An unseen monster of the deep once again collided against the hull. The violent crash shook the small submersible. Aegan sat wide-eyed as a bright, white tentacle slapped against the meter-wide porthole. The impenetrable dark throbbed with an eerie bio-luminenscence as the creature searched for a fissure or crack. Metal creaked and groaned under the renewed pressure. The dark-haired man worried that it would pry the boat open like a shell.
“Fuck,” he said as he instinctively pulled back into his chair. His eyes darted to the radio controls. With an upturn flick of a switch he opened a communication line through the umbilical, to the mighty Triton kilometres above.
“This is the Argo, I’ve got something attached.” He swallowed to calm the panic in his voice. “I need you to douse the lights on the umbilical, you’ve attracted something.”
The radio replied with soft static.
“Great, thanks,” he muttered.
With practised movement, he reached out and cut all the circuits to the thick cord. The lighting in the small space became dimmer. The battery indicators blinked into existence, giving off their soft, reassuring yellow light. “I hope this works”, he muttered to himself. He pulled down on a red lever by his chair, keeping his eyes on the tentacle outside.
The reverberation of the clamps signalled that he was now detached from the lifeline above. Outside the porthole, the tentacle grew dimmer as the sub dropped like a stone and the bright lights of the umbilical fell upward. The tentacle paused its questing movement, gathering it's muscled mass together, tensing.
The Argo pitched and rolled as the beast pushed against her, propelling itself back to the fluorescent lights. Aegan allowed himself a couple of breaths, and a few more meters, before righting his boat.
He took the time now to look over the light and gauges of the console in front of him, and to catch his wits. They were near the end of the twelve hour descent before he was jolted awake by the collision earlier. As he thought, they were only fifty or so meters from the ocean floor now.
With the turn of a small valve, he pumped some of the sea-water out of the ballast tanks. When the depth-gauge indicated he was ten meters above the floor he turned it back again. His finger paused on the button for the exterior lights, he tapped it lightly but didn’t activate them. Instead, he leaned forward to look out and, as best he could, up, but there was nothing except the dark void of the depths.
With a sigh and a shake of his head, he sat back and looked down at the clock jury-rigged to the console. His precious time ticked away. With a second sigh that melted into a groan, he lit up the deep-sea in front of him with an explosion of light. He winced, waiting for the renewed attack.
When nothing came, he opened his eyes to take in the scene in front of him. Hazy white rectangles had burst into life, fading into a bleak greyness a hundred meters beyond view. Below him was a rusted and ruined city, half collapsed from the kilometres of water above it. Aegan kept his head down and shoulders up, still bracing himself against the console. With tentative arms, he reached out and pushed the power-lever forward. The Argo began sliding across the tops of the once massive city.
Aegan had been a scavenger all his thirty year life, but an opportunity like this came very rarely. He was lucky enough to have been on rotation for one of the umbilical docks when the announcement came. Not only that but the Argo’s batteries were fully charged. After the cartographers announced that the Triton would be passing over one of humankind’s biggest cities, he was the first to drop.
The city passed away beneath him as Aegan searched for the telltale signs of a pathway. He had seen the faded map the cartographers had produced during their ceremony, so knew what to look for. Finding one was the surest way to get a clear direction to the most valuable salvage. It didn’t take long.
Cutting through the wrecked buildings was a wide, clear stretch of sea-floor that Aegan took no delay in diving down toward. It appeared like a massive arm had reached down and drawn it’s finger in a line from where he was, to where he wanted to be. Like tracing a line on a map. He could follow this all the way to the skeletal remains of the buildings that sprung up from the centre of all these ancient cities. Stories from all the old scavengers always told of the rich treasures that one could find there.
The electric engines hummed as the Argo powered onward. She wasn’t a graceful ship, Aegan thought, but she was fast. Predictions of the current had the Triton passing over the top in only four hours. He glanced down at the clock, three hours remaining now to search the ruins. He had to collect what he could, and make it back to the umbilicals, that would be by then on the far side of the city.
When he saw that the pathway he followed fell into a tunnel, Aegan swung the Argo up and clear of it. She was too big to safely manoeuvre in an enclosed space like that. But experience had taught him that he was right where he wanted to be.
He slowed down and turned down a new pathway, bordered by the massive walls of ancient buildings. The verticality of the buildings made no sense in his mind. Old maps showed that before the flood there was room everywhere, why they built everything so cramped and close together was a mystery. That desire to jam as much of humanity into close quarters as possible was the bane of his life now. Only these dangerous deep dives allowed him the respite he needed. But he was thankful that it made scrounging for scrap metal and valuables easier.
The pathway ended, and then just beyond was the wide cavernous entry to one of the buildings. It was wide enough and tall enough to fit the Argo through. Aegan slowed down and used the inertia to drift inside.
