by J A Bouma
Sending Ford sailing into the control panel, his face smacking it with a thud. A dribble of blood seeped from his nose and down his throat, the coppery eruption reminding him that it was every bit as real as it had been when he was fighting for the Legion rounding up Unfits with the Purifier battalion and getting into firefights with Resistors.
Now he was the one resisting, and under the Legion gun with three Stingrays on his tail under several kilos of water!
“What the heck was that?” Alexander asked.
Ford answered, “The Republic, what else?”
“Are we hit?”
“No,” Jin reassured. “Stunned with a high-level pulse wave that packs a punch.”
“Which was their warning shot,” Ford said, wiping another string of blood from his nose with the backside of his hand and getting hot under the collar from being under fire.
“What comes after the warning shot?” Alexander asked.
“You don’t wanna know…”
“Well, can you do somethin’ about it, hotshot?” Lucy asked. “Throw up some invisibility cloak and make the jump to hyperspace?”
Sasha shook his head, muttering, “You are watching too many old-school Hollywood sci-fi flicks, methinks.”
She smacked him in the shoulder; he yelped. “I thought that’s what you were supposed to be fixin’ with that doodad of yours. Fiddlin’ with the Legion’s monitoring systems on DiviNet.”
“It is not being so simple! I am just having broken through the firewall and now I am having to parse through thousands of lines—”
Another shudder, another tilting dip that nearly sent the PSV on its head.
“More parsing, less talking, amigo,” Ford said, yanking at the one side of the controller to stabilize their descent while trying to right the ship with the other. “Or we’re liable for a date with Davy Jones real soon.”
Sasha mumbled something in his Muscovia tongue before the clattering picked up pace.
Good lad.
Now for some fancy footwork to buy us some time...
There was a squeal from behind, then a shout from Lucy: “Mylanta…”
“Where is this water coming from?” Alexander asked.
Ford went to turn around when something caught his attention at his feet.
A puddle of water, quickly growing and spreading at the front.
Shucky ducky…
“Those damn Stingrays must’ve sprung a leak somewhere. Go find it would ya, Alex, and see what you can do?”
“Me?”
“Well, I sure as hot Hades can’t get to it with three Stingrays on our—”
“Alright, alright,” he said, unbuckling himself.
“I’ll go with you,” Rebekah said, the pair rushing off to stem the stream threatening to sink their ship.
“And hold on!” Ford yelled, flexing his fingers around both sets of controls, two joysticks moving independently of one another to control the PSVs movement and up-down direction.
It’s go time…
Not waiting for a reply, from either the pair in the back or the trio outside, Ford yanked the left stick left and pulled back on the right.
Sending their yellow submarine pivoting through the water and on a zooming course he hoped would throw the Republic off its game.
The cabin reacted as expected, startled protests thrown up but no broken bones. Same for the Stingrays outside, the cone suddenly spinning out like the tail of a Noramericanan tornado moving faster than its eye.
“Jin, cut the lights, would ya?” Ford commanded.
“Cut the lights?” Jin said. “Are you crazy? You’ll be running blind here—”
“Just do it, alright! Because so will the Solterran knuckleheads up on our tail. And if our Ukrainski friend can rustle up some DiviNet disrupting love, then we might have a chance.”
“Would you be holding your horses, bratishka?” Sasha complained. “Still working on it.”
“Well, work faster…” Ford muttered before yanking at the sticks again, throwing the hydrocraft to the right now and descending with a wicked slump that made even himself sick to his stomach.
Just as one of those pulse waves shuddered past, clipping their port-side fin and spinning it like a top.
The PSV threw up a collective yelp, another cough of water spreading through the main cabin and rising above the ankles now.
Double shucky ducky…
Ford yanked on the left stick to right the craft, then the other to straighten its bearing. “You guys making progress on that leak, homefry?” he shouted toward the back.
Another rush of belching water from the back, along with a muffled curse from Alexander, confirmed the worst of it.
