by Matt Betts
Cass watched Rina out of the corner of her eye. The woman was slightly manic, as she tried to control one drone, listen in on another, trace the sound from the Adamant’s equipment, and keep everyone in the loop about what was happening.
“Rina? We need some information here,” Martin said. “We don’t have time for…”
“It’s gone. The signal’s gone,” Rina said flatly. “It stopped.” She turned off her mic and turned to speak to Cass. “Stop your drone right there. You had the best signal where you were.”
“Got it.” Cass was supposed to be watching the crew on their mission so that they didn’t damage or disturb the Cudgel, but their enthusiasm was contagious at times.
15
“This is a big old roller coaster, isn’t it?” Ben said. He wheeled over to the window of the observation room, where Martin was standing and watching the water outside. “It’s all happening underwater, what are you looking at? Can you even see anything out there?”
When the whole thing started, Martin could see Jakob out on the deck, but now that he’d gone in the ocean, all that was visible was the ship and the water. “No. Just habit, I guess.” He nodded to the large screen at the end of the room that showed images from four different cameras, all showing underwater scenes and each glitching and going dark intermittently. “Those show me all I need to know anyway.” Martin picked up his glass and took the last sip of scotch. He’d gone through three so far and he was beginning to wonder whether he’d be conscious should they ever actually find something. He turned to Ben. “What brings you up here?”
“Seriously? You have the best seat in the house, and…”
Martin filled the glass with ice and poured more scotch. “And?”
“Well…” Ben averted his eyes from Martin. “I was worried about you. I mean, if this thing doesn’t happen with the Cudgel, that’s a lot down the drain.”
“You think I went to another room to off myself in private?” Martin would have laughed if he wasn’t so disturbed by the idea that a good friend would entertain that thought. “I’m a little depressed that this might not work out, but I have a lot of wrecks to find before I check out.”
“I didn’t think any such thing. I just know you don’t like being on the losing end of a deal, and you hate being so close to a treasure and not being able to find it,” Ben said. “Plus, I always figured you’ll die in some weird sex thing.”
Martin did laugh this time. “My days of ‘weird sex things’ are pretty much behind me, I’m afraid. But thanks for the vote of confidence.” His radio squelched and Martin grabbed it. “Yes?”
“I think we have something.” It was Rina.
“What?”
“Too early to say. But Cass’s drone is moving in now to get a closer look, the Suvari brothers are swimming in right behind.” Rina paused. “I’m putting the Champ behind them to light up the area. They’re pretty far down and in somewhat of a tunnel or cave.”
Finally, some action. It was hell for Martin to sit and watch everyone else do the work while he kept his thumb firmly up his ass. He grabbed the remote and got rid of all of the images, except for the one feed from Cass’s drone. It was still dark, even with all the lights that were moving into position. “Seriously, what was this ‘something’ we saw?”
“I was watching the video and thought I saw our lights glint off of something,” Rina said.
“A glint?” It wasn’t the exciting pronouncement that Martin had hoped for. “Jesus. A glint? A glint could be anything. It could be a fucking lantern fish for Christ’s sake.”
“There,” Rina said.
“Where?” It was Cass in the background.
“Back a little to your right.”
Martin could see the video of Cass’s drone slowly move to the right, taking in more rocks, more plant life, more coral and more of the same dark and blurry crap they’d been seeing since they hit the water. And then, he saw what Rina saw. An almost blinding flash of light. He grabbed his mic. “There. Go back a fraction. Go back.”
“We see it, Ogre.” Rina sounded happy again.
The camera nudged backward slightly and stopped with the brilliant light reflecting off of something among the rocks. Martin began to cycle through the cameras, trying to find the one with the best view of whatever they were seeing. “Be careful, but let’s get in there.” His manic scroll to find a good angle halted on Rina’s drone, the one furthest from the object. He determined that it was, in fact, some sort of shallow cave, with a high and wide mouth in the deep water. There was some unusual plant life dotting the cave inside and out. “Can anyone tell me what those plants are? I can’t see the color on this monitor.”
