by G R Matthews
That meant a lot was hidden. If you were clever, you could use those shadows to hide in. Of course, the downside was you might stumble over something you really shouldn’t.
Plotting a course was an exercise in guess work. I had a start and end point, it was all the bits in-between that were the problem. I didn’t want to cross any of the shipping lanes where this sub’s engine signature could be picked up and recognised, but that looked to be an impossibility. Using the shadowed areas and topography to my advantage would be my best route and I spent a good five minutes tracing a path through them all before scrubbing the lot and trying again.
On the third go I thought I’d plotted a course that better balanced speed against stealth. Everything was compromise. The straighter the route the more chance of getting caught, if they were chasing. The longer and windier a course, the less chance but the more time for Lijuan to get bored and drive me mad.
Tyler had hated sub journeys. Even short ones had made her antsy. More than once she had screamed a sub full of passengers into celibacy.
On the map, the city faded into the background ocean, its faintly traced lines on the HUD vanishing until only darkness remained. There isn’t a lot to see on a sub journey. Not usually. No light penetrated down to these depths and not many subs carried any lights that would illuminate more than a few metres ahead. Extensive mapping of the sea floor and currents, carried out over the years and updated regularly, were the preferred navigation aids.
There were some stories of deep-water nutcases who’d forgone the advantages of modern technology, apart from the sub, the engines, air filters, and piloted their vessels by dead reckoning, maps and maths. The stories normally started well, with admiration for those throwing off the yoke of technology, and ended when said rebel crashed his sub into a sea mount they hadn’t spotted on the map. No doubt it was covered by a smudge of seaweed burger or fallen beard trimmings.
Without technology we’d be dead. Without it we might still be on the surface. Somewhere in the middle was probably the sweet spot for life, but I’d settle for every little bit of high tech aid that could get me safely somewhere other than being in prison and threatened with a painful death. I’m quite modern in my thinking.
I watched the passive sonar for a while. It drank in every sound from the ocean and filtered it into a readout that could tell me what was in the area. You still needed a human ear on the really complicated, delicate military stuff, but automated designation had come a long way since the early days.
There were few other subs around, nothing close and nothing following us. Some machinery on the sea bed, perhaps mining surveys or some other industrial process. Turbines that converted ocean currents into electricity. And not a lot else.
“Go and get some sleep,” I said to Chunhua. “You’ll both need it. I’ll watch the sonar until we are well clear of the city and its environs. This bit of the trip will be the slowest. You’ll need to take over when I sleep, but the sub’s on autopilot and the course is laid in.”
She nodded to me and spoke to Lijuan. The little girl complained for a bit and Chunhua had to bark some words out. This seemed to have the desired effect and Lijuan followed the older girl off the command deck.
At the bulkhead the five year old turned and stuck her tongue out at me. Apparently I was the bad guy here.
Chapter 20
The alarm was closely followed by Chunhua’s shout. Both caused me to sit bolt upright and crack my head on the underside of the bed above.
I rolled off the bunk and onto all fours, trying to orientate myself. It felt like only a few minutes since I’d laid down on the bunk to sleep after a long night of staring at a glowing green sonar screen which had shown nothing but the odd biological trace.
I remember giving the girls some breakfast which they appeared to enjoy. I had no idea what it was or had been, but I’d eaten my fill and climbed onto the bunk while Chunhua had taken Lijuan to the command deck to begin her shift.
Stumbling out of the small sleeping quarters and up the corridor, rubbing the lump forming on my head, I ran towards the source of the shouting. All around the lights, in the infinite wisdom of sub designers everywhere, had changed to red giving the interior the appearance of particularly vicious murder. Why they didn’t just leave the white lights on, which would be easier to see by, was beyond me.
“Shut the alarm off,” I shouted as I staggered onto the command deck.
Chunhua slapped a button on the panel and slid from the pilot’s chair into her own. “It went off automatically.”
“Yeah,” I said with an apologetic wave. I’d set it to do that before breakfast. It had been too much of a step to trust a fifteen year old girl to stay focused and awake enough to spot a threat on the sonar.
“It appeared right on the edge of screen first and then vanished. The computer didn’t recognise it. Then it reappeared a lot closer. That’s when the alarm went off,” she said.
“Strap Lijuan in and then make sure you are too.” I focused on the sonar screen.
“What is it?”
It was a good question and one I’d have liked to answer, but I wasn’t sure. “I’m not sure.”
We were still on passive sonar only, though the motor had picked up the pace, just as I’d set it to once we were, by my judgment, far enough away to become background noise. I scanned through the sonar commands, refining parameters, making the best guesses the computer couldn’t or wouldn’t. The thing was still at the sonar’s extreme range, but by the trace on the screen it was getting closer.
The computer log reported that the thing following met enough of the indicators to be considered mechanical and that’s all I’d set the alarm to do. Anything biological wouldn’t, shouldn’t have set it off and it wouldn’t be following us as this appeared to be.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Chunhua pull the last of her straps tight. Lijuan was complaining to her and kicking at the seat, more in frustration than fear.
