Dark Abyss Read online

  Dark Abyss

  By

  Kaitlyn O’Connor

  © copyright by Kaitlyn O’Connor, Oct 2009

  Cover Art by Eliza Black, Oct 2009

  ISBN 978-1-60394-368-0

  New Concepts Publishing Lake Park, GA 31636

  www.newconceptspublishing.com This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

  Chapter One

  The concussion of the bomb blast alone was powerful enough that it created a spider web of cracks in the thick glass and compromised the seals around the office window where Simon stood. Thin streams of water shot through the weakened seals, forming miniature fountains that swiftly created pools on the carpet beneath his feet. One moment he was scanning the tourists and potential colonists as they emerged from the transport in front of the desalinization plant. The next, he was staring at havoc. The certain knowledge that he was about to become a part of it hit him like an aftershock of the blast itself.

  Spinning on his heels, he lunged toward the door. His right foot hadn’t even settled firmly on the floor when the window exploded, compromising the integrity of the entire structure. He had time to feel a split second of relief when he saw the door of his office seal automatically and then he was swept off his feet by the cannon of water blasting through the hole when the force of the explosion turned the two foot square window he’d been standing in front of into a missile. Within a handful of heartbeats, water had filled the room and transformed it into a deadly mixer, turning everything that hadn’t been bolted to the walls or floor, including the window itself, into powerful projectiles that slammed into him or narrowly missed him.

  Briefly disoriented as the water sent him tumbling, panic flickered through him, but as he rolled, he caught sight of the now empty socket where the window had been.

  Gritting his teeth, he fought to reach it, struggling against the artificial current created by the churning of the trapped water as it slammed into the walls and was deflected back upon itself. It was luck more than determination that ejected him from the building. A back surge caught him, slamming him against the edge of the window. He felt the impact, but shock prevented his brain from registering pain or even numbness from the blow.

  His luck held. By the time he was swept out, the wave of projectiles created by the explosion had already passed over the Watch Center.

  There were hundreds that hadn’t been as lucky. The debris still spreading outward from the blast zone included bodies and parts of bodies. Clouds and streams of blood mixed with the water, smoke, and ash.

  Galvanized by that discovery, Simon bellowed instinctively for the watch. The gargle of sound that emerged briefly confused him until it dawned on him that he’d been in his office. He wasn’t wearing his communicator.

  Fuck!

  Whipping around to look for some means of directing the emergency, he spied one of the watchmen gaping at the scene in shock and shot toward him. Grasping the young recruit by both shoulders, he shook him furiously and ripped his communicator from his head, pointing toward a bleeding victim drifting near them.

  “Code Red! Code Red! Watchmen to your stations! Emergency personnel—get the injured into a shelter! Immediately! Priority on the air-breathers!”

  Even as he made the announcement, he headed toward ground zero to assess the damage and see if there was anyone alive that could be pulled from the rubble. Before he’d reached it his men had launched into emergency mode. The heart of the city, as still as death in the aftermath of the explosion, began to churn with rushing watchmen and emergency workers.

  The blood in the water was going to draw predators. That was going to be the biggest danger for anyone uninjured, but the colonists knew the drill by now. At the first sign of a terrorist attack, they rushed to the nearest available shelter if they were able to move.

  The fucking bastards! Wondering if it was the work of the radical Green Peace movement, the Humans for Humanity, or some other crazed fanatic bent on ‘saving the oceans’ or ‘destroying mutants’, he surveyed the desalinization plant with disgust and budding anger. The plant, in the heart of the territorial capital, New Atlanta, supplied about a third of the fresh water for the entire colony of New Atlantis. If it was completely destroyed ….

  His anger blossomed into rage. He tamped it with an effort. First things first, they had to get the injured to safety so that they could be treated and gather up the dead before the sea predators were drawn by the blood into a feeding frenzy.

  He worked alongside the emergency personnel to sort and move the injured until he saw that they’d managed to get all of the injured within view to safety. Leaving the emergency workers to sift through the rubble for the possibility of other survivors, he headed out to check the city’s perimeter. As he’d feared, sharks had begun to gather. He paused to watch as three of his men worked to bring down a great white and, when the huge predator became the focus of the feeding frenzy, returned to the plant.

  The workers were still collecting the dead and searching for survivors, but he focused on the men clearing the rubble from the plant. It took them four hours to clear away enough of the debris to enter the building and begin assessing the damage. By that time he’d begun to get reports on the number of casualties and the damage to the other structures nearest the blast zone and had fielded a half a dozen calls from the mayor and the territorial governor.

  Seething with frustrated anger, he finally left the disaster area and headed to the capitol building to report.

  He discovered when he emerged from the access pool inside the building that the atrium was full of victims of the recent attack and bustling medics. Instead of heading directly to the dryer, he stopped to survey the scene and finally made his way along the aisles that had been formed, unable to resist the urge to search the faces for people he knew. He didn’t see any but since most of the people he looked at appeared to be land dwellers, he didn’t take much comfort in it.

