Black Water #2
Oliver followed his gaze. A drum beneath the derrick still carried several turns of heavy cable. The exposed section had been freshly greased. A dark scrape crossed one guide wheel where the line had run under load.
"Outward," Oliver said.
Jasper nodded. "Something came off."
"Not aboard."
"Unless they dropped it."
Oliver looked into the water. The shelf fell away on this side of the tender. Pale stone remained visible several feet beneath the surface near the bow, then disappeared into green-grey depth beyond the hull. Nothing large enough to explain the cargo marks floated below.
"What did they move?" Jasper asked.
Oliver thought of the warehouse docket.
SPECIAL BIOLOGICAL HANDLING.
DEEP WATER.
The words produced an answering tension somewhere behind his sternum. He wanted to know. Of course he did. Want had become an increasingly inconvenient thing to experience without observation. The shadow cast by the derrick shifted across the deck as the tender rolled. Oliver's did not.
Jasper saw Oliver's face change when the shadow caught up. He did not ask the obvious question immediately. His gaze moved from Oliver to the deck, then to the water beyond the missing rail. "What?"
"Nothing useful." Oliver disliked the answer as soon as he gave it. It was technically true and functionally evasive.
Jasper's mouth tightened. "That is not the same as nothing."
Oliver looked at him. The old instinct was to decide whether the information would help before sharing it. Marin had spent enough time dismantling that instinct that he now noticed it forming. He opened his mouth.
Three knocks came through the deck before he could speak.
Both men froze. Another three followed, uneven but deliberate. Not machinery. Not the hull settling into the shelf. Someone below had found metal and enough strength to use it.
Jasper was moving before the third knock ended. Oliver followed. "Marin!"
She came out of the wheelhouse with her pistol already in hand, reading urgency from their bodies before either explained it. Oliver pointed toward the companionway. "Below."
The main stairs descended just aft of the wheelhouse.
Four steps remained dry. The fifth vanished beneath dark water.
Oliver stopped at the edge long enough to identify the color correctly.
Engine-room filth. Oil, rust, bilge and whatever years of service had deposited below decks.
Ordinary black water. He disliked that his mind now required the qualification.
Jasper crouched beside the opening and watched the water climb half an inch against the stair before falling with the roll. "Level's rising."
Oliver held up one hand. Another knock came, only two this time. Weaker. The sound traveled through bulkheads badly, but the interval between strikes carried effort. "Someone's alive."
Marin holstered the pistol rather than carry a firearm into waist-deep machinery space. "Where?"
Oliver closed his eyes. He did not reach toward possibility. He made that distinction consciously. He listened instead. Water slapped the hull from outside. A thinner stream hissed somewhere aft. Condensation fell from a pipe in irregular ticks. Beneath those sounds, metal struck metal once.
Left. Aft. Below the waterline.
"Engine compartment."
Jasper studied him. "You sure?" The question held no disbelief, only the practical knowledge that being wrong below decks cost more than being wrong in a room.
"Mostly."
"Mostly how?"
Oliver opened his eyes. "With my ears." He let the answer remain plain. Jasper's grunt was almost approval.
Oliver took the lantern from the bulkhead. The flame bent away from his hand for one instant despite the enclosed stairwell. Marin saw it. Oliver saw her see it. Neither gave the anomaly more attention than the trapped survivor could afford.
Cold water entered his boots at the sixth step. By the bottom it reached his knees and climbed toward mid-thigh whenever the tender rolled. Every movement of the hull drove another pulse through the passage.
Jasper came down behind him and touched the nearest pipe, then the bulkhead. "Sea valve's still open."
Oliver followed the direction of the current. "I had gathered."
"Can you close it?"
He lifted the lantern toward the aft passage. "If they left the wheel."
Jasper muttered something about saboteurs, engineers and manners. Oliver almost improved it into a joke and decided the water level had earned everyone's concentration instead.
The lower deck smelled of oil, wet iron and hot insulation gone cold. The engine had stopped hours ago, but metal retained an old furnace warmth in the cramped compartment. At the split in the passage Oliver held the lantern low. Storage and crew bunks to starboard. Engine room to port.
The knock came again from port.
Oliver entered. The tender rolled sharply enough to drive water hard against his thighs. He caught an overhead pipe with his left hand. The movement pulled his injured ribs until the next breath whitened at the edges. He stayed still until pain became information again instead of interruption.
