Chapter 11: Submarine

"Alright, you two. You should be reaching the bottom any moment now." Josh told them bringing their attentions out of their books.

Fiercly glad that she wasn't afraid of the dark, Joe turned around and situated herself before the controls.

Kai flipped a switch on the side of the wall after she nodded to him that she was ready and the entire vessel was plunged into darkness.

She heard one screen being lifted over the window on Kai's side, then she felt his body heat as he climbed over her to lift the shade on her side window.

The she felt his weight join hers along the length of the floor and the shade of the main window being lifted.

She couldn't see a thing, not even the buttons in front of her were lit. She would be relying completely on Kai for all of the buttons to push.

"Ready, Kyma?" she heard his voice say softly from the darkness. Like the first time in the simulator, it was strangely intimate.

"I'm ready."

Kai could see fine. There weren't any colors, everything was gray or black, but he could see. Kyma was looking without seeing out the window. About 2000 feet ago, the merfolk accompanying them had let them sink alone unable to swim down any further.

The sea floor lay before them, rippled and vast. Had the lights been on, they would have illuminated a small circle around them. With them off, Kai could see the vast expanse of sea floor.

The lights weren't in view, they had landed on the other side of a sand dune that was just large enough to block their view of it and its view of them, if it could see.

"Alright, we'll hit bottom in a few seconds." he said.

"'K." Kyma nodded.

She didn't look afraid anymore, for that he was glad. He didn't like that she would fear what was home to him. Now she looked purposeful as she prepared herself for the thud that rocked the sub when it hit the sandy bottom.

A thick cloud of ocean silt rose when it did and its occupants rocked a bit with the force of it.

"Let's go forward, nice and easy." Kai said.

Her hands were deft and skillful as they moved along the control panel before her. She felt each control, rarely were any two the same, and her mouth moved silently as she counted rows and columns looking for what she wanted.

Beside her, doing the steering while she powered the propellers, Kai moved his hands quickly and efficiently over the control board.

Slowly, nothing really moved fast at the pressure of 10,000 feet below sea level, the sub started forward.

"Are we moving?" Kyma asked, able to feel the propellers but unable to see if they were working.

"We're moving." Kai nodded once as he started to move the sub forward.

"You two doing all right?" Josh asked.

Kyma fumbled for a second to find the speaker button, pressed it, and said, "We're fine, Josh. Let's try to keep radio silence as much as possible. Remember, we don't know what it is."

"Roger. We'll keep monitoring things from up here."

Kyma returned to her task.

It was silent, but it wasn't uncomfortable. Neither of them felt the need to make conversation. Kai wasn't really much of a talker and Joe was concentrating on her task. It was an easy silence the kind it took most people years to be able to achieve together.

Normally, Joe would have been desperate for conversation to break the silence of the deep darkness. But the book she had started on said that while communication was a necessity for humans, it wasn't so much for the merfolk. Silence was something the merfolk were well versed in and very comfortable with. And Joe found she liked the silence. It was calm and peaceful and feeling his body heat right next to her was extremely nice.

And now that she was here, now that she was doing it, all the fears she had had before about deep sea subbing were just gone.

They were in a world of their own, just the two of them, and it was wonderful.

"What's that?" Kai said suddenly.

Kyma blinked and lifted her head. "What's what?"

"There's something in the sand." Kai said, turning the sub a bit and directing it towards the thing he had spotted.

He almost missed it, it was buried under the silt. But, where a particularly deep ripple was, the smooth piece of it was exposed.

As Kai got closer, he recognized it.

"It's a cable wire." he said.

There was no cable wire here, at least none that was documented. There wasn't supposed to be.

By the direction, it was headed right towards the lights.

Organic things didn't need cable wires.

"Living things don't need wiring." Kyma mimicked his thoughts. "Can you tap it?"

"We didn't dive with the right equipment." Kai said regretfully.

"We'll have to remember to do that next time." Kyma said.

