by G R Matthews
"What's going on in there?" he said, taking a step closer.
I edged into his way, blocking his view and returned an apologetic smile.
"Move aside, Corporal," he ordered. "I want to know what you're doing with that prisoner and why he is out of his cell?"
Taking a deep breath, I looked him in the eye and shook my head.
"You will move aside, or I will have you up on charges and cleaning a waste barge before the day is done," he said, squinting at my name tag and back up into my eyes. With a finger he pointed to the insignia on his collar. "You know what this means?"
I had no idea at all but nodded anyway.
"Then you know you'd better get out of my way. If I have to ask again, you won't be cleaning the barge, you'll be part of the waste dumped on it."
A sigh escaped my lips. I turned my gaze aside, appearing downcast, and stepped aside giving the man access to the doorway.
"Best decision you ever made," he growled as he stepped past. "Now then, what is going on in here? Private, stop that immediately."
If you're going to hit a man, it is best to do it when he isn't looking. I brought the edge of my clenched fist down on the side of his neck with as much weight behind it as I could manage. The man staggered forward but didn't collapse as I'd expected, as I’d hoped. All those clip shows had lied to me.
"Fuck," I muttered, stepping forward and throwing another punch as he turned to face me. The insignia on his neck apparently meant hard bastard as my punch was diverted by a forearm and his retaliatory strike caught me high in the chest, just below my throat. It was my turn to stagger back out into the corridor. A little higher and I'd be choking on the floor.
He rose, coming around to face me fully when Abrahams's arms wrapped around his shoulders pinning the man's arms to his side. I was half-a-step into my charge when I saw the man's foot crunch down upon Abrahams foot and his head snap back into my friend's face. Abrahams grunted, and his arms slipped away from the VKYN soldier.
I ducked my head and launched myself across the intervening space intending to tackle the man at the waist. His knee rose and I turned my head aside at the last moment, taking the impact on my shoulder. Even so I wrapped a numb arm around his waist, my other catching the back of his knee, and my weight knocked him backward off-balance.
Norah crouched down behind the man as he staggered backward providing the perfect pivot for him to fall over. As we crashed to the floor Abrahams stepped in and drove the heel of his foot into the side of the VKYN man's head. He went limp in my grasp, but I held on for a few more seconds, making sure.
Convinced he wasn't faking it, I rolled off the fallen man and Norah extricated herself from underneath him. My chest hurt and my right arm was threatening to erupt in the worst case of pins and needles I'd ever had as feeling slowly returned.
"All clear," Abrahams said from the doorway.
"Great," I grunted from my comfortable repose upon the floor.
"Who is he?" Norah whispered.
"No idea," I admitted. "He said something about that insignia on his collar. Supposed to be something of a big deal from the way he spoke about it."
"Let me see," Abrahams said, coming over. "Copeland, keep watch."
I rolled over, grabbing onto the wire mesh to pull myself upright. My shoulder ached and I rotated it, swinging my arm a few times to encourage the blood to flow. "You recognise it?"
"Yeah," Abrahams said, sitting back on his haunches. "Special Forces."
"Which one?" I said. We were Special Forces, most Fish-Suit pilots were in every navy around the drowned world.
"I'm not totally sure," Abrahams said. "I spent a bit of time working over here between the wars. Got to know a few of the navy folk. Their Fish-Suit pilots had a badge like this, but so did a lot of others. Don't suppose it matters."
"He looks about your size," I pointed out.
"Yeah," Abrahams nodded. "I'll get changed."
"And we'll see if we can get this storage open. It'll be a good place to keep him locked up for a while."
Norah and I gave Abrahams a moments privacy to change into the officer’s clothes. There was scrabbling and cursing from behind us.
"Good move, by the way," I said to Norah as we watched the corridor in both directions.
"Are we going to get out of here?" Her voice was small and quiet, reminding me that she was young, inexperienced and had yet to really taste the bitterness of life.
"Of course."
"You're sure?"
"I've been a few situations and always come out in one piece." A bruised, battered and half-dead piece sometimes, but I was stood here still and she needed my confidence.
"When you two have finished," Abrahams said. "Give me a hand."
Neither my card nor Norah's unlocked the storage door, however our unconscious friend's card seemed to do the trick. I took hold of the VKYN man's legs and Abraham's grabbed his arms. Between us, we lifted him into the small storage area, tucking his sleeping form behind a set of shelves which held a wide selection of cleaning fluids in carefully labelled bottles.
"I can still see him," Norah said as we stepped out.
"But you're looking for him," I said. "A casual glance and no one will notice a thing."
Abrahams closed the storage door and took the access card from Norah, clipping it onto his belt. "Does the screen contain a map?"
"Might do," Norah said, turning back to it and sweeping through the menus. Grunting in success she pressed one of the choices and a map of the city appeared on the screen. "We're here."
I looked to her pointing finger and worked out in circles across the map, looking for something to give me a clue, an idea, or even the conception of a plan. "There are the docks."
"There's a lot of base between us and that," Norah said.
"And the route takes us through some busy areas," Abrahams added, tracing his finger from Norah's along the marked corridors to the docks.
