Salvage

  SALVAGE

  Chris Howard

  For Alice

  There were sailors who knew how to count these things,

  but they knew no songs strong enough to tame the sea,

  and they spent their voices counting their breaths to the last . . .

  —Tychasis, from Count More Than the Tides

  Copyright © 2013 by Chris Howard.

  Cover photography by Nicolas Raymond, with additional imagery from Shutterstock.

  Title set in Ferrum by Sora Sagano.

  Author’s name set in Dirty Ego by Eduardo Recife.

  Cover design by Sherin Nicole.

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-503-1

  Masque Books

  www.masque-books.com

  Masque Books is an imprint of Prime Books

  www.prime-books.com

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, contact:

  [email protected]

  Chapter One

  No Songs Strong Enough

  The eighty-meter rig support ship Serina Beliz was homeward bound, pushing through the smooth seas of the Yucatan Channel about twenty miles off western Cuba, when she suddenly shuddered to a crawl, rocking forward and back, her own wake rolling over the low stern in a wash of white foam across the decks. The Serina pitched in the shallow swells, shipping water, the sea moving heavy and sluggish through the crane mounts and swinging chain.

  Still up on the bridge, Captain Valentin Nersesian jammed down the callbox button: “Chief? What is this?” A rush of noise and static, then a man’s shouting voice that sounded like “me cago en el mar.”

  Nersesian’s voice came out calm, but the effort to keep the fear locked down poked through in a couple of places, like jagged wedges of rock off a dangerous cape. “I have the helm.” He gestured astern, catching the eye of the second mate standing at the nav. “Santo, check on the chief, please.”

  The second returned a concerned nod and dashed off, cutting around the captain’s chair to take the bridge stairs two at a time. Nersesian scanned the navigation screens again—Automatic Identification System traffic, weather view—and twisted around to grab his coffee, still calm.

  It wasn’t time to panic. Not yet.

  The captain had one arm reaching back for the mug in the cup holder, his fingers inches away from the handle, and then he sensed something . . . wrong, a prickling up the arms and around his collar. It made him snap back to the navigation controls, scanning the depth numbers, ship movement, anything out of place.

  All the electronics blew, a series of dull thumps behind the panels, screens dying, and the stink of burning insulation. Then a sharp clicking, the snap of stressed plastics in some of the instruments as they cycled through superheating and cooling.

  Captain Nersesian’s gaze moved over at the panels; he saw nothing but blank screens, the entire navigation space unlit, empty of data and information. He looked up, disoriented for a moment—like an airline pilot who had been relying on instruments the whole flight suddenly looking out over the nose of the plane to see what was coming.

  And then being surprised by . . . Nothing.

  He frowned at the empty sea, light weather, bands of thinning clouds way out. It was almost impossible to believe.

  The captain leaned forward, closer to the windows, and the horizon jumped, a shift in his balance that made him grab the nav panel.

  The line of dark blue at the world’s edge moved into the sky. He felt the motion in the floor under his boots.

  It wasn’t the water rising. It was his ship falling. Nersesian spent a second on the idea that falling was the correct word; sinking didn’t seem to apply, because the Serina didn’t list or pitch steeply. She seemed to be going straight down with a level hull, and he didn’t know what to call that—except that it wasn’t sinking.

  He punched the distress horn—compressed air-driven—seven short and one long blast that repeated every ten seconds, and then he was pushing through the nearest door, skidding along the railing on the portside. The Serina was already deep in the water, and sliding lower. By the time he grabbed the bar at the stairway, the Caribbean was creeping over the hull on three sides, spilling into the ship evenly, smooth falls of seawater moving gracefully over the broad, flat deck.

  He met his first officer, Adista, at the bottom of the stairs.

  She just looked at him, but didn’t bother saying, “Ship’s taking water, Captain,” because it was already up to her knees. She just gestured at the coils of foam and blue, one eyebrow raised, more curious than afraid.

  Then she waded toward the bow, up the stairs and back the way he had just come.

