Polaris (19 page)

Outside, a small cutter suddenly sped directly away from the island. It startled the admiral; it looked for all the world like someone was trying desperately to escape Eris Island. But no one reacted inside the tower, and he quickly discerned that it was part of the test. It was a beautiful white cutter, seemingly brand new. He guessed it was thirty-six feet long, a rigid-hull inflatable powered by water jets. Broad black crosses had been painted on its sides and deck, and the admiral knew these were markings to aid telemetry and observation; he'd seen similar markings on missiles during ICBM test shots years before. Huge rooster tails flew out behind the cutter; he estimated it was going at least 30 knots. While he knew suddenly it was a target, as a lifelong mariner, he found himself pulling for the boat.

Hamlin had binoculars to his eyes but was smiling broadly. “Don't worry,” he said. “It's unmanned.”

“Drones hunting drones,” said the admiral. No one reacted.

“Target is one hundred yards from shore,” said a petty officer at a radar screen.

“Very well,” said Hamlin.

Already the drones in the sky were reacting. They veered off, the whining of their engines increasing in pitch and volume. It wasn't the roar of a military jet but the buzzing of a stinging insect. In seconds, six of them were zooming down the wake of the cutter, accelerating urgently. Soon they were directly over it, about twenty feet above its deck, in a V formation.

“Two hundred yards,” said the petty officer, counting down the distance as the ship raced away. “Fourteen hundred yards … sixteen … eighteen…”

With perfect timing, at the exact moment the petty officer would have said “two thousand yards,” the lead drone dropped its bomb. It exploded with a flash, and the crack of high explosive reached the tower a millisecond later. The front drone immediately veered upward, and the two behind it dropped their payloads on the ship even as it was exploding into pieces and sinking. The final drones dropped their bombs on what tiny pieces of floating wreckage still remained. It was over in seconds.

The drones, even faster and more nimble now without the weight of their bombs, immediately flew back toward the tower, to the cloud of drones that whined above them. The lead drone went through an elaborate dance: swoops, twitches, and rolls. The swarm of drones beneath it reacted to whatever news it was communicating, the urgency of the engines and their movements increasing in what, to the admiral, looked for all the world like a celebration. Their shadows crisscrossed the carpeted floor of the control tower as they flew overhead.

A few of the drones peeled off from the cloud and went back to the site of the explosion, but nothing remained, not a single shard of wreckage. The attacking drones, their message communicated, flew to an unseen part of the island.
To reload,
the admiral realized.

Hamlin put the binoculars down, and looked at the admiral with an ecstatic smile on his face.

“You've just seen the future of warfare,” said Hamlin, pointing straight up to the swarm of drones above them.

“Maybe so,” said the admiral, pointing out to sea. “But in the meantime, you've driven us all underwater.”

*   *   *

Eight miles away, an enemy submarine watched. Commander Jennifer Carlson was on the periscope.

“Something happening?” asked Banach, her second-in-command. He didn't yet have her patience—a hunter's patience.

“Yes,” she said. “Something.”

“Shall we get closer?” asked Banach.

She wanted to, badly. She could barely see the island from this distance, even with the scope in high power and raised as high as she dared. The electronic sensors in her boat were so crude as to be almost useless. But she needed to see what was going on. The island was ringed by jagged shoals, but she'd studied the charts, thought there were breaks she might slip through at periscope depth, get her right up to the beach. From there, she could snap some pictures, take some video, chart the locations of underground cables. It was sorely tempting. All submariners were born snoops. Next to shooting at things, it was the most fun you could have on a submarine, looking through the keyhole and seeing things you weren't supposed to see.