"And once we get there, will we be able to get a sub?" Norah nodded.
"Some confidence would be good right about now," I said. "We've got uniforms, one Special Forces, access cards, two stun batons, and a map. That's a pretty good start."
"What about the Fish-Suits?" Norah asked.
"We'll have to leave them," I said, even though it pained me to lose mine. It had been with me for a very long time. Maybe we'd get it back at the end of the war. Some sort of technology and asset exchange.
"The risk is too great," Abrahams agreed with a heavy voice.
"The docks then," Norah said, looking up at me.
"The docks and home." I nodded, knowing again that saying it would be much easier than accomplishing it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
We walked past other officers and all gave Abrahams, in his stolen uniform, a brief glance before moving aside. How much of that was actually the uniform or the collection of bruises, including the fresh one courtesy of the uniform's previous owner, was hard to tell. It didn't matter because no one spared Norah or I, who followed in his wake, so much as a look.
I had the map firmly embedded in my mind and Abrahams, like me a seasoned pilot, guided us erringly along the path we'd seen. Passing a cafeteria, it was tempting to stop and grab something to eat, the ploy with the meatballs had left me somewhat hungry, but the risk was too high. The smell of freshly brewed coffee almost broke my resistance and my stomach grumbled as we moved beyond the doorway.
Traffic increased as we came closer to the docks. Dockers and sailors heading to and from the moonpools, interior docks and the extending tunnels with their hardened airlocks which led to the largest of submarines. We needed a small sub, something the three of us could pilot, that was nimble and quiet. It didn't need to be particularly quick, just hard to find when it was out in the ocean. Fortunately, subs like that were quite common and if we'd been searching the civilian docks they'd have been the most numerous. The navy tended to favour bigger subs which carried more armament, but as we intended to figh
t absolutely nothing a simple worker sub would suffice.
"You know they've got workshops near the docks," Norah whispered as we walked.
"There's no point going for the suits," I said. Leaving them behind was the only option, as much as it galled me.
"We might need them," she said.
"If we need them, we've already lost and it would be better to surrender. Live to complain another day," I said back in a quiet voice.
"We've got to pass by them," Abrahams said without turning. "The moonpools are on the other side."
"You too?"
"Not me," he replied. "I am just pointing out that we're going to have to go past them."
"Might not hurt to look in," Norah said.
"And it might get us killed," I said, confused about the exact moment I became the voice of reason in this escape. If things were that desperate, we were finished before we truly got started.
"He's right," Abrahams agreed.
"Finally," I muttered and then we were quiet for a time as more people ebbed around us.
Abrahams led us around the turns and corners through the base. They'd situated the cells as far from the docks and exit to the naval base as was possible, a sensible precaution in case of a jailbreak. So far we'd been lucky. No one had discovered the unconscious guards or the imprisoned officer but it was just a matter of time. Either they'd wake up and cause a fuss, or the lazy bastard on the cameras would sweep the cells on his rota of times and spot something was amiss.
"There's a security check ahead," Abrahams said.
"We walk up and present the passes," I said, noting a VKYN officer do just that. She had just tapped it against the sensor on the wall and the armed guard had glanced at his Pad and let her through without a challenge. "Norah, you do the talking if it's needed."
She gulped and nodded.
"Lead the way, Abrahams," I said.
He set off at a confident march. Purposeful even, as though he had somewhere to be and needed to be there about seven minutes ago. I saw his brow furrow into a frown and hurried to keep up. The guard saw us coming, his eyes widening at the sight of Abrahams face, uniform and bruises. Norah and I sported our own, me more than her, so we must have looked reasonably fierce as the guard snapped off a salute as Abrahams closed in.
His badge beeped clear in a second as did mine and Norah's. The guard glanced down, back up and down once more, a frown forming on his face. There were other officers coming from the dock end of the corridor.
"Get a move on," Norah snapped in a thickly accented voice.
"But... the..." the guard stammered.
"He isn't used to waiting," Norah said, her accent taking on a forceful, almost grating tone.
"There's supposed to..."
"Open the barrier or you'll have him to answer to," Norah said, her tone and accent edging into a plaintive, sympathetic tone. Abrahams turned the full force of his glare onto the guard and I saw his fist clench by his side.
"Right," the guard said, wilting. "Of course, sir. Forgive me, sir."
Abrahams grunted and without another look stepped past the barrier. I followed a step behind and heard Norah mutter something to the guard before she hurried through.
"Labs are to the left, straight ahead for the docks," Abrahams said in whisper.
"What did you say to the guard?" I asked.
"Told him to forget we were here," she said.
"Why?"
"I don't know," she replied, a puzzled note to her voice. "It seemed like the right and mysterious thing to do."
I had no response to that. The guard had seen something on his Pad that he hadn't expected to see. It worried me, but there was nothing I could do about it. The docks were, as Abrahams had said, straight ahead. The flow of traffic increased once more. This time it was sailors carrying equipment, some in boxes, some in pieces, along the maze of corridors, and guards who patrolled their zones with one hand on their batons, though they carried sidearms too.
