She was warm from the liquor and had a bit of a sweat breaking on her skin in the still and humid underground air. Walking downwards in the direction of the docks her eye caught the now-familiar clanking gait of Shakes coming up the slope. The collection of wrenches at his belt made him always walk like he had a limp. He put his hand up when his eye caught Percy coming towards him. “Captain! I was just coming looking for you. I wanted to talk to you about settling up and getting my boat off your tub.”
“Yeah, it’s about time for it, eh, Captain Shakes? Let me buy you that meal I promised you first.”
“Not going to say no to any fuckin’ grub.”
Percy reversed direction to join Shakes, and retraced her steps a short way back up the exchange floor. Across from the saloon, set back in the opposite wall was a small eatery. It glowed with orangish-red light that contrasted with the cold blue light of the hall.
Inside they got in line behind other patrons dressed in dingy shades of wool and leather. “Chicken or creamed spinach?” asked the short man with a large gravitational mass behind the row of steaming food as he tapped a long stamped-steel serving spoon against the metal tray.
They got some of each, a mounded plate full of long-grained rice with bits of clove and chopped peas and cardamom scattered in it. Their plates were stacked on steel trays splotched with rust, and a couple of pieces of large crispy flat bread were piled on. Percy handed the tall man at the end of the counter a few coins from her satchel, and they sat down at a chipped Formica table amid the mild roar of basso-voiced dock worker conversations.
Shakes ripped off a piece of the bread and passed it to his other hand while he blew on the tips of his fingers. He moved the bread back to the first hand, then piled a good amount of white rice and green spinach onto it before leaning in and shoving half the wad into his gaping mouth. He picked up a fork with his free hand and helped guide even more of the pile into his gullet.
While he was chewing with bulging cheeks, Percy brought him up to speed. “So I have locked down this job rumor I mentioned. Turns out to pay well. Really fucking well.”
Percy dropped the heavy satchel full of coins on the table in front of Shakes. Though when a couple of other patrons turned around to look for the source of that particular sound she realized it was stupid move, so she leaned in and whispered the next bit so only Shakes could hear. “Not to be dramatic, but this is only two-thirds of the payment for this job.”
Shakes eyes widened. He poked at the satchel with the handle end of his fork. “Better put that away.”
“Before I do, I want to get settled up with you.” She removed a handful of coins from the satchel and arranged them in a few neat stacks on the table in front of Shakes. “Is that about the hull rate for the Gnat?”
Shakes used his fork to divide off one of the smaller stacks. “The remainder there is about right. After you cover my fuel oil resupply costs, we can call our work together settled.”
“Right. Just pass the bill for the fuel oil over to me when you have the Gnat ready to go.” She paused to do her own food shoveling. “So the thing about this new job is, it’s kinda risky. Might attract some attention from one Authority or another.”
“Mmmph,” said Shakes through his mouthful of bread, “that’s usually how it goes. I assumed that job is behind that sub ramming you.”
“Might be. Still seems like a stretch to me though, considering the hold was empty at the time. It was just a dry run…” She drifted off, eating her way along a bone of dry chicken.
“Anyway, this next job is going to require being a little more tactical, I think. A little more forethought and planning.”
“I’m not much for fuckin’ tactics myself. I have just the one: stay small, stay low in the water, don’t get fuckin’ seen. It’s simple and it works. Not much to think about, and I like it that way.”
Percy nodded. “Something like that has always been my strategy too. But for this next job, I think I might need to add a somewhat more complex facet.” She scooped a little rice to her mouth. “Remember part of our deal was that if I knew of any work I could connect you with, I would?”
“Sure. You got something already?”
“Here’s what I’m thinking: As I said, I’m gonna be hauling this risky fucking load — I won’t get into details about it right now, just know that I’m confident certain Authorities would be interested in checking the manifest. Now, I will, of course, deploy the usual tactics of keeping my boat on the down-low, running quiet, staying submerged during the day and only running on the surface at night, and so on and whatnot.”
She paused for a second.
“But I thought: what if in addition to keeping the Prospect stealthy, we also had a partner with another craft of some type. And the partner’s job was to be unstealthy. To run as a decoy around and above the Prospect. Draw away the curious eye — or ear — so to speak. And this partner would be clean, of course. Any Authority inspection would turn up an empty hold or a dull cargo of stamped cigars or something.”
“Interesting. You want to buy some kind of surface transport or speed boat then?”
“Naw. Surface craft are fucking useless. The authorities have different methods for monitoring surface vessels and submerged ones. It has to be something that could be mistaken on sonar for the Prospect. Possibly a boat like the Gnat.”
Shakes swallowed. “So…what? You want me to juice up the Gnat so it fucking sounds like it could be a big ol’ fuckin’ cargo sub — and then you want to hire me to run around and get caught and inspected by various Authorities that might be hunting for the Prospect?”
