Silent City

by G R Matthews

  The ancients used radio and satellites, microwaves and sundry other technology I couldn’t even begin to get my head around. I knew that the military were still working on some form of quantum entanglement communication. They’d had a few sets working during the latter days of the war, but I’d never heard if they rolled it out to the whole fleet. Cost was probably an issue.

  Under the sea, radio is useless, lasers good for short range, and microwaves pointless. The satellites might still be in orbit, but that would mean breaking the surface and no one wanted to do that. The danger was too great. Skimmers revelled in it, the rest of us had sense.

  You could use sound, like the great whales. That travelled for thousands of miles. Get the frequency correct, something very low. Send it down the DSC, Deep Sound Channel, a horizontal layer of water where the speed of sound was low, and someone would pick it up four, maybe five, thousand miles away. Whether that was the person you wanted to or not, you had no control over. The cities, and subs, sometimes used it to send out general messages, warnings, or maydays. It wasn’t secure.

  So, for a message to pop up on my sub, stolen sub, was unexpected.

  The screen showed that a high powered laser communication had been initiated. A single word, “REPORT”, on the screen in green. Below it, a cursor, a short line, flashed, awaiting my response.

  “Bugger it.”

  “What is it?” Elena asked, as she slid into her seat beside me.

  “Someone thinks Keller is on-board.” I stared at the cursor. Whoever it was wanted a response.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Good question, what was I going to do? Lasers worked, if you knew where you were aiming and they clearly did, for about half a klick, five hundred meters. My hand hesitated over the keyboard.

  “REPORT” appeared again on the screen.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Right,” I answered and tapped out a response.

  “Success? Is that all you are going to say?”

  “What did you want me to say? ‘Sorry, we killed your man and stole his sub. We are just heading home to report it to our military. You have a nice day.’ I don’t think that would go down well?”

  “Well,” she said, but didn’t take the sentence any further as another message wrote itself upon the screen.

  “PROBLEMS?”

  “NONE.” I sent the response and brought up the map of the area, such as it was. A top speed of 10 knots does not give you a lot of options for escape.

  “There are a few canyons we can dive into,” I said, more thinking out loud than expecting a response.

  “Why don’t we just make a run for it?”

  “10 knots of running, in a worker sub designed to stay close to its home city, is unlikely to get us far. It is better to hide.”

  “DESTINATION?”

  “What are you going to say?” she asked.

  My hand hovered over the keyboard as I considered her question. I really had no good answer. A simple piece of logic suggested that this was not a random encounter. Whatever was out there had been heading towards Keller’s mine and that meant they likely knew what was going on, or rather what should have gone on.

  “I’m going to stall,” I answered. I sent the sub into a shallow dive. Nothing quick, that might draw their attention. Just a slight change of course to put us near one of the canyons.

  “DROP OFF.” I messaged them back. The laser didn’t bounce back which would have given me a range, but I could take a bearing and extrapolate the position of my follower. Somewhere behind and above. Not a lot to go on.

  “REPEAT.” Another fix. I am sure a brilliant physicist could have worked out how far away the message originator was by some change in the light. I am not a brilliant physicist, I had to guess.

  “SORRY.” It was as vague an answer as I could think of.

  My sub kept its course, slowly descending towards a canyon the on-board map told me would be there. If the map was wrong then I was going to hit solid rock, very hard. The sub wouldn’t, let me correct that, shouldn’t rupture, but there would be damage.

  “Check the passive SONAR. See if it can tell us what is following us,” I told Elena.

  “They might be friendly,” she said.

  “They sent us a message without introducing themselves and expected an answer. They know who they are, and they think they know who we are. I don’t think they’re friendly.”

  I wiped my palms on the jumpsuit and waited. Another message popped up on the screen. I ignored it. I had nothing left to say. The navigation screen, a kind of three dimensional representation of the seascape around the sub based on nothing but maps already on-board, showed the canyon approaching.

  “Elena?”

  “It is not showing much of anything. Biologics here and there, and a faint mechanical above us. Nothing is clear though.”

  “Send it through to the navigation screen. We are going to try and hide.” I pushed the glide planes down further, increasing our rate of descent. At this point, my hands itched to send out a ping or two of active SONAR, just to test the map. It would have been the safe, normal thing to do. Therefore completely inappropriate for a sub trying to hide.

  The screen lit up with a slew of colours, each indicating a different passive sonar contact. She was right, there were biologicals everywhere. We were in the ocean, there should be life everywhere and lots of it used sound to communicate. A flicked through the menus and I filtered most of them out.

  Another message appeared on the screen. They were concerned about my course. I ignored it. I followed the laser back to its source and it did not indicate the mechanical above. Mechanicals were really engine, prop or other noise that wasn’t naturally in the ocean. They could be anything man-made and, sometimes, sound tended to bounce around the ocean. It reflected off the layers where changes in water density, temperature and flow, divided the ocean into distinct strata.

  Passive SONAR was good. The computer on the sub was not. It simply had not been built, modified or in any way designed to play games of hide and seek. The laser was telling me the sender was aft of our sub, the passive SONAR was pointing to a mechanical above us. One that was going faster than us.

