Undersea (37 page)

“Commander, weapons contact. Torpedo in the water,” the sensor officer said, not trying to hide his panic.

“What? From where?”

“Not sure, sir. It looks like... it looks like we only disabled that last sub. They got a shot off.”

“Countermeasures!”

“Fired...  No effect commander. Weapon has no guidance.”

A dummy. The techs had shown him and the torpedo crews how to replace the extensive guidance package in a normal torpedo with additional explosives. It would only go in a straight line, but it would blow big when it got there.

“Bearing?” Maybe they’d get lucky and it would miss.

“Impact with the Fountain in 20 seconds.”

“Pilot, alter your turn. Get us between the Fountain and that torpedo. Sound collision.”

“Sir,” he replied. With that one syllable, he acknowledged the command and voiced the fear all were feeling. He pulled the wheel harder, and the metal in the ship groaned under the strain. The collision alarm wail pierced all other noise. Every person on the ship looked at the deck, the bulkheads, the ceiling, waiting. Waiting for death or water or both.

The torpedo detonated just aft of the main dorsal cannon, instantly killing everyone there and crushing decks and bulkheads. Water forced inwards at speeds impossible to avoid. Emergency hatches slammed shut around the ship, trapping crewmembers but thwarting the water in its ferocious crusade against the air. As far forward as the bridge and as far back as the engine room, the broken spine of the ship crushed inward, severing bulkheads, communication and control conduits, pipes, and power lines. Half the ship lost power instantly. The compression blew out most of the crew’s eardrums. Those nearest the impact lucky enough not to drown fell to the floor bleeding as their internal organs liquefied from the blunt force of the air.

Thom didn’t have to touch his screaming ears to know that both were oozing blood. Orange emergency lights offered the barest of illumination; more came from the green water pressing against the viewscreen. Cracks spidered out from the impact of the last sub. Around him, Thom’s bridge crew were injured, but alive. They had been strapped in. He knew others wouldn’t have been.

“Damage report!” Thom yelled, the sound of his own voice hollow and distant in his ears. Soli stumbled onto the bridge, covered in blood. A vicious gash crossed his forehead. Thom was out of his seat and to him before Soli could wave him off. Thom checked him over; disturbingly most of the blood didn’t seem to be his.

“Get down to the medbay,” Thom shouted again. Soli, in a daze, turned and staggered off. 

Thom turned back to see his bridge crew, bloodied but not beaten, trying to make sense of the situation.

“Sections 8, 9, 12, and 13 on Decks 1, 2, and 3 are flooded. Emergency locks are holding. Reports of extensive damage all along Deck 1. Fire in multiple compartments. Power is out across most of ship. I’m seeing cascading failures across all systems,” In the dim light and the ringing, Thom was having a hard time figuring out who was talking. From his right, someone else spoke.

“Casualty reports coming in from all along Decks 1 and 2. Injuries reported...” Thom cut the voice off.

“I don’t care about injuries, I want fire crews to gear up and get those fires out. I don’t care who’s bleeding; if those fires spread…” He didn’t want to contemplate the consequences enough to finish that sentence. “Can you get the engine room?”

“No, sir.”

“Pilot, do you still have control?” There was a moment of silence, then:

“Yes, I think so.”

“Get us back to the fight, ensign.”

“Sir?”

“We can be dead here or dead there. We haven’t won just because we took a beating.”

“Yes, sir.” He could feel everyone on the bridge calming down as training again took hold.

“I want damage control teams on Decks 1 and 2 to fix anything they can shore up.”

“Medbay is reporting being overrun with injuries.”

“Tell them that if they were good enough to walk there, they’re good enough to walk back to their stations.”

“Relayed, sir.”

“They can hate me later,” he said, barely able to hear himself say it. He could have yelled it for all he knew.

Thom could feel the
Reap
start to accelerate. Worrying creaks and groans echoed through the ship loud enough to hear even through damaged ears. Worse was the grinding. It sounded like one of the prop shafts had dislodged and was trying to abrade itself to nothing. It was causing a harsh and disquieting trembling in the deck. The ship was dying around them, but it limped along, as if knowing it had one final mission.

