Chương 451: 213.Hunt in Abyss 3

Europa's seawater was cold with impeccable manners. Not the crude sort of cold that turns you into a popsicle on the spot. More like a lady in a black gown, who first lays a hand elegantly on the back of your neck, then slides it slowly down your spine, and finally reminds you with the utmost courtesy that without that all-environment suit, you would have become a contemporary ice sculpture within thirty seconds—free of charge, on display. I raised a hand and signaled Jess. Jess didn't waste half a second.

She fired up the DPV's engine at once. That DPV was almost suspiciously small. When I first pulled it out of the gear bag, my first reaction wasn't "this thing can carry a person," it was "did the maintenance crew shove somebody's fancy hair dryer in here?" Then the engine started, and the little thing educated me with results. The moment the thrust hit, I was yanked hard forward, like some invisible deep-sea malice had grabbed me by the ankle and hauled me headfirst toward the bottomless black.

When the sonar interface lit up, the darkness took on shape too. The next second, I happened to catch a dull but vicious howl from somewhere overhead. Something cut through the water at speed. Combat craft. Asgard had begun. Wonderful. The people up top had finally finished building the stage. If this universe really did have a director in charge of naming people's lives, this scene had probably just been greenlit as "Deep-Sea Hunt." A vulgar title, sure, but the atmosphere was on point.

Black water, an ambush, an Imperial submarine, and two girls in protective suits who looked like they'd stowed away into a military documentary. Mm. Bold casting for a box-office flop. I dropped thrust to minimum and let my body skim along the shadow zone under the ice. Then the active sonar pulses came. It wasn't sound so much as circle after circle of invisible fingertips reaching out of the dark, feeling along the water, along the ice, along every corner where a person might hide.

Every time a pulse swept past, it felt like someone tapped my bones. The Imperial submarine clearly wasn't out for a stroll. It was looking for something, and looking hard. That kind of diligence is uncomfortable—like an instructor who suddenly starts caring about your personal life right before finals. Jess and I stopped at the same time. We even cut the DPV thrust. We hung at the edge of the ice shadow like two black parts tossed into the universe's trash can.

No voices on the comms, only the faint airflow of the suits' internal circulation and Jess's careful, quiet breathing. Strange, in a place cold enough to slow your blood, that small sound of breathing felt like better proof of being alive than the heating module. Then it came. First a blurred shadow, then a silhouette. The Imperial submarine rose slowly out of the black water, exactly like an iron-colored whale swimming up out of myth.

The hull was long and cold, coated in radar-absorbing material, the bow's active sonar array like a face with no expression casting nets in every direction, over and over. Light strips beneath the belly grazed the ice fog and suspended particles now and then, and the whole boat was like a blade on underwater patrol—unhurried, and quite capable of cutting a person in two. It passed not far behind us. Slowly. Slowly enough to feel like deliberate torture. I didn't dare move. Neither did Jess.

The two of us pressed into the shadow, quiet as though even our survival instinct had paused. The submarine slid by at that dangerous margin, active sonar sweeping and sweeping, like a hound that won't give up sniffing the same patch of floor. Honestly, for those few seconds, even my urge to curse the Empire had to get in line. Only when the submarine had moved some distance ahead and the sonar pulses drifted off with the hull did I raise my hand again and give Jess the second signal. Jess tapped back, light.

The two DPVs started up silently again. We didn't follow directly behind the hull; we cut to the right-rear quarter and hugged the edge of the turbulence. A dirtier route, but a livelier one. A large hull pushes a complicated flow field behind it, and to precision sonar that's like someone stirring an iron pot with a spoon during a high-brow symphony performance. Chaotic, loud, and very good for sneaking. I spotted the target quickly.

The junction where the stern propulsion fairing met the root of the starboard dive plane. There, on the outside, ran a half-exposed control manifold, left that way for ease of maintenance, feeding hydraulics and signal into the dive plane and the trim nozzles. Normally an armor skirt covered most of it, but for repair efficiency that structure had never been built as genuinely thick, integrated protection.

To put it unkindly, that spot was as thin as an Imperial aristocrat's conscience—dignified to look at, and obviously fake the moment you touched it. When Jess and I pressed against it, I could nearly feel the low-frequency vibration running through the hull. The vibration traveled through my glove and magnetic clip into my palm, like touching the spine of some enormous beast. Jess fixed the charges on the left side first. I took the right.

Under black water your hands had to be steady, steady to the edge of obsession. Magnetic base seating, safety pin rotation, timer sync, indicator going green—not one step could be wrong. Slip here and the story doesn't move into a heroic climax; it jumps straight to the casualty compensation procedures after a failed mission. When Jess seated the last charge, she turned her head and looked at me.

