Deep Sea One Read Free Page B

said, as he wrapped his hands tightly around his cup. He looked out the wet window, through trickling droplets that twisted the world outside. It was grey and miserable. Looking out over the endless expanse of ice cold water he could see the sea breathing steadily around them, heaving and falling in great swells of frigid power.
    "Who the hell is Tiamat?" Darwin asked, if only to make conversation. He knew his colleague enjoyed spinning yarns about maritime superstitions and he allowed him his fabled therapy.
    "The sea goddess of chaos, o' course!" came the answer from Liam, who still stared out as if he expected to see her.
    "You are such a pirate, Liam."
    "Pirate? I am a distant descendant of Boadicea, you know," he boasted and left his colleague with yet another anticipatory expression and a twinge of befuddlement. He was forced to explain.
    "She was a feared seafaring warrior, she was. Foe of the Roman Empire and leader of the Iceni tribe who sailed from Wales to kick some Roman arse back in AD 61or somethin'," he bragged. Darwin did not have the heart to torment him with the question of how he could possibly have traced his lineage that far back, and he dare not mention that the woman in question was in fact Welsh and not Irish. He let Liam have his moment and simply nodded with an affirmative smile.
    A while later they set out to facilitate the recovery of the minisub. Shivering from the sudden shock of cold sheets of salt water, the two cowered down in the booth to get the green bug up and stashed before the brunt of the storm hit the solitary tower. As they entered the booth Tommy, the assistant engineer, looked ashen.
    "What? Tommy. What?" Liam asked, as he stood staring with a measure of devastation.
    Looking helpless and nursing an impending breakdown of nerves, Tommy said, "The ROV is gone."
    "Gone where?" Liam asked quickly, before he could fathom what Tommy really said.
    "Gone. Vanished. Nowhere to be found. Fucking GONE!" he cried, in an unstable tone that compelled Darwin to calm him with a pat on the arm.
    "Calm down, Tommy boy. Now, how do you know it's gone? Did the umbilicals detach? We could always make a plan to retrieve—"
    "No, you're not listening, Darwin. The minisub disappeared without a trace. He is going to fire me for sure, but I swear to God, I have no idea how it happened. Everything was secured. You checked it yourself," Tommy wailed, seated on the control desk cradling one cheek in his hands.
    "I did. We did. It was secure, so how the hell did it come loose?" he asked in astonishment, more to himself in contemplation.
    "It could have been the undercurrents. The drift is monstrous today," Liam tried to sound logical and also calm his colleagues while inside he panicked about telling the boss about it.
    The three men stood quietly in the din of the raging waves thrashing the booth, each trying to make sense of the mystery and each worrying about reporting it to the owner. Finally Darwin stepped up and decided that sooner was better than later.
    "Give me the satellite phone. I'll tell Mr. Purdue."
     
    ☼

Chapter 3
     
    "How to get tenure," Nina dramatized the term, as if she was about to break into song. She stood in her office in the pale morning sun, dressed impeccably in her usual suit fetish, pinstriped grey for today, but her heels were cast aside carelessly. Between her teeth she had her pen horizontally lodged as she stared at the whiteboard she had been scribbling on since seven o'clock. After Professor Matlock screwed her out of credit for the Wolfenstein Ice Station discovery, of which he had no knowledge until she begged for emergency funding to explore the possibility, she had been setting aside her petty papers. Publishing was important, yes, but doing the work and not being more than a footnote in a hastily published book of stolen research rubbed sandpaper up her ass.
    Wolfenstein—Secrets of the Lost Nazi Ice Station was a joke, a slap in the face of serious exploration of