by G R Matthews
NOTHING IS
EVER
SIMPLE
CORIN HAYES 2
G R MATTHEWS
All characters and situations in this book are fictitious and have no resemblance to real people living, dead or Jiangshi.
Copyright © 2016 G R Matthews
All rights reserved.
For my family, friends, gaming buddies, and all those who’ve put up with me over the years.
Thanks.
Part 1
Chapter 1
They used to say the sea doesn’t forgive. It’s not true. The sea doesn’t give a shit about you, me, anyone or anything.
Two days ago I was drunk. A nice kind of drunk. The world had a rosy glow. Admittedly it tilted a little to the left, but I hadn’t downed enough alcohol to send my stomach into a spasm which would paint the floor with vomit. A few pints of beer, a whiskey, and a happy level of inebriation.
Tom was behind the bar, the other patrons were wrapped up in their own little world and the secret court, with the assistance of Derva and the Mayor, had found me innocent of any involvement in the destruction of the Silent City. No mention was made of the man found beaten up in the toilets of this very bar. These things happened in a dangerous city, in a bar at the bottom end of the market. The bruises on my knuckles had faded quickly, those from my past would never disappear.
I was living off of the retainer and the money from the last job. Life wasn't good, it was passable and it hadn't reached that level in more years than I could remember. To be fair, a lot of those years had passed me by in a drunken stupor. My memory was hazy.
The clip shows had spoken of an attack in the north of NOAH territory, putting it all down to a rogue band of pirates. Well, we'd taught them a lesson, the show's presenters said, they wouldn't be back in a hurry. The destruction of the Silent City wasn't mentioned and neither was I - which was good.
Between my fourth and fifth pint a beep in my pocket informed me I had a message. Derva had issued me with the Mini-Pad during the trial, just to make sure I was going to make each appearance in time and, I’m sure, to keep track of me. The tiny device vibrated in my trouser pocket. With a quiet sigh, I dragged it out and read the text. It was short, to the point and left no room to wriggle or argue.
URGENT. REPORT TO DOCK 2 NOW. NO NEED TO PACK. ALL DONE.
"Bugger."
Derva was waiting, tapping her foot on the metal decking, when I stumbled onto the docks. One of these days we’d have to sort our relationship out. Friends or more? Me, I wanted more. She, well, I’ve no idea at all. I’d settle for drink and sympathy at the moment.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I’m not,” I answered.
“You’re drunk.”
“You’ve got me there.” I tried a smile. It didn’t work.
“Corin, this is serious. We’ve got a missing sub.”
“Call the search and rescue teams.” I looked around for a place to sit down, there wasn’t one.
“We did, but they can’t get in or move it.”
“Why?”
“The sub was carrying some important passengers and information. It wasn’t on the normal route.”
I watched her eyes, but the In-Eye flickers masked her thoughts. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“The NOAH board has put the retrieval of the passengers and information as a high priority. The rescue team is on site, but cannot access the sub. There has been no communication with anyone on-board and the sub is stuck in a precarious position. They fear any heavy engineering intervention could send the sub to the depths. They’ve requested a Fish-Suit user to effect entrance and prepare the passengers for retrieval.”
Even through the drinker’s haze, I could see it. “This is a secret sub, isn’t it? It shouldn’t be there and I shouldn’t know anything about it.”
“It’s not too far and you’ll be briefed en route.”
“Derva, really, this…”
“Do your job, Corin. Earn your money.” Her stern, business look softened. “And come home safe. It shouldn’t take more than a day or two.”
Who could resist?
# # #
Clambering into the Fish-Suit and breathing in the Oxyquid, fighting the gag reflex, was its normal wonderful experience. Everyone should do it once in their life, just so they know never to do it again. The fact that I chose it as a career can only hint at the level of subconscious insanity I must hide behind the haze of alcohol.
Stepping out into the dark water was easy. Following the map on the HUD, its false colours lighting up the lightless world around me, was child’s play. Descending down into the deep was nothing. I’d done it before, countless times. At least no one was shooting at me this time.
The sub was not entirely as I’d been led to expect. As it appeared out of the gloom and marine snow it was clear this was not a standard passenger sub. Those are long and have portholes running down both sides. I’ve no idea why. Most of the time they are so far from the photic zone that there is no light and nothing to see. Some of the upmarket ones, the ones that don’t go too deep, have a transparent section, usually with a bar and a swimming pool. Not quite an oxymoron, a swimming pool under the ocean, but as close as you’ll get without drowning. This one had no such breaks in the hull, no way for the passengers to gaze out at the wonder of the pitch black ocean.
The second thing of note were the faint lines of the weapon ports dotted along the hull. They were definitely not standard issue. What my lights couldn’t pick out were the larger outlines of the rescue pods. I put this down to the simple reason that this sub didn’t have any. Now that was against the law. I suspect the builders of the sub knew and didn’t care, or had been told not to care.
At least they’d had put in an airlock. The suit’s thrusters brought me up alongside and kept me steady in the current. On the HUD, I could see the code and instructions for operating the airlock. It would need to be overridden and some of the safeties disabled. You generally open an airlock when you dock, when there was air on both sides. It’s safer that way.
