Trembling Into the Blue

by Shouji Gatou

  “Listen to me, Kurz. Like I said before, Mithril is a squad of mercenaries,” Nguyen insisted. “We’re not superheroes. We’re a gang of killers who get paid to do what we do. Why shouldn’t we side with whoever’s signing the bigger check?”

  Kurz said nothing.

  “What do you expect to get out of this whole ‘loyal soldier’ act, huh? Just come out already.”

  Kurz looked around the cabin he was in. It was just a standard sailor’s berth; bunk beds and personal effects. There was a picture of Tessa in her uniform tacked to the wall, but nothing that could be used as a weapon. No, wait... His eyes fell on a fire extinguisher next to the door.

  “You’ve convinced me, Nguyen,” he admitted.

  “Oh?”

  “After I get rid of you, I’m gonna hit up Tessa for a bonus. I’ll get her to let me take sexy swimsuit shots of her, and then I’ll sell them to the ship’s crew for twenty dollars a pop,” Kurz went on. “If a hundred guys buy them, that’s two thousand dollars. Sounds good, right?”

  Nguyen fell silent for a moment. “I thought you were smarter than this.” He sounded genuinely disappointed, but Kurz’s nose could pick up the scent of rising hostility drifting down the hall.

  “It’s not about being smart,” Kurz retorted. “I’m a realist, that’s all.” He picked up the fire extinguisher and steadied himself.

  Sousuke had an idea of where the “Lady Chapel” Kaname was talking about might be found. There was one place on the maps used by the ground forces and crew that was always blacked out and unlabeled: a classified bay. He’d never given it much thought, but he’d always kept it tucked away in the back of his mind, near the rear of the third deck, and directly below the control room.

  The crew of the de Danaan was diverse, ethnically and religiously—the captain’s policy was that those who wished to pray could do so in their own way—so the vessel contained no particular places of worship. Could the “Lady Chapel,” then, refer to this secret room?

  “We’re almost there,” Sousuke told her. “Try to hang on.” He sped to the location on the third deck, dragging along the unsteady Kaname. He was worried about Kurz, but right now, their priority was taking back control of the submarine from Gauron. The only way to do that was to follow the hints that Tessa had given her.

  On top of the vibrations that had been running through the boat for a while, suddenly, the floor tilted. It was like a passenger plane going into a descent. They could hear a commotion all around them as small objects toppled from desks and shelves.

  Half-tumbling, they turned a corner and saw a door at the end of a long, narrow hallway. They ran to it. The door was labeled “LC” and contained a warning label: “Entry forbidden without permission from Captain or Executive Officer.”

  “Do you have the key, Chidori?”

  “Yes, here. Ah, it went in...” Kaname inserted the key she’d found in the captain’s room, and the thick door opened with an electronic sound.

  The Lady Chapel was a very small room. It was a dimly-lit, domed space, about four meters in diameter; Kaname felt like she was coming into one of those snow huts that northern Japan was famous for. The walls were embedded with lines of blocky modules, with labels like A01 and X16, and covered in switches and levers.

  A large machine sat at the center of the dome. It looked a little like a bed and a little like a chair; it also vaguely resembled an open coffin. It was shaped to fit one person, in a seated posture, on their back—if the cover was slid shut, that person would be completely enveloped. It was similar to an AS’s cockpit block.

  On the part of the cover that would go right over the head, the following was engraved in elegant typeface:

  Transfer And Response “Omni-Sphere” / System103 / Mod-1997c Ver1.01

  Sousuke recognized the acronym—TAROS, the device inside the Arbalest that the engineer, Lieutenant Lemming, had mentioned. But what was one doing here, in the depths of the Tuatha de Danaan? He cast a glance at Kaname.

  Gazing down at the TAROS, she said quietly, “This is an older model than the TAROS in the Arbalest. It’s not hooked up to a lambda driver... but to the submarine’s control system.”

  “What?” he questioned.

  “I think I understand. Yes, I... I see.” Kaname was like a different person, both in her voice and her expression. She muttered to herself, nodded, and then... she turned gentle eyes to Sousuke.

  “Chidori?” He was taken aback, but she simply smiled at him.

  “Thank you, Sagara-san. Your job here is done,” she told him. “Now... could you come and save me?”