  He paused beside the physician in charge. “This is the tourists?”

  The doctor stared at him blankly for a moment, his mind clearly elsewhere. “All of the survivors we managed to find,” he said finally. “The blast demolished their water gear. We needed to get them inside quickly.”

  Simon nodded grimly. “Any idea how many were killed yet?”

  Anger flickered across the doctor’s face. “No numbers. Most of these people aren’t going to make it, though.”

  Simon ground his teeth, but he left the medics to their work and headed to the dryer. He barely paused. He was already almost dry. By the time he reached the council chambers, he would be presentable enough.

  There were robes in a locker near the dryer. Pulling one out, he shrugged into it and headed for the stairs. The council was in the middle of a heated debate when he was announced. The room fell silent at his entrance. A dozen pairs of eyes turned to nail him.

  “I hope you have some news for us, High Guardian!” the governor barked.

  “How the hell did they get past our security!” the mayor demanded at almost the same moment.

  Simon glanced from one man to the other and finally strode to the seat reserved for him and settled. “Would you like a preliminary report? Or would you prefer to pelt me with questions I don’t have answers for?” he said sardonically.

  Both the mayor and the governor looked taken aback and then deeply offended, though why they should was a mystery to him. They ought to be accustomed to his forthrightness by now. They’d complained about it often enough! He wasn’t a damned politician, though, and he saw no real benefit to beating around the
bush.

  “It’s been hours since the attack!” Mayor Grissom snapped. “You don’t have anything?”

  Simon narrowed his eyes at him. “I’ve got a lot of bodies and a lot of people in need of medical attention,” he growled.

  Grissom paled. Governor Harding spoke before he could think of another reproach. “Give us your preliminary report—has the saboteur been caught? And what is the likelihood of another bomb going off in our midst?”

  Simon settled back in his chair and scrubbed a hand over his face tiredly. “Most of the watchmen were detailed to protect the citizens. As much blood as there was, it was like ringing the fucking dinner bell. I had to get them out there to prevent shark attack and the like.

  “Preliminary ‘guess’ on getting the plant back up to full production is a month.

  Until then, it’ll be working at about half, which means the water will have to be rationed for a while unless you can come up with an alternative plan … or the feds lend a hand and we all know how likely that is.

  “We were able to determine that no one left the city either directly after the bomb went off or in the hours since. It’s possible the bomb was remote detonated—we haven’t found all the pieces yet and can’t rule that out. We found … hamburger inside, though, so I’m leaning toward a suicide bomber. It might have been a tourist, but that’s doubtful since they hadn’t actually made it inside, that we know of, before the explosion and there shouldn’t have been any workers in that area at that time—although we haven’t yet ascertained the identities of the dead and we can’t rule that out. The shift supervisor is trying to track down the identities of everyone who was inside the plant when it blew up.

  There were twenty men on the clock at the time of the explosion.”

  “My god! The tourists!” Grissom exclaimed as if it had just occurred to him.

  “The publicity! This is a disaster!”

  Simon narrowed his eyes at him. “It was pretty much a fucking disaster for the colonists caught in the blast, also.”

  Grissom glared at him. “It’s a disaster for the colony all the way around!” he snapped. “I’m not downplaying local repercussions, damn it! Don’t take that attitude with me! I’m the mayor! I have to worry about the city and the citizens, but that god damned bus was full of potential colonists! There’ll be shockwaves all the way to Washington and god only knows what the repercussions will be! Everyone in the states already considers the territory wild and lawless! This will only make us look worse!”

  Simon slammed his balled fist on the table top, half rising from his seat. “That god damned bastard that just killed several hundred people isn’t from the god damned colony! You can bet your ass he’s a god damned air breather from the ‘civilized’states!”

  “Do you know that for certain?” the governor demanded sharply.

  Simon sucked in a breath to blast him with his temper and then folded his lips together again. “Not for certain.”

  “Then find proof, damn it! And find it fast! We’re going to have to have a defense when Washington comes down on us about this! Grissom’s right … as badly as I hate to agree with him on this. This entire episode is going to land in our laps if we can’t hand them proof that it was a terrorist!” He studied Simon for a long moment. “Do whatever you think is necessary, Simon, to protect the Atlantean Territory. We have to put a stop to these attacks!”

  Surprise flickered through Simon, but he didn’t think he’d misunderstood.

  Frankly, he didn’t give a damn if he had. He’d had enough himself. Nodding, he pushed his chair back and got up. “I’ll see to it,” he said grimly. He paused at the door.

  “I’ll have the full reports on the damage to you by late tomorrow.”

  He was more thoughtful than angry as he left. The anger was still there, roiling inside of him. Much of it had found purpose, though, a possible outlet that had cooled the nearly overwhelming urge to strike out at something, anything to vent his frustration.

  Sucking in a deep, cleansing breath when he emerged from the government building, he looked around at the city. He was third generation aqua-former, or mutant abomination as the air-breathers referred to them, he thought with a flicker of anger.

