With low-pitched moan, the floor started to tilt down at the stern. Suddenly, they weren’t on the floor of the concourse; they were at the bottom of a hill that looked like the concourse.
“Go. We need to go,” she said, pushing him along. He gave up trying to help her and just tried to keep up.
The slope began to get worse. The rear of the boat was sinking, and fast. A garbage can rolled toward them. Then a table. Then a stampede of chairs and rotten fruit. The creaking in the former boats lining the space mimicked those Thom heard on the Reap only minutes before, but exponentially louder and deeper.
They ran up a path that wove in and around decorative grassy knolls and overgrown bushes, slowing their progress. Windows burst high above, showering them with glass as the frames contorted, the entire sub warping and bending under the strain. Plants and soil fell from their gardens, pelting Thom and Ralla with dirt. Legs burning with the strain, they kept at as close to a run as they could manage. To their right, an entire food stall tumbled past, rolling down the concourse, only to flatten itself against the aft wall. Everything had become a projectile. Behind them, water had found its way through and was pooling in the aft corners of the concourse.
Thom and Ralla fought their way forward and up, dodging the debris avalanche as they went. They climbed past the public terminals where they had sat months before, finally reaching the remaining food stalls. Trays piled on the inside of the stalls, waiting to be free and become airborne. The increasing angle had forced Thom and Ralla onto all fours, the looming shipyard wall now more a ceiling. Behind them the sea churned loudly, chasing and eating its way towards them.
After climbing two nearly vertical stairwells, they made it onto the curving corridor that led to the bridge as the bodies of two Pop officers slid past them. Blood seeped through their uniforms.
The boat’s incline passed 50 degrees, and another body slid towards them. It was the Captain. Having lost her rifle to the water in the engine room, Ralla braced herself and took the sidearm from Thom. She checked the clip and motioned for them to continue. Thom made the mistake of looking back as the body of the Captain picked up speed and fell, tumbling to a bulkhead ten stories below. He looked over at Ralla, but she had no intention of looking down, the determination on her face more sure than Thom had ever seen. They climbed forward, shuffling along using the “V” of the floor and wall as best they could. Eventually, the curve and angle of the ship allowed them to use the wall as the deck, and they broke into a lopsided run. As they neared the bridge, two more bodies lay sprawled against the deck. The doors to Oppai’s chambers were open. Ralla peaked around the corner and saw down through the cabin, the far wall littered with books, broken bottles, and glasses. Farther was the shipyard. To her amazement, the lock in the shipyard floor was still open, a cascade of water filling the bay. Turning, she looked up into the bridge.
Oppai stood near the front, bracing himself between the main table and the pilot’s chair. Behind him, filling the viewscreen, was the textured dark of the Fountain. They were moments from collision. Oppai locked eyes with Ralla, an eerie smile on his face. Thom pushed off from the actual deck, grabbing the far doorframe and swinging himself up onto the bridge, lying with his back against the wall. Ralla leapt up and did the same on the near side. Oppai did nothing to stop them.
As he sat up and reached for the table, Oppai produced a pistol. Thom rolled under the consoles just as Oppai fired at him. He yelled in pain as the bullet embedded itself in his right arm. Ralla fired back, hitting Oppai in the shoulder. He tumbled forward as Ralla shot again, hitting him in the leg. He fell over the table, hitting the rear wall of the bridge where Thom had just been. His battered leg dangled over the doorframe, hanging in space, the next wall below him the wall of water creeping up the shipyard. Thom used his good arm and the edges of the consoles to pull himself upwards towards the ever-rising bow. Oppai was dazed by his fall, but recovered quickly.
“Stop!” Oppai screamed. Ralla had kept the gun trained on him, but in holding it towards him, she hadn’t notice how close his feet were. His foot jolted out and knocked her hand upwards. She fired again, the bullet embedding itself harmlessly in the wall. She struggled to roll towards him to get a better shot, but he sat up and brought his pistol to bear. At point blank range he shot the gun from her hand, taking three of her fingers with it. She cried out in agony as blood spurted across bridge.
Thom had made it to the pilot’s chair, and glanced at the controls. The throttle and steering were destroyed. The bow thrusters had been jammed to fire down, the aft thrusters up, in an attempt to fight the buoyancy variance between the two halves. The ship was still creeping forward with enough mass that impact with the Fountain would still be catastrophic. At her yell, he spun around in his chair.
“We’re still moving forward,” Oppai said, as if reading Thom’s mind. The Governor trained his weapon on Thom, hopping slightly on his good leg while bracing himself against the table in front of him. Ralla, her face contorted in pain, tried to move towards him, but he swung the gun towards her. “It may be slow, but it will be enough. The mass of this ship will fold your Fountain like a twig. My people will be safe. I’ve won.”
