The Black

by Paul E. Cooley

  “That’s pretty standard stuff now,” Vraebel said. “I’ve had ROVs on my rigs for years.”

  Calhoun nodded. “And a lot of the patents used in them came from the work that long-haired punk did.” Thomas sipped from his half-empty glass of iced tea. “The other half? Those are mine.” Calhoun smiled. “Besides, whatever AUVs or ROVs you’ve worked with before are nothing like the ones we brought.” Calhoun stabbed his index finger on the table. “Our stuff is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. And tomorrow, you’ll understand why.”

  “Bullshit” was what Vraebel had wanted to say. Instead, he’d just nodded and let the engineer talk. Simpson had told Vraebel over and over again that Calhoun’s tech was the best in the industry. “Come hell or high water,” the executive had said in his thick Texas drawl, “he’ll find the oil. And we’re all going to make a lot of money.”

  Vraebel finished his coffee and placed the cup on the console. The crew was working fast. Instead of fighting with the drill bit, Calhoun’s new design coupled easily. Maybe the old man wasn’t so full of shit after all.

  “Deck to Chief,” the radio squawked.

  He glared at the speaker. The voice was most definitely Standlee’s. He reached out and took the silver mic off the stand. “Vraebel here. That you, Standlee?”

  “Yes, sir.” He sounded respectful, but Vraebel could sense that snot-nosed attitude just below it. “Wanted to get permission from you to take out the AUVs. We want to get them diving.”

  Vraebel smiled. For once the little shit was asking for permission. Guess Calhoun made good on his promise. “Aye. You’re a go to take out the Zodiac for tow. Any idea how long?”

  There was a pause. “We’ll need to get each AUV about 500 yards out from the rig. And we’ll need to do it one at a time. So it’s going to take a couple of hours.”

  “Understood. You’re a go. Let me know when you’re done.”

  “Aye aye,” Standlee said.

  Vraebel put the mic back in its clip. At least Harvey and Standlee were finally going to get some work done. More importantly, they would be off the rig.

  He stood up and stared down at the deck. The drill string was dropping through the slot. A fifty foot section of steel was slowly lowered into the hole before another section was attached. Vraebel had never seen a drill string put together with pipe sections this large. They were usually 46 feet long or less. But these were a new design—Calhoun’s.

  Vraebel had been uneasy when he’d first been told they were going to use new gear, new tech, new everything. There were many horror stories of new designs being tried out on exploratory rigs with disastrous results. Drilling was dangerous enough without taking components out of the lab and trying to apply them directly to the real world.

  But Calhoun’s reputation was golden. The man’s tech had never been blamed for an accident. Whatever new invention he applied to a new well, it just plain worked. Or so the stories went.

  Vraebel believed in mitigating risk. After you see a man lose his hand while trying to do the most simple task on a rig, you realize just how dangerous drilling is. You learned diligence. He’d worked rigs where the chiefs pushed the crew too hard. When a crew felt rushed, they made mistakes. Mistakes meant injuries or deaths.

  Regardless of how hard Simpson or Calhoun wanted to hit the well-site, no matter how much oil might be beneath the surface, Vraebel wasn’t going to push his people. He and Gomez had worked together for over five years. The tool pusher knew to take his time. If there was a delay, so be it. As a rig-chief, Vraebel had never lost a crew-member and he wasn’t planning on putting that track record in danger.

  The crew worked in 12 hour shifts for weeks at a time. This far out from land, it wasn’t the normal two weeks on, two weeks off schedule. It was three weeks on, three weeks off. Some of his people wouldn’t even bother going home. They’d just head to the mainland, stay in one of the company’s bungalows, and hit the streets. The family men would spend nearly 36 hours getting home and after two and a half weeks, spend another 36 hours getting back to the rig. It was a rough life, but they were paid well for it.

  Vraebel picked up his coffee cup and headed to the back wall. He’d plastered topographical maps constructed from the AUV surveys to the west wall. Several safety and procedure signs covered the south and east walls. The north wall? That was the coffee station.

