by G R Matthews
“One day, maybe,” I answered. Bojing was a spy, a political creature, a man whose sole job was to make sure I didn’t see anything I wasn’t supposed to see, talk to anyone I wasn’t supposed to talk to. More prison warden than guide. I knew that and I’m pretty sure he knew that I knew. The game was an old one and needed to be played.
“Yunru is meet to eager with you,” he said with a smile.
It took me a second to unpick that sentence. “Really? Now?”
He nodded.
“Great.” I stood from the chair and carried the carton to the bins provided. This city was the tidiest I’d ever been in or heard about. I reckon the punishment for littering was death, or having to sit through an opera.
I’d been last night. Bojing, and some of the guide sites I’d read on the sub journey here, had recommended it. Opera was one of the cultural highlights offered by the city. Not to be missed. If I’d dropped my carton on the floor and been arrested, I would’ve chosen execution. It would be over quicker and a lot more interesting. “Lead the way.”
# # #
“Lady Yunru know to like your progress,” Bojing said from his place at the lady’s shoulder.
She was painted like a doll. A child’s doll. From one of the cheaper stores. I guessed all the emulsion was an attempt to cover up the wrinkles and age spots. Another few coats should do the trick. It wouldn’t be polite to say so, or particularly good for my health. The bodyguards were much bigger than me and the weapons on their belts looked dangerous. I’d yet to see a weapon that didn’t exude threats of maiming, lots of pain and death.
“I’ve cleared a lot of the sediment out of the way and should be able to get in tomorrow.” Which was true. The job was slow going, clearing centuries of mud deposits from an old, pre-flood wreck on the sea floor took time. It wasn’t interesting either. If the wreck hadn’t been a sacred vessel to this corporation, Bojing told me it was from the old country, their own specialists could have done the job. They’d have their own Fish-Suit users. But it was, so they couldn’t and here I was.
Yunru spoke with Bojing who replied in a deferential tone before looking up at me.
“Lady Yunru enquires how long until recover the object you do?” Bojing smiled at me.
“Maybe tomorrow, if the inside of the wreck isn’t too full of sediment. The door’s uncovered and looks undamaged. I’ll open it in the morning and see what’s there. Hopefully, the plans you’ve uploaded to my suit should guide me to the hold.” I paused whilst Bojing translated for Yunru. The Pad wasn’t allowed in these meetings, probably scared I’d record it. “It does depend on the state of the wreck inside. There is bound to be some sediment, but as long as there’s no big hole somewhere else it shouldn’t be too bad.”
“Lady Yunru happy with progress is. No longer than two days. Must be done by then.” He nodded at the end of the sentence in, I’m pretty sure, the hope that I would do the same.
“Maybe,” I shrugged.
Yunru didn’t wait for the translation, but fixed me an icy stare, the years falling from her eyes, giving me the first glimpse of the hard steel mind behind. A bony finger was raised, its long, dark red painted nail pointing at me. “Two days.”
Her voice was firm and without compromise. I nodded. Instinct, animal brain, taking over. Self-preservation.
Chapter 6
Oxyquid flooded my nose, throat and lungs. I gagged and felt my diaphragm spasm in its desperate effort to expel the liquid from my lungs. It was a reflex, something I couldn’t control. Even though my rational brain told me I’d live through this, just as I had a thousand times before, my lizard brain, the ancient part of my cerebellum’s evolutionary process, wouldn’t believe it. My ribs hurt as they strained to compress my lungs and squeeze the liquid out. Which it did, but on the next gasp more filled the little alveoli, the tiny air sacs that allowed oxygen to pass into the bloodstream, and the process began again.
It could have been an hour or two, but was really less than a minute before the primitive lizard came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to die and released control back to the other part of my brain. I’m not suggesting it was more intelligent or better, but at least I was in control. There was no point calling that a victory, my grey matter had been pickled in alcohol so long I’m not convinced it was in perfect working order.