  He wanted to ask her what she was planning to do, but then the whole world went sluggish, his own muscles fighting against a heaviness that settled over him, everything gliding in slow motion around him as if the air was thick as oil. The shrill of the abandon-ship tones smeared into the roar of water and motion around the ship, breaking, and sounding far away.

  The sky darkened with a web of sleek crisscrossing shapes, like birds without wings, thousands of them shooting from the surrounding sea, threading a domed pattern over the ship.

  He moved past the back stairs to stand under the aft side of the ship’s superstructure, the wings of the pilothouse jutting out on each side against the closing sky. He was pointing up to the freefall boat, the only safe way off the Serina, but everyone seemed to share his slow-motion prison—except two of the crew, his first officer and her friend Tychasis, both of them experienced hands from Rhodes.

  Tychasis crawled up from the stores, wading through the water, “Something in the sea, Captain. I can hear the motion . . . biologika. They are pulling the ship below.” He gestured vigorously to the deck. When he looked up at the thickening web across the sky, he froze, staring for a moment, and then his knees gave way. A reflexive grab for the rail failed, and he fell back into the flood, skidding across the deck under the rising sea.

  The captain had one hand out, too slow to help. Water up to his thighs, unable to move, Nersesian just stared down at Ty, because the Greek wasn’t making sense. Biologic? They? More than one? Or is he talking about the thousands of shapes in the sky?

  Behind him, the chief engineer stumbled through the stern door, dark coveralls soaked through, and he was dragging the lifeless body of his assistant. The chief coughed up water between weeping and cursing in Spanish, gesturing behind him while he stared up at the ink-black lines of diamond-shaped shadows folding over the ship. The sea was pouring in below decks, into the engine room. He coughed and shouted above the roar of the flood. “She’s shut down, Captain!”

  Nersesian wheeled and staggered back as Adista landed in the water beside him, seawater blasted out of her way. It was as if she had jumped off the control tower to the deck; she moved with purpose and power, the sea itself obeying her and clearing a path for her. The rest of the world continued in slow motion, and Captain Nersesian worked against it at the same syrup-thick speed. He had no time to react as Adista cupped her hands over his ears, pulling his face to hers, eyes locked on his, her curiosity gone—madness and terror replacing it. “Do not be afraid, Captain. We will try to set you free.”

  Then she was screaming over the thunder for Ty to help her.

  Something was drumming against the ship like the hooves of an army of galloping horses. Nersesian tried to turn, didn’t want his back to whatever was pulling his ship under, but Adista yanked him toward her. The cold reached up and stopped his breathing; the air darkened around him. Adista was sobbing, tears running down her cheeks.

  Choking out a long stream of words—almost a song—Tychasis had
crawled through the water across the deck to them and climbed to his feet, eyes wild, blood running from his mouth. There was a rush of noise, the red pushing through his teeth went black, and the faraway sun cast vivid blue stripes across his face.

  They were underwater; the drumming sounded more like laughter now, and Captain Nersesian opened his mouth to the sea and closed his eyes against the cold.

  The Serina Beliz didn’t roll, or even list to one side or the other. She was spinning gently, clockwise, and then something monstrous pulled her through six hundred fathoms to the bottom of the Caribbean.

  Three days later, World Maritime News reported that the Serina Beliz, bound for Port Fourchon, Louisiana, made one routine port communication from the Yucatan Strait around 1400, broadcasting no sign of distress, and that was the last contact from the platform support vessel. US Coast Guard and SEMAR jointly conducted sweeps for survivors or wreckage and found nothing. Valentin Nersesian, captain of the Serina Beliz, and a crew of eight were presumed lost with the vessel.

  Chapter Two

  The Recovery of the Serina Beliz

  “Hey Rusty, what d’ya got for us?” Captain Jay Wilraven pressed the phone against his ear and listened intently, trying to cut out the machine noise from the deck. “I’m standing on the Marcene. Where else would you find me?” He stamped on the floor of the bridge with one cleated boot just to emphasize the point, and then turned to kick the portside door closed. The room suddenly went quiet. “The Irabarren is in the Gulf side, berthed in Tampa. Adam said call her for any job. No, I’m not going to sit down. What’s up?”

