Sophie agreed, immediately moving the Coelacanth into a series of evasive manoeuvres.
‘Dunc, report.’
‘Five mercs pinned in the mess, Captain.’
‘Keep ‘em there, Dunc, and make sure they can’t get to the armoury!’
‘Roger that.’ Duncan signed out to devote his whole attention to the mercs.
‘Blue, start shooting,’ Ben suddenly ordered.
‘But, at what?’
‘Anything. Everything. I don’t care. Just make Hans believe we’ve got a plan,’ Ben told him.
‘Er and do we have one, Captain?’ Sophie asked with a little too much hope mixed in her tone to be considered sarcastic.
‘Yes,’ Ben asked shortly. ‘Blue, I need those shots.’
‘I’ll light up the whole damn ocean.’
Ben laughed, ‘That’s the spirit, Blue.’
‘Soph, you should have coordinates coming through.’
‘Got ‘em, Cap. Whoa…’
‘Pretty specific, I know, but you’re going need to follow them exactly, can you do that?’
‘On it.’ Sophie grinned, happy to have a plan and something constructive to do.
‘Dunc, we’re going for a Creek Fall.’
‘Creek Fall?’ Dunc screeched back. ‘Shit! You serious? Now is not the time for—’
‘Creek Fall, Dunc.’ Ben cut across what was shaping up to be an epic rant.
‘Wonderful,’ was Duncan’s only response.
‘What the hell is a creek full?’ Ash shouted.
‘Just follow my lead,’ Duncan told him, all the while muttering to himself.
‘Blue, you remember our little science discussion?’
‘Aye Captain, I do.’ Blue’s concern was almost palpable.
‘Good. So you know what’s coming.’
‘Aye, here there be dragons,’ Blue muttered, still firing.
Ben stooped over the console, ‘Soph, course correction: bear four degrees starboard off the last mark.’
‘Four degrees, aye.’
‘Zhe, strap in,’ Ben ordered as he and Sophie did the same. ‘Blue, ease up on the bursts; we want Hans to come to us.’
Zhe looked uneasy at that notion, but kept her concentration on the hatchway; the angle was a little harder from her seat, but she should give pretty good coverage.
‘Well, he’s taken the bait, Captain,’ Sophie reported. ‘At least I hope it was bait,’ she muttered.
‘I see him.’ Ben was looking constantly between the viewers and his console station. ‘Just a little bit further,’ he murmured.
‘Dunc, we’ve got a ten count.’
‘Roger that, ten count.’ Dunc’s voice came over clearly.
‘Hard a starboard, Sophie!’ Ben suddenly yelled after six seconds. ‘Full engines!’
Yelps and yells reverberated around the Coelacanth as crew and mercenaries alike were thrown off their feet when the sub turned sharply and accelerated hard.
‘Hans is follow— What? She’s disappeared! Cap, the sub’s gone completely; no readings on her anywhere!’ Sophie shouted frantically checking her instruments.
‘Woo hoo!’ Ben cheered loudly from his station, drumming his hands on the console. ‘Told you there was a plan, Soph,’ he said before quickly shucking his harness and dropping down the central access ladder to help finish off the mercenaries, clapping his bemused pilot on the shoulder as he passed and grinning at Zhe.
‘Need a hand down here?’ he asked Duncan glibly as he kicked the gun out of a mercenary’s hand while Duncan, Ash and Simon all regained their feet and took out the surviving mercenaries.
‘Creek Fall, Ben.’ Duncan deadpanned before he burst out laughing and clapped Ben on the back. ‘You crazy son of a bitch, you damn well did it again.’
‘Blue, you good?’ he called through into the weapons con.
‘I’ll live,’ he replied dryly over the comm. ‘Though the Coelacanth will be limping for a while.’
‘She’ll sail true, always has,’ Ben acknowledged as he patted the hull. ‘Soph?’ He resumed checking in with his crew.
‘I will be when someone tells me where the hell that sub disappeared to!’
‘Somewhere where there’s no way back.’