He squinted and covered his eyes from the light reflecting in the interior. After dimming the exterior lights he saw that ti was a large hall. On the floor in front of him was a pile of rubble from the collapsed ceiling above. Beyond that mound was what he was looking for.
Sitting on shelves was an array of electrical cabling, still intact within their vacuum-sealed plastic containers. The immense pressure may have crushed the packaging, but the pliability of it usually stopped it from cracking or letting the sea in. Inside would be intact, and extremely valuable, copper wiring. Enough for him to finally buy his way to the upper-decks.
Aegan smiled to himself and laughed as he used the mechanical arm to pick everything he could off the shelves. The arm placed each item into the cage attached to the Argo's underside. The clock said he still had at least an hour before he would have to make his way to the trailing umbilicals.
Giddy with the possibilities, Aegan rotated the Argo to leave. As the lights swung over the rubble in the centre of the cavern, his heart sank into his stomach. There, in a mass of writhing tentacles was a sea-creature, likely twice as big as the Argo. The many limbs began pulsing with the same bio-luminescence he'd seen before. From within the centre emerged a great beak that opened to show rows upon rows of spiny teeth.
“Fuck,” he said aloud.
It wasn’t the fact that it moved toward him that was surprising, but the speed and grace at which it did. The whole thing elongated as it swirled like a fluid, up and to the left, before careening down at him. It's blow knocked the Argo sideways, the impact sending shockwaves through the hull. The room began to tilt as she started to list.
Aegan wrestled with the controls to right his vessel and came face to face with the monster. A soulless black eye watched him, unblinking, before it rotated up and fell back into the creature. Metal creaked as something hard slammed against the exterior.
A sudden hiss sent Aegan’s head spinning around, terror filled eyes searching for the source. The groaning sound of metal compressing brought his attention back to the creature holding him. One problem at a time, he thought to himself.
Looking around for anything to help him, his eyes set on a large button covered by a clear plastic protector. He thumbed it open, squeezed his eyes shut, and pushed it.
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Outside, the creature began thumping against the hull in an uncontrolled spasm. Aegan ignored the warning lights that blinked at him and kept his finger down for a few seconds more. When he let go, he caught only a glimpse of the thing as it fled out the hole above the mound.
It took a moment for Aegan to realise that the continuing sound he heard was his heart-beat raging against his chest. He gripped the top of the console and leaned forward, taking a deep breath, trying to expel the panic from his body. The deadly sound of a knife-edge of water forcing it’s way through the hull prevented him from doing so.
Strong-will alone forced him up and out of his chair to grab a repair kit. The immediate need to solve a problem kept him clear-headed enough to find the leak and patch it. A pin-prick of water had pierced the hull like a fine needle, through the plating around a much older hull breech.
“You’ll be more patches than anything now,” he said aloud to the ship as he placed a pressure bowl over the jet of water. He pushed his shoulder into it as he extended the crank-handle and began turning the valve. Once the rubber seal had made good contact, he stood as best he could in the confined space, and strained against the handle. After a moment he fell back onto the metal grating, holding his breath.
When the seal didn’t immediately explode off the hull, he allowed himself to exhale. The blinking red lights of the console urged him back to his feet and into the chair. Surveying the instruments told him that his batteries were almost depleted, but pressure was stable.
Fine with me, he thought. He’d collected enough electronics to make this a worthwhile dive, even with the hull damage. He only needed enough power to get back to an umbilical.
As he pushed the power controls forward the Argo lurched and then stopped. With more finesse than what her hulking shape should allow, he tried to twist and pull the Argo free. In desperation, he tried to turn her to face away from the exit in a hope to dislodge her from whatever kept her in place. Then he saw it.
Stretching out from under the Argo, his eyes followed a long, half-inch thick cable of rusted metal. It ended in front of him in the twisted remains of his scrap-cage. Packages of cables and electronics sat in the heap along with his dreams of living in solitude in the upper-decks.
“Fuck,” he said aloud for the third time today.
He tried holding the cage with the outboard arm, to keep it’s contents, but the whole thing was nothing but a mess of wire. It fell apart over and over again. With a sunken heart, he clipped the metal strand restraining them and turned the boat to leave.
His mind filled with anger at the unfairness of it all. Every dive he risked death for the Triton, and still they kept him down in the lower-decks. He had earned more than this. In frustration, he powered the Argo toward the exit.
The ship jerked to the side as she struck an unnoticed beam that protruded from a wall. Aegan watched as sediment began falling in funnels from the walls and ceiling all around him. Whatever he had run into had sent vibrations through the whole structure. He cursed his lack of concentration.
With complete disregard for his remaining batteries, he pushed the Argo hard, to get out of the way of the collapsing building. It fell behind him in slow motion, billowing up a cloud of sediment and debris. He watched as it overtook him, blinding him in a dark grey and brown miasma.
