by G R Matthews
It rose past my knees and to my waist. My feet were rooted to the floor of the compartment. I could move if I really put some effort into it, but QxyQuid was heavy. The suit's exoskeleton would help, if I diverted some power to it, but where was I going to go. In a small airlock, in any airlock, there was nowhere to run to. I'd seen recruits, overcome by the terror of what was to come, shuffle and stagger to the airlock door, bang on it, thump it, and beg to be let out. Hopefully, that wouldn't be any of us today.
I gave Norah a last look, her visor was clearing, and I could just make out her face. I smiled and hoped she could see it, before I turned away. The QxyQuid had reached my neck and no one wanted to see someone else drown. Even if that drowning was in a thick liquid designed to keep them alive. It looked the same and I'd seen it enough times to fervently hope to never see it again.
It reached my lips and instinctively I tilted my head back in my helmet, trying to stave off the inevitable for a few more seconds. Each and every time I knew it was pointless, but I couldn't stop myself.
The first touch of QxyQuid on my upturned lids and I pressed them shut, holding onto my last breath for as long as I could. My lungs ached, and my heart pounded in my ears. Every ounce of my body demanded that I take a breath, but it feared the liquid now rising above my nose and over my eyes.
Breathe it in, I told myself and the instinctive damn collapsed in one great gulp. It poured down my throat and into my lungs. Air displaced by the inrush of gel rose up my throat. I coughed, choked and fought to hold my food down. My ribs hurt, and my windpipe burned. Bubbles popped from my nose, the last of the air escaping my lungs and rising to the top of my helmet.
When it was over, when my body and brain accepted the QxyQuid and its oxygen, I felt ready to turn and face the others. Abrahams was ready and waiting. Roth was struggling in one corner and Norah in the other. I watched them through the cold ocean water which now filled the airlock.
Now that water surrounded me it was easier to move, and I walked over to Norah, dragging the communication cable from my chest and attaching it to her suit. I sent a diagnostic request to her suit and it returned with an all clear.
READY? I sent to her.
YES, came her reply. I waited a moment for something else, but she was silent.
A hand landed on my shoulder and I turned to see Abrahams. Inside his helmet, he nodded and indicated the direction of the airlock door. I returned his nod and followed him to the door. Standing to either side, Roth behind Abrahams and Norah behind me, we watched it slowly open.
It was dark outside. The light of the airlock did not penetrate far. All I could make out were the flecks of marine snow which fell constantly from the surface and now appeared as white streaks of movement. Disembarking a moving submarine was never pleasant, never easy, but this was better than being shot out of a torpedo tube. I could feel the eddies in the current tugging at my suit.
GO, I sent the message to Norah and diverted power to the motor, pushing myself out into the ocean. There was a strange sense of dislocation, of motion sickness, as the sub continued to move and I seemed to come to a standstill. Intellectually I knew it was the difference in relative speed. Us slowing down while the sub maintained its speed, but it felt strange.
There was a little tug on the communication cable as Norah followed me out and a beam of diffuse light from my right as Abrahams and Roth exited. The thrum of the sub's propellers washed through my suit and rattled what few brain cells remained in my head. That sound would travel and be picked up by sensors over the ocean floor where it would join the noise from the military fleet that passed by not too far away. At least I hoped it would. Even the subtle sound of an airlock opening, its effect on the acoustic signature of our submarine, would be detectable if not for the covering noise of that small fleet. At least, that's what we hoped.
DOWN, I texted.
A little more power to the motor and we dropped towards the ocean floor. In this area the sea bed undulated but was, sadly for us, mostly flat. There were some areas, according to the map, we could use to mask our approach, but they were few and far between. Our planned courses, each team had a different route in to prevent the capture of one team ending the mission, and the word capture really meant death, but I ignored that, took those topological features into account.
