Undersea

by Geoffrey Morrison

  Each of them checked the controls on the back of his gloves and nodded. Huth did the honors for Tegit.

  “Lo, you and Cern are going to proceed with the mission that brought us here. We’re going to need it as a distraction if we’re going to escape. Start with the engines, then work your way forward. Set the detonators for 12 hours from now and on remote. We’re going to stagger check-ins; the first will be 45 minutes from now.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Cern said, his tone leaving no room for argument. Thom knew he was right. It was risky having him go with Lo, given his lack of real training. At least searching for Ralla had less chance of accidental explosion. There was a huge part of him that didn’t want Ralla to see Cern until after he had a chance to talk to her. To rescue her. He recognized this as childish, didn’t care, but still decided it was crazy.

  “OK. Soli, you go with Lo and Cern will come with me.”

  They piled their armor with Huth, each taking just a sidearm. They set the thin trapezoidal communicators to vibrate, removing them from their gloves and placing them in their pockets. Soli and Lo took all the compact packages of high explosives. The multiple pockets in the coveralls swallowed everything, and looked no more bulky then when they were empty.

  “OK, remember your accents, always look like you know where you’re going, and we should be fine. Gentlemen,” Thom said, looking each man in the eye in turn. “Thank you again, and good luck.”

  When the elevator door opened, Thom and Cern exited and stood slack-jawed at the sight of it all. Cern marveled at the differences between the interiors of the Pop and the Uni. Thom, was staggered by the differences between the Pop he remembered and the one before him now. He quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed the two men in coveralls acting so surprised. To his relief, there was no one in sight.

  There was no one in sight. Odd. The concourse food stalls were all closed and there was no foot traffic on the walkways. Even in the gardens he couldn’t make out any movement. The light was bright enough for mid-day, but it seemed the place was deserted. Cern was still taking it all in.

  “This space is amazing,” he said, face to the “sky.”

  “It was even bigger before; that whole wall is new,” Thom replied, still trying to find a trace of the Pop citizenry. Cern turned his gaze down the length of the sub, and took in the new wall for the first time.

  “They built that in just a few months? Out of what?”

  “Good question. Come on, we need to get out of the open.”

  Cern looked around at their level and noted the absence of people.

  They kept to the edges, the cliffs of former ships towering over them, makeshift balconies and patios keeping them in shadow. They passed a few people, who smiled politely on their way to somewhere else. Thom relaxed slightly, knowing they could pass for natives. Cern started to get jumpy, though.

  “How are we going to find Ralla? What if they’re keeping her some place we can’t get to? There’s thousands of rooms on this thing. What if they just stuck her in some random cabin? How would we know? What if...”

  Thom grabbed Cern’s arm as they continued walking, silencing the taller man.

  “We’ve been looking for minutes. Someone knows where she is. If it’s not obvious, like a brig or a holding pen somewhere, we’ll just have to be creative.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Look at what you’re wearing. How many times a day do you see someone dressed like this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Exactly. We’re invisible. We make it look like we know where we’re going, and everyone will assume we’re off to fix an engine or patch a leak, or whatever it is that people dressed like this do. The people we’ve passed haven’t given us a second glance. As long as we’re careful, we’ll probably be able to walk right into wherever they’re holding her.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  “Then we start shooting. I don’t know, we haven’t got there yet.”

  They continued in silence, making their way towards the new wall. They could hear the low rumble of heavy machinery as they approached. Thom reached out to touch the patchwork of deck and hull panels that had been fused and welded together to form the surface.

  “They must have torn up half the ship to build this,” Cern said, following a weld with his finger. “It’s a wonder they have living spaces left.” He stopped short as Thom froze.

  “The domes. All the people. They’re in our domes,” Thom said, the weight of it all hitting him. “They’re converting this into a pure warship and dumping the civilians into our domes.”

  “No... Why would... Can you imagine? We don’t exactly under-populate. It must me horrific down there. What do you think, doubling, maybe tripling the inhabitants of each dome?”

  “That’s if they didn’t displace our people,” Thom replied somberly.

  “Oh...” Cern said, going slightly pale. “What if Ralla’s in one of the domes? How would we find her then?”

  Thom took a moment to consider this.

  “If they don't know who she is, and she's down on some dome, then she's as safe as anyone else. If they know who she is, she's here. If she's here, we'll find her. Let the Council figure out the rest. Come on, let’s try the elevator in this wall, I want to see what they’re doing on the other side of this thing.”

  “Lo, this is Thom,” he said as the elevator doors sealed themselves shut behind him. His voice held fear. There was a pause, then the communicator buzzed with an incoming signal. Thom double-checked to make sure the transmission was scrambled, then put it to his ear as the doors opened again and he and Cern stepped back out onto the concourse.

  “Go ahead.”

  “After you’re done in the engine room, I’m going to need you to head forward.”

  “Why, what’s going on?”

  “The entire bow of the ship has been converted to some sort of shipyard factory. There’s hundreds of subs in there. Hundreds.”

