Inherent Danger

by Matt Lincoln

  As I opened the bag, I saw probably two dozen wrapped or bagged muffins, a few croissants, a bear claw or four, and a bunch of napkins.

  “Xavier, I’m promoting you,” I announced.

  “Great!” He knew that I was teasing but played along as he took his seat at the comm station. “What to?”

  “Lieutenant of Breakfast Deliveries,” I declared. “There’s no bonus involved, and it’s more for the team’s benefit than yours, but it’s a sacred duty. Tend to it well.” I gave him a nod and salute as I bit into my first pastry of the day. Damn, that was tremendously good first thing in the morning.

  He’s in one of those moods again, Rosa warned, but I knew that she was only cheerfully taunting me.

  “I can venture a decent guess as to why, but it's none of my business.” Xavier tried to act smugly as if he really knew something that the rest of the team didn’t about me.

  I wasn’t about to let that kind of contest go, not now. “I would so love to hear what you think it is, or just your general opinion on my attitude, Xavier. Come on, share with the class.” I challenged him to spit it out, whatever it was that he thought that he knew about me. I wasn’t trying to be overly confrontational. I was just interested in what he or the others thought made me tick. And it was kind of fun to needle him, too.

  Rosa gave Xavier another warning, this time with a look rather than words. He must have gotten the hint because he backed down and recanted somewhat. “I was just going to mention that since Eve was in town, that you seemed more… nice. That’s all.”

  I smiled to myself and turned away, not wanting to give him the benefit of confirming or denying his comment. Rosa grinned about it, and luckily Doc came on board to save all of us from any further… observations.

  “Good, that’s it then.” I watched the barn door open, giving us our opening. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

  Getting out and back to the Speirs dive site was easy going this morning. There were some other boats in the general vicinity today, probably taking advantage of the good climate and fine conditions, but otherwise, it was pretty calm.

  We had already decided to split up the three-person dive to cover more area before bad weather or something more drastic set in to make our work more difficult. This was going to leave Xavier alone, which he wasn’t crazy about. Rosa and I took some time first to show him everything that he’d need to know, as a kind of crash course situation. I could tell that he was nervous about being left by himself, but he also understood just how important this was. Even Doc jumped in with some helpful attitudes and comments to bolster the younger man’s confidence that we all had in him. That helped, I felt, more than anything. Just letting Xavier know how much we all trusted him and believed in him seemed to give him that boost he needed to take on the responsibility.

  I helmed us to the coordinates, but it was soon obvious that something new and unanticipated had happened. The buoy had vanished, and the transmitter was not sending Wraith the pinpointed location as it had been.

  “Those batteries on the buoys have a solar backup, right?” I asked, wanting to make sure that I remembered the equipment correctly.

  “Yes, they do.” Xavier had picked up on the same thing. There was no reason for the buoy to have stopped transmitting, not without outside interference. “I’m not getting anything from it. Hold on, let me check something else.” His tone was stronger now, and he sounded alarmed.

  We all gave him the chance to work on whatever it was he was doing. Doc got up and came to stand in between Rosa and me. We were all watching the water now, looking for any signs of our buoy. It wasn’t likely to have snapped from the line, but weirder things had been known to happen.

  “Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of.” Xavier sounded worried. “We lost that other beaconed buoy on the debris site we’d found the other day, too. It’s not picking up at all.”

  I sighed, knowing all too well what this probably meant. “We have to assume then that someone else has been to our sites. That changes things.” I glanced over to Rosa, as today’s mission just got a lot more dangerous for us. “We’re still diving, but maybe we’d better get ready for something a little more… contact related.”

  “It’s been a while since I had to carry a gun on a dive,” Doc remarked. “Do we still have those HK P11’s stashed on here somewhere?”

  I turned to look at Xavier. “I don’t know. Do we?”

  “I haven’t touched them. They should be with the amphibious rifles still, right?” Xavier shrugged, not exactly up on the details of the weapons locker that we kept aboard Wraith.

