They attacked our secret facility deep in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge almost immediately after Kat’s funeral.
The troops cut into the hull and invaded with the intent to kill us all.
We had needed to say goodbye to her. We’d had the celebrations following the battle, we’d banished the traitor Robert Butte to his uncertain and lonely future, and we realized that we had to do something for the person who had given us the supercavitating drive. Had to give her an appropriate farewell. Kat had loved the oceans. She’d dreamed of them before she’d even seen them. During her years caring for her sick dad, all she’d wanted to do was live in the water. It had given her meaning through all the years. And now that she was dead, killed during the battle to help gain freedom for Trieste and to create the free seafloor nation of Oceania, I decided to give her body back to the oceans.
She would have wanted it this way.
In the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, that canyon that sliced through the Atlantic Ocean and cut nearly right to the molten mantle at the hot interior of the Earth, I decided to take her body as deep as we could possibly go and let nature and the undersea elements do what they wanted with her.
My sister Meg and I wrapped her body in a white sheet and tied it with rope. It wouldn’t last long out there, we knew, for the ocean would eat away at the coverings quickly.
But that was the point.
And there, in the rift zone, we could make it to the very bottom: 6,000 meters. Six kilometers under the ocean, where magma rises from even deeper and creates new ocean crust, where ash plumes and clouds of sediment leak continually from the seafloor and fill the crevasses with murky blankets of dark clouds.
It was deeper than any other sub could go, which is perhaps why I had picked it.
No other human would ever see Kat again.
We boarded her seacar—me, Meagan, Johnny Chang, Manesh Lazlow, Richard Lancombe and Jessica Ng—and departed the stealthy and silent dome where we had staged the battle only a few days earlier. Where we had crushed the USSF and French forces that had tested our new fighter subs, the Swords. The fight had also damaged SC-1, but we had repaired her and had even made a few additions. She was back to full operation.
The pressure in the airlock rapidly built until it equaled the exterior, the outer hatch opened, and I piloted SCAV-1 outside, banked her smoothly to the port, crested the ledge over the three-kilometer abyss, and pointed her nose down.
We dove at low thrust—ten percent only—and I watched the readout cautiously. Under normal conditions, the deepest the vessel could go was 4,000 meters, but at that point we had a new technology that could aid us in going even deeper.
The hull creaked and groaned and the others looked around, uncertain. The Acoustic Pulse Drive still wasn’t completely familiar to us. But our acoustician Doctor Manesh Lazlow had invented it, and it had been the single most important factor in our stunning victory.
The readout was at 4,000 now, and I thumbed on the APD and kept my speed at fifty.
The thrum of the sound pulses echoed through the hull. Johnny, my best friend and former partner in Trieste City Intelligence, was sitting in the co-pilot chair to my right, and he glanced at me.
“It still doesn’t feel safe,” he muttered.
“You know it works.”
“It’s new on this ship.”
I grunted. He was right. But the sound pulses that were radiating out from the blunt bow of SC-1 were sending compression waves away from the sub, and we powered into the lower pressure tunnel that they created. As they rebounded back to the source, as sound waves do, we’d already moved away. They were not able to cause damage. It was a brilliant method of forcing the pressure back upon itself, allowing us to go deeper. Using the APD, we could descend right to 6,000 meters at the bottom in the rift.
I glanced behind me at the living area of SC-1. Katherine Wells’ wrapped body lay on the deck. Sitting to either side, on the couches, were Doctor Lazlow, my twin sister Meg, and the elderly freedom fighters Lancombe and Ng, who had fought in the early days of resistance with my father.
They were all staring at the body.
Then Meg turned to look at me. Her eyes were moist. Even though we’d had a few days to grow accustomed to the notion that Kat was dead, it still hadn’t helped.
“How are you doing, Tru?” she asked.
My name is Truman McClusky. I was currently mayor of the US undersea colony Trieste, but I was also covertly leading Trieste City Intelligence in a war of independence against the superpowers of the world. Using new technologies like the supercavitating drive and the APD, we had just won our first major victory, but there was still so much to do. My plan was to forge the new nation of Oceania, comprised of all the undersea colonies, because we were tired of the land nations using us for resources and not compensating us for our efforts. In the ocean depths, we struggled enormously. There were deaths due to the extreme hardships. We loved what we did and we wanted to contribute, but we were through with the abuse by the land nations and their submarine forces like the USSF, the FSF, and the Chinese Submarine Fleet.
Our new technologies would help us achieve independence, but our cities were so vulnerable. We would have to change that.
I blew a breath out as I brought our seacar down into the depths. “I’m all right. Managing.”
Meg shook her head at me. I knew what she was thinking. Kat’s death had hurt us all. She had died in a torpedo blast and a shattered control console aboard that very seacar. She had been a crucial part of the fight, and now she was gone. Meg didn’t want me to just ignore the pain, as sometimes I did. Push it down deep and just forget that it had happened.
But Kat would live on, and our fight would continue.
Then I realized that I was pushing her body as deep as I could to leave it on the bottom of the ocean. Was I physically doing exactly what Meg silently accused me of emotionally?
I snapped a glance at my sister as realization hit.
She was glaring at me.
—••—
We had to keep moving at fifty kph or the sound waves would rebound and the seacar would hit crush depth instantly. I set the autopilot to follow the rift and stepped back into the living area. Johnny followed. Upward-moving thermals buffeted the seacar and we all braced ourselves as we stood in silence. SC-1 jerked up and down and from side to side, and inside the seacar it was a rough ride.
