I drifted under the water, weightless once more, and I floated, truly free for the first time since I’d been arrested. I pressed a button on the vial and collected one sample, then tucked it into a pocket at my waist, then swam on. I had no flippers, so I kicked hard, my leg muscles working overtime. The burn felt good. Familiar. I was loving the helmet, the ability to breathe normally without anything in my mouth, without having to clear any water from goggles. Normally I had to stop at about eight feet, swallow hard and try to clear my ears of the pressure before I swam. But with the space suit, the pressure inside my suit remained constant. It was a scuba diver’s dream.
Deeper and deeper I sank until the water’s color was murky from the depth. I glanced up, guessing I was about thirty feet down. I wasn’t sure if going any deeper would compress the air in my suit and use it up faster, as happened in scuba tanks on Earth. I doubted it, but I wouldn’t risk using up all my air, so I didn’t go any deeper. I didn’t want to be sent home early like a misbehaving child on the playground.
I saw a fish that reminded me of a barracuda, long and thin, and followed it.
That was when I heard something unnatural, a rumble that had no place underwater. It was the hum of some kind of machine. Mechanical, like the sound of a pump on a fish tank. I knew what the water was supposed to sound like, the crash of waves, the sound of currents moving around rocks or coral, the quick, whiplike tail of an eel or a fish. I had even heard whales and dolphins speaking to one another back on Earth. Otherwise, below the surface the only thing I was supposed to hear was my breathing inside the suit. With a rebreather, there weren’t even any bubbles floating back to the surface. I was a fish down here. Quiet as they were.
Nothing living was making that sound. I turned toward it, swam, then realized it was coming from the other direction, then whipped about. Paused.
“Rachel, can you hear that?” I asked, using my arms and legs to dive deeper into the water, swim a bit farther out. I didn’t want to risk the oxygen, but I had to find out what was causing the noise.
Giram said I had half a mile until anything with big teeth would show up, and I was taking him at his word. I’d spent enough time in the water to know I was maybe a hundred meters from shore. The currents were stronger here, the water deeper, but not frightening. Nothing I couldn’t handle. As long as the pressure this deep didn’t affect my air supply.
“Hear what?”
“Listen. Can you hear that through my helmet?”
All chatter stopped between the guards and Rachel as they all listened. I held my breath so not even the sound of my breathing would interfere.
“It’s a machine of some kind. Giram, you checked the water, right? You didn’t discover this?”
“No, Lady Syrvon. Nothing shows on our equipment.”
“Well, there’s something down here. I can hear it.” Or maybe I could feel it thrumming through my body like an echo? In the water, sound was different.
“Remain in position so we can scan.” The Atlan ordered me to hold still, but that was pretty much impossible as I was floating in water at least three body lengths deep and the current was gently pulling me along the coastline away from Rachel and the team. It was nothing I couldn’t handle, not like a riptide. The current was peaceful. Gentle. A short swim and I’d be back to them, or I could swim directly to the beach and walk back to their position.
“It’s getting louder. Can you hear that?” I asked again.
“We hear it, Mikki,” Rachel responded. “Come back to shore, and we’ll adjust our scans for it. It should be easy to identify now.”
I moved then, laying out flat and swimming for shore. I wasn’t in a full-out sprint, but fast enough to get the hell out of the water. And I was out of shape. Seriously freaking out of shape. My lungs burned and so did my legs. I really should have done some more serious exercising the last few years.
“Why here?” I asked as I breathed hard. “Why this location? Extend your scans beyond this area.”
“Already on it,” Giram replied. “Scanning indicates a power source in the area of Lady Syrzon,” Giram said. “By the gods, it’s huge.”
“That’s not all, Warlord.” Another voice came through the comms. “Similar pings throughout the water at even intervals. For hundreds of miles. There are thousands of them.”
“Are you shitting me?” I asked, still trying to figure out what I had just kicked. My leg made contact with something, but when I looked, there was nothing but water and sand. Empty space. Whatever it was, the loud ping was like metal on metal and the reverberations traveled up my leg to my spine. Ouch.
“Mate, evacuate the water now.” Surnen’s voice in my ear was like a whip, startling me.
“Go. Go get her!” Rachel gave the order, and the ragged breathing of at least two of our guards came at me through the comms. I heard the panic in her voice. That was what had me giving up figuring out the object I’d hit and getting the hell out of the water.
“None of us can swim, my lady,” Giram said.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she snapped. “You survived the fucking Hive and you can’t swim?”
I was still a good distance from shore, and I kicked hard. My foot struck metal again and another loud ping shot through my suit, loud enough this time to make my head swim for a moment. Risking a glance back I saw… nothing. Absolutely nothing.
What the hell? There had to be something there. Some kind of machine or something that made the noise. A submersible of some kind? Could it be invisible? Was that even possible?
I stopped for a moment, tried to catch my breath. Swinging around to get a closer look, I floated under the water and scanned the area with the light from my helmet. All I saw was water, and one small, swirling area of sand that looked like a little dirt devil on the bottom of the ocean floor. But the humming sound was much louder. “I can still hear it, but there’s nothing to see. It makes no sense.”
“What is it?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t know. I think there’s something on the bottom. I can take a closer look, but I’d rather not.”