"Nyah, can't be a cold frame," said Thumbs. "Of this size?"

"What size?" asked Delphia. "Damn thing's invisible!"

"Yeah, but the shield seems to cover the whole rocky plain . . . oh, I guess that's just to help hide its location. It wouldn't be no larger than a refrigerator, right? Just a big cube."

Silver studied him carefully. "You know about this stuff?"

"Got a cousin who's a drekhot decker, loves to talk about uniques and specials as if they're bedpartners."

"How many cousins you got?"

"I dunno, fifty, sixty, the usual."

"Lucky you," said Boomer. "What's a coldframe?" Delphia nodded at Silver, who answered. "It's a computer built to operate on modified electronics. Superconductor wires and circuits that allow electrons to move without hindrance. Only gravity itself slowing them down, and that's barely appreciable."

"And this stuff is faster than maser relays?" Boomer asked. "Drek. Fiber-optics operate at light speed!"

"Don't you believe it, cobber," Silver told him. "Best cables in the world-even Fuchi lab bench stuff-only goes at about ninety percent LS. Cables are never a hundred percent clear, even under perfect conditions, which means distortion and reduced speed. But still a quantum leap faster than the best electronics."

She glanced at the plain below. "Till now."

"Why's it called a cold frame?"

"The original superconductor wires wouldn't operate unless chilled to hundreds of degrees below zero. Pretty fragging useless for inner city work. But decker talk says that just before the Awakening some big brains got it up to room temperature. Down here, in this arctic subzero cold water, there'd be no variations of temperature to affect processing. No regular deliveries of liquid nitrogen for competitors to hijack, etcetera, etcetera. A coldframe is delicate and expensive, but will go a million times faster than anything in existence." Silver stroked her deck and closed her eyes. "Ghost, what it must be like to jack into that mother!"

Delphia exchanged glances with Silver. "Maybe."

Keeping his head low, Thumbs stood and advanced to the map table. Pressing buttons, he scrolled undersea charts across the flat screen. Some of them were hand-drawn from hundreds of years ago, some brand new and bearing the marks of Atlantic Security. None of them showed anything but water in their present location.

"No record of something here that was moved. And this thing musta cost a fragging gazillion nuyen to build," said Thumbs, accelerating the scroll function, maps flashing by at flickering speed. "Had to be somebody strictly major league."

Serenely, the sub continued to circle the suboceanic plain. "Maybe it's some other pirates," Moonfeather said from the hatchway, a steaming mug cupped to her chest.

Throwing back his head, Boomer laughed heartily. "Sweet Davy, no! Freaking IronHell don't have that kind of nuyen, and neither do any of the others."

"Silver, can we jam this phenomenon-whatever it is they're doing?" Delphia asked.

She pursed her lips in thought. "Maybe. We still had battery power during the blackout. I checked as soon as I could jack in again. But there wasn't enough power to run anything important. It was the fusion reactor that scrammed on us. And I have no idea how they did that little trick."

"So we move on?" asked Boomer, sounding disappointed. "Leave? Frag, no," whispered Silver, caressing the chrome jack in her temple. "If it's technology, then it has to have a control system. All I have to do is find an access port or locate the fiber-optic cable connecting the coldframe to whatever system it's operating."

"And then?"

"And then I'll go jack into that mother and find out."

"No. Too dangerous," said Delphia. "Any other ideas?" Fiddling with the controls, Thumbs spoke from the map table. "Perhaps we should damage the machine. Stir up a little mess. See who comes out to repair it."

"And talk to them," said Boomer, grinning. "We got a special room down in the hold, strap-down chair, electrodes, all sorts of toys."

"Silver, can coral live at this depth and temperature?" asked Thumbs, turning off the table and going to a port screen.

It still showed the large clump of pinkish brain coral, all alone in the vasty rocky expanse and receding in the distance.

"No way," she replied. "It's too cold, too deep. They like warm shallows. But storms do break off chunks and send whole reefs off into depths like these."

Thumbs tapped the screen. "Completely undamaged?"

"No," said Delphia excitedly. "And it's the right size too. You twigged it, omae. Silver, sweep that coral with the sonar. Let's see if we get a picture of irregular branches or a compact cube."

"Done and done." Her hands moved over the console, and the sonar screen sounded with a single powerful ping. It returned almost instantly. "Cube!" she replied. "We found it!"

"It's beyond the depth the sub can go," Delphia noted. "We'll have to use the Jym suits to get closer. Where are they?"

Boomer was studying the signal image of the cube. "Down aft of the conning, near the portside machine shop."

