by G R Matthews
“He was attacking Hai San,” came her defensive reply.
“I’m not saying you did the wrong thing,” I turned my eyes on her. “It was a good shot. That’s not what I am trying to say. You tried to kill a man.”
“Hai San killed him,” she snapped back. It was true, Hai San had cut the man’s head from his body, but he’d have died soon enough from the thick metal crossbow bolt in his neck. No Frankenstein shock of electricity would have brought him back to life. I didn’t want to rob her of any illusions that made life easier, however she’d have to face up to what she had done at some point.
Even Hai San was not immune to killing. Anyone with a conscience couldn’t help but be affected. I’d known old soldiers who couldn’t sleep at night, who cried themselves into exhaustion during the dark hours when your mind had free rein to dredge up memories. Like me, many of them turned to alcohol and drugs. Post-Traumatic Stress was an old world word that maintained and refreshed its meaning with every war.
“Yes, he did,” I said. “If you want to talk about it at any time.” I left the words hanging in the air between us and they settled to the floor, seeping into the stone, unanswered.
Chunhua turned away and I let the silence continue. Sometimes you don’t need to push a point, you just need to make it and let it marinate.
An hour of silence passed by. I spent the time trying to ignore the burning pain in my ribs and she spent it trying to ignore me. That was fine. I’d spent much of life trying to be ignored and it was good to see all the practice paying off.
When Hai San returned, sword in hand and a spatter of blood on his clothes, Chunhua stood, disarmed the crossbow and went to her room. Her door closed with an audible click and ratchet of the lock. She did it all without talking to me.
“Has she done that before?” I asked.
“What? Given me the silent treatment,” Hai San replied. “Sometimes.”
“No. Killed a man, I meant.”
“Not to my knowledge,” Hai San said, wiping the blade down and sheathing it once more.
“Who taught her to use the crossbow?”
“Her mother, my sister,” Hai San said. “She married one of my most trusted people. Lijuan will learn to fight and use weapons too. Our culture may differ from yours, Corin. I don’t want women to be unable to defend themselves. They cannot seem to be weak, not in my way of life. It isn’t safe.”
I recalled the punch Chunhua had delivered when we first met, or rather when I tried to break them out of their cell. The calm manner in which both girls had coped with the escape and sub journeys. The facade had cracked from time to time, but they’d been strong all the way through. Stronger than I would have been, but the recognition that both girls had lost some of their innocence at too young an age didn’t sit well with me. My heart wept a little for them.
“Did you find a doctor?”
“I’ve called a few in,” Hai San answered. “There were two more assassins in the house, not including the one we found unconscious in your room. We have a lot of injured people and they all need treatment. You’ll live until one gets here. It’ll be light in a few hours and I’d like to be ready to strike back. I’ve told my guards to direct a doctor this way as soon as they can.”
“Thank you,” and I was grateful. The cut along my ribs seemed to have stopped bleeding, but I’d rather not collect another scar.
“There’s a spare room at the end,” he raised an arm and pointed down to the far end of the balcony. “You can use it for the rest of the night. The doctor will find you there.”
He stood without another word and headed up the stairs to his room. I was left with only the blanket covered lumps of expired life for company. They wouldn’t be talking much and right now an hour or two of sleep would be welcome. Pulling myself up, grunting in pain, I turned my back on the dead and headed off to bed.
Chapter 46
They’d come in using a simple technique. An AI worm which Yunru’s team introduced during their visit had knocked out the alarm functions, the sensors and all the subsidiary Panels. The home’s tame AI should have picked it up and dealt with it, but it hadn’t and that’s all there was to it. You could spend a lifetime arguing about the ‘if onlys’ but they rarely got you out of trouble. It was a million to one chance, they said, but still it happened. The AI got a stern talking to and a small software update. The house was secure again.
The counter-attack was likewise to be simple and straightforward. Find the base they were operating from and send a few dozen guards to severely reprimand them.