"Oliver?" Marin called from the stair.
He could hear exactly what she was asking inside his name. "Still moving." It was a better answer than fine and cost him nothing to give.
There was a brief silence above. Then Marin said, "Good."
Someone struck metal once more. Oliver moved faster. Twin compact boilers sat cold on either side of the central shaft, and water poured through the open maintenance housing beyond them. The valve wheel remained in place.
The relief lasted less than a second. A collapsed service platform blocked the route to it, and beneath the iron frame a human hand broke the surface of the water, four fingers pale and shaking.
"Here."
The hand moved. Oliver waded toward him.
The platform had torn from one wall and fallen diagonally across the passage, one end resting against the engine casing.
Beneath it, a crewman lay half submerged with his left leg pinned between two lengths of iron.
His face surfaced when the ship rolled to port.
Then the water climbed over his mouth again. Oliver caught his coat and pulled his head against the higher side of the compartment. The man's eyes opened. Fear arrived first. Recognition followed.
"Hawkins?"
"Deeply disappointing, I know."
The crewman coughed. Oliver looked at the leg. Bad angle. Not necessarily broken, but he could not drag the man free without moving the platform. Jasper entered behind him with a line over one shoulder. His eyes took in the compartment.
"How long?"
"Until the tide lifts us enough to slide off the shelf?"
Jasper glanced toward the water pouring through the maintenance opening.
"Less than that."
The vessel rolled. Somewhere above, something heavy shifted. Marin's voice came down the passage.
"The bow is moving."
Oliver looked at Jasper. If the tender floated free stern-first, they would lose the stable angle holding half the lower deck above water. The crewman understood too.
"Go."
Oliver looked at him.
"That wasn't persuasive."
"I'm pinned."
"I noticed."
"You can't lift it."
Probably true. The platform was iron and timber, built to support three engineers and machinery. Two men could raise one side perhaps an inch, and an inch might be enough. Oliver looked from the trapped leg to the overhead brace, the valve beyond it and the line Jasper had brought down.
Near possibilities began to crowd the next few seconds before Oliver asked for them.
The brace held. The brace tore free. The rope slipped across wet iron.
Elias's boot caught when they pulled. The tender rolled at the wrong moment and turned an inch of clearance into nothing.
One of those approaching failures could be refused.
Oliver knew it with an ease that frightened him more than the power itself.
He shut the possibilities out. Not because exclusion would necessarily be wrong, but because this problem still had hands, rope, leverage and two men who knew ships.
Reality's new willingness to negotiate did not make rope, leverage or trained hands obsolete.
Marin was also above them, which meant any avoidable stupidity would eventually receive a precise written critique.
"Jasper."
"I know."
They rigged the line through a ceiling brace and around the fallen platform. Jasper climbed onto the engine casing to change the angle. Oliver moved to the trapped man.
"What's your name?"
"Elias Rane."
Oliver nodded.
"Elias. When this moves, Marin is going to pull you backward."
The crewman looked toward the passage.
"Investigator Vale?"
"Unfortunately for your dignity, yes."
A faint, exhausted laugh escaped him. Good. Conscious enough for that. Jasper pulled the line tight. The platform groaned. Oliver braced one boot against the bulkhead and got both hands under the lower beam. His right knuckles objected immediately. He ignored them.
"On three," Jasper said.
Oliver waited for the count and lifted with him. Jasper hauled. The platform moved. Not much. Enough for Elias's trapped leg to shift.
"Again."
This time the tender rolled at the wrong moment.
Water slammed Oliver sideways. His injured ribs struck the engine casing.
Pain erased sound for half a second. The platform dropped.
Elias screamed. Oliver came back furious, not at the ship or Jasper or even whoever had opened the sea valves, but at how quickly the next few seconds unfolded inside his awareness.
On the second attempt the brace might tear free.
Elias's boot might catch. The platform might drop toward Marin when she came in to pull him clear.
Each was a near enough failure to feel almost tactile, and one of them could be refused before it happened.
Reality already seemed willing to listen.
Oliver tasted blood where he had bitten the inside of his cheek.
"No."
Jasper looked down.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Not nothing. But not now. Oliver forced himself upright.
"Again."