Becoming Prey

I’d misjudged a few things. I see that, in hindsight. 

Actually, I saw it pretty well at the time.

When you plan an illegal salvage dive to Old Charleston, you plan to not bump into a squadron of Allegiance Navy troops. Let alone an entire battalion.

“Stay still, Lem,” I told Lemming, who floated beside me, still as the reef sprouting from the fireplace behind him.

“Aye, Sarge,” he replied in a soft voice. “Thought we’d be alone for this one.”

Four years out of the service and Lem still followed me around like a good natured remora.

“We were led to believe that…” I muttered, watching the orang dive suits mill about in the drowned and dilapidated city. 

“But why are they here?” I wondered out loud.

“Antique salvage? Same as us?” Lemming suggested.

“Naval divers on salvage… Could be that, Lem,” I said trying to mean it. “Could just be that.”

“Sorry, Sarge. But. Well then, what are they doing here?” 

“I think,” I replied slowly, “that it doesn’t matter. Let them float by… then we get to work on that vault.”

“Of course, Sarge. Wait ‘em out and work quick.”

“Right.” I stared down at the troops. 

They kicked past us in their pale orange dive suits, laser pistols fully charged. Like ours, their dive suits covered them from toe to tip. Unlike ours, each one had a bulge on their back where the slits of their mechgills could pull air from the water. Lem and I sported a pair of old hypercompression flasks. They weigh less and run quieter, but they put us on the clock. 

The soldiers’ long flippers lifted clouds of silt behind them, even from a few feet off the old cobblestone road. Must have been a dry lieutenant in command. New lieutenants feel safest hiding their troops down in the old streets, lurking in the shadows of the ruins. I’d have put that battalion a good twenty feet off the floor, with threats of hard labor on the deck to punish any squad leader dipping too low and kicking up mud. 

The orange suits of the Allegiance Navy talked a big game and had a track record to back it up. With 95% of Earth under the sea, the Allegiance with the biggest, baddest fleet of boats and submarines tends to carry the most clout. Well. On the surface they did.

Down here, though… Down here, power is fickle. If you feel safe, you’re probably about to die. 

“Wait,” I whispered, “Lem, they can’t hear us right?”

We floated there in the ruins, watching the Orange Divers paddle past by the dozen, laser pistols glinting on their hips.

“Uhm… no, sir,” he said.

“You hesitated. Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, “I’m running a double encryption on our comms that I wouldn’t want to break. Also, I think they would have arrested us by now.” I thought I caught a hint of self-amusement in that, but chose to ignore it.

“Too right,” I growled. “Okay. We wait, then we work.” 

“Gonna be tight on air, Sarge,” Lem said, helpfully.

I glanced down at my wrist and cursed. Just 56 minutes left on the tank. Our informant had given us a large radius of downtown Old Charletson to search and the description: stone walls, topped by monkey gargoyles. It had taken us hours to find it. And just when we did… Lem had caught that flash of orange up the street. We’d dipped out of sight, hunkering down in the skeletal remains of a townhome. Seawater and coral growth had eaten through soft furniture and trimmings. You could still get a sense for the kind of comfort these assholes had enjoyed, though. Made me sick with jealousy. Lem and I glared through up at those gargoyles lining the stone wall across the street. Breathing too much of our air. I glanced up and hoped they wouldn’t notice our bubbles. 

We still had to get into the stone house, find the old hydro vault, get a microbubble on the door, drill the door, drybag their precious documents, and get back to the ship. Oh, and decompress. An hour’s work, if it all went well. And we weren’t the only pickers in the sea. We might not get another shot.

“You’re not wrong, Lem,” I muttered. “But we do pretty well in a tight spot.” 

“Typically, Sarge, typically we do. Comes from being in so many tight spots, I’d expect.”

I gave him a grunt. 

Outside, the troops just kept streaming by. I counted the squadrons, through the muddy front window of the townhome. After a moment, I caught myself searching for familiar patches on those dive suits. I didn’t recognize anyone. Better that way. 

