“I grant you that,” said Orion, miffed. “But his sonnets are heartless, and that opera house he designed was totally self-indulgent.”
“Yep, that’s what we need now,” Foaly chimed in. “Opera-house designing skills.”
“Oh yes, traitorous steed,” said Orion testily. “Probe-designing skills would be much more useful.”
Holly sounded a quick burst on the klaxon for attention. “Excuse me, gentlemen. All this arguing is consuming oxygen, so could we all
“Is that a command, beloved?”
“Yes,” whispered Holly ominously. “It is.”
“Very well. Then quiet it shall be. I would rather cut out my own tongue than utter one more word. I would sooner behead myself with a butter knife than speak a single-”
Holly gave in to a baser instinct and jabbed Orion in the solar plexus.
That was wrong, she thought as the boy drooped in his harness, gasping for breath. I am going to feel guilty about that later.
If there was a later. There was plenty of power in the fuel block, just no air in the tanks and no recycling facility to scrub the carbon dioxide from the exhaled air. The pod was supposed to be a short-term option only. It hadn’t been designed for actual missions; the hull could crack under the pressure of steep ascent long before the fuel ran out.
So many ways to die, thought Holly. Eventually, one of them is going to get us.
The digital depth gauge was spinning backward from 10,000 meters. They were in an Atlantic trench, never before seen by human eyes. Shoals of strange luminous fish swarmed around them, easily keeping pace, butting the hull with the fleshy glowing bulbs in their transparent bellies.
Then the light changed and the fish were gone, darting away so quickly it was as though they had simply dematerialized. In their place were seals and whales and fish like silver arrowheads. A chunk of blue ice rolled past, and Holly saw her mother’s face in its planes and shadows.
Oxygen deprivation, she told herself. That’s all it is.
“How long?” she asked Foaly.
The centaur checked the oxygen levels. “Based on three conscious beings-nervous conscious beings I might add-rapidly consuming the air, we’re going to be short a minute or two.”
“You said we could make it!”
“The hole in the tank is expanding.”
Holly beat her fist on the dash. “D’Arvit, Foaly. Why does it always have to be so hard?”
Foaly spoke calmly. “Holly, my friend. You know what you have to do.”
“No, Foaly. I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
Holly did know. There were three conscious people breathing hard. Foaly alone took in more oxygen than a bull troll. It only took one person to steer the ship and send the message.
It was a tough choice, but there was no time to agonize over it. She felt for a squat metal cylinder in one of the rings on her belt and pulled it out.
“What’s that, sweetness?” asked Orion, who had just recovered from the belly jab.
Holly answered the question with one of her own. “Would you do anything for me, Orion?”
The boy’s face seemed to light up. “Of course. Absolutely anything.”
“Close your eyes and count to ten.”
Orion was disappointed. “What? No tasks? Not even a dragon to slay?”
“Close your eyes if you love me.”
Orion did so immediately, and Holly prodded him in the neck with a battery-powered Shokker. The electrocuted boy slumped in the harness, two electrode burns smoking gently on his neck.
“Nicely done,” said Foaly nervously. “Not in the neck for me, if you don’t mind.”
Holly checked the Shokker. “Don’t worry. I only had enough charge for one.”
Foaly could not suppress a sigh of relief, and when he glanced guiltily across at Orion, knowing that really he should be the unconscious one, Holly hit him in the flank with the second charge.
Foaly did not even have time to think
“Sorry, guys,” said Holly, then made a silent vow not to speak again until it was time to send the message.
The pod powered toward the surface, its prow slicing through the water. Holly steered through a vast underwater canyon that had developed its own ecology completely safe from human exploitation. She saw huge undulating eels that could crush a bus, strange crabs with glowing shells, and some kind of two-legged creature that disappeared into a crevice before she could get a proper look at it.
She took the most direct line she could through the canyon, finding a rock chimney that allowed her to exit into open sea.
There was still nothing on the communications array. Solidly blocked. She needed to get farther away.
I could really do with some warlock magic right now, Holly thought. If N ?1 were here, he could wiggle his runes and turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.
Water, fish, and bubbles flashed past the window, and could that be a shaft of light from the surface? Had the craft reached the photic zone?
Holly tried the radio again. She heard static this time, but maybe with some chatter inside it.
Good, she thought, but her head was fuzzy. Did I imagine that?
Oxygen deprivation. That’s all it was.
It’s too late. Too late.
Holly was shaking now. She filled her lungs but was not satisfied with the foul air. The pod walls suddenly became concave, bending in to crush her.
“It’s not happening,” she called, breaking her vow of silence.
She checked the coms again. Some signal now. There were definitely words among the static.
Enough to transmit?
One way to find out. Holly tapped through her options on the dashboard readout and selected transmit only to be informed that the external antenna was not available. The computer advised her to check the connection. Holly pressed her face to the starboard and saw that the connection was pretty well defunct, as the entire thing had been knocked out of its housing by one impact or another.
Holly punched the harness-release button on her chest and dropped to her knees. She slid along the deck, moving toward Foaly.
For a second, one of the handrails grew a snake’s head and hissed at her.
I am really going insane this time, thought Holly.
Holly pulled herself along Foaly’s frame, reaching into his shirt pocket for his phone. The centaur never went anywhere without his precious phone, and was proud of its modified clunkiness.
