Jake felt the submarine tilt very slightly towards the front as it pushed itself below the surface. A minute later, the ride changed entirely. Since he had spent months at sea it was quite an unusual sensation to no longer be rolling. The submarine slid through the water with such stability and precision it was as if they weren’t moving at all. To Jake, it felt for all the world as if he had stepped off onto dry land.

Someone called across from another console on the other side of the room.

“Sir, I believe we have established visual contact.”

“Come with me,” Coote said to Jake.

The two men crossed the confined space of the suite to find another officer operating a colour screen. There was a clear image in the middle. It was distant, magnified and pixellated. But it was without question the Spirit of Arcadia.

“That’s her,” Jake said. “That’s my ship.”

Coote picked up another handset, pressed a button and relayed more orders to an unseen helmsman.

“Maintain periscope depth and heading, reduce speed to 15 knots. We’re closing in on them.”

He hung up, turned back to Jake.

“We’re not deep, but they won’t see us coming. Staying at this depth means we can keep the photonics mast up and get a good visual approach. I daresay we’ll get a better signal for accessing to the computers too.”

Jake nodded.

“About another thirty minutes and we should be close enough to have a look at getting into that system. In the meantime, maybe you’d like to get cleaned up a little? No offence, but you do look like you’ve been through the wars somewhat. Ewan can show you where the bathrooms are. We have some spare uniforms, I’m sure there’s something in your size.”

“That would be great, thank you.” Jake was glad of the diversion from the mix of emotions he’d felt on seeing his ship again.

Sixty-Two

JAKE SPENT TOO long in the shower, but he didn’t care. The hot water was bliss. When he was done, he found a clean pair of navy trousers, a shirt, and a navy jersey all laid out for him. They fitted almost perfectly.

Ewan was waiting for him outside the bathroom, and escorted him back through the submarine. Jake couldn’t imagine spending weeks or months cooped up in such a confined space. The ceilings were low, and although the fixtures and fittings were modern and clean, the complete lack of any natural light was oppressive. The crew had tried to make the place homely. Photos adorned many surfaces, drawings sent by children were common too.

Every room they passed through looked to have more than one use. Food was stored everywhere, even under bunks. The efficient use of every tiny nook and cranny reminded Jake of caravanning holidays, and of his first trips on small pleasure boats back home.

All the submariners he encountered were polite. Many were keen to talk to him, to hear first hand what he had seen outside, on the surface. Ewan did a good job of fielding these requests, hurrying his charge through bulkheads to the next room each time they were slowed down by these inquisitive sailors. Jake didn’t mind answering their questions, but they didn’t really have the time for it.

He was struck by the ways the crew kept themselves occupied. There appeared to be at least two separate poker tournaments going on. Ewan explained that these could last for weeks. When they went through the junior ratings’ mess he saw a group of young men huddled together, studying materials for a test that could see them promoted. They must have known that the exams would never happen now, but he could totally understand the desire to carry on as normal. Indeed down here, under water, cut off from the rest of the world, it was easier to just keep pretending everything was normal.

They called in on the medical berth, and Vardy changed the dressing on his hand. The rest had done some good and it was starting to heal nicely.

When they eventually got back to the communications control room, Ralf called them straight over.

“We’re right behind them, less than a nautical mile between us. We’ve got excellent visual contact, and a high bandwidth connection to the computer system. I’ve had a go at cracking the security. It’s not bad, not great. With time I can get in. But it would be worth trying your own password first.”

He moved to one side, making his keyboard accessible. Jake leaned over and typed in his username, and then a password below. It was masked by dots as he entered it. He hit Return, and the page refreshed in the web browser. A message written in red informed them that his account was not valid for remote access.

“Sorry,” Jake said. “I didn’t think it would work.”

“That’s okay. Actually what I really needed was your username. I can get into the authentication database. It’s one way encrypted, hashed and salted, difficult to break without a lot of computational horsepower and time. We’ve got the power, but my understanding of the situation is that time may not be on our side.”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” Jake said, feeling dumb.

Ralf laughed. “No probs. It just means I can’t crack your password quickly. But I don’t need to, I just need to change your access level. I already cracked into the database, and now I know your username, I only have to do this.”

He tapped a button and his screen switched from the web page back to the green text on black. He bashed away furiously at the keyboard sending lines of text scrolling up the screen, then sat back, tapped Return, and the screen flicked back to the web page.

“Try again,” he said.

Jake leaned over once more, and re-entered his username then his password. He hit Return. The page refreshed, and a message read “Processing…” A few seconds later the screen changed and a complex page came up. It was headed Spirit of Arcadia Anti Piracy Security System Console.

“Shit!” Jake said. “It worked!”

“Of course. That’s what we do here. Okay, let’s see. We should probably get Coote back before we do anything else.”

“I’m on it,” Ewan said, and sprinted off out of the console room.

“Do you have any idea of the date and time we need to access?” Ralf asked.

“The date was May third. The time, I’m not sure. Let’s see…the election meeting was called for twenty one hundred hours. It would have been maybe half an hour later that they marched me up to the bridge. Flynn didn’t come up straight away, he had to get his shoulder patched up where he took a bullet. I would estimate twenty two hundred hours, that would be a good starting point.”

“Okey dokey. Let’s see here.”

Ralf navigated his way through various menus relating to archived security information. He found a page labelled “Bridge Feed”. There were a list of dates. He selected one. The page reloaded, and in the middle was a large video player. He looked up at Jake and grinned.

Coote stepped through the bulkhead door.

“Righto lads, what have we got?”

“We’re about to find out. Ready when you are,” Ralf replied.

Coote took up position behind him. Ralf moved the playhead on the video window to 22:00 and hit the play button.

A circle of dots animated in the middle of the black video window, indicating that the file was buffering. Suddenly it filled with a colour image. The video couldn’t capture the whole of the bridge. but it showed enough. The camera must have been hidden somewhere above and in front of the captain’s seat, looking backwards over the room. Visible in the background was a chair, and Jake was tied to it. Flynn’s henchmen milled around close by. The sound quality wasn’t great, and they were talking in hushed voices. It was impossible to make out what they were saying.