War Surf (7 page)

“So much for Class Nine. This surf’U be as treacherous as a bubble bath.” Grunzie spoke to us over the sat phone. “My money says you ladies finish this gig in two hours.”

“One hour or less,” I countered.

“I want some of that,” said Kat from the backseat.

We were all making an effort to regain our sense of camaraderie. Sitting inside the tiny sub, trying to figure out all the switches and screens, we kept up a forced banter. But Sheeba stayed silent, and I twisted around to see how she was faring. Her porcelain white skin dye made her look waifish. She gave me an elusive half smile.

“This’ll be fun,” I said, to calm her nerves.

Right then, I should have performed a ritual to mollify the gilded gods. Touched wood. Tossed salt. Sacrificed a body part. Something! Our plan started unraveling the minute we left Win’s yacht.

First, the
Celerity
overheated and stalled. The Deuteronomy engineers had designed a new catalytic add-on to increase fuel efficiency, and it crashed. With molto smug teasing, Grunze towed us back to shore, and while Chad found a discreet IT guy to uninstall the add-on, Kat and Verinne argued whether to set our clocks back to zero or to count this delay as surf time.

Then I got a tingly alert from my IBiS. One of my doctors was authorizing a telomerase booster by remote Net link. (The boost was preprogrammed, of course. The actual doctor was probably playing foosball on the moon.) Sure, I needed the boost to lengthen my telomeres and tone up my complexion, but it created inconvenient side effects, like heart palpitations and sudden urges to urinate. Even with Chad to remind me, I could never keep track of all these freaking doctors’ appointments.

Next it started raining.

You wouldn’t think rain would interfere with a submersible, but you have to understand what global warming has done to the Arctic rain. It falls at times in great brown pellets the size of your fist, half ice, half muddy grit blown up by the storms that scrape the northern continents. This so-called rain perforates the Arctic like a million piledrivers, penetrating ten meters deep. To reach maximum speed, the
Celerity
needed to travel just under the surface, but at that shallow depth, its hull would take punishing hits from the rain.

And we couldn’t just wait out the storm, either. Once an Arctic rain system moves in, the pattern can last for weeks. After extended debate, we decided to take the
Celerity
deeper—and slower—till we reached the outer limits of the WTO’s sensor net. Then we would rocket up to the rain-whipped shallows, accelerate to top speed and do a drive-by shooting to plant the
Lorelei
transponder by compression gun. Hopefully, this quick turnaround would minimize damage to the “borrowed” sub.

We finally deckled to re-zero our clocks when we launched a second time, and I recalled my impetuous side bet One hour or less. Ha. What sum had I mentioned? Two million deutsch? Well, at least I would plant that transponder and salvage our crew’s reputation. With a brave glance at Sheeba, I said, “
Lorelei
, prepare to meet your master.”

“Don’t presume too much. We’re not there yet.” Verinne sat beside me in the front passenger seat, reading documentation on her new radiation-hardened helmet

Meanwhile, Kat shuffled around in the back, making exasperated sighs. “Sheeba, you’re hopeless. You have your camera mounted upside down. Give it here. I’ll fix it”

That couldn’t be. I’d personally checked Sheeba’s gear. I twisted to see, but Kat had already popped Sheeba’s camera out of its slot

“Show me your radiation badge,” Kat said next “Sheeba, do you remember what the colors mean? You’ll have to pay attention. We can’t baby-sit you every minute.”

I said, “Stop picking at her, Kat,” but Sheeba remained oddly silent.

As we neared the
Lorelei
, Grunze came online to remind us that the sensor net would break our connection. Good old Grunze, he still sounded peeved. “Start your ascent, sweet-pee. And keep those cameras rolling. I wanna see the replay when you get back.”

Alarm sirens blared when we hurtled through the WTO blockade. Climbing toward the surface, our sub bucked and vibrated like the inside of a snare drum. Preter-vicious rain. Verinne fought to click her seatbelt, and her new helmet ricocheted off the ceiling.

Kat shook the back of my seat. “Kill that noise. It’s making me loco.”

“Slack off, Katherine.” I shut down the alarm, but the rain still pinged our hull like cosmic static. I glanced at Sheeba and yelled over the noise. “We have two minutes before the cops arrive. Everybody ready?”

The forward viewing screen showed the gutted rain ship floundering in swells not far ahead. Verinne tumbled with her compression gun. She was trying to load the transponder in the chamber when the sub reeled sideways and flung her against the armrest. She said, “How many spare transponders did you bring?”

