Percy spent the next few hours in the control room, sitting in the dive planes control chair and smoking one cheroot lit off another as sea water once again seeped into the cargo hold, and the bow of her boat slipped slowly farther down into the water.

Hemi called up a report from sonar every ten minutes or so. The first hour passed quickly, with Hemi’s reports describing their pursuer’s continued plodding movements towards the Prospect’s location. But Shakes’s slow, noisy run off to the southeast eventually seemed to work, and the Grackle adjusted its course to follow. The Grackle began moving steadily away from the Prospect.

At least, at first. But in another hour, Hemi’s reports made it clear that their pursuers were now familiar with the tactic of using the Gnat to draw them off. The Grackle gave up the chase to the southeast and started to move in large, slowly searching circles. They returned to using active sonar. The pings once again unnervingly echoed through the hull of the Prospect every ten minutes or so.

By the third hour, the fear of being found started to convert into the somewhat safer feeling that came with monotony. It was clear that the active sonar pinging was not helping the Grackle sort through the mass of contacts that echoed back to find the Prospect. The Grackle gave no sign that it would leave off its diligent search, but Percy began to feel more and more confident that unless they were spotted visually, the Prospect could continue to play the part of the proverbial needle while the Grackle dug through the haystack.

After hours alone in the empty cargo hold, standing in reeking bilge water, Gregory finally put his dripping and stinking head into the control room to report to Percy that he had successfully stanched the most substantial part of the leaking. She reached over and patted his head, and then wiped her palm on her pants. By now the bow of the Prospect leaned down about five degrees. She opened a couple of valves on the trim tank control panel and let water flow into the rear trim tanks. The stern sank slowly down until the boat was level. This left the Prospect at a depth where the deck was under water, but most of the sail was still dry. Percy figured floating the boat slightly deeper could only enhance the perception that it was nothing but another derelict.

Long hours of this stagnant situation turned into even longer hours. While Percy believed that the most important quality in a submariner was the ability to put patience above all else, she also knew that not taking action was a kind of action. In many cases the right move for a submarine was to simply hide and wait. It was the thing a submarine was best at — and in this world of discreet shipping, this was the reason so much cargo now crawled across the globe underwater. But the success of using hiding as a technique obviously depended entirely on having a reasonable chance of not being found. Percy’s intuition told her that while they were safe for the moment, it was only a matter of time before their chances of not being found decreased to virtually nothing. She was confident the commander of the Grackle would intuit the same conclusion.

Around mid-afternoon, Hemi joined Percy on the bridge of the sail. Bastian had been sent off for much-needed rest, and Gregory was temporarily covering sonar for Hemi, who needed a break to clear his mind after the endless, numbing noise. Hemi would have asked Cassandra to cover for him, but there was no way to know how Percy would react if she found Cassandra back at the sonar station.

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Percy was squinting into binoculars as she scanned around the horizon. She was unused to the brightness of the ocean under high daylight.

She heard Hemi’s heavy step from the ladder onto the bridge, but she did not look away from the horizon while she spoke to him. “We have to make a move. The surface is an unnatural place for a submarine to hide. They are going to find us sooner or later.”

“Having charted their search pattern, I agree. They are following an extremely systematic course, and that suggests to me that sub commander has high confidence that he will find us eventually — and is willing to take the time to do it.”

“We need to end this. We can’t run and hide forever. That fucker might be under the delusion he’s fighting an entrenched battle, and will go on fighting with all the deep-pocketed resources of an Authority. But we have got to get back to work. We have no margin to cover constantly operating in this fucked-up prey condition.”

“I have had the same thought. And I have an idea we could try — though I warn you that it is extremely unlikely to work.”

At this, Percy lowered the lenses and looked at him. “You have another option and you have been fuckin’ holding out on me?”

“Extremely unlikely to work — and likely to get us killed.” He took a breath. “The magnetic warheads… I let a couple of crates slip off the palettes when they were being unloaded in Stilt City. So I have a few dozen warheads still stashed down in our cargo hold.”

“You want to try to hit them with one of those fuckin’ explosives?”

“The only weapon we have.”

“Indeed. But how do you deliver a fucking warhead to the sub? They are just part of a weapon — as Miss Mai was so fond of pointing out to me. We can’t just underhand one over the water at them.”

“That where is the part of my idea that might get us killed comes in — I propose we use the Gnat.”

“I don’t think Shakes is going to appreciate you turning his boat into a fuckin’ torpedo. As small and shittily made as it is.”

Hemi proceeded to lay out a plan for her that, though it had a good chance of ending with the destruction of the Gnat, at least did not involve intentionally blowing the Gnat up. It did, however, feature using the Prospect as bait. It took some convincing on Hemi’s part for Percy to fully come around to the idea.

“OK. We’re going to try your — frankly, fucking insane — plan to take out a military submarine with nothing but leftover parts hanging around my darling Prospect. Go ahead and get Shakes on the pigeon.”

“You mean Herschel.”

“I don’t care what the bird’s name is. Just make sure Shakes heads back this way as silently as fuckin’ possible.”