Chapter 105 - Shadows in the Murk
The acoustic ping hit the hull with the sharp ring of a hammer against an anvil. *Ping. Ping. Ping.*
"Torpedo?" I asked, forcing my breathing to steady as I locked the tablet into my combat harness.
"Worse. Hunter-killer minisub," Ethan said, slamming his hands against the auxiliary ballast levers. "They aren't trying to capture us anymore. We know the Trust’s root protocol. They’re here to sanitize the grid."
The capsule lurched downward as Ethan deliberately flooded the secondary trim tanks, sending us plunging blindly into the subsea canyon known as the Norwegian Trench. Darkness swallowed the viewport completely, broken only by the bioluminescent drifts of abyssal plankton flitting past the reinforced acrylic.
"Depth at four hundred meters," Ethan called out, his voice taut. "This escape pod is rated for three-fifty. If we bottom out on the shelf, the pressure will turn this tin can into a pancake."
"How close are they?"
"Six hundred yards. Bearing one-eight-zero. They have active tracking."
I looked at the auxiliary system schematics glowing on the dashboard. "Can we vent the lithium-ion drive batteries?"
Ethan turned his head sharply. "If we dump the battery pack, we lose all propulsion. We’ll be dead in the water, drifting on currents."
"Julian’s drive told us their sub uses passive electromagnetic sensors to home in on battery signatures in low-visibility zones," I explained rapidly, tapping the decrypted telemetry files. "If we eject the auxiliary power cell, it floats on its buoyant casing. They’ll track the thermal and electric bloom. Meanwhile, we drop into the thermal layer with cold iron."
Ethan looked at the depth gauge—four hundred and twenty meters. The bulkhead shrieked, a hairline fracture weeping cold droplets of seawater onto the floorboards near our boots.
"You're out of your mind, Claire," he whispered. Then a dark grin touched his scarred face. "Manual release is on three."
"One."
"Two."
"Three!"
Ethan yanked the dual emergency jettison handles. With a violent hydraulic thud, the heavy battery modules detached from the undercarriage. The cabin immediately plunged into pitch darkness, save for the green glow of our emergency glow-sticks.
Through the viewport, we saw the battery casing drift upward, trailing tiny bubbles of venting gas. Five seconds later, two streaks of white cavitation ripped through the black water above us.
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A deafening double explosion shuddered through the sea. The shockwave slammed our unpowered capsule against the rocky side of the underwater ridge. Metal twisted, sirens shrieked in dying frequencies, and the pod began to tumble downward into the silent, suffocating deep.
***