A few presses of the control surfaces inside my gloves and the hoses that pumped the Oxyquid into the Fish-Suit disconnected. Freedom. Okay, I was still in the airlock, but I was in my world now. Away from the sing-song melody of a language that made no sense. Away from the noise of civilisation, the smell of food, of oil, of algae-processed air and constant press of bodies and buildings.
Despite the language barrier, and I’d been told that other cities in Da Long Inc speak standard, the suit meshed with the airlock control mechanism and the outer door parted. The last of the air in the small room bubbled out and up towards the distant surface. Motors on the back of the suit pushed me out into the deep where I hooked myself on to the cable dangling from the two-man worker sub that would convey me to the site.
It was too far to use the suit motors alone. They would get me there and back, but it would take an age. Better to travel in style. Not luxurious, but slung beneath a sub wasn’t all bad. The cable came with a power supply and I plugged in, topping up my suit charge, and used the connection to watch a clips show on the journey.
A few months ago I’d been reminded of an old, pre-drowned world, sci-fi show and now I couldn’t stop watching it. I’d raced through every season and the spin-off series; some good, some bad. A search of the web had thrown up another show and I’d downloaded all fourteen episodes. I’d only had the chance to watch one so far, and enjoyed it. Totally implausible, of course, but fun and that’s what I needed.
The heroes were just deciding to take the medicine they’d stolen back to the people who needed it and the bad guys had shown up to stop them when I got the signal we’d arrived. On a bright note, I had something to look forward to when the day’s work was done. I was pretty sure the heroes would win, I was only on episode two, but the cast was good and the sense of rebellion about the whole thing spoke to me.
Above, the dim light of the worker sub blinked away, but the false colour image on my HUD showed the wreck I’d mapped and the sea floor surrounding it. Using the control surfaces inside my gloves, I disconnected the power cable, logged the position of the sub into my map and signalled the crew that I was about to descend. When the acknowledgement came, I unclipped the cable and descended into the dark.
The lights from the sub disappeared as I dropped down the water column and navigated purely by my homemade map. Working in the dark, navigating your way through the ocean, once you were out of the normal transport lanes with their data cables, is all about speed, compass direction and time. It took incredibly complicated mathematics and an intimate knowledge of ancient cartographical skills to ensure the required accuracy.
Getting lost in the ocean was a sure way to get yourself killed. Back in the academy, they’d spent weeks teaching us the formulae, tips and tricks. The exams had been a special sort of hell that accounted for almost as many drop outs as the first lungful of Oxyquid. And now, out in the endless expanse of the ocean, I used a computer program that did it all for me. Education; never a waste of time.
As I closed in on the sunken wreck my suit started to pick up the signal from the transponders I’d dotted about the rusting remains. The map shifted on the HUD and I used a few bursts from the motor to reorient myself. All the lines and contours of the ship became clearer on my screen, the result of days spent mapping the vessel. It was larger than they’d led me to believe and, because it was something of a sacred site, their own maps had been mostly useless. Except for pinpointing its location and a few basic passes with a sonar and a camera equipped drone, there hadn’t been much investigation. They seemed happy to know where it was, to stay away and venerate it from a distance.
Three hundre
d and fifty metres from stem to stern, forty-three metres across the beam and surrounded by the mostly buried remains of thousands of container boxes. The COSCO SHENYANG had been a monster of a ship in its day. Now it was a monster of a wreck on the sea floor. Records of our time on the surface are complete for somethings, entirely missing for others. That’s what the Skimmers did. Looked amongst the flotsam for information, data, evidence, fame and fortune. A risky business. Of the SHENYANG only a little was known.
She’d been a container ship, carrying thousands of tonnes of products, goods and resources between the countries and governments of the surface world. Tying up at their ports, unloading and loading before heading off again. Its last voyage had been near the end of that world. Already many had moved below the seas and the governments were dying, unable to cope with the changes. The SHENYANG, the corporation briefing had informed me, had been carrying sacred artifacts and city building machinery to one of the cities under construction when it had sunk. No one could say what had caused it to sink, the records didn’t exist they said.
