*
They stood at the tunnel access doorway to the submersible berthed outside, looking into a corridor now fully drained of water. Turok activated the pocket in the floor and pressed the only other nozzle there. The round doorway irised open. There was no sudden flooding of air into the tunnel though it felt a good ten degrees cooler when they walked inside. The chill of the ocean at this depth could not entirely be kept at bay. The corridor walls were flexible enough for the tunnel to be retractable, joining its far end to any of a range of differently-sized submersibles. The material that formed the walls was lighter than the thick acrylic synth-glass in the lounge windows, or the fiber-acrylic of Oceangate’s walls. The tunnel seemed a sturdy, reliable structure suited to its purpose – even so, the impenetrable blackness of the water outside felt heavier, closer here. When they reached the sub Turok palmed a touchpad beside the craft’s entry hatch. The door lifted up, and this time there was a rush of air from the tunnel into the ship’s interior. Lights inside winked on.
They entered. It was strangely reminiscent of their Arc-4 shuttle, and felt more spacious. The shuttle’s jaunts outside the Surprise mother ship usually covered greater absolute distances than this vessel, yet the submersible, in its environment, had been used for relatively long, transoceanic journeys. Its layout prioritized passenger transit. The ship’s cockpit was forward of the cargo section, sleeper compartments were on two levels aft of the cockpit, with a dining area amidships. The kitchen and other support rooms were adjacent to the cargo hold. There were oblong portholes all along the passenger sections, and a bank of larger observation windows in the lounge opened out the sides and much of the lower deck.
It was a comfortable ship, but by no means luxurious, especially considering that transoceanic passages had likely taken several days. There were enough sleeping compartments to accommodate about forty passengers. After a quick tour of much of the ship, Mick focused his attention on the bridge, while Turok had spent a good half-hour in the engine room. Mick called down and Turok came up. Standing in the lounge by the observation window they looked down at the tunnel they had entered through. The bulk of Oceangate loomed above them, its top floors not visible in the cocoon of blackness that enveloped the facility. They turned and sank down gratefully into two easy chairs. Although the light from Oceangate flooded all the gate berths that fanned out from the facility’s hub, the exterior of this side of the ship was in shadow. Turok set the lantern on a low table, and directed its beam through the window. The plasphalt tarmac sprang more clearly into view. A few hundred feet out that ended and the ocean floor could be seen rolling away in a series of smooth hills as far as the light could reach.
Mick gestured to the ship. “Does your sub have another voyage in her?”
Turok made a pained smile. “Maybe.” He had been feeling guardedly optimistic over the surprisingly well-preserved submersible. “All systems look okay, except there are no crystals.” Turok looked up through the window, his eyes drawn to the indistinct disc-like horizon above Oceangate created by the facility’s lights. He knew Mick thought this station an inhospitable environment, yet he enjoyed being so near the water. Watyra, the underground city, was less to his liking. He returned to the moment. “We’ll need to find their version of a garage and hunt up some new crystals.”
“Those buildings down in Watyra – I’ve never seen a power system come back online so fast.”
“Yes, it seems very reliable. Oh, I couldn’t check the drive train, but there’s no reason for it to have decayed.”
“Nothing has decayed here.”
“True. But then Watyra is so far down it’s sheltered within rock. Oceangate may be different.” Turok looked out into the water that pressed against the window. “It’s been sitting here at the bottom of the ocean for generations.”
“Their materials and energy systems seem as anywhere in Alliance space.”
“Better, I’d say.”
“All this is Kalaali,” Mick added pensively, gesturing at the ship and Oceangate behind them. “Watyra too, and the other cities like it were all part of the Kalaal civilization.”
They looked again to the disc-like horizon of darkness.
“This is our best shot, isn’t it? Long term, I mean,” Turok said quietly. “Hopefully we meet up with the others. Touch wood.” He rapped the small table between them. “Return here, and sail this well-preserved tub to Polarica.”
“Yes,” Mick agreed. “And once there, with Franklin’s help, we can try to launch a beacon.”
Turok smiled. “Sometimes I feel like we’re chauffeuring that old guy from one scientific opportunity to another!”
Mick laughed.
They looked again out the window.
Their concern for the others kept returning. “If they didn’t make it,” Mick said, a sudden fear in his voice, “we’ll have no way of getting to shore to search.”
“It’s out of our hands, Mick. We go. And we hope for the best.”
With that, they set off, each retreating into his own thoughts.
Mick couldn’t shake the feeling they were courting the abyss. ‘So be it,’ he declared silently. ‘I can’t think of a better reason to do so.’
10 | Tulvar
Levrok stood high on a parapet that overlooked the Elaric Sea, which rolled away south to the Polar Ocean, and Inuvoro.
Levrok had landed on Nebura twenty-one years earlier. For years he had carried out research on his ancestors’ failed Siqdori insurrection. The Kalaal defense had been effective. During those years of study, as the details of Siqdori humiliation had emerged, he re-lived that earlier time in his imagination. Bouts of shame and rage alternated with despair. Inevitably, he had abandoned his studies, except for one disputed area of the historical record: weaponization of the planet’s spheres. He became obsessed with resurrecting the weapon system that had brought the Kalaal victory, a weapon the Alliance had since proscribed.
After walking the parapet’s full length, he turned and began retracing his steps, idly glancing out over the noticeably calmer sea-surface below.
New Siqdor would begin here, on Polarica. That would be the natural next step, once progress on the weapons system resumed. Back in Nebu City they had encountered worrisome obstacles, serious enough to put his plans in jeopardy. When he learned of Dr. Franklin Varo’s presence in the city he had made the first of several offers, all declined. Nonetheless, eventually the professor was put to work, for the greater glory of New Siqdor, and beyond.
Levrok paused again, his hands behind his back. He had planned on bringing the good professor here. ‘And most likely burying him here too,’ he thought, and laughed quietly. He spat over the parapet. As fortune had it, Varo hadn’t been needed after all. The development of the tulvar biotechnology had moved forward quickly once they realized what the spheres in fact were. Who would have suspected they were living atomic organisms? That was the one contribution the good doctor had made, though he had tried to conceal it. Levrok smiled as he took a last look at the sea spread out below him.
Turning, he stepped into a tunnel in the side of the mountainside. He emerged moments later on a wide platform that overlooked an enormous cavern. It gave him a frisson of martial pride to look out over the precisely ordered rows of open incubation pods. Within each pod there nestled a blackly gleaming globe – a tulvar sphere. In their thousands they would become the perfect machine of conquest. Indeed, they would swallow worlds.
There was still so much to do. He turned and strode towards the elevator.
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