by G R Matthews
I watched the lights pass us by ever so slowly accompanied by the changing sound of the motor. Becoming louder and higher in pitch as it closed the distance and then, thankfully, lowering, becoming deeper as it continued on its patrol path and faded away. We waited a few minutes, centuries, more to be certain it had gone out of range and with a final squeeze I released Norah's hand.
The start-up sequence for a Fish-Suit was pretty easy and usually accomplished from the outside. I could understand the thinking. Who, in their right mind, would be in a powered down Fish-Suit full of QxyQuid? Surely, they'd reasoned, that would lead quite quickly to panic and death. They weren't wrong, usually. However, the actual users, the first soldiers sent out to die, had, if they survived, pointed out that sometimes, rarely but enough times to be worth thinking about, that being able to switch the damn things on and off from inside might be useful.
Flicking the correct sequence of control surfaces inside my gloves and holding some down for a few seconds should be all it took to get the suit out of standby. Luckily for me, it was, and I watched the computer go through its boot up routine, checking and rechecking the systems, confirming they were all in working order. A few seconds later, my HUD was covered in the same arrangement of screens and readouts as it had before I powered it down.
Feeling the QxyQuid begin to swirl around the suit once more and hearing the comforting noise of the motors I even managed a smile. The exoskeleton tightened around my ribs, the little tubes woven into the suit inflated, or filled with water. It helped me breathe the QxyQuid and gave me a gentle massage at the same time.
I turned around and played the red beam of my light across Norah's suit. She was moving and as she looked up, I caught the fear in her eyes. However, there was also the soft glow of her HUD on her visor. I gave her the thumbs up and she, a moment later, returned it. Her suit was functional, and we could get moving once more.
FOLLOW THE PATH, I sent via the comms cable.
AYE, she replied.
THERE WILL BE MORE SENSORS NOW. It took a while to type in the gloves, but I wanted to get a conversation going to take her mind from the welling up of panic that must have battered against the fragile shell of confidence she had been maintaining.
I'LL KEEP WATCH.
GOOD. ALL SYSTEMS WORKING?
ALL GOOD, she replied and I half-expected a little smiley emoji to follow it. In some ways I was glad it didn't. The gesture would have seemed forced, an attempt to convey a feeling she wasn't having. At least, I thought, she was being honest with herself.
We began to move in slow steps towards the city. In places, the detection circles on the map overlapped and our course took us through the intersection. At other times the maps showed little corridors between the circles, potential blind, or more properly deaf, spots in the detection grid. They were an illusion, a false security. The designers adding little traps for the unwary, the untrained and the plain stupid. Enter those areas and you'd likely be funnelled to a site from which there was no escape from detection.
We avoided those, tracing the edges of circles, or walking on low power through the outer reaches of others. I kept up the questions, checking on status, on battery power, on detection grids, on anything I could think of to keep her mind occupied.
EIGHT HUNDRED METERS TO TARGET. Her words appeared in the little chat box and zoomed the map out once more. There it was. Our target and, if we'd come in on the right line, the hanger doors would be just around the curve of the structure. The plan, the one Abrahams and I had agreed on, said we get in close to the city, in amongst the noise, and follow the hull around the doors. Coming straight in we'd have been under the path of every submarine going in and out of the docks. Someone would have spotted us. This was, we hoped, a better plan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The strange thing about avoiding detection as we approached the city was the not knowing whether or not we'd been successful. If enemy submarines surrounded us, we'd have known we’d been detected. If they didn't, we’d assume they hadn’t, but we couldn't be sure. Not knowing was a strange feeling. It kept us on edge, kept me guessing and thinking.
When I was young my friends and I had played Hide and Seek amongst the inhabitants of the boxes. After a while of hiding we inevitably got bored and got to thinking about where the seekers had got to. So, against all logic, we would leave our little hidey-holes and go and seek the seekers. Finding them, we would follow them as they looked for us. It was all very strange and looking back, I wished I'd just turned around a few more times when I was the seeker. The games would have been a lot shorter.
