinched. “Rumble in the where?”

All four men rolled eyes as they faced her.

Juan sat upright, leaning forward to join the discussion, the fire in his eyes had dulled and he looked to the captain with renewed respect. A man who liked his boxing couldn’t be all bad, even if he had murdered Nellie.

Again, Dave gave voice to a question on their minds, “Shouldn’t we be asking ourselves why , as Leah suggested earlier?”

The look they all shared suggested that Dave made a fair point. But nobody dared hazard a guess.

Alvarez had been pissed right from the moment he’d been ordered to release the docking clamps securing Nellie to the outer hull of the sub. The hatch to the pressure hull always remained sealed, so there was no risk of flooding by letting her go. It was the captain’s ulterior motive that made Juan bristle with anger each time he replayed the scenario in his mind.

Nellie had been sacrificed. She’d been cut loose and allowed to resume her pre-programmed grid pattern, sonar pings firing in a constant array as she went about her designated mission, oblivious to the fact that she had become a decoy. The shock waves from the torpedo explosions rocked the Barracuda violently, causing significant damage to the propulsion and communications systems. Luckily, the life support systems remained fully functional and the Evaporation Plant and Oxygen Generator were able to produce a continual flow of oxygen from distilled seawater. And seawater was the only thing they had in abundance right now.

As proud as Juan was that his pride and joy had saved them all by leading the deadly torpedoes away from the Barracuda, he was still overwhelmed at the loss of years of research and development. To occupy his time during their ‘silent running’ time while repairs were made, he’d worked with his sonar counterpart, Dave, to clean up the data brought back by Nellie on her maiden and final voyage.

With nothing else to occupy their time, the antisocial pair of science nerds stared for hours at their computer monitors as their fingers danced across their keyboards with lightning agility. Dr. Leah Anderson watched with interest from her own workstation as the two argued, shared information and raced to beat each other to various solutions, all at the same time. They were just competitive enough to spur each other on but not so much that they sabotaged their work by trying to beat each other unfairly. A friendly spirit of cooperative competition, that’s how she defined it. She knew she’d selected well when she chose them. She only wished she was as adept at choosing companions for herself.

“Okay, I think I’ve got it, this time.” The excitement raised the pitch in Juan’s voice an octave.

“He’s right.” Dave nodded to Leah. “It looks good.”

“You’ve been saying that for two days, now, guys,” groaned Leah as she leaned into their curved wall of monitors.

“No, seriously, I take back what I said about Juan’s code being buggy. It’s not. He’s cleaned up my sonar data and the resolution is amazing.” He pointed to the center screen where a detailed 3D vector graphic was building, line by line, pixel by pixel.

The 3D image Leah was looking at was similar but more detailed than they had worked with when their project was in the testing phase. It clearly showed the thickness and undulations of the ice shelf. The strata of the ice was more or less uniform but for an anomalous bulge in the middle of the graphic. “So there really is a gigantic iceberg encased in the ice shelf.”

“Technically it’s an ice mountain,” commented Captain Jameson who had quietly positioned himself behind Leah and leaned in to see what was getting the geeks so worked up.

His warm breath cascaded down the nape of Leah’s neck, causing goosebumps to erupt on her exposed flesh. As she inhaled, the subtle scent of his aftershave brought back memories. Highly inappropriate memories given the circumstances. She stood abruptly to shake off the unwelcome reminiscence.