The Swarm (78 page)

‘Usually the hangar bay would be full of aircraft,' said Peak, ‘but for this operation we'll only be needing the six Super Stallions that are docked on the roof. In the event of an emergency, we'll be able to evacuate fifty people per craft. We've also got two Super Cobra attack helicopters aboard, in case we need something with a bit more zip.' He pointed to the two gate-like openings. ‘The external platforms are elevators for transporting aircraft from the hangar bay to the roof. Each deck elevator has a capacity of over thirty tonnes.'

Crowe walked towards the starboard gate. The steely grey sea stretched towards an empty horizon. Few icebergs found their way into these waters. The East Greenland Current transported them along the coast, three hundred kilometres away. The
Independence
would only encounter occasional patches of slushy drift ice.

Anawak joined her. ‘One of many possible worlds, right?'

Crowe nodded.

‘Did any of your scenarios provide for an underwater alien civilisation?'

‘We've got the full repertoire, Leon. It sounds ludicrous, I know, but whenever I'm thinking about alien life, the first place that occurs to me is planet Earth - the oceans, beneath the Earth's crust, the poles, the air. If you don't know your own planet, how can you get to grips with other worlds?'

‘That's exactly our problem.'

They followed Peak further down the ramp. It linked the various levels like an enormous stairwell. The tunnel levelled out and turned into a passageway that led towards the stern. They were now at the heart of the
Independence
. A side-door had been left open, bathing the corridor in artificial light. As they walked in, Crowe recognised the biologist she'd spoken to via video link-up over the past few weeks. Sue Oliviera was standing beside one of a multitude of lab benches, talking to two men, who introduced themselves as Sigur Johanson and Mick Rubin.

The entire deck seemed to have been converted into a laboratory. Benches and equipment were grouped together like islands. Crowe noticed chest freezers and barrels of liquid. Two large containers had been joined together and were marked with biohazard signs; presumably the containment facility. In the middle was a structure the size of a small house, surrounded by a walkway. Steel ladders led up to the top. Thick pipes and bundles of cable connected the walls to box-shaped machinery. A large oval window revealed the diffusely lit interior. It seemed to be filled with water.

‘You've got an aquarium on board?' said Crowe.

‘A deep-sea simulation chamber,' explained Oliviera. ‘The original's in Kiel. It's much bigger than this - but ours comes with a port-hole made of armoured glass. The pressure inside would kill you, but other organisms need it to survive. At the moment it's populated with several hundred white crabs that were caught in Washington and loaded into pressurised containers to be flown out here. It's the first time we've succeeded in keeping the jelly alive - at least, we think we have. We haven't caught sight of it yet, but we're sure it's lurking inside those crabs and controlling their movements.'

‘Fascinating,' said Crowe. ‘But I don't suppose the chamber's only here for the crabs, is it?'

Johanson flashed her an enigmatic smile. ‘Who knows what'll turn up next in our nets?'

‘So it's a kind of PoW camp.'

Rubin laughed. ‘That's a good one.'

Crowe glanced around. With the exception of the door, the laboratory was sealed. ‘Isn't this usually a vehicle deck?' she asked.

‘Yes,' Peak told her. ‘On the other side of this bulkhead is the stern half
of the vessel with the hangar bay above us. You've read up on it, haven't you?'

‘I'm inquisitive, that's all,' Crowe said modestly.

‘Well, let's hope your inquisitiveness translates into results.'

‘What a grouch,' Crowe whispered to Anawak, as they left the lab.

‘Oh, Sal's a decent enough guy. He's just not accustomed to know-it-all civilians.'

 

The passageway ended in a hall, whose height and length exceeded the dimensions of even the hangar bay. They walked over an artificial embankment that sloped down towards a basin whose inset floor was lined with wooden planking. It looked like a vast empty swimming-pool. At its centre, the planks had been cut away to make room for an inverted glass structure made of two square flaps that sloped downwards, coming together to form an upside-down turret jutting out beneath the deck. Next to that was an enormous raised tank filled with water. Its rippling surface reflected the beam of the overhead lighting. Crowe saw slim, torpedo-shaped bodies gliding beneath the waves. ‘Dolphins!' she exclaimed.

