Back In Blue

by G R Matthews

  I gave her a smile. "Morning."

  "Lieutenant," she answered and I caught the twitch of her arm as she went to salute.

  "Hayes or Corin. I answer to either," I said. "Though, if I'm being honest, I've answered to much worse in the past."

  "Yes, sir."

  I sighed and moved to my suit. A swarm of techs tried to assist me and I waved them away. "I think I can do this myself. Where were you lot when I was grubbing a living off the job boards?"

  "I was making a good living running my own tech business," one of them grumbled. "Till I got recalled to the Navy."

  "Me too," said another.

  "Listen, erm..." I started and realised I'd forgotten their names since yesterday.

  "Liddle," the first answered with a disappointed frown.

  "Right, Liddle, sorry. None of us asked for this, but here we are, and I know that you know your job. I know mine too. Least, I can operate a Fish-Suit and I can damn sure put one on without help. I'm not two years old and getting dressed by mummy," I said, my frustration a bitter taste on my tongue.

  "Yes... Sir," Liddle answered.

  "Good. Great." I tightened the straps on the legs and stripped off my t-shirt. The skins would help the life-preserving gel flow, but more importantly they'd stop any stray hairs, scabs or skins cells mixing with the QxyQuid. This had the bonus, and one I was grateful for, of preventing me breathing in a stray pubic hair. Some users shaved everything on a regular basis, from head to toe and every crevice in-between. It just made me itch like mad so some tight underwear and the skins protected my delicate lungs, nether regions and sensibilities. "Liddle?

  "Yes," he replied, glancing away from his delicate work.

  "Where does this bit go?" I held up a tube that had never been part of my suit before. "And what is it?"

  "It attaches to the redundant servo motor housed in the upper section of the suit, sir."

  "Redundant? You mean it doesn't work?"

  "No, sir," and the honorific was grated out between teeth clenched so tight they could have metamorphosed coal into diamond. "It means that should the main servo for the leg exoskeleton become damaged and fail, this one will take over."

  "What about the emergency servo?" I pointed at the back of the upper section on the floor.

  "It was outdated and the space required for the additional defensive systems."

  "And you think this will work? I mean the old system always worked fine. Why change it?"

  "I wasn't privy to the design of the upgrades, sir. My role is to ensure they are in place and work."

  "Good. Right. Thanks," I said, still confused by the changes. Give me consistency and unchanging routine, and a lot of alcohol, and I was as happy as I could be.

  "Of course, should the system fail and you are killed in some horrible implosion, or lost out in the wilderness of the ocean floor, sir, I, of course, apologise."

  "Believe me, Liddle, if I die because the suit fails, I will write a stern letter of complaint which will stay on your record forever."

  Liddle looked at me for moment, his eyes boring into my own, before a smile split his face and he chuckled. "Of course, Sir. I shall endeavour to make sure any suit failure is catastrophic enough to ensure that can never happen."

  "As long as we know where we stand." I accepted his contract with a nod and smile of my own. "Now, help me plug all this new-fangled equipment into the suit and then you can tell me what it does."

  "Of course, Lieutenant." Liddle stood and edged past the components on the floor of the airlock. "I am sure that during the briefing yesterday your mind was occupied by thoughts of a level above that of a mere technician."

  "Too right. I was thinking tactics, strategy and whether or not I could get a beer somewhere."

  One third of that was honesty which reminded me. "Norah, I ran into the muscle-bound friend of yours last night."

  "Oh?" she said, taking a quick glance at me before returning to the task of suiting up.

  "I think all those muscles steal the oxygen away from his brain, however he asked that he be reminded to you."

  "He what?" She looked away from her work with confusion in her eyes.

  "He wanted me to tell you to call him when you get the chance," and I'd was relegated to the role of high-school matchmaker. Though this was a mis-match.

  Norah was intelligent, you had to be to operate a Fish-Suit, and if she stayed in the Navy she'd go far. If she left, she'd get a company contract and be in work for the rest of her life.