  Kurz sprayed the fire extinguisher out the door. It was a makeshift smokescreen; the cloud of white powder reduced visibility to near zero. He immediately flew out into the hall and ran at Nguyen, full tilt.

  His enemy fired. The bullet grazed his arm, but the shot told him exactly where Nguyen was—he charged, and while the other man dodged, he managed to grab hold of the wrist of the hand with the gun.

  Nguyen grunted, and there was a flash from his left hand. Kurz ducked instinctively, but the knife tore a shallow cut across his neck. It swept past him again in a backhand swipe; Kurz pulled at his opponent’s seized wrist, and the slight imbalance forced Nguyen’s strike just clear of a critical hit.

  Dammit! Kurz mentally cursed. He’d thought that he would stand a better chance in close combat, but he’d been a fool—the man was a master with knives and had no blind spots to exploit. In a cramped space like this, a pistol and a knife in experienced hands was an ideal combination. Kurz might be a master with a rifle, but his close-combat instincts were basically average as specialists went. He could hold his own, but he wasn’t exactly a natural—which left him no match for Nguyen.

  The knife’s tip thrust at him. He knocked the hand away, but too late; it stabbed him in a shoulder. Kurz hissed and screamed as a burning pain shot through him.

  Grabbing the arm with the knife, Kurz yanked his opponent toward him again, and this time, rolled back onto the ground. From there, he executed an odd sort of tomoe-nage—propelling Nguyen up with a kick and, with a grunt of effort, casting him back and away. This gave him some distance from the other man, which freed him from the knife’s threat, only to put him back in danger from the gun. Kurz jumped to his feet and tried to flee around a corner, but the next second, he felt a dull impact in his right leg, followed by a shooting pain.

  Kurz winced; the knife Nguyen had thrown was sticking into the back of his thigh. He tried to put weight on it, but the leg gave out beneath him, causing him to fall to his knees. Clinging to a pipe in the wall for support, he looked back. Nguyen was pointing his gun at him, only three meters away; there was no escaping now.

  Nguyen’s swarthy face stood out against the white mist, the expressionless mask of a master killer. Cold ruthlessness had eclipsed his last vestiges of reticence or friendship; his eyes were now those of a murderous machine.

  I’m dead, Kurz thought. But the next second, something strange happened: Nguyen’s head underwent a slight spasm, like he’d been hit with an electric shock. There was a medical scalpel sticking out of the man’s neck.

  “Ah...” Nguyen’s eyes opened in surprise, and he turned his gaze toward the starboard corridor. That must be where the scalpel came from, Kurz reckoned, but from his current position, he couldn’t make out the source.

  Another silver flash pierced the corridor’s darkness. Another scalpel stuck into Nguyen’s chest. The man looked down at it, and as if remembering something, he turned his gun toward the unseen someone.

  In that moment, Kurz summoned all the strength he had left and launched himself at Nguyen. He pulled the knife out of his leg, readied it at his hip, and ran. He felt like he was in a yakuza movie. In his heart, he was shouting, Your ass is mine, punk!

  The charge—simple on the face of it, yet difficult to actually dodge—took Kurz straight into Nguyen, where with an unsettling crunch, he jammed the knife into his opponent’s stomach. Nguyen fired
at the floor as a groan spilled from his lips. Kurz stabbed him again. Then, in the same movement, he knocked the gun out of his hand.

  “You really suck, Nguyen,” Kurz said, breathing heavily. “You ask me, that five million isn’t worth the paper it was printed on. I wouldn’t use it to wipe my ass... it’d give me hemorrhoids, not to mention clogging up the shitter!”

  Nguyen’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell still. He was dead. Kurz felt a little bad that the last words he had to hear included “wipe my ass,” “hemorrhoids,” and “shitter”... but, he decided, he had brought it on himself. As Kurz pulled away from the body, the former Uruz-10 slumped to the floor.

  “Whew...” He crouched down, shoulder-to-shoulder with the corpse. The stab wounds in his shoulder and leg throbbed with pain. A silhouette was approaching, walking through the extinguisher’s leftover mist. It was the person who had thrown the scalpels at Nguyen from his blind spot.

