Silent City

by G R Matthews

  The heavy hand that landed on my shoulder stopped me dead.

  “You were the one looking for the woman?”

  I turned and gazed into the bright green eyes of a doctor. The white coat over the uniform was the biggest clue. I had to look up into those eyes and was beginning to get a crick in my neck. Why was everyone on this sub taller than me? It was giving me a complex.

  “I am,” and I paused for a moment as my brain searched for the correct title. I was outranked here. Actually, I had no rank on this sub, I wasn’t supposed to be here, but I had to play the role if I wanted to get off of it alive, “Doctor.”

  “Do you know why the comms are down? I can’t get hold of the bridge,” she said, and there was a look of irritation in her eyes.

  “I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  She paused, looking me up and down. I fought the urge to tidy up my stolen uniform. It wasn’t going to look any better on me that it did now and, right now, it looked like it didn’t fit me. She shook her head.

  “Go to the bridge and tell them that the medical bay is ready to receive casualties.”

  I nodded. “Yes, Doctor. Um, Doctor, do you know where they transferred the woman to, the one brought in earlier?”

  “You have your orders.” Her voice turned cold and the words were sharp.

  “Yes, Doctor.” I let my head hang low, avoiding her gaze. I should probably have saluted, but I didn’t know how to. A meek stance was my best defence. I heard her give a snort of disgust and walk away.

  # # #

  The docks were crammed with technicians and engineers. There were shouts, calls and orders. How anyone heard the order meant for them was beyond my comprehension. It wasn’t total chaos, there was the hint of purposeful disorder about it.

  The small attack subs were being geared up for battle. Figures swarmed over them, disconnecting hoses, connecting wires, testing and scanning. It was impossible to be sure if their pilots and weapon officers were aboard, just a safe bet that they were. If I wanted off of this sub, and I did, they were not the way.

  The sub, Keller’s sub, still at its dock. There was no-one working on it, fixing it, or do anything to it whatsoever. Once they opened the docking doors, those below the moon-pool, I might, might, be able to leave in that. There were some big ‘ifs’ in the way of that. If they didn’t see me, if they didn’t wonder why the engines were starting up, if they didn’t notice the sub sink under the water level. All those ifs meant that it was not option. No sub, military or civilian would ignore a sub leaving their ship without clearance.

  Now, the Fish-Suit? That was an option. I could dive alongside one of the subs leaving or find an air-lock and slip out. Noticing a Fish-Suit, a device designed to be stealthy, was a lot more problematic than noticing a two-man sub.

  There were some ifs attached to this method too. One, if I could get the Fish-Suit out of its hiding place on the sub. One-a, if it hadn’t already been moved. The caveat occurred to me as I considered the plan. Two, if I could get the Fish-Suit to a place where I could put it on without attracting attention. That was a big one. I was moving a heavy, bulky bladder full of Oxyquid and the attached suit. Three, if I could slip into the moon-pool or out of an airlock without being shot by armed soldiers.

  There was the possibility that they had a Fish-Suit user on the sub and I could steal theirs. It would mean leaving my own behind. Not something I wanted to do.

  In my favour, the shouting and rushing about would provide my cover. It you can’t hide, act confident. It would have to be one hell of an act.

  With a deep breath, puffing out my chest, I strode forward, gaze straight ahead.

  “I belong here. I have my orders.” I kept repeating the mantra to myself as I walked.

  Three soldiers and a technician rushed towards me when I was only five steps into my journey. Like all the others they were tall. They towered over me and I could see the determination on their faces. None of four were smiling and they were not slowing down. I tried to match their look, brow furrowed and the best snarl I could make curled upon my lips.

  They closed in and my heart beat faster, my stomach turned somersaults. I stuffed my shaking hands into my pocket and carried on moving. If they were after me, there was nothing I could do. If they weren’t, I didn’t want anything to give me away. There was a sheen of sweat on my forehead.

