The Shadow Beneath The Waves

by Matt Betts

  “Again.”

  Linden clicked it again, but this time the alarm was different. It was very close to their sound, but not quite. “I don’t think so.”

  “Listen, I’ve changed its speed to about the same as our annual mystery beep and put them side by side, removed the background junk and matched the speeds.” Linden played them at the same time, and it was hard to tell the difference. “And according to the site, this is a reminder sound, and, unless someone stops it, it goes on for exactly one minute.”

  “Just like our sound.”

  “Just like our sound.” Holli drank some more of her coffee, and sat back. “It’s a watch with a dying battery.”

  It made sense to Linden. Someone on board had a watch set to go off once a year. “And this can be picked up by sonar?”

  “If the sonar is sensitive enough and close enough, sure.”

  He stared at the ad on the computer until something caught his eye. “Wait. The features on this ad say it has a battery that will last a lifetime.” Linden pointed at the page. “Guaranteed.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. I’m having trouble figuring that one out. If I’m right and it’s the watch, I don’t know what could cause that,” Holli said. “But maybe the same thing caused the Cudgel to disappear?”

  13

  The two days it took to reach the site seemed much longer. Cass spent the majority of the time helping ready equipment for the hunt to come. They had air tanks filled for the divers, sea sleds charging on deck, and the drones were tested and retested for secure connections and maneuverability. Takis and Ozzie took them through their paces by racing the large machines against each other both underwater and in the air. Rina checked out Eyeball, the underwater camera she’d used at the Swansea site only a few days ago. It could operate entirely on its own, focusing in on whatever she told it to, or automatically focusing on any action or movement. The drones had cameras as well, but they weren’t quite as sophisticated as Eyeball.

  The rest of the time was a waiting game, and Cass took the time to get to know her new crewmates, Lewis and Caroline. Turns out Caroline had taught at the Centre of Marine Sciences in Lisbon. CCMAR was one of the schools that Cass had considered applying to, if she ever found time for higher education. They discussed the excitement of living in Portugal, and the hazards of chasing an unknown species deep into the abyss. They ended up passing the time together the first night by watching old shark movies in the communications room. Caroline pointed out the unrealistic behavior of the Great White in the series, but still jumped when the beast attacked the fishing boat.

  The other transfer to the Adamant, Lewis, was a little more tight-lipped. He tinkered in the small room left open for the scientists on the boat. He set up equipment, aquariums, trays and instruments with the idea that there would be sea life at their position that was worth studying. When Cass visited him, she found he had a background in oceanography as well, but also one in animal husbandry. He minored in theater, according to the copies of his diplomas he put on the wall in the lab room. He also taped up a picture of Albert Einstein, which seemed at odds with an ocean-studying actor, but Cass left it alone. Cass helped Lewis unpack a few beakers and sample slides, securing them in cabinets to keep them from breaking when the ship hit rough seas. Finally, she watched him pull out a small, potted tomato plant with tiny green tomatoes on it. “Just making it home,” he said. “We could be here for a while, why not make it nice?”

  Cass agreed with the possibility that they could be on the ship, and at the next site, for a good long while. However, she was not exactly sure how much time Martin would give them. With his initial hesitation, he might be inclined to leave if they didn’t find something immediately. The Swansea site held a sure thing, but the Cudgel site was a fairy tale.

  The trip was relatively uneventful for the two days; a storm started toward the end of the first day, nothing terrible, drizzle and a little thunder, but it was enough to drive everyone inside for most of the trip, forcing them to either ride it out in their quarters, or socialize in the comm room, or dining area. Rina started a marathon of pirate movies and episodes of some obscure Chinese superhero series, which kept most of the crew amused. Cass stayed in her room, reading everything she could on the Cudgel, its fifteen-person crew, and the past search attempts. She forgot to eat the first day, because she was so intent on what she was doing. It was dark all day from the storm, so time passed in stealth mode. She only realized how late it was when she heard Lewis vomiting in his room due to the rough seas.