  Muscle man wouldn't make it into officer training, he'd remain a non-com the rest of his career or move into security for one of the cities. Even then he didn't have the spark of life to get on in life.

  "Right, sir."

  "Hayes or Corin," I answered. "He also stopped me getting a beer, so this is the last time I’ll be mentioning him."

  "Yes, Corin," she said, trying my name out. It fell off her tongue with trepidation and a little worry.

  "Well, almost the last time. He's not a good match for you. You can do better. Check out all the fish in the sea before you set your hook in one." There are times when I really should keep my mouth shut. Tyler had been enough of a teenager before... I closed the thought down. I knew that telling a young woman, a young person, not to do something was a sure-fire way to make sure they went out and did it.

  "Thank you for the advice, Lieutenant," she replied and I felt the chill from across the airlock.

  "Always free and sometimes even worth listening to, Ensign," I answered.

  "But not always?" She queried, raising an eyebrow.

  "Fuck, no. Anyone can give advice, doesn't mean they are qualified to do so or even have a clue what they are talking about."

  "And your qualifications?"

  "Absolutely none. Well, except that I've made pretty much every mistake and fuck-up that is possible to make while remaining alive. I know how to do things wrong," I said.

  "That does not fill me with confidence, Corin," she said and a smile broke her face, lighting it up.

  "Nor me," I said. "Once we're out there," I nodded towards the external door, "we best keep an eye on each other."

  "Your helmet, sir," Liddle said, holding up the article for my inspection.

  "I hate this bit," I sighed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The QxyQuid crept up past my chin and I took the last, instinctual, desperate gasps of fresh air. It touched my bottom lip, a warm caress, and I felt it tickle the back of my neck. I held my breath. An action that made no sense but one I couldn't stop.

  My breath whistled out of my nostrils, splattering some of the gel across the helmet of my visor. Small, clear globules which stuck to the thick plastic and demonstrated a stubborn tenacity to hang on. I braced myself, the last dregs of air in my lungs sustaining me for the next few seconds of my life. My eyelids blinked without command as the QxyQuid reached the sensitive lashes. It coated my eyeball with a thick, warm, viscous layer and kept climbing higher. Only the few grams of air, held at pressure in my nose prevented it from forcing its way in.

  The tight hood of the skins became sodden as the QxyQuid soaked into the material. The world swam in my eyes, blurred and twisted by the refraction and diffraction of light passing through the air beyond the visor and meeting the thicker medium of the QxyQuid. The Head Up Display, the HUD, flickered into life painting its green text and readouts across my vision. Within a second all the checks were complete, a column of ticks rolling up the HUD.

  'Breathe' my mind said, commanding my lungs. 'I need air'

  In the dark place of memory, of instinct and animal brain, the bit which commands us to fight or flee, the lizard aspect, the remnants of the evolutionary dinosaur, said don't listen to that voice. Don't breathe. You'll drown.

  It was hard not to listen. Too keep my lips clamped shut even as stars and galaxies wheeled around the edge of my vision. Oxygen deprivation began to make itself known. There was a war of the primitive versus the scientific going on in my
mind. In the end, they both lost and my mouth opened. My diaphragm spasmed, overriding my conscious thoughts and the QxyQuid was sucked down my throat in a torrent. A last, forlorn bubble drifted upwards through the thick gel towards the top of my helmet and I followed it with my eyes.

  I gagged. It was impossible not to. This was the worst moment. Right about now my body and brain were convinced that my life was over, that death reached for me with his bony fingers. Tyler's face floated to the top of my mind, as it almost always did, and I let the guilt, regret, grief and sadness come with it. It's been said that your life flashes before your eyes when death’s hand grips your heart. She had been life, my reason for living, my joy, and being honest she drove me crazy as only a teenage daughter truly can, and she was all I saw at times like this.

