Salvage

by Chris Howard

  And she never surfaced.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Salvage

  Wilraven leaned over the scope, tracing the shape of the currents and the shapes of different densities in the water, noting the signal coming in weakly off their starboard side. He glanced up at Angelo, and then to Adista and Ty. “That’s Dess’s beacon. We found the Serina Beliz. She made it back.” He jammed a finger against the screen, voice rising with excitement. “Almost exactly where Inda said she would be.”

  He grabbed the binoculars off the dash and headed out the other side of the bridge, running right up against the rails, scanning the gray-blue chop a hundred meters off. “She’s less than her height in the water.” He pointed, glancing over his shoulder at Adista and Ty. “Masthead’s cutting through the surface.”

  There was a straight strip of white foam ripping across the current where the top structure and antennas stabbed into the air.

  Adista looked like she wanted to go over the side to investigate. Wilraven handed her the binoculars instead, calling through the open door, “Angelo, can we kill the beacon from here?”

  “Don’t think we need to.” The first officer shook his head, radioing the Irabarren for course and speed changes. He gave the Marcene a slight nudge to starboard, reducing speed, running parallel with their casualty—who just wouldn’t die. Wilraven caught a curiously pleased smile from Tychasis when the captain began explaining what they were seeing, making a cupped ship’s-hull shape with his hands. “We had her off the floor without a lot of trouble. She came to rest in soft sediment with minimal list, and we never pulled up the sling bags. We used them to hoist her to three hundred, then filled them, enough pressure to get the ship to neutral. Here’s the best part. When we let her go, she didn’t sink—just hung there--and we cut loose one of our ROVs to get her back into international water.”

  Adista looked doubtful. “On the thrusters of an ROV? Must be a strong one.”

  “Dess’s medium-sized.” He shook his head. “Didn’t need to be especially strong with the Serina neutral. We just didn’t want her surfacing before we got the hell out of someone else’s water.” He had already explained Corkran’s crazy plans to dump the Serina deep in Cuban water.

  Wilraven caught movement on the main deck. Tam and Miles from the Irabarren. He pointed starboard and shouted, “Serina’s a hundred meters off.”

  Angelo called out. “I think she’s slowing. Probably the end of power for Dess.”

  The captain shook his head at the sudden unexpected luck, but went with it. “Right on time.”

  The Serina Beliz hung in the water just under the surface, her pale green hull ghostly, the stern hoist beam holding the sling bags together jutting up at an angle as it rested against the deck crane.

  The captain waved, holding his arm high and swinging back and forth to Jeanetta and Aramesh at the helm of the Irabarren. Jeanetta gave him a quick double-flash of the fore lights. He ducked into the bridge to grab the radio. “Jean, we’re going to need a couple of anchors off Serina’s starboard. What’s the depth here? Get the Irabarren back-anchored off your starboard. We’ll work over your port.” Then he remembered he didn’t have Dewayne and Erich to man the big cranes. “Crap. Cancel that. We’ll lift the Serina’s hoist beams on this side. Aramesh, round up the ABs. We’re putting some slack in the towlines. Have Jerry untie us. I’ll be coming over in the launch with the chief, bringing the two pumps I have and some rigid and semi hose lines. What do you have on Ira?”

  Aramesh’s voice came back after some communicating with Jerry on the platform’s deck. “Just checking on lines and hoses, Captain. I’m sure we have enough. Four pumps over here, two more of the small sub-hydros, two of the Godwins on sleds we can forklift anywhere on the deck. I will have Miles move them to the middle. Run hoses off the starboard into Serina when she’s got her hull up to the surface, and we’ll pump off Ira’s port?”

  “I like it. Let’s get it going.”

  Turning to Angelo, “Call Rusty. Let him know where we are, not what we’ve found. Just tell him we have to stop here for a day—repairs or, I don’t know, come up with something. And that we’ll be at least a day late back in Lauderdale and Tampa.”

