“Hemi,” Percy called down to sonar, “we’ve got ourselves something, though I’m hardly sure what. You and Bastian come up on deck with me.”
Bastian unfolded his long skinny legs from a cramped-looking position where his feet were propped up on the control panel. He climbed up through the hatch and via the ladder to the bridge of the sail with Percy and Hemi following. The wind was blowing a little harder and the chop had kicked up. Bastian cupped his hands and lit another cigarette. Percy and Hemi shaded their eyes, scanning the water. It was a few minutes before they saw a small gray oblong object cutting through the choppy little waves. It was a tiny submarine sail, no more than a meter long and high, with a couple of thin wispy antennas trailing from the top in the wind. Unusual for a submarine, it had a small viewport in the front of the sail through which the pilot could look. At the rear of the sail a stream of diesel smoke floated up and away behind it. The deck of the tiny sub was totally awash, running just under the surface of the water.
As it got closer, they could see the big splotchy patches of rust all along the hull of the mini-sub, and a slight oil slick of a trail that it left behind in its minimal wake. Bastian, Hemi, and Percy climbed over the fairing of the Prospect’s sail and down to the deck. Standing here, Percy was somewhat sickened to see the angle of the deck and the bow of her boat sitting much lower than usual, still weighed down by the tons of excess ballast water.
A moment passed before a hatch opened at the top of the mini-sub’s sail, and the head of a man with yellow spiked hair emerged. His arms were still inside the sail, working controls, and he was standing propped on something inside so he could get his head and shoulders high enough above the fairing to see as he guided his craft alongside the Prospect.
Bastian opened the hatch to a wet-storage locker on the deck and pulled out some large white rubber fenders that were flat and deflated after being subjected to the underwater pressure. He connected each to a short hose that led to a fixture for the low-pressure compressed air system inside the wet-storage locker, and let a little puff of air into the fenders until they had been restored to more or less their normal shape. Each fender had a long line that he tied off to recessed deck cleats and lowered down between the two subs.
“Toss a line!” the man in the mini-sub yelled as he let the engine run on idle and stepped over the fairing. He was wearing tall rubber boots as he ran up the washed deck of the small sub. The boots were pulled over leather pants that were originally probably black, but were now cracked and gray at the seams. From the left side of his broken leather belt hung a adjustable wrenches of various sizes, the finish on them beaten away, matte and rusting in places, from years of banging against each other like chimes. He wore a faded black denim vest from which the sleeves had been inexpertly removed, leaving stray threads of denim trailing behind him in the breeze and exposing a pair of sinewy arms.
Bastian, still with a cigarette between his lips, threw across a line. The sub pilot made it fast to a cleat welded onto the hull of the mini-sub, and then repeated the move at the stern. He nimbly leaped across to the handholds on the side of the Prospect and climbed up the curving side to the deck.
He looked around with a nervous twitch, and then motioned to Bastian for a cigarette, who cupped his hand and lit one off his own before handing it to him.
The man took the cigarette between his fingers and brought it to his lips to suck long and hard. “Ah fuck, thanks. I ran out a couple of days ago. I go by Shakes.” He held up his hand level in front of them and they could see it tremble slightly in the air. “Ya can see why.” Shakes looked at Hemi, standing just ahead of Percy with his black beard wafting in the breeze. “You the captain?”
Hemi nodded toward Percy. She stuck out a grimy hand. “Captain Percy. Hemi here is my submersible giant and Deck Boss. The skinny one is Bastian.”
“That the whole complement?”
“Few more below.” Percy was still staring at the mini-sub. “That’s a hell of a fucked-up craft ya got there.”
“Like it? I built it my self. Welded it together on the top of a fuckin’ mountain coffee farm from rotting scraps of metal. They had a bunch of land higher up where the coffee don’t grow, and it seemed like a good place to build a boat. It was. ‘Cept it wasn’t a good place to launch a boat from. Getting it down to the water was way more difficult than the buildin’ of it.”
“I could imagine,” said Hemi.
“I’ve heard of this kind of thing,” said Percy. “The boat runs fast and just below the surface. Basically invisible to any kind of radar, and too quiet for most sonar. Good for…small shipments?”
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“Aye, ‘specialty shipments’ — when stuff has to be got somewhere fast with no fucking questions asked. Just not too much stuff. I also built in a few special modifications — this boat is the fastest and most versatile in its class!”
Percy looked at the rusting bulbous hulk alongside her boat and doubted there was any class of vessel that would accept it.
