Riptide Atlas Link Series 3

by Jessica Gunn

  Chelsea pulled a chair over from an empty side-station and we brought up Babel. Granted, anchoring the program from the Bridge might not have been the best idea, at least as far as keeping it hidden went, but you know what they said: in plain sight was, sometimes, the best way to hide things. We ascribed to that philosophy, so when Captain Marks approached us and asked what we were working on, he believed our lie.

  “Calculations for TAO,” I told him. “Chelsea’s team found some new Link Pieces amongst the cache from the outpost, and we’re adding them to the 3D map model I created.”

  “I doubt we’ll be able to check them out in-person,” Chelsea added, shaking her head. “With war imminent, they’ve almost entirely ended Major Pike’s exploration attempts.”

  “It works for us,” I finished. “Chelsea and I were mostly in it to find SeaSat5.”

  Captain Marks nodded. “I’m glad you did. Trevor, when you’re done I’d like to see you about some upgrades to the Humming Bird system and another project.”

  My brow furrowed. “What other project?”

  Chelsea’s eyes met mine, a question on her lips. She didn’t voice it.

  “We’ll discuss it later,” Captain Marks said, stepping away from my station. “Come find me at the end of your shift if I’m gone.”

  “Yes sir,” I said.

  “What’s that about?” Chelsea asked as he walked away.

  “Like I said, I don’t know.”

  “Hope he doesn’t know about Babel.”

  My eyes fell to the screen in front of us. “Doubtful. Only we do and most of our correspondence has been via our heads.”

  Chelsea shrugged. We worked the rest of the morning away in silence—well, in our heads—on Babel.

  Later that day, I made my way down to Captain Marks’s office and quarters. He’d left the Bridge before Chelsea and I had finished our work.

  “Enter,” Captain Marks said after I’d knocked on the door.

  I did so, shutting the door behind me.

  “Trevor, thanks for stopping in. Please, sit,” he said, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk.

  “Anytime, sir,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  The Captain’s eyes darkened. “You’re the last person I wanted to keep this a secret from, given your work on and involvement with the Sea Satellite Program.”

  I sat up straighter. “The program?” I hadn’t heard it been referred to as the program at large in years, not since before SeaSat5 had launched. Since then, it’s always been about this station only. The first four stations were never launched, but were retired and stripped for parts.

  Captain Marks leaned forward. “We’ve been working on a sixth station,” he uttered as though it were a conspiracy. “Well, it’s more of a ship.”

  “I figured the Navy would work on another station,” I said. “Makes sense after SeaSat5’s success.”

  “It’s more than a station, Trevor,” he said. “We’re working jointly with TAO.”

  “Excuse me?” The Navy was working with TAO on a sixth Sea Satellite design, but I hadn’t been informed much less involved? A memory, a flash of a look shared between Captain Marks and his daughter at the ceremony months ago, swung to the forefront of my mind.

  “That’s what your daughter’s working on, isn’t it?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “Indeed. It’s so top secret I’m not sure even Major Pike knows.”

  “Does Chelsea?”

  Captain Marks frowned. “No,” he said slowly, giving the impression there was an unfriendly reason for that decision. “Her relationship with TruGates was deemed a security risk to the project, and given the recent resurfacing of Lieutenant Weyland, that decision might have proven wise.”

  “So even though you’ve taken Weyland back, you don’t trust him?”

  The Captain sighed and relaxed into his leather chair. “I wish it were that simple, Trevor.”

  “What do you need from me, then?” Did they expect me to leave SeaSat5 to go off and build this sixth station with them right before a war? Maybe. SeaSat5’s preparation plans had been completed a week or so after Thanksgiving.

  My heart sank. If I left that meant I’d be leaving Chelsea. Again.

  Captain Marks leveled me with a look. “I’m not going to lie to you, Trevor. My daughter would like to see you over at berth to help directly with construction, but I’m not ready to give you up. Humming Bird aside, your knowledge of the war, Link Pieces, and Lemuria is invaluable, and there aren’t that many of you who know all of this to go around.”

