The Meridian Vigil (Part 1) - Points of Interest
Bart and a fetching foreign dignitary rendezvous at the Wet Graveyard. The beginning of a never-before seen Ascension Epoch adventure!
“They say the harbor is so thick with corpses that even a hundred and some years later they still haven’t been swallowed by the mud.”
The observation compartment of the sub was dark and almost soundless but for the hum of the ventilation fans. There was no inspiring soundtrack or the cheerfully chirping instruments of human technological supremacy, nothing but the eerie red deck lamps to reassure the pair before the dark, impenetrable surface of the observation portal. There were only two fragile human bodies standing before the unknown.
The pilot’s hand reached for the polished metal switch that would ignite the external flood lamps, then hovered. The passenger noticed his hesitation, her own faltering courage revealed by the tension of her slender muscles and the increased speed of her shallow breaths. Moisture beaded on the cold surface of the hemisphere of glass, glinting back the red light like clusters of malicious insect eyes as they danced inches above the abyss. Time froze. The ominous unknown loomed before them.
Her mouth moved to form his name, but no sound passed her dry lips.
“I… don’t know what we’ll see,” he whispered.
“Bart, wait--!”
She found her voice, but not before the water-muffled thunk of the flood lamps rattled the hull, followed closely by her own involuntary gasp. Tiphany yanked savagely on Bart’s arm, slamming herself against him as she hurried to bury her eyes against this shoulder.
Relieved for the moment of the necessity of theatrics, Bart smiled. He freed his arm and draped it across her narrow shoulders, rubbing the soft cashmere and the gooseflesh beneath with his fingertips.
“I think I see one!” he gasped with feigned fright and surprise. “Is that an arm?”
Tiphany quailed. “Turn the lights off!”
Bart chuckled. “You sure are skittish considering the company you keep.”
She tilted her head, eyes still shut tight, and a pleasant citrusy scent wafted from her soft, long hair. “I still don’t like seeing ugly or dead things,” she said. “Unpleasant things are still unpleasant.”
Smiling, he stroked the silken locks on her shoulders. “Are you sure you don’t want to look? I mean--you came all this way. Not many people can say they’ve seen the Baltimore Necropolis.”
Eventually she lifted her head, her right hand shielding her eyes from the imagined horrors of abandoned Baltimore harbor. Slowly, reluctantly, her fingers spread to reveal her tiny, darting pupils, her lips babbling some indecipherable mantra to rally her courage.
Tiphany drew in a deep breath. Her hand dropped to her side, gripping the metal grating of the bench as she leaned forward.
“I… think that’s a log?”
“Really?” He squinted at the obvious gnarled tree limb, pretending to study it. “Yeah,” he said finally, and chuckled. “Well, I guess they don’t know everything, huh?”
Tiphany seemed less sure. “Why are there so many bodies in the water?” she whispered, still searching the mud-choked bottom in vain for signs of the limitless dead she’d been promised. “Didn’t they bury people yet in the 1800s?”
Bart gaped, stunned into momentary silence by her stupidity. But the long, sideways look he turned on the teenage lovely beside him, with her wide doe-eyes, the pink, parted lips, and the perky 36Cs straining against her sweater helped him recover his manners.
“So many died that they ran out of room in the cemeteries. The war dead, the sick, the starving… they had to put them somewhere. And when the Martians fired that dirty bomb into the center of the city, there were thousands of people trying to escape by boat.” He snapped his fingers. “All dead in an instant. The barges drifted -- probably for days -- capsized, swamped, sank. And they all settled to the bottom.”
Tiphany held onto his arm more tightly. Her eyes plead for reassurance. “Are you sure it’s safe to be here? I don’t want to turn radioactive.”
He had to bite his cheek to keep from smiling. ‘Bless your simple little soul,’ he thought as he stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Perfectly safe, babe. Any lingering radiation can’t get through the water or the hull.”
She pressed her cheek into his hand and giggled with relief. “Okay,” she nodded, her eyelids fluttering closed. “I trust you.”
Bart bent his head down, intent on her lips.
“But why didn’t they leave sooner?” She suddenly said, turning back towards the portal. “They shouldn’t have just waited around to die!”
‘OK, now let’s not get distracted,’ he thought to himself. “Uh…they just couldn’t. The Martians had them surrounded.”
“You just said they had boats!”
