Andy Mcdermott - Temple of the Gods

‘Better than nowt.’ He looked ahead. Broken metal poked out from the silt, the debris field becoming thicker. They were coming up on the remains of the SBX. Matt turned to avoid something resembling an enormous broken eggshell: part of the giant fibreglass dome that had covered the platform’s main radar antenna.

Eddie looked at the LIDAR again. Their pursuers were still closing, the sub slightly ahead of the deep suit. ‘Have you explored any of this?’

‘Nope,’ Matt told him. ‘It’s a grave site — off-limits. The only people who’ve been allowed down to it are US navy divers.’

‘So you don’t know what’s in there?’ The engineer shook his head. ‘Oh well, at least we’ll all be in the same boat. One that’s up shit creek!’

The Sharkdozer swerved to skirt a fallen girder standing out of the seabed like a flagpole. One of the SBX’s six gigantic legs rose at an angle ahead. The concrete cylinder was surrounded by a nest of twisted metal. ‘Eddie, give me some hints here,’ Matt said urgently.

Eddie indicated a long beam protruding almost horizontally from the wreckage. ‘Can we fit under that?’

‘Yeah — but there could be anything on the other side.’

‘You want to find out what?’

‘Not especially.’

Nina saw plumes of bubbles from the diver’s rifle obscure his spotlights on the video monitor. ‘He’s shooting again!’

‘But I want a nail up my backside even less!’ Matt decided quickly, turning the Sharkdozer on a course that would take it beneath the overhanging girder. A couple of the six-inch steel spikes clipped the submersible’s back end, but the rest shot harmlessly past. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Just go through and make sure he has to go under that beam to come after us,’ Eddie said as he took the arm controls. On the monitor, the Mako’s lights were now dazzling as it caught up. Another few seconds, and it would be impossible for a torpedo to miss. He raised the remaining manipulator, turning it to look ahead. The long strut stood out clearly in the sub’s floodlights. He brought the arm higher, the paralysed claw now on a collision course with the beam. ‘Soon as you’re clear, turn so he can’t get a shot at us.’

‘There’s nowhere to bloody turn!’ The space beneath the leg was choked with mangled debris from the radar platform’s underside.

They were through—

The raised arm hit the girder with a crash, the base of the claw catching its edge — and acting as a pivot. The Sharkdozer swung sharply upwards, before the strain on the already damaged manipulator became too much and half the claw was wrenched away. Matt jammed the thrusters into reverse to stop his sub from ploughing into the wall of curved concrete above.

Behind, the girder shuddered, a mournful groan of metal echoing through the freezing waters… then it broke free and dropped towards the sea floor.

It hit the Mako as it fell. The submersible was slammed to the seabed in a roiling cloud of silt. The impact flung the pilot against his control panel, knocking him unconscious.

Not that anybody aboard the Sharkdozer was in a position to celebrate. Even full reverse power was not enough to slow it in time to prevent the collision. Matt tried to swerve to turn a head-on impact into a glancing blow—

There was a hideous crunch as the tubular steel bumpers protecting the viewing bubble were flattened, the acrylic hemisphere itself grinding horribly against the concrete. Hairline cracks flicked out from the ragged line where the viewport had been abraded into opacity. Another, harder impact threw the sub’s occupants around as the port-side arm was sheared from its mounting, taking an entire section of the outer hull with it and exposing the cylindrical pressure vessel of the crew compartment within. The LIDAR display went blank as the turret housing the scanning lasers was ripped away.

The Sharkdozer slewed round, only stopping when it thudded starboard-side-on against part of the SBX’s crushed superstructure. Nina was first to recover. ‘Is everyone okay?’

Matt clutched his left hand, blood oozing from a deep gash. A red smear ran along a sharp edge of the instrument panel. ‘Got a bit of a wallop,’ he gasped as he attempted with little success to make light of the pain. ‘Eddie, you all right, mate?’

Eddie had ended up at the back of the compartment beneath the submersible’s entrance hatch. Loose equipment lay all around him. ‘Took a laptop to the head, but apart from that, just fine,’ he said, giving the offending computer a nasty look. ‘Did we get him?’

Matt moved the Sharkdozer away from the wall. The submersible was slower to respond than ever. He managed to turn it about. ‘Yeah, yeah we did!’ The Mako was pinned beneath the fallen girder.

‘Great,’ said Nina, relieved, but still wary. ‘So where’s the other—’

Six-inch spikes stabbed into the submersible’s hull.

The diver had followed the Mako into the arena and opened up with his ASM-DT. The underwater weapon spat its remaining nail rounds in a line along the Sharkdozer ’s wounded port side. The cobalt-steel pressure hull was too strong for them to penetrate — though they still hit with enough force for their tips to punch into the metal, jutting like porcupine spines.

But the sub had a weaker point.

The last two rounds hit the viewing bubble. Even though it was thicker than the nails were long, they still tore into the transparent acrylic, stopping less than an inch from the inner surface. Gunshot snaps rang through the cabin as more cracks radiated outwards from the points of impact.

‘ Shit! ’ It was the greatest expression of pure fear Nina or Eddie had ever heard from Matt as he flinched back from the damaged port.

Eddie scrambled forward. ‘How bad is it?’

‘It could go at any time!’ Even as they watched, one crack slowly lengthened with a rasping squeal.

The diver was changing his gun’s magazine. ‘One more hit’ll finish us,’ Eddie realised. They only had seconds before the diver reloaded, and no way to stop him—

Except one. The sub itself.

‘Ram him!’ Eddie barked.

‘It could crack the port!’ Matt protested.

‘We’re dead either way — do it!’

Matt unwillingly pushed the throttles forward. Occupied with reloading, the diver at first didn’t realise the danger — until the increasing brightness of the Sharkdozer ’s lights made him look up. Startled, he froze for a moment before grabbing the control stalk protruding from his suit’s chest and spinning up his own thrusters—

Too late. The submersible hit him, pushing him backwards towards the sunken rig’s leg. The damaged bubble creaked alarmingly.

The deep suit was caught on the Sharkdozer ’s mangled bumpers. The diver’s thrusters surged, but he couldn’t break free. He hurriedly resumed his attempt to reload the gun, finally seating the magazine. Pulling back the charging handle, he pointed the rifle at the fractured dome—

The submersible drove him against the concrete. Even at a speed of only a few knots, the Sharkdozer ’s sheer mass was enough to make it a crushing impact. The deep suit’s humped fibreglass back split open, an air hose tearing and releasing a surge of bubbles into the water.

But the diver himself was still alive, protected by the suit’s rigid shell. The collision shook him loose from the bumper, leaving him floating as the sub slowly bounced backwards. He raised the gun again—

Eddie lunged over Matt’s shoulder and slammed the controls sideways with one hand — and shoved the throttles to full with the other.