Chapter 477 – Diving
Chapter 477 – Diving
Underneath the South Harbor, the submersible control hall was brightly lit.
The light shed by the gas lamps and electric lamps made the entire hall as bright as day, the huge ovoid diving equipment was being suspended by steel cables at the top of the chute that led to the sea, and the Immortal engineers were busily working at various places, doing the final stage of checking and adjusting the submersible for entering the water.
Next to the steel-framed platform that held the submersible in place, Duncan was sitting in a chair calmly watching it all, waiting for Tirian’s men to get everything ready.
The undead, who were grotesquely ugly and even almost frighteningly gruesome in appearance, looked enthusiastic, even with a vague sense of joy and excitement.
A bald, burly man with nervous apprehension on his face then walked over from a short distance away, bending down in front of Duncan in an uneasy manner, “Eh …… old captain, it’s a pleasure to meet you ……”
Duncan looked up at this burly man in a seaman’s shirt, with a shiny head and a complexion as pale as death, and after comparing the information he had previously learned in his mind, he nodded gently, “You’re Aiden, the one who has followed Tirion since the days of the Lost Country Fleet.”
“It is I,” Aiden grinned instantly, “You remember me?”
“No,” Duncan shook his head, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember the vast majority of things, subspace impaired my memory, I heard about you and the other ‘Phase One Seamen’ of the Sea Mist Fleet from someone else. ”
“Don’t apologize, don’t apologize,” Aiden instantly showed an even more rattled look, shaking his head as he said, “It’s good to have you …… back, everyone misses you quite a bit.”
“It should be quite scary, right?” Duncan smiled and glanced at all parts of the hall, then there were many gazes that unconsciously flinched and dodged in the process of his sweeping, “Fortunately, I’m now using just an avatar, if it is the main body that comes here, I’m afraid that most of the sailors have no way to work in peace.”
“There’s a good chunk of the ‘Phase II’s’ here, and they do seem rather frightened of you,” Aiden scratched awkwardly at the buttons of his shirt, “After all, their first contact with you… …”
“I know, the Frost encounter half a century ago.” Duncan said casually as he exhaled softly, and as the words fell from his lips, Tirian walked briskly over to him.
“The submersible is ready, Father.”
“Oh, it looks like it’s time to depart.”
A smile spread across Duncan’s face as he rose from his chair and stepped with Tirian toward the platform that had been used to secure the submersible, while the diving device that had been the product of countless men’s wisdom and hard work was already waiting in silence – the
The circular hatch on its side was already open, and across the thick watertight compartment, lights illuminated the structure inside the sphere, which didn’t look very spacious, and excluding the many dazzling pipes, valves, and consoles, the space for people to move around looked like it could accommodate the entry of three or four people at most.
Duncan surveyed the submersible for a moment, then stepped forward.
But the next instant he stopped abruptly, looking in a certain direction as if sensing something.
A swirling gray wind suddenly rolled into the hall and circled sharply to the diver’s platform, coalescing and taking shape in front of Duncan and Tyrian and the others.
Agatha’s figure stepped out of the gray wind – still dressed as the blind nun with the long black dress and long hair.
“I would like to go with you.”
She didn’t say anything, and spoke bluntly once she arrived in front of Duncan.
“You want to dive too?” Duncan looked at Agatha with some surprise, “Why?”
“Because I want to ‘see’ with my own eyes what lies beneath the Frost,” Agatha said calmly and firmly, “As the protector of this city, I can’t stay in the safety of the cathedral and wait for your results, and ……”
She stopped abruptly, and after a few seconds of silence, she raised her head and ‘gazed’ into Duncan’s eyes through the thick black cloth.
“Besides, this is a Frostbite city, a Frostbite affair, and there must be at least one Frostbite in the submarine we are building, so just …… let me go down and look at it on behalf of Consul Winston, and the successive Consuls of the Frost.”
“Reasonable grounds, and you should already know the risky nature of doing so, and since you’ve come to your senses, I won’t try to persuade you further.” Duncan nodded, then turned his head and looked at Tirion.
The latter quickly reacted and spoke, “The submersible is designed to hold up to four people, two people going in is certainly no problem, but ……”
“That’s fine, I don’t need to breathe either.” Agatha spoke softly, interrupting Tirion’s words.
Tirian was stunned for a moment and stepped back, “Well, then there’s no problem.”
Duncan smiled as he stepped to the hatch of that submersible and turned to offer Agatha his hand, “Very well, depart.”
He and Agatha got into the submersible and the heavy circular hatch then slowly closed.
Two strong undead sailors stepped onto the platform and screwed down the hatch’s closing structure from the outside. The heavy steel blocked off the inside and outside of the submersible, and the cramped crew compartment became silent, with only the occasional humming from certain machines and pipes to be heard.
