Salvage

by Chris Howard

“Count the individual members of Neomacrocystis pyrifera-twelve in a ten-square-meter area from my startup position.”

  “I for one would love to know how many there are.” Andreden sounded overjoyed, gesturing with open hands. “Tell me a little about Neomacrocystis pyrifera-twelve?”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, as if Theo was gauging Andreden’s precise level of interest and then apparently decided there wasn’t enough sarcasm to respond with anything less serious than, “It’s a large, deepwater fast-growing member of Phaeophyta. A genetically altered variation of an indigenous Macrocystis species. The brown algae and their congeners have complicated reproductive cycles that include being—”

  “Hold on, Theo.”

  Andreden held up a hand and turned toward a moving shape in the water, a tiny submersible about the thickness and length of his outstretched arm. It was coming right at him. And it was moving fast. There was something organic about the shape and movement in the water, but it was definitely a machine of some kind.

  Beams of sunlight broke into the depths, lighting up the sub as the canopy of kelp overhead opened up with the roll of the surf.

  Andreden and Theo both drifted in a slow turn, following the unusual submersible. It spun on the long axis, drilling through the water. There was something about the motion that was almost bacteriological—only macro scale. Details became clearer as it closed on them, driven by what looked like flagella, long whiplike appendages that coiled together as the thing rotated, creating an extended propeller.

  “Has to be doing twenty knots,” Andreden whispered, letting his body relax, squeezing the buoyancy controls on his vest.

  “Didn’t catch that, Jon.” Martin’s voice came in over the comm.

  Without thinking about what he should do next, Andreden adjusted his weight in the water and slipped lower in the sea, touching down on a massive rocky shelf. Theo followed him, and the small, twirling sub passed right over their heads in a straight line toward the mouth of Elkhorn Slough, just north of the Moss Landing piers.

  As it passed, Andreden kicked up three or four meters off the shelf and spun in the water to follow its course. The miniature sub changed course, the sharpened tail bending, flagella whipping into a new shape to adjust for the terrain. At twenty-five meters, it blended into the background of the ocean and slipped away.

  “Theo, did you pick that up?”

  “I had visual but no sonar or any other proximity detection on the unidentified submersible.”

  “What submersible?” Martin’s shocked voice was loud in his ears.

  “You didn’t catch anything on the monitors?”

  “When?”

  “Just now. Anything in the last ten seconds?”

  “I’m looking at Theo’s passive feed. The hi-res. There’s nothing unusual.”

  Andreden stared along the path of the sub. “It was small, about as thick as my arm—my forearm, and about as long. Unusual propulsion. I didn’t see any markings. The thing was quiet. Extremely quiet. It passed within five meters of Theo and me, moving fast. At first I thought it was headed right for us, but it continued toward the Landing.”

  There was a long space of silence between the test team from Knowledgenix—just Andreden’s loud breathing over the comm.

  Theo broke it with, “Where did it come from?”

  Andreden gave the machine a nod. “Are there any vessels in the area? Anything that looks military? A scientific or commercial launch vessel?”

  “Checking,” said Martin.

  Andreden and Theo drifted up and down with the tidal surge, blending in with the tangled stipes on the edge of a kelp forest.

  “Nothing but a few rec boats visible to the horizon. The scope doesn’t show much more. The largest vessel is more than sixty kilometers away, passing up the coast, marked as commercial freight. You think the sub’s something from NOAA or the Navy?”

  “Don’t know. Never seen anything like it.” Andreden paused for a second while he ran through the information on the meters and screens on his wrist and vest.

  After scrolling through the last minute of Theo’s logged data, he said, “First thought? A crazy one, is that it’s some sort of industrial espionage play, a stealth pass to get a look at what we’re doing with Theo, but I don’t know anyone making subs like that.” said Andreden. “We don’t have anything that small and quiet—or unusual. I mean, the thing looked alien.”

  Martin’s hurried voice cracked over the comm. “I’m sending security up to Moss Landing to have a discreet look around, see if anyone’s picking this thing up. Just an observe-and-gather team for now, see what’s up.”