They literally were on the run from the Republic and taking on water.
What else could go wrong?
A pair of red eyes suddenly sliced through the darkened abyss, spaced apart with charcoal skin and a pair of fins and a tail rising from the backside that took aim with menacing purpose.
Father Jim threw up a cry and started muttering a prayer, in Latin by the sound of it. Not a bad way to go, considering.
The radar confirmed the truth of it: one Enforcer Stingray coming at their twelve, with another hot on their tail!
The water suddenly glowed from behind. Ford knew the Stingray hydrocraft was getting ready for its ultimate weapon of PSV destruction.
The stinging raygun that would vaporize them into shattered pieces littering the Mediterranean floor in no time flat.
Yanking the stick again and throwing the other one forward, he zoomed past the hydrocraft by a hair just as it let loose its raygun.
A shot of fire blasted past the windshield, the heat of it boiling the water as it streaked past and striking something with a shattering explosion at their stern.
The second Stingray!
“Yee-haw!!” Ford exclaimed, laughing and pumping his fist in the air, one of the pulsing red lights on the radar blinking off with confirmation.
The others joined in as he fishtailed the PSV to throw off the other remaining Enforcer hydrocraft that took the downed fish’s spot.
“Did we get one?” Alexander said, coming from behind out of breath.
“Not we. They!”
“The dunces smacked one of their own in the kisser with that fiery stingray thingy!” Lucy exclaimed.
Ford laughed. “The Legion isn’t known for employing the best and brightest of the Republic.”
“You would know…”
“Hey, watch it, sassafras. You’re forgetting that I still got the controls.” He dipped the PSV with a sudden jolt and weaved it left to right again, sending Lucy out of her seat to smack Ford’s shoulder.
“I should give credit where credit is due, though,” she went on. “That was some fancy footwork back there, setting the one Stingray up for the fall.”
“Thanks, but we ain’t out of the woods yet.”
“We are being in luck now!” Sasha exclaimed with excitement.
“What’s that, lad?” Father Jim asked.
“Mission is being complete.”
A jolt of adrenaline-infused hope rose in Ford. He spun toward the man with a grin. “Lights out then? We got our invisibility cloak?”
“Da. I managed to find my way into their—”
“Don’t need to know the details, doc,” he said, spinning back to check the radar. And grinning at what he found.
The pair of fish that’d been forming behind them with precision for another run at their hide were starting to move with aimless drift, as if confused and blind and totally in the dark.
Which they were, thanks to the Ukrainski professor!
“Not sure how long my little trick will be holding,” Sasha explained. “So you better hop to it before they go boom-boom again.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice…”
Punching through a series of options on the digital dashboard, Ford brought up a topographical map and searched for a spot in the ridgeline for safet
y.
And found just the spot.
“Hold on to your pants, folks. And goose those engines some, Jin. We’re almost out of it…”
“Roger that.”
Ford eased the one control down as Jin thrust their PSV forward, the hydrocraft zooming down and through the darkness. When it was time, he threw on the headlamps to illuminate the seafloor below, a ridge of jagged rocks and waving sea plants shrouded in shadows and punctuated by the yellow light coming into view.
Then it opened up into a maw of darkness, the belly of the floor split like a chest cavity opened up for surgery, the depths below hiding secrets untold, stretching on for kilometers unknown.
“Dear Lord…” Alexander moaned. “You’re not seriously contemplating taking us in there, are you?”
Ford smirked. “You scared, Master Zarruq?”
“I dare say we all are, John Mark,” Father Jim said, standing behind him now.
Without answering, he told Jin to kill the thrusters and slipped the hydrocraft inside, coasting down through the crevice until bringing it to a rest underneath an outcropping that promised protection.
No one said a word; they dared not disturb the sanctity of the uncharted space. The minutes ticked by as they waited for word on their ruse, the radar falling dead under the weight of the volcanic rock’s disrupting influence. When enough time had passed, Ford instructed Jin to give them a boost. He eased the PSV back out into the main crevice and up to the surface, the group holding their collective breath as they crested the lip back out into the open seafloor.