“More than one battalion, Sarge?” Lem offered.

“Two at least. This is a major operation,” I replied softly. “Not just a regular patrol.”

“Maybe they’re going to Bubble here?”

“Hmm… Now, that would be some saleable information, Lemmy. You see any gear for it?” 

He didn’t respond. Our only decent buyer of “saleable information” had gone dark a month ago. Which probably meant that he was getting free meals and spilling his guts in a Naval Detention Center. NDC. Pickers, smugglers, and privateers referred to them as Gullets. As in, Shark Gullets. Nothing leaves a Gullet alive. The New North American Allegiance liked to keep its secrets. Which made sense. We– They  weren’t the only Allegiance around.

The mud clouds grew thicker. And thicker. Soon we could only catch flashes of orange amongst the murky brown. They were blind. It gave me a horrible crawling sensation, followed by a spark of optimism. Their stupid loss, our gain.

“Alright, Lemmy,” I checked my watch, 32 minutes of air left. “Up and over. Heading 223 degrees, not a hair off or we’ll be sleeping in the nearest Gullet.” 

“Aye, sir,” Lem said, quietly. Not frightened, not nearly frightened enough.

I pushed back from the window, crossing the worm-ridden flooring to get to the skeleton of a staircase. Something shot up out of the floorboards with a flash of bubbles and bluish gray skin. Swearing, I unholstered and fired my laser pistol. One shot. The bright white lance of light took it through the center and burned a hole through the wall behind it. I felt the sudden heat in the water even through the thick skin of my suit. 

A crab the size of my chest floated back down to the desiccated floorboards, a neat hole through its broad shell. Dinner for the other bottom feeders. 

I looked up through the tiny hole in the wall, no orange suits that way. Slowly, I turned around and looked back out of the front window. The Orange parade continued in a cloud of brown muck. I exhaled and glanced at Lem. He held a little tablet in front of him and had his face pinched in concentration. I waited. And waited. Finally, he shrugged and tapped the tablet.

“Clear, Sarge,” he said. “They’re still on the move. Nice shot.”

“Lucky,” I said.

“Not for the crab, sir.” He grinned.

“I meant lucky they didn’t…” I sighed. “Yes, Lem, shit day to be a crab. Let’s head on. Calmly.”

“Yessir. Right behind you.”

I ascended the stairwell with slow, deliberate kicks. I kept my pistol out, but reminded myself to identify objects before putting holes in them. If I fired a round into one of those orange suits, that dry behind the ears Lieutenant would boil the ocean returning fire. 

The staircase rose two floors up until we had nestled among the rafters and could stare out at the great ocean blue stretching away forever. I shivered at the largeness of it. Weak sunlight wobbled down to the pockmarked remains of the rafters. I poked my head over the lip of the front wall and peered down at the battalion. I swore. They’d fanned out, taking squadrons to separate parts of the town. 

“We’re too far out…” I said to myself. “What the wet devil could they want in Charleston?”

“Dunno, sir,” Lem replied. “But you did mention the informer for this job seemed jumpier than usual. Maybe they’re here for these same documents. Maybe he knew they would be.”

I gave a slow blink and recalculated. It hit home. He was probably right. 

“So it’s a race then,” I said, my heart sinking. “And possibly a fight.”

“That’s the spirit, Sarge,” Lem agreed. I could hear him grinning. 

“But,” I continued, instead of cursing his enthusiasm, “you don’t send a battalion down here if you know where it is, right? They’re searching for it.” I watched them swim past the building. Dozens at a time. “And they’ve got bad intel.”

“Or we do,” Lem said, cheerfully. “Stands to reason, Sarge.” 

I kept my curses to myself again. We couldn’t afford for that to be true.

It occurred to me, briefly, that we could swim right off this job. Just give it up. I’d hand Annie’s Revenge over to the next repo boat that pulled up. I’d get back in the Navy, training lieutenants. I’d get a little apartment in Denver or Asheville. Look out at the water. Wait around to get old…

“Ok there, Sarge?” Lem asked.