  Wilraven glanced over at his first officer, Angelo, whose demeanor changed from mild interest to wide-eyed questioning when he saw the captain’s unguarded expression. Wilraven looked away, toward the unlit video panels and instruments and then through the bridge windows of the salvage ship Marcene. His gaze roamed anxiously along the sunny Fort Lauderdale docks, never stopping or focusing on any of the other vessels and stacked cargo containers.

  When Wilraven thumbed off the call ten minutes later, he was breathing hard and finally turned to his first, giving him a nod.

  Angelo made an open-handed gesture. “What is it, Cap?”

  “A well-known ghost. We’re going to raise the dead.”

  Wilraven shut the door of his tiny cabin, locked it, and pulled open the workspace, a wide shelf that slid out from the wall with all his shit on it: stacks of hardcopy bills, manifests, not very neatly folded charts, ship’s plans, colored pencils, logs, port inspection papers. His old aluminum Mac was open in the middle of it, humming. He tapped the touchpad and videoed the Ocean Eight Salvage head office in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

  Rusty Vaneaton’s face swam into view: square jaw, circular wire-rim glasses, short spiky angles of reddish-blond hair sticking up all over the place. No smile this time—and Rusty was the smiling sort. Even on a bad day.

  Wilraven returned the serious look and was about to ask the one question he hadn’t asked over the phone, but Rusty—who ran logistics from the company office in Portsmouth—jumped in first with standard stay-on-task info for any job.

  “Hey, Cap. I’ve arranged food, water, a regular supply schedule. We are going to need the cranes. April will be out to see you this afternoon. She’s with the Carla, doing a lot of platform work, but she says she’s free enough the next two weeks to keep us supplied. She’s already talking to Corkran.”

  There was a pause, and then Rusty seemed to burst with questions and information, as if he could no longer keep in the details the captain needed to know. “Have you done anything for Wade Corkran before? He really is an odd one, called this morning asking specifically for ‘Captain Success’—you. He’s got money, so no concern over getting paid. He won’t agree to the Lloyd’s form, but sent his own agreement over this morning—along with an upfront allowance, which our attorneys required in order to move on this. Legal’s still going over the agreement, but it’s pretty much signed and ready to act on. Here’s his number—secure line. He wants to talk face to face, but I’d cabin his call. And damn, he’s working a really tight schedule. Wants the thing done inside two weeks. With high security.”

  Wilraven tapped his fingers on the desk, rubbing his eyes. There was a long space of thoughtful silence, and then he said, “I know the name. Know he made a lot, mostly Caribbean freight. I never worked for him or any charter of his. Did you tell him I knew Val? Captain Nersesian?”

  There was a long stretch of silence, and then Rusty sighed. “Look, I don’t know if it matters, but I had the feeling Corkran didn’t need to know. He started asking questions about the Serina—like if we’d heard of the ship, heard about her last charter. I told him we saw the news a few months back.”

  Like everyone else.

  It was strange that the loss seemed so long ago, when it was actually only two-and-a-half months—ten weeks. There had been no follow-up investigation, no continued surface or subsea searching, nothing. Almost as if the Serina had never existed.

  The captain didn’t answer for a minute, still trying to pick apart Corkran’s interest—and really, how the fuck this old wealthy run-aground shipper knew where to find the Serina Beliz when—within a day of her sinking—the US Coast Guard with several vessels and choppers, as well as a frigate with escorts and half-a-dozen patrol boats from Mexico’s Gulfside naval ops, couldn’t find one scrap of her or her crew on the sea.

  Rusty came back flustered. “I know, Cap; I know you’re a play-it-clear sort. I hope I didn’t get you in trouble.”