Shakes continued, “Most of these homemade jobs just run at the surface; I added some batteries and some trim tanks, and this here boat — the Gnat is the name — can dive. Run a bit under water, just enough to get away from any curious onlookers.”
“How deep?” asked Hemi.
“Maybe 30 meters on a good day, if you really pushed it. You don’t have to go very deep to hide something so small.”
“How fast?” Hemi could not deny his curiosity now.
Shakes grinned. “Faster than this fuckin’ barge,” he said, kicking the toe of his rubber boot against the hull of the Prospect.
Percy frowned. “Welp, that’s an impressive submersible hobby you got there. But has anyone here got an idea how we’re going to get my boat moving? You ain’t carrying a load of diesel fuel, are you, Mr. Shakes?”
“Captain Shakes, if you fuckin’ please. And I certainly ain’t got fuel to spare. And I can’t say what I am carrying, ceptin’ that I can’t see how any of it could help you. Still, if I can do anything to assist, I’m game — at least if there’s a little something in it for me. I’m pretty convinced y’all ain’t some Authority ruse, and we smugglers gotta stick together, I fucking say.”
“We’re not smugglers,” said Percy, her eye firmly locked on Shakes. “We’re independent logistics operators.”
“Ain’t we fucking all!” said Shakes. “Honestly, I ain’t got much in the way of ideas for ya. I was thinking maybe you were the smart ones. From what I can see y’all are fuckin’ fucked. Best I can say is I could run into my destination port and send some friendly bigger ship back out for you. But that’ll probably take a couple days at least.”
“In a couple of days we’ll either be sunk or in some Authority holding cell. There’s gotta be a better option. Hemi?” Percy turned to him.
“Well, nothing immediately comes to mind. But that is with limited information. If a new option has arisen, it will be aboard the Gnat. To assess the situation, I would need to get in there and take a look at what resources you have got aboard. I’m not sure how willing you are to let me do that.”
Shakes did not say anything, but pulled on his cigarette and watched the exhaled smoke quickly blown out over the water by the breeze.
“Look, we aren’t the type to ask for help,” Percy said, “and I hate imposing on other folks’ business, just as I don’t want ’em imposing on mine, but you can see we’re more than a little desperate here. If you can see your way to allowing Hemi — and just Hemi — aboard to take some specs of your boat — see if you’re carrying anything he can use — we’ll make it up to you later. At the current moment about all we can offer you is hot food.”
Shakes eyes brightened at that. “Hrm. Well, I’ve been eatin’ nothing but cold chow straight from the can for a week now. A hot meal is maybe a stronger offer than you realize at the moment. Alright. This big guy, and him alone. And he don’t look at nothing I don’t want him to look at. And he don’t get answers to questions I don’t want to answer. No fucking pushin’, right?”
“No pushing,” said Hemi.
“Right. Hang back a minute, let me go look around in there first, make sure all my pornography is put away. When I give you the signal, come across.”
Percy grinned as Shakes lowered himself down the side and leapt nimbly over the dangerous gap between the two boats, where the chop occasionally ground the two walls of rusting steel against each other, crushing the breath out of the cracked old fenders. He disappeared through the sail hatch of the Gnat.
“Interesting character,” said Hemi.
“Solo operators…nobody who is comfortable spending days or weeks at sea alone — eating fucking cold canned food no less — ever totally has their head screwed on right. Anyway, it doesn’t matter how pleasant a person he is. The question is, do you think there’s anything you can do with that boat that’s going to help us?”
“I am not entirely hopeful. It is not much of a craft, and is not likely to have much in the way of resources aboard. Frankly, I am surprised he is not lost and dead in the water himself.”
“Find us something, Hemi. But don’t do anything to set that tweaked motherfucker off while you’re over there.”
“I shall be like a lamb among the lions.”
From the sail of the Gnat, Shakes’s head and arm popped up and gestured. “Come on over, big guy. Mind the fuckin’ gap!”
Hemi’s size made for a thrilling sight as he hopped the crunching span between the two boats, but he proved just as nimble as Shakes had been. Hemi was wearing heavy but conventional leather boots, and the water washing the deck of the Gnat soaked the lower part of his legs. The tweed pants of his suit turned a dark and sagging color. He stepped over the open hatch into the sail, and from where Percy was watching, it seemed for a moment like there was no way his bulk would get down that tiny hole. But Hemi lithely disappeared into the boat.
Percy gave Bastian a pull on the sleeve, and he tossed a smoked-out butt into the ocean before they climbed up the sail and back inside the Prospect.