  The first officer turned to give the Marcene some back thrust, letting her rock gently in the sea right off Serina’s port. He was already on the comms with Ocean Eight when he hit the Dynamic Positioning System—DPS kept the Marcene in place, using her four thrusters to pin her to the specified coordinates. The Irabarren crept closer to Marcene’s stern, letting the towlines slacken into the waves. Jeanetta held her position there, while the chief and Wilraven kicked on the winches, drawing in the towlines, with Jerry unhooking the thick braided cables on their end.

  Tychasis jumped on the Marcene’s bigger knuckle boom crane, letting Wilraven know he had his shipmaster license, engineer’s license, and was crane certified. He pointed at the Irabarren’s enormous cranes. “I can operate one of those if you like?”

  Wilraven gave Ty a measured look, then shook his head. “We need to get the fenders deployed between us and Serina. Then we need the hoist beams in the air—hoping they didn’t twist or knot up when we blew the quick-release bolts. If everything goes well, this will take some weight off Serina, and she’ll come up to the rails just on the lift from the sling bags.”

  The chief, although not officially certified on the Marcene’s cranes, knew how to operate anything and he took the smaller lift crane they usually used for launching ROVs. The cranes didn’t need to lift the ship. They just had to be able to lift the hoist beams.

  With the towlines winched in on Marcene, and the big yellow beams climbing into the air, the Serina bobbed noticeably higher in the water, the sling bags puffing out around her, almost matching the paint color, blistering out along her length, looking like some kind of hull-bloating disease. DuFour’s quick-release bolts had worked perfectly, dropping the hoist beams straight down on the ship, and they came up without a kink or twist.

  The Irabarren moved to the Serina’s far side, Jeanetta hitting the DPS while every free hand, including Wilraven, manned pumps and hoses. Within an hour the air smelled of diesel exhaust and was filled with the roar of six water pumps throwing a combined three thousand gallons a minute over the Ira’s portside.

  The beautiful platform support ship Serina Beliz saw daylight again, inching her way out of the sea. Tears rolled down Adista’s cheeks as she stood by one of the big pumps, watching the bands of sunlight angling over the sleek facets of her towers and the defiant slant of her prow. Rivers of seawater flowed from the open bridge doors, broken windows, and ports, washing away memories and just about anything that had not been stowed or nailed down.

  The water pumps roared for hours, and hundreds of feet of semi-rigid hose coiled python-like across the Irabarren’s deck, the intakes running over the gap between the vessels, below Serina’s decks. It took half the day to float the Serina and get the towlines run out from Irabarren.

  By afternoon they boarded the casualty and ran lines from Serina to Irabarren. They turned off the pumps when they were down to inches sloshing around the floor of the engine room. She came up proud and majestic, rising out of the sea like a goddess. The lower cabins, water supply, fuel tanks, and engine room were the last to be completely cleared of seawater. Wilraven, Angelo, and Adista went over in the launch, doing a quick hull inspection before they took on the towlines.

  There was no sign of anyone on board.

  The captain saw the Irabarren off mid-afternoon, towing the floated Serina Beliz north at an even nine knots toward Tampa. It was just Wilraven, Adista, Tychasis, and Chief Salzen remaining on the Marcene. The captain had left the platform and towing in the hands of Angelo, who really was ready to get a ship of his own—the repaired Serina if Wilraven had his way. But that had to be cleared with insurance, ownership, terms of the salvage. Lawyers who could work the details in the favor of Ocean Eight.

  Before he had jumped into t
he launch to take him back to the Marcene, Wilraven held them up with one last obligation, running across the Irabarren’s wide decks to retrieve the letters and papers he had pulled from the Serina’s safe. He had taken the passports and handed the unaccountables over to Angelo, but the rest of the contents had still been in Dewayne’s work locker.

  Back on Marcene, he shuffled through the now-dry but salt-crusted papers and envelopes, stopping at one with his full name, Captain Jayson Wilraven, with his street address in Val Nersesian’s own handwriting. The flap opened without any effort. He looked up at the distant form of the Serina and unfolded the single piece of paper in the envelope. The paper and ink had not fared well in the water, but there were older folds and wrinkles as if it had been stored for a while. The black-penned letters were now a pale bluish purple, but clear enough to read. And it was from Captain Valentin Nersesian, because no one could copy Val’s poetic style.