  Wilraven laughed grimly, and Rusty shut up. “Don’t worry about it. Probably better if Corkran doesn’t know how well I knew the Serina and her captain.”

  Chapter Three

  Not Alone in the Water

  Jon Andreden was playing with expensive toys half a kilometer off the California coast and thirty meters down when he realized he and Theo weren’t alone.

  “I’m live, Martin. Start the sense tests from the top. I want to see a boot, enviro check, and how long Theo takes to load and understand the first task,” Andreden said into his mouthpiece. “Let’s see his reaction to waking up away from the lab and deep in the water.”

  Andreden clutched the neoprene half-ring in his teeth, trying to hold onto it, breathe, and talk at the same time.

  “Ninety seconds to reset, Jon.” Martin’s voice came in clearly through his earpiece. Martin Allievi was up in the sea lab. “I’ll let you know when Theo completes the boot.”

  “Good.”

  Andreden looked up through the frame of the mask. Far above him, the feathery yellow and brown bands of kelp formed the roof of a marine forest, swaying, pulling, and dropping in a gyratory dance with the tidal surge. As the crest of each wave passed overhead, shafts of sunlight shot through every tiny opening between the tangled seaweed stipes and blades, almost reaching the diver and the machine at the bottom. With every passing swell, the canopy of the kelp forest folded into itself and darkened the floor of Monterey Bay.

  The machine—Theo—drifted in front of Andreden. About half the size of a man, its body was made up of a tight bundle of tubes and spherical organs; jointed limbs and fist-like claws tucked up defensively against its face and sides like a pugilist starting a round in the boxing ring.

  Andreden and Martin even called the default posture Put up your dukes.

  Theo was still in the prototype phase, which usually ran long for intelligent underwater machines capable of extended autonomous activity. It was one of Andreden’s personal projects, and he had quietly ignored concerns in the dive center about being out in the water alone.

  Alone?

  He would have said he was out in the water with Theo.

  The project team’s concerns weren’t entirely unfounded. The scenario testing was just out of alpha, and this was one of a series of runs he and Theo and Martin were going through. Several of the prior tests had ended abruptly with mechanical and software failures, typical problems that appeared i
n early testing.

  When Theo ultimately functioned without errors, he would be able to perform planned underwater tasks for years: everything from wide-area search-and-rescue tasks to continuous monitoring of seafloor cables and pipelines to tracking and counting individual species of marine fish or mammals.

  The machine’s name, Theo, was stenciled in blue paint on one of the side plates of its body, just above the Knowledgenix logo: three waves circling each other.

  Martin’s voice cut in. “Okay, reset’s complete. Theo’s a go.”

  Andreden’s fingers worked the backlit keyboard on his wrist, and he looked over at the mechanical arms and video eyes. He started the day’s run.

  “Confirmed. Theo’s lit up.”

  The machine unfolded its arms into a ready position, manipulators in front. It circled slowly, opening and closing its fingers, extended its body into the low-drag speed config, then curled back into the default compact, blocky look. Andreden watched the machine motion a few meters away while drifting in the surge, holding his breath when he glanced down at the scrolling text on the logging screen on his arm.

  Theo dropped heavily, and then rose higher in the water column, above Andreden, testing its buoyancy functions. It stopped and faced the man in the dive suit and mask.

  And then it spoke. “Hello, Jon.” He even sounded like a Theo. He had been given a polished male voice, an educated west coast American tone and inflection.

  Andreden released a breath with a burst of bubbles and gave him the thumbs up.

  Theo acknowledged the sign. “Everything is functioning properly.”

  “Good to hear. Give me some environment data, Theo.”

  “Atmospheres: 10.16. Depth: 21.2 meters. Temp: 53.9 degrees Fahrenheit. Latitude: 36.808 North. Longitude: 121.798 West. We are north of Monterey, California, about a kilometer from the Knowledgenix lab.”

  “Fahrenheit?”

  “Twelve point one six Celsius.”

  “Good. What are you going to do today?”