Dive Deep

Captain Foser reached up and turned off the emergency klaxxon, its shrill scream quickly fading. Anyone who didn't know there was an emergency was either dead or unconscious. After the first impacts, the sub had settled to the seafloor, titled dramatically to the port side. Everything not tied down, including most people, were piled into the intersection of the floor and the port wall. As far as he could tell, there were no serious leaks, but the power cells were offline and the engineering section wasn't responding to his intercoms. The sub was now quiet except for the quiet groans of the crew as they picked themselves up and assessed their wounds. His Chief Petty Officer had a nasty gash across her arm, but for the most part, the command crew seemed intact.

He'd been driving subs for twenty years and knew from a quick glance at the command console that this sub wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Even if he could patch the holes in the stern, the drive system was destroyed.

As far as he could tell, they'd been hit by an underwater landslide. The stern sections, those that weren't already crushed, were likely buried under several tons of rock and mud. From the sounds of rocks still hitting the hull, he couldn't be sure there wouldn't be another rockslide any moment. If a big enough boulder came down, it could puncture the hull and the rest of the ship would be flooded.

With power offline and the communications gear buried under the mass of rocks, there was nothing he could do now but wait for rescue. If they were lucky, they wouldn't run out of oxygen before it came.

Chapter 1

The chill morning breezes used to cut mercilessly through her college sweatshirt, so Taz finally bought a new running jacket that protected her against the wind and the occasional light rain or snow. Her daily six mile run through the wooded neighborhoods was much more pleasant now.

Today she was running his usual route which curled through quiet suburban streets and out to a nearby park. She'd started at 6 a.m., trying not to disturb her boyfriend as she slipped on her running gear, stretched, and began her run in the morning darkness.

She liked to run in the morning because it helped to shake off the cobwebs of sleep and gave her a moment to plan her day ahead. Today's big project was to pilot a ROV as it explored a section of an undersea mount. During the Second Gulf War a cruise missile had apparently misfired during some tests and at the time it hadn't been a big priority to find it. Thanks to remote ROV pilots like Taz, the lower retrieval costs were now much lower and made it feasible to hunt down the lost missile.

Taz mostly worked from home. She had a control deck that allowed her to immerse herself in the ROV's controls and monitors. With a quantum feed direct from her house to the ROV, she was in real-time control as her 'bots dived and swam along the ocean bottom. On some projects, she was able to monitor multiple ROVs at once. She'd program their search patterns and parameters and then watch the sensors of each to see if anything showed up on the muddy sea floor. Sometimes she'd take control of one to explore an anomaly, but generally on those searches she was more of a shepherd than a pilot.

Today's project would be more difficult. The sea mount was craggy and the rocks had heavy concentrations of metallic ores. That meant she'd have to move around carefully and not be able to use any magnetic detectors to find the missile. It could take a day or it could take a week. Thankfully these jobs paid on an hourly rate, although she was hungry to get the bonus for finding it in under two days.

Taz hadn't always wanted to be a ROV pilot. As a kid she'd always been interested in marine biology and had been fascinated by the animals on the beach where her parents took her for summer vacation. But as she grew older she became interested in gadgets and mechanical principles. She loved that she could control a device that could see further, go deeper and stay underwater longer than she could. She'd learned to scuba dive in college, but got frustrated at the short times she could spend underwater on each dive. After an hour or two, she'd have to surface, tired and out of air. With an ROV, she could explore the ocean bottom for hours, go to staggering depths and see things that would otherwise be denied to her. With an ROV's advanced detectors and sonar, the underwater realm lit up into a world of wonderful opportunities.

In college she double-majored in mechanical engineering and ocean engineering. She had good grades, but knew that to be the best ROV pilot she needed to develop a wide knowledge base of numerous fields. She read up on underwater currents and ocean sea life, she learned about geologic formations and the different types of mud around the ocean. She learned about ROV control systems and how to debug programs that control their operations. At the time it all seemed like excessive knowledge, but it helped her to not only control the ROV better, but also to be a much more valuable ROV pilot.

One time she'd been part of a large search party trying to find an Saudi airliner that'd been shot down by the Egyptian air force two weeks previously. The sea bottom had been flat, featureless mud with visibility so bad the search teams were mostly limited to sonar. Taz's ROV was crawling along the bottom in her search quadrant when she saw a snashfish swim hurriedly. From her personal marine biology studies, she knew that snashfish loved reefs. She turned the ROV to follow it at a distance. The snashfish swam along for a short distance and then crested into a small rift. Hidden in the rift was the airliner, mostly buried in mud but already crawling with local fish anxious to stake out turf on this new, strange reef. Later, she'd explained to the team leader how she'd found the airliner, but he'd thought it was just coincidence.