"Drop a locator." Kai told her. He didn't want to lose the position of the wire, something all to easily done on the endless, markless ocean floor.

He held the sub steady as Kyma moved ove of the mechanical arms. He directed her towards it, telling her left, right, forward.

When she had the mechanical arm over the spot just a few feet from the wire. He told her to drop it. A small compartment, that filled with water as they descended to avoid the pressure breaking anything, opened and a tiny locator dropped into the sand right next to the cable.

When they returned, they would just have to follow the locators signal and they could find it easy.

"See if you can dig a little more of it up." Kai said.

Working double team again, he moved the sub closer and directed her movements.

The mechanical arms, while made of metal, were also designed to handle delicate objects such as retrieving glass or leather from sunken ships. Neither of them worried about damaging the cable as it moved sand off of it.

The sand wasn't like sand closer to the surface on beaches. It wasn't granulated so much as a clay. It was thicker, compact from the pressure of the water, and pushing it aside was like forming dough. Even as she moved it, it started to stretch back to its original position.

But she kept at it until about five feet of the cable was uncovered.

Deep sea cables weren't very big, it was a miracle Kai had spotted it at all. They couldn't be large or the pressures at the depth they were at would have a greater chance of destroying the thing. It was only about two inches in diameter. Tapping it would be a relatively simple task that they could have performed if anyone had thought to put the tap onto the sub before they sank.

Kai looked at it for a few moments, unable to do anything but stare, before he decided it was time to go and look at the lights.

"All right," he said to Kyma, "that's good. We'll bring back a ta-"

"Guys, mayday! Mayday! There's a sub coming your way! A big one!"

Josh's panicked voice came over the comm. system and Kai cursed.

"A sub? A real sub?" Kyma looked panicked.

"Powering down." Kai said, hitting a series of buttons cutting off communication, killing the power to the motors, and letting the sub sink to the ground. He was suddenly extremely glad Kyma had decided to forgo lights for their dives.

"I can't believe I forgot." Kyma smacked her head in a bout of self-depreciation. Jack had told her that submarines made their way to the lights periodically. She didn't think of that when she decided to go diving. If they caught their pattern of dive/no dive it would only make sense that they send their submarines in on the no dive days.

"I don't think they'll be able to see us." Kai soothed her. The manned sub was small, tiny compared to a submarine, the likely hood of it appearing on a radar was slim.

But it was still possible.

"Is it here yet?" Kyma whispered as if afraid that it might hear.

Kai didn't see it out the main window, he stood and peeked out the other two but saw nothing.

He looked back and Kyma was looking past his shoulder in the darkness that she couldn't see in, trying to see what he was doing.

"I can't see it." he told her.

If the submarine incoming was actively looking for something, there was no way they could avoid detection. If not, there was a chance they wouldn't notice the mini-sub.

Kyma reached her hand out into the air, searching for him.

He took it in his own and knelt down beside her and she climbed into his arms.

They were a tense few minutes.

Josh hadn't told them how far off the submarine was and Kai had disconnected communications so he couldn't ask. A signal from the surface was too easily picked up by subs, Kai didn't want his position given away when he could just wait it out.

They felt the submarine before they heard it and heard it before he saw it.

Underwater, submarines could be very loud, especially up close.

The felt the rumble of its engines vibrating them before they heard the echoing sound of it moving through the water.

Then Kai saw it coming right towards them through the main window.

It was a typical sized submarine, about the length of a football field and only about fifty feet off the bottom of the sea floor.

Kyma gasped as she heard it, it wasn't the quietest of machines, as it reached them. It seemed to be following the path of the cable line like it was an arrow pointing the thing towards the lights.

Kai watched, Kyma in his arms listening in fear, as the enormous metal contraption passed directly over them.

After it passed over them, Kai couldn't see it anymore, but he knew it was sailing over the sand dune right towards the lights.

And he held Kyma, afraid to power up the sub for worry of being spotted and unable to do anything but wait.