Khione's Prisoners Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  NOW

  FOUR DAYS AGO

  NOW

  THE PROMISED LAND

  For More Information

  About the Author

  Khione’s Prisoners

  by Paul Butler

  Copyright © 2018 J. Paul Butler

  All rights reserved.

  The characters, organizations and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  NOW

  Ivan Zima floated in icy water, trying concentrate on the hiss of his rebreather. He hoped if he focused on that he’d stay calm, even as his heart hammered and he struggled to aim his cavitation gun. He could barely feel the trigger through his heavy gloves.

  “Everyone stay cool.” In Zima’s headphones, Tanaka’s voice was as calm as it had been aboard the Cyrene. “Mark your target. Zima, you see the big one?”

  Zima wanted to sound composed. He pictured the hero in every war vid he’d ever seen. What would sound cool and composed? ‘I’m on it’? ‘Roger’? ‘Copy that’?

  “Zima! You awake?”

  “Copy! Copy. I see it.” Zima said, his throat mic transmitting his words to the other divers. They’d used diver sign language when they swam out from the Cyrene. The Keto could sense electricity the way an Earth shark could smell blood so the diver’s had kept their communications gear turned off. With the Keto right in front of them, it didn’t make a difference any more

  The big one was easily four or five times the size of him. The smaller ‘only’ twice his size. Trailing behind each Keto were their long grasping tentacles. Their cantaloupe-sized eyes were on the side of their bodies, just behind the tentacles. A single long fin wrapped around their oval bodies.

  “Poulsen, you’ve got the little one,” Tanaka said.

  “Yeah.” Poulsen’s voice was shrill. Zima wanted to look to see if Poulsen’s hands were steady, but didn’t dare look away from his target. He could just see Poulsen floating nearby.

  “Safeties off and keep your fingers along the trigger,” Tanaka said. The veteran diver floated above and behind them to back them up. “Make sure your target is in range. The damn things know to a millimeter the range on your weapons.”

  The cavitation gun was a diver’s weapon. It resembled an assault rifle with a clip of thirty high velocity darts and a laser range finder that signaled if the target was in the gun’s meager range. Zima had trained on similar weapons back on Earth, while going to the Vostochny Kildin dive school in the Arctic. First the students fired the weapons on a normal gun range, then suited up to fire at underwater targets. Facing the real thing was vastly different than shooting at a mylar balloon.

  Patches of wachira coral lit the waters around them. Other coral beds were colorful even if they lacked the pink and yellow glow of the wachira. The coral was home to the native fish and crustaceans swarming through dense mats of tubers and seaweed. Here, close to a thermal vent, the water was almost 7 degrees—warm for the waters of Khione and hypothermic for an unprotected human.

  Just over fifty meters away, the two predators swam past each other in lazy figure eights. They were in no hurry. This was their part of the ocean. As they passed over different patches of coral—some green, some yellow, others gray—their skin changed color as well. Zima had to track the tiny differences in their outline—a yellow area moving over green coral, green drifting into yellow to be sure that, yes, that really was a Keto.

  Occasionally one of the Keto swam through a dark area. Their skin blackened as they slid into the shadows. Zima’s heart beat faster he scanned the darkness, terrified he’d missed the beast slipping out of the shadows. Then he spot it and his heart rate would slow down. A little, anyway. Zima wouldn’t have been surprised if the Keto did that deliberately.

  Every so often, a small patch of their skin flickered colors in geometric patterns. Xenobiologists suggested that was how Keto communicated with each other. Since no one had ever captured a live Keto for study, the scientists weren’t positive. As he watched the Keto patiently swim back and forth, Zima was certain they were waiting for the divers to screw up.

  Poulsen’s breathing was getting heavy enough to trigger his throat mike.

  “Watch your target,” Tanaka said again. How was he so calm? “They’re faster than us, so running won’t work.” Tanaka must have heard Poulsen’s breathing and was worried he’d bolt. “We’ve got the guns and they don’t. Just wait, just wait. Breathe in, hold it and let it out nice and slow.”