  Dear Jay,

  There is world-moving artistry and terrible evil in the deepest places of this world. I know because I have seen it—both the artistry and the evil. There is great beauty too, but all you will ever see in pictures is the curve of the surf against a Hawaiian shore from beneath the waves, the struggle and force of survival on a coral reef, the chemical plumes of thermal vents in the abyss. There is blinding beauty but no artistry in nature. Only in people.

  And there are people who live in the deepest places in this world. Good people. And evil. Like anywhere else. There is peace and war. There is a great city—nine cities, actually. They live and work like anyone else. And some of them come to the surface.

  Some of them are good.

  I trust Adista and Tychasis with my life. They know the sea better than anyone. If you are reading this, it does not mean they failed me. It just means that whatever took me home was greater than the two of them.

  Take care,

  Val

  Well away from someone else’s territorial water, into open sea with nothing but the journey home between the Marcene and an end to the nightmare, he finally called Corkran.

  The charterer was expecting Wilraven’s call, and answered as if they were already in the middle of a conversation. No hello or who is this? Corkran’s voice sounded distant, broken. “There is evil in this world, Captain Wilraven.”

  That stopped the words behind his teeth and made the captain glance around. Every time he talked to this guy, it came with a whole load of foreboding and distress, as if the phone was a gateway into the man’s madness.

  And he was unwillingly part of it—or contributing to it.

  Wilraven could at last voice the words he had wanted to say from the beginning. His inflection was even, calm; only a hint of anger somewhere in the tone. “I know there is, Corkran. I have lived through it the last several days. You fucking dragged me and my crew through it. Some of them died in it.”

  Corkran went on in the same weary tone, as if he hadn’t heard the captain’s response. “Evil in the deep ocean, things that live there, breathe there, shouldn’t be there.”

  That stopped the rest of the words behind the captain’s teeth.

  It was almost as if Corkran had just read Nersesian’s letter along with Wilraven, mirroring it. And he repeated himself, as if losing track of the conversation a dozen words into it. “Evil in the deeps, don’t trust it. It will be your end.”

  It sounded as if he didn’t remember who he was talking to.

  Or it was a confession, and the captain was the only one—enemy or not—he could confide in?

  Wilraven broke the spell with, “What the fuck is going on, Corkran? And I want real information, not your bullshit nightmare and paranoia.”

  There was a long pause, and then Corkran started speaking rapidly, clearly and with more authority, the words spilling into the phone. “I’m just a middleman—representing the real power. I was involved in the original project—way back, has to be forty years ago—that tested gravity and magnetic weapons that could suck an entire ship under the waves. The prototype was something like a submarine that glided under a ship, filled ballast tanks, anchored itself to the floor, then turned on the field generator. Soon as the water was over the ship’s hull, it turned off the field, pumped out the ballast, and moved on—and the ship sank to the bottom.” Corkran let out a weary breath. “It only worked half the time, and it was shelved.”

  Wilraven let Corkran’s words drift into the static on the call, ten seconds of quiet, nothing but the sea wind blowing at his back. “What does any of that have to do with the Serina Beliz? Did someone use that on her?”

  “No.” Corkran’s voice came back short and sharp, with more silence following.

  The captain could hear him breathing on the other end, an unsteady intake and release—regimented fear.

  “When they told me where the Serina rested, I . . . it scared me. Too close, not enough cover for my liking, and that’s when I hired you. You’re ‘Captain Success,’ someone who’s proven to the world that he can do things with sunken vessels and other underwater disasters no one else can. That’s what I saw at the beginning of this: a disaster that I caused. And you were my one chance to make it disappear.”

  “You sank the Serina? Did it on purpose?” Wilraven heard the tightening in his own voice, felt a few glowing coals of the anger shake loose inside him.

  “No. I was managing the trials for breeding.” He made a sniffing noise, his voice fading as if he had moved away from the phone. Then he was back. “I did not select the test subject. I just went in to clean up the mess.”

  Wilraven’s solid anger starting turning molten inside him, trying to rise to the surface. Test subject. Clean up the mess.

