Decrypted

by Lindsay Buroker

  “And if they hit the wreck and destroy it before we get a chance to investigate?” Rias asked.

  “We have to risk it,” Tikaya said.

  He’d already turned back to the controls, and he flicked on the underwater lamp. The submarine surged forward, toward the Kyattese ship, Tikaya feared.

  “All right,” Rias said, “but let’s give them something to think about before we go down.”

  “Something to think about?” Tikaya asked. “Like a cannonball down the gullet?”

  “Technically, we have torpedoes, not cannonballs,” Rias said.

  Mee Nar frowned.

  “Neither is acceptable, Rias,” Tikaya whispered harshly.

  A few long seconds passed, and she couldn’t tell if he was mulling over alternatives or simply refusing to reply because he knew she wouldn’t like his answer. Finally, he tilted his head thoughtfully and met her eyes.

  “Did you have a chance to familiarize yourself with the tools in the science station?”

  “I looked at them when I was seeking octopus-fighting inspiration,” Tikaya said, “but I didn’t try any of them.”

  “There’s a cutting tool. Why don’t you go make friends with it?”

  Tikaya’s first thought was that he wanted her out of navigation so he wouldn’t have to explain his actions to her, but a hint of a smile had found its way onto his lips. A mischievous smile.

  “What do you want me to cut?” she asked.

  “I designed it for boring into the hulls of wrecks, figuring that we might encounter old vessels with archaeologically significant items inside. Of course, I was imagining us traveling to remote and exotic parts of the world to find these items, not into the water a few miles down the beach from your parents’ house, but regardless, that tool may prove useful now.” Rias’s smile widened. “I imagine your people will have a hard time focusing on hurling charges over the railing when their ship is in danger of sinking.”

  “You want to drill a hole in their hull?” Tikaya asked.

  “Actually, I thought you might handle that. It’ll take some tricky maneuvering to slip in close enough for the tool to reach the hull without bumping into the ship and alerting the Kyattese to our presence. You seemed uncomfortable the last time you were in charge of navigation.”

  Mee Nar gave her a startled look, as if surprised she’d been allowed to touch the submarine’s controls.

  “It’s not my fault you still haven’t given me proper instruction in that regard,” Tikaya said.

  “Soon.” Rias pointed behind her, toward the science station. “You’ll do it?”

  She supposed it was a better option than watching a torpedo burst through the hull of her people’s ship. “How big of a hole?”

  Rias paused, and she imagined him running an equation in his head, then held up his hands to form a circle in the air. “One they’ll notice, but that they should be able to patch before they get into too much trouble. And while they’re making repairs, we’ll go exploring.”

  As Tikaya headed back to her new station, she caught a comment from Mee Nar. “Depending on the skills of the practitioners aboard and what they’re focusing on, they may notice our presence no matter how careful you are not to bump the ship.”

  “Perhaps you can give those practitioners something else to think about?” Rias suggested.

  “You want me to get into their heads? I had some rudimentary instruction in that area, but telepathy isn’t my strength. I’m sure they’d sense me meddling. I’m best at offensive attacks, flamboyant ones in particular. It’s what impresses my people.”

  “Yes, my ships were on the receiving end of some of those fireballs,” Rias said dryly. “We’re almost there. If there’s something you can think of to help—even if it’s only to give me a warning that they know we’re here—I’d appreciate it.”

  Here? Already? Tikaya opened the hatch and slipped into the tiny science station. A lamp outside the porthole was already on, and she peered into the water, wondering if they were close enough yet to see the Kyattese ship.

  A distant boom reached her ears. Though she didn’t see a flash of light or feel the effects of a shock wave, Tikaya assumed the sound meant Rias was right; her people were dropping explosives. That boom must have come from deep down, too. What if she and Rias were already too late?

  A shark swam into view, one beady eye visible above a partially open mouth that revealed rows of sharp teeth. Coincidence, Tikaya told herself when it disappeared from sight. Something bumped against the submarine, and she gripped the desk with both hands. Maybe she’d been wrong.