“Your people?” Thom replied, fighting the nausea as he looked down past Oppai into the shipyard so far below. “You’ve killed your people.”
“You’ve killed all our people,” said Ralla. Oppai, for a moment, looked confused.
“Your people died in those domes. The ones you left there. They died. There wasn’t enough food or air. You killed them.”
“You’re lying.”
“I saw them. I tried to help them. Every dome I could, I brought food, I helped them fix the circs. I saved your people, you maniac. The ones you tried to kill.”
“No. I did what I had to do to save them.”
“No, you killed them and you’ve killed us all,” Ralla spat. “That Fountain is the only chance our entire species has of survival and you’ve destroyed it.”
“No,” Thom said flatly, “He hasn’t.”
Without turning around, Thom jerked his elbow back into the bow thruster control. They instantly reversed direction, downward thrust replaced by upward thrust, and with all the air still in the bow, the ship roared towards near vertical. Thom fell forward onto the edge of the table. The Population, attempting to stand nearly on end, shook Oppai off balance. He dropped the gun in a futile effort to grab hold of something, but his fingers found no purchase. Ralla swung herself out over the drop, kicking out at Oppai’s good leg. He toppled towards her, grabbing frantically at her baggy blue jumpsuit. But he slipped past her and fell out the door, across the hallway, tumbling down through his cabin, past his balcony, smashing through the windows, finally plunging to his death in the dark seething water dozens of stories below.
With only one hand and most of her weight hanging over the void, Ralla was in a bad way. She struggled to pull herself back up. Thom jumped to the consoles and climbed his way down towards Ralla, oblivious to the pain in his own arm.
“Hang on!” he shouted down.
He dropped to the wall beside her, grabbing her good arm with his. They locked eyes for a moment before Ralla’s darted past him and into the distance.
“What is that?!!”
The citysub Population collided with the underside of the newly formed n-pole icecap, forcing countless tons of ice and snow to blast upwards. The ice tore away at the hull, clawing at it, devouring bracing, panels, and bulkheads. The tremendous power of the remaining engines, coupled with momentum and the buoyancy of the front half of the ship, shot the sub up through the icepack and upward. For a brief moment, the newly desiccant and eviscerated bow reached towards the bare sun. It hung for an instant, then toppled over, snapping the ship in half.
The ship hadn’t been perfectly vertical, and now the corpse of one of the two largest beasts the planet had ever seen slammed down and beached itself on the island of ice. Deck upon deck collapsed under its own weight,
the sub’s ovoid shape sagging outward like a compressed balloon. Girders, forcibly relieved of their charge, snapped outward in compound fractures, piercing the hull in thousands of places. Tears sliced open along the sides, shredding the hull and exposing bulkheads to sunlight for the first time in generations.
The ice sank slightly under the weight, ocean water washing across its surface. But slowly it rose back, the water freezing in the cold air making the floating ice mountain stronger, bigger. The force of the impact had driven the island southward. The Fountain bent and gave, as it was designed to do, but didn’t break. With the slowness of the great mass that surrounded it, the Fountain righted itself. Snow from its top continued to fall onto the island of ice and its peculiar new inhabitant, a bloated black carcass of steel and composite.
Time passed. Steel creaked. Panels popped. Mostly, there was silence.
Onto the mutilated bow walked Thom and Ralla, bandaged and bloodied. Around them, the carnage of the citysub Population lay strewn across the snowy fields. In the distance, around the base of the Fountain, were small hills. The sun shone bright. More snow fell.
“And you’re sure it’s safe?” Ralla asked quietly, her bandaged hand clutched to her chest.
“Compared to what?” Thom replied. She squinted at the sun and hugged him with her good arm. She didn’t let go, nor did he.
“It’s beautiful.”
Thom could think of nothing to say, so he pulled her tighter.
“After what you saw, do you think there’s anyone alive on the Universalis?”
“Ralla, I think there are people alive everywhere.”
They looked out across the island, out across the sea.
“Then I guess we have some work to do.”
—
This book is dedicated to:
Dennis, an incredible editor, and even better friend.
Carrie and Lauren, for their insight.
and
My parents, for always encouraging my creativity.
All my thanks. All my love.
Geoffrey Morrison is a privateer writer and editor based in Los Angeles. You can find out more about him and his writing at geoffreymorrison.com, or follow him on Twitter @techwritergeoff.
The cover was designed and illustrated by the brilliant Clara Moon, claramoon.com.
The font used on the cover is called Telegrafico, designed by ficod, ficod.deviantart.com.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
About the Author
Undersea Page 30