Doomsday Hunter 4, page 16
“Mother had you busy with your political studies and learning to take her place, but…” Milly shrugged and then smiled warmly at her sister. “I’m happy to be in your shadow if that means I can also be in the lab.”
“You know I’ll need your help one day when I’m on the council,” Maurya said as she smiled back. “You won’t just be locked up in this lab.”
“Then I look forward to the day I can do both,” Milly chuckled.
“I’m going to stay here and guide you all to the shipwreck,” Castor cut in as he started the mission brief. “There will be debris that needs clearing, and now that we have a group of six in mech suits, you should be able to successfully push the vessel into the trench without it falling incorrectly.”
The neon green-haired scientist quickly tapped at the electronic tablet he was holding, and a huge blue hologram of the shipwreck suddenly illuminated the room.
“Wow…” Daphne muttered, and she instinctively blinked her big black eyes at the flickering blue light.
“Milly and I calculated the angle at which the shipwreck is pointed,” Castor continued. “You can see here, the weight in the hull is the only thing keeping the wreck on the edge of this cliff. If it were to fall to the starboard side, it would crash into the edge of the city and disrupt the air pocket.”
“Can’t have you pink-skins drowning on my watch,” Milly snickered. “That would look awful on my resume.”
“What’s in the hull?” Tracey asked.
“Good question,” Milly replied. “We don’t know. It’s always been too dangerous for the city to search it. But whatever is in there is heavy enough to counterbalance the rest of the ship.”
“Sunken treasure?” Natalie questioned with an eager grin.
“I hope it’s treasure,” Maurya chuckled. “You guys deserve something for helping my mother with this.”
“Much as I wanna impress your mother,” I started, “I wouldn’t say no to a chest full of gold.”
“An honest man, interesting.” Milly waggled her eyebrows knowingly at Maurya, who blushed.
“The shipwreck has been here for centuries,” Castor continued. “It’s actually made quite an interesting study for marine life, but Lady Everfinn can’t risk it piercing the air pocket and disrupting the pressure within the city. If the shipwreck falls into Anadonis, the city will be completely uninhabitable for Sunfolk, which would be disastrous, given the impending summit.”
“Just stick with me, and we should be fine.” Milly grinned through her glass helmet at us.
“I’ll be here keeping an eye on your vitals,” Castor assured us as we all walked over to the water portal. “Your suits are fitted with a mag-lock that homes onto the archway should you get into any kind of trouble. Just hit the blue button in the center of your chest.”
“I feel like Iron Man,” I snickered to myself.
“There won’t be any trouble, Cas.” Milly rolled her eyes playfully at her friend. “Absolute scaredy-fish, this one.”
“It’s my job to look after you, Miss Everfinn,” Castor insisted, and Milly shoved him in the arm.
“The hormones in this room…” Natalie snickered until Milly rounded on her next.
“Don’t make me shove you, too,” Maurya’s younger sister warned, but there was no seriousness in her voice, and she ended up giggling with her back to Castor the scientist.
“We can wrestle when we’re done here,” Natalie said with a grin. “I’d love to see you try.”
“Are all your friends this boisterous, Maurya?” Milly asked her older sister, and my newest Wayfarer mate chuckled.
“Natalie is perfectly polite around mother,” Maurya said. “She can just sense your impropriety.”
“Says you, bringing a group of Sunfolk down here the day before the summit,” Milly quickly shot back with a smirk, and Maurya blushed deeply. “And I’m the improper one?”
“Enough, you two,” I chuckled at the two bickering Fishfolk sisters. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Just jump through the portal,” Castor instructed us once we were all suited up, and he continued to tap on his tablet. “Once you’re all out, I’ll set up the group comms.”
“Ready?” Maurya asked me gently.
“Ladies first.” I winked at the green-skinned Fishfolk woman.
“If you insist,” she giggled with a tip of her head, and then she casually hopped into the rippling wall of water.
