Andrew Stewart - We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

And then the whole boat lurches, wrenches, thong s like I’ve never heard it before.

My head knocks against the ceiling of the low compartment.

It’s as though the whole boat has struck something.

Have we bottomed out? I can’t tell if the boat is still moving. It certainly isn’t diving any longer.

The lights flicker overhead, then wink out completely. The main power has shut down. Battery power now, keeping the auxiliary lights on.

Without main power, the batteries are essential until the reactor and the generators are brought back online.

I must keep at it.

Thankfully, the burst main seems to have been repaired. The cascade of water has lessened to a small stream pouring in through the well hatch. The boat has also leveled, shifting the water back from where it had been pooling.

There’s light enough to see that the pumping might finally be working. The bilge is beginning to recede.

I turn and turn not stopping until the water level has fallen below my ankles. My burning arm quakes, muscles clenching, angry and taut.

But the batteries are safe.

“Caleb, what’s going on up there?” I ask, panting.

No answer. Probably still looking for the tool kit. Or hiding under the table again.

I look over to the beam where I’ve hidden the missile key.

I feel for the key in the small crevice between the ceiling and the top of the beam, where I had carefully had wedged it. But I find only empty space.

I search again, running my fingers along the entire seam, but no. Nothing. No key.

It must have fallen into the water.

“Remy,” someone calls from above.

“A moment,” I say, coughing, splashing in the cold, murky water, feeling around the bottom.

If I’ve lost it, then that changes everything.

My fingers probe the rusty metal compartment deck, brush against sharp metal corroded edges.

“Remy!” I hear my name again. It’s Ephraim calling down.

Come on!

And then I find it. The smooth metal stalk. The key. Not sucked into the pump, after all.

Now is not the time to take a moment of relief. I shake as I tuck the key safely beneath my wet bindings, where I feel its cold shape pressing into my skin. Where it will stay for the next several days. Should we actually survive long enough to go through with the plan.

I finally climb up from the well, robes sopping wet, heavy.

It isn’t until I’m on deck that I recognize the silence that has overtaken the vessel. A hissing, a dripping, a tapping somewhere in the pipes, but quiet otherwise.

A thick haze of oily and electric smoke hangs about the dim compartment. Worse here than below. My eyes burn. My legs tell me that we must have bottomed out. We are resting at a slight tilt.

In the hazy darkness, I make my way forward until I see Ephraim’s form, leaning over something on the deck.

“What’s going on?”

Ephraim turns—face twisted up in sorrow.

I see now that he’s bent over a small, crumpled body. Only leaning in close do I see familiar, childish features half-obscured by a mass of dark gore.

Caleb.

“Wh—what happened?” I ask.

“Pipe must have come loose when we struck bottom,” he says, smudging his cheeks with dirty hands. Sniffling. “Thought he was down in the well with you.”

“He was,” I say, trying to blink away the burning. “I sent him out. Thought it would be safer.”

Now is the hour of Vespers, one of the most important prayers of the day. The prayer before a feast. The longest in the liturgy.

It is a time of sacrifice. Of giving back to God.

He had his offering today. Little Caleb.

Normally, I would sing the Magnificat during this hour. The Canticle of the Virgin Mary.

But the Sunset Office is not met tonight. Unessential crew has been ordered to their bunks. No excessive movement or activity. We must keep the air consumption down, while we are still submerged. Hiding, grounded, on the sea floor. Two hundred and nineteen fathoms.

Caleb’s body is in the balneary, awaiting its final rights. We cannot commit his body to the deep until the threat is gone.

The sub must still be up there, hunting for us.

It has been a full day.

The reactor and electric generators have been brought back online, but the air is running out. The oxygen generator must have been damaged. The rest of the scrubbers must have shut down.

My throat burns.

Every breath is tight. Each gasp filled with smoke and oil fume and poison.

The berthing compartment is full with my fellow brothers, sleeping or trying to sleep, or gasping for breath in their bunks.

But I’m listening. Ear to the hull. Listening to that lonely strain reaching through the depths.

One whale is singing. Yes, just one.

“ What are you looking for, Brother Whale? ” I whisper. “ Your friend? Has he been taken from you? Your family? Were they put somewhere far away? Is there a deep dark even too deep for you? ”

It is a sad song. I hear the bend, the strain. I sing softly with it, with broken voice. I follow its odd, unearthly melody. My voice wants to sing with it, to let it teach me.

A song of mourning for little Caleb. For all of us.

I wonder if Lazlo has been injured in this attack. And what of Adolphine?

It strikes me that now might just be the best time to check on her, when all are silent.

“It was the Liánméng,” Adolphine whispers weakly through the grate. “Would recognize the scream of their torpedoes anywhere. The Chinese have been using old Soviet ordnance since the end of the war. They might have intercepted our transmission.”

“I thought you said it was a code I was transmitting… a secret code.”

“Even if they couldn’t read the code, they could have triangulated our position. But yes… they may have cracked it.”

“Then Caleb’s death is my fault…”

“Caleb?” She asks. I hear her every breath. Strained, like mine.

“A Chorister. Like me. Killed during the attack. He was… very young,” I say.

“I’m sorry,” Adolphine says. “It wasn’t your fault. It’s my fault.”

I swallow, take in a slow breath. “I’m beginning to think… in trying to survive, we might accidentally kill more people. That sub might be waiting for us at the coordinates I transmitted. Waiting to destroy us…”

“We can’t know, Remy…”

“Why would they be after us in the first place?”

“They’ve been hunting you for years. This boat is a threat to either side. Plus, they might want what you have.”

“The Last Judgment?”

Her silence confirms it.

“Why?” I ask.

“There aren’t any nukes left. Not after the wars. At least, none that aren’t sitting in irradiated territories. It would be a commodity—” She stifles a cough. “A way to secure their power. We’ll be sailing into Australian waters soon,” she says thoughtfully. “They might not follow, risk causing an incident with the ceasefire…”

“I heard… on the radio, when I sent the message,” I say. “Australia will officially surrender in a few days. They said they weren’t sure about Guam.”