“Or maybe not get caught… You said the Gnat was fast, right? You could outrun them when they started pursuing you…and at the same time lead them away from the Prospect.”
Shakes started chewing again while he thought. “There is something appealing about the idea of being loud, fast, and — what’s the fuckin’ word? brash — after all these years of trying to sneak around and stay quiet. I can’t say I have much experience at that kind of thing, though.”
“I have a feeling you’d be a natural.”
“It would require a little work on the Gnat. I’d have to undo some of the dampening I’ve put in over the years. And I’d need to tune it up for speed. What are you offering me, exactly?”
“How about hull rate, plus two deck-crew share’s worth? And a deck-crew share on this run should be pretty lucrative.”
Shakes nodded slowly, while chewing through another piece of bread. “Alright. Fuckin’ alright! But I want a stipend on top of that to cover the costs of any modifications to the Gnat. And enough to reverse them after we complete this run.”
“Done. I’ll give you one share right now, and the other on delivery. You can write up the cost of the stipend at delivery too.”
“OK! …Wait, what about my current shipment? I have to get that delivered in the next few days. And I won’t be able to do that in a boat making a racket.”
“Think you could transship it from the depot here?”
“Maybe. Lots of boats around. Seems like at least one would be going the right direction. But it would have to be someone reliable and discreet.”
“Talk to that dock boss, if anyone knows who is reliable around here, seems like it would be her.”
“I’ll probably take a hit…”
“I will cover the difference, of course.”
Shakes nodded and grinned through a mouthful of food. “Well — partner — who knew picking up a bunch of fucking filthy marooned scumbags in the middle of the ocean would lead to anything profitable! Fuckin’ sweet.”
“Well, if that’s settled, I’ve been away from my boat for a couple of hours now, and that is enough for some serious fucking damage to have been done. I feel like I need to be getting back there.”
“You go, Captain Percy. I’m going to finish loading up on this chow.”
At docking slip four, the hole in the deck that led down to the cargo hold of the Prospect was like a giant black maw, with lips sucking against the airlock dock of the depot. It now had a number of heavy cables and hoses draped into the hole, as though some kind of enormous dental maneuver was being worked. Percy’s eye traced the hoses and wires from fixtures mounted on the walls of the docking bay down over the edge of the hole. She leaned and looked down into the cargo hold where the cables and hoses were lashed together and ran in a hulking pile up the middle of the space back into the deeper parts of the ship, where they were hopefully connected to the battery terminals and fuel tanks that so desperately needed to be topped up. At the front of the cargo hold, Chips was overseeing a repair crew that was working on redoing and reinforcing the messy repair welds she had made earlier.
Percy climbed down the ladder to the catwalk and made her way over and down to the deck of the cargo hold. From there she went aft into the forward battery room, where she found Hemi with a dock worker checking the cables hooked up to the battery bank that were recharging the batteries from the docking bay power system.
“Hemi!” Percy said. “What is that fucking woman still doing on this boat?” She pointed forward to Chips. “Didn’t I say she was to be off as soon as we hit the fucking dock?”
“Come here.” Hemi led her further back into the battery room. “I convinced her to stay long enough to oversee the repairs. She did not want to be blamed if those guys did a lousy job and the seam burst open again later. So she is just making sure they fix it right.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Fuck, Hemi! When I fire someone, they stay fucking fired!”
“Sylvia, we need her. I cannot do all these jobs myself. I am a middling welder at best. And I cannot tell the difference in someone else’s work between a good weld and a pile of dog waste.”
“Owen can take over the welding.”
“Owen is just a kid. He cannot tell these dock trolls what to do, even when he does know better than them.”
Percy considered. “OK…she oversees the repairs, we pay her up to date, and then she’s fucking gone.”
“Percy,” Hemi said looking directly at her, “we need her. You need to re-hire her. We cannot leave this depot with no engineer and no welder aboard. And in case you had not noticed, there is not exactly a surfeit of talented crew waiting to be hired around this depot.”
“Motherfucker.” She kicked the battery shelving with her boot. “Fuck! You’re right. You’re always fucking right and I fucking hate it when you’re fucking right. I’ll go see if I can re-hire that little fucknut.”
“Do it humanely. We need her to actually want to stay and work.”
“Speaking of work, remember I promised a plum job for us at this depot? Well I just confirmed it up on the exchange floor. For the moment, we’re flush.”
“Excellent,” said Hemi, though with a note of doubt, knowing that a cargo job that paid well was likely to be neither easy nor safe.
“We also got some free advice: to be gone from the depot within forty-eight hours.” She handed him the leather satchel full of coins. “Here’s the money. You know how this goes. Spend what you have to to get us out of here quickly.”