Immediately, he pulled the power off and raised his flaps to stop dead in the water. He sat back in the chair and stared out expressionless at the cloud for a few moments. Without looking down, he flicked the exterior lights off. The battery indicators blinked less urgently in acquiescence.
It took approximately thirty minutes for the cloud to begin to dissipate. He’d conserved as much battery power as he could in the hope that there would be enough time to pick up something, anything of value, before scampering in defeat back to the umbilical.
But the clock told him it was too late.
The Argo emerged from the city proper and began coursing over the low buildings that encircled the central area. Aegan kept his heading due north, where he knew the Triton would have drifted to by now.
Over time the cities buildings become scattered and thin. In front of him, in the centre of the porthole, beyond the harsh flourescence of the Argo’s lights, he saw a blue light. It hung there, in the centre of his vision, and for a moment Aegan wondered if it was a visual hallucination from the pressure he was under. But it soon began to drop through the darkness, revealing it's location on the ocean floor.
He slowed the submersible and turned off his lights as he bore down upon it. The battery was too low for him to risk using the sonar, but he reckoned it was flat enough, he wouldn't hit anything.
Aegan turned on a small speaker tied to a rail above his head. The comforting second-long pings of the umbilicals were like a harmonious melody. Each sound echoed the last in an endless loop, and judging by the volume of the loudest ping, it was not far away.
The blue dot was in front of him now, and Aegan could see that it was a bright, but small light, coming from the seabed. He pushed the Argo under low power now, so as not to draw the attention of whatever it was. As they got closer, it was clear that whatever the light was, it wasn’t a sea creature.
It was an artificial, rectangular light, recessed within some kind of machinery. Aegan almost fell over himself to switch the lights back on and get a better look. Whatever is was, it was half-buried in the sediment, and stuck out at an angle. And what was more interesting was that it showed no sign of fatigue or age. It was intact and there was no corrosion.
With the voices of the umbilicals echoing through the confined space, Aegan prepared to dislodge the item. The mechanical arm moved with expertise, pulling and pushing to work the container free. It wasn’t difficult, only a thin layer of sediment had built up over it. Every shift sluiced more of it off the sides, revealing it to be a large rectangular box. It was two meters in length, and both half a meter tall and wide.
More of the blue light could be seen now that the thing was free. In several spaces there were control surfaces. They lit up and displaying heirogliphs of readouts. Centred in the upper half of the item was a small circle of glass. Aegan turned the box and brought it up closer to the porthole, but all he could see within was a swirling white mist.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. “Fuck me what are you?”
The terrain all around began to flash in a rhythmic pattern. Unwilling to let go of the box, Aegan slammed his hand against the control panel to kill the lights. He wasn't sure if the Argo could take much more of a beating from the sea creature.
He released his death-grip on the controls when a pulsing slight descended into view.
It was Morse Code.
DO U NEED HLP?
Aegan's finger tips beat out a response on his panel.
NO. IS MINE. WILL RISE IT MYSLF.
A series of clicks came from his console, the batteries were almost dead. The singing of the umbilicals echoed around him, calling him home. Putting the Argo into full power, he hoisted the thing up toward the closest umbilical.
The ping grew louder with each repeat as the battery indicators went out. The warm thrumming of the electric engines withered away and died. Half of his console lights extinguised themselves and he came to a stop. The flashing light returned.
WILL TAKE U TO LINE. 4 HALF PRIZE.
Aegan couldn’t acknowledge the deal, he had no means to signal back. Instead, as the other boat came closer, he raised his middle finger and then thumbed to his rear. In response, the other sub dove under him, latched on from behind, and took him up to the closest umbilical.
Once he was connected to the powered umbilical, the Argo sprang back into life. His new business partner signalled once more.
RADIO.
Aegan knew he was indebted, but was still Annoyed at the apparent demand. He flicked a switch and opened the universal channel.
“Yes, what do you want?” he asked, trying to sound both commanding and ambivalent.
“Half the prize for whatever you’re carrying,” came the answer. It was a man’s deep voice, the sort of voice that would carry through several hatchways if it needed to. Aegan recognised it as Manann, a large man with skin almost as dark as the water around them, and a personality to match.
“I found it. I carried it. You only helped get it out. I will give you one third,” a reasonable deal he thought to himself, considering he had done two of the three tasks.
“Okay, Argo. I will meet you in your dock.”
He had expected more haggling on the split, but then supposed it was a reasonable suggestion. Maybe Manann hadn’t gotten a good look at it. Being hooked up first, he would reach Triton before him. After getting a better look over the item, he could decide then just how agreeable to the deal he would be.
Aegan relaxed. The umbilical was happily charging the Argo’s batteries. All systems appearing to have started back up. It would take about twelve hours for the Triton to reel in the kilometres-long umbilical line. The familiar sounds of the metal hull popping and bending back into shape swam around the ship. The young scavenger reclined in his chair and put his seat up, falling to sleep.