Undersea (25 page)

“You’ve got your man?”

 Thom leaned aside and pointed at Tegit, now on the ground beside a heavily panting Lo and Cern.

“We’re pretty well trapped here. If you can hold them, I’ll lead a few of my people around to the other side and get in behind them. We can meet up at Big Ugly over there,” she said with a motion towards the cruiser-sized sub still resting ominously at the forward end of the bay.

She didn’t wait for an answer before moving back to get the attention of her nearby soldiers. Hardly marksmen, they alternately ducked or shot wildly over the heads of the
Pop
soldiers. Thom grabbed her arm, and flashed her a wily smile.

“We got this,” he said, turning and catching the eye of Soli. The soldier waddled up, keeping his head down and bringing the satchel with him. Ralla watched as Thom unzipped his oversized coveralls and tossed his hood back, revealing the dark gray-on-black armor of his suit underneath. Ralla’s eyebrows went up. The blue cloth fell away as Soli and Thom slipped out of their adopted denim skin. Soli opened the satchel and handed Thom a sidearm and a carbine. Thom couldn’t help himself, and gave Ralla a wink as he slapped the side of his helmet, snapping the facemask shut. Soli signified his readiness with a pat on Thom’s back, who immediately twisted around as he stood and commenced firing.

At first the
Pop
soldiers didn’t know what to make of the two carapaced juggernauts slowly crossing the bay towards them. Then as the impact from the incoming fire peppered their entrenchment behind crates and submarines, they started firing back. Most of the soldiers had energy weapons, whose bolts were effortlessly absorbed.

Soli and Thom, unbothered by the incoming fire, continued to strafe the different clusters of soldiers. When the soldiers realized their weapons had no effect, two heavy rifles were brought out and placed on containers for support. Thom and Soli had made it halfway across the bay when the first of these rounds hit Soli square in the chest. He was knocked off his feet as if yanked, and slid backwards across the deck on his back. Thom dove and rolled, firing across the crate where the shot had come from.

“I’m OK,” Soli said over the comm. He sounded like he was gasping for breath. The fun was over. Thom got to his feet and sprinted across the rest of the open bay, spraying fire from the carbine as he went. Jumping on top of the crate, he kicked the rifle gunner in the face. As he went sprawling backwards, the rest of the soldiers got up and ran. Within moments, the shipyard was silent.

Thom looked back across the bay from his perch on the crate. There was a steady stream of people filing from the elevators towards the big sub. Already he could hear the whine of the engines. Soli had gotten up and was checking behind the crates and subs for any stragglers. Oddly disappointed, Thom saw Ralla with her back to him, indicating which of the two ramps people should go up to get onboard.

The elevators held 50-60 people each, and there were three of them. It took a little over 15 minutes to get the rest of the people down into the bay. Ten more for everyone to get onboard the sub they had christened
Reappropriation.
By the time the last of the civilians had made it to the portable stairs accessing the cruiser, Soli, Thom, and Huth started taking fire from above. Some of the more enterprising
Pop
soldiers had gone up to the upper-level gangways and were firing down at them. Cern and Lo were already onboard, carrying the now-unconscious Tegit to the medbay on the
Reap
with the help of a broad-shouldered civilian.

Finally, the shipyard was empty. Thom sealed the hatch and made his way to the bridge. Soli and Lo started to round up people to man some of half a dozen turrets along the spine and keel of their new ship.

The passageways, already narrow on the warship, were made almost impassable as people stood or sat any place they could. By the time he got to the bridge, he could tell there was a problem.

The bridge, such as it was, was barely larger than those on transports he’d piloted. It looked as if the craft could be driven by two people, with a support staff of five for communications, weapons, and engineering. The front seats were filled with two men who looked like they knew what they were doing. Toggles flipped, dials checked much as he would have. The other seats on the bridge were filled with men and women looking like they were trying to figure out what each station did, then actually reading the information given there. Ralla stood in the middle of it all, pointing at dials, giving orders, and trying her best to answer the questions of those around her. She looked in her element, like she had been on this bridge, stuck at the bottom of an enemy sub, countless times before.

