by Nick Cook
‘Now there’s a cheery thought,’ Mike said, chewing his lip as he gave the craft a suspicious look.
Leon noticed it. ‘I only have space for two passengers anyway; it’s very cramped onboard Neptune. So who’s it going to be?’
Tom gestured towards me. ‘This is your call, Lauren.’
If we were about to discover the clues about a micro mind, or even come across a Guardian, then my synaesthesia – which allowed my brain to interpret the audio to visual language of the Angelus – would be essential on this dive.
‘Okay, I should go, for obvious reasons,’ I said.
Jack crossed his arms. ‘Hang on, why should it be you? Let someone else take the risk for once.’
Of course, he already knew the answer to that because with my synaesthesia, not to mention the Empyrean Key stowed away in my rucksack, I was the only one who would be able to communicate with the Guardian if we ran into it.
But before I could take Jack aside for a serious chat, Leon was already waving his hands at him. ‘Please relax. Diving to this depth will barely tax Neptune and although I can’t stand here and promise you it’s a hundred percent safe, it’s pretty damned close.’
Jack’s forehead furrowed as he gazed into my eyes. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘I’m afraid I am, Jack.’
Mike and Tom were looking between us like this was a tennis match.
’Sounds to me like you have lost the argument, mate,’ Mike said.
Jack dragged his hand through his hair and sighed. ‘It does, doesn’t it? But I should go with you. If this does end up involving an ancient wreck, that falls under the realm of archaeology, albeit with an underwater spin.’
I started to nod, but Carlos stepped forward, his hands clutched together. ‘Please let me go on this dive, Lauren. If you discover Hercules down on the seabed and my children are onboard it…’ He placed his hands to his heart, beseeching me.
I held his gaze, thinking. What if we did discover them? Even worse, what condition would their bodies be in after three months down there? Despite his words, how would he really react to that? I knew if I was in his shoes I would probably suffer a breakdown there and then, not exactly ideal within the confines of the submersible. Surely if there was a grim discovery, it would be better to come back to the surface and break it to Carlos gently rather than expose him to what could be a brutal experience?
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Carlos, for all sorts of reasons,’ I said.
He placed his hand over his heart and gave me a pure big-eyed Bambi look. ‘Please, Lauren, I need to do this. Imagine I was your father standing here and it was you who had died down there. Would you deny him that request?’
That statement pierced my emotional armour like nothing else could. Carlos had no way of knowing that I’d lost both of my parents in a house fire when I was younger. Of course, no one had let me anywhere near the bodies to identify them. That had fallen on the shoulders of a close family friend. I knew everyone had been trying to protect me, but it had left a deep scar. One moment my dad had been reading me a bedtime story and the next I was being dragged out into the street as our house raged with fire and smoke. Even though I knew it would have been the most awful sight to see their burned bodies, if I had been an adult I would have insisted on it. Just like Carlos was now. This was all about closure, something that I’d never ever achieved over the loss of my parents. It had left a gaping hole in me ever since.
All these thoughts flashed through my mind in a matter of seconds.
Then before I knew it, I found myself slowly nodding. ‘I understand, of course I do, and if you’re absolutely sure of this, the third seat is yours,’ I said.
Jack took my arm in his. ‘Are you really sure about this?’
‘No, but how can I stand here and deny Carlos this request? Seriously?’
He glanced across at Carlos, then slowly nodded. ‘Yes, I think you may have a good point there, but what if…’
His words trailed away but I knew exactly what he was talking about. What if we ran into a micro mind down there?
‘We’ll just have to cross that bridge if we get to it, but leave it to me.’
Jack nodded. ‘Okay.’
A look of utter relief filled the old man’s face. He stepped forward and kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Thank you, thank you so much.’
Mike was nodding with approval, but Tom’s expression was unreadable. He almost certainly didn’t approve that I’d let my heart overrule my head. But as Tom himself had said, I was the one in charge and this was my call.
Leon clapped his hands together. ‘Good, then as that’s all decided, let’s get this dive underway. Just one thing that you should know – during the dive there won’t be any way for us to communicate with the surface, and vice versa.’
‘So in other words, we won’t know the outcome of your mission until you surface again?’ Tom said.
‘Pretty much,’ Leon replied.
‘Then once again, please remember that this is just a reconnaissance mission, Lauren,’ Tom said. ‘If it turns out to be anything more, you should surface straight away and then we can discuss our next steps.’
‘Okay, but have the coffee ready for when we get back,’ I said.
‘You can count on it,’ Mike said with a smile.
Leon was already clambering up a ladder, heading for the open hatch leading into the submersible.
Carlos walked up to Neptune and stroked its hull. ‘Beautiful,’ he said to himself, before – with some assistance from the crew – he climbed the ladder and disappeared into the sub.
I turned to Jack. ‘Thank you for understanding that I should be the one to go.’
‘I didn’t have a lot of choice, did I?’
‘No, but thank you anyway.’
I drew him in for a kiss and a smile flickered across his face as I pulled away.
‘Just be careful of any mermen you meet down there,’ he said.
‘Hmmm, I think the only merman I need to be a little wary of is our new friend Leon.’
