Invisible Armies

by Jon Evans

“No.”

  They look at each other.

  “Can you really sink the ship?” Danielle asks.

  Keiran hesitates. “Good question. I own the system, but I’m not sure what the system can do yet.” There appears to be a seawater ballast system, big tanks all along both sides of the ship, with maintenance doors that open into them from the engine room. There will be safety constraints that prevent these doors being opened while the ship is at sea. If such constraints are hardware, there is nothing Keiran can do. But if they are software, the safety issue is sufficiently fundamental that such constraints are likely hard-coded into the system, but it might be possible for Keiran to decompile and rebuild the software without its safeties. Possible but very difficult. Like programming an autopilot to crash into a mountain.

  “The short answer is maybe?”

  “Correct.”

  “What about the fuel tanks?” Danielle asks.

  “What about them?”

  “Do they open up too?”

  Keiran checks. “Yes.” There’s an emergency dumping system that voids the fuel tanks into the ocean in case of fire; he would have to trigger an emergency alarm, but that should be relatively trivial. “Do you want to –”

  “I’m not sure. But get that ready. And sink the ship.”

  “Then how do we –”

  “Just do it,” she says.

  Keiran nods. “I’m on the motherfucker.” He leans over the laptop, his face intent, his fingers a blur of motion but the rest of his body as still as a meditating Zen master.

  * * *

  “Danielle,” Laurent calls out, from the port-side door, which is opened the available inch. “This is ridiculous. I appreciate your need to try to escape, but it has failed. Open these doors or I can no longer guarantee your safety.”

  “I never believed in your safety in the first place.”

  “I’m serious. We’ll use explosives to break in if we have to. The shockwave will probably kill you. Without counting the way shrapnel will fly around the room. Neither of you will survive. Please don’t make it necessary.”

  “Keep him talking,” Keiran says, his voice low. “I think I’m close.”

  Danielle says, loudly, “You’re going to kill us both anyways.”

  “That’s not true! Fucking merde. I want you to live, Danielle. I want you both to live. I respect you both. I’m sorry there is no way out for Keiran. But there is still an escape for you.”

  “Prove it,” Danielle says.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Up to you. But if you convince me that you’ll really let me live, I’ll open that door.”

  Laurent grunts with frustration and retreats, presumably to think.

  “You mean that?” Keiran asks, keeping his voice distant, as if discussing the weather.

  Danielle shrugs. “Hardly matters. I can’t think of any way he can possibly prove it.”

  * * *

  “Enough,” Laurent says, his voice taut. “There will be no more conversation. You will have no more chances. Open this door now or we will blow it open and kill you both.”

  Danielle looks at Keiran.

  “I’m there,” he says.

  “So do it.”

  “I already did.” At least he thinks so. He has rebuilt WHEELHOUSE from source, without any safety constraints whatsoever, and ordered it to open the ballast access doors; but there are no sensors attached to those doors, no indication whether he succeeded or if some subtle, tiny bug caused his attempt to fail. “It’ll be slow if it works. Half an hour at least.”

  “Then do the other thing,” she says.

  “I already did.” That much he is confident of. Fuel is venting from Lazarus‘s tanks into the open ocean at the maximum possible rate.

  Danielle smiles and calls out. “I have some bad news for you, sweetie.”

  Laurent sighs. “Do tell.”

  “You set off that bomb of yours, and you kill everyone on this ship.”

  “Really,” he says. “What do we die of, broken hearts?”

  “No. If Keiran doesn’t type a special password into his laptop every sixty seconds, the electrical systems go haywire, sparks fly in this baby’s gas tank, and everyone goes boom.”

  There is a brief buzz of conversation. Then Laurent calls out, “Nice try. Even if you could cause a spark, the oil tanks are airtight. Nothing burns without oxygen. No more talk, Danielle, it’s time –”

  “Oh, they’ve got plenty of oxygen now,” Danielle says. “You should stop paying quite so much attention to us and take a look outside the nearest porthole. If you did, you might just notice that we’re bobbing up and down in the middle of a big-ass oil slick.”

