Deep Storm

"There's no need for that, Chief. I'll take over from here and relay my findings to the admiral."

"Very good, sir." And Woburn executed a superbly crisp salute.

Korolis regarded him a moment. Then he returned the salute and left the hyperbaric suite.

Korolis's private quarters were in a special section of deck 11 reserved for military officers. He stepped inside, then closed and carefully locked the door before moving toward his desk. The stateroom was dimly lit. Where others might have set framed pictures or light reading, Korolis had security monitors and classified manuals.

He placed the nylon case Woburn had given him on the desk, then unlocked it with the key. Unzipping the case, he reached inside and pulled out a laptop computer, badly scorched along one side.

The stateroom filled with the acrid stench of burnt plastic and electronics.

Korolis turned to his environmental control panel, put its airscrubbing filter on full. Then he took a seat and pulled the terminal keyboard toward him. He entered the password for his private computer, then entered a second, much longer passphrase to enter a secure area of the Facility's military network, accessible only by him. Next, he loaded a forensic audio program of the type used by audio restoration engineers and wiretappers. Then, bringing up a list of files, he paged through the entries until he found the one he wanted. Loading this into the forensic program brought up a complex screen dominated by an audio waveform: a mono sound file captured by a tiny microphone.

Korolis plugged a pair of headphones into the computer. Then he adjusted the program's spectral filter to remove extraneous noise, boosted the gain, and clicked the playback button.

Over the headphones came Crane's voice, remarkably clear given the low fidelity of the surveillance microphone.

"Before he died, Asher discovered something…I know, because he told me so, over the phone. It's all on the laptop, he said. I need to get that laptop, find out what he discovered. Because he was desperate to tell me something, there at the end…"

Then came another voice: a voice the program's soundprint analyzer had identified as Hui Ping's. Korolis's face darkened as he listened.

"The secret to that's on his computer," Crane went on.

With a click of his mouse, Korolis stopped the playback. Another click closed the file and exited the program.

Korolis stood, carrying Asher's damaged laptop over to a far corner of the room, where a gray locker sat on the floor. Kneeling, he unsnapped its clasps, opened it, and pulled out a bulky object: a degaussing magnet.

Once again, he made sure the door to his stateroom was locked. Then-slowly and deliberately, and careful to stay well away from his own computer-he held the magnet close to the laptop, passing it over the hard disk. Even if it had survived the fire, this would certainly scramble its data beyond all recognition.

Crane and Hui Ping were serious security risks-and one couldn't be too sure. This step was a start. And Korolis knew exactly what to do next.

38

Cold Storage Locker 1-C, on the lowest level of the Facility, was a grim place. The temperature was regulated to a precise 38.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The flooring consisted of wooden pallets, placed over a bilgelike inch of cold, dirty water. The lighting was faint, throwing the claustrophobic space into heavy gloom. The air smelled of mold and butchered meat. The only sound was the faint dripping of water.

Admiral Spartan stood in the center of the locker, staring at the horribly mangled remains of Marble One. It hovered before him like a crumpled foil ball, lashed around by heavy chain and suspended from the ceiling by a large, cruel-looking hook. To one side lay the heavy blue tarp he'd just pulled away.

What flaw caused this disaster? As a military officer, he'd made it his life's work to achieve victory by anticipating failure-his own or an enemy's-and either forestalling or exploiting it. But how could you anticipate failure when you were working with a rule set that was utterly, incomprehensibly foreign?

It was true that, since Marble One had been destroyed, Marble Two and Marble Three had continued operations without delay. They had implemented the changes recommended by Asher and his scientific team, and there had been no further problems. If anything, the work was going even more swiftly than anticipated: the third, lowest layer of the crust had proven to be of a softer, almost siltlike material that could be excavated very quickly, and they were on track to reach the Mohorovicic discontinuity in days now.

Asher. The chief scientist's warning, in the wake of Marble One's destruction and the deaths of its crew, sounded again in the admiral's head: My recommendation is that we cease all operations until we have a thorough understanding of what caused this disaster.

And now Asher, too, was dead.

There was a screech of metal behind him, and the door to the locker opened, throwing a stripe of yellow light across the dark interior. Commander Korolis-who had a feline distaste for being either cold or wet-wedged the door open and stepped inside.

Spartan glanced at him. "Your report, Commander?"

Korolis approached. "The sprinkler system in the hyperbaric chamber was compromised. And the compressor was overloaded, causing an explosion and fire inside the chamber itself. No question about it: this was an act of sabotage."

"An act of murder," Spartan said.

"As you say, sir."

Spartan turned back toward the ruined Marble. "This time, it seems a particular person was targeted rather than the entire Facility. Why?"

"I don't have an answer to that yet, sir. Perhaps we simply caught a break."

Once again, Spartan glanced over at Korolis. "Caught a break, Commander?"

"In terms of the target. We were lucky the saboteur didn't go after a more strategic asset."

"I see. And just how much more strategic an asset could we have than Dr. Asher?"

"Asher's usefulness to the project was growing questionable. He'd become a Cassandra, sir-his talk of gloom and doom, his eagerness to derail the excavation schedule, wasn't good for morale."

"Indeed." Spartan reflected that if Korolis had any personal failings, frankness was not one of them.

"That's my opinion anyway, sir. To be honest, I'm surprised it's not yours as well."

Spartan ignored the i

"Tapes of the transmissions have been carefully analyzed, along with the black box from the Doodlebug. Unlike the hyperbaric chamber, there's absolutely no sign of tampering or foul play. Equipment malfunction, plain and simple."

Spartan fell silent for a moment, contemplating the obscene tangle of metal. Then he roused himself. "Any progress on identifying the responsible individual?"

"Yes. We've isolated one individual who was in both locations-Outer Hull Receiving and the hyperbaric oxygen suite-directly before the sabotage incidents took place."

"And who would that be?"

Wordlessly, Korolis drew an envelope out of his breast pocket and handed it to Spartan. The admiral opened it, gazed at the contents for a moment, then handed it back.

"Dr. Ping?" he said.

Korolis nodded. "Her Chinese background always struck me as a little suspicious. And wasn't it your opinion, sir, that the saboteur must be in the employ of a foreign government?"

"She was thoroughly vetted, just like everybody else."

"Things can slip through the cracks sometimes. Especially if somebody wants them to slip through badly enough. You know that as well as I do, sir."

"Your recommendation?"

"That she be detained in the security brig until a thorough interrogation can be undertaken."