  “Company?” she called.

  Another shark drifted past.

  “Yes,” Rias responded. “The water around their ship is teaming with sharks.”

  “I noticed. Do my people know we’re here?”

  Rias and Mee Nar conferred in a low tone.

  Tikaya leaned close to the porthole, this time peering above them, figuring Rias would come in from below, but she didn’t see anything. He would probably cut out the lamps when they drew near. That would make sawing holes difficult. She sat down. Yes, familiarizing herself with the tools ahead of time would be a good idea.

  “It may not be a practitioner, but simply the carnage that’s attracting the sharks,” Rias called. “We’ve seen dead fish and other creatures floating up. I’m sure those explosives are doing damage to the sea life down there. A brutal tactic, given your people’s peaceful reputation.”

  Tikaya grimaced. She knew he wasn’t judging her, but she couldn’t help but identify with those making these choices. How not? As far as she knew, they weren’t rogues or foreigners; they were operating with the full knowledge of key members of her government. They represented her people, her country, and... her. “Yes, it is,” she said. Then, compelled to make an excuse for them, she added, “They must be desperate.”

  “We’re going in,” Rias said. “We’re about thirty feet down right now, and I don’t want our light to be visible to someone looking overboard, so I’m turning off the lamps. When we’re under them, I’ll risk turning yours back on so you can see.”

  “Understood.”

  Hardly feeling ready for the task, Tikaya found levers that controlled the pair of articulating arms she’d briefly explored during their last trip. A soft click sounded as something on the outside opened, and the “arms” unfolded to stick out into the water. One of the sturdy, black-painted implements held a claw with pincers that could open, close, and rotate to grip things. The other held the cutting tool Rias had mentioned. Tiny serrated teeth circled a long, cylindrical blade with an oval tip.

  The outside lamp winked out, and darkness interrupted her assessment of the implements. Even the interior lighting seemed to dim. Tikaya could do little but wait. The Freedom’s engine was quiet, even at full speed, but she sensed the craft slowing down.

  “We’re under them,” Rias said, his voice lower than before, as if he feared those on the ship might hear him.

  Tikaya doubted that could happen, but she found herself answering in kind anyway. “I need a little light to see what I’m doing.”

  Before she’d finished speaking, a faint illumination grew outside. Rows of dark green boards came into view, not a foot from Tikaya’s porthole. Knowing they might not have much time, she extended the saw. The tip touched the wood but didn’t do anything. She eyed the controls, trying to figure out how to move it back and forth or up and down, something that would cause the teeth to bite into the wood.

  “Rias?” she asked.

  “Under the desk.” Soft footfalls approached her station, and Rias appeared at her shoulder. He pointed at a switch with three different positions. “Those move the teeth at different speeds. The energy orb powers it. You just direct the blade.”

  “Thank you. Is it—”

  “Starcrest,” came a strained whisper from the front.

  “Never mind, I’ll figure it out,” Tikaya said.

  Rias squeezed her shoul
der and jogged back to the front.

  Tikaya fiddled with the switch. Outside, the serrated teeth started spinning around the blade. The submarine had drifted a foot away from the ship, and she had to extend the arm farther before the tool touched the hull. It bit in with impressive speed and power, and almost immediately she felt the give as it pierced through the board to the other side. Moving the blade to cut out a circle was harder than piercing the original hole had been, especially given the length of the arm and the fact that the ship kept floating in and out of reach. She could feel Rias trying to keep close without bumping the wooden hull, and knew he was doing the best job that he could.

  Gradually her crooked line took on the dimensions of a half circle. A little longer, and she ought to be able to—

  Something slammed into the submarine. The force threw Tikaya backward in her chair, and the cutting blade was torn from the hole.

  “Company,” Rias called.

  “They know we’re down here,” Mee Nar added.

  “I guessed that.” Trusting they’d handle the “company,” Tikaya leaned back toward the porthole, her hands gripping the tool controls.