Suddenly, the sonar was beeping wildly, the pings coming faster and closer together with every tick.

"Holy Davy, red freaking alert!" screamed Boomer, staring horrified at the navicom screen.

"Incoming!" shouted Silver, grabbing hold of her console. "Brace yourselves!" The entire vessel shook as if it had just rammed the world, throwing everybody out of their seats.

"Report!" snapped Delphia, hauling himself upright.

"Did we get hit by a torpedo?" asked Thumbs from the deck.

"No, drek for brains," said Moonfeather. "We're still here, ain't we?"

The Manta shook again, more violently, whole sections of the control boards going dark as klaxons sounded.

"Both Of those were hits," reported Silver, standing at her console. "We've got a double breech in the engine room. Fusion reactor dying, engines dead." She tapped the controls with a finger. "Something odd here. The internal temperature is down a hundred degrees. How the frag can that be?"

"Down? High explosives should make our internal temp go up, not down," snorted Thumbs.

"It's a Snowball. We're being hit by bloody Snowballs!" shouted Boomer, slapping the panels as if playing the drums. "Reactor to max! Life support to max. Sealing off the . . ." He rattled the controls. They sounded loose and lifeless. "Frag it, they're all dead again!"

Another tremor.

"Hit again!" cried Silver. "Hull breach sectors nine, ten, and eleven. Bilge temperature is at minus four degrees!"

"Boomer, what the frag is happening!" demanded Delphia standing, Crusader cradled in one arm.- "Snowballs! Armor-piercing torps loaded with liquid nitrogen. Kills the crew, saves the ship. A fav tactic of AtSec. Why the frag did you pinpoint it with the sonar, ya stupid slitch? Drek! There's flooding along the main corridor and the cargo hold," Boomer ranted, checking everything on his board. The boat shuddered again. "Propeller is gone, aft section damaged and taking on water. Auto-seals have closed the internal bulkheads, pumps gone." He swiveled about. "We're sinking like a rock."

"Depth at five hundred meters," reported Silver, stuffing the Fuchi into her bag, fiber-optic cables dangling like tails. "Five hundred fifty meters, six hundred, six-fifty ... a hundred till crush depth!"

"Abandon ship," said Delphia, shouldering the chattergun. "How?" asked Thumbs, slinging the Mossberg over his neck. "Escape pods are gone."

"Head for the Jym suits!"

As everybody dashed for the hatchway, another tremor shook the submarine, nearly knocking Thumbs over as he frantically typed commands into his console with his oversized fingers. "There," he grinned, stepping away. "Whoever boards this baby will never know we were here."

"With nobody on the bridge and the bilge filled with corpses?" asked Boomer, moving around him to get to the hatchway and almost slipping in Moonfeather's spilled coffee.

"No prob. I got it covered," said Thumbs grimly, ducking low to make his own sprint through the hatchway. Another shake and the ring of monitors winked out behind them. The Manta was blind.

"Covered how?" shouted Delphia, clambering down a metal staircase far ahead of the troll.

Moonfeather was right behind him, followed by Silver gripping her bulky bag, and trying not to bump into anything. Boomer traversed the stairs by grabbing the rails, lifting his boots off the deck and sliding down in practiced ease.

Thumbs simply jumped to the next level, landing in a crouch. "I set the Firelance to fire, full power in ninety seconds."

"Underwater?" screamed Boomer aghast, his breath fogging.

"It'll be a sight to see."

"Yar. From a distance. Let's book."

Creaks and groans sounded from all over the vessel. Struts snapped free from ceiling joyces to lethally swing across corridors like scythes. Hatches popped open randomly, and the lights flickered as the fusion reactor fought to stay on line against the encroaching cold.

Following the others, Thumbs banged his head on a normsized hatchway. Blood trickled down his cheek, but he kept going. "I sure hope you had a troll in the crew!" he said, shaking the blood off his face.

"No," Boomer answered, punting down a corridor. "But we once had a really fat ork, and his suit is still here."

"Close enough!"

The Manta was starting to list severely as mists crept along the decks, icy crystals forming on bare metal by the time the team reaching the airlocks. A deadly chill was in the atmosphere and getting worse by the tick. Delphia wrapped a pocket handkerchief around the latch, then hauled open the hatchway. Everybody tumbled in, then Boomer slammed it shut. He grabbed gloves from a locker and put them on to spin the locking wheel to seal the portal tight.