  The QxyQuid hit my lungs and they retched, contracted, twitched, convulsed in a vain attempt to expel the foreign material. There was nowhere for it to go and nothing to replace it but more of the same. I bent double in the airlock and heaved, the exoskeleton of my suit aiding my ribs in the expelling of the thick liquid. More rushed down my throat to take its place.

  It took a real effort to force my stomach not to follow my lungs' example and throw up the food I'd had for breakfast. No one needed to spend the next hour watching the chewed up remains of a thick pancake, maple syrup and bacon swim around their vision while the suit's filter tried to clear it up. Every bit of food was made from reconstituted algae and flavoured with chemicals that had probably once been illegal in every country, state and empire on earth. The fact they tasted fine and may have been a close approximation of the original product was neither here nor there. I didn't want to eat them a second time.

  As seconds stretched into long hours, my lungs refused to accept that the QxyQuid was providing every morsel of oxygen my body needed and kept on trying to get rid of it. Eventually, despite it feeling like swallowing the slimy evidence of an ongoing cold, my body took note of the fresh oxygen coursing through its arteries attached to the helpful haemoglobin and my incipient panic receded.

  Across the airlock, Norah, still in the throes of the fear jerked and twisted. There was no help for it, or for her. You just had to get used it. Learn to deal with it and move on. Embarrassment, fear and the high percentage of recruits either throwing up or shitting themselves when they first experienced it meant few trainees passed the Fish-Suit course. There were horror stories told in every navy bar from here to the other side of the earth.

  It took a special kind of human to make it all the way through to qualification. Stupidity and stubbornness were qualities the instructors sought out in all the recruits. Some of us were too stupid to realise it would happen every time, and the rest, me included, were just too damn stubborn to give up.

  I watched her struggle for a few more moments. The water between us was no barrier but seeing someone else go through the process wasn't pretty. I'd ceased being ashamed of my twitches, muted screams, and panic years ago. It was part of the process. I wasn't fearless. I was full of fear, but not of QxyQuid. In the deep ocean it provided everything I needed to breathe with the added benefit of stopping the pressure from crushing my ribs, ear drums and any other gas filled space. It kept me alive and much as I hated it for the first breath, I loved it too. It gave me freedom, made me special. Selfish reasons to be sure, but it was better than death.

  A few moments later, Norah straightened up and the gloved fingers of her right hand tapped at the controls on the forearm of her left hand. Everyone has a different start-up ritual, despite the navy's best attempt to make every suit and user the same. We all set our controls slightly differently depending on what we were used to.

  Most of mine were inside the glove and with little motions, taps and sequences of finger movements I could command the onboard computer and systems. Like Norah I had a set of external controls too, on my forearm but I kept those for the less used systems, or emergencies.

  Not bothering with the motor in such a confined space, I took the few steps over to Norah and tapped her on the shoulder. Her helmet moved upwards and I could see her eyes staring out at me through the plastic and QxyQuid. All distortion was gone now the air had vanished. I gave her the thumbs up and she returned the gesture.

  Hand signals would be one of our most used forms of communication. You couldn't talk with the QxyQuid filling your lungs. Any attempt ended in a gagging gurgle of nonsense and it was better not to try. In QxyQuid, no one can here you scream. So hand signals were a better option.

  However, this was the millennium of invention, said some advert I’d once seen, and with a simple cable I attached my suit to hers. There was a digital handshake as computer met computer, argued for a moment about whether they truly were what they said they were and, coming to a mutual agreement decided to play nice.

  Now, information and messages could pass between us and no one out in the deep ocean would be any the wiser. This was the way of most things. Submarines, even the big carriers, kept in contact by a succession of fibre-optic cables with each other when they moved in formation. It made last minute orders, changes and tactics easy to discuss and implement.