“The harbor was choked with the red vines.”
Her lips and eyebrows screwed up in bafflement. “Licorice?”
“No! The weed! From Mars! You have to have heard of it!”
“But I don’t understand. Why didn’t they just sail through it? Did it, like, grow out of the water like big trees or--”
Bart ground his teeth. He knew the whole reason that Tiphany was visiting was because she wasn’t acclimated to life outside of her homeland -- but her naivete was becoming a serious obstacle to their budding relationship. “Hey, you know what’s even more interesting?” he asked, desperate to change the subject. “The old Dundalk waterfront where Roundtable hunted down Strix a couple years back is only a couple of miles away. Let’s check it out. Maybe you can--”
She made a disgusted face. “Ugh, no! I never want to go back there again! I had nightmares for weeks after that. Bart, no more scary stuff!” Tiphany wrapped both her hands over his and leaned pleadingly in toward him, giving him a great view down the front of her sweater. “Can’t we do something nice instead?”
“Nice?” His lips drew into a bashful smile. Even in the red-hued light, he could see that even her polka-dotted bra was green. He hummed, “Nice how?”
She pursed her pink tourmaline lips and looked away awkwardly. She let go of one of his hands and massaged the other with her thumbs.
He cupped her chin, caressed her cheek, eliciting a shy, warm smile. “Nice like this?” he asked. Her emerald eyes met his, her long lashes fluttering.
“So, Tiphany, have you ever made out with anyone?”
She giggled a little. “ A couple times with Niles.”
“Uh…” Bart couldn’t help but balk, and not only because he was expecting her to say ‘no.’ “You mean the Target?”
She shrugged. “Sentinel said he’s too old for me, which is totally ridiculous, right? I mean, I’m older than both of them!”
“Yeah, Terrapin is always getting up in my business, too,” Bart mused before shaking his head and returning to the matter at hand. “But, uh, Target… are you and him a thing?”
That bubbly, soft laughter trickled out again as she shook her head. “No, no. I mean, we’re teammates, but we don’t get along like that. He just offered to teach me how to do it! I do miss making out, though. Have you ever made out?”
He coughed. “Sure, a bit. I might know a thing or two about it.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
A second later he was on top of her. Her calves crossed over his butt, pulling his loins against her for the grind as his fingers groped for the clasp of her bra. And despite the high oxygen concentration of the air, they soon found it a struggle to breathe.
The increasing turmoil of the water went unnoticed amidst their own buffeting, and the slurping and giggling hid the first scraping of metal against the access hatch. It wasn’t until Tiphany’s nimble toes had hooked into his beltloop and pushed his unbuttoned trousers to his knees that Bart heard the resounding clang and muffled voices above his head.
“Son of a bitch!” An ungentle shove sent Tiphany to the deck and he scrambled to his feet, yanking his now too-tight pants into proper position.
“Bart! What is it?”
Nothing good. Carcharodon, Blackfish, Jenny Greenteeth? Anyone that could reach him at the bottom of the Chesapeake was not anyone he wanted to run into. Worse, he wasn’t equipped for a fight.
“Get into the cockpit and lock the hatch, Tiph! Go!” He didn’t wait to see her obey, but dashed to the arms locker. He hadn’t brought along his combat hardsuit -- why would he? -- but there was always a suit of softshell armor on hand for emergencies. He snapped the carapace down over his shoulders and thrust his hands into the Trident gauntlets.
“Armor up!” The verbal command set the piezoelectric micromotors and pressure pumps to work. He felt the current run through the reflex polymer as it tightened, sheathing his skin in a layer of shiny black padding like bullet-resistant sealskin. He reached for the helmet, but he heard the hiss of the airlock as the hatch lifted and he knew there was no time. Bart somersaulted across the deck, kneeling beneath the boarding ladder with the twin gas barrels of the Trident pointed at the intruder.
A skinny blonde slid down the ladder and stared down the gun barrels, totally unperturbed. She wore a softshell suit just like his, only white with navy blue trim, like a sailor’s summer whites. She tilted up her head to meet his eyes. There was a familiar flash of disappointment and suspicion in them.
“Really, Broadside?”
Bart dropped his hand and swore. She was the only thing worse than Carcharodon. “What are you doing here, Scout?”