  Andreden was barely listening. He looked down the path of the sub; his voice sounded as if he was thinking aloud. “And what’s the point of showing your hand, coming in for a near miss without a sonar sig? I swear the thing came right at us. This is a big bay, bigger ocean. The way it moved, it was just . . . scary.”

  Martin sounded concerned. “You want to call the test?”

  Andreden’s voice came back slow, distracted. “Yeah, maybe not a good idea to have Theo out here if there’s a possibility it’s—”

  He stopped, and Martin cut in with, “What is it?”

  “It’s coming back.”

  The spiraling shape appeared, a smear of dark horizontal motion against the vertically moving background, angling to head right for him like some eerie hole in the ocean, ringed by the feathery trail from the propulsion. Andreden crouched, trying to move with the bay’s currents. Things this close to shore that didn’t move with the tidal surge stood out.

  “Someone knows we’re here, Martin.”

  Can’t be remotely operated from a ship, he thought with another glance at the screen on his arm. There were no in-vicinity launch vessels. It had to be autonomous or controlled from the shore. It didn’t look at all like a weapon, but then it didn’t look like any other man-made submersible of any kind.

  Andreden looked over at Theo. Its dark camera eyes stared back at him, making the machine appear to have a skull-like face.

  The light hum of the flagella-drive became clearer.

  “Let’s get a closer look at this thing. Catch it, Theo.”

  Andreden’s machine spun as smoothly as a cat, unfolding its arms. It twisted up and seized the miniature submarine in two powerful claws. For a second, Andreden thought the little sub had tried to evade Theo, flexing to one side like a maneuvering fish, but no machine reacted like that.

  The little sub bucked and pulled, trying to break Theo’s grasp; the six flagella whipped around to work at breaking the hold—each one almost a meter long, thick as a finger where it grew out of a rotating drive collar—a wide, spinning band about two-thirds of the way up the sub’s body, each one ending in a pointed tip.

  Theo’s claws were twice the size of human hands and more than twice as strong. The whips went limp. It gave up.

  Andreden kicked a few times, grabbed Theo’s right arm for support, and pulled up next to the sub.

  No markings. No lights. No numbers, codes, or safety warnings. The thing was dull black, a stretched-out teardrop shape with six whippy arms growing from the rotating band that circled the hull. No dive planes or rudder, but the thin end of the teardrop was flexible and had to be articulated under the skin, allowing the sub’s body to bend for direction.

  “This is beautiful.”

  Andreden reached out one gloved finger cautiously, pressing the tip against the sub’s forward dome. It was coated with a thick spongy material, and Theo’s claws were digging half an inch into its skin.

  “Not your typical sound-absorbing coating. Stuff feels alive. Martin, are you getting this?”

  “I’m looking at it, and I’m thinking what the fuck is that?” As if catching himself reacting with a not-very-well-thought-out answer, Martin cleared his throat and followed up with, “Theo’s vision’s coming in nice and clear.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Looks like some kind of
marine insect crossed with a blown-up version of one of the nastier Gram-negative bacteria.” Then he cleared his throat again and reined in the excitement. “Could be military, but I’d think anything of ours would be marked. And if it’s not our Navy, then whose? Could be an academic team. Can’t be NOAA or one of the other scientific orgs. Everything they deploy is painted bright orange, yellow, or white. Or at least it’d be marked. What would this thing be doing hanging around Moss Landing and the sloughs?”

  “No idea,” Andreden said. “We can take a closer look. See you in fifteen. I’ll bring in the gear from the shore and send our new friend back to you in the lab.” He tried to laugh through the mouthpiece. “Don’t do anything until I get there.”

  Andreden looked at Theo, his voice suddenly serious. “You got that, Theo? Don’t give it to anyone but Martin.”

  “That is what I will do.” There was a second’s pause. “Jon?”

  Andreden kicked around. “Yup?”

  “Does the word or maybe the name ‘Telkeenays’ mean anything to you?”

  He stared at Theo for a moment, wondering if the question was somehow connected to its test scenario with the seaweed, something the machine couldn’t shake after the test had been cancelled. “No. What is it?”

