The Terrans stood waist-deep in water, gasping. The bodies of the centauroid Naxids were almost entirely submerged, with only their arms, shoulders, and heads above water. The alarm blared off the enameled metal walls and a long row of lockers and hatches and overhead rails for equipment. Gaudy displays urged them to evacuate and follow emergency procedure. The water leaped to a series of tremors.
“Can we pump this room out?” Sula asked, raising her voice over the alarm.
“If there’s enough emergency power,” said the sergeant. He began scanning the lock’s control menu, found an appropriate page, pushed a button. A mechanical throb began, interrupted occasionally by a throat-clearing sound.
Sula cleared her ears. “What’s the air pressure in here?” she asked.
The police cadet looked at gauges. “Five point one atmospheres, my lady,” she said. She reached for a control. “I can bleed off all the extra.”
“No!” Everyone in the Fleet shouted the word in unison. The cadet not only withdrew her arm but jumped back from the controls.
“It has to be done slowly,” Sula explained. “Or we’ll all get the bends.”
Agony, convulsions, and death, Sula thought, while the blood turns to the consistency of clotted cream. Not a part of the plan.
“Yes, my lady,” the cadet said, a bit primly.
“Where’s the blasted submarine?” said the strange Terran. He was a dark-skinned man, small enough that the water came to his armpits, and he wore an elaborate turquoise uniform jacket with the badge of the UnderSea Hotel. He half-swam through the murky water toward another airlock door on the far side of the room, then peered at the airlock controls. He gave an angry shrug at the readout, then jabbed at a video screen. It showed nothing but blackness.
“Submarine’s gone!” he said.
Sula shivered in the cold water. She was trying to work out how long it would take to slowly purge the extra atmosphere from the room. She and Fleet enlisted would have trained on vacuum suits, and much of the training was done in water tanks, though hardly at five atmospheres. She had memorized charts and tables and formulae, but most of it had to do with exposure to the vacuum of space, not cold murky seawater five atmospheres down.
Sula decided to abandon that for a moment and bobbed through the water to join the angry Terran at the hatch for the submarine.
“The bastards have abandoned us!” the man said. “They were supposed to wait!”
“Is there a way of contacting the sub?”
The man waved his hands hopelessly at the controls. “I’ve no idea! I work for the hotel; I’m not a damned submariner!”
Sula paged through the menu, found the controls for the underwater speakers and hydrophone, activated the system, and began speaking.
“Base to submarine. Base to submarine. We have seven survivors waiting for pickup. We have survivors. Respond, please.”
Sula waited for a response while the compartment shivered to a series of quakes, and then repeated the signal. To her surprise, an answer came, a melodious Daimong voice speaking with surprising clarity. The submarine was very near.
“This is the Dyak III. We can’t moor to a compromised structure. It’s too hazardous.”
The chiming voice was so beautiful that the discouraging message seemed worse by comparison.
“Dyak III,” Sula said, “we have seven waiting for pickup.”
The answer was less melodious. “The entire complex has been knocked off its foundations by an avalanche. The building’s coming apart. I’m not going anywhere near it.”
Anger sang through Sula as she carefully composed her next message. “Dyak III, I hereby officially inform you that martial law is now in place, and the Fleet has been placed in command of all government facilities. This is Captain the Lady Sula, and I order you to dock with this station.”
There was a long pause, as if the submarine’s crew were conferring. Then: “Your message was garbled, miss. Please repeat.”
Helplessly, Sula repeated the message. She was tempted to add Return or I’ll personally shoot you, but on reflection decided that it was pointless to threaten someone who held all the cards.
“Your message was garbled,” came the answer. “We are unable to understand or comply. We are moving further away from the station for the safety of our craft.”
Sula called again, asking for a response, but got nothing.
“That was fucking precious,” came a voice that was surprisingly like her own. “That was a piece of tactical brilliance, that was.” Sula turned to see Anna Spendlove in the middle of the airlock, looking at her, her old arrogance back. Spendlove sneered, her straight-backed posture mirroring Sula’s own bearing. “At least we die together. You can hardly threaten me now.”
Sula looked at her. “We could push you over and find out how well you can swim when handcuffed. Want to give it a try?”
Spendlove decided not to respond and turned her head away, as if Sula wasn’t worthy of her attention. Sula saw that the water level had fallen to her mid-thigh, so at least the pumps were working, if slower than she would have liked. She turned to the angry Terran.
“Is there any other way off the station?”
“Escape capsules,” the man said. “Which I don’t trust, because I know too well how everything in this place has been maintained.”
“Well,” Sula said. “We’d better find out.”
“My lady.” Spence called from across the room. “We’ve got the algorithm for decompression. It’s built into the system. We can start relieving pressure.”
“Do it,” Sula said. And hope the valves work the way they’re designed and don’t let in more water.
“We need to tell the system how long we’ve been at this pressure,” Spence said.
Sula’s mind went blank. “Ten minutes?” she said. “Better make it fifteen for safety’s sake.”
Spence turned back to a control panel and punched in orders. There was no immediate sensation of air pressure dropping, but Spence peered at the display and said, “Depressurization commencing, my lady.”
