"Oh, there are," said Silver unexpectedly. She unjacked and swiveled her chair about. Her Seco lay on the console behind her. "I've talked online with deckers from dome-towns off Seattle and Jersey. Just little places, couple hundred chummers and no more than thirty meters down at the max. Mostly they do farming and fishing. Tap some oil.

"No, wait," she added, touching her cheek. "There's a big domecity off the CalFree Zone. Kalamari Incorporated. It's a hundred or more meters deep and has fifteen thousand folks, plus. They do genetic research, I think. And fishing, of course."

"Japan's are much bigger," Delphia said with a note of pride. "They have at least one farming arcology in the shallow seas off the main island, with a bubbletown permanently housing its population. I've seen reports from the Imperial Navy debating the wisdom of such, as the place is impossible to defend properly. Even with diakote coverings, a single salvo of armor-piercing torpedoes will destroy the protective bubble and a billion-nuyen installation is gone."

"Well, we're not going to find any of those down here," said Silver, swiveling back to her screens. "If an armored sub can only reach six hundred, no dometown could possibly survive the pressure."

"True enough. I've never seen one," said Boomer, not facing them directly.

Conversation slowed as each person became absorbed in his or her own thoughts. Then a ventilation fan clicked on with a whir, making everybody jump.

"Let's go, there's nothing here," said Delphia, hoisting the Crusader onto one shoulder. "Silver, was this the ..."

He left the sentence hanging and she shook her head no. "Boomer, continue on original course and heading."

"Aye, aye," said Boomer, returning his augmented hands to the control surfaces. The perforated deck below them took on a gentle cant as the Manta angled off in a new direction, building speed as the orange submersible dwindled on the aft and port screens.

A hundred klicks away, and six hundred meters straight upward, a rubber life raft bobbed in the low swells of the open sea. The sun was hot overhead and the surface water devoid of any sign of land or other ships to the empty horizon three klicks away in every direction.

There were two occupants, young norms. Both were shoeless and only partially clothed in loose garments, and already flushed red with the beginning of serious sunburns.

"Whaddaya mean, no?" raged Attila at the slave, sitting bolt upright in the dingy. His dirty silk robe was knotted about his waist.

Ruby tugged down her oversized T-shirt and glared at him defiantly. "You may have gotten us off that ship, but I grabbed the water and food and it's mine! Mine, do you hear me? Mine! You can't have any."

"No, you're mine!" he shouted, brandishing a fat barrel flare pistol. "I bought you, and I own you!"

"Own this, jackanape," she said making a gesture.

"You slitch!" screamed Attila as he leveled the flare gun, which she promptly kicked out of his hand. The gun discharged from the impact, sending a sizzling round high into the brilliant daylight sky, where the exploding charge was virtually invisible. The empty gun hit the water way out of reach, and sank instantly.

With a scream of rage, Attila dove forward, going for her throat with both hands. Ruby whipped out her homemade plastic shiv and stabbed for his stomach. He dodged, she missed, and the two collided, cursing and wrestling, food containers splashing into the sea as they fought over possession of the razor-sharp knife in their inflatable rubber raft. Nearby, a shark fin cut the water and began to circle the bouncing dingy. But the two cursing combatants were much too busy to notice the presence of the third killer. Not yet anyway.

Far below the surface of the sea, lunchtime came and went on the Manta, with the runners taking turns getting chow, somebody always watching Boomer. During the break, Thumbs readied his Mossberg and checked the brig of the boat to see if there were any guests. But the iron box with its leg irons and wall-mounted neck clamps was empty of guests, alive or dead.

On his way back to the bridge, however, Thumbs did note that all the escape pods were missing. Unless, of course, the ship ... the boat, frag it, simply didn't carry any. Who knew? If cleanliness was any indication, the pirates had been rather lax about maintenance. Then again, logically, even if they survived a wreck or something and got rescued at sea, they might still have their heads explode, so why bother?

It was late afternoon when the Manta crested a mountainous ridge and the forward vidcams showed a wild flurry of movement on the plateau below.

"Life, at this depth," breathed Silver, astonished. Her hands moved over her console, activating the disk memory and replaying what they had just seen in slo-mo. As the submarine crested the ridge, there came into view a valley below them with a horde of merrows fighting a huge kraken. As the lights of the Manta illuminated the fight, the creatures all darted away.