My inspection of the vessel revealed no physical cause of the sinking. No great holes in the side, no gashes, tears or evidence of foul play. Sometimes the sea can be cruel. It doesn’t care about you, me, anyone or anything. A freak wave, a crewman who forgot to close the right bulkhead, a container shifting, an engine failing, a storm, the reasons went on and on. All that really mattered, to me anyway, was the fact that it had sunk. I’m sure the crew on board hadn’t cared about the reason either. They’d just wanted to get off and survive. One lifeboat, according the ship’s blueprints, was missing. A testament to the survival instinct of some of the crew. The skeleton I’d uncovered on the command deck was a strong indication that not everyone had made it off the stricken vessel.
A cloud of fine sediment kicked up and billowed about my legs as I touched down on the deck. Despite the years beneath the waves, the hull of the SHENYANG was still strong. An artificial reef, animals had moved in to colonise the super structure. Fish, Sea Fans, Corals and Urchins had all found a new ecological niche to occupy. None of them had objected too strenuously to my presence on board. I was bigger than most things they’d come into contact with and, though I was unarmed, I did have my wrist welder and the Fish-Suit exoskeleton. There was little chance I would make a tasty meal for any of the bigger denizens of the deep. Even sharks didn’t like their food to come wrapped.
When I’d first arrived on board, I had spent a long time vacuuming the years of accumulated silt out of the vessel, clearing a path down to desired compartment. It had been boring and spooky work. Clearing a dead ship of its detritus wasn’t a job I relished, but the pay was good. It had been time well spent and, apart from the thin layer of mud that forever crept back in, the bubbled and pitted surface of the ship’s interior was navigable. Right down, through the bowels of the ship, to a bulkhead.
It was sealed. The suit’s sensors suggested, quite strongly, that there was air on the other side. A compartment that hadn’t ever been opened, not since the ship had sunk, and that had somehow survived the pressure of the water at this depth. When they built these ships, they built them to last. Apart from the whole sinking thing of course.
Chapter 7
There was a good chance that opening this door would kill me and, strange as it seems, I didn’t want to die.
A bulkhead was a thick, strong piece of metal designed to resist the pressure of inrushing water. Getting through it wouldn’t be easy. Even if the locking wheel could be turned and the bulkhead swung open, the weight of the ocean above would force the water in with such force that anything within would be destroyed. I needed to equalise the pressure somehow, either by creating a pocket of air where I was now or, my preferred and more practical method, letting the sea water into the room beyond in a controlled manner.
My visor darkened to protect my eyes from the incandescent flame of the wrist welder. This was the use a Fish-Suit was most often put to these days, construction and salvage work. Our days of Special Operations, of destroying enemy subs and cities were gone. Though I, along with others, remained on the reserve list, ready to be called up and let loose should war raise its ugly face once more.
Bubbles, a side-effect of superheating the water around the tip of the welder, rose towards the ceiling of the ship’s passageway creating an undulating silvery ribbon that meandered back the way I had come. Like all my best plans, it was simple and I’d made it up in a second. I chose a spot near the bottom of the bulkhead where the steel was thickest.
I could hear the squeal of the hot flame melting its way through the bulkhead. The stream of bubbles increased, smaller and faster, thousands of them rising up and obscuring my view. I didn’t need to see to know what was happening. A neat hole was forming in the solid steel. Molten metal glowing, dripping away from the bulkhead and cooling rapidly into heavy pellets that fell to the passageway floor.
I could extend the cutting flame and I’d need to. Steel, thick enough to hold back thousands of tonnes of water, would take a long time to cut through and, much as I wanted to find something to do, maybe another episode of that clips show, I couldn’t afford to get distracted. Once the hole was formed, I was entering the realm of hope and guesswork.