“Can you turn off that damned alarm? I can’t think.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Sula shivered again. The stink of the ocean bottom clogged her senses. She decided she needed to work out an escape before hypothermia stole her reason.
She turned to the display and paged through to the escape procedures, and discovered that the escape capsules were right there, attached to the airlock. The displays that would otherwise have marked them were instead flashing commands to evacuate, without mentioning that this was where everyone was to evacuate to.
Sula called up instructions. There were eight capsules altogether, each of which could hold up to six humanoids or four Naxids. When the capsule was ready to launch, it would release a buoy to the surface on a cable, where it would start broadcasting an emergency signal. When released, the capsule itself would bob up the cable to the surface.
Macnamara had been rummaging in the lockers. “My lady,” he said. “Look at this.”
He held out a helmet and the upper portion of what looked like a suit of armor, white laminate with red stripes. Sula looked at it and laughed.
“That’s more like it!” She sloshed through the water—it came only to her knees now—and examined the suit. It was very close to a Fleet vac suit, with similar controls and a self-contained fuel supply with a rebreather. The hardsuit had little water jets for maneuver, and gossamer fins that could be deployed from the boots. The power pack registered full.
“How many of them are there?”
They found four suits suitable for humanoids, each numbered, each striped in a different color, each with a full power pack. Two would fit Naxids, but neither of the police had been trained in their use. Also in the lockers was a variety of tools, some of them clearly intended for a single purpose, to be used outside in maintaining the structure.
“Right,” Sula said. “One for each member of the Fleet.�
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“And the rest of us will drown, I suppose,” said Anna Spendlove.
Sula looked at her. “The rest of you will go up in one of the capsules.”
Everyone froze in place as the small room shuddered and then was filled with the sound of a horrific rending, like a steel wall slowly being torn in two by a giant. There followed a boom, very close, and then there was a sinister scraping sound, as if a piece of sharp metal was being drawn deliberately along the side of the lock.
“This place is utter shit,” said the angry man. Everyone remembered to breathe.
The alarm cut off in mid-chirp. Sula looked at Spence, who was still at the control panel. “Did you do that?”
“I don’t think so, my lady.”
That could be better, she thought. “Better get you loaded into the capsules and away,” she decided.
But they had to wait. The hatches to the capsules were partly submerged, and the difference in water and air pressure kept them from opening. There was only one fragile-seeming handle on each hatch, and Sula didn’t want to apply too much force. So, Sula and the other Fleet personnel hauled the hardsuits out of their lockers and hung the components from the overhead bars intended for the purpose. Sula was cheered by the activity—it kept her from freezing, and though she hated the claustrophobic closeness of a vac suit, at least the diving suits could maneuver freely instead of bobbing on the end of a cable, a sure invitation to seasickness.
“My lady?” It was the constable who’d met her on the pier. His face was pale, a contrast to the blood trickling from flying windshield cuts. “My vac suit training was a little . . . rudimentary, and a long time ago. Maybe I’d better take one of the capsules.”
“Very good. You can escort the prisoner.”
A relieved sigh visibly heaved the constable’s chest. “Thank you, my lady.”
There was a chime from the lock’s console, and Spence looked at the readout. “Decompression’s over. We’re at one atmosphere, my lady.”
“About time.”
“There’s a recommendation that we breathe pure oxygen for ten minutes to clear the last of the nitrogen out of our systems.”
Sula gave a skeletal grin. “Anyone found an oxygen tank?”
No one had. The water was now ankle-deep, though the footing remained treacherous. Sula got one of the capsule doors open, put her head through the narrow opening, and looked at the egg-shaped interior space. There was a narrow bench that ran around the inside, and otherwise a couple windows, some simple controls, and the smell of mildew. She withdrew her head.
“Right,” she said. “First three.”
That would be Spendlove, the constable, and the angry civilian. The constable entered first, helped the handcuffed Spendlove to enter without damaging herself, and then the angry man crawled in last.
“Do not launch until you have the light telling you that the buoy’s reached the surface,” Sula said.
“Yes, my lady,” said the constable.
“If the buoy hasn’t deployed fully, you could be caught partway up the cable and there’d be no way to free you.”
“Very good, my lady.”
Sula shut the door and heard the clink of the constable triggering the door’s locking bolts. She stood and watched the display, and heard a rasping noise, a clank, more rasping that faded to a hiss, and then nothing.
“Buoy’s away,” Spence said. They waited for the light that would indicate the buoy had reached the surface, but it didn’t flash.
“Negative function,” said Spence.
“Right,” said Sula. She turned to the Naxid police. “Into the next capsule. We’ll pull these other people out.”
The Naxids climbed into the next capsule in the row, closed the door, and deployed the buoy in the time it took for the three Terrans to clamber out of the first capsule.
“Negative function.” Again the buoy deployed but apparently never reached the surface.
“Negative function.”
“Negative function.”
The first five capsules all had the same problem. The last three buoys wouldn’t release at all.
“I told you the maintenance here is for shit!” said the angry man.