She noticed Thom and flashed him a smile, grabbing him by the hand and dragging him into the center of the bridge. She squeezed it before she let it go.

“One problem,” she said.

“No water.”

“You’ve done this before.”

“Actually...”

Suddenly, she was serious, the brief moment of levity flushed from her face. Thom assumed the same attitude.

“They’ve sealed us in. We can’t open the lock from here.”

“Where are the controls?”

“They’re on the second level, overlooking the bay. I sent a team there, but they should have gotten the bay open by now.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. One of many things I’m going to be upset about later.”

“My team and I can get up there, no problem.”

“Here’s the thing. The crane isn’t big enough to move this thing. So the whole yard has to be flooded.”

“That’s OK, we can swim out.”

“All the doors seal when there’s water. There were signs everywhere on the way in. They obviously didn’t want someone to do what we’re doing.”

“Or what we did before.”

“Or that,” Ralla replied.

“So it’s a one-way thing. That’s fine. We can fight our way to another bay and get one of the transports out.”

Ralla leaned forward, ducking her head under the curving permiglass viewscreen, and pointed up towards the upper gangways. She motioned for Thom to do the same. There were soldiers covering the gangways. He got her meaning instantly.

“I still think we can do it.”

“No, there’s no way you could escape from all that.”

“So what do we do now? We can’t stay here. Can we blow the doors?”

“No ordnance. The turrets have ammo, but that’s not going to get us anywhere,” Ralla scratched the side of her head, and tried to comb her dirty hair with her fingers. She turned and looked at Thom’s suit. “You said you brought one of those for me.”

“Oh, no. No way. I left you behind once—no way I’m doing it again.”

Ralla cocked her head to the side and smiled.

“That’s so cute of you, but I’m a big girl now and I don’t need rescuing,” her tone went from mildly patronizing to overtly so.

“I didn’t mean...”

“You sort of did, and it’s fine. My mother does it. My father does it. Cern does it. I was hoping you wouldn’t, but that’s OK.” She put her hand on the shoulder of the man in the right pilot seat. “When there’s enough water to go, you
go
, I don’t care what else you see. Follow the route we talked about, and don’t go near the meeting place unless you know you’re clear.”

“Got it,” he replied.

Ralla stepped past Thom without a glance, and headed back into the ship. Thom, deflated but not ready to desist, chased after her. They ended up in the ship’s med bay, a cramped room with three metal beds and cabinets of supplies. Tegit was unconscious in the center bed, being attended by no less than five people, each taking authority over a different injury. Cern didn’t notice Ralla’s entrance, but he did when she scooped the black satchel from the floor.

“What are you doing?” Cern asked.

“Someone needs to flood the bay. Their soldiers are under orders not to kill me. I’m the only one that can stay behind.”

“Stay be...what? What are you talking about?”

“Ralla,” Thom cut in. “Please let one of us go instead.”

She opened the bag and started remove pieces of the suit. She slid into the armor, her blouse causing odd bulkiness in the underfabric.

“I need to do this, Thom,” she said, using him as support as she slid off her shoes and put on the armor’s boots. “I need to do it for these people, but more than that I need to do it for me.” Her eyes showed something Thom hadn’t seen before, as if she were a different person. Resolve was there, of course, but she seemed older, somehow. She said nothing else, but her eyes kept speaking.

“Ralla...” he said, his voice softer, no longer trying to argue, but trying to say something else. Trying to sum up everything that had happened, everything he’d thought over the past months. She looked up at him and her expression showed that she seemed to understand. He tapped the comm on the back of his hand. “Lo, what’s the status on our turrets?”

“I’ve got volunteers in each one, and Soli and I are giving them instructions the best we can. The equipment is pretty similar to ours.”

“So we’re good to go?”

“Similar. I can’t say they won’t lock up or explode or... I don’t know. Uh oh. I shouldn’t have said that, now everyone is looking at me funny,” his big voice sounding surprisingly bashful.

“Lo, in about three minutes I’m going to need you to slag it.”

