The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [7]
“We can’t risk it,” Duke decides. “Keep hauling at current ascent rate.”
They watch in silence for the next hour as the grab rises towards the surface, its precious, stolen cargo still intact in its arms.
The questing fronds surge up from the depths, growing towards the lens of the under-slung camera as the engineers and spooks watch anxiously. The grab is already 400 feet above the seafloor, but instead of a flat muddy desert below, the abyssal plain has sprouted an angry forest of grasping tentacles. They’re extending fast, reaching towards the stolen submarine above them.
“Hold steady,” says Duke. “Damn, I said hold steady!” The ship shudders, and the vibration in the deck has risen to a tooth-rattling grumble and a shriek of overstressed metal. The air in the control room stinks of hot oil. Up on the drilling deck the wildcats are shearing bolt-heads and throwing sixty-foot pipe segments on the stack rather than taking time to position them—a sure sign of desperation, for the pipe segments are machined from a special alloy at a cost of $60,000 apiece. They’re hauling in the drill string almost twice as fast as they payed it out, and the moon pool is foaming and bubbling, a steady cascade of water dropping from the chilly metal tubes to rain back down onto its surface. But it’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll get the grab up to the surface before the questing tentacles catch it.
“Article Four,” the Brit says tensely.
“Bastard.” Cooper glares at the screen. “It’s ours.”
“They appear to disagree. Want to argue with them?”
“A couple of depth charges . . .” Cooper stares at the drill string longingly.
“They’d fuck you, boy,” the other man says harshly. “Don’t think it hasn’t been thought of. There are enough methane hydrates down in that mud to burp the grand-daddy of all gas bubbles under our keel and drag us down like a gnat in a toad’s mouth.”
“I know that.” Cooper shakes his head. So much work! It’s outrageous, an insult to the senses, like watching a moon shot explode on the launch pad. “But. Those bastards.” He punches his palm again. “It should be ours!”
“We’ve had dealings with them before that didn’t go so badly. Witch’s Hole, the treaty zone at Dunwich. You could have asked us.” The British agent crosses his arms tensely. “You could have asked your Office of Naval Intelligence, too. But no, you had to go and get creative.”
“The fuck. You’d just have told us not to bother. This way—”
“This way you learn your own lesson.”
“The fuck.”
THE GRAB WAS 3,000 FEET BELOW SEA LEVEL and still rising when the tentacles finally caught up with it.
The rest, as they say, is history.
1.
RANDOM RAMONA
IF YOU WORK FOR THE LAUNDRY LONG ENOUGH, eventually you get used to the petty insults, the paper clip audits, the disgusting canteen coffee, and the endless, unavoidable bureaucracy. Your aesthetic senses become dulled, and you go blind to the decaying pea-green paint and the vomit-beige fabric partitions between office cubicles. But the big indignities never fail to surprise, and they’re the ones that can get you killed.
I’ve been working for the Laundry for about five years now, and periodically I become blasé in my cynicism, sure that I’ve seen it all—which is usually the signal for them to throw something at me that’s degrading, humiliating, or dangerous—if not all three at once.
“You want me to drive a what?” I squeak at the woman behind the car rental desk.
“Sir, your ticket has been issued by your employer, it says here und here—” She’s a brunette: tall, thin, helpful, and very German in that schoolmarmish way that makes you instinctively check to see if your fly’s undone. “The, ah, Smart Fortwo coupé. With the, the kompressor. It is a perfectly good car. Unless you would like for the upgrade to pay?”
Upgrade. To a Mercedes S190, for, oh, about two hundred euros a day. An absolute no-brainer—if it wasn’t at my own expense.
“How do I get to Darmstadt from