TideBreakers: One For The Bull
Page 3
Marcel sat on top of The Domino watching the sky darken. His helmet and jet-unit already on the metal beside him, he was unfastening his jet-suit's left arm from the shoulder. He eased it down over his elbow, feeling the cool breeze through the material of his charge-suit.
Footsteps approached behind him. "You think she'll continue on heists without him?" It was Commander Rojas's voice.
"I think she'll need to find a new fence if she does." Marcel began unclipping his right suit arm. "What was that unmarked sub?"
Rojas stepped over to one of the rig's hawser bollards and sat down, looking out to the horizon. "I have no idea." She took something out of her jacket pocket. "Some kind of spook though. Look at that." She dropped the item into Marcel's lap; it was the barrier-breaker from the service-hatch terminal.
He turned it over in his fingers. "This is advanced." He ran a finger over where it had been slotted into the terminal. "This part's melted from the inside – it's sacrificial?"
Rojas nodded. "It knocked out everything that you didn't hack. We lost life-support, communications, bulk-head control. They'd even started to flood the cargo-chamber entirely. With JSDs they could have pulled our air and taken the rig over. It was a good thing your hack timed out when it did or we may have lost so much more than one cargo crate."
Marcel turned the breaker over again – there was no identification marks of any kind. "Who would use this?" he said again to himself.
"The Hisakawas might have done."
Marcel nodded.
Neither of them spoke for a few moments, listening to the sounds of the water lapping at the rig's hull and the seagulls high overhead.
"That's the fifth time the Hisakawas have gotten away from Rosa Security." Rojas said flatly. "The second when I was in command of the operation."
"Well, sir," Marcel said with a sigh, looking back at where the tops of the derelict buildings broke the surface of the water at Shelton Mast, the waves drawing out into breakers by the city below. "There's only one of them now."
Milo Hisakawa's eyes opened. He was on his back staring up at the surface of the ocean high above, a frame of myriad silhouettes cast by the surrounding buildings.
Stiffly, he moved the fingers of his left hand to try and get some sort of response from the handphone display inside his faceplate; there was nothing. "Hello?" he said, his own voice sounding loud inside his helmet. He could taste salt-water on his lips, but there was no noticeable break in the glass.
Someone landed softly on the soil next to him, the sand billowing from away from the dive boots.
"Hello?" Milo said again, trying to turn over enough to see who it was, but only being able to see the shadowed outline of the person's dive-suit.
A soft voice spoke into his helmet's speakers. "You're dead, Mitzter Hitzakawa."
Milo took a few breaths, considering his answer.
"Jutzt as planned." Apart from the occasional electronic static in his speech, the man spoke in a light Australian accent.
"Did you get what you needed?" Milo asked, again trying to push himself up, the water whirling around him as he moved. "Did you get the crate you needed?"
The man didn't respond.
"Are my coms working?" Milo said, finally managing to prop himself on one elbow. "Can you hear me?" He reached up with his free arm to try and unclip the dead-weight of his jet-unit. "How are you tapping into my speakers if my coms are down?"
After another pause, the man spoke again. "I have a new jet-unit for your dive-tzuit." He let it fall in the water to Milo's side. "You'll need it in Waypoint IIU. We have a lot of work to do."
Hello,
Thanks so much for reading One For The Bull, the second of three prologue stories for the TideBreakers novella series; I do hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to keep an eye out for these other releases:
TideBreakers Prologue story 1: Prize Seven
TideBreakers Prologue story 3: Death on 'foils
Due on the second week of June 2015
TideBreakers Episode 1: One-hundred Keys to the Crown
Due on the second week of July 2015
All fifteen TideBreakers episodes will then be released at regular intervals afterwards. It's going to be a real adventure to write this all and one I really hope you'll share with me. If you'd like to be kept up to date, make sure you follow TideBreakers on Facebook and Twitter.
Keep up with my weekly writing blog and interviews with other online creators at the TideBreakers website.
You can also now start your own crew and embark on your own TideBreakers adventure by supporting me through my Patreon campaign, for access to the TideBreakers collectible card game and factsheets about the TideBreakers universe. I've dedicated as much time and care to the TideBreakers card game as I have to the novella series, so I do hope you'll take a look at the free samples that are available and perhaps even consider supporting the TideBreakers project with a small monthly donation!
Thank you once again,
Kindest regards,
Duncan Stockwell