Chen couldn’t help but smile at the irony. A tank within a tank. One kept fish alive in an air-dominated environment and the other kept him and Hon Yi alive in the depths of the sea. Both groups with nothing to do but stare out the window and eat. If the pattern held, he’d be ten pounds heavier when he returned to the surface.
Chen sprinkled in more food, but the fish stopped eating and went still without warning. All of them at the very same instant. Chen had never seen that before.
They drifted downward. Their fins weren’t moving, their gills were flat. It was as if they’d been stunned or drugged.
He tapped on the glass. Instantly, the fish began darting around, racing from one side of the tank to the other. They seemed panicked. Several of them slammed into the glass walls like bees trying to get through a window. One went to the bottom of the tank and began burrowing in the gravel.
As Chen stared, ripples formed on the top of the tank and the gravel at the bottom began to jump and dance. The walls of the habitat began to shake as well.
He stepped back. The vibration of the mining operation was growing louder. Louder than
it should have been. Louder than he’d ever heard it before. Books and pieces of decorative coral began to vibrate on the shelf. The fish tank fell and smashed down beside him.
He pressed the intercom button. “TL-1,” he said, calling out to the command robot. “Cease mining operations immediately.”
TL-1 responded calmly and immediately. “Authorization, please.”
“This is Dr. Chen.”
“Command code not recognized,” the robot replied. “Authorization required.”
Chen realized instantly that robots were listening for Hon Yi’s voice. He had yet to log on the computer and replace Hon Yi’s authorization with his own.
He reached for the tablet computer and tapped the screen furiously. As he typed, a deep rumbling sound became audible, like boulders grinding against one another. The pounding grew louder and closer with terrible speed until something hit the station.
Chen was thrown to the floor and then the wall. Everything tumbled end over end. A jet of water burst through a torn seam in the metal, slamming him with more force than a fire hose. It broke bones and gouged flesh and crushed him against the wall as easily as a speeding truck would have.
In seconds, the module filled with water, but Chen was dead long before he would have drowned.
Outside the habitat, the submersible had just detached from the station when the shaking began.
Hon Yi heard the rumble through the walls of the sub. He saw the destruction coming from above as huge slabs of rock fell through the glare of the work lights higher up. At the same time, clouds of sediment were exploding upward from below.
“Go,” Hon Yi said to the pilot. “Get us out of here.”
The pilot reacted with mechanical efficiency but no true urgency.
The avalanche hit the top level of the station and sheared it from the rest of the structure, the impact sent debris raining down on the submarine.
Instead of waiting for the robot to sense the mortal danger it could never perceive, Hon Yi reached over and grabbed the controls. He tried to push the throttle to full, but the robot’s grip was unbreakable.
“Relinquish command.”
The robot let go of the controls and sat back impassively. Hon Yi pushed the throttle to full and turned the valve to blow the ballast tanks. The submersible accelerated and began to rise.
“Come on,” he urged. “Go!”
The sub pushed forward. A wave of pebbles hit the outer hull, sounding like hail. A fist-sized rock slammed against the canopy, chipping it. Larger stones hit the roof and dented the propeller housing.
Hon Yi attempted to guide the sub away from danger, but with the propeller housing bent, he couldn’t get the craft to move in a straight line. It turned, even as it accelerated, and wandered right back into the danger zone.
“No!” he shouted.
A second wave of tumbling debris hit the sub square on. The canopy shattered. A boulder crushed the hull like a tin can and the avalanche of debris drove the submarine downward, slamming it to the bottom of the Serpent’s Jaw.
1
OUTSKIRTS OF BEIJING