Taz soon earned a reputation for being professional, disciplined and smart. Better jobs began to come her way and she was looking forward to competing in the international ROV championships in the spring.

She spooked a deer as she passed a group of pine trees in the park. The woods were always quiet and she liked how at peace everything seemed in the morning. She'd trained herself to rise early like this in college and the habit had stuck with her. She didn't drink coffee or smoke, those two addictions would have made her too jittery and uncomfortable during long ROV dives. She also made sure to take these morning runs and stretch properly before jacking into her deck. If a pilot's body was out of whack, the dive never went well. Part of being a good ROV pilot, just like being a good astronaut, was having control and discipline under pressure, and Taz worked hard to keep herself focused.

The air felt cool and fresh and she lengthened her stride. She guessed she was about three miles in when her audio implant sounded her emergency contact tone. Worried, she slowed to a walk and opened the channel. Her visual implant opened a window in her visual field, and she was surprised to find herself looking at one of her military contacts, Colonel Redding.

"Good morning Colonel, what's up?"

"Good morning Taz. We have a situation and need an ROV pilot immediately. Can you help?" That's one of the things Taz liked about Redding, he didn't waste words when there was a crisis.

"Sure, I don't have anything which can't be pushed back, and I could be jacked into my deck in 25 minutes." It would be a fast run home, but she knew that Redding wouldn't call her on her emergency channel unless it was extremely urgent. He even looked harried, which was a first.

Redding shook his head. "This is a live job."

Taz was surprised, there were few jobs that couldn't be done remotely, especially if they were time critical.

"We'll have a helicopter pick you up at the soccer field at the end of your street in thirty minutes. It's already inbound. I'll explain more once you're in the air. Okay?"

This sounded too cool to miss. "You've got it, Colonel."

They signed off and Taz began running hard back to her house. She used her audio implant to call ahead to her boyfriend, Jason, and let him know what was going on. She was lucky that Jason could understand her over her harsh breathing as she ran, but by the time she got in the front door he had thrown some essentials into her overnight bag and helped her assemble the rest of her kit.

They drove down the soccer field and arrived just as a black Super Wolverine landed in a swirl of dust. It was a mean-looking aircraft but Taz only had a moment to quickly kiss Jason goodbye and climb through the open hatch. She barely hadn't even sat down before it was climbing rapidly into the air.

Taz smiled as she imagined Jason enduring questions from their neighbors about the strange helicopter that had whisked his girlfriend away. He had a good sense of humor and might have some fun with the situation, probably suggesting that it was because of an error she'd made on her taxes. Still, regardless of the brave face he put on, he would be worried about Taz wherever she was.

A crew member handed Taz a wire and she jacked it into her array. She saw she had a secure channel to the Colonel and opened it.

"Colonel, I'm on board."

"Good. Here's the situation: Two hours ago we lost contact with a scientific submarine, the Darwin, which was conducting research off the Spratlys Islands. We have reasonable hope that the crew, at least some of them, are still alive. We're going to drop a rescue submarine as close to their last position as possible and we need you to go down there and rescue them."

"Okay, but why don't you want me to do this remotely? With quantum signaling it would be like I was there, and it would conserve oxygen for the crew. It would also save time."

"We wished that was possible, but over the last years the Chinese have mined the region and any quantum signals may detonate them. Once you're in the water, you're going to have to go silent. I'm uploading what we know about the mines to your data store now."

"Mines? That's rather unsettling. Anything else I need to know?"

"The only other thing you need to worry about is the Chinese navy. They've been acting aggressive lately and might not take kindly to your presence. It is international waters, but they still claim it as their own. The mission profile is uploading now."
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They landed the Super Wolverine at an Air Force base and put her on a ramjet to an American base in the Philippines. Taz was immersed in the mission details for the entire flight and didn't even notice when they landed. A marine escorted her to the rescue submarine, a small yellow submarine with a control room for one pilot in the front and a rescue chamber in the rear. The rescue chamber could hold about fifteen people, and had an airlock that could mate with the lost sub's hatches.