I watched her tumble gracefully in a full three-sixty before she spread her arms wide to steady herself in the water, and her image was distorted by the ripple effect of the water portal. She looked ethereal and beautiful, so I immediately jumped after her through the golden archway.
As I stepped into the waters surrounding Anadonis, I felt the weightlessness take hold of my body, but my silvership suit kept me completely dry, so it felt more like I was floating, or flying, rather than swimming. Then I watched as the rest of my Wayfarers passed through the wall of water, and eventually the six of us were bobbing in the deep ocean beside the golden portal.
Castor waved at us through the archway and then hit a button on his tablet.
“Testing, testing…” The green-haired scientist’s voice sounded inside my helmet.
“Reading you loud and clear, Cas.” I waved at him, and he gave a brief thumbs-up from where he still stood inside the lab.
“Everyone comfortable and breathing okay?” Milly asked us as we floated in the water, and my Wayfarers and I all gave resounding nods and mutters of agreement.
“I’ve never been out in one of these suits before,” Maurya marveled, and she twisted her body so she dipped and twirled in the water like a professional gymnast. “It’s an odd feeling, swimming while being perfectly dry.”
“Just a perk of being a nerd, then, isn’t it?” Milly laughed and rolled her eyes as her older sister continued to dance in the water. “Come on, everyone, let’s go find this shipwreck.”
Milly swam ahead, and we all followed through the dark waters. We were fully outside of the Anadonian air pocket now, so the pressure should have been squeezing us like a fist, and it should have been freezing cold, but the silvership mech suits Milly had fitted us all with made it feel as though we were still comfortably inside her lab.
But even with the pale glow of the city at our backs, the waters before us were pitch black. There were no light spheres or bioluminescent blue algae out in the deep, just dark murky water and the odd peripheral movement that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I decided to keep my eyes on Milly and Maurya where they floated easily ahead of us, and I kept on swimming until I could barely see my Wayfarers around me.
Then Milly’s voice sounded within our helmets.
“Press the button on your left wrist, the blue gemstone one,” the younger Everfinn told us, and we all quickly obeyed.
“Holy shit…” I muttered, and I watched in awe as my group of girls started to materialize around me.
The suits emitted the same sapphire-blue glow I’d seen on Maurya’s beautiful skin when we had first traveled to Anadonis, and as the blue light encased us all, I could finally see Milly’s smug grin properly.
“We could’ve fitted flashlights, but where’s the fun in that?” the younger Fishfolk woman chuckled.
“This is so cool!” Natalie did a somersault and turned into a pinwheel of color.
“C’mon, the shipwreck is a little further on and then up,” Milly said, and she darted effortlessly through the water ahead of us.
Now that we had a little light to guide us, I could truly appreciate the underwater wonders Dimension Two Thousand and Thirty-Five had to offer.
I noticed there were no red or orange colors to be seen this deep, and I figured it was probably due to the fact our only light source was the blue bioluminescence on our silvership suits. There was no natural light down here to give us the full color spectrum, so we were in a permanent realm of dark murky blues and deep greens.
Our diving group passed over a huge bed of coral that looked eerily similar to an ancient burial site. The reef itself was made up of long skeletal fingers of bone-white coral that stretched on for what looked like miles, and their translucent fingers reached up and around us like giant zombified hands. I watched a couple of weird-looking starfish around the ghostly reef, with their own limbs as creepy and bony-looking as the coral bed itself, and I spotted a long rippling water snake far below us. It was dark gray and slimy-looking with small black eyes, and I watched as it darted expertly through the oceanic boneyard.
We passed the creepy reef and swam around a huge wall of rocks covered in almost completely transparent fish that pecked and darted around the cliff face. The light from our silvership suits passed almost completely through them, and their tiny eyes were translucent and almost completely empty of color. They didn’t pay us any attention as we swam past, and just continued to blindly bump their tiny mouths into the rock.
“The shipwreck should loom in front of you soon,” Castor said through the intercom, and the sudden sound of his voice made me almost jump out of my skin.
