Submerged Read online

  Submerged

  Other Anthologies Edited by:

  Patricia Bray & Joshua Palmatier

  After Hours: Tales from the Ur-Bar

  The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity

  Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs Aliens

  Temporally Out of Order

  Alien Artifacts

  Were-

  All Hail Our Robot Conquerors!

  Laura Anne Gilman & Kat Richardson

  The Death of All Things

  Submerged

  Edited by

  S.C. Butler

  &

  Joshua Palmatier

  Zombies Need Brains LLC

  www.zombiesneedbrains.com

  Copyright © 2017 S.C. Butler, Joshua Palmatier, and Zombies Need Brains LLC

  All Rights Reserved

  Interior Design (ebook): April Steenburgh

  Interior Design (print): C. Lennox Graphics, LLC

  Cover Design by C. Lennox Graphics, LLC

  Cover Art “Submerged” by Justin Adams

  ZNB Book Collectors #8

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions of this book, and do not participate or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted material.

  Kickstarter Edition Printing, August 2017

  First Printing, September 2017

  Print ISBN-10: 1940709121

  Print ISBN-13: 978-1940709123

  Ebook ISBN-10: 194070913X

  Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1940709130

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Copyrights

  Introduction copyright © 2017 by S.C. Butler

  “Rust in Peace” copyright © 2017 by Seanan McGuire

  “Another Dream to Europa” copyright © 2017 by

  Michael Robertson

  “Go with the Flow” copyright © 2017 by Esther Friesner

  “The Deep End” copyright © 2017 by F. Brett Cox

  “Through Milkweed and Gloom” copyright © 2017 by Wendy Nikel

  “Son of Blob” copyright © 2017 by Marsheila Rockwell &

  Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  “Under Pressure” copyright © 2017 by Jody Lynn Nye

  “The Last of the Real Good Days” copyright © 2017 by Bill Kte’pi

  “The Windlost” copyright © 2017 by Rhondi Salsitz

  “Tamatori” copyright © 2017 by Susan Jett

  “High Sulfur Hot Springs and Camping Park” copyright © 2017 by James Van Pelt

  “The City Under the Sea” copyright © 2017 by Jeanne Cook

  “Pen’s Bracer” copyright © 2017 by Misty Massey

  “Fathoms Deep and Fathoms Cold” copyright © 2017 by

  A. Merc Rustad

  “River of Stars” copyright © 2017 by David Farland

  “The Byssus Woman” copyright © 2017 by Sara M. Harvey

  “The Seven Nights of Squidmas” copyright © 2017 by

  Nicole Duson

  Table of Contents

  Introduction by S.C. Butler

  “Rust in Peace” by Seanan McGuire

  “Another Dream to Europa” by Michael Robertson

  “Go With the Flow” by Esther Friesner

  “The Deep End” by F. Brett Cox

  “Through Milkweed and Gloom” by Wendy Nikel

  “Son of Blob” by Marsheila Rockwell & Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  “Under Pressure” by Jody Lynn Nye

  “The Last of the Real Good Days” by Bill Kte’pi

  “The Windlost” by Jenna Rhodes

  “Tamatori” by Susan Jett

  “High Sulfur Hot Springs and Camping Park” by James Van Pelt

  “The City Under the Sea” by J.C. Koch

  “Pen’s Bracer” by Misty Massey

  “Fathoms Deep and Fathoms Cold” by A. Merc Rustad

  ”River of Stars” by David Farland

  “The Byssus Woman” by Sara M. Harvey

  “The Seven Nights of Squidmas” by Nicky Drayden

  About the Authors

  About the Editors

  Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  S.C. Butler

  From Jonah to Jules Verne, the depths of the oceans have always intrigued us. Whether it’s the nightmares we can’t see—Kraken, Leviathan, Cthulu—or those we sometimes wish we could—Selkies, Mermen, Flipper—the unfathomable trenches and abyssal plains that lie buried beneath three-quarters of the surface of the earth are home to some of the most celebrated inhabitants of our imaginations. Fantasy and science fiction have explored the depths of space countless times, but those nearer unknowns that lie beneath the keels of our ocean liners and canoes, not so much.

  Here, then, are seventeen tales of underwater mystery and adventure, from seventeen masters of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Cringe in terror as you investigate the Love-craftian mysteries of the tenth planet. Laugh (and groan) through the seven days of Squid-mas. Savor sweet revenge from the bottom of your victim’s wineglass. High-five a giant squid, battle nautiluses with underwater magic cowboys, or experience first contact in the frigid depths of Europa. These adventures, and more, await your first plunge into the deep end of…SUBMERGED.

