Submerged

Chapter 06: Failed Rescue

Paul Reese waited with the extraction team on the upper deck of a military transport sub. The lights were dim red as the ship was under combat alert. Although he appeared calm, sitting perfectly straight against the wall, his muscles were tense and ready for action. He didn't usually work with a team, but he'd been assigned to lead one on this particular mission and had no choice but to accept their assistance.

Like him, his team was dressed in solid black tactical gear. Their weapons, even the blades of their knives, had been chemically treated to absorb light and prevent any reflection from giving away their position. In addition to laser weapons powerful enough to burn through steel and knives sharpened with an electron particle beam to make them capable of cutting practically anything, Reese was also carrying a new piece of gear, a cloaking field generator.

The cloaking device was only a prototype and hadn't even been used on a human before, so there wasn't any way for him to know what to expect when he turned it on. It functioned well in lab tests, or so they told him. Reese was highly suspicious and wondered in the back of his mind how much they would tell him if they actually knew something was wrong. It was a risk bringing the untested device along on such a sensitive mission, but Reese had already decided not to use it unless the situation got desperate. He could always test it later if necessary.

This mission was a simple extraction, break in, find an operative and the man she was with, and get them both back to the sub. Simple missions always made Reese nervous because he realized if the mission really was a harmless as it looked, they wouldn't have called him. Reese got sent in when problems were already out of control or teetering on the edge of total disaster. His superiors wouldn't waste his time and talents on simple missions. Something else was going on here, and it was clearly bad enough for Command to not tell him the full story. The entire situation was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Pushing aside the distracting thoughts, Reese focused on the task at hand. It didn't matter what else might be in the wind. The only thing of importance was completing his objectives, and he would. He'd never failed an assignment before, no matter the odds or opposition, and Reese had no intention to change things now.

A blue, transparent hologram of the ship's commanding officer gleamed into being in front of Reese and the team so he wouldn't have to leave his post on the bridge to speak with them. Attired in a double-breasted suit with gleaming buttons, the Captain had a moustache, but his beard had been cut away and was only recently growing back. It was impossible to tell the color of the hair as the entire man in the projection was solid blue.

"We're approaching the underwater city," the Captain reported to them. "ETA two minutes."

"Understood," Reese answered, and the hologram melted away to nothing. He nodded to the team and held up one finger. "One minute. Get ready. Final check."

Despite having two minutes until they arrived at their destination, Reese wanted them prepped and ready before the sub docked since they couldn't afford to waste valuable time at the airlock. Delays could cost lives, and Reese wanted to prevent as many as he could.

The lights blinked off and then on again a moment before an alert sounded through the ship. Reese guessed something was wrong, but from his position on the upper deck, he had no idea what was going on one floor below him on the bridge. Deciding not to wait until things settled down before taking action, Reese gestured for his team to head toward the airlock. Reese thought if the ship was in terrible trouble, he and the team could slip out while the sub departed to find safety. An additional reason for wanting his men at the airlock was because if the ship was in great peril, they might have to abandon the ship before it went down.