Through water and the reflection on the faceplate, I couldn't really make out her expression, but I knew Jess was smiling. That smile was annoying. It usually meant "come on, we're doing something no sane person would ever agree to again." I gave Jess the count. Three. Two. One. Detonation. An underwater blast isn't the earth-shaking roar from a movie; it's nastier than that. First the flash of white, then the shockwave hitting my chest and my teeth like an invisible fist.

The whole stretch of black water shuddered, and a mass of bubbles and debris boiled up out of the stern. The propulsion fairing tore open in a snarling gash, the starboard dive plane lost control on the spot, and the exposed manifold spat out a string of flickering arcs. The submarine's entire stern lurched. A second later, the hull began correcting its attitude in something like pain.

With one side's precision control gone, that Imperial submarine was like a noble young lady who had snapped a heel at a ball and still wanted to pretend she was elegant—holding up appearances for half a second, then choosing the only practical option left. Surfacing.

"It worked," I said quietly. Jess laughed over the comms. The sound was short, but it carried a strangely reassuring weight. We followed fast along the top of the hull. The damaged submarine tried to correct itself while being forced upward, the water above gradually paling, the faint light bending through the ice like silver gone cold. When the hull finally broke through the thinner surface layer with a dull metal groan, Jess and I slid in close to the upper access hatch. The hatch opened.

"02, they're coming out," I said.

"Seen them," Jess answered, crisp. The first Imperial soldier had barely poked his head out, not even having time to understand why he was on duty in a hellhole like this, before I put a hot hole through his chest. The second reacted faster and tried to raise his weapon, but Jess's beam was faster than the motion and slammed him back down the hatch. The soldiers behind came out like canned goods being dumped, one after another climbing out and one after another dropping back in.

Honestly, it wasn't an elegant scene, but in the face of a real ambush, Imperial discipline usually only has neatness left as a virtue.

"02!!" I shouted. Jess understood at almost the same moment I opened my mouth. The next instant, strings of grenades and riot rounds went neatly down the open hatch. The motion was as practiced as delivering holiday gift boxes to people, the difference being that the recipients mostly didn't feel like leaving a review afterward. Blast, white light, screams, and the echo of metal slamming back and forth inside the hull turned the interior into a pot of soup that had completely lost its dignity.

A ship interior that had been gloomy as a deep-sea crypt a moment ago was suddenly as lively as someone carrying New Year's fireworks into a military dorm and letting loose a crowd of bad-tempered ghosts. In a sense the Imperial soldiers were celebrating tonight too—just with a more stimulating program. I used the chaos to lock the photon shield generator onto my forearm interface, and a strip of system light immediately ran a cold white ring along the edge of my armor.

Having this thing on feels very safe; the price is that you feel like you're carrying half a small refrigerator into battle. But on the verge of going into someone's boat to exchange close-range greetings, my tolerance for weight has always been generous.

"02, check your shield. We don't have time to play shooting games with them."

"Copy." Jess paused, then dropped her voice closer, as if speaking right against my ear.

"Don't die first. I'm not planning to tour this wreck alone." I nearly answered "don't say unlucky things," but by the time it reached my mouth I laughed instead. I hate that. Even now, Jess could still make a person want to laugh. I grabbed the ladder beside the hatch and went down. The metal rungs were slick with seawater and the fine ice debris shaken loose by the blast, cold as if Europa had personally blessed them.

The shield module hummed against my forearm, and residual white smoke and flashing alarm lights curled upward together inside the hatch. Below, someone was coughing, someone was shouting, someone was trying to reorganize a defense. Good. That meant they hadn't died out yet, and it meant that once we were inside, things were going to look worse than this. But so what. Asgard had already pulled the stage open on the surface. And all Jess and I had to do now was walk all the way down this improvised gateway to hell.

Europa's ocean was cold enough to suggest the universe had reservations about life, but at least it had space. Black is black, deep is deep, but you could still breathe visually. Inside the submarine it was different. No sea, no distance, no way back. Pipes overhead, bulkheads on both sides, a narrow passage ahead with room for two people to squeeze past each other at best.

The whole interior corridor was like the esophagus of some steel beast that had just swallowed something with spines, and was now working it down with obvious displeasure. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. When I landed, my boots came down on a layer of slick seawater and condensed oil film, and I nearly performed a free wrestling match for the Empire.

