CENTAURIAN
All Rights Reserved © 2021, Rick Haydn Horst
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
CHAPTER FIVE
After making the plunge, Ronan jerked his hand free of the container door. Having left his element, among the broken strings of kelp and the flotsam he had chucked from the ship's cargo, he found himself enveloped by a world where sound plays a more important part of life than sight. His ears filled with a cacophony of sounds from the ship, a few creaking groans from the metal containers, the motion of the water around him, and every stroke of his limbs as he struggled to swim to the surface, but his efforts came to nothing; he continued to drop with the shipping container which, with every passing moment, inched its way farther from his reach.
He tried not to panic and worked as fast as he could to find a way to reverse his descent; the greater distance from the surface, the less light he would have to see.
He could alter his trajectory by swimming any direction but up, so he returned to the twenty-foot container and ripped the doors from it. As the opening faced the surface, he could see the Honda's position—the front bumper pointed downward—and most of the straps that held it to the bottom of the container had burned to a few threads that would snap when it impacted the ocean floor.
Due to the width of the container, he could barely reach the vehicle's unburned driver-side rear tire. It still had air but would weigh too much to have sufficient buoyancy. He used its Schrader valve to inhale air from it, thinking to fill the space inside him that he used for speaking, attempting to make himself more buoyant before it was too late, but the external water pressure had already reached the pressure of the air inside the tire—maybe, 33-pounds per square inch—so the negative pressure in the tire drew water inside rather than allowing air to escape. A few seconds later, the tires tried to implode, but rather than collapsing inward from the vacuum, it broke the seal, and the air he might have used, he lost to the ocean.
He tore open the trunk and scavenged for what he could find. Beneath the floor mat, he found the vehicle's donut spare tire. He figured it would float, and it had yet to lose its air, so he hurried to remove it from its holder, but before he could, it imploded sending the air inside it bubbling to the surface. He wouldn't climb farther into the vehicle to reach anything else; even the foam cushions rapidly grew waterlogged.
He thought to use the metal of the car to craft a large set of rudimentary hand-held flippers—at least, that would be something—but his ability to manipulate metal in regular air wouldn't work in the ocean. The water kept the molecules too cold, and it wouldn't bend to his will.
The light he used to see in the photic zone transitioned to a darker blue tone, and he knew he had entered the twilight zone of the ocean: less of the spectrum made it that deep. Ronan could not think of anything else he might use, and it became harder to see as he descended. He gazed upward and watched the light from above grow evermore remote along with his hopes of easily reaching the ship.
In that experience of an unwelcome and uncomfortable sense of imposed solitude, he could only think of Liam. He knew him enough to know that he stood at the railing waiting for him, but every second took him farther away, and he couldn't tolerate the sensation of being torn from him. He realized just how much Liam meant to him. Having been the first person he saw upon awakening, he almost felt as though he had imprinted upon his protector. And in his own unique way, he had, and at a level he couldn't understand at the time.
He wished he could feel Liam's presence the way he could Aquila. He could still sense the man out in the world and which direction he could find him. As a last resort, while more than seventeen hundred fathoms beneath the surface, he could make a blind trek in Aquila's direction across the ocean floor, and if he hadn't stumbled along the way into a worse problem than he already had, he would reach dry land...eventually.
Feeling alone and exposed to the openness of his abysmal surroundings, as the minutes ticked past and the light grew dim, he held fast to his metallic companion. As he glanced around, he could barely detect his hand in front of his face, and the evidence that the surface world existed at all had become little more than a memory. He hadn't known what creatures dwelled at that depth—or how large they could grow—but he would catch from the corners of his eyes occasional flashes of a ghostly luminescence from something that lived there.
He closed his eyes and concentrated to speak to Prometheus.
"I'm in trouble," he told him. "I can think of nothing to use to help me; my resources are limited. Is this when I should use the power? Is that my only option besides walking the ocean floor?"
"You could," said Prometheus. "But you have the power to help yourself without it. You have had it within you all along."
"Is this where I close my eyes, click my heels three times and say, 'There's no place like ship?'"
Prometheus found the reference amusing. "I'll give you a hint, my son. Watched or not, a cold pot never boils."
Ronan opened his eyes, smiled, and shook his head at a solution so simple he couldn't think of it.
Time passed faster while speaking to Prometheus, and as he continued to drop in the benthic depths, an inky blackness had shrouded Ronan's vision; he had reached abject darkness. But in the ocean, sound moves five times faster than in the air, and it carries for miles, so when a new noise invaded Ronan's ears, he listened intently to discern its source. The crew had engaged the ship's propulsion; the captain wouldn't believe he could survive and would choose to leave him behind. If he wanted to get back to Liam, he needed to make a rapid ascent. He swam a few yards from the shipping container, called upon the eternal flame within him, and turned up the heat.