‘Er… what’s a Creek Fall?’ Simon ventured to ask as he dusted himself down.
‘Just a little manoeuvre we attempted down at the falls.’ Ben attempted to brush the incident to one side.
‘Oh no, this one you’re damn well explaining!’ Duncan told him in no uncertain terms. ‘Creek Fall. I had put that out of my mind completely and was happy living a Creek-Fall-less existence!’ Duncan exclaimed resulting in laughter all round – amusement and relief mixed together now they were safe again. As safe as they were ever going to get, at least.
Chapter Eleven
‘You know, I’m pretty sure that these weren’t designed for this,’ Blue mused as he and Simon loaded another body into the torpedo bay.
‘Well, when have you ever known the captain to use things as they were intended?’ Simon responded. ‘I think he’s got a standing policy against it.’
‘Very true, lad.’ Blue chuckled.
‘And, still, it’s better than them stinking out the sub; week-old rotting corpses, yuck,’ Simon added.
‘Still reckon we should have interrogated them first,’ Ash muttered, as he hauled the last of the mercenaries into the weapons room and dumped her on the pile.
‘And just what would you be looking to get out of them?’ Blue asked casually.
‘I dunno; information?’ Ash’s sarcasm was biting.
‘You mean like who they were, what they were doing here, who sent them, what they were after…’ Simon supplied helpfully.
‘Exactly.’
‘So, stuff we already know then.’
Ash just scowled at the two of them. ‘The captain doesn’t know everything,’ he muttered mutinously.
‘Fine time to have a change of heart, considering we’ve all staked our lives on the fact that he does,’ Blue replied calmly, as he and Simon loaded the next body.
‘Hmph.’ Ash mulishly kicked one of the bodies.
‘Look, we got what we needed off them. These dive suits alone are phenomenal.’ Simon gestured to the pile of suits and guns they had stripped off the dead mercenaries. ‘I mean, just how much is the Guild paying these guys?’
‘A damn sight more than us,’ Ash grunted, looking over the haul, focusing on the weapons.
‘These suits are amazing: the flexibility in the joints and the overall manoeuvrability, not to mention how long you could stay out in one of these.’ Simon extolled the virtues of these new suits as he ran his hands over them.
‘Now me, I’m more of a fan of their guns.’ Ash grinned evilly, hefting a laser-sighted, automatic rifle from hand to hand. ‘Not so much use in a sub, though – they found that out – but where we’re going, now this baby will definitely be something to keep hold of.’
‘Once you two have finished ogling the haul, perhaps you can get back to the job in hand,’ Blue called out; he’d be damned if he was going to heft another body into the torpedo bay.
‘Ah Blue, you sure the patch on this bay is going to hold?’ Simon asked as he came back over and realised this was the same bay he'd helped Blue repair.
‘It’ll hold.’
‘Shouldn’t we use the port bay just in case though?’
‘No use in running the risk of damaging them both,’ Blue reasoned.
‘Thought you said it'd be fine?’ Ash remarked, still a little surly over their last argument.
‘It will. Now your patch in the engine room might be another matter.’
Fortunately, at that point, Duncan arrived to oversee proceedings.
‘How goes it?’ he call
ed, climbing through the hatch.
‘Good. Three down, two to go,’ Blue reported, ‘And a good haul of equipment that these two have been waxing lyrical about.’
‘Good.’ Duncan cast a quick but expert eye over the weapons and suits before he turned back to the group. ‘Blue, you leave Ash and Simon to finish up here and go check out the patch in the engine room. Ben's concerned about the position it’ll leave us in if more mercs or Elites show up.’
‘More mercs?’
‘You know the captain – he likes to be prepared.’ Duncan shrugged as if it was such a remote possibility it wasn’t worth bothering about.
‘It’ll probably be a long job; Ben's aware of that, I hope,’ Blue pointed out as he downed tools.
‘He just wants you to look over the patch right now, Blue, and secure it. We’ll be holing up somewhere soon to make full repairs and ensure we’re shipshape before landing in Abantos,’ Duncan explained.
