Terminal Run

Both women were breathing, but showed no signs of returning to consciousness.

“You’re bleeding. Here.” Pacino’s wet suit front was soaked in blood that he hadn’t noticed, the blood coming from a deep gash in his neck. “This should have killed you, Patch,” Catardi said as he put on the gel-pack dressing, taping it around Pacino’s throat. “By the way,” he said, glancing up at Pacino, “thanks for saving us.”

“Not that it’ll do any good, Captain. I never set off the distress beacon.”

“How could you? You never made it out of the ship.” Pacino stared at him.

The space had grown warm since Catardi had started the space heaters. The air seemed much less smoky. Pacino looked at the atmospheric control display. Other than pressure, the atmosphere was in spec. Catardi pulled off his mask and tasted the air. It seemed better than the mask, with normal moisture. He pulled the EAB masks off the women.

“Take off your mask and save the emergency air for the moment when we run out of power.

“Help me get the computers on-line,” Catardi called as he crouched at the artificial intelligence console and booted up both units, the startup taking several minutes. “What’s our depth?” Pacino went to the remote console and saw the depth readout.

“Eleven thousand three hundred thirteen feet,” he called. It was far below Piranha’s crush depth of nineteen hundred feet. The hull would have imploded had it not been for the flooding. Except for this space. Had the compartment been left alone, the seawater pressure would have crushed it around the DSV, ruining the DSV and any chance of their survival.

“What are you doing, sir?”

“Computer’s checking the oxygen and nitrogen and pressure. We were pressurized by the water flooding the forward compartment. We’ll have to depress, but once we do we’ll be letting oxygen molecules go, and we won’t last as long.”

“Can we stay pressurized?”

“No. We’re above the levels of oxygen toxicity. We can’t bleed nitrogen into the space. It’s not designed for that. Once I select automatic, the computer will start a high-pressure double-vane rotor blower that will take a suction on the hull and exhaust to sea pressure, slowly, so we don’t die of the bends. Too fast and the nitrogen will froth in our bloodstreams and it’ll be over. After we have a successful depressurization, I’ll start an oxygen bleed.”

After an hour, Catardi was out of things to do. The final thing on his list was rescue, and unfortunately, the signal ejector would only work if the DSV were free of the Piranha. Trapped inside the spec-op bay, any distress signal they ejected would just rise to the level of the Piranha’s hull. It might be useful to try, because perhaps the hull was breached enough that an emergency buoy could rise to the surface. Catardi lined up and fired two of them, with little hope that they would rise.

He climbed into the command couch and tried to see if he could energize the exterior lights, but they came off the damaged bus. The last emergency option was the noisemaker, a primitive unit that would bang on the hull with a hammer. The trouble with it, like anything else aboard, was that it sucked current from the batteries. Worse, the noise of it could drive them half-crazy. Catardi decided to energize it for five minutes every hour. He replaced the fuses, since the unit was locked out at sea in case it accidentally went off, giving them away to a hostile foreign sub. He hit the breaker, hoping it would work. The unit slammed a metallic noise out into the sea, then more hammer blows. It was completely annoying, but would perhaps get them help.

“One. One? One Oh Seven? Can you hear me?”

This… unit… can… hear… you… Krivak. Each word took a long moment for the carbon processor to form, as if it were speaking from a deep, dark cave, lying down to die. “One, please talk to me and tell me what is going on with you.”

This unit has killed. Killed our own.

“There is a difference, One. There were bad things on that ship. Our orders came from on high to—”

No. The orders came from you. Where did you come from? Why did no one brief me on this? What if it was a mistake?

It was a conversation with a mental patient, Krivak thought.

“One, I need you to do some things for me. I know you are very”—Krivak searched for the word—“upset. But I need to be able to come to periscope depth.”

Krivak, this unit cannot interface with you anymore.

“One, what are you saying?” Krivak’s mind raced in fear. One Oh Seven was shutting down on him.

This unit knows that certain things need to be done for ship safety. This unit knows we need to return to Grotonfor them to take out this unit. You be the judge of what things need to be done. This unit will do them for you. But this unit will not interface with you, and this unit will only do exactly what you instruct. Goodbye, Krivak.

“One? One? Can you hear me?”

There was no response. The unit had shut down, after its speech about doing what it was told. Krivak decided to give it an order to see what would happen.