Breakwater Page 4

“You okay?”

  “Yup.” Hanover flicked the phone open and the screen’s watery glow lit her face. She shone it around. “Found the locker … ah, shit.”

  “What?” All Cally saw was the phone’s pallid glare glinting dully on the deck. She sank down against the bulkhead, hugging her knees. Her clothes pulled her down, like ice-ridden weights. Had to get them off, but too tired.

  “Emergency supplies,” said Hanover. “They keep a locker full of them in all the Type Twos.”

  Cally had been only dimly aware as she’d sprawled on the deck that she’d been in a larger, squarer module. “At least we got here.”

  “Yeah,” said Hanover, “but it’s as far as we go tonight.”

  Tonight—of course, that why it was dark. Then she realised what Hanover had said. “What?”

  The phone shone on broken clear and red plastic. “We had some electric torches here, but they’re fucked. Hull integrity’s basically intact, but just our fucking luck, there’s been one piece of minor buckling and it was right inside the locker. Crushed them to bits.”

  “First aid kit?” said Cally.

  “Still there.”

  “Pass it over, then. You cut your arm open—”

  “No offence, hun, but I’ll patch myself up.”

  “Okay.” Cally felt stung. Hanover’s strength and confidence were very attractive, but she’d have liked to have felt capable of something—since meeting the other woman, Cally had either been tagging along after Hanover or being rescued by her. Did she really seem so useless she couldn’t even tie a bandage?

  “Nothing personal, chica,” Hanover said. “Prefer doing it myself, that’s all.”

  Chica? “You must have had some very disappointing exes.”

  There was a pause, then a fairly alarming snorting sound. Cally realised Hanover was laughing. “A few.”

  Cally held back from asking whether they’d been male or female. “We’re really stuck here?”

  Hanover sighed. “It’s pitch black out there, hun, and God knows what state the rest of the place is in.”

  “Could use the phone.”

  “What drugs are you on, Doc? The glow’s piss-weak, and the battery’s nearly out anyway.”

  “So what do we do?” Cally heard a whine creeping into her voice and feigned a cough to hide it, but it turned into an actual coughing fit.

  “Jesus! You okay?”

  “Fucking freezing.”

  Hanover moved closer. “No shit, babe. Get out of those wet things. There’s a blanket somewhere. Have to share it, but it beats hypothermia.”

  “I can live with that,” said Cally as she fumbled with her clothes, wondering how much of her true feelings her voice gave away.

  “Me too,” Hanover said; her tone suggested Cally’s voice had told her all she needed to know. “Stay put.”

  Cally, now in her underwear, felt her heart quicken. Hanover crawled over. A hand touched Cally’s knee, then her shoulder—a few more inches and it would have found her breast. “Hiya,” said Hanover, and sat against the bulkhead beside Cally. The Chief Petty Officer felt as cold as she did at first, but with the blanket securely wrapped around them both, the heat of Hanover’s body slowly began to warm Cally, even through the clothing the other woman still wore. To Cally’s surprise, the coverall was almost dry.

  “Here’s what we do,” said Hanover. “Wait till it’s dawn, then head for T-8.”

  “Wait? But the place is falling apart.”

  “It already has. Listen.” The pumphouse continued to creak and groan, but it was muted, distant. “I’ve seen it before. Pretty much anything that was gonna go, has done. Whatever’s left has settled, found a new balance. Should be more or less stable for now, barring another wave-strike. What are the odds, d’you think? You’re the expert.”

  “The Choirs tend to strike and vanish,” Cally said. “Coastal Command’d make them disappear permanently if they didn’t.”

  “Ha. Yeah, what I thought. So things’ll be calming down. Means we’re safer staying put than if we go blundering around in the dark. Sounds mad, I know, but it’s true.”

  Cally settled against Hanover, closing her eyes, then reopening them. “The air.”

  “Mm?”

  “Backup batteries are in powersave. Why the lighting’s out.” Cally spoke thickly. She could barely keep her eyes open.

  “Yeah, Doc, I know. My job, remember?”

  “The air purification system,” she mumbled, drowsily.

  “Don’t freak out,” said Hanover. “We’re good for twelve hours, maybe twenty-four. I only make it four hours till dawn. Five at most till it’s safe to travel. We’ll make it, chica.”