  “Wow. OK, Soli and I are finding a few choice spots, then we’ll head that way. Is the rest of the ship as empty as it is down here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “We can talk about it later. This is close enough to our check-in time. Let’s talk again in one hour.”

  “Got it.” Lo’s booming voice still sounded huge from the thumbnail sized speaker in the communicator.

  Thom turned to look at Cern, who was bracing himself against an abandoned food stall. He was the palest Thom had ever seen him, his normal healthy patina replaced with a sickly pallor. He was visibly frightened. Vomit erupted from him, covering the side of the food stall. He dropped to one knee, shaking.

  “I agree,” Thom said.

  Ralla was sure that her captors viewed her stares as contempt. In truth, she stared because the guards were consuming her thoughts at the moment. They had returned to their posts the night before, and while jittery, they were no more aggressive than they had been before. More importantly, they were still armed. That was the mistake. Ralla was sure none of the young men—they all looked even younger than she—would enter the makeshift prison now without weapons. The irony was that those weapons endangered more than protected them. With enough people—no, the right people—her band of refugees could overpower these four, take their weapons, and advance on the unsuspecting soldiers in the hallway. With any luck, before any of them could signal for help. With a lot of luck, they might be able to do it without anyone getting killed.

  A lot of luck, and that was the problem. Poorly trained as these guards were, their lack of training made them unpredictable. They might give up, or they might just spray the crowd with fire. There was no way to be sure. She tapped Dija on the back.

  “Yeah?” Dija said, rolling over.

  “Can you make me a list of everyone who’s had any sort of combat training? I know we don’t have any military people, but even if it’s just workout stuff, a hobby, anything.”

  �
�Yeah, give me a few minutes?”

  Ralla nodded and leaned back against the wall, her eyes still on the guards. She was going to have to lead it, whatever they ended up doing. Not out of any need for leadership; a bar fight is a bar fight. But if she was going to risk these people’s lives, she needed to be at risk too. There was no way else to stomach it.

  Unsurprisingly, the thought of bar fights turned her mind to Thom. It was odd how in just the past few days, her perception of him had completely changed. What had started as an innocent crush on this guy—a new and exciting fascination with someone so unlike any she had ever met—had evolved. Now when she thought of him, she saw his strength, even if he didn’t see it himself. It was odd: thinking of him now warmed her. She knew she was glamorizing him a bit, but she let herself have the fantasy. She wished for a moment that he were here, so he could take over.

  No, she laughed to herself, if he were here she’d still be in charge. She played back that thought in her head, and it ceased to be a joke. She thought it through again. Of course she’d be in charge. She’d be in charge not because of who her father was or for the lack of someone better, but because that’s what she did. She led. She was good at getting people to follow her, and to inspire people to do more. Not because of her last name, but because of her.

  It was the kind of thought that, once formed, seemed obvious all along. Of course she’d lead the fight against these guards, and they’d win, because they had to. She could do it.

  Dija had finished and had rolled back over to hand her the piece of white plastic they had been using as an erasable writing surface.

  “There are five or six more that might work, but these twenty have direct experience with some kind of hand-to-hand combat, even if it was mostly glorified calisthenics. It’s the best I can do,” Dija looked at Ralla, trying to judge her reaction. Ralla studied the names, twelve men and eight women. It would have to do.

  “Thank you, Di,” Ralla said, flipping the plastic over to the other side. She started sketching a floor plan of their ballroom prison. “This is what I want you to do.”

  Thankfully, the guards merely dismissed the strategic rearrangement of people as the usual shuffling around that always followed dinner. Even better, there was a guard change before they lowered the lights, so the new guards didn’t notice that the people near the doors were different then they were the night before, and looked a whole lot healthier.

  Ralla had counted on a force of twenty people with some sort of training. As word spread what they were doing, and it spread quickly, her twenty became close to a hundred. She turned away close to two hundred more. It seemed that too many days with little food and no showers had pushed everyone to a new level of urgency. She worried that the even the ones who did make the cut were a little too enthusiastic about her plan, no matter how hard she harped on the risks.

  The plan was simple, though: An initial wave of her and her twenty “soldiers” would take down the guards; the second wave would follow after to overwhelm the soldiers outside.

  Ralla thought back to her speech to her soldiers. She had repeated it, almost verbatim, so that everyone in the initial waves understood.

  “You are not to kill anyone unless it is in self-defense. Manipulation of facts created this unknowing army of fanatics, but these people were no different than anyone from the Uni. I know some of you want revenge, but your anger is not against these young men. They, personally, have not harmed you. We will let them live as that is the right thing to do. The people who kept us here will be punished, but killing these guards is unnecessary and not who we are as citizens of the Universalis.”

  Her words worked on most, but the logic was lost on others. She hoped she or someone else could stop those few from doing anything rash. In the meantime, she couldn't exactly be choosy when it came to those willing for violence.