  This time, the conversation outside goes on longer and is considerably more heated. Keiran grins. It’s a bluff, he can’t make sparks fly inside the oil tanks, but they don’t know that. “You’re brilliant,” he says.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ve disabled all safety systems. I don’t think anything can stop the ship from sinking now. Unless they can bail eighty gallons a minute.”

  “Great. Can you drop the lifeboats onto the deck?”

  Keiran nods. There are four lifeboats hanging on the sides of the fore and aft superstructures; the harnesses they hang in are controlled from WHEELHOUSE’s control panel.

  “Do it,” Danielle says.

  “I don’t suppose you ever learned how to fly a helicopter?” Keiran asks, as he remotely lowers the lifeboats.

  “I think I was sick that day in grade school,” Danielle says sarcastically. “That’s how they get out, not us. We paddle.”

  Keiran shakes his head. “They won’t let us get to a lifeboat. They’ll kill us first.”

  “Not if they have to leave in a real hurry. Like, for instance, if that huge oil slick all around the ship was on fire.” Danielle looks to the corner of the room. “Oh, look. A welding torch.”

  Chapter 40

  Danielle has never used a welding torch before, and has only seen it done once before, long ago, in Oakland. Fortunately it isn’t complicated. The torch is already connected to a propane tank. She slips the welding goggles on, squeezes the trigger, thumbs the ignition switch, and a long needle of white flame hisses from the torch’s nozzle. A rubber band around the trigger ensures it will stay on as long as needed.

  No one is waiting for them at the aft door. Not a surprise; the platform is awkwardly narrow. Probably there is someone on top of the ladder in case they try to escape that way. That won’t be a problem. No one in their right minds will climb down that ladder, starting about thirty seconds from now. Danielle opens the door, pushes up the welding goggles, and looks out. The oil slick that surrounds the ship extends out for a good hundred feet in every direction, flat as a pancake; the ocean’s swells travel only about five feet into its thickness before dissipating. The oil shimmers with fantastic, kaleidoscopic rainbow swirls, unexpectedly beautiful. She feels a faint twinge of guilt at having polluted the sea.

  Behind her she hears Laurent’s voice: “What in the name of God are you two doing?” She smiles. She has never heard him sound frightened before. She supposes that what she is about to do is crazy, but better that than let him win.

  Danielle opens the door, checks the rubber band on the welding torch, lobs it underhand off the ship, and shuts the door immediately.

  She expects a massive Hollywood explosion. Instead, through the door’s porthole, she sees a mound of flame erupt and spread, until the flames have climbed high and far enough to swallow all her field of vision out to the horizon. It looks as if she has set the entire Pacific Ocean on fire.

  “Sweet mother of God,” someone says reverentially, in a South African accent.

  Keiran enters the hallway. Like her, he wears canvas coveralls and gloves, rubber boots, and a welding mask. “I think you got their attention,” he says quietly.

  “Did you do it?”

  “Yes. Ten thousand SOSes. Bit redundant if you ask me. They’l
l see this fire from orbit.”

  Behind them they here Laurent’s voice say, sharply, “Immediate evacuation. Get to the chopper. Now.”

  The whole ship shudders violently, then, sending both Danielle and Keiran hard into the corridor wall, they barely get their hands up to slow the impact. The fire must have entered the still-half-full fuel tanks; in that enclosed space, the conflagration would have been much like an explosion. The ship rights itself – but not completely; it has developed a pronounced list.

  “I think it’s better we go sooner not later,” Danielle says.

  “Yeah.”

  They look at each other. Danielle reaches her gloved left hand out to Keiran’s and squeezes it, tightly. Then she takes a deep breath, flings open the door, and steps out into what looks like the fires of Hell.

  The actual flames from the burning oil don’t quite reach the platform at the base of the ladder, but both the air and the metal – including platform and ladder – are already too hot to breathe, or touch barehanded. She scrambles up the ladder as fast as she can, trying to ignore the brown burn-scars appearing on her gloves, the agonizing protests of her broken finger, or the searing pain where her skin is exposed at wrists and neck. She wants to breathe starting halfway up, her upward exertion seems to have consumed all her oxygen in just a few seconds, but she holds her breath with desperate discipline. The air is both too hot to breathe and too thick with black, acrid smoke. The deafening sound of the flames, all around her, sounds like the roar of an enraged god. She throws herself over the edge, onto the aft deck, and into the door furthest to the right.