Of course, the first job was to locate their base.
“We’ll know by midday,” Hai San said as he drank his tea.
The balcony outside his room, and now mine too, was empty of anyone else. The two girls had been whisked away just before the clocks struck dawn. A last wave from Lijuan and they were gone. They didn’t tell me where, and I was guessing the fewer who knew the better.
“So soon?” It wasn’t a small city. Multiple domes and a myriad of Boxes, factories and other structures to search.
“This is my city,” he said. “Little happens without the Hai San knowing.”
“You can’t have eyes everywhere,” I replied, sipping my own tea. I’d have to get a bag of this before I went home, I was beginning to develop a taste for it.
“Eyes, ears, and lot of people who owe the Hai San a lot of money.” There was no boasting in his tone, just calm truth.
“And once you find them?”
“We go after them. We kill them.” He raised his cup to his lips again and drank. I watched his eyes, they were staring at a point on the stone floor stained brown with dried blood despite the three or four goes the servants had had at getting it clean.
“Yunru?”
“She will not be there. It is dangerous to come into an enemy’s city. She will stay on a submarine somewhere close by. Issuing orders for others to carry out, risking their lives not hers.”
“Will you be able to find her sub?” I asked and knocked back the last of the tea.
“Possibly,” he said. “She will move around a lot and that will give us something to work with. It will take longer though.”
“Won’t she leave when you take out all the Sio Sam Ong she has brought with her?”
“More than likely,” he said. “Though the news will take a little time to reach her.”
“So why not wait and hit them both at the same time?”
“The aim is not to kill Yunru.” He faced me, twisting in his seat. “Though she tried to have me killed, I do not wish to create a power vacuum within the Sio Sam Ong. There is still a deal to salvage that could make both organisations very rich.”
I stared at him, mouth open and eyes wide. It took a moment for my mind to reassert control. “You’d still deal with her after everything she has done and tried to do?”
“Business is business, Corin. One of my ancestors, a long, long time ago said, ‘the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.’ Though it has come to a battle, the true war is fought with money and power not swords, guns and torpedoes.”
“What could be worth your daughter’s life?”
“A mineral, Corin. A rare earth that only forms around the volcanic vents and fissures of the deep sea floor,” he answered.
“A mineral? Worth a lot?”
“More than platinum and diamond. It promises to speed up travel beneath the waves, Corin. It will let us go faster and quieter than ever before,” he said.
“Like that water drive some subs use? Props are still faster.”
“But what if you could make propellers that turned faster and shifted more water on each rotation.” He leaned forward, towards me.
“Then you’d run into super-cavitation and you’d make a tonne of noise,” I said back and paused. “Unless you’d found a way around that?”
He smiled and didn’t answer. For some reason, the memory of a lab and readouts flickered through my mind. There
wasn’t time to follow them back to their source as an aide chose that moment to enter the courtyard.
“Honoured Hai San,” the aide said, “we have found them.”
Hai San leaped up from his chair, the legs scraping over the wooden floor of the balcony, and down the steps, snatching the Pad from the aide’s hands. I didn’t move. The promise of more bloodshed didn’t thrill me. In war people die, I know that. Understanding it on a dispassionate, logical level is easy. Being in the middle of it is anything but. All you hope is that the blood spilled isn’t yours. I’d been beaten up enough times to worry that I didn’t have much left, certainly none to spare.
They talked for a moment, the aide answering in short, clipped sentences. With a wave Hai San sent the man away, but not before receiving a bow which he returned with the merest nod of his head.
“So?” I asked has he came back up the steps, Pad gripped tightly in one hand.
“I told you we would find them,” Hai San said, slipping back into his chair,
“And now?”
“Now? Now we take the fight to them.”
“I know that,” I said. “But where are they? Who is there?”
“In a warehouse in one of the outer Boxes,” he said. “We don’t know who is there, but it is their chosen headquarters. A strike there will hurt them and they will leave the city.”
