With a bow of my head, I moved past.
Reaching the far side of the pools, I ducked to enter a tunnel of rock. Geothermally heated walls baked my exposed hands and face. Sweat broke out on my forehead and in my armpits.
I entered a small stone room, stood straight, and hung my bag from a metal spike jammed into a fissure. Following my regular routine, I stripped out of my uniform, folded the clothes, and set them on a bench before taking a silk waistwrap from the pile and covering myself. Crouching low, sweat dripping from my brow, nose, and elbows, I walked down a low-ceilinged tunnel into a tight space with a stone table at its center. The masseuse was there, as usual, sitting on a stool in the corner next to a bucket of cold water she could use to keep herself cool. Every day, she’d sat in the same spot, waiting for anybody to request her services, which never seemed to happen in the mornings, myself excluded. Evidently, much of the admiral’s government liked to sleep late.
I climbed onto the table, its edges worn smooth from centuries of use. Lying facedown on the hot stone, warmth radiated into my thighs, stomach, and chest.
I let her work my back for a while, but I was incapable of relaxing, my teeth clenched tight enough to make my jaw ache.
She pounded my shoulders with closed fists. “Your muscles are wound tighter than a whirlpool’s spiral.”
“Leave me be,” I said in fist-pounding vibrato. “I want to nap.”
And like she had every time before, she told me she’d see to it I wasn’t disturbed.
Down the tunnel she went before disappearing to wait obediently in the cool of the main corridor for me to retrieve her when I woke.
One hour.
I had one hour.
I slipped off the table and down the tunnel, where I grabbed my bag off the spike and hustled barefoot in the opposite direction of the baths. Reaching a seldom-used service corridor, I leaned into the cool air to look both ways. As expected, the corridor was empty.
I dashed for the air lock, my bare feet making hardly a sound on the cold steel. Greased by sweat, my feet skidded to a stop, and I knelt before a murky aquarium resting on the floor. Pushing aside the plastic tubing, I reached through the surface scum and air bubbles all the way to the gravelly bottom of the tank. Tentacles snaked between my fingers and wrapped my wrist. I pulled the creature from the water and looked into its emotionless eye. “You better keep me alive, you hear me?”
With my free hand, I spun the hatch wheel, climbed inside the air lock, and sealed myself in. I hit the button on the wall.
A red light flashed as the small space pressurized. Feeling the sting in my ears, I pinched my nose and blew to equalize. I dropped the bag off my shoulder to keep it from getting tangled with the octopus before taking a deep breath and lifting the creature to my face. Cringing, I watched suckered tentacles reach and take hold. The creature made the transfer and moved to the top of my head. With a shudder, I eyed the strange appendage as it crept alongside my nose. Curse the geneticist who had engineered these creatures.
Soon the appendage was in my mouth, burrowing down my throat. Knowing what to expect couldn’t keep me from gagging. Wracking coughs filled the chamber until my body adjusted, and I started breathing evenly, lungs ballooning in and out.
Frigid seawater ran across the floor and instantly chilled my feet. Already shivering, I felt the water climb my legs, every inch a shock to my sauna-heated skin. Swirling water soaked into my waistwrap, then up my chest to finally take my shoulders and head.
The flashing red light now glowed green. Remembering to loop my bag back over my tentacle-tied shoulder, I spun the outer hatch wheel and opened the door onto the cold black of deep ocean. To my right, a row of underwater lamps on posts glowed in the murk. I stepped toward the first of the lights, knowing they led to the underwater turbines that powered the Ministry.
With its own submerged sources of electricity and freshwater, the Ministry was remarkably easy to defend. If any of the Empire’s previous contingents ever found themselves under attack from the locals, all they’d had to do was lock themselves in and call for reinforcements, who could easily bomb a mob of any size into submission. It was little wonder the Empire’s control had lasted for millennia.
Until Kell’s daring betrayal.
I reached the first lamp and took hold of a guide rope attached to the post. Hand over hand, I pulled myself toward the second post, my feet kicking through sand and gravel.
From here the plan was simple. Soon, I’d reach the turbines, at which point I’d turn right to swim up the rock face to the shallower water that washed over the reef. From there, it would be a short underwater swim to the Ministry’s ring-shaped island, where I’d stay as deep as the reef would allow until I reached the missile platform.
I was still worried the guards might spot my submarining approach, but Pol and I agreed that if the water was deep enough to support the draft of the ship Mathus had used to transport the missile system, it should be deep enough for me to avoid notice. Besides, the guards would be looking out, not down.
I reached the second post and continued for the third. I would’ve smiled if my mouth weren’t stuffed. Mmirehl was a cunning bastard, but so was I. Cunning enough to con him into keeping the missiles hidden under a broad tent that would shroud my climb from the water.