One after the other we passed through the detection circles on our path to the city and no VKYN subs turned up. A good sign.
The sounds of the city grew louder in our ears. The mechanical clanks and hisses of machinery in the factory modules. A hum from the power generators, the small nuclear pods which sat on the sea bed, their power lines leading the way to the city. A whir from the turbines which hung in the sea, just off the seafloor, generating power from the current.
Early in some old war, one Corporation had targeted those nuclear pods. No doubt thinking that taking out a city's power supply would be a good first move, and I can understand that. No power equals no computers or defensive measures and, therefore, easy pickings. It is tactically a sound idea.
Of course, if you destroy a nuclear generator, even the small ones we use these days, what you get is pollution. Worse still, it is the radioactive kind. The sediment becomes radioactive for the next twenty thousand years. Fish, a staple of our diet, becomes poisonous. Algae, plankton, sea plants and all the little life forms which rest comfortably at the bottom of the food chain are suddenly a danger to life. At each stage in the food chain the radioactivity becomes focused and then we eat whatever it was that ate everything else. Hello, cancer, birth defects, lesions, and a rash of alopecia for both men and women.
Ever since, there'd been written rules regarding what and what could not be targeted in war. Those nuclear generators were off limits. Sadly, the same could not be said of people in Fish-suits or innocent babies taking their first breath of life. People, regardless of age, affiliation and military training, were regarded as fair game when hunting season, war, was declared.
My map showed the outline of the city's boxes come into range. The number of detection circles started to decrease and while I couldn't breathe easier, I felt better about our progress. We still had to plant the explosives and get out before they went off.
THREE HUNDRED METERS TO TARGET, Norah said via the chat box on my HUD.
EXTRA CARE NOW, I replied. It would be too easy to give in to the relief of making it this far and do something really stupid, without thinking it through. Especially for me. I've a history of doing that.
We edged around the box and after that the curve of a dome where it met the sea floor. None had any portholes or windows for someone to look out of. That didn't make us safe from detection, but a Fish-suit is easy to lose within the soundscape of a living, breathing, functioning city.
At the base of the dock complex, Norah and I crowded into a small dip where the outer frame dived below the sediment. The current here had scoured out the sand and silt and given us a place to hide. Above, I saw the dim glow of light spilling out of the open doors slowly cut off and darkness returned. Further around, there would be the raised section giving access to the moonpools. Those would be frequented by the smaller submarines and the odd Fish-suit user, though airlocks were much easier for us to use.
TIME CHECK, I said.
CONFIRMED, she replied.
We were a little early according to our synchronised clocks and planning documents. It mattered little, the explosives were timed to go off many hours hence and it was now simply a matter of getting them in place. The bright points in all this skulking around were the changes which Abrahams and I had made to the plan. We weren't going after the doors, just the controls and, if we were lucky, some hull damage to make them
think twice.
SET DESTINATIONS, I ordered.
SET, Norah said back.
On my map the view changed to a false three-dimensional representation of the city and the first of our targets was highlighted with a flashing cross on the outline of the hull. It was thirty meters above us.
I sucked in a deep lungful of QxyQuid, considering my next actions. There was every chance that the explosive I was about to lay would kill someone. A brother, father, mother, daughter, sister or son. Today, because of me, a family would lose one of its own and the queasy feeling in my stomach was unpleasant. I wanted to vomit up my guilt.
MOTORS ON.
CONFIRMED, she said, and I heard the subtle hum of her motor join with my own.
HERE WE GO, I said and set a short countdown. GO ON ZERO.
We pushed off the seafloor, the small motors lifting us up the water column towards our target. The grey coated hull of the docks scrolled past my HUD. I could pick out the individual rivets, the welded seams, the little hatches here and there. On the map the flashing cross grew closer.
