Project MINA Gen version

by Kei

An experiment releases a great evil onboard Seaview.

2. 2

4



Transmission from InterAllied Command, office of Fleet Commander Carter James Thomas. Regarding inquiry by Admiral Harriman Nelson as to the status of Antarctic Station Delta and Seaview mission thereto: Further investigation into said research station has neither proven nor disproven aforementioned potential theory of the possibility of some unknown private enterprise underway on the premises of Antarctic Station Delta by also aforementioned science teams into area of artificially engineered biological weapons, products, or pathogens. Previous transmissions from Station Delta were routine in nature and were in regards to multinationally approved "Phoenix Project".

Regarding second inquiry, however, on status of S.S.N. Voyageur and crew, the Canadian government has indicated that her commanding officer -Captain Adam Lawrence Hudson- had made an official complaint in regards to the reluctance of the Delta scientific team to co-operate with official inquiries on the progress of project. At the time of the unusual transmission from Delta, InterAllied Command was still awaiting results of Captain Hudson's further investigations as approved by the Canadian government and InterAllied Command.

Because of obvious sensitive nature of Station Delta's work, Seaview is under command by InterAllied to rig for complete radio-silence until mission's completion or until two weeks have passed from the time of this transmission. Submarines Lockwood and John Holland will await your arrival at previously transmitted co-ordinates until that time. Late arrival or non-arrival will constitute emergency situation; any searches or rescue attempts on your behalf would begin only at that time.

Upon your arrival at base in Santa Barbara, Voyageur's nuclear arsenal will be off-loaded and transferred to Canadian submarine, S.S.N. Trudeau. Any biological samples and/or evidence of aforementioned Project M.I.N.A., if found to exist, will be transferred to the InterAllied carrier Titania at that time.

End transmission -Fleet Commander Carter James Thomas.




Doc sat back in the swivel chair before his desk and rubbed his eyes as if the effort would exorcise the heaviness from the lids or the soreness within them. It didn't help much, and as a doctor, he had known that it wouldn't, but the effort didn't hurt either. With a frustrated shake of his head to clear the mental cobwebs confounding his thoughts, he opened a drawer in the desk and removed a small, hand-held recording unit, and pressed the "record" button, speaking into the built-in microphone as the tiny reels of the micro-tape began to spin.

"Medical report on Seaview shore party and rescued survivor -as by the Chief Medical Officer of the S.S.R.N. Seaview; a follow-up." Doc glanced at the written report on his desk, flipped several sheets up, giving them a cursory look-over, and then let the pages fall one on top of the other until the report cover fell shut. "All tests indicate that both the shore party and the Delta survivor are free of any infection or illness. Final tests have been performed on Petty Officer First Class Devereaux...seamen Tomàs, Clarke, Kowalski, and Riley also. Captain Crane is having a final blood work-up performed at this time -however, I expect the results to mirror those of his shore party. Please note that though injuries suffered by shore party due to the attack on their persons during the shore-side mission were unpleasant, they were relatively minor in nature. Devereaux, Clarke, Kowalski, and Riley suffered deep scratches that were treated only with antiseptics and ointments to increase the speed of healing -no sutures were required. Captain Crane and crewman Tomàs required conventional stitches for bite wounds; Tomàs requiring same for particularly deep scratches -as well as the healing ointments, a course of antibiotics were also given as part of their treatment as an extra precaution though no infections of any kind were found to be present."

Doc clicked a button on the micro-recorder, putting the small machine on "pause" as he rose from his seat and walked from the Sick Bay's ante-room into Sick Bay proper. The bunks in Sick Bay were deserted save for one. The Chief Medical Officer leaned over the young man on the bunk. The man's eyes were empty and staring, rarely blinking. The doctor flashed a penlight into them, but beyond a minor reflexive reaction of the pupils to the light, there was no response. Doc shoved the penlight into the pocket of his medical overcoat and clicked the machine again. "Subject: Thibideau, Lieutenant Jr. Gr. Mathieu Marcel -corpsman. Subject is somewhat underweight due to borderline malnutrition and minor dehydration, in a state of deep near-comatose withdrawal for causes as yet unknown. Identity of subject confirmed by cross-reference of finger prints and retina scan graph. Subject Thibideau has checked out as uninfected by any unknown or known contagion. As yet, mental state is not yet cause for alarm and patient will no doubt recover in time as no biological cause can be found for said condition. As I suspect that the cause for said condition is entirely psychological in nature, his case will be referred to the psychiatric corps."

But what psychological cause, Doc wondered, staring down at the young corpsman who, to his estimation, appeared to be far too young to be serving on a submarine in the first place let alone as an officer. The blankness of the corpsman's present expression was just a mask, hiding something...perhaps experiences or memories so horrible that he could not bear to face them or the real world in which they had taken place. But what?

Doc spoke into the recorder again. "Personal notes: I reviewed the tapes of the video-feed from the sunken S.S.N. Voyageur and am forced to wonder if subject was forced to witness similar scenes of such inexplicable destruction and horror. If I had been forced to witness and remain among horrors such as those, I am not certain that my sanity would survive either."

Just then, Doc heard the door to the Sick Bay's ante-room swing open with its familiar squeak (had to remember to get it oiled or replaced), and pressed the "stop" button of the micro-recorder as he heard Admiral Nelson's familiar step. "Doc?"

"I'll be right out, Admiral. Just finishing the follow-up medical report."

"Take your time, Doc." Nelson stared at the open door that led to Sick Bay proper as he slowly slid from foot to foot -impatient, waiting. Despite what he had said in the spirit of politeness, his patience was wearing egg-shell thin. The transmission he had finally been able to get through to InterAllied Command hadn't borne much fruit. He knew as little about Station Delta as he did when this mission began...which wasn't much. All that was really clear was that his assignment was to find evidence of the nebulous Project M.I.N.A....and that, for the time being, for the duration of the mission, Seaview was on her own.

Nelson stared at the map of the Seaview mounted on the bulkhead. Upon arrival on Seaview, his captain's shore party had been met by the requisite team of corpsmen in anti-contamination suits -he had been among them, waiting for answers that he was certain that he would not like. Moot point. Liking what he would hear or learn was never a consideration.

A colorful object on Doc's desk caught Nelson's eye and he soon found himself idly toying with a game that had become the latest fad with the present love of the simpler days of the late twentieth century -a Rubik's Cube. A simple problem -getting the squares of one color onto one side- with a difficult solution -the same.

Before the shore party had been herded into the decontamination cubicles, Crane had handed him an old burlap satchel, apparently once belonging to Captain Hudson of the Voyageur, evidenced by the initials stitched into the scuffed outside. Initial hopes of an easily acquired answer to the questions that plagued the mission had immediately been quashed upon first sight of the writing on the papers and the spiral-bound journal within... Whoever had written the odd notations -Captain Hudson or another- the words had been scribed in some weird kind of short-hand. It would take time -time they could not afford in face of InterAllied's insistence on a quick answer- to decipher them...and, Nelson noted with a frustrated twist of the multi-colored cube, his secretarial skills were, to say the least, a little rusty.

"Admiral..?"

Nelson looked up from the object of his fascination a little sheepishly, mildly surprised by Doc's sudden appearance from the Sick Bay proper. He idly set the Rubik's Cube back on the Chief Medical Officer's desk, half complete. "How are the test results, Doc?"

"Quite good, Admiral," Doc answered with a slight lift to his eyebrows, unable to deny his puzzlement, considering what he had been told about Delta. He set the micro-recorder back in its usual resting place and sat on the edge of his desk. "Tests came back... negative...and that's for every member of the shore party." Doc opened the report folder, glanced at the notes again, and let it fall shut. "At the moment, I'm only waiting for the final blood tests for-" Just then, the door to the Sick Bay swung open and a corpsman wearing a white med-lab overcoat entered the room as both officers fell silent. He handed Doc a sealed vial of blood bearing a label with the name; "Crane, Captain Lee B." scribed on it in blue marker ink.

"Final lab tests indicate no foreign bacteria, viruses, or abnormal pathogen of any kind, sir," the corpsman said, indicating the vial and then lab results' papers which he had pulled from a pocket within his lab coat. "Shall I tell the Captain that he is free to get back into uniform?"

"Humor me a moment longer, Taylor," Doc murmured with a slight smile crooking the corner of his mouth as he regarded the officious young corpsman. The young medical officer stood silently aside, not acknowledging the unsaid jibe at his expense, as Doc took the vial and removed from it a single, tiny drop of blood which he put on a transparent slide and then carefully placed the prepared sample before the lens of the electronic microscope.

Nelson waited with ill-suppressed impatience for Doc to make his final examination of the sample before him. A seeming eternity seemed to pass before the doctor moved away from the microscope, and stood up with a nod of mingled relief and satisfaction. "All clear, Admiral -the Captain's fine." Doc noted how the Admiral's shoulders slumped with the release of some inner tension despite his too-obvious efforts to mask it; a deeper personal relief than the doctor himself could possibly feel though he cared for all of Seaview's crew members in the way that doctors were expected to. It was well known, though generally unspoken, that the Admiral and the Captain were especially close friends; almost like brothers...more like father and son. "Taylor, would you inform the Captain now that he is free to get dressed?"

"Aye, sir," the corpsman said with a terse little nod and left the room.

A stillness settled on the room for the longest time as Doc placed the sample and the vial in a secure container, the Admiral following him all the while with his eyes until he felt he could no longer remain silent. "Is it some kind of psychological perversity, Doc?"

Doc regarded the Admiral, searching his expression. "Is what 'some kind of psychological perversity', Admiral?"

Nelson offered the doctor a beleaguered half-smile. "There are times that I wonder about the possible perversity of my own hidden nature. Now, here, we've proven that both parties -diving and shore- came away unscathed by some kind of malady we feared we might find -and believe me, I am delighted that they did...yet, I find myself disappointed like some sort of ghoul that after coming all this way that we didn't find anything." Nelson shook his head in bewilderment. "I must be one of the most twisted men alive."

"Hardly," Doc replied with a slight, weary grin. The smile faded almost as quickly as if it had never been. "I don't know, Admiral...despite the lack of evidence of some mystery disease or genetic engineering, we're left with more questions than answers."

"I know," Nelson muttered sourly. "Not the least of which is disease or no, what happened at Station Delta and why?"

"You said that the Captain brought aboard some kind of notes?"

"In some kind of short-hand...definitely not official Navy script," Nelson replied as if stating the obvious, "and I don't know anyone aboard who took civilian secretarial courses. It's going to take time to-"

Nelson and Doc turned in response to the turning of the doorknob. The door swung open and the Captain of the Seaview entered, in the process of fastening his uniform shirt. Like the other crew members who had experienced the decontamination chamber's cleansing rays, his olive skin had taken on a definite flush like that of a slight sunburn. As if sensing Nelson's concern, he flashed a reassuring smile and extended a hand. "Admiral."

"Lee..." Nelson said, grasping Crane's hand. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," Crane replied, not quite expunging from his voice the puzzlement he felt inside. The fact of the matter was that he did feel fine; better, in fact, than he had for days. The aches and pains that had wracked his body were gone and he could breathe freely -his chest and sinuses were startlingly clear. It was as if he had never had the flu at all...if he had had the flu... It was all too strange. Perhaps adrenaline was the new cure-all for the common cold -and he had had more than a little of that anxiety-spawned substance flowing through his veins in the last while.

Crane glanced at Doc who motioned for him to sit down on the roll-away examination table as he put the earphones of the stethoscope in his ears and placed something that felt like a block of ice against the Captain's chest. "Doc, is this absolutely nec-"

"Breathe in, please, Captain," Doc interrupted, heading off another potential argument with Seaview's captain over the overly fastidious nature of his chief medical officer. "Again -and hold it for a moment. That's fine."

Crane plucked the signet ring that rarely left his finger from the pouch in which the corpsmen had had him leave it while he had undergone decontamination and testing. He winced as Doc sounded his back with the ice-cold stethoscope and resisted the urge to scowl at Nelson's amused grin. "Doc..."

"Breathe in please. Again and deeply."

Crane drew in a deeper breath and then sighed with relief as the seeming block of ice was finally removed from his back. "Doc... there isn't any reason that I shouldn't be feeling 'fine', is there?"

"None of which I know, Captain," the doctor said reassuringly as he removed an opthalmoscope from a pocket in his medical overcoat. "Look this way, sir." He trained the thin needle of light on the Captain's eyes -one and then, the other- and snapped off the light, studying Crane with a new concern. "You haven't been experiencing any unusual symptoms that I know nothing of, have you, Captain? If you have, I have to insist that you tell me now."

Crane noted the Admiral's deeply concerned frown. Allergies...it had to have been allergies. He couldn't remember there being a history of Hay Fever in his family, but... Crane shook his head, adding a mild shrug. "No, Doc. Nothing unusual."

"Good," Doc said, reassured. He noted the new silence and took it as his cue to leave the room while his admiral and captain talked in private. "I'll be taking a look at our guest if you should need me."

When Doc had finally left the Sick Bay's ante-room, mindfully closing the door to Sick Bay proper behind him, the two officers were left alone. Nelson studied Crane who was twisting the signet ring around his finger in a very familiar gesture of silent unease. Crane caught sight of the Admiral's probing stare and abruptly ceased the embarrassing nervous activity of his hands, letting them fall to his lap. "Lee," Nelson said quietly. "Are you certain that you're all right?"

"I said that I am," Crane replied with a small dismissive shrug and then added: "Why shouldn't I be?"

"You tell me ," Nelson said gently and then, remembering that no clam could be as tight-lipped as the Captain of the Seaview, he decided on a new tack. Lee Crane wanted to talk -he knew that, believed it at any rate- but getting him to talk was another thing entirely. "Let me tell you something, Lee."

Crane stood up. "I should really be getting back to-"

"Sit." Crane considered the Admiral's terse order and then reclaimed his seat, a little warily. Nelson pulled a seat of his own to where Crane sat regarding him with open unease. "I'm telling you, Lee -no matter how well trained one is in the military, it has little or no bearing on how one reacts to scenes like the ones that the shore and diving parties saw first-hand."

"I'm...I'm not sure that I understand what you mean, sir."

"And I'm just as sure that you do," Nelson said, observing Crane's unwillingness or inability to look him straight in the eye. "Once, as an ensign, I had the unpleasant duty to assist in the mop-up job after an accident that caused the destruction of a fine naval vessel and the deaths of many of her men..."

"Do you mean...the engine explosion on the old S.S.Combatant that you once told me about ?"

"The same," Nelson affirmed with a wince at the sudden spate of old, unpleasant memories resurfacing all at once. "But I never told you the details of what I saw there...or the effect it all had on me. For the purpose of an accurate investigation, the Navy had to leave the scene as it was for more than a day while investigators pored over the remains. I...helped take a photographic record of the scene and I also...saw things that no man should ever see." Nelson uttered a small hollow laugh. "I still remember them."

"I still don't see what that has to do with me," Crane said as if not entirely convinced by his own opinion.

"As happened with myself -as happens with many others- there is a shock syndrome that occurs when one is faced with such terrible sights and experiences. It makes itself known perhaps physically or psychologically...as nightmares or headaches-"

"I heaved my guts all over the floor." Crane met Nelson's eyes apprehensively. "That is what you wanted to know, isn't it? I got sick to my stomach and I still feel sick."

"I suspected that it might have been something like that," Nelson said quietly. "For me, it was a rash of brutal headaches that lasted for over a week. They began to fade when I talked it out with a counselor on the base."

Crane's eyes narrowed with sudden suspicion. "How did you know?" He nodded slowly at the answer that his own imagination provided for him and sighed as if resigned. "Kowalski told you."

"No."

"No?"

"What tipped me off," Nelson admitted with a wry smile, "was the fact that of all the shore and diving party members, you're the only one not to admit to feeling completely miserable after your experience -at least, until now."

A soft laugh escaped Crane's lips. "I should know better than to try to fool you."

Nelson tilted his head in assent. "That would be wise... In any case, there's nothing to be ashamed of -it happens."

"Like Thibideau in there?" Crane asked, jerking a thumb in the direction of Sick Bay proper. The Admiral nodded ruefully. "And what about that poor soul who attacked my shore party?"

"I can only imagine that he remained in the midst of the horrors too long...after a time, revulsion must have become madness. The parties, even Thibideau will recover in time, but he..." Nelson let the sentence drop. "We don't even know who he was."

"Captain Adam Hudson of the Voyageur." Nelson glanced up sharply at Crane's whispered words -silent and yet, questioning. "The more I think about it, the more I believe it," Crane said sadly, grim pictures playing before his mind's eye like some old movie reel. "I saw the similarity between his and Thibideau's uniform, the fact that even in his state that he still resembled the description InterAllied sent us...the captain's bars..." Crane stared at a blank wall for several minutes while Nelson looked on, waiting for him to continue. "But who wants to believe that something like that can happen to a man -a fellow captain? And the fact that Thibideau called after him even in his own confused condition..." Crane buried his head in his hands until he felt the comforting pressure of the Admiral's hand on his shoulder and looked up. "That shouldn't happen to an animal, sir."

"I know, Lee...I know." Nelson drew a deep sigh -back to business. "For tonight, we'll lay-to at these co-ordinates. Perhaps, translated, Hudson's notes will provide us with a few clues -either way, it can wait until morning."

"Yes, sir," Crane admitted with a half-stifled yawn. "I guess it can-" Just then, Crane grimaced and massaged his stomach. "Oh my..."

"What is it, Lee?" Nelson demanded, seeing the sudden ashen pallor on Crane's face.

"Nothing..." Crane replied, slightly perplexed. "Gas, I think." He sighed with a small smile of relief. "It was just a- God..." Crane clutched at his stomach, his face straining and whitened, his breath coming out in small gasps. "Oh jeeze..."

Nelson reacted with alarm. "I'll get Doc-"

"No...no, it's okay..." Crane straightened up, the color coming back to his pale visage; a more relaxed, though slightly bewildered expression on his face. He uttered a weak laugh as his stomach gave a grotesque, audible groan. "I...I just realized that I haven't eaten in about twelve hours -as my treasonous stomach has just chosen to inform me."

"You're...sure about that?" the Admiral said, studying the young commanding officer, not quite convinced.

"Quite sure," Crane said with a sheepish grin.

"Well then..." Nelson said as he took Crane by the arm, insistently guiding him toward the door that led to the corridor outside. "At the risk of engendering nightmares by eating before you sleep, I suggest that you stop at the Mess -before you turn in."

Crane regarded the Admiral incredulously after glancing at his watch. "But I have another hour on my watch. The debriefing-"

"I take it back," Nelson interrupted with a thinly disguised grin. "That was not a suggestion -it was an order, Captain."

"Aye, sir..." Crane answered, recognizing the caring in the gruff-sounding command. He opened the door that led out into the corridor and headed towards the Ship's Mess -he did not note the fleeting frown of concern that passed over Nelson's face.




It took a moment to realize where he was.

Kowalski sluggishly studied his surroundings, eyes rapidly blinking against the glue that seemed to make it difficult to keep them open despite the brain's commands to do so, and gave the heavy lick of hair that had drifted into his eyes a brush with one hand while he pushed himself up from his awkward reclining position with the other. As the last of sleep's fog dissipated, he recognized the wall-mounted cot that was his bunk and sat up sharply as he realized that he had fallen asleep with his scarlet utility tunic uniform half-off and rolled down to his waist. A quick check of his watch affirmed the lateness of the hour: "2200 hours". Kowalski's eyes widened as he marveled disgruntledly at how tired he must have been to have fallen asleep in the midst of readying himself for bed -early, and on Doc's orders.

The man seemed to think that the sights that this seaman had seen might have put some kind of unusual kind of mental strain on the shore party members -some kind of shock that was best treated with talk and early bed-rest....as if he hadn't wanted to heave his guts all over the deck over sights of lesser horrors. Kowalski closed his eyes as a new wave of tiredness washed over him...still weary. The unexpected nap had not exorcised the need to rest, but he didn't want to give into Morpheus just yet. No...not yet. When his eyes closed for too long, vague images of carbonized human forms materialized before his mind's eye; their empty-eyed stares, the gaping grins, echoes of distant voices borne on a ghostly wind... The seaman shook his head and the phantoms of dream-time thought fled -for now.

He would sleep eventually -there was no choice in that matter. Bur for now, this ordinary seaman just wanted to get out the day's uniform...maybe think, maybe just read Patterson's newest issue of Playboy -he knew where he hid them. Right beside a pack of carob-mint cookies he had brought along with him on this cruise just in case the ship's cook got too inventive with his galley culinary experimentations.

Kowalski pushed himself off of his bunk and stood up, stretching each tired limb, muscles straining taut until the bones creaked in silent protest and the muscles could be pulled no further, and then relaxed, enjoying the release. He shrugged off his uniform, stripping down to his briefs, and began to massage a slightly tender spot in the small of his back. Stiff as a rod...maybe serving on board Seaview was taking its toll on him.

The craziness...the sheer insanity... It had all become a part of this seaman's life the day that he had volunteered to leave the regular Navy and serve on some new type of prototype nuclear submarine that most of the Navy at the time called "Nelson's Folly" -the S.S.R.N. Seaview, created at the Nelson Institute of Marine Research. Yeah...it was getting to him all right. With every ache and pain, with every groan that followed, he sounded more and more like his old man.

"Aches..." Kowalski frowned as he caught sight of his injured thumb all swathed in bandages -not a break, Doc had said; just a nasty cut and an even nastier bruise. It would probably hurt a lot for the next week or so, Doc had pronounced, a thoroughly unnecessary grin on his lips -the accident hadn't been all that funny. Oddly enough, though, his thumb was the only part of his body that didn't ache. Curiosity triumphing over better judgment, Kowalski took a first-aid kit from his locker and, using the tiny pair of scissors within the kit, snipped the sticky bandage and unwound the gauze wrapped around the digit. The thumb was still discolored, still had an ugly-looking cut that stretched from the nail to the knuckle, but it didn't look even half as bad as he remembered it -the bruise was actually smaller somehow. He was sure of it. Besides...it didn't hurt. Doc had been right. He had overreacted.

At that moment, the door to the crew's room swung open and the tall, lanky form of Patterson appeared in the doorway. He paused and stopped, stifling a long yawn with his curled fist and then, with a clearing shake of his head, entered the room. "'Ski..."

"Pat..." Kowalski murmured and pulled the edge of a strip of gauze from its roll. He glanced up momentarily. "Hard watch?"

"No kidding..." Patterson sighed heavily as he pulled a bath towel from his locker and slung it over his shoulder. "It felt like the longest in history. Mr. O'Brien had me at that sonar board for almost eight hours straight! And for what I don't know. We're 90 feet under the Antarctic Ocean and we're the only ones here!"

"Ehhh...this Delta thing has got just about everyone on edge," Kowalski muttered off-handedly as he finished winding the bandage around his thumb. He cut the straggling end with his teeth. "Don't let it get to you."

"Yeah...I guess..." Patterson's voice trailed off as he stared at the cake of soap, which smelled slightly of detergent, clutched in his hand. "'Ski..?"

Kowalski flexed his bandaged hand -it was stiff, but it would do. He winced at the small discomfort of the pull of bandage's fabric against his skin and muttered "What?" as Patterson's question finally filtered from his ears to his brain. He glanced up when there was no immediate response and saw the troubled expression on Patterson's face as the young seaman stared into the distance at nothing at all in particular. "Well?" Kowalski snapped, immediately regretting the sharpness of his tone of voice. "What is it?"

Patterson looked up with apprehension, dreading the question that he had decided that he needed to ask someone -almost anyone- before the thought drove him off the deep-end. Kowalski was waiting with obvious impatience. "'Ski, you think that I'm pretty level-headed, don't you?"

"I'm beginning to wonder," Kowalski murmured as he shoved the first-aid kit onto a shelf in his locker. He suddenly caught Patterson's expression which now seemed all the more pained and sighed aloud, relenting. "So, what's eating you?"

"I'm not sure..." Patterson said with a helpless shake of his head, "but if I don't tell someone, I'm gonna lose my mind over this thing." Patterson sat on the opposite edge of Kowalski's bunk as his fellow seaman shut the door to his locker which resounded with a hollow clang. "So," Kowalski said, studying the distinctly haunted cast on Patterson's face. "Don't leave me hanging."

Patterson allowed the green-striped cake of soap to fall from his hand onto the bunk as his terrycloth towel tumbled to the slightly crumpled blanket in a loose, unkempt heap. "'Ski, what I... No, what -we- saw on Voyageur -was it like that at the base...at Delta?"

"I guess..." Kowalski closed his eyes as another wave of weariness swept over him...and just for a moment, he was back among the ruins of Antarctic Station Delta, surrounded by death and the dead. He opened his eyes with a start and swallowed deeply. Patterson didn't seem to have noticed his brief lapse as he was staring again at nothing, likely surrounded by his own apparently troubled thoughts. The seaman shook his head, warding off the demons of sleep for a little longer.

"The bodies were frozen in place by the blast, right?"

"Yeah, I guess. Mostly..." Kowalski regarded Patterson through bleary, tiredness-reddened eyes. "Look, Pat, if this is another game of Twenty Questions, can we save it 'till morning? I'm really not-"

"I think some of the crew were too busy fighting to bother trying to escape."

There was a sudden utter silence as Kowalski sat up straight in aghast disbelief, suddenly completely awake. He studied his fellow crewman, his friend, a thin rattled laugh escaping his lips to break the strained silence, but the laugh died quickly. Patterson was many things, but he was not a liar...and his expression was too bleak, too distressed for this to be some sort of a gag, and black humor had never been Patterson's way...especially not at a time like this. Kowalski shook his head tiredly, drawing his bandaged hand through the slightly rumpled dark hair. "Pat, look, I...I know you've seen some...awful things -we all did. It's affected all of us in some way -me, Riley, even the Cap -ah...er...it's just that this idea of yours is too-"

Kowalski's utter disbelief was not lost on the blue-uniformed crewman who studied him and waited as Kowalski got up and anxiously paced the length of the crew's quarters. He had expected this kind of reaction and would have been surprised if Kowalski had reacted any other way. "'Ski. Look at me." Kowalski stopped in his tracks, surprised by the unusual note of authority in Patterson's voice. Neither of them outranked the other. They were, both of them, seamen first class -double "A" security clearance in the ParaNavy and the regular Navy, but it just usually seemed to follow that he was the leader, and Patterson, the follower. Patterson, his visage stern, held his hands out flat. "Are my hands shaking, 'Ski? Do I have the tremors...the sweats? I am not suffering some kind of mental shock syndrome."

"All right," Kowalski conceded almost begrudgingly, "you're not wigged out...but you couldn't have-"

"Crewmen in two different compartments -I couldn't tell how exactly how many- I'd almost swear they were fighting, wrestling, something, when the blast hit!" Patterson said, slapping fist against open palm. "They didn't even have time to move!" Patterson seemed to slump inwardly. "Or they didn't even try."