“I’m near some, Martin,” Takis said. Martin switched to Takis’s feed and watched as the diver pointed to some. “It looks like most of it is acropora coral, sort of a lilac hue. Usually around for the beginning of a reef. It does have some sort of odd coloring to it, but nothing too far off its normal color.”
“What are the dark bits in among those?”
Ozzie jumped in as well. “Plumose Anemones, it looks like. But again, the color is slightly off. They’re black, with sort of red lines, almost veins all the way down into the rock and coral.” Martin switched to Ozzie’s channel and could see him put his hand next to one, revealing the size of each anemone to be larger than his fist. “Usually, these sort of tentacles, would grab and stun fish for food.” Indeed, to Martin it looked like the anemones had long shocks of hair that flowed with the tide, back and forth.
“That’s… kind of fucked up,” Ben said. “Think there’s something going on in that cave that’s messing with the environment?”
“How would a missing battle mech cause that sort of mutation?”
It was Ben’s turn to laugh. “Didn’t all those things have nuclear cores? I mean that was why disposing of some of them was such a catastrofuck, right?”
“I would think a leaking reactor would kill off the fish, not change them.”
Ben poured a glass of Martin’s alcohol for himself and plopped in some ice cubes. “I don’t know. I just park boats.”
There was another rip of static on the radio before Rina’s voice came through clearly. “You guys are looking at the wrong damn thing.”
16
Cass moved Mister Punchy closer. Ozzie and Takis were using her drone to steady themselves and rest as they looked on. Buried in the anemones, coral, and dark rocks, they’d found the surface reflecting their lights; it was the viewport of the Cudgel’s head unit. As they drew closer, Cass felt like they were looking into the weapon’s eyes, and seeing its despair and longing at being out of action for so long.
“Do you see anything inside?” Martin asked.
“We certainly aren’t going to find any survivors, if that’s what you’re asking.” Ozzie replied.
“I don’t expect survivors, but there has to be some sign of them. There has to be some evidence of them.”
“It’s too dark, and the port is tinted. Can’t really see much.” Takis could be seen on screen in his dive suit, peering into the Cudgel.
“What’re those rocks? More coral, or is it some debris from the cave?” Rina asked.
“We can’t really tell. They aren’t rocks; they’re stuck to the hull like glue. They don’t seem to be coral because they have unusual spikes on them. They’re almost a couple of feet long. We’ll see if we can pry a sample loose and bring it back.” Takis’s hands appeared on Cass’s screen holding a dive knife, which he tried to slide under the strange formation.
Soon, Jakob was swimming with them as they began to examine the giant government weapon that had been missing for so long. Rina used her drone to take pictures of the area around the ‘head’ and then took wide shots to further establish their find. It took them a while to extrapolate where the machine’s body was hidden among the natural plant life and other things around the cave. It appeared the legs were locked together, and the arms were spread eagle. A thick sea g
rass had grown to cover the feet and part of the legs. Coral was everywhere.
Rina sent the map to everyone.
“So this thing was just crucified on the rocks there?” Martin asked.
“Kind of looks like it, but…” Jakob said. “I doubt it. I mean, where are you going to get nails that big?”
Cass shook her head. It was hard to tell if Jakob was kidding or not sometimes. She forwarded the pictures of the Cudgel to her personal email account. Later, she’d send them on to Linden with a message that they’d found it, and that a cleanup team is needed to seal off the area and begin the recovery operation. They’d found it.
“My god, it’s just enormous,” Martin said. “I knew the dimensions, but wow.”
Cass hoped that the monstrous robot would prove a worthy find for Martin, for as long as he had it in his possession. He’d done the work over the years and it had paid off for him, but it had also paid off for the government to place someone on his crew, just in case.