  She rapped on his door. “You okay in there?”

  “Fine.” She could hear him spit weakly in the room. “I should know better than to eat stew on rough seas.”

  “Stew is not your friend when it’s rough?”

  Lewis coughed and cleared his throat. “Actually, pretty much everything is a bad idea except bread or crackers. Anything more and I’m in for it.”

  It caused Cass to think, but she couldn’t remember anyone else on the crew that had trouble with seasickness, even on worse seas. She supposed that they’d all managed to put their time in on the sea, and that very little slowed them down anymore.

  In the old navigation room, Rina was taking a break from her movie theater duties and was setting up large monitors and other equipment.

  “Need a hand?” Cass asked. She stepped into the room, helped place the first monitor on a table.

  “Thanks, these are all for controlling those drones. Once they’re set up, they can be simple to control, but…” Rina clicked the monitor in place and stepped back to look at the boxes and equipment. “All this crap is a pain in the ass until then.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Good thing you’re here. They have you controlling the newer drone during the expedition, at least at the time that the beeping is supposed to go off.” Rina tore open a box and removed the three tiny hard drives within, setting one on each of the tables. “I’ll control the other one. Should we be back-to-back, or next to each other?”

  “Maybe next to each other. Just in case I need some help.” Cass wasn’t worried about controlling the machine; she’d driven deep-sea drones on a number of missions for the NIA in the past, she was more concerned about being able to look over Rina’s shoulder to see what she was seeing, she wanted a front-row seat in case Rina made it to the Cudgel first.

  Once everything was set up, Rina and Cass booted the computers and loaded up simulation programs to practice with the drones. If the simulators were true to life, then the dumpster-sized machines would be tough to handle. “Wanna arm wrestle?” Rina asked.

  “Can we do that in a simulation?” Cass asked.

  “You can do anything with a simulation. Would you like it to look like you have giant boxing gloves?” Rina tapped away at her keyboard.

  Suddenly, in Cass’s screen, the collector arms blinked, then came back with realistic-looking boxing gloves covering their four pinchers. The custom controls that made them reach out and slowly grab delicate objects now were changed to allow the drone to jab at the open air. “Holy crap, forget arm wrestling.” Cass made the machine punch a one-two combo at the air on her screen.

  “I’ve got money on Rina,” Jakob said. He was leaning into the room and staring over the women’s shoulders. The others looked as well and laughed at the idea.

  “Can we watch this on the big screen in the comms room?” Takis asked.

  And so was born the drone boxing craze that swept the Adamant for the fourteen hours before the ship reached their destination.

  14

  Cass took the remote for one of the large drones, while nearby Rina sat at the controls to the other. Takis and Ozzie were already in the water, both of them with small motivators that could move them quickly to the site, if the sound actually occurred.

  A crackle over the radio, and Rina spoke. “I would like to name my drone Champ, since we crushed everyone in the World Drone League playoffs. Maybe later, if we get time I can paint it on the si
de of the drone in big pink letters?”

  “No, no,” Martin’s voice came through Cass’s headphones. “We're not using codenames on this one, there’s no reason to.”

  “Yay! I want a codename as well,” Cass joined in. “My drone is big and boxy and ugly. Maybe it should be Ogre.” She was beginning to see why Rina loved to tease Martin so much. He was an easy mark.

  “No, no,” Martin said. “I already said we're not painting anything on the drones. Let’s just pay attention.”

  Takis tried to talk through his own laughter. “What should mine be? Something to do with water I would guess. How about Sea Snake One?” He chuckled more, before turning his mic off.

  “I’m positive there's no way I'm going to say Sea Snake One, how about Tadpole One?” Ozzie said.

  Martin came back on. “Guys? Just shut up and pay attention. Nobody gets a code name, let’s start gearing up to move, and maintain radio silence.”

  “Well, maybe he should be Ogre,” Takis said. “He doesn't seem to be too pleasant.”