  “There should be four of us,” Poulsen said. The muzzle of his rifle jerked about as Poulsen tried to follow his Keto.

  “You can tell Reece that when we get back to the sub,” Tanaka said. “For now, shut up and track your target!”

  Zima kept his weapon pointed at the large one. When the angle was right, he could see a glint of light off its huge eyes. Its fin’s nonstop rippling eased the large beast through the water, moving it with a deceptively slow pace. In vids he’d seen how fast the Keto could sprint. They’d fill their mantles with water and compress it through the narrow opening in their tail, turning the water into a jet.

  Zima wished the things would attack, just to get it over with. He took a breath and slowly released it. He felt calmer for a moment. He’d started another deep breath when the pair lit up in brilliant colors. They jetted around each other in tight circles, their skins flicking from gold to black to red to green.

  Poulsen fired. Tanaka shouted for him to stop. Poulsen kept firing.

  FOUR DAYS AGO

  Ivan Zima was quietly repeating a phrase, whispering the words over and over again, when the smell slapped him in the face. “Nothing to worry about, one day down. Nothing to worry about, one day down. Nothing to worry—Gah!”

  The odor burnt the lining of his nose and brought a tear to the corner of his eye. He blinked away the tear. A couple of the other orange clad men and women burst out coughing. They kept walking and he followed the line of prisoners onto the Naxos Station docks. Zima’s orange coveralls were stiff and chaffed his legs. A rentacop pointed them toward the far end of the submarine docks.

  The source of the powerful odor was the sea water filling the moon pool. Mixed with the other chemicals in Khione’s ocean was a dangerous level of ammonia. Early settlers had hoped to seed the ocean with Arctic sea life. The chemical soup of Khione’s ocean made that impossible.

  Normally Zima would have been fascinated by his first look at the docks. This work was what he’d spent years training to do.

  He and thirty other new divers had arrived without fanfare, riding a gliding coaster down from the landing fields on Khione’s kilometers-thick icepack. The coaster set down on top of the station and the newcomers had simply filed down the metal stairs, where a customs agent checked their IDs. Their arrival had been as uneventful as stepping off a metro platform. That night’s celebrations hadn’t been as uneventful. He open and closed his fist, working the stiffness in his bruised knuckles.

  The dock facility was hundreds of meters wide, making it the largest open space at Naxos. The facility was mounted on tall concrete pillars, so submarines could sail beneath it and surface inside the moon pool. Once inside, the subs moored along one of the concrete piers.

  The rentacops steered the prisoners toward the end of the dock. Most of the piers were busy with loading and unloading cargo from the subs. Overhead a web of steel beams crisscrossed the concrete roof, holding floodlights and tracks for overhead cargo cranes. Sub crews closely watched the cranes lower
nets into their vessel’s cargo compartments. On the docks more rentacops walked alongside dollies loaded with small drums. Cargomasters loaded the drums into cargo nets before lifting the drums into the sub.

  There were four blasts from a horn and a submarine began backing out from the pier. Zima walked backward for a few steps, watching the show. When the sub cleared the pier the last of the crew hurried below deck, slamming shut the hatches behind them. The submarine slid under the water.

  A rentacop caught Zima’s eye and twirled his finger in the air in a turn-around gesture. Zima turned on his heel. He shifted his duffel bag from one shoulder to the other.

  They crossed a scuffed line of yellow paint, entering the corporate territory of Dumas S.A.. They filed past teams of workers in jackets or jump suits with the Dumas swordfish logo. The subs at these piers had the trident painted on their bows. A few workers elbowed their friends, snickering at Zima and the others.

  The prisoners reached the piers at the end of the dock. A tall wire fence separated this area from the rest of the Dumas piers.

  The subs here were smaller than the long cargo subs. They had a rougher surface as well—these were locally made utility subs, with concrete hulls instead of the more expensive alloyed steel or Earth-made carbon fiber plates used on the larger vessels.

