Zero Sum Game (34 page)

Ekimori attempted to help her down from the table. As he reached for her, the first officer yelled out, "Captain! The mini sub is launching."

Ekimori forgot about Hina and focused on his second-in-command. "Lock the clamps, now."

The man at the console where the first officer stood pressed several buttons. After a moment, the first officer shook his head. "We can't. Override is not working."

Alarms blared and the room lurched to one side. Hina grabbed the edge of the table to keep from rolling off.

"Report!"

An officer from the other side of the bridge answered. "The twin hatches to the mini sub weren't locked and sealed. The whole compartment is flooding."

"Get up there and manually close them."

Voice spoke up. "Shimizu used his battle suit's AI to override the system."

Hina nodded in understanding. To the captain she asked, "Can you stop the water from getting into the rest of the ship?"

"Already done. The whole deck is sealed off. We're safe. Basically, he stormed out of the house and forgot to close the back door. It's nothing we can't handle."

Hina smiled, glad to know another crisis wasn't coming. "I need to get out of here." She lowered herself off the table.

"I know you're scared," the captain said.

Hina interrupted him. "I need to get off this ship and stop Shimizu."

Ekimori let out a frustrated sigh. "I don't know what's going on here. I have a lunatic going berserk, killing my crew—"

"And I can stop him. You don't need the details. Work with me, please. I can stop him, I really can. But I'll need your help." She watched his face as his gaze held hers. He seemed to be wondering if she was telling the truth or playing some child's game. His softened expression told her he had picked the former.

She continued. "I'll swim out and follow that thing, what is it called?"

"A submersible."

"Yeah, that. I'll stop him. I'm sure I can do it."

"We aren't a military sub," said Ekimori. "We don't have any weapons, but we have plenty of lights. We'll try to help you find him." He turned to a man with headphones sitting at a console. "Get me a reading."

As the man turned dials and studied a console screen, Hina said to the captain, "I need to get out of here fast."

He glanced at the ceiling. "Through the conning tower." He pointed to a ladder set into a recessed portion of the wall near the front of the bridge.

The man at sonar ripped off his headphones. "I have a reading on the mini sub, sir. Bearing zero two eight mark three five."

The captain whirled to the next station. "Helm, get us on that heading." He turned to his first officer. "Get every light glowing."

The man nodded and moved to another station. The captain put a hand in the middle of Hina's shoulder blades and led her towards the ladder.

"There are two hatches." He pointed to the hatch a meter above them. "This one has to be closed first before you open the outer hatch, or you'll flood this whole room. We don't want that."

Hina shook her head in agreement.

"Open this one, close it, then open the outer hatch. It will flood, but close the outer hatch and secure it. When you do, the water will start getting pumped away. Understand?"

Hina nodded.
Open one door, close it, open the second, close it.
Easy
, she thought.

Captain Ekimori asked, "Is he a terrorist?"

Hina shrugged. "You could say that. I'll explain everything when I get back."

"That wouldn't be a wise course of action," Voice interjected. Hina ignored him.

"Unlike other submarines, we were built for depths. We can go to the bottom of the Marianas Trench if we need to. We can follow you, but we're slow. It's not like dropping a rock in the lake. But we'll be as quick as we can."

The captain went back to his crew while Hina climbed the ladder. She opened the hatch and swung it upwards. She climbed into a small space with barely enough room to stand to one side to close the door. She swung it closed and spun the wheel shut, making sure she didn't do it so tight it broke. The area was dark, and above her was another hatch. She could smell saltwater, and the temperature was much cooler.

"Hina. Take a deep breath. You can hold it for about twenty minutes. It will be cold and dark, but you'll adjust quickly. Trust me, all right?"

"I trust you, Voice." Hina opened the outer hatch and swam into the deep Pacific Ocean.

