moved the Sharkdozer away from the wall. The submersible was slower to respond than ever. He managed to turn it about. “Yeah, yeah we did!” The Mako was pinned beneath the fallen girder.
“Great,” said Nina, relieved, but still wary. “So where’s the other—”
Six-inch spikes stabbed into the submersible’s hull.
TWENTY-FOUR
The diver had followed the Mako into the arena and opened up with his ASM-DT. The underwater weapon spat its remaining nail rounds in a line along the Sharkdozer’s wounded port side. The cobalt-steel pressure hull was too strong for them to penetrate—though they still hit with enough force for their tips to punch into the metal, jutting like porcupine spines.
But the sub had a weaker point.
The last two rounds hit the viewing bubble. Even though it was thicker than the nails were long, they still tore into the transparent acrylic, stopping less than an inch from the inner surface. Gunshot snaps rang through the cabin as more cracks radiated outward from the points of impact.
“Shit!” It was the greatest expression of pure fear Nina or Eddie had ever heard from Matt as he flinched back from the damaged port.
Eddie scrambled forward. “How bad is it?”
“It could go at any time!” Even as they watched, one crack slowly lengthened with a rasping squeal.
The diver was changing his gun’s magazine. “One more hit’ll finish us,” Eddie realized. They only had seconds before the diver reloaded, and no way to stop him—
Except one. The sub itself.
“Ram him!” Eddie barked.
“It could crack the port!” Matt protested.
“We’re dead either way—do it!”
Matt unwillingly pushed the throttles forward. Occupied with reloading, the diver at first didn’t realize the danger—until the increasing brightness of the Sharkdozer’s lights made him look up. Startled, he froze for a moment before grabbing the control stalk protruding from his suit’s chest and spinning up his own thrusters—
Too late. The submersible hit him, pushing him backward toward the sunken rig’s leg. The damaged bubble creaked alarmingly.
The deep suit was caught on the Sharkdozer’s mangled bumpers. The diver’s thrusters surged, but he couldn’t break free. He hurriedly resumed his attempt to reload the gun, finally seating the magazine. Pulling back the charging handle, he pointed the rifle at the fractured dome—
The submersible drove him against the concrete. Even at a speed of only a few knots, the Sharkdozer’s sheer mass was enough to make it a crushing impact. The deep suit’s humped fiberglass back split open, an air hose tearing and releasing a surge of bubbles into the water.
But the diver himself was still alive, protected by the suit’s rigid shell. The collision shook him loose from the bumper, leaving him floating as the sub slowly bounced backward. He raised the gun again—
Eddie lunged over Matt’s shoulder and slammed the controls sideways with one hand—and shoved the throttles to full with the other.
The thrusters pivoted in response, the Sharkdozer spinning on the spot. The vulnerable viewport swung away from the diver—and the damaged starboard thruster pod came at him. The exposed screw blades sliced through the water in a vortex of froth—
The submersible juddered, the motor’s whine replaced by a meaty thunk-thunk-thunk before the thruster cut out, clogged. Another red light joined the many already on the instrument panel. Outside, the water also took on a distinctly crimson tint. The rifle slowly spun past, part of a gloved hand still clutching its grip.
“He’s definitely screwed,” said Eddie, breathing heavily.
Nina watched the gun land before focusing on something much closer: the damaged viewport. The crash had extended more of the cracks. “Matt, how long before this thing breaks?”
“No way to know,” Matt admitted, backing the sub away from the expanding red haze. “It might last hours—or it could go in two seconds.”
Eddie counted to two under his breath. “Well, we got past that, so let’s hope it lasts for hours, eh?”
“We’re still fucked even if it holds! We’ve only got one working thruster, so it’ll take even longer to get to the surface, and in about five minutes the air’s going to start going bad.”
“How long can we last?” Nina asked.
“Three of us, in a compartment this size? Maybe ten minutes before we pass out, fifteen at most. Twenty minutes, tops, we’ll be dead from carbon dioxide poisoning.”
Eddie pursed his lips. “No way we can fix the air system?”
“Not from inside.” Matt slumped in his seat. “I don’t want to be the one who has to say this, but … we’re dead.”
“What about the other sub?” said Nina. The Mako’s lights were still shining brightly. “Is