  Fifteen steps, ten, five, three, two, one. A nod and I was past them. Now the struggle was not to turn and check. The confident act was either going to work or it wasn’t. I kept moving, never more aware of each stride, each step. Never thinking more about the act of walking and, therefore, making each step feel as natural as breathing water. Which, to be fair, I almost did every time I put that suit on. So at least there was a precedence.

  No shouts followed. No sounds of running feet, and no alarms. The sub, my target, was just ahead.

  Without a pause, I clambered on board and down the ladder into the sub. The blood had dried to a rust coloured stain and the engine compartment door was still closed. I hoped the guard I’d knocked out was still in there and that I wouldn’t have to go in.

  The pilot’s chair was comfortable when I slipped into it. The guidance computer was off, the engine was cold and the rest of the basic systems were ticking over. The few buttons I pressed did nothing. I flicked through a few of the menus that still worked. There was little to work with. Someone had interrupted the restart and it would take hours to get it working again.

  That meant that the sub I had come in on, with Elena, was not going to get me off the bigger sub. That left two options. First, stage a coup and take over control of the big sub and sail that home. It was a nice idea with just one or two slight flaws. Namely, I had no support on board, no weapons, no idea where the bridge was, no clue who was control, and didn’t have the three months to a year to carry out such an insurrection.

  The second option had fewer flaws but a similar level of risk. Drag out the Fish-Suit, get it to an airlock, and get off the big sub. It would leave me in the middle of somewhere, hopefully not too far from Base 1 and a chance at rescue. It might leave in the middle of nowhere and with no chances. However, staying on this sub was not an option.

  Elena was gone. Probably in their brig, being questioned or tortured for information. It wouldn’t be long before she cracked, everyone does. I still wanted to rescue her, but I had a responsibility to my city. And to me.

  Chapter 32

  I was getting good at this. The trick was complete confidence and a pressurised look on your face. Walk like you meant it, let your features tell everyone you had a place to go and they were better off not distracting you from it.

  In that manner, I managed to get hold of a four wheel flatbed trolley. It was normally used to move air cylinders and other heavy, hard to carry stuff about the dock. Someone had left it, out of the way, against a wall and without pause, like it had always been mine, I took it.

  Dragging the Fish-Suit out of the small cargo hatch, the filled bladder dangling like a ball sack under the flaccid penis of the suit itself. It wasn’t pretty. I didn’t care. The too small uniform was lifting and pinching my undercarriage, and I was sweating.

  The trolley was a life-saver, a back saver at least. What I needed now was a place to climb into the Fish-Suit, a few cables to top up the power, and a door to the outside. That meant an airlock. You’d be shocked by how few of them there are on a large sub. Each doorway, each break, however small, was a weakness. Either in the strength of the hull or acoustically. For that reason, big subs had as few as they could manage and it was one of those rare beasts I needed to find.

  In fact, I needed a Goldilocks one - it couldn’t be too close or too far away. Pushing a Fish-Suit through the sub was bound to get me noticed sooner or later. Similarly, slipping into the Fish-Suit couldn’t be done in the view of everyone. It would spark a fair degree of interest.

  I pushed the trolley along the docks, past the little subs and all the crew fixing them up, armi
ng and fuelling them. The main doors would lead back into the sub and too many people. There was, however, another exit. One that I was sure would lead into the armoury or the fuel stores, maybe both.

  The best hope was the weapon store because you had to get the weapons on board first of all. You could use the moon-pools, but that meant ferrying the weapons in by sub, a slow process. Much better to dock, run an extendable corridor out from your main city and trundle the weapons in that way. The airlock would, therefore, be quiet large, but it would have room to move, power interfaces and, most importantly, be right at the back of the store and only used when the sub was in the dock.

  A few crew came out of the store, using a trolley just like mine, to cart boxes of munitions to the waiting subs. I couldn’t read the labels, but the drawing on the side indicated they were for the rail guns. Heavy slugs of lead, depleted uranium or other esoteric metals. Close range weapons for the little subs or point defence for the bigger ones.

