Deep Ark 6 chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO   pg 19

The pipeline is a nightmare.

Basin City and its outlying townships are connected by a series of steel tunnels: the pipelines. These pipelines carry people around on conveyor belts. There's no other way to get around the city. But, with the power failure and the quake, the conveyors have ground to a halt and thousands of screaming people are desperately trying to flee the city on foot.

And I know exactly where they are headed. I'm headed there myself.

The docks.

The docks lie to the south of Basin City. They make up a huge, sprawling sub-port,  where the mighty sub-liners and undersea fishing fleet are docked. Beneath a gigantic dome, warehouse,
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 wharve and workshops are clustered. After Neptune's Window and Old Joe's, the docks have always been my next favourite place to hang out.

I would sit on the steel wharves and watch the rusty sub-trawlers unloading their catches of silver, flapping fish. "Then a mammoth sub-liner would break water in a thundering, frothy wake, like a mighty blue whale. From a thousand portholes, wet and glistening, you could see the excited faces of the passengers. They'd travelled for days in underwater darkness and now here they were in the glaring, fluorescent light of the Basin City docks.

But I'm not racing to the docks to sit and watch today.

The pipeline is overflowing with shouting, screaming people, all moving like a human tidal wave to the docks and the sub-liners that will take them to safety. A big man, dragging a huge suitcase, is pushing aside everyone in his way. His elbow crashes into my bruised ribs and the pain makes me drop to my knees. I try to struggle to my feet, but the sheer force of those

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behind me knocks me back on the ground. I'm about to be crushed beneath their stampeding feet when suddenly a hand reaches down and grabs me by the collar. I feel myself being pulled along until I'm able to stand upright.

Still being swept along by the jostling crowd, I turn to see who my rescuer is.

It's Old Joe.

"You look like you just saw a ghost!" he shouts.

I'm too dumbfounded to say anything until we spill through the giant gateway of the docks. The crowd flows on past us, down to the wharves, and pours onto the gangways of the nearest sub-liner. It's pandemonium, but at least there is light here. Like Deep Ark 6, the docks have their own backup power supply.

Old Joe and I duck into an alleyway to catch our breath.

"I thought you were dead!" I say, clutching my bruised ribs.

"Takes more than a quake to get rid of Old Joe. I'm like one of them cockroaches — nothin' kills me. I survived the Meltdown. This is nothing."

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It doesn't seem like nothing to me. I'm scared out of my wits.

Another tremor rolls under our feet. The sea around the docks swells, smashing a sub-liner against the wharf. Dozens of people are tossed off the gangplank into the sea. More screams, more confusion.

"We better get ourselves onboard and quick!" cries Old Joe. "That's no mere earthquake!" "What do you mean?"

Joe's face is grim. "It's an underwater volcano. That's what you saw through the window, lad. Come on, this place is fallin' apart:'

He drags us out into the crowd.

"I'm not going on the sub-liner!" I say, pulling back.

He turns and stares at me. "You can't stay here, lad!" he shouts above the noise.

As if to prove his point, another tremor rocks Basin City. The lights flicker and spit and somewhere a steel beam crashes to the ground. Screams and panic fill the air.

"I've got to get to my dad ... to Deep Ark 6!" I shout.

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"Your dad? Deep Ark 6?" he repeats. "How do you know it's still in one piece? The quake might've hit it as well!"

"I've got to find out!" is all I can say.

He scratches his chin. "How do you plan to get out there ... swim?"

I haven't thought that far ahead. Everything has happened so fast.

Old Joe suddenly grabs my arm. "I know a guy who'll get us out there!"

"Us?"

"Sure! I'm comin' with you. You don't think I'd let you go off by your lonesome, do you, lad?"

I glance at his missing fingers. "But you hate snakes."

"So do you, Rom, me lad! But that's not stoppin' you, now is it?"

He pulls me after him into the stampeding crowd.

The Sea Slug entirely lives up to her name.She is docked at a wharf in a dingy corner

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 of the docks, tugging on her chain like an old dog.

Old Joe reads my mind. "She don't look like much, I know. But she'll get us to DA6."

I'm not so sure.

The Sea Slug is an old sub-trawler, part of Basin City's undersea fishing fleet. She's seen better days ... seen them and forgotten them. Now she is just a bucket of rust, pockmarked with grimy portholes.

Suddenly, the hatch squeaks open and a head appears, wearing a grease-stained captain's cap pulled down low. The man's face is flat, with bulging eyes spaced so far apart they almost touch his ears. He disappears back into the sub-trawler.

"That's the skipper, Karl Hammerhead," Old Joe says, clambering aboard. "He's got a bite like a barracuda, but he's the best in the business."

I follow him onto the sub. How is this rust bucket ever going to get us to DA6? I hope Old Joe knows what he's doing.

We climb down a rusty ladder into the dinily lit belly of the Sea Slug.

                                                      

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 The place stinks. I mean, really bad! Rotten fish guts, stinking bilge water and choking diesel fumes. Old Joe makes the introductions, but the skipper barely acknowledges us.

