Deep (2 page)

“What do the scanners say?” Sean said, grabbing his overalls and pulling them over his sweatpants.

“Lifeboats have been deployed but the hull’s intact, as is the cargo. Ship looks to have hit the reef on ascent and they couldn’t pull her up. Guess it must be an amateur vessel. You wouldn’t get an experienced diver making such a rookie mistake.”

If the lifeboats were deployed there would be no survivors left onboard. Sean paused. “Wait. What kind of cargo?”

“Scanners indicate a full mineral load. The ship’s registered with an eight-bit drill, too. These boys were digging deep!”

This was a big find. This was bigger than the crew had hoped to pull in after a month’s digging themselves, and there it was, waiting to be salvaged. Sean felt a wave of euphoria erupt within him. This solved all the captain’s worries.

All of the crew were awake. Boarding a shipwreck was dangerous work. The ship could have corroded and one false move would bring thousands of gallons of water in. There could be a chemical spill, a disease outbreak, anything. Sean even remembered one particularly horrific incident with a blue-horned squid that had somehow gotten into a ruptured mess.

Everyone wanted to be there in case anything went wrong. Mia stood by Sean’s side. She was a strong woman; Sean suspected she could probably bench press him if she wanted to. Normally, she was the levelheaded one on the ship. She kept Joel, her big brother, in check, kept the crew moving, and even kept Sean sane. But her husband was on the expedition with the captain, and having the two men in her life at potential peril made for a tense day.

“Did Harvey manage to suit up this time?”

“Kyle helped him.” At the mention of her husband’s name, her eyes became glassy.

It’s typical,
Sean thought,
the one question I ask is the wrong one
. He decided it was better to opt for silence. He copied Mia, watching the hatch. He hated this part of life in the Deep. The waiting was always the worst.

JOEL HAD READ about pirates back in the olden days on Earth, and how the captains had always been the first to board an enemy ship. He wasn’t sure if it was even true, but he’d taken it as gospel to run his ship by. His heavy-booted feet were the first to cross the threshold into the abandoned ship. He helped Kyle through the hatch next, and then Harvey. Together, the three men moved methodically to the bridge.

The ship’s interior was still good. Joel checked the seals and they were holding strong. It hadn’t been down for long, maybe only a couple of days.

“Captain,” Harvey said, standing by an interface, “looks like the pressure is good.”

Their diving suits were heavy and cumbersome. In the depths of the ocean the suits protected them from crippling pressures and bone-breaking currents, but salvaging a ship would take twice as long with them on. Joel considered taking his off, but stopped himself. It wouldn’t be the first time a computer gave him a green light when the atmosphere was filled with aquatic acid.

“Check all the seals,” he said, gesturing with a slow hand at the door separating them from the rest of the ship.

“One lifeboat has been deployed,” Kyle shouted from the left. “The second one malfunctioned.”

That was strange.

“Malfunctioned how?”

“Eh... stopped working,” Kyle said.

Joel’s jaw tightened in annoyance. “Yeah, I figured. How did it stop working?”

“I don’t know, electrics maybe. Could get Mia over. She’d be able to check the system and figure it out.”

“Let’s check the rest of the ship first. No point pulling the whole crew across and putting everyone in danger.”

“In case of another giant squid surprise,” Kyle added with a knowing grin. “Good call.”

They moved through the ship, checking the seals on each door. Everything was good. There were no breaches, no signs of anything wrong with the stability of the ship itself. Joel was starting to worry that there might actually be a sea monster lurking somewhere—things were never this good.

The cockpit was flashing, continuing the distress call
Ariel
had picked up a couple of hours ago. Joel punched the beacon off. The ship was theirs; the last thing they wanted to do was alert any other salvagers to their find. He scanned through the logs. The missing captain had filled in a report a week earlier, recording the final details of their total cargo before they were due to ascend. It was one hell of a catch. Joel checked the ship’s internal scanners. He hovered his fingers over the interface. The screen was telling him that a critical chemical leak warning had fired, but there were no reports of the leak on the rest of the system.