  RUST IN PEACE

  Seanan McGuire

  The body of the ocean liner dominated the ocean floor, a great husk of rot and rust and broken glass. The color of her hull was no longer obvious, obscured by waving strands of opportunistic sea grass and the clinging bodies of the sea stars that had come to hunt and feed. Fish swam through the gashes in the ship’s side, bodies undulating with the current, untroubled by the slow approach of our submersible.

  I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life.

  “There she is, Dave,” I whispered, unable to keep the awe and delight—and yes, relief—from my voice. “Just where we knew she’d be. There she is.”

  Dave didn’t say anything. He’d always been a careful diver, more aware of his surroundings and the risks that attended them, than anyone else I’ve ever known. This was the man I would trust to ferry me into Hell, if that particular dive ever became necessary. He’d get me through the rivers of molten iron and lava in one piece.

  He’d gotten me here.

  “The Sendale Star,” I breathed. If Dave tended toward silence, I preferred sound. It was never quiet this far below the sea. The water had weight here, and with weight came a soft but constant susurration, like we were moving through the veins of some great, living beast. I often thought that all the people who scoffed at the idea of “Mother Earth” should be sealed in a fragile metal can and dropped to the bottom of the Pacific, where they could hear the heartbeat around them, the sound of current and tide and living sea.

  Of course, they’d probably demand we pave the oceans if we did that to them. Someone who doesn’t want the planet to be alive certainly doesn’t want it to be bigger than them.

  I put that line of thought brusquely aside. We weren’t here for the living, or for the political. We were here for the dead, and for the biggest infusion of cash our bank accounts would ever see.

  “Get us in closer,” I said. Dave answered with a grunt, steering the submersible slowly toward the great rusting bulk of the Star.

  Damn, but she was beautiful. Her lines were still as clean as the day she’d been finished, emphasized rather than obscured by the alterations her time in the living sea had made. The absence of paint and polish did nothing to lessen her beauty—if anything, they enhanced it, showing that she was the kind of lady who needed no effort, no ar
tifice, to be beautiful beyond measure.

  The hole in her side was a gaping, jagged wound that would never heal. Even after we finished wandering through her bones, learning everything we could, and notified the authorities of her location—earning ourselves a fat finder’s fee in the process, naturally—that hole would remain. She had historical value, not nautical. She’d go to a museum or a lab somewhere, and everything about her would be picked apart and analyzed before she was released to someone who would tear her apart for scrap.

  She would sail again. Not as she was now, but reincarnated into a hundred new forms, part of the bones of a hundred new ships. If I thought of it that way, this didn’t feel as much like a betrayal. More like a rebirth. We were going to raise this fallen lady from her watery grave and set her on the waves when we were done, and while she might not be grateful, she would be gracious to the end. I could see it in the proudness of her prow.

  “This is as close as I can get without disturbing the ship,” said Dave.

  “It’s close enough.” I gazed longingly out the front window at the money, at the history, at the opportunity spread before us on the sea floor, and I smiled. “We come back tomorrow, ready to dive.”

  * * *

  The Sendale Star was a luxury liner. Not in the same class as the Titanic or any of those other big, eye-catcher ships: she was smaller, faster, and equally, intensely expensive, even though she was only ever intended to make short hops along the Pacific Coast. She was beautiful, she was exclusive; everything about her screamed “class” to the status-hungry nouveau riche who had come to the golden, hardscrabble shores of California and the Pacific Northwest looking for a fortune and, upon finding it, found no path into the high society they so yearned to enter. To the East Coast, they were new money, little better than the poor.

  But the Star…oh, the Star didn’t care about the age of their money, only the color, only the way it glimmered with power and potential when set against the price tag of the world. Better still, the Star took her bookings locally, which meant that if one of those fancy Easterners wanted to go for a ride through the most beautiful waters in the world, gazing out on miles of pristine, exploitable coast, they would have to travel to Vancouver or San Francisco, at no small expense, only to risk finding themselves in a third-class cabin, or worse yet, in steerage. This was something the West Coast’s wealthy could have that their unwilling peers could only dream of.

  She sailed the coast four times, down and back, without incident. Maybe the bloom would have been off the rose before too much longer: novelty is in many ways the most expensive thing of all.

  On her fifth voyage, a man—Mr. Matthew Alder, of Portland, Oregon—boarded with his family. This was, in and of itself, unremarkable: history would have forgotten him, if not for two things.

  The ship was lost, with all hands, somewhere between the ports of Seattle and Vancouver. Despite being an increasingly trafficked stretch of sea, rich with cruise liners and Coast Guard vessels, the Star’s location would remain unknown for decades. The cruise line that had owned her and claimed her as their biggest asset went bankrupt in the aftermath of the disaster, and their records were seized by local authorities, not to be seen until an informant responded positively to the idea of bribery. That’s the first. The second…

  When Mr. Alder’s sister came to clean out his home and claim his things, she found a note on the mantle, positioned so anyone who entered the home would be sure to see it. In her brother’s hand, it read only, I am so sorry for what is to follow. Be assured that the damage would have been greater had we not set out to sea.

