Mega 6: No Man’s Island

by Jake Bible

“We don’t talk about that,” Max said.

  “Yeah, lady, show some respect,” Shane said. “We’re mourning here.”

  “Assholes,” Wire said and nodded to Sterling. “Take them below decks to the brig. Separate cells for each. I don’t want any collusion.” She focused on Darby who had been quiet through the entire transfer and explosion. “Will you be trouble, Darby? Do I need to have you restrained or sedated? Or can you behave yourself in a cell?”

  “Why don’t you find out?” Darby replied.

  Wire nodded then punched Darby between the eyes. The small woman dropped to the deck, unconscious.

  “Carry her down and have her restrained in her special cell,” Wire ordered. “She isn’t to be let loose until we arrive home. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Sterling said as he began barking orders.

  Chapter Seven: We All Float Down Here

  Kinsey held onto the outer hull of the mini-sub with all her might. Whatever had happened to the B3 had knocked her for a loop even though they’d managed to get at least a full kilometer away. The shock waves that rippled underwater were brutal and Kinsey was only just recovering even after a full two hours.

  “Kins? You still okay out there?” Gunnar called over the com.

  “Doing fucking great, Gun,” Kinsey replied, the mustache allowing her to communicate without drowning. “I’d rather not be hanging onto the outside of the dick machine, but, hey, other than that…”

  “Dick machine?” Gunnar asked.

  “Did you get a look at the sub, Gun? It looks like a huge cock,” Kinsey replied. “Huge. Cock. Dick machine.”

  “Not sure if Ballantine is going to go for that name,” Gunnar said, chuckling. “He prefers to pull from Anglo-Saxon literature.”

  “Ballantine can pull from my asshole, for all I care,” Kinsey said. “No, scrap that. I don’t want Ballantine anywhere near my asshole.”

  “Uh, is this how you people handle tragedy?” Nivia interrupted. The com was wide open and on speaker inside the sub. “Your friends and family could be dead back there.”

  “Maybe,” Kinsey said. “But probably not. Ballantine wouldn’t let that happen.”

  “You put a lot of trust into a man you don’t like,” Nivia said. “Maybe he saved himself and left everyone else to die.”

  “Gonna agree with Kinsey on this,” Gunnar said. “Ballantine has something planned. He hasn’t told anyone what it is, but he has something. The guy might be an ass, but he isn’t wasteful. At the very least he’d see the deaths of everyone as a complete waste of resources. For his own survival, it would be better if the crew and Grendel still lived.”

  “Yeah, but what if the other people decided to kill everyone?” Nivia asked, her voice close to panic. “What if they’re hunting for us right now?”

  “You’re filled with all kinds of fear, ain’t ya?” Kinsey replied. “Take a breath, lady. I know you haven’t been with us for long, but you’re gonna have to trust me when I say that there is no way that my father or cousins would let those people kill the crew. The explosion would have been from two ships, not one, if that was the case. Thornes, and Reynolds, go down fighting.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” Nivia said.

  “Gun? You got any dope you can give her?” Kinsey asked.

  “Should I worry that a person in recovery is suggesting I drug someone simply to make her problems go away?” Gunnar replied.

  “You want her to start freaking out inside that tiny sub and sink us all?” Kinsey asked.

  “I can still hear you!” Nivia shouted.

  “Yeah, I know. Maybe listen to what I’m saying, the actual words coming out of my mouth, and chill the fuck out then. Alright? Okay? Got it?”

  “I am not some child! I’m a nurse! I know…how to…deal with… Stress…” Nivia’s voice faded out.

  “Thanks, Gun,” Kinsey said. “Glad you were thinking ahead and brought knockout juice.”

  Kinsey laughed, but Gunnar didn’t respond.

  “Gun? You copy? What’d you give her?”

  Still no response.

  “Oh, shit,” Kinsey said as the sub continued on.

  She listened closely and realized she could just barely hear ambient noise. The beeps of the control systems, the wheezing of strained lungs, the thump of something shifting and falling.

  “Fuck me,” Kinsey growled as she started moving about the hull of the sub.