“What? Yes, why?”

“It’s just… you were swearing again. A lot.”

“Oh. Yeah. I’m fine. We’re fine, Lem,” I said, clamping my mouth shut. He didn’t reply.

Clouds of silt rose between the buildings. It looked like the gooey brown soul of the dead city making a last, awkward reach for sunlight. 

They’d never see us going over. Probably. 

“Moving out,” I said. Squeezing between two rafters, I rose above the building. Something grabbed one of my flippers. I spun and took aim without hesitating and had a couple pounds of pressure on the trigger before I recognized Lem.

“What?!” I shouted, quickly pulling the pistol out of his face. He never flinched. Curse him, he never flinched.

“Sorry, sir!” Lem said. He gazed, serene and curious, past me and out into the blue beyond. Sunlight glinted in his eyes, then a dark shadow covered us both. Something about it prickled the hair on my neck. “But… well look, sir!” He let go of my flipper and pointed up. My gaze snapped around and I… gurgled.

“Urrgghghgh…”

“My thoughts exactly, sir,” Lem replied. 

The word “shark” doesn’t capture the scope of the thing. It could have swallowed Annie’s Revenge in a go. It eclipsed the sun for several moments as it continued a slow loop down toward the submerged rooftops. My mouth ran dry watching its tail sweep back and forth in massive, lazy strokes. Completely silent and completely at ease. I felt the sudden smallness of my form, the fragility. I found myself making the prayer of those preyed upon: Please, great powers above or below, let that monstrosity pass without noticing me. 

“You ever seen one that big, Sarge?” Lem whispered.

I tried to respond but the fear held my chest too tight. The “shark” drew lower and swam around the pitted frame of a church steeple. For an insane moment, I pictured that massive shark smoking that steeple as I would smoke a tapered cigar. 

“No, never,” I choked out in a whisper. “Is there a name for it?”

“Shark, sir,” Lem said. “Maybe Megalodon?”

I ground my teeth and glanced down. None of the orange suits glanced up. The silt cloud thickened. No one swam for cover. No one reacted. They have to have that on radar. They have to…

When I looked back up the sea was empty again. I spun all around. The shark had disappeared.

“Lem?” I whispered.

“Sir?”

My eyes nearly rolled in my head as I probed the inky depths for miles in every direction. Every shadow looked like a leviathan. None were. Were they? My heart pounded.

“Where did it go, Lem?”

“Probably back out to sea, sir,” he suggested, voice steady, almost unconcerned. “Looking for larger prey.”

“Right,” I said, turning back to the brown cloud over Charleston. “Right. Let’s just get this–” 

A gray blast of motion whipped by me, then the shark’s tail disappeared into the cloud of silt. Downward. Toward the battalions. The power of its tail stroke tumbled me backward over the roof of the townhomes. I recovered with a string of curses and saw Lem frozen, tablet in hand. I swam up and shook him. When he turned to me his face had drained of color. He had to slap the tablet three times before we reconnected.

“Their comms–! They’re dying, sir!” he shouted. “By the dozen! It’s chaos! We have to–” 

“We have to get the hell out of here while that thing is distracted, Corporal!” I shouted, turning to run for it. With a slap of my fins I took off, pumping some buoyancy into my suit and kicking furiously toward Annie. My breath came in panicked heaves, Lem yelled something, but I couldn’t hear it. My heart pounded like a mullet on the dock. 

Like a mullet. 

Fast. 

Too fast. 

Conserve air. Decompress.

I checked my watch and saw that I’d hit the first decompression checkpoint already. And I’d burned through half my air. Swearing beautifully, I sucked stale air from my buoyancy vest and hovered there, halfway home. The silence of the blue crushed in on me from miles all around. It’s always so much worse when you’re alone.

Alone.

“Lem?!” I shouted. 

No response. Static.

“Oh for– ARGH! Poseidon's bristly ballsack! LEM WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!” 