Grim images of the recent past fluttered at the back of Kowalski's mind -ghostly pictures of carbonized bodies huddled together or..? "I don't know, Pat...did anyone else see this?"

"I don't know." Patterson sat heavily on the edge of the bunk and met his friend's eyes. "'Ski, I'm not crazy, am I?"

"Tired is more like it," Kowalski said with great sympathy. At the moment, he was too weary to be angry, and too amazed at his own instance of willingness to believe the impossible to point out the ridiculousness of Patterson's new pet theory. He clasped Patterson's shoulder. "Pat...do you want my advice?"
"Yeah..." Patterson muttered. "I do."

"Take a long shower. Turn in. If you feel the same way in the morning -report your suspicions to the Chief, but..." Kowalski lowered his voice conspiratorially. "I wouldn't be too surprised if you don't."

"Yeah, I-I guess so." Patterson wearily gathered up his towel and soap, but stopped just as he was about to enter the shower area of the Head, turned his head slightly and looked over his shoulder. "The Voyageur -nothing like that could happen to Seaview...to all of us, could it?"

Kowalski shook his head as if with the greatest conviction. "Nah...never happen."

Patterson nodded with somewhat less conviction. "Good."

Soon, the sound of water pounding against the white tiles of a shower stall played in the back of Kowalski's perceptions as he rummaged through his locker. Soap, washcloth, and bath towel suddenly came tumbling out from one of the shelves, one after the other, like an upset house of cards, triggering a slew of choice obscenities from the seaman as he stooped to pick them up from the deck. He had only just pulled himself from his awkward kneeling position when the door to the crew's quarters swung open again, barely missing his head. Kowalski looked up, a dark scowl creasing his brow as Stu Riley entered the room. "Could you watch what you're doing, Stu!"

"Huh..?" Riley regarded Kowalski dumbly as if he had been sleepwalking and his fellow seaman's voice had woken him from a nocturnal trance. "I...ah...I'm sorry..."

"Stu, are you feeling okay?" Kowalski asked, struck by Riley's nearly sonambulistic attitude, but the question went unanswered as the preoccupied Riley walked past the puzzled seaman and hoisted himself up onto his bunk, quickly donning a familiar pair of earphones connected to his Sony Discman. Soon after, the familiar squeaky whisper of some vaguely familiar rock anthem could be heard, and for all intents and purposes, Stuart Riley was deaf to the world around him.

Kowalski cast a slightly puzzled frown in the reclining Riley's direction and then shrugged his shoulders with the resignation of the fatigued. A day like the one that they had experienced could get to anyone -even the ever-exuberant Riley...and if Riley didn't feel like talking about it...well...he himself was presently too burned out to bother pressing the matter.

As Kowalski turned towards the Head, he suddenly stopped, grimacing as a sharp pain stabbed at him in the middle of his stomach, twisting...and then, was gone. As if the pain had never been. For several minutes, the seaman stood where he was, a confounded cast to his visage as his stomach gave an audible gurgle. "Gas..." he muttered sourly, wincing as his stomach gave another, lesser pinch. He glanced to his side -Riley was still in his personal Discman-induced oblivion and hadn't even noticed the incident- and slung his towel over his shoulder.

He hoped that maintenance had repaired the hot water taps.




Was it fish or was it fowl?

Lee Crane stared down at the plate set before him with the intense fascination of an unwilling witness to a gory accident where one doesn't want to look, but cannot force himself to look away. It was that kind of a feeling. He pushed a portion of the weird-looking, multi-hued casserole-like concoction with the thin tines of his fork, his mind dulled with some strange hybrid of boredom and fascination as he moved the piece of what Cookie had proudly claimed was his newly famous seafood lasagna slowly around the plate in a widening circle, each arc bringing the food no closer to his mouth. Fish or fowl...whatever Seaview's galley chief had presumed to call his latest culinary creation, this was definitely foul.

Crane made a stab at the red, orange, and white covered pasta with his fork and held a piece up before his eyes, strings of partially melted synthetic mozzarella stretching from the plate to the fork, and then let both the fork and the portion fall to the plate with a noisy clatter, the tomato sauce only just missing his uniform shirt, but amply decorating the remainder of the plate and the immediate area around it. He couldn't eat this. Crane pushed the platter aside in nauseated disgust. He was hungry, and there wasn't really anything wrong with the food, but God help him, he could not eat this. The Captain of the Seaview sat back in his seat, aware of the cook's questioning stare, pointedly ignoring it as he rubbed his eyes, unwilling to give into sleep just yet. The Admiral had been right as usual. The sights at Antarctic Station Delta had affected him far more than he cared to admit.

When he closed his eyes, he could see the charred bodies of those poor souls and almost smell the stink of carbonized flesh that the almost unfathomably bitter Antarctic chill could not hide...and when he did, he would feel the gorge rise up in his throat -the food, its sight and smell, only made him feel worse. It would take time to get over this -the Admiral had said as much- and he was unwilling to surrender himself to Morpheus' leaden embrace and chance being vulnerable to those nightmarish visions...not yet anyway.

"Lee..?" Crane blinked, snapping out of his grim contemplations and glanced up in the direction of the familiar voice. Chip Morton had appeared at the table carrying with him a steaming mug of warm...milk? The Executive Officer cast a slightly embarrassed glance at the steaming mug. "I've been having trouble sleeping," he admitted almost sheepishly. Crane nodded silently -he understood. Morton gingerly sipped the drink and grimaced. Too hot. Several minutes passed, Morton studying his commanding officer in silence until he leaned over slightly and whispered conspiratorially: "So?"

Crane raised an eyebrow quizzically. "So...'what'?"

"So..." Morton said, effecting an attitude of puzzled insistence. "What did the Admiral have to say?"

Crane shrugged slightly. "We're going to lay-to at these co-ordinates until mid-morning at least and then, we should be getting underway."

A muted sigh of exasperation from Morton gently broke the ensuing stillness. He silently studied his captain a moment longer, watching the man apparently continue to play with his food, and then set his mug down on the table's dull surface. "No...what I meant was -what did the Admiral say about you having the flu and still being on duty?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know..." Morton insisted, privately wondering whether Crane really didn't understand what he was talking about, or whether the man was just being deliberately obstinate about the matter. "The tests after the shore party must've shown-"

"Oh...that," Crane murmured. "He didn't say anything."

Morton reacted with ill-concealed surprise. "He didn't say anything?"

"Exactly," Crane replied lightly, the glimmer of a grin playing at the corners of his mouth as he stared down at his plate, idly turning the tines of his fork among the gooey mess. "Not a single thing."

"Nothing."

"That's what I said," Crane replied with a dismissive hunch of his shoulders. There was no sign of me ever having had the flu at all."

"Then what-"

"Hay Fever, I guess...or something like that." Crane saw the incredulous look on his executive officer's countenance and felt himself compelled to smile a little wider. "Believe me, Chip," he said earnestly, "I'm surprised too. I feel perfectly fine now."

"But..." A confused, convoluted mixture of profound relief and disbelief swept through Chip Morton's mind. If a ship's captain suffered, the whole ship felt the effects, and only a short while ago -a matter of hours, days- Lee Crane had looked ill enough to worry even this stolidly unperturbable executive officer. He had been pale, sickly...but -and Morton had to admit this- Lee Crane did not look sick now. Not even a little. "Lee...how can that be? A couple of days ago, you looked like death warmed over."

"Thank you," Crane muttered with a pained expression.

Morton shook his head slowly -only Lee Crane could have come out of a potentially sticky situation like this unscathed. "I guess cold weather agrees with you."

"Maybe..." the Captain said, his voice drifting off, his attention suddenly elsewhere. But the moment passed quickly as though whatever had passed through Crane's mind hadn't been worth much consideration after all. He pushed his plate aside. "But I don't want to stay here any longer than I have to." A weary-looking galley crewman approached the Captain's table, and with his permission, collected the uneaten meal as Crane stood up and pushed his chair aside. There was a troubled cast to the young commanding officer's countenance; something the reassuring grin that he wore could not hide. "Looks like we've got a long run ahead of us, so I think I'll turn in now. See you at first watch."

"Aye...sir," Morton replied with a small nod, again appreciating the slight shift that had come between them; the shift that sometimes came when his friend, his captain, had decided that he had said all that he intended to say. "Have a good rest, Lee."

Crane hesitated at Morton's words as if he had paused to mentally digest the suggestion. He sighed softly. "I'll try."

Morton stared silently after the Captain as he left the Ship's Mess, privately puzzled by Crane's behavior, but deciding, finally, not to pursue what Crane apparently did not wish to share. He put the mug to his lips and frowned.

The drink had gone cold.




"Lee Crane, you are truly one sorry son of a bitch..." The Captain of the Seaview studied the fatigue-ridden image that stared back at him from the mirror hanging in the private Head in his cabin. The reflection of himself seemed to stare back at him with mute sympathy as if agreeing with his personal assessment of his physical condition. As tiredness had begun to claim him, his countenance had become ashen with care, his dark eyes reddened and bleary. Crane ran a hand over his chin -needed a shave. Badly. He had occasionally considered the possibility of growing a beard or, perhaps, a mustache, but somehow, he never seemed to have the patience for it. Probably never would either. Tentative stubble would meet the rotating blades of his electric shaver first thing in the morning. A grin lit Crane's face and his twin image grinned back as if complimenting him on the first truly genuine smile he had experienced since arriving from Delta.

The horrors were still there, and so were the questions...questions that would take more time than he and his crew had to answer them. He had never been one to run away from any mission, but this one... This one was one he would be glad to hand over to the purely investigative team that InterAllied would certainly send over to Station Delta once Admiral Nelson had handed over the little information that they had been able to gather from the ruins.

Crane's hand brushed against the switch on the lamp beside his bunk and the bright glow of the bulb softened in response, becoming more muted and far less painful to his weariness-reddened eyes. The softer light seemed to distort already existing shadows, creating weirdly shaped dark recesses against the pale tan paint that covered the slightly curved bulkhead of his cabin. Too wound-up to sleep despite his tiredness...just yet. Crane reached over from his bunk to the table beside it and retrieved the heavily dog-eared second-hand book that the Admiral had loaned him -the book had been bought on a recent shore leave and had all the appearance of a tome that had been through far more than two owners despite being called "second-hand".

No matter... Crane leaned back against his pillows, the slightly creased pages fluttering beneath his fingers until he came to the book-marked page and frowned with vague bemusement at the old-fashioned, 19th-century writing style which bordered on pretentious. "'When she raised it, his white night-robe was stained with blood where her lips had touched, and the open wound in her neck sent forth drops...'" Crane yawned and forced himself to continue, doggedly determined to finish this chapter of the book at least. "'The instant she saw it, she drew back with a low wail, and whispered amidst choking sobs: Unclean, unclean! I must touch him or kiss him no more. Oh that it should be that it is I who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may have most reason to fear...'"

Another yawn, longer this time, escaped Crane's mouth as he sank deeply into the pillows, the book still in his hand. He closed his eyes for a moment, compelled by the stronger wave of weariness which was engulfing him, to set down the book for a little while.

Seconds later, he was sound asleep.




"Nelson."

Harriman Nelson's eyes snapped open. For several long minutes, he lay on his bunk, still, eyes straining to pierce the darkness by which he was surrounded. He turned his head at a sound, a soft whispering sound like that of a sigh. "Who..?" Nelson pushed himself to an awkward sitting position, the box-springs of his bunk creaking softly with the shift of his weight. "Did someone-" In the darkness, the Admiral's visage creased with a frown. Dreaming. That was what it had to have been. Dreaming and a stray, whistling draft carried by the ventilation system. And yet... Nelson glanced at his digital clock. It was 0500 hours and he was alone in his cabin, but...he could almost have sworn that someone had called his name, rousing him from a well-deserved slumber. Nelson ran his fingers through his rumpled red hair. Foolishness, of course. Dreams created by a too-active brain no matter how real the delusion had seemed...a very weary brain.

"Nelson."

Harriman Nelson had forgotten far more of the ways of military preparedness than most would ever learn and his personal side-arm was in his hand even as he stabbed the switch on the cubically-shaped light on the bulkhead nearest his bunk. He swung around as the light, bright and stinging, flooded the cabin...and stopped short, mouth open in mute surprise...and disbelief.

A few feet in front of him, the figure of a man sat in the visitor's chair beside his desk. The tall, lean, dark-haired man, a commander by the pips on his collar, stood up, apparently not particularly concerned by the semi-automatic trained on his person...and then stood quietly studying the incredulous Admiral Nelson, the fabric of the navy-blue uniform of a commissioned officer of the Canadian Navy rustling slightly as he spread his long-fingered hands, a quiet smile on his handsome face. "I'm not armed, Admiral," he said quietly, a curious, soft echo to his voice. He had a definite accent; something from the eastern regions of Canada, perhaps Ontario. "And in any case," he said, "shooting me wouldn't do anything but ruin the wall behind me." Whereupon, the uninvited "guest" drew his hand quite literally through the darkly lacquered hardwood surface of Nelson's desk. "As you can see."

"No..." Nelson whispered, finally reclaiming his lost voice. He knew the face -he had read a copy of Voyageur's personnel files...had seen the pictures. "Captain Hudson..."

"Yes?"

"You're dead," Nelson murmured lamely, the gun in his hand feeling like a useless lump of lead.

"I know," the apparition said with a pronounced sigh. "I saw the body -I've never seen a mess like that before. Your captain did the right thing, you know -killing me- I would have killed him, killed your entire shore party, had he not." The phantom shook his head. "I would have had no choice...neither did he...and neither will you."

Nelson passed a hand over his eyes, trying to wipe away the vision before them, but the effort was unsuccessful as the ghostly being was still there when he opened his eyes, waiting patiently. "I don't understand any of this."

"I'm not surprised."

"What do you want?"

The ghost of Captain Hudson appeared to sit of the edge of Nelson's desk. "You have no idea of what's going on here, Admiral...neither did the crew of my ship. The people at Delta knew, but they couldn't stop it -that's why everyone had to die the way they did...my crew, their people..." The apparition paused as if it had become difficult to speak. "I made the only decision available to stop the spread of the evil they had loosed."

"Then you did create those bombs." Nelson stared at the entity before him. If he stared hard enough, he could almost discern the opposite end of his cabin through the ephemeral form. "You were responsible for the deaths of nearly three hundred innocent souls!"

"Never innocent...and most were dead long before I had to...take care of the rest," the ghost said, his countenance profoundly sad. "Please don't judge me, Admiral. You, yourself, may have to make the same decision."

"You're talking in riddles."

"Not really." The image of Captain Hudson paused and watched as Nelson slowly lowered his gun. "Project M.I.N.A. was a pact with the Devil himself. The scientists at Delta created a terrible evil, Admiral...an evil which gave the Devil children -my crew, the personnel at Delta...and now, your crew -even your captain. Project M.I.N.A. wouldn't release my crew -and believe me, they did try to escape its reach. It won't release your crew either." The ghostly captain gestured toward the cabin door. "You see?"

Despite himself, Nelson felt compelled to look at the door. A light, a strange fluctuating orange-red glow, had begun to seep into the cabin from the space between the bottom of the door and the deck...and then, as if guided by invisible hands, the handle jiggled and then turned, unlocking itself. The door slowly, quietly began to inch open. Fear clutching at him, Nelson quickly glanced behind himself -his cabin was empty; his ghostly visitor had vanished- and then, walked into the light.

Seaview was in ruins.

The corridors of the submarine that was Nelson's brainchild were blackened and scorched, her deck cracked and pitted, distant flames creating unearthly shadows as they danced a demonic dervish. Emergency neons, flickering and sparking, emitted a sanguine glow. Suddenly, the door to Nelson's cabin slammed itself shut behind him, locking itself noisily as the deck tilted crazily to one side. What was this! There was the sound of distant explosions, like thunder which shook the submersible again and again...and beyond and beside that...the sound of voices...human, not human...moans, cries... Screams. But Nelson could see no-one. No-one at all.

Struggling to see through the murky smoke-ridden brume, Nelson spied the door to Crane's cabin -it was hanging awkwardly from its twisted hinges, swinging ever so slightly, banging against the torn and twisted doorjamb. Nelson saw a shifting in an unearthly light that was coming from Crane's cabin, strange and almost blood-red, and struggled to maintain his footing as he made his way along the madly tilted deck towards it. He peered in, straining to see through the fog of acrid smoke and saw a figure there, seated and hunched over on the bunk. "Lee..."

Lee Crane looked up at the sound of his admiral's voice. "Admiral."

"Lee, what's happening here!" Nelson demanded. He stopped short as he saw the semi-automatic in Crane's hand, dangling there as if the Captain had forgotten its presence or didn't particularly care that it was there. "What are you-" Crane mutely, listlessly, looked towards the deck just before his feet and Nelson followed his train of vision...and felt the bile rise in his throat as the curtain of smoke parted. On the deck, in a pile that was macabre in its nearly impossible neatness, were the bodies of several crewmen that had been alive only hours ago -their throats had been torn out as if they had each been attacked by a wild animal...and each one had a huge bloody, ragged bullet hole squarely in the middle of the pulpy remains of their foreheads. Nelson looked at Crane, only just now noticing the blood splattered on his uniform shirt, his hands, and smeared on his cheek and around his mouth -blood that wasn't his own. There wasn't a mark on him.

"I had to do it, Admiral," the Captain said softly, a small tremor in his voice. "I didn't have a choice. The thirst..." He shook his head in some kind of inner anguish and then looked up with eyes that were glazed with insanity and reflected the strange light as two hard rubies. "They wouldn't stay dead otherwise." Crane laughed softly, shakily, as he stood up, training the gun on Nelson who could only look on in absolute horror. "You...you could have stopped this, you know."

"Lee..."

Crane's expression hardened as his bloody fist pounded against his chest, angrily punctuating his words. "I didn't want to go to that place...I did not-" He grimaced as if suddenly overcome by terrible pain. "I did not want to."

"Lee, listen to me," Nelson implored. "I don't know what has happened to you, but we can-"

"You made me do it!" All of a sudden, Crane's twisted visage softened as if a veil of horror had been lifted from his face. He released the safety catch on the gun. "But it stops here. It goes no further." He slowly raised the weapon -and turned its thick black muzzle towards his own temple. "I'm sorry."

Nelson lunged forward, reaching for the service weapon, but it was as if he was caught in a time warp, his limbs stiff, his movements impossibly slow. "Lee! No!" The explosion threw Nelson backwards. "No-"

It was dark.

Nelson found himself on his bunk, his blankets snarled around his legs, sitting bolt upright. His body, pajamas, and bedsheets were soaked in sweat, his chest heaving against a heart that beat with such fury that it seemed to be struggling to free itself from the confines of his own body. As his heart slowly resumed its normal rhythm, he sat slumped over, his head resting in his hands.

Nightmares. He had had nightmares before, but nothing like this. Why- Nelson's eyes narrowed as he tried to grasp at the ethereal strands of the hellish dream. The memories of the night terror had begun to fold in on themselves, waking forgetfulness already beginning to dull the mental images...save for one. "Lee."

Nelson stood up suddenly and unsteadily, pulling on his bathrobe as he opened the door to his cabin and stumbled out into the still, quiet corridor. It had only been a nightmare and his present actions were irrational -he knew that- but he had to be sure. He had to.

Steeling himself with a weak, hastily devised excuse, Nelson stopped before Crane's cabin and gently rapped on the door which, to his surprise, slowly swung open. Somehow, it had been shut-to, but not properly closed. Odd, but... Nelson cautiously peered inside the quarters and slumped inwardly with a deep sigh of relief -Crane was sound asleep on his bunk, the blankets only partially covering his body. The lamp was still on, its bulb burning coolly, softly, and the book that the Captain had apparently been reading was still dangling from his limp hand.

The Admiral, shaking his head over the sheer irrationality of his behavior in the face of a simple nightmare, retrieved the book just as it was about to fall to the deck and placed it on the nightstand beside Crane's bunk. Scuttlebutt had it that he treated the young commanding officer, that was to him a friend and a son, like a child. Perhaps there was some small truth to that particular rumor, some grain of fact. Few knew it, but he had known Lee Crane since the Captain had been a mere infant. Crane had become the son that he had never had...and because of that, the line between personal feelings and naval duty could easily become muddied and confused. Perhaps because of this, Nelson knew, he occasionally worried too much -the strangeness and events that had surrounded the mission since its conception hadn't helped at all; a fertile breeding ground for the sort of nightmare he had just suffered.

Feeling both foolish and relieved, Nelson quietly doused the lamplight, and casting another look at the deeply sleeping man, left the cabin and closed the door behind him without so much as a sound.




Morning and night had become one. At this time of the year -in this part of the Earth, a part that did not follow the cycles of days and nights with which most were familiar- the difference between a night and a day could only be discerned by the changing digits of a clock or the subtle difference between the bitterly cold day and the deadly cold night. There was no day as such -only night...and the only thing shrouded in a more complete darkness was the Seaview.

The frigid waters that surrounded the great silver-grey submersible were black at this depth. The clouds in the sky above her, shrouded the dark canopy completely -there was no glow of moon or stars, and therefore Seaview herself was the only source of light where she hovered in the deep near the land mass where there was little more light...and no life.

"Lee?"

The Captain of the Seaview started slightly at the sound of his executive officer's voice and turned away from the sight of the seemingly endless darkness beyond the massive viewing ports of the Seaview's observation nose. "Everything is in order," Morton said, handing him the completed checklist he carried. "We can get underway to retrieve Voyageur's missiles at your command."

Crane studied the list, eyes moving left to right along the printed page, quickly and silently, until he stopped, and with a small nod, jotted his signature on the bottom of the page. "Anything else?" he asked as he handed back the signed list. Crane reached for the half-drunken cup of coffee he had left on the long, lacquered meeting table and then looked to his side when he realized that the requested answer was not immediately forthcoming. "Well?"

Morton looked slightly uncomfortable. "There was an incident in the Missile Room."

"When?"

"At 0730 hours."

Crane glanced at the reticent XO sharply. "What kind of incident, Chip?"

"Tomàs and Clarke -the two technicians that you took on shore party," Morton said with a slight edge to his voice. "Nothing major -or, at least, I broke it up before it went too far. Just fisticuffs...general profanities -that sort of thing. I had them confined to the Brig for the duration of the cruise home."

Crane shook his head in exasperation, silently disgusted and amazed that even at times like this, under circumstances such as the present ones, that there was almost always someone who could find the time to get into some kind of trouble. "I don't get it," Crane said and set aside the cooling cup of coffee. "As far as I knew, Roberto Tomàs and Peter Clarke are the best of friends ...what could have caused it?"

"Hard to say. Religion, the weather, a full moon -a disagreement over who's more maco for all I know. Probably nothing at all ultimately. Even they didn't seem to know what they had been fighting about after it was all over." Morton spread his hands in a familiar gesture of defeat and frustration. "Could be nerves. Since the completion of the last reconnaissance mission, there's been this air of...tension all over the ship."

"I know what you mean, Chip," Crane agreed reluctantly, staring again at the dark waters beyond Seaview's massive viewing ports as if the deep might offer up the secrets known only to it. His nerves weren't as steady as they should have been -he had been sleepwalking, something he hadn't done since he had been a very small child. Somehow, in the middle of the night, he had turned off his lamp and had put away a book he remembered falling asleep reading. While he rarely slept deeply, he did not remember sleeping quite so restlessly for a long time. Crane faced Morton who stood waiting with unease. "We're not trained to accept or like unanswered questions, but this time..." He grimaced at the very idea. "We may have no choice in the matter."

Morton accepted his captain's logic with an equally reluctant tilt of his head. "Aye, sir...you may be right. Shall I set course to Voyageur?"

Crane winced inwardly at the thought that his men would have to endure the sights he had seen first hand as they would enter that underwater tomb to off-load Voyageur's nuclear arsenal -they had all the codes, the permission from the Canadian government, but those facts would make the task no more pleasant. It had already been determined that the Voyageur would be the grave of the men she had carried. "You might as-"

"Sirs?" At that moment, a new voice interrupted the hushed proceedings and both officers turned to see the stocky figure of the Seaview's chief-of-the-boat bounding into the Observation Nose. "Beggin' your pardons, sirs," Sharkey said with almost comical sincerity as he made his way to where the two officers stood, a small scrap of paper clenched in his hand. "I'm sorry t' interrupt-"

"You weren't interrupting, Chief," Crane countered with a small smile.

"Aye, sir. Thank you, sir," Chief Sharkey said, a little out of breath. He extended his hand, proffering the slip of paper. "Sparks just received a FLASH from InterAllied Command."

Crane glanced at the small sheet of paper which was simply a print-out bearing a code that meant that not only was acknowledgment important, it was imperative. "How can this be..." Crane said to no-one in particular. "They were the ones who ordered us to be on radio-silence."

"Yes, sir," the Chief concurred very gravely, "but this comes from the Top; the Fleet Commander."

"I can see that, Chief," Crane replied a little tersely, and then, seeing the wince on Sharkey's face, relented a little, acknowledging with a wry grin. "Thank you, Chief. I'll take it at the Radio Shack."

"Aye, sir!" Sharkey responded smartly, beaming.

At the Radio Shack, Communications' Officer Sparks nervously drummed his fingers on the metallic edge of the radio console, waiting and staring at the button which signaled incoming messages. Though it might have been his imagination playing tricks on his senses, the longer he was obligated to wait, the more certain he became that the repetitive flash of the indicator was growing steadily more insistent that it be answered. But InterAllied Command or not, it would have to wait...even if the waiting increased the chances of his developing an ulcer at this point in his young life exponentially with each minute that passed.

"Sparks!" Sparks exhaled with profound relief as Captain Crane, trailed by Commander Morton and Chief Sharkey, approached the Radio Shack. "You can start transmission now."

"Aye, sir..." The Communications' Officer said smartly and nodded in the affirmative (still quietly relieved to be free to act) as he quickly stabbed the flashing button which pulsed once more and then stayed a neon green. "Seaview to InterAllied Command ... Captain Crane is ready to receive." There was a pause, a long silence, and then, the console began a familiar symphony of clicks and whirrs as a white sheet embossed with an unintelligible convolution of letters emerged from the thin slot and then stopped with an abrupt snap. Crane removed the print-out sheet with a sharp jerk and winced despite himself -the facsimile paper always took too long to cool- and glanced at the coded message, eyes widening with recognition of a code he remembered almost by heart and because he knew exactly what was printed on the page. God...he understood all of it. "Christ..." he muttered at last, disgusted. Crane canted his head in Sparks' direction. "Extend my compliments and end transmission, Sparks."

"Aye, sir," Sparks replied uncertainly, puzzled by the troubled expression on his captain's face.

Morton glanced uneasily at Sharkey who returned the look questioningly, hunching his shoulders as Crane continued to read and then re-read the classified transmission. "Chief!" Crane snapped abruptly. "Take this to the Admiral."

A brief frown of bewilderment passed over the Chief's rough face as he accepted the folded page. "Aye, sir."

