Undersea Prison

by Duncan Falconer

  The ferry platform eventually loomed into sight as the vessel manoeuvred to enter a docking bay. It was an impressive construction, like the top section of an oil platform.The most prominent feature was a towering derrick with a dozen heavy cables passing over large wheels at the top before they stretched down at an angle into the roof of a building on the edge of the platform.

  The cabin cruiser slipped snugly into its tailored dock and gently hit the bumpers at the end. Several platform guards, all wearing life vests over brilliant yellow jackets, secured the vessel into place, its gunwales level with the landing deck.

  Gann opened the rear door and faced his passengers. ‘I’m gonna unlock your chains and we’re all gonna walk together in a line across the platform to the ferry housing. For those of you who think it might be risky on our part to have all prisoners walkin’ at once even though you still got your hand chains, that’s because there’s nowhere to go from this platform - nowhere but down, that is. And you can either do that in the comfort of the ferry where you can breathe, or you can jump or get shoved off the side. Either way you’re going to the bottom . . . I know you’ll be surprised to hear I don’t give a rat’s ass which you choose. Anyone screws around I’ll personally toss ’em over the side.’

  Gann undid a latch at the end of the bench, took hold of a lever and pulled it up with some effort. Every prisoner’s hand shackles were released from the bench between their legs although their hands remained chained together at the wrists. ‘Stand up,’ he called out and the prisoners got to their feet with a clatter of metal. ‘Turn towards me.’

  Stratton faced Gann’s broad chest an arm’s length away.

  ‘Forward march,’ Gann said as he stepped back through the door. ‘Move it.’

  Stratton walked outside and onto the short gangway.

  ‘Keep going,’ Gann said. ‘Follow the guard.’

  Stratton stepped off the gangway onto the wooden deck of the jetty, walked across it and up another steep gangway with a hinge at the top that allowed it to rise and fall with the ocean swell. He stepped onto the main platform, the sea visible through a steel-mesh floor, and followed the guard at an easy pace that allowed the others to catch up.The prisoners’ ankle and wrist chains clinked behind him as they walked along a covered ramp that led to another platform connected by massive chains that allowed it to move independently of the docking section.

  They approached the entrances to two hangars joined together, each with several thick wire cables coming down at steep angles from the derrick wheels and passing through openings in the roofs.A sign above the entrance to the left-hand hangar read FERRY 1 & 2, and above the right hangar FERRY 3 & 4. Stratton was directed towards an archway into the right-hand hangar.

  Inside, the hangar was fully enclosed, the mesh floor limited to a central pathway with open water either side. A squat craft that looked like some kind of submarine occupied the right bay, while the left bay was empty. Thick, greasy cables entered through the hangar roof, one set dropping into the left bay and disappearing beneath the water, the other set crossing over the top of the squat vessel and through a complex series of wheels on a heavy framework rather like that of a cable car. As Stratton looked at the steel vessel, which was painted white with the number four stencilled in black on the top and sides, the blueprints he had studied in detail came to life in his head. There were four ferries in total, the conveyance method much the same as a classic cable system with a car at either end, both moving at the same time to counterbalance the driving mechanism and passing each other at the halfway point.

  The ferries were identical, each with a safe operating capacity of fourteen persons.They were divided into two compartments: a larger main passenger cabin and a smaller section designed for emergency escape. Both compartments had escape hatches but only the emergency compartment had an airlock-tube system that allowed one person at a time to escape without flooding the entire compartment. The escape hatch in the passenger cabin was a standard maritime docking system that a rescue submarine could attach itself to prior to opening.

  Massive weights were fixed to the base of the ferry to keep it in the correct attitude as well as to provide negative buoyancy. Along its sides were neat rows of high-pressure gas bottles that provided fourteen passengers with breathable air for up to twenty-four hours at a hundred and fifty feet of pressure.

  ‘Stop there,’ a guard called out and Stratton came to a halt halfway along the length of the ferry. The other prisoners shuffled to a stop behind him.

  ‘Turn and face the ferry,’ Gann called out as he walked down the line, his voice echoing.

