Andrew Stewart - We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

“A shame you could not do more to save Brother Silas,” St. John says, smugly. Jealous, perhaps, that again, Lazlo was considered important enough to be singled out, to join on such an auspicious mission.

Lazlo looks down.

“We got what we needed,” I say, trying to comfort him.

“Nah, wan’t worth it,” Brother Callum says bitterly, shaking his head.

Brother Augustine glances uncomfortably at us.

The ringing of the hull sweeps away the tense moment.

Call to Prime.

We will gather in the chapel, but today, since it is not a holy day, only for private prayer. Individual meditation.

Normally, Lazlo would linger at the back of the procession with me—sometimes to exchange a hushed word or two. I haven’t yet had a chance to speak with him privately at all since his return. But he has rushed ahead.

We are almost to the chapel, and I have almost caught him, when the red bulb, caged in rusted wire, mounted above the main hatchway begins flashing.

“ Enemy ship! ” an urgent, crackling voice calls out over the squawk box. “ Dive! Dive! Dive! All unessential crew forward, to the balneary. ”

This is Ex-Oh Goines’s voice on the speaker. Urgent, strained.

Though a rigid man, he has never been good at shielding his real emotions.

He is scared.

“We haven’t fixed the dive plane yet,” Ephraim whispers.

“Diving in’t the problem,” Brother Augustine shouts as he rushes against us to reach the ladder to the control room. “It’s the surfacing I’m worried about.”

“Topsiders,” young Caleb says, rushing from the chapel, voice tremulous. “Again.”

The deck pitches suddenly downward, and we all must grasp anything available to keep our balance—pipes, walls, the ceiling to brace ourselves as we carefully shuffle our way down the steeply pitched corridor.

No time to drop down into the battery well to retrieve the key. It should be safe, tucked where it is, even if there is flooding.

We snuff out lamps and grease wicks along our way, casting our path into a deep gloom. Gather buckets for bailing, should we need them. Finally, we make our way back into the balneary, completely dark, save for one bulb flickering above head.

More than just us Choristers here. Brothers Gonzaga, Marcus, and Erris. Alexander and Magnus and Philip and Nicolas follow. Some twenty of our sixty-eight-soul crew rush in.

More weight in the nose of the boat means we dive faster.

Lazlo huddles against me and Caleb.

If we are called to some other emergency service, like extinguishing a fire, or patching a breach, then we will have to move, but for now, we cluster together, a large mass, seated silently between the tubes, below the array of valves and dials and gauges.

One large, round gauge we are all keeping a close eye on.

Depth.

A red needle arcs across the face, edging downward, past thirty fathoms now and still steadily falling.

Hollow knocks against the hull.

Pressure.

“I hope we don’t stay down as long as that one time—I didn’t like the way the air smelled. Made me dizzy as anything,” Caleb says.

That time occurred when we were diving for Vespers, and the planes did not respond at all, stuck in a position that took us down and down. The Leviathan screamed at us that day. Groaned and creaked like I never heard. I was sure then that it would be our end, that we would be crushed. That’s what Lazlo says will happen on our final day, after we launch the Last Judgment. The pressure will squeeze us tight until all the bolts and welds give. We went down to 140 fathoms before the Watch was able to regain control of the dive.

If the dive plane has been damaged, who is to say we can correct this time?

In the dark, the dank, green reek of the room closes in.

I hold my breath and listen. Listen for the splashes, for the inorganic thrumming of the enemy machines.

“Don’t hear any depth charges,” Ephraim says.

“No,” I say, glancing at Lazlo. Something heavy in his gaze. “Not yet.”

No sooner do I say it than a resonant boom thunders above us. I feel the percussion of the blast pass through the hull. Our little world rattles.

The deck lurches from beneath me.

But no sounds of cascading water from breach or leak. No smoke, no fire. No damage-control alarm.

“It was shallow,” Brother Marcus says, looking up with his normal, froglike frown. Like the rest of us, waiting.

“We should pray,” Brother Ernesto, one of the feebler elders, says in his rich, quavering voice.

Yes, it is Prime.

A time for personal confidences with the Lord.

In the days of Caplain Amita, we were told to pray for those faithful who have suffered in the years of tribulation. People like my parents, who I do not remember in the least but who I figured must somehow still be deserving of Grace. To pray for the Demis and the rest of the Forgotten.

Caplain Marston now tells us to pray for our own souls instead. Those others are already damned, yet ours might still be saved.

Instead, I think of the bodies. Of Silas. Of Caplain Amita. Of Brother Calvert and all the others lost to sickness and raids and stale air and poison.

The truth is that I don’t want to drown in the icy black fathoms.

I never have. Not even upon the promise of the salvation that will follow. A secret I have always kept to myself. If Caplain Amita really knew how I felt, he would have never entrusted me with the key.

Thus, just as during our times of private meditation, I often pray that we live.

I pray that all these seeping seals and pipes and valves hold true. I know that they are aging—these works, salt-corroded and rusted and gummed up and ailing. I do not want to suffocate—we have choked on fumes before. My lungs know the tight burn. So, I pray that the oxygen generator keeps sputtering away, the little brown strips taped to the vents still flutter, that the ventilation-fan system circulates the air. The CO 2scrubbers once worked—machines and chemicals used to purify the air—now we use soda lime when we must, but even those stores have run out. We must surface often to vent. So, I pray that the diving planes and the rudder stay true.

I pray that we do not starve, for I know the pain of hunger. How it eats at the soul.

I pray our engine—our glowing blue heart that has sent so many Demis to early graves—continues to burn. For it powers everything. And should it fail, then we really would be doomed.

“We’re going deep this time,” Ephraim says, alarmed, despite his best effort.

Ninety fathoms.

A chain of muffled, watery, fizzling blasts rings weakly in the depths above.

“This is the third time in a month,” St. John says, disgusted. Less fear in his voice than the others, perhaps. It’s only for show.

The hull continues to groan around us. Echoes. Steady, deep drumming.

“It’s a sign that our time has almost come, is what Caplain says,” Caleb says soberly.

“Caplain Amita said that too,” Lazlo says. “And we have survived this long.”

Except we all know the truth.

That even if we survive today, it will only be to die some other day. We’ll eventually take our last dive. Sing our last song, and let the depths take us.

But what about before then? What if we are damaged, or stranded under water before we have launched?

We were never officially trained in how to survive should such an event occur.

“Ditch,” is what Brother Calvert told me one day, months before he went on a Topside raid and never came back. He said this to Lazlo and me, had gathered us together ostensibly to train us on properly cleaning and drying electrical parts, but he instead led us to the forward trunk.