Undersea (10 page)

Thom signaled the transport. No answer. He signaled again. It was still spiraling downwards. Thom throttled up and nosed his sub over. It was only a moment before he was next to the transport, mirroring its course on the outside of the curve. He could see into the lit cockpit of the sub. As he suspected, one of the marines was hunched over the controls, bloodied and unconscious. He signaled again. External pressure warnings started lighting up orange on his console. He signaled again. This time, the other marine answered.

“Vargas?” the voice said over the comm. It sounded confused and disorientated.

“I need you to get to the cockpit and stop the sub. Can you do that?”

“I... I’m kinda hurt here. There’s this piece of... wow. Hey, I’m kinda hurt here.”

“MARINE! I need you to get control of the sub. Can you do that?”

“I think so.”

Looking up, Thom could see the other marine enter the transport’s cockpit. There was blood coming from his ears and his right arm hung limp at his side. With his left arm, he pulled the other marine off the controls. The body slid off the chair and onto the floor. The sub righted itself.

The one-good-armed marine pulled back on the throttle, and the transport came to a stop. Thom could see the marine clearly now, looking very pale as he slumped into the seat that had been holding his partner. The marine looked at Thom and there was a brief moment like he knew what was going on, as if his head was clear. He toggled a few switches on the dash, then slumped back into the chair, unconscious.

The pressure warnings had switched to red, well past what was advised. Thom paused. His sub was fine. At full speed it wouldn’t take more than a day and a half to get back to the
Uni.
Part of him could see the value in getting back soon. He could warn them the
Pop
had patrols out this far. That they were probably closer to the
Uni
than anyone thought. Opening the canopy, in all reality, could kill him. There was just way too much pressure at this depth. His hand was on the button before this thought was even fully formed in his head.

The pumps couldn’t work fast enough, the water was under such pressure that it pushed itself past the impellers as fast as the escaping air would let it. Within moments the cockpit of the abused but intact attack sub, formally of the citysub
Population
, was full of water. The main screen and dials cracked from the pressure. It pressed on Thom like a blanket of lead. Instantly, every warning light on the inside of his helmet started flashing red. It was impossible to breathe. His suit was tighter than skintight. The pressure crushed his diaphragm and throat. His only option was to take short, shallow breaths, as quickly as he could. His suit switched over to pure oxygen, which made the shallow breaths a little more tolerable. Knowing what was going to come, he hoped his time on pure O
₂
would be enough. The suit tried to equalize the pressure somewhat—he could hear little else aside from the whir and whine of the pumps—but the strain was too great, and soon his suit’s processor shut down to avoid frying completely.

After opening the canopy, Thom unbuckled himself and kicked away from the sub and towards the transport. He looked down as he drifted upward, and had the first attack of vertigo in his life, staring down at nothing. His ears hurt, his chest hurt, the pure oxygen was already making him nauseous. He swam clumsily to the back hatch of the transport and breathed a tiny sigh of relief that the panel indicated the back of the sub was clear and ready for flooding. He keyed it to do so. He could hear pumps working to keep the sub buoyant as several tons of water crashed into the rear of the transport. A few minutes later the door opened, revealing the seawater-filled rear cabin. The water pressure had crushed the seat cushions and several of the bottles containing drinking water.

Thom pulled himself in, his eyesight starting to tinge red. Keying the door closed, the wait as the sub cycled out the water and pressurized was agony. But it did so, and he sank to the floor as the water drained. The suit auto-equalized, and he removed his helmet. For a moment he just lay there, wheezing.

From his vantage point on the floor, Thom could already see the damage the craft had sustained. The bulkheads were bulging and bent in odd directions, cross beams twisted. Shelving had been ripped away, dumping supplies everywhere. There was blood on the deck.

He opened the door to the cockpit, and checked the pulse of the two marines. They were alive. Thom took one last look at the various screens, aimed the sub towards their rendezvous point with the
Uni
, and throttled up, slowly. The transport shuddered, let loose a cacophony of creaks and pops, but got underway. He slowly trimmed off their depth.

