Andrew Stewart - We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

He tilts his head. Even standing a foot from him, it feels as though he is looming over me. Light eyes, flashing bright as ever with conviction. With energy and fervor. “Perhaps it is the fate of young Lazlo that still troubles you?”

Here, I know I should not tell the truth.

“My heart does ache for Lazlo,” I say. My words come out tight, as a croak. “I pray for his soul, as you have allowed. But I know there is nothing to be done. He is where he belongs.” I say these words as resolutely, as confidently as I can manage. I choke back the anger that has been building in me for days. I can’t let on. “I believe I’m just… aware of how much responsibility rests upon my shoulders.”

This, Caplain Marston seems to believe as genuine. Closes his eyes. Nods heavily. Places a bespotted hand on my shoulder. I fight the urge to cringe, to pull away. “Yes, I see. Of course you would feel it. You should go see Brother Dumas and tell him I have given you permission to take a sleeping nostrum. We need you rested and focused in these last days.”

“Very kind, Caplain,” I say, bowing my head. “I’m sure that will help me. I won’t… I won’t make any more mistakes.”

“Good,” he says. “I know you won’t. Go on, now.”

When he turns to round the desk once more, I see the chart fully—the course plotted in pencil. A location marked with a dot, an X, and scribbled numbers. -9.48, 136.60. Longitude and latitude. Caplain Amita taught me how navigation is done. That these numbers point to an exact location on the globe.

-9.48, 136.60.

I burn them into my mind.

Remember.

“Cantor…” the caplain asks.

I’ve allowed my gaze to linger too long. He’s caught me.

“I… I always liked looking at maps. Caplain Amita had them in his office. He would show them to me. I always thought they were quite… beautiful.”

“Indeed,” he says. Perhaps wary. Suspicious.

But if he does suspect, he doesn’t let on. He dismisses me. I rush from the room before he can say another word.

“I have them. The coordinates,” I whisper up into Adolphine’s cell.

I waited a full day before coming to visit her again, just to be careful of the caplain’s suspicion, and of St. John’s ever-vigilant watch of my comings and goings. But today St. John is busy helping Brother Aegis with the mending and sewing of robes, and my job, to inspect the underworks, presents the perfect opportunity.

“What’s that, child?” Adolphine asks, her shadowy form appearing on the other side of the grate above.

“I got a look at the chart. The caplain called me up to the control room. We were standing right beside it the whole time.”

“Good,” Adolphine says, more energetic than I’ve ever heard her. “Good girl. Brave girl.”

Girl . The word gives me pause. Such weight to it.

There’s a bond hidden in this word.

An association so very different than this place. This submarine and everyone on it.

A new covenant.

“Where is the course plotted?” she asks.

“West, to the Arafura Sea,” I say.

“Arafura,” Adolphine mutters thoughtfully. “A very shallow body of water, between Papua New Guinea and the northern coast of Australia.”

“We normally wouldn’t sail into such shallow waters,” I say. “No room to dive and hide.”

“It makes sense. Most of the CPN fleet will still be to the northwest, near the Philippines. They won’t be patrolling those waters. Your captain is smart—he’s been listening to the radio chatter, figuring out what’s been going on up there in the world,” she says. “Also, the Polaris missile only has a range of 1300 miles. He would need to get close in order to hit Sydney without sailing into the southern waters around Australia, which will certainly be heavily patrolled. Could you see how close we are to the launch destination? Captains will normally keep track of the boat’s position.”

“Yes, I saw. There was a solid line that ended with an X, and a dotted line continued to the Arafura sea. The X had us just south of an island called Fiji.”

“Fiji,” Adolphine says, then falls silent.

“What?” I ask.

“Doing the math. I’ve been aboard… thirteen… no, fourteen days. And the Janus was attacked just off the coast of the Cook Islands. Means we’re only going about…”

“About 160 miles a day,” I answer. “So, we’ve traveled about two thousand miles.”

“That’s… right. That’s right, Remy,” she says, the same way she was impressed when I told her I could read words and charts. That Caplain Amita taught me. “That’s not very fast. Which means we’ve got about another five or so days… yes, five days at least before we reach the launch point. I can stretch out repairs for that long. Brother Ernesto doesn’t know much about the electronic systems, the targeting computer, but Goines and your captain do. They know how to check to see if each of the missile and launch systems are in order, that I’m repairing them correctly. No way to fake that. But I’ll keep finding ways to delay. Scavenge for parts. That’s time.”

She seems to be speaking only to herself, thinking out loud.

“Time for what?” I ask.

“For us to send a message…” the woman whispers. The whites of her eyes flash in the wicklight.

“Message?”

“Rescue. We’re probably too far away for Guam or Australia to receive the transmission, but we’re no doubt still being followed by one or two CPN ships. We can send a radio transmission to them. I know the channel to transmit… we have a secret code. We can tell them what our launch position will be.”

“But they would attack us… right? They’re hunting us.”

“Not if we send them the message that I’m alive. That the missile cannot be launched. Then we surface the boat.”

“Caplain Marston would never surrender… I told you that…”

“We won’t get him a choice. We’ll disable it,” she says, knowingly. “You said you know the Leviathan backward and forward, right?”

I think. “Short of taking control of the helm, or the control room… and we wouldn’t be able to manage that—too many people. We could get to the engine room somehow…”

“Exactly,” Adolphine says, the way Caplain Amita would offer praise when testing my reading skills.

She says, “We wait until we surface to vent. Then we find a way to shut off engineering from the forward compartments. You said there’s only one entry point to access aft, yes?”

“Yes… through the tunnel…”

“Is it guarded?”

“No—the hatchway is sealed on the forward side. The brothers enter and exit by calling over the squawk. If we’re in the middle of a shift, there won’t be anyone there.”

“Then we could easily get back there and shut off the engine, the generators if we time it right. How many are stationed back there?”

“Two. Two or three brothers at any time.”

“That’s not many,” she says, ever more confident. “Yes, we can take them.”

We.

“But…” I begin. “I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone.”

“We won’t have to. If we surprise them, we can restrain them. No one has to die.”

I think a moment, find myself chewing at a nail. Bitter grease. Most of it pulls away at the quick. Only a little jolt of pain. My fingers no longer have much feeling in them. “But even if we shut off the engine and generators, Marston could still use battery power to dive.”

“We disable the hydraulics, then,” Adolphine counters. “They won’t be able to control the dive planes.”

“Then the boat would be dead in the water.”

“I know most of the Leviathan ’s systems,” Adolphine says. “I studied them. But I’m not sure if I’d know how to shut everything down. Would you?”