Chapter 3: River Run

Paul's job was simple, really. Inspect the Pride's waterline before and after each trip. Look for signs of damage, wear, rust, fresh water barnacles or mussels, and report the same to the ship's engineer.

The ability to dry dock the ships that made up the Columbia steamship fleet was limited, and the number of men who could work on the steel hull without making things worse was even more limited. The people who oversaw the fleet's operations took their responsibilities very seriously, and hired men like Paul to watch over the ships like sheepdogs to a flock of sheep. If you could imagine a flock where the sheepdogs outnumbered the sheep, that is.

Paul had spotted something tangled near the nacelle for one of the forward bow thrusters and had put on his 'duck boots' as he liked to call the suit, to do a closer inspection. It was really a pair of rubber waders embedded in an inflated collar, but the suit let him float right at the water's surface while remaining upright and high enough out of the water to do the inspections.

Sure enough, there was an old, frayed snarl of nylon rope caught in a flange on the thruster's housing. A dull blue piece thick as his thumb, stained by tar and oil from years of use. Paul struggled to clear it, but was quickly frustrated. He had a belt knife that he had looped around his neck for the inspection, and he had it out and cutting, but sharp as the knife was, it was slow going through the old, snarled knots of nylon, and the bits of rock and sand that had slowly infiltrated all the seams made it even tougher.

Tough as cutting the rope was, slowly going over the housing, feeling for bits of rope with his hands in the cold water was worse. It took a long time with his face pressed against the river's surface before he was sure there was nothing left that could cause a problem. He slowly pulled himself back around the bow of the Pride, making for the shore beneath the dock where he could take the flotation collar off before trying to climb the ladder back up to the dock. As he came around the bow, he saw three dark figures in a small skiff pulled up close against the Pride's hull. The three, and their skiff, were barely visible in the darkness. Two of the figures were crouched over one of the side thruster's housing while the third knelt behind them, acting as a counterbalance for the skiff so the two could work over the side.

"Hey!" Paul yelled at the top of his lungs. "What are you doing there?"

The third man turned his way, and in the darkness, raised an arm and there was a loud ringing noise in Paul's ear. It took him a second to realize that the man had fired a gun at him! Paul turned towards the shore and began walking towards it, using his hands as oars to push him while the water was still too deep for his feet to touch the river bottom. A second shot rang out, sounding impossibly hollow and booming as it echoed in the confined space under the dock. Paul felt a flash of fire and heat in his left shoulder, and a shove that sent him momentarily underwater. His feet touched the river bottom now and he scuttled forward, taking rapid, small steps in his now sinking waders, the inflated collar collapsing quickly.

'They shot it!' he thought to himself, before the realization hit him that they had probably shot him as well. He surged forward, the water getting shallow enough now that he could put some push into it, and scrabbling to get hands and feet out of the water without the waders and the collar tangling him.

There was a crease in the shoreline, a place where runoff from under the docks had washed out a little of the gravel and sand. Paul collapsed into it, onto his back, hoping the slight depression made him harder to hit, and struggled to get the waders and collar off. His efforts made the throbbing pain in his shoulder turn into a grinding agony, and as the edges of the world started to grow fuzzy, he pulled himself around to make sure he didn't fall back into the river. He passed out wondering if he would ever regain consciousness.

"There's no doubt this was an attempt to set an explosive device of some kind on the Pride," the engineer said. "We found a pound of an old military explosive, the waterproof kind from before the Reaping. We didn't find any sort of fuse or detonation device, and none of what we did find was actually attached to the hull."

"You think it was dropped or abandoned in the attempt to escape?

"I do. I would guess that they would have used some sort of waterproof fixative, like that new flash glue, or epoxy. The super glue — cyanoacrylate, or some such compound if I remember rightly, was much faster acting than even the best epoxies would be."

"The Pride has a steel hull," Dante Arellano observed. "Couldn't they have just used magnets, and weren't those sort of things pretty common in the old UOD?"

"Yes, of course, and they still are," Lieutenant Colmes answered. "The UOD is the only place in the region where such things are still kept, and they are carefully controlled and accounted for."

"Perhaps someone has managed to swap some explosives for some clay or another material that would fool a casual inspection?" Dante suggested.

The lieutenant nodded his head. "Sneak the explosives out, but leave the package behind? We'll have to do a careful inventory and see."

"If something turns up missing, then you will have to check everything," the engineer warned. "It will mean that there's someone working for the Denied inside the military, and inside the UOD."

"Okay then, Lieutenant Colmes, you get word sent to someone up the chain of command, high up the chain. Someone we can trust. Have them begin that inspection. Have them sort through the logs and duty reports too, see if we can find a pattern that makes sense, now that we've got something to look for."

"Yes sir," the Lieutenant saluted, forgetting for the moment that Inspector Arellano was not a superior officer.

Dante waited for the lieutenant to leave before turning to the engineer. "Mr. Horst, we'll want you to do a little research too. See if its possible for this stuff to be duplicated anywhere in Columbia or anywhere within reasonable travel distances. Many of the old roads beyond those we maintain are still in good enough shape to make trips outside of our borders possible."

"Of course, I'll get right on it. Do I have authorization from the Council to draw on the resources I'll need?"

"You have permission to draw on any resources at the university you need. If there are military or council resources you need, you'll have to clear those with me, or someone on the council."

A nod and a handshake later, the engineer was gone too, leaving Dante with his 'aide', Forrest Samuelson, and Huck Scales, who had joined them as soon as he'd heard of the discovery.

"Huck, I don't suppose you want to leave the twins long enough to run an errand for me, do you?" Dante asked.

"No, and especially not now," Huck answered in his quiet, deep voice. "There will be a contingency plan, in case this one failed, as it has, and I would guess it should get sprung pretty soon after they leave here."

"I agree, dammit, and I really need to send someone I can trust on an errand for me. Do you know anyone local you trust?"