“Slag what?”

“Everything.”

“We’ll be ready.”

Thom focused back on Ralla, as she struggled with the armor’s gloves. He was surprised Cern hadn’t said anything, and when Thom looked over at him, the taller man was shaking and looked ready to explode. His face had flushed with blood and emotion.

“STOP!” he shouted. Everyone in the room froze. When they realized he wasn’t talking to them, Tegit’s “doctors” went back to their charge, cutting away at the underfabric of his armor and poking at wounds in ways that made Thom queasy. “Ralla, you must stop this craziness. You aren't a warrior. What do you know about armored suits and guns? Who do you think you are?! You’re just, you're just, you're...”

He looked ready to pop. Without warning or provocation, Tegit’s nearest physician turned with a syringe and jabbed it into Cern’s leg. The big man snapped his head towards the attack, then crumpled to the floor, syringe still stuck in his thigh. The physician casually turned back and continued his work on his patient. Ralla stooped to pick up a rifle, pistol, and two charges of explosives.

“Can you help me with the helmet?” Ralla said, as if she were asking him to zip up a dress. The stretchy underfabric conformed to her petite frame, but the covering armor pieces rubbed and clattered against each other. He fitted the helmet and they walked back to where they had entered the sub, stepping over and around people. Pausing at the lock, they could see through the small porthole the rolling stairs still pressed against the hull outside.

“Are you sure they won’t kill you?”

“I’m sure they won’t kill me more than I’m sure they won’t kill you.”

“Huh?”

“As sure as I can be.”

“You can’t know. Let me come with you.”

“No. If you don’t understand why I need to do this then please just let me go because you care about me and I’m telling you this is something I have to do.”

“I was in pretty bad shape when I left you the last time.”

“I figured you might be. Maybe you can think of this time as me leaving you.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“Are these suits that good, or were you just showing off before?”

“Both.”

“OK,” she said. She checked the charges on her carbine and sidearm, then looked back up at Thom, his face bracketed by the retracted helmet, much as hers was to him.

“I’m going to come back for you.”

“Oh, don’t start that again.”

“Ralla...”

“We’ll talk about it later.” She fumbled for the button to seal the helmet, then thought better of it. Grabbing Thom’s shoulders, she pulled herself up and kissed him. The helmets clunked against each other. As awkward as it was, standing there in front of the lock, armor holding them apart, Thom pulled her towards him. All that was unsaid was said unsaid.

Neither moved, but for the kiss. Then Ralla dropped from her toes and pulled away from him, still holding his arm. Thom couldn’t let go of her. She gently placed his arm from her side to his. His mouth opened to say what they both wanted to say, but she stopped him.

“Later,” she said, hitting the button on the helmet, her tone indecipherable. When it snapped down it made her jump. For a moment, through the helmet, Thom could see she was far more nervous than she had let on. She took his gloved hand in hers, and gave it a squeeze. Reaching around her hand, Thom activated his comm.

“Lo. Light it up.”

From deep within the
Reap
, the unmistakable sound of heavy gunfire emanated from all around them. The turrets on the top and bottom of the ship reverberated through the corridors and the deckplates themselves. The people crowded in the passageways of the ship, startled, let out a few screams, many yells, and covered their ears from the sound. Ralla and Thom stood at the lock, oblivious to it all. Thom pounded the door release, which hissed as its pressure seal deflated. The door pivoted outwards.

The walls and floor of the bay were lit red and yellow as the weapons of the
Reappropriation
launched their salvos into everything at the far end of the bay. The guns made short work of subs, containers, and hatches, punching torso sized holes into everything they could see. In the enclosed space, the sound was deafening. Soldiers lying prone on the upper levels, ready to snipe, now fled back to the main part of the ship.

Sealing his own helmet, Thom gave Ralla one more look, his heart in his throat. He stepped out onto the landing of the rolling stairs. Dropping to one knee, he raised his carbine to add his own music to the symphony of noise. He was sure Ralla looked back once as she got to the elevator. Then she was gone.

Neither saw Cern limp back towards the medbay.