by G R Matthews
Every man has his weakness, and I’ve been known to exploit it before. I grabbed his genitals, his trousers had slipped down in the fall, and squeezed as hard as I could. There was a piercing scream in my ear and I moved my left hand to muffle it. A sharp twist of my right hand, that would need a good scrub, and his arms released me, his back arched and all his muscles tensed.
I let go and rolled off. Sympathy and empathy were strong, but pragmatism won out. I could let him scream and cry out his pain and shock. It was more humane, and a damn sight more practical to send him into unconsciousness. Which is what I did with two sharp, snapping kicks to the back of his head.
Kneeling down, I checked his pulse. It was strong and quick. Being unconscious doesn’t stop the body feeling and reacting to pain, it just means your conscious brain doesn’t tell you about it. Lifting by the armpits, I dragged him out of the way and pulled his trousers up. No one needed to be confronted by that sight. He’d thank me for that small consideration. Maybe.
I took a moment to visit the sink and give my hand its promised cleanse. A quick cup of water to wash the taste of violence out of my mouth didn’t seem like a luxury either.
The keyboard wasn’t written in any language I understood, nor did I have a Pad or, seemingly any options to change the language. Most computer systems follow a similar pattern. The operating system, outside of the city AIs, was generic enough that even with my eyes closed I could find the airlock controls and the camera system.
Glancing left, I saw the clips he had been watching. Though how any grown man, or in fact anyone who claimed to be part of my species, could find people dressed as furry animals engaged in quite vigorous and athletic sexual acts erotic was way beyond my comprehension. I stabbed the off button with my finger just as one of the fur clad bodies stabbed another with a different appendage.
On another screen, the camera feeds showed sleeping inmates and an empty cell. Mine. There was separate screen that showed the airlock and the door leading back into the city proper. By the airlock door, Chunhua waited with the still sleeping little girl in her arms and by the warehouse door, two guards sat slumped in chairs.
I ignored the writing and funny squiggles on the keyboard and used the touchscreen to cycle the airlock doors. I saw the lights turn amber and then green. The doors opened and the taller girl carried the smaller one inside.
A quick search showed absolutely no footage from the interior of the submarine but it was docked and so an umbilical carried oxygen and fuel to it. The readouts showed, I think, a full tank of fuel and battery charge. The air tanks looked, I hoped, like they’d been topped up too.
With a last check on my unconscious friend, making sure he could breathe and his heart still pumped blood around his body, though I suspect it was going to stay away from his groin for some time, I headed for the door.
The steps still groaned and creaked underfoot and I still made an effort to be quiet, but as the prisoners and guards had slept through all the noise so far there was little chance they would wake now. Once at the bottom, I hurried across the warehouse, past the table, chairs and serving area, glad to be away from another dishwater and mystery flavoured soup.
Chunhua gasped as I entered the airlock and her arms tightened around the little girl who murmured in her sleep.
“I’m all right. You?” I said, pitching my voice low so as not to carry far.
She nodded in return.
“There are three guards. One I’ve taken care off,” and I felt my groin tense as I recalled the reason, “and two are asleep.”
She nodded again.
“I couldn’t see anything on the sub, but I’m guessing the pilot will be there. Either that or they went home and are returning in the morning. I don’t know.” I could feel my brain beginning to tangle itself in the ‘what ifs’. “I’ll go first, but I won’t close the inner airlock door. That’ll mean no one from the warehouse can follow us.”
Airlocks were beautifully and simply designed with all the safety features that city-people could desire. They were all the same. Self-contained units the strongest materials known. Better yet, they had the most basic of programming; only allow one door to be open at a time. Perfect.
I pressed the cycle button and the door to the warehouse slid closed. A few seconds later, after the computer had decided that yes, indeed, the door had closed properly, the one to the sub slid aside. Freedom beckoned.
Chapter 18
I listened.
Chunhua was silent. Lijuan murmured in her sleep, fidgeted, and woke up. Her bleary eyes looked around for a moment, rested on Chunhua’s face and a contented smile followed. The teenager put the youngster down and raised a finger to her lips. Lijuan nodded, her face serious.
“What are you waiting for?” Chunhua asked after a few seconds.
“I want to know if anyone is home,” I answered. “I’d rather not have to fight. But if I do, I want the element of surprise on my side.” Skill and ability had already asked for a transfer to another team.
“How will you know?”
“What?”
“If anyone is on board.”
“I’m hoping I’ll hear them coming,” I said, patting the air in a useless signal to be quiet.
“Why don’t you go and look for them?”
“Because they might see me.” I squinted at her in the semi-darkness of the airlock.
“But if you don’t go and look, we will not move from the airlock all night,” Chunhua said.
Battling logic with a teenage girl was never an easy task. Like any woman, whatever age, they had the ability to hear the words they wanted to and twist them into ones you didn’t want to hear. Like any great General, or man who’d been married for longer than five minutes, I knew when to retreat. I could hear the trumpets calling out the rout.