“It is going to be tricky in this place to throw money around without also getting a bunch of useless hangers-on and value extractors.”
“But you’re the best deck boss there is for people management, Hemi. I’m sure you can walk that line between getting it done and not getting completely fucking bilked. I should also let you know I hired a new kid to work sonar.”
“I am amazed. Seems like there is an unusual lack of green folks on the docks. Does he have any experience?”
“She. And not a bit. But who trains people better than you Hemi? She should be by the boat later, if she doesn’t fuckin’ skip out from fear.” Percy gave him a light punch in the arm as she turned towards the cargo hold. “We can talk details over dinner later. Just keep things moving for the next few hours.” She was already out of the battery room and into the cargo hold.
Percy picked her way around gear being prepped, moving forward up the cargo hold to stand next to Chips, who had a foul look on her face and her arms crossed as she watched a crew of oversized dock workers sloshing around in the bilge water in tall rubber boots. A couple of them were working a welding rig and bent over the repeatedly stitched-and-patched gash that ran from the bottom of the boat up the curve of the inside of the pressure hull.
“I’m collecting my fuckin’ pay and fuckin’ leaving as soon as I see that these fuckheads do a job that will hold. You’re not pinning any fucking further leaks on me,” Chips said to Percy.
“Yeah. Hemi said you would. Thank you for that. How bad is it?”
“When we was on the surface I had it patched up pretty fucking OK, despite half the welds still being under the bilge water. But now the fuckin’ boat’s under ten or 20 meters of water, and the pressure is causing it to seep, like a wet sucking wound.”
They watched the dock workers go at it for a couple of minutes. Then Percy said quietly to Chips, “Umm, it really looks like they’re making it worse in places. Kinda fucking up some of your work.”
Chips cracked her knuckles and breathed heavily through her nostrils. “Fucking useless fuckin’ shit clods,” she said under her breath, then: “Hey you fuckers, don’t just fucking re-weld the failing fucking patches. Take them out and put new fucking plate steel in. Fuckin’ hell!”
There was an incoherent grumbling from the men standing in the puddle.
“Chips,” Percy hesitated. “Look, I need an engineer. And I need a welder. You’re both of those things and I can’t get either of them on this forgotten rock. I need you…at the very least for the next run. Maybe you could stay on until we hit a major port, and then you can find new work there…”
“What the fuck makes you so arrogant to fuckin’ think I would go back out with a stubborn fucking ass-reamer like you?” Her face was flushing. “Fucking fuck! You’ll fuckin’ get me killed with your fuckin’ stupidity, and is if that wasn’t fucking bad enough, you would tell the story that it was my fucking fault somehow.”
“Fuck, Chips! Look at the work these meatheads are doing — if we don’t have you aboard, we’re going to go down when it fails and there’s nobody who can fix it! Now, I’ve got a new job coming in, it pays really fucking good. I can offer you a fucking double engineer’s share for this next run. I’ll even pay you half right fucking now,” Percy said, reaching for her satchel full of coins.
“Ah fuck you Percy. You can hold the fucking money. You’re a fucking stupid arrogant shithead, but an honest fuckin’ one and always fucking paid smartly.” Chips pushed at the bilge water edge with the toe of her rubber boot. “Ah, fuck. Look at this fucking work they’re fuckin’ doing. Y’all going to fucking die without me on board. You, Percy, I don’t give two shits. But I couldn’t live with fucking Hemi or Owen going down when I could have stopped it.”
“Well, me fucking neither Chips.”
“OK. You got me. I’m in for the next run — double fucking engineer share. Now get the fuck away from me before I start looking for another piece of pipe. Actually, I might need one for these fuckers in the puddle anyway,” she said looking around.
Percy walked away thinking she would do her best to just stay out of Chips’s way on this run — as much as one could stay out of anyone’s way on a sub.
At the other end of the cargo hold, Percy found Shakes had made his way back from the cafe and was having a conversation with Hemi through the hatch into the forward battery compartment. He stepped a little to one side as she came up so she could join in.
“Captain Percy. Hemi and I are talking about disconnecting my boat from the Prospect.”
“You got the Gnat refueled already?”
“Naw,” said Shakes through a mouthful of oozing leaves, “but if you look back toward the end of the battery compartment, to the hatch down to the Gnat, you can see we’ve still got the Gnat’s batteries connected to the circuit. That means since we’ve been charging the Prospect’s batteries,” he nodded toward the heavy cables hanging from the Prospect’s cargo hatch and running up the middle of the cargo hold, “we’ve been feeding the Gnat juice too. Hemi here figures there’s enough charge on now that I could move the Gnat to its own slip, and refuel there. …Remembering to send the bill to y’all, of course.”
