Chief Nolan Pierce grabbed my uniform collar with both hands and pulled until the fabric tore beneath my name tape.
Then he hit me.
My shoulder struck the torpedo-loading rail. Before I could straighten, Pierce drove his boot into my side and pinned me there.
“Load the tube,” Commander Mark Holt said.
On the weapons display behind him, a target marker pulsed red. The ship beneath it was the Mercy Point, an American rescue vessel carrying survivors from a fishing boat that had caught fire hours earlier.
I had checked its identification code three times.
“No, sir.”
Holt stepped closer. “Load the tube or lose your dolphins.”
Pierce lifted his boot. Pain ran through my ribs as I pulled myself upright.
“That’s a friendly ship,” I said.
“The identification is compromised,” Holt replied.
“Then we verify it with the captain.”
Holt reached for the authorization card clipped to my uniform. He bent it until it snapped and dropped both pieces at my feet.
“Chief Elena Vale altered the target data,” he announced to the sailors in the bay. “She’s refusing a lawful order to conceal what she did.”
Nobody moved.
I looked at the weapons display. My credentials were listed beside the target change, but I had never entered it. For the past six minutes, I had been standing in the torpedo bay with Pierce watching me.
The hatch opened.
Captain Rose Bennett came through with two sailors behind her. She looked first at my torn uniform, then at the screen.
“Report,” she said.
Holt answered before I could. “Chief Vale corrupted the target file. I relieved her of duty.”
Captain Bennett moved to the display. The Mercy Point’s identification code was visible beneath the red marker.
“Why is an American ship designated hostile?” she asked.
Holt pointed at me. “That is what I intend to find out.”
I pressed my thumb against the transmitter concealed inside my belt.
A blue light appeared on its edge. My biometric record opened on the adjacent maintenance screen: my location, every time I had touched an authorized console, and an audio capture from the bay.
At 14:07, my credentials had been used to change the target file.
At 14:07, the transmitter placed me beside the loading rail, four meters from the weapons console.
Then Holt’s voice played through the bay speakers.
“Launch before Bennett gets down here.”
Captain Bennett turned toward him.
Holt lunged for the maintenance screen. One of the sailors caught his arm. Pierce stepped forward, but two others blocked him. Within seconds, both men were restrained.
“I gave no such order,” Holt said.
His recorded voice was still playing when a heavy valve opened somewhere behind us.
Water rushed into the torpedo tube.
A countdown illuminated above the rack.
REMOTE LAUNCH: 01:00.
The first sonar ping from the Mercy Point passed through the hull.
Holt stopped struggling. He stared at the numbers.
“That command isn’t coming from me.”
Captain Bennett reached for the bay intercom. “Control, confirm the source of that launch order.”
Static answered her.
00:51.
The weapons technician at the console tried to cancel the sequence. The display rejected his authorization.
“Local controls are locked out, Captain.”
I had seen that maintenance screen every day for eight months. Beneath the launch timer, a small line showed the source of each command. This one listed a communications relay elsewhere on the submarine.
“Radio room,” I said.
Captain Bennett pressed the intercom again. “Security team to communications. Secure every transmitting station.”
A click sounded from the speaker, followed by a man’s voice.
“Captain, this is Petty Officer Lewis. Communications is locked. The watch officer’s on the floor.”
“Is he injured?”
“Breathing. Someone struck him and left.”
The countdown reached forty seconds.
Pierce twisted against the sailors holding him. “Holt, what did you get us into?”
Holt looked at him but did not answer.
I leaned over the maintenance screen. The relay could issue a launch order, but the bay’s mechanical firing circuit was separate. Someone had prepared both.
“Captain, I need access behind the rack.”
“Take it.”
I opened the lower panel. Inside, a small service cable had been plugged into a port normally covered by a metal plate. Fresh scratches marked the screws. The cable ran behind the rack toward a maintenance junction.
I held it up so Bennett could see.
“Who had access to this panel?” she asked.
“Pierce,” I said. “He inspected it this morning.”
Pierce’s face reddened. “Holt told me to run the cable. He said it was for a diagnostic.”
“You knew the target was friendly,” I said.
“I didn’t know he could launch it remotely.”
00:25.
Captain Bennett ordered everyone clear of the rack. I followed the cable to the junction, but its connector was secured behind another panel. My hands shook as I worked the latch.
The sonar ping came again. The Mercy Point was still out there, unaware that a torpedo tube aboard an American submarine was flooding.
“Lewis,” Bennett said into the intercom, “find that relay.”
“Working on it, Captain.”
I got the panel open. Two identical cables entered the junction. One was labeled for maintenance. The new one had no label.
“Chief Vale,” Bennett said.
“I see it.”
00:12.
I pulled the unlabeled connector free.
The countdown stopped at eleven.
For one breath, nobody spoke. Then the weapons technician checked his display.
“Remote order rejected. Tube is still flooded, Captain, but the firing circuit is open.”
Captain Bennett gripped the edge of the console. “Keep it that way. Notify the Mercy Point and get the radio room secured.”
Holt was watching the disconnected cable.
“You think I put that there?” he asked.
“You cloned my credentials,” I said. “Pierce says you ordered the cable installed.”
“I changed the target file,” Holt said. “I gave the order in the recording. But I never set a remote countdown.”
The radio cracked again.
“Captain, Lewis here. We found the relay terminal.”
“Who used it?”
A pause. “The watch officer is awake. He says the person who struck him was wearing a maintenance uniform.”
“Name?”
“He couldn’t see the face. But he saw a badge.”
Lewis read the number aloud.
The weapons technician entered it at his console. A personnel record opened on the screen.
Pierce leaned forward to read it. Holt went pale.
The badge belonged to a sailor who had been listed aboard the Mercy Point when it left port that morning.
Captain Bennett looked toward the speaker. “Lewis, seal communications. Nobody enters or leaves.”
I picked up the two broken pieces of my authorization card. On the display above them, the rescue ship’s identification marker was still red.
Someone aboard our submarine had prepared to fire on it. Holt had helped give that person the opportunity.
We had stopped the launch. We still had to find the sailor before the next command came through.