STOP, I ordered, and we came to a halt. SECURE DEVICES.
I unhooked the first explosive device from my belt and checked the small screen on it. It paid to be sure that the timer was set for the right time and not, for instance, about to go off. We needed time to get away and I wasn't going to be a sacrificial soldier for my home city.
The dull thump as mine and Norah's explosives attached themselves to the hull would have been heard by no one. Even a city AI would have put the muted sound down to something biological. In a way it was, we'd put them there and as many doctors had tried to tell me, I'm only human. The contexts of those conversations varied, a lot.
NEXT TARGET, I said, confirming on my HUD and syncing the target with hers via that ever-present comms cable.
This was a little closer to the great doors through which the big subs passed through. Sticking close the hull, the motors pushed us through the water. We planted the explosives without issue and moved on again, repeating the process again at different hatches, panels and locations where Military Intelligence told us important cables and junctions were likely to be found.
In typical military fashion, we used a lot more explosive and a lot more sites than was strictly necessary. However, it was unlikely we'd be able to get back in and plant more once the first lot went off. I suspected that VKYN military might just be on high alert in the aftermath of the explosions.
DOWN, I said to Norah.
Our last site was not far from the moonpools and our plan called for us to meet up with Abrahams to set the last of the explosives. We'd need to carefully judge where these devices went and plant them in sequence to get the best results.
Dropping under the docks, we found in a moment of heart stopping terror, Abrahams and his second waiting for us. When both sides had lowered weapons and given the thumbs up, we set to work. A new cable came from Abrahams suit to mine and all four of us could now converse. We'd have to be careful not to get tangled up, but as long as Abrahams and I led the way we'd be fine. Every one of us had trained for this. Admittedly, a long, long time ago. Hopefully it was like riding a bike, once learnt never forgotten. My shins were covered in scars from bike pedals, it hadn't been an easy skill to master.
HAYES.
ABRAHAMS, I greeted in return.
YOUR TEAM READY?
WE'VE PLANTED OURS. YOU?
SAME, Abrahams replied. WAITED FOR YOU.
HERE NOW. RUN IN WITH A SUB DELAYED US, I explained.
DETECTED?
NO, I said. WE WENT TOTALLY DARK FOR A WHILE.
I could almost hear the gulp on the other end of the line.
WE SCOUTED HERE. SENDING DETAILS.
A moment later a new map appeared on my screen. This one was full of data and more flashing crosses. Some were in blue and others in yellow. Next to each was a little number from one to three.
SEQUENCE? I asked, knowing Norah was listening in.
COUNT UP, Abrahams said. SUIT TACTICAL PREDICTS THIS HAS BEST CHANCE OF SUCCESS.
CONFIRMED, Norah's words appeared in the check box followed a moment later by Abrahams's teammate.
COMMENCE, Abrahams said after a moment of quiet.
We rose towards the underside of the moonpool deck. The brightly lit circles through which the blurred interior of the VKYN deck could just be seen lay above us. This was the most dangerous part of the plan.
Someone looking down through the water might, if they were exceedingly lucky and possessed of amazing eyesight, note the vague shapes of the Fish-suits moving around. A Submarine coming in might detect us or bump into us. It was lucky that there were no subs docked at the moment. Though they'd have provided some cover, they usually bristled with sensors which could detect our movements.
WHY ARE THERE NO DOCKED SUBMARINES? Norah asked in the chat box.
She'd caught my thinking but twisted it to ask the simple question that really should have occurred to Abrahams or me.
Shit.
The dark of the ocean lit up in bright light, and I was forced to squint my eyes against the glare.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The proximity alerts which should have gone off now started to blare in my ears. The HUD, normally green, began to flash red in warning.
Even in the QxyQuid which coated my eyes, I could feel the tears begin to form and had to squint to block some of the glare. A moment later, my visor darkened to reduce the light just as it would do if I was welding a joint on a superstructure somewhere.
