The Apocalypse Ocean

by Buckell, Tobias S.

  The pilot nodded. “Okay. Okay. I’ll help you.” She looked at the crate Kay had dragged into her apartment. “But what’s that?”

  Kay turned back and looked at it.

  “Nothing you need to worry about just now,” she said.

  The plans were still a bit hazy in her head. She knew she needed to bring both the Xenowealth and the League into Placa del Fuego in full force. Right now, both parties kept the area a neutral zone. Which was nice, but it created a vacuum into which the Doaq operated free of consequence.

  In fact, she had realized while sitting in the dark waiting for Avris, that was a sign of the Doaq’s weakness. If it were as powerful as she had feared, would it have appeared in a neutral zone out of reach of both the Xenowealth and the League?

  No.

  She wouldn’t believe it more powerful until she saw the full attention of both the Xenowealth and the League turned to the creature.

  Kay needed to bring war, on the scale that she’d seen when her world was liberated from the Nesaru, to Placa del Fuego.

  And a Xenowealth-designed and built dirty bomb might well do just the trick of getting the League to pay very close attention.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The streets of Trumball baked in the hot sun. This was League territory, in practicality. Technically, Octavia was neutral, another buffer area agreed on by the League and the Xenowealth. Here politicians could meet. Citizens could migrate off to other worlds. But Trumball was the League side of the neutral area.

  Trumball’s floating docks and structures were concrete, square, and practical. There were no gardens or greenspaces like Reception. No trees lining the canals leading to the wormhole.

  Military police in olive uniforms patrolled the streets, and people avoided your eyes.

  The only chaos allowed to proceed in Trumball was near the docks, where orderly markets allowed by the Governor’s Council occupied pre-built concrete table slabs to sell their wares.

  Small black spheres sullenly regarded the world from scattered perches on building corners, lamps, and eaves. Just like on League planets, the Council here watched everything. And the Governor’s Council reported everything back through the wormhole upstream to the League.

  Not a good place, Kay thought, to be on the wrong side of the law. Which was exactly where she stood right now. Or at least, planned to stand.

  “Relax,” Kay told Avris, who kept staring at every single uniformed goon that meandered by. “You’re too nervous.”

  They sat by the docks in a tiny bar, watching ships load, unload, or head up the canal towards the Trumball wormhole. Like the other floating cities of Octavia, the black disk of the wormhole sat right in the heart of the city. Everything here had started out built near it, and then slowly crept outward.

  “I’m nervous because our guy’s late,” Avris said. “You know how risky trying to smuggle yourself into the League is?”

  “Relax,” Kay repeated, and stilled Avris with a hand on the wrist. The physical touch was all that was needed. Avris visibly deflated.

  Kay pushed the small mug of mead on the table closer to Avris. “You got me all the way back here. You contacted the people we needed to find. We’re doing fine. Drink some of the mead, if you need it. We can get another. And relax.” Kay couldn’t communicate through invisible networks. She couldn’t even understand what she was looking at when Avris put the glasses on her that let her see lamina, a universe of data laid over everything you could see.

  It was overwhelming.

  Kay had no doubt that, in time, like learning how to read, she could master it. But she didn’t have another two years to invest in mastering this new concept. The Doaq would own the island, if not more, by then.

  She sighed and eyed the mead. She wanted to feel the extra warmth and calm that would come from a long sip. But that would break the illusion she was creating with Avris.

  Knock back mead, and Avris would remember the reality: that Kay was not some broken child turned up on her doorstep.

  No. She was something else entirely.

  #

  An old woman in a tattered, grease-streaked gray uniform sat down at the table between Avris and Kay, as if she had always known them.

  She picked up the mead. Sipped it. With the mug over her mouth she asked, “Are you ready?”

  Kay rubbed Avris’s shoulder. “Relax,” she repeated. “Let’s go.”

  “Follow me,” the woman ordered.

  She moved quickly. Lean from years of working on the docks with machinery and manual labor. Avris limped, struggling to keep up, and Kay eventually gave her an arm to lean on.

  “What happened to your leg?” Kay asked. “I don’t remember a limp.”

  Avris didn’t answer, but squinted up at the road ahead. They walked past the busy market and toward a more modern shopping district. Cold air wafted out from storefronts.

  They cut through an alley and back to an old warehouse.

  The old woman waved them through a rusty old door and inside, where the tall expanse was filled with plastic storage crates. A large robotic claw hung from chains in the roof.

  There was a shed in the back, playfully decorated with bright, colorful landscapes on the roof and walls.

  “In there,” she ordered.

  Now it was Kay’s turn to tense. She stopped and looked at the shed.

  “What’s wrong?” Avris asked.

  “There’s someone waiting for us in there,” Kay muttered. She took half a step back, and the woman whipped out a tiny black pistol.

  “Inside,” she ordered.

  Avris gave Kay an I-told-you-so look, and grimaced.

  “It’s okay,” Kay said, continuing to stare at the woman. “We’re not in physical danger. But we don’t have a choice.” She looked around the warehouse. She couldn’t see them, but she sensed that the woman knew there were others out here, watching them.

