Ship With No Name by J.S. Morin

Author:J.S. Morin [Morin, J. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-64355-087-9
Publisher: Magical Scrivener Press

“I felt something,” Esper snapped suddenly.

Wesley put up his hands, no small task in the confines of the sub. “Wasn’t me!”

Esper’s breath quickened, sparking worries about using up the little underwater beer can’s air supply. “No. I mean from up there.” She pointed, unable to even extend her arm before her finger poked the inner hull. “Something scienced us.”

They were sitting ducks.

No, ducks could at least take flight. They were chum in the water for a shark that’d just noticed their presence.

“Take… whatever it is… evasive actions!”

Instead of taking the controls and performing Carl-like feats of subsea piloting, Wesley killed the controls. The sub went dark.

“But I said—”

Wesley shushed her. “Quiet.”

The submarine turned eerie. Utter darkness. Utter silence. Breaths huffed like a bellows.

The submarine jolted.

Esper yelped. Both passengers were thrown against the safety restraints.

“Ha!” Wesley barked. “Missed us!”

“That didn’t feel like a miss!”

“We’re still here. Nothing in orbit’s smaller than a Harrison-class destroyer. That was just a shock wave from superheated water turning to steam nearby. Little bucket like this slows to the pace of a Victorian-period romance as soon as it shuts down. We’re drifting along like a flower club garden party right about now. And those hackneyed naval gunners led us too much.”

“What if they fire again?”

“At what?”

“At US!” Esper shouted.

“Keep your voice down. I doubt they’re using sonar, but I’m having a hard time believing they can’t hear you up on the beach right now.”

“And if they keep firing until they hit us?”

“Why would they? We’re not emitting any active radiation. No power signatures. No transmissions. We look like a shipwreck.”

“Aren’t we? Will power even come back on?” The darkness wasn’t helping, but Esper didn’t want to harass the beleaguered tech aboard the sub any more than she needed to.

“In theory…” She could hear him tapping a finger on that chiseled chin of his. “But we ought to give them long enough to give up hope of us being alive down here.”

“How long is that?”

“What’s the patience of the average navy captain assigned to a planetary blockade?”

“How would I know!”

“My point exactly,” Wesley said calmly. “Why would I know? I’m just an actor.”

“Cut the bull poop!” Esper snapped. To heck with it. She lit a tiny flame, the sort that didn’t burn anything or suck up oxygen from the air. Wesley needed to see the scowl he was receiving. “You’re not just an actor.”

“Nope,” he admitted. “I’ve moved on to bigger and nobler—”

“Before acting!”

“You think me maybe being somebody else a long time ago gives me special insight into the commander of an unknown vessel a thousand kilometers above us?”

Well, when he put it like that…

Esper didn’t budge. “Yes.”

“You’re not letting this one go, are you?”

Esper seethed out a sigh and mustered every shred of patience within her. “Look, I used to work for a guy who, for all his faults, knew how to keep a secret for a friend. I’d like to think that, if anything, I was a better custodian of secrets than him.”

Wesley nodded. “Your friend Ramsey.

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