Free ReVISIONS by Julie E. Czerneda Page A

pungent curse escapes, and I break into a run. NO! No no no no no. . . .
    Gateway seems small when you’re trying to avoid someone, but want to be at point B when you’re at point A, and it can seem like miles of hallways and hatches. I swing over the railing and drop the three steps that separate the living quarters from command. The alarm is muted here, but the amber lights flash as quickly, pulsing with my heartbeat. Worthy—the best-named kid on board—comes around a corner and matches my stride perfectly within two steps.
    â€œWe’ve dispatched Sub Three, as it was cruising in that vicinity.”
    â€œThey didn’t report anything beforehand?”
    â€œNot a damn thing, sir.” His ruddy skin is blotchy with stress.
    â€œFuck.”
    There’s a sick feeling in my gut like too much seawater swallowed too fast, an elevator in free-fall, cold sweat shriveling my skin and chilling my bones. I’d been a kid when Site Four went to hell. I still remember watching the coverage on television: serious-faced men in suits talking about instantaneous decompression and shock waves and acceptable losses.
    There’s no such thing as acceptable loss. Not then, not now. It may be unavoidable, it may be inevitable, but it’s never acceptable.
    Control Center is lit in an overdose of marine-greens and -blues, the kind of encompassing darkness that feels good at first, but makes you yearn for the sunroom at the end of your shift. There are too many people already crowded in there, a mass of orange faintly glowing in the darklight like a patch of fluorescent tube worms; I put a shoulder forward and plow through. They move aside like sheep, none of them taking their eyes off the action below. Someone hands me a headset and I clip it to my ear as I step down into the Pit. Seven stations, each one of them manned by some of the best, brightest, and most dedicated minds available to Mariner.
    â€œTalk to me, people, one at a time.” They are the best, but as commander on shift, the fan the shit is hitting is me.
    â€œYou on-line, McCarthy?”
    â€œYessir.” Admiral Gregor Frants, scourge of the underclassmen when he was at the Academy. Mariner Project’s Big Grouper, we call him. The conduit directly to the White House.
    â€œWhat the hell is going on, Martin?”
    â€œWe’re finding that out for you, sir.” He knows that, damn it. He knows and is talking to hear the comfort of his own voice. I tune him out and concentrate on my own people.
    There’s a chair the OiC is supposed to sit in, more often used by someone’s jacket, or once, for almost two months, a giant blue stuffed bunny someone had smuggled down for Easter. I pace back and forth instead, touching shoulders, glancing at screens where information flows in a steady stream.
    â€œNo reported seismic activity anywhere in the area, the blast was purely localized. Reading came from below and to the left side, traveling outbound.”
    â€œRoger that,” a voice says in my earpiece. “Sats show no geologic movement in your area preceding the blast.”
    The satellite program had been a godsend to oceanography, but it wasn’t perfect. No technology could compensate for human intuition and observation. Still, if they didn’t see it, odds were it hadn’t happened.
    â€œElectrical systems are off-line. OTEC’s still pumping, but nothing’s being drawn down. Geothermal likewise.”
    Could mean anything. We do failure drills on a regular basis, nobody’s going to panic just because it’s dark. Hell, they sometimes turn off all the lights, interior and exterior, for a day or three, just to see what will go bump against their windows. Fucking scientists.
    â€œLife support still registering, sir. Went to backup the moment of impact.”
    I breathe in; hold; out. Slow. Keep it cool. Hope kills, if you let it ride your decisions. That meant only that the backup