“Looks like we lost the Enforcers, sir,” Jin finally said, pointing at the spinning radar, free and clear of any hostiles.
Ford clasped his shoulder and chuckled, heaving a breath and chuckling again. “Roger that. And good work. Why don’t we hightail it outta here back to HQ and—”
“Wait a minute,” Alexander said. “HQ?”
Ford turned around and grinned. “That’s right, homefry.”
“But I thought the Ministerium headquarters were leveled by the Republic.”
“We got ourselves some new digs since you’ve been gone. Or rather, several new digs. We’ve sorta decentralized since Solterra rained on our parade.”
Jin snorted a laugh. “And with Queller bombs, no less.”
“Where?” Alexander asked.
“Actually, the nearest one isn’t too far from here, my boy,” Father Jim said. “Along the Mediterranean Ridge.”
Alexander furrowed his brow with confusion. “The Mediterranean Ridge…” Then he widened his eyes, the truth of it coming into view. “Wait, you’re not talking about a deep submergence outpost, are you?”
He looked from Father Jim to Ford, who was still grinning. “You bet your bottom dollar, homefry. A little home-away-from-home right there on the floor of the Great Sea, somewhere between the outer edges of Athenia and Byzantium.”
Alexander slumped back into his seat as Jin brought the hydrocraft up to cruising speed, running a hand through his matted hair. “What the heck have I gotten myself back into…”
Ford leaned back in his chair with a smile and propped his feet up on the control panel. “You have no idea, partner.”
Chapter 5
Sleep came fast and hard for Alexander, as it did for all on board the Ministerium PSV, everyone but Ford taking to different parts of the hydrocraft to snatch some rest during the undersea journey through the darkened depths of the Mediterranean to their new headquarters fighting for the Christian faith and what was left of the Church.
And in the midst of the apocalypse no less!
Boy, did he need the shut eye, his body collapsing onto the charcoal couch of firm faux leather with a familiar heaviness he had carried with him for months—the bone weariness from the back-breaking work, the loneliness from being on the run, the anxiety from the fear of being caught and cancelled by the Republic. Add to that the apocalyptic chaos that unfolded on the beach and the near-death experience at the hands of those blasted Enforcer Stingrays—all of it had suddenly caught up with him. And now they were headed toward some bucket of bolts from last century that held Ichthus’s last hope.
What did I get myself into...again?
The way Father Jim explained it, they were headed to a secret deep-sea submergence station, a so-called DS3, known only to a handful of people within the upper echelons of the Ministerium’s Resistance movement. Alexander was skeptical about the secret part, given what had happened to the Ministerium’s previous headquarters at the hand of Solterra Quellers, yet another supposedly secretive outpost known only to a handful of people. Yet the mystery outpost was about the only option they had left at that point, relying on some decommissioned research station leftover from the early race to colonize the oceans a century ago under the auspices of the United Earth Oceanic Assembly.
While the former Asiatican nation of China won the space race to colonize the moon, the former United States of America had won the race to populate the seventy-one percent of Earth’s surface with DS3 Atlantis. Of course, China followed up their lunar landing with their own DS3 version, called Matsu after the Taoist goddess of the seas—which led to a string of undersea conflicts that nearly derailed the utopian dream of colonizing the undersea world. The UEOA charter was ratified by all nations in 2045, serving as the national and transnational peace and trade accord governing stations, outposts, and the personal and commercial hydrocrafts now congesting the marina corridors like the magnacrafts on the rest of Earth’s twenty-nine percent surface.