To make sure I didn’t kill everyone on board, I followed the instructions with great care. The code was accepted without a qualm by the sub’s computer, but the warning lights started flashing when I began to turn the lock wheel.
A large bubble of air, silvery skinned and undulating, escaped from the hatch followed by a steady stream of smaller ones as the inrushing water filled the small airlock. I felt the current as a tug on my suit, easy to resist by holding onto the handle and using a little kick from the motors. The red glow of the emergency lights in the airlock stopped flashing and glowed steadily, my signal to enter.
There was room for three large men, or two people wearing Fish-Suits. Luckily it was just me. Another code, another locking wheel and the outer door began to close. Through the helmet and the Oxyquid that filled my ears, I heard the sub groan. Metallic, painful, a slow cry of agony, and the sub moved. The water shielded me from the movement, but anyone alive on the sub would know about it. My HUD showed the inclination of the sub had steepened, only by a degree or so. Not a lot, but it wouldn’t take much more to send the vessel over the side of the ridge and into the depths. There’d be time, if it did, for me to escape. The sub would survive, for a time, it was rated to go deeper than this, but the sea floor was a long way down. Too far.
The outer door closed and the level of the sea water in the airlock began to drop. I stood still as the meniscus line sank down my helmet.
Decisions, decisions. Without the buoyancy of the water, the Fish-Suit was heavy and cumbersome. Moving around the sub, assessing the situation, repairing the
systems and readying the crew and passengers for rescue would be tough. Without it, if anything went wrong, I’d be as dead as everyone else.
Chapter 2
I elected to stow the suit away. The airlock had Oxyquid connections and a reserve tank. They were standard in modern airlock manufacture and I’d bet that redrawing the plans for a simple airlock would cost more than anyone wanted to spend. The hoses attached easily and once the water was gone, the systems engaged and drew all the oxygenated liquid out of the suit.
It is a bit like drowning in reverse. You are trying to breathe a mixture of air and liquid at the same time, in the same breath. The gag reflex kicks in pretty quickly and your body goes to war with your rational mind. I know I can breathe air, and I know I can breathe the Oxyquid, it is the moment of switchover that causes the most panic. Globules of Oxyquid stubbornly refuse to be ejected from your lungs and dry air fights to replace them. I didn’t throw up, but it’s been known.
The inner door of the airlock hissed open and I stepped into the sub, dripping Oxyquid on the carpeted floor. The emergency lighting was on, bathing the interior in its red glow. I’m still not sure why they think emergency lighting should be red? I see a lot better in normal white light and the power drain is no different. Old habits die hard.
There was no one to greet me. The airlock opened out into the staging room, a rectangular box where the stewards would stand, waiting to read your ticket and guide you to your seat. In passenger subs this doubled as the kitchen. The place where they reheated meals that had been prepared weeks ago and tasted like they’d been made a few centuries before that. An information panel was helpfully flashing the word ‘Emergency’. I couldn’t fault its grasp of the situation.
The door to the left led to the cargo bay and engines. The door to my right led to the passenger compartment and the command deck. I chose right.
The compartment was empty. The seats where there. Three columns, three seats in each. Two aisles ran from the bulkhead to the far end and the thick security doors that led to the command deck. The briefing had been rushed, but I knew that only a skeleton crew ran this sub. Enough to chart the course to its destination and not a lot else. There were two passengers on board, the sole cargo for this trip.
I ducked back into the staging room and looked around. Something nagged at the back of my mind and a moment later I saw it. The kitchen equipment, the fridges and cooker weren’t where they should be. There were cupboards and compartments.
If you’ve ever taken a sub, you’ll know they have available every luxury item the weary traveller could ever wish to purchase. Drinks, food, perfumes, clothes, blankets, anything. These compartments weren’t empty, but I doubt the weary traveller was really in the market for a selection of low and high powered pistols, assault rifles, armour piercing rounds and the variety of explosive devices on offer. Unless they were on the way to a Christmas family get-together.
A stealth sub. One designed to get close to, or right into, an enemy city and deliver its cargo, normally troops, without being detected. I’d bet that the cargo hold was outfitted with a few troop launchers; like torpedoes but designed to hold one or two soldiers and deliver them at high speed to their target. It wasn’t something I ever wanted to do.
I’d heard the tales of soldiers who’d been fired at cities during the war. The good stories had the soldiers punch through the city walls in such swathes that the city fell to their superior numbers. Sadly, these were outnumbered by the accounts of torpedoes failing to penetrate the city walls and crushing the soldiers within to a red, white and purple pulp.
The launchers would be down-below. Right up against the sea floor and, therefore, useless as a point of egress. With a decent air tank, you could survive two, maybe three hours in one of those. If it didn’t sink too far and the hull could resist the pressure. Two too many ifs for me. If things went as the boffins who’d briefed me said, I wouldn’t need an escape route. A simple case of repairing the communications and defence systems to allow another sub to connect an umbilical and it would all be fine.