Minutes passed. Around him the bridge crew continued to relay information and assistance to damage parties around the ship. Thom stepped off the bridge to look down the corridor. Lights winked on and off as electricity arced somewhere, making a short-lived connection and supplying power to some other area of the ship. The shadows held bodies. He stepped back onto the bridge.

There was no way to tell how long the sensor officer had been calling him, but the urgency in his voice made Thom’s blood run cold.

“Commander, look!”

On the sensor screen, Thom saw his worst fears: the
Population
was undeterred, still on a direct course to the Fountain. Racing alongside but losing ground was the
Universalis
. It had started to turn to starboard, into the path of the other sub. It was impossible to see what untold amount of damage had been done in the short time the
Reap
had been away. All that could be seen was the
Uni
, more than half of its bulk still forward of the
Pop
, sacrificing itself in a terminal attempt to stop the unrelenting enemy citysub.

The scene unfolded in slow motion, the
Uni
turning and slightly rolling almost leisurely it seemed into the path of the
Pop
. There were no sudden moves with such mass. No last-minute saves. But the mangled
Reap
charged towards them both like a child rushing to come between fighting parents.

In the green, brackish gloom, the contours of the titans became just visible as the two ships finally met. Thom heard gasps as they helplessly watched the collision.

The impact was agonizingly slow at first, the bow of the
Pop
piercing the upper hull of the
Uni
, the latter’s angle odd due to the severity of its turn. The
Pop
slid upwards, ripping away hull plating with an ease and savagery no weapon could duplicate. Light burst forth around the wound as the gash became deep enough to penetrate the inner hull. Colossal bubbles of air leapt from the edges between the two subs as water rushed in, killing everyone and everything in the Yard with cold unrelenting pressure. The laceration continued, tearing more and more hull away from the wounded ship. The bow of the
Pop,
like a knife, continued to rend the spine of the
Uni
. The gaping wound progressed aft past the Yard, and despite a desperate “No!” from one of Thom’s crew, opened up the long roof of the Garden. The bow of the once mighty
Universalis
sank rapidly. The deluge continued as air and water struggled to get past each other.

Then, with a final shudder, the ships separated. One seemed unharmed, the other mortally wounded, plummeting towards the sea floor. As they pulled apart, the extent of the damage was revealed to the helpless crew of the
Reap
. The breach torn in the
Uni
’s
hull was twice the width of the
Reap
, and ran the length of the Yard and about a third of the Garden. As it continued its mortal tilt downwards, the
Reap
crew could see in, down the cliff-like walls and hanging gardens of the Garden and Yard for the few moments the lights remained on. Then, after a few flickers, the lights across the entire ship winked out and it sank, pitch black, into the darkness.

No one said a word. The
Population
loomed ahead of them. Its pace had slowed considerably, but it was inexorable.

“Are weapons back up?” Thom said, trying not to let the shock of what he had seen overwhelm him.

“Negative.”

Thom knew immediately what must be done, but it took him a moment to be able to say it.

“Abandon ship.” There was no response. “I said
abandon ship!
”

“Sir? Yes, sir. Yes, sir!” came the delayed response. There was shuffling in the dim light as the bridge crew freed themselves from their chairs. Thom reached forward to the central table, its internal lighting dark, never to be lit again. On the side, underneath a protective cover, was a button only he was allowed to press. It clicked precisely under the weight of his finger. Triple redundant and isolated wires became excited with electrons for the first, and last, time. Every room and corridor on the
Reappropriation
simultaneously erupted in a noise no crewmember had ever heard in action, yet still knew by heart: the rapid double blat alarm to abandon ship. They’d been trained from childhood to recognize the sound and act immediately and decisively. All knew intuitively where the nearest escape hatch or lifeboat was, and what to do when they got there. The well trained and weary, battle-hardened crew of the
Reap
feverishly but adeptly made their way past the dead bodies, picking up and carrying the live ones to the lifeboats all around the ship.