‘Hmm, sounds like another temporary fix becoming permanent to me,’ Blue muttered as he headed over to the hatch.
‘You know, we still haven’t found out about that Creek Fall,’ Simon wheezed out as he loaded the next body, trying to get his still unanswered question out before Duncan disappeared again.
‘Oh, you will,’ Duncan said with a grin. ‘As soon as the clear up’s finished,’ he promised over his shoulder as he followed Blue out and over to the engine room.
***
‘Not that I object to a bit of rest, but shouldn’t it be full steam ahead to Abantos?’ Blue queried as the crew gathered in the common area.
‘I’m all for a break,’ Simon announced as he flopped down onto one of the sofas, stretching out his muscles.
‘Sounds about right to me,’ Sophie muttered from behind her hands as Ash grunted his agreement.
‘We’re going to rest up a bit, now we’re through the danger zone; with the Abyss immediately behind us and Abantos out in front this is the safest we’re going to be for a while.’
‘That’s it, cheer us up,’ Duncan commented on Ben’s rousing speech.
Ben barely spared a glare at his first mate for his sarcasm, before continuing as if uninterrupted. ‘We’ve got repairs to make, our course of action to refine and, most importantly, we all need some rest before we dock.’ He let the weight of the task ahead sink in for a few moments before adding, ‘And I figured there'd be a few questions ’bout earlier.’
‘Yeah, like what the hell happened to that sub?’ Sophie pointed out.
‘Well, that depends on how technical you want to get about it. The old tales would tell you that the dragons took it. As to what actually happened, in short, I’d say it went into the Abyss,’ Ben explained.
‘How about the long version?’
‘Like where you actually tell us something,’ Ash added.
‘Blue's dragons that live in the Abyss are no more than a representation of the laws of physics.’
‘Mere representations grabbed that boat?’ Ash asked incredulously.
Ben sighed; he could feel that this was going to be a long explanation.
‘Let’s look at this from a different point of view. Right, you all know how a sub works…’ Ben trailed off at the blank looks he was getting from everyone but Blue and Duncan. ‘Bloody hell! You live in one and have no clue how you don’t drown. It’s a damn miracle we’ve survived this long.’ Ben sighed. ‘Blue, a crash course in sub dynamics, if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Sure Cap. It’s all about density or weight if it’s easier to imagine for some of you. Essentially you want to keep your sub’s density the same as the water on the other side of the hull, so you use a mixture of air and water in the ballast tank to ensure this. When you want to go up, you make it lighter and when you want to go down, you make it heavier… essentially. It’s a fluid thing; everything causes adjustments to be made, like firing the torpedoes,’ Blue explained to the crew. ‘And for the captain’s science lesson here, it’s important to note that it’s a gradual thing; it takes time to change the ballast levels,’ he added as an afterthought, having already had this particular science lesson from Ben, although then it had been only theoretical, but now it was practical.
‘Thanks Blue. Right, so you’re all still with me? Density is the key, it’s what allows us to move up and down. And we don’t ever want to be less dense by any real margin than the ocean outside us because…’
‘We’ll get crushed?’ Simon half stated, half asked.
‘Exactly. Do you know how to make water less dense?’ Silence met Ben’s query just as he expected. ‘Right, you aerate it. Meaning if you have a stream of air bubbles through the water, it will be less dense than the water without the air bubbles.’
‘A visual demonstration might help,’ Duncan suggested casually from his armchair, where he was enjoying the superior feeling of knowing what the hell Ben was talking about, having suffered through a variation of this in Creek Fall.
‘You’re not going to sink the sub!’ Ash jumped to his feet.
‘No Ash, I’m not going to sink the Coelacanth,’ Ben sighed wearily, ‘but, as you’re up, grab a bucket of water, some tubing and something small that’ll float.’
Ash grumbled but complied and, after ten minutes of muttering and trudging, there was a bucket of water on the table. Ben got up and tossed the plastic cap into the bucket to prove it floated, and then picked up the tubing.