"Sea is full of it," commented Delphia, polishing his sunglasses with a pocket handkerchief. Both went into a pocket. "But I didn't think either merrow or kraken could go this deep. Guess I was wrong."

"How much further to the center of the target zone?" asked Thumbs, reclining in his chair.

"Just over those mountains," said Silver, hunched forward over the console. Her hands never stopped tapping keys, turning dials, or adjusting the controls. "Range eighty klicks."

Filling the dark bow screen were the faint outlines of an undersea mountain range. The jagged granite peaks registered taller than the Andes.

"High or low, Skip?" asked Boomer, retarding their speed.

"Umm?" asked Delphia. "Oh, ah, keep us low. Can you maneuver through that central pass over there? Between those two jagged peaks?"

"Def. Plenty of room."

As the submarine started forward again, Moonfeather shuddered violently from head to foot. Deathly pale, she gasped out as if in pain, nearly falling from her chair.

"Mother goddess, stop," she pleaded in a strained whisper, as if mortally wounded. "P-please, s-stop the b-b-boat!"

23.

Smoothly, the megakiloton Manta glided to a complete halt.

"W-what did we just go past?" Moonfeather stammered, hugging herself as if freezing cold.

"Umm? Nothing," reported Silver. She checked her board. "Bare stone below us. Just an empty plain. We're not even close to the foothills of the mountain range yet."

"Empty, my hoop," chattered Moonfeather, going to the aft starboard screen. Only blackness showed. "Go back."

"Why?" asked Thumbs, puzzled.

"Just do it!"

"Skip?" asked Boomer, looking over his shoulder. Drumming his fingers on the arm rest, Delphia was studying Moonfeather. She was staring at the aft screen intently. Her whole body said she was looking for something she knew was there. "You heard her," he said at last. "Reverse course."

A shrug. "Aye, aye." Slowly, the submarine eased into motion and started the long slow process of backtracking to its earlier position.

"Stop!" cried Moonfeather after a few minutes. Boomer did so. With trembling fingers, she reached out to touch the screen. "There. Can you feel it? Cat, it's big. Huge!"

"What?" asked Delphia, checking the monitors in the arm of his chair. "Thermal is clear, no metal registering, no movement, no magnetism."

"There's nothing there," affirmed Thumbs at weapons. His view screen was black, the sensor panel underneath showing a vector graphic of the area below them. In glowing green outlines was a cartoon seabed, rippled sand dunes, a few copses of hundred-meter-tall kelp, a couple of rocks, some brain coral, and not much more.

"Sonar is clear," added Silver, touching her ear. "Not even any fish in our immediate vicinity."

"No fish?" said Delphia, shaking his head. "That's not right."

She gestured. "See for yourself! There's nothing out there!"

"Something invisible?" demanded Delphia, slipping on his sunglasses. He frowned. "Damn, nothing."

"A magical shield," she confirmed. "Biggest I've ever seen. Ever heard of! Must have taken some hotdrekking mages to create it!"

Twelve.

"Who said that?" barked Moonfeather, whipping around.

"Said what?" demanded Thumbs.

"You okay?" asked Delphia in concern, lowering his glasses.

"Nothing. Forget it. Just nerves, I guess," she said after a tick, and went back to studying the black screen. But she began to hum softly, a wordless song none of them had ever heard.

"This could be the Yamato," Boomer said eagerly. "Maybe somebody else found her first and left her protected by magic."

"Get us closer and lower," said Delphia, loosening his necktie. "Z minus one hundred. But go slow. I want elbow room."

"Gotcha, Skip."

Moving in a long slow curve, the submarine adjusted the angle of its hydroplanes to descend to a lower level. Time passed in silence, everybody straining to see whatever was out there on the ring of screens. The Manta was coasting at dead slow over the empty vista, every sensor on the trips, sonar beeping steadily when the monitors suddenly winked out and the lights died. Silence engulfed the bridge as the sonar, sensors, ventilation fan, everything stopped working at the same time.

"Trouble," came Silver's voice. "We got trouble."

"Aye, roger that," said Boomer, the clicks of dead buttons being pushed painfully loud in the darkness. "We're dead in the water. Motors off line. We got nothing."