  He slotted a pod in the machine, pressed the brew button, and waited for the black coffee to drop into the cup. By lunch time, the crew would probably have most of the drill string assembled. After that? They would spend the afternoon readying for a core sample.

  Vraebel had half a mind to postpone that until tomorrow. He’d worked the crew hard the last 24 hours. Between offloading the supply ship and getting the drill string ready, they’d not had enough rest. The machine burped a cloud of steam as it finished brewing the coffee. He picked up the cup and sipped. Perfect. As always.

  He turned to the bridge windows and stopped in mid-sip. Down on the deck, Calhoun stood off to the side of the drill crew. He watched as the crew put together the drill string, a strange smile on his face. Vraebel groaned. The rumors were true.

  Vraebel had heard Calhoun wasn’t the typical engineer. Instead of sitting in the bowels of the rig watching TV and waiting for someone to tell him there was a problem, the man supposedly walked the deck before drilling started and during. He liked to be down with the crew in case there was a problem.

  “One more fucking thing I have to worry about,” Vraebel said aloud. If PPE’s star engineer was injured at all during this trip, Vraebel would no doubt lose his job.

  But Thomas was far enough away from the crew. He was near the steel shelter in case something bad happened. If there was an accident powerful enough to take him out, the entire crew would be gone anyway. Vraebel shook off a chill and took another sip of his coffee.

  Yup, that was that. As soon as the drill string was ready, he was sending the crew on break. A long one. He’d talk to Gomez at lunch and have him choose a skeleton crew to monitor for problems. Calhoun could wait. PPE could wait. He had a bad feeling. And until it went away, he wanted to take every precaution possible.

  #

  Catfish sat at his console. Two energy bar wrappers and three empty cans of Monster sat on the desk next to the screen. Bright, blue-white light illuminated the nearby workstations. When Catfish had first seen his work area lit up like a cube farm, he’d retrieved a stepladder and unscrewed all the bulbs directly above him. It didn’t completely diminish the brightness, but it left his workstation in a pool of twilight.

  Any idiot knew that fluorescents were bad for long-term computer work. They glared off the screens (even if they were matted) and made for tired, strained eyes. Catfish preferred to work in the dark. All his console backgrounds were black with green text. The custom software he’d created for AUV/ROV control and monitoring was fully color customizable. He’d created this theme, however, for himself.

  The four 27” screens created a panorama of alert and tracking data. The first two screens were lit with AUV/ROV readings while the third and fourth were for mission commands and navigation programming.

  The five AUVs were still diving. He’d lose communication with them very soon. When he and JP first arrived, the ex-SEAL dove beneath the rig and installed the remote radio/WiFi sensors. For a time, the extra bandwidth and radio reception would help Catfish correct the dive characteristics. But once the AUVs went below 15,000 feet, the reception would be spotty at best. After 20,000, he’d be lucky if he managed to get a status ping.

  The ROVs were different. They were attached to the rig via specialized tethers that allowed for near real-time control and communication. The increase in bandwidth meant the ROV cameras could send actual video, albeit only ten frames per second, at ridiculous depths. The only problem? The tethers had to be watched and constantly massaged. You had to spend a lot of time controlling an ROV to make sure it didn’t get wrapped around the drill string or the
tether didn’t get fouled by subsea fauna and flora.

  Catfish loved driving the ROVs. It was like a video game where you had to incorporate the sensor data to decide which move to make. The yaw, pitch, and throttle controls were affixed to a metal plate next to his workstation. Another of Calhoun’s inventions, it allowed Catfish to control the ROV the same way he played actual video games. It was slick and every other ROV driver in the industry would no doubt salivate in envy. If, that is, they ever saw it.

  Prototypes. Everything on this mission was new gear. It had been tested in the lab, field tested in the Gulf of Mexico, and then finally brought out here. The difference? He’d never pushed the AUVs or the ROVs below ten-thousand feet of water. Thus, the week long break-in.

