by Kieran Shea
There’s a small mouthpiece alternative air-source, but given the unknown nature of the cable caught in the rudder, Koko decides it might be better to go with full gear. Attaching the regulator, she checks the flow from the cylinder, and the air tastes cool and slightly like plastic. She then searches the bottom of the bag for line. The last thing she needs is to get sucked away by some unexpected current when she’s in the water, and Koko finds a small coil of line tagged at five-meter intervals. Taking a pair of black scuba fins, Koko attaches the cylinder with its affixed regulator to buoyancy compensator vest, clips a dive light to the vest’s shoulder, and grabs a mask. From a large toolbox beneath the pilot’s seat, she also grabs a stubby set of bolt cutters.
Climbing up the ladder with all the gear, Koko unlocks the upper hatch and shoulders it open. The fresh air tastes amazing, and the gentle, warm breeze on her face is percale soft. Under better circumstances, it might be nice just to hang out and enjoy being out of the freaking submarine for a spell. Above her there is a dazzling cape of indifferent stars, and outward from the still half-submerged flanks of the submarine twelve long shafts of light skelter beneath the ocean’s surface.
Koko sits down, fastens her fins to her feet, and pulls on the buoyancy compensator vest. Using a set of recessed toe-holds with her heels, she sidles down the starboard side and rinses some spit in her mask in the slopping water. Compared to the air the water feels cold, but she tells herself to deal with it. Jamming her regulator into her mouth and releasing the airflow, Koko secures her mask and ties off the coiled line to a stud-mounted cleat to her right. Tying the opposite end of the line to her waist, Koko slides into the water and the expected shock locks up her muscles and takes her breath away. She not so much switches on the shoulder dive light as slaps at it. This shit—why did a technical issue have to be beneath the sub? Releasing air from the BC vest via a depressed valve, she slips beneath the rolling surface.
Fearing an impending metabolic shutdown, Koko swims along the sub’s flank as fast as she can toward the jammed rudder. When she reaches the affected area, she is pleased to find the impacted cable is scarcely thicker than the diameter of her forearm. No big deal. So she lines up the bolt cutters’ jaws to cut, and squeezes the rubber-gripped arms together. The brutal cold constricting her blood vessels has her skull feeling like she’s been socked by a hammer, but after a half a minute’s worth of exertion, the cable gives way with a dull snip and Koko peers inside the rudder’s recesses. She assesses that nothing else looks amiss, just as a vermillion-colored blob of pulsating flesh zooms past her back.
Koko blows out a startled blast of bubbles and rolls over. The ghostly shaft of the dive light attached to the BC vest catches a spaghetti tangle and just as the tangle disappears another mass of rippling, metachrosic meat and suction cups swoops past her face.
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding…
Zooming through the surrounding sub lights, the attacking shoal of giant squid is staggering. Bioluminescent, most of the creatures are the length of Koko’s arm, but some pumping through the light shafts possess massive winged mantles topping out at whopping meter-lengths or more. Koko realizes the submarine’s twelve outer lights have keyed in the invertebrates’ swarming, collective aggression. The creatures flash like bar lights, and Koko is so completely freaked out she nearly drops the bolt cutters.
Another mass of smaller glinting squid flexes through sub’s lights and then a second larger-sized group shoots past in the opposite direction. Crisscrossing back and forth, the squid appear to be searching for the source of the lights and are closing in on the sub fast.
Koko kicks back, presses herself as close to the hull as she can, and her air cylinder hits with a dull clank. Deliberately slowing her breathing—piff-ahhh… piff-ahhh—she inches her way along the flank, and like a squishy overgrown trumpet one of the polypods wraps around her head and rips her mask and regulator free.
Koko flails. The frenetic sucking sensations pawing her face quicken, and the bitter sting of cold water blinds her eyes. With her free hand, quickly Koko yanks the dive light from her shoulder and wags it out at arm’s length, hoping to distract the squid gripping her head. At once there is a notable slacking and Koko releases the dive light. The face-hugging squid cuts away altogether, and pumps after the bright beam as the dive light spins end over end into the blackness below. Unable to see, and using her attached line, Koko drags herself back along the hull until she reaches the spot where she entered the water. Surfacing with a rush, she tears her way up the toe-holds and is nearly out of the water completely when a fumbling tentacle loops her right ankle like a whip.