Morton watched the Chief disappear up the spiral metal staircase that led from the Control Room to Officers' Country above. "Lee..." Morton said aside in a low whisper as he drew up to where Crane stood. "What is it?"

Crane gestured in the direction of the metal staircase and to Officer's Country beyond it. "The Admiral's not going to like this one. Emergency transmission from InterAllied -by orders of Fleet Commander Carter James Thomas, we are to retrieve any useful human evidence of either the Phoenix Project or Project M.I.N.A....and we are forbidden to conduct any intrusive investigations of any bodies. No autopsies -InterAllied wants 'em. " Crane shook his head slightly. "I can't believe any of this..."

Morton drew a sharp breath, grotesque images of what he had seen on the Voyageur flashing before his mind's eye -there was nothing to retrieve. Nothing. "A little late, aren't they?" he said finally.

At first, Crane's answer was silence and then, a small nod. "Just get us ready to get underway."

There was no more to be said.



"Damned glasses..."

Admiral Nelson grumbled, a multitude of dark thoughts and even darker sentiments brewing beneath his furrowed brow. He yanked the sliding pair of glasses from his nose and whipped out a neatly folded handkerchief from his breast pocket, unfolding it as he squinted through one thin lens and then, the other, holding the reading specs up to the light of his desk lamp, before taking his unfolded handkerchief and attempting the nearly impossible task of keeping these overly expensive spectacles clean...and free of the smudges that seemed to have appeared from nowhere at all. His eyes were getting tired despite the fact the glasses were supposed to help him avoid such discomfort -but he wasn't all that surprised.

After having woken from a nightmare of hellish proportions during the very early hours of the morning, he had somehow failed to go back to bed, electing instead to pore through the voluminous satchel of notes that had once, apparently, belonged to Captain Hudson of the Voyageur. That had been five hours ago...and despite his grim determination of the wee hours to make some headway through and some sense of Hudson's journals and notes, he was steadily growing weary of the task he had set for himself.

The huge admiral's desk was all but bowing under the weight of the mountain of papers -loose notes mostly- that he had heaped upon it. Few of the papers made any real sense to him because Hudson's curious short-hand scrawl had reduced them to something akin to the curious hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt.

Nelson picked up two battered leather-bound journals -these were probably the safest bet he had to discovering the reason for the final fate of Voyageur and Station Delta; the lone survivor of both, still incapacitated. Doc had said that it was difficult to know exactly when the young junior grade lieutenant would awaken from his catatonic stupor...or "if". InterAllied would want something to chew on as soon as Seaview touched port...if not sooner. Nelson rubbed his eyes. Would that there was a Rosetta Stone for personal scrawl.

The still slightly smudged reading glasses fell from Nelson's hand onto a pile of written notes, sending several pages fluttering to the deck as he watched for a moment in bored fascination. He had just stooped to retrieve the errant notes when he heard a sharp rap at the door to his cabin. "Come."

The cabin door crept open to admit Chief Sharkey who stood there for a moment, a folded sheet of paper in his hand. "The Skipper wanted me to give you this, sir," he said, casting a surreptitious glance at the unusual scene of disorder heaped upon the Admiral's desk -and on the floor. "Top priority -from InterAllied."

"InterAllied?" Nelson questioned as he accepted the missive. "Who the blazes ordered the break in radio-silence?"

"Fleet Commander Carter James Thomas, sir," Sharkey replied evenly. "I recognized his signature code."

"I see." Nelson unfolded the coded transmission, taking in the contents of the message in a glance...and like Crane before him, reacted with undisguised disgust. There was some logic in the order, but... "Like vultures circling a carcass..." he muttered.

"Sir?"

Nelson uttered a tiny, wry laugh. "Nothing, Francis...just military politics at work." He slumped down into his seat and gestured to the mounds of undeciphered papers. "I just...I just hope that these aren't merely the result of more of the same."

Sharkey's brow furrowed with a frown of concern. Despite the fact that Nelson was a flag officer and he, an ordinary N.C.O., he considered himself and the Admiral friends -it troubled him to see the Admiral so obviously overwhelmed. "Is there...is there anything I can do t' help, sir?"

Nelson shook his head wearily, peering through the glasses that he could no longer be bothered to hide. "Not unless you're an expert at reading civilian short-hand, Chief."

"Actually, sir, I am."

Nelson's countenance went blank with incredulity. He sharply swiveled his chair around so that he could look Sharkey directly in the eye. "Where did you learn short-hand, Francis?"

"In...high school, sir," Sharkey responded meekly with embarrassment as a reddish tinge flushed his rough visage.

A tiny smile of disbelief twitched at the corners of Nelson's mouth. "I thought that your high school major was 'cooking'."

"That is the case, sir. I..." Sharkey swallowed deeply, half-wishing that the deck beneath his feet would open up and swallow him whole. Right now. "I...had this crush on the teacher of the Secretarial Skills' course -a real sweetie called Miss Mary-Margaret O'Rourke...and besides, I needed the extra credit to make up for my lack of straight A's."

A short burst of laughter escaped from Nelson's mouth unbidden. He couldn't help it -and he wasn't certain whether it was the utter hilarity of his chief petty officer's pained expression or a simple sense of relief on his own part, but he was suddenly very glad that Sharkey had walked in when he had despite the message that he had carried. "Sit here, Chief," Nelson said, indicating the chair across from his own. "We have a lot of work ahead of us."




"Course laid in, sir!"

Crane acknowledged Commander Morton's report with a curt tilt of his head as he stepped down from the periscope island. "Down 'scope!" At his command, the heavy, metallic column lowered into its resting recess with the familiar soft hum of turning gears, all moving in their pre-programmed rhythm, and stopped. There hadn't been anything to see but the slightly shifting blackness of the waters that surrounded Seaview. But routine had its place, and even when seemingly pointless, it could be of some comfort.

He would be glad to leave this place.




"This is 'Greg', sir. Definitely 'Greg'."

Nelson studied Chief Sharkey with a puzzled frown. "What do you mean -'Greg'?"

"Oh..." the Chief said, looking up from the untidy pile of papers heaped before him, a smile that he hoped did not appear too smug on his lips. There were precious few areas of knowledge in which he could consider himself Nelson's superior and despite himself, some small part of him relished the switch in positions. "The short-hand style, sir," he said by way of explanation, indicating the handwritten scrawl. "The penmanship sucks big-time, but you can still tell. Long and short strokes indicate 'Greg' style short-hand. Thick and thin strokes indicate 'Pitman' style short-hand. This is 'Greg'."

"Uh...huh..." Nelson murmured, "but can you read it, Chief?"

"Oh, sure, Admiral," Sharkey replied, drawing himself up proudly. "Only...what exactly should I be lookin' for?" He flipped the creased papers that he held in his hands, shaking his head slightly and then, looked up to meet the Admiral's stern gaze. Sharkey glanced again at the sloppy scrawl. "So far, all I've seen are routine reports..." He held up one sheet. "This one's a grocery list."

"There must be something in there, Chief," Nelson said, slowly massaging his temples with the tips of his fingers. "I know it. The Delta shore party found a partial list -a computer print-out listing some sort of medical results- and there may be more like it among these piles." Nelson looked to his side and retrieved one of the battered journals. "As far as I can tell, this is a personal log -it isn't an official naval journal...perhaps Captain Hudson wrote something we can use in here." The Admiral caught the Chief Petty Officer's slight frown of uncertainty and added: "So far, this may be our best bet -we have to try."

Sharkey nodded slowly, not entirely convinced, but willing to try if only for the Admiral's sake...and, perhaps, for the fellow submariners who had died so violently. He took the battered book in hand as Nelson rose from his seat, still massaging the painful pulse in his temples. The pages, crinkled and still curiously cold despite having been subjected to a decontamination process, turned stiffly, threatening, despite his deliberate care, to snap from the cracked glue of the log's spine. For several minutes, there was only the sound of the turning of stiff pages and the low-key mechanical hum that throbbed throughout the submarine as Seaview's powerful nuclear power-driven engines were brought to bear as the ship was made ready to get underway for the cruise that would bring her to her rendezvous and home. "It's a personal log, all right," the Chief said, his voice low and slightly distracted. His eyes did not leave the pages as he scanned them. "Observations and the like...some mention of the Voyageur's skipper being royally ticked off at the director of the Phoenix Project for not making regular reports as promised..."

"Reports?"

"Supply reports...just some minor discrepancies between what the station ordered, what had been used, an' what they had." Sharkey shrugged. "Nothin' strange, really."

"But anything unusual?" Nelson persisted, still hopeful.

"No, sir... According to this, the Voyageur was assigned through InterAllied to offer technical assistance to Station Delta plus the transportation of necessary supplies as needed -a 'milk-run' their skipper called it. Just general observations..." A page snapped from the cracked spine as Sharkey turned it, releasing an odd, musty odor. "Damn..." Sharkey cursed under his breath, muttering softly as blood welled up from the tiny paper-cut on his thumb. He automatically sucked on the bleeding digit, marveling silently at how such an insignificant wound could cause so much pain as he propped the journal on his knee, turning the pages awkwardly with his uninjured hand, some of the sheets stained and oddly sticky with some kind of drying brown matter that- The Chief Petty Officer's thick eyebrows knit together, his small injury forgotten as he tried to turn the next page, but found that the sheet would not be moved. He picked at the page's edge, but it was as if it and the pages thereafter were one solid mass bound by some sort of fixative to the back cover itself. "Sir..." he said finally. "You might want to have a look at this."

Nelson, alerted by the strange note of agitation in Sharkey's voice, set aside the creased document in his hand and stepped over to where Sharkey sat puzzling over his strange discovery before he noticed his admiral's arrival and handed over the damaged tome. Nelson took the journal, examining it visually and then, began to run his fingers along the half-inch thick section of solidly fused pages.

"Hand me that letter opener, would you, Chief?" Sharkey searched through the piles for the letter opener which his admiral could obviously see easily, but he could not. He finally found the object of his search and handed it to the Admiral, watching, perplexed, as Nelson worked the fine blade of the silver-handled letter opener between the hard cover and the fused sheets. There was a sharp pop and the leather binding came away from what was now revealed as a fake section to the log; a small hollowed-out hiding place for the incongruous thin parcel that he found there.

Sharkey watched as the Admiral unfolded the plain paper wrapping to reveal- "Micro video diskettes?" Sharkey said, bewildered.

Nelson nodded silently. There were three micro video diskettes in all; each no larger or thicker than a credit card, and with them, a sheet of note paper folded several times over to fit into the small recess. Nelson unfolded the missive -this one, he noted with grim satisfaction, was written in ordinary long-hand -short and simple though the writing itself was shaky and the penmanship truly poor as if the hand that had scribed it had been anything but steady.

Nelson read it aloud. "'While I still have the presence of mind to think sanely and remember what must be remembered, and the ability to write at all, I must pen this warning to whomever might be unfortunate enough to actually arrive at Station Delta and read it. I hope that the warning beacon that I will release will be enough, but I somehow fear that it will not. I don't know how long I have left before I myself succumb to the disease sweeping us, but I do know that they will find me soon enough. Taken by this hideous disease or taken by them -not much of a choice, is it?

"'My past suspicions seem to have proven correct...no -more than that- I know now that the personnel at Delta haven't been truthful either to me and my crew -or to InterAllied about their dealings here. I wrote about this before -I know- but my official log has gone missing and I realized a long time ago that I have been under suspicion and watched. I also don't know how many of us are actually infected and just how many want to keep the truth hidden.

"'Twelve days ago, two days after the official report I sent to InterAllied and my subsequent permission to investigate further, there was an explosion in Section "G" of the station -in the main generator room. The back-ups were not touched, but the explosion was enough to ignite some of the explosive compounds being transferred to the main unstable compounds' storage area. A resultant series of secondary explosions occurred, killing the five staff members involved in the actual transfer as well as breaching an extreme-high-security pathogen-containment area -this caused twelve storage units of an element -perhaps a virus- to rupture or burst -the resultant dispersal radius of this element was enormous. The element was in the labs where the Phoenix Project tests were being performed. As far as I was informed, the Phoenix Project was supposed to create a preventative vaccine for cancer, but I soon learned from the assistant director of the project, Dr. Mill Bagmen, that the Phoenix Project had been given up long ago when the Delta team had decided upon a more aggressive tactic.

"'They called the unauthorized project: Project Metastatic Infectious Neural Anlage or
Project M.I.N.A. for short. They had decided that instead of seeking to cure a disease which had every chance of returning no matter what cure was created, that they would create something that would render humankind itself incapable of becoming ill at all -a new kind of human, created by a virus that would reprogram the D.N.A.; an entirely new lifeform. But what actually resulted and has been released onto all of us is far worse than any cancer and I, like most of the Delta team and my crew as well, am infected...'"

Nelson paused, his countenance blank with disbelief. Sharkey mirrored his expression. Antarctic Station Delta had given up medicine...for the genetic engineering of humans.





"What the Hell is this..."

Stu Riley glanced up from his station at the hydrophone to see Kowalski hunched over the sonar board, his face clouded with annoyance. "'Ski?" Riley whispered, glancing to make certain that there were no prying eyes or ears. "You got something?"

"I'm not sure..." Kowalski glared at the sonar screen which pinged in its constant rhythm, indicating the presence of...nothing. He gave the unit a thump with his hand as if the effort would make a difference in what he saw...or didn't see, but nothing changed. This thing is a piece of junk..."

"What's wrong with it?" Riley asked as he nudged his earphone aside. "I don't see anything."

"That's just it..." Kowalski sighed heavily. "But I could have sworn I just had multiple contacts...or something like that."

"There's nothing there now."

"I can see that...but it was the weirdest signal...lasted for maybe a second or two...and I did see it..." The seaman shook his head with frustration and offered Riley a half-hearted smile. "Just gremlins, I guess."

"For sure," Riley observed sagely. "That unit's, like, due for an overhaul."

Kowalski cast Riley a questioning look. "Overhaul? Stu, this thing's ultra-cutting edge -you don't overhaul a thing like that."

"So?" Riley replied with a slight shrug, lightly noting his partner's sudden change of opinion on the supposedly oddly behaving piece of hardware. "What else would you do with it? Anyway, they'll take care of it when we get back to base."

"Yeah...that's true..." Kowalski stared at the innocent-seeming piece of equipment and scowled in defeat. "They'll take care of it. No problems."




"Genetic engineering, sir? On humans! That's been officially against international law for how long I don't know!"

Admiral Nelson took in Chief Sharkey's naïve outburst with a thin, cynical smile. "I know," he said, the tentative smile twisting into a scowl as he returned his gaze to the page he still held, the paper deeply creased in a criss-crossing of straight indentation lines by the way that it had been deliberately and yet, awkwardly folded. The scrawl, as the message went along, grew progressively worse -from poor to all but illegible. Nelson squinted at the spidery script -his glasses didn't help- reading aloud from what had to have been the last words of a dead man.

"'Even as I write this, I realize that it's just self-deception to deny that some among us want to keep what has happened a secret even now -accidents could not have so conveniently destroyed the communications' systems on both my ship and the station within minutes of each other -only the auxiliary radio system in the far end of the station is functioning, but it's range is poor and I have yet to be able to reach it -I will try again nonetheless.

"'I digress. It's hard to keep my thoughts in a logical line -sometimes, I forget myself. Suffice it to say, there was a group of victims deliberately infected before us -a voluntary test group...and their sacrifice was a fatal one as this mutant pathogen killed them one after the other. After death, their bodies were incinerated in secret -this happened sometime before my crew and I were assigned here. I wish I knew what possessed the science team to keep working on their forbidden project -it should have stopped there, but it didn't obviously. Dr. Bagmen gave me this information not long before she, too, succumbed to the effects of the disease. I don't know why. Perhaps a last cleansing of the soul. The three disks she was able to get to me will bear me out. They will explain better than I can -it's getting hard to think again. There's too much noise outside of this prison/hiding place.

"'I know that the part of my crew that were still at Delta when things really turned for the worst are dead -but I still hear them. They're looking for me even now, so angry that I let them die like they did. They're thirsty...so very thirsty for blood, for life, and for the rest I can't give them even though I've tried.'" The Admiral and the Chief regarded each other, an unspoken sorrow at the obviously deteriorating sanity of the writer on their silent lips. Through the Admiral, Captain Hudson spoke again. "'I can't give my men rest, but I can release them in the only way I know how. With help from the few with mind enough to help, I have been able to fashion a series of plasma-burst bombs.

"'Eight have been placed at various locations through-out the base. After learning that the survivors of my crew had decided on escape -I cannot find it within myself to blame them- I had four units placed on the Voyageur -Lt. Commander St. Baptiste has agreed to detonate them before they can reach land. Divers have attached two units below the land mass near the submarine pen. I can only pray that the materials I used are stable enough to work as they must. I pray God that I have created enough power to kill us all. There's no longer any choice. It stops here. It goes no further.'"

Nelson's brow creased all the more as the faint echo of a memory rang in the back of his mind; similar words he remembered being spoken from where or when he knew not.

Captain Hudson's final words were clearer. "'May God forgive me."




"All ahead two thirds!"

"All ahead two thirds, aye!"

In response to Captain Crane's sharply barked order, the soft throbbing mechanical hum of Seaview's engines rose in pitch and volume as the great silver-grey submersible began a wide, arcing turn, massive propellers pushing against the black ocean water as she traveled around the narrow column attached to the craggy underside of the land mass on which what was left of Station Delta was situated, the light of Seaview's nose lamp vaguely cutting through the murkiness and glinting off the twisted, scorched steel structure that had once been the umbilical underwater entrance from submarine to station.

Seaview was ultimately just a machine despite the men and memories housed within her -everyone on board knew that- but as she cut through the blackness, her double titanium-steel alloy hull equaling the press of the tons of pressure around her, the ship herself moved ahead as if eager to be home -as eager as he was, Crane thought with an uneasy shudder. Foolishness, of course, he countered silently as he studied the plotting chart before him, but he felt it nonetheless. Unanswered questions still plagued his mind; a disquieting maelstrom that had denied him both a truly restful night's sleep and the ability to eat his breakfast as Spartan a meal as it had been. He would be very glad to be in the familiar waters off of Santa Barbara.

Crane glanced over his shoulder towards Lieutenant O'Brien who waited tensely at his station. "Mr. O'Brien!"

The dark-haired lieutenant came to stiff attention. "Yes, sir!"

"As of 1100 hours, this area is officially declared an ecological 'dead-zone'," Crane stated, confirming the hour with a quick second glance at his watch. "Eject the electronic beacon to mark the surrounding-"

"Sir!"

Crane stopped in mid-sentence, interrupted by the highly agitated voice of Kowalski who sat hunched over his sonar board, his visage pale despite the green glow of the rapidly pulsing screen. Crane crossed the distance between them, his young countenance indignant, but just as suddenly clouded by puzzlement as he saw what Kowalski saw. "What is this!" he demanded, gesturing sharply to the screen with his hand.

"I don't know, sir!" Kowalski quickly attempted to adjust the oddly performing instrument, but the readings remained the same. "I thought it was some sort of glitch, but it isn't. It reads like multiple contacts, but then it doesn't!"

"Fathometer!" Crane snapped.

"Nothing, sir!" Patterson responded, a puzzled frown creasing his brow. He stabbed several buttons at his own console and tried various dials as the screen before him began to crackle, the images suddenly clouded by electronic snow. "Sir! Fathometer just went dead!"

"Hydrophone!"

Riley, prodded by the harshly barked command of his captain, anxiously tried his own instruments and recoiled, grimacing in pain as he clutched at the headset covering his ear. "Sir! I-I don't know what I'm hearing, but it isn't any kind of ship!"

"Sparks!" Crane snapped, his voice lashing out like a whip. "Pipe hydrophone signal through the main speaker!"

Suddenly, a high-pitched electronic screech pierced the air through the speaker system. It was much like the sound of sharp fingernails being dragged across a giant blackboard, and yet much, much worse. It grew louder, highs and lows resounding off the curved bulkhead, until the screaming electronic row became a symphony.

As crewmen clamped their hands over their ears, agonized by the intolerable sound, instrumentation boards began to short, spark and suddenly burst into flame. "Cut it off!" Crane shouted, all but despairing to be heard over the wail.

"I can't!" Sparks shouted back. "Energy pulse -it's overriding everything!"

"Energy pulse...plasma-burst-" Crane's mouth worked silently and his eyes widened with horror -suddenly, he knew. "Get us out of here! Flank speed-"

It was too late.

The explosion was silence itself -a soundless all-consuming nova of white light that seemed to envelope the ship, blanching the dark waters around her...and then, the thunder came.

All at once, Seaview was hurled like the toy of an angry child by the power and force of the growing, blinding eruption as it reached, consuming, the water literally vaporizing at the point of its genesis. On board, men were hurled from side to side; flames leaping from consoles, cracks appearing in metal struts as the battered submersible violently pitched and yawed. Some struggled to right the reeling ship as others fought to give the instructions -but few could hear the orders let alone give them as Seaview tumbled away from the horrible, consuming submarinal conflagration...downwards...rolling towards a void.

Whether she was a living thing or not, Seaview's crew suddenly realized one awful truth
-it was possible for a submarine to scream.



5



...

...blackness...

It was an emptiness utterly devoid of light...and life. Absolute. Empty. He saw nothing. Heard nothing. He was...nothing. Alone in a place that did not exist.

...

Was this death?

Possibly...didn't know. He didn't know...anything. Just then -something. Somewhere in the endless nothing, there was...something. A sound. A soft distant whispering that seemed to be coming closer...gradually louder. "...ral...mral...miral...admiral... Admiral? ...Admiral!"

A stabbing pain sundered the darkness; a bolt of lightning in the lightless night. Admiral Nelson fought against the weights on his eyelids, forcing them partly open as he slowly turned his head towards the still somehow vague, distant voice. A sharp hiss escaped his mouth as a blinding pain twisted at the back of his skull, radiating down his neck, the slightest movement causing the awful discomfort to echo off every muscle in his body.

Somehow, in the foggy haze that shrouded his confused senses, Nelson felt a hand (his own?) gingerly touch the throbbing center of pain that pulsed at the back of his head and was sluggishly aware that the hand had come away wet and sticky with blood.

"What was that, sir?"

Nelson struggled to focus the blurred image before his eyes. "I said: 'Would someone please shut down the jackhammer in my head?'" The Admiral blinked rapidly, eyes slowly clearing, and took in his surroundings with a start. Recognition filtered into Nelson's brain -he was lying flat on his back in his cabin...or what had once been his cabin. There was a saying...it rang through his mind vaguely...something about a room being such a mess that it looked like a bomb had hit it. It was an apt description of his quarters right now.

The papers that Nelson had been studying were strewn all over the deck, scattered anywhere but on his desk which was now lying on its side; the globe-lamp was also lying there, its glass shade smashed. The few pictures which decorated the bulkheads were now tilted at crazy angles -the mattress and blankets of his bunk hung half-off the box-springs in much the same way. Nelson pushed himself up by his hands, sitting with difficulty. "What happened?"

Chief Sharkey shook his head in bewilderment as he rested on his haunches. A thin trickle of blood ran down the right side of his chin from a small bruised cut on the jaw. "I don't know exactly, sir. There...there was some kind of explosion. I think...I think Seaview's on the bottom."

"On the bottom-" Nelson winced as he struggled to his feet, shakily grasping Sharkey by the arm. "How did we-" Some memory came...of a deafening thunder, the ship being battered about, a blinding pain as his head hit the hard deck...and then, nothing. Until now. The Admiral steadied himself, holding on to the edge of his overturned desk for support as a wave of vertigo swept over him, engulfing him in a grey vortex...but the moment did not last for very long though it seemed to take an eternity before equilibrium returned to his still addled senses. Nelson shrugged off the Chief's well-meaning attentions and staggered over to the wall mike which hung loosely from its metal cradle, its slight rocking motion causing it to bang slowly against the bulkhead. He took the handmike and clicked it, hesitating as the submersible gave an audible groan and the smooth deck beneath his feet appeared to list to one side before settling again.

"Geeze..." Sharkey murmured, casting an anxious look around him as if he could see beyond the confines of the vessel into the ocean surrounding it. "I hope Seaview landed on something stable."

Nelson inclined his head silently -he agreed. He clicked the handmike again. "Nelson to Control Room, what-" Nelson recoiled from the loud burst of high-pitched static that exploded from the hand-held communicator. "What the Devil is this?.." He tried the small unit again and was again met with the same cacophony of electronic noise.

"What is it, sir?"

Nelson wearily placed the mike back in its cradle, his eyes narrowing in concentration -which wasn't easy. His head was throbbing with the intensity of a migraine -movement hurt. Thought hurt even more...and somewhere in the pain-bedeviled recesses of his brain, the raucous clamor of Seaview's emergency klaxon reverberated over and over again...and beyond that, something else. The Admiral shook off the steadying hand of the deeply concerned chief petty officer who could only look on now in troubled wonder. "It makes sense..."

"What makes sense, sir?"

For the longest time, the Admiral did not speak, his lined brow furrowed, his mouth working silently as grim inspiration whispered at the back of his mind. He no longer heard the wailing of the ship's emergency klaxon, nor did he feel the throbbing pulse in his skull as he had only minutes ago. Sharkey's voice seemed to fade into the distance, merging with the muted buzz of the Admiral's thoughts. The late Captain Hudson had spoken of fourteen bombs -eight to destroy the station, four to sink his own ship, two to seal off the underwater entrance... Nelson glanced sharply at the Chief. "We only found evidence of one..."

Sharkey's expression fell blank and he shook his head slowly. "One? One 'what'?" But Nelson was already heading towards the door to his cabin, new horror-induced adrenaline purging the lingering disorientation as he reached for the steel handle. Sharkey followed close behind, half-convinced that his admiral had slipped into some kind of delirium. "One what, sir!"

Nelson flung the door open and even as he did, a billowing translucent cloud rolled into the cabin -the smell of it thick with char...a gagging, noxious stench that flowed from the darkly-lit corridor. Nelson grabbed an emergency breathing apparatus from a metal cabinet and slipped it over his nose and mouth as he tossed another to Sharkey. "Plasma-burst bombs! Captain Hudson said that two had been planted under the base. Two! Not one!" He swept a hand in front of his face, but the filthy mist closed in on itself almost immediately. "Seaview just found the other one."



The weather had been good when he had awoken this morning -blue skies, sunshine...and warm. It had been the kind of warmth that numbed the senses and lulled one into personal oblivion -the siren's song of nature. That had been this morning.

Things had changed since then. They were in for a storm -a big one by the looks of things. He knew it. The air surrounding him was thick, muggy -difficult to breathe. It was funny how the worst weather seemed to occur when the air was thick and hot. It was dark too. The sun shouldn't have set at such an early hour...not normally anyway. Yes, it was definitely going to be bad storm. Just then, he was staggered by a peel of thunder so loud that the ground beneath his feet literally shook and he stumbled, falling to his knees as warm rain began to patter against the skin of his face...

