“Hey Dad, I didn’t hear you guys come in last night…..out past curfew? Like the dress?”
“Very funny kiddo. Bloody comedian. At least you’re up on time, ya eat yet?”
“Nah, I was waiting on ya and Mum.”
“She’s still in the shower, and then I think she’s going ta take a little nap before tonight.. So I’ll meet ya for brekkie in a bit. Tell Hamilton I want bangers and googs for once. Ya got your stuff ready…..”
She smirks a bit, “Yep….and yours……all sitting by the stairs headed to the docks.”
He’s putting on a green t-shirt so his voice is a bit muffled, but he’s also smiling to himself at the excitement in her voice. “All the gauges good, spares, extra spares, insulated wetsuit?”
“Uhm….why the insulated?”
“Did you check the weather for today for the Coronado Islands?”
“Yep, sure did, twenty-five degrees, light breeze, two-four knots out of the northwest, one-meter swells.”
“Ok so the answer to the question is?”
“Uh….I need to get the insulated suits?”
“I already know the answer. What are you forgetting?”
As he turns towards the door, she’s scowling, chewing on her lip, “Shit……water temperature, probably only eighteen degrees at the surface, maybe less than fifteen when thirty meters down.”
“Which means?”
“Go get the insulated long suits.”
“That’s my girl. Regular bathers underneath for the extra core temp, little as it is.”
“Yea, yea, old man.”
As she turns to go, he says, “Livy, one more thing……, well two.”
A deep, pained sigh. “What?”
“All of it again in American. Gotta remember where we are.”
“Are you fucking…..uh, approximately seventy-five degrees temp, water temp, anywhere from fifty to sixty-five degrees, three to five miles per hour wind, three foot swells, give or take.”
“Excellent.”
“Dad? What was the other thing?”
“Remind Hamilton picnic and snacks for eight people. Lots of coffee.”
“8 people? Who the bloody hell is coming?”
“You. Me. Diving takes a lot of energy. Its at least 90 minutes both ways by boat.”
“Whatever, you….you….hell I don’t know.” And then she’s gone.
“Brett?” comes from the bathroom.
“Yea? What ya need?”
“Can you grab me the ibuprofen and the Tylenol from the night-stand?”
He grabs the pill bottles, then opens the door to see Amelia sitting on the toilet toweling her hair dry.
“Gotta a headache?”
She stands up, hissing, not even bothering to catch the other towel as it falls off her body, before limping slightly over to him, hissing again before slapping him across the face, “No you bloody loon, I’m fucking sore. Now, bend your fucking bogan neck and kiss me. Then carry me to the bed and rub lotion on me please.”
He kisses her lightly, before picking her up, and carrying her back the other way.
He slowly rubs the lotion across her back and shoulders, lightly massaging her sore muscles, before moving on to her hips, and on slowly working the lotion into the backs of her thighs, her calves, and even her feet, relishing in the slight sounds she makes, but even more in the calming sense of helping someone you love. “I told you she’d be excited, that she is absolutely loving the scuba lessons,” she says, her voice muffled by the pillow she is propped on, arms crossed underneath.
“Uhm…..I know ya said that. Now, time for the other side.”
She rolls over, grabbing another pillow, wincing, before propping her head up, lying there and looking at him, but he just stares. “Well, get started.”
He follows orders, squeezing some of the lotion onto his hands, before straddling her legs, and leaning over to slowly work it into her should, slowly moving down towards her breasts, and if lingers overly long, she doesn’t mind, embers smoldering in her nerves. He stops for a moment, grabbing the lotion, and adding more to his hands as he rubs it into her stomach, the aches and pains beginning to lose out to the feeling of his hands slowing stroking her skin, moving down to her hips again, the thighs, slowing, tracing long circles. She moans slightly, “Damn it, I said no funny business…I am way too sore.”
“I’m not doing anything, although, now that you mention it, you are fucking hot as hell, and, we need to do this more often.”
She opens here eyes, seeing him straddling her ankles, starting to work the lotion into the area round the surgical scars on her left knee, but the dive shorts he has on give all the clues she needs that he’s not lying about what he sees.
“Damn it, you randy fucking goat.”
“What, I haven’t done a thing…..”
“That’s the problem. Do something.”
He laughs. He was late to brekkie.
“Ya got it?”
“Dad….”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, try not ta hit anybody else.”
“There’s only one damned tinny on the horizon, and its ta the north!”
“Aye. Try not ta hit it.”
