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read.”
    â€œDo you think our man onboard is taking over? Giving us a signal that the mutiny is complete?”
    â€œNo,” she said, “unfortunately. They are still submerged, still cruising. Maybe it was a failed attempt.”
    â€œSuch weakness,” he said. “Our crew could easily overpower us if they chose to mutiny.”
    â€œTrue, they are armed to the teeth, and extremely bored.”
    â€œWhat shall we do?”
    â€œStay on it,” she said. “Same range. They don’t seemed inclined to shoot us at the moment. We should have some contact soon from our spy; if he’s still alive, maybe he’ll fill us in.”
    â€œAye, Captain.”
    She put the headphones on and listened again, let her imagination go to work on the noise. Banach hadn’t learned it yet, but on a ship with no windows and very limited sensors, an imagination was a vital military asset. She pictured the submarine in front of her, and tried to picture the chaos within. She badly wanted to shoot them, and they were there for the taking. But she’d learned from her experience with the airplane; it was better to shoot somebody on their return from Eris Island, not on their journey there. Take out the vessel and their precious cargo.
    The temptation was great because she needed to kill an enemy submarine; it was a gap in her résumé. She’d come close once, very close, in an episode that was now taught to midshipmen in her home country, and celebrated on military holidays.
    *   *   *
    It was in those early days off Eris Island, one year into the war, when they were watching the drones take off endlessly through the scope. Initially they’d tried to count them all, but it proved impossible. Instead they tried to count how many took off in an hour, and then counted the hours. A few times the drones had seemed to notice her scope, and they quickly submerged, moved to a different sector, and resumed their surveillance of the island. Other than the drones, they had the ocean around Eris to themselves. No Allied ship came anywhere near them.
    Carlson sent messages to fleet headquarters. They replied indifferently, asking pointedly if she had plans to surveil any targets of military value. Then the drones began dropping their little bombs on their surface ships, and the commodore asked her why she hadn’t sent more thorough reports about the drone menace.
    At some point, a daring Allied submarine commander decided to take a peek at the waters around the island as well—perhaps looking for her, perhaps just equally curious about the business at Eris Island. He was able to completely sneak up on them. The Allied submarine service had made a cult out of silence, and her primitive sonar couldn’t have detected a submarine that was twice as loud. Her submarine was designed to be durable and cheap, so they could manufacture them in vast quantities and overwhelm the enemy. This might have been helpful to the commodore, who commanded twenty-six boats, but it did little good to Carlson, who had only one. Banach was in control when the enemy attacked.
    â€œTorpedo in the water!” he shouted into the intercom. By the time she ran into control, Banach was already turning sharply toward the unmistakable sound of muzzle doors opening and a torpedo hurtling toward them.
    â€œLaunch the countermeasures!” he said, and suddenly the sound of the screaming torpedoes was replaced by a wall of noise pumped in the water via their noisemakers, shot out of both signal ejectors, one on each side of the Typhon boat.
    Carlson looked at the sonar display while Banach tried to save the ship. Their countermeasures appeared to be working; the torpedoes were peeling away.
    â€œReady bearing and shoot!” he said, sending a bearing to fire control. The enemy ship, of course, far more sophisticated than theirs, remained silent. The only datum they had for her location was the sound