  Just as the blade found the hull again, a shark rammed into the articulating arm. Startled, Tikaya almost fell out of her chair. She pressed her face to the porthole, afraid the strike might have broken the arm. It remained in tact, but, that close to the glass, she spotted dozens—hundreds?—of sharks milling around out there.

  “Is the hull electrified?” she asked.

  “No, not with you at the tools,” Rias said.

  Right, the current could probably travel up the metal and into her body. Ouch.

  “The sharks shouldn’t be able to damage us though,” Rias called, then lowered his voice to talk to Mee Nar. “Any idea what they’re going to try? Besides sharks?”

  Tikaya didn’t hear the answer. She directed the tool toward the hole again, hissing when more sharks came in, bumping the arm with their bodies. She took an irritated swipe at one, drawing blood, and it swished its tail and shot away in a streak. Rias’s words about the carnage her people were causing came to mind, and she promptly felt guilty.

  A couple of clunks sounded. The submarine had eased closer, scraping against the ship’s hull. Rias must no longer care if they bumped it. Taking advantage of the nearer target, Tikaya angled the tool in again.

  “You’re getting it,” came Rias’s voice, this time from the hatchway. He stepped into the science station. “Good.”

  “I can handle it,” Tikaya said, focusing on the porthole. “You should stay up front.”

  “I’m experimenting with my extendable clamps. We’re attached to them now. Mee Nar’s trying to distract their practitioners. He says there are at least four.” Rias set a metal object on the desk with a clunk. He unlatched a cabinet door and plucked out something else.

  “What are you doing?” Tikaya asked, eyes riveted to her work outside.

  “Giving them something to think about.”

  “More than the leak?” Tongue between her teeth, she guided the saw closer to the start of the circle. Almost there. Another inch and—

  A shark’s blue wedge face pressed against the porthole. Tikaya gasped. Knowing it couldn’t do anything didn’t keep that leering face full of teeth from alarming her.

  “Rias,” she said in exasperation. Of course, he couldn’t do anything about it either, but he was in the cabin, so he received her complaint. “It’s blocking my view.”

  Rias laughed. “So it is.”

  Tikaya was about to give him a how-can-you-find-this-amusing glare when her gaze fell upon the cannonball-shaped object on the desk. Welded seams ran around it and a tiny flap stood open while Rias poked around inside with pliers and a screwdriver.

  Tikaya stared. She had seen pictures of enemy ordinance during the war, and some of them looked a lot like that. “Is that... a mine?”

  “Yes. I’ve removed the powder charge. I thought I’d see if I could insert it into the hole as a warning. Maybe put a little note in the middle.”

  “A note? Like what? We didn’t blow you up this time but we could have?”

  “Something of that sort. Just to give them plenty of time to think over their situation.”

  Something else thumped against the hull.

  “Right now, I’m more concerned about our situation.” Tikaya pointed at the porthole—the shark was still floating right outside.

  She angled the cutting tool up to poke the finned intruder. At the first touch, it burst away from the window, but, unlike the first shark, it returned. That huge maw opened and snapped down on the articulating arm.

  “Demon-spawned sprites,” Tikaya blurted and tried to pull the tool back into its cubby in the hull. The shark refused to let go. It shook its body from side to side, like a dog trying to rip a rope from its master’s grip.

  Though she feared it was already too late, she grabbed the controls for the second tool. She could barely see with the shark thrashing about in front of the porthole, but she tried to bring the gripping claw in to... She didn’t know what she hoped to do. Distract it. More by accident than skill, she jabbed it in the lower belly hard enough to surprise it. The shark’s mouth opened long enough for Tikaya to yank the cutting tool back into the hull. She couldn’t tell if it’d been mangled beyond use yet, but the blade was still rotating, and it grazed the shark’s nose. This time the creature disappeared, leaving only bubbles behind.

  “Good work,” Rias said, “you got him in the balls. That tool will need repairs, but see if you can slice out that last couple of inches there. That’s all we need for now.”

  “Already on it,” Tikaya said, pushing the saw toward the wood again.