"Ve get going now!" is all he mumbles, in a thick German accent.

While I sit and stare out a grimy porthole, Hammerhead slams the hatch shut and spins the wheel, sealing it tightly. Then he lurches into his grubby captain's chair and starts the undocking process, flicking switches and pulling levers. His weird eyes seem to rove across all the dials and gauges at the same time.

Old Joe disappears down into the engine room and soon the Sea Slug's motor begins to cough noisily. It splutters, shudders and stops. Choking black exhaust smoke pours into the cabin.

Hammerhead yells, "More power on number two, Joe!"

Old Joe shouts something unprintable back

and the sound of clanging fills the grubby sub. Hammerhead smacks the starter again and, with an amazing belch, the motor hiccups into 

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life. There's more smoke and more cursing from below, but the old engine is actually working!

I watch through the porthole as the Sea Slug chugs away from the docks. Ahead, a mammoth sub-liner is diving deep while, back at the wharf, another is loading more of Basin City's terrified citizens. Behind them, the giant steel gates of the docks are closing. Whoever hasn't made it this far is now locked out.

Abandoned to their fate in Basin City.

I suddenly realise that my own fate is sealed inside this rusty sub. I cast a nervous glance at Hammerhead. He's busy scanning an ancient radar screen while puffing on a foul-smelling pipe. The next few minutes will be critical. Every available sub is departing the docks at the same moment, all desperate to get as far away from Basin City as possible. Unfortunately, there is only one exit: Trident Arch.

Trident Arch is the only undersea passage through which subs can enter and exit Basin City. It's only big enough for the towering sub-liners to pass through one at a time. The trouble is, a dozen sub-liners are now heading straight

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for the passage. Not to mention the hundreds of smaller subs and sub-trawlers swarming about like a school of frightened fish around a pod of angry whales.

Old Joe pops up from below. His watery blue eyes are full of worry.

"Looks like we're in for a bumpy ride, lad!" he says, peering through the porthole.

Hammerhead just grunts. He swings the Sea Slug into position behind a lumbering sea-bus. Ahead, a mighty sub-liner is powering towards the Arch.

Hammerhead suddenly hits the gas, accelerating the Sea Slug around the sea-bus and bringing her right in behind the sub-liner's massive propellers.

"Hold on!" he shouts over his shoulder. "This vill get rough."

Old Joe and I grab whatever we can hold on to as the ancient sub-trawler bucks and bounces like a crazy conger eel. Cups, chart books and chairs crash to the floor.

"Are you crazy, Skip?" Old Joe yells in horror. "Those blades will make mincemeat of us!"

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Sure enough, the little Sea Slug is being sucked into the slipstream of the sub-liner's spinning propellers. We'll be chewed up and spat out like fish guts.

Hammerhead laughs at our fears. "The slipstream is the safest place to be!" he shouts, his bulging eyes darting over the instrument panel.

I'm not so sure.

Up ahead, the liner is entering Trident Arch. Beyond that lies the darkness of the open ocean. On the Sea Slug, we are still white-knuckling the ride of our lives. Rivets are popping with the strain and I'm convinced the old motor will seize any second. If it does, we'll be sucked straight into that giant mincer blade.

As the Arch approaches, the passage narrows, forcing the mighty sub-liner to slow to a crawl to navigate the tight exit. Hammerhead is fighting the controls to stay in the changing slipstream at a slower rate of knots. Behind us, a huge traffic jam of vessels is fast catching up. The sea-bus obviously hasn't realised we've slowed and there is a sudden, sickening crash at the Sea Slug's rear end.

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Thrown up against Old Joe and we both go flying into the back of Hammerhead's chair. 

In the confusion, the skipper thrusts the aquaplanes forward.

 Suddenly, the Sea Slug is accelerating out of control — straight for the 

churning propeller!

Hammerhead is on his feet in an instant, hauling on the wheel with every muscle in his sinewy body. The sub-trawler rolls dangerously to starboard. We all roll with it. My ribs are crushed as Old Joe and Hammerhead crash on top of me.

The little sub has escaped the liner's propellers with millimetres to spare, but it's not over. Now we're alongside the steel giant and, with the passage walls only metres away, it looks like we'll be crushed to death anyway.

"Get below, Joe!" shouts Hammerhead, back on his feet again. "Give me everything! Full power! Make her scream!"

Old Joe fairly dives through the hatchway below. I hug my aching ribs and wait for the sound of the sub's hull grinding into the rock.

Suddenly, the motor roars and there's an

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ear-piercing scream of diesel and pistons. 

Black smoke billows from the engine room.

Hammerhead shouts like a crazed scientist. "You beauty! That's my girl! Ve aren't done for yet!"

Then he throws the throttle open and the Sea Slug springs forward, racing up the side of the mammoth liner. The Arch exit is now dead ahead.

"Steady, my beauty! Steady!" he cries.

With a final lurch, the old sub zips past the liner's huge prow and powers ahead into the exit.

We're through!

I stare in disbelief through the porthole. The sub-liner is behind us and ahead lies the black ocean.

Somewhere out there is my dad ... and Deep Ark 6.