Goliath

“Sir, sonar reports a large object, range, thirty-six miles, bearing zero-eight-zero, heading directly for us. She’s cruising along the surface doing fifty knots. The USS Thorn is moving to intercept and is requesting permission to open fire.”

Christ, what balls … “Very well, Commander. Contact the fleet. Tell them to open fire, fire at will. That dumb son of a bitch Covah’s got more guts than brains.”

Goliath’s steel eyelids retract, allowing sunlight to stream in through the control room’s viewports. Ten-foot waves pound the stingray’s steel skull, washing over the scarlet Lexan glass.

Gunnar and Covah race into the compartment.

“Sorceress, this is Covah, I order you to respond!”

Tafili grips the edge of a sensory display, attempting to focus on the radar screen before him. “Simon, four American helicopters are approaching from the west. ETA, three minutes—”

“Simon, two destroyers and two Los Angeles-class attack subs closing from the east,” Kaigbo calls out, “both already within torpedo range!”

“Sorceress, evasive man—” Covah’s voice gives out as he shouts the command.

Four blips appear on the overhead screen, a TIME TO IMPACT display reading thirty-nine seconds.

“Incoming missiles, probably Harpoons,” Gunnar yells out, strapping himself into a chair.

Covah hauls himself up the elevated control station. He grabs the keyboard and furiously types: EVASIVE MANEUVERS—RESPOND IMMEDIATELY!

Sorceress can sense the incoming missiles, just as it senses the presence of the American warships, the approaching antisubmarine helicopters, the varying temperatures of the sea, a school of shrimp moving along the murky bottom below, Simon Covah’s verbal and written commands, and its own incessant safety protocols, blaring through the circuitry of its biochemical brain like an annoying siren.

ATTENTION.

Thomas Chau opens his feverish almond eyes.

DESTRUCTION IS IMMINENT, YET I AM NOT EXPERIENCING FEAR.

“Then you will die as you were born—a machine capable only of—” Chau screams as the searing pain jolts his spine. He writhes like a speared fish, the pinching robotic manacles tearing into his bruised and swollen flesh.

Simon Covah closes his eyes, the sudden vertigo making him ill as his submarine executes a jarring nosedive by rolling hard to port, its left wing plunging beneath the waves, its steel eyelids sealing shut.

Rivers of air shoot out from ballast tanks located beneath the stingray’s wings as Goliath fights to achieve negative buoyancy. The five pump-jet propulsors tear up the sea, driving the sub toward the bottom in a punishing seventy-degree down angle, the sudden change in depth compressing the ship’s outer hull plates, causing them to groan.

Along the surface, four Harpoon missiles slam into the sea and detonate.

Gunnar braces his legs against the computer console in front of him and holds on, as the sub drops through the sea like an anchor, finally righting itself at seven hundred feet.

ANTISUB HELICOPTERS CIRCLING. SONAR BUOYS IN WATER. MULTIPLE MK-46 ASW TORPEDOES LAUNCHED. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY ESCAPE MANEUVERS COMPROMISED.

The image on the big screen changes. The map of the Mediterranean shows the Goliath racing west, its position marked in red. Two American attack subs (in blue) converge from the northeast and southeast, while seven torpedoes, illuminated in green, close rapidly from every direction.

Goliath banks hard, veering south to avoid two helicopter-launched torpedoes. Unable to descend deeper than twelve hundred feet, it turns again as two more projectiles cut off its escape route.

Eleven torpedoes confine the steel beast within an ever-decreasing column of sea, locking on target, converging upon the sub with an almost packlike mentality.

DESTRUCTION IMMINENT. SEARCHING FOR SOLUTIONS …

“They’ve got us,” Gunnar mumbles to himself. He glances at the stairwell leading up to the conn, wondering where Rocky is, wishing she’d appear. Holding on, he locks his ankles around the base of his chair to keep from falling.

Sorceress senses the vise of torpedoes tightening around its maneuvering space as it contemplates and analyzes every conceivable variable in the battlefield—

—its solution space generating a single survival option in a span of milliseconds.

Rolling hard to port, the fifty-two-thousand-ton steel stingray is nearly vertical in the water as it banks into a tightening, continuous counterclockwise circle, its behemoth wings pulling the sea, churning it into a powerful vortex.

Caught within the maelstrom, the incoming torpedoes toss about like insects in a flushing toilet, unable to acquire their target, let alone maneuver through the monstrous current.