“Wait here,” I said and padded onto the sub. Footsteps followed me and I turned with a sigh. The two girls stood only a metre or so behind me. “Right. In that case, keep your eyes peeled.”
“What?” Chunhua said and Lijuan tugged at the older girl’s sleeve.
“Keep a look out.”
The submarine’s corridor was wide enough for two people so long as they were very thin or didn’t mind sliding past each other, swapping skin cells all the way. A ladder ahead rose to the upper deck or the top side hatch. It was impossible to tell. I pointed at the symbol and gave Chunhua the raised eyebrow of questioning.
“Hatch,” she said.
“Good.” It meant the airlock was the only way on and off the sub for now. I eased Lijuan out of the way and pressed the airlock controls.
The exterior sub door closed with a hiss. In the control room the lights would be flashing and if anyone was awake up there, they’d know someone was on board. Subtlety was not an option. “Command deck?”
Chunhua studied the wall signs a second and pointed right.
“Follow, quietly,” I said. The teenager raised a finger to her lips and smiled at Lijuan who giggled a soft, cute laugh and raised her own finger. Getting them out had seemed like the right thing to do, now I was putting them in more danger.
The floor was metal. Plain and grey it curved at the edges into the walls. Built in one tube, doorways cut in and bulkheads reinforcing each join, it was designed for safety and much cheaper. The command deck bulkhead was open, and lights blinked from the screens and panels.
Pausing at the door, I waited for any one of the three chairs to turn and a surprised voice to cry out, but none did. Clear. Half a relieved breath whistled through my closed lips only to stop and catch at the thought they must be behind me.
“Take a chair,” I pointed to the co-pilot and operations seat. One at the front, below the bulbous viewport, the other behind it almost surrounded by screens, buttons and panels. “Chunhua, do you think you can change the language on the screens to mine?”
She nodded. Almost every system had multiple languages because building cheap stuff was still expensive and you were never quite
sure who was going to buy it. A lot of sub companies sold across corporation borders. It was a cut throat market.
“Stay here,” I added, with my fingers crossed.
Back to the airlock and not sight nor sound of anyone. Doors had concealed the functional rooms a submarine needs to operate far from a city. A toilet, a small kitchen, and the computer core. At the other end of the sub would be the engine room. There should be some sleeping quarters too. Three seats meant at least one bunk, more likely three so the crew could sleep in rotations. Maybe more. Three bunks and it would be a crew of five, three on the command deck and one or two in the engine room keeping it all working.
I pushed open the door with a slight tremble in my fingertips. The room could be occupied by the crew and I would be discovered. What then for Chunhua and Lijuan? Three empty bunks glared up at me, or rather two glared up and the top bunk, really a shelf, looked down on me. A quick search and rifle through the drawer under each bunk revealed precisely nothing. Not even a piece of fluff. Sterile.
Which left the engine room and I felt a lot more comfortable approaching that door. There was little chance of a crew member being in there. The noise, a constant hum that you felt as well as heard, the heat that even the shielding couldn’t protect you from, and the grease would keep most folks out, even the engineers. A closed bulkhead door sectioned off the engine room from the rest of the sub. Thick walls, full of sound insulating material, surrounded the room and as I swung the door open the drone from the small power plant drifted out into the corridor.
Another empty room. The power plant sat in the middle of the room and a gentle warmth emanated from it. On standby likely. Once the sub got moving and started to demand more power, the heat would ramp up considerably and the compartment would become uncomfortable edging towards unbearable. I checked the panels and readouts to make sure that everything was in perfect working order and concluded I had absolutely no idea. Chunhua hadn’t yet managed to change all the language settings or maybe just not those in the engine rooms. It didn’t matter. The sub had got here so it would go somewhere else.
And any place would be better than here.
“Chunhua.” My voice was soft as I entered the command deck, a grandiose name for the three chairs and control panels.
“I’ve got the language changed,” she answered without turning from the panel she was concentrating upon.
“Great,” I said. It would be nice to read a script I could understand again. To my right, in the operations chair, Lijuan was sat in rapt attention, staring at a panel screen where a small animated girl, with jet black hair cut into a sharp bowl shape, appeared to be talking to a map and a backpack.
“The sub is in good working order,” Chunhua interrupted my own fascination with the clips.
“It is?” I turned away from Lijuan’s screen. It should not have been a surprise. Most children could pick up new technology incredibly quickly and many were taught to pilot a sub or operate systems that would keep them safe. Water safety was on every school’s curriculum, no matter what Corporation you were born into.
“Yes,” she said, her voice flat.
“Uh… well then, we’d best be off.” I slid into the pilot’s seat and scanned the panel’s readout. “Do you know how to operate a sub?”
“A bit,” came the grudging admission. “Lijuan’s father took us on a submarine a few times. One of his servants let me take the pilot’s seat on some of the trips.”
“Good.” I placed my fingertips against the panel. “See if you can release the docking clamps and disengage the airlock.”
While she scrolled through menu’s, I brought the power plant up to operating capacity and began to route power to the motors and sensors. Passive only. No point in advertising our presence. The HUD flickered and a map of the local area misted into focus.
