* * *
Moonfeather opened her eyes. “Guards everywhere doing inventory,” she announced. “They took some prisoners and stole my fragging coffee.”
Delphia slid on his sunglasses and looked at her directly in the dark. “All of it? Good. Something for us to drink in celebration after we’re done.”
“Coffee?” said Thumbs. “I love real coffee. Haven’t had any since I was a kid. Where’d it come from?”
Moonfeather smiled at him. “Surprise!”
“Ouch!” said Silver, testing her blackjack by swatting it onto her hand.
“Ouch?” asked Thumbs in concern.
“Ah . . . splinter,” replied Silver.
“In a macroplas crate?”
“Tell me about the exits,” said Delphia.
Moonfeather pulled a small pocket secretary from a bag at her waist. She unfolded the palm-sized flatscreen and started doodling on the luminescent display. “Main door . .. sorry, main hatchway is over here. Side, port, no, starboard, aw, drek. The right-side door is here by the hoist controls. Small personal storage lockers over here. Equipment and hoists etcetera, over here. They have the crates and macroplas containers laid out in nice neat rows, lashed down tight. Very tidy for wavejockeys who eat their own young.”
“Arms?”
“Every guard has a holstered pistol and a cybergun.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
“Motherfragger. Everybody be careful if one of them tries to raise his hands in surrender. Any vidcams?”
“Two. Opposite corners.”
“Excellent. Silver?”
Reaching above her head, Silver found a small valve, eased off the lock, and gave the handle a quarter turn.
* * *
The cargo-hold hatchway, a half-meter thickness of layered metals and duraplas, undogged with an oily series of clangs, and swung open ponderously upon counter-weighted hinges. Billowing clouds of blue-gray mist filled the cargo hold, masking everything.
“Bloody hell,” cursed the First Mate bitterly. “Must be the halogen gas coolant. That experimental box musta sprung a leak!”
“Aye, First,” agreed Cargo Guard, chewing a bit of seasoned soybeef like a plug of tobacco. “Ta captain will be furious less we plug it. Prototype chips could be our biggest haul ever!”
“Don’t I know it, squint,” she growled. “If it goes wrong, you’ll take the fall.”
The Chief Guard said nothing, but gestured to the younger crewman standing aft the big door. The newbie nodded at his section chief. “Should we go topside and vent this stuff, sir?”
“No need,” answered First Mate. “Come on, bring a number nine patch kit and some duct tape. That’ll fix bugger all.” Hands outstretched to feel her way, she shuffled into the cool swirling clouds, carefully placing one foot ahead of the other. “Halogen won’t kill you, ’less ya breathe a lot of it for a long time. We’ll be done in tick.”
She disappeared from view into the mist, and as the others found the requested items, they carefully joined her.
* * *
“Whaddaya mean, fifteen?” demanded Captain suspiciously.
“We keep sending people down into the hold, but they don’t come out,” repeated Chief Cargo Guard. “We even used SCUBA and they still don’t come back.”
“An’ it took you this long to tell me?” Captain roared, spittle flying from his bearded mouth.
Chief Guard did not flinch or wipe his face. “Did our best
to fix it without bothering you, sir.”
“First concurred with the plan, sir,” added Spanner, the pockets of his greasy coveralls bulging with tools and chip-readers.
Captain growled at the news.
“Maybe it’s poison gas,” suggested Sonar. Massive headphones covered his ears and a cord ran from his console to the datajack in his temple.
Everybody shivered. Poison gas was the oldest death for submariners, and the most feared. Bust a wall at the big depths and the pressure killed you before you even knew it. Slam! You’re pate. Fast and painless. They all knew the horror stories from World War Two back in the pre-Awakened days. Those old boats used nickel-lead batteries for power when they were under, and didn’t have reserve air to feed their massive diesel motors. If the hull got a leak and sea water hit the plates, it formed chlorine gas and whole crews died in screaming agony, skin bleached white as ghosts.
“Shut up, Sonar,” snapped Captain, and the man flinched. “Second, close all internal hatches!”