Approaching the next post, I spotted a large object to my left. I strained my eyes to see through the green-black water.
I needed to keep moving. But the object was so out of place in this barren wasteland of sand and stone. Letting go of the guide rope, I veered in its direction. A sack. A tattered sack sitting inside a triangle of large rocks.
Getting close, I could see ropes twined around the cloth with more ropes running to the rocks. I moved closer. Small fish darted out of my way to hover a short ways off.
Kneeling in front of the sack, I peered through a footlong gash in the cloth. But it was too dark to see. I reached into my bag and pulled out a knife, along with one of the glowgrubs. After impaling the grub, I held my makeshift torch close and looked through the tear.
Crabs. A teeming mass of them bumped and scrabbled over top of each other. I pulled one out and dropped it to the sand. Then another, and another.
The last had something pinched in its claws. With sickness stewing in my gut, I watched it eat. Bladelike mouthparts picked off one morsel after another and shoved them into a chitinous grinder.
I did. The size of a coin purse. The swooping seashell curves.
A human ear.
Dropping the crab, I ripped through the cloth with my knife. I peeled back the flaps to look at the face. The eyes were gone, the tail end of an eel wriggling from one eye socket. The lipless mouth hung open, a missing tooth on the lower right.
Right where the arms dealer’s gold tooth used to stand.
I stood up. Black water pressed down on me. I could feel it seeping into my pores and sinking into my bones. Chilled to my core, I swept my eyes left and right to take in the dozens of sack outlines standing like ghosts on the edge of night.
Sire, help us.
CHAPTER 19
“Certainty is the foundationn upon which unconscionable action is builtt. But it’s a foundation that eventualy eroddes to leave yor conscience standing naked beforeyour actions.”
–JAKOB BRYCE
I was so tired. So, so tired.
Bursting lungs screamed for oxygen. I’d stayed under too long. So long that the octopus had weakened to the point it felt like my breathing tube had been stuffed with wet cotton balls.
But the surface wasn’t much farther. I sucked hard at the tube in my throat to receive only the tiniest sip of oxygen. I tried to kick my feet, but my legs barely fluttered in water that felt like molasses. Chasing a small cluster of air bubbles, I somehow managed to keep rising, my eyes nearing the rippling ribbon of light. Just a few more inches.
My head broke the surface, and I had to concentrate to keep from sinking back under. The octopus retracted from my throat, and I resisted the urge to gasp for fear of being heard by the guards. Instead, I took slow, deep, delicious breaths.
I was under the cover of the missile platform’s tent. I looked up at the patchwork tent made from swaths of leather crudely sewn together with twine. A pole stood on either side of the missile tower, thus giving the tent two peaks. Walls of leather stretched down to where ropes wrapped around poles standing in the water behind my back.
Regaining some strength, I took my bag from my shoulder and quietly pushed it up out of the water onto the stone floor. Hooking my hands over the stone, I lunged upward but only managed to pull my shoulders out of the water. I kicked at the barnacled wall and felt the sharp sting of shells slicing through skin. Bracing against the pain, I scrambled for footing among the blades, and, with a final excruciating push, I lifted my hips from the water.
Lying facedown on the stone, my lungs heaved air in and out, in and out. I rolled over and sat up. My feet still dangled in the water, red stains pluming like smoke from barnacle-chewed skin.
I didn’t care. My mind was already sinking back under the water, sinking all the way down to the horror of the underwater graveyard. So many bodies.
The compliment barely penetrated my senses. So many bodies. Most had been wrapped in cloth. A few had been left bare to the cruel indifference of the sea and the hungry mandibles of the crabs. I could still see their bloated souls straining to break free of their anchored restraints. I’d found others who had been reduced to small spreads of bones picked clean of skin, muscle, and humanity.
Having almost forgotten where I was, I was returned to the present by the touch of tentacles slithering down my torso as the octopus worked its way down the back of my neck. Careful to make as little noise as possible, I opened my bag and emptied the contents.
The octopus dropped off my back with a wet slap that made me wince for fear the guards outside the tent would hear. Some tentacles wormed across the stone while others twisted and tangled under its melon-shaped body. Carried atop the writhing knot, the octopus propelled itself toward the sea.
I lowered my bag into the water and held it open. “Here you go,” I whispered. “A nice little cave.”
The octopus went over the stone lip and dropped into the bag with barely a splash. Tentacles followed like suckered snakes tapering to lizard tails before disappearing.
Pinning one of the bag’s straps under a stone, I let the rest of the bag hang in the water so the octopus could regain its strength. I needed it for the return trip to the deep-water airlock.
I drew my knife and cut the comm unit out of the eel-skin pouch. With a touch, the screen lit.
