Decrypted by Lindsay Buroker

Author:Lindsay Buroker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, mystery, fantasy, steampunk, heroic fantasy, high fantasy
Publisher: Lindsay Buroker

CHAPTER 14

Tikaya and Rias entered the main cabin, and he shut the hatch behind them, spinning a wheel several rotations, his arm muscles flexing as he tightened it. In addition, he threw two heavy latches. A twinge of claustrophobic unease ran through Tikaya. Without access to the deck, the cabin suddenly felt tighter, the lights dimmer. Several clinks emanated from within the bulkheads, followed by a soft tremor and a last resounding thunk-clang.

“Those noises are normal, right?” The hatch lacked a porthole, or Tikaya would have had her nose pressed to it to check the results.

“Yes.”

She touched the hatch. “Is this the only way out?” Given how much muscle he had thrown into tightening the wheel, she wondered how hard she’d find it to open on her own, should some emergency require her to do so. “What if there’s a leak and we have to escape quickly? A leak due to sabotage, that is.”

Rias took a couple of steps, reached above his head, flipped a hidden switch, and slid aside a panel between two beams. An escape hatch, the other side of which must have been buried beneath the wheelhouse, was set into the hull. “If we’re at the surface, this won’t be underwater. We’ll enter and exit this way.”

“And if we’re not at the surface?”

“You’d flood the submarine if you tried to get out. Also water pressure is problematic to the human body below certain depths.”

Problematic. As in instantly deadly. “Let’s hope for no leaks then.”

Rias regarded her gravely. “Do you still want to go forward with this?”

“Oh, yes. I just wanted to be aware of the options.” Or lack of options, Tikaya added to herself. Then, deciding she wasn’t showing enough enthusiasm for the adventure—and his new craft, smiled and said, “If we get bored in the confined space, there’s always that canoodling.”

Rias returned the smile. “I doubt you’ll be bored. There’s a porthole in the science station as well as the navigation chamber, and lighting outside to illuminate our surroundings. You’re about to see the ocean in a way very few have. Perhaps no one in the world.”

“Can glass withstand the pressures of water down... however deep we’re going.” She pointed in the direction of the ocean floor.

“I wasn’t planning on skimming the bottoms of deep sea trenches in the Freedom—it’d take some of that black alien metal to withstand that kind of pressure—but there may be times when we want to drop a couple hundred meters to reach a wreck, and the hull should be able to handle that. As for the windows... Milvet arranged for the glass, and he claims a Maker enhanced it, but he couldn’t give me specifics as to how many PSI it could withhold. I would have preferred real glass, as formulas tell me what to expect. As is... I’ve made my best guess and factored in as much redundancy as possible.”

Rias thumbed a hidden switch, and the forward bulkhead split vertically down the middle, each piece sliding away on a concave track.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.