"Shit," I muttered, spotting a familiar face in the corridor ahead. He was turned side on and couldn't have seen us yet, but once his conversation was completed he'd turn our way. Jonasson, my interrogator, was here and there was no way we were going to be able to pass him by. "Labs. Go to the labs."
"What?" Norah said.
"Jonasson ahead," I shot back in a whisper. "Abrahams, the labs now."
He raised his pace and turned sharply at the next junction. When Jonasson left my peripheral vision, I let out a sigh.
"Who was he?" Abrahams asked as he paused near a screen and tapped at it.
"Our interrogator," I said, and a hint of suspicion formed in my mind. "You don't know him?"
"Not him," Abrahams said, the map appearing on the screen in front of him. "I had Tomasson. Evil bastard who was way too free with his fists."
"Why two different interrogators?" Norah asked, stepping closer and lowering her voice as a group of lab techs, white coats and stylus sticking up from their chest pocket were a dead giveaway, passed us by.
"So, they can meet up and compare the information," Abrahams said. "They want to check what we told them, and it means that one person can't be turned, or diverted from their aim."
"A safety measure," I grunted, the suspicion falling away. It made a certain amount of sense. I'd not heard of it before, but Abrahams had been in the service longer than me.
"There's a route through here." Abrahams pointed to the screen. "We'll have to turn here," he stabbed the screen, "to get back on the main corridor, but it will take us to the docks."
"Is that an airlock?" I pointed to the little square which led to great nothing beyond.
"Looks like it," he said.
"We'd need the suits," Norah said, hope entering her voice.
"I was thinking more of a last-ditch place to hole up," I said.
"There's some storage compartments here," Abrahams noted. "If it all goes to shit, we could hide in there for a while."
"Once they start searching, we'd be better off risking a sub escape than hanging around," I said, the voice of experience in these matters. "The cameras will pick us up quick enough in the base. Even if we managed to get out of the base and into the city proper."
Abrahams cleared the screen. "It isn't too far."
The labs were brightly lit and screens with readouts flashed numbers and graphs at the occupants. That they hadn't succumbed to bouts of photosensitive epilepsy was beyond me. One look at the screens and I could feel my stomach roil and a headache form behind my eyes. Inside, the scientists and lab techs stood by long silver tables full of complicated electronics with a myriad of wires leading to machines which stood like guardian sentinels over the whole operation.
In one room they were working on the innards of torpedoes, delicately poking around with thin probes and long screwdrivers. The lab techs there were sweating heavily and the walls of that particular room looked exceedingly thick. Not that it would do much good. Torpedoes were designed to penetrate the double, and sometimes triple, hulls of submarines. One little accident and it would take out this lab and all the rooms close by. I hope they got paid extra.
Another room had techs poking around the disassembled remains of a navigation unit. The coils, the sensors and delicate web of wires which sensed the exact state and orientation of the earth's magnetic field were exposed for all to see. The technology was incredible and enabled subs equipped with it to navigate with extreme precision and off the main shipping lines without a care. It was expensive and prone to going wrong. Some fish could do it without thinking and so reliably they'd survived a few million years. One misaligned wire and the whole human engineered system was useless. Only the very best, most expensive, and quite often most dangerous subs were equipped with it.
Outside one room I came to a sudden halt, my eyes drawn to the equipment on the table. A lone lab tech, shadowed by two guards, appeared to be connecting my Fish-suit chest piece up to a monitor.
"What is it?" Norah asked as she stopped and p
eered over my shoulder. "Is that yours?"
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
"What are they doing?" Norah said, resting a hand on my shoulder.
"Accessing the computer by the looks," I said, noting the cluster of wires which erupted from my Fish-Suit.
"Leave it," Abrahams interrupted. "We don't have time."
"It's my suit, Abrahams. I want to know what they are doing to it."
"The computer is encrypted?" Norah added. "They won't be able to get..." Her words tailed off as a new screen sparked into colour and a lines of code, jagged yet elegant, modern art for the introverted, scrolled upwards.
The lone lab tech stepped across to a keyboard and began typing. On the screen, the code slowed. I saw the tech say something, but he wasn't looking at the guards, he was staring at something on the desk. He waited a moment, nodded and spoke some more. A conversation with someone, probably on an embedded screen. Someone senior or an advisor from far away who had the knowledge to bypass the encryption. I'd bet we had our own people who could do that. Fish-Suits were common to all corporations, but the software would differ and encryption was unique.
"We need to move," Abrahams said once more.
"They've accessed my suit," I pointed out.
"So what? It doesn't know anything," he answered. "A few maps of the ocean floor, some navigation data and the plan for this mission. Nothing they don't already have."
The memory of Norah's original suit and its deadly malfunction floated to the surface of my mind. Maybe there'd been a purpose behind it, a reason it went wrong. I couldn't fathom what the reason was right now, just my brain joining dots and creating a rough outline of some mythical beast of explanation.
At that moment, the lab tech looked up from his screen and spotted my curious face at the small window in the security door which separated us from him. His eyes widened and he gestured to the guards, saying something which the thick walls muted.
"Shit. Spotted," I said.
"Run?" Norah said, her voice quavering.
