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TH - Book 2 - Chapter 30 - Confusion
🕑 Added 2025-02-18 17:48:57 +0000 UTCMight need some polishing, make the signs of exhastion more consistant over the rest of the chapter. Also note: This is setup for something that'll happen in Fata, so there's reasons why they're having problems tracking the fugitives down!
“A sub pen.” I repeated dumbly. “Are you sure?”
{Arty: Based upon the dimensions of the building, and proximity to the harbor, that would be the most likely explanation. We’d have to investigate further to be sure.}
“But… What would a sub pen be doing here? The Cascadian government carefully monitors all construction within the city, I doubt that someone could build something like this without their knowledge,” Skyler mused.
{Athy: Early in the 2030s, before humanity realized that the antithesis could survive underwater as easily as they could on land, a number of companies started developing aquatic havens, like New Houston, and submersible technology. Most of these projects were abandoned once the first aquatic antithesis species were discovered.}
I frowned. “So what? This is just an ancient fucking remnant of the early incursions?”
{Arty: Most likely.}
“Isn’t this area behind the seawall? Wouldn’t the submarine still be stuck in the harbor?” Skyler asked.
{Athy: It would have been, if the samurai hadn’t given the all clear a couple hours ago. The wall was lowered to allow merchant traffic to enter and exit the harbor again.}
“Still, whoever did this must have some serious balls,” I grumbled. “They attacked a Cascadian government building, fled to the harbor, then escaped in a submarine right after an antithesis attack. Whatever they wanted from my father, and the other inmates, must have been extremely important to try something so risky.”
“Well, before we get ahead of ourselves, we should actually confirm that this IS a sub pen,” Skyler declared. “I’ll grab Howie and see if I can find a connecting tunnel in the harbor.”
“Probably a good idea,” I agreed, severing my link to the drone and stepping away from the burned out building. “Arty, any chance the samurai surveillance network was tracking sea traffic?”
{Arty: If it was, we don’t have access to that data. The maps have been heavily sanitized to only provide essential information to the local samurai. I’ve requested access to the full data layer, but apparently the samurai in charge of the system believes in data privacy. They won’t share unless it’s an emergency.}
“Chasing a wanted felon doesn’t count?” I grumbled.
{Arty: Not according to their AI. Nothing less than a serious threat to a megacity would be sufficient.}
“Great. Well, can you get me a list of the samurai that were around the mouth of the harbor in the last hour or so? It’s a long shot, but maybe one of them had long range sonar active and caught our mysterious assailants on the way out.”
{Arty: Done.}
I waited until Skyler confirmed this was a sub pen before I started making calls. The connecting tunnel was extremely old, but there were clear signs of someone clearing debris out of it in the last few days. It was also fairly narrow, so whatever submersible they used couldn’t be much larger than a city bus. Since the only submarines I was familiar with were from the books in my grandfather’s library, that seemed pretty small to me.
Once that was confirmed Skyler and I started contacting the samurai in the harbor. The first person I thought of was, of course, Limelight. The call took longer to connect than I expected.
[Honorable? What do you want?] the voice on the other side of the line snapped.
[Phantasmagoria? I’m sorry, I thought I called Limelight.]
[You did, but she and Prism aren’t taking calls right now and her AI redirected the call to me. So what do you want?]
I took a deep breath before explaining. [Just over an hour ago someone broke into the Vancouver courthouse. They disabled the security system, then broke a bunch of inmates out of the holding area before escaping. Skyler and I tracked them down to the harbor, where it looks like they might have switched to some sort of submersible. We’re trying to figure out if anyone saw them leave the area.]
[Why would you be interested in a bunch of criminals? Shouldn’t you be back home right now?] the girl snarled.
[One of those criminals was my father,] I replied quietly. [I have no idea who sprung him, but that son of a bitch deserves to be in jail, and I’d like to put him back where he belongs.]
[You sound like Prism,] the other girl muttered quietly.
[Pardon?]
[Nevermind, just give me a second,] Phantasmagoria replied. The line was quiet for several long seconds before she came back. [The sonar did pick up an unknown submersible leaving the harbor about half an hour ago, going north, but since most of our systems are designed to track antithesis and it didn’t look suspicious at the time, we didn’t bother tracking it. It left sonar range fifteen minutes ago.]
[Shit. You think anyone else might have eyes on it?]
[I have no fucking idea! We’re not from around here, and half these samurai are from up and down the coast,] she replied. I could just imagine the girl shrugging apathetically. [If Warspite was here I’d suggest contacting him, but since he’s still out dealing with the deep water hives, you’ll have to contact the others. If you’re lucky, one of the other boats might have a better sonar system. I’ll send you the submersible’s last position, and course, but beyond that I can’t help you.]