‘Yep, he really is a ladies’ man if ever I saw one,’ Mike said.
‘Trust me, only in his own head, although there will always be a few who fall for that sort of guy,’ I replied quickly, as Jack was now frowning again.
I hugged Mike and then even Tom, who looked slightly taken aback by my show of affection. Considering the guy was only in his forties he was seriously stiff upper lip and don’t show your emotions, old-school British.
A moment later I was climbing down the ladder into Neptune to join the others.
As I set foot on the deck of the cramped cockpit, I saw Leon and Carlos, already laid out on their fronts on two couches, their heads peering out through viewing blisters in the sub’s nose. A constellation of lights lit up around Leon’s couch as he powered up the sub’s systems.
I headed to the remaining couch, on Leon’s right, and slid myself along it until my head was within my own blister window, which I could see was reassuringly thick. Through it I could see Jack, Mike and Tom watching me. I gave them a thumbs up, which Jack half-heartedly returned. He was so not happy that he wasn’t accompanying me, even if he got my reasons for letting Carlos take his place.
I glanced to the left of my blister window to see that Leon had taken hold of two complex controls fixed to pivoting rods. As he moved his hand through the air, the mandible claws outside replicated his movements. Then, when he squeezed his hands, the pincers clamped shut.
Beyond him, in the far blister window, I could see Carlos’s head, his eyes wide with wonder. And who could blame him? This thing must have felt like a spaceship compared to the ancient diving suits that he’d was used to exploring the sea in.
Leon spoke into the headset that he’d just pulled on. ‘Venus control, main tanks fully pressurised, power is at one hundred percent charge and Neptune is running under her own power. Ready to launch.’
‘Roger that, Neptune, hoist lift commencing,�
�� a woman with an Italian accent replied.
A whine came from outside as several winches kicked into life. With a slight lurch the mini-sub began to rise from the deck by a crane, then was pivoted out over the sea.
Through the blister on the deck I could see Jack, Mike and Tom all waving, which Carlos and I returned. A moment later I lost sight of them as Neptune was lowered towards the water. The immaculately painted hull of Venus slid past, gleaming white, with not a dot of rust to be seen anywhere.
I took a last glance at the horizon. Even though the storm was still a long way off, the crests on the water were already starting to build.
‘Okay, brace yourselves for a gentle impact,’ Leon said as the waves rose to meet us.
With a slap of surf that jolted us on our couches and sent a spray of foaming water over our windows, Neptune settled onto the surface. I clung to my seat’s arms as the waves began to rock the sub to the right, before it settled back into an upright position.
For all my bravado about insisting it should be me on this mission, it was only as we began to bob around on the surface that I remembered I didn’t have a great stomach for sailing. That was something I’d discovered in truly spectacular fashion during a girls only sailing trip around the Greek islands. I’d spent most of my time with my head over the railing, puking into the sea. This was much to the delight of the fish, who’d risen to eat it all up like some sort of gourmet chum that people use to attract sharks.
‘Hey, Leon, I don’t suppose you have any sea sickness pills on board?’ I asked.
He cast me an amused look. ‘Actually, I do, Lauren. But please relax. I promise you that once we get beneath the waves it will be a silky smooth ride from there on out.’
‘I just hope you’re right,’ I replied.
‘Trust me,’ Leon said. He pressed a button on his console and spoke into his mic. ‘Venus, release harness on my mark.’
‘Roger that, Neptune, waiting for your order,’ the Italian woman replied.
Leon scanned his readouts. ‘Three, two, one…release.’
With a lurch the harness shot away and the submersible immediately settled deeper into the water.
’Flooding main ballast tanks,’ Leon said, flicking a switch above him.
A gurgling sound came from the belly of the craft beneath us. Then my stomach lurched as we began to descend into the water. Within moments the waves were lapping up over our blister windows.
My eyes drank in the last view of the blue sky then it was gone as we submerged. The large hull of Venus sat to our starboard with its anchor line stretching away into the depths below.
It was then I noticed two sharks swimming further out, the caustic light patterns across their backs refracting the sunlight coming through the surface of the sea above.
I gripped the sides of my couch harder. ‘Damn it, there are bloody sharks out there, guys.’
Carlos peered out and then a smile filled his face. ‘So beautiful. Those are Blacktip Reef ones.’
Leon shot me an amused look. ‘And before you panic, they are pretty harmless, Lauren, although they might give you a nip if you get too close.’ He made a show of biting down and flashing his bright white teeth at me.
Yep, this guy was a regular predator in every sense and I’d come across his species plenty of times in bars and clubs over the years. I knew how to handle them.
‘Okay, let’s see what awaits us down below,’ Leon said, totally unaware that I had mentally categorised him into that box. ‘Starting up motors and increasing angle to diving planes,’ he continued, pushing a control yoke in front of him forward.
A whine came from behind us and with a velvety smooth bit of acceleration the nose of the Neptune dropped and we began to move forward while quickly descending.
The Blacktip sharks swam briefly over to us to inspect our strange red craft trailing ribbons of bubbles behind it.