Lee Crane's eyes flickered and then closed again. It took several minutes -he didn't know long exactly- before he could force the messages from his brain to his leaden limbs, and when he could, the reaction was slow...sluggish. He reached towards a small growing, stabbing pain near his left temple and touched the warm wetness that trailed down the side of his face, the hand shaking almost uncontrollably. He hissed sharply at the stinging discomfort as the flesh of his fingers touched the small deep wound there, and as his vision finally cleared enough to recognize what his eyes were telling him, he realized that the tips of his fingers were slick with the blood that continued to drip down the flesh of his cheek -his own blood.

As more awareness filtered into his brain, he understood that the thunder he had heard in his brief delirium was the all too familiar sound of a wounded submarine roughly settling on the bottom -how far down, he didn't know- and the humid air was Seaview's recirculated atmosphere, clotted with a thin haze of acrid smoke.

"Lee!"

All at once, Crane felt himself pulled to his unsteady feet, strong hands supporting him as he rediscovered his center of gravity and looked up and found himself staring into the begrimed face of Chip Morton. "Chip..."

The Executive Officer nodded hesitantly, blinking at the haze that had begun to sting his eyes, making them redden and tear. He studied his captain uncertainly, grimly noting the small, but ugly wound on Crane's head where he had been thrown against the periscope island. "I'm going to get you to Sick Bay," he said, reaching out again to his commanding officer who had all the sickly appearance of one who was about to faint.

Crane drew back defensively. "Don't bother. It's just a cut -I'm fine."

"But-"

"I said that I'm fine!" Crane snapped, immediately regretting his tone of voice. He shook his head, dizziness reaching for him and then fading. "But maybe you had better go."

Morton automatically covered the bloody, ragged hole in the sleeve of his uniform shirt with his hand. "It isn't my blood. One of the crewmen..."

Crane followed Morton's train of vision, the sight of what he saw expunging the last of the torpor...a mound, human in shape, lay covered with a fire-retardant blanket -he understood, wishing that he didn't...but there was more. Seaview's Control Room was as close to being a total wreck as such could become and yet still function. A filthy haze from sparking and blazing control panels burned Crane's eyes and lungs; metal paneling hung, tangled in wires, from the bulkhead -scorched and warped; and crew, officers and seamen alike, were strewn about like limp rag dolls. Only a handful were lucid enough to begin to struggle to their feet.

Crane grabbed Morton by the arm. "Chip -get the blower system activated. We have to clear this air!" The Executive Officer nodded sharply and ran to do as he was bidden. Crane coughed, clearing his lungs before he was able to speak again. "Fire detail! Get on those fires!"

Kowalski, one of the first to successfully pull himself to his shaky feet, hobbled over to a fire extinguisher mounted on the bulkhead, almost tripping over the recumbent form of Stu Riley along the way. The seaman half-helped, half-dragged the bewildered strawberry-blonde crewman to his feet by the collar of his blue duty uniform, pressing the extinguisher into his hands. "Hit those flames!" Riley accepted the unit dumbly, at first not seeming to remember what it was or how to use it. Kowalski's voice grew sharp. "MOVE!" It was enough -Riley blinked as if suddenly woken from a trance and soon, the already polluted air was rank with the odor of compressed fire-retardant vapor, as Kowalski pressed other crewmen into service.

Crane grabbed the handmike at the periscope island, clicking it rapidly. "Damage Control -report!" He grimaced as a high-pitched electronic whine burst from the mike. Crane pressed the button again. "Damage Control!"

More electronic babble screamed from the unit and then, as if straining to be heard above the mechanical row: "Damage...-trol...-porting...Main transformer...burned out...hull damage...all the way through...to...The propellers might...possibly repair...Definite damage...in frames 90 through 111...shipping water...aft compart-...sealed off...Energy surge shorted out...most...control systems...likely propeller damage...Stand-by transformer...should soon...on-line...communications compromised..." There was a pause that didn't seem to have anything to do with the electronic interference. "We've...lost at...least...six men...sir..."

Anguish etched itself into Crane's visage as he received the grim report, the pain of loss cutting as keenly as a sharp-edged knife. He stood frozen for a long moment, the mike in his hand, his eyes closed against the almost physical agony of the mind. A ship could be repaired, parts replaced, but a human life...when that was gone, it was gone for good. Knowing that such a possibility was part of the life to which he and his men had committed themselves willingly, made the loss no easier to bear. "All right," he said finally, "can you give me a repair-time estimate?"

"Difficult...maybe three days...or as much as...week...more..." There was another pause -longer this time. Too long. "We can't move."

"Damn..." Crane stared at the mike, a lump of cold metal and plastic in his hand, and slowly tilted his head in an acknowledgment that he knew the speaker on the other end of the line could not actually see. "Set a detail on it," he said, suddenly, indescribably drained. "I want specifics as soon as possible."

"Aye...sir..."

"Lee-" Crane turned in the direction of Morton's voice as he set aside the handmike. The Executive Officer's countenance was grim and he carried with him a white metal box with a bright red Caduceus emblazoned on it -a portable med-kit. Morton gestured towards a vacated watch station seat. "If you'll just sit here..."

Crane automatically, uncomfortably, touched the small, throbbing wound near his temple and opened his mouth to protest...and then decided to remain silent as he sat down, a small sigh of relief escaping his lips as the pulse in his head, which had been jumping with every movement, finally settled down. He watched as corpsmen, some easily as battered and bewildered as most of the Control Room crew, entered Seaview's core and tended to those who could not tend to themselves -and there were more than a few of them. He realized then that he knew the identity of the mortally injured crewman whose body lay covered by the fire-retardant tarp...just a kid -a kid whose family he would have the duty of informing of his death; one of the few duties that could make him come close to questioning his acceptance of command.

Morton had opened the white metal box and was removing a sealed vial of some evil-smelling antiseptic that made Crane wince just by the stench of it. Like all of Seaview's crew, the XO had some medical training -enough for the matter at hand to be sure. Besides which, Crane knew Morton well enough to know that the XO wanted to speak privately. "Jesus!"

"Sorry, sir..." Morton cringed, drawing a sharp intake of breath through his teeth, as he carefully removed the blood-smeared antiseptic-soaked pad from the small bloody wound and visually examined the cut (and the ugly scowl forming on his captain's countenance) before disposing of the pad and retrieving another medical swab from the med-kit. "We have some initial damage reports on instrumentation," the Executive Officer said, whispering as he struggled with the seal on the air-tight sterile pouch. The package opened with a small pop, releasing a nauseating medicinal odor. "And it isn't good."

Crane willed himself not to recoil from the strong-smelling pad as Morton placed it against the wound. Medicine or not, healing-salve or not, it stung like a son of a bitch. "Go on," Crane said finally, his own voice muted with the greatest effort as the XO continued the unpleasant work of sterilizing and dressing the wound.

"Radio is out. I've got Sparks on it, but God only knows when he'll be able to get it functioning again. Could be hours...could be days."

"Wouldn't do us any good anyway..." Crane muttered sourly under his breath and then privately chided himself for having spoken his mind out loud. This wasn't the time or place for such things -despite the fact that it was the truth nonetheless. They were on radio-silence -InterAllied would not be concerned over a lack of reports when there were none expected...and depending on the present bent of their officious fleet commander's mind, it was more than merely possible that no-one would be allowed to answer an S.O.S. were they able to send one...at least, not until the two weeks of absolute radio-silence had passed. Two weeks -it was quickly beginning to sound like a life time. "And..?"

"Sonar's out...so are the hydrophone and fathometer...and we're too deep to use the periscope even if it does work -which, all things considering, I somehow doubt."

Crane's eyes locked with those of the Executive Officer as he said in a low voice: "How deep?"

Morton sighed heavily and paused in his efforts to pry open the stubborn package that contained a single synthetic-skin bandage. "One thousand feet...approximately. Maybe more." He carefully placed the bandage over the cut, effectively covering the injury. "That was the last reading we had before we hit the bottom."

"Too deep for conventional divers..." Crane murmured as he slowly got to his feet, deep in thought.

"Repairs could be made using those new deep-sea diving suits, but we only have twelve of those." Morton wiped his fingers with a medical cloth. "Repair details will have to go out there in rotating watches of maybe four to five hours each at the most -a snail's pace."

"But better than nothing," Crane murmured, matching Morton's grim tone. "Air revitalization and reactors seem to be in good order...food stores are fully stocked -I suppose the situation could be far worse."

Morton glanced at his captain uncertainly. "But the men..."

"Keep them busy, Chip," Crane replied, understanding the inferred question immediately. The last thing that the crew needed was a lot of time to think too much -panic and mounting claustrophobia could do what whatever had hit them had not done. No... Seaview would not survive a panicked crew -especially not now. "I don't care what -work detail rotation...or maybe dig something out from the video library when they're off watch. Just keep 'em occupied."

"But none of the video-library's old classic disaster films like 'The Poseidon Adventure'?"

Crane shot Morton a look of aghast astonishment and then shook his head in grim amusement at the irony of the Executive Officer's apparently innocent query. "No. No disaster films."

Morton nodded and closed the med-kit with a snap. "Lee..." he said quietly. "What hit us?"

"I don't know, Chip -I'm just not sure..." Crane grimaced at the dull ache in his head. "But I suspect that it could have been a plasma-burst bomb hidden somewhere under the land mass."

"A hidden bomb?" Morton shook his head with disbelief. "A...booby trap?"

"Or a proximity bomb...or maybe just one that failed to go off the first time 'round. If it was a plasma-burst bomb, the core could have collapsed on itself and then expanded, exploding just as we got too close -the Admiral would know better than I." Crane clapped Morton on the shoulder. "Just carry on."

Morton tilted his head slightly. "Aye, sir."

Crane looked the way that the Executive Officer had departed and then headed towards the metal staircase that led up to A-Deck and Officer's Country, aware, even as he made his way along the slightly tilted deck, of sounds, very low in the background of his perceptions; of metal against metal -of steel beams straining against each other as the great grey submersible settled again. But on what? And where? He was loathed to admit that he could not be entirely certain whether Seaview was in fact settling...or sliding.

The crash doors to the ship's nose were closed, cutting off the view through Seaview's viewing ports -and they would have to remain that way until the weakness or strength of the forward beams could be accurately determined. The external cameras had succumbed to whatever force had battered the ship herself. Seaview was not only crippled, she was blind.

At that moment, a shudder ran through the entire length of Seaview's frame and the grim dark glow of emergency neons was replaced as the submersible's lighting array flared to its normal intensity -something Crane noticed only in passing. Fragments of grade-school lessons on the history of nuclear energy came to mind -something about how the deadly energies of an exploding nuclear bomb could disrupt most functioning electrical machinery that its destructive power did not actually touch. The blast had certainly been similar to that...but not the same. No...had that been the case, the entire ship would have been hot with radiation, but it wasn't. Radiation detectors were one of the few instrumentation arrays still working properly. The only other force that could have created the type of mayhem and destruction that Seaview had suffered (was suffering) was a plasma-burst bomb...of unusual power. The Admiral would probably have a clearer idea of what had struck the ship, but the question was...where was the Admiral?

In all the confusion- Crane's brow creased as a surge of dread forced him to step back from the metal staircase -dread and the solid, immovable reality that the passageway between A-Deck and the Control Room was completely blocked. Steel struts and synthetic-plaster-covered lighting mounts covered the man-sized opening; fragments of glass and cork still slowly raining down on the metal steps, coating them in a rough, greying gravel that crunched loudly underfoot. Crane shook his head uncertainly -had the entire ceiling of A-Deck collapsed or... "Mr. O'Brien!"

O'Brien, still shaky, still steadying himself against the railing of the periscope island, stared up, a vague, slightly bewildered cast to his face as he willed himself to stand up straight. "Sir..."

"Get a work detail to free up the passageway between the Control Room and A-Deck!" Crane paused only momentarily. "And take the Conn!"

"Aye-" Before the young lieutenant could actually voice a response, the Captain had swept past him, disappearing through the aft hatchway. He had never seen the man move so fast.




"Keep holding it! We have to get the weight off his legs!"

Sweat dripped down the sides of Admiral Nelson's grime-streaked face, his lips drawn tight and thin, his eyes narrowed in grimly intense concentration, as he stifled the cough that threatened to erupt from his aching lungs. The Seaview's blower system was running at full capacity -he recognized the tell-tale mechanical hum radiating throughout the ship- but crippled as he suspected she was, it was very unlikely that Seaview could reach the surface. It would take hours therefore, perhaps far longer, to entirely scrub the submarine of the dulling haze of smoke that still polluted her self-contained atmosphere. Divers' tanks and emergency breathing units were being held in reserve for necessary use only at this time -for the injured and others that had to have them- he did not know whether the air revitalization system was working at full capacity and if so...for how long.

Yet, that thought, no matter how troubling, was nowhere near as immediate as what he faced right now. "Sir! This ain't budging and we can't hold on to it much longer!"

Nelson barely heard Chief Sharkey's voice over the din of his own racing thoughts and the discordant sound of other human voices...and cries. He and his chief petty officer had yet to make it to the Control Room; their first obstruction, a caved-in section of the ceiling of A-Deck that had completely blocked off the passageway directly leading to Seaview's core; the second obstruction being of the more sobering human variety.

Ensign Madison groaned in acute pain as his would-be rescuers were forced to release the huge unwieldy metal beam that pinned the young officer down to the deck by the lower legs. His face had blanched a sickly yellow; his eyes reduced to thin white slits as the Admiral, the Chief, and three seamen struggled to free him from the section of the ceiling and bulkhead that had collapsed, all but burying him there. Doc looked up, his visage haggard with anxiety, his thinning hair matted with sweat as he took the young officer's pulse and adjusted the brace around the man's neck. "Where is that laser torch!" he snapped through gritted teeth. "If we don't free this man soon, he won't make it to Sick Bay at all!"

"I know that, Doc!" Nelson snapped back, casting a deeply worried glance at the trapped man. He had served as an unwilling witness to horrific incidents like this too many times and suspected that he knew what the junior officer was suffering. The crushing weight of the steel alloy girder was such that the rescue team had yet to be able to move it more than an inch...and time was quickly running out. Madison was dying before their eyes -the human body could endure only so much pain and Doc could give the man only so much morphine...without killing him. Help was on the way -Nelson did not doubt that- but in a ship with over a hundred men and God-only-knew how many areas damaged, help could come too late.

"Doc..."

At the sound of the stricken man's voice, Seaview's chief medical officer leaned closer, kneeling, his pants' legs stained by the growing pool of blood on the debris-strewn deck. "It'll be all right, Madison...the torch will be here soon."

"My legs...take them..."

A look of ill-concealed horror paled the medical man's face. "You don't know what you're saying."

Madison's eyes fluttered as he struggled to focus on Doc, the effort draining him. "Take them!" he demanded, vision still unfocussed as his head fell back limply and he whispered, just barely: "Please..."

Nelson met Doc's haunted eyes. "Can you do that, Doc?" he asked in a muted voice, hating the words as he said them. Seaview's doctor glanced unwillingly at his medical bag and nodded slowly. Yes, he could do it. Yes, he had the proper equipment here with him...and yes, the thought of doing what Madison had begged him to do -what he suspected that he would have to do eventually anyway- made him feel sick. All of this, Nelson could read in the medical officer's distraught expression. The Admiral's words were a mere whisper. "Then do it."

"But, sir-"

"You said yourself that he'll die if we don't free him now!" Nelson snapped, just as anguished. Doc opened his mouth to protest and then, merely sighed deeply, nodding in reluctant agreement as he slowly began to open his medical kit and signaled one of the crewmen to fetch some other instruments.

"Sir..."

Nelson turned and met the haunted face of Chief Sharkey. "Yes, Chief?"

"Doc...he isn't actually going to cut off Ensign Madison's legs..." Sharkey asked incredulously. "...is he?"

Nelson regarded the Chief Petty Officer sympathetically -he understood Sharkey's dismay. "There's no other-" The Admiral stopped in mid-sentence at the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps from the opposite end of the corridor, expecting to see...hoping actually, the crewman-bearer of the laser torch that would help them to free Ensign Madison...and, perhaps, avoid the grim operation that the Seaview's medical officer was about to perform. Instead, the form of Captain Crane, looking no less haggard than himself, bounded up the corridor towards the waiting group and stopped suddenly as he mutely took in the dreadful scene being played out before him. The Captain didn't bother to ask what had happened -there was no point. He already knew. "Is it as bad as it looks?"

"It is..." Nelson admitted ruefully. Doc was laying out surgical instruments and one of the crewmen had been sent to the Sick Bay to retrieve a respirator, gurney and other things needed ideally before the operation should start. Nelson turned aside with a small shudder. He had seen far worse things than what he would soon see, and his stomach was strong, but this was one of those things no sane human actually wanted to happen even if it was meant to save a life. He glanced to his side and saw the frown on Crane's brow, visible to his eyes though the Captain was apparently doing his best to mask it as he stared as if transfixed by the grisly tableau. "We can't wait any longer. Madison won't make it if we don't free him now."

Crane nodded dumbly, his dark eyes troubled, as he continued to study the gory scene -the young junior officer trapped beneath the collapsed section of the bulkhead, pale and helpless, and dying as his life's fuel, his blood, pooled and spread on the deck...his blood... A sudden spate of visions of the frozen hell that Delta had become and the watery tomb that Voyageur now was fluttered briefly before the Captain's mental sight before he blinked, shattering the spell of an instant. There had been far too much death -if he could help it, there would be no more. Crane's brow creased as he strived within himself to reclaim memories of old instruction long since used and almost forgotten. "I think I can do it..."

Nelson glanced at Sharkey who returned the puzzled look, and then back at Crane who stood staring with almost single-minded intensity at the weighty obstruction as he slowly flexed his fingers in silent anticipation of...what? "Do what, Lee?" Nelson demanded...but the answer did not seem to be forthcoming. It was as if the Captain of the Seaview either did not hear his admiral's query or was simply not listening as he studiously ran his long fingers along the jagged edges of the metallic mass...testing. More questioning looks were exchanged between Nelson and the crewmen gathered and the Admiral was on the verge of hotly demanding an explanation for the Commanding Officer's downright peculiar behavior when Crane regarded Nelson over his shoulder, his countenance all but expressionless, and said: "Just get ready to drag Madison out as soon as this thing moves."

It shouldn't have happened...shouldn't have been possible, but somehow...it did happen. Drawing a deep, steeling breath, Crane grasped the edge of the huge mass, jaw clenched with the agonizing strain as he pulled upwards, sweat beginning to drip down the sides of his flushing face, the muscles of his arms and back trembling visibly with the increasingly terrible effort and growing pain, hands blistering and reddening against the bite of the still-hot recently scorched metal...which actually, slowly, began to move...up.

The ragged structure of steel seemed to strain against itself as it was gradually forced from its former position, bits of synthetic plaster falling to the stained deck in a steady rain...and still, it went up. An inch...two...three... For a seeming eternity, no-one appeared able to move -the impossible sight rendering them immobile with something akin to awe...but like the fairy tale spell which would spend itself at the stroke of midnight, the apparent miracle had a definite time limit. Sweat streaming down his reddened temples, the tremor in his arms more pronounced, Crane was barely able to gasp out: "...hurry..."

The response, this time, was immediate as Sharkey, Doc, and the other crewmen dragged and then lifted the helpless ensign from under the huge chunk of steel and plaster and onto the gurney which had just arrived.

Almost immediately, the corridor was shaken by a thundering roar as metal, mouldings, and plaster came crashing down to the deck, sending a cloud of synthetic-based dust up into the already filthy air, leaving a pile of rubble where the young ensign had just been.

Crane stared at the clutter, his face flushed, his chest still heaving from the exertion, knowing that what he had done would pass through loose lips until a simple act of focused will had been transformed into the likeness of a Biblical miracle -he was not unaware of his unsought-after status of legend- but such an act had a price. As he examined his reddened, blistered hands, pain like whips of electricity was already beginning to travel up and down his arms, back and shoulders. Yes... he would pay for this dearly...but he consoled himself with the fact that it had been worth it. At least, now Ensign Madison had a chance at a recovery that he might not have had only moments before -he had been able to give the man that much.

"Lee..?"

Crane felt the Admiral's hand on his shoulder and winced inwardly at the sharp pain that traveled from where the hand touched. "Yes, sir?"

Nelson's train of vision went from the pile of rubble to the haggard face of the young commanding officer to the pile of rubble again in quick succession. "How..." he said, his voice small with wonder. "...how did you do that?"

"Something...something I was taught in the Secret Forces...years ago. A martial arts technique...very old." Crane leaned heavily against the bulkhead for a moment, his head swimming, struggling to marshal his suddenly flagging strength. He felt Nelson's steadying hand against his arm as he waited with eyes closed for the transient weakness to fade. The moment passed and Crane faced his Admiral, a weary, grateful smile on his face. "Thank you...it-it takes a lot...out of me...makes it a fairly questionable technique at best... I haven't tried anything like that in a long time."

"I didn't know that you could do it at all," Nelson replied honestly.

"To concentrate and focus the entirety of one's physical strength into a single, powerful burst..." Crane laughed quietly, tiredly. "It's been a very long time -I didn't know if I could do it either."

Nelson nodded, accepting the partial revelation -for now. As close as he and Crane were -as well as he believed he knew the man he had helped to train- he was coming to realize that he probably didn't really know Crane at all. He hadn't been the only influence in his life or his only teacher...and how could one really know another man anyway? But the questions could wait. Though the emergency klaxon had fallen mute and the sound of repair details had begun to echo through the corridors, the submarine needed him, needed them both. They were all far from out of danger. "Come on, Lee...let's see about getting this ship afloat."




The water came from the faucet in a steaming torrent, a thick wet fog of condensation rolling upwards in a translucent haze, before disappearing down the seemingly endless well that was the drain, the clear hot liquid now sliding off his hands bearing a grimly familiar reddish hue, as it washed away the still sticky drying sanguine stains on the skin of his arms. "God..." Doc paused in his efforts, his lined face haggard and sallow with exhaustion, his head hanging down as he grasped the slightly slippery, long rim of the surgery ante-room's scrub-up basin, as a stronger wave of bone weariness swept over him, tempting the medical man to lie down and sleep...maybe forever. He sighed aloud and shook his head. No... None of that. He would rest...but later. Probably much later.

The water continued to pour as he studiously examined the results of his efforts, noting with a slight grimace the sanguine stains that he had failed to exorcise from his flesh. It wasn't always like this. When he had chosen, a seeming eternity ago, to be a doctor -a physician, surgeon, diagnostician- he had gone into the medical field having reconciled himself to the fact that he would see sights that the average person would not and should not see...not the least of things being the blood. Having been born blessed with both a strong constitution and an even stronger stomach, he had never had to shy away from that fact. Never would. But it was never a pleasant thing, no matter how normal or natural, when that red flow carried away a life...as it had today.

Whatever had struck the Seaview, it was taking its toll in one way or another on the crew as well as the ship. In the past seven hours -or was it longer- he and his surgical teams had seen more blood than in recent memory -from smaller cuts that had to be sutured, to greenstick fractures, to burns caused by boiling steam from broken hot water pipes or by fire, to injuries that were much, much worse. For a time, it seemed as if it wasn't going to stop -for seven solid hours, case after case came. Some lived and some...well...some didn't. The worst of it was that sometimes he had no idea why one man lived and the other didn't...crewmen that should have lived, had died. Men, far worse off, were still living. At least, for now...and there was always the blood... Too much. Too much of it shed today.

It was all that he could see as he closed his eyes as he sat down, hoping that the lull after seven solid hours of performing surgery, that had at times proven pointless, signaled a lack of new cases. "Sir?"

Corpsman Yamada stood waiting uneasily, his own younger face lined and grey, as the Chief Medical Officer opened his eyes and almost painfully pushed himself to his aching feet. "Yes, Yamada?"

The young corpsman handed Doc a diagnostic print-out sheet and several X-rays. "X-ray systems have come on-line...at least, for now. They just brought in Yeoman Morley...looks like we have a trauma to the back of the skull...definitely some fluid build-up and internal bleeding."

Doc nodded in grave silence as he scanned the sheet and then the ghostly black and white images that were the X-ray prints, one after the other. He shook his head slightly as he handed back the sheets. "Tell Surgical Detail #1 to scrub up." Yamada nodded sharply and disappeared through the doorway through which he had come as Doc shed his stained surgical smock in favor of a clean, sterile one.

There was always the blood.




"Coffee?"

Lee Crane glanced up from the deeply creased print-out sheet he had been reading, a tiny frown furrowing his forehead, and tilted his brow in the affirmative as he pushed himself up from the partially slumped-over position into which he had somehow slid. Nelson was standing by an electric coffee pot hooked up to a small battery-generator outlet beside his desk. "Uh...yes, sir. No sugar-"

"-no cream," Nelson said, finishing the instruction with a tiny worn smile twitching the corners of his mouth. "I do remember, Lee."

A brief smile animated Crane's face as he caught the Admiral's knowing grin as he handed over the cup and took another over to where he had been working. But the grin that had gladdened Lee Crane's face faded almost as soon as he had returned his own attention to the object of his study, massaging the pulse in his head as he did. The papers crinkled loudly as he flattened out a folded-over corner of a page, shaking his head slowly as a sense of incredulous wonder washed over him at what he had been reading and had absorbed thus far...Captain Hudson's personal journal translated from personal script, the last testament of the late captain, other notes and entries...

Crane cast a bleary-eyed glance at the ungainly pile of documents and notations heaped high in the middle of the top of the Admiral's desk; only about two-thirds actually of the writings that had somehow been stuffed into the satchel that had once belonged to Captain Hudson -some in the possession of Chief Sharkey who was ensconced in his quarters, doggedly trying to translate the remainder...a snail's pace, but it was the only option open to them all...the only way to corroborate what Captain Hudson's last testament had contained...to learn the source of the madness that had possessed a fellow InterAllied commander to leave what had essentially been a booby trap for whomever had arrived at Station Delta to offer help.

Crane cast a look at the digital clock on the Admiral's desk. He was not an impatient man, but this search for the truth was taking far too long...and he was loathed to waste time -if that was what the search turned out to be. Crane set the papers aside and rubbed his eyes. Even if the search did bear no fruit, they had the time for it, didn't they? Seaview wasn't going anywhere -not right now anyway...and certainly not for awhile. The plasma-burst bomb had seen to that. Crane raised the steaming cup to his lips and sipped the hot brew, scowling at the sudden irrational surge of loathing he felt towards the late captain of the Voyageur and then slumped inwardly. Anger toward the dead was not only unsatisfying and stupid, it was pointless...and it didn't help. There were far more important things to deal with -such as getting Seaview afloat...and home. "Shit..."

Over at the opposite end of the Admiral's cabin, Nelson looked out from behind the damaged video monitor that he had swung away from the bulkhead, a spaghetti-like tangle of wires held in his hand as he grappled with the contentious unit which had thus far proven to have no intention of working. "Is something the matter, Lee?"