The submarine has assorted thrusters and sensors, but no armaments. Taz did a quick walk-around to check everything was good, and then climbed in the cockpit. She had time for a quick systems check before the sub was loaded onto a modified drop rack and then that was loaded onto an old B-52 bomber.


Within an hour they were cruising low over the drop point. The pilot signaled, the doors were open, and then the ROV and drop rack were flying through the air. There was a pop as the parachutes engaged and then the sound of the drop rack's rockets firing. A moment later, the rack and submarine hit the water, throwing Taz against her harness.

Water rushed around the submarine but it stayed afloat. The rack automatically disengaged and began to sink, the parachutes dragging behind it. Taz did a quick system check to make sure nothing was damaged in the fall. The control systems were the latest in cybernetic technology, allowing her to control and monitor the sub's numerous functions with a flick of the mental wrist. Everything checked out and she rolled the ROV into a quick dive.

During high school and college Taz had spent countless hours reading about the marine environment, studying about everything from the epipelagic zone to thermoclines. She often passed up weeknight drinking and hanging out all so that she could become an expert pilot. She might not know the latest Seinfeld joke or know any quotes from the Simpsons, but thanks to her studies she'd been called upon to save people's lives. As she felt the powerful sub respond to her commands, she knew those late nights in the library had paid off.

Visibility dropped almost immediately and she was forced to rely on passive sonar and a low-power active sonar system. She knew that the active sonar increased the chance she would attract the attention of a Chinese mine or ship, but without active sweeps of the area in front of her, she could drive right into a mine without warning.

Fortunately, the American navy had done extensive soundings of these areas so her charts appeared to be accurate. She reached the ocean floor about five hundred feet down and leveled off a dozen feet above it. She engaged her forward thrusters and began to move towards the last known location of the research sub.

She coasted along the bottom, hugging the curves of the ocean floor in case someone tried to do an active radar sweep of the area. During World War II, German submarines would hide in the shadows of underwater peaks and sunken ships. Taz hoped she could dive to the bottom and get lost among the noise if an active sonar system started hunting around for her.

The minutes ticked by and she approached a giant rock wall that went almost to the surface. There was a giant crevasse in the middle, along the direction of the lost sub's last location. Taz eased the sub in. There was space to maneuver, but not much. If the Chinese had planted a mine along her route, she would likely die before she was aware of it. She reflected that she really did prefer remote work. If she was remote, a mine would knock out the sub, but she would live and be able to pilot again. There was no such luxury today.

The valley began to narrow and she controlled her breathing as she calmly flew around rock outcroppings. She turned on her infrared search beams to try to get a visual scan on the area. With this and the active sonar readings, she was able to form a rough outline of the forms ahead, creating a rough 3-D image of the path ahead of her. It was still very fuzzy and she had to reduce her speed to avoid collisions.

She cleared a corner and then saw the Darwin. It appeared that a rock slide had rolled onto it, slamming it into the bottom of the crevasse. The Darwin wouldn't be able to move again, but it was possible there were still survivors.

She cautiously moved closer, firing thrusters in short bursts. She turned on her spot lights and began to sweep the hull. The aft section was a crumpled wreck. A large boulder had slid on top of the propeller and aft control surfaces, crushing both. Smaller boulders were strewn around the other aft areas but as Taz moved towards the bow, she saw that it was largely intact. She also saw torpedo tubes and other markings. She realized that this wasn't a scientific research vessel at all, but a spy sub.

She quietly cursed Colonel Redding and reversed her course to search for the escape hatch. She found it near the middle of the hull and fortunately it was clear of rocks. She slowly spun the sub around until its rear entry hatch faced the Darwin's escape hatch. With short bursts from her thruster she reversed until her entry hatch lined up with the Darwin's escape hatch. There was a soft clang as the two subs came together. She engaged grapples and soon there was a seal between her sub and the Darwin.

She pressurized the airlock area and opened her exterior port. There was now nothing between the sub's rescue chamber and the Darwin's exterior. Although she was sealed in the pilot's area, Taz could see the Darwin's hatch from her internal monitors. There was some dripping saltwater but otherwise the hatch's dull exterior was silent and unmoving. Anyone inside of the hull should have heard her efforts, but to be sure Taz engaged a small mechanical device. It began beating out Morse code on the hull.

"Rescue sub attached to starboard escape hatch. Ready for evacuees."

