Marina Dre's Arc

Chapter 6 of 14

The wreck hid them, but it had one flaw. One hole in the hull, one way in. If a diver followed, they were trapped with no line of retreat. Marina would not sit in a grave with a single door. She pulled the salvaged plasma torch from her pack and thumbed the switch. Pink coils flared. The tip bit into old timber, and black smoke curled up through the water. "Watch the entrance," Marina told Mia. She dragged the torch in a slow arc, cutting a new mouth low in the far hull. Wood peeled away. Cold current pushed through the fresh gap. Now they had two exits, and a coral spire rose off the seafloor within reach of the second hole. Hollow at its center, ringed with anemones. Thin cover, but cover. "If they breach the front, we go through here," Marina said. "Straight to the spire." Mia nodded, jaw tight. Marina had one more piece. She unclipped the sonic buoy and wedged it above the original entrance. It read the water. Any shift in pressure, any body pushing through, and it would sound. An alarm she could not miss. They waited in the dark. Marina counted her breaths. Then the buoy screamed. A high pulse rang through the timbers and rattled her teeth. Someone had come through the front. He came fast, no fear in him. A man in a black rebreather, mask filling his face, hoses trailing from his jaw. His eyes found Mia at once and did not blink. A hunter who had done this many times. Marina had spent three years mapping exits for exactly this face. "There's a bounty on the girl," Kade Varro said, voice flat through the mask. "Comes easier if the mother steps aside." "Mia. The back hole. Now." Marina shoved her daughter toward the fresh cut. The repeller sounded and it temporarily stuns him, but not permanently Varro lunged. Marina swung the torch up between them. The pink flame hissed and boiled the water, and he jerked back to save his hoses. That flinch bought a second. Mia slipped through the new exit into open sea. Marina backed after her, torch held high like a blade. Varro drew a knife but would not close on the flame. She reached the gap and pushed through. Then she killed the torch and turned. She jammed the dead casing sideways into the hole, wedging it in the splintered wood. Varro hit the block hard. It held. He would have to cut or crawl, and the delay was hers. Marina and Mia swam for the spire and folded into its hollow core. Anemones brushed Marina's arms. Through a gap in the coral she watched the wreck. Varro's shape squeezed out the front hole, turning, searching the empty water. They had lost the ship. They had lost the sonic buoy, still wailing inside. Now they had only a thin coral tower and a hunter who knew their faces, circling the seafloor between them and every open route.