“I….I what.”
“Not I……Aye, ya know, when those lazy knockers in the Navy acknowledge somethin’. Aye.”
“Who the fuck cares about the Navy?”
“That’s my girl. Oh, ya know, I don’t really care about the language, as long as its not disrespectful, or at least too much. But…..some of the team, well, let’s just tone it down a bit in public or with the group. Got it?”
“Aye, Captain Nemo.”
“Good books.”
“What books are ya talkin’ about old man?’
“The Jules Verne books. Ya know, Captain Nemo?”
She starts cackling in laughter……”I don’t know what yer talkin’ about. I was talkin’ about the clownfish in that movie.”
A look of confusion crosses his face. “Guess I never saw that one. I’m going to double check all the canisters.”
She nodded, the breeze of their passage pleasant upon her face as she stood before the wheel on the boat Titan apparently never used. The coast was just a darkened shadow to the east, the morning sun still draping it in shadow as it slowly rose on this fall day. She didn’t ever turn to look that way though….she just watched the endless water with an occasional check on the navigational devices. It amazed her that such a small craft could have so many things to check. It was a shame really, she wondered what it would be like to be out here with just the basics.
The energy of the deeps pulled at her. Dark……unknown, powers waiting to be unleashed. Just like her. She just knew it, down deep. Deep inside her, she could almost taste it.
Her Dad watched her from behind without her knowing, idly clanking gear around to make distracting sounds. It would have surprised her to know that he understood. He’d felt the same pull all his life. The peace, the power, the….anger. All waiting to be awakened.
Finally, he straightend, “Power bar?” he said, handing her a water.
“We just ate!”
“An hour ago.”
She took the water, “No thanks.”
Finally, Livy spoke, “Nine. . . . . is that right?”
“Nine what?”
“Mum’s scars. Is that right?”
“Partially.”
“How can it be partially?”
“Not everyone’s scars are on the outside Livy.”
She considers that for a few minutes.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Ya can always ask,” her father replied.
“Why……..I mean, …….. have you…..uhm, ever killed someone?”
He looks at her profile, “Well, fuck me dead, that’s not what I was expectin’.” He pauses, then simply says, “Yes.”
With a combination of dread and excitement, she continues, but more quietly, “Did they deserve it? What did it feel like?”
“This is so not what I thought father daughter bonding would be like………Do you want the truth?”
“Duh.”
“Then the truth is its complicated. I hope they deserved it, but I’m not sure if anybody really deserves it, not anymore.” The Alliance doesn’t believe its justified. He pauses, considering his words, “But I was a soldier first, and well, soldiers do a lot of things other people don’t.” He walks around to stand in front of her, looking directly at her. “This is the other truth. I don’t remember feeling anything at the time…….but some of them haunt my dreams…….” He reaches out to touch her face gently, “I hope, when the time comes, the Red Widow never has to make that decision.”
A thrill of excitement arcs through her as she hears her father acknowledge the Red Widow, even if its a future one, but she doesn’t recognize the sorrow and guilt that permeated the statement.
“How many?”
“More than I can remember. Only a psychopath keeps count,” he says, and even a teenager can sometimes recognize when a conversation is over.
“Alright, all the dive flags out?
“Yes.”
“Time to check the gear.” He checks her suit, her accoutrements as she does the same for him. “Alright, Livy, turn around.” As she does, he checks her gauges, her tank. “All good.”
“Your turn, Dad.” She does the same thing, flicking the guage, and then saying, “We are a go!”
“Remember, visibility around here is not the greatest, although its better than some areas. We’re close enough to the main island, that its about 30-35 meters down to the sea floor. We go down, stay no more than ten – fifteen minutes, and then we gotta make our way up, pausing every five or six meters for a couple minutes, just circling. No more than six feet away from your partner at all times. Got it.”
“Yes. Questions. Why do you have a pistol?”
“Because these are Mexican territorial waters.”
“So, I should have one, righto?”
“No, ya have your dive knife, that’s all you need for now. Now, ya ready?”
“Let’s get it on! Like Donkey Kong.” To which her father just rolls his eyes, before replying, “Aye, like a giant monkey in the deeps sea.”
“Righto, entering now.” She watched him roll backwards, and then she followed.
She followed her father down. She’d always been a good swimmer, but she could tell he was basically treading water in comparison, and he kept circling her, judging her technique. Sometimes it was awesome having him teach her stuff, sometimes it felt like he was silently condemning every action she took. In those moments, his face was……like a rock maybe?
