- Right here, - Jester tried to speak mysteriously and shut down the motor. - Around a hundred meters below
- How come nobody found it yet? Twenty clicks to the navy base and the city is packed with divers every season.
- Technically, this is a natural reserve. Some rather unique seaweed species that don't grow anywhere else.
So the government doesn't welcome the yankees. The divers are technically allowed with a special permit, of which only one was issued in the last year.
There is a research station five clicks to the west, but it's underfunded, so the scientists only visit it a few months in the winter.
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Sounds like a place where you will find illegal divers too...Sounds like a place where you will find illegal divers too.
- Yeah, a few risky guys come here during the high season. They usually don't register in town and sneak in small boats, like ours, sometimes hydroplanes, but the Navy gets nervous about these. However, the seaweed secretes something like pollen, so the visibility in the first 50 meters is close to zero and it's super easy to get entangled. Gets better below that level, but then you get aggressive and poisonous wildlife and methane bubbles, quite big ones. Easy to get hit by one and get disoriented or ascend too quickly. Now add magnetic anomaly that flips the compass, leading you straight into the sea caverns. And did I forget to say that sonar is marginally useful, unless you get a really good one, military grade?
- Sounds nasty, but nothing that can't be handled without proper preparation.
- Frankly speaking, diving with no visibility is just not fun. So those who figure out at least part of this crap usually just don't bother returning. A normal meatbag would need ton of stuff to do anything efficiently down there diving from surface. Gets easier with a submarine, but getting one here is exactly how you trigger the Navy.
Mary leaned on her back, looking into the stars:
- Sounds like you tried it already.
- Well, they sent 2 subs to search the area on approach. Had to chill for a week between some rocks until they left.
- So, what's the plan?
- We anchor here, in a relatively clear spot, and get down. Set up a beacon at the anchor point and start walking. Drop more beacons as we advance, these things are really short range, like half a mile. Can't use anything stronger without attracting the military. We also have gyrocompass to make sure magnetic navigation doesn't screw up. The destination is like 2 clicks to the north.
- And why do we need air canisters? - Wen waved her hand towards the chest with equipment. - A pair of these weights more than I do.
- In case we find something down there, we need a way to get it up. So, not just canisters, but also baloons.
- And they are 100% oxygen in case we need to cut through some impediments?
- I see you didn't skip your underwater engineering classes.
- And what if somebody finds the boat?
- The beacons also double as comms. Bandwith isn't nice, but enough to send down a few pictures of the visitors. The boat is registered to University of Brisbane, same as research station, so the authorities should be fine, unless they get a reason to dig really deep. The only problem will be illegal divers, but they would normally keep away from other vessels.
- Worst case scenario is that one of us will have to swim back quickly and have nice, fresh lunch, - laughed Wen. - Not like we are going to have decompression problems.
- In fact we do. That is not common knowledge, but when you dive deep enough, you need to get more vitae into your system to function normally. As you get back up, got to either consume it quickly, or dump.
- That second option is not going to look pretty, - Mary shievered as she imagined the picture.
- Totally unnecessary. For real emergencies, we have a casket with Nibbs in the cargo bay.
- Him too? You are a real bitch, Wen, to steal Peter's team like that...
- In fact, I had no idea he is down there until he started thinking too loudly a few hours ago.
- He just approached me and said that he needs a few weeks of "inner thinking" and asked if I can help putting him somewhere safe, - Jester turned around and started to unpack the equipment. - Probably doesn't even know where he is and that Wen is here.
- Well, he definitely knows he is on a boat and is not exactly in agreement that it matches his definition of "safe".
- The boat will be safe exactly because he is on board, can't argue with that.