  “Especially if you don’t involve Chelsea,” I asserted. TruGates was no longer in the picture, and I knew Chelsea’s mind—and therefore her loyalties—better than everybody here. “You can trust her.”

  Nodding, the Captain said, “I agree. Unfortunately, I’m not the only person involved in the decision-making.”

  “Admiral Dennett.” Obviously. It wasn’t that he disliked Chelsea, because that wasn’t the case. He very much hated the, shall we say, “bad life decisions” that’d she’d made over the course of the last three years. She’d racked up on awful lot of used second chances and questionable ally choices. “Look, I can vouch for Chelsea. I can read her mind, Captain. Not only would she want to know about this, but she deserves to be involved after everything we’ve done and gone through. Besides, she’s the only Atlantean super soldier that’s spent a significant amount of time on a Sea Satellite ship.”

  I paused, my mind racing faster than my words. “She also knows TruGates and can see the Waterstar map. I can only assume that by your partnership with TAO, this new design had to do with that. If anything, Chelsea should be leading the civilian senior staff.” I lifted my eyes to his. “She should be in a position of power there, especially right now.”

  Captain Marks lifted a hand. “I agree with you, Trevor. Wholeheartedly, in fact. Again, there’s only so much I can do.”

  “What can be done?”

  “I’m giving you work on the side for SeaSatellite6,” he said, offering up a manila folder that’d previously taken up space on his desk. I read its contents as the Captain continued, “They’re going to have a Humming Bird system as well, but it doesn’t have to have all the bells and whistles that SeaSat5 has.”

  “Huh.” The schematics of SeaSatellite6 were impressive. It was half the size of SeaSat5, but it had systems created for prolonged, in-motion study. No anchoring of any kind, even if Captain Marks had said he’d wanted Humming Bird at least semi-functional in that respect. “This is amazing.”

  Captain Marks nodded. “Yes, it is. They’ve done a sensational job getting her ready, but it’s not time yet. We—”

  A low rumbling filled the air around us, echoing in my chest. The ceiling tiles vibrated, sliding out and falling onto the shaking chairs and other furniture. I stood as it got worse, until it became nearly impossible to remain standing.

  “What the hell?” Captain Marks exclaimed.

  But I already knew. After all, this sort of shaking only happened when someone forced the ship to change orientation while simultaneously obliterating Humming Bird.

  We were being attacked.

  Bright blue lights filled the room, waterfalls cascading out of nowhere—two, three, five of them. I retreated behind Captain Marks’s desk with him. Atlanteans. The Atlanteans have come.

  That was the last thought I had before Captain Marks and I were sent sailing across the room, connecting with a thud against the wall.

  17

  Chelsea

  “And that’s why we need to keep track of these things,” I said to the doctors. Sheesh. My team was supposed to be made of professionals, but somehow two dozen artifacts had gotten mixed up and deleted from the system—two of those artifacts being Link Pieces. I pointed to the objects on the table before me. “I realize you two can’t see what these are, but Link Pieces are important.”

  Not that I was one to talk. I was the amateur here, compared to them.

  I s
ighed. “Let’s try not to mess this up in the future, okay?”

  They both nodded and we all retook our seats. I placed the ancient coin and vase on my desk and slapped gloves onto my hands. Finger running down the side of the vase, I opened my mind to the Waterstar map. This Link Piece didn’t go anywhere special—most time periods grew repetitive after a while—so I logged them without thinking twice about their destinations. It wasn’t like Trevor and I would have any time to join Sophia, Dr. Hill, and Major Pike to go exploring soon anyway.

  I shut off the map in my head and replaced the items back into the Artifact Room. My hands slid off the vase at the same time my entire body chilled, skin prickling. The hair on my arms raised with goosebumps and electricity coursed through my veins. The super soldier part of me reared up to knock on the metaphorical door between our personalities, then banged loudly. I swallowed down her requests and reentered the office space, taking three steps before my legs gave out and I crashed to the floor.