“And your chance at a deal will still be in place,” I stated. There was the taste of something rotten on my tongue.
“Yes,” was all he said.
Silence reigned for a few minutes as he finished his tea and perused the information on the Pad in front of him. This wasn’t my fight. I’d brought back his daughter safe and sound, even though he hadn’t really needed or wanted it. Put my own life at risk to do so. I’d seen confidence and fear on Chunhua’s face, seen the paternal care that Hai San, even in his own convoluted way, demonstrated towards both girls.
Yunru cared for no one and nothing except money. Except, that wasn’t fair. I didn’t actually know. She may have children and grandchildren, people she cared for and who cared for her.
The difference between her and Hai San was perspective and subjectivity. She’d tried to have me imprisoned, tortured and killed. He hadn’t. Score one for his side.
Yunru hadn’t cared that I had two young girls with me when she tried to have my sub, stolen admittedly, destroyed. Her man had gone after Lijuan with one thought in mind, to kill her. Hai San hadn’t done either of those things. Add more to his tally.
And the girls. They were innocent in all of this. Cannon fodder. Slaves to other’s whims. Expendable and trade-able commodities. Both sides were guilty of that. However, Hai San still came out on top.
I wasn’t duty or honour-bound to help. It would be no skin off of Hai San’s nose to let me walk away, to put me on a sub back to NOAH, and forget all about my minor role in his conflict. Sure, I’d been a part of the cause of this mess, but Yunru had broken their agreement. My part was, by now, incidental.
They’d fight and battle. Kill and be killed. Hai San would stay safe and Yunru, on her hidden sub, was safe too. All the guards, soldiers of both organisations would suffer the consequences and then, in the end, the two leaders would strike a new deal. All those deaths for the sake of tradition and game playing.
Like every conflict, battle and war, it was a pointless exercise where the only winner was the skeleton with the sharp scythe and tendency to talk in capital letters.
“What can I do to help?” I said, mentally giving myself a really good kicking.
Chapter 47
I don’t feel at home in the ocean, but I do get a sense of peace. A chance to be alone for a time. Cities are crowded places and even in your own home, apartment, cardboard box at the bottom of a stairwell, peace was hard to find amongst the sounds of civilisation, usually arguing with itself.
Even with the feeling of warm Oxyquid in my lungs, the pressure of the exoskeleton on my ribs and the view through the visor’s HUD, I still preferred it to being in the city. In a Fish-Suit I was my own boss, made decisions for myself and was, for once, more knowledgeable than many others. It was a sense of power over my own destiny. Fuck up and I’d die. Do well and I’d live, get paid and get drunk.
“Hayes,” came the tinny voice in my earphones, “are you ready?”
This time out, I wasn’t alone. A short distance away, visible in the faint blue light that still penetrated down this deep and picked out by my HUD, another Fish-Suit user. This one, a small lady named Qiao, was the only user in the city that held any allegiance to Hai San.
“Yes,” I typed back and my voice, or a computer generated approximation of it, would sound in her ears. Subtitles would appear at the bottom of the screen just as hers had on mine.
Between the two of us stretched, or rather floated, a thin, almost invisible fibre optic cable. Like the large sub formations which combined their data and coordinated via cables, Fish-Suit users could use them to work together. They were fragile. Get them snagged or pull on them too hard and they snapped. There was no repairing them if they did. Useful for getting close to a target, but worthless once it all went to shit.
“Deploying the first strut,” said the voice and the words flashed up in the little chat window on my HUD.
“Me too,” I answered. Unhooking the long pole from the pack I’d carried from the airlock on the other side of the city I placed it gently against the wall of the box. It landed with a soft metallic thump which I felt all up my arms. Inside, if they were listening, they might have heard it too. However, two thick hulls and all the insulation would do a great job of muffling the sound. “In place.”
“Next one,” she said.