“What now?” Chunhua said, ignoring the wailing girl.
“First, I want to make sure that whatever it is, is actually following us. Second, I need you to get Lijuan to be quiet. The sub’s shielded and insulated against leaking sound, but she is giving me a headache,” I said, which made me think of a drink and how I hadn’t had one for a while. Too long. There was something I should have done right at the start, or at least before I went to sleep. “Third, I am going to see what defences this thing has.”
She swivelled her chair to face Lijuan and started speaking a calming voice, soothing the little girl. A few moments later, I heard the theme tune of the clips show Lijuan had been watching last night start up again. Someone must have downloaded a lot of those shows at some point. No idea why and nor did I care. It worked and Lijuan settled down.
“Right,” I said, shuffling in my seat, making sure I was comfortable. With a swipe over the panel I paused the autopilot and with another brought up a false image of the seascape around us. The HUD danced and flickered a variety of colours and as the two systems synced with each other. Now, below us, I could see the faint contour lines of the sea floor. Dead ahead was still a featureless blackness.
“Keep an eye on the engine readouts and the sonar trace. Let me know if anything changes.” I relegated my own sonar panel to a small corner of the screen and brought up the attitude controls and the exterior monitors. A military sub would have a boom, a thin wire, you could extend out the back of the sub for a kilometre or two, far enough away from your own motor, to pick up very sensitive data. This had nothing like that. Pity.
A slight turn to the left, tracking a little west off our course and I eased up the speed a notch. Not enough to create too much more noise, but by enough to make us a touch faster than whatever was following.
I’d laid two tests for whatever, or whomever it was. If they changed course to match ours, well that would be one sign they were following but not definitive. For all I knew, they could be heading somewhere else along that track.
However, if they upped their speed also, that would be a sure sign. Especially if they started closing the distance once again.
We waited. I partitioned the screen again and started to parse the subsystems, looking for anything that could be a weapon or a defence. Of the former, there was nothing apart from the robotic arm attached the underside of the sub and which could be operated from the appropriately named operations station. Though I couldn’t see Lijuan being much use with that.
Of defences there were a few decoy charges on board that might confuse a torpedo and that was it. I might be able to fiddle with the engine settings and acoustic insulation to change the sub’s signature a little but that would take a long time, slow us down and probably wouldn’t work.
The other thing I could do was hide the sub somewhere amongst the topography. I had a flash of déjà vu and it was gone.
“It has turned to follow us,” Chunhua said, counting off one of my checks.
“Speed?”
“Just increased,” she answered, knocking the second check out of the park.
Someone was after us. It might be the military because we’d strayed into an area we shouldn’t. It might have been a concerned citizen noting that we seemed to be away from the shipping lanes. A security sub, assuming we were pirates or pirates assuming we were easy pickings. Or it could have been them, the Sio Sam Ong.
Either way, we didn’t want to get caught by any of them. At least not until were far enough away from the city and closer to the girls’ home. A place where our story could be heard and we stood a chance. Not here though. We were still too close.
“OK. Plan B.”
“You had a Plan A?” Chunhua whispered.
I ignored her and picked out a likely looking valley on the sea floor. It appeared to be deep and twisted enough that I could lose this small sub in it.
More power to the engines, more speed, and I nudged the nose of the sub down, picking a course that would drop us into the valley between two rising peaks. The lines on the HUD grew brighter and clearer as we dived.
“I really hope this map is accurate,” I muttered.
“Me too,” I heard Chunhua whisper beside me.
Chapter 21
“It is still closing,” Chunhua said as the sub dipped between the rising mountains that marked the edge of the deep ocean valley. “Can you go any faster?”
“I can,” I replied, not looking away from the artificial, computer drawn lines that marked out the valley, “but it would be a shame to smack into one of these peaks or valley sides. The sub might spring a leak.”
“But I can see the line.” She pointed at the HUD. “We are far enough away from them.”
“I don’t know how accurate this map or view is.” I tweaked our heading a little.
“But the HUD says,” she began.
“The HUD is based on the computer’s best guess. I’d need to send a sonar ping or two out to confirm its readings,” I interrupted. If I did that the computer would recalibrate its map and we’d be right on the money.
“Then do it,” she snapped. Lijuan made a noise from her chair, but whether it was agreement or just something to do with the clips I couldn’t be sure.
“The ping will travel a long way and give our location away to everything around.” I slipped the sub a little to the left, trying to keep us in the centre of the valley. According to the HUD we were just skirting the top of it at the moment and that was fine by me.
“But they know where we are.” She pointed to the sonar trace on her screen. I saw the motion out of the corner of my eye, but didn’t look away from my own screen.
“But we don’t know who they are and whether or not they are alone.” I was scanning the map ahead now, diverting my attention between the HUD with its depiction of the valley’s rise and falls, and the map screen on my panel. The valley could either be our escape or our trap. I needed to find just the right spot.
“But,” she started again. Having the last word was a teenage rite of passage, as was knowing everything. You became a true adult when you realised you didn’t have all the answers and that, at best, every choice was a roll of the dice. No natural twenty’s for me, mostly ones.
