Frank Schatzing - The Swarm

Akesuk had been talking about Greywolf! His friend had been able to interpret his dream. The iceberg had melted, but Anawak's path didn't lead into the depths: it took him up to the light.

Into the world of the living.

To Crowe.

Anawak's mind jerked back to the present. Of course. How could he have allowed himself to be sidetracked? There was work to be done on board the Independence .

'What now?' asked Johanson.

'Plan B.'

'Which is?'

'I've got to go back up.'

'Are you crazy? Whatever for?'

'I need to find Sam – Sam and Murray.'

'They've all gone,' said Johanson. 'The ship must have been evacuated by now. They were in the CIC last time I saw them. They were probably on the first helicopter out.'

'No.' Anawak shook his head. 'They can't have been. Or, at least, Sam wasn't – I'm sure I heard her shouting for help. Look, I don't want to bore you with my problems, Sigur, but I've spent too long avoiding things in life. I'm not like that any more, and I can't just look away. Do you see?'

Johanson smiled.

'I'm going to give it one last try. In the meantime, you can lower Deepflight 3 and get her ready to go. If I don't find Sam in the next few minutes, I'll come back and we'll get the hell out of here.'

'And if you do find her?'

'Then we've always got Deepflight 4.'

'OK.'

'Do you mean that?'

'Of course.' Johanson spread his hands. 'What are you waiting for?'

Anawak bit his lip. 'If I'm not back in five minutes you're to leave without me.'

'I'll wait.'

'Five minutes. No longer.'

Anawak ran down the jetty. The opening of the tunnel was flooded, but the ship hadn't tilted any further during the last few minutes.

Water swirled round his ankles. He waded in, swam a few strokes and walked a couple of metres until it got deeper. As he approached the start of the ramp leading up to the hangar, the ceiling seemed to tilt towards the water. There were still a few metres of air left overhead. He swam past the locked door to the lab, turned the corner and looked up. While parts of the ramp had become almost level, others were precipitously steep. The section leading up to the hangar deck now formed a gloomy peak. A dark cloud of smoke hung above it. He'd have to crawl up on all fours. In spite of the wetsuit he was cold. Even if they escaped in the submersible, there was no guarantee that they'd come out of this alive.

They had to: he had to see Karen again.

He set about trying to clamber up.

It was easier than he'd expected: the steel ramp was ridged to provide grip for military vehicles and troops. Little by little Anawak pulled himself up. The temperature rose as he ascended, and he felt warmer. Now he was plagued by thick, sticky smoke, which settled in his lungs. The higher he climbed, the denser it became. Now the roaring noise from the flight deck was audible again.

The fire had already been blazing when he'd heard Crowe's shouts for help. If she'd survived the start of it, she might still be alive.

Coughing, he hauled himself up the final few metres and was surprised to find that visibility on the hangar deck was better than it was on the ramp. The tunnel had trapped the smoke, while up here it could circulate, entering through one gateway and escaping through the other. The air in the bay was as hot and oppressive as a furnace. Anawak covered his nose and mouth with his forearm and ran across the deck. 'Sam?' he shouted.

No answer.

'Sam Crowe? Samantha Crowe?'

He had to be mad.

But it was better than living like a dead man. Greywolf had been right: he'd been no better than a corpse.

'Sam!'

Well Deck

Johanson was alone.

He had no doubt that several of his ribs were broken, thanks to Floyd Anderson. Every little movement hurt like hell. During their efforts to retrieve Rubin's body and load it into the Deepflight, there'd been several occasions when he could have screamed, but he'd gritted his teeth.

His strength was running out.

He thought of the Bordeaux in his cabin. What a waste! He could have used a glass of it now. So what if he had to drink it by himself? He was the only bon vivant left on board. In fact, among all the people he'd met over the last few months not one had shared his taste for the finer things in life.

He was probably a dinosaur.

A Saurus exquisitus , he thought, as he lowered Deepflight 3 until it was level with the jetty.

The idea appealed to him. Saurus exquisitus . It described him exactly. A fossil who was happy to be just that. . . exhilarated by the future and the past, which filled his dreams squeezing out the present.

Gerhard Bohrmann would have known how to appreciate a glass of Bordeaux, but otherwise there was no one. Sure, Sue Oliviera had enjoyed it, but she would have enjoyed a supermarket bottle just as much. Among all the people who'd worked together in the Chateau, there was no one whose tastes were sufficiently cultivated to appreciate a fine vintage Pomerol. Except perhaps…

Judith Li.

He tried to block out the pain in his chest as he jumped on to the Deepflight. Landing upright, he groaned, knees quaking. Then he crouched, opened the control flap and activated the mechanism to unlock the pods.

The domed tops rose slowly into the vertical position. The pods lay open at his feet. 'All aboard,' he trumpeted.

It was odd. There he was, balancing on top of a submersible, left alone in a well deck that was tilting out of the sea. You never could tell where life would take you next.

And as for Li…

He'd rather pour his wine into the Greenland Sea than give a drop of it to her. Sometimes the only way to do justice to the finer things in life was to make sure certain people couldn't have them.

Li

She ran up to the hangar deck, panting for breath. The bay was shrouded in smoke. She stared at the sooty clouds, trying to discern what lay beyond them.

Then she heard the voice: 'Sam? Samantha Crowe?'

Was that Anawak shouting?

There didn't seem much point in killing him now. Besides, the bow's remaining bulkheads might give way at any moment. The vessel was in danger of splitting, and when that happened, the Independence would go down in seconds.

She ran to the ramp and peered into a smoke-filled cavern. Her stomach turned. Li wasn't easily scared, she wasn't cowed by the need to go down there, but if she let go of the torpedoes, they'd end up in the water.

She edged down the ramp, feet turned sideways, taking one small step at a time. It was dark and oppressive and the smoke was smothering her. The soles of her boots made empty clunking noises on the metal.

All of a sudden she lost her balance and sat down with a thud, legs stretched out in front of her. Still clutching the torpedoes, she slid painfully over the uneven surface of the ramp. The ridges hammered against her spine and the water rushed towards her.

The ramp fell away and she splashed down, then surfaced, gasping for air.

She still had the torpedoes.

A muffled groan shook the tunnel walls. She pushed off and swam through the passageway, round the corner and towards the well deck. The water wasn't as cold as she'd expected. It must have come from the basin. The lights had gone out in the tunnel, but the well deck had its own power supply. She could see it getting brighter ahead. As she got closer she could make out the outlines of the jetties sticking up into the air, then the stern gate looming menacingly over the basin, and two submersibles, one of which was dangling at the height of the jetty.

Two submersibles?

Deepflight 2 had vanished.

And someone in a wetsuit was balanced on Deepflight 3. Johanson.

Flight Deck

Apart from supplying Crowe with cigarettes, the Pakistani cook wasn't proving very helpful. Huddled wretchedly at the far end of the stern, he was in no fit state to make plans. Her own attempt had been no more successful. She stared helplessly at the raging flames. Everything inside her rebelled at the idea of giving up. As someone who'd spent decades listening for signals from space, the idea of resigning herself to death seemed absurd. It just wasn't an option.