Today though, she wasn’t going to let it spoil her mood. Visibility sucked ass though, nothing like snorkeling off the reefs back home. Seven meters maybe, or twenty feet or so, with a few more with their dive lights on.
When they reached the sea floor, she checked her dive watch, which showed thirty-three meters exactly. She floated, just kicking her feet every once and awhile to maitain positioning. There were different fish, and really not much of a reef at all, but she could feel the weight of the ocean, the darkness as it hid the world. So much power, so much raw energy, encompassing her, ready to swallow her at the slightest mistake. There was no comparing it, not really to the joy of crossing that finish line, or even the excitement of being the Red Widow. She couldn’t really describe it, not really. It was……calming.
At five minutes, her father tapped on her shoulder, giving the signal for canister check. He checked her, and gave the ok, and then the numbers eight and zero for eighty percent. He’d told her that normal guages would show the exact PSI left, but he didn’t like them. KISS. Keep it simple stupid. He turned in the water so that she could check his, and the sounds of the sea came roaring into her ears. She flicked the guage……it moved slightly, and then settled back on seven percent, well below the red. No where enough to get back up with all the stops they needed to make to avoid decompression sickness. Her breath rattled as she sucked down oxygen through her breather, as she saw him turn around towards her. He held his fingers in the ok symbol
She shook her head side to side. She flashed the seven, a five and a two, and his eyes narrowed.
Next he crossed his arms, driving his right arm out in the abort signal, followed by the thumbs up for ascend.
She nodded, and began to follow up. She hoped it was just a broken guage. Oh, how she hoped.
It wasn’t the guage. Less than halfway up, he stopped, giving her the out of air signal, followed by share air.
He took his breather out, and she did the same, letting him breath through hers while she held her breath, and then they ascended a little further.
He watched her carefully. Her tanned skin had gone a little pale, and she was breathing a little fast, but otherwise, she was doing well. More than well.
They moved up a little more quickly than they had planned, but that had been from an overabundance of caution, the plan anyway. They had to stop more frequently anyway to share the air, and of course it helped that he could hold his breath far longer than a normal person. Not long enough because whether he would survive, probably, any decompression issues, she couldn’t if something went wrong.
At that moment, he couldn’t be more proud of her reactions. She’d done everything by the book, from the beginning when they left the base through this second of the dive. It really wasn’t her fault that he’d sabotaged the tank while she was steering the boat. Would he have done this without his special abilities? Probably, his SASR dive instructer had done something similar to him for his final test.
Her breathing had calmed. The surface was just a few feet away, and as they broke through, relief flooded through her. They had even came up only a hundred feet or so from the boat.
“Good on ya, kiddo. Let’s head back ta the boat.”
A flush of pride surged through her. She hadn’t panicked, not like the other night with Silver Spyder. This was fucking awesome! Swimming in these damn things was a little awkward but who cared. She screamed at the sky in exultation, while her Dad shook his head and smiled.
It only took a couple minutes to get through the swells to where they had anchored the boat.
“Alright kiddo, you first.” Getting into the boat after a dive had been one of the hardest things for her to figure out, as it was one of the most awkward things she’d ever done. You could take some of the gear off, but her Dad had forbidden it because you might lose it, let it float, whatever.
He watched her struggle to get the first leg into the little ladder that hung off the rear of the boat. This really wasn’t a dive boat, so it wasn’t the greatest setup but perfect conditions were for fucking losers.
Maybe he should have been paying more attention to the surroundings than watching his thirteen year old daughter try to climb out of the water, but…..he’d be excused by most parents who had just watched their kid accomplish something they had been training for, but he exploded into action when he felt it wash over him.
She had just finally gotten a solid grip and a foot on the little ladder when she felt herself go flying into the air and over the gunwale of the boat. “Fuuuuuuuck!!!!” She screamed and twisted like Brant had taught her, but the weight of the oxygen tank and the bouancy weights threw her normal balance off, and she landed hard, the tank knocking the wind out of her. Since screaming wasn’t an option, the pain that shot through her right hand as it slammed into the edge of something resulted in a whimper.
As he released her, he rolled to his right, away from the boat, just enough that only one side of the jaws clamped into his side, as the rest grated against an oxygen tank that wasn’t actually empty, and then the shark rolled as it it dove beneath the waters, dragging a snake with it.
