Undersea (17 page)

She closed her eyes as Thom slid down the lock door.

Awbee lay in a crumpled, bloodied pile at the bottom of the lock. One arm dangled over the edge into the water. After failing to find any controls to the lock, he carried her into the transport, kicked away the stairs, and sealed them in. The sensors told him there were just two other subs in the area. One was docked at the other end of the station; the other had been patrolling, but was now holding just above the station, waiting to pounce. It seemed like the enemy pilot figured that was the best place to cover any escape. He was mistaken.

Thom blew the ballast and the sub fell away from the station like it had been dropped. Instantly his console lit up with warnings that the other sub had locked on and was eminently firing weapons. Before his craft hit the seabed, Thom pushed the throttle to its maximum, launching them forward like a rocket. The supports for the station flashed by, close enough to touch. Then he was in the open, still accelerating. He blew the rest of the ballast and dove straight down.

By the time the other sub caught onto his tactic, the transport had disappeared into the Crevasse. 

V

The forth punch put him on the floor. By that point, he wasn’t sure why he had remained standing for the two previous. There, among the stickiness and the stench and the filth, Thom decided that if this guy wanted to beat him to death, he’d be OK with it.

It had taken Thom and the unconscious Awbee three-and-a-half hours to get back to the
Uni
using full emergency speed. They weren’t followed; his depth and course had seen to that. A medical team was waiting for them on arrival, as he had requested. While Awbee was brought down to MedBay, Thom was rushed to the Bunker to brief the Captain. He told Thom he would personally brief the Proctor and the Council in the morning. It was little consolation to Thom that the Captain felt he had done the right thing, and congratulated him on making the right choice.

He made it all the way back to his cabin before the weight of what he had done hit him. He sat on the edge of his bed, shaking. As if in a daze, the world around him disappeared as he relived the moments over and over. Her face. Her face as she fell. Her face as it looked up at him. He couldn’t come up with any reason why he hadn’t let go. She was right there, just a few strides away. He could have picked her up...

But no, even then. Even with the haze of shame and regret, some part of him knew that he had been too high. There is no way he could have jumped back up. Then they’d all be captives. That was so nearly a better option. But it didn’t matter. Not in the least.

He slid off his bed and sat on the floor, knees to his chest. He wanted to yell and cry and scream and weep. He wanted to go back to that moment they had been alone at the far end of the station. To touch her hand. Tell her that they should leave then. Now the tears came.

He staggered down to the bar a few hours later and buried himself in booze. He didn’t see the guy enter who hit him. Just the fist as it landed on his right eye. But as he fell off the back of the stool, mostly standing, he saw who it was. It was the blond guy. The guy who kissed Ralla. The guy she wore on her arm like a big dumb genetically engineered accessory. Thom knew Cern Hennorr, by look, reputation, and now by feel. The second punch was on the other side of the face, and he staggered back a step. The next was the gut. The one that put him on the floor was to the jaw. The guy was screaming at him, face flushed with furor and wrath. That part, at least, felt good.

At least they put her arm in a sling. It hurt brutally. She wasn’t sure what was in the ammunition they’d been using, but the pain it created was mind-numbing. That was probably the point.

From what Ralla could tell, and from the opinions of the scientists surrounding her, her wound wasn’t deep, though it would probably leave a scar across her shoulder blades and down her arm a bit. Surprisingly, she didn't care.

There were eight of them in one room of one of the dormitories. The bed had been removed and they all sat on the floor, shoulder to shoulder. There was a worn cyan carpet that did little to insulate them from the icy steel deckplates.

She leaned forward the best she could, having nearly blacked out the one time she’d leaned back against the wall. The others had tried to move so she could lie down, but she wouldn’t have any of it. There was barely enough space for them to be sitting as they were.

Over the next day they were allowed turns in the bathroom, supervised by an armed soldier, and served meals of whatever packaged food had been found by their captors. They could whisper, but if the soldiers heard them talking they’d be threatened at gunpoint. She heard shots down the hall at one point, and figured the threats were probably real.

