Spiral (9 page)

Carter spun the ECube in his palm, then sent the report to Spiral.

What the fuck, he thought. Let them figure it out! Maybe they could discover what had happened to the ECube as well...

A low drone reached his ears, pounding over the forest.

Carter waited patiently as the Comanche leaped into view, spun around low over the trees and touched down. The
whump whump
of the rotors sent branches and trees swaying and Carter ran to the cockpit and the serious face of Langan.

‘Hurry up,’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got company.’

‘Company?’

Langan nodded as Carter ascended and belted himself into the cockpit. ‘Put on the spare HIDSS ‘cos I might need your help. Whatever the fuck you’ve been up to down here, you’ve certainly stirred up a hornets’ nest. Ever used a holographic Bi-Ocular FOV in a real-time combat situation?’

‘What?’

‘Just get in.’

The Comanche RAH-66 twin LHTec engines screamed and the attack helicopter launched into the fast-approaching darkness.

T
he Russian Ballistic Missile Submarine 941 Typhoon Class,
Moscow 16,
thrummed through the dark waters 130° and a hundred miles south of the Gelz Ice Shelf. Slowly, the seven-bladed perch propellers spun down and the vessel sat squat and dark in the dim cool glow, immobile, predatory and frightening in its bulky, matt black presence.

Juri Kolgar, Captain First Rank of the 19
^th
Submarine Division, drummed his fingers on the desk and stared at the readings on the screen before him. He glanced up at Seaman Bharzova and the worried expression on the young man’s neatly shaved face. Kolgar smiled warmly, and dismissed the man.

For the past four months the Russians had been working with Spiral in an attempt to quash a new internal problem - a spate of mass rioting that had been brought on due to a Mafia-peddled designer drug, which had taken the poverty-stricken working classes by the balls and sent them spinning down the cobbled road to narcotic Hell. This drug, Lemon Vodka as it had been nicknamed, had made the Mafia-led clans even more rich and powerful, but was costing the government dear -financially, politically and, of course, socially. Spiral had been called in as a last resort to try and help stamp out the illegal importing of Lemon Vodka.

A day earlier, the
Moscow 16
had been tracking an unnamed surface vessel that was under suspicion of drug trafficking; the vessel was the size of a battleship, of unknown origins, and had been making slow progress to the north-east, close to Russia’s Arctic coast.

Now, however, the vessel had gone.

Kolgar had sent out Tykes, tiny aquatic machine scouts no larger than a tennis ball. A hundred had surged from the sub, humming quietly and darkly into the deep cold waters in search of the mysterious vessel that had - impossibly - evaded their most high-tech searches.

Now they were playing the waiting game.

Kolgar sighed, opened the drawer to his right and looked longingly at the bottle of crystal-clear liquid nestling within. He shook his head, rubbed a hand over the bristles on his chin, and closed the drawer again.

Standing, he left the room and walked slowly to the Control Centre, which was situated above the batteries where energy from the 2x600 mwt nuclear reactors were stored in order to give the huge craft its propulsion.

Seamen snapped to attention as Kolgar entered. He saluted his men, and took his seat on the bridge. ‘Anything on the sonar?’

‘Negative, Captain. Not even on the I/J band surface-target detection. But she was there, as real as a bear in the woods. She isn’t there any longer.’

Kolgar cursed.

‘What about the Tykes?’

‘Nothing yet, Captain. They’ve spread out, and are heading away in a globe formation. If there’s
anything
around us, they will find it and report it.’ Their gazes met. ‘You know, Captain, as well as I that they have never missed a target.’

Kolgar nodded, rubbing wearily at his temples. ‘Have you informed Spiral Tac of this?’

‘Not yet, Captain.’

‘Do so. Their intelligence may have some records or information on this vessel. What did we find out before it…it…’

‘Vanished?’

‘Yes.’

‘Vague dimensions estimated by the BattleSubTec computers. Nothing more. An estimation of possible weapons capabilities. And the fact that it moved much, much faster than any seagoing vehicle had a right to move.’

They waited, watching the Tyke scanners. A tense silence surrounded them, filled with the glittering glow of computer read-outs and submarine-control displays. Red light scattered like rubies across Kolgar’s heavily bearded face, and his eyes narrowed as they fixed on one of the Tyke ScannerReps.

He pointed. ‘What’s that?’

There was an instant of blackness, and the light went out.

‘What does the TerminationDisplay read?’ asked Kolgar slowly.

‘Zero, Captain.’

‘That’s impossible! No last-nanosecond read-outs? No transmissions on what was around the Tyke when it was destroyed?’

‘Nothing, Captain.’

The two men stared at each other, frowning. And then, like a scene from some digital firework display across the control wall, the Tyke-linked scanners arrayed before them - each signal linked to individual Tyke scouts spinning through the voids of dark ocean all around - seemed to
explode
in front of their very eyes ... the red lights scattered, spun through shades of attack report from green and blue to yellow - and then, like a visual tidal wave, the lights were swept out and into darkness and
death.

Kolgar stared, numbed, at the scanners. All were black.

Every single Tyke had been simultaneously destroyed.

‘Reports?’ he asked, his voice a dry croak.

‘None,’ came the soft, disbelieving reply.

A hundred scouts had been destroyed; and not a single transmission to give the submarine a clue to their attackers had been registered; not a single warning given. Nothing.

Kolgar could taste sweet vodka on his tongue and he longed for a drink.

Later, barked his intelligence.

‘Contact Spiral Tac. Tell them we have an
emergency.’

‘Transmitting.’