  Kinsey inspected every square inch of the machine until she found what she was looking for: a tiny hull breach directly next to the air tanks. Gunnar and Nivia were trapped inside and suffocating because the sub was out of air.

  “Don’t freak out like Nivia,” Kinsey told herself. “You can figure this shit out, woman. All you have to do is get them up to the surface.”

  Kinsey glanced up and saw what a task that would be. Even if she could get both Gunnar and Nivia out of the sub without it filling with water and sinking fast, the surface was a good fifty meters up. The compression suit that Kinsey wore would allow for a rapid ascent, but even if she got Gunnar and Nivia out of the mini-sub, they would most certainly get the bends and probably die before they even got close to air again.

  The only way she figured she could save them was to change the trajectory of the sub itself. The machine was designed to depressurize on the way to the surface. The elves had put some damn fine tech into the sub so that the need to stop every five minutes and wait for pressure to equalize wasn’t necessary.

  Kinsey made her way aft. She could simply push up on the directional rudder and that should tilt the sub upwards.

  Except the sub didn’t have rudders. It was propelled by a type of propulsion screws that allowed the sub to be streamlined and work without spinning blades coming out of its butt. Which meant that instead of rudders, it had directional thrusters, basically water jets, that controlled the trajectory by pumping water in specific directions.

  The elves had said it was more efficient and a faster method of steering than rudders. Kinsey said it was fucking bullshit and how the fuck would she get the sub to aim up?

  The reality was Kinsey knew exactly how to get the sub to aim for the surface. She was just dreading the effort it was going to take to make it work. Not that she couldn’t handle strenuous activity underwater while wearing a mustache and compression suit. She’d fought mercenaries and giant sharks under the same conditions.

  But fighting was one thing and trying to maneuver a sub was a whole other thing. Kinsey knew she’d be sore in the morning. If there was a morning. She could talk all the confidence she wanted, but the truth was even without the current emergency, all three of them were royally screwed.

  Clambering hand over hand to the bow of the sub, Kinsey studied the end until she figured out what to do. There weren’t exactly handholds waiting there for her, but no matter how streamlined the elves wanted their creations to be, the mini-sub had been slapped together fast. She could get purchase for her fingers.

  Now, the only issue was whether or not she had the strength to divert the sub from its current path or if the machine’s momentum and pull was too much for her. Only one way to find out.

  “Let’s do this, fucker,” Kinsey muttered as she swam down underneath the sub, shoved her fingers into the grooves she’d found, and began kicking as hard and fast as she could with her legs, her body perpendicular with the sub’s body.

  Nothing. No movement other than the constant straight-ahead path the sub was already taking.

  Kinsey kicked harder and harder. Still nothing.

  That was when panic began to seep into her psyche. Gunnar and Nivia were already unconscious. They had minutes, if not seconds, to live. Kinsey did not have the luxury of trial and error. She needed that sub to go up ASAP or she’d only find corpses inside.

  A new approach was needed. If she couldn’t push up, then maybe she could push down.

  She let go of the sub and watched as it started to pass her by. When the aft end re
ached her, she grabbed on and clambered up on top of the tail. There weren’t as great of handholds, but Kinsey didn’t need her hands to hang on. She needed her feet to not slip off as she kicked the shit out of the sub.

  Kinsey settled her butt on the sub then kicked down, slamming her feet into the tail as hard as she could. A shudder, maybe? Or that could have simply been the rebound from hitting the sub’s hull. She kicked again. And again. Over and over she slammed her feet onto the tail of the sub.

  It was several minutes before she realized that she was heading up. It wasn’t a straight shot, but it was enough that the sub would breach the surface of the ocean soon. If it didn’t try to correct its course and head back down.

  Kinsey kept at the kicking. Her feet slammed down a good dozen more times before lessening pressure on her body made her glance up. The surface was within reach!

  The sub broke free into the open air and Kinsey whooped as she scrambled to get to the hatch. It wasn’t easy now that she was in open air. That damn gravity and momentum combo messed with her equilibrium as she struggled to keep from slipping into the water. Hand over hand she went until she reached the hatch and gave the wheel on top a hard spin.