“Jesus, Cas…” I muttered, and Maurya let out a slightly wobbly laugh.
“Sorry,” the Fishfolk scientist said into our helmets.
“It’s okay, you just made me jump,” I chuckled nervously.
“It’s perfectly normal for you to feel out of place,” Milly half-whispered as she floated beside me. “You don’t belong. Hell, even Maurya and I feel nervous outside the air pocket, and we’re more suited for this environment.”
“It’s fucking creepy,” Natalie said bluntly, and I let out another laugh again.
“I mean, you’re not wrong,” I told the Scavenger, and she smiled grimly back at me through her glass helmet.
“Come on, the ship is on the cliff just ahead,” Milly said to us confidently, and she swam a little further ahead to guide us along. “I know we seem a little far from the city, but the cliff is tall, and the shipwreck is angled toward Anadonis, like I’ve mentioned before.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but then I heard something.
An incredibly faint melody that sounded out through the deep water like a melancholy siren song.
“It’s a whale!” Tracey gasped. “Listen!”
“You’re right!” Maurya whispered in reply.
We stopped swimming and hovered in the water for a moment as the six of us listened intently.
The whale’s voice sounded as though it were miles away and close all at the same time. The ghostly song echoed through the water continuously as the unseen animal called out to its friends, and I listened as it changed pitch and reverberated in the water around us.
I couldn’t help the smile that crept onto my face as we listened to the incredible animal’s eerie singing. I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d ever get to hear a whale’s song below the ocean’s surface.
“It’s beautiful,” Daphne whispered, and I could see tears glittering on her cheeks behind the glass of her helmet. Her eyes had become huge and black in the incredible darkness of the deep waters, and I realized her evolutionary trait had instinctively kicked in.
“Let’s keep moving,” Milly said quietly, and we reluctantly followed as the younger Everfinn started to swim upwards.
The pressure lessened a little as we ascended, and then suddenly, an underwater cliff face just emerged out of the incredible darkness before us.
The ocean floor had disappeared completely as we found ourselves floating above the giant underwater cliff, and I could see the faint glow of the city of Anadonis down and to our left.
“You should see the wreck soon,” Castor told us, and I noticed he now kept his voice soft and quiet.
“I think I see it already,” Maurya muttered, and she pointed out ahead of our group.
The sunken vessel was ginormous.
It was a massive galleon ship, with three huge masts that must have been at least a hundred feet long, and the huge wooden pillars reached out into the ocean above as if it were desperately trying to claw their way to the surface again. The ocean had bit into the old ship and eroded the wood of the hull and deck, and it looked like the ship had been half-eaten by the water. The remains were covered in marine life as schools of tiny silver fish darted in and out of the empty windows of the cabin, and I could see the same creepy skeleton coral we’d passed earlier had found its home on one side of the hull.
The thick patches of algae and seaweed swayed gently in the water like specters beckoning us forward, and a forest of translucent jellyfish suddenly sprouted from the decking like a swarm of ghosts.
“Ghostfish,” Milly muttered darkly as she watched the forest of jellies float away. “Steer clear of those.”
“You don’t say,” I replied with a forced laugh.
The massive shipwreck clung to the edge of the rocky cliff, with half of the hull hanging over the empty blackness below, and I was grateful for the fact we were suspended in the water.
I didn’t fancy climbing this thing for real and having a situation like The Italian Job.
“Let’s go and investigate the hull of this old girl, shall we?” Milly turned in the water to face us with a maniacal grin.
“You’re a thrill seeker,” Tracey giggled with her own laugh sounding a little crazed.
“Life would be pretty boring otherwise,” the younger Everfinn answered with a casual shrug.
“I’m starting to agree with you,” Maurya said to her sister with her own smirk, and the green-skinned Wayfarer shot me a wink as she swam gracefully past me.
As we got closer to the sunken ship, I noticed the name carved into the half-rotted stern, still visible despite the murky green algae that covered most of the vessel.