They waited ten seconds - a long ten seconds of tense wondering filled with uneasy sweat and thoughts of death as every seaman in the Control Centre waited for a reply, looking around and
up
into the imaginary dark waters around their sub, imagining dark enemies with incredibly superior technology - the sort of technology that could make a massive warship disappear, the sort of technology that could evade their most sophisticated scanning equipment, and the sort of technology that could annihilate a hundred scattered scouts without giving away any indication of method or weapons.

There came the
blip
of reply.

‘Three TacSquad officers will be with us in just over two hours from the nearby stationed British destroyer
Castle.
They are deploying as we speak in an underwater Shark Attack Craft, very, very fast. They recommend that we sit still and do nothing - merely report if our situation changes.’

Kolgar nodded, and wiped the sweat from his forehead on the back of his sleeve.

The scanners remained dark, quiet; this was no help when you suddenly believed the enemy to be
invisible.

The
Moscow 16
received the Shark Attack Craft into its huge belly like a subterranean Leviathan swallowing its prey. Decompression chambers hissed, pumps whined, and within a few minutes the ramps engaged and two military-suited women and a man walked down the ramp and saluted Juri Kolgar.

‘I believe you have a problem,’ said the tall, red-haired female. She had cold blue eyes and high cheekbones that highlighted rather than diminished her incredible beauty. Her hand moved slowly, confidently, to Kolgar’s and they shook. ‘Commanding Officer Reyana Treban at your disposal. I am an expert in aquatic machinery and covert tracking systems, and was part of the design team that invented the Tyke Tracking Systems.’

Kolgar nodded. ‘I have heard of you, Lady Treban.’

‘You may address me as Reyana. I have no time for rank when we need to work together in an emergency situation. This is Alice Metrass, bio-weapons expert, and James Rothwell, who has an incredibly detailed working knowledge of practically every submarine utilised by most world governments.’

Formalities were speedily dispensed with, and Kolgar led the trio straight to the Command Centre.

‘We have your reports, as issued by our connective ECubes; they inform us that a
hundred
Tykes were destroyed within a few seconds of one another, and not a single scout reported back anything as to their situation?’

Kolgar nodded.

Reyana seated herself at a console, and began to type; she integrated with the sub’s computers and for a while all was silent as data flashed across the screen. Eventually, she stroked her cheek, eyes distant. ‘I think we are in grave danger.’

‘You found something?’

Reyana nodded. ‘It was hidden in a data structure; you did receive the reports, but they were
scrambled
so that the sub computers would not recognise the codes.’

‘What destroyed them?’ asked Kolgar slowly.

‘I don’t know. But you were tracking a huge ship, is that correct? A surface vessel?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now it is tracking you. And it is closing fast.’

‘Weapons?’ asked Kolgar.

‘Break out every fucking gun you’ve got.’

The
Moscow 16
glided through silent dark waters. Fish darted from its path as engines roared, all need for stealth thrown off as the machine surged forward towards the protection of the nearest Spiral naval outpost. A distance of two hundred and thirty miles.

As the submarine increased its speed, so it increased its depth; nose dipped, it powered down deep below the surface, cutting through shoals of silver glittering fish, deep deep into the abyss of darkness that was the Tremanan Valley, scraping into the deep trench of scythed-out rock filled with stagnant dead water from a million years past.

Unidentified debris floated past in the depths, several of these huge metal casks thumping against the sub’s hull with distant echoing
booms
that made all the inhabitants shiver - even though scanners confirmed that these objects were not
mines.
On Reyana’s instruction they slowed their speed and once more she analysed the sub’s scanners, calling for Rothwell’s help in disassembling navigational data.

Suddenly, a siren sounded and data started flashing across all the screens in the Control Centre simultaneously; Kolgar leaped forward as Lieutenant-Captain Lyagarin burst in and the sonar operator turned to him.

‘Active sonar acquiring! The bastards have locked on!’ came the panicked voice of the det-ops seaman.

‘It’s above us!’ hissed Lyagarin.

‘That’s impossible!’’ snapped Kolgar. The 941 Typhoon Class was fitted with active/passive sonar, surface target detection, ESM, radar and direction-finding systems, and a contemporary combat-control interface. The
Moscow 16
was supposed to surprise the enemy - the enemy was not supposed to surprise
it.

‘Arm and lock-on the VA-III’s!’ snapped Reyana as the Command Centre exploded with activity. Every man and woman present knew their jobs and knew them well; this was war, and they all had a job to play.

‘There it is,’ snapped Kolgar.

Suddenly, as if uncloaking, the huge warship became visible. It was directly above them. It had them locked in its sights, ensnared in its net; caught in its trap.

The submarine rocked; there was a distant
boom
, a scream of steel and a rumbling like distant thunder. The whole submarine started to shake, vibrating, and Kolgar looked helplessly down at his hands as they trembled before his very face.

‘The pressure hull,’ he croaked, suddenly white-faced as he met the stare of Lyagarin. Reyana and Rothwell were screaming orders to the seamen, and understanding passed between them all, and their faces were bleached, with shock and horror, at the terrible implications.

Some form of advanced depth charge or torpedo had cracked the supposedly ‘unbreakable’ parallel pressure hulls. You could have as many SLBMs or torpedoes as you could carry, but the pressure hulls were the only substance between life and the terrible, crushing sea which surrounded the deep-sea vessel.

The 941 was going down ...

More than that, it was being crushed by the sea.

The rumbling increased in volume. Men charged across the Control Centre, panic their master, but Kolgar and Lyagarin just stood staring at one another. They were deep; far too deep. They both knew; they both understood. They were dead men savouring their last breaths.

Reyana grasped Kolgar’s arm. ‘The attack craft; we can still escape!’

Kolgar shook his head sadly. He had been at sea far too long; he knew the dangers, accepted the dangers; only a miracle would even allow you to reach the belly of the sub, and the chances of escaping...