  Awkward vibrations shook the arm, and the saw lacked the smooth cutting efficiency of before. She struggled, but made progress while Rias finished his modifications to the mine.

  “Do sharks actually have balls?” Tikaya asked.

  “Of course they do, as evinced by its alarm at your precise placement of that grasper.”

  “I’m sure it was just startled by having something poke its underbelly.” Tikaya finished carving the circle—if one could call the lopsided, crooked outline a legitimate geometric shape.

  “That wasn’t its underbelly.” Rias smirked.

  “Do you actually know how sharks reproduce, or are you simply teasing me?” If Tikaya hadn’t been busy with more pressing matters, she would have grabbed that encyclopedia on sea life. Instead, she maneuvered the claw toward the damaged hull, hoping she could pull out the wood, rather than punching it in; the sailors would have a harder time making repairs if they had to fashion a plug.

  “Sharks reproduce via internal fertilization.” Rias knelt and unlocked a tiny hatch underneath the desk. He placed the mine inside a cubby, closed the hatch again, and hit a switch beside it. Several clunks sounded, as if the metal ball were being cycled past a number of safety hatches. “The back of a male shark’s pelvic fins has a pair of intromittent organs called claspers, which are essentially the same as a mammalian penis.” Rias stood back up and made the mistake of meeting Tikaya’s eyes—she imagined her brows had climbed into her hairline—and he seemed to remember he was talking to a woman. He blushed and his academic lecture turned a tad shy. “The sharks swim side by side, with the male, uhm, well, it bites the female to get a good grip, and one of the claspers goes in and delivers sperm to the female’s, uhm, woman area.”

  Woman area? Tikaya held back a smirk of her own. “I see. I didn’t realize you were so well versed in the reproductive natures of sea creatures.”

  His blush deepened. “Twenty years at sea, and you learn a few auxiliary tidbits of information. Do you need a hand with that?”

  “No, I have it.” Tikaya had wedged the tips of the claw around the sides of her circle, and she pulled out the “cork.” She glimpsed a dark hold before water flooded in, obscuring the view. Dark was good. It should mean nobody was in there, watching her handiwork. The cre
w might know a submarine was under them, but they apparently didn’t know what it was doing yet.

  “May I?” Rias waved to the controls.

  Tikaya slipped out of the seat. He nudged another switch under the desk, then guided the grasping tool out of view. Soft scrapes and clunks came from the hull. That she heard them made Tikaya aware of the utter quietness around them. Chaos had to have erupted on the Kyattese ship at the first sign of the submarine’s approach, but she couldn’t hear a thing.

  Water started streaming past the porthole. The submarine bumped and drifted, drawing alternately closer and farther from the ship’s hull. At first Tikaya thought some vigorous waves had come their way, but then she realized the other ship was moving. Because they were attached, they were going with it.

  “They’re trying to escape us,” Rias said. “We’ll let go as soon as...” He leaned closer to the porthole. “Should have included some mirrors so I could see—there.”

  The claw came back into view, now holding the mine. Rias thrust it through the ragged gap and released it. Tikaya thought she could detect light in the hold now, but the waterline was above the hole, so she couldn’t make anything out for certain.

  “That ought to keep them busy.” Rias pulled the tools back into their compartments in the hull. “Mee Nar, want to release those hooks we put out?” He faced Tikaya. “Ready to go down?”

  “Yes, though there’s one other thing I’m wondering about.”

  “I’m absolutely certain the mine is diffused and won’t cause harm, yes.”

  “That’s not it.” Tikaya propped her fists on her hips.

  Concern wrinkled Rias’s brow. “What?”

  “The male shark bites the female? And she allows that?”

  “Oh,” Rias said, though he didn’t look like he knew if he was completely off the hook. “Well, it’s in the water, you see, and they don’t have hands or legs or any other way to, uhm, hold on. Not like we do. Er, we could. If you wanted to... get creative underwater.”

  “Underwater? Completely? Even that diary doesn’t mention that.”