There was no place to sit in the crew compartment, so Duncan and Agatha stood in front of the controls, holding onto the iron tubes that acted as guardrails on either side of them, while through the extremely thick and sturdy glass portholes set into the bulkheads beside them, they could see the immortal sailors around the platform loosening the steel cables that were used to hold the submersible in place and releasing the safety pins on either side of the steel frame.
Tirian’s voice, meanwhile, came from some small device in the corner of the submersible’s console, “Father, Lady Agatha, can you hear me?”
Duncan came to the console, “Yes, loud and clear.”
“Good. I won’t go into the controls of the submersible, it’s really quite simple and you shouldn’t be mistaken, I’ll now talk about what happens after you enter the water.
“The submersible is powered by a small steam core as well as a generator connected to the steam core, which is theoretically enough to run until all deep diving missions are completed, but if something goes wrong with the steam core or the generator it has two batteries in the bilge that will allow the submersible to continue to run for about two hours… …
“There are three sets of high-powered searchlights for extravehicular illumination, but their effectiveness is limited in deep-sea environments, so be sure to maneuver them carefully, plus there’s a lot of resistance on the seafloor, and the propulsion system’s power will only allow the submersible to move slowly, which also requires attention ……
“The communication device on the submersible has an effective range of only three hundred meters, so we won’t be able to talk as much after a depth of more than three hundred meters, but your power or Ms. Agatha’s psychic resonance should be unaffected.
“Also …… although I may be worrying too much, but even you, please be aware of the dangers in the deep sea – once you meet the situation is not right, please surfacing immediately, the lever in the upper left corner of the console is for emergency surfacing, pulling it will directly throw off the ballast structure on the bottom of the submersible and open the buoyancy ball on both sides of the hull …… In the worst case, just abandon the submersible, with your power, it’s possible to teleport straight back with Ms. Agatha, the machine can be rebuilt …… “
Duncan listened intently to these reminders from Tirian.
To be honest, this “former cold cold sea pirate” is indeed a bit long-winded, many of his advice in Duncan’s view is not necessary.
But Duncan still very patiently listened to Tirion’s every word, until the other party’s words fell, he then spoke in a deep voice: “I know, let’s start.”
Outside the submersible, in the command seat at the end of the hall, Tirian drew in a soft breath, then nodded to the men beside him.
“Open the through-sea valve!”
“Fill the channel with water!”
“Disconnect the submersible external cable and prepare to release the locking hook!”
A low rumble penetrated the steel hull of the submersible, echoing faintly inside the spherical chamber, a slight vibration coming from underfoot, accompanied in between by the creaking and scraping of the outside of the hull.
The valve to the sea opened, and in the canal below the facility that led straight to the sea, seawater was rapidly rising and gradually reaching its intended level, and the last two steel cables above the submersible began to creak and release downward a little.
Duncan and Agatha felt a rocking sensation at first, and then they sank downwards – after a brief period of weightlessness, the submersible entered the water, and they began to sink down the inclined canal, and were guided by a series of chutes that moved rapidly towards an opening to the sea at the outer edge of the South Harbor.
Outside the porthole, the water surged upwards and then faded into darkness, in which only occasional flashes of bright light could be seen, and those flashes became faster and faster, and the vibrations of the submersible became stronger and stronger – and eventually all the vibrations came to a calm.
Outside the porthole, all that remained was an endless deep blue that was gradually dimming.
There was sunlight shining down through the sea water above, casting a constantly moving column of light and darkness outside the window, and in the gradually darkening sea water, there were bubbles floating up from outside the hull, accompanied by the reflection of the sun’s afterglow, like some kind of haunting psychedelic colors of the sea creatures.
Agatha seemed to be attracted by the “landscape” outside the porthole.
She slowly left the bridge, holding the handrail, and came to the porthole. She curiously approached it, and through the thick black cloth, her eyes, which had become empty, gazed intently at the deep blue that was rapidly sinking into darkness.
“What can you see?”
Duncan asked casually as he familiarized himself with the not-so-complex levers and buttons on the console.
“Light, shimmering lights of all kinds,” Agatha said softly, as if she were talking to herself and as if she were in a psychedelic state of ecstasy, “They flow like rivers, forming a vast, complex, yet well-ordered circulatory flow …… But actually it’s plunged into darkness out there now, isn’t it?”
“There’s still a little remnant of sunlight, but it’ll be completely dark soon,” Duncan maneuvered the submersible to slowly turn at an angle, “Now what?”
“An immense ‘curtain of light’, faint, but filling my entire field of vision,” Agatha said, as if with a sense of shock in her tone, “What is that?”
“It’s the Frost,” Duncan said calmly, his eyes peering through the porthole, where an immense and roughly mottled “crag” stood silently in the water, illuminated by the fading sunlight and the high-powered searchlights of the submersible. “It’s the ‘base’ of the city-state.”
(End of chapter)