“I should be asking you the same thing,” she said, narrowing her eyes, “but I already have a pretty good idea.” She tilted her head back and yelled up the ladder. “He’s here, pop! Alive, too.”
“Not for long!” An angry voice echoed in reply. “I’m coming down.”
Bart grimaced. “Oh, come on! You brought Terp, too? Can’t you ever cut me a break, you little brat?”
“We’ve been looking for you for hours! We got a call from Roundtable, but since you stole the sub we had to beg Undertow for a ride,” Scout said. “Dad thought you might have been hurt--” her eyes flicked over to Bart’s left and a sour smile crossed her face. “But I knew better.”
Bart tried to wave Tiphany away, but it was too late. She poked her head out into the passageway, looking quite pale and disheveled. “Is everything all right?”
Scout pointed at the bench. “I, uh, think you dropped something.”
Tiphany squealed in embarrassment as she snatched her bra from the bench and jumped behind Bart.
Bart blew out a huge sigh and rubbed his temples. “Tiphany, meet Scout,” he said. “My little sister.”
A huge, armored bulk dropped down the ladder, rattling the deckplates and sending the clang of metal echoing throughout the sub. Something like the alchemical union of a deep-sea diver’s rig and a robotic sea turtle loomed over the three youngsters. It stooped, its bullet-shaped dome scraping the overhead while its enormous, ribbed forearms filled the width of the passageway. Motorz whirring, a large, circular portal in its head opened, mechanically leering at Bart as a web of blue-green lasers traced the line of his body.
“--And this is my partner, Terrapin.”
“He’s your partner, but I’m your little sister? You rat bast--!”
Terrapin’s electronically amplified voice cut off his daughter’s outburst. “What my daughter meant to say is that we’re honored to meet you, your highness.”
His gauntleted fingers flicked with impressive dexterity across his armored collar and he lifted his helmet to reveal a lean, weather-worn jaw covered in graying stubble beneath bright blue eyes.
“I know your chargé d'affaires very well, Princess Ozma. We’ve become friends.” Terrapin glared at Bart. “I hope we’re still friends in the morning.”
“Oh, you’ve met Jellia! Isn’t she just the sweetest person?” Tiphany gushed. She leapt out from behind Bart excitedly, either forgetting or not caring that she was naked above the waist. “And please, call me Tiph! Ozma’s just my regnal name. So formal!”
Terp turned his eyes to the overhead, his sunburned skin growing redder. His daughter stepped in front of him, fists on her hips and head pecking rather like an angry hen. “Maybe you’d like to get dressed, your highness?”
“Oh,” said Tiphany, and her face betrayed an effort to look bashful. “That is a good idea, isn’t it?” She crossed her hands over her bare breasts and disappeared down the adjoining passageway for a moment before returning dressed only in her green polka dot brassiere.
“Oh yes, Terrapin! And Scout! And what a pleasure it is to meet you both,” Tiphany curtsied. “You were saying you’re friendly with Jellia! Isn’t she just the sweetest?”
“Extremely pleasant, your highness,” Terrapin agreed.
“And so innocent!”
“Uh, I suppose--”
“So, so innocent.” the princess repeated. She looked deeply into Terrapin’s eyes, her own rather guilty. “You know it would just kill her to find out I snuck out here to make out with Bart. All alone and naked.”
“God help me,” Scout exclaimed.
“Well,” Terrapin stammered, “I, uh… I suppose that’s your business.”
“It would just kill her!” Tiphany went on, her cheek suddenly streaked with tears. “She would die!”
Terrapin held up his hand. “I understand completely, your highness.”
Tiphany clamped her hand to her heart and let out a sigh of relief. “You are so, so kind! Your whole family is just so great! Your kids must adore you, Mr. Terrapin!”
Terp hummed. He looked pointedly at Bart, who avoided his gaze.
“Bartholomew, you’ll have to escort her highness back home right away. Undertow will take the three of you back to Meridian Harbor. I’ll take the conn here.”
“Aye, aye, Terp. But what’s this Roundtable business? Once I take Tiph back, we can--”
“What you can do is stay home and learn to obey me for a change. Do you read me, partner?”
“Loud and clear.”
Making very sure Terrapin saw it, Bart cupped his hand on Tiffany’s half-exposed rump and cocked his head toward the overhead hatch. “C’mon, Tiph. Let’s scoot while the Big Men with Screwdrivers take care of everything.”