Tempest and Phones spent the next hour and a half in comfortable silence breaking occasional for the odd sighting report and occasional small discussion. Until one sighting appeared a little more odd then the rest. At the base of a rocky outcrop on sea bed, a little light in the blue darkness of the ocean blinked on and off, repeatedly held up with just a battered metal tripod.
"I'm getting no read outs or inputs for it Capt'in. No semaphore pattern. What do you think it might be?"
"I dunno Phones." Troy frowned squinting at the light in the near distance. "It kinda reminds me of a beacon or a buoy light, but would it be doing in the middle of nowhere?"
"It's not showing up on any maps. Maybe it's not one of ours?"
"Dam right it isn't ours. And I don't just mean American. "
"Oh you mean like undersea folk?" Phones asked. "Kinda shallow water for them? They tend to sick to the deep trenches and there's no record of activity here."
"We don't know which or what 'them' it is. And it could easily be the British invading or setting up a smuggling port." Troy grinned momentarily before getting back to the task in hand. "Any craft in the area?"
"There's a navy ship docked at nought eight miles but that's it, Nothing registering below surfaces on radar or Sonar. That said it's pretty hard to be a hundred per cent sure in this terrain."
"Right. pull up at two hundred yards. I'm going have a closer look."
"That wise Troy? It could be a trap, like I said, all them rocks-"
"I know I know and strictly speaking it's out of our area but I'd rather check it out and have it be nothing. We'll stick with protocol. For a change. I'll take a line out so you can pull me back in. Besides any idea to get out and be doing something, right?"