Europa Strike

“Probably because Atlantis is close by, with remote drones that can innocently stray into government-restricted waters ‘by mistake.’ And they can link in from anywhere, remember.”

Atlantis was another seaquarium resort, much like Oceanus but located in Florida, just south of West Palm Beach. Three hundred kilometers wasn’t exactly “close by,” but it was close enough that teleop drones could operate comfortably for extended periods.

“Range?” Mark asked Carver.

“Seventy meters.” The whine of the Manta’s jet drive increased as the SEAL sub driver boosted the power. “Sixty. We’re closing.”

Outside, all was still in complete blackness, save for the constellations of luminous deep-sea life. According to the readouts, they were at 495 meters depth now, with an outside pressure of nearly fifty atmospheres squeezing at the hull. A tense minute passed as the Manta climbed through the high-pressure dark.

“They’re running,” Carver said. “They know we’re on to them.”

“Run ’em down!” Mark said.

“Range ten meters,” Carver said. “I’m gonna hit the lights.”

“Do it,” Mark replied. A harsh white glare stabbed through the sea outside, turning drifting bits of detritus into a blizzard of glowing flecks. Ahead, a bubble-topped vessel less than a meter long, with twin outriggers and a yellow and red paint scheme, twisted in the Manta’s beam.

“That’s an Atlantis boat,” the pilot said.

“It’s tiny,” Jeff said.

“Unmanned,” Carver told him. “Someone’s linked in through its cameras and other sensors and is piloting it from somewhere else. I’m picking up two blue-green laser relays between here and the surface. Chances are, whoever’s steering that thing isn’t even at Atlantis. They could’ve linked in through the Net.”

“Damned tourists,” Mark growled. “Can you take him?”

“Working on it. He’s slower…but a lot more maneuverable.” As if to demonstrate, the other sub twisted sharply toward the Manta, ascending, passing out of the field of view from the tiny forward port.

“This thing has torpedoes?” Jeff asked.

“She can,” Mark told him. “She was designed to release remote drones for deep exploration…but it’s easy enough to plug in a warhead instead of an instrument package. We’re not armed today, though. Have to do it the hard way.”

“Huh. Competition between all the new seaquariums must be pretty fierce,” he observed.

Mark glanced at him, as if to see whether or not he was joking. Jeff grinned and shrugged. It was a bit surreal. Throughout the last century, by far the largest sector of American business had been the entertainment industry, and theme parks like the big seaquariums and their space-park cousins had proliferated the way movie theaters had the century before. Competition between them was stiff…but this was the first time Jeff had ever heard of a war between rival theme parks.

The Manta surged, rising sharply, then banking right into a tight, tight turn that felt like the boat was hovering at the shuddering brink of a low-speed stall.

“That’s screwed him,” Carver said. “I’ve just interrupted the BG-laser link with our own hull. The target is dropping into wait-and-see mode.”

“That means it will circle,” Mark told Jeff, “trying to reacquire the comlink beam.”

“It means,” Carver added, “that for the next few seconds, it will be predictable.”

“Martin 1150.” Mark tapped the screen showing the rotating schematic. “Pretty stupid, actually. No AI. No anticipation. It needs a human remote-driver to do damn near anything at all.”

Jeff still couldn’t see the other sub, but the Manta was falling now. A moment later, there was a sharp, hollow-sounding clunk from port, transmitted through the hull from the Manta’s left wing. “Got him!” Carver said, bringing the Manta’s nose high once more. “He’s going down, boss. Crushed his starboard flotation tank.”

“Good job.”

“Do you and the Atlantis seaquarium often take out one another’s subs?” Jeff asked.

“These are restricted waters,” Mark pointed out. “Part of AUTEC’s test range. If Atlantis loses a few of their touristride drones, maybe they’ll be more careful about keeping track of where they’re at. It’s not like GPS receivers are expensive or anything.”

“But you think it might’ve been the Chinese actually piloting it.”

“Almost certainly,” Mark said. “They tried getting in here first with drones off one of their big nuke subs, but the Navy chased them off. Lately, we think they’re using the commercial teleops to keep an eye on us.”

“Why? The Manta is new, but there’s no radical technology, no antimatter, no ET stuff. What’s their interest?”

