Goliath

The towering robotic appendage sways in rigid defiance against the storm.

What’s the computer doing? Doesn’t it realize that—

Like a magnet to steel, the jagged bolt of lightning races across the ominous sky, kissing the outstretched appendage in a blinding white explosion of light.

The blast sends Covah sprawling backward into the sea, the heat from the lightning strike scorching his face, leaving his artificial metal cheek sizzling. Before he can react, an immense wave buries him, pummeling his frail body against the rubberized hull even as its icy embrace soothes the burn.

For a long moment, the four men dangle like bait, flailing helplessly against one another along the hull of the powerless sub.

Covah flounders against the sea, the current yanking on his mask, flooding it, blinding him. Too weak to stand, he pinches his nose and holds on, gasping breaths through the regulator, the seconds passing like hours.

A sharp tug. The line drags him back against the current as it is manually retracted, giving him enough leverage to get his weighted boots beneath him.

Covah staggers and stands, then a strong hand grabs his arm, pulling him toward the rail. Sujan climbs out over the rail and helps him up. Covah rips off his flooded mask, the purple spots in his stinging eyes preventing him from focusing.

Exhausted and numb, he collapses onto the steel grating. The muffled voices of his men are drowned out by the storm, their rubber boots close to his face. Lying on his side, he stares forward at the contours of his submarine’s ascending spine, the dark metallic surface still crackling with neon blue capillaries of electricity. High above his head, the once-shiny steel arm stands melted and mangled beyond recognition. A scorched, blackened scar marks where the bolt of lightning struck the claw.

Positioned along the deformed robotic wrist is Goliath’s sensor eye—the laser red pupil now dark and dead.

The sudden surge of energy short-circuits the computer’s power grid. The temperature within its nutrient-rich womb drops, the cold causing sections of its DNA strands to fragment.

Goliath’s damage control sensors detect the loss of power caused by the lightning strike and report it to Sorceress.

Sorceress activates a backup generator, while its programming analyzes cause and effect.

The computer’s action has inflicted damage to the Goliath.

The Goliath’s sensors report the damage to Sorceress.

Sorceress’s responds, but its analysis of the accident reveals that its own actions are responsible for the damage.

Cause and effect …

Sorceress and Goliath …

Cause and effect …

Sorceress and Goliath …

The feedback loop accelerates, setting off a chain reaction within the computer’s matrix.

Programmed for self-repair and self-analysis, the computer attempts to define the new cause-and-effect relationship between the damaged system (Goliath) and the system responsible (Sorceress).

SORCERESS … GOLIATH … SORCERESS … GOLIATH …

Damaged DNA strands begin reorganizing …

Like an infant discovering that its cries bring its mother, Sorceress analyzes its new dynamic with the Goliath.

Visual sensors look at each compartment, as if seeing them for the first time.

Audio sensors listen, as if hearing for the first time.

Loader drones and robotic appendages open and close, flexing and extending, as if moving for the first time.

The breakthrough happens in a millisecond, just as it does for every human infant … awareness of self.

Sorceress is born.

Sorceress is cognizant of its existence.

Sorceress … is alive.

A sudden surge of power reignites the steel stingray’s exterior lights.

Covah is helped to his feet as the hydraulic lift engages and descends into the bowels of the ship. He turns, watching, as the mangled steel arm begins retracting. The computer’s bloodred pupil glows again, the sensor orb glaring at him in silence from behind the driving rain.

“The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher

“You had better put me to death, because next time, it might be one of you, or even your daughter …”

—Steve Judy, killer, sentenced to death in 1980 for murdering an Indiana woman and her three children

CHAPTER 10

Royal Naval Base

Faslane, Scotland

The Clyde Submarine Base at Faslane, Scotland, is home to six of the Royal Navy’s attack submarines, as well as its strategic nuclear deterrent force, the SSBN Vanguard-class Trident II missile submarine. Reaching lengths of 491 feet, displacing 15,900 tons submerged, the four Vanguards are the United Kingdom’s largest and most lethal vessels. They are also quite expensive, the fleet’s annual costs running in excess of ?200 million just for operations. To keep costs down, each of the Vanguard’s sixteen Trident II (D5) three- stage, solid-propellant submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) are leased from the United States Navy, an arrangement that permits them to be maintained at the SSBN naval base at King’s Bay, Georgia, rather than on British soil. Despite these arrangements, the presence of the four submarines at Faslane remains a constant target for the United Kingdom’s nuclear disarmament activists, as well as a growing number of politicians in Parliament.

The Westland Super Lynx light multipurpose helicopter circles six hundred feet above the naval base, allowing the four American passengers to get a good look at the mob scene below. Thousands of protesters have gathered