‘Engine room, status,’ I say, gritting my teeth. ‘Any injuries?’
‘Status nominal,’ Nelinha says. ‘No injuries down here. Told you she could handle it.’
The wait that follows is the hardest part. Almost three hours at heavy G-force is not fun. I feel like I have a walrus sitting on my chest. We can’t move around or do much of anything except watch our control panels. It doesn’t help that LOCUS displays don’t work during a cav-shot, so we’re essentially blind.
‘Stay with me,’ I whisper to the Nautilus. ‘We’re going to show our enemies what you can do.’
I have to believe the Nautilus understands. She’s attuned to my voice now. She’s ready to fight. I just hope she has enough tricks in her arsenal to go up against a much newer sub. We’re going to need every advantage we can get.
After a long while, the scent of oatmeal-raisin cookies wafts from the kitchen. How is Jupiter making cookies right now? And why can’t I have one?
I make a mental note that, in the future, cookies will be distributed before punching to cav-drive. Then I start thinking about ways to install drink holders for glasses of milk …
Finally, Halimah gives me the news I’ve been waiting for: ‘Five minutes to termination.’
‘Can we please not call it that?’ Ester asks. She’s sitting at the back of the bridge next to Top, who wears a special harness in his doggy bed.
‘Destination?’ Lee-Ann suggests.
‘Good,’ Ester says. ‘Destinations are good.’
Top sighs heavily. He seems to agree that a destination would be great, because cav-drive is worse than being stuck in a kennel.
I open the comm. ‘All hands, battle stations.’
As if I need to tell them that. They’ve been stuck at their battle stations for hours. I just hope we don’t have an immediate line for the bathrooms as soon as we drop out of cav-drive.
‘One minute to – uh, destination,’ Halimah says.
I drum my fingers against the armrest controls. I imagine us overshooting our goal and slamming into the Hawaiian coast like an alt-tech bug against a windshield.
‘Five, four …’ Halimah grips her controls. ‘One.’
The blizzard of air disappears from the windows, and I’m looking at blue ocean.
The LOCUS holospheres flicker to life.
‘Weapons online,’ Gem says. ‘Scanning for targets.’
‘Evasive course,’ I say. ‘Activate camouflage. Thirty degrees starboard. Make depth –’
The ship shudders as if we’ve passed over a speed bump.
‘That was our payload deploying.’ Lee-Ann sounds relieved.
‘Is the payload okay?’ Ester asks.
I understand her concern. That was a long time at a lot of Gs, but I can see the large blip on Lee-Ann’s LOCUS, descending at a diagonal under his own power. I have to hope our large hitch-hiker isn’t carsick now as well as lovesick.
If we’re lucky, the Aronnax will be moored in the lagoon or even the cavern. That will give us time to get away from our payload and the exit point of our cav-shot – using camouflage to obscure our position.
If we’re unlucky …
‘Contact!’ yells Virgil. ‘One kilometre, twelve o’clock, depth ten metres. It’s the Aronnax. They’re right between us and Lincoln Base.’
I curse. I didn’t really expect Dev to let his guard down, even after a week. Still, the sight of that awful purple arrowhead on Gem’s tactical display makes me hesitate a millisecond too long. The second smaller blip comes out of nowhere – right in front of our prow.
‘Torpedo in the water!’ Gem shouts.
I start to yell, ‘Leidenfrost –！’
The Nautilus lurches forward, almost jolting my head from my neck.
‘Power is down!’ Halimah yells. ‘EMP blast!’
I blink spots from my eyes. The bridge is dark.
Dev’s voice comes over our loudspeaker: ‘Welcome back, Nautilus. Stand down and prepare to be boarded.’
I hate how smug he sounds. He’s been waiting to pull exactly this trick: disable us, then take us without a fight. The fact that I anticipated the scenario doesn’t make it any better. I was hoping to have a few more seconds for evasive manoeuvres. Now I have to pray for Plan C to work.
‘Come on, Nautilus,’ I murmur. ‘Engine room, how is Plan C?’
‘Little busy down here, Captain!’ Nelinha says. ‘I managed to hit the kill switch before impact. Reactor is down, but hopefully our circuits aren’t fried. If we can just – Aha!’