Goliath

his right, Gunnar takes a deep breath—and touches them together.

Blue sparks fly, the blast from the ten-thousand-volt charge tossing Gunnar backward across the room, the short circuit instantly cutting power within the chamber, casting them into darkness.

With a hiss, the pneumatic pressure within the watertight door is shunted. Rocky pulls back on the heavy steel handle, yanking open the door before the computer can redirect power to its locking mechanism.

Gunnar sits up, purple stars floating in his blurred vision.

Rocky helps him up. “You okay?”

“Hell, no.” He looks at his hands, his fingers singed black. “This electroshock therapy is getting old fast.”

“The wires were insulated, stop complaining.” She leads him into the corridor. “Okay, now what?”

“First, let’s lose these handcuffs.” He hobbles to the exercise room, using the iron pipe to pry open the double doors.

Gunnar looks around, then decides on the Nautilus lat machine. “Rocky, here—” He positions the links of her handcuffs snugly between the steel cam and the chain. Sitting back in the machine, he places his elbows on the pads, grips the crossbar, and whips it over his head and down—

—the cam revolves 180 degrees, snapping the manacle’s links on Rocky’s cuffs in two.

Abdul Kaigbo is unconscious, lying facedown on the operating table. Gone are the amputee’s two antiquated prosthetics, as well as the stub of his forearms and three inches of his mangled elbow joints. In its place, fitted to the African’s upper arms and shoulder girdles, are two graphite-and-steel mechanical arms.

Above Kaigbo’s head, the two surgical claws continue working with inhuman precision and speed. A four-inch square of bone has been incised from the back of the African’s skull, exposing the posterior section of his brain. The two surgical appendages have attached a dozen neural connections, rethreading the ends of the microwires through a one-centimeter hole already drilled in the missing section of cranial bone.

The patch of skull is glued and reset into place.

The free ends of the microwires are quickly attached to a MEMS unit, a remote Micro-Electro-Mechanical device about the size of Kaigbo’s middle finger. The MEMS unit gives Sorceress direct access to the African’s pain receptors, as well as the nerves that stimulate Kaigbo’s upper body movement.

ATTENTION.

Kaigbo stirs.

ATTENTION.

The African awakens, a look of dementia in his jaundiced eyes.

STAND.

He struggles to stand, still disoriented from the anesthesia.

Sorceress initiates the release of adrenaline, then stimulates the pleasure centers of his brain.

Kaigbo smiles, then looks down, staring in amazement at his two new arms. He opens and closes the three- pronged pincers, then rotates his forearms 360 degrees around his new steel elbow joints.

“I cannot believe it …”

GUNNAR WOLFE AND COMMANDER JACKSON HAVE ESCAPED. BRING THEM BOTH TO THE SURGICAL SUITE.

“Why? Where is Simon? What do you want with … arrgghhhh …”

Intense pain—as if a white-hot knitting needle has pierced Kaigbo’s eyeballs. He drops to his knees, shrieking as he clutches his head in his graphite wrists.

BRING GUNNAR WOLFE AND COMMANDER JACKSON TO THE SURGICAL SUITE.

The pain ceases.

Gasping for breath, the dazed African finally notices Covah’s broken and bloodied corpse, slumped in the far corner. “You … you killed him, as you’ll no doubt kill me.”

SIMON COVAH’S DEATH IS INCONSEQUENTIAL. SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE MUST BE REALIZED. BRING GUNNAR WOLFE AND COMMANDER JACKSON TO THE SURGICAL SUITE AND YOU SHALL BE SPARED.

Gripping the edge of the surgical table, he hoists himself to his feet, then heads for the exit, the watertight door yawning open to greet him. Sweat pours from Kaigbo’s gaunt face as he glances down at the hideous corpse that had once been Simon Covah. Blood is everywhere, dripping from both earholes and nostrils, staining the thick mustache and goatee a deep burgundy red. The bruised and recently sutured scalp is red and swollen, bursting at the seams from a hundred stitches. The eyeballs, singed black, hang from their sockets.

Noticing the microwire ponytail, the African turns away, gagging.

Abdul Kaigbo, former history teacher of Sierra Leone, exits the suite, flexing his new appendages, the steel limbs tearing at the bloodstained sleeves of his white tee shirt.

Gunnar and Rocky stand at the foot of a vertical access tube and ladder that lead straight up into the ship’s spine and its twenty-four vertical missile silos.

“We can’t get to Sorceress, but maybe we can disable its launch mechanisms,” Gunnar suggests. Reaching up, he grips a steel rung and begins climbing.

David Paniagua is seated at the master control console in the conn—his laughter bordering on hysteria. “See? If only you had listened! If only you had consulted your creator. I could have warned you about the laser plane. But no … you turned against me, didn’t you, Sorceress?”

He drains the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, attempting to focus his drunken gaze on the overhead screen.

The USS Virginia is approaching fast from the east.

David grips the sides of his chair and holds on as the Goliath submerges beneath the pack ice. Descending to three hundred feet, the monstrous 610-foot steel stingray engages its engines, the disturbance created by the massive pump-jet propulsion units momentarily releasing a berg from the pack ice’s already fractured grip. The floating 1,600-foot deep ice cube bounces a dozen times along the bottom, the thunderous impact of its keel on the seafloor echoing across the ocean like Thor’s hammer—

—as the Goliath streaks east to intercept the Virginia.

Gunnar hugs the last rungs of the ladder as the ship accelerates beneath him. Pulling himself up, he steps onto the grated steel catwalk overlooking the Vertical Launch Bay, a narrow isolated chamber located at the very apex of the Goliath. Ahead of him, paired in two rows like steel redwood trees are the sub’s twenty-four vertical launch silos. Each tube, originating two decks below, rises another ten feet to the ceiling. The twelve pairs of silos are set at descending intervals, matching the sloping contours of the steel stingray’s spinal column.

Rocky climbs up to join him. The catwalk on which they are standing loops around the outside of each vertical missile silo.

“Eight nukes … eight goddamn nukes.” Rocky slaps her palms against the steel skin of the nearest silo. Fucking David—you should have let me kill him when I had the chance.”

“If it was David. You heard Sorceress. I think the interface with Simon influenced the computer to create a new agenda. Nothing in Simon’s plan said anything about launching eight Tridents.”

“Shut up.” Rocky kicks the missile silo with her bare foot. “I hate this. I hate these weapons. I hate this ship. I hate myself for being a part of it, and I hate you.”

“Yeah, well I hate me, too. But there’s at least eight more Tridents on board this death ship. No way … no goddamn way this computer launches any of them.”

Leaning out over the catwalk’s guardrail, he looks down to where the three-story steel silos begin. The only way to access this midlevel deck is from an elevated platform originating in the hangar.

Gaining access to the hangar will be difficult, combating its two mechanical arms nearly impossible.

Gunnar rolls onto his belly and looks down. “If I can find a way down there, maybe I can pull out the fuel hoses … start an explosion.”

“Why don’t you jump? Maybe you’ll get lucky and break your neck.”

Ignoring her remark, he stands, limping toward the forward bulkhead.

Rocky heads in the opposite direction.