  They would be armed as well.

  The woman waved them inside. From the door, Kay could see shelves packed with what looked like technological junk. Broken computers, cables, fiber optics, chips, old fabrication machines, and more that she couldn’t guess at the functions of.

  Avris stepped through first, and Kay followed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The giant catamaran hung in place. The cable had been already paid out, the mark struck. Tiago had watched Goz spend the day roaming the large ship, his eyebrows furrowed, taking measurements with shielded instruments that could survive the dead zone.

  They’d ordered the ship’s crew over to the control room and cockpit and out of their way. They might be peeking at what was going on through windows, but the ship was almost ghostly quiet without anyone on deck.

  “Time to do it,” Nashara called out. “Waiting won’t make it any less dangerous. He gave us exact coordinates, to within a few feet. ”

  She stood on the runners of a large, heavily weighted sled hanging onto the cable, dwarfed by the giant drum the cable had been coiled on hulking overhead.

  “We don’t know if you can even survive that pressure,” Goz said. It wasn’t the first time. He’d been arguing with Nashara for two whole days about it. “You might be more metal than woman, but that still don’t make you damn invincible.”

  Nashara reached over and grabbed him by the shoulder. Gently. “He knew he could survive it. And so can I. Trust me.”

  Twenty-seven thousand feet. It was too deep, Goz told Tiago. The air in your body lets itself compress, but your tissues couldn’t. Things ruptured. But then again, Goz said he’d seen Nashara survive the vacuum of space. Explosions. Bullets. And worse.

  She had been rebuilt long ago in such a way that there was a chance she could well survive.

  “And Pepper?” Tiago had asked. “You still believe he’s really alive down there?”

  For that, he got only a shrug.

  Nashara jumped up and down on the runners of the sled, shaking the whole contraption. “Goz! You ready?”

/>   He looked over at her.

  “It’s time,” she said.

  “Time,” Goz said. “Look, we should take time and bring in a recovery vehicle. Shield it to operate here in the dead zone, then coast down.”

  “If I don’t come back up, you should do that,” Nashara said. “And rescue both of us. But there are League ships out here moving around. And the dead zone is expanding. And if that creature figures out where Pepper is, maybe it can just walk around down there and find him. I’m taking the risk. I am the shielded recovery vehicle. Let’s go.”

  Goz nodded.

  They stared at each other for a second, then Nashara smiled and yanked the chain holding the sled in place.

  It fell. Guided by the cable, it wobbled slightly, tossing Nashara around, but she was strapped to it by a quick-release harness.

  Both hit the water in an explosion of spray, and then disappeared.

  “Shit,” Goz said. “We doing this.”

  He scrambled over to the control room. Tiago followed.

  A small mechanical readout flicked numbers off, reporting the sled’s depth and speed thanks to a simple sonar device Goz had rigged.

  Ten feet per second, then twelve, then fifteen. Nashara plunged toward the ocean floor at a little over ten miles an hour.

  It didn’t seem fast. Not when she had so far to go.

  The readout froze. “Out of range.” Goz started a small kitchen timer, winding it up for half an hour.

  “That long?” Tiago asked. “I thought it would be faster.”

  “Thirty minutes down. Thirty minutes back up.” The ticking started.

  “How long can she hold her breath and still look for him? On the way down?”

  Goz looked irritated. “I don’t know,” he said.

  The sound of the ticking filled the silence that followed.

  #

  The timer dinged and Tiago jumped. He’d fallen into a trance while staring the stuck readout.

  “She’s at the bottom.”

  “Yep.”

  Tiago swallowed. In a way, this was his fault. His idea. He’d convinced her to jump down there.

  Goz reset the timer. Thirty minutes. “I’m going to tell the captain to make sure his boilers are stoked and ready. The moment we pull them aboard, we make for the Takara Bune and get both of them in the medical bay.”

  Tiago walked over to the window. The spaceships had gotten as close to the edge of the dead zone as they dared, waiting.

  Everyone was waiting.

  Goz left the room. Tiago fell back into his nervous trance.

  If this worked, Nashara would owe him. He had to think … he had to think like Kay, as much as that disgusted him. If Nashara owed him, he could change this all. Get what he wanted. That was the thought he hung onto as the minutes ticked slowly past.

  The sonar readout flicked on, numbers clattering away.

  “Goz!”

  They rushed out on deck and over to the platform by the cable. Waves passed underneath the catamaran, slapping the sides of the hulls.

  Nothing.

  Then a single, large bubble burst, wobbling its way up from deep beneath the waves.

  More followed, until it looked like the surface boiled.

  And then the sled broke through, thrashing clear of the ocean and falling back onto the surface, two lifeless bodies lolling from its surface.

  Two of the hired crewman gaped for a second, and then Goz started yelling. Poles with ropes and clips were extended, and the sled hauled up into the air. Now the two bodies looked even more grotesquely still, arms flopping in the air.

