Chương 215: Dead In The Water (01/18/2016)

DATE: Monday, January 18, 2016 LOCATION: The Draven | Caribbean Sea, 40 Nautical Miles West of Cuba LOCAL TIME: 1: 15 PM EST"Splash down," Woz called out, his hands flying across the navigation terminal as the tactical radar pulsed with four new, rapidly descending contacts.

"Four Mark 48 heavyweight torpedoes in the water. Active acoustic homing. They are rated for this depth." Through the panoramic glass of the hull, augmented by the ship's sensors, we saw the faint, spiraling cavitation trails of the Mark 48s cutting through the black water. They were dropping straight toward the glowing fractal dome of Tamoanchan.

"Target the kinetic payload," I ordered, my eyes locked on the incoming streaks. Elon didn't hesitate. He stepped up to the Element 115 reactor housing in the center of the cabin, a manic, electric grin spreading across his face.

"Bring the waveguides online. Delta configuration." He slid his right hand forward along the smooth, buttonless interface. Deep below the deck of The Draven, the three massive gravity-wave amplifiers whined, pitching up into an ultrasonic frequency that made the fillings in my teeth ache.

"Severing their mass," Elon whispered.

"Untethering local gravity." A ripple of distorted space shot out from the bottom of our ship. The gravity wave intersected the four incoming torpedoes perfectly. They didn't explode. They didn't deflect. They simply stopped. The Mark 48s froze mid-water. Their dual-speed pump-jet propulsors spun furiously, churning out a massive cloud of bubbles as they tried to push forward, but the torpedoes remained perfectly suspended in place. Elon had disconnected them from the universe's kinetic flow.

Robbed of the ability to move through space, their onboard navigation computers panicked. Five seconds later, the internal safety failsafes triggered. The propulsors spun down into dead silence. The two-ton weapons drifted harmlessly to the sea floor like dropped stones.

"Payload neutralized," Elon said, tapping the console.

"Take us up," I commanded. Elon shifted his hands over the Element 115 reactor, his fingers dancing in the brilliant blue light of the core.

"Untethering from the seabed. Tethering to the stratosphere." The Draven did not accelerate. It didn't move a single inch. The physics of the Lazar Sport Model dictated that the ship itself was never in motion. Instead, the reactor manipulated the gravitational tethers that bound objects to space-time, making the ship the only fixed, static point in reality. The universe moved around us. In less than three seconds, the entire planet dropped two thousand feet.

The abyssal darkness vanished instantly as the surface of the Caribbean Sea crashed downward around our hull. The midday sun blinded us for a fraction of a second before the glass auto-tinted. We were now hovering fifty feet above the rolling ocean waves, positioned dead center in the destroyer formation. The USS Roosevelt was so close I could read the white hull numbers painted on her massive gray steel bow. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"We have their attention," Woz said, wincing as the tactical display lit up with overlapping targeting lasers. On the bow of the Roosevelt, the distinctive white dome of the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) violently swiveled, its six-barrel 20mm rotary cannon locking dead onto our silver hull.

"They're firing!" Marcus shouted, stepping back from the transparent bulkhead. A deafening, mechanical roar echoed across the water as the Phalanx unleashed a stream of depleted uranium rounds—three thousand rounds per minute, a literal wall of kinetic death flying straight at The Draven.

"Amplifier Three," I said, not even blinking. Elon tapped the console.

"Untethering their momentum." The space between our ship and the destroyer physically bowed. The stream of depleted uranium hit the invisible, curved envelope of our gravity field. Instantly, the rounds were severed from their forward trajectory. They didn't bounce or ricochet; they simply hit the field, stopped completely in mid-air, and dropped straight down into the ocean in a torrential, splashing metallic rain. The firing stopped.

On the deck of the destroyer, tiny figures in navy uniforms froze, staring up at the fifty-foot silver disc hovering silently above them, entirely unbothered by their heaviest weaponry.

"Now the submarine," I said. Elon shifted his left hand.

"Tethering the John Warner to our static field." Directly beneath the USS Thomas Hudner, the ocean began to boil. Elon projected a massive, reversed gravity tether straight down into the depths, locking onto the submerged nuclear submarine. A highly advanced, eight-thousand-ton stealth sub was suddenly, violently pulled upward, falling toward the sky. It breached like a massive black whale, displaced water cascading off its sleek sail as it bobbed helplessly on the surface, caught in the artificial gravity tether.

"Hold them," I said. Elon spread both hands across the console. The three amplifiers synced into a perfect Delta configuration. He didn't move the ships; he moved the ocean. The water beneath the three destroyers bowed downward as Elon tethered the sea itself to a different gravitational vector, creating a massive, localized trough. The heavy warships slid down the steep slopes of the shallow bowl of water.

Their rudders and heavy brass propellers lifted completely out of the ocean, spinning uselessly in the humid Caribbean air. The entire United States Atlantic Fleet was pinned. Immobilized. Completely neutralized without a single drop of human blood being spilled. I tapped the comms panel, overriding the encrypted, narrow-band frequency used by the fleet commander.

"To the Commander of the Atlantic Fleet," my voice echoed through the bridge of every ship pinned below us—calm, authoritative, and terrifyingly clear.

"Your weapons have zero mass in this airspace. Your chain of command in Washington is currently compromised by an unregistered, non-human intelligence. You are firing on an allied archaeological site." There was absolute, dead silence on the radio. Only the sound of the ocean rushing against the edges of the gravity trough could be heard.

"I am releasing your hulls," I continued.

"Turn your ships around. If you fire again, we won't stop the torpedoes. We'll simply return them to your launch tubes." Elon pulled his hands back from the console, dissolving the tethers. The gravity trough collapsed. The ocean rushed back in, the destroyers violently rocking and pitching as their massive hulls settled back into the water. The John Warner stabilized, its sail gleaming in the midday sun. For ten agonizing seconds, nothing happened.

Then, slowly, the Phalanx CIWS on the Roosevelt powered down, its barrels dipping submissively toward the deck. The massive turbine engines of the destroyers engaged, throwing heavy white wakes into the water as the three warships turned hard to starboard, setting a direct heading back to Mayport.

"They're retreating," Woz breathed out, wiping a hand across his forehead. I stared out the transparent hull as the fleet shrank on the horizon. Tamoanchan was safe. The surface world was transitioning into our ecosystem. The board had changed forever.

"The Aesir just played their biggest piece," I said quietly, the black cap shadowing my eyes.

"And they missed." I turned away from the window, looking at Elon and Woz.

"Spin up the reactor. Calculate the gravitational tether for the Wilkes Land crater," I said, my voice dropping to a low, lethal register.

"We aren't flying to Antarctica. We're going to pull Antarctica to us."