The lights were dim in the pressure chamber, the filaments of the bulbs easily visible as the power to them was so low. Lockers lined the bow wall, with dressing benches bolted to the deck before them. Hung on the opposite side were the Jym suits. They lined the bulkhead like overstarched tuxedos, flat black instead of orange like the ones the Gundersons had been wearing. Resembling military power armor, the suits were in two pieces, top and bottom, the waists open. However, the arm and legs were fastened to the bulkhead with chains and one mother of a padlock. Delphia gestured, the Manhunter spoke, and the lock exploded into pieces.

Thumbs dogged his waist seals tight, then punched the emergency start button clearly marked on his sleeve control panel. The Jym suit came alive with power, lights, and air. Frost was creeping along the bulkheads at an incredible pace, and the thickening mists made it difficult to see as he searched for the keypad to open the huge hinged hatch in the deck.

"Where's the switch?" he shouted, his voice muffled by the thick metal and plastic of his helmet.

"Here," said Boomer clearly from the twin speakers inside each of the helmets. He pressed the keys on the icy pad. Nothing happened. He tried again, and again, with the same result. "The safeties have shorted out!"

"Then we improvise," said Silver, and she flipped the safety latches off with a metal kick. Instantly, the pressure hatch slammed back, indenting the perforated metal floor, the hinges cracking apart. A solid column of water thundered into the room, impacting against the ceiling and punching through the deck above them.

Fascinated by the sight, Moonfeather reached out a gauntlet, and Delphia pulled her arm back. "Don't. The pressure will shear off your hand. Wait for the water to come to us."

Bitter cold began to creep through the bulkheads, ice forming around their suits as the thundering sea water rose to knee depth, waist, chest, and they were finally under. One by one, the runners stepped into the gaping hole and dropped through.

Truly resembling shadows, the ebony Jym suits plummeted through the cold sea, the running lights of the Manta wildly splaying about as the hull buckled and writhed like a huge beast dying in anguish. Then a perfect sphere of fire brighter than the sun replaced the submarine. The deafening shock wave brutally shoved the falling Jym suits into the killing depths below as hot shrapnel hissed by in a deadly rain and darkness swallowed them whole.

24.

"Here they come again!" cried a sonar operator.

Filling the forward display with gentle majesty were the waving forests of the undersea farms, organized hexacres of crops colored in brilliant hues growing in wild abundance under the powerful lamps of the undersea arcology. And traveling straight in from the west came several pirate submarines, their advance heralded by a fusillade of torpedoes, arcing and spiraling toward the shimmering bubblecity in an ever-expanding cone formation.

"Anti-torpedoes launch, activate countermeasures. Deckers proceed with jamming and whiplash!" ordered the duty officer, using both hands to operate his console. Seated next to him in the command dais was the XO officer. She was slumped in her seat, comely features charred from the electrical explosion of her console. It was caused by a freak overload when an enemy torpedo hit a power relay junction Beyond The Wall.

In fast precision, the amber cross hairs on the screen surrounded each of the enlongated submarines, and the antitorpedoes streaked away. The tiny needles lanced through the ocean to slam deep into a pirate boat, and then the vessel vanished, engulfed in a globular fireball that expanded, contracted, and was gone.

Outside the mesa, alarms sounded on the streets of the city as the shock wave hit and thousands of tiny cracks appeared over the section of the dome facing the blast. Slowly, the fissures started to close, but water sprayed in through the hairline fissures, knifing through buildings, carving off chunks, and cutting passenger vehicles in half.

In the Command Center, the side screens displayed a hundred bubbling trails crisscrossing in wild patterns as the pirates released anti-anti-torpedoes to counter the city's defense. Made of ceramics and powered by compressed air, the deadhead projectiles were invisible to magnetic sensors, so The Cube master-computer formed vector graphics of the incoming projectiles based on sonar readings; glowing green lines to show the silhouette of an enemy incoming where the passive sensors indicated they should be located. The accuracy of the plotting and graphics was highly doubtful.

Two rumbling explosives blossomed on the horizon and the computer screens as a pair of torpedoes were destroyed. Then the easterly screen went speckled as dozens of pirates in green camouflaged Jym suits were released and disappeared into the farmland of the city. The duty officer cursed. "The pirates never used troops before!"

"Launch salvo of anti-sub limpet mines," the commander snapped. "Needlers, fire at will. Prepare to trigger outlying depth charges."

A chorus of acknowledgments greeted the orders, when an entire panel of controls went dark and an alarm began to howl.