  Cass ran through her controls to make sure everything was responding. “Yeah I want another code name if he's taking mine.”

  “Down to about six minutes,” Rina said “Make sure everyone's in place and ready to roll just in case we actually hear something.”

  “Oh, we’re going to hear something this time I think,” Jakob said. “I can feel it.” He was already up on the deck waiting to see what would happen. From that position he could also jump in the water quite easily and grab another motivator for himself.

  The rest were in a direction that would be advantageous to discovering the ship, or at least finding out where the sound was coming from. All of them were already in the water and watching what would happen next. Cass scanned the horizon and checked the radar to make sure no one else was around to horn in on their search, and so far, no one was. As Cass looked down at everyone getting prepared, she kept one eye on a tiny view screen at what her drone could see as it was floating just below the waterline and prepared to move in any direction necessary.

  Rina messed around with her drone, making it turn in circles and flip end-to-end. She was impatient, waiting for a signal to indicate the location of the robot. She finally leaned back in her chair and looked over at Cass. “What do you think you would change your code name to?” Rina said without keying the mic. “I think it’s imperative to stick Martin with ‘Ogre’, so what else can we give to you?”

  “I don't know…” Cass hadn’t really thought about code names, other than the one the government gave to her.

  “Big and green? You could go with Godzilla, but that seems a little on the nose. Hulk? Let’s see, Grape Ape? That’s an obscure one. What about something random like Mister Punchy, or Droney McDroneface? Or…”

  “I like that one. I like Mister Punchy.” Cass looked from her control and smiled at Rina. “He may have lost the drone boxing playoffs, but he’ll be back.”

  “Mister Punchy it is.”

  “Getting close to go time. I need a status from everyone,” Martin’s voice broke the radio silence.

  “Affirmative, Ogre. Mister Punchy and Champ reporting,” Rina said. “Everything is…” she looked over at Cass. After a quick glance at the screens in front of her, Cass gave a thumbs up. “Everything is A-Okay for go. All of the sonar buoys we dropped all around are operating as needed.” On the way in, they’d dropped a number of sensors around the area in the hopes that linking them all together would allow them to triangulate the sound if it occurred.

  This should be interesting, Cass thought. If Martin doesn't have a coronary over all of the money flying out the window, he might have one over Rina's constant badgering.

  “Ethel Mer-man squared away, five-by-five,” Takis said.

  “Albatross One checking in.” Ozzie’s breathing was heavy in Cass’s earphones as he laughed.

  “Just check in, please,” Martin said.

  “Red Five, standing by,” Jakob said. He waited a second and clicked back on. “That was from Star Wars. The first one. Well, the fourth one chronologically, but the first one that came out.”

  “You people are weird. I think I know now why we don’t mix crews.” It was Ben in the wheelhouse. “Things are ready here.”

  “All right let's start a countdown to the supposed time the alarm goes off,” Martin said. “And don’t just put it on the screens, I want to hear it.”

  Rina agreed and got them started. “Okay. Let me synch things up. Here we go. We've got the clock counting down from ten…nine…”

  Cass kind of wished she could be in the room with Martin, just to see how he reacted when the time came. He had so much put into this, and it was such a labored decision in the first place.

  “Six…Five…”

  A few feet to Cass’s left, Rina cracked her knuckles once or twice while she did the count. A small, thin monitor next to her larger one displayed nothing but the numbers as they ticked down.

  “Three…Two…”

  Cass gripped her controls and stared at the world underwater through her view of Mister Punchy’s camera.

  “One…”

  Everyone's mic went silent as they all listened for the sound—any sort of vibrations or noises coming through their headphones, other than the pings of the sonar array floating just below the ship. There was the occasional bloop of bubbles and whoosh of waves. But beyond that, there was no repetitive noise that came close to the recording. Cass wondered if that was why Martin had put himself in another room; so people couldn't see his anger or his disappointment at finding nothing, again.

