“Aye, captain.”
Cally felt her pulse pick up again, and in some ways it was a comfort. She must’ve got used to the darkness if her heart rate had subsided without her noticing.
“Stop, I can see rocks,” Brent said, urgency in his tone.
They let their momentum fade away, and once more he did his tilt thing. “There’s the bottom. About twenty feet.”
“Can you see Antoine?”
“Not yet. We need to get closer.”
They drifted down steadily, with rocks appearing out of the murky gloom. Cally didn’t need to focus to feel their bond; there was nothing on her mind but Antoine. He was so close.
She turned, and her lights reflected off metal.
A steel box, wrapped in chains, wedged between rocks and half-buried in silt.
Fuck. He’s inthere? Seeing it was almost worse than what she’d imagined.
“Between those rocks.”
Brent’s lights swung the direction she faced. “Yes, I see it. Damn, that’s… grim.”
“What do we do?”
“The chains will make this easier. I can just clip the carabiners straight on, and the lift bags will do the rest.”
“Some luck at last.”
Hang on, Antoine. We’re here.Yet again, Cally wished she could talk to him. But if she could, would he have done to her mind what he’d done to Noah’s? With her screaming or tranquilized, they’d never have found him.
Her suit sank lower, and Brent’s voice snapped across the radio. “Don’t disturb the silt. We won’t be able to see a damn thing.”
Cally pulled her joystick, shooting up a few feet. “Sorry. How about I…” She adjusted her controls, pitching forward until she was almost horizontal above Antoine, bathing the whole area in light. “Does that help?”
“Yeah, perfect. Good thinking.”
Brent maneuvered carefully, easing his equipment basket between the rocks. Little puffs of silt rose as his jets disturbed them. Within moments, the water turned cloudy, Cally’s lights diffracting and scattering from the particles.
“Shit, this isn’t working,” Brent said after a while. “The links are too large to take the clips. I’ll have to loop them around after all.”
So much for luck.
It took longer for Brent to loop the lift bag around the end of Antoine’s box than it had to descend, and there was nothing for Cally to do but watch, every moment fraying taut nerves. She’d only hamper if she tried to help, and she had to remind herself she’d done her bit. She’d got them here; it was down to Brent now.
“Once you get that on, what happens?”
“Two of them,” he corrected. “One each end. Otherwise, it’ll rise lopsided and risk slipping out of the loops.”
Cally grimaced. The other end was buried in silt, and would have to be cleared. “Then what?”
“We trigger the gas. The bags fill, and up he goes. Slow to start, but he’ll accelerate.”
“Wait. You’re saying he’s going to rocket out of here?”
“That’s how pressure works. So yes, too fast for us to keep up.”
“Shit, Brent. Won’t this hurt him? What about the bends?”How did we not think of this sooner?