“I’ll send a ping when I’m sure we can hide it well enough.” I allowed her that. For my plan, C I think I was up to now, to work I’d need a good reading of our location. “How far away?”
“Sonar says one kilometre,” she huffed.
“Good.” I pushed the engines a little more. We hadn’t hit the sides yet, another knot or two wouldn’t hurt unless we hit something head on and the map showed nothing like that for a good distance ahead.
And there was the perfect spot, just two kilometres ahead. The valley narrowed and the sides rose making the whole thing look like some horrific cut in the sea floor. According to the measurements on the screen, the sub would fit with room to spare and if I played it right, the ping we fired off would be muted by the rocks. At least a little.
“Strap in tight,” I said, as I played my fingers over the panel, selecting a sequence of actions and tying them all to one button. I made it big, red and round and stuck it in the middle of the panel. “Warn Lijuan, it might get bumpy.”
As Chunhua whispered to the little girl, I checked and rechecked the sequence, studied the map another time or two. If this didn’t work, Plan D was likely to involve a lot of pain. Ours. And I didn’t relish that. I glanced at Lijuan. Perhaps, she’d have been safer in the prison. Choices, choices, choices. Time to roll those dice.
“Here we go.” I stabbed the red button with my finger and gripped the arm rests of my chair.
The sub picked up speed. A hefty kick of the engines behind us and whine of motors followed by a chuck, chuck sound as the propellers cavitated. The sudden increase in rotation speed, the blades cutting through the dense salt water led to the formation, and rapid popping, of bubbles as the propeller weakened the pressure just a little. It happened at high speed with every sub. If someone ever discovered the secret of super-cavitation, the ability to move at speed without producing all those sound making bubbles, they’d make a fortune.
Right now through, I needed noise. It would signal us out to everyone and everything around, but it would also confuse the sonar and microphones of anyone listening. The moment the HUD showed we had dipped below the rim of the gash, two things occurred simultaneously.
A decoy charge was ejected from the port side of the sub. Without any delay it began to spew out a rush of bubbles under high pressure. These grew in milliseconds and popped under the pressure. Millions of them, uncountable but noisy in the deep. Standard issue on most subs, the decoys were used to confuse torpedoes. A last ditch, and generally not very good, system of self-defence.
The second thing was a ping. A solid, high pitched tone barely a tenth of a second long, but it reverberated through the hull as it bounced off the rock all around. The ship’s computer struggled to make sense of all the echoes, but the HUD line shimmered and realigned a little.
I waited a second or two, listening over the speakers to the last of the decoy’s breath evaporate into the ocean. The moment it died, I fired the starboard decoy, aiming it high into the rim of the gash.
A last goose of power, another ten or so degrees of down angle on the dive planes and I cut the engines.
We sank towards the bottom.
Chunhua turned to me with wide eyes and a face gone pale. I raised a finger to my lips and nodded towards the little girl. Lijuan’s chair had turned also. She was no longer watching the clips show.
The teenager caught my glance and turned around herself, reaching out a comforting hand to the tiny girl. Lijuan was brave. No denying it. There was fear in her small eyes, tears welling at the corners and her mouth was open.
“It’ll be all right,” I whispered and took Lijuan’s other outstretched hand. I felt her squeeze mine in response. It tugged at my heart.
In the ocean there is no light to cast shadows, but there is sound. You can
play hide and seek simply by being the quietest thing around, by hiding in the shadow of other noise.
My Fish-Suit training, all those years ago, had focused on stealth and surprise. Those things had been tiny, man-sized, and relatively easy to hide amongst the structure of enemy cities. However, the main lessons still applied.
Distract the enemy with noise. Deafen them if you can. Get them to focus where you want them to. In war, this usually involved an armada of war subs driving full pelt towards a city and letting loose with every weapon they had.
Hide amongst the cacophony. The Fish-Suit users would be fired in torpedoes or dropped off on the sea floor while the enemy concentrated on defending itself. The torpedo method was not one of my favourites.
Lose yourself amongst the sound. A Fish-Suit soldier would use little motors, almost soundless when they wanted to be, to creep up on the enemy.
Strike hard and escape. This is the bit we couldn’t do. The robotic arm, our only weapon, was slung on the belly of the sub. A useless weapon at the best of times it was pointless now.
Never mind. As long as we lost ourselves amongst the sound of the ping, the echoes of the decoys slamming off the valley walls, and could find a good resting spot on the uneven sea floor, they wouldn’t be able to find us.
With a dull clunk we struck the sea floor, nose first and slid to a stop. There wasn’t much of a scraping sound and the decoy above was still going great guns so the sound our impact would be hidden.
I released Lijuan’s hand and started shutting down all the systems I could on the sub. Not totally, but enough to reduce the noise we emitted to that of a soft sigh.
Now we had to wait and hope. Hope they couldn’t find us and hope they’d give up the search pretty quickly.
We were relying on their impatience and my luck. In which case, it was mostly their lack of patience I was counting on.