"No, sir," Crane murmured, a reddish tinge coloring his cheeks as he flicked away the stinging liquid he had spilled on his hand. Crane gingerly set the steaming cup back on the table to his side, cursing the clumsiness of his tender, blistered right hand. The Admiral nodded uncertainly and resumed his self-imposed task as Crane examined the bandage wound around the blistered hand -a minor injury hardly worth mentioning and yet, he had had less discomfort from greater wounds. It never made much sense.

Suddenly, the Captain's attention was distracted by the loud, shrill sound of electronic hissing as the monitor screen flashed, crackled, and then flared to life. "You've done it," he observed aloud, getting to his feet as he retrieved one of the micro-video diskettes Sharkey and Nelson had discovered.

"Not really..." Nelson shoved the monitor unit back into the recess within the bulkhead. "The energy pulse from the plasma-burst bomb fried most of the essential wiring -this is a patch-up job at best. It can't receive or transmit, but the video unit portion can play...and that's what is most important at the moment." Nelson made some quick adjustments to the unit and the screen went a video-ready blue. "We're just fortunate that the energy pulse has no effect on human energy fields."

"I have to agree..." The protective sheath of the sliver-thin micro-video diskette glinted in the lamp light, the reflective, shimmering material of the plastic-alloy surface splitting the light's glow into a spectrum rainbow as Crane examined it visually and then, handed the diskette to Nelson who held the other two. "I hope that they're worth the effort."

"So do I," Nelson agreed, his voice low and slightly distracted. The micro-video diskette was almost weightless in his hands, glittering sharply in all directions and at all angles save for the plain white stick-on tag that adhered to one corner -on that label, written in simple red marker ink, was a date. Nelson quickly examined each of the three diskettes, Crane looking on in silent puzzlement, as Nelson noted that each of the three video recordings bore a date; not consecutive, but all three apparently recorded within a period of two months. "The first two were recorded within three weeks of each other...but the other-" Nelson momentarily regarded Crane with mild incomprehension. "The other was dated just over a month later."

Crane spread his hands, his expression openly questioning. "What's the answer?"

"We'll soon see." The first micro-diskette disappeared into the entry slot of the video unit with a soft click and a familiar soft hum of electricity flowing throughout the partially restored unit. The monitor screen crackled momentarily and then, the screen was filled with the image of the official insignia of Antarctic Station Delta. Nelson and Crane shared a small sigh of relief.

The insignia disappeared soon after and was replaced by the face and form of a man; greying and clean-shaven, perhaps in his latter fifties. His countenance was enigmatic, somewhere between suspicious of the camera he faced and yet, just as certainly, eager. He wore a standard-issue white lab coat, but the name printed on the security tag, pinned on the coat, indicated some authority: "Dr. Radu Ionescu", director of Antarctic Station Delta. The man glanced away from the camera and at some whispered insistence off-camera faced the screen again, a fleeting expression of discomfort at being obliged to appear before an unfamiliar or disquieting medium momentarily clouding his face. There was the slightest twitch of a smile on his mouth as he began to speak.

"My greetings. My name is Dr. Radu Ionescu," he said, his voice slightly accented, "director of biological projects at Antarctic Station Delta and director of the Phoenix Project..." The nascent grin became a wide smile. "Or should I say, was the director of the Phoenix Project?" Dr. Ionescu leaned back in his seat, a new, almost giddy expression on his face before he bent forward, facing the camera again. "Forgive me...I am ahead of myself. I will explain.

"For more than ten years, the science teams headed by myself and my assistant, Dr. Mill Bagmen, have been working on a possible preventative serum against the most deadly forms of cancer as based on our prior research into the disease...research which had provided 'treatment' for this sometimes hereditary molecular breakdown of biological tissue while not providing measures to avoid it...whether hereditary or acquired. Unfortunately, conventional tactics, as in the past, have proven, ultimately, fruitless...the enemy, as we had come to know it, had always had the potential for returning. After too many pointless experimentations under conventional guidelines, most of my staff and I eventually came to an epiphany and a collective, while admittedly unauthorized decision, was made to attempt the most obvious means of avoiding this hellish illness...perhaps all illness. Humanity has spent inordinate billions every year by creating new and improved weaponry and technology. We, the science corps and I, agreed that it was time to do something about improving the human species-"

Dr. Ionescu's image froze mid-sentence as Admiral Nelson's thumb hovered over the "pause" button on the remote unit in his hand. "Lee...tell me that I didn't hear what I just heard."

Lee Crane glanced at the screen and its frozen image and then, back at his admiral. "I wish I could."

Admiral Nelson depressed the "pause" button and the static image jumped and then moved forward. "It is a scientific fact that traditional curative methods are, at best, questionable. The cure is often worse than the disease. Inoculations sometimes do not take at all...all because of the faulty nature of the human D.N.A., but human D.N.A. is little more than a biological computer program, and so, we hypothesized, could be...reprogrammed." Dr. Ionescu laughed quietly to himself. "The new project began three years ago. Borrowing from the simplistic theory of computer programming and far more in-depth genetics' research, some gleaned from other sources that need not be named at this time, we began to seek a...'virus' program that could make up for the natural deficiencies in human D.N.A. by flowing through the blood stream via a conventional injection on a viral carrier and attaching itself to the nervous system where actual reprogramming would begin -a most efficient method, I'm sure it would be agreed... The first real breakthrough occurred a year ago when serum batch #666 -trust me, I recognize the irony of the number- proved not only non-lethal to our test animals, but beneficial as well...for simplification, we called the batch 'V1'.

"The test animals, common field mice, showed marked improvement in co-ordination, speed, strength, and over-all physical capacities...night vision, hearing, and yes, markedly improved immune and recuperative abilities. An unexpected side-benefit of decreased appetite has also been observed...as well as a definite increase in life span. This will undoubtedly prove useful." Dr. Ionescu paused, a fleeting frown appearing on his brow. "We did notice an increased tendency towards aggression and general irritability among the lab subjects, but this is to be expected among creatures of a lower order who lack our 'human' capacity to comprehend and accommodate a change in perceptions. Said test subjects were destroyed by incineration after requisite post mortem examinations." Doctor Ionescu sighed with personal satisfaction. "It was at 6:00 a.m., Tuesday morning, two days ago, that the newly re-named Phoenix Project truly became everything I could have hoped it would become. The first human volunteers were injected with the refined version of our Metastatic Infectious Neural Anlage. The results have proven promising beyond my wildest dreams. If all goes as expected, we will be able to present to the scientific community and the world in general, the first of an improved human species -Project M.I.N.A. is a success."




He wondered if it was possible to be dead and not know it. The last few days -it was days, wasn't it- had been spent in a grey world of oblivion with no touch...sound...sight...and even less thought. No...he wasn't dead...as much as he might have wished to be. Fate wasn't that kind. Damn it.

Corpsman Thibideau opened his eyes just a sliver; just enough to see through the veil of his eyelashes. He was laying on a hospital bed...no...not a hospital bed. A bunk. A Sick Bay roll-away bunk on...what..? Thibideau chanced a glance around himself, eyes scanning his surroundings with great care, while he remained perfectly still, feigning sleep. A submarine. It was definitely a submarine Sick Bay...similar to the one on Voyageur; somewhat larger perhaps, but not...no, it wasn't the Voyageur. Couldn't have been. Voyageur was... No! Thibideau swallowed deeply. Mustn't dwell on it. Ship and crew were dead -they couldn't be helped...and certainly not by guilt-addled mourning. Everyone dead...except... How was he still alive? And how did he get here? Wherever he was...what did it mean that he was still alive?

Thibideau strained to see without being seen and caught sight of a map mounted on the Sick Bay's bulkhead not far from his bunk. Seaview...the S.S.R.N. Seaview! American... An American classified research submarinal warship. How did he get on board her? Just then, Thibideau closed his eyes sharply, willing himself to remain calm, neutral, and unmoving as he heard voices somewhere close by...a gaggle of American accents...he had never been able to fathom how his country's southward neighbors possessed so many...but that wasn't important at the moment. He heard someone called "Doc" speaking to someone, his captain (over the intercom by the sound of it), about casualties -fifteen dead, numerous crewmen injured. Thibideau felt a deep thrill of dread. The Sickness...but no, the deaths weren't because of the Sickness. An accident, terrible...the doctor wanted to perform autopsies -something about how some of the dead shouldn't have died -but he couldn't. Orders from InterAllied. Only blood work-ups and X-rays allowed under certain circumstances of which the corpsman could not quite make clear -nothing more until they got back to base...if they ever did.

How could the American medical man know that it might be better if they never touched port? No...he couldn't know...and he didn't know how to tell them...or if to tell them. Thibideau sighed softly to himself, grey nothingness reaching for him again, and allowed himself to fall into oblivion.




Crane released the button on the intercom on the Admiral's desk, his hand lingering there for a moment as his eyes met those of his admiral who returned the look pensively. "Doc sounded upset...and I can't say that I blame him. Those orders from InterAllied don't make much sense to me either."

"The loss of fifteen good men would upset a hardened man...especially as we're not sure that the orders even cover our own fatalities." Nelson shrugged tiredly. "We'll just have to follow the present interpretation for the present." Doc had sounded angry -he was a man of deep emotions and to lose even one crew member was too much for him, for any of them, to accept easily, but if experience had taught Harriman Nelson anything, it was that one had to accept the fact that the human body bore the dichotomy of being both fragile and resilient at the same time. A seemingly insignificant wound could kill and a major injury could leave a man alive. He wished that Fate had chosen a far less grisly way to prove that point. "As for the rest, InterAllied must have a reason for their orders -it's our duty to follow them to the best of our ability. Doc will understand in time."

"The higher echelons of InterAllied command wouldn't explain even if we could contact them," Crane muttered half to himself.

Nelson caught sight of the scowl on Lee Crane's face and was forced to tilt his head in agreement. "Unfortunately true." He inserted the second tape into the video unit. "Tape two...three weeks after the first...or, at least, the first of which we know."

As before, the image of the insignia of Antarctic Station Delta appeared on the screen, but unlike before, the image of Dr. Ionescu did not materialize. Instead, Nelson and Crane saw the form of a woman; handsome, mid-forties, with silver-stippled hair of jet black that was pulled up into a severe snood. Her name tag gave her name as "Dr. Mill Bagmen". But if her colleague, Dr. Ionescu, had worn the air of a scientist gradually swept up in the intoxication of discovery, Dr. Bagmen had the mien of one who labored under oppressive worry. As one looked closer, one could see the lines of care on her face and the barely controlled tremor in her hands as she struggled with a lighter whose wick flared and then died several times just short of the unlit end of the cigarette loosely perched between her lips.

Finally, cigarette lit, she blew a blue-grey cloud of smoke into the air. "Video entry number 69...Friday..." Dr. Bagmen frowned, seeming to puzzle for several seconds before she spoke again. "Never mind the date -it doesn't matter. I'll write it on the tape later. I forget things so easily nowadays. Where was I? Ah yes... Human test subjects for Project M.I.N.A. -Professor Michael Jefferson and technician Rosa Micelli- died today...they were the last two of the ten human subjects given injections of the mutant engineered anlage we nick-named V1...under Project M.I.N.A.. The progression of the D.N.A.-altering virus introduced into their systems remained insidiously consistent with the progression suffered by the eight before them.

"Initially promising results of improved ability and capacity did not last and deteriorated in the same way...we could do nothing to help them. As before, all efforts to re-introduce former normal healthy D.N.A. structures failed...just as all efforts to determine the reason why V1 itself changed have failed. The truth of the matter is that we are no longer certain what, exactly, we are working with -even in test animals, V1 is displaying an almost sentient capacity to defy accepted methods of curing viral infections -whatever we apply, V1 appears capable of 'learning' to survive... Whatever we have created is far more potent than the cancer we had hoped to avoid or cure, or even the AIDS virus of the latter twentieth-century...if it had been that, we would be able to cure it. How can the body react to or attack what it cannot accept exists...or what seems, at first, to be beneficial?"

Dr. Bagmen drew a hand through the stray, wispy strand of salt and pepper hair that hung loosely over an earpiece of the old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses perched on her long nose. "They were once so very healthy... Even the outbreak of the Asian Flu, brought in by the crew of our previous supply ship -the Andropov, out of Russia- did not cause any major effect on the test group initially...any illness was negligible at best while the rest of us suffered. All subjects remained healthy and became almost impossibly healthier...increased physical strength, visual /auricular acuity -they developed night vision that was easily feline in its scope- increased digestive efficiency that required reduced food-bulk intake...and the afore mentioned immunity factor. My God...for a short while, they were superhuman.

"How could we have known..." Dr. Bagmen drew on the cigarette, the lit-end burning brighter, before she blew another bluish cloud of smoke into the air and then dashed the burning tobacco stick against the scorched basin of the fifty-cent foil ash tray in front of her, her lips drawn tight with disgust...or anger. It was hard to tell which. "The rate of deterioration was different for each subject due to factors of which we know nothing...there was no one incubation period...but the process itself was predictable as it was in inexorable.

"Improved vitality became frenzied strength...without direction. Increased sensory acuity led to sensory sensitivity so great that the subjects were eventually in nearly constant pain -a simple touch became agony, normal lighting was intolerable. There was eventual emotional collapse which displayed itself in various, mostly violent, ways. As their conditions deteriorated further, normal food intake became impossible. Intravenous transfusions of high-protein supplements -as well as transfusions of whole blood to combat what appeared to be an aggressive anemia-like condition- seemed to temporarily slow the progression of V1, but in the end, they could not stop it. Nothing could change the ultimately destructive end of the disease. One by one, they slipped into comas ...and died.

"Tissue samples are being taken from the last two subjects as they have from the others. Blood samples will also be taken. Their bodies -also like the others- will be cremated to avoid any possible contamination -it's all we can do for our former co-workers. Dr. Ionescu has convinced a majority of the science team to continue with Project M.I.N.A....the rest have been 'convinced' to remain silent. Though initially reluctant myself, I have also come to admit that we've come too close to our goal to quit now. V1 -and the mutated virus subnamed 'V2'- may yet hold the secrets for which we are still searching. InterAllied's insistence on assigning S.S.N. Voyageur to us will make this difficult, but not impossible."

At that moment, the picture was consumed in electronic snow as the tape came to an end, leaving the viewers mute with disbelief...and horror.




It was an effort to force his hands to remain steady...for if he relaxed his concentration even a little, his mask of steel self-assurance would begin to slip and the uneasiness he truly felt would reveal itself...and his hands would tremble. Chip Morton shook his head slightly at no-one and nothing in particular as he rubbed his eyes, trying to free them of the obscuring saline fluid that would well up and blind them. The air was much clearer now -at least, it was cleaner than it had been only hours ago- but there was still a slight, acrid haze in it that made his eyes sore and watery...and it would stay that way for a long while yet.

Morton sighed deeply and continued to study the print-out sheets in his hands. The first was a casualty list -so far, twenty men dead and more than twice that injured; some severely ...some which might enter the ranks of the dead before the day was done. Another heavy sigh escaped Morton's lips -it was never easy to accept the demise of one's shipmates. He had once heard it said that the day it got easy was the day one should quit the Service.

The second sheet was a long list, noting each and every possible kind of damage a submarine could suffer and still function...and with each revision, the list seemed to grow. The damage to the grey lady had far outstripped initial estimates. Though life support systems were in fairly good order and the reactors had, somehow, remained unscathed (technicians suspected that the special shielding there might have had something to do with it), there was still the cold, hard fact that Seaview would not be going anywhere for a long time. Around the Executive Officer, the Control Room crew had fallen to their individual duties with a ferocious single-mindedness that bordered on desperation and little by little, the Control Room was beginning to actually resemble the brain of the Seaview as they had all once known it a seeming eternity ago.

The Executive Officer of the Seaview did not count himself as either particularly superstitious or religious, but he would not resist offering prayers to whatever higher power cared to hear them, if it would get Seaview afloat and her crew home. Neither he nor the great submersible nor her crew were ready to die just yet.

"God dammit!"

Morton glanced up sharply from the papers in his hand at the sound of the indignant cry and the loud clatter of metal hitting the deck. For a long pause, the droning murmur of human activity fell still as all eyes momentarily turned towards the Radio Shack where Sparks sat hunched over the mangled console, his work kit of fine tools up-ended, the expression on his young face ugly with frustration and anger as he sucked on the jagged, bleeding wound on his right index finger. Morton cast a silent glare of warning to the rest of the Control Room crew and the familiar hum of vigorous activity returned as he made his way to the communications' center. Morton pulled aside the scorched remains of the curtain which partially obscured the watch station, noting with no surprise that the radio operator had returned to his duties in what seemed to be a vain effort to avoid acknowledging that the embarrassing incident had happened at all.

"Sparks?"

Sparks winced visibly before he slowly set aside the miniature laser welding torch with exaggerated care and turned to face the Executive Officer. "Yes, sir?" he asked almost timidly, surreptitiously shaking the wounded hand at his side.

The Executive Officer glanced at the gutted radio console and then at the bleary-eyed communications' officer. He felt a stab of pity towards the young officer who had worked the long hours of his watch without complaining despite the fact that it was somewhat past his normal time. No...he wouldn't bother mentioning the obvious fact that certain expensive instruments were still lying on the deck. "How's it coming along?" Morton asked instead as he bent down and reached towards the up-ended tool kit.

"The energy-pulse overloaded just about every circuit board in the console, sir." Sparks pushed himself up straight in his seat, flinching at the sharp pain at the base of his spine and the ache in the seat of his pants. He gestured wearily to the ravaged radio console, the villainous micro-screwdriver with which he had injured himself still in his hand. "The whole thing has to be rewired."

Morton placed the last of the delicate instruments in the kit and paused, silently considering the grim possibilities forming within his brain. "Can you do it?"

"Yes, sir...but I don't know how long it'll take...especially with most of the communications' team laid up like they are." The young officer turned aside to stifle a long, heavy yawn, and then stopped, struck by a small inspiration. "With the XO's permission, if I could have technician's mate Peter Clarke assigned to me, it'd be a great help. He's not part of the communications' corps yet, I know, but he's a wizard at communications' electronics."

Commander Morton nodded in the affirmative. "Consider it done. I'll have him..." Just then, the Executive Officer's voice faded to nothing, his countenance suddenly blank and just as suddenly etched with aghast disbelief. He couldn't have... It just wasn't possible that he had forgotten...

Morton caught Sparks' bewildered, questioning stare. "Ah... Keep on it. I'll get you some assistance right away." Sparks nodded slowly, still puzzled by the Executive Officer's suddenly strange behavior as Morton strided over to where Patterson was closing up the inspection panel on the burned-out fathometer. "Patterson..?"

Patterson stood up sharply. "Sir?"

Morton fished in his pants' pocket and pulled out a set of keys on a small metal loop. "I want you to release Tomàs and Clarke from the Brig on my authority. Have them report to the Control Room."

Patterson gave the Executive Officer an odd look. "Aye, sir..."

Morton turned aside, unwilling to have anyone see the look of anger and mortified embarrassment at his lapse of memory and duty on his visage. How in the name of all good reason, when the ship needed each and every one of her able-bodied crew, could he have forgotten to release the two crewmen? Morton shook his head, incredulous, wondering -almost seriously- if he had been struck with some form of early senility and scowled all the deeper when he heard a sound which sounded suspiciously like a giggle...at his expense.




The silence was deafening as Nelson removed the second micro-video diskettes from the viewing unit while Crane sat in the swivel chair across from the monitor, his right hand slowly twisting the signet ring around the ring finger of his left, as he stared silently at some distant spot on the bare bulkhead. Nelson returned his attention to the job at hand -he didn't feel much like talking either. They had both experienced their share of horrors while serving aboard Seaview -and some on other vessels before her- but nothing the likes of which they had heard in the last short while. The mere mention of disease had struck the same chord of horror and fear in them -modern men of the twenty-first century that they were- as it had their ancient forebears many generations past...though, at least, they both privately hoped that they were hiding that instinctive fear a little better than their ancestors. Things borne of nature or supernature could usually be battled, outwitted...but how could one outwit a disease? Neither captain nor admiral had an answer and so, for the moment, remained silent.

Nelson activated the viewing monitor, the screen flaring almost immediately as the last tape began to play. When Dr. Bergman's image returned to the screen, the picture was shrouded in the thin haze of electronic distortion, shifting video noise, of a video recorded by a filthy old machine or subjected to some kind of external abuse. Her appearance was different as well -she was no longer the care-laden, but efficiently kempt woman of the recording preceding this one. The handsome woman of forty or so had become a gaunt, drained one of about sixty -easily- and haggard, the once silver stippled black hair now nearly completely grey. Her medical lab smock was heavily creased, a tear on one sleeve, strange brown stains spattered here and there on the cloth. She didn't seem to notice or care that the ever-present cigarette in her mouth was unlit -spent butts spilling onto the table in front of her from a mound of the same piled onto the stained ashtray.

"This...will probably be my last log -there doesn't really seem to be much of a point in recording them anymore. Oh God... What is the point to all of this? No matter... The fact is that most of the science team members are dead -our...'dear' Dr. Ionescu died just yesterday- and a large number of the crew of the Voyageur have succumbed to our 'little mistake'...and I..."

Dr. Bergman laughed softly to herself, a strange disjointed sound. "Let's just say that I strongly doubt that I will have to suffer the indignity of a retirement party... It's probably for the best... Detractors of Project M.I.N.A. seemed to believe from the first that it was some kind of a sin to presume to be God -maybe they were right. I have come to realize that Project M.I.N.A. was cursed from the start. I recorded the details before, when my mind was clearer, but most of the diskettes are gone -I just don't know where- but if I hadn't smuggled the other two away when I had, I don't know..." The scientist shuddered visibly. "Doesn't matter... I'll try to remember as much as I can...

"About two weeks after the arrival of the Voyageur, there was an accident...an explosion in the main generator room and a massive fire... A series of secondary explosions caused the destruction of the storage area where the secure containers of V2 were being kept, releasing massive quantities of both the virus itself and contaminated shrapnel." Dr. Bergman crushed the cigarette between her fingers and her voice fell curiously flat. "Despite our best containment procedures, wide-spread infection was inevitable. I...I don't know why we were so surprised...or why any of us even bothered to try to hide the extent of the truth from Voyageur's crew. V2 spread too quickly, a geometric progression...a geometric progression of sickness...madness... No-one who hasn't actually seen what I've seen could even imagine the things that once good men and women have done and are doing to each other...and themselves. Those who die quickly can rest a little, but the others pass into madness that grows more and more bloodthirsty with time as if the mere sight of blood arouses them to create greater, more horrific violence..."

For several long minutes, Mila Bergman sat with her head propped in her hands, shoulders slumped and thin, before she faced the camera again. "It used to take days -more- to detect the virus...sometimes not at all, but the only real triumph we've had in curing our deadly brainchild is a reagent which can detect the virus in its host within seconds with infallible accuracy -for all the good it's done us. The disk containing the original copy of the formula for the reagent has been destroyed...don't ask me who, how, or why...the only written copy that still exists is in the personal journal I have decided to give to Captain Hudson at the completion of this taping. As far as I know, he is not infected...at least, not yet... I have to be certain that at least one copy remains safe -it could hold the key to an eventual cure." Nelson reacted, a frown of concentration creasing his brow, as he remembered the second of the unofficial log books.

The image of Dr. Bergman cracked a crooked smile. "I hope that whoever reads it can understand Hebrew...if it ever sees the light of day at all. I don't know what's for the best anymore...or if death will provide any more respite than this twisted life that we've created. Even the dead are restless in this place of the damned.

"Our impatience had cursed us -we didn't want to wait for something that might have taken a lifetime...or longer. For forbidden knowledge, we courted the Devil...and he gave us children." Doctor Bergman paused, lost for a moment in the disjointed thoughts within her brain, before she faced the camera once more. "My God...what have we done?"

The screen went blank.




The keys jingled on the metal loop, an almost pleasant sound, as seaman Patterson made his way along the grimy deck, his pace quick despite the occasional, random obstruction; bits and pieces of debris here and there, the still grimy air forcing him to blink rapidly to clear his eyes...but he didn't pause for long. Didn't dare. Two steps out of the Control Room, he had realized why Mr. Morton had seemed so anxious -it was more than possible that Tomàs and Clarke had been left in the Brig, forgotten in the ensuing confusion after the Seaview had been brutally sent to the bottom where she now lay. It was also possible that someone had released them -the Skipper or someone else perhaps- but that wasn't a certainty and the XO's expression had been enough for this seaman to know that questions would not be brooked. Better to be sure than sorry anyhow.

A grim sigh heaved Patterson's chest as the steel-barred doors of the Brig came into view, still secure, likely not opened since before the crash. It wasn't his fault that the two crewmen had been forgotten in the madness, but he knew that he would be the one to get it in the face -Tomàs had an ugly temper when it was aroused, and he and Peter Clarke had never been exactly close. No particular reason, it had just turned out that way. Patterson took a steeling breath -into the abyss...

The keys jingled again as he sorted them out and started to place one in the lock. "Okay, you guys, the XO wants-" Just then, as he looked up, Patterson's jaw fell slack, his mouth working loosely and silently, as the keys fell from his hand to clatter harshly against the hard deck. He turned away from the Brig door sharply, leaning heavily against the bulkhead, his face blanching pale...and vomited.




An audible groan echoed throughout the length of the Seaview, her internal lighting array flickering and then regaining its normal brilliance, as the great grey submarine shifted ever so slightly once more until the deck beneath the feet of the men within her became even, freed finally from the small, but awkward tilt that had plagued her since the devastating accident, making even the most minor duty a frustratingly difficult task.

Crane glanced up towards the ceiling as Seaview stirred and then became still, his dark eyes probing as if he could envision the dark waters beyond the grey lady's hull. He almost felt as if he could. There were times that he felt as though he and the vessel had achieved some impossible empathy; a joining of man and machine on some spiritual plane. The Captain returned his attention to the underwater photographs taken by one of the deep-sea divers, a little bewildered that he had come to wax so poetic despite the fact that he had no talent for it. Perhaps suffering was the stuff of great writers...or perhaps, he had merely admitted to himself a truth that he had always secretly believed.

The Captain of the Seaview willed himself to ignore the muse of creativity in favor of the blacker present reality as he stared at the photographs, each in its turn. The divers had reported that the ship was resting on a rocky ledge, fairly stable, too far from the edge to fall off and tumble into the fathomless depths below it, but near enough to remind them all of how close they had come to joining countless other sailors before them whose bodies the sea had ultimately claimed as its own. From what he had heard, divers were all too glad to come in from their individual diving rotations -few stayed out longer than they had to. It was dark at these depths; oppressively dark, the negritude broken only by the unnatural murky light of the Seaview's external lighting array, and the valleys of the sea were a void. No...no-one wanted to stay out there any longer than he had to.

