Undersea (33 page)

She had hoped the routine of repeated, long-term exposure to panic and fear would abate it somewhat, but it didn’t. Days blurred away to periods of panic and periods of sleep. There was no joy at the end of a shift, only the slight reduction of terror, but knowing it would return in just a few hours put a limit on how good even that could feel. Then the morning would come. With it, the long walk to the rear of the ship, figuring this would be the day something would slip, something would tear, some little thing would go wrong, and it would be her life, or that of one of her fellow workers.

Every day, every hour, every new leak, every crackle of energy from the generator, every pound of pressure on her skin, every degree of heat, everything a slice in her resolve against Oppai. She knew it. It was a matter of time. He would win.

They came at the worst time. It was at the end of a particularly grueling shift. She was caked in sweat and grime. Her eyes burned from the arcs of the welders. It took her a while to realize the two guards weren’t walking her back to her cell. Her heart sank. Ralla knew where they were going, and when she was dumped unceremoniously in Oppai’s cabin, she swallowed her pride and fixed herself a drink.

The Governor was visibly livid, seated in a chair at the long table. Around him stood several of the men she had seen before, looking even more agitated than the last time she’d seen them. The one with the beard poked Oppai in the chest. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, and didn’t care. So she finished her drink, then made another. A knife lay near one of the bottles, which she slipped excitedly into her coveralls. Her heart sank as she realized that she had no strength left to do anything with it. But maybe one good shot. She had that in her. She could do that. She walked calmly towards the table, making out the end of the conversation. The bearded man barked at Oppai.

“Do you understand? This was your idea. Your idea from the beginning, and we went along. Either you fix this, or we will. You understand?” he said, poking Oppai in the chest a final time. With that last poke, Oppai’s demeanor changed. He had been seething quietly in his chair. Now, he looked almost calm. Ralla felt a chill. Something was wrong. She put her drink down on the table, the sound causing everyone to turn.

Oppai stood, fingertips on the table.

“Get out,” he said, staring at Ralla, but clearly talking to everyone else. His half smile started her adrenaline pumping. She envisioned getting out the knife, and the sweep she would need to get his neck. It was a short blade, but she could do it.

The men, unsure if they should follow his instructions, eventually filed out. As the guard outside reached in to close the door, Oppai nodded at him, and the guard nodded back. The signal was unmistakable.

Oppai pushed pages down the table at Ralla; one made it far enough to be stopped by her glass. They were similar to the one he railed about weeks earlier. There were zeros in column after column. Some were map printouts, with red marks over installation after installation. She couldn’t help but smile.

He backhanded her across the face; she hadn’t even seen him move from the end of the table. After weeks of grinding in the hotbox below, though, the belt cleared her mind. The real, immediate pain was like ice against the skin. She was slow to bring her face back around, but when she did, it wore a look of weary defiance. The smile returned. Oppai’s arm swung back for another strike, but she was ready for it. Ducking, she swung her right fist up into his stomach, connecting and causing him to stagger backwards. Leaping like an animal, she knocked him to the ground. They landed hard on the floor as Ralla, in one motion, took the knife from her pocket and slashed towards his throat.

But he had recovered and deflected it, grabbing her wrist in the process. She swung with her left, and he grabbed it as well. The weeks of labor had exhausted her, and as she struggled to free herself, she found she had no more strength to fight. Adrenaline could only go so far. His hand crushed down on her wrist, and the knife fell to the floor, a bubble of red on his chin its only victim. She was spent and she knew it. Oppai, fueled by anger, retaliated with vigor. In one fluid athletic motion, he pushed her off, spun her limp body around, and held her arms behind her. He smashed her face down onto the table.

Oppai grabbed a handful of the scattered pages, and smeared them against her face.

“You see this?!” he screamed. “This is one of my mining facilities. It was lost a month ago. You see this?!” he asked, grabbing another handful and pressing her face hard between the pages and the table. “This is a convoy that went missing, losing three weeks’ worth of materials.” He dragged her along the table, her face sweeping up stray pages as it moved. They stopped in front of a group of maps. From her sidelong viewpoint, they were just blue pages. “Every one of these stations is
gone
, and it’s
your
fault. Your ship is taking everything from me. And if they were quiet about it before, they aren’t anymore. This morning one of my fleets came back decimated. A result of an unprovoked attack by your people. I guess they don’t value your life as much as you hoped they would.”

