Authors: Geoffrey Morrison
Undersea (39 page)
“No,” Thom said flatly, “He hasn’t.”
Without turning around, Thom jerked his elbow back into the bow thruster control. They instantly reversed direction, downward thrust replaced by upward thrust, and with all the air still in the bow, the ship roared towards near vertical. Thom fell forward onto the edge of the table. The
Population,
attempting to stand nearly on end, shook Oppai off balance. He dropped the gun in a futile effort to grab hold of something, but his fingers found no purchase. Ralla swung herself out over the drop, kicking out at Oppai’s good leg. He toppled towards her, grabbing frantically at her baggy blue jumpsuit. But he slipped past her and fell out the door, across the hallway, tumbling down through his cabin, past his balcony, smashing through the windows, finally plunging to his death in the dark seething water dozens of stories below.
With only one hand and most of her weight hanging over the void, Ralla was in a bad way. She struggled to pull herself back up. Thom jumped to the consoles and climbed his way down towards Ralla, oblivious to the pain in his own arm.
“Hang on!” he shouted down.
He dropped to the wall beside her, grabbing her good arm with his. They locked eyes for a moment before Ralla’s darted past him and into the distance.
“What is
that
?!!”
The citysub
Population
collided with the underside of the newly formed n-pole icecap, forcing countless tons of ice and snow to blast upwards. The ice tore away at the hull, clawing at it, devouring bracing, panels, and bulkheads. The tremendous power of the remaining engines, coupled with momentum and the buoyancy of the front half of the ship, shot the sub up through the icepack and upward. For a brief moment, the newly desiccant and eviscerated bow reached towards the bare sun. It hung for an instant, then toppled over, snapping the ship in half.
The ship hadn’t been perfectly vertical, and now the corpse of one of the two largest beasts the planet had ever seen slammed down and beached itself on the island of ice. Deck upon deck collapsed under its own weight, the sub’s ovoid shape sagging outward like a compressed balloon. Girders, forcibly relieved of their charge, snapped outward in compound fractures, piercing the hull in thousands of places. Tears sliced open along the sides, shredding the hull and exposing bulkheads to sunlight for the first time in generations.
The ice sank slightly under the weight, ocean water washing across its surface. But slowly it rose back, the water freezing in the cold air making the floating ice mountain stronger, bigger. The force of the impact had driven the island southward. The Fountain bent and gave, as it was designed to do, but didn’t break. With the slowness of the great mass that surrounded it, the Fountain righted itself. Snow from its top continued to fall onto the island of ice and its peculiar new inhabitant, a bloated black carcass of steel and composite.
Time passed. Steel creaked. Panels popped. Mostly, there was silence.
Onto the mutilated bow walked Thom and Ralla, bandaged and bloodied. Around them, the carnage of the citysub
Population
lay strewn across the snowy fields. In the distance, around the base of the Fountain, were small hills. The sun shone bright. More snow fell.
“And you’re sure it’s safe?” Ralla asked quietly, her bandaged hand clutched to her chest.
“Compared to what?” Thom replied. She squinted at the sun and hugged him with her good arm. She didn’t let go, nor did he.
“It’s beautiful.”
Thom could think of nothing to say, so he pulled her tighter.
“After what you saw, do you think there’s anyone alive on the
Universalis
?”
“Ralla, I think there are people alive everywhere.”
They looked out across the island, out across the sea.
“Then I guess we have some work to do.”
—
This book is dedicated to:
Dennis, an incredible editor, and even better friend.
Carrie and Lauren, for their insight.
and
My parents, for always encouraging my creativity.
All my thanks. All my love.
Geoffrey Morrison is a privateer writer and editor based in Los Angeles. You can find out more about him and his writing at
geoffreymorrison.com
, or follow him on Twitter
@techwritergeoff
.
The cover was designed and illustrated by the brilliant Clara Moon,
claramoon.com
.
The font used on the cover is called Telegrafico, designed by ficod,
ficod.deviantart.com
.
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