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looks top-notch. Two full cylinders with eighteen liters of compressed air, weight belts, gloves, fins, masks, and a variety of secondary tools, regulators, and gauges. Sadly, the two wetsuits included with the bag are shorties—skinned flimsy at a meager two millimeters for tropical temps. With her legs and arms half covered, Koko knows she’s going to be a virtual popsicle out in the open water, but she hasn’t much choice.
    Removing her boots, she strips and hauls on the smaller of the two wetsuits and is pleased to discover it’s a snug fit at least.
    Heading further forward to the console, Koko blows the ballast and the sub gradually rises to the surface. A floppy wash of water swishes past the bow screen, and she flicks on the sub’s outside lights. Traipsing back to the gear bag, she pulls on a pair of gloves and cinches a weight belt around her waist.
    There’s a small mouthpiece alternative air-source, but given the unknown nature of the cable caught in the rudder, Koko decides it might be better to go with full gear. Attaching the regulator, she checks the flow from the cylinder, and the air tastes cool and slightly like plastic. She then searches the bottom of the bag for line. The last thing she needs is to get sucked away by some unexpected current when she’s in the water, and Koko finds a small coil of line tagged at five-meter intervals. Taking a pair of black scuba fins, Koko attaches the cylinder with its affixed regulator to buoyancy compensator vest, clips a dive light to the vest’s shoulder, and grabs a mask. From a large toolbox beneath the pilot’s seat, she also grabs a stubby set of bolt cutters.
    Climbing up the ladder with all the gear, Koko unlocks the upper hatch and shoulders it open. The fresh air tastes amazing, and the gentle, warm breeze on her face is percale soft. Under better circumstances, it might be nice just to hang out and enjoy being out of the freaking submarine for a spell. Above her there is a dazzling cape of indifferent stars, and outward from the still half-submerged flanks of the submarine twelve long shafts of light skelter beneath the ocean’s surface.
    Koko sits down, fastens her fins to her feet, and pulls on the buoyancy compensator vest. Using a set of recessed toe-holds with her heels, she sidles down the starboard side and rinses some spit in her mask in the slopping water. Compared to the air the water feels cold, but she tells herself to deal with it. Jamming her regulator into her mouth and releasing the airflow, Koko secures her mask and ties off the coiled line to a stud-mounted cleat to her right. Tying the opposite end of the line to her waist, Koko slides into the water and the expected shock locks up her muscles and takes her breath away. She not so much switches on the shoulder dive light as slaps at it. This shit—why did a technical issue have to be
beneath
the sub? Releasing air from the BC vest via a depressed valve, she slips beneath the rolling surface.
    Fearing an impending metabolic shutdown, Koko swims along the sub’s flank as fast as she can toward the jammed rudder. When she reaches the affected area, she is pleased to find the impacted cable is scarcely thicker than the diameter of her forearm. No big deal. So she lines up the bolt cutters’ jaws to cut, and squeezes the rubber-gripped arms together. The brutal cold constricting her blood vessels has her skull feeling like she’s been socked by a hammer, but after a half a minute’s worth of exertion, the cable gives way with a dull snip and Koko peers inside the rudder’s recesses. She assesses that nothing else looks amiss, just as a vermillion-colored blob of pulsating flesh zooms past her back.
    Koko blows out a startled blast of bubbles and rolls over. The ghostly shaft of the dive light attached to the BC vest catches a spaghetti tangle and just as the tangle disappears another mass of rippling, metachrosic meat and suction cups swoops past her face.
    Oh, you’ve
got
to be