Undersea (13 page)

“93 years next month.”

“Very good. And why did our ancestors build this ship?” This time the same girl raised her hand. She had a mound of blond hair that spilled out from no less than five hair clips. Ralla called on her again.

“Because of the floods and radiation?”

Ralla looked around the room and saw the stock pictures of what life had been like before their civilization had fled under the sea. She nodded at the girl who had answered, who looked pleased.

“It’s important to learn history,” Ralla said to the class. “It may seem like a whole lot of stuff that doesn’t mean anything now, but if you don’t learn what people did before, how will you know what works and what doesn’t in the future? OK, do you have any questions for me?”

The same girl raised her hand, Ralla tried to hide a smile as she called on her.

“What do you do on the Council?”

“Well, I am the main liaison... um, I’m the person who talks with the new pilot training program and the Council. I also represent the people of District 1 in voting when the Council needs to make decisions.”

“How long have you been a Councilman?” one of the boys asked. Ralla felt a lump in her throat, but was able to swallow it.

“A little over two months. Before that I assisted my father, who was also a Councilman.”

“Council
woman
Gattley,” asserted the same girl. “How old do you have to be to become a Councilmember?”

Ralla couldn’t hide the smile this time.

“Well, there’s no rule that gives a specific age. It all depends on the people in your district. If you can convince them that at age 25 you’re the right person to represent them, then  they’ll vote you in. Or 20, or maybe even 10.” The young girl beamed. There were a few more questions, and soon the teacher stepped in and wrapped things up. The students and their teacher thanked Ralla, and she left in the best mood she’d had in a long time.

Another elevator ride, another corridor, and she got to her next meeting just as it was starting. She took a chair near one end of a long table of older men. She looked down at her notepad and grimaced. The bi-weekly commerce meeting. There were few things more boring in her schedule. The men droned on and on about the skyrocketing price of fish and minerals and the effects that had on the farmers and by extension, the restaurants and grocers. They spoke of setting prices, offering service subsidies, and on and on and on. If her father hadn’t drilled into her how vital this committee was to the survival of their micro economy, she would have signed up for pretty much anything else.

Her father. It had been two months since he stepped down from the Council. There had been ceremonies, parties, banquets, and on and on. She half suspected he had done it to get people’s minds off the battle. The other half figured he wanted to exit before he died in office, with all the disruptions that would go along with that. He named her as successor and the Council, surprisingly, voted unanimously to her appointment for the rest of her father’s term. From the voices of support, both verbal and electronic, she didn’t figure reelection next year would be too much trouble. The one three years later, on the other hand, she’d have to win on her own. That is, if the ship even lasted that long.

By the time they landed, or more or less crashed, on the bottom of this trench, there wasn’t a single part of the ship that hadn’t sustained damage. They were taking on water at such a rate that, even with every bilge pump and vertical thruster going at maximum, they were still sinking. The countermeasures had set off enough of the incoming torpedoes that the resulting compression waves had detonated the others some distance from the hull. Those same waves, though, wreaked havoc on the aft third of the ship. Ironically, the damage already sustained from the impact with the
Population
acted as a sort of buffer, absorbing much of the energy.

The
Pop
fleet apparently wasn’t so lucky. The ships closest to the blast crumpled and imploded, as far as the sensors could tell. The others took enough damage that they didn’t pursue as the wounded citysubs limped away from each other. With so many of the hull microphones damaged, destroyed, or ripped away, it was difficult to detect what damage the
Pop
itself had taken. They could hear bulkheads bursting, metal creaking, and other sounds buried beneath the roar of the ship’s engines. It had taken the techs weeks to sort out all the data. They were still going over it. That’s a meeting tomorrow, she realized.

Her father had been instrumental in figuring out the
Pop’
s plan of trying to get them to ground themselves. Then, of course, he had been the one to find the perfect hiding place. It had taken them two weeks to get here. Only able to go deeper, never shallower, thermal hopping was out of the question. She doubted anyone slept as the ship changed direction every half an hour for six days to see if anyone was following. It seemed like they hadn’t been. They had to coast the last half-day as they lost two more screws, and navigating the narrow trench would have been too hazardous with power only on the port side.