CHAPTER 30

Water and darkness enveloped Hina. She stopped, disorientation blanking her mind. She wasn't sure what she had expected: perhaps schools of beautiful fish swimming by, sleek manta rays flapping through the water, or even giant sea turtles. She hadn't expected the complete emptiness. There were no coral reefs, no fish, no plants swaying. Her skirt billowed around her like a table cloth caught in a languid summer breeze. She saw the metal hull of the submarine, but beyond it there was nothing; only darkness. She panicked, but suppressed the desire to take a breath. She needed to calm down. The saltwater didn't sting her eyes and she wasn't cold.

Focus
, she told herself.
Find Shimizu, that's all. Find Shimizu. Find Shimizu.
She used that as a mantra, to block out the darkness and emptiness that surrounded her. Then the darkness exploded, becoming a mixture of gray and blue. She could see clearer than before. The
Kaiyou Infinity
had turned on its lights. A small speck of white in the distance flared into existence.

"The
Infinity-001
," Voice said.

She jerked in surprise, Voice sounded much louder than usual. She remembered her science teacher telling the class how sound traveled better in water than air. With water pressing into her ears, the manipulation of her eardrums and bones were in a more conductive environment.

"Before we begin," Voice said, "we need a way to communicate. You can't talk, remember?"

Hina nodded even though in actuality she had forgotten.

"I'll help you. Tap your left wrist with one finger for 'yes.' Tap with two fingers for 'no.' Tap with three fingers for 'I don't understand.'"

Hina tapped with one finger.

"Now swim."

Hina kicked her legs and used her arms to cut through the water. Her strength made her swim faster than she had expected and she chased the white speck floating in the darkness.
When am I going to learn to not be surprised?
she thought. As she swam, she focused on the light ahead. She didn't stop when the water around her darkened.

"The submarine is following us, but we are faster than it is capable of," Voice informed her. She tapped her wrist with one finger.

She lost sense of distance and time as she swam. With nothing around her to judge herself against, she felt she wasn't making any progress. She moved her arms and legs, but she accomplished nothing. The gray glow of the mini sub didn't seem any closer.

Then it
was
closer. She continued closing the distance between them. In the small vessel's circle of light she saw the ground.
Not ground
, she corrected herself,
but the sea floor
. She enhanced her sight and saw a hole drilled into the floor. The tiny opening was only thirty centimeters wide.

"It's the hole scientists have drilled to reach the Earth's mantle," Voice explained. "It's four kilometers deep. Shimizu will plant the device in it. The force will expel the catoms into Earth's crust and mantle."

Hina needed to stop the submersible before it reached the hole. She tapped her wrist with one finger. An arrow-shaped piece of metal about a meter across rested in the basket at the front of the sub. Hina suspected this was the device that would deliver the Earth-destroying catoms.

Her first idea was to swim for the device itself. But with the three portals, Shimizu would see her. She decided to stop the vessel. She swam behind it, angling herself towards the left side propeller. It was housed in a cage of metal, but the gaps between the bars were big enough for her arm. A jet of ocean water from the propeller's wake slammed into her, but she swam through it. She reached out and grabbed hold of the cage, letting it pull her along. She punched. The propeller blades snapped against her indestructible arm and broke apart like shooting clays hit by a twelve gauge. The metal bits and shards shot out into the water, then slowed, drifting into aimless courses. She heard an alarm from inside the small vessel, and felt a drop in the thrumming vibrations of its engines. She swam to the right-side propeller and disabled it in the same fashion.

"You are more effective than a monkey wrench," Voice said. Hina smiled. Did Voice just make a joke?

The vessel slowed, but its momentum carried it towards the small hole in the seabed. Hina swam underneath the sub. She cleared the front edge, the basket with the bomb in it above her. The front of the submersible exploded and a shape blurred past her vision. She panicked, thinking it was a shark, and she twisted around for a better view.

Shimizu swam towards her, both mouths twisted in an expression of fury. He was slow, making little headway with each of his strokes and kicks. Hina guessed his mass and armor plating were working against him. He was bulky, not sleek like she was.

The mini sub bumped her leg. Water flooded into the hole Shimizu had made during his explosive exit. As it tilted downwards nose-first, Hina saw the larger research submarine in the distance, its lights growing brighter as it moved towards her position.