Beyond the lights, I saw the shapes of other Fish-Suit users and further away a single light was coming closer, growing in intensity.
My suit ramped up the power it drew from its batteries. I could hear the hum rise in pitch and the little bar graph on my HUD rose towards the top of its scale. The onboard computer clearly detected a threat and it was hard to argue with its assessment.
There are few armaments on a Fish-Suit. A wrist welder or cutter depending on the use you put it to was normal in times of peace. We were at war, so the Navy had gone all out and fitted a belt upon which a knife was scabbarded. They were truly serious about our ability to defend ourselves. Each of us had a sidearm too, but that was secreted in a little pocket inside the suit where we couldn't reach it in a hurry, or at all underwater.
It was hard not to acknowledge the utter uselessness of such a weapon when surrounded by water. An unpowered projectile doesn't travel far through this medium unless it is given a really heavy kick from the start. Our little popguns were unlikely to make the bullet reach the end of the barrel let alone any further.
I drew the knife. It made me feel better.
CIRCLE, Abrahams ordered.
Standard defensive tactic when surrounded. Put your backs together and present a prickly wall of fire and blade.
CUTTERS, came the second order when we'd rotated into formation.
The bright blue flame of my wrist cutter erupted into life with the single flick of my glove controls. My visor darkened a little further, but even so the ocean outside took a glow of the same colour illuminating our enemy.
Fish-Suit users, seven of them, perhaps the full cohort of the city, faced us and their own cutters sprang to life. No one moved.
ATTACK? Roth, Abraham's second sent.
WAIT, I responded.
PATIENCE, Abrahams said, backing me up.
No one wanted to fight. Not really.
To make a slice or cut in a Fish-Suit with a blade was a tough proposition. These things were built to withstand the pressure down here and to keep their pilot safe. There were any number of sharp things that were a danger to a suit, not least the teeth of a large shark. It would be the height of stupidity to build a fragile suit that would tear at the first sign of a sharp rock, rusted point of metal or hungry shark.
The cutters were a different proposition. They were built to cut through metal and that took incredibly high temperatures. We didn't carry a lot of fuel, not u
nless we were working in construction, but we had enough to last for a quick melee or two. One touch of the superheated flame and the suit would be open to the oceans. That’s not a good thing.
Add to that the exoskeletons. They increased your stamina by taking a large load of the effort of moving and heaving materials and yourself about. Add a little more power and they augmented your strength. Given the right circumstances, and enough power, a Fish-Suit could grip hard enough to bend steel.
We all, us and them, knew that some of us would die if we fought. It kept us all at a distance and afraid to make the first move. There was a change coming in form of an approaching light. If wouldn’t be a full-on combat submarine, but a smaller, shorter range sub kitted out for city defence. It would be armed and ready to kill.
FIGHT OR SURRENDER? I asked because someone had to.
We waited for a stretched second before time snapped and the reply came.
FIGHT, Abrahams said. CLEAR A PATH AND ESCAPE.
A new set of waypoint markers and a route appeared on my little map. Abrahams had put it together, his intended plan of escape. Punch a hole and flee. We weren't fast, but perhaps we could hide.
THREE, TWO, ONE, Abrahams words appeared, GO.
I pushed power into the motors and shot forward, wrist cutter extended in front. It cut off my vision, but that didn't matter it would do the same for the other pilot. His, or her, it was impossible to tell, own blue blade rose to meet mine. It was a reflex, an instinct. You tried to block the attack coming at you.
Adjusting the angle of my motors, I dropped beneath the rising blade and passed my cutter across the leg of my enemy’s suit. We were moving slowly enough that the hot flame had time to cut through. I felt the give in the material and the sudden change from resistance to nothing.
A life extinguished. A quick cut and the death of someone I'd never met and now never would. Recriminations and guilt would have to wait until I had a beer in hand. My first job was to survive. I pushed the motors harder, twisting around and shoving them into reverse so I could defend myself against anything following.