  The men obeyed, all looking at the vessel, in particular at the single open door that led into the main passenger compartment.

  ‘You are about to take the last stage of your journey to Styx max-security pen,’ Gann said. ‘This may look like a submarine but it ain’t.There are no pilots or crew. It’s an underwater cable car controlled from the prison - unless somethin’ goes wrong, then it can be controlled from here. There’s a toilet on board but it ain’t workin’ at the moment so if you wanna go, say so now or do it in your pants ’cause once you’re in your seat you don’t get out of it until we reach the prison. We won’t be serving any snacks or drinks, either. The journey’ll take about twenty-five minutes. I ain’t gonna go into the technicalities but it’s as safe as takin’ a bus ride. There’s only gonna be me and Mr Palanski on board with you so behave yourselves. For safety reasons, if anyone should get outta line we have the legal right to use whatever we have at our disposal as a restraint to prevent putting other lives at risk. I love that legal right. I’ve got an iron bar inside and my idea of restraint is a crushed skull. So don’t piss me off.’

  Gann nodded to Palanski who stepped inside the vessel, remaining by the door.

  ‘We’re gonna go in one at a time, just like before, and you’ll be secured to your seat,’ Gann continued. ‘Lead off,’ he said to Stratton, who stepped towards the vessel’s entrance. The man beside him began to follow and was grabbed harshly by Gann around the throat and held before his leading foot had touched the ground. ‘One at a time, I said.’

  The man choked, unable to grab Gann’s hands because his own were secured to his waist-belt. Gann gazed into the man’s reddening eyes before pushing him back into line.

  Stratton was led by Palanski to the end of a back-to-back double row of metal seats fixed to the floor along the centre of the cabin.

  ‘Sit down,’ Palanski said. Stratton obeyed.The woven steel seat was cold. His hand chains were removed from his waist-belt and placed over a hook poking up through the metal seat. Palanski pushed the hook down into a slot in the seat until it clicked into place.‘That’s a release mechanism,’ he said. ‘We can release you if there’s a problem. But don’t worry, there won’t be.’

  Palanski talked without any threat or cruelty in his tone, the good cop to Gann’s monster. Stratton watched him walk back to the door to receive the next prisoner. It was the same dark surly-looking individual that Stratton had sat beside since joining the group and he watched as the securing procedure was repeated. When Palanski walked away the prisoner gave the hook a firm tug. It was immovable. He glanced at Stratton and they held each other’s gaze for a few seconds. Stratton was surprised to see no real malice in his eyes, nor any sign of the cold macho aggression that the others naturally exuded.They were intelligent and without the torment that an incarcerated convict of his level usually possessed. Stratton wondered what his crime was. It was obviously a serious one to have got him a trip to Styx.

  Stratton went back to studying the vessel, as much of it as he could see from his seat without stretching around too much. It was interesting to identify various components from the blueprints and those added since. The docking hatch was the same, almost directly above him with its interesting dual lock-and-hinge system designed to open either inwards or outwards. The interior of a regular submarine remained pretty much at surface pressure no matter how deep
it descended, which meant the forces against the outer skin were always greater than those inside. The Styx ferries, however, were designed so that the internal pressure increased as it descended, constantly equalising with the outside pressure. For the return phase the pressure remained at the prison depth to allow slow decompression even as the ferry ascended. The ferry was therefore built to prevent it blowing open as opposed to the conventional imploding. Decompression could be carried out inside the ferry or, once on the surface, the vessel could be connected to a habitat chamber and the passengers transferred into it to decompress in more comfort.

  The prison was kept at the same pressure as its depth which was an average of a hundred and fifty feet.There were a number of reasons for this, both security and structurally related. If the forces inside the structure equalled those outside (or were just fractionally lower, to be more accurate) there would be less chance of structural failure and fewer leaks. As for the security aspect, an escaping prisoner would have to decompress for hours or risk dying of the bends.

