Within the Water

by Kelly Fallows

  ‘Well, well, well, what do you know,’ Nathan muttered through his cold mirth. ‘Looks like Fahlen is getting desperate.’ His shark-like smile at this prospect was enough to send the lackey, who had brought him the news that Fahlen was calling, scuttling back towards the open door, pulling it shut tightly as if that would protect him. Nathan paid him little mind as he set his screens to receive the visual communiqué from the Republic’s Minister of Security.

  ‘Minister Fahlen, what an honour,’ Nathan mocked as Fahlen’s face appeared on his monitor.

  ‘Nathan.’ Fahlen’s reply was terse at best and downright hostile at worst.

  ‘Ah, don’t be like that, Fahlen; after all, you wouldn’t want to make me upset enough to end this highly… illicit conversation, now would you?’ Nathan laughed again, taking no pains to hide how much this whole situation amused him. It also had the added benefit of obscuring the fact that Nathan wasn’t in the exact position he had hoped to be when this call came through, namely disks in hand ready to make demands.

  ‘I think it would be to our mutual advantage to keep this conversation going, don’t you?’ Fahlen countered with all the confidence he could muster. He knew he had already surrendered the advantage to Nathan by making this call, but he really had no choice. He knew that Nathan was behind the theft of the disks, but needed more information before he could actively plan to retrieve them.

  ‘Really? Do you have something I want then?’ Nathan queried in mock thought. ‘I know I certainly have something that you want,’ he added suggestively, making Fahlen as uncomfortable as possible with his insinuations.

  ‘Do you? I certainly don’t know that,’ Fahlen countered plainly, ignoring Nathan’s blatant insinuations and recognising them for the attempts to unnerve him that they were.

  ‘Aww, too uptight to have a little fun? Pity.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ Nathan parroted back in mock innocence.

  ‘You know damned well what, Nathan!’ Fahlen lost his composure, which only served to entertain the Guild leader, who had no qualms about laughing at the minister, loudly.

  Taking a deep breath, Fahlen tried again. ‘Have you got…’ he began before trailing off mid-sentence as realisation struck him. ‘You don’t have them either!’ he exclaimed suddenly, putting an equally sudden stop to Nathan’s laughter. It was now Fahlen’s turn to laugh and not even Nathan’s flinty glare was enough to get him to stop completely.

  ‘Well now, isn’t this just priceless?’ Fahlen announced, looking a great deal more relaxed than at the start of this discussion. ‘Did your little scheme go awry?’ he asked in mock concern.

  ‘The way I see it, Fahlen, you don’t have anything to be cheerful about,’ Nathan countered. ‘At least with me there could have been… an understanding.’

  ‘An understanding that would have cost me dear. Whereas now—’

  Nathan barked out a laugh, cutting Fahlen off. ‘If you think there is still room for negotiating and wheedling, you’re in for a nasty surprise. He won’t deal with you,’ Nathan told him flatly.

  ‘Won’t he now? I’m sure there is something that I have that a thug like him will want,’ Fahlen announced, feeling as though his understanding of the situation had improved greatly in the last few minutes, and with it his fortunes. Pirates, after all, were a lot easier to bribe than the Guild.

  Nathan leaned forward at that, suddenly interested in their discussion. ‘A thug like him, eh?’ he repeated carefully, ‘you really have no idea, do you?’

  ‘A pirate is a pirate, Nathan; no matter how much you want to dress up your… organisation; thieves and thugs the lot of them.’

  ‘I did wonder if you knew. When I heard there had been survivors, I thought for sure that you would know,’ Nathan’s musing acted as a taunt to the minister, who prided himself on knowing about everything that was happening in the Republic – knowledge was power after all.

  ‘But, now, I’m questioning if you even knew about him in the first place, or is he just some forgotten file languishing with all the others, lost and forgotten. Now I thought Admiral Greyson at least would… well it’s hardly my place to question his wife.’ Nathan drip-fed Fahlen the information he so desperately wanted, and then sat back in the hopes that he would take it and run with it.

  ‘Admiral Greyson?’ Fahlen immediately latched onto the familiar name.

  ‘Did I say Greyson?’ Nathan played the oblivious card.

