“Captain,” said the helmsman, looking at his screen. “We’re here.”
H124 took a deep breath. It was time to dive.
The dive master appeared in the doorway and gestured for them to follow him back to the lockout trunk. It was a chamber where divers entered, and water filled to match the outside water pressure. Then the door would open, and divers could swim out from there.
The dive master had already gone over all the diving equipment, and now she, Raven, and Dirk climbed into the bulky diving suits with full-face helmets. Each helmet had been fitted with transducers that converted their voices to ultrasound, and receivers that converted those ultrasonic signals back to audible sound. This would allow them to communicate with each other and the sub while underwater. Exterior lights on the helmets would allow them to see in the murky depths. She felt the heavy weight of oxygen tanks being placed on her back as she secured the seal on her helmet. Other crew members buzzed around Raven and Dirk, securing them. Dirk looked distant and sad, just as he had every day since he’d woken up from his coma. She’d never forget his reaction when he’d learned about his twin Astoria’s fate.
That day, she’d heard Dirk’s scream from the far end of the hall. He’d staggered out of the med lab, gripping the doorframe, swaying there in the open doorway. Byron had reached out to steady him, but he’d shoved his friend away, bringing his hands up to the sides of his head. His mouth had opened in a silent scream, his eyes squeezed shut, as if begging his brain to take back the horror. Byron had reached out again, steadying his friend, who’d nearly crumpled to the floor. He’d gripped his elbow, steering him to a nearby bench. Dirk had shaken his head, teeth clenched. “It can’t be. I don’t believe you!”
H124 had felt frozen to the spot. She’d told her legs to move toward him, but they wouldn’t. She’d been with Astoria when it happened. And though she didn’t know how, she’d felt she should have saved her, felt she could have done something, anything, to have returned to Sanctuary City with her alive. Though logically she knew that Astoria had forced her hand, had shoved her off that rooftop and run shouting into the tangle of soldiers, H124 couldn’t help but feel she’d let Dirk down, that she was somehow responsible for the gaping hole that had yawned open in his life.
Now in the gloom of the submarine, Dirk’s eyes looked hollow, and though he’d never been incredibly talkative before, he definitely wasn’t now. He’d been the first to volunteer to go on this mission, insisting that he come along because he knew his way around old tech, and while that was certainly true, she knew that mostly he just didn’t want to be left alone with his thoughts. She’d noticed that he’d been working with Orion nonstop since emerging from the med bay. He’d barely slept, and kept busy constantly. Now he stared vacantly off into the distance as a crew member secured the seal on his helmet.
“It’s going to be dangerous down there,” the dive master warned them for the twelfth time. “Doorways, hallways, narrow passages, a million places where you could get hung up or trapped and run out of air. You’re going to be at a dangerous depth, more than two hundred and ten feet, so don’t screw around down there.” He checked them all over, making sure the suits were secure. It was old tech his crew had retrofitted, and they’d only have an hour of air. “We’ve mixed other gases with your O2, sort of an updated version of the old gas Trimix.”
“What’s that?” Raven asked.
“It’ll let you go deeper than a regular O2 mix and will protect you from the narcotic effects of nitrogen. Still, this is a fool’s mission. There’s no way that ship is still down there.”
H124 peered through the opening into the cavernous lockout trunk. A sudden fear squeezed her stomach.
“It’s our only lead,” Raven told him. “We have to do this.” Now fully suited up, he stepped into the lockout chamber with H124 and Dirk.
The only way the sub crew had agreed to take them out to the facility was if they didn’t have to risk any of their own crew by diving.
“We lost a man last year,” the dive master had told them when they’d first met him. H124 had only learned later that it had been his son, that he’d become hung up when a rusted wall had collapsed on him, damaging his air tanks. Though he’d had a diving partner, the other man hadn’t been able to lift the debris off, and he’d died in a matter of minutes.
Now the dive master locked eyes with H124. “It’s dangerous diving. The most dangerous kind, entering a structure. This could well be a suicide mission.”
“We don’t have a choice, unfortunately,” Raven told him. “Not if we’re going to divert this thing. It’s either risk our lives here, or die when the asteroid hits.”
“It’s your funeral,” the dive master said with finality, giving a sterling vote of confidence. He shut them inside the lockout trunk and flooded it with water.
Once the water pressure equalized, the hatch opened with a groan. H124 peered into the dark depths of water beyond. She’d never been in salt water before, never been in such depths. The most she’d ever done was swim in rivers and, once, a small, sapphire-blue lake up by Sanctuary City. The water there had been bitterly cold. Here, though the surface temperature wasn’t so bad, she knew they’d be experiencing severe cold at this depth.
She pushed off the lip of the sub. The dark water yawned beneath her. This was a crazy crapshoot. If the craft was even still down there, it would be rusted and…
She pushed the hopeless thoughts away.
Dirk and Raven swam out of the chamber, joining her in the water. Raven nodded to her, and all three switched on their helmet lights. Brilliant beams cut through the water. All three swam deeper. They’d each been fitted with special PRD displays that could operate down there, adjusting for the magnification of the water. She turned hers on and it shimmered, showing a schematic of the old building, the way to the hangar that had historically held the A14.
The cold water pressed against her body, and she could feel the added pressure on her chest as she descended, allowing the weight belt around her waist to pull her downward.
“Everyone okay?” Raven asked. His voice, reassuring in the dark cold, came across clearly. She gave him a thumbs-up. “Remember we only have sixty minutes of air, so we have to make this quick.”
As she slid into the dark, she turned on the lights mounted on her helmet. The others did the same, and she glided down through the water until a shape loomed up beneath her. Strange white fingers covered it, and as she drew lower, she could make out more detail. A long, flat surface lay beneath a myriad of small tangled white shapes, some indeed shaped like fingers, others like small trees.
Raven drew up beside her. “It’s coral.”
She’d heard the captain use the term. It was something the Rovers in this area were trying to save, a living organism that formed reefs, which provided habitat for a number of marine species. She’d read about how warming oceans and unsustainable fishing practices had destroyed the reefs in antiquity, how warming seas had caused them to bleach and die. Slowly these coastal Rovers were trying to fix that, planting coral where it had once thrived.
H124 took in the expanse of the flat surface, stretching away into the gloom in both directions. She peered down at her feet, where the shape extended into the darkness in that direction as well. It was the roof of the building, covered in coral.
“All this coral is bleached and dead,” Raven breathed. “The sea here is too warm for it to survive.” From what they’d told her, the sea had been too warm for so many years that no one even remembered when the coral had thrived here.
As she drew closer and could make out the ocean floor, she saw that the coral wasn’t just bleached and white here. Much of it was broken and shattered, the original shape of the reef destroyed. “What broke all of this up?”
“Bottom trawlers,” Raven told her. “Back before the oceans were overfished and fishing was still