And there was definitely something forbidden there, no matter how many times her clueless commanders dismissed her concerns. According to the few charts they had of it, the island was a medical research station, and had been for decades. They even had a few ancient satellite photos of it, showing two small buildings at the south end with animal pens and a small dock flying the yellow flag for quarantine. Old italicized warnings on the chart told vessels to stay away because of the presence of contagious diseases. While it seemed like dated information, this, more than the shoals, worried Carlson. Like Banach, she'd grown up in an area that was regularly ravaged by disease, and had an almost superstitious fear of infections and viruses. Her crew, who once a week cleaned everything to a sanitized gleam, would attest to it. She preferred targets she could shoot torpedoes at. Was the Alliance creating something smaller and more sinister?

They were definitely up to something. Farther out, past the horizon, were dozens of enemy surface ships, standing guard in a twenty-mile ring. But none of them dared come as close as she had. She wasn't remotely worried about being found out here. No one, not even her own command, expected her to operate this far out to sea, sailing the deep blue water. To them, submarines were not strategic assets; they were designed to patrol coastal waters and pluck off an occasional container ship, or deploy a landing party of saboteurs to blow up railroad bridges and other quaint targets. The Alliance submarines carried ballistic missiles; she carried a platoon of marines with rifles and hand grenades.

“Here,” she said, handing off the scope to Banach. “Tell me what you see.”

He turned his hat backward and stooped over, adjusted the eyepiece, and looked toward the island. He stared a bit, and then turned slowly, a complete circle, looking around them.

“No surface contacts,” he said.

“They are keeping their distance,” said Carlson.

He was pointed back at the island now, his eyes refreshed. “It looks like…”

“What?”

“Something is flying.…”

She took the scope back and stared on the same bearing. She now saw it, too.

“You have good eyes, Lieutenant Banach,” she said.

It looked almost like a flock of birds, but she could see the sun glint on parts of them. They were too big to be birds, if they could see them at this distance, but flew with too much agility to be airplanes, swirling and looping into the air.

“Some kind of airplane?” she said.

“Surveillance craft maybe? Cruise missiles?”

“Too many of them,” she said. She tilted the right handle of the scope toward her, tilting the lens to look upward. She saw nothing but clear blue sky.

When she turned the scope back down to the waterline, she was startled to see, directly in front of them, two plumes of water erupting from the sea, a deep V of spray and foam: a fast surface ship. Heading right for them.

“Surface contact!” she said. “Arm tube one, prepare to fire!” She pushed the button on the scope, marking the bearing and sending it to fire control. She was down to five torpedoes, and badly wanted to save them for something big—a carrier or, better yet, another submarine. But this little shit was heading right for them, and she might not have a choice. How had they found her? They might have sensors mounted on the seabed, she thought, or perhaps their silhouette, just a few feet beneath the surface of the clear, tropical water, had been spotted by surveillance in the air, a plane or even a satellite. The white boat was hurtling toward them, going at least 30 knots.

“Solution is ready!” said Banach. “Ready to fire!”

She watched the boat approach, still debating whether or not to fire. It was small, she noted, with a shallow draft, shallow enough to pass right over the shoals. “Prepare to fire on this bearing…” she said.

Suddenly, she noticed a formation of those small, odd planes flying directly behind the craft. Pursuing it.

“Wait!” she said. She looked down to confirm that they were recording the scene through the scope, for later study.

The planes were closer now, and they were like none she'd ever seen. They were small, and there was something odd about them. She realized they had no windows.

“Captain…”

At that moment, following some unseen cue, the planes attacked the speeding boat. The ship disappeared in a series of bright, small flashes. None of it stayed afloat long enough to burn. After a short delay, she felt the concussions of the explosions reach the hull through the water, a rapid series of dull thumps.

The planes pulled up, maneuvered excitedly, and returned to the island.

“Captain, what did you see?”

She took her eye away from the scope and looked at Banach. “I'm … not sure.”

*   *   *

They stayed at periscope depth for six hours after that, Banach and Carlson taking turns on the scope. Carlson watched the sun go down, and a few lights began to twinkle on the Alliance's odd little island.

“Tea, Captain?” Banach had appeared at her side. She handed over the scope so she could have a drink. It was strong and heavily sweetened, like she preferred.