-------
When the engines engaged, pushing the ship forward, Liam jerked his head toward the bridge at the top of the superstructure. "What the hell is the captain doing? We've waited less than half an hour!"
He felt fine when Ronan helped people at the hotel a few miles away, but the watery divide became more distressing with each passing moment. He, along with Emma and William, had stared out over the ocean at the railing where the container had pulled Ronan overboard. The incident aboard the ship had left the water littered with debris, including a couple of containers with air pockets large enough to keep them afloat for a while.
When it first happened, Emma had spoken with Prometheus about Ronan, but he had nothing to say. Not that Prometheus had no knowledge, but for things to play out as they should, an absence of knowledge often catalyzes much decision-making and change.
William told him, "If you ask Captain Stettler to stop the ship, I know what he will say; we have fallen behind schedule."
"Is that the sort of consideration Ronan deserves?"
"He will refuse to believe Herr Stallion can survive underwater unaided for this length of time, especially if he has fallen to the bottom."
Liam asked him, "You believe us, don't you?"
"After this morning, I will believe anything that Emma tells me, and she has said that I can trust you and Herr Stallion to always speak the truth. So, I believe you."
"I appreciate that. I know I can speak for Herr Stallion on this, but you're welcome to call him Ronan, and me, Liam."
"Thank you," he said. Germans are usually very formal when addressing people unless explicitly told otherwise. "And you all may call me William. So, what shall we do about leaving the vicinity? I know the captain; he won't change his mind."
"If Ronan manages to reach the surface," said Emma, "hopefully he can catch up with us. Alternatively, the land and the ocean floor
are
connected..." She turned her gaze upon Liam.
"That sounds like such a long, lonely walk back to Florida."
William glanced over the railing and pointed. "Something is happening..."
Off the port side of the ship, a fog-like mist rose from the water, and the ocean began to bubble. Someone on the bridge must have noticed as they had, once again, stopped the ship. Liam, Emma, William, and several crew members ran to the section of railing closest to where the water roiled near the ship. And as it grew increasingly frenetic, they realized they were witnessing not just air bubbles but water in gaseous form boiling up from the ocean, which, unfortunately, had the effect of cooking several fish that lay floating on the surface. When it reached its peak—looking like a pot of water hot enough to steep tea—it appeared as though the ocean had rid itself of Ronan's presence by ejecting his muscular body three feet into the air where he then landed atop one of the floating cargo containers where steam surrounded him. A scorching heat emanated from him. Viewing him through hand-shielded faces and squinted eyes, felt like they stared into a blast furnace, with the extreme temperature distorting his image. They could see he had burned off his clothing when he stood. He moved his feet and bounced the container into the water to wash over the top to keep it from getting too hot, and steam rose from where the brine touched his skin as he began to cool.
"Are you okay?" Liam yelled to him.
Ronan nodded, raised one finger, and then tapped his throat.
"Give him a minute, he can't talk," said Emma.
Captain Stettler joined them all at the railing to watch.
Ronan bent down and stuck his hand in the water. The water steamed and bubbled around it. Once it had cooled enough, he held onto the container with it and slid into the water over his head. The ocean continued to boil around him, while he cooled himself as though he were searing hot metal pounded into shape by a blacksmith's hammer.
Dunking his head to cool himself beneath the surface along the way, he attempted to move the container closer to the gangway staircase built onto the side of the ship; it reached a foot above the waterline to the main deck. Everyone moved closer to the stairs, and by the time Ronan reached it, the water around him had stopped boiling.
Liam descended the stairs and met Ronan at the bottom where he had remained submerged hanging onto the metal staircase until he reached a normal temperature. Ronan stared up at him, pleased to linger in Liam's proximity.
"So," Liam said with a smile, "you can't swim."
Ronan made a few tests of his vocal cords and said, "Not a lick. I don't have any memories from Chiron of the other Stallions swimming, so they may not have been able."
"So, unless we find something to assist you-"
"I'm no better than a sinker in a fisherman's tackle box."
Liam laughed. "Do they make water wings for biceps the size of yours?"
"Yeah, that would be cute," he said. "Let's just avoid my having to save anyone from drowning."
"One day, we need to find a way to make you buoyant. It's a vulnerability we need to eliminate."
"Agreed," he said and tipped his head. "One day? That sounds suspiciously like a long-term plan."
"Yeah. About that. I want you to know that I've learned something about myself in the brief time you were gone."
"I learned something too," he said. "What's yours?"
"I'm unsure of the precise cause, but for as much as I have loved working as a police officer on Key Biscayne, I can't stand being away from you, and I would like to think you need me more than Key Biscayne ever has. Besides, I never went into law enforcement just so I could brag about being a policeman. I wanted to help people, but I can do that more effectively by helping you than I could anywhere as a policeman. So, if you will have me, I know that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be."