  There was a problem with passive SONAR. You were blind to everything behind you, your own engines made too much noise. On larger subs, and military ones, they solved this by trailing hydrophones and other devices that listened into this blind spot. Keller’s sub did not have any of those.

  Something above us, and something behind us. That was not good news. However, the canyon lip was coming up quickly now.

  “Strap in and brace,” I said. “We are going into the canyon. If we can find a good place, I’ll back the sub up against a wall or into a cave. We’ll see if we can hide out.”

  Little power, silence and making the sub seem like part of the rock formations was our best hope. It was a trick that lots of the creatures used to hunt other creatures in the ocean. Wait, save your energy, and let your meal come to you. You’d think them lazy, but there is as much energy used up in waiting, unmoving, as in chasing a meal through the water.

  Two clicks told me she had fastened the safety belt. I gave a tight smile and gripped the controls, pushing them down a little further, taking the sub into the canyon.

  It wasn’t that there was any change in the light, there wasn’t any light to change, but I knew the moment I was below the rim of the canyon walls. A change in the sound coming through the hull, differences in the way the water flowed over the hull, the feel of the controls under my hands. I kept diving.

  “STOP.” The message flicked up on the Comms screen. Then again. Insistent.

  I didn’t stop. Down and down, 10 knots of speed, full power from the engines and crossed fingers, toes and intestines. If the map was wrong, we were going to die.

  The current changed. It pushed against the sub and the engines whined, rising in pitch. I fought the controls, pushing them up, down, left, right. Twisting them to ya
w the little craft into the current. The Nav screen spun, colours blurred across the image, any detail lost.

  “What is it?” Elena shouted above the engines. She had one hand on the arm rest of her chair and the other pressed against the roof of the cabin, trying to hold herself in the seat.

  “A deep water current, I think.” I wrenched the controls again, let some of the power bleed from the engine and the sub spun around. Elena screamed. Or it could have been me. I wasn’t sure at that moment. These deep sea rivers of cold, dense, saline water moved at incredible speeds, compared to my sub, and there just wasn’t the power to do much about it. We had a choice, continue to fight the good fight and die, or rise up, back into clearer water, and take the risk of the other sub.

  Death or possible death? I’ll take the possible over certain every time. I pulled back on the controls and fed power back into the engines, forcing the sub to ascend before we got dragged too far.

  “We are putting out so much noise they will be waiting for us when we come out. Go and find a place to hide. If they capture us, they might believe me when I say I was the only one on board.”

  Elena nodded, unclipped her belt and stood.

  Some seventh sense, warned me a moment before it happened and I pushed the controls with one hand, reaching out for her with the other. I was too late.

  The sub clipped the canyon wall. The front robotic arm and its housing caught on an outcropping. The sub, the full 10 knots of power pushing it upwards, tipped up. The aft rising higher, pivoting around the caught arm. Elena fell. Her head left a bloody streak across the control panels.

  I shoved the engines into to reverse, pulling the arm off the outcrop and letting the sub adopted a lazy turn in the now clear water.

  Once my own belt was off, I grabbed Elena under her arms and pulled her into the small space behind the chairs. She was breathing, a good sign, but there was a lot of blood and I couldn’t see the wound.

  The field dressing, a bandage with a large absorbent pad, in the first aid kit contained the flow of blood. The coagulants in the cloth itself would help to slow it down further, reducing the amount of blood loss. However, she was out cold and needed treatment. That was something I just didn’t have. Head wounds can look nasty and be a tiny cut that bleeds profusely. They can also look nasty and be nasty. This one seemed to fit into the latter category.

  “STOP ENGINES.” The message beeped on the Comms panel and I complied.

  “TOWING.”

  There was a metallic clang on the hull. Our sub started to move again, upwards, without the engines doing any of the hard work. They were winching me in. That was a big sub up there.

  “Elena, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I you’re hurt. Hopefully, the people on the sub will look after you. At least until they can get the answers they want.” I patted her hand, an awkward gesture, and sighed.

  All the evidence of two people, and there wasn’t much, I cleared away as the towing continued. The first aid kit, I placed near her unmoving hand and tried to make it look as if she had treated herself before passing out. It wasn’t perfect. I am not sure what it was. Better than nothing, I hoped.

  Then I tried to find somewhere to hide away. Not easy in a tiny, two man, sub.

  Chapter 28

  Part of my military training, apart from the Fish-Suit, focused on survival techniques. Difficult when a ruptured suit or holed sub would kill you in seconds and, should you survive that, at the bottom of the sea there are limited ways to ‘live off the land’ so to speak. However, they did teach us to evade capture, to hide and, if needed, to escape. I wasn’t good at it.

  The biggest problem, for me at least, was breathing. Finding a place to hide, easy. But staying still and being quiet. Not my preferred way of being. During the drills, whenever I hid, anywhere, all I would hear was my own breathing and it always sounded loud. I could go a whole day, maybe more, without ever worrying about how loud my breathing was, without even hearing my own exhalations. I could go weeks without thinking about it, it just happened naturally. However, as soon as I would hide anywhere, all I could hear was my rasping, loud, echoing, cacophonous breathing.

