Salt (25 page)
Authors: Colin F. Barnes
She could hear him sobbing over Stanic’s body.
They had been solid friends for years; she didn’t blame him.
But he did what he had to do.
“Dad?” Duncan said. He sounded groggy as though he had just awoke from an eons-long sleep. “Is that you?”
“You’re safe now, son,” Jim said between heavy breaths. “We’re all safe now.”
C
hapter 42
Eva nursed a headache. She sipped the steaming mug of tea and swallowed three codeine pills. They were officially out of date, but she no longer cared. Her body needed something… anything to dull the aches and pains. She looked out of the Bravo’s bridge windows and watched with satisfaction as Dietmar’s fleet disappeared over the horizon. What was more satisfying was not a soul had come to the deck to see them off as they normally would.
Once the truth had got out about Stanic and what Jim had done, he was quickly accepted back into the fold and reinstated as captain.
No one would miss the fanatics now. And with Marcus agreeing not to take over as leader, although still claiming the Bravo for his own, the flotilla once more felt united. Eva, like the others, was just glad it was all over, even if they didn’t have the full story or fully understand Stanic’s actions.
Tom, having created a distraction for Jim to get onto the Alonsa, had recovered the broken USB drive and taken it with him back to the Excelsior to try to recover the data.
She winced as she spun on her chair to face the others sitting around the bridge.
Annette was there, checking on Marcus. A bandage and dressing covered his shoulder. Despite his grumbling, he was okay. Luckily, he hadn’t lost a lot of blood, and his unconsciousness had been brought about by shock more than any lasting wound.
“You’ll be fine if you keep the wound clean,” Annette said when she had finished with him. They had set up a temporary medical bay in the bridge. No one wanted to stay at the Alonsa given what had gone on. Shaley’s body was sent off, like the others, earlier that morning with Frank, Cath, Tyson, and Marcus himself in attendance.
“I’m sorry,” Eva said.
Marcus gave her a nod of gratitude.
Duncan came in with Danny by his side. The boy rushed to Eva and hugged her. She grunted with the impact but didn’t mind. “I’m glad you’re safe,” Danny said.
“Me too, Dan,” Eva replied. “Couldn’t let you down now, could I?”
Eva looked up at Duncan. “How you feeling this morning, Dunc?”
“Like hammered shit, but I’ll live. It could have been a lot worse. You?”
“Just a bit banged up. Jim still with Tom?”
Duncan thumbed towards the Excelsior, which was now tied up next to the Bravo. “Yeah, he’s going over some stuff with Tom. Hopefully he’ll have some positive news. I for one would love to know what was on those files that drove Stanic to do what he did. Oh, here they come now.”
Eva saw Jim pat Tom on the shoulder as the two man walked across the makeshift bridge between the two ships. A minute later, amid fevered conversation, the two men entered the bridge.
Marcus stood with the help of Annette. He approached Jim and held out his hand. “I just want to say thanks, for what you did, and well, sorry about… everything.”
Jim shook his hand. “Likewise, Marcus. I’m sorry about Shaley. I know we didn’t get on, but still, you’ve got my condolences.”
“So?” Marcus said, looking at Tom. “Long time, no see. Do you have the key to this mystery?”
“There’s good and bad news on that front,” Tom said, addressing everyone as they looked to him for information. “The good news is I managed to recover some of the data. The bad news is I can’t decrypt the documents fully.”
“Show Eva the files,” Jim said with excitement in his voice. Tom took a set of papers from inside his jacket and placed them on a console in front of Eva. Duncan and the others, including Marcus, gathered around as Eva read the first piece of paper.
It only contained five short paragraphs.
When she read them, she turned to face Jim and Tom.
“Is this legit?”
“Yes. Thomas was Stanic’s first mate,” Jim said.
Tom continued. “You see, I didn’t know he’d survived. I was hiding for my life when Jim and the others brought the sub in. After I came aboard, bringing the files and various other items with me—I didn’t know what they were at the time; I just recognised the seal on top—I decided to leave, not realising Benedict had infiltrated the community.”
“Benedict?” Eva asked.
“That’s Stanic’s real name,” Tom said. “Stanic is his mother’s maiden name. His full title was Captain Benedict Montgomery. He was one of the favourite sub captains of the navy. It’s how we got the mission to get the president.”
“He was going on about that,” Eva said. “I didn’t understand. He kept talking about a ‘them’ and how they had used him as a pawn. But now… after reading this, it makes sense.”
The unencrypted text was partial orders from an executive committee. Montgomery had been ordered to slaughter his crew in return for safe passage to an underground facility.