  The interior air of the scuba room is cool and breathable. Keiran follows her in and she slams the door shut. It feels like closing a furnace. They peel off their coveralls and pull on wet suits. She has to help Keiran, who doesn’t realize that the zipper goes on the back. He is no use at all assembling buoyancy vests, scuba tanks, and the ‘octopus’ breathing apparatus that connects them. She tries to work as fast as she can, but it isn’t easy, working with a broken finger and hands shaking with adrenalin, on a ship prone to sudden lurching shifts. Outside, the flames have died down a little, but the ship is sinking closer to them. By now Laurent should be gone in the helicopter. They can’t hear anything over the roar of the flames.

  At least the scuba tanks are filled to 5000 psi, far more than she had hoped for; 3000 is more usual, these tanks must be specially made. Enough to stay underwater for more than two hours if they don’t go too deep. She pulls on neoprene gloves, hood, and boots, and inserts the hem of the hood under her wet suit’s neck. Keiran follows her example. He is trembling, and she realizes it is with fear. Danielle once spent a whole summer diving every day, but this is his first time.

  “It’ll be okay,” she says. “You just have to trust me. There’s no time for a lesson. Whatever happens, just stay limp and keep breathing. Don’t ever hold your breath. If your ears start to hurt, pinch your nose and breathe through it, like you’re on an airplane. Hold your mask and regulator on with your hand when you jump.”

  “Regulator?” he asks.

  “The mouthpiece. The thing you breathe from. Once I put your fins on, if you see me start swimming, you kick too, but otherwise just go limp and do nothing, not even if you’re sinking. You have to trust me completely. Understand?”

  Keiran nods and forces a smile. Danielle makees herself smile back. She knows that understanding and following instructions are two very different things, especially when you’ve never before been exposed to the dizzying cold and weightlessness of an undersea environment. And she knows that the instructions she just gave Keiran could easily kill him.

  They help each other put their weight belts and vests on. Danielle has to guess at the weight required for both of them. Too much will drown them, and too little will condemn them to involuntary cremation. Fortunately the margin of error is large.

  The view through the door’s porthole, which earlier was like a vision of hell, is now utterly black with smoke. She can feel the warmth of the floor through her neoprene boots. Metal is a near-perfect heat conductor, and the hull and all the floors and walls must be hot enough to blister exposed skin. The air will soon be too warm to breathe. They pull on masks, the last piece of gear.

  “I always wanted to be an astronaut,” Keiran says.

  Danielle smiles grimly. In full wet suit, with a scuba tanks on his back, he does look straight out of 2001. “All right,” she says. “We’ll put the fins on underwater. I mean, I will. You won’t do anything but breathe. And let go of the fins when I take them from you, and help kick when I start swimming.” She reaches for the flippers that will strap over their feet –

  – and the interior door to the scuba room opens and Laurent walks in, followed by two khaki-clad guards, Vijay, and Sophia. Half of Laurent’s left cheek is blistered by a puffy red burn, the others too are burned and singed, and Sophia leans heavily on one of the guards, coughing uncontrollably.

  The two sides of the unexpected standoff goggle at one in mutual amazement for a moment. Then the ship makes another of its unexpected lurches. This one is a shipquake, it goes on for several seconds, knocking all of them onto hands and knees, and sending scuba gear tumbling around the room. A tank hits Danielle’s shoulder, hard enough to bruise, and narrowly misses crushing her hand. She looks up. Laurent is on his feet, rushing across the room towards her. Without really thinking about it she grabs the tank that just struck her, aims its nozzle towards him, and twists its valve fully open.