  “The submersible spoke to me—not clearly. It said this is where it comes from, or maybe who it belongs to? Its maker?”

  Andreden pushed himself all the way around, a chill making its way through his suit and the feeling that they weren’t alone pressing in on his thoughts.

  “Is it saying anything else?” He didn’t want to say he didn’t hear anything. He also didn’t want to ask how Theo had managed to hear it. That could wait for better look at the thing.

  “No, just that.”

  “Okay.” He waved toward the labs. “Meet Martin at the sub-pool.” He made a spiraling gesture in the water. “And record anything else it tells you.”

  Theo spun up its drives, its body of rounded panels and bundles of components unfolding into a sleek low-drag shape that sped off toward the underwater development lab of Knowledgenix, a cluster of buildings perched over the water on the south side of Moss Landing harbor.

  Speaking silently or not, the little sub with the flagella seemed to be dead in Theo’s grip.

  Chapter Four

  A Separate Communication

  Captain Wilraven pushed a stack of papers aside and leaned forward over his workspace, the webcam’s function light telling him it was sending his face far away.

  “Mr. Corkran?”

  The charterer’s office came into focus on the Mac’s screen: dark wood paneling, a leather couch, one wall dominated by an oil painting of an aggressive-looking four-masted barque, sails rigged for speed ahead of stormy seas. Then a fit sixtyish guy with a full head of gray hair and sad-dog blue eyes filled the screen.

  Corkran smiled, showed some very white teeth, but there was nothing happy in it. There was hope in the smile, the hope that something terrible could finally be resolved, that a weight was about to be lifted from this wealthy shipper’s mind. A smile that said Corkran was hoping he had found just the man for this job.

  “Please, call me Wade.” He went on without a pause. “Captain Wilraven, I know your reputation. I don’t go near the sea anymore, but I know someone who knows the sea.”

  Wilraven had been called “Captain Success” in a couple of the trade journals, Work Boat and Salvage, because he got the job done—in cost and without unreasonable losses. Marine salvage didn’t get better than that.

  He had patched and pulled ships off reefs, run oil-disposal on some rough coasts around the world; taken on tankers on fire; floated ships, barges, and pieces of oil rigs from their graves. Wilraven shook his head, and didn’t know why he said it, but it seemed to fit. “Yeah, my rep’s slipping. I lost a good diver—a good friend—on a job in the spring.”

  “Your dive master.” Corkran looked away with the sound of crinkling paper. He was going over some notes, found what he was looking for, and read them aloud. “Regina Lowell was on your team almost five years. Killed during an op involving the dismantling and moving of a sunken DP rig?” Corkran swung his gaze back to the screen, his eyes cold points of blue steady on Wilraven. “It was a mistake you didn’t make, and you were down there as well. My research says you risked your life to find your diver. That kind of loyalty is what I’m looking for.”

  Wilraven sighed and came right out with it. “What do you want with the Serina Beliz? How do you even know where she is?”

  “I want you to raise her from her grave.” Corkran said nothing more, as if the second question hadn’t been asked.

  Wilraven rubbed his eyes, looked at the blue sky through the porthole above his bunk. Somewhere a ship’s horn sounded a long, moaning cry across the harbor. “Yeah, that’s what Rusty told me. Why?”

  There was a flare of anger in Corkran’s features. “You need to ask why, then maybe I’m wrong and you’re not the right salvage master for this. Or are you looking for something besides ‘she’s worth thirty million dollars and I’m the only one who knows where she is’?”

  “Sure, a good place to start. Is there more?” He clamped his mouth shut, wishing he could call back the question, and hoping Corkran wouldn’t bring up Captain Nersesian, and that they had known each other for years.

  Corkran leaned back, away from the screen, folding his arms. “The rest is none of your business. Your lawyers already signed off on this. Do you want the job, or do I have to find someone else?”

  “No, I’m in.” Crap, he sounded desperate.

  Corkran unfolded his arms.