“You know, Governor,” she said, the pressure and the table slurring her words. “I don’t know if you really believe this crap you’re spewing, but I know I don’t care anymore.”

Oppai tossed her to the ground and strode over to the shelves of timeworn books. From the top shelf, he brought down an antique globe. It must have been made from before the floods, as it showed the pristine land masses she knew from her school years. For a moment, she was back in the schoolroom talking to the girl she had thought of as a young her. The reverie was short lived. Oppai slammed the globe down on the table above her, then hauled her up to look at it. He grabbed her head, and made her look at the globe.

“Show me where the weapon is.
SHOW ME
!”

Ralla looked away. He shook her violently. It was too much. The labor, and the dread, and the heat for so many weeks. It proved too much. She just wanted him
gone
. She let her eyes dart towards the globe. Just for a second. They fell on the pole. It was nearly involuntary, and she looked away immediately.

Oppai released her and without the support she fell to the ground. He laughed as he walked towards the doors.

“Thank you, Ms. Gattley. Guards,” he said opening the doors wide. “Bring her to the bridge.”

As the guards approached, Ralla had a brief moment to herself, in awe of what she’d done. Of what it would mean to her people, her ship. Her eyes moved slowly up from the floor, up the thick and blocky table support, up the rippled enameled edge, up the brass stand of the globe, and finally to the cracked and tarnished sphere itself. Her eyes locked on where her eyes had flashed a moment before. At the pole.

The s-pole.

OK, mom, she thought. I just bought you a month. Maybe more. Make it work.

Mrakas Gattley’s cabin was well lit, as usual. The amber tones of the wood floor and white walls contrasted sharply with the obvious and pervasive tone of the people in the room. There were over a dozen. Two were nurses, tasked with keeping their sick charge alive. Then there was Awbee, uncharacteristically doting at her former husband’s side. Cern and Larr stood off near the balcony, watching in silence. The rest were aides, milling about, talking on communicators, checking notes. The Captain stood rigidly by the door. As Jills and Thom entered, there was a moment’s pause as the energy shifted towards the Proctor. Aides asked him rapid-fire questions, then darted off to make more calls. Thom expected at least a scowl from Cern or Awbee, but got neither. In fact, he got no recognition at all. In the bed, propped up on two thick pillows, were the living remains of Mrakas Gattley. His sallow, ravaged body a mere husk of what it had been. His eyes darted from person to person, eerily alive as the carcass around them decayed into oblivion.

One of the aides got Jills’ attention; the Proctor acknowledged, and stepped into the center of the room. The various conversations silenced.

“Mrakas,” Jills said with a nod. The eyes on the elder statesman closed, and his head dipped with the barest of nods. “We have little doubt what this message will contain, so please prepare yourself. The computer has finished compiling it, so I’ll have the techs play it if everyone is ready.”

Around the room there were somber nods. With a crackle, the highly compressed voice of Governor Oppai filled the room. Thom looked for speakers, but could see none.

“I have only done what I have had to do,” the disembodied voice chastised. “I have only done what you have forced me to do. I have asked you to back off, and you have not. I have asked you to end hostile actions against the people of the
Population
, and you have not. Well,” the voice dropped away, and in its place there were the sounds of a short struggle. Clothes rustling as one person struggled against captors. The voice that returned was still Oppai, but it was different. It lacked the polished sounds of someone giving a speech. There was an edge to it, anger. “Say something,” Oppai growled. The terminal weariness in Ralla’s voice cut Thom viciously. Whatever thrill he momentarily had hearing her voice, the pain in it, and what was surely about to happen, filled him with impotent anguish.

“Please don’t do this. It’s not too late for peace,” she said. Awbee gripped the pale hand of Mrakas.

