by G R Matthews
Chapter 22
We sat in silence. Well, I was silent, Chunhua was quiet and Lijuan kept chattering on and on.
The sub lights were low and the computers were merely blinking lights, all the panels were off. Power plant was ticking over and the motors provided no thrust. We were a rock on the sea floor. A lump of metal wedged amongst the broken ridges of the valley floor. To either side, great walls rose and towered over us.
If I’d been on the sub following, I’d be wondering where we went. Even knowing that we had dived into the valley there were many options open to us. The two decoys and the ping were an obvious distraction. The ping to give a clear location and starting point, the decoys to confuse the sonar and microphone.
Did we up our speed and drive along the valley? Did we double back and take our chances, heading in the direction they least expected? Both were viable. It was fifty-fifty for our chasers. Pick a direction and pursue us. A moving sub was easier to detect by its noise, but a moving sub was an escaping sub.
The last thing they’d expect, I hoped, was for us to sit on the sea floor and let them go running in one direction or the other. The valley sides would confuse passive sonar or active microphones. Echoes bouncing off of walls, from ridges and protuberances giving false readings. Conflating some sounds with others, hiding others within interference patterns.
We were safe for the moment. Hidden. Silent. A rock. A lump of earth. Another bump within a multitude of bumps. The sound insulation of the hull enough to hide the slight hum of the power plant, the soft whisper of the air filters, and the annoying whine of a five year old.
The sound of the deep ocean filtered through the hull. The groans and mysterious cracks, the sighs and thumps that the ocean always gave off. They always reminded me of my old man clambering out of his favourite armchair. All the effort and struggle. He’d lived a good life, reached a good age, but nothing compared to the billions of years the ocean had passed since the earth had been born. You could forgive it its little noises if you thought about it that way.
“Will they find us?” Chunhua said, pulling Lijuan into her lap and giving the girl a cuddle.
“No,” I said. “They’ll figure we ran or doubled back. Give them an hour or so chasing their tails and we’ll head out on a new course. Nice and slow and hugging the sea floor. Now we’ve pinned down our location we can do that safely for a while.”
“Why won’t they think we settled to the bottom?”
“If you were running for your life, would you stay still, in one place, right under their noses?” I smiled with the question. The blinking lights of the low power panels gave the command deck the appearance of a cheap disco.
I saw her thinking about it for a little while. She was chewing her bottom lip and unconsciously playing with Lijuan’s hair. Tyler had done similar. It seems to be something girls can’t help, this playing with someone else’s hair. Perhaps it is a hangover, or desire to return, to the days of dolls and toy babies.
“But what if they thought that too?”
“What?” Tyler’s collection of dolls and her little fingers fumbling with the buttons on one of their tiny coats slipped from my mind.
“What if they thought that the last thing we would do would be to sit right under their noses? If that’s the last thing anyone would do…” she took a breath, a pause. “I mean, wouldn’t it be the first thing you would do?”
“But if it was first thing, then we’d actually have run and they’d think that,” I said, trying not to tie myself up with second guessing logic. A certain defeat, and I wasn’t about to lose this argument to a teenager. “Believe me, they’ll have headed off in one direction or another.”
“You are sure?” She said.
“I’m sure,” I answered. “In a few minutes, we’ll run a pulse of power through the passive sonar just to see what we can find. If that makes you happier?”
“You mean look for them?”
“In a way, I suppose. If it makes you feel any better, that is.” I shrugged.
“Won’t that help them find us?”
“If they are looking, which they won’t be. Not here. Not at the bottom. I told you, they will be heading off in one direction or another. The passive sonar will just tell us, maybe, which way they have gone. If we know that,” I sounded like I was trying to convince myself more than her, “then we’ll know which way to go a bit later on.”
“If we are hiding from them, why don’t we just hide?” She shifted Lijuan in her arms and the girl snuggled down a little.
“Because, well, we need to know if they believe we have headed off someplace else,” I said, clasping my hands together to stop my fingers twitching.
“If we wait an hour or so they will have gone though, won’t they? I mean,” and I could see her struggle with the concept. Clear signs of a youth not misspent hiding from parents or playing with others, “When you are hiding, you don’t want anyone to find you. And if we turn the passive sonar on we will be telling them where we are. I don’t understand.”
How do you explain the finer rules of hide and seek to a teenager who has never played it? The subtle strategies involved. The moments of patience, of risk, the time to be quiet and the time to make a run for it. In the Boxes, where I’d grown up, it was one of our favourite past times alongside stealing cakes and food from stall owners in the markets. It would take longer to explain than to do, but the doing might worry her and Lijuan. I didn’t want or need that.
“We can wait,” I said after a moment.
Silence fell on the command deck. Lijuan closed her eyes, and under the tender stroking of her hair by Chunhua, fell asleep. The older girl looked down upon her charge with a soft, warm smile.
“You like her a lot,” I said.
“She is like a sister,” she answered without looking away from the sleeping girls face.
“You have a sister?” I realised I knew little of her life. A bit about Lijuan’s father, not a great deal, but almost nothing about Chunhua’s.