The biggest problem was her layered linen indigo blouse and black cotton pants. She explained away her dressy clothing saying she was new to the station and had wanted to make a good impression. It was a bad lie, but under the circumstances no one thought to question it.

The second day they were ordered out of the room and down to the lock she and Thom had entered. She felt a twist in her stomach, hoping he had gotten away OK, that he had gotten her mom away OK. She was sure she would have heard it had the sub been destroyed near the station, that unmistakable sound of a sub imploding. But still, she wondered.

They entered a transport, which left and immediately docked to the side of another sub. She was unable to get a look at its outside, but from its cramped quarters and state of interior, she was pretty sure it wasn’t the
Pop
.

The hallways were narrow and the walls were covered with bare tubing and wires. The lighting fixtures were unadorned filaments that had gone out of style on the
Uni
decades earlier. It was a strange mixture of old and new. The deckplates had patches of rust, but they passed several rooms adorned with new looking equipment and terminals. Some bulkheads were even shiny. The best she could tell was that it was an old ship—or at least one hobbled together out of other, older ships—that had been refurbished.

They made it to this ship’s small mess, and were handcuffed to brightly polished benches. It surprised Ralla that they hadn’t seen anyone other than their captors. She was sure a ship of this one’s apparent size would have to have a crew of at least a hundred or more. Other captives filed in and were placed around the other five gleaming tables. She wasn’t sure the complement of the research station, but it would have to have been more than this. Maybe there was another sub, or this one was making multiple trips. She had no one to share her curiosity; their captors made it very clear that there was to be no talking. So they sat in silence on the cold benches, smelling food they weren’t having.

Then for the better part of a day, they sat. No food, no water. Bio breaks were done in shackles. She was glad she had used the facilities on the station. From what Ralla could guess it was in the evening when they finally made it to their destination. There was a disconcerting jolt that the four guards in the room must have been expecting, given their lack of surprise. As a group they were herded off the way they’d entered, but now exiting down a set of stairs where the transport sub had latched before. She concentrated on not losing her balance as she descended the soaked and slippery metal stairs. When she reached the deck, she took in her surroundings. It was awe-inspiring.

From what Ralla could tell, given the height and the curves, she was in the front portion of the interior of the
Population
, roughly where she and Thom had slept and seen the speech so many months before. It had been completely transformed into a portal for war. They stood on what had been the bottom deck. A colossal pool occupied the center, larger than anything on the
Uni
. There was an unobstructed view clear to the ceiling, more than twice the height you could see at any open part on the
Uni
. Every few stories, there was a “U” shaped floor with maintenance bays, launch bays, and rows upon rows of submarines. Attack subs, escorts, subs of different sizes and designs she’d never seen. She counted fifteen of these floors, with a least fifty subs per floor. And those were just the small ones.

Getting her first real glance of her “transport,” it seemed to be roughly corvette sized, with a crew of maybe 50 to 70, and that was the smallest sub she saw on the floor around the pool. There were half a dozen frigates, 100 to 150 crew, and a pair that were even larger.

None of those compared to the menacing submarine at the far end of the shipyard. It was all hard angles bristling with guns. Ralla guessed two rows of five corvette-sized subs could fit into the pool at the same time. The sub at the end of the shipyard looked almost too big to fit in the pool at all. Fear mixed with awe caused her to stop walking, and she was jabbed hard in the back by one of her captors.

Everywhere there was work being done on the subs, on platforms, but the space was so open, so cavernous, it was all faint and far away. At the end of the shipyard, where once there had been a view clear down to the other end of the
Pop
, there was now a bulkhead, floor to ceiling. The amount of metal, minerals, energy required for all this, in such a short time—Ralla could hardly fathom it. They were marching them across this space, in front of all this, for a reason. And it was working.