  I’ll take a rifle, Rosa announced. We’re not going to have to take too much gear down with us this time, so I’d prefer something with a bigger payload if given a choice. Rosa was already getting up to go and check them out.

  I wasn’t too picky, myself. “I’ll pack a few knives to go along, too. I mean, unless we actually see a boat coming into this area, I doubt there will be any contact. Chances are, whoever removed the buoy came and went before now and are most likely not even still in the area.”

  Like you always say, though, better safe than sorry, Rosa replied.

  We spent the time we needed to get ready for this new adjustment in our diving plans. All the voice checks panned out, and Rosa’s keyboard was functioning normally as she, Doc, and I all stepped off into the water, one by one. I went in first, knowing that Rosa would wait two minutes, and Doc two minutes after her.

  There was no sign of the buoy guideline, but this all felt familiar, anyway. I swam down, finding the wreckage of the Hester pretty much where I expected to. Not like it had moved or anything, but coming in without the guideline was more like the first day’s dive: diving by instinct and searching out visual cues.

  I came upon the wrecked opening that I had secured on the trips before, and I took the time to examine it thoroughly for anything new or out of place. Knowing that someone for unknown reasons had been down here, we all had to be more cautious now. I did find the guideline and, tracing it to the end, I saw its frayed ends had been carefully cut through.

  The line had fallen straight down and was coiled without a hand to direct it. The cut also wasn’t the mark of a predator’s bite or the propeller of a boat getting too close. This was a sure slice with a sawing or cutting implement, and it had been done deliberately. But I didn’t see anything else out of place at this first glance, so once Rosa and Doc joined me, we prepared for the split.

  “I’m going to swim around the entire wreckage,” I announced as I headed away from my teammates. “I’m going to look for where the bridge fell, and I’ll also try to see if there was any damage prior to the sinking. Rosa, Doc, good luck with your locations. Keep your eyes open and stay in contact often. Let’s not take any more chances than we have to today.” I gave them both a thumbs-up, and then I swam off to the left, as that was the clearest path around the boat as a whole.

  The ocean floor had settled in over the rubble and broken off parts of the Hester, and I didn’t see much evidence of any outside interference there. Of course, whoever had been down here most likely came yesterday, and that could have given the sea enough time to mask the meddling with silt and sand.

  I moved around slowly, making sure to allow the cameras attached to the suit and gear to record what I was seeing and relay it back up to Xavier and Wraith. It was all still being recorded, but with Xavier watching in real-time, if he saw something unusual that I didn’t catch, I didn’t want to have to double back on a hunt. I took my time and captured objects and frames that might come in handy at a later viewing.

  Doc broke into my train of thoughts, though, as he’d reached the galley with ease. “Alright, I’m in. Looks pretty good so far. Lots of pots and pans tossed about. Son of a---!” He exclaimed suddenly and loudly. “Sorry. Just a couple of fish chowing down on the spoils. I think we scared each other equally there.”

  I chuckled. I had the mental image of Doc getting frightened by
some tuna or something like that. I’d have to see the footage later and then tease him if it was warranted.

  “Yeah, the seal on the refrigeration unit got busted,” Doc added for our benefit. “It’s been gone through pretty severely. Looks like…” there was a definite pause where Doc was most likely examining things, “some of this wasn’t done by creatures without thumbs.”

  “Doc?” Xavier’s voice sounded out. “What was in that metal case you just passed?” Rosa and I had only the ability to hear what Xavier and Doc saw firsthand, but I’d actually stopped my own searching efforts to pay closer attention to what was going on down in the galley.

  “It looks like meat of some sort, or it was. Some bags are still sealed. But yeah, the latches were opened by people. So, there’s your evidence that someone was down here and looking for something.” Doc’s take on it could be trusted. “No amount of biting or butting this kind of case would open it. Just so that you guys not seeing it can understand.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” I replied appreciatively. The computerized Rosa voice said thanks, as well. “Well, I’m going to continue on around out here. Rosa? Try to give us a play-by-play when you get to the engine room if you please. I’d like to know if anything there has been tampered with, too.”