The Admiral was removing the micro-video diskette from the video monitor; the screen of the unit blank and video-ready blue before he stabbed the "off" button and the screen went black. "Well," Nelson said quietly, abruptly, as he placed the diskettes back on his desk with a gesture of finality, "now we know."

Crane uttered a small laugh of annoyance at things he could neither understand nor change. "We know what happened...at least, we know some of what happened," he muttered, grimacing slightly as he covertly massaged a small twinge of discomfort in the base of his stomach with one hand while he picked up the second of the two journals with the other, silently chastising his treasonous body for having chosen this, of all times, to give him an acute case of indigestion. He studied the decorative, almost alien script within the journal. It was Hebrew as the late Dr. Bergman had indicated that it would be, but beyond a precious few words he had acquired during his many cruises, he could not read it. If the little luck that had preserved Seaview from a premature death was still with them, there had to be someone aboard who could. Crane regarded the notebook, deep in thought. "But why did it happen?"

"And how can we possibly vouch for the veracity of anything we have heard or learned when the line between sanity and madness had obviously become so thin?" Nelson demanded with a tired shake of his head. "I know."

"Delta was real," Crane offered, "and so was the Voyageur."

"In this case -unfortunately true." Nelson sighed aloud and reached for the pack of cigarettes within the breast pocket of his uniform shirt, a gnawing longing for the forbidden weed made all the worse by a double-cursed situation over which he had no control. As a scientist and a naval man, he had been trained to believe that there were always a myriad of possibilities if one bothered to seek them out, but at the moment, and the foreseeable future, he could think of only two -to continue the repairs on this stricken vessel...and wait. A thoroughly unacceptable situation...and -Nelson opened the foil and paper pack- Surgeon General be damned, he needed a cigarette.

"Admiral Nelson, this is Morton."

Nelson and Crane looked up at the same time as the tinny sound of Commander Chip Morton's voice came over the speaker mounted on the bulkhead of Nelson's cabin. "Wonder what's going on this time..." Nelson muttered vaguely. Though the transmission had not been preceded by the usual announcement signal -yet another electronic breakdown, no doubt- the signal was much clearer than it had been for the long hours previously, sometimes all but free of the after-effects of the plasma-burst bomb that had crippled the submarine...clear enough, at least, to hear the uneasy note in the Executive Officer's words. Nelson cast Crane a questioning look which was answered by an equally puzzled furrowing of the Commanding Officer's brow as Nelson stabbed the receive button on his desk intercom speaker. "Nelson here. What's the problem, Chip?"

There was a pause, not of silence, but of a small sigh somehow heard over the low-frequency electronic hiss. "Is the Skipper there with you?"

"He is," Nelson replied a little tersely despite himself as he automatically stuffed the unlit cigarette back into the pack secreted within his breast pocket. "Now what's the problem?"

There was a pause, but not as long. "We have a...situation in the Brig, sir," Morton said finally. "You'd better get down here."




Once, several years ago, Harriman Nelson remembered, while driving on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, traffic -which had until then flown freely- had come to a near stand-still for no apparent reason. It hadn't been until a little over an hour had passed that he had learned the reason why. As his car had inched forward along with the rest of the vehicular caravan, he had become witness to the nightmare of nearly all automobilists: a car wreck...two vehicles all but wrapped around each other like crushed soda cans, paramedics tending to victims who were well beyond all caring, and witnesses...well, it had been the rubbernecking motorists, one after the other, that had caused the traffic slow-down -not the crash itself. It had been as if the sight of spilled blood had hypnotized them into one long train of gawkers, somehow unable to look away from the horror.

This was a little like that.

As he and Captain Crane bounded down the corridor towards the Brig in response to the Executive Officer's cryptic utterance, they came upon a small crowd of crewmen (and a few officers), each wearing that familiar expression of aghast wonder as they blocked passage to the Brig, staring at -what? One of the chief petty officers was pushing his way through a milling group of crewmen, a tremor to his gruff voice despite the equally familiar bluster of a C.P.O.. "Move your butts, men -this isn't a matinee! Get back to your duties! Let the Admiral and the Captain through!" Slowly, amidst the buzz of voices, the human mass parted, and Nelson and Crane became witnesses to their own scene of horror.

Commander Morton was standing by the door to the Brig, his already fair-toned skin blanching a sickly white. By one of the bulkheads, Chief Sharkey was trying to get some kind of coherent statement out of Patterson who, all but doubled over with revulsion, had been violently physically ill and -as corpsmen backed out of the Brig, bearing two covered stretchers- was about to be sick again. Nelson and Crane approached the covered litters despite an instinctive little voice in their heads that had gone off like an emergency klaxon, demanding that they not look at what was best not seen...but there was never any choice in that. There was no way that they could have avoided seeing that the white sheets covering the body-shaped mounds were grotesquely saturated with wet gore.
The XO drew a steeling breath and pulled aside the bloodied cloths. As the stained sheets were moved, Nelson felt the remnants of a meal recently eaten, begin to force its way up his esophagus as a dizzying nausea almost overwhelmed him, but, somehow, did not. He had witnessed death before -in battle and otherwise...very rarely witnessing a death that had occurred when a man fell asleep and never awoke. He had given far more eulogies than any man should have to have given in one lifetime. Therefore, the sight of a dead body was in no way unfamiliar to him...but what Harriman Nelson saw now sickened him to the very depths of his being. That seamen Roberto Tomàs and Peter Clarke were dead was obvious...even a blind man could make no mistake in this. Their pallid faces were frozen, twisted in a last expression of fear or rage; blood like garishly painted lipstick, covering their mouths and their throats... The ragged, red tears there were jagged grins of flesh and blood.

Nelson looked away as a pale XO replaced the stained covers and saw in passing the mask of horrified fascination on Crane's face as the litters were borne away. Doc emerged from the deserted Brig, his haggard visage stricken and wan as he approached the Admiral, his medical bag hanging uselessly in his hand. "They can't have been dead for more than...two hours...less perhaps. I'd say they...they killed each other."

"And no-one heard them fighting?" Morton demanded in disbelief.

"Warrior cries are movie fodder, Chip..." Crane murmured, his voice detached and somehow distant as he recalled former training best kept unmentioned. "Even animals don't growl aloud when all they see is their opponent...and the kill."

Doc nodded, acknowledging, but not entirely comprehending. He stared down the corridor...the shadows suddenly strange to his eyes...until he returned the Admiral's questioning gaze. "Rigor hasn't set in yet."

Being a medical man, a scientist, had always to him seemed to preclude the idea of psychicism, of the reading of minds, but Doc was certain that he knew what his admiral and captain were thinking. They did not need to speak it to say it. Doc drew a deep, shuddering breath. "They attacked each other, Admiral...scratching and biting...and I don't know why." The Chief Medical Officer paused for a moment, thinking. "But I can tell you this -the wounds were not serious enough to be fatal."

There was a silence; a heavy, consuming silence...the Admiral, the Captain, and the Executive Officer exchanging looks of mute incredulity; in the background by the bulkhead, Chief Sharkey and the pallid Patterson exchanging the same. Crane shook his head slowly, unthinkingly performing a pantomime of the late crewmen's injuries with his hands as he spoke. "But how? Those wounds..."

"Severe, but not deadly...the blood-loss was significant, but not lethal." Doc's brow creased. "Without a full autopsy, I can't be certain how they died...but I do know that they died. A post-mortem blood test might tell us something." Doc turned in the direction of the corridor that led to the Sick Bay and its medical lab, but then paused, stopping in his tracks before he had gone more than a few steps. "Captain...if you would, I'd like to see the members of both the diving party to Voyageur and the shore party to Delta in the Sick Bay...yourself included."

Nelson regarded the Chief Medical Officer sharply, interrupting before the Captain could speak. "What are you thinking, Doc?"

"With the Admiral's permission..." Doc said grimly, casting a glance at his medical bag. "I'd rather not say...until I'm certain."




"It's a high fly ball! And the San Diego Padres sweep the World Series for the fourth time in a row! A first in baseball history-"

There was a loud, collective groan as video phantoms of the World Series most recently past faded as the video tape came to an end and, for those who had betted badly, wistful hopes that history might reverse itself, ended with it...not that anyone had been serious about that. Or... and Kowalski glanced at the jury-rigged video monitor one of the technicians' details had set up in the Mess Room...he hoped that no-one had taken a wish like that seriously as much as he himself might have wished otherwise. Losing one hundred dollars to Lieutenant Horowitz on a baseball bet was not exactly something he cared to remember or admit...but there were better reasons than lost bets to want to change the past.

Kowalski scowled to himself as the synthetic Styrofoam cup that he was carrying in his bandaged hand slipped ever so slightly from his grasp, hot milky coffee sloshing noisily from side to side within the cup's basin as he quickly righted his grip, avoiding a messy and embarrassing incident. Two or three of the dispersing audience glanced uneasily in the seaman's direction and just as quickly averted their gazes when they realized that their attention was being returned.

The cords in Kowalski's neck stiffened visibly, his jaw clenching tightly shut, as he willed the sharp response forming within his brain to remain there, silent and unspoken. He was neither blind nor stupid -he had seen those same looks before, recently, and had heard the muffled whisperings that somehow stopped when his presence became known. Almost unconsciously, the seaman's free hand traveled up his arm and massaged the dull ache in the spot where Doc had taken that last sample of blood only hours before...tests taken to make sure that Doc had not missed something the first time around...tests taken to be certain that neither the shore party nor the diving party had brought "something" aboard the Seaview.

Kowalski sat heavily at one of the long Mess Room tables, alone with his thoughts. That was the rumor, wasn't it? Scuttlebutt had it that one or more members of either party had brought something, some sickness aboard Seaview. That Doc's second battery of tests -even more intensive despite being handicapped by having to use old manual equipment because of the submarine's still-compromised electrical system- had proven otherwise, did not seem to matter. The crew was still afraid.

A psychotic snap -a state of temporary psychosis brought on by stress and fear- had pressed Clarke and Tomàs to attack each other. Biocardio-infarctions -terror-induced heart attacks- had killed them...or so Doc had said. No sickness. No nebulous plague. Just an extraordinary set of circumstances that had one chance in a million of happening again as they had. But the fear was still there...and so were the looks, the whispers...the doubt. Kowalski sipped the brew in the cup, grimacing at the bitter aftertaste of over-brewed coffee, and suppressed the tremor in his hands. Yeah...the doubt was there...and two more good sailors were not.

"'Ski."

Kowalski looked up as Riley sat just across from him at the same table, mildly surprised at the young crewman's grim, grey pallor and raised an eyebrow in bewilderment as the dour-faced young crewman produced a small carton of 2% milk -apparently, the refrigeration units were in working order, Kowalski noted silently as Riley doggedly, awkwardly struggled with the container's tightly sealed spout, hands fumbling with the fused cardboard until the opening suddenly tore, splashing hands and uniform with the cold, white liquid. Riley's youthful countenance twisted with a scowl that was almost as comical as it was alien to his face. He glanced up at the crewman who sat across from him and then buried himself in the seemingly impossible task of not spilling anymore of the milk as he anxiously searched for a dry cloth, muttering audibly under his breath: "Fan-fucking-tastic..."

Somehow, Kowalski managed not to smile and nudged an ever-present dispenser of white paper-serviettes that had somehow escaped the perturbed Riley's notice over to where the young crewman was furiously struggling to sop up the small, widening pool of liquid before him with a crumpled handkerchief he had yanked out of a pocket before the milk ended up on the deck which had been swabbed only a short while ago. "Doc, put you through the ringer, Stu?" Kowalski asked finally, peering through the rising billow of translucent steam rolling down the sides of his cup.

Riley shrugged slightly with a deep, dramatic sigh of the overly burdened. "And then some," he muttered through clenched teeth and then shook his head at the results of his efforts. He grabbed the wet paper and then, after a moment's hesitation, added the soaking handkerchief to the pile, and then tossed the sodden ball towards a waiting waste basket in which it landed with a dull, sloppy thud. "Didn't tell me anything I didn't already know."

"Like..?"

"Dig." Riley cracked an odd, sour grin and dug into a breast pocket of his duty uniform, pulling out a small, clear plastic pouch which contained three pills. Kowalski recognized the medication immediately. The navy and turquoise capsules were two half-grain units of Fiorinal-C, a potent narcotic painkiller. The tiny, flat, scored orange pill was probably dimenhydrinate, Gravol, or maybe Dramamine -for nausea. He remembered the prescribed medications all too well -he had been obligated to take them on and off this past week to battle a cluster of migraines...and Riley was having to take them too? As Riley would say -total bummer.

Kowalski felt a sympathetic twist of nausea as Riley downed the pills with a draft of the remaining milk and almost gagged on them as they inched their way down his throat...but the moment passed and the young seaman was finally able to relax a little, the tension leaving his shoulders as he regarded his friend through eyes that were already becoming a little glassy in response to the drug. "Is it always like this, 'Ski?"

Kowalski studied Riley's pale face silently before speaking. "What do you mean?"

"These - these migraine-things," Riley explained with open impatience. "I mean, like, I've had head-aches before, you know, and this thing is way more frightful than those -even worse than the day after that time I got totally wasted on that shore leave in Okinawa...Japanese rice wine, dude..."

"It's that bad, huh?"

Riley closed his eyes for a long, drawn out minute, and then opened them again... slowly... his voice, little more than a weak whisper. "It's like this, dude... I can feel a piece of lint falling on my skin. There are some guys down the corridor a ways -I can hear them, 'Ski, like they were right beside me -yelling." He pointed upwards with an unsteady hand at the bar-shaped halogen light fixtures mounted on the ceiling. "Those feel like I'm staring at the noon-day sun and on top of all that, I feel like I've got a ballpeen hammer whacking away at my skull and the sight of food makes me want to puke." Riley stopped as if exhausted from the effort of talking and nodded with great care. "Yeah...it's that bad."

Kowalski studiously stared at the dregs within his cup, wishing that there was more he could do than offer his sympathy, but there was not. The pain was like that -when it was there, it was as if it would never leave. When it was gone, it was as if it had never been. As Riley cradled his head on his folded arms, two of the engineering corps, Halder and Bates, walked by the table, and Kowalski could not help but notice the familiar uneasy look that they cast in his and Riley's direction as they exchanged looks of...what? Kowalski met their eyes and they looked away quickly. The doubt again. It was always the doubt.

Once, not all that long ago, Kowalski knew that he would have been in Halder and Bates' faces had they so much as looked at him the wrong way -his nature to act first and then think was legend- but this was different. Perhaps, admittedly kicking and screaming, his career on Seaview was finally dragging him into maturity. He felt too tired, too burned-out right now to bother-

Suddenly, there was a loud crash as the metal serviette-dispenser landed on the deck, opening and spilling its contents. "What the fuck are you staring at!"

The whispering audience of two stopped in their tracks in the same mute disbelief that bound Kowalski who looked on, a blank expression on his face, as Riley jumped to his feet, seemingly unaware that only minutes ago he had been all but crippled with pain, his normally cherubic face pinched and reddened with anger. "You heard me..." Riley hissed through clenched teeth. "What the fuck are you staring at!"

It was like looking at a changeling; a man whose face and form were identical to the person one knew intimately, and yet...was not that man. This was very much like that. Kowalski stood up slowly, something akin to genuine alarm tickling at the back of his mind as the bizarre scene continued to play itself out before him...a horror movie without a script and an end he didn't particularly want to see. Stu Riley was not one to back out of a fight...and he was also not one to start one...if he could help it. But there was something wrong here...deadly wrong. He knew it. Bates and Halder knew it. Neither man had moved and didn't seem to know whether they should...or not.

"Stu..." At the sound of Kowalski's voice, Riley spun around, eyes glazed and narrow...with suspicion? Madness? Maybe both. That wasn't the Stuart Riley he knew. "Stu...just let it go," he said, almost pleading, as a tentative, hopefully mollifying smile played at the corners of his mouth. "Just let it go, okay?" Kowalski spread his hands in a placating gesture. "You don't want Cookie to call Mr. Morton to throw you in the Brig, do you?"

Riley stared for a moment -at Kowalski, at Bates and Halder who were still frozen in bewilderment- as his own young face fell blank. His fists slowly uncurled and he put a shaky hand to his head as he collapsed like a marionette whose strings have been cut...and crumpled to the deck, his limbs splayed out, spasming violently.

The paralysis of disbelief lasted only a second or two. "Get the corpsmen down here!" Kowalski barked even as he dove for the deck at Riley's side. "NOW!" At the edges of his perceptions, Kowalski heard the one of his fellow crewmen -he didn't really care which- scrambling to obey. Whatever they suspected...whatever they feared, the fact was that a fellow crewman was down. For the moment, at least, that was more important than their private fears. Mental scraps of medical training flashed through Kowalski's mind and though that training had covered the treatment of epileptic seizures, he would never have expected- Kowalski's eyes widened with horror as the convulsing Riley began to gag and then choke, his contorted face darkening to purple. No, no, no! It was not physically possible to swallow one's tongue!

Kowalski thrust his fingers into the crewman's mouth. "Dammit, Stu, no! You're not gonna bail on me-" Kowalski cried out involuntarily as the stricken crewman's teeth suddenly clamped down on his fingers -hard- hard enough that they drew blood which spilled from the wounds and onto Riley's face...and then it stopped. The seizure just stopped. Kowalski ignored the throbbing pain radiating from his wounded fingers as the wracking tremors in Riley's body faded as he blinked...dazed and bewildered, like a man waking from a nightmare, and turned his head and looked at the friend who could only regard him with worry-laden care. Riley's eyes were as wide and bright as those of a small child as a vague smile lighted his red-smeared lips. "Oh wow, 'Ski...what a rush..." His eyes closed.

Thundering feet announced the arrival of the corpsmen; corpsmen who stopped for a moment, frozen by the sight of the grim human tableau before them of Kowalski cradling Riley's limp, lifeless body in his arms.

There was no longer any need to hurry.



6




It had been said that the dead traveled fast. Perhaps that was true. Perhaps it wasn't...but certain was the fact that news of death traveled very fast indeed. Loose lips had carried the news of the deaths of Tomàs and Clarke, and the horrifically peculiar circumstances surrounding their demise, around the entirety of Seaview within hours. The news of the death of Stuart Riley had covered the ship within a mere matter of minutes. But while sorrow had attended the demise of the crewmen whose lives had been lost when Seaview had been stricken by Delta's plasma-burst bomb, fear had attended the deaths of Tomàs, Clarke, and Riley.

What had been suspected, and dreaded, had become a certainty in the hearts and minds of most of Seaview's crew: when the shore and diving parties had returned to Seaview, something had boarded the submarine with them...some sickness...some madness-inducing plague that all the decontamination equipment and procedures they had used, had somehow missed. No-one knew or would admit to knowing who had started that particular rumor or how that person had gotten what information he had on the nebulous sickness on Delta in the first place -it didn't really matter anymore- but the fear aboard Seaview was an almost palpable reality. Regardless of rank, the crew had begun to regard each other with ill-concealed suspicion, each man secretly afraid that the one serving next to him might be carrying -what?

That was the question. What? Doc looked up from the stereoscopic microscope, his eyes reddened from weariness and long hours of effort as he made some notations on the laptop computer perched on the cluttered lab table to his side. A heavy sigh escaped his lips as he brushed aside the limp strand of hair that had drifted into his eyes with a frustrated flip of his hand. A glance at the mute electronic brain which held all of the medical information that the medical corps, including himself, had gathered during this cruise told him little. There was knowledge there, perhaps even some clues; bytes that held a tiny piece of fact or conjecture each...but no answers...and answers were what they needed right now.

"Well?"

Harriman Nelson's gruff voice broke a stillness that had been punctuated for the lest few hours only by the soft droning hum of the electronic equipment that had finally seen fit to come on-line in the medical lab (for now, at least), the dull clicking of computer keyboard keys, and the low sound of the breathing of the men that waited within the sterile room; a soft intaking of breath that fell still just for a second or two as the lights within the lab flickered, dimmed and then flared to almost, but not quite their normal intensity as the stricken ship shifted ever so subtly and then settled again, reminding them that their present problem was in no way their only one.

Doc regarded the bar-shaped sterile white lights mounted on the ceiling with silent unease and then, with a visible effort to appear untroubled, reached over to the sliver-thin laptop computer, turning it so that the Admiral could see better the read-out displayed on its screen. Nelson nudged the apparently distracted Lee Crane with a tap on the shoulder, indicating for him to look as well...which the Captain did with ill-concealed reluctance. "It's as I told you before," the Chief Medical Officer said, flexing his stiffened fingers. "According to the tests I was able to conduct, Stuart Riley should be alive and well."

Crane's eyes narrowed visibly, disbelieving, as he took in the information displayed on the pale-green screen. He had some medical training -enough, at least, to understand what he was reading- but he had also talked to and had tried to comfort one grief-stricken seaman named Kowalski for whom the death-throes of a friend had been immovably burned into memory.

Riley...

Crane swallowed. He had liked the occasionally flighty young crewman too. "According to Kowalski -according to other witnesses as well- Riley seemed to have some sort of violent episode and was then struck by an 'epileptic' seizure of some sort. Doc, people have died because of them before."

"True...but not five hours ago, I treated Riley for a violent migraine and even with the compromised equipment, I would have detected any cerebral abnormalities indicative of an aneurysm, hemorrhaging, tumorous presence, or epilepsy." Doc caught Admiral Nelson's sharply questioning look. "Non-intrusive scans in both diagnostic and post-mortem phases... Either way, I'm telling you that I can find no reason physical reason why a healthy young man should suddenly keel over and die. A full autopsy might tell me something more." Doc paused, his expression slightly sour. "Were I able to perform one."

"Unless it was a disease that can't be detected by normal means."

Both Nelson and Doc started at Crane's grim suggestion, but they both knew that the Captain had merely voiced what they, too, suspected. The medical corps had studied -were still studying- the recorded evidence of the illness science had created; a virus that had mutated and had become all but impossible to detect by the scientists who had seen to its creation...a disease that might have boarded Seaview with her men...a plague that had no cure. As the implications of what they knew and feared weighed heavily on the men within the submarine, within this room, there came a new awareness -that of if the Seaview had become a plague ship, repaired or not, she could not touch port until a cure was found. The fact was that they didn't know one way or another -there was no real proof beyond that of circumstance- and that was far more frightening than anything else the crew had suffered thus far -pointless to seek what might not have been there...and maybe all but impossible to protect oneself against something that might have been.

"But Dr. Bergman's personal journal..." Nelson muttered in mild protest as he paced the length of the room restlessly. "There must be something about the reagent that can detect the presence of the virus. If it is aboard we have to know! If...if we were to go against orders and perform internal examinations, we would have to know what precautions to take -if any can be taken at all!"

"Yes, sir, I know. But if it is in there, we haven't found it yet." Doc stabbed a button on the laptop unit and the computer uttered a curious mechanical hum as the data within it began to download into the main medical computer. "Yeoman Myerson's working on it now. He has excellent Hebrew...but there is as much gibberish in Dr. Bergman's log as there is logical observation. It may take-"

"Look, you drop-out ex-airdale, I can count!"

"How about counting all the times when you've been wrong!"

The conversation between Nelson, Crane, and Doc fell suddenly silent as the sounds of a very heated verbal exchange -loud and growing louder- reached their ears from the adjoining medical stores. Doc's jaw tightened involuntarily as he cast an apologetic look of embarrassment in the direction of his superior officers and then shot one of anger in the direction of the other room, the hem of his lab coat catching and tearing on the sharp, crumpled edge of the recently battered desk as he stood up sharply and crossed the distance to the partially closed door.

The heated debate came to an abrupt end, voices falling silent, as the two corpsmen stopped, frozen in the instant before coming to blows, by the thunder of the medical stores' door crashing against the bulkhead, their superior officer standing there -arms folded, fingers tapping out a muted staccato rhythm on the sleeve of his upper arm. "Well..?"

Roderiguez glanced at Gill who returned the look just as uneasily -the shared expression of a doomed man. An eternity seemed to pass before Roderiguez rediscovered his voice despite the Chief Medical Officer's baleful glare. He proffered the clipboard in his hand almost timidly. "We... seem to be missing several units of whole blood from the refrigerated medical stores...sir."

"It was a miscount, Roderiguez," Gill hissed under his breath. "Blood doesn't just go-"

"That will be all, gentlemen!" Doc snapped, lips drawn tight as he quickly scanned the printed page. "Do either of you realize that the Admiral and the Captain are in the other room! I cannot believe your-" The physician's lined brow furrowed visibly. "...your..." Doc's eyes darted along the printed words as he quickly flipped the pages, one after the other, his indignation over neglected protocol taking second place to something more immediate. "Is this correct?"

"Yes, sir," Roderiguez answered, not daring to sound as smug as he was tempted to feel. He cast a glare of warning to the contentious corpsman to his side who rolled his eyes heavenward as if to beg off on another argument on the matter. "We are missing sixteen units of whole blood -seven 'O' positive, two 'B' positive, two 'B' negative, and five 'AB' negative...and that's taking into account what we used in medical procedures after the crash."

The puzzled cast to the Chief Medical Officer's visage deepened, his pale eyes scanning the pages over and over again as if the effort would change what he read, as his lips became a tight thin line. Sixteen units... Even under the best of circumstances, they could not afford to be missing sixteen units of whole blood. "All right," he said finally. "Let's look through the medical stores again."



"Doc's dealt with the situation by the sound of it."

"Hmn..."

A troubled cast darkened Admiral Nelson's brow at the sound of Crane's non-response -an answer that was more an inarticulated grunt than an actual acknowledgment...which probably meant that the young officer hadn't heard a word that he had said. Nelson pushed himself off of the large faux-wood desk and walked over to where Crane stood staring at a laminated copy of a map of the Seaview, his dark eyes fixed as if mesmerized by the bulkhead-mounted image so common to every deck of the ship. Nelson gave the static image a half-interested cursory look, the Captain not seeming to notice that he was there. "What are you thinking?" he asked gently.

Crane stared at the image a moment longer, one hand unconsciously twisting the signet ring on the other. "I was just wondering about things...about the impracticality of a quarantine on a submarine," he said quietly and glanced down at the ring with a slightly troubled frown -the ring was loose and slid from his finger easily...far more easily than it had only days ago. What an incredible thought...Crane almost idly slid the ring back and forth for a moment or two...quickweight-loss through constant tension -fantastic idea although a little impractical, he thought, grim humor tempting him to smile when he had little right and even less reason. He turned slowly and regarded Nelson who stood waiting with the troubled countenance of the overburdened it seemed, for the rest of the answer. "I'd always wondered about it...carriers and destroyers could maybe manage one, but not a submarine...not with our air system and the way that we're 'housed' together ... but I never thought that the idea would actually ever be put to the test."

"We don't know that it has now," Nelson countered quietly. "Every casualty on this ship during this cruise has had a logical explanation that precludes plague...or viral illness of any kind."

A brief sardonic smile animated Crane's young countenance. "Do you really believe that?"

