Getting all the gear from the welding operation stowed back in the cargo hold took longer than expected. The chop was building a bit, which made doing anything aboard the Gnat more difficult. Once Hemi saw all the odds and ends stowed below and checked the main cargo hatch seal, he went to the forward end of the cargo hold to see how Chips was coming along on her work. She was welding yet more scraps of metal patches over the still-leaking wound in the pressure hull. Thankfully, the water level had at least receded enough that Chips was wading instead of swimming.
Percy came walking down the cargo hold and met up with Hemi at the water’s edge in the forward end. Chips looked up and glared at her but immediately went back to her welding.
“We are ready to try this connecting up the Gnat move,” Hemi said to Percy.
“Good,” said Percy through an exhale of cigarillo smoke. Her eyes were bloodshot and her entire face drooping and wan from lack of sleep. She had another cup of coffee in her hand. “Need anything else from me when you try the mating?”
“I do not think so. But it will go much easier for Shakes if we can put the Prospect in motion and lower the deck under — just run sail-up. At that depth the waves will have a lot less effect on the motion of the boat.”
Chips looked up from her work again when she heard this.
“Do we have the battery left for that?” asked Percy
“Ten minutes at a creep speed, maybe? I believe we can just manage it. I am more worried about whether we have enough fine control over the buoyancy to lower the boat just a few meters like that.”
“But if we can run at sail-up depth, we’ll also be a much harder to spot target as we head for the depot.”
“Ah, fuck ya both, ya leaking assholes!” Chips interrupted from where she was standing in the water. “Yer determined to fuckin’ sink us! Are ya forgetting the high-pressure system is fucking depleted? I doubt there’s enough fuckin’ pressure left for a full blow if something goes wrong. Fuck — there’s probably also not enough fuckin’ power in the batteries to bring us back to the surface with the fuckin’ low-pressure system! We’ll be lucky to fuckin be leapin’ out the top of the sail as it lowers away under us heading for the fuckin’ bottom!”
Percy just stared at Chips, her mouth a hard line.
“I agree, Chips,” said Hemi. “It is dangerous. But so is running slow with engines blaring full-up on the surface if we manage to get the Gnat attached. We would be a big fat radar and sonar target. We need the advantage lowering the boat down will give us.”
“Aye well, yer both fuckin’ suicidal, and murder-fucking-cidal — since yer trying to drag me down against my will. To lower the boat you gotta open the main fuckin’ ballast valves, of course. What the fuck happens if they don’t fuckin’ close again though, eh? Then we are just letting all the fucking buoyancy out of the boat with no way to put it back.”
“There is no reason to think the valves will not close,” Hemi said.
“And you, Chips, will go double-check those devices our lives depend on before we try this operation,” said Percy, her eyes grinding away at Chips.
“The fuckin’ problem,” said Chips, furious and exasperated, “is there’s no fucking back-up plan — no fail-safe, no redundancy. The boat works perfect-like, or we all fuckin’ die. Submarinin’ is just too fuckin’ dangerous for no backup-system.”
“We are not disputing that Chips,” said Hemi, as calm as always, “but sinking is only one of the risks we face right now. Go check the ballast tank valves — make sure you are confident they will work the way they are supposed to. When you are satisfied they will work, let me know, and we will put the top deck underwater.”
Ten minutes later, Chips climbed up into the control room and reported to Hemi, interspersed with much swearing, that the main ballast valves should work as expected, at least as far as her limited ability to test them without sinking the boat would allow. Hemi checked over the state of their batteries and other systems and noted everything with a pencil on a clipboard. He got on the external PA and called Shakes to the control room.
Shakes appeared on the bridge at the top of the Prospect’s sail. He looked down at Hemi through the open hatch into the control room and called to him, “Ya fuckin’ ready Hemi?”
“Almost. I need you to take the Gnat off a hundred meters or so. We are going to bring the Prospect down to just sail-out, and creep at two knots. We will hold it steady. Then it is all you: dive the Gnat, come up underneath, you should see the mating collar just about under where the sail would be on the bottom — about one-third of the way forward from the stern. Bring the Gnat up under, and gently pop your mating collar into ours, and if you boys did not miss on the location of the docking clamps by too much, you should be able to lock into the hull of the Prospect…like a male angler fish.”
Shakes raised his middle finger and held it out in front of him, toward Hemi.
“…When you are clamped on, bang on your hatch with one of those wrenches of yours. I will have Gregory down there waiting to hear from you. Do not open the hatch until Gregory bangs back, OK? Even in its current condition, the Prospect will do a lot better if your welds leak than the Gnat will. Keep in touch over the ship-to-ship.”
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Shakes pounded his acknowledgment on the side of the sail, and his head disappeared from the bridge. It still remained so quiet aboard the Prospect, with no engines and so few systems running, that they could hear the Gnat’s diesels fire up, and inarticulate shouts from Shakes to Gregory on the deck as Shakes cast off the lines and Gregory retrieved them and pulled up the fenders.
“Hey-fucking-ho!” Shakes’ voice came crackling over the ship-to-ship. “I’m fired up, buttoned up, and off fuckin’ motoring. Out.”