  The noise made me nervous and, as a result, it got worse. The more I would think about breathing in a slow, even measure, the louder it would get. I felt sure that the hunters would be closing in, just following the sound of my breathing. In the end, I had to move to a different spot. Usually, I’d be caught in one of these moves. No surprise that I almost failed that section of my training.

  So, in this tiny sub, with limited places to avoid detection, the focus on each breath was total. A slow inhale, hold, absorb all the oxygen I could, and a careful exhale. That was the plan and all it accomplished was to make my ribs hurt and my head dizzy. I had to stay put. There was nowhere else to go.

  Through the engine compartment door, I heard hatch open and the hollow ring of boots on the ladder. The heavy tread of two people echoed through the thin inner walls as they moved about the cabin. They began to talk.

  “Is she dead?” said one voice, a deep tone with an accent I couldn’t place.

  Some clumping around, a moment of silence.

  “No, Chief. Looks like she’s taken a blow to the head. Bled a bit and tried to patch herself up. Head wounds always look worse than they are,” said a second voice. Same accent but higher pitched. Probably younger or a woman, hard to be sure.

  A clatter of plastic on the metal floor.

  “It must have been quite a bash. She is completely out.” The first voice again.

  “I’ll get a medic team down here. They can do a proper assessment and get her to the sick bay. Once they patch her up, we can get some answers,” said the second voice.

  “Do it,” the first said. “While you’re waiting, search the sub. I want to know what she was doing out there and where she was heading.”

  “Yes, Chief,” the second said.

  “I’ll go and report. The captain will want to know as soon as possible.” The sounds of someone climbing the ladder were followed by a muffled call for the medical team.

  I was breathing hard. I didn’t mean to. I wanted to be quiet, but my lungs were doing their own thing. Any moment now the person left behind was going to swing the door to the tiny engine compartment open and peek in.

  There wasn’t much room in here. It was really just the small reactor, which drove the engines, powered the life support and generally ensured the sub didn’t sink. The computer core was here too, kept cool by all the pipes and tubes that kept the reactor temperature low. You could walk in, hunched over, and move around the reactor and pipes, but there wasn’t much space to hide. The space I had found was uncomfortable, wedged in between some pipes, a deuterium tank and its tritium bed mate.

  My legs were pressed up to my chest, which didn’t help the breathing issue. A valve, or something else metallic, was digging in my back and the cold pipe above my head meant I couldn’t turn my head much. I needed a drink. Several, in fact. I could almost see that little bottle that Devra had taken from me, almost taste it.

  The door opened. I held my breath. I couldn’t turn to look so I closed my eyes and focused on holding my breath. It was torture. More painful than the valve or the pipe. There were no other sounds but the soft susurration of the pipes, the gentle hum of the reactor, and the blood pounding in my ears.

  I wanted to breathe. I needed fresh oxygen. In my favour were the years of training, diving and Fish-Suit operation. You’d be surprised how long you can hold your breath, if you have the right motivation and a little bit of knowledge. The little bit in question is, and it makes a lot of sense when you know it, if you hold your breath long enough to pass out from lack of oxygen, you will immediately start breathing. The upshot of this, and my training officer kept on about this kind of thing, was that you could push and push yourself, far past what you thought was possible, and be certain that your body would cope. Sure, it might knock you on your arse for the liberties you had taken with i
t, but when it was all said and done, it would be just fine, and so would you.

  It didn’t always work. I’ve lost friends who pushed it too far. I guess their bodies didn’t like them too much. Mine loved me. It should, I fed it beer and whiskey most days. It should be desirously, drunkenly, happy.

  The door finally shut. Just as well, the red and orange splotches that swam in my eyes were flashing out a Morse Code SOS. I sucked in a deep breath, not caring, for the moment, if the searcher heard me or not.

  It took another three before the splotches receded and another few minutes before my head stopped spinning. The sound of blood, rushing through my arteries and veins, quietened enough to make out the sounds beyond the door. Multiple footsteps, grunts of efforts and what sounded like, through the muffling effect of metal, curses, the whine of an electrical motor and the creak of something.

  All of this went on for a few minutes and was followed by the tread of two people ascending the ladder. There must was still be one on-board. I could hear footsteps and the groan of the pilot’s seat settling under a weight. The computer core’s lights, next to me, started to flash.

  I suppose it is one of those vagaries of science that the computer could, on the user’s screen, feedback all sorts of information about how it was working and any faults, but we liked the actual thing to have lights that flashed. Engineers could probably tell you what each of the lights meant, or even have conversation with the lump of precious metals and whizzing electrons via those lights. To me, it meant that someone was using the sub’s computer.

  It took a minute or two, three additional bruises and a nasty knock on my decidedly un-funny bone that sent numbing tingles up and down my arm, to extricate myself from my cramped position behind the pipes. The computer was still flashing away to itself as I slid the door back and peeked into the cabin.