  “Chelsea!” Patricia exclaimed. She rushed to my side, lab coat floating behind her. “Are you okay?”

  I brushed off my pants as I stood, my breath coming in gasps. “I don’t know. That was really weird.”

  “What happened?” Aaron asked.

  I rubbed my eyes and forehead. “I’m not sure. It was like a giant chill swept through me and then…” Prickling, like with Weyland. “No,” I said, astonished. “No way in hell.”

  I rushed out into the hallway on unsteady feet, expecting to find Weyland or even Sophia standing outside the door to the Archaeology Department. Instead of them, I found three Atlanteans with guns pointed directly at me.

  I didn’t give them time to make me a target. I slipped back into the office a split-second before they began firing, slamming the door shut and using my telekinesis to put my desk in front of the door as fast as possible. It was easier, the telekinesis, when I let the super soldier part of me rise to the surface. She answered the call immediately, a protective streak surging forth. I had to get my team out of here.

  “What the hell is that?” Patricia asked.

  I crossed the room, grabbed Patricia’s arm, and dragged her over to Aaron. “Do not, under any circumstances, let go,” I warned them before teleporting us to Shuttle Dock inside a cloud of navy blue lights and hurried them into the closest shuttle. “Wait here in case others try to escape,” I said, speaking quickly. “I think we’re under attack. If no one shows up, get the hell out of here.”

  Almost everyone who boarded SeaSat5 received basic shuttle training for this exact reason. They’d be fine as long as no one found them before they disembarked.

  “W-what?” Patricia asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “What about you?” Aaron asked.

  “Don’t worry about me. Do what I say.”

  I tore away from them, rushing up between the decks, headed for the panic room. As I reached the landing it resided on, an Atlantean tumbled into the hallway. I paused, confused as to who else here could hand out a beating like that to someone with powers, when gunfire pummeled the Atlantean. His body twisted with every shot. I tensed, ready to flee, as their attacker rounded the corner.

  Freddy.

  “Go!” he shouted.

  I dashed to the end of the corridor and wrapped my fingers around one specific tile in the wall. With a twist, it gave away to the hidden panic room panel. I kept one eye on Freddy the entire time, praying we’d make it inside the panic room. Loud blasts ricocheted down the corridor with each shot Freddy fired, over and over again. They faded away, replaced by the sound of Freddy’s boots pounding against the metal floor as he ran toward me.

  “It’s clear for now,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  I pried the panel shield open with my fingertips, flipped the lid on the scanner, and depressed my thumb into the reader. The scanner beeped and flashed green before the wall gave away and the hidden door slid open. I darted inside, Freddy right behind me, and we climbed up the ladder. I crawled into the room and reached a hand down to help Freddy up. We shut the door at the top of the ladder and bolted it closed. The door in the corridor should have melted back into the wall like a chameleon blending in to hide itself.

  I collapsed against a wall, trying to catch my breath. Freddy didn’t.

  He raced for the panel on the wall beside the door and punched in a code. Vents kicked on, starting the cold air. If we got it cold enough, the new bio-sensors Captain Mark had installed wouldn’t be able to find us or this room, period. We simply wouldn’t show up on the heat sensors, but rather blend in with the hull currently exposed to freezing ocean temperatures. We wouldn’t freeze, but the room wasn’t going to be the toastiest space on the station either.

  With the cold kicked on, Freddy slumped to the floor, a hand pressed against the back of his left leg. “Son of a bitch,” he grunted.

  I glanced over at him, my skin chilling despite the cooling having been on for only a few seconds. “What?”

  “He got me.” He lifted his hand and it came away slick with blood. “Dammit. Did it trail down the hallway?” He reached above him for a first aid kit.

  I moved to help, but he stopped me with a hard look.

  “Ch-check the hallway cameras for blood first, then the rest of the procedures. I can take care of m-myself.” His exhale spiraled upward. The wrinkles of pain around his eyes, the scrunch in his eyebrows, said differently, but I followed his command. Would the cold affect his blood loss at all? Hell if I knew. I wasn’t a medical doctor.