  It was hard to say what bothered him most—his own sense of failure or the not so subtle implications of the mayor and governor that he’d failed.

  A lot of good men had died today because he’d failed to prevent a terrorist from invading the city and a lot of innocent tourists looking for the possibility of a new and better life.

  He was going to have somebody’s ass when he found out who’d fallen down on the job and let the bastard through, he thought grimly!

  He supposed there was some truth to the charge that the territory was a wild place, but then again ninety percent of the colonists were men. They lived on the edge, knowing every breath they took living in the territories could be their last. They worked hard. They played hard and there was always some bastard out there who preferred claim jumping and robbery to actual work.

  He was more inclined to view it as rowdy rather than lawless, however, although he would grant them that much. He took it damned personally, though, that the entire territory was lumped together as if there was no difference, as if it was all the same. He was High Guardian of New Atlanta, the capital city … as his father had been before him and his grandfather before that. Considering how thinly spread they were, he and his watchmen did a hell of a job at keeping the peace. Their crime rate was certainly no higher than the major cities in the states—not as high from what he’d been able to determine.

  The same could be said for all of the other established cities within the territory if not the smaller burgs that had popped up over the years across the vast continental shelf claimed by the U.S. Outside those areas … well, it was a territory and the last frontier …

  on Earth. They attracted all kinds and that included plenty of people that had worn out their welcome among the air-breathers. It was the militia’s job to patrol the areas beyond the cities and they were spread thinner than the watchmen.

  Which meant he was responsible not only for keeping peace within the city but protecting it from attack from the outside when necessary.

  And he meant to do that! Whatever it took!

  Instead of waiting for the reports to be brought to him, Simon toured the disaster area and the emergency medical stations that had been set up to treat the injured. He felt vaguely nauseated as he made his way at last to the Watch Center. The death toll was staggering.

  The bastards had planned their assault well, or been damned lucky. He wasn’t sure which, but they’d managed to set the bomb off at the peak of activity in the center of the city and caught a bus load of potential colonists on top of that. Of the fifty men, women, and children that had arrived for a tour, thirty-five were dead and the rest likely to die. Twenty men had been in the plant itself and it had been shift change so they still weren’t sure of just how many of them had been killed—possibly all of them unless some had left a little early and some had been late reporting for their shift. There was another hundred dead or dying who’d been in the office building directly across from the blast or moving along the street between the two buildings, sixty in or around the surrounding buildings, because the concussion of the blast had blown out the windows and the buildings had imploded. Added to that, they had several hundred people with injuries from the flying debris.

  He discovered when he reached the Watch Center that it, too, had been closed off due to damage. Wondering how many of his own men had been in the building when the shockwave hit, he headed toward the nearest watch station on the edge of the city. There were several inches of water standing on the foyer floor when he emerged from the pool and uneasiness flickered through him. Hoisting himself onto the rim, he ignored the dryer and the locker with robes and stalked into the control center. To his relief, he spotted his lieutenants, Ian, C
aleb, and Joshua as soon as he entered.

  “What the fuck is all this water doing on the floor?” he growled by way of greeting.

  Ian flicked a quick look at him. “Glad to see you’re still among the living, too,”

  he said sardonically. “There’s been a good bit of traffic in and out since the blast.”

  Simon glared at him, and then encompassed the rest of the room. “Emergency or not, there’s a reason for protocol. There’s a fucking inch of water in here! Somebody, or everybody, is going to get electrocuted. Oscar! Get the vac and get this floor dried up before we have another disaster!”

  Caleb looked him up and down pointedly. “Guess everybody was in too much of a rush to stop to dry off and grab a robe.”

  Irritation flickered through Simon, but, unfortunately, Caleb had a point. Deciding to ignore the provocative comment, he headed toward the console the three men had been Ian pointed to the screen. “Most of the surveillance cameras close enough to have caught anything were destroyed in the blast. This one was pretty beat up, too, but we lucked out and managed to get most of the feed from it. That man right there was the last to enter the building before it blew.”

  Simon leaned close, studying the grainy image Ian had paused on the screen and then leaned back, trying to bring the man’s features into focus. “This isn’t worth a fuck.

  Has he been identified?”

  “One of the workers,” Caleb supplied.

  Simon glanced at him frowningly, waiting.

  “The supervisor gave us a positive ID on him—name’s Trey Carter. New colonist.”

  “How new?” Simon asked grimly.

  “Moved into the territory about six months ago. Applied for a job at the plant, which just happened to have an opening since one of the workers had disappeared only a few days earlier.”

  Simon felt his belly clench. “And nobody thought that was worthy of comment?”

  Ian shook his head in disgust. “I questioned the supervisor myself. I’m positive he didn’t have anything to do with it—he’s second generation, no known ties outside the territory. The man that disappeared was a friend of his. He said he guessed he was just too upset to consider that the man applying for the job was ‘convenient’, had his mind on his missing friend and all that. I believe him.”