  They gave me a funny look as they went by. I nodded and smiled in return. Once they had cleared the doorway, I moved in, pushing the trolley ahead of me. The store room was long and narrow with a low ceiling. To either side of the main alleyway, box upon box of ammunition was stacked floor to roof. More boxes of rail gun slugs, but also more specialised munitions. The self-guided mini-torpedoes that the small subs could carry two or three of, self-propelled bullets that the subs’ cannons used and a variety of more specialised mines, some thermal, some kinetic, some sticky. The last were nasty. You never knew if one had hit you. They stuck to your sub and did a variety of things, cut their way in with lasers, timed detonators, or acted as beacons for larger torpedoes.

  There were more crew in here, big lads one and all. Well, apart from the big ladies too. It was hot and it stank of sweat. How much would it have cost to give them a little air conditioning or, at least, an air freshener?

  It took a little deft driving to get round all the muscle-bound dockers, lifters and carriers. It also took an effort of supreme will not to gag on the stench. At the end of the corridor, my target.

  The controls were simple to operate. Even the military wouldn’t change the multi-corporation agreement on health and safety protocols. Hence, all air locks were colour coded, used the same icons and operated the same way. A quick press of a few buttons and the inner door swung open. It was not a silent operation. Lights flashed, klaxons sounded, alarms rang. All perfectly normal by the standards of health and safety.

  There was silence behind me, stunned silence, for about five seconds before the shouting began. I ignored it, pushed the trolley in and began the sequence to close the door.

  “Hayes, stop right there,” shouted a voice I recognised.

  Running down the alleyway, Elena was waving her arms. She’d somehow broken free and needed me to get her off this enemy sub. A smile spread over my face and I reached for the controls again, to halt the door closing.

  Which is when I noticed the uniform she was wearing, and all the armed troops behind her. My hand froze, finger outstretched towards the controls. The smile on my face melted and dribbled down my throat to sit heavy in my heart and stomach. She didn’t look as though she was in trouble. She looked like she was in charge.

  “Fuck,” I swore and that was the least I wanted to say.

  I watched her run towards me, her hand dip to the sidearm in the holster on her belt, the door still closing. Her hand rose, aiming the weapon at me, finger squeezing the trigger. A flash from the muzzle and the echo of a gunshot. The metallic spang of the projectile striking the airlock door as it finished closing. I waved at her.

  Now, I had to be quick. The time for re-thinking, recriminations and revenge was later. Right now, I needed to get out. I took a screwdriver out of the uniform pockets and stabbed it into the control panel. It took three blows to get the cover off and then a moment to strip the wires from the buttons and cross them. Any commands sent to the door, requesting that it open, even in the politest of tones, would go round and round and round the door system until the end of time, or the power ran out. Health and safety strikes again, the door controls were on a separate circuit to the rest of the sub.

  I started to climb into the Fish-Suit as Elena thumped against the vision panel in the airlock door. I could see that she was shouting something at me, but the door was too thick to let sound through. It was designed to keep the pressure of the ocean out, a little sound wave was no trouble.

  The butt of her pistol hit the clear panel a few times before she gave up. Her last gesture, before stepping out of sight, consisted of just one finger that she indicated I should insert somewhere no finger was designed to go. I gave her a smile in return and carried on struggling into the suit.

  “Hayes, stop what you are doing. There is no escape.” Elena’s voice sounded over the airlock speaker.

  “You can’t stop me.” I carried on dressing.

  “I can.”

  “Elena, if that’s your real name, the airlock is out of your control. I know how these systems work.”

  “Hayes, I don’t need the controls. I have something else. I can tell you what happened.” The voice was tinny but insistent.

  “I know what happened. You killed them all. You and Keller. Well, Keller’s dead and Base 1 has a warning. Oh, and I am getting off this sub. Goodbye, Elena.”