There were tiny puffs of grey sediment when my feet touched down and the ubiquitous marine snow glared in the white light of my lamps. With the flick of a glove control the white light changed to red and the snow disappeared, mostly, from view. Another quick selection from the menu on my HUD and I shut down my motor. They were quiet, built for stealth, and unlikely to be heard from any distance, but it was better to be safe than sorry, or dead.
WE WALK FROM HERE.
A moment later Norah's response arrived. GREAT.
The onboard computer threw the map onto my HUD, doing its best to locate us from the last bit of reliable information the submarine had given us. A set of waypoints and timings appeared, detailing our route. We'd purposefully built in some extra time but even so it was going to be a tough, long walk to the VKYN city.
STAY IN LINE.
AFFIRMATIVE, she replied.
I moved the map to the top right corner of my display, added a timer below it, set an alarm on my passive sensors and queued up a selection of music. Nothing too taxing or too demanding, just something to take my mind off of the danger. The opening bars, guitar, drums and woodblock, I think, of Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower set the pace for our march.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I'd been to a few gigs in my youth, but no one matched Jimi on the guitar. It isn't just the skill, it's the energy and feeling he drives through the music. I kept one eye on the map and the other staring at the darkness beyond my visor. The gentle tugs on the communication cable let me know that Norah was keeping pace. Somewhere out there, Abrahams and his second were traipsing their own planned course towards the VKYN city.
It wasn't a pleasant thought, what we were about to do. People would die. Either us or them, though I sincerely and ghoulishly wished it to be the latter rather than the former. I'd never met them and likely never would. They'd never know who had killed them and the survivors better not find out either. Least that was the plan. I shoved the thoughts aside and let Jimi's voice cleanse my mind as he sang about kissing the sky.
On the map, the first of the predicted detection circles crept into view. It marked the beginning of our real work. The little triangle of our way point lay just ahead of it and from then on it we'd have to concentrate. It would be vital to work together, as a team, and slowly. The line which picked out our planned course was based upon speculation, out of date intelligence, and a lot of guesswork.
SYNC MAPS, I sent Norah as we stopped at the waypoint. Hendrix was just questioning Joe's possession of a firearm when I cut the music and let the sounds of the ocean wash through me.
COMPLETE, came Norah's reply.
In those old clips from the old days, I'd have spread warpaint across my face, tied a bandanna around my forehead, picked up a large gun and said something macho. Here and now I settled for a sigh, a bubble obscured 'fuck it', and the message LET'S GO.
I turned the exoskeleton power down, letting the batteries hoard their power, and put one foot in front of the other. We crossed the green line of the detection circle and the war became real.
ALL CLEAR. Norah's message appeared in the little chat box on my HUD. Her role was to monitor the suits' readouts, focus on picking up the sensors. Mine was to pick a path and make sure we went in the right direction. At the moment, that should have been to turn one hundred and eighty degrees and get the hell out of there. However, there was nowhere to go but forward, complete the mission and get out alive. I'd done this before, once or twice, but I took no comfort from that. Too many others had died in the last war for any illusion of immortality to hang around my mind.
The red beam of my headlamp was pointed at the seabed. It undulated i
n ridges and valleys of sediment. Small creatures who made this plain their home burrowed into the sand as we approached. Slow fish which cruised across the land seeking a meal flicked a tail and were gone in a flash. Fronds which looked like plants but were really animals snapped closed, withdrawing into the murk.
PRESSURE LINE.
I saw the message and a sharp beep sounded in my earphone as a warning. Stopping, I waited the few seconds for Norah to catch up.
PUT IT ON THE MAP, I sent.
DONE. A wavy line pulsed on my HUD map indicating the placement of the pressure line. They were set to detect larger vessels than us by the changing current and pressure wave which passed across them from a moving sub. It wouldn't detect us as much more than a large fish, but it paid to be careful. Norah's suit had found it by the slight emanation of electrical current in much the same as sharks hunt. Admittedly they'd had a few hundred million years to perfect it and we'd barely managed to walk upright, but even so the sensors we had were pretty good.