Man, she’s had just about enough of leechy calamari bullshit. Twisting about, Koko kicks wildly at the tentacle as the suction cups rip her scuba fin free from her foot. Grabbing a higher toe-hold, Koko pulls her weight upward right as a second giant tentacle lassos her other ankle like a slick cuff.
Oh, for the love of—
Swinging the bolt cutters, Koko pounds at the slimy feeler and just below the waterline, a single rimmed eye stares at her droopily. Rolling over, the massive squid stretches and exposes its carnivorous, basalt-colored beak as its other squiggling tentacles attach to the sub’s hull. Veering riotously left, one of the tentacles whaps Koko square in the mouth.
Call her Ishmael?
Call me Ahab, sucker-puss.
Koko jabs the bolt cutter tip right in the attacking squid’s eye.
Detaching, the giant squid retracts backward with a huge, vociferous splatter. Spewed ink and frigid seawater splatters Koko’s face, and she doesn’t give the beast a second shot at grabbing her. Climbing topside to the open hatch, Koko skips the convention of the ladder and drops down to the deck below. Jumping upward she grabs the hatch handle and then locks the hatch off.
“Son of a bitch!”
Koko kicks off her remaining scuba fin. Reeling forward and dripping, she slaps at the helm’s controls.
No messing around this time.
Koko fires the engines, throttles back in full reverse, and the sub is free.
Ten minutes later and cruising forward at surface level, however, Koko learns the distressed rudder has affected additional operational mechanisms. A subsequent software shutdown has led to a chain reaction, culminating in seizure of the sub’s deeper diving capacities. Maximum submersion depth? Two and half fathoms, barely over four meters. Running shallow and unable to dive deep, she and Flynn will be dead meat so close to the surface. Koko rips through the operational manuals.
Three hours of forced system quits, runbacks, reboots… nothing works.
†None of Your Fucking Business
THE SIXTY II
DISCUSSING DIRTY DEEDS
The next afternoon, Wire and the heavyset security officer she now knows as Horace Britch ride in the rear compartment of an SI security transport hovercraft. A sole additional security officer serves as the hovercraft’s pilot and is silhouetted behind a partition of ballistic soundproof plastic two and a half fists thick.
As the hovercraft enters a banking turn, through a window slit in the rear of the compartment Wire can see the tops of palm trees rustling. She’s grateful to be back in some clothes—not her own, naturally—and wears a yellow hemp-weaved detainee jumper with hand-woven buttons. The jumper is a size smaller than Wire would prefer and itchy as all get-out, but the size and itchiness are not as infuriating as the chains shackling her bare feet and wrists. Britch adjusts the gelatinous spread of his thighs on the bench seat across from her.
“So, once we understood we were witnessing an unusual security event, containment procedures were activated. To be honest, I half expected Martstellar to make a break for the resort air fields, as taking any number of flight craft would’ve been the fastest way off of The Sixty, even with our long-range batteries. Alas, the woman’s creativity—”
Wire interrupts, “Creativity like what?”
“Well, first of all she initiated some confusion by digging o
ut biometric identifiers. One of the release specialists, her own, and the wounded man Flynn’s. Together the release specialists led us on dueling chases in a cargo ute and on a terra-sled. This diversion began in a dead zone in The Sixty’s scanners, and it’s obvious to us now that Martstellar must’ve known about the technical oversight.” Britch tames an eyebrow with a finger. “After that she and Flynn got into an outdated access point and entered the maintenance tunnels beneath The Sixty.”
“These maintenance tunnels, that’s where she stole the submarine you mentioned?”
“Correct.”
Wire tongues her cheek. “Oh, man, and you call this high-priced tourist trap secure? You should’ve expected Martstellar to know about backdoors like that. Evasive training is second nature to someone like her.”