“What’s beyond the Cudgel? Is it just a wall of rock, or what?” Rina asked.
“Let’s see.” Ozzie’s camera began to pan around the head unit. “I don’t know. There’s too much of this coral and other stuff covering it. We’d have to clear it off.”
His brother spoke as well. “Yeah. I’m down by this thing’s crotch, I think. And I can’t even see the hull at all. I occasionally see a swath of dark blue paint, but man, I can’t see what’s beyond the bot.”
“Hey. As long as you’re checking out crotches…” Jakob said.
“Stay away from me, Jakob.”
“You’ll get lonely at sea eventually,” Jakob laughed.
Rina keyed her mic. “Why would you naturally be the first he came to if he got lonely at sea?”
“I think it’s some kind of law of the sea,” Cass said. “Leftover from pirate times.” She gave a weak chuckle, but couldn’t take her eyes off the little bit of uncovered head piece of the long lost war machine. That uncovered chunk of forward window was immense. Cass had grown up in New York City in an apartment that faced the Empire State Building. Every morning she’d look out the window and marvel at the building’s style, and how immense it was. There were other buildings that were taller and had their own unique styles, but the Empire State held a soft spot in her heart. Maybe that’s why she was so fond of the Cudgel, A-9. It was larger than the Empire State Building by a good fifty feet, sported some of the same colors, and, when she looked at the Cudgel, she thought she could see the same style of lines in the battle machine’s arms and legs, the front panels across the chest were reminiscent of the windows on the building, and certainly the unfinished one hundred and second floor landing looked like a big influence on the head’s viewport.
“What should we do now?” Ozzie asked.
Cass held her breath a moment to see what Martin would say.
“Put a marker there, so we can get back easier. Cass, bring your drone up for recharging. Rina, keep yours on station and get footage of every inch you can. If you get tired, switch with Cass. Guys, start heading up, take your stops on the way. Don’t want anyone getting the bends.” Martin’s feed was silent a moment. “Good work everyone.”
Cass began to bring Mister Punchy back up to the surface, but stopped partway up. “You guys need something to hold onto for your breaks?”
Jakob answered her. “That’s not necessary.”
“But we’ll take it,” Takis said. “Why make it tougher than it has to be? Plus, I’m super lazy.”
Cass slowly brought the drone up, pausing for the men to acclimate to the new depths, then moved up to the next level, and continued until they all surfaced.
“Everyone take thirty minutes to get back on your feet, eat something, and then we’ll meet in the dining hall for debrief, discussion and high fives.” Martin didn’t sound thrilled when he said it. Normally, if they’d found a treasure, they’d be whooping it up or shouting with glee. Today, they seemed somber and dark.
Once she helped everyone get aboard and locked down Mister Punchy on the deck, Cass stood and patted Rina on the shoulder. “I’ll see you in a few. Need anything?”
Rina was still using her drone to collect images. “I’m fine.”
Cass left the control room and walked down the hall to her quarters. She locked the portal behind her and pulled out the satellite phone. As she began putting in the passwords to access the line, the light in her cabin went out. She made a note to get a new bulb and raised the phone to her ear. It too had stopped working. Cass pressed the power button on the phone, but it wouldn’t come back on. She wrapped the phone back up in the wool sock and shoved it into the hiding place she’d located on this new ship, at the back of the small closet.
In the hall, she heard the brothers shouting about the power. As they passed her quarters, she stepped out. “What the hell?” Cass said.
“I know, right?” Takis said. “Where you right in the middle of a Super Mario level too? I was kicking Ozzie’s ass.”
“No proof,” Ozzie replied. “Power went out, didn’t save it. No proof you were beating me.”
They met everyone else in the dining hall – one of the few rooms that had good lighting coming in from the windows. “What’s going on?” Cass asked.
“No idea,” Rina said. “I was still getting the last of the photos of the Cudgel and suddenly lost control of the Champ.”