It all became clear. Joel chuckled to himself.
Never trust a computer
. He’d heard of this before, of ships flashing out all manner of nonsense warnings and inexperienced crews bolting at the first hint of catastrophe. The ship had told them they were all about to die a horrible death and, instead of checking, they’d fled to the lifeboats. They’d left an entire season’s trawling for nothing. This was shaping up to be a very good day.

“Captain.”
Harvey’s voice came through Joel’s earpiece.
“We’ve got a survivor.”

Joel frowned. “Repeat that, Harvey. Sounded like you’d found a survivor.”

“Yeah, I did. In the mess, Sir.”

Joel hurried, his heavy footsteps dragging him down as he made his way into the ship’s communal area. It wasn’t that dissimilar from
Ariel
. They had the same-sized dining area, a makeshift den with an entertainment unit, and a kitchenette big enough to sustain a small crew. In the middle of it all was a young blond man laughing with Harvey, who had taken his helmet off and was about to take a swig of beer.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Joel snapped. “Who said you could open your suit?”

Harvey lowered the beer and placed it on the table. “He said it was safe.” He pointed an accusatory finger at the survivor.

“I don’t care if he said you could marry his sister, you keep your goddamn suit on until I tell you otherwise!”

Sheepishly, Harvey reattached his helmet, fiddling with the clasp in a panic until it sealed in place.

Joel turned his attention to the surviving crew member. The man was in his mid-twenties, about the same age as Sean. A decade younger than Joel. The kid was tall and thin, not built for deep-sea mining at all. There was something a bit too clean about him for Joel’s liking—the newcomers were always like that. He thought back to Sean and what he was like when he first boarded
Ariel
. He had the same pristine skin and hair, still keeping up appearances even though they were leagues from civilization. But Sean at least had integrity in his eyes; that was why Joel had hired him. This newcomer had a glint of something altogether less compelling, though Joel couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

“You here alone?” he snapped. It was important the kid knew who was in charge.

“The crew left,” the boy said. “Took the lifeboat.”

“What’s your name, kid?”

“David.”

“So, David, you wanna tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know,” David confessed. “I’m a scientist. I was out on the pod collecting samples when I got a call to come back. But I ran into problems. By the time I made it across, the ship was empty. I tried to use the backup lifeboat, but it didn’t work. I didn’t think anyone would come.”

“You’re a scientist?”

David nodded proudly, and Joel could see why his crew had abandoned him. Joel, like most miners, had no time for floundering scientists getting in everybody’s way.

“Who was your captain?”

“Chase Wells.”

There were a lot of ships in the ocean. Joel didn’t recognize the name, but he’d check it out when he got the chance and make sure the kid wasn’t spinning him a tale. “You got a suit?”

“Eh, yeah, I think so.”

“Unless you want to rot here, suit up.”

“The ship got lodged in the reef. Can you get it out?”

Joel shrugged. “Don’t reckon I’ve got time to find out. This is a salvage operation, not a rescue mission. Do you know how long it takes to tug another boat to shore? We’d lose out on a solid season mining, not to mention setting ourselves up as a nice prize for cutthroat pirates. Not happening on my watch. Suit up and you’ll get a seventh of the spoils, like the rest of my crew.”

“But this is my ship!”

Joel laughed at the absurdity of the boy’s claim. “Okay, we’ll wait a few days and come back when you’re dead. I don’t have to house you.” In the Deep, rescue missions were a myth. No captain worth his salt would risk his own ship and crew for one in trouble if there was nothing in it for him. It was a given that if you had to be rescued you’d be lucky to make it home with your life, never mind anything in your pocket.

David stopped protesting. “A seventh?” He sounded disappointed.

“How big was your old crew?”

“Five.”

The boy was losing out on his original cut, but as Joel saw it, the scientists never did earn their keep anyway.

“Take it or leave it, all the same to me,” he said, knowing the boy would have to concede.

THE HATCH OPENED after an excruciating two hours. Sean held his breath and watched as the captain’s boots crossed the threshold. He exhaled in relief. Following the captain was Kyle, Mia’s husband. It was Mia’s turn to breathe out. But the man following Kyle wasn’t Harvey. This was a stranger, a refugee from the shipwreck. Finally, Harvey clambered inside, raising a big hand victoriously in the air. Pulling a survivor from the Deep was good news. It meant hope. It meant a celebration.