Lies and half-truths manifested themselves within Nelson's psyche, masquerading as absolute truths. The Admiral of the Seaview studied his captain who seemed to be waiting for an answer. Like many times in the past, Crane had been succinct and to the point -did Harriman Nelson believe that there was no mysterious virus on board Seaview? Did he? Yes...no...he didn't know. In the end, Nelson said nothing and in so doing, had given the Captain the awful answer he had suspected all along. There were few things as terrible as dread-filled certainty ...certainty that Seaview had become a plague ship.

"They were far too young, y'know," Crane said when the silence seemed to drag on far too long. "Riley...Tomàs...Clarke...just kids -and children shouldn't be on a ship like this."

"Were you an adult when you joined the Navy, Lee?" Nelson asked pointedly though he already knew the answer to his question. Hadn't he been there...known Crane for most of his life? Lee Crane had joined the Navy young; underage if the truth be known...a skinny young kid whose exceptional intelligence and mile-long stubborn streak had impressed the then Captain Harriman Nelson to use his small measure of influence to waive the technicalities and stretch the rules a little to allow the otherwise underage boy to make use of a little known clause in the regulations to join the Navy -a decision he had never regretted. His tutelage, among others, had honed the raw talents of a willful boy into the finely tuned skills of a man, an officer -a captain- when most Crane's age were still struggling with the entrance exams at the Naval Academy...a young man who grieved because he cared almost too much for his men and had no choice but to accept that death was no respecter of youth.

Nelson rested a hand on Crane's shoulder and felt the tension bleed out of it...at least, a little. "Lee, we have survived far worse than this. If something is aboard, we will find the cure." Crane nodded mutely. "For now, I want you to have a rest. You've been up on your feet for far too long."

Crane glanced at his watch automatically. "No...I'd rather stay on watch. I'm really not all that tired," he protested.

Nelson folded his arms with mock severity, recognizing the familiar pattern of the usual argument being woven again. "I don't remember inviting debate, Lee."

Crane regarded the Admiral uncertainly, suddenly, despite himself, afraid. "Are you...are you putting me into quarantine ...sir?"

"No," Nelson replied evenly, a small twinkle in his pale eyes, "but what I...what the crew needs right now is a captain -not a zombie. I'll inform you should anything arise." Nelson saw another familiar look forming on the young commanding officer's face and hastened to add: "Don't make me order you to do it. I assure you that it'll be embarrassing."

For a moment, Crane seemed on the verge of protesting anyway as he waged a silent war within himself, and then slowly relented, a small sigh of what seemed to be relief escaping his lips. "Aye, sir."

The stillness was complete again after the door to the medical lab closed softly behind Seaview's captain; a far more complete stillness than normal because in the present quiet, Nelson suddenly realized that the familiar seemingly omnipresent hum of Seaview's engines no longer formed a part of the general rhythm of the ship...and in that moment, Nelson was suddenly aware that he missed it. The Admiral turned, hearing the sound of the door to the medical stores click as it was shut. Doc was standing there with a puzzled frown on his brow as he studied the stores' list again, reminding himself that the figures had not changed -sixteen units of whole blood were still missing and unaccounted for. "Doc?"

"Yes, sir?"

Nelson crossed the distance between them. "Of the casualties thus far, how many of the deaths could be considered...'strange'?"

The Chief Medical Officer hesitated as he went over the mental roster within his brain -it didn't take long. "Of the twenty-five deaths...thirteen, including Stuart Riley. I'd be more certain if all of the A-level diagnostic equipment were on-line...even from simple blood tests."

Nelson grimaced slightly at thoughts which he did not wish to think and realizations which refused to be denied -something deadly had boarded his submarine...and it didn't walk with two legs. He caught Doc's anxious expression. "You'll have them...and more."




"'Ski..."

Seaman Patterson's hesitant greeting was met with silence, the person to whom it was addressed not seeming to hear it, or just not bothering to answer -which situation it was, he did not care to guess. Very few of Seaview's crew seemed to be thinking all that clearly lately and no matter what he decided, the answer would probably be wrong. Patterson felt the sealed carton of burned-out Missile Room circuitry slip slightly from his grasp, and shifted its position in his arms, determined not to drop it and make a scene. He didn't want to draw attention. Not now. The Missile Room was far from deserted, repair details working at one end or the other, and he...well...he just wanted to talk -if the presently taciturn Kowalski, who was working on an instrumentation panel with single-minded concentration, cared to bother responding -he hadn't thus far...and that wasn't like him at all.

The Kowalski that Patterson knew loved to talk, to voice his opinions on one thing or another, but since the incident in the Mess Room, beyond making his report to the Captain, Kowalski seemed to have stopped talking altogether of anything...even of grief. Patterson gnawed his lower lip with unease as Kowalski continued to work, not even acknowledging his presence as he pulled the instrumentation panel from its recess within the bulkhead, wires dangling from the section, as he muttered to himself, cursing softly under his breath. "'Ski..."

Kowalski continued to work within the panel with a wickedly sharp splicing blade, for some odd reason using the keen-edged instrument to remove bits and pieces of energy pulse-charred insulation, as sweat began to trail down the sides of his face. "What!" he responded finally, sharply, as he glanced to the side out of the corners of his eyes towards a waiting Patterson.

"I..." Patterson paused, unsure how to continue. "I heard about Stu."

"So?"

"I-I know how you feel."

"Do you?" Kowalski paused in his furious efforts for a moment, just long enough to mop his damp forehead with the wrinkled sleeve of his scarlet utility uniform, the hand trembling enough for the sharp splicing tool to fall from his grasp into the mesh of wire and circuitry before him on the deck. "Shit..."

"Yeah, I do..." Patterson knelt beside the stooped-over seaman and placed his own burden on the deck beside him, casting a glance to one side and then the other. Chief Sharkey was supervising a detail not far from them and scuttlebutt had it that the Captain wanted the men to keep busy so that they wouldn't think too much...but he had been thinking...thinking about a lot of things...thinking about how the Seaview had started this cruise with her full compliment of 125 men and had had that number reduced to one-hundred. He felt the loss...Kowalski did too -he was sure of that. Kowalski and Riley hadn't always seen eye to eye on things, but they had been friends. Good friends. "It sometimes helps to talk, you know."

"Hmph..."

"'Ski, I do know how it is when you lose someone you care about. It was the same for me when my father was killed." Kowalski ceased his efforts for a moment, eyes moving as if searching his brain for the memory, but then shrugged slightly and continued with his work. "Grief is like that," Patterson said quietly. "It hurts like hell...and made me say and do a lot of crazy things. I'm lucky that the Skipper and the Admiral understood...but it passed, 'Ski. It'll pass for you too."

"Crazy..." Kowalski stopped in mid-effort, the sharp-edged instrument now clenched within his tensing, bunching hand. He winced, a hiss of pain escaping his tightened lips, as he suddenly turned and regarded Patterson with narrowing eyes...like a beast studying his prey...or something worse. "I'm...not crazy," he said in a low, distracted voice. "I'm not."

"I didn't say you were, 'Ski..." Patterson's eyes widened with puzzled alarm, his attention suddenly caught by something stranger than his shipmate's bewildering attitude. At first, no sound, no voice came from Patterson's mouth, and then... "'Ski, your hand..."

A shadow of puzzlement crossed Kowalski's face, a sudden uncertainty and then, torpid comprehension, as if the messages from his ears took their time to reach his brain, as he slowly regarded his hand. Thick, liquid carmine had begun to seep between the fingers; the sharp metal sliver biting into the tender flesh of the palm of the clenched fist which continued to tighten ...knuckles blanching white, as the sanguine fluid began to drip, droplets of red falling to the dull grey steel deck...and though he could obviously feel the pain, the hand tightened further still.

It was a moment that seemed to last an eternity. "'Ski! Don't!" Patterson lunged and grasped the bloodied hand, struggling to pry the fingers from the sticky makeshift weapon, but madness was strength, and the seaman felt a crashing pain and saw stars as the knuckles of Kowalski's fist connected with his jaw, sending him hurtling backwards to land heavily on the hard deck. There was no time to debate the situation -he and Kowalski had been the best of friends for as long as he could remember- but when the stars blinding his eyes had faded, Patterson realized that Kowalski had pinned him to the deck, straddling his chest, the bloodied blade being pressed ever closer to his throat as he clamped his hands around the man's wrist, struggling to push it away, Kowalski's face twisted with some kind of mindless rage. "'Ski...no!"

"Dammit, sailor! Get the heck offa him!" The blood-stained blade fell to the deck with a harsh clatter as the raging seaman was torn away from his would-be victim. Patterson, dazed with incredulity still, felt himself pulled to his shaky knees by Chief Sharkey, a tiny stinging pain on his throat...barely noticeable...the trickle of blood from the pinpoint wound more so -and beyond that insignificant discomfort, as if from a great distance, he heard Kowalski's garbled, unintelligible screams as he was pinned to the deck by several crewmen as he struggled wildly in inexplicable terror and rage.

There was the sound of running feet resounding against cold steel; the sound of corpsmen bounding into the Missile Room, having been summoned by Chief Sharkey who half-supported Patterson by the arm -both of them could only look on in horror. A foam of spittle and blood from his bitten tongue spattered Kowalski's contorted face, the arms of fellow crewmen imprisoning him though only barely as a corpsman drew a supply of an suspicious, clear fluid into a hypodermic needle and then emptied the contents into the maddened seaman's arm. Seconds passed. Little by little, like an old-fashioned clockwork toy that was winding down, Kowalski's frenzied struggle weakened, spasms fading as the powerful narcotic numbed his enflamed nervous system and leadened his limbs.

Corpsmen loaded the semi-conscious crewman onto a gurney and bore him away, leaving a haunted audience behind them. Sharkey, dazed himself, took Patterson by the arm as the young crewman stood, his pallid face all but blank. "C'mon, kid..." he said, spying the small bloodstain on the neck of the seaman's uniform. "We'd better get you t' the Sick Bay too."

Patterson stared in the direction that the corpsmen had gone for a moment longer before he answered, his voice a mere whisper. "He said it couldn't happen like on the Voyageur...he said it'd never happen..."

The Chief Petty Officer shook his head slowly, the information of what had happened on Voyageur and what he had been told had occurred at Delta still ringing in his brain...and realized that he had no comfort to give.




Memory was a very selective thing.

There were sounds, sights, and smells that passed without notice...without thought...and then, there were those other things -things which one needed experience only once to remember them for a lifetime. His experiences as a corpsman had taught him as much. Sounds filtered through the closed doors, through the walls, from Seaview's surgical theater to Sick Bay proper -muted, but he could still hear everything. Lying here, just thinking...listening...had sharpened his hearing to a point he had never known...as he heard things he remembered hearing an all too short while ago on his own ship. He wished he could forget.

Sterile white sheets rustled softly as Thibideau turned his head ever so slightly in the direction of the voices beyond sight and reach. He could move a little more freely now and yet remain unnoticed. Sometimes, someone would send in one of this ship's N.C.O's, Devereaux, to try to communicate with him -in some odd dialect of French- but that didn't happen much now. What point was there in trying to talk to someone who "couldn't" respond? It made it easier to listen openly and not be seen...but this time...he wished he had not listened. Sometimes, it was better to remain ignorant...ignorant of what was happening aboard this ship...and to that crewman they had rushed into the theater which sounded far too near.

"He's convulsing!"

"Damn -flat line!"

The impassive mask that covered Thibideau's visage flickered ever so slightly as the sharp crackling sound of electricity from a defibrillator in action -how could he not know that somehow insidious noise when he had heard it more than once on the Voyageur as he and others of the Voyageur's medical corps had tried to rescue shipmates in the Sickness' final stages in the days that they had known little more than nothing about it? Cardio-stimulators. Medications that ran the length of the alphabet. Anticonvulsants. None of them had helped then. Nothing would help now. He knew that...and accepted it at last. The end was always the same.

"Damn... We've lost him..."

"Who do we inform first?"

"The Skipper, I guess..."

"Did he have family?"

"I think so -a brother, at least. Stan Kowalski, if I'm right. I'll check."

"Don't bother rushing. We're not going anywhere for awhile."

"Damn..."

Thibideau let the voices fade to the back of his senses, his eyes closing and then opening again a sliver as he scanned his surroundings until his train of vision fell upon the map of the Seaview mounted on the bulkhead, and studied it. Observation room...engine room...reactor...and so on. He used to consider his photographic memory more a burden than a blessing -sights would stick in his head longer than he cared to have them- but as the image of the map burned into his mind's eye, he felt an almost perverse gratitude.

He could not change what had happened, but perhaps he could put an end to it.




"I think I've got it, sir!"

A tentative look of relief washed over Chip Morton's face as the glowing red digits of the LCD depth gauge flickered and then remained constant, the silence of the Control Room crew as complete as his own as the liquid crystal numbers began their steady, rapid count. Perhaps it was an unwillingness on his own part to move as the times dictated that he should, but he had always held a certain preference for the old-fashioned fibre-needle depth gauges of old -as clunky and less accurate as they were said to have been by present standards. At least, they would not have so easily and completely succumbed to the disruptive energy pulse that had so completely crippled this unit...until only minutes ago.

No matter. The numerical countdown gradually slowed and then finally completed its march, newly repaired infra-red sensors finally able to determine the true depth of the grey lady's present resting place. Morton's silent expression of tentative relief faded, eyes widening with incredulity. "Depth...one-thousand five-hundred and thirteen feet... One thousand five-hundred and thirteen feet!" Despite himself, the Executive Officer's voice had risen, loud enough to be heard and he could all but feel the eyes of the Control Room crew upon him. He dashed away the thin film of sweat that had formed upon his brow. Once, not all that long ago, fifteen hundred and thirteen feet would have been death to a submarine -crush depth- and though Seaview could dive several thousand feet below that old limit in complete safety, normally, the mighty submersible was not at her best. The fact of the matter was that he did not know what fragile Seaview's actual crush depth was right now. He shook his head slowly, whispering. "Can't be right... Vasquez-" The seaman at the Control Room depth gauge regarded the XO uncertainly. "Are you sure this is right?"

"Yes, sir... I mean, I think so..."

"What do you mean you think so?"

"I-I only began training with this detail two weeks ago, sir..." the seaman stammered. "Kowalski was supposed to-" Vasquez stopped, swallowing deeply as a new, sudden silence began to crush in on him. "I mean-"

Morton's fingers tightened visibly on the edge of the console board, his eyes traveling reluctantly to where a familiar watch station remained vacant, as he willed his mask of imperturbability to neither shift nor weaken. "And what about Milner, Kormos, or Walkingman?" he demanded, remembering the names of the technicians he should have been able to expect to have been on this detail.

Vasquez's eyes were downcast, his voice small, when he finally answered. "I...I don't know...sir."

A sharp retort formed on Chip Morton's lips, but was never spoken aloud as he paused, suddenly uncertain. They weren't on the casualty list, so where... He regarded the anxious young seaman who sat waiting for some awful fate to befall him. "Just...just do your best. Carry on." Vasquez nodded in puzzled silence as his executive officer crossed the distance to where Seaview's bulkhead-mounted main computer remained, pulsing with the light of artificial life. There was a single moment's hesitation before he punched in his personal code, instructing the unit to recognize his voice. "Computer, give me the most up to date list of functioning crew members registered as of last watch."

There was a soft whirring sound before the computer's synthesized voice answered, low, mechanical, and slightly feminine. "Request acknowledged. Please stand by." As the computer's mainframe began to hum with increased activity, Morton's eyes narrowed with concentration as he mentally searched the hidden recesses of mind and memory -the familiar niggling itch at the back of his brain had returned with far greater force than it had when he had discussed his fears with the Admiral only a relatively short while ago.

Something was very wrong.




Some time ago, far more years than he cared to admit, an eager red-haired youth named Harriman Nelson had entered the Naval Academy and had had the good fortune to meet a wise instructor who had imparted to him a nugget of information that no text book contained. He had said that when the moment was right, usually in the solitude of a sailor's thoughts, a seaman could attain a oneness with the vessel on which he served and the waters on which she sailed. It was a treasure of knowledge that Nelson had passed on to the captain of this vessel -though Crane was generally too pragmatic a man to accept such a romantic notion as solid fact- and hoped that the Captain of the Seaview would at least one day learn to accept it as he did...because foolishness though the saying might have been, it was nonetheless the truth. He felt for this ship.

Nelson paused, halting in his tracks momentarily as a low groan traveled the length of his stricken submarine, sounding almost like a human moan of anguish. Seaview was not a living being -he made no pretense about that- but she contained lives...and...memories...memories of those who lived...and those who had died. Too many...

Nelson squared his shoulders and continued on his trek, a clipboard detailing each work detail in his hand. Seaview was a wounded ship, a crippled ship, but she was no longer a dying ship. The arduous efforts of her men had seen to that...and were the circumstances normal, her present situation might have been considered an unpleasant, but relatively minor hindrance; a distressing, but not insurmountable difficulty in the course of a cruise not unlike others accounted for in Seaview's ongoing log.

But the situation was far from normal.

The low, distant wail of a laser welding torch met Nelson's ears as he rounded a corner in the long corridor along Officers' Country -another repair detail...another effort being made to repair the chinks in the mighty submersible's armor...would that human flesh were so easily returned to proper order. Within the last two hours, three crewmen had died -two succumbing to their injuries despite Doc's best efforts against the impossible, and Kowalski... He had no idea in Heaven or Hell why he had died. Neither did Doc. The demise of the likable, rough-edged young sailor, who had always shown the potential for a great naval career, had brought the grim tally of inexplicable deaths up to fourteen - and of those, four had been part of the shore party that had reconnoitered the decimated Station Delta and had been attacked there.

Clarke... Tomàs... Riley...Kowalski... Logic indicated a disease, some awful insidious disease, where none appeared to exist. Logic also indicated the transmitting of that disease between crew members, but gave no clue of how ...or who would be next...or why.

Petty Officer First Class Devereaux, who had certifiably never been sick a day in his life, not so much as catching a cold, appeared in every way as healthy as ever, and Captain Crane... Nelson frowned to himself, unwilling to complete the thought, unable not to. As a scientist, he should have been able to see the potentials with cold, clinical detachment -if Crane and Devereaux succumbed, as had the rest of the shore party, the presence of some invisible contagion would be proven beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt...but as the friend and mentor of the young captain he had seen grow from infancy to manhood, the concept was intolerable...and he refused to accept it, unless he had no other choice.

"Sir!"

Nelson was abruptly brought back to present reality as he all but walked into the solid form of Seaview's galley chief, Cookie, who with a deft movement caught his small burden before it went crashing to the deck. "Uh... Sorry, sir...."

"Never mind, Cookie, it-" Mild puzzlement and gradual comprehension creased the Admiral's brow as regarded the loaded dinner tray that had almost decorated the deck at his feet a moment ago -the covered plates, a Spartan meal at best, apparently untouched- and met the galley chief's distressed face, glancing in the apparent direction from which the man had just come. "The Captain's not eating?"

"No, sir." Cookie glanced down at the tray, well aware of his admiral's stern gaze all the while. "Black coffee's all he'll take."

"For how long?"

For a moment, Cookie looked here, there, and anywhere but at his admiral, unwilling to be the equivalent of a snitch, but having no real choice. "Since...breakfast...yesterday maybe."

"I see..." Nelson had seen many naval cruises and had come to know how even the some of the best trained sailors reacted when faced with overwhelming odds that seemed to lead only to death. Some fought all the harder, some went off the deep-end, and some...some, when they had used up everything they had inside them, just gave up. They stopped caring whether they lived or died. He didn't want to believe... "Give it here," Nelson said finally, the clipboard tucked under his arm as he held out his hands towards the confused galley chief.

"But, sir..." Cookie protested weakly even as he handed over the covered tray. "The Skipper was very specific. He said-"

"I can well imagine what he said," Nelson muttered more to himself than the flustered crewman. "Carry on." Nelson watched as the galley chief disappeared around a bend in the corridor -he was now fully convinced that he was heading towards a confrontation. Doc had recommended that the men keep up their strength -even if there wasn't a sickness aboard, they needed all they had- and he had made it an order...and that meant eating something, didn't it? Either way one interpreted the order, it was not a command that the Captain of the Seaview could take into his head to ignore when the whim took him...and he had the strongest suspicion that Crane hadn't eaten for more than "two days".

Jaw set with determination, the Admiral stopped before Crane's quarters and, perching the tray on one arm, rapped sharply on the synthetic-wood door. "Lee? This is Nelson."

A voice, low, answered. "Come in."

Nelson shuddered involuntarily. Though living and working areas throughout Seaview were kept at generally comfortable temperatures, his skin was suddenly pricked like goose flesh, a definite chill striking him as he entered the quarters of his friend. He gave the digital thermometer on the bulkhead a tentative tap with his forefinger, but the read-out indicated a normal room temperature; no mistake despite the dimmed lamplight, the only illumination lessening the shadow-filled gloom. Nelson set the tray down on the desk. "Lee, I-"

Nelson stopped in mid-sentence, momentarily distracted by what he was seeing, fascinated despite his determination to say what he had decided had to be said. It was, he knew, Lee Crane's practice to exercise in private when duties permitted, as he was doing now. The Captain had shed his uniform shirt, draping it over his covered bunk as he performed a routine that was in many ways more like a stylized dance than an ordinary workout; a routine done in a silence broken only by the sound of breaths being slowly and steadily drawn in rhythm with slow, almost ferally graceful movements; the dance of a mime. But fluid though the movements might have seemed, they were obviously not made without effort. Crane's visage was slightly flushed and the sweat that dampened his hair also trickled down his temples.

T'ai Chi. Nelson recognized the technique when he saw it and accepted its value even though he himself did not practice it, preferring the more traditional calisthenics. Crane had told him once that the oriental exercise was somehow necessary -a kind of peaceful balance to the esoteric martial arts he had been taught in the Secret Forces; techniques that had made it possible for him to kill efficiently and quickly...but could not make him enjoy it.

Another minute passed...two...before the Captain exhaled, cheeks slightly reddened, shoulders moving against a painful kink that the familiar routine had somehow failed to exorcise. He was aware of the Admiral's presence, that he was waiting with great patience, but it was a moment or two longer before he felt himself able to speak freely.

Winded...strange... It had been a long time since the oriental technique had drained him like this. True, as he had predicted, his entire body was stiff and achy from everything he had done to himself since this cruise had begun; some muscles were like twisted knots -there was no surprise in that- but what was surprising was that the exercise hadn't helped as it usually did. Damn... Out of shape. How could he have possibly have come to have allowed himself to have gotten so slack? Especially now. Seaview needed everyone aboard fit and able to give his all to get ship and crew safely home -everyone now that so many had- The flicker of a grimace passed across Lee Crane's countenance. It didn't do himself, or anyone else for that matter, a bit of good to dwell on the dead when the living were trying to stay alive. "Admiral...you wanted to speak to me?"

"I do." The Admiral grabbed a pale blue terrycloth towel draped over Crane's swivel chair and tossed it overhand, Crane catching it with one hand as he started towards the Head. Nelson waited as Crane mopped his dampened brow, face still slightly flushed. "Lee... I assume that you are aware of the order I issued concerning maintaining certain health standards despite our present situation?"

"Yes, sir," Crane admitted, pausing only momentarily as he splashed his face with the blessedly cool water pouring noisily from the faucet of the sink in the Head. He knew where this conversation was going. "I know of it."

"Then I can also assume that you know that no-one is exempt," Nelson stated sternly. "Can I not?"

Crane mopped his face again, a little more refreshed, as he stepped out of the Head. "Yes, sir," he said. "That's true, but-"

Nelson held up a hand for silence, heading off the argument he saw forming. "When I said no exemptions, I meant no exemptions...not even captains who seem intent on punishing themselves for circumstances beyond their control." Nelson glanced at the untouched tray, a vaguely familiar aroma reaching his nostrils. Crane had sat down in the chair across from him ...silent...sullen perhaps...as he ran his fingers through the mass of damp curls on his head, eyes focused not on him but on some distant thought only he could see. "Cookie told me that you aren't eating."

Crane's eyes narrowed with annoyance. "Cookie talks too much."

"Cookie...was following orders." For that Crane had no answer, Nelson noted with a satisfaction that proved only fleeting. "Listen to me, Lee." Crane looked up as Nelson closed the small space between them. "I can't take away the pain that you're feeling and nothing I say will make it pass any faster than it should, but, Lee, you have to understand this -Seaview has lost twenty-eight good men this cruise and she may yet lose more. It may not be fair, but you cannot afford to show weakness right now. The crew needs you to be strong for them if they are not to give up...and that won't happen if you allow yourself to starve to death as some kind of penance."

Crane stared at the crumpled towel within his hands and nodded slowly, reluctantly, as he dumped it on his bunk. "You are...right, of course."

"Of course I am," Nelson said with a hopefully encouraging smile. He removed the cover of the platter and shuddered with comical dismay at the sight of the meal which proved to be some kind of pre-formed chicken covered in an orangy sauce beside a portion of mixed vegetables -the notorious rehydrated Chicken a l'Orange. What was the world coming to when what was almost certainly nutritious could look so insipid? He gestured to the waiting meal. "Lee..?"

Crane shrugged in silent resignation, approaching the meal like a condemned man approaching the gallows. He stared at the dish -sat and stared- for the longest time, fully aware that the Admiral had made no move to leave and was still waiting with arms folded, not so much his superior officer at the moment as he was the figure of a dutiful parent intent on seeing that his child ate what was good for him. Crane jabbed at the chicken with the tines of his fork, grimacing, and then glanced to his side. "Admiral, I am going to eat it."

Nelson raised an eyebrow ever so slightly. "I'm sure you will."

"I'm not a child."

"Good...and I'm sure you'll finish it like an adult."

"Oh for... I'm not that hungry!"

"Eat."

"But-"

"Eat."

For a long, drawn out moment, Crane sat, mouth open to protest louder and further, but little by little, a small beleaguered smile played at the corners of his lips at the sight of the slight grin on Nelson's own mouth, and he shook his head wearily and took a tentative taste. "Good...God," he muttered, his countenance twisting with a comical expression of disgust. "What the hell is this stuff?"

Nelson cocked his head to one side. "Tell me, Lee...do you really want to know?"

Crane regarded the questionable meal and then shook his head slowly. "No."




The smile on Nelson's face, as he shut the door to Crane's cabin behind him, was one of satisfaction and more than a trifle smug. He could have pulled rank...could have simply ordered Crane to do as he was told -and as Captain of the Seaview, Crane would have dutifully obeyed- but this way was better...much better when acting in his capacity as Lee Crane's friend rather than his superior officer. It was something they both preferred to keep apart -the subtle difference between respect between fellow officers and the more personal caring that had come with knowing the man for most of his life...and quite simply put, he liked to win an argument on that level every now and then -especially when it was for Crane's own good even if he didn't know it.

"What..?" Nelson stopped abruptly, one foot in front of the other, and glanced over his shoulder, expecting...what? He didn't know. The corridor was empty...deserted...strange shadows cast by the dull red glow of emergency neons that substituted for the normal lighting system in this area right until the array was repaired.
Strange shadows...