“Indeed. But you must understand, The Sixty is a massive operation. Utterly massive. The maintenance tunnels and lower support infrastructure rivals some of the major European flood zones. Naturally, we secure what we can, but there are over five hundred passages laced beneath the entire archipelago chain. The access point was simply overlooked.”
Wire jeers derisively. “What a crock. I don’t care if it’s five thousand access entries or tunnels, it’s still sloppy. And cutting out biometric identifiers? What is this? Some kind of half-assed amateur hour? Platelet-tagging is more reliable.”
“Pardon the pun, but the ship has sailed on all that. Shall I continue?”
Indifferent, Wire wiggles her fingers—whatever.
Britch drones boorishly on. “To preserve and maintain the islands’ support architectures, The Sixty operates a fleet of solo and two-person helmed submersibles. The short of it is that Martstellar and Flynn stole one of the larger capacity payload units, the variety our technicians use to service the rest of the fleet. Equipped for larger loads, these submarines cost twice as much as some of the smaller units, so they definitely chose wisely. With advanced calibrated fusion-drive capacities, the submarine they took? Fully submerged it’s able to reach speeds topping out at fifty-five knots and has a range that’s nearly worldwide.”
“Meaning they’re in the wind.”
“Well, in the sea anyway.”
Wire’s chains clink as she weaves her fingers together. She cracks her knuckles. “Well, seeing that the world is three-quarters underwater and then some, how is this even remotely helpful to me?”
“Oh, I’m getting to that,” Britch assures. “Once we understood what occurred we initiated trans-oceanic tracing sweeps as the stolen sub is equipped with a reliable GPS transponder.”
“Great, so you do know where they are.”
“To a point, yes, and to a point, no.”
“Man, are you always this annoying?”
“I say only to a point because they disabled the transponder shortly after they escaped. What they didn’t sort out until a short time later was that we have distance reach access to all the submarine’s onboard navigations. Retroactively archived, I have records of all of their chart research. Of course when they realized this had happened they fried out this link as well.”
Wire lets her eyes almost glaze over, almost. Goddamn, the monotonous, self-justifying minutia crawling from Britch’s lips—it’s the sort of mediocre babble that has always bored her to tears. And really, why is this waddling tub of dick telling her all this? Wire leans her head back against the compartment’s padded wall. If only she were free of her restraints for a few delectable seconds, she could easily coil one of her forearms around Britch’s neck and punch him in the face until his teeth jellied inward.
“Just sum it up for me,” she says.
Delighted, Britch rubs his hands together. “All right, this is what I am proposing. I’d like an anonymous credit asset transfer from you. I’ve all the proper account codes ready, and once this transfer is confirmed, I promise to upload all the collected intel, the tracking records, Martstellar’s last known chart headings, and so forth to wherever you receive your data, in return.”
Wire scoffs. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
“Think of it as a quid pro quo arrangement.”
“Oh, yeah? How’s this for quid pro quo arrangement? How about I let your superiors here know you’re a weaseling extortionist?”
“Now, now… me? A weaseling extortionist? This is a simple business transaction.”
“Ohhh… a business transaction.”
“Mmhm.”
“But what about CPB’s pursuit efforts, huh? You’re telling me the CPB and The Sixty are just going to let these two numbskulls duck out on whatever contracts they have, boost one of their priciest submarines, and just let it go at that?”
“See, that’s just what makes this offer so attractive for both of us.”
“In what way?”
“You see in the grand scheme of things the directive has come down from on high to let this matter pass. Too much bad publicity and such. As you can imagine, the CPB has had more than enough trouble with Martstellar of late, and given the thorny history with her, the board of directors has decided not to engage in this matter further. Besides, the CPB has more than ample insurance to cover the cost of the submarine.”
“Insurance on a fusion-powered sub? Damn, it must be nice to have that kind of juice.”
“Have you ever looked at the CPB’s holdings?”
“Not really, no.”
