Neptune base, Central Pacific

Jack sat buried in warm towels. He was finally starting to feel his toes. Charlie’s image flickered on the computer screen in front of him. “First tell me about this missile strike. What’s that all about?”

“A fail-safe mechanism was initiated from a radio transmission from below. I thought you might know more about it.”

“Then it must have been Spangler,” Jack said with a scowl. “His final attempt to kill me from the grave.”

“He must have really hated you, Jack,” Charlie chimed in. “A nuclear-tipped ICBM has our names on it.”

“From Gabriel’s estimation, fifty-seven minutes. One minute after the solar storm hits.”

Jack shook his head. “So even if we can block this pillar and save the world, we still die in a nuclear blast.”

Jack sat quietly, stubbornly considering their options, then sighed. “What the hell. Heroes aren’t suppose to live forever. Let’s get this done. What’s this new plan of yours, Charlie?”

“Well, unless you have a Ouija board, that ain’t happening. So spit it out. What’s this plan?”

Charlie looked grim. “You gave me the idea, Jack. We overload the pillar with energy.”

“Not exactly. If we overload the crystal with precisely enough energy, pulse it at exactly the right frequency, it should fracture the crystal without a kinetic backlash, like shattering a crystal goblet by striking the right note.”

Charlie nodded. “I think I do. But the hard part was finding a way to deliver the note. The energy has to be precise and sustained for three minutes.”

“I think so.” Charlie sighed. “That’s what Gabriel and I have been working on since you left — and you’re not going to like it, Jack. For this type of sustained power, we’ll need a particle-beam weapon.”

Then understanding struck Jack between the eyes. He jerked to his feet. “Wait…you can’t mean the Spartacus?”

Jack sank back down. “It’s a Navy satellite. The one I was putting into orbit when the shuttle Atlantis was damaged. Its equipped with an experimental particle-beam cannon engineered to knock out targets from space. Airplanes, missiles, ships, even submarines.” Jack turned back to Charlie. “But it’s defunct. Damaged.”

Charlie shook his head. “Only its guidance and tracking systems — which, of course, makes it useless to the government. For it to work, they’d need an operator sitting up there aiming the thing by hand.” Charlie paused. “But luckily, we have that operator right here.”

“Exactly. I sent him earlier to try to access the satellite’s central processor. With the current global crisis and with the Spartacus classified as dead in space, he and Miyuki succeeded in slipping past the old firewalls. The satellite’s processor is still active.”

As the others talked, Jack sat quietly, flashing back to the bright satellite lifting from its shuttle bay cradle, silvery solar wings spreading wide. He tried to close his mind against what happened afterward but failed. The explosion, the screams, the endless fall through space…

He shivered — not from cold, but from a twinge of superstitious dread. The Spartacus was cursed. Death surrounded it. Nothing good could come from the wretched thing. “It won’t work,” he grumbled.

“Do we have any other choice?” Karen asked. She placed a hand on his shoulder, then spoke to Charlie. “When can we try it?”

“Well, that’s the clincher. We’ll have only the one chance. The satellite won’t come within orbital range until forty-eight minutes from now.”

Jack checked the clock. “That’s three minutes before the solar storm hits.”

“To target the pillar, Gabriel will need an active GPS lock. Something upon which to focus the cannon. We’re going to need you to place the Nautilus ’s Magellan GPS homing device over by the pillar. It’ll feed data to the Fathom, and in turn I’ll send it to Gabriel.”

Jack shook his head. “Then we have a problem. The Nautilus is still outside the sea base. I had to do an emergency jettison to enter the docking bay. There’s no way to get to the Magellan unit outside.”

“It’s too crude to extract the Magellan unit without harming it. Someone would have to do it by hand.”

Standing in the docking bay, Jack watched the water level rise past the front port of his helmet. He moved his arms, acquainting himself to the deep-sea armored ensemble. It was one of the Navy diver’s suits. The large helmet had four viewing ports: forward, right, left, and above. The bulbous helmet was so wide that it blended flush with the suit’s shoulders, creating a bullet-shaped form with jointed arms and legs protruding from it. Small lights were mounted atop the helmet and at each wrist. There were also thruster assemblies built into the back, like the old rocket packs in scifi serials.

As Jack moved slowly about the filling bay, he found its operation fairly intuitive, similar to the EVA suits used for spacewalks.

“How’re you doing?” Karen’s voice came through the helmet radio. Through the seawater, he spotted her waving to him from the bay’s observation window. After talking with Charlie, Karen had taken Jack down to the docking level and shown him the “garages” where the huge suits were stored. He had to give her credit. It was a clever solution.