  Understood, she digitally responded.

  I cringed. “Xavier, you have got to fix that. Use the Mia voice pattern and integrate it into the rest of our earpieces. It’s just too weird and jarring to hear the computer Rosa speaking to us.” Maybe he’d not realized it, but it made her real responses feel unnatural.

  “Oh, so that’s who it was,” Doc chimed in, almost playfully commenting about it. “I thought that voice on Wraith sounded familiar the other day.”

  Is Mia my voice? The computerized Rosa asked. Xavier…

  “Yes,” Xavier admitted, “Mia was the imprint pattern that I used, but it was only supposed to be for what I was hearing. I digitized Rosa’s keyboard voice so that it wouldn’t be so weird. But Mia was with me when I was working on this program, and she wanted to help, that’s all.” Xavier was pleading his case fairly well. “I couldn’t think of anything else for her to do, so I had her record a bunch of words. It made her feel like she was contributing.”

  “That’s actually very sweet.” Doc was the first to say anything. “Also, a tad bit strange, but in a cute manner.”

  At least you aren’t using your own voice. Or Header’s, Rosa teasingly added.

  “Hey, now, my voice is dead-sexy,” I joked. “I’d personally love to have my own voice coming out from all of you. Xavier, can you make that happen?” I grinned mischievously.

  “That is a negative, Header,” Xavier insisted. “And just so you know, Rosa is in the engine room. So, I’m giving her the mic. Such as it is.”

  I had been moving forward, looking for something that might be part of the upper deck, but there simply wasn’t much left here. Now that I was out here and could see it for myself, I could tell that the Hester had fallen in such a way that had smashed the nose and foreparts of the deck into a cluster of rock formations. I wasn’t sure if there was going to be anything to find on the bridge now.

  Rosa’s digitized words were now coming through. I’m not at the engine room yet, but there’s been action down here. The storage lockers have been pried open, and they have pulled out a lot of stuff.

  “Header, Doc,” Xavier's voice started to describe the scene for us, “The medical supplies and basic storage compartments are all opened. They were probably locked, and it looks like someone took a pry-bar to them, as Rosa said. Or typed. Just so you know.”

  “And we all know that they weren’t like that two days ago.” I thought back to how nothing had been bothered when we’d found the crew’s bodies there. “Just more proof that someone came down here and was looking for something in particular.”

  Doc’s voice added to this while we all waited for more from Rosa. “So, I doubled back to check on the cabins again. As I anticipated, all the rooms, including the privy, have been ransacked. They turned over everything, went through each and every drawer, nook and cranny.” There was a brief pause as we all stopped to contemplate what this meant.

  “Okay, team, let’s work this out,” I began. “We all know that treasure hunting types would see our buoy and assume that it was important somehow. So, let’s say they dove here, saw the wreck, and just searched it for anything of value.”

  “That has been known to happen,” Doc stated with certainty.

  “Yes,” I agreed, “and so far, they’ve hit everything locked up or down, and that’s it. None of this is out of the ordinary for your typical wreck divers, right?” I spoke as I continued to search for something on the upper deck where I was.

  “Correct,” Xavier answered. “It is all plausible that the buoy was what made them dive and not a pre-knowledge of what they’d find or hoped to find.”

  “Rosa,” I called out to her, “Are you in the engine room yet?”

  But before she could reply, Xavier let out a low whistle that wasn’t a good kind. “Um, Header? Doc? You guys might want to converge on her position. There’s some interesting stuff she’s found there.”

  “Interesting good, or interesting bad?” I asked plainly.

  “I’m on my way,” Doc answered back. I knew that he’d get there much sooner than I would.

  “I’m going to finish my tour around the perimeter here, and then I’ll head back inside,” I let my team know. “I don’t think I’ll find the bridge here, though. It looks to me that the rocks crushed most of the upper deck, and I’m certainly at the halfway point out here. I want to finish what I started, but I’ll come in as soon as I can.”