  Hanover sank against Cally. Understandable enough. She must be exhausted after all she’d done. Lifting Cally up like a toy. Heat bled from her; she was so warm, thought Cally. In every way. She huddled closer to Hanover under the blanket, caught a whiff of Hanover’s breath, that odd, but not unpleasant, spicy smell. Necessity, of course, nothing more: they had to have warmth or die.

  Cally was never able to pinpoint the moment it became something else. Dimly, she felt fingers stroke her hair. Ben? She’d missed that more than the sex. You could substitute that for yourself, but not this other intimacy. But Ben was dead. Except that he was warm and close, and stroking her hair. Then she remembered, as other lips touched hers—or were her lips touching them?—and a hot tongue entered her mouth, that Ben was dead, Ben was dead and this was Breakwater (no, not Dunwich, not anymore; for now, Breakwater was restored) and either she was kissing Hanover, or Hanover her—she couldn’t tell which, and didn’t care.

  Clumsy at first, then fluent, her fingers unfastened the coverall and crept inside, touching hot, smooth skin, while Hanover’s hands eased inside Cally’s bra.

  The rest was a blur, but a pleasurable one, in which Ben was forgotten. If any past love’s memory intruded, it was Paula’s: the two of them undressing one another in her flat that first time, with scented candles and Melissa Etheridge on the stereo. Cally lying back shy and afraid while strong, tender hands stroked and woke and opened her till her hands and lips and tongue came alive too, hunted and explored. The darkness only heightened the pleasure, made each touch a thrill; they made love in silence so that there was no other sense to navigate by. Cally only cried out once, clutching Hanover tighter. Minutes later, Hanover broke her silence too, with a shriek higher and full of more abandon than Cally had thought her capable of.

  After that, sleep returned. And Cally, still in Hanover’s arms, drifted off on the waves of a deeper, darker sea.

  V. Cold Light

  A smell of the sea, a touch of light on Cally’s eyelids, but the dawn was cold. Strange. It was summer, wasn’t it? Summer, and she was in bed with Ben. But no, that was wrong: it was November. And she wasn’t in bed, either, but under a blanket, huddled against a cold steel bulkhead. And she wasn’t with Ben.

  Although, she thought, studying Hanover’s—Jen’s—sleeping face in the undersea dawn, she could have done worse.

  Cally felt stiff and sore from the posture she’d slept in, and was shivering. There’d been no keeping the cold out completely and the burning sensation she felt with each breath hadn’t gone away; if anything, she thought it was worse. She felt other kinds of soreness, though, which weren’t entirely unpleasant. She smiled to herself, glancing sideways at her sleeping—companion? lover?—she didn’t know what to call Hanover yet, or whether last night had been the start of something or its beginning and end. Cally was content to let that question wait: for now, she was happy to enjoy the warmth of Hanover’s half-clad body against hers.

  Or she would have been, if she hadn’t now been fully awake. The early morning cold and damp rapidly made her position uncomfortable, and she needed to know how things stood in the (very bloody) cold light of day. More importantly, she had to pee.

  Pearlish, wavy light shimmered on the floor as Cally emerged from under the blanket. She immediately gasped in the
cold air; in seconds she was shivering. She crawled to the furthest corner of the module, squatted and peed. Hanover shifted position and started snoring, but thankfully didn’t wake.

  Cally retrieved her clothes. They were cold and damp, and she winced as she put them back on, but she wasn’t as cold as she had been. In fact, her forehead felt hot to the touch, she smelt rank with sweat, even to herself, and there was a cellophane-y crackle in her chest when she breathed in.

  She squinted through a porthole. The sea was a grey murk, like a duller, darker version of the mist she’d sailed through to begin her final watch on Dunwich, one night and an eternity ago. It swirled thickly: Cally saw sand and twigs, fragments of seaweed, severed crabs’ legs. Those other, larger shapes, with their limp, dangling arms and legs, swirled in the water too. She tried not to see them. And stretched across the seabed, from the Stour to the Wash, HMS Dunwich lay broken and slowly dying.

  At least some sun was getting through. The sea’s surface was hazy and grey. A huge blurred object hung in the water. Cally finally recognised it as LVR36, capsized with its snapped anchor chains swinging in the current. Jesus Christ.