  Ralla’s new spot was directly under the bank of light switches. The guards had controlled the lights during Ralla’s first days, but in yet another victory in her war of rule attrition, they had relinquished control of the lights to their prisoners. For the past few nights, her people had turned off two-thirds of the lights each night to sleep. Tonight, Ralla was the one who turned them off. She sat in the twilight of the fake evening, more awake and alive than she had felt in years. Ten of her soldiers surrounded her, all within arm’s length. Dija sat near the other door, with the ten other members of the first wave. Di had wanted to fight, but Ralla had insisted she didn’t. Not least because people looked to Dija as Ralla’s main lieutenant, but also because the girl looked to be made of paper and seemed to weigh little more than the same.

  Enough time had passed for their eyes to adjust to the dim light. She could just make out Dija down the long length of wall. Ralla made an exaggerated head nod, which Di mimicked. They both simultaneously reached out and tapped their not-sleeping army. One by one the prisoners-turned-soldiers rolled or turned to look at Ralla. In a move that looked like she was stretching against the wall behind her, she raised her hands. She saw Dija do the same.

  It all seemed to happen at once. Ralla slapped a hand down on the carpet. Simultaneously, she and twenty others leapt from their sleeping positions, and made the few strides to the unknowing soldiers faster than anyone thought possible. As she passed the light switches, she flipped them on. As her group impacted the shocked guards, half the room stood and rushed towards the doors.

  The four guards were incapacitated before any of them realized they were being attacked. No sooner had they hit the ground than dozens of fists and feet swarmed their incapacitated bodies. And just as quickly as their ragtag assault had started, it started going horribly wrong. The pressure of the mass of the rioting crowd forced Ralla’s shock troops into the hallway before they had a chance to regroup as planned and arm themselves.

  It didn’t matter. By the time the soldiers in the hallway, most asleep, figured out they were being overrun, they were covered in a horde of angry prisoners. Ralla herself had been carried into the hallway with the flow. She found herself face to face with one of the officers, whose panic-stricken look was not one concerned with his command or task, but of absolute fear for his life. The crowd kept coming; more and more people filled the hallway outside the ballroom, spreading in each direction. Ralla was stuck in between the swelling masses. She spotted Dija, who looked elated.

  “I hit one!” she yelled, waving a fist. Ralla couldn’t help but smile, but it faded quickly as the simple attack savagely spiraled into outright chaos. The push into the hallway was relentless. More and more people tried to flee their prison. Ralla saw one of her commandos with a pistol. They made eye contact, and she motioned for the gun, which he handed over.

  The noise it made as she fired it toward the ceiling was louder than anything she had ever heard. Her ears rang so loudly she couldn’t hear anything for several minutes. It had the desired effect, though; everyone froze long enough to look in her direction.

  “We are leaving this place,” she shouted, her voice sounding distant in her head. “But we need to be organized. I want Teams A, B, and C out in the hallway. Everyone else, please stay where you are or move back inside, just for a few more minutes.” There were many faces furious to have to re-enter their prison, but enough did so that she could organize her fighters.

  A few dozen of her team had fired weapons before, either in a simulator or as a hobby. This was her Team C. They were part of the 100-person push, and now stepped forward to confiscate every weapon they could find. There were more than enough, so four men from the initial assault crew got sidearms. They hefted them and pointed them like they had seen in vids.

  The real soldiers, bloodied and battered, were being tied up in the hallway according to plan. The officer she seen a moment earlier was pleading with a gaunt man from Team C. She realized everyone looked a little gaunt, but this man even more so. His pleading was intense, near tears, upset in a way she would never had expected of a soldier. The gaunt man told him to be quiet, a
nd poked at him with his rifle. Ralla stepped over just as the officer burst into tears.

  “Please, please! My brother!!!” He pointed vigorously towards the crowd still stuffing the doorway. Her stomach sank. Many in the crowd faced inwards and were looking down. She strode over, the eyes of everyone in the hallway on her. She pushed people aside, the sick welling up inside her. When she got to the center of the mob, what remained of the guard was nearly unrecognizable as a person.

  She looked back at the officer, who got up slowly, then ran over when his captors didn’t try to stop him. He fell to his knees and grabbed his brother’s corpse, blood soiling his khaki and jade uniform. Sobbing was the only sound as quiet spread from the circle to the crowd beyond.

  Ralla felt her own tears come and did everything she could to fight them back. Not here. Not now. Not with all these people. She watched the officer, no older than her, cradle his younger brother’s corpse. His tears created tiny clean spots in the blood on the mangled face. She couldn’t stop it; her tears flowed. Her breathing sped up, her teeth clenched. These were not tears of sadness, or even remorse, though she was sure that would come later. No, these weren’t the emotions afire within her.

  Dija had forced her way to Ralla’s side, and now looked at her questioningly, focusing on her wet cheeks. Ralla looked around to her soldiers, who looked back at her with the same questioning look shared with Dija. They were all good people. She knew all their names. The men and women still inside the ballroom, good people to a one. These weren’t people who would kill. Not without extreme pressures and stress. This boy had died because of her and not because of her. He died because of the situation, and that wasn’t anyone in this hallway’s fault, or this prison. Everyone had been frozen by Ralla’s tears. Dija asked the question they were all thinking.