Hemi nodded. “With that mating collar we added, you should be able to dock at one of the regular slips for small boats.”
“And bonus,” Shakes continued, “now I know the Gnat is good down to thirty meters! Makes a fella proud, ya know, to see the fuckin’ fruits of his labors.”
Percy looked at Hemi. “Do we have any more use for the Gnat now, Hemi?”
“As a spare battery bank? No. Keeping it connected just slows down our own charging process.”
“Alright then,” said Percy, “get that leech off my fuckin’ boat.”
Shakes grinned. “Applying that leech saved your fuckin’ boat.”
Percy patted him on the arm like a grandmother pleased with the works of a younger generation.
It did not take too long for Hemi to seal Shakes into the Gnat and get it disconnected from the Prospect, though Hemi wanted some help coiling and stowing the heavy jumper wires that were no longer needed, and it took a while to find one of the deck crew to help him.
Shakes steered the Gnat further down the docking bay and got it mated up to slip fifteen. After popping the Gnat’s hatch at that slip, he started the process of negotiating with the dock workers for finishing the job of getting the batteries charged, and for refueling the fuel ballast tanks. Pretty soon, the Gnat was gorging on its own set of umbilicals running down through its sail hatch and into its belly.
Refueling, recharging, and repairs were busily carried out over the next six hours. Percy was uncomfortable with how many people were coming and going — and crawling around — inside her boat. In the long expanses of time that she lived in this steel tube, during most of it she knew exactly who was aboard her submarine. But in dock there was unusual and discomforting open access to her boat. Just another reason to be on the move, as far as she was concerned.
All of the activity meant that Hemi was probably spending heavily to get things done quickly. Considering the condition they came in, in normal circumstances they would plan on staying on the dock for a week or two. The damage to the hull meant the Prospect should really go into dry dock for serious repairs — but that required a monetary flushness that was far beyond a single well-paid job, even if they had no limitations on their time at all.
Getting the boat ready to go out again so quickly was not just expensive, it also meant cutting some corners that Percy was not happy about. The repairs to the hull continued to be a foul mess of patches and half-competent welds. Through Chips’ streaming curses from the bow, Percy got the impression that Chips felt she had done a better job welding underwater while the boat was moving than this whole team of ruddy thick-fingered men were doing with the boat dry and steady.
The only fuel oil Hemi could contract for on the dock on such short notice was a gritty and sludgy bunker. Chips was also not going to be happy about feeding that stuff to her engine.
By dinner time, most of the critical repair and refueling work was wrapping up. Most of the crew took off for the cafe on the exchange floor. Hemi and Percy stayed behind and ate in the Prospect’s galley, though they prepped dinner from somewhat fresher food items they had bought off the dock, including a head of cabbage and a bit of gristly meat.
“What’s left for us to do, Hemi?”
“We still have to charge the high- and low-pressure tank systems. It would be better to do that from the dock rather than from diesel while we are moving, if we can.”
Percy nodded.
“And we should take on some more food, refill the fresh-water tanks, and lay in a normal spread of spare parts…”
“I did try to start buying parts earlier today but got sidetracked discussing the job offer. Put Gregory on securing our food stocks. And tell him I need more cigarillos.”
Hemi nodded and jotted a note on a scrap of paper clipped to a clipboard that lay next to his plate. “You are sure about this job Sylvia?”
“You saw the fucking money! And that’s only two-thirds of it.”
“I do not trust jobs that pay too well. Cargo?”
“Weapons parts — magnetic warheads.”
“Ah. Had to be something like that, did it not? You have no problem with Authorities breathing down our necks and taking on the risk of someone blowing the boat in half if a crate full of explosives is dropped?”
“We’re on the fuckin’ Nitro Express now, Hemi. Someone has to move this stuff. Might as well be pros like us. The cargo is supposed to arrive for loading any minute now, actually. Is the hold ready for it?”
“Chips finished up repairs an hour or two ago — at least as repaired as could be with the resources available here — and the bilge is pumped dry. I think we can start loading cargo. Though if we are hauling explosives, you might want to pack in some soft batting first.”
“I’m sure they have been thoroughly packed and duly deactivated…though it would be good if you took a peek at them before they get settled so you — Hemi — are sure they won’t go off if someone walks by a crate with a heavy socket wrench or something.”
There was a tap of someone’s knuckle on the hatch to the galley, and Gregory swung it open a bit. He downed the last of an ice cream sandwich he had been working on and tossed the wrapper in the sink. “Back from dinner, Cap. Bunch more of those fuckin’ big trolls up at the slip with crates they say are to be loaded into the cargo hold.”
“That is indeed our cargo. You can come help us get ’em stowed properly. Hemi?”
Hemi forked his last bite of meat and squeezed his bulk out of the tight galley bench seat.