  Catfish had tested each of the robots by sending them down to the trench floor. The AUVs had to travel roughly thirty-thousand feet before they neared bottom. He’d played with the ROV controls to get a feel for how sluggish they were at the maximum depth of 20k . Because of the delay between the electronic impulses that traveled down the wires and the return signal from the ROV, you had to think a second or two ahead of what you did. Otherwise, you’d have to over-compensate. Over-compensating could lead to a damaged ROV or worse.

  R3, his favorite of the ROVs, was diving steadily and without issue. The video feed displayed a vampire squid jetting through the water. The strange looking creature had no doubt been attracted by the ROVs headlamp. It kept circling the machine, unsure if any part of the robot was edible. Catfish smiled. The ROV was already eighteen thousand feet below the ocean surface. At that depth, all was darkness with a near-freezing temperature. The only creatures that plumbed those depths were ancient evolutionary marvels.

  He’d never seen a vampire squid at this depth. They usually stayed out of the lower midnight region of the ocean, but here it was. Catfish made a mental note. NOAA would want to know any biological specimens he found during the dive and exploration. He always made sure to send them reports out of courtesy. After all, their research money is what had uncovered this find.

  An alert window popped up on the left screen. He glanced over at it without turning his head. AUV 1 was out of contact range. A second later, the other AUVs followed suit. They’d descended into deep midnight and wouldn’t be heard from again until their return to the surface. When “the bitch” lost contact, Catfish sighed deeply and then turned back to the ROV feed.

  He was nearing its design threshold for pressure. If he went another three thousand feet down, he’d be risking the robot. Ever since Mass had lost an AUV due to a decompression incident years ago, Catfish had worried he’d make the same mistake. All it took was one minuscule air bubble to be in the wrong place and all the design in the world couldn’t save you; your two-million dollar toy would turn into a storm of undersea shrapnel.

  Catfish stopped the ROV’s descent and set it to hover. According to the coordinates, it would be well out of the way of the drill string when it dropped. But that fucktard Vraebel had postponed finishing up drill string construction until tomorrow’s morning shift. Apparently Vraebel was worried about fatigue. Catfish harrumphed. “Sleep when you’re dead, fuckers,” he said aloud.

  He took another sip of his third energy drink and realized his foot was tapping. Too much caffeine, he thought. Maybe I should get some sleep too. He’d programmed the AUVs to start taking video and sensor readings near the well-head. They would carry out their missions even though the drill string hadn’t yet been fully deployed. He’d have to wait until they surfaced or came in radio range to send them back on the same programmed routes.

  He’d no idea what “the bitch” would do. Number 5 had given him so much trouble with navigation, it would be a miracle if he’d finished working out the bugs. Catfish checked his watch. It was after five in the afternoon. Vraebel had announced over the radio that everyone was to get rack time and they would resume building the string at 0600. That would let the night shift do light duty around the rig and go to sleep just as the morning crew came on.

  Standlee’s stomach grumbled. It had been too long since he’d eaten. Period. When he and JP had taken the AUVs out into the ocean, they’d just had breakfast. After three hours of towing them offshore and setting the robots in motion, Catfish felt exhausted and starved. But instead of taking a break, he’d wanted to jump in on the monitoring as soon as they’d stowed the Zodiac.

  Number 5 hadn’t given them any trouble when they put her in the water. She started her dive immediately as programmed, but diving had never been the problem with that one.

  Catfish rubbed his eyes and his stomach grumbled again. The ROV was stationary in the water. He thought about putting it on auto-pilot so it would stay in its position, but instead he chose to bring it back up. He could check the sections of the drill string that had been deployed. If nothing else, he’d be able to update Calhoun and Vraebel if he found a problem.

  He took his hands from the controls, reached in a drawer, and pulled another protein bar out of the box. The wrapper said “chocolate peanut butter” but it still tasted like ass. Oh, well. It would have to do until the ROV was put away for the night.

  #

  The deepest parts of the ocean are known as lower midnight. No sunlight from the surface reaches these depths. Born in darkness and near freezing temperatures, the sea life is an evolutionary marvel that may very well be older than the dinosaurs.