  Even with her ears shielded by neoprene the resulting scream almost deafens her. The air inside the tank is stored at 400 times sea-level air pressure, and is correspondingly eager to escape. The tank bucks in her hand, but she has a good grip on it, and holds it steady as a jet of air erupts from it like a firehose, knocking Laurent almost off his feet as the ship lurches again. He staggers away from her, somehow keeping his balance on the tilting floor, and backs out of the room. She hurls the tank towards the open doorway, and as it spins there like a top, still venting its earsplitting shriek, she grabs Keiran’s arm. “We have to go!”

  He nods.

  “Hold this and don’t let go!” She gives him another air tank. They may need it. Laurent is still here. The flames and superheated air must have been too much for the helicopter to take off. And Laurent may yet survive the sinking. She grabs a speargun from the wall rack, runs her arm through the rubber loops of four fins, puts her mouthpiece in, and opens the door.

  The metal door handle is so hot that, even though she opens it as fast as possible, some of her neoprene glove melts. But at least the door hasn’t welded shut. Danielle steps out into the black superheated fumes of burnt oil, breathing through her regulator, moving as fast as she can with a 40-pound scuba tank on her back and 20 more pounds in metal plates on her belt and in her pockets. She can feel the exposed skin around her mask and mouthpiece start to blister, as if white-hot metal is being pressed to her face. She looks back once en route to the edge. Keiran is only a few feet behind her but she can barely see him in the dark clouds of smoke. At the edge of the boat she sees the fire still raging below her, as the smoke rises and allows more oxygen to reach the burning oil. They are only ten feet above it now, the ship has sunk more than halfway into the ocean.

  Without hesitation, hesitation would be lethal, Danielle uses her momentum to step up onto the middle bar of the railing around the ship, using it as a ladder, and onto the top bar, and leaps out as far as she can into the immolating sea of flame. In mid-jump she presses her hand tightly against her mask and mouthpiece. Then she is falling, falling fast, and plunging through the burning oil slick and into the dark cold Pacific.

  Chapter 41

  Visibility is zero. Only the top layer of oil, exposed to air, can burn; the rest of it, opaque as ink, blocks the sun’s light entirely. Only the telltale pinching sensation inside her ears tells her she is sinking. Danielle works her jaw furiously, opening the eustachian tubes to equalize air pressur
e before her eardrums burst or her sinus cavities rupture. With her free hand she pushes the inflation button on her buoyancy vest, her BCD, flooding its bladders with enough air to slow her descent. All this in only a few seconds, operating purely on instinct. She hasn’t gone diving for years, but the shock of immersion has brought it all back, made that summer in Baja California seem like yesterday.

  She feels a disturbance in the water to her left. A splash. Keiran made it off the ship. But he is helpless, doesn’t know the first thing about diving, she can’t even see him, and her fins aren’t on, she can’t maneuver. Danielle reaches her arm out, clutching desperately, and her fingers close on something. A strap. Enough to connect them in the dark water. He is not as overweighted as she, he is sinking, but much slower than she had. She grabs him and pulls him closer. She can tell by feel that he is curled up into a taut ball around the scuba tank he carries, breathing as furiously as an Olympic sprinter. But at least he isn’t kicking and flailing.

  Even so, their situation is desperate. Both of them are sinking, she thinks fairly slowly, and that is a good thing, but she can’t even see her gauges to see how deep they are. They don’t dare ascend for fear of surfacing in the midst of the flames; and if they go too deep, nitrogen narcosis will set in like a powerful drug, they will lose their ability to reason, and even if they somehow manage to ascend after that, they will certainly get the dreaded bends. They need to get out from under the burning oil right now. But without fins, in full scuba gear, Danielle can’t swim much faster than an infant crawls. And they may well sink to a lethal depth before she can even strap on her fins.

  She takes a deep breath and tries to focus. No sense brooding about their predicament; better start trying to do something about it. She lets go of the speargun, she can’t spare a hand for it, tucks an arm through one of Keiran’s straps to keep them connected, and then, working awkwardly in darkness so complete she might as well be blind, with thick gloves on, she slips off one of the fins looped around her arm, and tries to pull it onto her right boot as fast as she can. The attempt is not successful. But after its failure she realizes she can see a metallic glint in front of her. She squints and it coagulates into the rim of the spare tank Keiran carries. Vision has returned.