  Better act fast then. I logged into the system and swiped through the security camera feeds to the hallway, peering closer. No blood. Aside from the dead Atlantean’s body, there was no proof we’d been there at all.

  “Just the body,” I called over my shoulder. “I could teleport out there and take care of it.”

  “No,” Freddy said, unwrapping the compression bandage from the first aid kit and placing it in his lap for the moment. He eyed the bloody wound. “The body’s in the main corridor, not this hallway. They’ll never know as long as there’s no trail to the hidden door. Ah”—he grimaced, throwing his head back against the wall— “shit.”

  I spun fast. “Wh-what’s wrong?”

  “The bullet’s still in there.” He looked back to the bloody mess that used to be his leg and grunted. “It won’t stop bleeding.”

  I rushed to his side and knelt down next to him. “Let me teleport you to Pearl and get you medical help.”

  He shook his head fast. “No. You can’t leave—what if they screw with Humming Bird and you can’t get back?”

  “They’re Atlantean,” I said. “Their lights were blue. They can’t block me without blocking themselves.”

  “I’m not risking it,” Freddy said. “Do we have pliers in here? I can take it out and we can wrap it and pray to god it stops bleeding.”

  An idea came to me. A painful one. I inched closer to him and hovered a hand over his leg. “We cleaned up the room, so that’s a no on pliers. But I think I can take it out.”

  His eyes met mine. “You are not teleporting this bullet out of my leg.”

  I wiggled my fingers, trying very hard not to actually move anything inside him. “No, telekinesis.”

  His jaw locked, his lips forming a thin line. “Be gentle.”

  I swallowed hard. This was not how I’d ever planned on using this power of mine. “Okay.” I placed my left hand on his leg to hold him down and my right a few inches above his bullet wound.

  “Just do it,” he grunted.

  I nodded, steeled myself against the prospect of inflicting intense pain on my friend, and felt around his leg with my telekinesis for the bullet. And found it.

  Slowly, I lifted my hand, millimeter by millimeter, pulling the bullet up and out. I could feel his sinew and muscle letting go of the bullet as it passed. Freddy groaned and held on to the bar next to his head. He drew his other leg closer to his middle.

  “Sorry,” I repeated

  His
eyes squinted in pain, brow scrunched together. “Do it. Quickly. Please.”

  I nodded again, bit my lip, and tugged. Hard. The bullet tore out of his skin and flew up into the air. I let it fall to the ground a few feet away and held down Freddy’s leg with both hands. He writhed and twitched, trying his hardest not to cry out.

  Cringing, I searched the first aid kit for something, anything, to help him out. A bottle of ibuprofen sat tucked at the bottom. I opened the bottle, poured out four pills, and shoved them at Freddy. He downed them dry.

  “Thank you,” he said, panting past the pain.

  “Don’t thank me yet. I’m not a doctor.” I snatched up the compression bandage still in his lap and tied it around his leg.

  Freddy chuckled. I looked at him. Nothing about this was funny.

  “Sorry,” he said, waving a hand through the air. “It’s just—blood and bullets and hijackings. We need to stop meeting like this, Chelsea.”

  The reference to the first hijacking, to the day I’d almost bled out on SeaSat5’s bridge but didn’t thanks to Freddy, sent flashes through my mind. Thompson. “Yeah. We really do.”

  Freddy straightened himself against the wall, placing a hand over the bandage. “What’s the… overall situation?”

  I glanced back at the computer set up. I almost didn’t want to know.

  18

  Trevor

  Captain Marks pulled up fast, dodging the first super soldier attack, and drew his side arm. He emptied half a round into each Atlantean before I even blinked. Each super soldier took at least one bullet to a vital area—head, heart—leaving me in awe of the Captain’s marksmanship. Before I had time to take a breath, Captain Marks had reloaded his weapon and charged the door.