It was a beautiful April day in the underwater colony, Trieste. In the world above, countries were beginning their Spring season. In the past, that meant rain, new growth, flowers sprouting, warmer temperatures, and pollen on the winds. Now, however, it was just more of the same: high temperatures, crops that continued to wither and die, and water that lapped at coastal cities and flooded crane facilities. Another one had just gone dark on the west coast—failed, because trucks could no longer negotiate the inundated streets—and the US economy took one more hit in a series of body blows and big uppercuts.
Trieste and cities like us seemed to be the only bright spots in the world. A colony thriving on the shallow seafloor, mining and harvesting resources by the boatload, and shipping them to the mainland each and every day.
I wondered again, for the millionth time, if the US would ever really let us strike out on our own. If we’d ever truly be independent.
We’d find out, very soon.
The atrium in Trieste was bright. Sunlight sliced down from above and filtered through the nine-level commercial and office area in the central module. I was at a café with Renée, enjoying a morning coffee. We were against the vine-covered railing, looking down several stories at the levels below. People were moving about on each deck, shopping, enjoying the morning, going to work, or coming back from a tough shift and getting ready to hit the sack.
These periods where we could relax and take a breath were nice, but they were few and far between. I wanted to enjoy it while I could.
I knew this one would not last long.
Renée said, “How’s the progress on the weapon?”
I closed my eyes and turned my face up to the sun. “Alyssna has the components connected. It’s ready.”
“Where did you decide to put it?”
I eyed her. She was smiling at me, her eyes crinkling at their corners. “It needs to be mobile because the range is so low. An attack will come from the Atlantic direction. So . . . ”
“It’ll be in a sub? Patrolling?”
“That’s a nice idea, but it’s a bit dangerous. If the sub gets hit, the weapon is useless. I think we can come up with something else.” A silence stretched between us. I continued, “Maybe a ring around the city—a tube—and the weapon could be within. It’ll be able to move through the ring, on a rail maybe, and prevent warsubs or torpedoes from getting close.” I shrugged. “It’s a thought. Alyssna and Hyland pitched it.”
Renée checked the time. “And what about Richard?”
The truth was, that was a much more difficult decision. He had admitted to murdering Katherine Wells a year earlier. He’d geared his motives toward ensuring I lived a miserable life. He was motivated to achieve greatness for Trieste, but his methods were . . .
I cringed. There was no good description for what he’d done, and why.
“I’m going to speak with him after this. I’ll decide then. But I’m . . . ” I trailed off.
“Go on.”
“I wasn’t with her when it happened. When Richard did it. I’m feeling guilt over that. If I’d been there, I could have stopped it.”
She frowned. “I don’t want you to feel this is just a line, but people always say that when others close to them die. There are always ‘what ifs,’ Mac.”
I remained quiet and felt the guilt coiling through me. It would always be there, I thought. I’d have to just get used to it. “He tried to kill you too, Renée. Multiple times. I was there for two of them and managed to help. But for the first and last ones, I’m lucky you survived.”
“I’m tough, Mac.” She was smiling. “But you know, when the carbon monoxide nearly killed me, we should have realized something was off earlier. My PCD wasn’t working. I didn’t tell you. I put it away when we were out. When we returned, it had started up again. It didn’t occur to me because we assumed you were the target. My comm wasn’t working in my mask either. We should have realized that I was the target.”
I nodded. We had to be more vigilant.
Renée was still watching me.
“What?” I asked. She tilted her head and I sighed. “I miss Kat, you know that. But she’s been gone a while now. Frenchie,” I added with a smile.
“There’s something else bothering you though, Mac. Not just Richard.”
I frowned. “Something Chalam said to me back after The Vault really made me think. When we found out that he’d stolen a bomb for Clarke to use against the Imperial Force. He told me he had only done it because of what they’d done to his brother. He told me that had the same thing happened to Meg, then I would have responded in the exact same way.”
“And?”
I snorted. “He was absolutely right. A hundred percent. It’s what I had already done, and he had no idea. I went on a rampage, all to protect my sister.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He was only doing what I myself did, Renée, six months ago, at Seascape. He was acting human. It was a natural instinct.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“He’s going to stay.”
Her eyes widened. “But I thought he loved Churchill? He wanted to work as a geologist there.”
“Until his brother died. Now that city reminds him of Manse. He realizes that he needs a new start.” I’d had a long talk with him, on our way back from the Indian Ocean—which had taken a long time because our SCAV hadn’t been operational—and he’d come to see that he needed a fresh start. A new beginning. “Maybe he’ll move back there in a year, when he begins to feel better, but for now he’s going to work here, in our Mining Division. Prospecting for us.”
