Piranha Assignment by Austin Camacho Page A

biggest shark. It had a sleek steel body, jet black, with a dorsal fin jutting six stories into the sky. Not the cigar shape she expected, its hull was more like a teardrop, with some odd concave styling near the front. It seemed quite streamlined and she wondered how fast it could go.
    The Piranha’s sheer size overwhelmed her. It looked almost as long as a football field. It’s nose sloped into the black water more than a block away. On her right, even farther away, a tail fin thrust defiantly into the air like a silent steel observer. On top of the conning tower, a half dozen giant hypodermic needles glinted in the giant sun.
    â€œWhat’s all that plumbing on top?” she asked.
    â€œNothing of importance,” Bastidas said with a flash of impatience.
    Morgan took her arm and pointed upward. “The usual stuff, Red. Exhaust mast, snorkel, masts for radar, antennae, electronic warfare and I’d guess a couple of periscopes.”
    â€œYes, yes,” Bastidas said. “Come down this hatch into the control room and see something of important.”
    Bastidas directed Felicity to go down the ladder first. She wished she was not in heels as she climbed down and dropped into a well-lighted room. The control room was sixty feet of high tech gauges, lights and screens. The entire dinner party followed her down the steel ladder into a video game palace populated with grim faced players. Bastidas waved at them with pride.
    â€œThese men are putting the controls through their final testing phase. Here we have the usual sonar controls. This is the missile console. And this…this is one of my personal masterpieces. This is the control center for the sonic image reconstruction phase adjuster.”
    â€œCan you say that in English?” Morgan asked.
    â€œI’m sure you know that submarines are most easily detected by noise,” Bastidas said. “A good sonar man can detect an enemy submarine by its acoustic signature. We have reduced this ship’s signature to a minimum through my own stealth technology. We added a Teflon skin to reduce sea turbulence, layered over anechoic tiling which, as its name implies, absorbs sonar pulses or echoes. And we use pump jets for propulsion.”
    â€œPump jets?”
    â€œYes, Mister Stark, We’ve replaced the traditional propellers with ducted multi-blade rotors turning against stator vanes. Much quieter. Most important is the exterior design of the hull. It muffles both engine sounds and any noise the crew makes. The phase adjuster adds the right sonic vibrations to the remaining signature to nearly negateit entirely, or when desirable, to alter it in such a way as to imitate perfectly the acoustic signature of a whale or a school of fish. It’s simply a matter of…”
    While Bastidas launched into a scientific explanation of his revolutionary device, Morgan leaned over to Felicity, standing at the back of the small group. “Just what were you laughing about at dinner?”
    â€œIt’s his little team of yes men,” she whispered. “When I saw them sitting there at the table, from right to left, they made me think of the seven dwarves. You know, Doc, Happy, Sneezy, Bashful and Grumpy there on the end.”
    â€œSo am I Dopey or Sleepy?” Chuck Barton asked, leaning over between them. Before either of them could give the obvious answer, the tour moved on.
    â€œBy the way, which of you ended up on the third floor?” Barton asked. When Felicity raised her hand, he said “Oh, so you got Matthews’ old room.”
    â€œGreat,” she said, rolling her eyes.
    With Bastidas as guide, they moved on through cramped and crowded crew accommodations, and the forward escape tower above the provisions store. Throughout the tour the air tasted stale and even in the biggest rooms Felicity felt cramped. She handled close quarters better than most, but she wondered if there were tests to make sure