Hemi pulled down the ship-to-ship mic. “Got it, Shakes. Remember, gentle is the word.”
“I’m allllways fuckin’ genteel.”
“We are going to take the Prospect down to sail-out depth now. Hold tight until I give you the go.”
Hemi got on the ship PA and flipped the switch for both internal and external speakers. “Gregory, lock down all the external hatches as you come back inside. Owen and Bastian, come up to the control room — we are going to dive the boat to sail-out depth.”
Moments later the entire crew converged on the control room.
Percy looked at Chips, knowing the question she wanted to ask was obvious and unnecessary, but she asked it anyway. “Why the fuck are you here?”
“If we fuckin’ go down, I want to be right next to you when you know death is on you, Captain Percy. I want to be able to look you in the eye when tell you: I fuckin’ told ya so,” said Chips.
“On every trip to hell, Chips, a crowd of people stand on shore waving. And they shout their goodbyes, but they don’t say ‘bon voyage’, they say ‘I told you so,’” replied Percy. “If you’re gonna be up here, sit at the radar and let us know if we’re going to have a surprise audience for this operation.”
Percy waited for Gregory to clear the ladder from the control room on his way to the lowest deck of the boat with his instructions from Hemi before she climbed up into the control room, which was once again at capacity with its full complement of four people.
“OK, Bastian. Give us a two-knot creep. We want just enough to keep us steady against the motion of the water,” said Hemi.
Bastian nudged the throttle forward, and they heard the hum of the electric motors rise from the depths of the boat as the propeller came under torque.
Percy pulled the ship-to-ship mic. “Shakes, we are going to try submerging the hull now. If you see the sail disappear, this boat is never coming back up.”
“Right,” Shakes’ voice crackled. “I won’t wait around for another meal then.”
Percy hung the mic back on its nubbin. “OK, you know what the old submariners say: always do the stupidest things on the smallest amount of sleep.” She nodded to Hemi.
“Owen, open the main ballast valves,” Hemi said.
Owen swiveled his chair to face the tank control panel and gave a quarter turn to both of the small wheels that opened the valves at the same time. They could hear the hiss of air escaping up through the main ballast valves ahead of the sail as sea water pushed up into the ballast tanks from below and displaced the air into the atmosphere above.
“Just a thin hair of down angle on the dive planes, if you please,” said Hemi.
Owen was ready for this; he had been resting one hand on the large wheel that controlled the dive planes. He rolled it a short distance around its circumference.
“As soon as you feel the angle on the boat Owen, level it back out again.” By the time Hemi had said this, there was already a slight angle down on the bow.
From the radar station below they could hear Chips muttering. “No fuckin’ redundant system, no fucking second chance at all…”
Owen already had the dive planes leveled out again and the slight angle came off the Prospect’s deck. Owen and Hemi were watching the depth gauge closely as it slowly lifted off its pin. When it indicated a couple of meters of depth, Hemi reached over and rolled shut the control wheels of the main ballast tank valves himself. They all listened for the sound of hissing, escaping air to stop. No one breathed as the sound went on longer than it seemed like it should. But it wavered, slowed, and ceased as the valves came to their closed position.
“Give it another minute…make sure everything is where it should be…” said Hemi.
The boat held at its shallow depth, the deck fully submerged and most of the sail still above the surface. Percy reached up to pat Hemi’s huge shoulder. In some ways it seemed like such a small thing — a basic maneuver they had done a thousand times before. But Hemi, at least, knew Chips was right: what was usually so routine was, in this case, incredibly risky. He felt a tremendous release of the tension that he had not quite known had come on him when the main ballast valves opened. But everything had worked the way it was supposed to.
“Good,” said Percy, satisfied. “We didn’t sink her by flooding the main ballast. Now let’s see if we can do it by opening a hole in the bottom plugged with nothing but a rusty bucket of a home-made boat.”
Hemi got on the ship-to-ship. “Captain Shakes, we are holding at sail-out depth, two-knot forward creep. I think you can begin your dive now.”
“Fuckin’ righto,” came Shakes’ crackling reply.
Percy raised the periscope and swiveled around until she could see the tiny, nearly-invisible gray sail of the Gnat bobbing in the gray water off their port side. It picked up speed, and a little wake formed behind it. Then it shrank down and disappeared under the surface like a sun winking out at the horizon. She lowered the periscope back down.
“I’m gonna get on sonar,” she said.
Hemi nodded.
Percy slipped down the ladder and tapped Chips on the shoulder. “Chips, I think it would be good if you joined Gregory in the bottom of the boat. And bring a welding rig down there with you…just in case.”
“If you’re fuckin’ staying in this room, I’m happy to go somewhere else.” Chips went forward toward the cargo hold to find her welding rig.
Percy sat in the seat vacated by Chips and glanced at the empty radar scope to make sure it remained empty. She put the sonar headphones on and turned the directional control until she could hear the soft buzz of the Gnat’s electric motor. Shakes was lining up directly behind the Prospect, slightly deeper and with more speed. She could follow his progress with a fair amount of precision through the sonar and its range finder. But he disappeared for a minute when he moved into their wake where the sonar could not hear anything. In another minute she expected to hear the Gnat directly underneath the Prospect.