He jacked the drive into an open port and typed. Even with its rapid upload speed, there was a large amount of data to decrypt and transfer. Depending on the computer’s processing capacity, he might need a half hour or longer to complete the upload and confirm the underwater sensors were activated.

Footsteps to his left. He spun in his chair, his rifle coming up.

Jochi stood looking at him.

“What is it?” Grigor asked.

“We’ve zeroed out the personnel,” Jochi said. “The guards. The engineers. A maintenance woman.”

“You’re positive?”

Jochi nodded. “There were fifteen altogether. I had the men put the bodies in one room.”

“Those guards outside too?”

“Yes.”

Grigor nodded. “All right,” he said. “Stay alert. Don’t get sloppy. This is going to take a while.”

The elevator was about a quarter of the way down into the hold when Carmody realized he wasn’t descending into a hold at all. The light was soft and scattered and came from all directions, but it was also without shadows. He could clearly see the space below him.

There were walls lined with flat panel displays. There was what looked like a long boat ramp with rollers. There were robotic arms.

He looked up at Chen. The captain’s expression was one of open fear and dread. He looked like someone whose life’s biggest secret had just been exposed.

“What is this?” Carmody said.

The captain didn’t reply.

Carmody saw a big red emergency stop button under the handrail and hit it with the base of his fist. He grabbed Chen by the shoulders and jammed him back against the rail with his chest. They were seventy feet above the bottom of the hold. Or whatever it was.

“Tell me,” he said.

The captain didn’t reply.

Carmody grabbed Chen’s nose and gripped it in his fist and pressed his thumb into the side of the bone and twisted. Hard to the left, then hard to the right. He felt the nasal bone crack under the flat of his thumb. Blood squirted from the captain’s nostrils and he mooed in a way that might have been comical under very different circumstances.

“Tell me.”

Tears squirted from Chen’s eyes, but he didn’t reply. Carmody continued pinching with his fingers and twisted again. Blood gushed out. The nose was no longer intact. It felt soft and crumbly and loose in his hand. Like when he was young and would freeze a Turkish Taffy bar and smack it against the counter to break it into little pieces.

“Tell me.”