"Another hit," called out the female operator at the damage control console. "Missile strike in Section Ten, breach in Quadrant Four of Old Dome. Explosive decompression in Quadrant Three and Two!"

"Sonar is down," called out the operator at engineering. "Fusion reactor number two is down. Shunting emergency power to back up sonar and the Wall."

With the resurgence of power, the althropic dome over the city closed the hissing cracks faster, but the streets were already flooded in some sectors, with traffic snarling in the outer divisions.

Almost undetectable against the mass of the arcology, a swarm of microscopic dots launched from a battery hidden in the surrounding mountains. Under independent control, the sleek drones curved away at full thrust, a trail of bubbles streaming behind them like a jet's contrail in the atmosphere. Rapidly accelerating at ten ... fifteen ... thirty-five knots, the finned bombs dodged around the lamp posts in the farm field to zoom in on the Jym suits amid the greenery. Balls of fire erupted in the cropland, grisly bits of armor and clouds of red blood forming a dense cloud. Needlers, plain steelloy rods with barbed tips stuttered out of nests through pressurized ports, the thousands of quills riddling the Jym suits by the score and detonating incoming torpedoes everywhere.

Then a lone torpedo pierced the defensive barrage and struck the bubblecity dead center on the west side. Fifty tones of diakote and marcoplas glass vaporized instantly, leaving a hole the size of a fist clear through. A stream of water shot out of the puncture, lancing across the city.

One tick later, explosive decompression hit, the dome rupturing from the shock and spiderwebbing cracks for hundreds of meters in every direction. Unstoppable, the ocean poured in through the ever-widening rupture. Clawing at anything, men and women screamed, their bodies banging helplessly against walls as the deluge poured into the city, smashing everything.

Alarms sounded everywhere, from The Cube to Old Dome, and banks of monitors were flashing red in the Command Center.

"Breach in Sector Ninety-four!" cried a technician, frantically throwing switches and levers. "No . . . Sectors Eighty through One-twenty! And on levels eight, seven, and six!"

"Launch everything!" screamed the duty officer, brandishing his fist at the computer screen. Overhead the lights flickered and died. "Motherfragger! They got the fusion plant!"

The sea outside the wounded dome was filled with spheres of fire as drones and torpedoes battled for supremacy. A flash, and a pirate submarine was gone. Another, then a third! Then the roof of the city violently shook as tremendous bombs dropped from out of the dark sea overhead to pound the dome in unrestricted fury. Cracks spread to every quadrant, knives of water roaring in through splintering cracks. A geyser of boiling water shot across the center axis of the city, toppling buildings into the central granite mesa. A thousand death screams were drowned in the titanic roar of the sea unleashed.

A bomb larger than the rest combined hit the top of Old Dome. The five meters of resilient dome material held for no longer than a heartbeat against the blinding fury of the hellish onslaught. The upper city burst apart like a cheap lightbulb, the inhabitants jellied from the stark implosion. The steelloy girders of buildings were driven into the reinforced granite of the central mesa like tent pegs, splitting the rocky edifice to pieces.

The fuel tanks of liquid hydrogen for the fusion generators detonated, sending out a death cloud of shrapnel toward the damaged city below. Overloaded, circuit breakers exploded into molten metal, power relays slagged solid and the superconductor cables heated to the point that they ignited their own fireproof casing. Soon, billowing clouds of poison gas were added to the chaos. Busbars hissed into nonexistence, then the mighty fusion reactors exploded and melted. Gigawatts of stored power were released, and blue lightning crackled over the wounded arcology, setting fires everywhere that were promptly extinguished by the flooding from above and both sides.

More torpedoes arced in through the weakening defenses and struck the dome, embedding in the transparent material, then detonated in unison, the titanic force vectors separating the crack with a screech of tortured glass unheard by any living soul. The physical shock wave rippled along the streets and granite of the central mesa, shaking off chunks of cliff. The main dome split asunder, the remaining atmosphere woofed out as the sea rushed in, carrying with it a million tons of debris and failing bodies. Bridges, buildings, streets collapsed, crushed flat under an avalanche of falling concrete. A hundred unoccupied escape pods launched. Even underwater a chemical fire raged unchecked in Industrial, and the bubbletown went dark.

The pirates fired salvo after salvo of torpedoes into the ruins as bombs dropped from overhead to complete the utter destruction of the trillion-nuyen arcology and its many inhabitants.

The tridscreen went dark and the theatre lights gradually came on to rosy levels. The rows of seats were completely empty except for two patrons, a man and a woman. Both were norms, both elderly, and neither seemed the least bit pleased.