The great hammerhead was angry, and hungry. Something had called to it, disturbed its routine, brought it from the bay where it had been feasting these last months. Normally a solitary hunter, it has tolerated the lesser of its kind to be near it this last cycle although it had eaten one that had come to close a while back. The school of smaller sharks swam to its rear, and had fallen behind as it swam toward the disturbance.
It bit down on the smaller creature, and then dove.
Livy stood up, hitting the quick release on the tank and the weights, before staring at an obviously dislocated finger. “Mother fucking koala balls Dad. What the fuck? Dad?” She paled as she saw multiple fins circling the waters. “DAD!” she screamed at the otherwise empty sea.
She jumped towards the steering column and slammed the start button, then started to pull the anchor up. Grimacing in pain, she looked at the finger bent sideways, before grabbing it and popping it back into place with a grunt of pain.
The teeth piercing his side hurt like hell, but the real fucking danger was if this monster headed to deep water. So, he twisted, letting the teeth grate along his ribs, releasing gushes of blood into the water. That didn’t really matter, because as a kid who grew up in and near the ocean, he knew Great Hammerhead were solitary hunters. Of course, today he was wrong but he didn’t know that yet. This fucker was huge, at least three times in length over his height. It had to weigh well over a thousand pounds. All of this flashed through his mind as he grabbed its sensory shelf and ripped it half off its body.
The shark released the prey/predator, blood pouring from its wound, and flopping through the water, becoming what all sharks favor, a thrashing fish in distress.
Brett swam towards the surface, his wounds slowly healing but trailing blood. He might as well have worn an all-you-can-eat Buffett sign around his neck.
He could hear the purr of the boats engine as he swam upward. He couldn’t really hear the silent sharks swimming through the waters, hunting, but now he could feel them.
They were smaller, but they still bit. Some died for their efforts. Some took chunks of meat, some carved into bone, leaving bits behind as they were ripped from their meal.
Livy had finally gotten the anchor to retract. She tied a jury rigged safety line around her waist and the bar on the gunwale and circled, tears streaming down her face.
She saw four fins headed in roughly the same direction, which meant there were more underwater, so she turned the boat in that direction.
When she saw him break through the swells, she slammed the throttle forward. The boat wasn’t a bike and the sharks weren’t a triple, but they made interesting sounds when the boat struck them from behind. Hopefully, the bottom would be tougher than them and they wouldn’t sink.
“Shiiit. This is going to fucking hurt.” She slowed the throttle to half, half slid to the right where she could keep her left hand on the steering colum and still half lean over the gunwale to the right, at least if you count the left foot jammed in the crevice where the steering pedastal met the deck, her knee on the seat against the side, and her right hand over the edge of the boat, eblow propped on the gunwale, leaning.
Flashes of memory flew threw her mind, boat rides and lessons, leverage from Uncle Brant, balance from racing, Uncle Bryce “learn from your mistakes,” and her Dad, chasing her in a go-cart, the costume watch party of the Magicians for her birthday, his total lack of awareness of the show, but sitting there watching with her leaning up against him, scuba, anger……and fear. Fear that she had just finally found him, her family, the realization that she finally felt at home and why. Time slowed, memories slowed, and yet, there was no time to think, no time to act, time sped up. The water roared in here ears as the pricey speedboat raced forward, slicing through the minor swells, jumping at times, bumping along as if she was racing over whoops on her racing bike.
How he timed his grasp, she never could really figure out. Her hand was no where close enough to the water for a “normal” person to reach, certainly not at the fifty knots the boat had achieved in the short half a mile. She screamed in pain as her Dad grabbed her right hand with the fucked up pinky, and her hand spasmed, losing its grip as her elbow and then shoulder popped as his mass and her energy collided, combining with the water drag and wrenching her joints in ways they weren’t meant to go. Beads of sweat popped all over her face, as he used her body and the line she was tied to for leverage to throw a leg up over the gunwale, her battered arm screaming in pain, as she screamed in rageful victory for one long moment.
Then time jolted, becoming normal again, whatever that was, as adrenaline flushed through her, and she saw flashes of water, blood, bone, even part of a small shark by its shattered jaw, as she watched her father roll into the boat, collapsing into a bloody mess across the beautiful teakwood deck.
The Giant Great Hammerhead headed towards deepwater, blood trailing from its damaged shelf. Some of its smaller brethren tried to take advantage. He left their cripped bodies for the rest of the pool to devour.
He couldn’t feel the pull any longer, the drive to come here. He didn’t really care anymore either, but……..the sea did. The sea remembers.
Last Dreams 