  ‘Yes, you did. What are you playing at Nathan?’ Fahlen demanded, trying to put all the information he had just gleaned from the Guild leader into some kind of recognisable pattern.

  ‘Me? I’m playing at nothing,’ Nathan said lightly.

  ‘Well then, I believe this discussion has accomplished everything it can. The Republic stands,’ Fahlen declared, shutting off his end of the communiqué with the ever-present phrase.

  ‘Oh yes, I believe it has accomplished a great deal,’ Nathan agreed to the now blank screen. ‘The Republic stands… for now,’ he added mirthlessly; Fahlen really was too easy to manipulate.

  ‘Nathan?’ Rose called from the doorway interrupting his thoughts.

  ‘Yes, Rose?’

  ‘I heard Fahlen was going to be calling,’ she stated carefully, not wanting to overstep her bounds again so soon after the last incident.

  ‘He just did, my dear.’

  ‘A good turn of events?’

  ‘Indeed. It seems that Fahlen may just take care of our problem with a certain pirate captain,’ Nathan explained.

  ‘You sent him after Daniels?’ Rose queried. ‘But what of the disks? Surely we need to get them first.’

  ‘That we do Rose, but with Fahlen on his tail as well Daniels is more likely to be reasonable with us and if not reasonable… well, let’s just say harried men make more mistakes.’

  ‘And Fahlen agreed to this?’

  ‘Ha! Fahlen isn’t as clever as he thinks. I let slip some information from which even he’ll be able to work out who took his precious disks, and, once he knows, he simply won’t be able to resist going after him,’ Nathan explained. ‘In fact, soon, I think we might even have a whole posse of ministers after dear Captain Daniels.’

  ‘As long as we get to Daniels first,’ Rose pointed out. She knew just how capable of evading capture Daniels was and she had a bad feeling that this plan was not going to play out as Nathan intended.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, Rose – it’s all in hand,’ Nathan assured her confidently and with the inference that there was a lot more going on that she wasn’t aware of. ‘You know there’s a certain irony about this whole situation that I’m only just beginning to appreciate, and having Fahlen do our dirty work for us as well… well, doesn’t that just make you feel all warm inside,’ Nathan said with a laugh.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Dammit Blue! If you don’t watch what you’re doing with that bloody torch…’

  Ben heard his first mate yell at their engineer and current chief welder as he stood on the catwalk of the engine room, chuckling to himself as he watched Duncan duck out of the path of the flame for what had to be at least the tenth time that shift.

  ‘Well, if you insist on standing where I need to weld,’ Blue countered.

  ‘I’m standing there because I’m holding the bloody panel you’re welding!’ Duncan exclaimed.

  ‘How goes it?’ Ben called out as he moved to join them on the lower deck, having decided to intervene before Blue ended up without any help at all.

  ‘Oh, just fine,’ Duncan replied laying on the sarcasm.

  ‘Blue?’

  ‘We’ll get there, Captain,’ Blue told him confidently, ‘and if Dunc here would stop getting in the way and screaming like a girl, we'd get it done a lot faster,’ he added slyly.

  ‘Blue, play nicely.’ Ben cut across Duncan’s splutteri
ng and what he was sure would be a venomous retort to gently reprimand his engineer.

  ‘Right you are, Captain,’ Blue agreed with a grin.

  ‘By the way, have you looked at the damage to the outer hull from Sophie’s… ah… delicate piloting with the Serronous?’ Ben asked; he wanted everything in top condition for entering Abantos.

  ‘No.’ Blue’s good humour and teasing fell away in the blink of an eye at the reminder of yet more avoidable damage having been done to the Coelacanth.

  ‘Ah, well, it’ll be best if you take a look before we move out,’ Ben told him seriously. ‘This is going to be the last opportunity for a while to get things fixed, so we’d best make full use of it.’

  ‘Full use as in full use of the dive bay too?’ Blue asked cautiously.

  ‘Yes, Blue, if you can convince Simon to go out with you, that is,’ he added that caveat before Blue could decide to go gallivanting out in the ocean by himself. Again.

  ‘He’ll come, and now I can at least start…’

  ‘And only for necessary repairs,’ Ben called out over his shoulder as he left, not waiting to hear Blue’s indignant reply that all the repairs are important if you want to stay afloat.