After dragging the two marines into the rear of the transport, Thom settled down for a long, hopefully boring, trip back to the
Uni
. The console would announce any nearby ships, so his last thought before he passed out was to hope sleep found him before the inevitable decompression sickness had its way with him. It did.

XI

It was well into the fourth day before Thom was able to make contact with the
Uni.
The two marines had regained consciousness a few hours after Thom had. One had medic training, and was able to diagnose himself and his copilot with severe concussions, and bandaged their other wounds the best he could. The concussive blasts from the battle had done substantial damage to the transport, but not to any of the main systems. They became enamored with their hardy conveyance as it brought them home.

The
Universalis
was running, and running hard. At top speed, the transport was just able to creep up on them. Had the big ship started off earlier, or the transport any later, they wouldn’t have caught up before the transport’s food ran out.

“Say again, Traffic Control?” Thom said over the comm. The
Uni
was making such a mess of the water running at full speed it was affecting the communications.

“Transport 53A, we are unable to open any of the normal docking bays. You are instructed to proceed to the rear landing deck and dock manually with the airlock there.”

“They want us to do what?” Diier, the marine with the medic training said to no one in particular.

“Have either of you ever done that?” Thom asked. The others shrugged.

“They stopped using that part of the ship years before either of us joined up. I thought they decommissioned it with the rest of the war fleet,” Tegit, the other marine, said.

“TC, this is 53A. We are not sure how you expect us to do that,” Thom said back over the comm. There was a pause, then a new voice came over the transport’s speakers.

“53A, we are aware of your situation. We are currently running at full emergency power for reasons that will be made clear when you are aboard. We cannot slow down enough to open any of the bay doors without risk of damage or flooding. Approach from above; when you enter the lee space behind the hull, the microcurrents will pull you to the deck. Then all you have to do is maneuver into position near the airlock. Please get on board as soon as possible. TC out.”

Thom looked at the two marines, and they back at him. The
Uni
had come into view, and they looked out over the back of its hull. The propellers were making a churning mess of the water. Above the rounded stern of the ship, the arc of the back of the
Uni
sloped down smoothly, except for a small notch, where it dropped down straight then flat out till it continued the curve. In the war, this little notch was used to launch and recover attack subs at speed. Thom wondered if there was anyone alive on board who had ever used it.

The transport started to descend as soon as Thom had lined them up over the landing strip. He matched velocity the best he could. The
Uni
seemed to slowly rise up to meet them. As they got close, the turbulence from the hull tossed them around. The transport shook violently, then suddenly it dropped hard into the deck and was still.

Ever so slightly it scraped along the landing strip towards the lock. Thom increased the throttle, edging them closer.

Just before he reached the lock, in the lee of the hull, Thom spun the craft around, and mated the rear of the sub with the lock. Diier and Tegit took turns patting him on the back as the lock cycled. They left the transport tired, hungry, smelly, and in all cases in need of some kind of medical attention. It would have to wait. Two young aides to two different council members near dragged them to a waiting cart which shot off down the narrow passageway that ran along the spine of the ship. After a few minutes, they were shuffled down a side access tunnel.

What followed was a blur of staircases and corridors that ultimately led them to the main Command Bunker, one level below the bridge. It was a long space, but not very wide. Thom had never seen so much new tech in once place. It was as if the entire room had been taken out of some vid and brought to life. There was a pair of rectangular tables positioned longitudinally, each with embedded screens and terminals. Along the walls were stations with more screens, terminals, and controls. At each station sat a busy crew member. The room was dark, lit mostly blue and red by the glow of the terminals and the tables Even if he was a more hands-on kind of guy, each station was clearly just a newer version of equipment he'd used before. Thom identified his unease as not so much intimidation, but more the complete lack of a place to sit.

