#Teasertuesday entry. Thanks for reading. Extra thanks for commenting. I appreciate the time and consideration.

Mahalo.

Doug


This is a flashback D.T. Rhysing has at a critical juncture in the story. In this scene the Argo, an experimental submarine he was serving aboard, has smashed into the sea floor four hundred and twenty feet below the surface. All the crew save D.T. and Brendan Braddock are dead in an undersea inferno that is consuming the interior of their submarine.

They have only one way to escape and they have taken it, leaving the Argo by a partially open hatch in a maintenance bay. The maneuver is called a free ascent. No air tanks, no second chances and only seconds to spare. As they begin their long ascent the Argo implodes below them....



The Bones of the King - CHAPTER 133 - Newborn

The ring of gas expanded below, followed closely by a billowing column of bubbles that rose to slowly surround them. D.T. could feel the warmth they carried through his skin. Brendan was shouting out words, expelling a trail of bubbles from his hood. The Argo was obscured for a while but showed briefly after the plume dispersed. The blocky shape merged with the blue bottom, becoming just another pattern of shadow and light and then they were alone in midwater, save for an ever shifting cloud of tiny, oscillating bubbles which grew in size as they watched, calving and calving again as the surface drew nearer.

D.T. kept up the litany of airway opening okays, a minimalist prayer of supplication whispered in a vast and beautiful cathedral. Brendan’s muffled shouting and the muted melody of air moving through the sea could not drown out the constant kettledrum rumbling of the Argo. It seemed to come from all directions at once, remote and distant yet clear and sharp in his ears. D.T. felt as though he was suspended motionless between the silver sky and the indigo depths, no more or less significant than any of the plankton through whose realm he was passing. He felt no need to breathe despite having been ascending for what seemed a long while. Including their time in the maintenance bay and factoring in an ascent rate of eight feet per second he knew their journey would take no more than a minute and a half, but, if pressed to, he would later say that it seemed much longer.

After a time D.T. began to be able to pick out the finer details of the waves moving across the surface as the blue around him gradually lightened. They had passed through over three hundred feet of water and were getting closer to light and life when D.T. felt something in the darkness calling him, urging him to stay behind and be a part of the unhurried and eternal rhythm of the sea. So real was the feeling that he gasped and almost held his breath, an action that would have had swift and fatal consequences. The rush of adrenaline his fear set coursing through him made him kick out desperately. The last fifty feet passed in a rush, full of anticipation of success and equal parts dread that something would arrest his ascent just before he reached the surface.

In the final seconds D.T. screamed out under water and shot into the air, arms wind milling as though he was climbing an invisible ladder, eyes still straining upward as his lungs sucked in fresh air. He fell back into the embrace of the sea and cried, newborn in the blinding light of the hot tropical sun.