The bridge crew was the last to leave. Ahead, the
Population
’s torn-up bow looked like menacing razor-sharp teeth filling the viewscreen, ready to devour them. As his bridge crew filed towards the door, Thom made his way forward to the pilot’s chair. They seemed reluctant to leave without him. To the dissonant tune of the earsplitting siren he saluted them, and they him, in a silent showing of mutual respect. Thom pulled back on the controls, tilting the
Reappropriation
up towards the gaping maw of the
Population
.

IX

There was nothing else to do. The controls were set, the lifeboats were away. It was likely there were wounded crewmembers still onboard, but nothing could be done for them now. There was no time.

He patted the table gently and told it “Thank you.”

Then he was off. Normally, he could have made it to the rear lock in under three minutes at a good run. He knew he had less than two. He did it in one. The upward angle of the ship aided his movements down it, despite the treacherous leaps of faith over collapsed girders and bulging bulkheads.

Everything in the rear lock was in disarray, having slid back against the exterior doors. Dollies, racks, gear, and drysuits piled against the one thing he needed: a scout sub. Thom slid down the deck, joining the detritus, shoving aside containers of food lying on the lid of the cockpit. He looked around for any weapons, but saw none.

The escort sub had a remote connection to the lock door, and as soon as the cockpit was sealed, he enabled it. Despite all the damage to the ship, the pressure was holding enough that the water didn’t rush in as the door slid open. He fell back, though, in a stomach-churning drop out the back of the sub. The
Reap
seemed to climb away from him, up towards the black cloud that was the
Population
.

Thom guessed at the time of impact and counted down silently in his head. He got to nine before his comparatively little
Reap
embedded itself into the front of the
Pop
, looking like a piece of errant food stuck in the gaping maw of some massive beast. Disappointingly, there was no explosion. Three of the four propellers still churned and the sub wasn’t moving, so he hoped at the very least his beloved ship had bought him some time by slightly slowing the
Pop
. At best, he figured he’d have twenty minutes before it ran down the Fountain.

Thom throttled up and dove down and away from the ship. As he reached maximum speed, he pulled back up again. His aim was perfect.

It had taken Ralla far too long to fight her way down to the shipyard. Door after door had been sealed shut, perhaps in an attempt to keep her occupied, or perhaps as a precaution against the battle being waged outside. Getting knocked off her feet every few moments as torpedoes impacted the hull didn’t help. She knew no one torpedo would cripple the ship, but each one still caused her heart to jump a little. By the time she made it down to the floor, nothing was where it was when she had seen it from above. The constant barrage, and one tremendous jolt that felt like a collision, had rearranged, dislodged, or broken anything that wasn’t an integral part of the ship itself. The jolt had worried her, but the ship hadn’t slowed or turned, so she figured they hadn’t run down the Fountain. There was still time.

She had found her rockets. As she figured, only two fit in her coveralls, and her hands were full with a pistol and the rifle she taken from the soldier two decks above.

She had made her way up some scaffolding to the next level, the doors on her level blocked with debris. Another jolt knocked her to the deck, which was the only reason she was looking back towards the bay where she noticed something moving through the open lock in the floor. It was a light. It quickly grew brighter, then it was there. Only in the moment before it hit the surface did she realize what it was.

A dart-like escort sub, travelling at full speed and at a steep angle, broke the plane of the water, bursting forth like an explosion, momentarily airborne. It sailed through the air, passing over the edge of the lock before gravity took hold and smashed it down to the deck. It ground to a halt, water cascading from the hull and vaporizing as it hit a floor hot from abrasion. The canopy popped open, and Ralla was equally surprised and unsurprised to see Thom crawl out, bearded, bloodied, and furious.

Ralla shouted to him, but he didn’t hear. She scampered down the scaffolding, nearly breaking her leg as she slipped towards the bottom. Maybe that got his attention, maybe it was her awkward limp, or maybe it was the sheer volume of her screaming. He turned, and she could see the caked blood on his ears. The look on his face when he saw Ralla told her everything she needed to know, had wanted to know, had hoped to know for months. She jumped into his arms and they kissed.