In this case, they did their job and within thirty metres I found the line. If one of us had trodden on it, an operator would have noticed something strange. Enough to notify their superior, especially in a time of war, and for them to note it with some other officer.
STEP ACROSS, I ordered Norah as I stayed back to watch her.
In the dull red glow, I saw her step up to the pressure line and, with great care place, one foot the other side of it. A moment later she brought the other foot over and took another two steps to make sure she was clear.
CLEAR, she sent.
Mimicking her action, I stepped up to the line and across. It wasn't hard, but it was the first challenge we'd truly encountered, and I felt a damn sight better now that we'd cleared it.
I took the lead once more and Norah fell into step behind, following in my footsteps. From here on in, the map would start to clutter with detection circles as the mapped and detected sensors were placed in their approximate positions.
With a few flicks of the controls in my gloves I changed my HUD around. The chat box, my only form of communication with Norah stayed in the bottom left corner, but I expanded the map to take up most of the right-hand side of my visor. The remaining space I filled with graphs and readouts detailing my own suits operational status. I didn't truly understand them all, but it made me feel better and looked impressive. In itself that was quite a confidence builder.
A few minutes later and a circle appeared on the map, and another, and another. Beyond those, the city, our destination and target. There was no point stopping and assessing the threat circles, we'd planned for these and the single line of our route changed direction just ahead.
When it turned, I turned and kept on walking. I could feel the muscles in my legs begin to burn with the effort of wading through the water. It isn't like air, which flows around you without seeming resistance. You can run in air, sprint should the mood take you. In the ocean, surrounded by water, running is more like a drunken stumble, I'd done enough of those, and sprinting an impossibility. Every step is an effort, fighting against the water, pushing your way through, trying to make headway. That's why these suits came with an exoskeleton, to make that easier, but I couldn't risk turning the power up and giving our position away to a sensor we missed or one which was more sensitive than we'd expected.
Walking was the only option, and aching legs were the price to pay for stealth and survival. The latter was to be fervently pursued. Getting myself, or worse Norah, killed for the sake of a little pain would not make me happy. I'd be sure to give myself a good kicking in the afterlife should those events come to pass.
Underfoot the terrain changed a little, the sediment ridges becoming higher and the valleys deeper. We'd done our best to account for these, but until we were here it had been an almost impossible task. The ripples moved, slowly for sure, across the plain and no one had truly thought to chart each one because soon after the cartography was complete the resulting map would be out of date. Now amongst them we could use them, alter our course a touch here and there to follow a valley for a time or avoid a particularly large rise.
Through the map and readouts on my HUD I could see the little puffs of kicked up sediment around my feet. There was nothing else to look at and following the green line on the map was getting boring. It is strange how existing one step, one mistake from being discovered could be side-lined into the monotony of the walk and vista.
SUBMARINE. Norah's warning flicked up in the chat box.
WHERE? We stopped moving and I focused on my HUD.
EIGHTY-THREE DEGREES RELATIVE BEARING, she told me.
I zoomed the map out a little, getting a better look at the terrain and detection zones that surrounded us. The update from her computer painted the symbol of a slow-moving submarine just where she had said it would be. Letting the sounds of the ocean pass through me I sought out the subtle hum of the vehicle’s propeller but heard nothing. The computers and devices on the suit were a lot more sensitive than my ears. Which was good.
SONAR?
NONE DETECTED, she replied. Her suit, tapping into my own computing power, would be running all sorts of algorithms and complicated mathematics trying to determine the nature of the threat. A few seconds later and the submarine was encircled by its own moving detection zone. PASSIVE ONLY.