  Wilraven took a deep breath, let it out slowly. This might be his only chance to really find out what had happened to his friend Val, and to the Serina. “Fine. If you know where she is, and she’s intact and resting in less than twelve hundred meters, I’m pretty sure we can do it. I’ll have the Irabarren with me—she’s our deepwater crane and dive platform. I’ll sail with the Marcene. We can be just about anywhere in the Gulf inside two days. We’ll dive or remote down and see what we see, get a clear picture of what it will take.”

  Corkran nodded his head fractionally, as if the deal had been made, and Wilraven swallowed hard because it felt as if it had just been made in blood—without feeling anything sharp.

  “The Serina Beliz is in water less than twelve hundred meters. I will follow up with exact location details. For now, I can tell you that she’s just outside Cuban territorial water.”

  Wilraven stumbled over a follow-up question to that, but pushed it aside and filed it with things to bring up in a moment. One important issue had to be resolved first. “Are you coming with us?” He didn’t really want that, but it wasn’t uncommon on a job like this—a time charter. Usually the guy paying for the recovery of a ship as new as the Serina had more than scrap interest. The Ocean Eight Salvage attorneys had okayed a job that wasn’t using the standard Lloyd’s Open Form. It smelled of gray insurance payouts, but he left that alone. No need to pick at someone’s scabs. Not when he had plenty of his own to scratch.

  “No.” Corkran said the single word firmly. Then he looked down, and his voice went rough at the edges with fear and memories. “I don’t go near the water anymore.”

  Something obviously haunted the man, but Wilraven kept his reaction locked down, managing to reply as if he had not heard the emotion in the other man’s voice. “Very well, Mr. Corkran. We’ll take the job. I have to square a few details with the Ocean Eight offices. We’ll leave in the morning, run a quick survey of the site after I gather the dive and crane teams.”

  “Great.” Corkran didn’t sound as enthusiastic as he should have, but Wilraven’s thoughts had already moved down the list.

  “One more thing?”

  “Yes?” Corkran’s voice was steady again.

  Wilraven decided on the delicate approach. “Mr. Corkran—Wade. There are specific dangers—political dangers—working on a stationary rig for weeks jus
t outside Cuban water. Or any nation, for that matter. No one likes secret or suspicious commercial work going on on their doorstep. In the past, I’ve had visits from the Cuban navy—one of their corvettes—and even a few gunboats. Most of the time they’re cool. Others that I don’t think were official were not . . . cool. That area of the world’s just a rough place to do business, you understand?” The complications shouldn’t be piling up this close to signing onto a job, but there they were.

  “I know the dangers. I’ve taken care of things. What time are you leaving tomorrow? I’ve already hired a security team to go with you.”

  Wilraven felt the heavy thud of his heart, and then a shiver rushed up his back. He was thinking hazard pay, something he could stack on top of the paychecks for his crew. Security on board—guys with guns—wasn’t what he had wanted at all. He tried to sound casual. “Really? Well, I’m not—”

  Corkran cut him off. “They are going with you. That’s a requirement. It’s in the terms I sent your office.” As if trying to soften the idea, Corkran added, “I’m well aware of the dangers the Caribbean poses to ships and their crews. This is a capable, handpicked team. Only a few of them. They won’t get in the way, and I have a backup ready to rotate in. Just think of my security staff as trouble you don’t have to worry about.”

  Fuck. Wilraven let out a breath, not very happy about being backed into a corner. “Okay. Just get them here tomorrow before two in the afternoon.”

  “They’ll be there. You have my number. I also want you to keep me informed.” Corkran jabbed a demanding finger at the screen. “A couple of other things we have to be clear about: One, you don’t lift the ship without telling me. Two, let’s talk as soon as you’re done with your survey. I need to know how long you think this will take. I’ll tell you right now, you don’t have the Serina moved off the floor inside twelve days, you can forget it.”

  “Rusty said that. Best I can say is I’ll try—and as long as the weather cooperates.”

  “Sure. I hear you.” It sounded like it was Corkran’s turn to rein in some anger, taking a couple of deep breaths. “Look, Captain, do the survey. Tell me what you think it will take—long as it’s not too long.”