  The moment they were cut free and rolled to the deck, Goz fired two explosive bolts and dropped the cable, drum and all, into the ocean. He turned in the direction of the cockpit and waved. “Full fucking speed ahead, man!” he shouted, and then kneeled down by the bodies of his two friends as Tiago stared.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They hauled the battered bodies up into the Takara Bune’s sickbay using robotic stretchers, as they were too heavy for anyone to lift. Tiago was sure he saw something leaking out of the nose and ears of Nashara’s chiseled face.

  He wanted to throw up. These were two dead human beings.

  Very dead.

  The man called Pepper had squishy, strange things growing on his forearms.

  Tiago followed the edge of the group, watching as the robotic stretcher deposited the two bodies on two different tables. An extra set of robotic surgical hands descended from the ceiling in a blur and started ripping away clothing.

  Yuki stood between the two tables, swearing and darting her head back and forth, waving away skeins of data.

  The ghostly Nashara, the machine one that called itself Piper, appeared for a second, then disappeared as it focused on assisting Yuki.

  It was all an explosion of chaos that ended when a spark of electricity arced across the table. Electronics sizzled and spat, and the body of Pepper thrashed. The table dented under the impact. One of the surgical arms snapped and spun off into the wall with a clatter. He vomited water, and under one of his legs metal pistons burst through skin and froze as more electricity sparked.

  Pepper leapt back off the bed, tearing away another surgical arm and holding it like a club. He staggered back against a wall, sightless face scanning the room.

  “Identify yourselves or die,” he asked in a voice that came from somewhere deep and artificial in his throat.

  “Goz, Yuki. Piper’s listening,” Goz said, his voice breaking slightly.

  Piper reappeared, floating a foot over the end of Pepper’s table. “It took two weeks to get you hauled out,” she said softly.

  Pepper grunted and tossed the robotic surgical arm aside. “Did the dead zone expand outwards?” he asked.

  Goz flicked a look at Piper. “Yes. It trapped you.”

  Pepper swayed in place for a moment, thinking. Then he growled, “Piper, I need you to call for the full mobilization of all of the Xenowealth’s military resources for a pre-emptive strike against the League.”

  “Why don’t you rest?” Piper said. “You’ve undergone severe trauma. Get your rest, and when we can talk details …”

  “There’s no time for that. Do it. Do it now,” Pepper hissed, and then slowly slumped forward. He stumbled back to the dented table and passed out onto it.

  Alarms beeped, and Yuki moved back into motion.

  Piper appeared in the air by Goz. “Damn it, he’s asking us to start a war.”

  “You ever see him wrong?” Goz asked.

  “It’s war.” Piper rose into the air and looked down at Goz. “I’ve seen enough of that, even as denizen of this ship’s systems, to know what the costs of that are going to be.”

  “Pepper calling it,” Goz said. “They at least need to mobilize.”

  “We’ve been facing off against the League since the Xenowealth was founded,” Piper said. “It’s never been all-out war.”

  Goz rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know the answer, or why he needs this. But you need to pass the message on to the council and see what they say. And we need to get ready.”

  Piper flickered away.

  “What about me?” Tiago asked. “What about Placa del Fuego? We’ll be caught in the middle of that.”

  “Maybe,” Goz said. “Maybe. Best you stay on board now, I guess.”

  Maybe? Tiago thought about Nusdilla and her family hunkered down in the space between two buildings, hiding from the burning rain.

  “Don’t fret,” Goz said. “The dead zone stops the worst of any warring. Nothing advanced happening around there.”

  “But …”

  More alarms whooped, and Goz froze for a second.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Tiago asked.

  “League ship coming in closer for a look,” he said.

  “I’ll go to my room,” Tiago said.

  “No. Pepper talking war, a League ship sniffing us out, and all what happen on your island? Go to the cockp
it. In case we do end up in a fight.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Kay’s eyes adjusted to the bright light of the junk shop’s interior as she and Avris stepped inside.

  “Don’t be alarmed by Simone,” said a voice with overly precise enunciation. The man behind the counter had bronzed skin. His overly perfect face looked like it had been glossed over for the kind of posters that hung outside the old theaters, Kay thought.

  “Simone?” Avris asked.

  The woman behind them grunted.

  “Simone,” Kay said, half turning back toward her. And she smiled. “Good to meet you.”

  Simone waved them further in with the gun and the man behind the counter sighed. “Put the weapon away, Simone.”

  She flexed her hand and the gun slid underneath the sleeve of her coveralls with a metallic snap.

  “Excellent.” The man leaned forward in a precise motion to extend his hand. “I’m Thinkerer,” he said. “I’ll be handling your travel arrangements from here on out, now that Simone has handed you over. We are so excited to have your business.”

  He smiled with perfect, almost reflective teeth.

  Kay swallowed. There was nothing behind those eyes. The man was just … empty to her. Empty like Nashara had been. Empty like Pepper.

  “We don’t know who you are,” Avris said. “We made an agreement with Simone. To smuggle in on a container. We don’t know you.”

  Simone left.

  Kay felt vulnerable, standing in the little junk shop with just Avris by her side, as Thinkerer smiled again. Who was this stranger? “I don’t often interfere with Simone’s business as a smuggler, but I do keep tabs on the traffic and intervene to lend a hand sometimes, when our interests coincide.”