  “Keller? You don’t know anything, Hayes. But that’s not what I have to tell you. That’s not the information I have.”

  I paused and looked up the clear panel. She was there, a knowing smile on her face. Smug and in need of a solid punch. I don’t hold, much, with hitting women, but this one had killed a lot of people. Some of whom might have been my friends, given time. She clearly thought she knew something. I shook my head and got back to dressing.

  “I can tell you about Tyler,” she said.

  I stopped. Chilled. Cold. Frozen. Tyler, my child.

  “What can you tell me?” I shuffled towards the door.

  “I can tell you what happened on that day. All you have to do is come out of there. I can tell you everything.” She smiled through the transparent panel.

  “You don’t know anything.” And it was more than likely that she didn’t. I’d never met her before a few days ago, certainly not years ago when Tyler died, was killed.

  “I was in the city,” she started to say and then health and safety started to work against me. The inner door was closed and that meant that the airlock could be flooded. Not a problem, that’s what needed in order to open the outer door. What I didn’t need was the whole process to begin before I had the suit on. But that’s what it did.

  Part Five

  Chapter 33

  “Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck.”

  It didn’t make the process of clipping myself into the Fish-Suit any faster, but the swearing was great for stress relief and the fast rising water was inducing a lot of that. I couldn’t afford for any sea water to get into the suit and mix with the Oxyquid. The two just don’t go together and inhaling a lungful of salt water was a sure way to drown.

  Up and up the water came, past my calves and knees. I was ahead, just. I’d put this suit on more times than I could count, this should be easy. The danger of imminent drowning was, I admit, a bit of a new twist to the whole thing, but nothing I couldn’t deal with.

  Gagging on salt water, freezing liquid filling my lungs, the taste of it on my tongue, my life flickering before my eyes, the world going dark, my fingers as claws, scrabbling at the controls, the burning in my chest, the panic in my mind. Tyler.

  “Bugger, bugger, buggery, bugger.” I fumbled the waist clips as the water climb up my thighs. A pause, a deep breath, who knew how many of those I had left, and on the third attempt I managed to close the clips. My arms, I stuffed down the sleeves, sealed the front and the neck ring as the sea water reached my chest. I was still winning. Go me.

  The hood was fixed tight round my head as the water climbed further. The last piece was the helmet which I rammed
down, over my head, and slotted the locking rim into the tracks, twisting to seal it. Ha! Now the water could rise all it wanted to and I wouldn’t drown.

  I gave Elena, who had reappeared at the door panel, a little wave. Her face twisted into a contortion of anger. The beauty of a few days ago gone.

  Drowning was no longer a threat, suffocating was. The commands to re-fill the suit flashed up onto the visor and I used the controls in the gloves to OK them all without reading all the warnings. The liquid, cooled by the time away from my body, and from the heaters that normally kept it at an optimum temperature, flowed into the suit. And by flow, what I actually mean is jetted, sprayed, right into the back of my neck. It hurt and there was no escape.

  In a reflection of the sea water, the Oxyquid, after it had poured down my back, rose past my ankles, calves, knees and kept on going. The air I needed to breathe was being pushed out of the suit, through the valves. A stream of bubbles passing before my visor. A dark, twisted sense of humour those designers had. You could actually watch your last breath disappear before your eyes.

  Here it was, that time again, once done, never forgotten, and by most, never repeated. I sucked the gel down. It was cold. At another time, it might have been called refreshing. It wasn’t now. The gag reflex cut in and I choked it down. You can’t control a reflex. They come from that lizard part of your brain, the survival section, the bit that tells your body to do something to save its life. It bypasses your thoughts like it is hotwired to muscles, valves and other bits of anatomy. Once it starts, you can do your best to overcome it and that’s what my training, all those years ago, was about.

  I could breathe again. It was a strange type of breathing, but it meant I was alive and, with a strange kind of elation, another wave in Elena’s direction seemed appropriate. So I gave her one. The flashing red lights told me the airlock was full of water.