Apparently, I was told, the first sub to get close enough to effect a rescue had been fired upon. Something they put down to a malfunction of the Friend or Foe system on the damaged sub. The crew wouldn’t know how to repair it. They were a pilot and a navigator. An AI ran the rest of the sub. The Fish-Suit was so small, so low energy that even a stealth sub couldn’t pick it up, not if you ran it the way I did. The joy of military training.
I picked my way back through the passenger compartment, noting the recesses and hooks for all the equipment a soldier carried into battle but which would make sitting comfortably impossible. One of the trays on the back of a seat was down and there was a cold cup of coffee in the holder. It looked half-drunk, but it could as likely been half-spilled. I checked the carpet below, just to be sure and because I wanted to know. It was dry. So one of the passengers had been relaxing with a coffee before disaster struck.
What that had been was anyone’s guess. The boffins didn’t know and with communications down there was no way to ask them. A short range radio burst had produced no other response than a sonar ranging ping coming from the stealth sub. They’d wisely backed away and after the subsequent attempt to reach the sub had resulted in a torpedo heading their way, no further attempts had been made.
I looked around. There had been two passengers on board, but the seat next to the coffee drinker showed no evidence of occupancy. From my position, halfway down the aisle, there was nothing to see. I walked on, checking the seats as I moved.
Two rows from the front, I found the other passenger. Dead. Whatever his name had been, and I hadn’t been told, he hadn’t been wearing a belt. Nothing unusual in that, subs didn’t move too fast and they were unlikely to hit anything. This one though, had hit the sea floor, coming to rest with over half its length dangling over a ridge. Only the mass of the engines at the rear had stopped it tipping over. My extra mass wasn’t going to make much of a difference, but a change in the current or a mistimed, misaligned rescue attempt would.
Tipping the man’s head back, I saw the small bruise on his forehead where he’d hit the chair in front. Not hard enough to kill him, not a bruise that small. I tilted and twisted his head a little, the man’s neck didn’t seem to be broken. Putting a finger against his neck, just below the corner of his jaw, I checked his pulse again. He was definitely dead, but I couldn’t find out why. No wounds, no broken neck and only a small bruise.
There was nothing in his pockets, no ID, no wallet or chip card. Nothing I could use to identify him. However, around his feet were the discarded shells of peanuts. In the folds of his clothes were more fragments of shell. It was possible, I suppose.
Ghoulish work, prising a dead man’s jaws apart and peering in. I couldn’t see any obvious evidence of choking, but there was a fair amount of mashed up peanut paste stuck in his teeth. There was no way I was putting my fingers down his throat to check, but it was as likely as anything else. The poor guy had been eating peanuts when the red lights came on and the impact with the sea floor had thrown him forward, causing him to breathe in sharply, rather than swallow. A peanut got lodged in his throat and he choked to death. Not a nice way to go, if such a thing existed.
Why he was sat so far from the other passenger, I couldn’t say. Maybe they wanted some space or maybe they hated each other. Either was a possibility.
Chapter 3
If nothing else, I could tell the investigators, because as sure as a shark’s teeth are sharp there would be an investigation, that the man was dead. Choked on a peanut. Tragic accident. Sad story. Life.
With luck, and if everything went to plan, they would reclaim his body and pass his remains on to any surviving family who would, no doubt, grieve. I could empathise with them. Getting the news that a loved one is dead, is the most harrowing experience. Someone sticks a hook down your throat and yanks your heart out through your mouth. All I remember about the moment they told me Tyler was de
ad, had been killed, murdered, was the pain. The heart wrenching, bottomless drop into an ocean of burning pain.
I took a breath, closing down that chain of memories. Not now, not here. I needed a drink and I wasn’t going to get one. Perhaps I could make sure no one else had to die today, no other family had to get that news.
At the end of the aisles, the command deck door. It was a bulkhead and that made sense. Not only did it protect the command crew from any distractions or interruptions, but if the sub sprung a leak they were likely to be safe. They could still control the major systems and try to guide the sub to safety. In desperation they might head for the surface. That would kill them as much as heading to the bottom would.
The locking wheel on the door wouldn’t budge. Even with both hands on it, leaning and pulling on one of the spokes with all my weight and strength, the wheel was stuck fast. It might be locked from the inside. Probably standard procedure in an accident. Go into lockdown and prevent water from spreading throughout the whole sub.
The panel next to the door was working and with the tap of a few commands I found out that, yes, the wheel was locked from the other side. With no way to unlock it from this side, there were few choices. First, go outside in the Fish-Suit and try cutting through the hull with the wrist welder, but the occupants didn’t have the hours and days that might take. I could grab the suit and try the welder on the bulkhead door, a weaker target than the hull, but it was designed to work in salt water. No telling what it might do in an oxygenated environment. Get hot, certainly. Cut through that much metal, unlikely. Third option, try and call the command centre on the internal comms.
They should be aware of my presence. The opening of the airlock would have sent lights flashing on the main command panel. They hadn’t tried to contact me, or come out of their own accord. It was entirely possible they thought I wasn’t a NOAH employee and was a pirate or an enemy combatant. I shrugged, it didn’t matter either way.