It was possible that the sudden change in pressure would cause the bulkhead to fail and all the water behind me would rush into the gap. At the same time, all the air would come rushing out. I’d be caught in the middle, crushed to a mushy, bloody pulp.
Time wore on and bubbles rose. There was nothing more to see than that. Boring, but necessary and tinged with an edge of terror. With no way of knowing precisely how thick the bulkhead was, and I’d measured a few of the open ones to get an idea, it was all down to experience, judgement and luck. I had a bit of the first, little of the second, and I’d used up the third years ago.
It could have been the sudden lack of resistance, or a change in the nature of the bubbles, or the feeling of the water pushing against me. Whatever it was, I shut the torch off immediately and backed away from the bulkhead, the motors in full reverse, just in case.
I watched from a safe distance and waited. The suit’s sensors measured the flow of water into the room beyond the bulkhead. Bubbles, not superheated this time, just ancient air, came from the hole I’d cut. When they stopped, the room would be full of water and I could enter. Of course, to do that, I’d have to spend more power and more time cutting through the locking mechanism. Once that was done, the door could be swung open. It’d be heavy, but the suit exoskeleton would help me there.
The clock on my HUD started to flash. The sub would be waiting for me. I hadn’t realised so much time had passed. At least I could rest, recharge the suit batteries and make a proper stab at finding the object they wanted me to recover tomorrow.
# # #
Another night, another meal and another trip to the sunken ship. At least I got to watch another episode or two of the sci-fi show. Somehow, in an age when humans travelled the stars, the captain of this starship was fighting a duel, with a sword. I’d have shot them and run.
The bulkhead stood firm and the suit’s sensors showed the room beyond was full of sea water. Now I just had to get it open and retrieve the box that Yunru wanted. I’m not sure how she squared it all with the people around her, maybe she didn’t have to, but I was taking something from a sacred site, a burial ground of their ancestors. For me it was just a job, to them it meant something else. Something special.
With the pressure equalised it should have been easy to swing the bulkhead open. Of course, there were thousands of tonnes of water keeping that door closed, not to mention any rust and ground in sediment. Nothing is ever simple. Not for me.
I passed a cable through the hole I’d burned yesterday. It shone a tight beam of light into the room and the small camera attached to the cable relayed the scene to my visor. The room was large, the light struggled to reach the other side, and there was a scattering of detritus across the floor. Mainl
y broken shelving units, drawers and tumbled boxes. Thankfully, the rear of the bulkhead was clear and, even though it was hinged to swing outwards, towards me, it would make the next step easier.
A few flicks of my glove’s control services, a scan through the menus I’d pre-programmed and I selected the next stage. The camera image vanished and now all I could do was imagine what was happening. More of the cable slid into the room and using a dim AI began climbing towards the bulkhead locking wheel. Like all watertight doors on subs and cities there were safety measures. In the case of the old technology here, a simple lever whose mechanism had not released when it should have done so. It was possible that I’d cut a line or two with my tiny little hole.
The cable would be climbing the door, fed from below, and seeking out the lever. Once there it would wrap itself around the handle. From there it would be an easy task for me to pull the cable which would release the lever. Like all good plans, it was simple. A light flashed on my visor, the cable was in place and I yanked on it. A groan and squeal sounded through the hull followed by a solid, if muffled, clank and the cable went limp in my hand. Nothing new there.
Now I could rotate the wheel and prise the door open. There were still those thousands of tonnes of water pressing the door closed but the pressure on either side was equal. On my own, with just the power of my human muscles I would stand no chance, but I’d brought help.
Squeezing and forcing a thin but strong fabric between the door plate and bulkhead was tough. I had to jiggle the door and slide it in a little at a time. I found myself breathing hard, dragging the Oxyquid in and forcing it out, and took a moment to watch the readouts on my visor run through a check of the suit systems. It always calmed me down. The mundane boredom of watching little words appear on my HUD accompanied by a little green check mark. If one came up with a flashing red cross my calming technique would fail in the most spectacular manner possible.