"... This floor is trying to kill people on purpose." I kept my voice low and pushed the photon shield on my forearm forward. The translucent light film spread along the shield face at once, like cold light glass compressed to its limit. Good-looking, practical, and expensive in a way worthy of the Empire's enemies. The problem is that it isn't a mythic barrier—just a slightly higher grade of borrowed time.

It can absorb energy weapons, yes, but past a certain point it starts to degrade, and once it degrades far enough—bang—it shatters in your face. In other words, the design philosophy here is extremely modern: first give you a sense of security, then remind you that all security is paid in installments. Jess landed behind me, neater than I was, like she was stepping back into her own dorm.

"At least this proves the Imperial military values real combat," Jess said, shield in one hand and gun in the other, her voice carrying that familiar lightness over the comms, the kind that makes you want to roll your eyes.

"You can eliminate anyone with bad balance right on the commute to work and save on future medical costs."

"You'd better pray you're not the first one to slide into a wall."

"That wouldn't be so bad. At least the cause of death is novel." How does this person make total self-abandonment sound like a weekend travel proposal? The alarms inside the hull were still going. Red lights blinked, cutting the narrow corridor into segments like twitching blood vessels. Rapid footsteps came from ahead, along with the short, sharp shouts of Imperial troops. Not orderly commands—the sound of people after things have gone out of control, all pretending they still have a handle on the situation.

It sounded very professional. And very pitiful. Jess and I didn't exchange much. No need. In a place like this, one extra word might bounce off three layers of metal before it came back, reminding everyone where we were.

Besides, the way Jess and I worked together had long since simplified into a set of rules that saved a lot of life—whoever raises a shield first, the other fires; when someone's shield brightness starts dropping, the other steps in immediately; and if both shields drop at once, that means today's luck is used up, so please bring out your real skills, or at least your last words. The first group came around the corner ahead.

Three Imperial soldiers in close-quarters armor, the charge rings on their muzzles just lighting up, and I stepped half a pace left first, cutting the shield across at an angle. The first energy bolt hit the photon shield and the whole surface rippled violently, as if something heavy had been dropped into mercury.

The second and third piled on right behind, white light bursting in the narrow passage hard enough to hurt the retina, alarm red and energy blue mixing together—like some designer with terrible taste had moved nightclub lighting into a warship interior.

"Right." Jess said one word. I dropped the shield angle at once. The next second Jess's fire passed out from beside my shoulder, a three-round burst, clean as filling in every correct answer on a test sheet in one stroke. The Imperial soldier on the right hadn't even finished adjusting his stance before his chest was punched through and he slammed back into the bulkhead.

Another tried to lean out and return fire; I shoved the shield forward and took that bolt head-on, the shield brightness visibly dropping a layer, like a fever patient suddenly losing half their blood.

"Awfully enthusiastic," I said through my teeth.

"Treating guests like this the moment we walk in."

"That's what we get for not making a reservation." Jess's answer was as heartless as ever, and she raised her gun and finished the third one. We stepped over the first corner and pushed forward. The corridor from the stern to midships was nastier than I'd expected. Narrow, low, hatch doors and maintenance wells everywhere, more corners than an explanation of where Imperial military spending goes—every single one labeled "reasonable," and all of them together one giant question mark.

Worse, the enemy here knew the terrain. Any half-open hatch could have someone crouched behind it; any lateral branch could spit fire. This wasn't the kind of fight you could win outside with nerve and speed. Here you had to dismantle a bomb with a needle and thread, one thread at a time. The second wave of fire came harder. Two soldiers suppressed from the front while another gun poked out of the upper maintenance catwalk at midships.

Three firing angles bit down at once and the passage lit up like a steel pipe with high voltage running through it. Jess and I raised shields at almost the same instant. The two photon shields overlapped left and right, making a brief and precious window to advance. Energy bolts cracked against the shield faces, popping like someone roasting a whole bag of glass beads in a fire. My forearm went numb.

A warning popped up on the shield status bar: absorption down from ninety-two to seventy-nine, then sliding to seventy-four. We couldn't keep taking it.

"I'll hold three seconds," I said.

"Then it's you."

"Copy." I charged. Charging is actually stupid here, because you have no room to dodge, only the right to collide. But sometimes the line between stupid and effective is as thin as the Empire's death benefits for rank-and-file soldiers. I went in behind the shield, pressing into the line of fire step by step. Every step was like reaching into a glowing furnace door. The light pattern on the photon shield grew messier and messier, fractures starting to appear at the edges.

Just as the third second came up, Jess cut in from behind me at an angle, and her shield face took a full volley for me.