Something...
Something about the dull red glow reminded him of...again what? Faint impressions of a dream, a nightmare perhaps, that had fluttered before his mind's eye and then vanished, causing a shudder that traveled from the top to the base of his spine like an icy finger. It was almost as if...almost as if he could "feel" something -the presence of someone close-by...the whisper of cold breath against the skin of his neck, but... Nelson turned and regarded what he realized were his multiply-cast shadows, several dark images of himself seemingly painted at crazy fluid angles on the bulkhead, and scowled deeply to himself before he turned in the direction he had originally intended and headed down the intersecting corridor.

One of the shadows headed down the other.




"Well?"

Blurred shapes, indistinct and shifting, seemed to lay in the middle of a circle of light; a wriggling distorted mass that sharpened as the focus of the stereoscopic electronic microscope was adjusted by a chief medical officer whose lips were drawn into a tight thin line of frustration. Doc stared through the eyepiece a moment longer, eyes smarting and reddened from hours of abusive effort to find what did not appear to be there to be found, and finally stood away from the magnifying device. "Nothing."

Harriman Nelson's rough visage twisted with a grimace of disbelief. "Nothing?"

"I know -it makes no sense." Doc gestured wearily to a row of needle-thin vials of blood mounted within recesses within a cold-storage container; the vacant spot he now filled with a vial bearing the name "Riley, Seaman Stuart." "I've retested the blood samples from the shore and diving parties, and the other crewmen who died 'suspiciously'...and I can find nothing that would indicate that they were ever sick a single day in their lives. Logically, they should all be alive and well."

"So...there's nothing," Nelson said, still incredulous. "No disease at all."

Doc hesitated, looking decidedly uncomfortable, before he responded. "I...never said that, sir."

Nelson's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "What do you mean?"

"All I said...was that I couldn't find anything -and yet, all indications are that something is at work on Seaview...but what it is, I don't know -and that's what frightens me." Nelson studied the medical man, questioning in his silence. "Project M.I.N.A.... Dr. Bergman seemed to think that a mutation of the original virus -something that they came to call 'V2'- confounded their scientists... somehow becoming more difficult to detect than its original form."

"And if that was indeed the case," Nelson said with grim understanding, "whatever they created may well be on board Seaview and we wouldn't be able to find it. At least...not until we find the formula for the reagent Dr. Bergman mentioned on the tape. What's the progress in that area, Doc?"

"The medical corps has gone through ten of the potential formulas written in Bergman's notes -they turned out to be useless for anything -red herrings...but we still have eight to go. With our presently compromised equipment, it's going to take time to go through them all, but there's still a good chance that-" Just then, there was the sound of knocking at the medical lab door, and Nelson and Doc fell silent as the door slowly swung open. Doc nodded and went over to his medical computer.

"Sir?" Chip Morton, trailed by an apparently uneasy Chief Sharkey, entered the room, the Executive Officer carrying a clipboard in his hand. "Ah...sir, there may be a problem...with the crew."

Nelson felt the tickling of a thoroughly irrational laugh beginning to inch its way up his throat unbidden -as if there weren't enough problems aboard Seaview right now- and struggled valiantly to suppress it. Like a completely inexplicable case of the giggles at a funeral, there was nothing to laugh about...especially not at the XO's troubled expression. As long as he had known Chip Morton, the young executive officer had been the epitome of military-bred stoicism; a man who usually kept his feelings and fears to himself, but for some reason, for not the first time on this particular cruise, Nelson could read the agitation in the XO's eyes as plainly as if a sign had been posted there. "What is it, Chip? What's the problem?"

"As you know, sir, after the accident, I re-registered every member of the crew personally for an accurate census of survivors -and I've continued to update that; the most recent number being ninety-seven which includes and accounts for deaths and other casualties."

"So..?"

Morton glanced at the clipboard, hesitated, and then handed it over to Nelson. "There's been a problem with crew missing from work details -so I did another update...as of less than an hour ago. I can now account for the whereabouts of only eighty-three crew members at this time though there should still be ninety-seven...and the truly curious thing is, sir, several of the fourteen not accounted for are officers."

Nelson's expression fell blank. "You're certain of this?"

"Sharkey..?" Morton prompted.

"I didn't believe it myself, sir," the Chief Petty Officer said with a puzzled frown darkening his expressive face, "but when Mr. Morton gave me the computer read-out, I checked each and every one of those work details myself -and Officers' Country...an' I can't find any of 'em either. All I can figure is that they're holed up somewheres, hiding or goofing off or something." Sharkey glanced quickly at the officer's pips on Nelson and Morton's collars and added quietly: "Begging your pardons, sirs."

"Of all the times to shirk one's duties..." Nelson muttered to himself, amazed at the conduct of crewmen he thought he had come to know so well -and officers too? He scanned the list, familiar names meeting his eyes -Milner, Kormos, Walkingman, Dietz, Jameson, O'Rourke, Tomlin, Yashida...skilled crewmen everyone, chosen personally either by himself or Captain Crane. Jackson, Torres, Cole, Donewitz, Boyd, Rose...three of them junior officers, one up for promotion to a fully commissioned position. Nelson shook his head with dismay and handed the list back to the waiting XO. "Very well. Set a detail to find them -and don't bother to send them to the Brig...officers as well. I have other things in mind to keep them too busy to-"

"Curse me for a fool!" Nelson, Morton, and Sharkey turned sharply in the direction of the Chief Medical Officer who, until now, had kept himself hunched over the medical lab computer console. As Nelson approached the medical officer, Doc pushed himself away from the glowing monitor, the wheels of his swivel chair creaking ever so slightly as he gestured to the digital images flashing by on the screen. "I can't believe I could have possibly missed something as important as this and yet, it makes sense!"

"Get a hold of yourself, Doc," Nelson cautioned. "What makes sense?"

"A common denominator, sir, in the 'unexplained' deaths..."

"Then...then it's not a matter of some new plague?" Nelson asked, puzzled.

"Unfortunately, Admiral, I still believe there's something new aboard, but this time, I believe I can tell why some have been affected...and some haven't. It's not much, but it's a start." Doc's fingers alternated between dancing quickly over the recessed computer keys and clicking the computer's mouse, images flashing across the monitor's flat screen, one after the other, in rapid succession. "The scientists at Delta were searching for an artificial genetically-based antigen or vaccine against cancer -and, in a way....I think they found both more and less than what they expected."

"The V1 version of the virus," Nelson concurred, glancing at Morton and Sharkey who stood there, still waiting. "But what-"

"It occurred to me that the experiment went out of control after the Andropov stopped at the base...and brought with them what appears to have been the Asian Flu." A computer simulation of that flu virus appeared on the screen. "I think that was the true catalyst for Delta's outbreak of their plague -station staff and scientists contracted the flu, weakening their immune systems, leaving them wide-open to the introduction of the new virus when the accident released it en masse...a virus which had recently mutated into a new, virulent strain. The physical weakening may even have been necessary for the mutated virus to gain access to their bodily systems. The circumstances seem to bear the theory out."

"But the initial test team..." Nelson said, almost protesting. "They wouldn't have been infected if that were so. The experiment which altered their genetic natures and eventually killed them occurred before the Andropov's arrival."

Doc shook his head vigorously, a man possessed by the dark muse of grim inspiration. "Delta was working on and with conventional contagions in other areas of the facility, I believe." Nelson nodded in confirmation. "In times not very distantly past, some of the best stateside disease containment facilities have been known to have failed in some degree without the fact being noticed before something escaped -that outbreak of smallpox eleven years ago in Colorado, for instance. It was very likely that the test team's immune systems had already been compromised -the common cold or something like that...something so brief and seemingly insignificant that no-one would have bothered to mention it or think of it as a problem. There."

An electronic beep issued sharply from the computer console, an image appearing under the file heading: "Seaview Medical Files." "And now I think I know why the mutant virus attacked certain crew members and not others." At a click, several file windows popped up on the screen, Doc slumping back into his seat. "I recently treated Tomàs for food poisoning. Clarke had recently gotten over a case of the measles he caught from his children while on shoreleave. Riley came to me for treatment for a viral condition contracted also while on shoreleave. Kowalski recently suffered from cluster headaches due to neck strain and had a hand injury which he had allowed to turn septic before he came to have it treated... All of these conditions would have weakened their immune systems in some way -as did different conditions for each of the other victims of 'unexplained deaths', I'll wager...and yet, I could find no..." Doc shook off the transient confusion with a slight shudder and then met the Admiral's eyes. "Of the shore party, the only exceptions were Devereaux, whom I can vouche has never been sick a day in his life and was not recently injured -not severely at any rate, and-"

"Crane!" Nelson laughed aloud as though a great and terrible weight had been lifted from his shoulders. "He wasn't sick before the attack -he wouldn't have been infected therefore!"

Just then, there was a sudden, loud crash; the sound of hard plastic and metal hitting the smooth deck. Nelson and Doc turned sharply to see Morton, his countenance suddenly pale with horror, the clipboard at his feet where he had suddenly dropped it, his mouth working silently like a masterless marionette. "Oh, Jesus, no..." he whispered, his voice returning shakily. "Crane...Lee -he was sick. Very sick -the flu. He told me it was... I didn't think... I promised him to keep it to myself."

Nelson stared at the mortified executive officer for only a moment, an instant that felt as though it had been stretched into an eternity, before he flung the door to the lab wide open and dashed through the opening, his face blanched white with horror.




He had tried. He had really tried.

The greater part of the meal that the Admiral had insisted he eat remained on the plate on the Captain's desk as Crane leaned against the doorjamb of the entrance to his personal Head, his face distorted, damp, and pale as he fought back the wracking dry heaves that kept telling his brain that he wanted...no...needed to be physically ill again even though there wasn't anything left inside him to expel. The food had gone in his mouth, but it wouldn't stay. Wouldn't even though his stomach burned with hunger and his mouth with thirst. Thirst...

Crane's eyes immediately went to the glass beside the tray. He had drained six full glasses of water like that only minutes ago to quench a thirst that only grew and now he needed more. Much more. The room seemed to sway as he lurched over to the vessel and the carafe beside it, but the pitcher proved empty...and though he knew that all it would take was a turn of the faucet to get more, he was suddenly possessed by an inexplicable, overwhelming fury which had him bring his fist down on the drained glass with a strength he did not know he possessed.

He saw the glass shatter under the blow as if from a great distance, bits of red-stained crystal flying in all directions, before he felt the pain. Crane brought his injured wrist up before his eyes, thoughts of rage suddenly gone as he stared...just stared at the glistening blood trickling from the wounds and at the shard of glass imbedded deeply in the lean flesh before the heel of his hand. A hiss of pain escaped his lips as with trembling fingers he shakily grasped the shard and pulled it out. Immediately, more of the sanguine fluid welled up to the surface, pulsing in time with the beating of his heart...and still, he stared. It was a bad cut...a very bad cut...likely to need stitches. Doc would want to-

Without warning, the intolerable thirst welled up within the Captain's breast, rearing up like an angry viper, as he clamped his mouth over the wound, the metallic fluid leeking over his tongue as he sank to his knees and onto the deck, his entire being centered on that one consuming act -to thirst...to feed.

"No!" Realization, true awareness of what he was doing, came in a sudden, painful jolt that sundered the perverse bliss as brutally as a bucket of ice-water thrown in his face. Madness gave way to revulsion and horror as Crane released the injured limb and stared at the wound, still bleeding, and became aware of the metallic taste in his mouth, the warm wetness that trailed down his chin...and in that instant, came new knowledge, a logic born of insanity.

He knew...he knew at that moment what Station Delta had truly created. The Devil's children -beings that could not get sick, could not bear the light of day and thrived at night, who had strength beyond normal human ken, and did not eat...but they thirsted. Captain Hudson had said so, hadn't he? Memories came...disjointed and crazed now...of bodies not huddled together for comfort -he knew that as he hadn't before. No...they had been too busy fighting, attacking each other to seek refuge even though there was likely none to be had. Attacking each other for...

The wound in Crane's wrist had begun to leak down his forearm, the blood trailing along the skin until the trail began to drip downwards, a red pool gathering on the smooth deck...the answer staring him right in the face and he had been too blind to accept that he saw it...maybe they all had been.

Project M.I.N.A....M.I.N.A....Mina...not a code -a name...the name of a girl in a story he had recently read, proving Fate's macabre sense of humor...a girl, no, a woman who had been forced to drink the blood of her demonic attacker, infecting her with his evil nature. Could the answer have been so ridiculously plain that no-one had bothered to take the possibility seriously?

The blood... Blood had gone missing from the medical stores -still not found...Captain Hudson -maddened and attacking with his teeth...Tomàs and Clarke -ripping and tearing at each other...Riley -biting and drawing blood even as he died...Kowalski -frenzied to the point of biting his own tongue, attacking Patterson with a blade...himself- Crane clenched his teeth, the viperous thirst rearing up again as he stared at the carmine pool. The blood -that was what it had been all along...what each and every maddened victim had tried to get at one way or another...what he-

Crane gasped as the thirst became raw pain, something...some thing trying to reach the surface of his being. He recognized the pain from an old memory, an old madness he had once felt and had tried to forget; a familiar bloodthirst that had now become a thirst for blood. But there was still a part of him that was Lee Crane, Captain of the S.S.R.N. Seaview, and that fading part knew what his duty was and what he had to do. The crew...he could not...would not hurt them. No...he wouldn't...They... They all had to be warned...protected from him... Protected...from this plague. They had to know what the scientists at Station Delta had really created. He had to tell the Admiral -he would know what to do, always seemed to... A maddened laugh, almost a feral growl, issued from Crane's mouth. Yes...Admiral Nelson -he would...he would understand...always a scientist at heart...a heart which pumped warm, living blood that...

"No..." For an instant, Lee Crane had seemed to cease to exist or matter, something else taking his place -something that thirsted. There wasn't much time... Crane shook his head, struggling to clear it for just a little longer. He was beginning to feel weak...more blood lost than he had realized...dizziness threatening to overwhelm him before he finished what had to be done. Had to warn them in the only way left to him... Crane extended his hand as the deck became his palate and the blood on his trembling fingers, his paint as he struggled to scribe the warning, but even as he tried, the word...the proper word slipped from his mind, ethereal as quicksilver, and so, he used the next best thing...

...and when oblivion finally came, he welcomed it.




Morton and Sharkey followed in hot pursuit, Doc close behind them, as Nelson bounded the turns in a corridor that had suddenly become too long, the distance between the medical lab and the Captain's cabin somehow seeming to stretch on forever. Harriman Nelson was a man consumed by an overwhelming dread unlike any he had ever known or believed existed...until now. At Morton's words, there had been no room for logical thought...only fear of what he had refused to believe and now had no choice but to accept -Crane had been sick. Very sick.

Even as the door to the Captain's cabin was flung open with a splintering crash, they could all smell the blood...and see it -on the deck, on bits of shattered glass strewn all around, and amongst all of this, a body lying there, very still. Doc reached the Captain first, and tried to press the edges of a gaping wound in his wrist closed with his fingers. "He's still alive!" Doc barked, feeling a weak, thready pulse. "Get those corpsmen in here now!"

It all happened so fast. Nelson felt himself grasp for the edge of the Captain's desk, dizziness reaching for him as an invisible bubble seemed to descend upon him, numbing his perceptions, distancing him somehow from what he could scarcely bear to accept...the realization of a nightmare he had forgotten. As corpsmen loaded their stricken captain onto a gurney, Nelson turned to follow, only half noticing the smeared remnants of what appeared to be some kind of a warning scribed by a shaky hand onto the deck in blood...a single word.

Unclean.





"Sir?"

Nelson regarded Sharkey through weariness-reddened eyes. "Francis?"

Chief of the Boat returned the look uncomfortably. "You know...there is a chance that we got to him in time."

Nelson nodded slowly, the sense of defeat in him obvious to anyone, but he did not answer aloud -he did not trust himself not to voice his fears...and destroy the hope onto which the Chief Petty Officer apparently held...or the ember of hope he himself held onto so dearly. In time...what did that mean in the face of something no-one really understood? The medical team had gotten Seaview's stricken commanding officer to the Sick Bay -Doc was working on him now- but whether all the efforts were "in time", no-one could know. It was taking too long.

The soft rustle of medical garb alerted the two men to the presence of Seaview's chief medical officer as he emerged from the treatment area of the Sick Bay, his face lined and grey. Nelson and Sharkey rose as he approached them, Nelson glancing uncertainly at his chief petty officer before speaking. "Well?"

Doc sighed aloud. "I don't know what to do for him. As with the others, the wounds are relatively superficial in as much as they were easily treated -and the blood seems to check out normal...but at the same time, there's no way that it can be normal. There's no sign of contagion-flu or otherwise- but his body is reacting as if there was something...some kind of infection or toxin there though there isn't -his white-cell count is going through the roof. The Captain's body is trying to fight a phantom disease...and he's losing. He's burning out." Doc's expression was one of anguish. "We have got him stabilized for the moment, but I don't know for how long. Kowalski and Riley both apparently seemed to stabilize for a short while just before-"

Nelson did not hear the rest of what the Chief Medical Officer had to say -as if a part of him believed that not hearing would change an inevitable outcome. It was as if the awful weight that he had carried since the horrors of this mission had begun, had suddenly grown several-fold. He and Crane had faced death together many times -until now, he had never really accepted it. It had never truly seemed real. "I...I want to see him."

There was a pause, an instant of hesitation before the medical officer nodded his assent. "All right."

Nelson did not look to either side as he walked forward, but he could sense that Sharkey had followed his lead though from a small distance. It was not a matter of fear that held the Chief Petty Officer back...no, Nelson knew that the Chief knew him well enough to know when he needed to be alone...as he did now. Nelson hesitated as he approached the Captain's bedside, noticing that though Crane was unconscious, he was nonetheless strapped down, medical restraints effectively immobilizing him were he awake to fight them. Why...why the restraints at all? What had Doc not told him about Crane's condition?

Just then as if in answer to Nelson's unspoken question, Crane stirred, moaning slightly in a restless delirium, before he slowly opened his eyes, squinting as if the curiously softer light of the area around his bed hurt them. Confusion and fear were etched into the pallid face, eyes staring and unfocussed until they met those of his admiral and sharpened a little. For a moment, Crane stared as if he did not recognize the man before him and then... "Admiral..."

"Lee..." Nelson felt the lies, both to himself and his friend, form in his brain. "We...we got to you in time. Doc's working very hard on the cure -you'll be all right." He grasped Crane's limp hand. "I swear it!"

Crane shook his head feebly, tears beginning to stream down his cheeks as if waking was the last thing he had wanted. "No...Oh no..." he whispered, his eyes suddenly wide with horror. "I...know... I know now... The message..." He swallowed deeply, chest heaving. "Got to...to kill me...before it's...too late... I... I don't want...to hurt you... Please!"

Nelson shook his head with disbelief at his friend's delirium-induced words. Why kill him? Why? "Lee -you don't know what you're saying. It-" Just then, Nelson cried out involuntarily as the hand in his own suddenly gripped him with an impossible, crushing strength. "Doc!" It was a strange thing how the human mind dealt with the intolerable messages it sometimes received. Time suddenly seemed to slow to a crawl as Nelson felt himself pushed aside as Doc and the other corpsmen in the Sick Bay rushed to tend to the suddenly convulsing captain who, despite his former weakness, showed every sign of freeing himself with a frenzied strength that seemed to grow with every movement of the hands of a clock... And just as suddenly, it was over. The invisible bubble seemed to pop, time resuming its natural course, and Nelson saw Doc pulling white bedsheets over a still body.

The Chief Medical Officer noticed his admiral's blank, numb stare and walked over to him, his eyes downcast. "I'm sorry."

Nelson nodded dumbly, the walls of the room seeming to close in on him for a moment, before he could speak at all. "I know." He stared at the covered bed, the invisible weight all but crushing him now, his voice a mere whisper. "Take care of him."

Doc watched his admiral leave the room blindly like an automaton, before he approached the equally stricken chief petty officer. "Stay with him, Sharkey."

Sharkey could only nod.




Mental images of the smiling faces of those he had known and cared for appeared before Francis Sharkey's mental eye as he made his way along the seemingly endless corridor, his own burden of grief all but overwhelming him. He had always known, as did any naval man, that the payment for one's dedication to the Service might be one's life...but he had thought that such was a debt to be paid only by the older sailor...one who had lived his life -a time and experience-toughened old salt like himself- not sailors who were little more than kids. Not Riley, or Kowalski, or the young captain he had all but revered. Not them. God... Not them.

Doc had told him to stay with the Admiral...to be there for him, but that had proven a thing easier said than done. Grief-stricken though he might have been, if Nelson did not wish to be found, he would make it difficult to be found. From A-Deck to C-Deck to the lesser places shown only on blueprints had Sharkey gone and this was his second circuit around the ship. It was something he felt that he had to do alone. The news of the Captain's passing had all but flown around the great submersible and the Skipper was a man both loved by some and respected deeply by others -the crew was too busy dealing with its own shock, grief, and myriad duties to be of much help to him right now -Sharkey paused and slammed his fist against the wall- even were that not the case, it wouldn't have made any difference. Like he had decided -this was something he preferred to do alone. He had to find-

Sharkey turned sharply at the sound of a hard object hitting the deck in the near distance and followed the sound to its source, realizing as he did, that he had searched for his admiral along this way earlier...along Officers' Country. A slightly puzzled frown creased the Chief's brow as he came upon the Captain's cabin, its door unlocked and slightly ajar, light coming from within. The Guard of Honor couldn't have been placed already...could it? There was still so much to do. Sharkey opened the door a little wider and peered inside.

To the Chief Petty Officer's surprise, within the Captain's cabin, Admiral Nelson was stooping on the deck, picking up an electric clock with exaggerated gentleness and was placing it on the Captain's desk. He frowned and looked up as he became aware of Sharkey's presence, his manner shaky, his eyes reddened. "What are you doing here, Chief?" he asked, his voice ragged.

"Doc told me he wanted me to-" Sharkey stopped in mid-sentence as he caught sight of Crane's dress uniform, draped on the neatened bunk with great care where Nelson had apparently placed it. In truth, the dreadful evidence of Crane's madness no longer existed, the blood and the glass cleared away scrupulously -it was almost as if the horrible incident had never occurred at all... then Sharkey saw the cleaning implements -a mop, a bucket, and other things- propped in one corner of the room and the fact that the Admiral's shirtsleeves were rolled up his arms, and realized who it was that had strived so hard to make it seem that way. "Oh...sir... You... You don't have to do all that. I'll get some crewmen and the Guard of Honor will-"

"No!" Nelson snapped, his chest heaving, his face flushed, as he shook his head vigorously. "No..." he said again, more quietly, the tremor in his voice all the more pronounced. "I...I'll do it. They...they'll get it all wrong...make a mess of things...always do. No...you stay there. I'll do it."

"Aye, sir." Sharkey looked on helplessly as the Admiral continued with his self-imposed task, sweat dripping from the man's brow onto the deck at his knees. At times like this, more than any other, the Chief Petty Officer wished that he could equal the intellect of many of the men with which he served because while he did not consider himself stupid, he knew that he had neither the skill nor sophistication to say the words...the right words...that would offer the comfort the Admiral needed...the words that would make everything all right again. His friend was in agony and he didn't know what to say.

Nelson stood up, his movement causing him to back into the Captain's bunkside table and a hardbound book that had been lying on it fell to the deck open-faced. Nelson stood, frozen, seemingly uncertain as to what to do, as Sharkey automatically knelt and picked up the tome that was now revealed to be a photo album -a memory book- the photograph on the open page causing him to frown with bewilderment and then gradual comprehension. The image was one of a young naval officer and his bride on their wedding day; the Admiral there with them as a younger man -a lieutenant, their best man. Sharkey recognized the groom's face -an almost identical twin to one he knew so well though the trim of the man's hair was somewhat old-fashioned by present standards. "The...Skipper's father?"

"Yes..." Nelson took the book from the Chief very gently, his countenance clouded. "He was my best friend long before Captain Crane was even born. He died young...far too young...in the line of duty." Nelson turned another page listlessly. There, another picture was revealed -that of the couple and their infant son on the day of his christening. "He was...always a very serious, very intense man -when he asked me to be Lee's godfather..." Nelson saw the puzzled frown form on Sharkey's brow. "When he asked me to be Lee's godfather, he made me promise that if anything were to happen to him, that I would look out for his son -not to shield him from the world as such- just to be there for him. He said that though Lee's mother would love and guide her child as only mothers can, he had always believed that a boy needed a father's love and instruction...and I tried. I did try."

Sharkey shook his head slowly. "You and the Skipper... I didn't know..."

"You wouldn't. Very few do," Nelson said, understanding Sharkey's confusion immediately. "We both agreed that it would be better that way. You see, I knew... I always knew that Lee had a... special raw talent, a gift that the Navy could put to best use and I never wanted it said that any triumph or accolade accorded him was by anything but his own skills -and none of them were. He did it all by his own merits." Nelson let the book fall shut, his chest heaving, his face working as the warm salted water finally reached his eyes, and sank down onto the swivel chair. "My God... What am I going to tell his mother..?" At that moment, the dam finally broke and all that the Chief could do was to wait and be there as sobs unbidden wracked the Admiral's hunched frame even though he tried to hide them even now. It occurred to the Chief then that until that moment, he had never before seen the Admiral cry.

Nelson drew a heavy, ragged breath, swallowing deeply, as he struggled to regain his composure. He shakily searched through one of his breast pockets and pulled out a scrap of slightly crumpled note paper. "You know, Francis..." he said, a small sad smile on his lips, "I gave everything for the Service and scientific pursuit -any chance at a normal life, a wife, children...and I did it by choice. No-one forced me. What they asked, I gave...and when we get back home, eventually, they will ask for the bodies of those that died -for study. Lee Crane was my friend... He was my..." Nelson shuddered and swallowed deeply. "He was my son...by all but birth -and they would cut up his body with as little regard as they would a common lab rat." Nelson's expression hardened. "I'll see them in Hell first."

The Admiral handed the partially crumpled paper to the Chief who studied it, face blank with incomprehension. "This...this is a cremation unit...sir."

"I know. I want you to give the plans to Mr. Morton. We have the capacity and the technical stores to create it. The design is fairly simple...and I want it done by the end of this watch." Nelson turned his back to Sharkey, seeming to study a bulkhead-mounted photograph of the Seaview. "Carry on."




It was done.

There had been little more left to say.

After his dismissal, after it had become clear that the Admiral had no intention of discussing the matter any further, Sharkey had had no choice but to take the design and the orders to the acting captain. Mister Morton, his own countenance etched with lines of anguish, had merely taken the message and note with a small nod, saying: "I'll...get right on it."

The rest was a blur, Sharkey remembering only that he was now in his quarters, alone, and even though he wanted to, he felt too dead inside to cry.