  A rentacop checked off names from his pocket slate, waving prisoners towards each submarine. He sent Zima and another prisoner toward the gangway to the last submarine.

  A man in oil-stained coveralls leaned against the gangway railing. He smiled a shit eating grin as he watched them. “You two our new convicts?”

  “Yessir,” the other prisoner said.

  “Sir? I like that. Name?”

  “Poulsen.”

  “Uh huh. How long you been on Khione?”

  “Just a couple days.”

  The man snorted. “Don’t take long to screw up, does it?” The man looked at Zima. “And you…?”

  “Ivan Zima. Nice to meet you,” Zima said.

  “Yeah, thrilled. This boat’s the Cyrene. I’m Meacham.” He hawked and spat over the railing.

  Meacham didn’t get up from the railing. Zima and Poulsen stood there for a couple minutes, glanced at each other and waited a few more minutes. Finally Zima spoke up. “Um, should we go aboard?”

  “Nah, sit tight, kid. We gotta wait for a couple more people.”

  Zima dropped his bag to the ground. He sat on the bag, leaning back against the railing.

  “Don’t get comfy. They’re here.” The man waved in mock cheerfulness at two newcomers, a man and woman also in orange coveralls. “Reece, did you have a nice break?”

  The front of the woman’s coveralls were covered with food stains and patched with duct tape. Her ratty brown hair was secured in a ponytail. She barely glanced at Meacham.

  Compared to Reece, the man beside her was shockingly tidy. His coveralls were clean and a rip on the shoulder had been neatly mended. His jet black hair was short and recently cut.

  “Meacham,” the neat man said.

  “You two need to watch out for Tanaka-san,” Meacham said to Poulsen and Zima. “He ain’t like you lightweights. He’s a real criminal.”

  Tanaka frowned at Meacham and Meacham’s gloating smile slipped away.

  Meacham jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Get your asses aboard. Poulsen, Zima, follow me. I’ll show you were you’ll stow your crap.”

  Zima gave up unpacking.

  Their tiny berth wasn’t much bigger than a closet. Two narrow bunks were on one wall, with a few drawers under each bunk. Opposite the bunks were the built-in lockers they’d use to store their gear.

  Zima and Poulsen kept bumping into each other as they tried to unpack their gear. Finally, Zima threw his duffel on his bunk. “You get unpacked. I’ll be in the galley when you’re done.”

  The Cyrene had a single passage running down the center of the ship. Meacham’s brief tour had only been to point at different locations. Forward was the sealed hatch to the bridge. Moving aft from the bridge were the crew berths and the galley. Behind the galley was the dive compartment, the head, cargo compartments and at the aft end of the passage another hatch, this one propped open and leading into the engine compartment.

  Meacham had pointedly told them to stay out of the engine room and that Pilot wasn’t to be bothered. That was how Meacham referred to the ship’s pilot—not by name, just ‘Pilot.’

  Zima was surprised to see Reece in the galley. She sat at the one table, staring into the corner. She’d pushed back the sleeves of her coveralls. Scars crisscrossed her forearms—a few older, pink ones, others had the raw look of fresh cuts.

  “Hi,” Zima said.

  Reece glanced at him, then went back to looking into the corner.

  Such a happy boat, Zima thought.

  The back of the galley had a built-in hot water dispenser for coffee, tea or instant noodles. Beside it was a microwave. There were small locked cabinets with taped labels reading REECE, MEACHAM, TANAKA, as well as other cabinets that were unlabeled and empty.

  Zima pulled out a ration pack. Peeling back the cover revealed quick rice, tofu, dried vegetables and a compressed fruit bar. There were two powdered drink packets.

  He looked through the other ration packs. They were identical. This is going to get very old, very quickly.

  “The orange tastes best,” Reece said.

  Zima glanced back at Reece. She still looked into the corner.

  “Um, thanks, I’ll try it.”