I searched the distant rooftops. The shark rolled around in the streets of Charleston. Red tinges had started to infect the brown clouds of silt.

My breaths came sharp and loud, painful. Come on, Lemmm. Come on come on comeoncomeoncomeon Where the devil–?

There. A flash. A flicker. 

A tiny figure above a row of townhomes. Highbeams on, firing laser after laser into the roiling brown mess below. Slow, steady rhythm, letting the water cool between rounds. A good soldier.

“You IDIOT!” I shouted. 

Then I froze. I almost left him. Almost. 

Instead I sucked the rest of the air out of my suit and started kicking down. My head stung as I dived. Those seconds felt like hours and the water felt thicker somehow, like it tried to hold me back. I kicked harder, watching.

Lem had a roof beam clamped between his legs. He calmly poured lasers down into the mud. It rose higher and higher, threatening to engulf him too. Flashes of orange and gray showed in the frenzy. Then the cloud exploded. The shark charged Lem. My heart stopped. The size of the damn thing… it looked like a battleship bearing down on a mollusk.

Still though. It was just a shark. Maybe I could communicate with it. My laser pistol came up and I fired right over Lem’s helmet. 

One to the nose, it flinched away to the right. The shot left a scorch mark, but didn’t break the skin. I didn’t worry about that. Next shot to the gills, the shark flinched back. One more to the eye. It swam off in a circle, the blast of its tail spun Lem up out of the townhome. I felt the water warming around me, I was firing too fast. I needed time to cool off.

The shark came back around in a flash. Lem blocked my aim for a precious second before sailing behind me. 

Gills, flinch. Nose, flinch. Eye, flinch.

It kept coming. The water warmed. Oh this is gonna hurt.

Gills, nose, eye. flinchflinchflinch The heat crinkled my suit. The shark gave a twist of rage. Turned as if to leave. My heart soared. 

Then it turned back and shot toward us. Resignation swept through my veins, bracing me.

Gills, nose, eye. flinchflinchflinch

The heat seared me. I grimaced, but held my aim, kept firing.

Gills, nose, eye. flinchflinchflinch

I saw blossoms of white spread up my arms and across my chest. I felt the first trickle of pain.

“GILLS, NOSE, EYE YOU BIG STUPID FU– ARRRRGGHHHH!!”

Plasma boil. A fit of bubbles surrounded me and I dropped the pistol. Blinding pain scorched my arms and chest. I screamed, kicking back and feeling the burn dig down to my nerves in an instant. I whited out and the world went dark. 

***

I came-to in my own cargo bay. I live in Annie the way a conch lives in its shell. I know every centimeter of her. We had a ding in the cargo bay’s fifth beam, from a transport job a few years back. I lay beneath that dent. I tried to sit up, but couldn’t, so I raised my neck to find about a thousand tons of metal on my chest. My torso and arms felt cool and itchy. I groaned.

“Morning, Sarge,” Lem said. I heard two clanking footsteps and his face appeared above me, beaming.

“What the hell is this, Lem?” I demanded.

“Nanobot vest, sir,” Lem said. “Patching you up.”

“Nano–? Lem I expressly forbid you to get these. Do you remember that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So what the hell is this thing doing on my chest?”

“Repairing you, sir,” Lem said.

“Right, well…” I started. “Right. Let’s make sure we find somewhere out of the way to store it.”

“Right, sir,” Lem said. “Thank you sir.”

“Lem,” I said, and my brain got hung up for a moment, unsure which question mattered most. 

“The Navy took heavy losses and pulled the orange boys out. The shark followed them back to the ship and got scared off by the long guns. It’s still out there.” 

I grunted. 

“But so are we,” I said.

“Yessir,” Lem replied. I could hear the self-satisfied grin on his face. “Best to rest, sir. We can go take another look tomorrow.”

I  grunted again, then closed my eyes and lay still, trying to ignore the itch.

Two divers in the ruins of a drowned city. (graphic by StarryAI)