  Of course, once battle began the cables tended to break and shatter and each sub was on its own. At least, I suppose, they had the initial tactics to rely upon. AIs could have run attack runs, defensive strategies, but their time was taken up by filtering and classifying the vast array of sounds that made up the seascape. Unless you operated in the shallow waters near the surface no light reached the sea floor and sound was the source of all our information. Human commanders made leaps of intuition, grand plans, daring escapes and fuck ups much faster and with greater unpredictability than an AI. Chaos was a valued tactic in an underwater battle. The more you could contain and control the chaos, the more successful you would be.

  "Ready?" I sent the short line of text to Norah's suit.

  "Yes," came her verbose response.

  As one we turned towards the outer airlock door and waited for it to slide open.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Living in the cities you're all too aware of the crushing pressure of the ocean above the domes and boxes which make up our little world. There is little freedom within the streets and corridors. Even those rich enough to live in the domes with the space above their heads, the fake day and night cycle of projected sun and lights which mimic its life preserving radiation, the knowledge that you're at the bottom of the ocean never leaves.

  We are a species designed to live out in the wilds, with our wits, inventiveness and ruthless desire to survive being the only things between us and a short existence. In the boxes or domes, life was preserved by technology and thick hull plating. A single crack, a weakness in the hull and the sea would come rushing in. Death wouldn't be pretty, it rarely was, and it wouldn't be quick.

  In the cities our natural talents were stymied, useless, pointless. In all the clips I'd watched over the years, in the images held in the museum of the pre-flood, the sky above the heads of the inhabitants and actors went on forever. At night the stars came out and the silver moon patrolled the heavens, shining down and protecting those asleep and awake alike.

  We'd not lived there for more years, decades, centuries than I wanted to think about. One day, we were told, we would go back. In NOAH there was a vague plan to make our way back to the surface, once it was safe enough. Other corporations had other ideas, some mere flights of fancy and others much more realistic. For us to re-emerge from the depths would be like the first creature to ever step fin on land, which in turn gave rise to the mighty dinosaurs which had once ruled the world.

  Yet even now, trapped behind the bubble of my visor, breathing the thick QxyQuid, I couldn't imagine that the promised freedom could be any better than that which I had now. No-one chattered in my ear. No-one gave orders or demanded something of me. Sure, I had a plan, an objective to complete, but in the ocean, in a Fish-Suit, was the closest thing to freedom I'd ever experience. No one could take the sea fro
m me and there was no place I'd rather be. It was my serenity. Something that eluded me through every waking hour.

  ALL SYSTEMS CHECK

  The green words sent from Norah's Fish-suit across the cable to my own broke my reverie.

  ACKNOWLEDGED, I sent back using the built in and personalised communication menu and a few twitches of my glove controls.

  In a little computer-generated window on my HUD, a map of the ocean floor around the city flickered into being. Waypoints, little diamonds linked by routes which followed the contours and avoided obstructions, real and imagined. A simple exercise designed to test the suits and their users, it was also to foster some teamwork between the two of us and those back at base who would be trying to discover and track our whereabouts.

  MOVE TO WAYPOINT ALPHA, I sent to Norah along with a set of instructions for her on-board computer. This bit of the journey could be done on auto-pilot. Alpha was our start point. From there we had the simple task of avoiding the sonar traps, pressure sensitive cables, automated defences and a thousand other little tricks the city used to defend itself from unwanted visitors. On a war footing, everything was turned on and working though I hoped they had at least set the guns and torpedo launchers to safe fire. A lock on and tagging us would be enough, no need to waste ammunition on friendly units, at least not yet.

  Friendly fire, an oxymoron of titanic proportions, was a reality of war and one I didn't want to fall foul of on a training mission.

  I felt the kick of my suits motors and my HUD showed Norah's had initiated the same programme of movement. Nothing to do but sit back and let the suits take us through the dark to our starting point. Normally, on a job, I'd have a loaded up a clips to watch and have my earphones wedged in place. A way to pass the time. Apparently the Navy frowned on this practice. Something about constant concentration on the seascape around us. Frankly, peering into the utter black of the deep was boring, soporific and mind-numbingly dull.