Austin saw that the cable splice was unraveling.
“Just keep hauling,” he said.
He gritted his teeth as if he could lift the B3 through sheer willpower. The bathysphere remained where it was. The cable unraveled some more.
“Move, damnit!” he yelled.
Plumes of mud billowed around the bathysphere. Then the sphere pulled free, popping from the mud like a cork from a bottle, and righted itself. A thick cloud of silt hid the sphere for an instant before it rose into the glare of the Hardsuit’s searchlights.
Austin’s triumphant yell blasted through the ship’s public-address system.
The B3 was ten feet from the bottom, mud streaming off its sides, then twenty feet, and still there was no sign of air-bag deployment. What was Joe waiting for? Maybe the flotation doors were clogged with mud.
Austin kept pace, rising slowly with the bathysphere, his eyes glued to the hook and cable.
As the last strand of cable splice gave way, doors along the sides of the sphere suddenly blew open and six air bags blossomed and rapidly filled. The bathysphere rocked back and forth, stabilized, then began to ascend.
Austin watched the B3 until it was out of sight.
“They’re on their way,” he notified Gannon.
“You’re next,” the captain said. “How are you?”
“I’ll be a lot better topside.”
Austin steadied the thrusters so that he was in a more or less vertical position, and was ready when the Hardsuit jerked at the end of the cable. As the suit began its long trip, Austin turned off his lights and saw that he was not alone.
The blackness was speckled with dozens of constellations. He was surrounded by luminescent sea creatures that hung in place like stars. Occasionally, he saw something moving like the lights of an airplane across the night sky. Then his eye caught movemen
t off to the left. The constellation hanging there at the edge of his peripheral vision seemed to be growing larger. Turning his head, he saw what looked like a trio of glowing amber eyes moving closer.
An alarm went off in Austin’s brain. He’d been focusing on the rescue and forgotten about the sinister shadow loitering nearby when the cables were cut on the B3 and the ROV.
The Hardsuit’s searchlights reflected off the smooth, dark surface of something shaped like a flattened teardrop. It was a submersible of some kind, most likely an automated underwater vehicle, or AUV, because he couldn’t see a tether. The glowing eyes on the leading edge were apparently sensors, but Austin was more interested in the sharp-edged metal mandibles protruding from the front of the vehicle.
The vehicle moved fast, gliding at a depth where the mandibles would intersect the cable pulling him to the surface. Austin stomped on his vertical-thrust pedal. There was a second’s delay before the thrusters overcame the Hardsuit’s inertia, then he shot up several feet, his attacker passing below him, the mandibles snapping at empty water.
The vehicle made a wide banking turn, rose to keep pace, and circled back for another attack.
Gannon was watching the encounter on the ship’s monitor.
“What the hell was that?” the captain yelled.
“Something that wants me for dinner!” Austin yelled back. “Haul faster!”
The nimble AUV was quick to adjust its strategy and speed. Coming in for its second attack, it slowed to a walk, stalking its target with the wariness of a predator whose prey showed unexpected behavior.
Austin waited until the thing was just yards away and then tapped his foot pedal. The Hardsuit rose a few feet, but not fast enough to escape the attacker. He raised his arms defensively, holding them out straight and close together. He crashed into the AUV’s extended manipulators glancingly, but not before his claw stabbed the AUV in its middle eye.
Austin’s head slammed against the inside of the Plexiglas helmet. The impact knocked him sideways, and he swung at the end of his cable like soap on a rope. Pain shot up his left arm from the wrist.
The AUV went for another pass, but it was moving slowly, and it jerked erratically from side to side like a hound sniffing out prey. Rather than coming straight for Austin, it feinted a frontal attack, then angled upward toward the cable. Because Austin was still dazed from the last attack, he was slow to give the vertical thrusters juice. The AUV’s pincers caught his raised right arm at the elbow and closed around it.
With his left manipulator, he grabbed onto a thruster mandible and powered himself down, then up, operating like a yo-yo. The thrusters were designed for horizontal rather than vertical movement, and the weight of the vehicle worked against it, bending the mandible so that it was useless. Then the blade snapped at the base. The AUV thrashed wildly, peeled off, and disappeared into the darkness.
“Kurt, are you okay?” the captain’s voice rang in Austin’s earphones. “For God’s sake, answer me!”
“Finestkind, Cap,” Austin managed to croak. “Haul me up.”