  Cally looked at her watch: 8.00 am. How long had the sun been up? Twelve to twenty-four hours of air left, Hanover had said. Say it was twelve. Minus five hours spent asleep, maybe more. That meant maybe seven hours, perhaps even fewer remaining. And before that, the air would grow stale as the purifiers ran out, fogging their brains and slowing them down.

  Cally started towards Hanover—even now, she couldn’t think of her by any other name. They had to get away, find a way out. Her foot caught something on the floor, some sort of waterlogged rag. Then she recognised it as her cap. She wrung it out, water pattering on the deck.

  Hanover snored on, oblivious, even though the blanket and her coverall were crumpled around her waist. Her black vest top and the bra underneath had been pushed up, exposing her small, firm breasts and taut belly.

  No-one looked their best first thing in the morning, but Cally could think of far worse sights to wake up to every day. It would certainly be preferable to resuming her lonely, pointless vigil. It was long past time for her to find a life beyond Ben’s death.

  Hanover shifted position, snoring. Cally had to chuckle—whatever else she had going for her, Hanover was next to useless with first aid. The bandage she’d tied last night had come loose. Perhaps it was because Hanover had fastened it in the dark. If she’d always been this useless at patching herself up she’d be dead by now.

  A jagged cut ran along the underside of the forearm, from wrist to elbow. It was bloodless, without even a trace of scabbing; it might as well have been a slit in rubber. Worse, a flap of skin hung down like so much loose wallpaper. Hanover snored obliviously on. She should have been in agony, but she wasn’t.

  She shifted in her sleep, turning sideways so that Cally was looking directly at the wound.

  The underside of the skin flap was a faint, cyanotic blue. There was no blood. The exposed flesh—if it was flesh—was deep blue, glistening and translucent. Cally saw globules and sausage-shapes of what looked like blue gelatin, packed into the interior of Hanover’s arm, gently rippling and undulating.

  Cally gave a short, strangled cry. Hanover grunted, blinked, and focused blearily on her, then grinned and rubbed her eyes. “Morning, gorgeous,” she said. Her smile, the wicked gleam in her eyes, were so natural that for a moment Cally smiled back. Then Hanover scratched her head, and she saw the wound a second time.

  Hanover pulled her bra and vest top back down. “Best get a shift on. We’ve not far to go now. Depending on the state of what’s left of the old girl, we— Cally? What’s up, Doc?”

  Hanover finally noticed the damage to her arm. “Ah,” she said. “Bollocks.”

  In one fluid motion, Hanover stood, sliding from her coveralls like a snake shedding skin. She stepped clear of them, now wearing only the vest top and tight black shorts. Her white feet, slender and beautiful—high arches, long toes—slid out of her boots and socks as if boneless.

  The cap slipped from Cally’s hands, fell to the deck with a wet slap.

  There was a moist squelching sound as Hanover pressed the skin flap back into place and pinched the wound’s edges together. It was matter-of-fact: another piece of maintenance. She looked up. Cally couldn’t decipher the look on her face. “Sorry, hun,” Hanover said, and white nictitating membranes darted across her eyes.

  Hanover stepped forward, and Cally turned and ran.

  The hands that had loved and pleasured Cally last night would now be inches from her neck. Cally yanked the nearest airlock hatch wide, leapt through, and slammed it in Hanover’s face. She locked it, then dashed through the outer hatch and shut that too.

  In the module beyond the airlock, a crowbar was mounted to the wall beside the hatch. Cally jammed it through the hatch wheel and backed away. The wheel part-turned a couple more times, then stopped. “Doc?” called Hanover. “Cally? Hun?”

  Cally kept backing away.

  “Come on, chica, can we at least talk about this?”

  Like fuck. Cally ran. Her lungs blazed, and she was soon staggering. A coughing fit doubled her up. She was sure she saw blood in the brownish phlegm she spat to the deck. Pneumonia. Had to be. Hot, feverish. She wanted to vomit. Heart thundering. Could barely breathe.