  No hurry, Rosa replied. I think I found the sinking reason.

  I had to make myself continue on as planned. Just hearing her words made me want to see whatever it was for myself. “Xavier? Explain it to me.” I didn’t want Rosa to have to type out everything.

  “Um, okay.” Xavier sounded unsure. “It looks like, yeah, okay… the seal on the containers have busted. All the riveted seams are warped.”

  That was startling.

  “Oh, my,” Doc remarked, and I knew he must have arrived at the scene in question. “Yes, well, not being an engineer, I can’t say with much certitude, but that definitely looks like a leaking restraint system to me. And Rosa just pointed out a profoundly serious hole in the hull under the compartment.”

  “The gauges are all broken, Header,” Xavier added to the report. “They look bent and distorted. That could be the pressure, though, couldn’t it?”

  “Not very likely.” I was nearing the opening that we all had entered through. I was getting anxious to see this for myself. “You said that the seams were split away? That could mean that the engine was losing containment. Or had already lost it.”

  Thinking that too, Rosa told us. This hole led right to the engine unit. I’d say that they were taking on water.

  “That could make sense,” Xavier mentioned. “If they were actually sinking and taking on water, they might have, or they should have, sent out an SOS.”

  “So then, all the crew would have been down there, trying to repair it, is that what you’re thinking?” Doc asked, trying to clarify the scene and probably piece it together for him and for us.

  “They could have been, maybe.” Xavier didn’t sound too sure of himself.

  Well, if, IF, the crew members were repairing the hole, I doubt they would shoot each other. Rosa’s point was spot on, too.

  I swam into the opening and saw the overly familiar passageway that would take me to the rest of my team shortly. “Let’s go with the SOS. Follow that thought through.” I moved carefully, not wanting to get stupid this close to figuring things out. “They are taking on water, calling for help, maybe someone comes to their rescue, but…” I was hoping they’d pick up the clues.

  “They happen to be pirates instead of good Samaritans?” Doc inquired. “They take advantage of the situation, but
things get out of hand? The crew fights to keep the ship, or argue because the ship is sinking and can’t be repaired, and they need to get off of it?”

  “So then, the call for help becomes the reason they get killed?” Xavier sounded mortified to even think this. “That’s… awful.”

  I still wasn’t satisfied with this, though. “Let’s go with pirates for now. Either the whole of the crew is down at the engine, working on the hole, or… the pirates force them all into one area to keep them contained while they search the ship.”

  But what about Declan? Rosa posed the main, burning question.

  “Wrong place, wrong time?” Doc offered. “He was most likely in his cabin at the time. Perhaps he came up when the boat started to sink, when it listed or something?”

  I was swimming into the engine room as he said this. “Or an alarm went off, warning the entire boat about the danger?” I finally stopped to catch my breath and slow down. Rosa and Doc were there, looking over the engine, the hole, and the mess left by the other divers.

  “Maybe Declan went topside to meet the pirates, who he thought were rescuing them? Or the crew told him to get to the deck to keep watch or something like that?” Xavier was trying to help, throwing out ideas and theories like all of us were now.

  “That could explain why his case was still in his cabin. He didn’t have time to go back for it.” Doc looked at me and cocked his head as if he, too, were trying to make sense of it all.

  “That’s a possibility.” Everything kind of was at this point, though. I examined the hole where the water would have come rushing in. It was large enough and located where it would have been a problem to fix under pressure and around the engine. “This could have all happened so fast that things just got out of hand.”

  I think that too, Rosa typed and nodded.

  “Then…” Xavier tried to make it all fit. “The Hester started to take on water, the crew called for help, the pirates, or whoever they were, showed up, tried to take over or steal from the crew and ship, then killed the crew and Declan and escaped with… Well, not the valuable case in Declan’s cabin. Is that about the gist of all of it?”