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Jazz stared out the window as the reefs drifted under them. “What’s happening?”
“It’s how we assembled the five tiers of the station,” Byrd explained. “Piece by piece.”
He turned over to a bank of controls that had bloomed into light behind him. Above it, the curve of glass extended in an arc across the space. Below it, Byrd grasped a large yoke that stuck out.
“Each tier is its own self-contained submersible,” he explained. He pushed the yoke forward, and the thrusters thrummed louder. “How else could we position and join the tiers together down here? We needed some means of maneuvering them into alignment and stacking them together.”
Jazz got her legs fully under her and stumbled to one of the windows. She leaned her palms on the glass and gaped back at the glowing bulk ofTitan Station Down. It still shone in the dark, only now it was slowly coming apart, the tiers sliding past one another.
“Unless interrupted, each tier will autonomously rise to the surface on its own.” Byrd glanced back to them. “Like I told you all, I designed multiple fail-safes and redundancies into this construction.”
Haru stared at the fragmenting slide of tiers. “What about everyone else back there?”
“When a tier is in motion, the submersible docks automatically lock down. It’s too risky to release them when moving. Could cause a catastrophic leak. There is a manual override, but I doubt the newcomers know about it.”
Kowalski crossed next to Jazz and whistled out a stream of cigar smoke. “So you trapped the bastards with the station personnel.”
Byrd shrugged. “Unless they’re suicidal, it should discourage them from exploding those charges.”
Kowalski grimaced and looked up. “It’s not them I’m worried about—but whoever sent them. They may not care who dies down here.”
20
January 24, 2:40A.M.NCT
Four hundred miles off Norfolk Island (Australia)
Captain Tse Daiyu frowned at the sonar array on the bridge of theDayangxi. The data did not come from the equipment aboard their ship, a Type 076 helicopter landing dock. Instead, it had been transmitted to them via an array of sonobouys dropped into the waves around the tall research station floating atop the Coral Sea.
The bright sonar screen revealed a 3D map of the seas beneath the research rig. She stared at the ruins two miles below. The deep-sea station showed up as a scatter of saucer-like blobs, which slowly fell apart as she watched.
“I don’t understand,” Daiyu said. “Did Snow Leopard Team already destroy the submerged station?”
A radio operator in blue camouflage sat at a console behind her. He held a headphone to one ear. “There remains confusion, sir. The men sent below have not yet surfaced. But so far, no underwater explosions have been picked up by the hydrophones on the sea’s surface.”
“Then what happened?”
“Unclear, Captain. Current consensus is that there might have been an accident.”
Her frown deepened, detesting such uncertainty. “Do we still maintain full control of the upper facility?”
He nodded sharply. “Shì.”
She stepped over to the windows facing the stern. The dark seas lay flat around them, as if beaten down by the press of the low, dark skies. Even theDayangxi’s exterior lamps had been dimmed by a shroud of falling ash. Occasional flashes of static discharge snapped through the roiling clouds of powder.
To the west, eighty nautical miles off the stern, a small torch glowed through the pall. It marked the upper tier of the research rig, which still burned following the initial missile attack. Snow Leopard Team had destroyed a helicopter, which allowed one of their own birds, a Z-8 transport chopper, to land and deploy a well-armed assault force. At the same time, a trio of attack boats, each loaded with forty men, had sped out ofDayangxi’s flooded well deck. They had reached the station and quickly subdued it.
Daiyu had overseen the attack from afar. Already, theDayangxiwas steaming away under the full power of its gas turbine and diesel engines. She had barely slowed the ship as it passed the research rig at a distance. It was of secondary importance. Instead, she continued swiftly toward their primary objective—the Tonga Trench.
Still, she had monitored the assault behind her from theDayangxi’s combat information center. She had been prepared to deploy additional forces, both by sea and air. Even now, a Hongdu GJ-11 Sharp Sword—a stealth combat drone—waited atop one of the flight deck’s electromagnetic launchers. She was somewhat disappointed she hadn’t needed to dispatch the drone—which was no surprise. She knew the research rig had minimal security and firepower.
As she stood by the bridge window, she watched the site burn for another two breaths, then crossed back to the sonar station.
Once there, she pointed to the radio operator. “Alert Snow Leopard Team. After their divers are clear, blow everything below and have their demolition force sink the rig above. Then rendezvous back at theDayangxi.”
“Yes, sir.”
Snow Leopard’s helicopter and attack boats were far swifter than the two-hundred-meter-longDayangxi. The assault team could easily close the distance while the landing dock made slow passage to the trench.Within the next hour, she planned to take advantage of another swift vessel, one still stored in the well deck of the ship. She intended to use it to reach the trench well ahead of theDayangxi.