There was no way to actually determine that for sure, it was the result of the computer detecting no outgoing signals and making an assumption. I'm well aware that all you do when you assume is make an ass of you and me, usually me, so I didn't move. The longer the computers spent analysing the signal the more accurate its suppositions would be. A few minutes couldn't hurt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The symbol representing the submarine came closer and closer. A new line, orange this time, speared out from the front of the vehicle, an indication of its likely direction. Taking that into account, the sub would pass less than a hundred meters from our current location. They wouldn't be able to see us, visibility is only a metre or so at this depth, but they'd have their own batch of sensors. This time those sensors would be mobile. They might change course and sweep over us with magnetometer, a low beam sonar, a microphone which was sensitive enough to pick the quiet hum of the QxyQuid motors, or a thousand other little things which might give us away.
GO DARK, I ordered with a heavy heart. Norah was strong, she had to be to pass the training, but this would be a real test.
I began to shut down the Fish-suit. The exoskeleton went first and the subtle whir of the servos was conspicuous by its absence. A flick of the control surfaces in my gloves and the red lamp and passive sensors went off. Next my HUD shut down and I was left in a world of utter dark. Not just that of night, with the knowledge that you can turn a light on, or with persistent orange glow of Pad charging or a screen on standby, the total absence of light. I sucked in a breath of QxyQuid, much harder now there was no assist from the mechanical ribs. Last, the small motor which circulated the life sustaining gel shut down.
It was dark within the suit and I closed my eyes, holding onto the sounds of the ocean. I stepped back, picturing Norah's location in my mind, hoping she hadn't moved or panicked. Fumbling in the dark I found her hand and gripped it. Through the gloves, insulation and thin layer of QxyQuid, I felt her squeeze back.
This would be just like her brush with death. Hardly different from a suit failure. We couldn't talk. I couldn't reassure her or tell her it would be all right. I knew, consciously, rationally, that the suit kept up a bare trickle of power to the computer, keeping it working, on standby.
However, I'd also been forced to rip the battery out of my Pad a few times when the bloody thing got stuck in some logic loop or other, refusing to boot up when it should have done. Everything out here was a risk. No one would turn up to fix it. No engineer or technician. No help desk idiot on the end of a comms line asking whether I'd forgotten to plug it in. We were on our own. No one else to rely on but each other.
&nb
sp; I felt her other arm encircle my waist and she pulled in close. It was hard to begrudge her the contact, and I didn't even for a second. We'd be stood like this for a while. One minute? Five? Ten? It was hard to tell, but long enough for the sub to pass us by. Every second would seem like a year. A minute would be a decade and ten minutes a millennium. I really needed Jimi right now, but he was tucked away on the powered down memory chip, as out of reach as the world he'd lived in.
The low thrum of a propeller reached my ears through the suit, QxyQuid and earbuds. I felt it in my bones as the sound grew louder. It wasn't deafening. Submarines, in war time especially, tend not to be loud and military ones the quietest of all. Norah's hand tightened on mine and I tried to give a reassuring squeeze.
Behind the sound of the submarine, the rest of the ocean went on about its normal business. The distant song of whales which travelled for hundreds of kilometres. The creak and groans of the slowly shifting tectonic plates. Other, stranger sounds, that took the combined power of five AIs to decipher, but which most folks called Sea Ghosts.
The slow chopping of the water, the distinctive sound of a small submarine, came closer and I imagined, or saw, it was hard to say, the glow of its running lights. They were ahead of us, distant dim stars in the night of the ocean and orbiting us slowly.
I'd seen clips and stills of the night sky. It scared the hell out of me. Nothing above you, surrounding you for billions of kilometres, light years, parsecs, and a thousand other words that tried to convey the mind-staggeringly vast distances, but which failed at every try. Those old shows I'd watched where they went from planet to planet, meeting new lifeforms, new species, having adventures and solving moral dilemmas, reduced those vast gaps between to a trick of narration. However, if putting your mind to the task, thinking about it, usually after a lot of beer or the ingestion of something stronger, there was no other reaction than to be stupefied by the reality of it.