  They waited a full two minutes and still it seemed that their timing was off, or the place was off. Or maybe the noise didn’t have a thing to do with it.

  “Takis? Ozzie? You want to swim down a little deeper? Might as well look around since we’re here anyway.” It was Martin and he sounded defeated.

  “Yeah. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and find it. Or maybe there’s a lost Viking ship just hanging around we can discover,” Ozzie said.

  At the next chair over, Rina blew her hair out of her eyes and leaned back in her chair. She held the controller in her lap and dreamily moved the Champ through the sea.

  As Cass waited, she moved her drone around a bit too, getting used to the controls a little more and using the drone’s camera to have a look around for any sign of life, or the glint of metal. On the screen, she noticed Jakob slip into the water off the starboard side. He’d geared up and slid into the water to look as well. After five minutes of waiting, everyone was getting bored and anxious. In one way, Cass felt relieved; she didn’t have to call a full-scale alert and bring in Kemp and his government team. She’d started to like being on the water with Martin’s crew. She looked over at Rina, though she was a few years younger than Cass, they’d developed a comfortable bond, partly borne of being the only females on the regular search crew, but also for a genuine affection.

  Rina suddenly slammed her chair forward. “I have something,” she said to Cass.

  “What?”

  Rina opened her mic up for everyone to hear. “Guys? I’m getting the same sound we heard before. It’s just slower, drawn out.”

  “Where?” It was Martin.

  Rina focused on the screen in front of her. “I’m trying. It sounds like it’s fairly deep.”

  With a flip of a switch, Cass made her drone dive down toward the ocean floor. The machine’s arms automatically folded in to make less resistance. Her screen showed a huge grouping of rocks below, part of a formation that stretched on for what seemed like miles.

  “It’s echoing around off the rocks, hard to pinpoint,” Rina said.

  “Call it out, Rina. We only have a minute. Tell everyone where they need to be,” Martin said. His voice crackled out on the last word and static filled Cass’s ears.

  “Hello? Anyone? This is Mister Punchy. Can anyone hear me? Over?” Cass called into her mic. No one responded.

  “I can’t hear a
nything except static. Take your drone down toward the larger rock formation.” Rina said to Cass from across the room. “This is the Champ.” The static suddenly grew louder for a moment then stopped in the headphones. Cass heard Ozzie finishing a sentence.

  “...the hell is going on?”

  The interference was intermittent. Someone’s sentence suddenly ended in the middle, or consisted of few words that made no sense on their own.

  Rina switched her small screen from the countdown to a visual representation of their communications. “Some bullshit down here is interfering with our signals. It happens. Could be something in the composition of the rocks, or a natural phenomenon.” Rina talked more out loud to herself than into the mic. “There’s a deep canyon between the larger groups of rock and coral beds, I’m sending Mister Punchy to check it out,” Rina said. “Ozzie and Takis need to head that way too. Follow the drone.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “The sound is slower, so I hope that means we have more time,” Rina said. “If so, we still have just under a minute. If not, we’re down to fifteen seconds or thereabouts.”

  Cass turned the joystick to move the drone lower, but it didn’t respond immediately. The camera image remained steady, pointed at the bottom of the sea. “I’m having trouble getting Mister Punchy to move…” Cass could hear her own signal cutting in and out over the headphones.

  She tried again, and the drone moved this time, slow and skittish at first.

  “Our sleds are cutting in and out, as well.” Takis’s voice came through clearly. “Hold on. I think we’re back in business.”

  Cass plunged her drone downward as fast as she could. The controls still stuttered a little, but she was able to wrestle it on a course for the rocks.

  “Signal’s fading, but still going,” Rina said. She grabbed the controls for her own drone and sent the huge vehicle deep under the water. She checked the triangulation of the sonar array with each of the vehicle’s receptors. “Mister Punchy seems to be closest. I’m tapping into that drone’s navigation system to see if it can get a fix…”