“Spares? None. Hyperwave transponders cost a bloody pile,” I said.

She looked at me with startled eyes. “What if I miss?”

Suddenly our screen view of the
Lorelei
vanished behind a wave, that rose like a lathery claw. Its foamy white fangs crashed on our hull and hammered us nose down. We rolled and cartwheeled in the depths, and I had to wrestle the steering yoke and restart the CPU to get us moving upward again. When we surfaced, our distance to the
Lorelei
had widened.

“Ninety-four seconds till the cops come,” Sheeba said. She’d set a stopwatch.

“Open the cockpit, and I’ll fire the transponder,” Verinne shouted. Then another wave bashed us, the sub lurched, and Verinne dropped her gun. “Fuck all.”

That’s when the certainty hit me. Verinne
would
miss. In this churn, she couldn’t possibly hold her aim steady enough. After all this effort and expense, we would blow the surf. Again.

Had we, the almighty Agonists, degenerated into a gang of bumbling old farts? How could that be? The idea almost panicked me. Then sheer determination and a reckless will to spend money kicked in, and I resolved to take back the lead.

“We’ll board the
Lorelei’s
hull,” I shouted over the muddy ringing rain. “We’ll plant the transponder by hand!”

Verinne stated the obvious. “That means more surface time. Your sub will take major damage.”

When I turned to check Sheeba’s reaction, Kat grabbed my hair and wrenched me around to face her. “Deepra, what about the freakin’ cops?”

“We’ll be quick,” I said. “Everybody suit up.”

An electric charge of haste spiked through the cockpit as we scrambled to zip our rad-hardened suits, and I put the submersible in a fast sideways skid, keeping just below the surface to avoid the worst of the rain. When we thwacked hard against the rain ship’s flank and bobbed to the surface, the savor of dry fear tingled the undersides of my tongue.

“Nasir, your helmet’s loose.”

Sheeba leaned over my seat, and Kat grumbled, “You’re in my way.” But dear Shee persevered and helped me lock my neck ring.

“Double-check your cameras. This is one surf for the record,” I said with a shiver. My radiation gauge was already measuring a 40-mrem dose. Pretty hot. Sheeba’s badge read the same. I squeezed her hand, then popped our cockpit cover.

Blinding waves sloshed into the cockpit and smeared my helmet visor. The muddy rain hurt, even through our surfsuits. I thought we’d reach out and slap the transponder on the hull in one second flat. But the swells were huge. They’d already separated us from the ship by a good ten meters.

“Thirty-five seconds,” Sheeba said through the helmet sat phone.

Mud coated my visor, and the waves tossed us around like a circus ride. In the distance, we saw the strobing flash of an approaching WTO cutter. As the rain pelted us, Verinne tried again to load the transponder into her compression gun, and Kat and I both reached to help. Then the ocean rose around us like a mountain range, and a wall of water knocked my head against the console.

Perhaps time flowed through a mobius loop. In those pendulous thirty-five seconds, events propagated in ever-widening spheres of probability. Was I the first to unbuckle my seat belt? Did Verinne throw the transponder into the ocean, or did she drop it by accident? What words did Kat scream, and who grabbed my arm? Did I dive for the transponder, or did I fall overboard?

The cops fished me out with a gaffer’s hook and reeled me onto their cutter. They blared orders through a megaphone. Kat and Verinne were already onboard, handcuffed together, hanging on to some kind of aerial and trying to stand upright on the rolling deck. And Sheeba?

“Where’s Sheeba?” I coughed up sea fluid, then gripped the rail and peered into the rain-whipped swells. Had the
Celerity
sunk? Was my darling girl lost beneath the waves? Can you conceive my white-hot fugue of fear and guilt?

“Don’t say anybody’s name,” Kat warned over our sat-phone connection. “The cops have probably hacked our conference call.”

“It’ll take the cops two seconds to sample our DNA,” I yelled back with the bleak voice of experience. One of the peace officers was trying to cuff my wrist, but I tore away and elbowed him in the groin. “What happened to Sheeba?”

“Shut it,” Kat snarled.

“She’s still on the sub,” said Verinne.

The guard twisted my arm painfully behind my back and snapped on the bracelet. He was about to cuff me to the aerial when a mighty blur of light and spume burst from the sea and arced over our heads. The guard and I hit the deck in unison. Above us, the apparition sailed over the WTO cutter and splashed down on the other side like some mythical seagoing goliath.