I went to the spiral staircase and started up, tracking bloody footprints all the way to the top. I rested a hand on one of the missiles and felt the cold steel. Long as I was tall, one end had a pointed tip, the other end a trio of small wings that stood out like feathers on an arrow.
A power cord ran through a small hole on the lagoon side of the tent and traced a path to a control board. I searched the front of the board with my eyes, the back with my fingers until I touched upon the switch.
His voice was calm and professional now.
I did as instructed, and a few seconds later, the comm unit’s screen asked for a passcode. Pol recited a code that I tapped into the screen.
Error.
Pol spelled out the next code. They’d preloaded all the manufacturers’ codes into his consciousness before they implanted him in my head. But he couldn’t be certain which code would unlock this particular board. Each manufacturer had several codes, depending on model and manufacture date.
Error.
I kept cool, trusting in Pol, trusting in his abilities. I entered the digits he spoke into my mind, knowing a team could already be coming to investigate. The alert would’ve gone up in the underwater control room the instant I turned off the power.
We would’ve done this remotely if we could have, but as a security measure, the manufacturers’ backdoor codes required a manual reset of the control board’s power. That way, the backdoor passcode couldn’t be used even if it fell into the wrong hands, unless the Empire’s Army let you through the front door to flip the power.
Red letters blinked on the screen. Another error.
He responded by starting into the next code. I tapped out the letters and numbers as fast as I could, my heartbeat quickly catching up to my finger’s pace.
I tapped out the last digit and held my breath until the screen unlocked and blossomed with controls.
Pol efficiently directed me through the steps, the two of us working as if we were one brain instead of two.
The countdown timer started. Five minutes . . . four fifty-nine . . . four fifty-eight . . .
My wounded feet stung with every step as I circled down the stairs. Reaching the bottom, I hustled to the water’s edge, where I stopped to pick up the rope and the bamboo cuda fish I’d finished carving that morning. My nerves stayed calm as I tied a knot around the cuda’s tail. According to Pol, the blast would be modest. We had only set the timer for one of the missiles, and it was only the missile’s hull-piercing head that would detonate instead of the entire warhead.
Still, the guards would be pulped by the force of the explosion. The domes would be sprayed with shrapnel, and any boats docked nearby would be shredded. Many would die, but mine was a righteous mission.
The Empire’s return would be a blessing far greater than the kiss on my cheek. I knew the Empire was flawed, but the new contingent would make its best effort to rule this world with fairness. I didn’t doubt that was the best thing for Maritinia. No more of Mnai’s paranoia. No more black sashes. No more waterlogged mass graves.
The octopus was in place, and my bag was on my back, restocked with heavy rocks. With the roped cuda in my hand, I slipped into the water with serene efficiency. I kicked for the bottom, my eyes already focusing on a knobby piece of coral close to the atoll’s wall of rock.
I wrapped the other end of the rope around the coral and tied off. Releasing the bamboo cuda from my hand, I watched it shoot upward and stop several feet below the surface. I took a moment to watch it bob and sway on its line. Protected by the atoll’s rock face, Pol thought the cuda woul
d survive the explosion.
To be the calling card of the so-called resistance.
My arms and legs swept through the water like a frog’s. Pol’s voice was jubilant in my head.
Salt water stung my feet as I upped my pace to the maximum my octopus-fed lungs would allow. Branches of purple-and-orange coral passed below my chest as I slalomed through patches of kelp and around a cluster of jellyfish. I plowed through a school of shiny silver minnows that pecked harmlessly at my skin. I ducked under an amoeba the size of my head, gelatinous arms oozing in random directions.
I could see the reef’s edge now, could see where it gave way to the plummeting black of deep water.
A cuda swam into view.
My pounding heart jumped into another gear, and my cheek started to throb. I wished I could turn around and swim the other way. But I couldn’t. Not now.
I tracked the cuda with my eyes as it darted through a stand of kelp before skirting the atoll’s wall with swift flicks of its tail. It hadn’t seen me, hadn’t smelled my blood in the water. Not yet.
I pushed for deeper water, hoping it might not follow. The cuda was big. The biggest I’d seen, as long as one of the missiles and almost as thick around. Battle scars ran down its flank, and its tail was ripped and weathered like an old flag.
The cuda spotted me. Its long head angled in my direction, and an instant later, the entire streamlined body lined up like an airborne spear. It was close. Close enough I could see a piece of seaweed hanging from its teeth.
But it didn’t attack. Instead, it seemed to hang in the water, staring me down like an accusing finger.
The concussion struck. My ears stung, and my chest tightened before a push of water tumbled me over. I righted myself and searched for the cuda. I looked left and right, up and down.
The angry soul was gone.
Tides of Maritinia Page 15