Ralla’s group entered a small elevator in the bulkhead that separated the shipyard with the rest of the interior of the ship. It rattled as it rose, and quickly lurched to a stop. The doors opposite the one they had entered opened to reveal the interior of the ship. As she suspected, it was as if a giant patchwork of metal had been sliced down into the
Pop
. Walkways just ended. Shops were split, the bulkhead as a new wall. Ralla could see cabins bifurcated high above by this new end to the living space. The light was bright, but there were oddly few people about. And that wasn’t the only thing that had changed since her last visit. New floors and platforms jutted out into the open down the length of the ship. Light squeezed past their staggered placing, casting sharp shadows that blanketed the floor.

Supports extruded out from bulkheads and hung haphazardly to any flat surface seemingly able to hold them. These arched up, connected with the new levels, then arched back down to the other side. She couldn’t see what was on the closest of these new levels, but those farther away appeared to have some greenery and what could have been tents.

They crossed the park where she and Thom had done their research, the terminals now blank, and continued to the starboard side. Then countless corridors, all damp and poorly lit, before the group arrived at a space that was likely a ballroom in its previous life. Now, though, it was littered with cots. Rows and rows of cots. Worse, there were more people than cots, so the floor was covered in sitting, sleeping, and obviously distraught bodies. Ralla had her first moment of panic. Her breathing quickened. Her heart pounded. Her face flushed. These were
Uni
citizens. These were her people. And this was a jail. The faces nearest her were gaunt. Uniforms and clothing were soiled and torn. Some in the cots had blood on their clothes; others had more obvious injuries.

She saw few blankets, most covering unseen figures too still to be sleeping. Her sharp intake of breath went unnoticed as the others around her all processed the same thing.

For a brief moment, she had wished she had run to Thom when she had the chance. She saw him, hanging from one arm, being lifted from the deck. The anguish on his face as he was pulled away. Not for a second had she wanted him to do anything else. More than anything she hoped he understood that. Then she wondered, not for the first time, what he had said before he slid down the gate.

VI

Marines had found him still on the floor of the bar, bloodied, bruised, and unconscious. A med team had  picked him up, cleaned him up in the Medbay, and sent him home. No sooner had he changed out of his sticky, bloody clothes than there was there a knock on his door. One of Jills’ assistants, after giving him a confused once over, informed him that the Proctor wanted to see him. The assistant neglected to say the entire Council would be there as well.

The entire Council, save one. A wave of guilt and pain washed over him, but he fought it back down, such was its familiarity. During his walk to the meeting, a few paces behind the rushing assistant, he hoped Ralla’s father wouldn’t be there. On that, at least, he was lucky.

The rest of the Council—plus Cern, Thom was almost amused to see—was seated at the black glass table, and all eyes turned to him as he entered.

“I was told you were uninjured in your escape,” Jills asked, looking genuinely surprised. Thom’s eyes had already started to blacken, his nose was taped, and there were lacerations down the side of his face.

“I fell,” Thom replied. After a moment of silence while they waited for him to elaborate, he looked around for a place to sit. An assistant appeared, as if decloaking from the wall, and wheeled him over a chair. He sat at the end of the long table, facing Jills, in the spot normally reserved for the Captain. Cern was at Jills’ left, and if he felt shame or regret for the damage done, he didn’t show it.

“The Captain briefed us this morning,” Jills started. “But we would like to hear it again from you. Please don’t take this as a trial of any sort. Dr. Gattley backs up your story to the extent she can remember it.”

Thom told them step-by-step what had transpired, every detail he could remember. The firefight at the end he told in exacting detail, including what Ralla had mouthed to him as he was pulled away. He left out his reply.

“Mr. Vargas... sorry, I guess
Lieutenant
Vargas is more accurate,” Jills began. “I have no doubt the decision you made concerning our Councilmember and her mother will be a difficult one for you to live with. I have decided, against the judgment of several elder Councilmembers, to allow you to stay and hear Awbee Gattley’s report regarding her work of recent months. Then you will at least understand why Ralla chose her mother’s life over her own.”