Nothing happened for several minutes, but then the hatch slowly opened and a middle-aged, African-American woman crawled through the hatch and into the rescue chamber. She looked around, expecting to see the rescue sub's crew.

"Hey." Taz said over the intercom "I'm Taz Shiru, the pilot. I'm sealed upfront. Sorry I can't come back and help you."

"I'm Chief Petty Officer Shaw and we're just plain happy that you're here."

"How many are you?"

"Ten still alive, five were killed in the aft section when it collapsed."

A couple more people had entered through the escape hatch. They looked tired and their uniforms were dirty and stained. They'd been stuck in the wreck for close to fifteen hours now and it showed.

"There is a medical kit and auto-doctor above the starboard bulwark. There is some food and water next to it. Once the rest of the crew is on board, get them strapped in and we'll get out of here. Are there any officers?"

"Captain Foser's doing a final check. We had a lieutenant but he was killed in the engineering section."

"Okay, let me know when you're ready to go."

It took the better part of a half hour to get all the crew loaded, some were unconscious and had to be lifted into the rescue chamber. Finally the captain lifted himself from through the hatch and closed it. Once he'd cleared the airlock hatch, Taz sealed it and let water flood the airlock, breaking the seal. She released the grapples and with a slight push of her thrusters they were drifting away from the wreck, which was now nothing more than an underwater grave for the lost crew.

Chapter 2

Taz began to backtrack the sub down the crevasse towards the open water. The rescue sub was slower because of the extra weight, but still reasonably maneuverable. In her internal monitors Taz could see that the crew were settling into the rescue berths, some had even fallen asleep. She was glad to see that they weren't wasting any oxygen by talking unnecessarily.

It took her an hour to clear most of the rock mounts. She was staying deep to avoid surface ships, but was also mindful of rockfalls and the ever-present risk of mines. She reached the channel entrance and killed her forward thrusters so she could take a moment to assess the surrounding areas. Like a rabbit looking out from a burrow, she didn't want to step into the open without first knowing having a good look around.

Things seemed to have gotten busier while she was rescuing the crew. In the distance, destroyers tore across the surface and filled the water with active sonar pings. They were too far away to be an immediate threat, but it was unsettling to hear their echoes. She also detected the sounds of other surface ships, but none were nearby.

It was much less obvious what was going on underwater. She thought she detected patterns along the fringes of her sonar, there were flickers of shapes, but nothing that she could identify. Whatever was lurking in the shadows, she would have to avoid by doing some lurking of her own.

Slowly, carefully, she nudged the sub out of the channel and slowly dove to the sea floor below. It was a short drop, no more than a couple hundred feet, and she leveled off again and began to thrust to the pickup point several miles away.

Suddenly there was a low boom, like rolling thunder. It had come from the direction of the channel and the echoes bounced around for several moments.

"What the hell was that?" Taz asked over the intercom. Taz had spent enough time underwater to recognize the sound of a submerged explosion, but she thought the captain might know something

"That was the self-destruct on our sensitive gear. We couldn't let our equipment fall into the hands of a foreign government, Chinese or otherwise." He was unapologetic, which pissed Taz off even more.

"My God, could you have mentioned that little fact a bit earlier? Or gave us a little more time? You've stirred up a hornet's nest with that little firecracker."

Taz wasn't exaggerating: the destroyers pings were louder now, and there were more of them. She could imagine them rushing through sea towards them. Taz also thought she heard other rumblings that might indicate cruisers, and the deadly helicopters they carried.

Taz had to make a decision now: run or hide. If she hid on the seafloor, she might be able to escape detection from the initial searches, but given modern detection technology and the amount of resources that the Chinese were pouring into the area, it was pretty much guaranteed that they'd be found before too long. There was also the issue of the rescued crew. She didn't have enough oxygen to last for a drawn-out stay and some of them needed medical attention.

If she ran, she might be able to get far enough away from the crevasse opening that the destroyers wouldn't be able to catch her before she reached international waters. She would be obvious to any other submarines in the area, but they were unknown quantities whereas the destroyers rushing towards her were painfully known.

In the end, the decision was easy. She kicked the forward thrust to maximum and began powering towards international waters. She pushed the sub to its limits, all thoughts of stealth gone.

Sirens started to scream as equipment pushed beyond design tolerances. She jettisoned used air tanks and other unnecessary equipment to lighten load and distract anything that might try to follow her.

