“Try to push them open now,” Carter said after the knob had been turned about 180 degrees.
“Cross your fingers,” Jayden said as he pushed the arm forward while it still clutched the doorknob. Nothing happened while they sat there staring at the closed set of doors. “Let me try pushing with the sub itself just a little bit…” Jayden engaged the thrusters forward for a quick burst, and for a moment nothing happened. Then suddenly they witnessed a puff of silt around the door frame as the doors were dislodged and swung into the room.
“Behold, the Purser’s Room!” Carter said. Jayden checked in with Topside on the radio, telling them they had found the room of interest. Johnny’s reply came right away.
“Amazing work, you two! Don’t forget to watch your gauges — how are all your systems, over?”
Jayden’s gaze roved over the console’s various gauges and indicator lights before replying that all systems were go. “We have sufficient clearance through the double door entrance to make it inside the Purser’s Room. Doing that now, over.”
After Carter declared them to be free of obstacles behind them, Jayden gave the sub small bursts of horizontal acceleration until their craft’s nose entered the room at an angle. Then he engaged only the left thruster to swing the craft to the left so that it could then head straight into the room. They scooted inside smoothly without incident, and Jayden kept them in a controlled hover while they examined their new surroundings. This room was small, with not even enough room for the sub to turn around inside due to collections of debris that took up what was once open space.
“We’re going to have to back out of here,” Jayden noted while Carter swept the spotlight around the floor.
“Except for the major debris piles, it’s relatively clean in here,” he said. “Looks like-“ But then he broke off his own sentence as he saw the skeletons — how many people they belonged to he couldn’t tell — piled in a heap in a corner on the floor. But as chilling as the sight was, Jayden’s next words made him forget all about it.
“I see two safes!”
Carter looked away from the bones. He eyed the cone of brightness from Jayden’s spotlight. In the middle of it was one cube-shaped safe, bronze in color, lying on its side on the floor. Around it was a toppled shelf unit of some sort, now mostly fragmented. Near the edge of the cone of light was a second safe, also lying on its side.
Carter resumed sweeping the rest of the room with the spotlight on his side of the craft. This room was bare compared to the others, with not a lot in the way of furniture, which made it easy to see that there were only the two safes in here and nothing else of real interest.
“Only two safes,” Jayden said. “That can’t be all they had on the entire ship.”
Carter shook his head as he watched a small black fish dart through the cones of light between the two safes. “No, but I have some bad news. I didn’t notice this before, but look at that fallen shelf.”
Jayden added his own spotlight’s beam to the area in question. “Yeah?”
“At first I thought it was laying on the floor, but now I can see that it’s actually obscuring a major hole in the floor. See right… there….” He physically pointed through the front of the acrylic dome to a dark patch visible beneath a corner of the overturned shelving unit.
“Oh yeah, I do see it. So that means…”
“Unfortunately, I think it means that there more safes down in that hole there, that broke through the floor. These two over here managed to fall far enough away from the rest that they didn’t fall through with the excessive safe weight after who knows how long underwater.”
“Let’s see if we can get a closer look.” Jayden brought the sub over to the break in the floor, hovering a few feet over it so that Carter could aim his spotlight down into it. He shook his head as he peered into the opening.
“It’s just a deep black hole, I can’t see anything. If safes did fall down there, we’re not going to get them on this dive, that’s for sure.”
Jayden tapped a gauge on console. “It’s time for us to head back up, anyway. Let’s see if we can grab these two and get them up.”
Let’s start with the one on my side over here, since we’re already facing that way,” Carter suggested. Jayden agreed, and nudged the sub a little closer to the target safe. “The claw’s not big enough to reach around the whole thing, but fortunately we have those mounting brackets, I guess is what they are, on the back. I should be able to form a sealed grip through one of those.”
“Be quick about it,” Jayden warned. “Battery power is depleted one-third, so to preserve the rule of thirds we should be heading back right now.”
“Just hold her steady then, and here goes…” Carter lowered the arm until the claw hand was next to the mounting bracket on the back of the safe. “Opening the claw.” He informed Jayden of each step since the pilot couldn’t see what was happening with the starboard side grab arm. “Moving the fingers through the bracket… and… closing the claw….got it!”
“Test it by lifting the arm before I move the sub.”
Carter lifted the arm and the claw grip held, but the safe didn’t budge. “Looks like it’s too much weight for the arm to lift by itself.”
“As long as the claw grip holds, the sub itself will lift it. Just make sure the grip is secure.”
Carter tested it for a few more seconds and then pronounced it ready to go. “It’s closed on there. We’ll just have to try it.”
“Moving over to the other safe now. You may need to swing the arm without losing the claw grip to avoid obstacles. Definitely will on the way back out, so just get used to the idea.”
“Roger that. Let’s move.”
Jayden expertly sidled the sub across the room to the other safe, where he positioned them over their second target. He rapidly lowered the second mechanical arm, mounted on the port side of the sub, until the claw grabber was next to the back of the safe. Then he paused.
“What’s wrong?” Carter asked.
“This one’s laying on its back where the mounting brackets are. No easy way to grab it.”
“See if you can flip it over with the arm, or just up onto one side.”
Jayden adjusted the spotlight and squinted down at the safe. “It does look like there’s a small gap between the back of it and floor. I’ll see if I can wedge the claw under there and flip it.”
“Yeah, try it, but don’t take too long, we should probably get—” Carter cut himself off as his concentration was derailed by what appeared to be a flash of light outside of the room — through cracks in the walls — in another part of the ship.
“Probably get what?” Jayden asked, fingers poised over the grab arm controls.
“Get going. Hold on.” Carter killed his spotlight, casting the far reaches of the starboard half of the room into darkness. “Do me a favor: turn your spot off, will you?”
“I can’t do the work without that, why—”
“I see something. Quick, just do it.” With an irritated glance, Jayden pressed the button that turned off the powerful spotlight on his side of the sub. “Floodlights too, hurry,” Carter added.
But at this Jayden hesitated. “Carter, what’s going on? I need to be able to see in here to keep from hitting stuff.”
“I see lights over there, through the walls. Turn it off!”
“Probably bioluminescence.” But Jayden complied, dousing the floodlights, casting the room outside the sub into a complete absence of light. Inside the cabin, only the soft glow of the instrument console LEDs and screen readouts illuminated them. Carter pointed to a spot toward the wall in the Purser’s Room to Jayden’s left. It was pockmarked with small rust-pitted holes and the occasional small tear. A few seconds passed and then, through one these small openings, there came the unmistakable flash of bright, white light.