Andy McDermott - The Hunt For Atlantis

“Okay.” She nodded, her face betraying her concern.

They reached the gash in the ceiling. Kari used her thrusters to rise out of the temple, pulling Chase with her. The water rapidly cleared. Chase looked around for lights. He spotted some almost immediately-but they weren’t familiar.

“Another submersible,” said Kari, looking at the wreckage of the vessel. Even though its crew compartment had imploded, its battery section was still watertight, uselessly feeding power to the spotlights. “Qobras.”

“Hugo’s here somewhere.” Chase swam clear of the hole. “Hugo? Do you copy? We’re outside the temple, I repeat, we got out. Can you hear me?”

Silence, then: “Edward!” The voice was faint, shrouded in static, but it was unmistakably the Belgian’s. “I can hear you! Where are you?”

“Above the north end of the temple. You?”

“I’m descending from the southwest! Can you see me?” Chase looked up. Sure enough, he saw Castille’s suit lights approaching. “Are you okay?”

“Kari’s suit’s damaged-and mine’s screwed as well. I’ve got a leak and no thrusters. We need to get to the surface, fast.”

Castille shone his light over Chase’s suit. “There’s your leak,” he said, pointing at its waist. Chase realized the cause. When he’d used the knife to cut his equipment belt, its sharp tip had pierced the polycarbonate shell. Even as he watched, another tiny air bubble popped out and shot upwards.

“You got anything we can use to patch it?”

Castille shook his head. “Edward, listen, something’s happened on the surface. I heard-”

Clank.

“What the hell was that?” Chase asked. The unexpected noise sounded like metal tapping against stone. He turned. Something gleamed faintly, an object lying nearby. He moved closer to examine it. A spanner.

Clong!

Another noise, much louder and sharper. They all whirled to see a long pole standing upright on the stone roof. It keeled slowly over and skittered away down the temple’s sloping side.

Castille swam after it, stopping when he realized what it was. “It’s a boat-hook,” he said. “Why is-”

In his peripheral vision, Chase became aware of other objects falling around them, a metal rain. He looked up-

“Hugo! Move!”

Too late.

The Evenor’s helicopter crashed down tail-first onto Castille like a javelin. The Belgian was hammered down onto the temple roof.

One of the rotor blades stabbed through his deep suit.

“No!” Chase roared. He tried to swim towards his friend, but the shockwave as the rest of the helicopter’s fuselage smashed against the stones knocked him back.

A dark, swelling cloud obscured Castille’s spotlights.

Blood.

“Hugo!” The wave subsided; he swam again, kicking furiously, ignoring the pain in his arm.

Kari grabbed his suit, using her thrusters to pull him back. “He’s gone!” she cried. “We’ve got to get out of here! Now!”

Chase rounded on her, full of anger and despair. “I can’t leave him behind!”

“You have to! Look!” She pointed upwards-

More debris was raining down. Tools, hatch covers, pieces of railing, even a section of the Evenor’s radar dome.

And something larger, a hulking yellow shape charging at them through the gloom-

Kari blasted away at full power, dragging Chase with her as the Sharkdozer plummeted past and punched straight through the temple roof, barely missing them. A chain trailed behind it, its links rasping hideously over the stones. The crane at the other end crashed down onto the temple, then scythed down the slope right behind Kari and Chase. They both felt its passage through the water as it passed just inches from their feet.

Kari leveled out as she cleared the temple. More debris fell around them, slow-motion explosions erupting as objects smacked into the seabed.

Chase looked up. “Oh, fuck! Go right! Go!”

She obeyed, turning her head to look-and her heart jumped in terror.

It was a constellation of falling stars, a pattern of lights racing to engulf her.

The Evenor!

Emergency lights still ablaze, monstrous groans of metal echoing through the ocean, the ship was a three-thousand-ton missile dropping straight at them!

Kari jammed her thumb even harder on the thruster control as she pulled herself and Chase out of the path of the plunging vessel-

The Evenor hit the seabed like a bomb.

The bow was crushed flat on impact, the force of the water driven back through the ship’s interior ripping apart seams and welds as destructively as any explosive. What little air was still trapped inside gushed from the hundreds of new rents in the hull. Rivets, portholes, even doors blew outwards like shrapnel from a grenade.

Caught in the shockwave and almost deafened, Kari and Chase could do nothing except be carried along as pieces of the wrecked ship whirled around them, smacking against their suits.

Another awful screech of tortured metal moaned through the depths as the Evenor slowly but inexorably toppled over, falling sideways and slicing through the temple like a guillotine blade, no amount of architectural precision able to withstand the sheer destructive force of thousands of tons of steel.

The temple roof blew outwards as the Evenor displaced the water inside the main chamber. Support gone, the walls collapsed, crushing everything within.

The Temple of Poseidon, the very heart of the citadel of Atlantis, was now truly lost forever.

The noise subsided. Head ringing, Chase was almost startled to realize that he was still alive.

Kari…

They had lost their grip, become separated. He turned, trying to catch sight of her. “Kari! Where are you?” There was no sign of her lights in the darkness.

“I’m here,” she said weakly through the distortion. “Behind you, about five meters below. I’m coming up.”

Chase looked down. Still nothing. “I don’t see you!”

“My lights have gone. Hold on.” A moment later, an orange glow appeared, the ghostly outline of her suit rising behind the small glow stick in her right hand. “My air system’s failing-it’s getting harder to breathe.”

“Are your thrusters still working?”

“Yes. What about your leak?”

Chase squirmed inside the suit. The coldness had spread. “Shit. I think it’s getting worse.”

“It can’t be a big hole, or you’d be dead already-but it’s only going to deteriorate.” Kari reached him, holding the glow stick in front of the damaged area.

“Is there anything you can do to plug it?”

“No. But there’s something you can do.”

“What?”

“Put your thumb over it.”

“Oh.” Chase felt oddly embarrassed for not thinking of that himself. He looked down at the temple. A few of the Evenor’s lights still burned amid the wreckage. “Hugo…”

“It’s Nina I’m worried about,” said Kari. “For all we know, she was in the ship. Qobras doesn’t leave witnesses.” Even right next to him, the radio interference at a minimum, her voice was still weak.

She fired her thrusters, beginning their ascent. Chase held her belt with one hand, the thumb of the other pressed against the crack in his suit. There was a little digital depth gauge inside his helmet, the number decreasing.

Decreasing too slowly. With his extra weight, Kari’s suit could only manage less than half its top speed.

He struggled to work out how long it would take to reach the surface. At least twenty minutes. Probably more like thirty. And with Kari’s air supply damaged…

“How’s your breathing?” he asked.