‘Dunc, come on and be useful for once, and aerate the water for our students.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because you can’t look so smug with a tube in your mouth. Now get to it.’ Ben grinned – he wasn’t going to be the only one suffering in this.
Duncan huffed out a sigh, but got up from his spectator’s position and grabbed the tubing.
‘Right, watch as Duncan blows a stream of bubbles under the cap and see what happens,’ Ben told the crew with more patience than he felt.
‘It sank!’ Simon exclaimed.
‘Your observational skills are unparalleled,’ Sophie commented dryly, although she was unable to completely hide how impressed she was.
‘All right, Dunc, you can stop.’
‘Good; that thing tastes foul,’ he complained spitting the tube out onto the floor.
‘Now back to the Abyss.’
‘I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you,’ Sophie commented lightly.
Ben ignored her and continued, ‘While I was in the control room figuring out how to outmanoeuvre Hans, I noticed strange readings regarding the density of the water, and the methane readings would suddenly go off the charts and then settle back to negligible. I tracked these readings and realised that pockets of gas were suddenly bursting from the ocean floor, thus aerating the water. I made sure we were clear of the main area of activity and went back to the fight. Then I realised if we could lure Hans into those streams, they would take care of him for us.’
‘Right, I get that. Hans got caught up in this stream of whatever, but why didn’t he just rise up out of there?’ Ash asked.
‘You remember the discussions about density and how if the ocean is denser than the sub, the sub gets crushed?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And how it takes time to recalibrate the ballast?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hans didn’t have the time; they fell through the water so quickly that, before they could count to ten, they’d have been on the wrong side of a density ratio of ten to one.’
‘Squish,’ Dunc commented helpfully.
‘Exactly. Squish.’
‘So, Blue’s dragons are air bubbles!’ Sophie laughed. ‘Brilliant! Bubble dragons!’
‘How did you know it would work?’ Zhe asked quietly, speaking up for the first time during this little science class from where she sat next to Ben.
‘Two words,’ Duncan said as
he leaned forward to add emphasis. ‘Creek Fall.’
Ben laughed. ‘Are you ever going to get over that? It was, what, six years ago?’
‘I’m scarred for life!’
‘Hey, it’s not my fault that you decided that by “aerate the water” I meant chuck hand grenades in it!’
‘Well you could have been a little more specific! Grenades produce explosions, which are made of gas!’ Duncan countered, obviously rehashing an old, worn argument.
‘As you may recall, we didn’t have time for specifics what with, oh, I don’t know, all those bullets flying around.’
‘Wait. You mean Creek Fall didn’t work last time?’ Sophie interrupted.
‘Ah, well, not exactly as I’d hoped,’ Ben conceded rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.
‘You mean you based all of that on a plan that had failed the first time around?’ Sophie screamed incredulously; suddenly this whole situation didn’t seem so funny anymore.
‘In my defence, it would have worked – if Dunc hadn’t thrown a shit load of grenades in the water.’
‘Oh no, don’t you dare blame this one on me!’ Duncan exclaimed. ‘He’s the one who was sitting pretty, up out of harm’s way—’
‘I see you’ve conveniently forgotten about the score of troopers that were “sitting pretty” with me,’ Ben interrupted Duncan’s favourite story dryly.
‘And I’m the one in the dive suit out in the ocean trying to make his crazy plan work.’
‘Well, if—’
‘Getting concussive damage from the shockwave and having to dodge incoming debris from the subs.’
‘At least the suit worked,’ Ben said mildly enough to infuriate Duncan even more. Although a keen observer would have noticed how such well-worn arguments were made increasingly for amusement and on a principle, so long forgotten, that neither party was truly angry about anything anymore.
Duncan spluttered admirably at Ben’s comment.
‘Well, I mean, you should have been pancaked by the blast,’ Ben continued, fighting off a grin.
‘Pancaked, he says without a hint of concern! I got three broken ribs!’ Duncan declared loudly.
Within the Water Page 10