There was a thunk, a hiss and the sub began to roll a little. “Clamps and airlock are released.”
A few choices, a sweep of my finger across the panel and I set a course towards freedom. I glanced around the small deck and Chunhua caught my eye, she nodded.
“Here we go,” I said and brought the motors up to ten percent power, easing the submarine away from the city. “Do you know your way home?”
Chapter 19
Submarines by their very nature are hard to find machines. Electromagnetic radiation doesn’t travel well through water. Hence the ocean floor is riddled with cables, sensors and microphones. Sound travels best of all. You can hear whales singing from thousands of kilometres away. With a sensitive enough microphone you can pick out the signatures of machines from a fair distance.
This sub, one built to be multipurpose, had little in the way of military sub-systems. None of the modifications that would further hide the sub from detection were present. Even as the sub pulled away from the city and into the dark it would be leaving a trail of sound for any and everyone to follow.
The best I could do was keep the propeller speed down, negate any chance of cavitation, and look for valleys and trenches along the route to further baffle our sound.
They would come after us for two reasons, maybe three. First, they thought I had the antique sword or at least knew where it was stashed. Second, the little girl they were using as a hostage and leverage against someone important was on-board the sub. Third, revenge.
“There,” Chunhua said and twisted her panel so I could see it. “That is our city.”
On the screen was a pulsing red dot with the name Nanxun above it in white text. She spread her hand against the panel and the map zoomed out. Another dot came into view, the city we had recently been in. She dragged a finger across the distance between the two, joining them with a green line. A small box full of numbers appeared next to the line.
“That’s a long way,” I said. “Even in a straight line. We can get there, but it is going to take a few days.”
“Can’t you go faster?” she asked, her jet black hair swinging round as Lijuan called her name. She spoke to the small girl in the language I couldn’t understand. “She says we are looking at a map, just like Dora.”
“Dora?”
“The girl on the clips she is watching.”
“She doesn’t speak the same language as you?” I asked.
“Yes, she does,” Chunhua answered.
“Well, yes, but not both of the languages I mean.” There was something lost in the cultural exchange of ideas here. She took language literally, where as I spoke between the lines. We’d work it out in time. If we got that.
“She hasn’t been long with her father,” Chunhua answered. “Her mother moved away with her and when she died Lijuan went to live with her father. It was quite a remote city, very traditional and old fashioned. Da Long has quite a few of those.”
“She’s young,” I said. “She’ll pick the language quickly.”
Lijuan’s seat was turned away from me, but I could still see her screen. The little girl with the harsh haircut appeared to be talking to some banded rodent. I could just hear Lijuan chanting something along with the clip.
“Right. Out here, in the open ocean, we can’t go too fast. The sound of the propellers and the engine will give us away. What your map doesn’t show is all the sound and sensor nets that cover the ocean floor.” I reached over and selected a command from the right hand side of her panel. More lines, blurry blues and purples, appeared. “These are the shipping lanes. You can see they criss-cross…”I paused as she raised an eyebrow. “The lines go between the cities. Each of those follows a cable or five. Those cables provide the links to the outside world.”
“You want to follow one of those to the Nanxun?” Her eyebrow arched further.
“No. Not at all. My point is, the cables are dotted with sensors, and those are just the civilian ones. The ones everyone knows about, that everyone uses to navigate. The Corporation’s military arms have hundreds if not thousands upon thousands more cables and sensor stations. In NOAH, if a whale farts, the military track it.
If a prawn trips over a grain of sand, they know about it.”
“Really?” Both eyebrows were now raised.
“Well, no, not really. My point is they can hear a lot more than you realise and this Sio Sam Ong, this Triad, seems to run a whole city, I’d bet they can access at least some of that data.”
“They are like an octopus,” Chunhua said. “They have arms everywhere, in everything.”
“In which case, we have to do everything we can not to be found. We stay away from shipping lanes, we follow valleys, we go slow and quiet.”
“I hope you know what you are doing. I am not sure Lijuan can stay quiet for days,” she said, pulling her panel back round.
“How many episodes of that clips show are there?”
“Not enough.”
A last glance at Chunhua, whose own gaze was focused on her panel, and I turned my attention to the route. I hadn’t been kidding. It was a good distance between the cities, but on the plus side the ocean floor was not the flat abyssal plain you found in some areas. The maps on-board the sub were comprehensive. Clear indications of depth and the topography of the sea floor. Arrows marking currents and lines indicating the placement of cables.
There were gaps too. Between the cities and shipping lanes were little hollows, shadows of quiet where there may be nothing or a military base, staging point, listening station, Silent City or anything else. Maps were power. If you had a map of everything you could do anything. That’s why the maps here weren’t complete.
Computers, even the dedicated navigation ones, were installed with a ‘good enough’ system of maps. If it was a short range pleasure sub, you got detailed maps of the local area and little else. A transport sub and your maps covered the topography of the shipping lanes. You never got information you didn’t need. It was just ‘good enough’.