“What do we need now?” she asked, her eyes glinting.
“More hafnium, actually.”
“Oh.” She shook her head. “For more bombs.”
“A few more.” I rose and gave her a kiss. “I have to go now. See you later?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
—••—
We’d confined Richard to his cubicle in Trieste. He’d survived the Trafalgar attack, but just barely. If he’d died, it would have made things easier, but that was a morbid thought and I’d shoved it aside as soon as it had occurred to me. Inside the SCAV chamber, he’d had the foresight to alter the particle beam’s path to cut a larger hole in our hull. As the rising water shorted the weapon’s electronics, he’d already been in scuba gear and able to swim out the hole. He’d entered our airlock with a smile on his face, and told us about the experience. The steam had churned outward from the hole the beam had created, the hull had dissolved quickly under the onslaught, and the water had shot in from the perimeter of the opening. When we’d gone deeper, the spray had arrowed across the entire chamber, hitting SCAV electronics in bulkhead consoles. Increasing atmospheric pressure had helped, but only for a bit. Eventually the beam had ceased entirely, and Richard—while fully submerged and outside in the water—had watched the Spitfire Class BSF vessel plunging downward toward the ocean bottom.
Once back in SC-1, he’d willingly allowed us to restrain him again, and he endured the trip like that patiently.
Now, back in the city, he was staring at me, in his cramped compartment, sitting on his bunk, meek. “I’ll understand Mac. Whatever you do. I’ll take it. I’m just happy we got the weapon back here, safe and sound.”
“You arranged the entire mission. From start to finish.” In fact, Richard had played a role in every event, including the final attack. “I hadn’t expected to find out that you murdered Kat.”
“I have my motives.” His voice was soft, but not remorseful. It was more accepting than anything, meaning it was something he felt he’d had to do.
I frowned. “You tried to kill Renée as well. Just to keep me, what? Focused?”
“On the path forward, yes.”
“You don’t think I deserve human interaction. I can only do what you want?” My blood was beginning to boil.
“You have Meg. She is distraction enough. Look what happened when the USSF took her. It led us off mission for months.”
“Until you feel Meg is distracting me too much, right? But we ended up pulling New Berlin in to Oceania,” I snapped. “Things worked out.”
He shrugged. “We just have a different way of looking at things, I guess.”
“Yours involves murdering your friend’s lovers!”
He took a breath. “I’m just trying to—”
“Save it. Renée doesn’t deserve it. Kat certainly didn’t.”
“What are you hoping for here?”
“I was hoping to see a bit of remorse, maybe. Some contrition.”
“Mac.” He stopped and stared at the bulkhead before him. “In war, if you want to win, you have to be willing to do what it takes. Whatever it takes. You have to be willing to make the hard decisions. To kill. You know that.”
“I don’t.”
“You sank the USSF warsubs in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge after the battle last year. You knew we couldn’t allow them to leave. The location of our secret base was on the line. You kept it hidden by sinking those warsubs.”
“I had to . . . ” I trailed off.
“It was a tough decision, but you made it. It was necessary. Sometimes these things are hard, but war is hell, as they say. You can’t just win the hearts and minds of the undersea dwellers. You have to be so tough, so hard, so heartless that the enemy will freeze at the mention of your name, at the sounds of our ships. They need to be scared. We have to keep them scared.” He clenched a fist. “The Russians knew this back in World War II. They were merciless, because they had to be. Their homeland was on the line. They were fighting the worst enemy they’d faced—the Nazis. After the Soviets won the Battle of Stalingrad, they took over 90,000 prisoners. Almost all of them died. The Soviets killed them. There was no mercy, Mac. Germany knew it, after that. When the Soviets arrived, there was no hope.”
I cringed at his words. Using the Russians as an example, especially after their history in Eastern Europe . . .
“Doesn’t that make it harder to fight a war? When the enemy will fight to the death rather than surrender?”
“No!” he shouted. “It means we need the superpowers to fear us! We need their submarine fleets to run from us, to give up, to not fight at all! To back down before it comes to war! That’s what we need to do! They’ll be launching three dreadnoughts to take us down, any day now! We have to fight harder than them. They won’t show us mercy. We can’t show them any either.”
“And you killed Kat for that? And tried to kill Renée? That’s sick and twisted, Richard.”
“We’re in a war!” he yelled. “We need to win! To win, you must do the unthinkable. I know it’s hard, and it might not be in our nature, but war is different. You can’t be yourself. Countries have lost wars because they don’t have what it takes.” He snorted. “Taking prisoners. Keeping them comfortable. Caring for them.” He slammed his fist on a knee. “It’s ridiculous! You kill! You press forward, always, and make the enemy fear you! It’s the only way!”
