297/1

“Nice to see you again, Sparks.”

A toothy grin flash beneath the slouched figure's tattered hood, followed shortly by a rasping voice; the voice of a man who must have smoked several packs a day for most of his life.

“And you, boss. We were beginning to worry we'd lost you.”

Standing a little taller now, Sparks swept the hood back from his weathered face. His skin was tan, almost leather-like. Age lines were etched across it like some kind of ancient navigation chart, criss-crossed by his greasy, near-white hair. Long and unkempt, hanging in front of his eyes, it joined a dense and tangled beard that appeared likely to swallow his entire face were it to be given enough time. His most striking facial feature, though, was undoubtedly the pair of pale blue eyes set beneath a bushy brow. Glittering faintly in the pre-dawn glow, they contained a soft kindness that had somehow endured a life full of setbacks and tragedies.

Sparks was an electrician of incredible experience. Nobody actually knew his age – not even himself, if he was honest – but he was old enough to have served in the Soviet Navy as a young man. Specifically speaking, he'd been part of the submarine force, where his relatively short stature had been an asset. So had his talent for improvisation. He was well beyond fighting age by now of course, instead filling a role as a minor technician for the science team stationed at the White Forest Research Facility.

He beckoned for the 'boss' to follow. With a furtive glance over her shoulder, his much younger companion hurried after him. She stood a couple of inches taller than Sparks, festooned in equipment. Beginning to pick up the windswept look of her companion, she'd spent the better part of a week trekking through the wild reaches of White Forest to reach this rugged stretch of coast, making camp in whatever ruined structure or hole in the ground she could find along the way.

This had been her life recently: constantly travelling back and forth between the two very different but equally dangerous regions, carrying messages and supplies in both directions. For their part, the science team spared people where they could. Personnel were in short supply these days; they needed as many warm bodies as possible just to hold onto their flimsy claim to the old missile base. Her Partisans, meanwhile, were tied down by the constant maintenance demands of the boat.

Ah yes, the boat.

The enormous black silhouette loomed up ahead as the faintly-worn trail rounded the bottom of the bluff. Saltspray stung the young woman's upturned face, thrown up by the seas that pounded against the rocky shore just a few feet away. She squinted against it, eyes fixed ahead. There was absolutely no missing the steel whale, beached more or less upright on a long stretch of sand between two massive headlands.

Even from this distance, the number 297 was clearly visible, painted in stark white on the rusting slab-sides of the submarine's sail. The numbers must've been several metres tall, a fleet identification number long since rendered unnecessary. She was the only one of her kind here. She was probably the only one of her kind anywhere.

A rolling sea of white dunes marked the junkyard further inland. Salted with rusting metal and tangled hoses, a few tents had been pitched there, sides mostly covered with sand to conceal their presence. Their entrances were just visible. The main camp itself was actually dug into more solid earth beyond the dunes, the terminal point for the thick-gauge cabling that dipped down from the open hatches on the submarine's deck and across a number of rotting wooden pylons driven into the sand.

Jane had never quite acclimatised to the sight, despite seeing it so regularly over the past few months. She suspected she wasn't alone in this regard. The desolation of the remote bay was awe-inspiring on its own, but the decrepit carcass of the once-proud vessel added a whole new quality to it, an air of finality. A giant sleeps here. Let's hope she never wakes up.

The find had been made by a small scouting party exploring possible smuggling routes, nearly a year ago now. Nobody back at the base had quite believed the account of what they'd seen, and so a second scouting party set forth to investigate – this time, with somebody who might be able to make an appraisal. Sparks had been that man, tagging along with a handful of fellow technicians. He'd been the first to actually enter, to descend into the beast. He'd been the one who yelled out with astonishment as the faint, familiar hum of electronics greeted him.

The giant may have looked dead from the outside, but her nuclear heart was still beating.