  It was locked tight. Kinsey yanked the mustache from her face and screamed. The scream was ninety percent frustration and worry and ten percent pain as the tendrils were withdrawn from her sinuses way more violently than they were designed to move. She hawked up bloody phlegm and coughed several times before the weight of her failure seeped in.

  “Fuck!” she roared.

  She was answered by a bellowing horn. A ship’s horn. A really close ship’s horn.

  Kinsey turned around and stared at a good-sized ship that was headed right for her.

  “Shit,” she muttered as the ship corrected its course and missed hitting her and the sub by only a couple meters.

  The wake from the ship caused her to bob up and down violently and she came close to falling into the water. But she held tight and stared up at the upper deck as several faces appeared.

  “Kinsey Thorne?” a woman shouted. “Are you Kinsey Thorne of the Beowulf III?”

  Caution was her first reaction, but then the thought of Gunnar and Nivia took over.

  “Yes!” Kinsey shouted back. “I don’t know who you all are, but I need to get this sub open! My friends are dying inside!”

  “Coming down!” the woman yelled.

  ***

  The smell was familiar: medical antiseptic. Gunnar knew that smell anywhere.

  So, it wasn’t a total surprise when he opened his eyes and found himself in a hospital bed with a heart monitor beeping along rhythmically next to him. He was surprised that his hands were secured to the bed’s sides by leather straps. That gave him a bit of a fear punch to the belly.

  Gunnar tested the straps and sighed with relief. The sigh told him almost as much as his testing of the straps. He had tubes down his throat that were helping him breathe. The straps were there so when he woke up he didn’t try to yank the tubes free and seriously hurt himself. Standard practice for someone that has been unconscious for a while.

  But, that didn’t mean he didn’t want to know what the hell was going on. He slapped his hands along the bed sides until he found the ubiquitous row of buttons. Channel up and down. Volume up and down. Light. Nurse.

  He thumbed the little nurse icon and waited. He hadn’t heard a chime, but that didn’t mean much. Maybe he was far away from the nurse’s station.

  As he waited, he began studying his room. It was a small room, barely enough space for the bed and equipment needed to keep him alive. And the walls looked funky. Metal walls, not plastic sheeting used in most hospitals. Metal was just as easy to clean, even more so since it wasn’t as porous as plastic, but he hadn’t heard of any hospital using metal walls for decades. Many, many decades.

  Then a new smell hit him, one that was able to seep past the antiseptic and trigger a hundred thoughts and memories.

  He’d been on the B3. He’d escaped with Nivia inside the mini-sub and Kinsey hanging on outside. The B3 blew up. Deliberate or not, Gunnar didn’t know. But he was certain what was left of the B3 was at the bottom of the ocean. He’d been talking to Kinsey over the com when he’d felt lightheaded. He checked the air gauge and saw that the tanks were empty. They should have had plenty of air, but the needle was woefully sunk into the red.

  On a ship, or mini-sub, red meant dead.

  The smell he picked up under the antiseptic was the smell of the ocean. Seawater mixed with that dank scent that many ships got after years in the water. Not mildew exactly, but close to it. Unbridled damp, would be a term for it. Gunnar smiled at that thought. He’d have to remember it and tell Kinsey.

  If Kinsey was still alive. Or Nivia, for that matter.

  He thumbed the nurse icon over and over, his ears straining to hear the chime that should have sounded somewhere outside the room he was in. When no one arrived after what he thought had to be a good five minutes, Gunnar began to thrash. He knew he could seriously injury himself because of the tubes down his trachea, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. So he thrashed.

  Gunnar pulled on the straps with all his might as he threw his body left and right, smashing into the railings that kept him secured. He lifted his legs and kicked down as hard as he could, hoping maybe he could break something, anything and get some room to move and maybe get loose of the straps.

  All he ended up doing was exhausting himself and causing a good deal of pain for his throat. Gunnar stopped thrashing and tried to yell around the tubes. That hurt even worse and he gave up on that strategy.