The landing had knocked loose two entire cabin ships, both overlooking the Basket. These were evacuated successfully, and the ships secured before they fell to the floor, a disaster narrowly averted.

As it stood, they had lost just under a thousand people. The single biggest loss was E6, the starboard-most engine room. Torn open to the sea, 223 crewmen and women were killed instantly. Pressure change like that was a quick death. Others in the aft of the ship hadn’t been so lucky. Dozens drowned, unable to outrun the advancing carnage and influx of water. She had attended several of the mass funeral ceremonies as one of her first official duties. Not that it was a “duty”—she probably would have gone had she not taken her father’s job. There were a few dozen that had fallen or been crushed in the impact. The worst, she thought, were those that had been trapped in a tiny oasis of air, surrounded by flooded compartments. They had found many of these too late. The thought made her shudder.

She focused on the table. No one had noticed. She was still being ignored at most meetings she attended. Even when she asked questions, the responses showed a poorly veiled condescension. This was one meeting, though, where she was glad to be invisible. She would get the transcript of the meeting later that night, and look it over then. Understanding the numbers wasn’t hard, but trying to understand them as they were being spoken was next to impossible. She was half certain no one else in this room followed any of it either, a shared mutual deception.

Overall, the crew and inhabitants of the
Universalis
were handling it all fairly well. Updates on the repair progress were broadcast every night on the news, unfiltered by the Council. Her father had been implicit on that. It warmed her heart that the number of volunteers actually outnumbered the jobs and equipment available to them. Most were told to continue what they had been doing before the start of the war. That’s what most people were calling it. There was a near palpable camaraderie across the ship that she had never seen before. People seemed genuinely more friendly and helpful.

It hadn’t been easy, though. Most difficult was resources. The Garden had suffered relatively mild damage, and was back up to 100 percent within a few days. Fishing was harder. Only a select few fishing businesses were allowed to leave the ship. This had the other companies on the verge of rioting. They were given a subsidy, or their workers given other jobs, in the meantime. The fact was, the Council only wanted certain pilots outside the ship: those they could train, or had trained. It was still a pretty well-kept secret that all the current fisherman were actually marines or one of the new batch of navy pilots. Their main job was to fish, that was true, but they were also scouts, and served as an early warning system if the
Pop
managed to find them. Not that it would do much good. They were still months away from having a working navy like they did in the last war, nearly forty years earlier. The designs had been modified, both for efficiency in manufacture and to reflect four decades of sub development. Even the weapons were upgraded. Drychem rockets with better range and explosive potential, microtorpedoes, and some new weapons that she hadn’t been briefed on yet. Later in the week, she thought. Those meetings were always fun.

The biggest problem had been raw materials. They had sent out messages through emergency channels: a tightbeam to the nearest facility, which relayed it to another and that one to another and so on. The message warned of possible aggression, and asked that whatever supplies they had be delivered to certain rendezvous coordinates. After a brief quarantine in the middle of nowhere to be sure they weren’t followed, they were escorted to the
Uni
. This took time, and also meant there weren’t steady shipments. Each dome was told to send what they could, and to hunker down and be prepared to defend or surrender. That decision was left up to each dome. She found it odd that not too long ago she had been sizing up a dome as a possible permanent habitat in case something went wrong on the
Uni
. Now dome refugees were looking for a home on the crippled ship out of fear of attack from the
Population
, and they simply weren’t prepared for the influx. That didn’t stop them from coming, though.

Eight domes in the past six weeks had gone silent. One, near where the Battle of the Shallow Sea had taken place (as her father insisted on naming it), had broadcast distress, and then the signal went dead. She had seen on a map the domes that had stopped responding to messages, and they were sequentially in a line starting from that first. Though small consolation, the
Pop
seemed to be travelling roughly away from their current location. It pained her to think what may be happening to the poor people in those domes, but there was nothing they could do. They had barely a skeleton of a fleet. Not to mention they were buried in silt, hiding. It was frustrating, to say the least.