[That’s fine, that’s enough to get us started. Thanks for everything.]
[You’re welcome. If you want to talk to Limelight next time, remember to call at more reasonable hours!] Phantasmagoria snapped before ending the call.
{Arty: Nice girl.}
{Rei: She might have a little bit of an attitude, but she did help us. At least we know which direction to look for our phantom submersible.}
I filled Skyler in on the details, then we split the list of remaining samurai in half and started contacting those in the bay. Unfortunately, even though half of the aquatic samurai contingent was back in the harbour, most of them were unreachable.
Most of them were taking advantage of the temporary lull in action, which followed the destruction of the aquatic wave, to catch up on some sleep. Most of their AIs were polite, but very few of them had serious sonar systems. After an hour of making inquiries we’d managed to locate a single ship which managed to track the submersible about another couple kilometers before losing it.
“Ugh… After all that we only managed to track the thing twenty kilometers before losing track of it. I expected someone to have better long range sensors than that,” I moaned as I collapsed on the hood of Skyler’s car, exhausted. “Now how are we supposed to pick up that asshole’s trail?”
“It’s not that surprising if you think about it. I can see short range precision tracking, and ocean floor mapping, being much more useful for underwater combat. Larger models exist, but they can probably rely upon the orbital tracking for those leviathans,” Skyler replied, rubbing my back. “Tracking human vessels just isn't a priority.”
“This would have been so much easier if we could borrow the orbital tracking data,” I pouted.
“We’ll petition for access again later. For now, I think we should update your mom, then I should get you home. You’re not looking so hot,” Skyler said quietly.
“I’m fine,” I grumbled.
“No you’re not,” Skyler replied as she gently pulled me to my feet. “Neither of us have slept properly in the last few days, and you’ve been pushing yourself extremely hard every single time we go out. You need some downtime, so barring a city wide emergency, we’re taking today off.”
“What about my father?”
“We’ll pass the information on to the government, and let them investigate, we can always pick the investigation up tomorrow.”
I stared at her for several seconds. I knew that was the right decision, but a large part of me still wanted to stay here and keep pushing until we found something. Skyler’s expression however, told me she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Maybe I looked worse than I thought.
“Fine,” I conceded. “I’ll just summarize our findings, then send a copy to both my mother and the government.”
“No, you’re going to let Athyna do that for you,” Skyler declared. “Your only job is to sit in the car, and sleep.”
“I’m not that bad!” I muttered.
“You look that bad! You’re swaying on your feet!” Skyler replied. She carefully put an arm around me and steered me towards the passenger seat. I followed her obediently, and as soon as the door was open I collapsed into the seat. Without the adrenaline that hit me when I woke up, and the sense of urgency we had when we arrived at the wharf, the energy just completely left my body. I was vaguely aware of Skyler buckling my seatbelt, but not much more than that.
“Let me handle things for now, and we’ll discuss things later, okay?” she whispered. “Just sleep now.”
My body didn’t need any more prompting, and my eye lids slowly closed.
Comments
Shannon Livingston
Hmmm... that's a good question... which may be answered in Fata in the future :P
jaskij
How closely is Reina's father tied to those antithesis hybrid experiments?
Shannon Livingston
Yeah. Skyler could probably continue, she doesn't have to go full bore like Reina. I'll review the chapter soon, and make some adjustments.
Shannon Livingston
True... It'll take a little bit of rework, but I realized at the end this was the second day in... four days? They'd been woken at like 4 am, and Reina been working her ass off the entire time. Didn't thik aobut it till the end. Previous chapters are probably fine, can be explained with adrenaline, but all this should take is a couple minor changes in dialog and added snippets. Thanks for the ideas
Irish Not Sane
I would expect her speech to be slurring a bit more as the adrenaline was running out towards the end of the conversation about taking the day off and maybe some more physical description of how she looks but otherwise it’s obvious she’s at her days end. I hate to see them having to give up the chase but sleep really is more important if they don’t want to become drugged up zombies
Kahunabob
Interesting chapter. What kind of time frame are we talking here? 4 am - 5 am ish? Would explain why Lissa (Phantasmogoria) is so short with our dastardly duo. So how do you let us readers know our duo is tired a.f. and barely functioning. Hmmm. They seemed more combative/argumentative than tired. I feel thats more Teddy's way of conveying exhaustion, by dropping the little patience she has for other folks. I'd see Reina turning silent, more inward or introverted. Trying to stay focused. With Skyler the more extroverted, protective one, kind of like she's doing here, but maybe even more in momma bear mode. So, if you feel that fits their characters, maybe have Reina say less, give monosyllabic answers or grunts, throw in a stifled yawn or two. Have Skyler go momma bear by describing her actions a bit more while running a monologue about Reina going to hard etc?