Joel unhooked his helmet and looked about the bridge. He was the only one unaffected by the excitement.

“Doc, get your backside down here!” he yelled.

Sean flew down the steps. He hit the bottom as the refugee removed his helmet. The refugee shook his blond hair and turned. Sean stopped dead in his tracks. He gaped at the other man in disbelief, his mind unable to process anything more than the man’s name:
David.

“Get our guest checked out in the infirmary,” Joel said, before turning to his crew. “Well, what’re you waiting for? Get the load hooked up and salvage the necessary from the ship. I’m not paying you to stare.”

Sean had lost the ability to speak. He was looking at a face he thought he’d never see again, and he couldn’t control himself enough to process his feelings. David Greene—his old partner in crime—looked shaken. No doubt from whatever had happened on his ship. And that was another thing: what was he doing in the Deep? When Sean had last seen David they were trying to escape the police.

“Doc?” Joel said, clearly confused by the change in Sean. “That went for you, too.”

Sean snapped to attention. “Right. Sorry. Eh, come with me,” he said to David, self-conscious now that he had drawn attention to himself.

David was playing it cool. He always was able to keep his game face in check, even in the most surprising situations, but he had a tell. For the briefest moment his eyebrow twitched, and Sean knew the man was equally dumbfounded at finding Sean this deep.

Sean led his old friend out into the corridor, trying to keep track of where the rest of the crew were heading and whether any of them were in earshot.

“Are you hurt?” he asked in a whisper.

David shook his head.

“Okay, it’s through here, follow me.”

He opened the door to the infirmary and promptly closed it once they were inside. Sean’s heart was racing. He pressed himself against the door, not daring to get too close to the newcomer.

David was typically handsome: perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect everything. Even in the Deep he still dressed well and looked groomed. Back on Earth, David had been a socialite, living off a trust fund from his grandfather. Sean couldn’t imagine what he could possibly be doing on a mining ship in the middle of an off-world ocean.

“Wow, you’ve come up in the world,” David teased as he inspected the infirmary.

Sean let out a nervous laugh. These were not the surroundings David was used to seeing him in, and he felt suddenly embarrassed at his little infirmary. “How are you, David?”

“Aside from being left to die on a shipwreck? I’m fine. Good, in fact, now. What about you, Doctor Sean? Didn’t figure you’d end up trawling the ocean after all this time.”

“Perfect hiding place, I suppose. Nobody comes this way.”

The two men stared at each other, a wave of emotions being conveyed in their body language. The last time they had seen each other had been intense. They had spent the night together while the authorities hunted them, and then, knowing they weren’t going to be able to stay together, they got on separate airbuses, David Earthbound and Sean toward the farthest reaches of the solar system: down to the depths of Titan.

Sean could see David was running the same memory through his mind. Then David launched forward, putting his arms around Sean and holding him tight. “God, it’s good to see you, Sean. It’s so good to see you.”

It had been such a long time since Sean had been held that he almost lost himself in the moment. Until he remembered where he was and who might see him. Carefully, Sean extracted himself from David’s arms.

“The crew, they don’t....” He wasn’t sure how to put it.
They don’t know I like men. They don’t know I have a reputation. They don’t know I have fucked most of Earth’s social elite and now they’re after me.

He didn’t have to explain himself. David understood. “Sorry. Yeah, I get it. Same on my ship, too. I just lost myself there. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a face as pretty as yours. Honestly, these people are so—”

“Different,” Sean said before David could finish. The crew took a lot of getting used to, but Sean wouldn’t hear a bad word said about them. “How long have you been down here?”

“First season. Sure to be my last, too. What about you?”

“On my third.”

“Third? Let me guess, something to do with that brutish captain?”

“What? No.” Sean could feel his cheeks glowing. “It’s safe here. I like it.”

David pursed his lips and Sean could tell he wasn’t convinced, but Sean wasn’t about to extol the virtues of deep-sea life. If he did, David might want to stay, and that was all kinds of complicated.