Although he had been intrigued as a child about stories of sea adventures and oceanic pioneering exploration, a real wild West given the untamed nature of the underwater world and homestead leases offered for building out an empire embedded in the charter, Alexander wondered what would be awaiting him along the Mediterranean Ridge—and who. Because according to Father Jim, the outpost was staffed by an eclectic group of the Ichthus Resistance as they were now being called, given the Republic’s open assault and designation of Christians as Unfits. Several survivors from across Ichthus had managed to get the outpost up and running over the past year after the Church was forced into hiding.
Never much cared for water, the claustrophobic anxiety of it all giving him palpitations even as he tried resting for the journey. So to say he was less than thrilled to be trading his former sea life on land as a wharf workhand for one under water as some Resistant soldier in the Lord’s army was the understatement of the year!
A soft slap and then a louder thud shook him from his quiet contemplation.
Followed by an alarming rap-rap-rap, rap-rap-rap.
The rapid-fire slapping jolted Alexander upright in an instant, the rap echoing something fierce throughout the hull. He thought the bolts holding the hydrocraft together were popping clear off the bloomin’ thing, it was so bad!
“Sorry about that!” Ford yelled from the front, the rap-rap-rap quieting some before picking up again. “Just a school of fish getting in our way, but we should be fine. This bucket of bolts has been through worse.” He knocked on the windshield and gave a thumbs up.
“Bucket of bolts is right,” Alexander moaned, easing back down for more shut-eye.
“Should reach the outpost in thirty. Catch whatever shut-eye you can get, because it’s all hands on deck to sort through Ichthus’s latest mess.”
He closed his eyes to catch another catnap. “Can’t come soon enough…”
“Aww, is big and bad Alexander Zarruq scared of a little water?”
He smiled, recognizing that voice with a lilt from his own lands back home.
“Who are you calling bad?” he said, a roll of knots from the hard faux-leather couch at the rear of the hydrocraft now biting into his back with pain. “You’re pretty bad yourself from what I recall from our last experience together zooming through the elements toward no uncertain doom.”
Rebekah giggled, taking a seat on a couch across from him. “What can I say? Zooming along the time-space c
ontinuum brings out the best in me.”
“That is being the space-time continuum,” Sasha mumbled down the way from a recliner made of the same tough faux charcoal leather.
She furrowed her brow and smiled at Alexander, whispering: “I stand corrected.”
Wincing, he sat up and stretched. “Don’t mind him. He’s a rather particular individual, especially when his science is concerned and his pet time-travel project.”
“I am hearing that, bratishka,” Sasha muttered again.
“So the water, ehh?” Rebekah said, sliding next to him. “Not a fan?”
He shook his head. “It’s that obvious?”
She smiled. “Just a little.”
“Have never been much of a fan. But then the anxiety surrounding it went through the roof when my father jumped from that bridge back home, plummeting to his death in the river gorge. At least, that’s what I thought had happened.”
He took a breath and ran a hand through his nappy hair, sniffing a ripeness to himself and not at all liking the feel of oily, gnarled hair. He needed a hot shower, and soon. A plate of hot food would be nice, too, and a week of sleep to recover.
Resting a hand on his leg, Rebekah asked, “How are you faring, with everything that’s happened with your father, the revelations of him being alive and basically architecting the latest threat to Ichthus and the Ministerium?”
Alexander shrugged. “To be honest, I’ve been sort of numb to it all, not allowing myself to think about it. To feel anything about it. Guess that’s why I ran and hid out the past year.”
“I understand the feeling. When I found out who my father was, the Minister of Peace and architect of one of the bloodiest authoritarian wars the world had ever seen, I did the same thing, actually.”
“You did?” he said, turning toward her now.
“Sure. Ran and ran, then ran some more, with nowhere in particular to go. By then, I had escaped captivity as a child soldier—which was a whole other level of crazy, catching sight on OneWorld News of the man who had sold me to that godforsaken life!”
“I bet.” He grinned a little now, mostly because he loved the way she rolled her Rs, as she had with c-r-r-r-azy. But also because he could take a small measure of comfort from her knowing that she understood his plight—understood him, even just a smidge.