“Aye, sir!”
Captain assumed his chair near the map table. “We’re going to vent that hold now! Emergency stop!”
“Emergency stop, sir,” repeated Navigator formally. The great submersible slowed to a gentle halt. Not a dish rattled in the galley, not a stylus rolled off a console.
“Zero bubble, level ascent, blow all tanks, surface crash, now!”
“Aye-aye, Skipper. Express to the roof!”
Feeling oddly like an elevator, the floor rose underneath the crew, driving them ever upward. Then lights began turning red all over the status board.
“Internal hatches unlocked and opening, sir!” called out Chief of the Boat.
Captain glared at the man. “Impossible, COB! Override and close them!”
Hands racing over the controls, COB said, “Can’t, sir. Something’s stopping me.”
“A short from the gas?” asked Sonar, just as a thick, billowing cloud of blue-gray smoke poured into the bridge, completely hiding the hatchway.
“Close that fragging hatch!” bellowed Captain furiously.
“Aye, sir,” snapped Gunner, and taking a deep breath, she charged into the thick swirling mist. A spray of her blood came back first, then the woman stumbled out, both hands clutching her neck. Her throat was gone, red blood pumping out from a huge ghastly wound.
“What the fragging hell?”
“It’s a mutiny!”
“Red alert!” boomed Captain, drawing his pistol. “Security, intruder defense goes on ... now. Code Romeo-niner-alpha!”
Silence from the intercom. Dead silence.
“No response from security, engine room, the galley,” said Communications. “Slot me, skip, the whole boat is off line!”
Then, from out of the cloud, a knife came swooping through the air to slam between the eyes of Sonar. He went limp in his chair. There followed a series of soft chugs, and now the rest of the bridge crew also began to spurt blood and drop in their tracks. In mere seconds, Captain was alone on the bridge.
Galvanized into action, he raced for the map table, firing blindly into the cloud. Ricochets zinged everywhere. Clawing at the table, he ripped off a macroplas cover, exposing a small control array. He jabbed a finger toward the sensor plate, but his hand was stopped in midair by the massive grip of a troll in a fringed vest.
“Surprise,” said Thumbs, lifting the norm into the air as if he was a child. “We win.”
His wrist crushed, Captain let the pistol fall from his hand. Twisting about furiously, he finally just fired his cybergun. The small-caliber round went through the ceiling panels and did not ricochet. Thumbs grinned in victory, and the pirate kicked him in the chest with no appreciable effect.
Enraged, Captain loudly hissed like a bad impression of steam radiator, and twin steel fangs long as pencils jutted from his upper gums, tiny drops of a clear fluid glistening on the needle tips. Horrified, Thumbs released one hand and used it to fast-punch the pirate as hard as he could. Captain flew across the bridge to smack into the bulkhead and then drop to the deck limp as a ragdoll.
As Delphia, Silver, and Moonfeather emerged from the smoky mist, somebody leapt out from under a console and charged, swinging a monofilament knife in a practice arc. The blade whizzed centimeters from Silver’s face. She
whipped out her shock baton and Delphia leveled his
silenced Manhunter, but Thumbs stepped between his fellow runners and the charging pirate. Ducking low, he kicked the man in the groin with the flat, not the point, of his boot. As the pirate tumbled, gasping and pale, Thumbs thumped him once gently on the head. Groaning, the norm sank, then tried to rise again, his palm outstretched. Thumbs kicked the pirate in the face with his boot and the norm collapsed twitching on the grisly deck.
“Why’d you leave him alive?” asked Delphia, checking the rest of the bridge crew. Down the corridor came the grisly sound of exploding heads.
“IronHell told me to,” Thumbs said, really, really loud, pointing at his own head, and then the pirates.
Nodding in understanding, Delphia asked a silent question and Thumbs pointed at the crumpled norm. “IronHell needs him alive,” he said theatrically.
Moonfeather turned the man over to see. “Yes, the rigger is okay,” she said. Removing a necklace, Moonfeather laid it on the man and stood up. “He can’t hurt us now, nor can the bomb.”