“Peace to your people means the subjugation of mine. The people of this ship don’t want it, and neither do I. We will fight until there is no more threat from the great ship
Universalis
. And now that threat comes in the form of a tremendous doomsday weapon, designed to drain our seas and wipe out everything we have spent decades building.”

“No. That’s not...” Ralla’s voice grew more distant as her unseen and unheard captors pulled her away from the microphone. They could hear her still struggling in the background.

“Ralla here has given me the location of your weapon, and now we will destroy it.”

In the distance, just loud enough to make out, Ralla shouted one final thing.

“They’re coming from the northern hemi!” There were more sounds of a struggle.

“And to show you I am serious…”

A scream of terror chilled the room, followed by a single gunshot.

“Ralla Gattley is dead. This is the way you choose it. I...”

Jills signaled the audio dead. Each person handled it differently. Jills and Larr looked somber, their faces ones of pity towards the Gattleys. Cern was in shock, and stumbled back to lean against the balcony’s railing. Awbee buried her face in her husband’s chest.

Thom, though, showed neither pain nor anguish. His face looked puzzled. The only one to notice was Mrakas, and they made eye contact. It was as if, in that moment, a shared secret passed between them. With a tiny motion of his head, Gattley got Thom to the bedside. A pale hand slid from under the covers, and loosely gripped Thom’s forearm. The skin felt plasticy to Thom. A gentle tug was all Mrakas could manage, but he got Thom to lean in.

“She’s not dead. You know it, too. Get her back for me. For us.”

Mrakas let go of Thom, and let go of life, sinking back into the deep of his pillows and beyond.

Awbee cleared the room with a single glace. The hard-edged scientist had disappeared. In her place was a woman who had married a man who had died. Cern fled to deal with his grief. Jills corralled the Captain, Larr, and Thom into the Council Chambers. They had all heard Mrakas’s last words, but didn’t speak of it.

“Either there will be time to deal with Ralla’s death later, or there won’t be. Either way we can’t spare a moment now.” Jills said after taking his usual seat. “Ralla’s outburst of how close they are is a dire sign.”

“I don’t believe that’s what she meant at all,” said Larr, already recovered from what had happened in the other room. “No, I think Miss Gattley is far cleverer than I gave her credit for.”

“Explain.”

“Well, of course they’d be coming from the northern hemisphere. There’s no other way to
get
to the n-pole. This isn’t useful information, really. We’d already be at full alert. Besides, we’ve got scouts spread throughout the hemisphere; we’d see them coming from a day away. So the timing of their attack wouldn’t really matter. Hours or days, we’d be just as ready. Ralla must have known that she’d only be able to get out a short sentence. No, I think she did something rather heroic.”

“You think she lied to them.”

“I do. If we were at the s-pole, such information
would
be useful, letting us know we had some time, a reasonably known amount of time, to fortify our defenses. So somehow she sent them to the wrong pole, and this was her way of telling us. Clever girl. Such a shame.”

Jills pondered the new information.

“Either way, I don’t think it changes much. All she’s done, if you’re right, is buy us a little more time. Captain, I’m temporarily re-tasking personnel and marines to assist with the Fountain project.”

“As long as I can get them back when the unpleasantness starts,” the Captain replied.

“Of course. This is our ‘All Hands’ moment, gentlemen. Miss Gattley has given her life for us. Let’s not let it be in vain.”

The meeting broke up, but Thom remained, staring at the table.

“Thom,” Jills said, after gathering up some pads. “I know this has been a rough few hours, but please don’t take what Mrakas said as anything more than the wishful hopes of a dying man.”

Thom looked up, as if he hadn’t heard what had been said. Jills moved to the seat next to Thom.

“This is it, Commander. The fleet we’ve cobbled together is the last of the ships we’ll be able to build. Even if you can capture more mining facilities, we just don’t have the time. We have two smaller fleets patrolling southwest and northwest of our bearing, but at best they’ll only slow down the
Pop
fleet. We need you now more than ever to raze their domes and convoys, and if you encounter the
Pop
, to attack and retreat, attack and retreat, all the way back up here.”