  It was Mao. She was dressed in her underwear—an olive green sports bra and bikini panties—just how she’d been left in the sick bay. Her smooth skin had worked up a thin sheen of sweat. Her ample bosom, slender legs, taut waist, and toned rear were all on display, giving her the beauty of a leopardess.

  While Kurz stared in awe, Mao ran a languid hand through her hair. “Kurz... You are the worst close-range combatant I’ve ever seen. Charging in, then pulling away... You looked like a small-time hood. I couldn’t even watch it...” Her voice was listless. There was something strange about her manner; she seemed unsteady on her feet. “Who is that, anyway? Oh... Nguyen. What the hell, what was his beef with you? Huh?” She looked down at the corpse, muttering incomprehensibly.

  Kurz tilted his head. “Big Sis, what are you doing here?”

  “Huh? Me? I was in the sick bay, I think... when I woke up, they were sounding the evacuation drill alarm. I didn’t want to go to the... to the hangar looking like this, so I hid,” she said. “I think. That’s when I heard shots...”

  “Hey, now...” he began.

  “Peggy... I think she drugged me up or something. I don’t know what’s going on,” Mao admitted. “What happened to the Venom? Where’s Sousuke? And... ugh, I’m so dizzy...” she let out a shallow breath and slumped against the wall. Apparently, walking was taking everything she had. To wield scalpels with such skill in her condition...

  “You’re one scary chick...” Kurz said in tones of great admiration. Just then, he heard another sonar ping. They’d been getting them consistently for some time, and the space between them was growing shorter and shorter. There was a torpedo close by, searching for them. Even if he hurried to the control room now, he wouldn’t make it in time; de Danaan would already be sunk by then. There was no way to stop it. Nguyen had delayed him for too long.

  Even as he wallowed in despair, he found himself gazing at Mao’s supple legs. “Damn. No camera,” he whispered.

  The torpedo was hot on their heels. Ping......... ping...... ping... ping... came the sound of its searching, louder and louder—a prelude to their destruction. The terrifying rhythm taunted the de Danaan as it sank to greater depths. Those new ADCAPs were tough; even at this depth, this one held firmly on course.

  Very soon, they’d reach 1,500 feet. The water pressure was 50 atmospheres. Their titanium alloy hull was starting to buckle under the pressure, which had already shrunk the boat by several meters stem to stern. The contraction caused warping in various parts of the internal structure. Pipes shot out steam, water, and compressed air; twisted cables released sparks.

  Dana’s oblivious “warnings” kept coming.《Warning, explosion in B-corridor, third deck. Warning, damage to 16th water pipe, line C. Warning, suspicious noise in H7 pressure bulkhead on first deck. Warning—》That commotion, the creaking of the hull, and the sound of the sonar all echoed through the control room.

  Gauron, lounging in the captain’s chair, let out a cackle. “Yes, here it comes! Here it comes!” Desperate, terrifying—those words couldn’t adequately describe his laughter, which was like that of Death itself. But there was one thing you could say for sure: this man was enjoying himself from the bottom of his heart. The situation made him feel alive.

  He’s utterly mad. OOD Goddard felt a chill up his spine. He was bound and basically powerless... Was he just going to die, without doing anything to resist? Without using their vessel’s incredible abilities? Without showing his brilliant navigational skills?

  The Tuatha de Danaan was designed to execute raids at shallow depths; it wasn’t designed for these kinds of deep sea maneuvers. Its maximum depth for full functionality was listed at 1,200 feet, and its terminal pressure limit was 1,600. The depth where the pressure would crush them like an egg, the depth at which they’d be pulverized—it was only 100 feet away. A mere 32 meters. All this, with a high-speed torpedo nipping at their heels...

  And yet, Captain Teletha Testarossa remained perfectly calm. She was squatting down next to Gauron, holding very still; her gaze was lowered, half-lidded eyes staring emptily at the floor. Her lips moved like a person in a fevered daze, and she reacted neither to the AI’s warnings nor to Gauron’s words.

  Perhaps she’d withdrawn into herself, unable to face this cruel reality ahead of her. No matter how competent she might be, she was still just a 16-year-old girl. Goddard felt both deep sympathy for her and a small amount of disappointment. The control room had two entrances, but Dana had currently locked both of them from the inside. No one was coming to save them.

