Sea of Greed

What had once been gray-painted steel was now covered in barnacles and flakes of rust.

“Pipe exposed,” Kurt said. He retracted the first robotic arm and extended a second. Gripped in the claw at the end of this arm was a large block of C-4 connected to a detonator and a circular band that would allow them to clip the explosives to the pipe. The band was open at one end and would slip over the pipe with a slight shove, clipping on like a bracelet.

“Don’t bump it too hard,” Joe said. “The pressure in that line is nearly ten thousand psi and there’s no telling if the other explosions damaged it.”

“I’ll be gentle,” Kurt insisted.

With a deft hand, Kurt forced the clip onto the pipe and it locked into place. “Easy peasy,” he said. “Now back us off.”

Joe engaged the propellers once more and the sub pulled away from the pipe. As they moved back, a thin wire spooled out. A hundred feet out, Joe slowed to a halt and held station.

“Setting the countdown for fifteen minutes,” Kurt said. “That ought to give us time to get back on the Raleigh, crack open a beer and settle in to watch the fireworks.”

With a nod from Joe, Kurt started the timer. A digital readout on the control panel flashed 15:00 and then began clicking down.

With the timer operating, Kurt disconnected the control wire and Joe spun the sub around to take them out.

• • •

UP IN the OSLO compartment, Captain Brooks watched on the remote screen as the timer started clicking down. Cox stood over the fish tank, watching the tiny electronic version of the submersible navigate back along the orange pipeline trail. He marveled at the detail. “I feel like Zeus, looking down on the world from Mount Olympus.”

“More like Poseidon,” the captain replied. “But I know what you’re saying. I’ve almost gotten used to it now, but I remember feeling the same way the first time we used it on a salvage operation.”

Circling around the display, Cox studied the shattered arrangement of pipes, the bits of wreckage that had come off the Alpha Star that now littered the seafloor, and the miniature version of the slow-moving sub that Kurt and Joe were piloting. To his surprise, it wasn’t the only thing moving in the tank. “What’s this?”

Brooks looked his way. “What’s what?”

“There’s another guppy in your tank.”

Captain Brooks crouched down beside Cox, took a long, hard look and then shook his head. Reaching for the control panel, he tapped the key to zoom in. He tapped it once, twice and then a third time.

After the third increase in magnification, he could clearly make out a disk-shaped object, moving to the south. It flickered, reappeared and then vanished again.

“Is that a glitch?” Cox asked.

“I don’t think so,” the captain said grimly. “The tank can only show us what the sonar is picking up. The fires, venting gas and wreckage are blocking the signal in places, causing it to cut out. But there was something there all right.”

Brooks picked up the phone and contacted the bridge. “Helm, give us five knots and pull us around to the northeast. Have the sonar team max out the pulse, if they haven’t already.”

Brooks continued scanning the display as the ship began to move. For several moments, there was nothing to see. And then the red disk reappeared.

“Looks like a Frisbee,” Cox said. “Or a flying saucer.”

“Which seems appropriate,” Brooks said, “since it’s completely unidentifiable.”

Brooks pressed the intercom button again, this time reaching out to the sonar operations room. “Sonar, this is the captain. I’m down in OSLO, we’re seeing a contact bearing zero-four-five, depth eight hundred and fifty feet, heading directly for the danger zone. Any chance this is an artifact or a biological reading?”

“Negative,” the sonar operator said. “Speed and sound profile indicate electrically powered water jets.”

“What does that mean?” Cox asked.

“It means Kurt and Joe have company.”

10

NUMA SUBMERSIBLE, AT A DEPTH OF EIGHT HUNDRED FEET

“WHAT DO YOU mean another contact?”

Kurt was responding to the news from Captain Brooks. He wasn’t sure that he’d heard correctly.

“Just what I said,” the captain replied. “Another submersible, heading across what’s left of the collection grid down there. We lost it as it went behind the largest of the fires, but it was definitely there.”

“Are you sure it’s not just drifting wreckage?” Joe asked.

“Not unless the wreckage is powered by an impeller.”

“Any idea who it is?”

“Not a clue.”

“If this was sabotage,” Joe said, “whoever did it would need a vessel to plant the explosives. And if they realized the other two platforms are salvageable, they might be coming back to finish the job.”

“Our thoughts exactly,” Brooks said.