“They are a group of world leaders,” Tom said. “And on that second page are the coordinates for their facility. That is what Benedict was killing for.”
Eva rubbed her face, still feeling the bruise from Benedict’s attack. “That makes sense now,” she said, looking at the numbers on the sheet of paper. “He kept saying how if he couldn’t go there, no one could. He wanted to keep us independent and said this would split us apart.”
Jim looked out the window. “He was probably right, a few days ago. But the flotilla is different now. With no Faust and her group, and with a united citizenship…”
Marcus turned to Jim. “Are you suggesting what I think you are?”
“I don’t know. What are you thinking?”
“You want to pay this committee a visit?”
Jim looked at each person, his eyebrow raised in an unspoken question. Eva fidgeted on her chair, looked again at the papers, read the kill orders. She hated the fact that a small part of her empathised with Benedict. A celebrated and capable captain who was dedicated to his country and his job had been put in a difficult situation; they knew he would find it impossible to break his commitment. They had manipulated him, and all those crewmen and flotilla citizens had become victims of a broken man.
“I want to go,” Eva said, voicing what she could tell the others were thinking. “Whoever they are, and whatever the reasons, I want to hold them accountable. Hiding in their safe facility while the rest of us cling to life with the barest of grips. I say we go.”
“Aye, I’m with Eva,” Duncan said. “I’m sick of this place.”
“Count me in,” Marcus said. “I’m always up for expanding one’s possibilities.”
Annette and Danny also agreed.
“We taking the Excelsior?” Eva said.
“No, not enough fuel, unfortunately,” Thomas said. “It’s too far of a journey. But there’s a way we can do it. We won’t be able to take everyone, though, so Benedict was right in that this would split the flotilla.”
“The sub?” Jim said.
“If what you said was right about the tampered meter, it seems Benedict had set it up such that we would stay here, in his vision of his own world. If the core isn’t compromised, and if it were, you’d have known by now, then I can get it up and running.”
“When do we leave?” Eva said.
“We’ll need some time for Annette to identify any potential patient zeroes before we hand out the vaccine,” Jim said.
“And I’ll need to train some people in how to crew a submarine,” Tom said.
Annette added. “I can do the tests in a few days as Angelina and her team had developed an early detection solution. It’ll take a few more days to run the regular infection-identification tests, so I’d be ready within a week.”
“That would be perfect,” Tom said. “I only need five good men and women.”
“You’ll have me,” Duncan said. “I’m sure Patrice, Ellie and Ahmed would be suited to a role too.”
For the next hour, the group planned their departure below deck in the ops room. Duncan came up with another mug of tea. They were finishing up the last of Marcus’s personal supply. Eva had been reading comics with Danny, admiring how resolute he was. She could never truly know what effect all this trauma would have on him, but he seemed to be handling it well.
Duncan ruffled Danny’s hair as he placed the two mugs on the console.
“I just wanted to thank you,” Duncan said. “For everything, for being brave, investigating the case, and for stalling Stan, I mean Benedict. If you hadn’t, Dad might not have been able to get the jump on him.”
She reached out and gripped his hand. “I’m glad we survived. There was a time when I… well, let’s say I’m glad I didn’t get my wish.”
“When we find this place… deal with what we have to do, I wondered if… well I don’t know how to say this, but, it’s something I’ve thought about for a while but with—”
“He wants to ask you out,” Danny said, grinning from behind his comic. “He hasn’t stopped talking about you all the time I’ve been here.”
“Thanks, Dan,” Duncan said, blushing behind his beard.
Eva stood up and placed her arms on his shoulders. “Let’s see how things go, but in the meantime, I would like some company.”
“Hey, you two,” Jim said from below the hatch, “no time for slacking. Get your arses down here. We’ve got a mission to plan.” He flashed them a smile and ducked back into the ops room.
“I guess we’d better do as the skipper says,” Duncan said, his arms around Eva’s waist.
She shrugged. “He can wait a few minutes longer.”
Eva reached out her right arm and pulled Danny into the hug. She sighed with a sense of relief and anxiety at what the future might hold, but right there, she knew they’d be okay if they stuck together.
As a group.
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About The Author
Colin F. Barnes is a full-time writer of science fiction and thrillers. He’s a member of both the British Fantasy Society and the British Science Fiction Association. He honed his craft with the London School of Journalism and the Open University (BA, English).
Colin has run a number of tech-based businesses, worked in rat-infested workshops, and scoured the back streets of London looking for characters and stories—which he found in abundance. He has a number of publishing credits with stories alongside authors such as: Hugh Howey, Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, and Graham Masterton. He lives alone with a black cat in Essex in the UK. Rumours that the cat is the one with the talent is a malicious slur.
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