  ***

  ‘…grenades, flash-bangs, electromagnetic-pulse grenades, sh—’

  ‘Just how many kinds of grenades do we need exactly?’ Simon exclaimed, interrupting Ash’s inventory.

  ‘You have been witnessing the same crazy-arse plans they come up with as I have, right?’ Ash checked.

  ‘Well, yeah, but still regular grenades, flash-bangs – do we really need the EMP grenades?’

  ‘I know weapons aren’t your speciality, Doc, but really. We can only use the regulars and flash-bangs if we’re deep enough; it’s a little matter of pressure and percussive waves, sinking subs and cities, and all pleasant things like that.’

  ‘You mean the pressure wave could puncture a hole in the outer shell of the city or sub?’ Simon asked a little nervously.

  Ash laughed, there was a reason the doc wasn’t usually a member of the boarding party. ‘Yeah, but don’t worry, most cities are deep enough that the outside pressure of the water will stand up to the percussive blast,’ he reassured him.

  ‘Well, that’s comforting.’

  ‘Not that the EMP grenades are a cakewalk,’ Ash added, hefting one between his hands, ‘nasty little buggers, really.’

  ‘Yeah, those I’ve seen at work,’ Simon muttered darkly, much to Ash’s surprise.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Treated a guy who’d been in range of five EMP grenades at once – his whole nervous system shut down,’ Simon explained, unable to stop picturing the twitching mess that was left after that.

  ‘Urgh, yeah, one does quite enough damage on its own,’ Ash commented, placing the grenade back on the table after checking twice that it wasn’t loaded.

  ‘Hmm,’ Simon grunted in agreement, looking at them with distaste.

  ‘Right,’ Ash declared shaking off those images as he returned to the inventory. ‘Shotgun shells, rappelling rope, shotgun… rappelling rope?’ It was Ash’s turn to make an exclamation mid-inventory. ‘What the hell do we need rappelling rope for?’

  Simon shrugged in response, still writing everything down. ‘Who knows what the captain will do next.’

  ‘Another crazy, half-arsed plan is what,’ Ash complained. ‘You know I’ve got bruises the size of Eckarna on my back from that last stunt of his. Creek Fall, my arse,’ he continued grumbling, successfully distracting them both from the mess EMPs can create.

  ‘Well, you should have held on like Dunc said,’ Simon told him.

  ‘Dunc said? That crazy fool didn’t say a damn word. Bloody mime act!’

  ‘Glad to know you approve of our methods so much, Ash.’ Ben chose that moment to alert them to his presence.

  ‘And I don’t care who knows it; sinking subs with bubbles, rappelling ropes, sinking bloody subs we’re still on…’ Ash’s grumbling and list of complaints grew as he slammed different bits of kit down to check and pack up for their excursion.

  ‘We’re still here.’

  ‘Bloody miracle, that’s what that is.’

  ‘Lighten up, Ash – live for the moment!’ Ben declared, clapping him on the shoulder.

  ‘Hmph.’

  ‘How goes the inventory? We still got everything we need?’

  ‘And a few things we don’t,’ Ash pointed out before Ben could turn to Simon for a more sensible answer.

  ‘Sure, so far it’s all here. But we kind of made a bit of a mess yesterday, what with those mercs, so it’ll take a while to check everything and straighten it all up,’ Simon explained.

  ‘And your supplies?’

  ‘The chop shop’s kitted out and ready for her next visitor.’ Simon grinned at him.

  ‘I’ll bet it is! Well, don’t take it too personally if we disappoint on that one, Crippen,’ Ben joked.

  ‘I’m sure we can survive the deprivation.’

  ‘Deprivation? What deprivation?’ Ash asked, suddenly coming back into the conversation.

  ‘Nothing Ash, nothing,’ Ben told him, laughing at Ash’s stricken look; he really needed a longer attention span for something other than weapons.

  ‘How’s the patchwork going?’ Simon asked, turning back to the kit.

  ‘Well, if Blue doesn’t burn Dunc to a crisp and Dunc doesn’t throttle Blue, I think we’ll be in the clear,’ Ben told him mock seriously.