I stared at the veins on his forehead. “You’ve gone too far. I’m not the enemy.”
“You need to learn! You need to know how to fight! You’re weak!”
“I’ve been called a lot of things. Weak isn’t one of them.” I sighed. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a family. To have people who love you, support you, protect you.”
“You have Meg. You don’t need anyone else.”
“I do. My dad is gone. My mom is gone. You killed Kat. I need people in my life. I thought you were one . . . ”
“I still am!”
“No. You’re not. Not anymore. You’re not remorseful at all.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We have a few options. Prison is one.” The irony was obvious. He was telling me not to take prisoners, and yet I was offering it.
He remained silent and stared at the deck. “I saved us. I saved the ship. We got the weapon back because of it.”
“Maybe. It took the whole team. Sahar may have saved us all.” I thought about how she’d jumped into the moonpool and swam hundreds of meters, straight down, to plant the grenades at the neutral beam emitter. I remembered watching her disappear into the shadows. That had been bravery. What Richard had done was downright evil. “Where’s Jessica?” I asked him.
His expression changed immediately. “She’s avoiding me. She’s pulled away. I haven’t spoken to her in weeks.” He shrugged. “She can’t take my tactics either, I guess.”
“You call them ‘tactics.’ Others call it murder, Richard. It’s sick.”
“It’s war. You have done terrible things too, in TCI.”
“Not to my friends!” I snapped.
“I did it for Oceania.” His voice was deliberately calm. Smooth. “We’re back, and we’re safe.”
“Kat’s not back. Renée almost died four times!”
He looked up at me. “I won’t apologize for it.”
I turned my back on him. “Goodbye, Richard. I guess you’ll read about us in the news.”
“What do you mean?” His tone had finally changed; there was a sliver of panic there.
“I’m kicking you out. You can’t stay here anymore. Leave. Don’t come back.”
He paled. We had once done the same thing to my former Deputy Mayor, Robert Butte. “Trieste? Mac, you wouldn’t—”
“And Ballard. I spoke to Grace Winton. Seascape too. You won’t be welcome there either.” He wouldn’t be able to live in any US colony. I opened the sliding partition and stepped into the corridor. “Find a new home. According to your philosophy, I should just kill you right here and now, but I won’t do it. I want to show mercy too. I won’t win like that. I’ve said it to you before—we have to make the superpowers see that there’s no other option. Letting us work the oceans is the best way for their futures too. I can’t win and then have them hate us. We need to work with them after we declare Oceania.”
“Don’t do it! Don’t—”
His voice was still calling to me as I marched down the corridor.
—••—
I called Jessica Ng next. I had to fill her in on what had happened with Richard. Her face clouded over when I mentioned what he’d done. She’d known my father as well; she’d fought by his side in the 2090s before his death. She’d ended up running to Ballard with Richard, and had been with him since.
She’d been with him when he’d killed Kat, and I needed to speak with her about it.
“Mac, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you after it happened. I was so scared.”
“Of Richard?”
“Yes. I was worried that he’d hurt me. So I stayed with him for a while longer, and slowly distanced myself. I’ve left him permanently now.”
“You saw him kill Kat?” I watched her eyes.
“I did, Mac. It was terrible.”
“Tell me.”
She paused. Then she looked away and began the entire story. About the attack in the Rift, the FSF and USSF forces, Kat in SC-1, and finally, the murder. She cried as she spoke, and as I watched, I realized that she’d been living a nightmare for months now. Maybe years.
“I sent him away, Jess. Banished him. He’s not allowed back, and he can’t go to Ballard or Seascape either.”
“It’s probably for the best.” She hesitated then looked me square in the eye. “It’s maybe worse than killing him. He’ll take it hard. I’m sorry, Mac. I didn’t warn you.”
“He almost killed Renée too.”
“I should have told you.”
“He might even kill Meg, if I let him stay. Do you think he’s a danger to us still? Now that he’s leaving?”
She pondered that. “He’ll find a way to help, if anything. He’ll fight for independence for the colonies. Maybe he’ll end up at Blue Downs, or Churchill Sands. Or New Berlin. Whatever happens, and wherever he goes, he’ll fight for the cause. He’ll never stop. We’ll likely hear from him again.”
—••—
I was back in my office, expecting my next visitor. I sat at the desk, staring at the mounds of work waiting for me. My inbox was in a similar state: lots to do, and not enough time to do it. The pressures were immense. People wanted to work and needed to be free to do it. Sometimes they needed more things from me, and I had to make sure they had the necessary resources.
The comm buzzed and Kristen said, “Your guest is here, Mac.”