  “A ship, with living, breathing people aboard, you fuck. You’re nothing but a killer. You’re using this stuff on people.”

  Then the word breeding set off a new line of thoughts connecting to the explanation Tychasis had given him . . . the speculation around the rebreather . . . the larval forms of something monstrous in the ocean . . . the word dragged it all to the surface, like rot and refuse tangled in a net. “The goddamn thing on the deck was an egg. For making more of the things that sink ships?”

  Corkran made a sputtering, surprised noise. “You’re not supposed to know about that.” And then spat out more. “Don’t ask me how it works, I don’t know.”

  Wilraven felt like smashing something. “Well, what the fuck do you know?”

  Corkran paused—apparently not for drama, but possibly out of fear of what he was about to say aloud. His voice came out shuddery and soft, like that of a dying man. “I know it works. Because he used it on the Serina Beliz.” His voice dried up, came out weak. “He has used it since, on several other vessels. I know it works every time.”

  Wilraven felt the stab of a rapidly surfacing problem. Something’s not right here. “Why are you telling me this?”

  Corkran went quiet, rapid breathing on the other end telling Wilraven that he hadn’t hung up. When his voice returned, it had regained some strength, but was subdued. “Well, Captain Wilraven, dead men . . . you know.”

  Corkran killed the call.

  The captain stepped onto the Marcene’s bridge and all the electronics blew; fried plastic insulation pumped clouds of smoke from the navigation board. Wilraven rammed down the comm button, started yelling for the chief. Nothing happened. No snap of an open line, no sound from the audio built into the bridge. The ship rocked gently on the sea. One second they had been under way, heading northeast, but still miles off the shipping channel along the Keys. The next . . .

  “Holy fuck. We’re dead in the water.”

  He ran his fingers over the controls—not sure what he was looking for, holding his breath against the toxic stink of burning plastic—and kicked open the starboard side door. Chief Salzen was already on his way up, shouting about the failure, when he stopped suddenly and covered his mouth with one hand, staring over the side at the swelling mass of ink-dark motion a few meters under the ship. He
didn’t need to point.

  Wilraven was leaning over the rail when Adista and Tychasis dashed past him, yelling, “Down to the deck, Captain. This is the thing—Ekhidnadai—that took the Serina under. We go to battle it.”

  All he could do was follow them, waving the chief ahead of him.

  Chapter Fifty

  Leviathan

  Tychasis turned toward the sea, his eyes widening and wild. “It is here.” He threw his arms up as if describing something enormous, hands and fingers hooking into claws.

  Wilraven grabbed the railing with both hands, looking into the sea at the spreading mass of a monster under his ship. “What is?”

  Adista said something in Greek with the word ekhidnadai in it, and then switched to English. “The children of Ekhidna.”

  Distracted by the patterns in the motion, he couldn’t look away from the water. Just whispered the question. “Who?”

  Adista remained calm—as calm as Ty was frenzied—and put one hand on Wilraven’s shoulder. “Not really a who. Or perhaps a metaphor. Gods and goddesses often have monsters for children . . . ” Her voice trailed off, and she was scowling over the words. “For some reason. You would think they would have better things to do.” Then she gestured toward the growing web of movement, shadows and bolts of color in the water around the Marcene.

  The Ekhidnadai looked like a single colossal monster because it wanted to look like one, shadows and smears of light coming up from the deeps, swarms of individual monsters in coordinated motion, each one not much larger than a cupped hand.

  Wilraven caught himself glancing at Tychasis. The swarming shapes firing in coordinated paths over the Marcene looked just like the weird larval thing Ty had pulled from inside his body, only bigger and with a harder, many-sided shell.

  Wilraven wasn’t sure if it looked like a living thing—or millions of living things acting as one, faceted skins of what appeared to be iridescent metal, pulsing rings of vivid pink and turquoise, blue and purples, that caught the sunlight coming through the waves. Millions of monsters with one purpose, working in tight, synchronized paths that turned the Caribbean sun’s rays into a kaleidoscopic dance. He watched one side of the thing spread its hundred thousand arms into the air and across the sky.