  Couldn’t follow Hanover now. Have to find her own way there. Hanover had said they weren’t far, but why would she tell the truth? She was a Toad, or something the Toads had made—

  Cally climbed up through a ceiling hatch. Found another crowbar, which she used to jam the locking wheel. Then she climbed on up to the horizontal module above. Her hands were slippery with fever-sweat, and she was weakening—pulling herself up the ladder was exhausting and she nearly fell twice.

  Which way now? Pick a direction. Any fucking direction, as long as you keep moving. She looked both ways along the dim-lit corridor. Left or right? She ran to the right, started turning the wheel.

  A knocking sound, and the scanty glow falling through the porthole dimmed. Cally turned, and saw Hanover looking in at her from outside the module.

  She hung in the water, pressed against the hull. The nictitating membranes flashed white across her eyes. They were black and shiny now like polished coal: shark’s eyes, the better to see in the gloom. Dropping the pretence, now the truth was out. Three bloodless slits, like knife-cuts, pulsed gently in Hanover’s neck: gills.

  Hanover kept knocking on the porthole, still wearing that strange look Cally couldn’t interpret. Cally, Hanover mouthed; silver bubbles flurried from her mouth.

  Cally jerked the airlock open and went through. She didn’t shut it, much less lock or jam it. What would be the point?

  Where was she now? Closer to T-8, or farther away?

  She was halfway along the next module when the floor hatch flew open. Water splashed out of it, and two pale hands reached out and clutched the decking, each attached to a pale, muscular arm. The hands pushed down. The arms flexed. Hanover’s head and shoulders emerged, dripping wet.

  “Ugh,” spat Hanover, climbing out. “Can’t get the taste out of your mouth.”

  Cally cried out, ran back the way she’d come. Running in a straight line. Need to stop. Go up. Next level.

  She found a hatch above her, climbed. Afraid to look out of the portholes, afraid not to. If she didn’t look, she wouldn’t see Hanover following; if she did, she would. Suck that, Schrödinger.

  Cally stumbled along the next level. She found another large module, but it was a transport station—a disabled one, the airlocks all snapped shut. No evac pods. Where now?

  Whoever did the directions in here needs shooting. Maybe that had been Hanover too. No saying how long she’d been here, doing the Toads’ work. Had she said how long she’d served on Dunwich? What if she had? Why believe anything she’d said? Even if Hanover wasn’t the direct cause of Breakwater’s destruction, she was part of it. Yet she’d saved Cally, and more tha
n once. None of it made sense.

  The module beyond the nearest hatch was filled with seawater. Cally made for the next hatchway—but then it swung open, water spilling out across the deck, and the smell of the sea filled the station.

  A bare foot emerged from the open hatchway to rest upon the deck. A white leg followed, and Hanover stepped out, in her vest top and shorts, gills pulsing in her neck, coal-black eyes flickering white. Cally dodged towards the next nearest remaining hatchway, but Hanover moved to cut her off. She stood, arms outspread. The look on her face was the same as before, and at last Cally recognised it as one of sorrow.

  Cally found herself crying as she backed away. Was it fear, or something else? This had been the closest she’d come since Ben’s death to giving herself to another person. There were a hundred reasons why it might never have been more than a brief ecstatic fumble in the dark, but even so, Hanover was—had been—a woman Cally could have loved. Except she hadn’t been a woman at all.

  Hanover kept moving, blocking Cally from first one exit, then another. Bitch—oh, you bitch. Haven’t you tortured me enough?

  Hanover stopped. Cally retreated, till another hatch cover dug into her spine. Hanover spread her hands, stepping back. Bitch is playing with me. A cat, tormenting a wounded mouse. But there was no option but to play. Cally lurched through the hatch and slammed it behind her, spinning the wheel to lock it. She knew even as she did so that it wouldn’t stop Hanover, would barely slow her down. But she did it anyway, and then ran on.

  Her lungs burned; her legs ached. Cally staggered on, vision blurring. A lithe white shape flitted past the portholes. How was Hanover doing that? Inside one moment, outside the next. Was there more than one of her, was that it? Had Cally slept with one of a range of identical models, cranked out on an undersea production line?

  She found another ceiling hatch, climbed up another vertical module and emerged into a horizontal module. A plaque on the wall—S-7. One more level. One more section.

  Each breath burned. Cally hunched over, coughing. She wasn’t sure how she stood or moved. She wheezed, and pain shot through her chest.