"Switch," Jess said. Her tone was as calm as if she'd just caught a cup of coffee about to spill for me. I rolled right, came up on one knee to steady the rifle, put two rounds into the soldier on the upper catwalk first, then dropped the one suppressing us from the left. The last one tried to fall back; I flicked a micro flashbang at his feet. White light burst, he never even got a full scream out, and Jess finished the cleanup.

"Nice," Jess said.

"Don't compliment me in a place like this. I'll start thinking I'm actually good."

"You are—" Halfway through Jess's sentence, the hatch on the right was slammed open. An Imperial officer practically lunged out, and what he held wasn't a rifle but a short-barreled, high-output energy shotgun. The range was indecently close. I only managed to angle my muzzle aside before he pulled the trigger. BOOM. The photon shield took a full sheet of blue-white energy head-on and the whole thing let out a teeth-grating whine.

Not the sound of "blocked," but the sound of "I'm doing my best, but you two had better not push it." The shield face dimmed by more than half in an instant, fractures running to the frame, and I could even smell the scorched coating. One more hit and this shield would probably be retired. I'd barely finished cursing internally when Jess pressed in close. Not a figure of speech. She actually pressed in.

Jess cut half a step into my blind spot, her left shoulder almost hitting my chest, and slid her shield in from the side, taking the officer's follow-up second shot head-on. In the narrow corridor the two of us were dangerously close—close enough to be a problem. Through the protective suit I could even feel the tremor that came through Jess's arm as she put her strength into it.

"01," Jess said quietly. That meant shoot. I didn't disappoint Jess. The muzzle came out through the gap between the two shields, and I put the energy bolt almost against the man's faceplate. The officer fell back, the shotgun flying out of his hands, his body slamming into the compartment like something spat out of this steel esophagus. Only then did Jess step back half a pace, her shield face dimming a notch along with her.

"Did you just use me as cover?"

"It's fighting side by side," Jess said, utterly deadpan.

"A more romantic way of putting it."

"Talking romance in a submarine stern corridor. Your taste is beyond saving."

"Then why is your face red?"

"That's the alarm light."

"Oh." That "oh" stretched out very long, and very punchable. We killed our way forward. From the machinery section to the mid-level connecting compartment, then from the connecting compartment to the forward end of the command area. The closer to the bridge, the more the resistance took shape. The Imperial troops weren't popping up in a panic anymore; they started using blast doors, side cover, and height differences inside the hull for mutual cover. That was normal.

People are like that—the closer they are to their superiors, the stronger the urge to show off. Especially when the superior might be watching from the other end of a monitor; everyone suddenly believes they can burn a little more for the Empire. Sadly, burning is beautiful, but what's left after is still ash.

"Main door ahead," I said, stopping behind the last corner, keeping my breathing low. That was the blast door to the bridge. Thick, hard, ugly, practical. Very Imperial military engineering. Someone was behind it. At least four, possibly more. Thermal readings showed a few blurred human shapes packed behind the panel, and the power signatures of two fixed firing positions. Opening the door and charging in would be the same as slicing yourself up and serving yourself on a platter.

I pulled the breaching charge from behind my waist. Jess saw it and raised an eyebrow.

"Finally, my favorite part."

"Your life preferences are genuinely bad for longevity."

"But full of content." I stuck the charge on the weak seam between the lock and the hinge, set for directional breaching. A door like this can't be blown through, only twisted off true. The point wasn't to send the whole door to the sky, but to blow a gap big enough to pour fire through immediately. Once it was set, Jess and I pulled back to dead corners on either side. No need to say the count out loud. I pressed the detonator. A massive crash.

The entire blast door took the hit like a giant hammer from the side; the lock structure blew first, and the panel twisted inward as a whole. Smoke, debris, alarms, and muzzles snapping up behind the door all poured out at once. Jess threw two flashbangs in first, and I came through behind the shield right after. White light burst in the narrow forward section of the bridge, and the Imperials inside were blinded before they could even hold a heroic pose.

"In!" Jess and I cut in left and right. The bridge was wider than below, but only relatively. To people in an active firefight, it was still as cramped as a metal can packed with consoles, seats, screens, and the possibility of death. Two Imperial soldiers tried to form a crossfire behind the main console and Jess and I picked them off separately. Another officer, fighting dizziness, forced his gun up, and Jess's shot put him back into his chair first.

The last one hid behind the side of the secondary console and tried to snipe; I pushed the shield's remaining output to max, took a hit head-on, then shot him from an angle, and the shield finally gave a brittle cry and broke apart into falling flakes of light. Good. Retired. Thanks for your service, you expensive sheet of transparent coffin board. When the bridge went quiet, only the system alarms were still chattering. I didn't waste time being lyrical.