  To this day, no one has known what he meant…and to this day, treasure hunters have been seeking the fallen Star.

  Until this day. When we finally found her. Untouched by anything save for the sea that became her grave, waiting for us to come and bring all her sweet and hidden secrets home.

  Ours.

  * * *

  The nice thing about looking for a ship as famous as the Star is that it’s easy to know where not to look. Just go online and look up all the places people have written about going. Then dig a little deeper, and mine the social media of your competitors for references that tie them to a specific place, a specific time. While Dave had been applying his military research skills to going over maritime records and a hundred years of weather reports, I had been chewing on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit, filtering the noise, cross-referencing the “good spots” that people had been hoarding for years while they hunted for that eventual perfect payday.

  Treasure hunters love to share our successes. We’re not always so happy to share our failures, reasoning that if we don’t tell the competition where we’ve already been, maybe they’ll waste their time going there just like we did. But then Dave found some current maps that had been adjusted with new data, and I confirmed that no one had yet been to our most likely site, in part because it seemed unrealistic for a ship as large as the Star to wind up in a region defined by little islands and shallow waters, and now here we were. Here we were, on the cusp of changing our lives forever.

  My dive suit was skintight and comfortably confining. Some people find them claustrophobic, but I appreciate the way a well-fitted dive suit clings, keeping me from feeling like I’m alone in the open sea. Dave was fiddling with his equipment, checking the wireless feed that would keep my cameras streaming back to our ship. By presenting an unbroken chain of events from the moment we found the Star until we came up with the first of our many, many prizes, we could make it more difficult to challenge our claim to be the ones who had located the Star. Always important, especially with a find of this size.

  Salvage law stated that, since the Star was located within three miles of the United States coastline, everything on her belonged to the government. But the find—the prestige and importance of being the first ones to shout “tag, you’re it”—was still a pearl beyond price. We could collect rewards from the surviving relatives of several of the passengers, who had been waiting for decades to know for sure what had happened. We could write our own ticket with burgeoning treasure hunters, who would suddenly see us as the best the sea had to offer.

  There is more to wealth than chests of gold and jewels. Although it would have been nice to keep a few of those, if I were being honest.

  “All signals strong,” said Dave.

  “Awesome,” I replied. “I have enough air on me for an hour, counting descent and ascent, so I’m going to get moving.” Once I was in the water, he would be able to speak to me, thanks to my waterproof ear bud, but I wouldn’t be able to respond. There are things technology has not yet managed to achieve.

  Dave frowned. “I wish you weren’t going down there alone.”

  “Can’t be helped.” My girlfriend and I had had a parting of the ways six months ago, when she decided that waiting around for me to make the big score was not as useful as moving to Montana and working for an accounting firm. Prior to that, she had been my spotter on dives. Dave was right: it was dangerous for me to go down alone. But by the time Cynthia had left us, we had been so close to the Star that there hadn’t been time to find a replacement. We couldn’t trust anyone who’d want to join us.

  I was good. I was accomplished. I would be fine.

  Smiling at Dave, I slipped the mask down over my face and stepped off the deck, plunging into the water. A veil of bubbles accompanied me down, wrapping itself around me like a wedding gown. When it cleared, I turned on my light and began to swim.

  Our small submersible was great for scouting runs: with it, we could travel miles along the bottom of the sea, recording and analyzing everything we saw. Sometimes we found things that were of clear scientific interest, and would set those aside until the meat of the dive was done and we were no longer concerned about leading the competition to our location. Most of the time, we saw lots of spectacular fish. That was enough. No one goes into a profession like ours unless they truly love the sea. Although the money, when it happens, doesn�
�t hurt.

  Despite the submersible’s undeniable advantages, there are some things that have to be done by a single diver, alone against the sea. So I swam, the lights attached to my shoulders illuminating the water, until there she was: the Star, resting rusted and lovely on the bottom. I swallowed a sigh of relief and pleasure. Part of me had believed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the Star would be gone, or crawling with rival divers, when we came back. She disappeared once before, after all, without a whisper, without a trace. Even this spot…

  We followed the weather reports and we followed the last known headings for her position and we followed the rumors and we followed the gossip, and the fact remains that we got here first—us, out of all the people in the world—because we were willing to take the long shot. We were five hundred miles away from where we should be. There was no logical way the Star should be here, so far from where her course would have seen her go down.