“That,” Mark said, “is an excellent question. I wish I knew the answer.” He glanced at Jeff again. “It could be they know something about Icebreaker.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, Major, I wouldn’t think it was.”

“I’ve sent a message to the surface,” Carver said. “They’ll send a salvage boat down to collect the BGL relays. I doubt they’ll be able to collect the wreckage, though. Depth’s almost three thousand meters here. Pretty steep for the salvage boys.”

“They wouldn’t learn anything from a damned commercial drone anyway,” Mark replied. “We’ll have Intelligence check out the user logs at Atlantic, but whatever they find’ll be a front anyway. S’okay. I doubt that they saw anything worthwhile.”

“‘Grains of sand,’” Carver said.

“I know.”

“What’s that mean?” Jeff asked.

“Chinese intelligence services work somewhat differently than we’re used to here in the West,” Mark replied. “They operate on a philosophy as old as Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and they can be incredibly patient. They don’t rely on spies or moles or intelligence coups as much as they do on many thousands of discrete, tiny, apparently unrelated bits of information all being funneled back to Beijing by Chinese tourists, government workers, scientists, businessmen. The image is of millions of termites, each with a grain of sand, patiently building a mound two or three meters high.”

“Hell, sir, I thought all spy work was like that,” Jeff said. He’d spent three years of his Marine career working a desk for Marine J2 in the Pentagon and knew something about military intelligence. “Forget the cloak-and-dagger stuff. You piece together a fact here, a probability there, a statistic, a photograph…and you end up with a detailed report on why the Uzbek Republic is going to have a civil war next year.”

“Sure, but the way we go about it is a pale, pale shadow of how the Chinese do things. Intelligence operations in the West tend to go from fiscal year to fiscal year and extend just as far as the current budget allows. For the Chinese, doing something, doing anything with an eye to the future is standard procedure. They can afford to take the long view and make decisions that won’t bear fruit for twenty years.”

“I’ve heard stories about that,” Jeff admitted. “When they targeted our nuclear weapons program back in the last century, they did it a little bit at a time. But they did have a lot of help from greedy politicians and short-sighted bureaucrats.”

“They are…opportunists,” Mark said. “Opportunists with a very clear idea of where they want to go and how they need to go about it. And the patience to get there.”

Forty minutes later, the Manta broke the surface, exploding into dazzling, tropical sunshine and riding a gentle swell. A kilometer ahead, a Navy subcarrier was just visible, her black, stealth-canted upper deck, sensor suite, and aft housing rising from a main deck that was completely awash, completely bare of masts, railings, or other radar-catching protuberances. A lot of the newer Navy warships looked more to Jeff’s eye like the original U.S.S. Monitor than a modern surface vessel. Most attack vessels had even less visible above the waterline than the subcarrier Neried.

Though the Neried could launch and recover her submersible offspring underwater, the Manta was still undergoing sea trials and was scheduled this day for a surface docking. The subcarrier was broader than she looked in profile, with dual catamaran keels embracing a central wet-bay facing aft. Carver brought the sub about to line her up with Neried’s stern, slowly guiding the DSV “up her ass,” between the big ship’s keel-mounted MHD propulsors.

Mark slithered backward off his couch and stood behind Carver’s position. A touch of a button opened the Manta’s hood, exposing her topside bubble canopy and allowing sunlight to flood the cramped space with light and warmth. The space directly under the navigation bubble was the only spot on the bridge where a tall man could stand upright.

Jeff stayed where he was, however. He was fine underwater, but once the Manta reached the surface, the boat became ungainly, wallowing heavily with each swell despite the broad reach of her wings. He felt the first sharp twinge in his stomach and throat.

A fine thing, he thought, both angry and bemused by the weakness. He swallowed hard and clung to the padding of his couch, trying to shut out the lateral shift and yaw. A seasick Marine.

He’d been violently ill his first time afloat, back at the Naval Academy during small boat evolutions. It had been all the worse because Jeff Warhurst was the son of a Marine officer, the grandson of an officer and former U.S. Marine Commandant, the great-grandson of a Marine who’d won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam.

And that Marine’s father had been a Marine as well, a gunnery sergeant who’d watched the raising of the flag over Suribachi and five years later had frozen to death at a miserably desolate place called Yudam-ni.