“The Mermaid’s Lament!” I gasped. “Hey, we stayed at a tavern with that name on the surface!”
“You think maybe this ship belonged to the Sunfolk?” Milly asked as she swam beneath the stern and through the hull itself.
“Would that maybe explain why it’s sunk on the edge of your city?” Natalie asked as we all followed the younger Everfinn through the skeleton of the ship.
“It’s been here for, well, it must be centuries now,” Maurya commented beside me. “Though tensions have always been high between the city and the surface, even centuries ago.”
“I’m starting to wonder why this ship was sunk in the first place…” I murmured as the six of us swam through the belly of the vessel.
Giant shrimp-looking creatures scuttled away from us as we disturbed the water, and another small school of tiny silverfish dispersed around our group the further we swam into the ancient shipwreck.
“Milly?” I heard Tracey’s voice sound within my helmet. “Maurya?”
The two Fishfolk sisters immediately swam over to where my programmer Wayfarer peered around an eroded section of the hull, and Natalie, Daphne, and I all followed suit.
Nestled within the empty hull and surrounded with tiny fish and shrimp was a large mechanical pod, big enough to hold at least a couple of people, with cracked windows and murky green algae covering every surface.
Maurya wiped her hand across the curved side of the mechanical pod and pushed the slimy algae away, and we all saw the once shiny golden metal it was made from.
“This is one of ours,” Maurya gasped. “It’s from the city.”
“A super old one, but it’s definitely one of our pods,” Milly confirmed. “Maybe a mark two hundred?”
“Two hundred?” Maurya questioned. “How old would that make it?”
“About five years old,” Milly replied with a nod. “That timeframe checks out on the algae patterns.”
“What’s it doing in this shipwreck, though?” Daphne asked in a confused tone, and the two Fishfolk sisters shared a look at the curly-haired woman’s question.
“I’m not sure,” Milly said grimly. “But it can’t be good. I’m gonna take a sample of algae so we can date it at least. I just don’t know why we found one of these out here.”
“But surely you’ve been out to investigate this shipwreck before?” Tracey questioned.
“Never in person,” Milly replied. “I’ve always just been told to steer clear of this wreck on the off-chance it could damage the city, and if our ancestors did send an expedition out here, I couldn’t find any records of it.
“So we wanna know who the hell in the city took a pod out here, and why.” I sighed in realization, and both Milly and Maurya nodded with concerned expressions. “That does sound weird.”
“Uhm, scratch weird,” Natalie suddenly said from behind us. “Replace it with something a little more concerning.”
Natalie curled in the water and swam over to maybe the only intact section of the old ship’s hull a little way away from the shuttle pod. She hovered above what looked like another section of brownish-green coral reef, but she pointed down to the side that faced us.
I swam over to her so the bioluminescent light shining from my silvership suit could illuminate what Natalie was pointing at, and I realized what I thought had been another chunk of coral was actually several wooden barrels all branded with the Anadonian mark of an ‘A’ inside a perfect circle.
“That looks exactly like--” Tracey started in a low voice.
“Barrels of gunpowder,” Natalie finished, and the blonde Scavenger had a grim expression on her face.
“Probably just part of the ship’s cargo,” Maurya explained as she peered at the algae-covered barrels.
“That’d be nice, but no,” I sighed. “Look at the state of the ship. This is weather-worn, properly treated wood, and it’s still rotted away over the centuries. These barrels are pretty much good to go, so they’ve probably been here as long as that pod has.”
“You think someone abandoned a shuttle pod and a mountain of gunpowder in this shipwreck five years ago?” Milly demanded.
“Well, it can’t have been Sunfolk,” I explained with a shrug. “Both the pod and the powder belong to the Fishfolk.”
“So, you’re saying someone from the city put them here?” Maurya asked me, and I watched her face wrinkle adorably in confusion. “I know there’s always been a rivalry between Sunfolk and Fishfolk, but you’re saying Fishfolk put barrels of their own gunpowder in this old shipwreck to… what? Threaten their own home?”