  ‘Ah, so we’re sunk then.’ Simon laughed, glad he was well clear of those two – a happy team they did not make.

  ‘Don’t start getting too cheerful now. Blue’s going to need you to go diving after he’s finished up that patch. Seems Soph may have done a bit of damage to the outer hull.’

  ‘You mean when she scraped down the side of Devonport’s sub?’ Simon asked lightly.

  ‘About then, yeah.’

  ‘Wonderful. Say, why can’t Dunc help him? I’m going to be tied up with this for a while.’ Simon tried to wheedle his way out of it.

  ‘Not a chance, Simon. Those two are bad enough inside a sub together; stick them in the ocean and who knows what they’ll manage. Besides, you signed up for this, remember?’

  ‘Wish someone had been a little more specific with what I was signing up for,’ Simon moaned.

  ‘That’ll teach you to try and keep the peace,’ Ash snorted from the sidelines. ‘Should’ve just let the two of them fight it out; it would’ve been highly entertaining for the rest of us.’

  ‘Somehow, I didn’t think that offering to help Blue before he and Dunc started the next ocean war would end up with me diving outboard at any given moment to scrub the paintwork!’

  ‘Relax, Crippen. Don’t want your blood pressure going through the roof now, do we? And, besides, I told Blue essential jobs only,’ Ben told him jovially. ‘You should only be out there—’

  ‘A couple of days!’ Ash cut in.

  ‘Exactly, just a couple of days,’ Ben said with a smirk.

  ‘Urgh.’ Simon threw his hands up in despair. ‘I give up.’

  ‘Don’t worry you’ll live.’ Ben’s concern was belied by the grin on his face.

  Heading back through the mess on his way up to the control room to check on the diagnostics Sophie was running for him, Ben came across Zhe sitting at the long table. How he had missed her on his way through to Simon and Ash was easy to see; she was sitting as quiet as a grave and about as sombre as one too.

  ‘Zhe?’ he asked quietly, not wanting to scare her. Although she has been getting better on that score recently, he thought to himself as he watched her startle in surprise, but not in fear.

  ‘Hey,’ she whispered softly, smiling lightly at him.

  ‘Lost in thought?’ he asked, leaning against the table next to her.


  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Just so much is happening; I hardly feel like…’ She trailed off looking down at her hands.

  ‘Feel like what?’

  ‘Well, me,’ she said quietly, darting a glance up to his face to gauge his reaction.

  ‘Zhe…’

  ‘Well, no it’s not like I don’t feel like me, I do, but then…’ She wrung her hands together, obviously having trouble putting her thoughts into words. ‘It’s like a dream. No, not a dream, but like I’m… a character! Like in a book that you read, where you see and hear everything she does and how she thinks, but it’s not you – she’s someone else,’ she explained in a flurry. ‘Does that make sense?’ she questioned, almost desperately, wanting to know that she wasn’t going mad.

  ‘I think a lot has happened and a lot has changed; it’s bound to be confusing,’ Ben told her gently.

  ‘Confusing?’ she let out an almost hysterical laugh as she pushed away from the table and started to pace. ‘I don’t even know who I am, so how can I know that I don’t feel like me?’

  ‘Hey now,’ Ben whispered soothingly, wrapping her in his arms and just holding her there. He really had no idea what to say to her; he wasn’t good at this emotional kind of thing.

  ‘One step at a time, little one,’ he told her. ‘This is the first time you’ve got to be you, so naturally it’s going to take a little while to figure out who that is, exactly, but you’re getting there.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ he agreed before expanding on that a little. ‘Zhe you’ve just stood here and voiced all these concerns, saying more in the last two minutes than you have in two days. You’re finding your voice.’

  ‘You know, sometimes I feel like I’ve… been me before,’ She whispered fearfully into his chest.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Zhe was silent for a few minutes before gathering the courage to answer him. ‘Remember the gun?’ she asked looking up at him, waiting for his nod before continuing. ‘I’ve been thinking about how familiar it felt – the weight, the movement and everything. I think I’ve fired one before, many times before,’ Zhe told him, leaving out the real point this raised – a slave would never have held a gun and certainly not enough times to be familiar with it.