  Once the torpedoes were within 500 meters, Gauron shouted out, “AI! Right full rudder! And fire off the decoy!”

  《Aye, sir.》

  Goddard knew immediately that it wouldn’t work—They couldn’t dodge it this way. The firing was too soon, and the turn wasn’t the right direction. Damned amateur... he cursed to himself.

  “Okay, it’s dodging time! Can I do it? What do you think?!” Gauron guffawed. Then, just as the torpedo’s pinging reached its peak—

  The control room’s front screen blacked out. It lasted for just for a moment, as long as the slow blink of an eye.

  Goddard looked up, confused. Just as he and the rest of the crew were wondering what had happened, Teletha Testarossa snapped her head up. There was no despair in her gaze, only iron will and quiet confidence—and a little something extra, as she spoke up, resonantly, “Dana. On my signal, launch countermeasures one and two. Deep sea mode.”

  《Aye, ma’am,》Dana responded.

  Aye, ma’am, it had said. Gauron, Goddard and the others looked at Tessa, their eyes wide in shock. Seeming oblivious to their attention, she raised her perfect index finger to trace out a rhythm like an orchestra’s conductor. The elegant motions suggested a complicated melody.

  “Yes... not yet...” she murmured. With superhuman endurance, she let the torpedo continue to tail them. The pings sounded like an alarm clock’s buzzing, now. Almost there. Take aim. Now—Tessa made a clipped declaration. “Launch.”

  《Launching countermeasure.》The de Danaan obediently launched its countermeasure—a dummy sound source.

  “Emergency blow, now,” Tessa instructed.

  《Aye. Emergency blow!》

  Alarms sounded. Emergency pumps activated. An explosive sound filled the ship as the sudden rise in pressure forced the water from the ballast tanks, and the ship immediately gained buoyancy.

  Trailing bubbles, the Tuatha de Danaan streaked upward. The incredible noise and unexpected motion caused the torpedo to completely lose sight of its target. The only thing left in its detection range was Tessa’s brilliantly timed countermeasure. The torpedo plowed into the decoy and activated its payload, bursting just below the de Danaan.

  The roar and shockwave hit the belly of the boat, causing its massive form to buck. Various crew members and nonstabilized objects were knocked to the floor and rolling around. Tessa’s body slammed against the control room’s back wall, and even Gauron was sent tumbling out of the captain’s chair. The vessel shuddered and s
hrieked like the massive beast it was, and yet it continued to ascend. Like a balloon. Like a rocket.

  Or, more poetically... like a bird, flapping its wings to reach the sky.

  USS Pasadena

  “They dodged it?!” Sailor demanded.

  “Yes,” Takenaka admitted. “They seem to have used an emergency blow. They’re currently rising at high speed to the surface.”

  “At that range?! I don’t believe it... Shit,” Sailor said. The torpedo’s search radius was conical, meaning that to escape it, you had to let it get as close as possible before abruptly changing course. But to hang in there that long, in a boat of that size... “That captain is incredible. What’s he got, balls of steel?”

  “I admit... it’s impressive. He must have considerable nerve,” Takenaka agreed, dumbfounded.

  But the other torpedo they’d fired was still pursuing the Toy Box. Impact was expected in three minutes.

  Tuatha de Danaan

  The sub was shooting straight for the surface as the floor rocked back and forth. Tessa, clinging to the wall of the control room, picked herself up. Everyone was looking at her; Goddard’s gaze, in particular, was that of a lovestruck young man.

  “What kind of magic trick did you just pull?” Gauron asked.

  “You don’t know?” Tessa asked curiously. “I suppose ‘he’ didn’t trust you as much as you thought.”

  Gauron said nothing.

  “This vessel is mine, now,” she went on. “You won’t have your way any longer!” The front screen zoomed in on the status board.

  Even absent Tessa’s orders, all on-board functions were returning to normal. The doors separating the fore from the aft were opening one after another; the flow of oxygen was being returned to the hangar. The engine room’s output stabilized, and began undergoing self-diagnostics. Damaged channels were severed and backups were activated. The boat’s various gauges, which had been in the red zone, quickly began to change back to green. This wasn’t Dana. Someone, somewhere, was doing all of this directly.