In my book, RAGING TORRENT, a good bit of the action takes place in and around the drydocks. Since the city of Aquataine is actually an underwater city beneath a dome, you might wonder how people get in and out of the city. That has to happen via submarine, of course, and when those submarines need repairs, they go to a drydock. To get from outside the dome to inside the dome, we need a system of locks.
The submarines enter a deep channel near the base of the dome over the city, and wait for the outer doors to open. The sub enters the lock chamber, and the doors close behind the sub. Once the outer doors are secure, the inner lock doors open and the sub can enter the grotto, where it is then able to surface in order to access the passenger terminal or enter the drydocks in the repair facility.
Phelan Maxwell and Destyn Albright are hot on the trail of the Sub Aqua Transport and Shipping Company, suspected of trafficking drugs into Aquataine. That submarine is a frequent visitor to the Bethlehem Submarine Repair Facility, and now their investigation leads them there where this brief excerpt begins:
From RAGING TORRENT:
I use the gaming chair to call up the Biqi-net on the big screen so Destyn can see better. “You ain’t the only one with cool tech.” I whip through a couple of searches and find only one reference of any kind to a sub repair. It’s a news article in the ‘Fitters and Machinists Weekly’ about a repair person who was injured in a welding accident.
‘Shipfitter Lindsey Bower was injured late on Wednesday when a piece of pipe fell from an area above where workers were replacing air systems. Though she was wearing a hardhat, the pipe dislocated her shoulder. According to sources at the Bethlehem Submarine Repair Facility, she had been making repairs on the buoyancy management systems on the cargo sub, Miracle, when the accident happened. Bower was taken to Mercy Hospital where she was treated and released. This is the twelfth workplace accident at the facility in the last one hundred days.’
“The buoyancy management systems are the ones that control the ballast tanks. The air systems feed into the tanks, to allow them to draw in water or blow it out, and that controls the sub’s depth.”
“So, you’re thinking that because this submarine was having its ballast tanks serviced, that this is what we’re looking for.”
“Yes I am. It sounds far-fetched, but there must be a way to hide illegal drugs—or other cargo for that matter—in the tanks. They need to keep it hidden from customs inspectors, and what better way than this?”
The UNDERCURRENT Series
Want to read more? If you haven’t read UNDERCURRENT yet, you should start there (because it’s the first in the series, of course). I’ll introduce you to Phelan and Destyn, and of course the series would not be complete without Ariana Torrent. The three of them pursue Saxon Cole and his radical Wave Party as they use sabotage and coercion to attempt to overthrow the Aquataine government.
From there, RISE OF THE WAVE takes you on a wild submarine chase as Phelan and Destyn set out to rescue the Dome Minister’s son Joshua from kidnappers. It’s here they discover that the Wave’s motives are rooted in illegal drugs.
In RAGING TORRENT, the authorities are onto the gang, so desperation sets in and they need to find creative ways to get their contraband into the city. But they’re no match for Phelan, Destyn, and Ariana. Or are they?
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Michael Crowl - Author 