Despite being told that they were relatively harmless, I found it distinctly unnerving as the bigger of the two sharks, almost a couple of metres long, swam past. My window slightly magnified the shark and made it appear even bigger, which really didn’t help. Its white-rimmed iris eyeballed me as though it could almost smell my unease through the window.
‘I’m starting to feel like a human exhibit in a reverse aquarium,’ I said.
‘We are the exhibits to the Blacktips out there,’ Carlos replied with a laugh, pressing his hand to the window as if he wanted to tickle the shark’s nose.
We began to spiral down, following the anchor line from the ship above, the sub tilting slightly in the turn as Leon applied the rudder by twisting the joystick.
Leon glanced across at Carlos. ‘So what do you think so far?’
‘It’s spectacular, but I just wish my children were here to share this moment.’
Leon expression fell. ‘Of course you do…’
After that, not surprisingly, we all fell silent, each of us lost in our own thoughts.
I’d once watched a Falcon rocket launch on YouTube and had heard one of the astronauts describe the ship as a living breathing dragon as it left the Earth’s atmosphere. That was exactly what I was experiencing here, as the soft whir of the electric motors propelling us were increasingly overwhelmed by the slightly alarming creaks and groans coming from the submersible titanium hull around us. Also, there were gurgling noises that sounded very much like my own stomach after taco night at the Rock Garden. But what really wasn’t helping was the odd pop and hiss that had my imagination working overtime, imagining rivets exploding from Neptune’s metal body. However, when no cracks appeared in my blister window and there wasn’t a sudden jet of water to drown us all, I started to relax a fraction. I just needed to keep reminding myself that statistically, this dive was almost totally safe…
With a considerable act of willpower, I concentrated on the view through the window rather than the paranoid churn of my own thoughts.
Leon flicked on Neptune’s headlights, which lanced down into the gloomier waters beneath us.
As we descended, small particles swirled past the window, caught in the sub’s headlights like tiny stars. Talking of which, our own sun, still visible through the sea’s surface overhead, had grown considerably dimmer as we dived deeper.
There were also more of the silhouetted Blacktip sharks swimming around Venus on the surface, but they seemed just curious rather than waiting for an unlucky crew member to stumble overboard and become a quick snack. Yes, maybe Jaws had a lot to answer for regarding my attitude towards those beautiful creatures.
The ocean beyond our windows was gradually turning from light green to a deeper ultramarine as the odd fish flickered past. At one point, a whole shoal of shrimp, catching the light like a field of diamonds, swam by.
As we continued our descent, the seabed was gradually becoming visible. On first glance, it appeared to be littered boulders sticking out of a silt that surrounded them like a thick grey icing that softened every sharp edge. An abundance of plant life, including coral, rose from the seabed despite the depth. Then to my surprise, I saw a turtle pass us with lazy strokes.
‘Wow, I had no idea turtles could dive this deep,’ I said.
Leon glanced at a display. ‘We’re only at eighty-three fathoms, otherwise known as five hundred feet; that’s nothing for a turtle. They can dive down to nearly a thousand feet if they put their minds to it. At this depth we’re still in the sunlight zone and there is still plenty of luminescence to support photosynthesis. Because of that, life thrives down here as there’s plenty to eat for everyone. Isn’t that right, Carlos?’
The old man seemed to stir himself out of a reverie. ‘Yes, and that’s despite the pressure at these sorts of depths.’
I did a quick mental calculation. ‘So, at roughly forty-five psi per one hundred feet, that’s a pressure equivalent of around two hundred and twenty-five pounds. Talk about uncomfortable.’
‘Exactly and you have to be extremely fit and strong to be able to dive t
o these depths to cope with it, just as my children were…’ His voice trailed away and he returned his attention to his window.
Leon caught my eye and grimaced.
I looked down through my own window. Would we find their bodies partly buried in that grey mud, like everything else that had ended up down here?
We continued our descent until the seabed was at last only a car’s length beneath us, and Leon finally levelled Neptune out. A boulder field stretched away from us and in the distance lay a coral field of hills and valleys. Little flickers of bright colours caught in our headlights gave away the presence of hundreds of fish swimming among the rich feeding ground of canyons and coral mountains.
‘This is a scuba diver’s paradise,’ I said.
‘Not at these depths it isn’t,’ Leon said. ‘This is strictly the realm of subs and deep sea divers, although one record-breaker managed a thousand feet in scuba gear. However, the bends are a serious danger and it took the diver over fifteen hours to return to the surface in a series of staged ascents.’
I nodded, imagining what four hundred pounds of pressure must have felt like on a human’s body.
I gently patted the inside of the padded hull. ‘Well Neptune is definitely designed to easily withstand it.’
‘Ah, she may be, but a diving suit is still a magical experience,’ Carlos said. ’I miss being down here, exploring, seeing what so many eyes have never seen. And that’s a passion that I passed onto my children.’
Leon smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, I know all about that. You see, my father was a marine biologist who fuelled my own love for the sea and that’s something that never left me.’
The two men exchanged a knowing look.
When I saw the wistful expression on Leon’s face as he returned his attention to the controls, my mind was already starting to recategorise him. Yes, he might be a player, but it was obvious the guy also had a good heart too.