‘Yes.' Peak nodded. ‘Our marine mammal fleet.'

Her eyes shifted upwards. The monorail system covered the ceiling here too, the track branching off in several directions. Futuristic vehicles were suspended from above, like giant sports cars bred from submersibles and planes. On either side of the basin the embankment continued in the form of jetty-like walkways. Boxes of equipment and other goods were stacked along the walls. Crowe noticed probes, gauges and diving-suits hanging up in lockers. Ladders led down into the basin at regular intervals.

Four Zodiacs were resting on the wooden planking at the near edge of the basin.

‘Someone pulled the plug, huh?'

‘Yesterday evening. It's down there, by the way.' Peak pointed to the glass structure. Crowe tried to gauge its size - it had to measure at least eight by ten metres. ‘That's our sluice gate, the entrance to the ocean - with a twin set of locks: glass flaps at the base of the pool and steel flaps in the hull. There's a three-metre vertical shaft between them. It's foolproof - the gates never open simultaneously. As soon as a submersible has been released into the shaft, we close the glass flaps and open the steel
ones. When the sub returns, the same thing happens in reverse. The submersible enters the shaft, the steel flaps close, and we can peer through the glass to make sure there's nothing down there that shouldn't be. In the meantime, the water's being checked for chemicals - the shaft is lined with sensors that test it for impurities and toxins. The results appear on two displays, one near the glass flaps and the other on the control panel. The sub stays in the shaft for about a minute. The glass flaps won't open until we've received the all-clear, then it's released into the basin. We use the same procedure for the dolphins. Follow me.'

They walked along the starboard jetty. A console towered up from the decking, positioned at the edge of the pool and equipped with monitors and other gadgets. A bony man with piercing eyes and a handlebar moustache left the group of soldiers and came towards them. ‘Commander Luther Roscovitz,' Peak introduced him. ‘He's in charge of the dive station.'

‘You're Ms Alien, right?' Roscovitz flashed his long, yellowed teeth in a grin. ‘Welcome aboard for the cruise. What took you so long?'

‘My spaceship was delayed. Neat desk.'

‘It does the job. We use it to operate the hatches and for sending down the submersibles. It also controls the pump, for when we want to fill the basin.'

Crowe remembered what she'd read about the
Independence
. She jerked her head in the direction of the steel bulkhead that sealed the stern-side of the hall. ‘That's a hatch too, isn't it?'

‘A stern gate. By flooding the ballast tanks we can get the vessel to sit lower in the water, so when the stern gate's open, seawater rushes in and creates a nice little harbour with its own private entrance.'

‘Cute place to work. I like it.'

‘Oh, don't get me wrong. Normally this place is full of landing-craft, heavy-duty tugs and hovercraft. It's a big hall, sure, but in no time at all they're crammed in like sardines. We had to shift everything around for this mission. It was clear from the start that we wouldn't need landing-craft. All we were looking for was a ship heavy enough not to be sunk by any kind of sea monster, that could stand up to huge waves, and had all the latest in communications technology. Oh, and it had to have aircraft landing points and a dive station. It was lucky as hell that the
LHD-8
was already in construction, the biggest and most powerful amphibious-assault vessel of all time. It was practically ready, but we had the option
of making some changes. What more could you ask for? The ship-builders in Mississippi are seriously good. They came up with a new design for the well deck, added the sluice system and modified the workings of the pump. Now we can flood the basin without using the stern gate. In fact, we'd only ever need to open it if we wanted to launch the Zodiacs.'

Crowe looked down into the basin. Two people in neoprene wetsuits were standing at the edge of the dolphin pool; a slim red-headed woman and an athletically built giant with a long dark mane. She watched as a dolphin swam towards them and poked its head above the water, allowing the giant to stroke its smooth forehead.

‘Who's that?' asked Crowe.

‘They're in charge of the dolphin fleet,' said Anawak. ‘Alicia Delaware and…' he hesitated ‘…Greywolf.'

‘Greywolf?'

‘Yes, or Jack if you prefer. He answers to both.'

‘What do the dolphins do?'