“What’ll happen to it?” Ben sat at the end of the dining table, drinking coffee from a mug that read “Divers do it Underwater.”
“The drone? If I don’t reestablish a connection, it’ll ascend to the surface and deploy its flotation devices.” Rina shrugged. “It won’t get lost or anything.”
“Where’s Jakob?” Cass asked.
Martin walked in the room. “I asked him to look at the problem and get the back-up generator going.”
Lewis and Caroline came in the room and dropped a large aquarium in the middle of the dining table. Inside were the two large spiky amoebae that the Suvari brothers had removed from the Cudgel’s hull, half-covered in water.
“Ewww.” Rina slid her chair away. “Is this really the best place for that? Don’t we have a big-ass research area downstairs?”
Despite Rina’s objections, everyone else gathered closer, and put their noses close to the glass. “Could it be some sort of barnacle?” Ozzie asked. “It kind of looks like one… From the right angle.”
Caroline shrugged. “I don’t even know yet if it’s alive. The outside is like rock, but this spike on top is almost like cartilage. It’s extremely flexible.” She stuck a long pointer into the aquarium and used it to knock the spike back and forth. “But look, we just got it. We haven’t done any sort of tests on it yet; we haven’t had a chance to use the computer for research, since it just went down. No clue what we have here.”
17
Linden stared at the model of the Cudgel as he gathered his tablet and notes. It was an audacious machine, to be sure—bright white and blue, large, and the control room was housed in a nearly-rounded head that looked a lot like a hangman’s hood, probably not by accident. It made the British and Western Russian machines look tame in comparison. Those units had disappeared as well, though not by accident or disaster, those went into mothballs once the war was over. No real need for them in combat now. Though Linden wondered if they would come back out should a conflict arise again.
A knock from behind him brought Linden out of his thoughts. “Your appointment is here.” Lou leaned into the room.
“Appointment?” Linden checked the calendar on his tablet quickly. “I don’t have anything today.”
“It’s Thursday,” Lou said. “End of the month?”
It hit Linden that he’d forgotten to renew a standing appointment on the calendar. He met with Major Henry Braun about the Cudgel every last Thursday of the month for five years now, since Braun had taken over the search project. Braun was a career military man, who was always kind when he spoke and Linden usual
ly looked forward to speaking with him every thirty days or so… until he started making the huge cuts to Linden’s department. Usually, the two had a good meal and Linden officially reported that he had nothing new to report.
At least today that would be different.
“Thanks. I’ll be right out.” Linden stood and straightened his suit. He fixed his tie in the reflection of a monitor and checked his face and hair as well. He wasn’t military anymore, but he still liked to follow the military expectations and make sure he was put together as best he could.
In the hall, he could see the major standing straight as a rail near the secretary’s desk.
“Did I interrupt a nap?” Henry asked, he held out his hand and Linden shook it.
“Actually, we may have something to talk about. I was busy the last few days.”
The major looked surprised. “Well, then. I can’t wait to hear.” He pushed the elevator button and looked up at the floor indicator above the doors. “How have you been? Staying fit?”
He didn’t want to admit he was skipping some of his workouts lately, so he lied a little. “Still at it, yes sir.” He and the major stepped in when the doors opened.
“Greg, down at the base gym, says you haven’t been in lately. Says you missed a physical therapy appointment or two. Everything okay?” The concern was almost fatherly in tone.
The elevator automatically began to ascend at a rapid clip. “Sure. Yes. I was travelling and just didn’t get around to rescheduling those,” Linden said, lying again.
“See that you do. I’d hate for you to be on sick leave with surgery or something else you could prevent.”
The elevator came to a stop three floors from the top and the men exited and briskly walked by the Major’s staff. He gave each a nod, but he’d trained them not to stand up and salute every time he walked in a room. They did it each morning and as he left each night, but he told Linden he’d grown tired of the tradition every god damn time he went to the bathroom.