“No, I’m an only child,” she said. “A lot of families have only one or two children. It is something of a tradition.”
“How did you get the job of Lijuan’s nanny?”
“My father works for Lijuan’s father,” she said, stopping her stroking and resting her hand on the small girls shoulder. “Lijuan needed someone to look after her whilst her father was busy and I was given the job.”
“What about her mother?”
“Her mother died,” Chunhua’s mouth turned down and sorrow filled her eyes. “Mine too.”
“I’m sorry.” There was little else I could say. “I’ll get you back home to your father. Lijuan too.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you rescue us? Why take us back to our city when you could have just gone home yourself?” The sorrow had left her eyes, replaced by challenge.
“Because… you needed someone. Both of you did, do. I didn’t really consider doing anything else. I couldn’t leave you there. A child needs a parent and a parent needs their child. You were both missing yours and being kept from them. That’s wrong. I couldn’t leave you there.” I spread my hands. “It didn’t occur to me. I just hope I can get you home.”
She stared at me for long moment that stretched out until it was close to snapping. “When did you…”
Her final words were cut off when the bell like toll of a ping reverberated through the craft. Louder and closer than it should have been. On one of the panels, a light started to flash. The proximity alert. Something or someone had found us.
“Strap in. Fast,” I snapped, spinning my chair around and bringing the sub back to life. How the hell had they found us?
Chapter 23
I had to back up first. Only a metre or so, just enough to clear the front of the sub from the debris I’d nose-dived us into.
With the throttle mashed as far forward as it would go and the now sharp lines of the map underwater map back on the HUD,
we were in a race.
Magnetic scan. Had to be. The only way they could have found us apart from a visual search, using lights that would only penetrate a few metres, ten at the most, and thousands of square kilometres to cover, was to use magnetics. It must have taken a lot of patience and someone with a good deal of experience. The sub wasn’t big and a lot of rocks had iron and other metals in them.
The valley was narrow and despite the sonar now picking up the sounds of the vehicle following us I had no idea who it was. The computer could only tell me it was a submarine, had two motors, and was larger than the one I’d borrowed. Stolen.
At the unimpressive full speed of fifteen knots, there was little chance of outrunning our chaser. Also, with the motors and power plant pumping out noise like a teenager’s rebellion, punishing the parents with more bass than a Blue Whale’s song, we weren’t hard to follow. Worse still, a torpedo would have an easy job of locking on and blowing us out of the water.
Our advantage, the valley itself. It twisted and turned. Fractured lines of rock, sometimes turning sharply at ninety degrees and at others meandering like a serpent along the sea floor. Straight sections were a rarity and those I did find we traversed with the motors screaming in agony, pushed way beyond their limits.
“How far behind us?”
“I don’t know. The canyon,” Chunhua started saying.
“Valley.”
“The Canyon is distorting the readings. That and all the noise coming off the motors is making it difficult to get a good reading,” she finished.
I pushed the yoke over to port, let the propellers idle for a moment, as the sub swung around another bend. Goosing the throttle again, we picked up speed. “On the bright side, they aren’t as fast as us round the corners.”
“Why don’t they just go up and out of the canyon? They could track us from there easily enough.”
“They could, but the valley is echoing enough of our sound back at us that there would be multiple ghosts of our sub. They could follow but do nothing.” Full reverse on the motors for a few seconds and we were pushed forward in our seats, towards the panels and dark view-ports. Banking starboard, the submarine made it around a tight bend in the valley.
“A torpedo would find us.”
Lijuan started crying and wailing. It didn’t help, but it had taken her long enough. I’d been tempted to start wailing the moment they’d found us. These were two tough girls. They’d been through a lot in prison, but I’d bet a lot of their resilience came from their parents.
I shook my head. “They don’t want to destroy us. If they did, they’d have fired the moment they found us. They either want you, or they’re pirates and want the sub and its contents intact.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to keep running,” I said, taking another corner in the valley at a speed that would have had my license revoked in a heartbeat.
“How far can we run?”
“Check the map, see how far this valley runs,” I said, my eyes fixed on the HUD, its contour lines and suggested courses and speeds. I was ignoring the latter two and just piloting on dead reckoning. Sooner or later, I reckoned I’d be dead if I kept this up. We needed something else, but I was out of ideas and kilometres from anywhere.
I took a moment, along a straight, to fiddle with my panel. In the corner of the HUD, the sonar screen appeared. A mess of confused green splotches, most of which were the echoes of our own engines bouncing from the valley sides. There was one splotch that pulsed, that came and went, as we careened along the valley, and it was behind us. Our shadow. Our chaser.
“Eight kilometres more and then it rises back onto the sea plain,” Chunhua said. Another ping rang through the hull as she finished her sentence. “What’s that?”
“They’re just checking their findings and confirming our location. If they fired a torpedo, even a wire guided one, it isn’t going to make the corners in here. Don’t worry,” I said. “See if you can calm Lijuan down. She’s terrified.”
“So am I,” Chunhua admitted. A quick glance over, away from my HUD, at the teenager revealed her trembling hands and wide eyes. Brave, but reaching her limit.
