Water muffles some sounds in its depths, other sounds it seems enhance. The roiling mechanical purr of power had been accompanied by piercingly distinct clanks and clatters that seemed to thump in the chests of Salvage Team. Perry had frantically gotten the team rallied near him catty corner to the rolling mass of haunting light smothered in constantly shifting sand mists. Ke thought the scene reminded her of watching heat lightning streak across a night sky from when she worked in Florida. Wells thought it looked like a magician cloaking his next illusion. The sound of Metal on metal slamming dwindled and faded, the hum remained and then the yellow-green light of the glow sticks were consumed by darkness.
“Those were 12 hour sticks, ya?” Asked Perry
“Those were 12 hour sticks, yes.” Replied Ke, both of them speaking in bewildered tones.
A single white light tried to reach out from near the center of the amorphous rolling dust blob, the illumination bouncing off of each sand particle and causing everything around to carry the same ghostly hue. It was almost beautiful, if not for the situation unfolding, it might have been worth snapping a few photographs for the National Geographic. The white light seemed to rise, followed by a second powerful white orb. Slowly they wandered up, independent of the cloud storm around them until finally a modern respirator mask pierced the edge of the clouds, looking around.
“Holy shit it’s the red necks, “muttered Wells,” We ‘re on your three o’ clock you magnificent bastards!”
If the brothers heard Wells they didn’t react, instead they simply seemed to get their bearings, looking straight up and start to paddle to the surface. Ke produced another object from her bag of tricks, an underwater pen-flare. The pen-flare had been around for a long time but they gained usefulness in the Iraq War from US sentries launching pen-flares as approaching vehicles that ignored or were deaf to a million warning shouts. The flares were slightly larger than a permanent marker and shaped about the same, to use them was simple; the cap would be pulled off and then shoved onto the back as though it were a marker being used. The difference was that once the cap was shoved onto the back a streak of red light would shoot out and illuminate, or signal, quite a lot in a small radius for a short time. Perry found himself a little startled when he watched a red streak fly out towards Tom and Paul.
The light showed two things. When the red streak grew close enough to the brothers who swam up holding either end of a box, they turned and saw the other members of Salvage Team. Both groups exchanged short waves and Tom pointed to the side of his helmet and gave a thumb down, he was deaf. Tom then pointed to Paul and mimicked the same motion, then pointed up three times fast, the sign for a rapid evacuation to the surface. Ke and Wells had been looking at the brothers and understood the short communication that was exchanged, Perry had been following the red light as it traveled away, revealing the second thing.
A massive shadow was coming toward them, in the rays of their chest lamps shining toward the rising shape. Soon a bright rod was caught in their spot lights, the slender pole rising past their vision, then guard rails to a U-boat tower, then the tower. They kicked away, dodging the monolithic steel ship as it neared. The painting of a cartoonish swordfish with a Jagged nose was proudly on the freshly exposed side of the bow.
The Brunhilde was upright. It was upright and it was moving away, dipping down into the valley and into the black.