“What the fuck is she doing?” said Kat. “She doesn’t know how to drive the sub.”

My guard forgot about cuffing me and rushed to the rail with his comrades to see where the bizarre phantom had gone down. Seizing the moment, I staggered to my knees and crawled across the pitching deck to where Kat and Verinne were jerking each other by their mutual chain.

“That was the
Celerity
?’ I whispered.

“Stupido. They’ll overhear you.” Kat shook her fist in my face, yanking Verinne’s handcuffed arm. “That neophyte threw off our timing. I’ve never been arrested in my life.”

Verinne rubbed her bruised wrist. “Considering your age, Katherine, that’s rather sad.”

Before Kat could sputter a comeback, the
Celerity
arced out of the ocean again and spiraled in a high, dizzy parabola several meters off the port bow. When it plummeted into the swells, its wake of sea spray exploded across the deck and washed us against the base of a gun mount. Then the cutter’s engines powered up, the deck heaved, and the cops gave chase.

The cutter swung to port and sent us rolling. They were probably tracking Sheeba on sonar. When the cutter swung again, Kat grabbed me to keep from bashing into a ladder. “I told you she’d panic.”

The ship turned hard to starboard, and we tumbled back toward the gun mount. Verinne’s words came out garbled. “She’s too young for this level of intensity.”

I said, “At least she’s making evasive moves.”

“She should dive,” said Verinne.

“She’s outta control,” Kat muttered.

All at once, the sub leaped over the cutter’s sharp pointed bow and grazed the hull. Sparks flew, and the friction burned off paint. Through veils of rain, blue smoke curled off the deep gash in the
Celerity’s
keel before she vanished into the ocean again.

Kat snickered. “Didn’t I read somewhere that sub cost 14 billion deutsch? Hope your little tart gives you your money’s worth.”

“Shut up, Katherine.”

“Admit it, she’s making a dunce of you,” Kat went on. “Nubile young flesh, ha. A woman’s not worth two cents till she’s past fifty.”

Then Verinne pointed into a deep black wave trough. “The transponder. Look.”

Kat and I jostled against each other just in time to see it sink under a monstrous brown wave. The spray knocked us backward.

As Verinne pushed up from the deck, a gust of wind plastered her suit against her skinny chest. She said, “The Paladin crew will keep the lead.”

“They’re already calling us has-beens.” Kat hugged the gun mount. “They say our surfing style’s outmoded.”

Verinne bowed her helmeted head. “I never dreamed we’d end this way.”

I reached for her ankle. “Cara mia, this is not your fault.”

Picture us clinging to the rail, huddled miserably in the rain, waiting for the inevitable arrest, fines and public humiliation. Had we reached the final fade-out? Ye graven icons, I hated for Sheeba to witness our demise.

Nothing’s more fragile than the conceit of an old man who believes he’s young. Sheeba had once called me a seeker. We were seeking the dark, she said. Mystical fizz, but it sounded brave and heroic. Picture me slanting bravely against the winds of reason and sound judgment. Imagine me jutting out my chin, pounding my pectorals and declaiming mat I, Nasir Deepra, would show these bums something to remember. Hear me shouting like a vain old cockatiel through the roaring storm.

“We’re still the best, and we’ll prove it. We’ll surf Heaven!”

Verinne crawled toward me. Behind her faceplate, her eyes darkened with hope. “Nasir, do you mean it?”

“Look around you,” Kat yelled. “We’re finished. We’ll never see Heav—”

A thunderous wave drowned Kat’s last sentence as the
Celerity
surged up onto the deck right beside us. We stumbled backward as the sub skidded over the rail, drenched us in sea fluid and bumped sideways into the gun mount. While the sub was still sliding, the cockpit cover retracted, and Sheeba yelled, “Hurry! Jump in!”

At first, no one moved. Nanoseconds streamed like light-years as rain bounced against the dented, blackened hull of the most expensive submersible ever built.

“Come on!” Sheeba yelled

The cops raced toward us. Verinne got to the sub first and hauled Kat in by brute force while I made a running jump for the dorsal elevator. The instant Sheeba saw me take hold, she powered up, slued across the deck and crashed through the opposite rail. When we hit the waves, she let go of the steering yoke to pull me inside. It was Kat who climbed into the driver’s seat, closed the cockpit and took us down.