  He used the hot water to heat his rice, microwaved his tofu and stirred orange powder into a glass of cold water. He sat down across from Reece. He chopped up the tofu with the edge of his spork and stirred it into his rice. He inhaled the steam and smelled...nothing. It might as well have been hot paper on his tray.

  Before heading to the docks the rentacops had marched the prisoners to a commissary that sold a bewildering variety of small luxuries. There were seasonings and sauces for the shipboard rations, cuisine meal packs, memory cards with movies and soaps, cards with books, cards with porn, and an aisle of chips, cookies and candy. He couldn’t afford any of the goods. He’d spent the last of his money on an arbitrator to argue his court case. The woman charged a flat rate and didn’t seem interested in winning as much as she wanted to finish so she could move onto the next case.

  There’d been one troubling store banner labeled Easy Credit. The smaller print said he could buy commissary goods on credit against successful harvests. His arbitrator had mentioned that coming in over his quota would shorten his sentence. Did they get cash bonuses as well? He had a movie card in his hand before he stopped himself. Perhaps later, when they’d completed a harvest and he knew a little more, then he’d treat himself. He put the card back.

  Now he wished he bought a few bottles of hot sauce. He looked about the galley, hoping for something to distract him from his tasteless food. There was a wall screen over the table, but it looked dead. In desperation, he decided to talk to Reece.

  “How long have you been on the Cyrene?” Zima asked.

  Reece shrugged. “Month or two to go. Pilot’s not bad. You’ll never see her anyway. Tanaka is great.”

  “He is?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Huh. And Meacham?”

  She shrugged. “Meacham is Meacham. He touched me once.” Reece draw a circle around her breast in case Zima couldn’t guess what she meant by ‘touched.’ “Tanaka made him stop.”

  Zima nodded, but wasn’t sure about her. Were her and Tanaka a couple? They’d arrived together. But he had trouble believing the neatly maintained man would be with this unfocused slob.

  “Can I make you a drink?” Zima held up an orange packet.

  Reece paled. She waved her hand in front of her face. “God, no.”

  Zima spotted someone hurry past the galley—just a flicker of motion with the suggestion of long strides. The galley was small enough that if he slid to the end of the bench he could lean
out into the passageway. He got there just in time to see the hatch at the forward end of the passage swing shut. Several loud clacks came as the bolts shot home.

  Meacham’s brief tour also included two red lines, one at each end of the passageway, just in front of the bridge and engineering hatches. “Ya want to know how 500 volts feel, cross those lines.”

  “When do we meet the pilot?” Poulsen had asked.

  “Ya don’t.”

  The Cyrene departed without announcement from the bridge. Poulsen and Zima were talking in their berth when they felt the ship get underway. They had to lie on their bunks while they talked. If they wanted to sit, they’d have to take turns using the one chair that folded down from the wall. They stopped talking when the engines started. A few minutes later there was an elevator dropping sensation as the submarine sank through the moon pool.

  “So we’ve started,” Poulsen said.

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “Not what I thought my first cruise would be like.”

  “Me neither.”

  An hour later Meacham poked his head through the open doorway. He pointed at Zima. “You got weapons cleaning duty.”

  Entrusting the prisoners with weapons seemed odd to Zima. Meacham must have seen the look on Zima’s face. “Ya thinking about taking over the boat?”

  “What? No, of course not.” Zima followed Meacham down the passage way. Meacham stopped outside the dive compartment.

  “Ha! You don’t get ammo until you’re heading out the hatch. Wouldn’t do ya much good anyway. Pilot sees you running around with a cavitation gun you get--”

  “500 volts,” Zima said. Meacham frowned at not finishing his story. The engineer looked inside the dive room. “Brought you a little help.” He waved Zima inside.

  It may have been the biggest room in the sub, but it was crowded with equipment. Suits and helmets were on racks against one wall. Compressors and tool boxes lined the opposite wall. A diver propulsion unit was locked in place in the back. In the center of the room were a couple benches bolted in place, next to the diver’s hatch in the floor.