“The little bugger has finished troubleshooting the satellite’s systems. They’re powering up and awaiting our signal. Just get that GPS unit and haul ass. We’re running out of time.”

Jack’s gaze flicked to the helmet’s internal computer screen. Sixteen minutes. “I hear you.”

Jack bent a bit, peering down. A few feet away the huge doors slid open. The ocean lay beyond.

Jack stepped toward the opening. “I’d better get going.” From across the way he spotted Karen’s face through the window. She held a fist to her throat. Worried and scared. Jack sensed her fear was more for his own safety than the fate of the world.

With a last wave, he stepped from the bay and sank down to the ocean floor. Using a hand pad, he adjusted his buoyancy and settled in place. The remains of the Nautilus lay two yards away. Playing with the thrusters, Jack spun himself around until he faced the sub, then moved over to its side.

Bending at the knee, he searched the vessel. The Magellan unit was just forward to the portside thruster assembly. He shuffled around until he found it. Reaching with an arm, he used the three-pronged pincer grip to unscrew its cover plate. It took a little prying since it was bent inward from the hard use the sub had recently faced.

Jack kneeled lower, awkward in the bulky suit. He shone the tiny wrist lamps inside. Oh, shit… The shoe-box-size device was smashed, its inner components open to the seawater. He groaned aloud.

He straightened. “The Magellan is toast. The unit’s fried.” Hopelessness hollowed his chest. “Goddamn that asshole Spangler!”

Charlie’s voice echoed through the tiny speakers. “But Jack, I’m picking up a GPS signal.”

Using his thrusters, Jack skimmed between two of the steel support legs and out into open ocean.

“It’s you!” Charlie said. “That Navy suit must be engineered with an automatic GPS homing device. A safety feature in case a diver gets stranded!”

“You have eight minutes.” Charlie paused. “But Jack, if the GPS is a part of the suit, you’ll have to stay by the pillar.”

Karen came to the same realization. “There has to be another way. What about that other plan? The last resort. To reset the explosive charges and blow up just the pillar.”

Fingering his controls, Jack goosed his thrusters. “Folks, either way, there’s a nuke with our names on it already in the air. This is the only viable option.” He swung around and flew across the seabed floor. The pillar lay fifty yards away. “Be ready.”

Lisa stood with Robert and George by the bow rail. The sun overhead shone brilliantly. There was not a cloud in the sky. They had come up to the deck to await the outcome. With the other four belowdecks, the lab had been too crowded, too cramped. Lisa needed to feel the breeze on her cheek…if only for one last time.

George and Robert had accompanied her. George smoked his pipe. Robert had his Sony walkman over his ears. Faintly, Lisa could hear the tinny sounds of Bruce Springsteen singing “Born to Run.”

But they couldn’t. The Fathom needed to stay nearby to aid in the flow of transmissions between the station below and the satellite overhead. There would be no escape for any of them. Even if their plan succeeded, the area would soon be wiped out, destroyed in a decisive nuclear strike.

Lisa looked. A small contrail rose from the northeast, streaking higher as it arced into the sky. The fail-safe missile.

Encased in his reinforced suit, Jack stood with his back to the crystal pillar. The ocean bottom lay dark all around him. A moment ago he had ordered Karen to turn off the grid to the lamp poles, plunging the seas back into darkness. He had also turned off his own suit lights. He could not risk exciting the pillar prematurely and interfering with his GPS signal.

Charlie answered from the Fathom. “Loud and clear. Transmitting data up to Gabriel.”

He gazed around him. The only light came from the yellow glow through the portholes of the Neptune sea base. Though he could not see her, Jack felt Karen staring back at him. He sighed. He would have liked the chance to have known her better. His only regret.

He waited. There was nothing else for him to do. He was now just a living and breathing target for a space-based weapons system.

He glanced up through the upper port of his helmet, as if he could see the satellite — Spartacus. He had somehow known one day their paths would cross again. A destiny that needed to be fulfilled. He had escaped death once, the only survivor. Now he was standing in the crosshairs of the same satellite. Death would not be denied a second time.

Karen whispered in his ear like a ghost, “We’re with you, Jack. All of us.”

He silently acknowledged her. All his life he had been surrounded by ghosts. Memories of the dead. Now, at this last moment, he let it all go, finally realizing how much power he had given to the shades of his past.

Well, no longer. At this moment he wanted only his flesh-and-blood friends at his side. He opened his eyes and his comlink. “Good luck, everyone. Let’s get this done!”

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