Everyone in the room was busy enough not to have looked up when Thom, Diier, and Tegit entered. Gathered around the closest table were several council members that Thom recognized, but whose names he couldn’t remember. Closest to him were Larr and Jills. Across the table, standing rigidly like every picture he had ever seen of him, was Captain Sarras. The two marines next to Thom stood up a little more erect. Sarras nodded to Diier, who rattled off a report of what had happened. Tegit filled in where Diier was either unconscious or had a lapse in memory. Thom shuffled on his feet, growing uncomfortable as important people did important things around him. The only one to notice was Larr, who said nothing.

Before he could finish, Diier was interrupted as everyone’s attention focused on the door behind him. Leaning heavily on a cane, Councilman Gattley filled the entrance of the bunker. He stepped inside and made his way haltingly to the table. Despite his obvious illness, he still carried a quiet power that commanded the respect of everyone in the room, including the Captain.

“The marines here were just telling us...” Larr started, but Gattley waved him silent.

“It doesn’t matter. Captain?”

“Councilman Gattley, we are currently running at flank speed due to the skirmishes with the enemy corvettes.”

“Show me,” he said, moving around the corner of the table, forcing Larr to concede his space. Thom looked at the marines, who were clearly just as puzzled as he was. The portion of the table closest to Gattley changed to a map of the seafloor around them. It showed the
Uni
in the center. It zoomed out, showing a smaller version of the ship and larger area. It zoomed out again, and showed a red silhouette of a small ship.

“This is where we made contact,” the Captain said, motioning towards the red shape. “Then again here, here, and here,” as he said it, three more silhouettes appeared. Each was staggered, with the
Uni
seeming to follow a zig-zag pattern bouncing between the enemy ships. The captain looked quizzically at the display, as if seeing it for the first time. Gattley stared at him.

“You see it now, don’t you?” Gattley asked. The other Councilmembers saw it as well. “Captain, I spend a lot of time in bed. More than I should. We all are so used to the way the ship feels. How it vibrates, how it moves. Lying in my bed, it feels different. I can listen to it. I can
hear
it. I knew we were running. Everyone could hear the engines. But I could feel when we were turning. I could feel by how much. How many watch changes have you made? Two?”

“With a third coming up.”

“With all the commotion of the attacks, with no one person navigating or driving, I can see from your face that this is the first time anyone has looked at the course.

“We were just running to put distance between us and them,” one of the Councilmembers said.

“That’s where you’re wrong. We’re not running. We’re being herded,” Gattley said. The Captain nodded distractedly, already on to the next steps in his mind. “Jills, we’re not going to have the time we wanted. We need to mobilize now, with whatever we’ve got.”

Jills, still fixated on the screen, agreed. Gattley looked up at the Captain, who made eye contact, and nodded definitively.

“Chief of the Watch, sound General Quarters,” Sarras said. From behind him, Thom could hear alarms reverberating down the corridors of the ship. “Navigation, I want charts and maps for everything that’s ahead of us, no matter how small.”

“Sir!” one of the crewmen acknowledged from a nearby terminal. The screen in the far corner of the table switched to a new map, and Sarras hunched over to study it. Gattley turned to Jills.

“Janner, I’m going back to my cabin. The boy here...” he said, motioning over his shoulder at Thom. “...is going to help me. Then he’s going to come back here and be my eyes and ears.”

“OK.” Jills replied, looking up from the table for the first time in several minutes. “Mrakas, we’re going to need you on this.”

“That’s what scares me.” Gattley turned and motioned for Thom to exit ahead of him. The two walked side by side down the corridor for a bit. As the passageway curved out of sight of the Bunker, Gattley reached out and put his weight on Thom. “I’m sorry, Thom, you’re going to have to help me back to my cabin.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Don’t
sir
me,” Gattley said. His voice sounded raspy. Thom turned his head, and the older man seemed to have aged a decade since he entered the Bunker. Their pace slowed but they made their way down the corridor.