“Look after Lijuan. I’ll get us out of her. Don’t worry,” I said, forcing a smile and all the confidence I didn’t feel into my voice.
As she swung her chair around, I turned back the HUD and, ignoring my own advice, started to worry. In just over seven klicks we would run out of valley and be out in the open. At that moment, they could catch us up, shoot us down or just knock out our engines. We wouldn’t have a chance.
Seven Klicks, twenty minutes or so to think something up. No decoys left. Not enough speed to outrun them. No place to hide. Me, two girls and a robotic arm. My inventory of our resources amounted to less than I wanted it to. All we could do was trust to luck and fate. We were screwed unless the girls had a lot more of that stockpiled than I did.
Throttle up on the straights. Slow down, glide around corners, hugging the apex, applying the throttle as soon as possible. I was way past the range of my piloting skill, an edge of panic and desperation encouraging me to risks I would never normally take.
If the hull ruptured we would know about it. Not for long. Not long enough to scream, but enough time to feel the agony of freezing water rupturing our lungs, bursting our eardrums, forcing its way past our lips. It would hurt. It would burn and we would die. Hopefully of shock, or a heart attack, of a cracked bone spearing something delicate rather than the slower, drawn out lack of oxygen.
It is not dying that scares me, just the manner of my passing.
Five Klicks and no new ideas. Lijuan was still crying and Chunhua was trying to soothe her with a song that rose and fell in pitch with the motors. I’d no idea whether this was a conscious effort or just a symptom of the situation.
More corners, bends, a rising pillar of stone to be avoided. Four clicks.
Another ping struck the hull. The sonar showed them still behind. They hadn’t gained or lost ground. Sonar pings are a two way street. They tell you where everything else is, but also tell everything else where you are.
Three Klicks and the valley was beginning to straighten out. Fewer corners. Nowhere to hide.
Two Klicks and already they were gaining. The valley floor was starting to rise or the valley sides were coming down. It was one of the two. It didn’t matter which was the truth. I was running out of hiding spaces.
One Klick. No more corners.
“What the fuck?” I shouted and hauled the yoke over to port, cutting the throttle at the same time, letting the sub swing, before pushing it back to full power.
Chapter 24
Passive sonar is great. It was a wonderful invention centuries ago. Welded to a state of the art AI, which I didn’t have, and even the slightest sound in the ocean could be interpreted.
Where it fails and it is a big hole in its usefulness, is when the thing in your path makes no noise whatsoever. Only the weak beam of the piloting light, a warning beep from the proximity sensors, little devices that measured the magnetics, the eddies in the water, changes in temperature and a myriad other little clues that could tell you if something was close by, very close by, warned me.
Someone had dumped a great big pile, a mountain almost, of rocks right in the middle of the valley.
“Holy buggering fuck,” I screamed as the side of the sub scraped along the mountain. My voice was drowned out by the motors and the impact. I’m pretty sure both girls added their voices to my own, but it was an uneven competition.
Alarms sounded, warning lights flashed. The panels pulsed red and the HUD lit up with the words, “UNKNOWN OBSTACLE IN PATH.”
Really? No shit.
The pitch of the motors rose further and the lights on the command deck, sputtered, failed, flickered back on and failed again.
“What the…” and they came back on.
The HUD steadied and I rushed to turn the sub back to its course back up the
valley. It was sluggish and wallowed in the turn.
Behind us, our pursuers would have heard every bump, scrape and motor whine. Their computer would have already told them about the obstruction. Fuckers. Getting all that information without having to go through the trouser filling fear of it all.
“What’s that?” Chunhua, gripping Lijuan tightly with one hand, was pointing to a large and steady blip on the sonar. It was ahead of us. Around three kilometres out from the valley.
“Focus the sonar on it. Ignore everything else.” I pushed the throttles forward again, eking out every knot of speed I could get from the motors. One panel showed the power plant was close to over-heating and I didn’t care. I flicked that readout to the side and pulled up the local map.
It was empty. There was nothing on the map apart from the valley and the plain around it. The nearest city was way too far away to be of use. According to the map, this area of the sea floor was empty, unexplored or unused.
“It is a city,” Chunhua said. She spread the fingers of her free hand on the panel, and the sonar filled the screen. The large splodge of green had been resolved into several circles and squares, each emitting a different noise into the ocean. The computer was beginning to decipher and label some of the structures as industrial. Around the city, smaller green dots flitted. Submarines.
Civilisation.
We were safer. Not saved.
“Let’s go and say hello,” I said, adjusting the course as we rose out of the valley and gunned the engines once more. “Keep an eye out behind us. If they’re going to try anything, now would be the time. They might get desperate.”
Closing in on the city we started to pick up signals from the beacons which would lead the way to the docking ports. To not follow them would be a serious breach of etiquette and might signal to the city that we were hostile. So I turned the sub again, a slight nudge only and we were on course.
We were above one of the buried cables that provided reliable communications to the surrounding area. When the HUD told me we were right above a node, I swiped a panel, bringing the communications system online.