The body was at my feet, and I knelt beside her. Placed my hand on her head, closed my eyes. She had convinced me to rejoin the fight over a year ago. I had given up and was working at Trieste farming kelp. Then she had come into my life, I’d rejoined the resistance, and within weeks had not only become its leader, but was also elected Mayor of Trieste. The election had occurred more because my dad had been an important figure in the city—a former mayor whom the CIA had assassinated in 2099 because of his efforts to achieve independence—and the citizens had elected me in a landslide vote. But Kat was the emotional core of the movement, and her death was a monumental loss despite our victory.
I looked up at the others. At the tears on their faces. Even Johnny was crying. “She’s the reason I rejoined the fight,” I said, my voice husky and faltering. “I realized that she was right. We can’t sit back and let them use us for labor. We’re not their slaves. We’re going to fight for our independence, and we’re not going to stop until we’ve got it.”
They were nodding as I spoke, perhaps realizing the colossal impact this decision would have on the oceans and the colonies and on the superpowers of the land nations. “We’re going to press on,” I continued, “because if we don’t, then her death will be in vain. This is what she wanted. It’s what my dad wanted.” I gestured at Lancombe and Ng. “It’s what you two have been preparing for more than thirty years.” I sighed and then slowly rose to my feet. We were going to put Kat in the airlock and flood it while piloting just over the seafloor near a series of thermal outgassing vents.
There was a pit in my gut. I felt hollow.
“Let’s do this,” I whispered.
—••—
Cruising at fifty kph just a meter or two over the bottom, we carried Kat’s body into the airlock and set it down gently. We sealed the inner hatch and then, without fanfare or any other speeches, we opened the outer hatch. On the video monitor, the water rushed in and carried the body out into the depths.
She was now truly and utterly gone.
—••—
Back at The Ridge, that dome nestled on a ledge just above conventional crush depth and half buried in the cliff face, the place where we had secretly constructed almost a hundred Swords to fight in the battle, we surfaced in the docking pool and climbed onto the hull of SC-1. I noticed absently that countless scrapes and pits from the fighting of the past few weeks still marked her hull. I would have to get them repaired eventually. Each could represent a tiny flaw that might eventually cause an implosion. Besides, it would have horrified Kat if I didn’t fix her seacar.
Jackson Train, the manager of the facility, was standing on the steel mesh dock beside our berth. In the Olympic-sized pool were other moored seacars; they bounced in the waves we had created from surfacing. There was a murmur of white noise from the sloshing against the docks and catwalks. The air was cold and moist and I took a deep breath. I loved it. I’d been living underwater now for over thirty-five years.
The colonies were my home.
“What’s next, Mac?” Jack asked me. His voice was soft; he knew what we’d just done. Others had died in the battle as well, but their bodies had been immediately sacrificed to the deeps due to torpedo or mine detonations. Kat’s body had been the only one to return with us.
I looked up at the ceiling and around at the little fighter subs. They were all in good working order, having weathered the battle better than anyone had predicted. There were forty more of them in the holding pond, behind the cliff face near the base’s fusion reactor.
I pursed my lips. “We continue building ships I guess. Get ready for the next battle.”
He blew his breath out and looked at his feet.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s just that we’ve been here for a year. And everyone wanted to do it, don’t get me wrong. But we’ve just won our first battle, and a break would be . . .” He trailed off and looked away again, as if in shame.
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Jack. No worries. We’ll get everyone home now. You’re right. I’ll arrange a new crew to come here.”
A look of panic suddenly crossed his face. “That’s not what I mean!”
“No?”
“This is my base. Don’t take it away from me, Mac!”
“I’m not—”
“I’m in charge here! I just need a break. We’ve been working nonstop, not even taking a day off in a year. I just want to see my family back at Trieste. They think I’m dead, Mac! Died a year ago. Let me get back to them for just two weeks.”
I laughed louder this time. “How about a month?”
“I have to keep building ships. Two weeks is enough.” He thrust his chin in the air, as if that was his way of saying the discussion was over.
“Good enough,” I said, slapping his shoulder. “Done.”
At that moment, one of the Triestrian workers at The Ridge sprinted across the flimsy mesh catwalk. It had some give to it, so each step he took made him rebound slightly. He appeared to be moving faster than otherwise he would have. It was like running on a trampoline, I realized. Was he doing it for enjoyment? I wondered.
But the expression on his face said otherwise.
“Mac!” the man cried out. “Ships, a bunch of them! It’s an attack!”
—••—
Up in the dome’s control room, on the uppermost level, we stared at the display screens anxiously. The dome was dark, hidden amongst a jumble of rocks and boulders and half carved into the cliff face. And we were deep. I knew they wouldn’t be able to see us.
Anechoic tiles also covered the hull, each pitted with random geometric shapes that rebounded sound in all directions. They would make us seem like a giant boulder to any sonar crew searching for us. Our double hull was vacuum within, to cut down on errant noises of the assembly machinery, so I wasn’t worried that they’d hear us. And we had no communication ability in The Ridge, so no stray transmissions could have led them to us. But still . . .
How did they know where we were?
Or were they just searching the area cautiously?
“Maybe it’s the French or Americans, looking for their lost ships,” Johnny muttered. The light from the displays shone up at him, sending twisting shadows across his face.
“Maybe.” I studied the readout. Sonars studied the sounds of vessels and the database held information on every known warsub and seacar in the oceans. It should have been able to detect these, but it couldn’t. Each point of white light on the screen had a label over it which read:
Unknown signature
Depth: 3,312 meters
Speed: 3 kph
I shook my head. They were going slow. As if they knew exactly where we—
There was a shout from outside the control room. One of the workers.
Then another.
I straightened suddenly and listened to what they were saying.
“Sparks from the bulkhead on the first level! They’re cutting their way in!”
My gut tightened. Oh, shit. “Get some weapons,” I snapped. “They’ve found us.”