  Looked like he was forced to wait until whoever had him captive came for a visit.

  Then inspiration hit him. There were TV control buttons on the bed. He looked about at the room again and tried to smile, which wasn’t happening due to tubes and tape, when he spotted the small flat panel monitor tucked up into the top corner.

  Gunnar thumbed one of the channel buttons and the monitor came on. It wasn’t a TV show he recognized. It didn’t look American at all. Gunnar’s thumb found the up volume button and he pushed it until the monitor’s tiny speakers began to hiss and spit with static. The language spoken was not English, but Spanish. Or sort of. By the looks of the actors, Gunnar wondered if it wasn’t Philippine in origin.

  “What the shit is happening in here?” a man asked as the door burst open, its edge just barely clearing the space between the wall and the bed. “What do you think you’re doing, dude?”

  The man was in his early to mid-thirties, with bleached hair, a dark black goatee, and dressed in light aqua scrubs. Good shape, but not cut. He had absolutely zero military air about him. Gunnar studied the man as he hurried over and switched off the monitor.

  “Jesus, there we go,” the man said as he turned around and glared at Gunnar, his hands on his hips. “Couldn’t hear myself think. You know, if you were trying to get my attention, you could have just pushed the little button there.”

  Gunnar glared.

  “Oh, shit, is it not working?” the man asked.

  Gunnar kept glaring then sighed (or tried to around the tube) and rolled his eyes.

  “Right! Hold on,” the man said as he found a pair of gloves and slipped them on. “Gonna take off the tape then pull the tube out. You ever had this done before?”

  Gunnar nodded.

  “Then you know the drill. Big breath then cough hard as I pull. It’s gonna suck, dude. Gonna suck bad.”

  Gunnar knew that. He’d not only been through it before, but he’d had to pull tubes out of many crew members of the B3 plenty of times. The man grabbed the tube, Gunnar took a deep breath, then there was a simultaneous cough and yank.

  The tube came free and Gunnar threw up bile onto his chest.

  “Let me get that,” the man said as he found a disposable pad and blotted the bile until it was mostly gone. “We’ll get you cleaned up and dressed soon.”

  “Where…am…I?
” Gunnar croaked.

  “Nope. No talking,” the man said. “You should know that. Ease off your throat for at least a couple hours. You want me to give you something so you can sleep? Rest wouldn’t hurt you at all.”

  ‘No,” Gunnar said. “Answer…my question.”

  “Okay. You’re on the Fallback,” the man said. “I’m Jackson. I’m the medic slash nurse of this rust bucket. You’re the only doctor onboard. But, don’t worry, I’m trained out the ass. I probably could pass my boards, but why try when you don’t exactly fit in with society, am I right?”

  “I don’t know,” Gunnar said.

  “Don’t know what?” Jackson asked.

  “If you’re right or not,” Gunnar said.

  Jackson laughed. “Dude, you’re funny. Stay put. I’ll be right back with some apple juice and Jell-O. Gotta get your blood sugar up.”

  “Kinsey? Where is Kinsey?” Gunnar asked.

  “Oh,” Jackson said as his face fell. “The woman you were with?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen, dude, I’m sorry to tell you this, but she didn’t make it. Severe hypoxia. Her brain ran out of oxygen. It was a tough choice, but we had to let her die. We don’t have the resources to keep a vegetable alive.”

  “Fuck you,” Gunnar snarled, as much as he could snarl. “She was my friend.”

  “Whoa, yeah, sorry,” Jackson said as he held up his hands. “I wasn’t being flippant. You gotta understand, we’re ten seconds from running out of everything at any point. Ballantine keeps us on a short leash with supplies. Only thing we do have is a fuck ton of weapons and bullets. Damn, you should see the armory.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You should see the armory. If you want to know where all the money goes to, it’s everything in that damn room. We could take a small country, if we had enough men to do it.”

  “No, not that. Ballantine? You said Ballantine keeps you supplied?”

  “Yeah,” Jackson replied, nodding. Then he stopped nodding and looked puzzled. “You have no idea what the Fallback is, do you?”

  “No.”