My second one hit the wall with the same sound. I backed away a little, just a shove with my arms and a little kick from the motors to keep me hanging in the water column. “In place.”
“Activating primary,” Qiao said. No emotion in the fake voice. No excitement, stress or anger. It was disconcerting.
There was a hiss that I heard through the water, suit and Oxyquid. From the left, one of the struts, a long pole of metal, moved along the Box wall. Where it met mine there was a bright flash and rush of bubbles. My visor darkened in self-defence, just as it did when I used my wrist welder.
“Confirm join,” I typed to her.
“Activating secondary,” her words said.
Another hiss and another metal pole snaked over the hull and joined with mine in a flash of bubbles.
“Confirm join. Tertiary bonding activated now,” I said to Qiao and tapped a sequence of commands. A last flash and the poles were all cemented together.
“Get to it, Hayes,” Qiao said. “All readings show normal.”
We spent the next ten minutes building a double-hulled tent on the outside of the box. Fabric, thin and flexible in the air, became a bugger to move in the water that surrounded us. Hooking it over more poles, shorter ones this time, of strong metal took longer that it should have done. I could feel myself sweating, even in all the Oxyquid. A little adjustment to the environmental controls and the suit cooled the Oxyquid a little.
With a struggle we erected the temporary airlock. It wasn’t pretty and it flapped in the slow current that skimmed along the edges of the Box.
It was another job of five minutes to check all the seals, to make sure the bonding of material on metal was perfect. One imperfection, one flaw and we’d be crushed into a bloody, meat flavoured, and slightly crunchy pancake in seconds. It was worth the time to make it right.
“Looks good,” I typed.
“Agreed,” she replied. “Attach pipe and fill it.”
The pack came with a hose which slipped into a connector on the front of the tent. Opening the valves we filled in the interior of the tent’s double hull with expanding foam. It would harden quickly into a rigid, incompressible frame, squeezing into every crack, corner and crevice of the tent.
It did nothing for the aesthetics of our construction, but i
t would keep us alive when we needed it to. Back in the war, when I was training, I’d practiced a time or two with these things. Designed for ultra-stealthy insertion of agents and soldiers into a city, they cost an absolute fortune and were renowned for failing. I’d never heard of them being used in the last year of the war when I was actually active. We’d been edging towards peace at the time and hostile acts had been fewer and larger as the military machines of both corps took the chance to lob bigger and bigger torpedoes at each other. Subtlety was a thing of the past in that last gasp of a dying conflict.
Using the motors to move inside, we both turned and put our backs to the wall of the box. The last thing to do here, and it was almost as scary as taking that first gulp of Oxyquid, was to seal ourselves in. To create our own potential tomb. No chance of escape. Well, I could cut us out, but it would take hours and even Fish-Suit users don’t do well in enclosed spaces.
We strung more fabric, the last in our packs, across the open section of the rigid tent. Bonding the flexible fabric to the walls we’d built. Simple zips, Velcro and smears of contact adhesive held it in place. The last sputters of our foam tanks went into the new fabric hull and it filled in seconds and hardened in a minute. Our coffin was complete.
She turned her light on first and I smiled at the small, meaningless victory.
Water filled our little room and there was little time to waste by relaxing in our own isolation. The portable, though that was almost a misnomer, airlock wasn’t really an airlock. It provided a simple barrier to the water pressure outside and now we needed to get inside. I checked the clock on my HUD, we had time.
“Start cutting,” I typed and got an affirmative reply.
My visor darkened once more as my wrist welder erupted into life. One of the reasons, so I’d been told, that these airlocks failed was the user being boiled inside by heat of the cutting tools. It is true that wrist welder can put out a lot of heat, but it is localised and precise, nothing like the old systems the military used. The whole process of cutting through the first hull would take an hour or so, another thirty minutes to chunk up the thick insulation layer and then we’d be right on the inner hull. A few centimetres at most from our target.