  Some fish survive the incredible pressures of the deep only to rise to the surface. No one knows why these strange creatures choose to leave their birthplace and struggle against the pressure to taste the sunlight.

  Their bodies have molded themselves to not only survive the unfathomable pressure, but somehow reorganize their internal ballast bladders and float to the warm ocean surface. Evolutionary marvel or prehistoric cast-off, these creatures are remarkable in their abilities and design.

  Like the creatures it encountered at the extreme ocean depths, AUV 5 had been designed much the same way. As it dove from the surface to reach lower midnight, it expelled every last remnant of air. If a single air bubble was trapped inside the machine’s body, the incredible atmospheric pressure of lower midnight would result in catastrophic decompression.

  Its twin ballasts, looking like steel remora fish attached to its undercarriage, were filled with seawater to accelerate its dive to the ocean floor. When it was time to surface, the AUV would open a control valve and expel the contents. The sudden buoyancy of the tanks would aid its ascent.

  Number 5’s programming led it into slow lazy circles around the area where the drill string should have been. The other AUVs were further off, their cameras pointed straight at a target that wasn’t there. Number 5’s thermal imaging and blue-light cameras snapped the programmed 10 frame per second video and stored them on an internal SSD array. It would continue doing this until it ran out of space or it was time to surface.

  The yellow-painted robot, invisible in the pitch-black depths, continued its descent until it reached the well bore. It studied the spud site. Number 5 pinged the area, analyzed the data, and ensured to the best of its ability that the readings were as expected. The drill string hadn’t yet been dropped, so it found no sign of the metal pipe or the blowout preventer.

  Normally, if it found a problem, its subroutine to ascend until it was in radio range would kick in, but Standlee had programmed the robots to ignore a missing drill string. Number 5 was as content as a machine could be. None of its warning or emergency routines were running. As long as that was the case, it would wait and monitor. As the SSD filled with video, the AUV fired off another sonar burst at the rock and sand surrounding the spud site. The return was…strange. AUV 5 marked the reading, but analyzing the data was far above its pay grade.

  The robot continued pinging the area as it looked for other anomalies. Perhaps the strange echo was a glitch in its system. Or maybe something below the rock moved. Either way, it continued its pinging, gathering as much data as possible. Provided nothing of
import occurred, it wouldn’t begin its trip to the surface until 0400. It continued checking its internal clock, counting off the seconds until the ascent program began.

  Chapter Three

  Catfish sucked on his e-cig and blew a cloud of vapor above the workstation. Shawna rolled her eyes. The long-haired tech had been using the vape non-stop since the drill string had fallen into place.

  When the AUVs had reached a depth of 18,000 feet, they started sending radio signals. Catfish had awakened for breakfast at 0500. He’d scarfed down a world-class omelette, three cups of coffee (which he hated), and headed to his consoles to check on his babies.

  They were there, waiting for him to send instructions. Rather than bring them to the surface, he put them in a holding pattern while he sent down the ROV. Because the human controlled vehicle was tethered, it was capable of capturing large amounts of data and sending them back up the lines. Once it reached a depth just above the five AUVs, he cycled through the robotic probes one at a time and had them dump their data to the ROV.

  Raw telemetry, sensor reports, and thousands of small videos began uploading to the ROV and in turn to his consoles thousands of feet above. As each AUV finished its dump, Catfish’s RAID arrays captured the raw data. His programs filtered and sorted them by depth and time.

  From an analytical point of view, the videos and stills were the least useful. He’d deal with them last. His computer crunched the readings and began their statistical analysis.

  As his consoles lit up with reports, he gave them a cursory glance before shunting them to the shared server. He was sure Shawna would want to look at them before the rig crew started drilling the core. He had, of course, been right.

  But it was Number 5’s sensor data that made him call her. It had marked a group of readings as anomalies from its sonar and thermal arrays. Catfish had no idea what he was looking at, but it was something the geologist would.