  Stratton studied the door to the emergency escape room, hoping he might get a chance to look inside at some stage. From this point on he would have to constantly evaluate possible ways to escape from the prison despite the fact that it was not essential to the plan. His orders were to attempt it only once he had disposed of the tablet and ensured that there was no risk to himself or to others. He reflected on how stupid the ‘no risk’ part of those orders was. He was in the extreme-risk business.An escape would only give closure to the counterfeit aspect of the plan which was the ‘independent evaluation’ of the escape potential of the prison. It would be nice if Stratton could manage it all but no one was expecting him to get even close to that. But as long as he destroyed the tablet first he could make an escape attempt if he so desired.

  Stratton decided that he would have a go for the adventure of it. His other option, the one most popular with the mission’s planners, was that once he had successfully destroyed the tablet he was to give himself up. By doing so he would technically have failed as far as the evaluation was concerned but his real mission would have been achieved. The truth was that Stratton himself did not really expect to succeed in escaping. To do so certainly appeared impossible after he’d studied the plans and experienced the system thus far. But he still fancied the opportunity if it should arise even though he was less inclined these days to take the kind of risks he used to have scant regard for. He’d come close to dying too many times and the incidents were more than just vague memories. The emotions he had experienced during the worst of them were deeply etched into his psyche. It was as if he were two people: one eager to volunteer for any operation, the other warning of the consequences. He could have done with a little less of both.

  A heavy clang yanked Stratton out of his thoughts and at the same time he felt the pressure change in his ears. He looked at the entrance to see Gann spinning the central wheel on the closed watertight doors. The action pushed out a dozen clips around the seal, squeezing it shut.

  ‘You’re soon gonna feel the pressure build in your ears,’ Gann said. ‘Sorry you can’t use your hands to help relieve it if it hurts. If you get any pain wiggle your jaw or try to yawn. If that don’t work then just sit it out. Your eardrums’ll burst but that’s not a problem. There’s nothin’ in Styx worth hearing other than me and I’ll always make sure you know what I’m sayin’ . . . Some pearls o’ wisdom for you before we set off. From here on in you’re gonna be under pressure, and I don’t mean just from me. You’re gonna be under sea pressure. That means the only way you can get outta the prison is by decompressing, which takes hours. Give you an idea how it works. If you somehow got outta the prison and floated up you’d be big as a Buick by the time you reached the surface. Course, long before you got there you’d explode into a thousand pieces. So if you did escape no one would know about it. A little piece of advice to add to that: if you piss me off too much or you’re caught stealin’ from the mine - you’ll get to learn about that - or you’re just a pain-in-the-ass troublemaker I’ll see to it that you do escape. This ain’t like no other prison on Earth. There’s nowhere to hide, no way to escape, no one to run to if you ain’t happy. No visitors, no lawyers, no press.’ He glanced at Palanski who thought he saw something in Gann’s look. ‘We do our own cleanin’, our own cookin’, our own laundry. We even do some of our own equipment servicin’ if we find out any of you are geniuses. And then we’ve got the mine for you to play in. What’s up, Ramos?’

  Everyone glanced at Ramos who was looking agitated. ‘I don’t like small spaces,’ he said, his lips quivering.

  ‘Ain’t you spent most of your rat life in a cell?’ Gann asked.

  ‘Not at the bottom of the fuckin’ sea,’ Ramos mumbled.

  ‘Don’t worry yourself about it,’ Gann said, amused. ‘You’ll soon be in an even smaller, deeper space.’ Gann took a handset off the wall and put it to his mouth. ‘Control, this is ferry four, come in.’

  A speaker crackled for a few seconds before a voice broke from it. ‘Ferry four, control hears you. That you, Gann?’

  ‘Yeah. We’re ready to push from the platform. That’s five packs plus two guards, total seven persons.’

  ‘Copy, you’re ready to push, seven up. Stand by, ferry four . . .’

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot the emergency procedures,’ Gann said as he hung the handset back onto its hook. ‘If in the event of an incident, like a fire or the cables snap and we sink like a stone’ - Gann glanced at Ramos and others who were beginning to look uncomfortable, enjoying their unease - ‘your chains’ll be disconnected from your seats by me or Mr Palanski. Anyone panics or gets outta control I’ll zap you or knock you out,’ he said, pulling a zapper from his belt with one hand, a blackjack with the other and holding them up. ‘Whichever, chances are you’ll get left behind. I got no time for assholes. If we have to bale out you’ll be directed to the emergency escape room through that door over there where your cuffs’ll be removed and you’ll put on escape suits and go to the surface one at a time.’