“Thank you,” she said. “You might make commander after all.”

“You flatter me, Captain.” He adjusted the scope, took a quick swing around, made sure nobody was sneaking up on them. “Have you figured it all out yet? We're all waiting for you to tell us what is happening.”

“You'll have to keep waiting,” she said. “I have no bloody idea.”

“Oxygen has drifted down to sixteen percent,” he said. “Shall we ventilate, Captain? As long as we're up here?”

She knew it was a good idea. Her oxygen generators were overtaxed, and fresh air was good for morale. It was dark, they were quiet, and nobody seemed to know they were out there. They could raise the snorkel mast and let the ship take a deep breath of the warm, tropical air that surrounded them. But like she told Banach: she didn't know what was going on. And she remembered those satellite pictures of the island, with its animal pens and medical scientists. Maybe breeding murderous germs and bacteria …

“No,” she said. “Not this time.”

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

After defeating the seagulls, the commissioning of the drone station at Eris Island was a triumph. The success rate was higher than their most optimistic projections, the failure rate negligible. In the first few weeks, the drones took a deadly toll on enemy shipping, both military and civilian. Silent, grainy video from the drones was shown on breathless newscasts and widely viewed Internet clips. The clips were always roughly the same. An open, featureless ocean. A ship comes suddenly into view, far below. The ship would seem to grow rapidly as the drone swooped down, details becoming visible, the outlines of the cargo containers or the flash, rarely, of defensive gunfire. A single bomb would fall and explode with a silent white burst, momentarily drowning out all the visuals with the washed-out lightning of its high explosives. Then other drones would come into view, and the screen would become awash in white as they dropped their explosives in force. When the explosions dimmed and an image returned, what had been a ship was transformed into an oil slick and jagged wreckage, and drones were everywhere, drawn to the kill.

Enemy countermeasures were even less effective than Pete had predicted. Automated gunfire from bow-mounted guns would throw clouds of twenty-millimeter shells into the sky. Clouds of chaff would surround ships under attack, distracting the drones and degrading their sensors. But drones could overcome every countermeasure with sheer quantity. Whatever the enemy could come up with that could defeat ten drones couldn't defeat twenty. If it could defeat twenty drones, it couldn't defeat a swirling, relentless swarm of fifty. Enemy tactics evolved quickly from attacking to impairing to evading, until finally, inevitably, submerging.

Within weeks, the only military ships in the ocean were submarines, carefully staying hidden beneath the waves. Civilian shipping ground to a halt. A month after the initial launch, the second wave of a thousand drones flew all the way from Detroit to Eris on their own, at a lazy pace dictated by the shining sun and the thermoclines they could soar upon. Unburdened with bombs, they were light and efficient as they made their way west. Cities along the route had viewing parties to watch on rooftops and in football stadiums, and they cheered as the stream of drones passed overhead while high school marching bands and country musicians played patriotic songs. Watching the drones fly by made Allied victory seem inevitable.

With the station at Eris working so well, Pete immediately began planning the drone station in the Atlantic; several suitable locations had already been scouted. He would fly there at once to begin the work. But first, he had to stop on the mainland for a piece of pressing business.

His wedding.

*   *   *

By then they'd known each other for a year, although you could hardly say they'd dated. Pete had been consumed by the drone project, seeing Pamela mostly from the screen during chat sessions on his tablet computer. She'd broken up with him briefly as a result. That's when he begged her to meet him in Hawaii. At the head of the Kealia Trail, he'd proposed to her, not at all sure what her answer would be.

While neither wanted a huge ceremony, Pete kept delaying the wedding anyway, overcome by obligations as Eris neared completion. He felt a twinge of guilt about it. But Pete was spending his days with military men, including many naval officers and chiefs who'd missed every milestone of family life. Missing a child's birth was so common among the submariners he knew that it barely merited comment. So this made Pete feel better, along with the constant reassurances from everyone he was around about how important his work was.