‘They're living cameras. They take video footage for us while they're swimming around out there. But we mainly use them for surveillance. Dolphin sonar detects other living creatures long before our systems pick them up. Jack used to work with some of this fleet when he was in the navy. Their vocabulary is pretty big. They use different kinds of whistles - one for orcas, another for grey whales, a third for humpbacks and so on. They can recognise pretty much every decent-sized creature, provided they've been taught the signal, and they can even point out shoals. Anything they don't recognise, they classify as unknown.'

‘Impressive,' said Crowe. ‘And that good-looking man down there can really speak their language?'

Anawak nodded. ‘Better than he speaks ours, I sometimes think.'

 

The meeting took place in the Flag Command Center opposite the LFOC. Crowe already knew most of those present, having met them in the flesh or via video link-up. Now she was introduced to Murray Shankar, SOSUS's lead acoustician, and Karen Weaver, as well as the first officer, Floyd Anderson, and the skipper, Craig C. Buchanan, a wiry, white-haired man who seemed to have been born for a career in the navy. They all shook hands and Crowe took an instant dislike to Anderson, with his thick neck and small dark eyes. She was introduced
lastly to a corpulent man, who arrived a few minutes late, sweating profusely. He was dressed in a baseball cap and sneakers. A bright yellow T-shirt bearing the words ‘
Kiss me, I'm a Prince
,' stretched over his expansive belly. ‘Jack Vanderbilt,' he introduced himself. ‘You're not what I expected of E.T.'s mom.'

‘Daughter would have been more flattering,' Crowe said drily.

‘Hey, would you be dishing out compliments if you looked like me?' Vanderbilt chortled. ‘Incredible, isn't it, Dr Crowe? After all those decades pointlessly beaming your hopes and expectations into space, you might even get an answer.'

They all took their seats. General Judith Li addressed the room briefly, summarising the state of play. They knew in advance what was coming. The US had tabled a leadership motion to the UN Security Council, which, in a special meeting held behind closed doors, had voted unanimously in favour of the proposal. America now had the mandate to co-ordinate the logistical and technological battle against humanity's unknown enemy. Japanese and European delegates had reached the same conclusion as the Chateau delegates: mankind wasn't attacking itself; the threat was coming from an alien intelligence.

‘Well, I'm pleased to say that we'll soon have a drug that will immunise humans against the killer algae's toxins. The trouble is, the side-effects are pretty nasty, and the drug won't work against mutations of the pathogens, which is what we've been finding in the latest batch of crabs. By now, most of the world's worst-hit regions no longer have any functioning infrastructure. The American government was happy to assume responsibility for the international war effort, but we've had to accept that we're no longer in a position to safeguard our shores. There's also the ongoing problem of the worms. Colonies are continuing to collect along the continental slopes and - more worryingly - on the slopes of volcanic seamounts like La Palma where Dr Frost and Dr Bohrmann are setting up a deep-sea vacuum-cleaner to clear the infestation. In other parts of the world we're still not making any progress with the whales - sonar offensives are futile when you're dealing with mammals whose instincts have been hijacked by an alien intelligence. But even supposing we could control the whales, we still wouldn't be able to jump-start the Gulf Stream or prevent the build-up of methane. Tackling the symptoms doesn't solve anything and we haven't been able to advance to the cause. We're not gleaning any
information about what's going on down there, and our underwater cables are being disconnected one by one. The devastating truth about this war is that we're blind and deaf. Let me put it more bluntly. We've lost.' Li paused. ‘Who are we supposed to attack? La Palma's going to slide into the ocean and America, Africa and Europe will be swamped by mega-waves. What's the point of fighting back? The fact is, we're not going to make any progress until we know whom or what we're up against–and right now we don't have a clue. So the purpose of this mission isn't to launch an offensive but to open negotiations. We want to make contact with these alien beings and persuade them to stop terrorising mankind. In my experience, it's always possible to negotiate with the opposition, and there's an excellent chance that we'll find our enemy right here - in the Greenland Sea.' She smiled. ‘We're hoping to achieve a peaceful solution. And, to that end, we're pleased to welcome the final member of our team, Dr Samantha Crowe.'