“Smart move leaving him alive,” whispered Delphia, moving away from the rigger anyway. Thumbs gave him a wink and a nod.
Under the consoles and behind the map table, the heads of the slain crew started to regularly explode.
“Jesus, Buddah, and Zeus, am I glad this thing has a grilled floor,” said Thumbs, slipping a little. ‘This is disgusting!”
“And that’s fourteen here,” announced Silver, toeing the fallen captain with her gore-streaked shoe. “According to the manifest, that’s the lot of the .. . mutineers against IronHell. The ship is ours.”
“Boat,” corrected Delphia, coolly removing the silencer from his Manhunter. “They call it a boat.”
“Anybody know why?” asked Moonfeather.
“Unknown,” said Silver, taking a seat at the Security console and jacking into the submarine’s operating system. She tested the keyboard with some taps. “But the first submersible ever built was a converted rowboat. So perhaps it stuck.”
A tendril of wafting mist obscuring his features, Delphia asked, “Silver, can you vent this smoke out of here, please.”
“Null perspiration.” After a few ticks, a soft whirring noise permeated the bridge and the cloud noticeably thinned, taking a lot of the stink of the dead crew with it. Cool, fresh sea breezes wafted about. Then there came an unexpected banging and clanging sound. A steady rhythmic noise like a rain of hard hail.
“More exploding heads?” asked Thumbs, glancing about unsure.
Sonar went bang, followed by COB, and then Captain. “That’s an exploding pirate. The other noise is from outside,” said Moonfeather, glancing upward and wiping off a wet cheek.
“Activate the monitors,” said Delphia, looking around, Manhunter back in hand. “Screens, windows, whatever the frag they’re called. Activate the view screens!”
Pursing her lips, Silver nodded, her fingers moving awkwardly over the unfamiliar console. “Drek, this is a mess. Odd design, very old and reworked by some tech on drugs.” Daintily, she pressed a sticky red button. “I have no idea what I’m seeing. You all seem to forget I’m a decker, not a fraggin’ rigger!”
“Can you do it?” asked Thumbs, towering over her.
Every screen surrounding the bridge flickered into life, clearing into a panoramic view of the ocean around them. “There are only so many commands,” Silver said slowly. “This one has View Screens On.”
The choppy Atlantic Ocean was shown on four different screens, the dying squall moving away in an easterly direction. North was clear, as was the south and west. Some birds in the far distance, but that was it.
“No sign of the
Esmeralda."
Silver reported. “Low-level radar shows clear.”
“It’s been a couple of hours, and from what we know, the pirates rarely stick around after looting,” Delphia said, studying the horizons. “And the storm is way the way over there. So what’s that weird noise?”
“Fish?” suggested Thumbs.
“Jets!” said Moonfeather, pointing a hand at the western screen.
High in the corner of the view screen, almost off-camera, were three tiny shapes hovering in the air, motionless black birds with swept-back wings as if struggling against a powerful wind. The water below them was turbulent, nearly roiling. Lights sparkled from their noses. The rattling on the hull of the submarine continue nonstop.
“Eagles!” identified Thumbs. “Aztlan patrol!”
“Thank Yomi, no missiles yet,” said Delphia, nervously holstering his gun and drawing it again. Slap-slap. “Those jump-jets can trash this can in a tick.”
“They must think we’re pirates!” growled Moonfeather.
Thumbs rapped a hull with a knuckle. “Lady, we ARE pirates!”
“Drek!” Delphia moved to a control console, staring helplessly at the array of buttons, switches, dials, levers, knobs, jackports, meters, telltales, and indicators. “This is a technophile’s wetdream. How can anybody run this thing?
Eta gaijin
motherfragging pirate hoopheads ... Silver, get us out of here!”
Thumbs went over to the weapons console, touching this and moving that, proceeding with extreme care and achieving nothing.
“Outrace a military jump-jet?” scoffed Moonfeather.
Delphia motioned. “Straight down will do. A hundred meters and nothing they’ve got can touch us. Water is almost as good as dirt for stopping bullets.”