"Starting to drift," said Thumbs, voice tight.

"How can you tell?" asked Delphia.

"I can see just fine. There's plenty of heat in here," he said. "Power's off, but the compass and bubble float are still working. We're .. . five, no, six degrees off plumb and getting worse."

"Caught in a cross current," Boomer reported emotionlessly. "I can't see drek," Moonfeather complained.

"Chemical lights," said Delphia.

"Nada," said Boomer, releasing the non-functioning controls. "Haven't replaced the ones used up earlier when you sprang your surprise."

"Great. We blow a fuse?"

Swiveling his chair, Boomer turned to face Delphia. "Hey, you tell me. I got thrown off-system when the mains died." There came a low hum from the captain's chair. "Ah, that's better," said Delphia. "Everything looks okay." There came the sounds of him walking surely across the bridge, his steps going around the periscope.

The deck was canting seriously by now, the angle of degree steadily increasing. Somewhere aft in the boat, something crashed and a loose hatch swung open to slam into the bulkhead with a thunderous boom.

"We're gonna be floating sideways real soon," said Thumbs nervously. "Hey, there's no seat belts!"

"What? Oh, of course not," admonished Boomer. "If we hit something hard enough to throw you out of your seat, the boat's busted to drek and you're already dead."

"Silver, was the current going in the direction of the mountains or the plains?" asked Delphia from the darkness beside her.

She turned toward the sound of his voice. "Sorry. I honestly don't remember."

"Just in case we're heading for the mountains, did anybody think to check the escape pods?" asked Delphia. "Are they in good shape? Do they have air and battery power?"

"They're gone," rumbled Thumbs. "We ain't got one on board."

"All of 'em?" gasped Boomer. "But that means we're trapped!"

"Yar. Unless you wanna walk home."

"So we just sit here?" Moonfeather hissed. "Boomer, do something! You're the expert. It's why we kept your hoop intact, chummer."

"Yeah, I remember," he muttered. His chair squeaked once, and was silent.

Then a spark flashed in the darkness, and a heartbeat later a hundred lights winked over the boards as they rebooted. The overhead bulbs flickered and strobed back on with full power as the floor gently vibrated from the engines kicking on.

Caught halfway across the bridge, Boomer scowled and returned to his chair. "We're on line," he announced, jacked back into the controls. "Fusion plant at full power. I'm taking us away from that freaky plain."

As the submarine leveled off, Delphia made no direct response as he reclaimed his seat and removed his sunglasses.

"Was that a magical attack?" asked Thumbs, rubbing his forearm nervously.

Exhaling, Moonfeather ran fingers through her hair, brushing it away from her face. "No, that was some sort of technological interference."

"Technological interference?" Silver seemed shocked, and repeated the word. "Technological, eh? Can you do an astral projection to check it out?"

Going back to the map table, Moonfeather barked a laugh. "Against juju like that? Frag you and the horse ya rode in on. Lots more easy ways to get my butt kicked."

"Then how about sending a water elemental to check it over?" asked Delphia. "Or an ally spirit. Don't you have any spirits?"

Moonfeather shook her head and pointed a finger at the view of the empty plains. "I don't want anything to do with that thing!" She shivered again, in spite of the fact that the bridge was a balmy twenty-two degrees Celsius.

"Want some hot soykaf?" offered Thumbs, rising from his chair.

She gave a chattering nod. "Cat, yes. But I'll get it. Thanks."

"Hey, Boomer," said Silver, eyes glued to her screens.

"Any chance we're in an especially cold area of the ocean?"

He looked at her quizzically, then checked his board. "Yeah, we are. Smack in the middle of a polar stream. An undersea river that comes straight from the North Pole. Howdyaknow?"

"Technology," she murmured, keying in commands. "Deep underwater, icy-cold area, took us out in a nano. Everything but the batteries. Magically protected by a shield of invisibility. Can't be anything but that... What else could it be? Nothing. So there's the answer."

"A coldframe?" said Delphia, incredulous. "Down here, in the middle of nowhere?"

"What better location?" she responded.

"Possible," he mused, stroking his chin. "Unlikely, but possible."

"They're almost always war computers," Silver reminded him. "And combat always generates a lot of heat."