Dive Beyond Eternity

Boston, U.K.

Present day

The small research vessel rolled pitched wildly on the storm swell of the North Sea, the horizon disappearing beneath the dull waters. An armada of heavily pregnant clouds advanced from the west, readying their attack, giving no ground to the eternal blue sky or permitting the sun to penetrate their thick grey armour.

Zara never felt seasick. In fact, the long drive from Portsmouth to Boston, to reach the wreck, exhausted her more than a few hours in the pre-storm sea. She daydreamed that in a previous life, she could’ve been a mermaid, or a pirate, or maybe a submarine captain.

She squinted, tasting the salty spray on her lips as she observed the mission’s progress. The gusting wind punched the small boat, jerking it to and fro in a maddening waltz.

‘The dive is taking much longer than I expected.’ Anita Patel, the team’s sonar specialist, interrupted Zara’s thoughts. ‘I informed Professor Milne we’ve never worked with such a large object before, but he insisted.’

‘Looks like the storm is approaching much faster than we planned,’ Zara mumbled in reply. ‘The sea is too rough.’

She also wondered about Professor Milne’s strange choice of divers. Instead of summoning the university’s usual contractors, he had employed a random company they knew little about.

Perhaps he wanted to keep the mission low profile. Discovering this dark underwater shape, mysteriously buried in a sandbank, sounded like science fiction. And yet the professor had agreed with North Waters Offshore that it could be of interest to the university and had sent Zara to investigate.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Ms Patel stared at Zara, waiting. ‘Do you want me to call off the operation right now or—?’

‘How much time do we have?’

‘About an hour’s worth of oxygen in the divers’ tanks.’

Zara fixed her eyes on two monitors, watching the remotely operated vehicle – ROV –

  transmitting underwater video from the darkness.

For the last hour, the two divers had been trying to clean the layers of sand away from the wreck, using a specialised pressurised air hose. The sonar monitored the location of the wreck over a hundred-foot radius, and there was no mistaking in distinguishinging shape of the U-boat. Her three-bladed propeller, small conning tower, periscope, antennae, snorkel, and hydroplanes.

‘There’s one thing we know for sure – this is a U-boat.’ Zara exclaimed, shifting her gaze from the sonar to the camera screens and back. ‘U-4713/A,’ she read the number on the conning tower aloud. ‘This is a rather unusual number. 4713/A? Where did you come from?’

‘She looks like she left port yesterday,’ Anita said. ‘Look. The hull’s rubber coating is undamaged. No signs of sea life’s interference. There’s no debris around her either.’

‘No signs of torpedo impact or a strike by a mine.’ Zara nodded. ‘Nor implosion from within.’

‘Pete, Ivor… can you get closer to the rock?’ the supervisor asked the divers, turning to the screen. ‘We need to see the surface where it meets the hull.’

Ivor gave a thumbs-up signal, dragging the the pressurised air hose to the rock where it met the submarine.

‘Can you see this?’ Ivor’s slightly accented voice sounded from the radio. His camera moved closer to the hull.

Even in the murky water, Zara and Anita could distinguish no damage to the U-boat.

‘It looks like she’s growing straight out of the rock! How on earth?’ Anita shot an anxious look at her colleague.

‘I have no idea, but…’ Zara trailed off in thought. ‘The only way to know is to glimpse inside,’ she said finally. It sounded like a huge favour to ask, far too dangerous, far too risky, and outside of the company’s regulations, but it seemed like the only way to clarify her theory.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Rose, but I can’t put my people at risk,’ Anita said. ‘Professor Milne agreed that only—’

Zara exhaled. ‘I understand. Safety first.’

Anita had made it crystal clear she wasn’t ready to sacrifice her divers and the company’s equipment for the sake of her crude scientific guess.

The wind whipped Zara’s hair over her face, thunder rolled in the distance. ‘The storm’s approaching. We have to leave.’

Anita nodded and commanded the divers, ‘Guys, return to the boat. We’re leaving.’

‘Give us a minute,’ Pete’s low voice crackled from the radio. ‘I just want to film the conning tower’s hatch a bit closer.’

‘Can we have a clear image of the propeller, please?’ Zara asked the second diver, before turning to Anita. ‘Markings on the blades can indicate where the propeller was manufactured and which shipyard assembled the vessel.’

Ivor acknowledged, ‘Copy that.’

The two women watched the diver clear sand from the hatch’s handle. The screen blinked into complete darkness.

‘Pete?’ Anita bellowed. ‘Pete, what’s going on? Your camera’s offline.’ She squeezed the radio but heard nothing.

The second camera seemed to have frozen as well.

‘A technical issue?’ Zara shifted on her feet.

‘Pete? Ivor? What’s going on? Where’s Pete?’ Anita almost screamed.

Zara grabbed Anita’s shoulder and stared at the screens.

‘Ivor? Pete?’ Anita repeated, turning the radio’s volume to maximum.

‘I’m not sure.’ Even through the radio’s interference, Zara could hear Ivor’s panic. ‘Pete was right here a second ago—’

The second screen blinked into darkness. The radio fell silent. Only. the sound of the approaching storm howled around them.