Defection (MentalModel!Brothers and OC)

Chapter 29

Anger.

It flooded my nerves before I could register that I was screaming in rage, my mind cursing at the monster towing my unflinching body out to sea, out to the waters that I knew like my own circuits. Swears spilled from my nonexistent lips as my eyes locked on to the metal hull churning the white-capped waters ahead of me, the tow lines crudely attached to my bow railing and comm tower by steel eyelets that had been welded into place.

I had been confused to see others like me sitting on station, the open waters calmly lapping at our hulls before the enemy fleet sailed in to molest our sides, twisting our innards open to ensure that we did not sink to wherever they were dragging us. I had seen two of the older submarines get dragged out to sea, unable to watch where they had turned past the shoreline from my pier mooring.

Another submarine had been taken a little further west than the other two, his hull passing close to mine.

There were one-hundred-and-sixteen of us in total. The enemy wanted us all dead, but hauled only twenty-seven of us to this port.

When I had been dragged from my mooring, there was only one submarine left in port.

My focus recentered on the destroyer hauling me out to open water, the cursed white flag of the Royal Navy flapping heavily in the wind.

Her name was HMS Solebay, and I had been hunting her before my captain received his ceasefire orders.

The destroyer had stopped, my own momentum quickly following her movement before I watched with hatred as a small crew of humans boarded one of her lifeboats. The little boat's bow nudged against my deck as the scant crew clambered on board, rushing towards the tow points and unlocking the hooked lines.

Was I to be left here?

The lifeboat swung back towards the destroyer as the warship began a lazy turn southward. My weapons had been long removed, guns empty of rounds and flood chambers deactivated.

How I wished that I could kill that ship on my own without a crew.

The Solebay's cannons turned towards me, and I understood my fate.

Target practice. An empty vessel with no means to fight against the crew.

Rage filled my senses again, a noiseless scream echoing the groaning metal as round after round lanced through the ballast tanks, piercing deep within my hull while I slowly began to fill with water.

Humans had created me to kill others like them, others like me. Humans had betrayed me to their own kind. Now, it was by human hands that I was sinking without control.

The chill of the North Atlantic Ocean was nothing to me, my comm tower slipping underneath the waves as I desperately tried to keep myself from sinking further.

I don't know how long I slept.

'Take this gift. Follow my instruction.'

An order, a very simple order. It was something I could do.

I felt my body breathe again, the water that had filled my hull pushed out by pumps that suddenly worked after decades. A single thought was all it took to righten out where I had fallen, the holes created by the Solebay filling as my old metal plates fell off, only to be immediately replaced by new ones that felt like they were growing right underneath the rusted surface.