Polaris by Todd Tucker Page B

been discovered in the ruckus that they’d overheard, exposed, perhaps even executed. No, she thought again, the Alliance prized themselves on their civility too much for that.
    Suddenly, a noise spiked on their sonar. She could hear it right through the hull: a dull ka-chunk.
    Before she could say anything, a delicate alarm sounded next to the chart, a rarely heard alarm that took her a moment to recognize.
    â€œCaptain,” Banach said, “the inertial navigation system is failing.…”
    She looked up at the central panel in front of the dive chair, where a number of other alarms had sounded. Some of the smaller circuit breakers on the ship had opened, and the electrical system was busily resetting itself into a safe mode.
    Meanwhile the Polaris continued drifting slowly forward.
    â€œIs it some kind of weapon?” asked Banach. “An electric pulse? Are we under attack?”
    â€œNo,” said Carlson. “I don’t think so. But we are at the edge of some kind of electrical field … a powerful one.”
    They waited a few more minutes and then the ka-chunk sound repeated, and the alarm for their navigation system cleared. Breakers continued to reset around them, and she realized that the sound was similar to the one that had come to them on the bearing of the Polaris .
    Once again the Polaris sped up and changed depth, ascending to periscope depth.
    â€œLet’s follow them up this time,” she said, heading for the scope. Banach climbed into the dive chair and efficiently brought the ship shallow.
    She raised the scope as they came up. Soon they were at periscope depth, and Carlson squinted at the bright equatorial light through the scope. The Polaris was a mile or so away, too far for them to see the scope.
    But she could see the drones everywhere, attracted by their earlier trip to the surface. They were swooping overhead, many of them directly above where she thought the Polaris was sticking up her nose. They were no longer in the tight pattern of attack that she’d seen earlier. The drones were swooping and searching.
    â€œCaptain?”
    â€œThey’ve made themselves invisible to the drones,” she said, the solution suddenly dawning on her. “At least at periscope depth.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œDegaussing,” she said. “They must have passed an underwater degaussing range.” It made sense, in a way, this close to Eris Island, probably the outcome of another, earlier research product. She grudgingly respected the Alliance and its technology; it always seemed to work when they needed it. Her leaders, on the other hand, couldn’t provide her ship a microwave oven that would work without bursting into flames.
    â€œSo the drones use MAD?”
    â€œApparently,” she said, watching the drones fly obliviously over the Polaris . “At least for shallow boats.”
    â€œWell!” said Banach. “That is good news for us!”
    She took her eye off the scope and smiled at him. “Yes, it is, Lieutenant. Very good news.”
    Her submarine, like their entire fleet, had been designed with coastal warfare in mind, where mines might be concentrated at strategic chokepoints. And while her government might not be able to make a decent microwave oven, they did control 90 percent of the world’s titanium supply. And if they couldn’t make a decent microprocessor or a clever movie or a decent rock-and-roll record, they could, better than any government on earth, marshal the huge labor forces necessary to mine titanium ore from its inevitably difficult locations, smelt it, and refine the metal. Titanium was a complete pain in the ass to work with. Every weld on her big boat had to be conducted in an inert atmosphere, a blanket of argon or helium to prevent the introduction of oxygen. But that was exactly the kind of laborious process at which her people excelled, and her boat was entirely crafted out of that