She knew that the destroyers could likely hear her now on passive sonar. The rescue sub hadn't been built for stealth, but if she stayed deep she might be able to prevent them from getting a good fix, especially since they were likely honing in on the channel entrance that she was trying to leave behind.

If she was lucky, a couple more rockfalls would be triggered by the explosion and their rumblings might help hide her escape. But she couldn't rely on that, and so focused all her energy into pouring on more speed.

Her optimism about escaping disappeared as shapes began to break away from the background sonar noise. Two large forms, probably Chinese hunter submarines, took shape and accelarated along intercept courses. Taz quickly realized that she couldn't outrun them, and it was too late to try to hide.

She knew that Chinese hunter submarines were fast, deadly and likely carrying the new Hubei-class torpedo. She'd heard rumors that their captains were chemically conditioned to be ruthless, and the whine of an incoming torpedo supported that rumor. Taz dove to the bottom, hoping the torpedo would lose her in the bottom clutter.

It had no effect. The torpedo continued its unwavering drive towards the rescue sub. Its targetting sonar beat out a rapid tempo on the hull and its whine reached a higher pitch as it accelerated for the kill.

Taz began to mentally take stock of her life when the torpedo suddenly veered off to one side. She had a brief moment to feel surpised before there was a deep boom and the explosion's shockwaves brutally slammed into the rescue submarine.

Once the shockwaves faded, Taz glanced at her controls and saw that they hadn't lost any major systems, but she cut off flow along a fuel line that appeared to be damaged. At first she thought they'd been amazingly lucky, but then she realized that the miss had been intentional. They didn't want to destroy the sub, but instead to cripple it so badly that she would be forced to surface and surrender.

The whine of a second torpedo veering to one side reinforced this thought, and another shockwave struck the rescue sub mercilessly. All her major systems screamed in pain. A port thruster was knocked offline and Taz worried that some of the electronics were destroyed. A quick system check showed that her communications gear was offline and that she was leaking fuel. If the next torpedo was anything like the last one, she'd be forced to surface.

She ducked into small rift and that gave her a moment to drop off the sonar scopes of the pursuing submarines. But the rift soon ended and she was forced back onto the seafloor, thrusting along with the Chinese hunter submarines pursuing like wolves after a fleeing deer.

The hunter subs began to lash her with active sonar, pounding against the outer hull. Taz knew they were giving her one last warning. She considered surrender, and then realizes that the Chinese would likely torture the rescued crew, using deep mind taps and other techniques that would leave them mentally destroyed. If she surrendered now, she and the crew would likely disappear and their families would never know what happened.

There was no good option. She needed to choose between an immediate death from a crushed hull or slow torture in a Chinese prison. Her future wasn't exactly looking bright. She was trying to decide when a shape suddenly formed out of a nearby rift. It was large, far bigger than Chinese submarines, like a bear to their wolves.

From its bulking form powerful sonar lashed out, pounding the pursuing Chinese subs, and targetting lasers seared through the water. It moved with a powerful deliberation, dwarfing the other submarines. Taz recognized the unmistakable form of an American Alaska-class attack submarine.

The American sub launched a torpedo that moved quickly between the rescue sub and the Chinese subs, and then stopped. It began to emit a sonar pulse, like a beacon, signalling that it was now a mine. The Chinese subs decelerated and turned away from the mine, but were still heading towards the rescue sub's general direction. There was a pause, and then they completed their turns and headed back to the main Chinese forces.

Taz let out a whoop of joy but quickly turned back to her controls. They weren't in the clear yet, many key systems were failing or on the brink of complete shutdown.

She entered an almost trance-like state as she jumped from system to system, fixing here, tweaking there. She redirected wiring, closed off tanks, hacked thruster control systems. Her mind danced throughout the sub, trying to keep it from dying and sinking into the mud.

Every time she thought she was doing well another system would flash red and begin to die. She fought each of these battles in rapid succession but quickly realized that she was going to have to surface immediately.

She tripped the emergency surface systems and aligned the remaining thrusters for upward thrust. Nothing happened. A long moment passed. Taz poured through the different systems, looking for something more she could do. After an eternity, the depth gauge began to crawl upwards, slowly bringing them to the surface. Taz didn't have much time to celebrate, she continued to fight to keep the systems online.

The water began to lighten as they approached the surface and soon they crested into a sunny, clear day. In the distance, Taz saw two Chinese cruisers steaming away. Closer in, she saw an American destroyer cutting the waves towards her, rescue boats being scrambled.