“Thank you.”
The hatch slid aside, and she walked in.
Sahar Noor.
—••—
She was in an aquamarine hijab and a shimmering, iridescent green scarf. Her eye makeup was dark, her lashes long, and she was grinning at me. The bruises had faded, and she had fully recovered from the adventure. I rose to greet her, and we sat together, in the small chamber.
“Do you still want this for Churchill?” I asked, without waiting.
She pursed her lips. “It’s a tough decision, Mac. It means struggle, fighting, hardship.”
“War, maybe.”
She shrugged. “I’m hoping we can avoid it.”
“When someone attacks, you have to defend yourself. It may involve shooting. You’ll have to be prepared.”
“I understand.”
“Thanks again for helping us steal the neutral beam. Alyssna is going to make more. We’ll make sure you’ve got one too, for your city. We’ll also give you some of our SCAV ships—Swords. They have the superfast drive, as well as the deep diving tech you were asking about. To go below six kilometers.”
She nodded but didn’t speak.
I continued, “You know, this wasn’t easy. It was one of the more difficult missions. They won’t all be this hard.”
“Clarke made it a lot harder.”
“He betrayed us, but he didn’t turn us over. He was trying to achieve two different objectives at the same time.”
He’d managed to sink multiple Imperial Force warsubs in the Indian Ocean. It had given the BSF reason to crack down on the splinter group. They’d sailed there, en masse, and arrested hundreds of sailors and officers. They’d claimed that the Isomer Bomb had been a danger to the surrounding nations, and they had to stop officials at Diego Garcia. It was embarrassing for the BSF to admit it, but the massive detonation had given them a useful excuse. The world didn’t want to see another colony destroyed—like Seascape—and allowed the BSF to deal with their internal issues without interference.
There were more questions about the Isomer Bomb; nations were still wondering who had invented it. They still didn’t know it was Doctor Max Hyland at Trieste, but they’d realize soon. There had now been three detonations in the past six months, including those in the Chagos Trench.
And Clarke got what he wanted in the end, but he’d killed people, which Sahar had been against.
A shadow fell across her face. I said, “What’s wrong?”
“When I planted the bomb, it was to take out their neutral beam.”
“Go on.”
“But it let you sink their ship, Mac. People died.”
“You saved our lives. Don’t ever forget that.” Still, I knew what she was feeling. I felt it too, on a daily basis. And after my conversation with Richard . . . “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. About what it’ll take to achieve Oceania. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want. There’s a darkness that we need. In a way, Richard was correct.”
She looked shocked. “But we can’t focus on that!”
“No, but we may have to embrace it, at times. We all have a side that we want to avoid, but it’s part of who we are. Richard embraced his a little too much.” I snorted at the understatement. “He went way too far. But sometimes, for the greater good, you may have to do things that are . . . questionable.”
“I’m going to do this the right way, Mac. I’ll stick to my morals.” She paused and a stillness seemed to settle over her. “Allah says that ‘Whosoever kills an innocent human being it shall be as if he has killed all mankind.’”
“I know that quote. The Quran also states that if you save the life of one, you’ve saved all lives.” I shrugged. “Or something to that effect, correct?”
“Absolutely.”
“You saved us all out there, Sahar. If you hadn’t sacrificed yourself with that final dive . . . ”
She processed my statement in silence.
I continued: “You saved many lives. Not just on our seacar, but possibly all of Trieste. Do you see that?”
She pursed her lips, but didn’t reply.
I smiled. “I’m happy to be with you on this, Sahar. I can’t wait to work with you.”
Finally she said, “I am going to go outside to pray soon.” She sighed, but I wasn’t sure if she was still internalizing what I’d said, or if she already agreed with me. “I just love the water here. It helps see things clearly, don’t you think? Care to join me?”
I smiled broadly. “I’d love to, although I’ll just meditate.”
“Fair enough.”
Then I leaned back and studied the ceiling.
“What are you looking at?”
“We’re so fragile here. The slightest attack could end it all in an instant. Russia is sending three dreadnoughts for us. We don’t have much time to prepare. To get The Water Pick up and running. To get more Isomer Bombs ready.” I snorted. “We have civilians here, and I’ve brought this on them. An implosion means those fragile ceilings could crash down in an instant. Crush everyone.”
“It’s the same at Churchill. The only reason I’m involved is because they elected me, and it’s what they want. I have to follow their wishes. But here, your people want you to do this too. They want you to lead. Otherwise they’d have left months ago, Mac. Or elected someone else.”
Still, the feeling was rattling in my brain. There was a dread surging within me. We were going to declare independence soon, and every superpower in the world would declare war on us.
They were coming.