“You should have a gander sometime. Just incredible. Now then, you’re correct. The two fugitives’ actions have violated their contractor agreements, and as a matter of course the CPB acquired and froze all of their assets. Given their hell-bent departure from The Sixty this was something the two couldn’t possibly take care of in time, and added all together it’s a trifling amount. But even if Martstellar was prepared with a back door, as you say, it’s likely the two have limited resources stashed on their persons. They might choose to sell the submarine to shore up their liquidity. And if they don’t end up selling the vessel and elect to abandon it, sooner or later someone acquiring it by salvage will re-activate the disabled transponder to see if it’s operational, don’t you see?”
“Most salvage operators have more sense than that. Reactivating a transponder would be like ringing the dinner bell.”
“Perhaps, but then again some in the world’s more uninhabitable fringes might not be so savvy.”
“You mean de-civs.”
“My, you’re such the smart cookie.”
Wire scowls. “You’re talking some long freaking odds here, Britch.”
“But you must admit, it is possible. So, what do you say? Interested?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Depends on this anonymous credit asset transfer.”
Britch rests his own head against the compartment padding and pauses. “Look, I’m not greedy. I think fifty thousand credits is more than fair.”
Wire feels like she’s swallowed a shot of hot vinegar. “For this?”
“I’m taking a substantial risk here even propositioning you. And this is rock-solid intel. It’s more than adequate to jumpstart your pursuit.”
Wire leans forward. “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you take this fifty large rock-solid ho-ha of yours, tie it up in a pretty bow, and stuff it up your pucker. Even if Martstellar is at large, you’re forgetting one thing: I can just wait her out. I’ve got a whole psych profile lousy with her habits. Eventually she is going to turn up somewhere, and my resources will cost me a hell of a lot less than some fifty thousand delusion of yours.”
“Hmm, I suspected you might feel that way. But here’s another thing. This Ultimate Sanction status on Martstellar?” Britch beats a glance out the rear window slit of the hovercraft and then turns back. “I’ve checked into this. The order is not exclusive. I can easily leak all this to other hungry bounty agents, if you find my offer so repulsive.”
Wire’s eyes move back and forth.
Shit.
“But what if they scuttle the submarine?”
“Scuttle i
t?”
“Yeah, did you think of that? If they scuttle the sub and no one ends up finding it, then where would I be with your weaker than spit intel offer?”
“At a solid starting point.”
“I could just beat it out of you.”
Like a deranged crow, Britch cackles. “Oh, really now? How outré. And when would this supposed torment take place exactly? Do you really think you’ll ever set foot on The Sixty again after this monumental bungling of yours? Again, you should’ve read the finer details of your reservation agreement. There are at least five paragraphs covering deportation proceedings with follow-up restrictions. Despite whatever vitriolic judgments you have of me, The Sixty or the CPB, the terms of your deportation includes a fatal consequence clause. If you ever appear again within The Sixty’s confines or even our airspace, make no mistake, this will be acted upon. Expediency is the marrow of my position here, and the choice is now yours. We should be arriving at your transport vessel shortly.”
Wire shakes her head. There is no way in a cold, deep, stinking hell she’s giving this jerk-off fifty thousand credits, not even if it gets her Martstellar’s head on a silver platter tomorrow. True, it’ll probably take her a little more time to locate her and close out the contract, but seriously, is this guy totally out of his mind?
“I think I’ll pass.”
“You’re not interested at all?”
“Nope. Not at all.”
“Oh, I really think you should reconsider.”
Wire lifts her fists and gives Britch the finger—both barrels.
“Eat shit and die, piggy.”
Britch sighs. The hovercraft’s engines whine, and the craft enters a twenty-degree turn. After a long pensive moment, Britch slowly lifts up his right hand as though he’s about to take an oath. Given the back and forth spirit of their talk, the gesture is weirdly atypical, and Wire’s eyes flit briefly to the hand. Seizing her lapse in judgment, Britch quickly leans forward and stabs a pressure syringe with his other hand into Wire’s knee.