  ‘’Scuse me,’ said the large neo-Nazi. ‘Can I ask a question . . . please?’

  ‘Since you asked so nicely,’ Gann replied.

  ‘I thought you said we’d be the size of a Buick if we go straight up to the surface.’

  ‘That’s only if we’re down on the bottom of the ocean more’n a few hours. If that’s the case we’ll stay in here and wait to be rescued by a special sub.’

  The prisoners looked at one another, mumbling their concerns and dissent.

  ‘I said I’m the only one who talks,’ Gann grumbled.

  Everyone shut up, already conditioned to their guard’s potential to cause suffering.

  The vessel jerked heavily as the cables above began to move and there was a long creaking sound outside like the tearing of sheet metal. Ramos started to tremble violently, his breathing quickening. He pulled on his chain in the hope that it might disconnect from the hook in the seat. Gann walked down the row and stopped in front of him. ‘I’m warnin’ you, Ramos. You fuck aroun’ and I’ll zap yer.’

  ‘I . . . I can’t take this shit! Let me outta here!’ Ramos shouted. ‘I told ’em I couldn’t go down to that place but they wouldn’t believe me.’

  Gann gritted his teeth as he held the zapper in front of Ramos’s face.‘I’m warnin’ you, wetback. Settle down.’

  Ramos ignored him as if his only obstacle to safety was the hook securing his chain to the seat.

  Gann pressed the button on the device and a bright blue and white spark connected the tips of the chrome terminals an inch from Ramos’s nose.

  But Ramos could not be deterred, his claustrophobia more powerful than Gann’s paltry threat. ‘Lemme outta here! I gotta get outta here!’ he screamed. ‘LEMME OUT!’

  ‘Prisoner’s outta control,’ Gann called out, as if formally declaring the way clear for his legal solution. Without further hesitation he rammed the terminals of the zapper into Ramos’s throat
where it clicked loudly in time with the high-voltage pulses.The two prisoners on either side of Ramos leaned away as he howled and shook violently. A short zap would have sufficed but not for Gann. He held the device firmly against Ramos’s neck for an age. Palanski cringed as he watched. Some of the prisoners found it amusing.

  Ramos had gone silent by the time Gann removed the zapper, his body shuddering, his head back, eyeballs rolled up, tongue hanging out, foamy saliva dribbling from the sides of his mouth.

  Gann leaned over the Mexican to observe him like a crackpot indulging in an experiment.‘He’s OK,’ Gann declared, none too confidently. ‘That’s how they usually go.’

  The vessel shunted again and this time there was a perceptible feeling of movement that gradually increased as the craft gracefully pulled out of its holding bay. As it left the guide tray it dropped, taking up the slack in the cables. Everyone experienced that lost-stomach feeling, to the point where several of the prisoners groaned.

  Gann tapped Ramos on the side of his head, still unsure if he had done any serious damage - not that he cared much. He gave up and shrugged. ‘You got the picture, guys,’ he said, walking back along the row. ‘No fuckin’ around or you’ll get the same.’

  Stratton focused on a map board at the other end of the bench row. The ferry’s position was indicated on an angled line marked at regular intervals like a metro map, except the lit beads were depth markers between the surface platform and the prison’s arrivals dock. A bright green LED light indicating the surface platform extinguished and a blue one blinked on further down the line.

  Gann stopped in front of a bank of valves and gauges that displayed the internal and external ferry pressures, air-storage volume, air quality, and the carbon dioxide, nitrogen and oxygen percentages of the air. He tapped a couple of the gauges, noting with satisfaction that the internal pressure was several pounds per square inch lower than outside. As he turned around to check on the prisoners his eyes drifted to the line of relief valves in the ceiling, three in total. A drop of water fell from one onto a prisoner’s head, causing the man to look up curiously.