The meeting broke up, and she said goodbye to each man by name. The next meeting was right down the corridor, and she was the first one there. She took a seat in middle, and went over her notes from the previous week’s meeting. This was her committee, so to speak. She didn’t run it—she was too junior for that—but she was the sole member that brought data; everyone else was there to keep apprised of the situation. Throughout the week she met with the heads of the training programs for pilots, damage crews, marines, and so on. Then it was just a matter of compiling the info on recruiting and progress. Nothing too major, but she was the liaison and it was her first real important duty as a Councilmember. Also, it gave her an excuse to see Thom.

This presented a bit of a challenge. She wasn’t sure what it was about Thom... wasn’t sure what she felt towards him. They had been spending a lot of time together, and not just in an official capacity. If there was one thing, it was how he spoke to her: like she was one of his drinking buddies. An old friend. She couldn’t remember the last time someone did that. But then, it wasn’t just one thing. She wouldn’t go so far as to call it a crush. Even the thought of the word made her feel like she was cheating on Cern.

Cern had been so good through all of this. He had been the first one to congratulate her on her nomination. He had helped her get her schedule sorted out, and had been by her side at every party, every banquet, every funeral.

But there was just something about Thom. He was funny. Unpredictable. And he looked at her in a way sometimes... But other times he was distant. And, in all honesty, he was a bit of a Basket loser. She was sure that if her father hadn’t forced a commission on him, and handed him the role of pilot trainer, he’d still be a drunk fisherman in some below-decks bar. No one said no to old man Gattley. Still, Thom did step up into the role, and well.

People started filing in. There were four other Councilmembers on the committee, along with two representatives each from the Fisherman’s and Farmer’s unions (there to be sure their ranks didn’t get too pilfered); the last member was the Proctor of Manufacturing, in charge of the several divisions tasked with building their new fleet. This should go fairly quickly, she thought optimistically. She stood, and clasped her hands behind her back.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said in her most official-sounding voice. The seven men  looked up at her, expectantly. Her meeting. Her show.

Mrakas Gattley lay on his bed, covered in blankets. From the doorway it seemed he was even thinner than the last time she had seen him. He had always had a look of strength, of power, about him. As a child she remembered him being a giant. While others lost this feeling as they aged and grew, she had not. It wasn’t just physical size, but a presence. And though he had been sick for some time, it wasn’t until the last few weeks had he started to emaciate. His skin had taken on a pallor. He smiled as she entered. She took a breath and pushed down her fear.

“Hi, Dad,” she said smiling.

“Today was your committee day, right? How did it go?”

“Good, very good.”

“Tell me what’s been happening,” he said, struggling to push himself upright in the bed. She hurried over to help him. Sitting on the side of the bed, she went over her notes with him from the other meetings that day, and the afternoon of the previous day.

“I spoke with Manufacturing like you asked, and they said production is on track.”

“They’re lying. They always lie. They don’t want to lose face in front of the Council, for fear that you’ll try to butt in and run things. Next time, ask him what he needs to increase production. He’ll know you’re really asking what he needs to maintain the current pace, but he’ll appreciate you letting him look strong.”

“Good information for this morning, but I'll keep that in mind for next week.”

 “And training, how’s that going? How’s that kid working out? Thom.”

“Both are doing fine. We’re on track. Thom is doing good work,” she said, glancing away. He noticed. His eyes were still good. “Some of the recruits, like those coming from the fishing fleet, take to the subs pretty well. Most pick up the tactics fairly quickly, and their instructors have no problem graduating them to full pilot status. On the other hand, those without previous experience haven’t done as well. Most have struggled with even the basics of sub maneuvering, and have failed completely on tactics. I and their lead trainers recommend that we have a higher failure rate for pilots, but instead of kicking them out of the program, require them to complete a secondary training program predominantly on simulators.”