I pulled the link terminal from my thigh and plugged it into the external interface on the main console. The decryption module Yggdrasil had given us started working at once, and line after line of military-spec data packets popped up on the screen—the kind that give me a headache and would probably make Kushima sit up with a jolt. Download started.

"Pulling data," I said.

"I hope they keep their files organized. I don't want to be doing clerical sorting for the Imperial military on an enemy bridge."

"Then you're probably overestimating the bureaucracy." Jess sniped back while rummaging through the other control area. Her hands moved fast, like looking for snacks hidden in her own room, and seconds later she yanked a metal key out of a locked recessed box. Not a classic shape—a military launch-authorization key, slim, cold, hard, with a serial code and a red identification ring engraved on the surface. Jess held it up and gave it a little shake.

"Found it." For a second, I almost wanted to applaud on the Empire's behalf. Good hiding place, rigorous procedures. Unfortunately, today they'd run into two intruders with no patience for regulations. I switched to the comms channel at once.

"Overlord, this is Frost 01." Staring at the download bar still running, I kept my voice as steady as I could.

"We have the key. Give us the antenna coordinates." After a brief burst of static, Kushima's voice came on. Compared with everything else on this submarine, Kushima's tone—calm enough to be measured with a ruler—was practically a symbol of civilization.

"Copy. Recording coordinates." Kushima paused less than half a beat, then began reading them off.

"Alpha Seven. Bravo Two. Charlie Nine. Delta Four. Rotation alignment correction, one-two. Repeating—Alpha Seven, Bravo Two, Charlie Nine, Delta Four, rotation alignment correction, one-two." I entered the coordinates into a terminal tab quickly and called up the launch control subsystem. Jess had already slotted the first key into the left console. The launch system lit up like someone had slapped it awake from a sound sleep, several locked interfaces coming alive at once. Then Jess tossed me the other key.

I reached out and caught it. The metal was cold as a small ice snake.

"Dual authorization," Jess said.

"I know." I slotted the key into the authorization port on the right console. The whole bridge felt as if some heavy will had woken it again. A red countdown box popped up in the center of the main screen, and the launch sequence demanded simultaneous dual-key confirmation. The Empire really does love this kind of ritual. The goal is simply to shoot something, yet they stage it like a priest officiating a wedding. Maybe for them, power has always needed to be performed more than it needs to be efficient.

I looked up at Jess. Jess looked back. Through the red light, the gun smoke, and the bodies on the floor where the resistance had just ended, the corner of Jess's mouth curved slightly. Not that deliberate cool-guy smile—closer to "all right, we're about to do something ridiculous together again." Honestly, if your heart can still spare a small corner to notice someone else's eyes at a time like this, then either I'm far too unprofessional, or Jess is far too good at picking her moments.

Knowing Jess's general character, I lean toward the latter.

"Three." Jess spoke first. I tightened my grip on the key.

"Two." On the screen, the authorization rings began closing in together.

"One." Jess and I pressed down at the same time. A click. Then the system confirmation tone. [DUAL AUTHORIZATION COMPLETE. LAUNCH SEQUENCE ESTABLISHED.] The main screen turned green, launch status locked. In that moment I could almost picture that antenna far away, or something larger still, beginning to operate because of what we'd just done.

Authority the Empire protected with an entire rigorous process had in the end been pressed down by two women in enemy gear, standing in oil slick, who had fought their way up from the stern. If this story ever made it into an Imperial military academy textbook, it would probably be filed as a negative case study in crisis management.

"Confirmed," I said.

"Confirmed," Jess answered. I pulled the link terminal out of the main console at once and stuffed it back into the gear bag. This thing couldn't stay. You can gamble your life temporarily; you can't gamble the data. Data causes more trouble than people do, and it's worth more than people too. Since we'd come all this way to get it, there was no reason to leave it forgotten on an enemy bridge. That wouldn't be an oversight.

That would be a crime—the kind of crime an intelligence type like Kushima would hold against you for three years. I confirmed the terminal was secured, then looked up at Jess.

"Done." Jess pulled her hands back from the console and rolled her shoulders, like she'd just finished a decent warm-up. Outside the bridge the alarms were still wailing, and deep in the hull there was still confused movement and comm traffic. In other words, this submarine wasn't dead yet; we'd merely cut her throat, and for the moment she couldn't speak in full sentences. And we were standing inside her brain. Honestly, it was not a comfortable place to be. But it felt good.