Sula glared at the last of the capsules’ control panels and considered kicking it. Her run of ill luck seemed absurd and extreme, as if some malevolent god of chance had its thumb on the scales.
Avalanche. How many people died in underwater avalanches?
Instead of lashing out, she gathered in a sodden circle with Spence and Macnamara. “The cable’s fouled, or the buoy’s stuck on something,” she said. “We’re going to have to go outside and fix it.”
Only Macnamara made an effort to look optimistic. “Yes, my lady.”
“I’ll go out first,” Sula said. “I’ll analyze the problem and tell you what sort of tools you might need to bring with you.”
Sula threw off her tunic and kicked off her sodden shoes, and Spence and Macnamara helped her enter the hardsuit and adjusted the internal webbing to her body. She hoisted herself up to one of the overhead bars and dropped her feet and legs into the lower part. Boots were placed over her feet and locked on at the shins. She knelt to make it easier for Macnamara and Spence to drop the upper body on her, and then staggered to her feet while the others steadied her. She now weighed twice as much as she normally did, and even though the extra weight was distributed evenly, she was glad for the support of the others.
Claustrophobia’s clammy fingers closed round her throat as the helmet was locked onto its ring. Her senses filled with the scent of the suit seals, her own wet clothing, the muck she’d stepped in. She kept focused on the business of bringing the suit to life, watching the lights on the head-up display as they ran through their changes.
“Suit’s nominal,” Sula said. “Can you hear me?”
“Barely, my lady,” said Macnamara.
Sula manipulated the controls on her left arm, paging through menus until she found the commands for the external acoustics. “Is this better?” she asked.
Macnamara and Spence winced at the volume. “Yes.”
“Someone stand by on the hydrophone,” Sula said, “and relay my instructions.”
The entire room served as an airlock for the submarine, but the airlock had another airlock for divers. It was small, and Sula had to get on hands and knees to crawl into it. Spence and Macnamara kept her from toppling and closed the hatch behind.
Claustrophobia threatened to smother her. She turned on the suit lights to relieve the darkness and the fear, and did so just in time for water to start gushing in, a tidal wave powered by five atmospheres of pressure. Sula closed her eyes and concentrated on calming her breath while the black tide battered her faceplate and the seawater rose around her.
Water filled the chamber, and the outer door opened. Sula could see nothing but blackness beyond. She moved forward with crabbing motions of her knees and elbows, and then drifted free. She clamped one hand on the rim of the lock and bobbed in the weightless silence. The only sound in the suit was the gasping of her own breath, the sound of her panicked pulse in her ears.
“Lady Sula?” came an amplified voice, that of the angry hotel man. “Lady Sula? Are you all right?”
Sula gulped air and tried to suppress the fear that was breathing in her face. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m trying to get oriented. Send out Macnamara next.”
Around her was darkness, not a hint of a light anywhere but on her suit, the floodlight atop her helmet and another light on her right wrist. The water was murky, filled with swirling turbidity, and with what looked like falling black snow. She stared, wiped her faceplate with a hand, and still saw the black specks drifting down.
Volcanic ash from Karangetang, each particle no larger than a grain of sand, all raining slowly to the bottom of the bay. The ash fell against her faceplate without a sound, tracked snakelike across it.
Sula felt the tug of a current. She tried to orient herself by pannin
g the wrist light over and above. Scaffolding hung in the darkness, pale alloy crossbeams forming some kind of open structure. She lowered the light and saw the escape capsules nested in their sleeves like eggs in a container at the market, then tracked the buoy cables upward and saw them disappear into the scaffolding.
She released and armed the joystick on the inside of her right wrist, then made a tentative attempt to maneuver with the impellers. The movement was too sudden and violent and nearly threw her into the structure. Suddenly, it seemed more desirable to swim.
She triggered the fins and kicked toward the scaffolding overhead. The suit defaulted to neutral buoyancy, and the swimming seemed natural. The current tried to push her away from the structure, but she increased her kick and fought her way to her destination. She might be weightless, but her armor still had plenty of inertia, and it took effort to move her limbs against the resistance of the water.
Once she neared the scaffolding, she saw that it was a fallen tower partly draped atop the airlock. Perhaps the tower had once held a navigation light to help the submarine find its berth, but there was no light shining now, and the structure was crumpled, lying across the airlock like an exhausted animal. Sula tilted her body to look up with the floodlight and saw buoys nesting in corners of the structure or straining against fouled cables. She flashed her light to the capsules in their sleeves, the buoys and cables reaching upward. Hand over hand, she pulled herself along the fallen structure, took hold of one of the buoy cables, and pulled. Weightless despite her armor, she was unable to exert any proper force. Panting, she hooked one leg over the beam to anchor herself and began pulling the buoy’s cable.
It came down easily. When she was able to get her hands on it, she found it the size of a large watermelon and just about as easy to wrestle. It took her several tries, but she managed to pass it under herself and the beam and let it fly free. The buoy rocketed away, the cable scraping against the fallen beam as it unspooled.
She gasped out a laugh as the cable whirred away, scraping against the beam, then devoted herself to catching her breath. Everything here was work.
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