Shimizu threw a punch, but she moved her head, and he left a hole in the sub's metal skin. He reached for her throat with his massive four-fingered hands. She struggled, grabbing his wrists to keep him away. She brought her knees up and kicked him in the chest, launching him away. He tumbled end over end.

He launched himself at her and they struggled again. She attempted to keep his hands away from her throat. He was holding his breath like she was; she wanted to strangle him as well, but her arms were too short to reach his neck. As they turned and twisted through the water, Shimizu kicked and pushed, he dragged them deeper downwards. Hina struck the sea floor. It took all of her willpower not to open her mouth in reflex. Shimizu kicked himself up and away, swimming fast.

Hina raised her head. White filled her field of vision, then the flooded
Infinity-001
collided with her. She heard the screeching and snapping of metal as the twenty-seven ton vehicle drove her deeper into the rock. Silt exploded around her, flaring up like a volcano exhaling lava. Metal pressed against her head, chest, and legs.

She lay stunned for a few moments while three emotions warred within her: panic at the situation getting out of hand and the thought of Shimizu taking the bomb to the nearby hole, determination to not open her mouth or breathe through her nose as she tightened her chest and abdominal muscles to fight the impulse, and the absurdity that she had been hit with a submarine.
Okay, it's a little one,
she admitted to herself,
but it's still a submarine.

More mass pressed against her as the mini sub settled, falling onto its side. She couldn't stay trapped beneath it, she felt weaker than she had earlier. It wasn't the twenty minutes Voice said she could hold her breath, but the fighting and panicking were taking their toll. She wasn't sure how much longer she could last. She heard and felt the vibrations of debris from the inside hitting the walls. There was another sound, metal bending then scraping together. She knew Shimizu had retrieved the bomb from the mangled samples basket.

She needed to end the conflict now.

Wiggling and twisting her body, she managed to get her hands beside her. She pictured herself on a weight bench, getting ready to do a bench press. Placing her hands against the curved hull, she pushed the multi-ton vehicle off her. It weighed almost nothing to her, but the water caused it to rock back and forth, making it unstable.

She needed to get back to her feet. Hoping her idea worked, she let go with one hand. Holding the mini sub aloft with her left arm, she used her other to help get to her feet. She lifted the sub up and off her. She tossed it to one side and gave a small prayer of apology to Captain Ekimori as it crashed to the sea floor. She swam upwards, away from the rising cloud of silt.

Shimizu swam with the bomb in one hand. She had to get a hold of him. She kicked hard, thrusting her hands through the water as fast as she could. Shimizu swam towards the hole and didn't look behind him. Hina hoped her element of surprise would last.

She swam over him and his foot tapped her stomach. Before he could turn around, she grabbed him in a bear hug and wrapped her legs around him. Her skin tingled and knew that Voice was now engaged with Shimizu's battle suit, waging war on a microscopic level. Shimizu grabbed the arm wrapped around his neck and Hina tightened her grip, not wanting him to get his fingers between her arm and his neck. His speaking mouth moved against her arm, but his soft teeth were useless.

Shimizu started convulsing; violent spasms and jerks contorted his body. He let go of the bomb and it sunk to the bottom, its impact rising a small puff of disturbed silt. He bucked and clawed at her in desperation and Hina suspected something was wrong. It didn't feel like he was attacking her, but fighting something within himself.

A moment later, Hina's eyes stung from the ocean water and cold pressed against her. The neon purple glow from the tube caught her attention; it was her best chance to get the bomb and destroy it. She let go of Shimizu and swam downwards as fast as she could, but it was more difficult than before. She couldn't kick as hard and the water weighed down on her, like being enveloped in thick syrup.

"Hina," Voice said, "While I was able to damage both Shimizu's battle suit and flash skin, I have also been compromised. My ability to sustain you has been drastically reduced."

Hina tapped her wrist with one finger. She could feel her lungs tightening; they wanted air. She hoped she had enough in them to finish what she needed and get back to the
Kaiyou Infinity
, which was still making its way towards her.