Excerpt from Undersea SciFi BookStory by D.

Matchey:
The port side of the sub scraped up against the roof of a stealth tank that the
military had sunk years ago to create an artificial reef. Normally, it would ha
ve appeared as a bright, pulsing dot on the sub's built-in object scanner displa
y, but some genius electrician from the military branch in question (which shall
remain unnamed) forgot to remove the capacitor to the tank's active cloaking mo
dule. This meant the tank was invisible to most methods of detection, and due t
o its position near a feeding spot in the reef which kicked up copious amounts o
f sea dust, the tank was invisible to the naked eye as well. Otherwise, the sub
's external repair-class robots, which are equipped with analog graphene retinas
, would have seen it. The tank tore open a 5 meter long gash in the hull.
"Captain, sir, we have a breach in section P-61a" said Markus, the Russian ex-mi
litary engineer in charge of systems monitoring. This was a civilian prospectin
g sub on contract to a undersea mining corporation, but the man's military habit
s never left him.
"Get Tucker on the horn right now, tell him to get his team down there and check
it out," bellowed Captain Stevens on the com from his quarters.
Minutes later, Tucker and his team were knee-deep in near-freezing seawater. Th
e methane hydrate mix that passed for an ocean on this planet would have paralyz
ed them on contact had they not been wearing their powered suits.
Signus Gravitronics dubbed their suits "Leviathans" even though they were only a
few feet taller, and twice as wide, as a standard human frame. The SGL Mark-17
's were nuclear powered, cell hydraulic motion suits that carried a level 2 envi
ronmental rating, meaning they could withstand extreme temperatures; Absolute ze
ro wasn't a problem, and you could dance a jig in molten lava if you wanted to.
Level 1 environmentally rated suits were being tested for close-range quantum d
yna-mechanical work near Black Holes, and weren't yet being used outside of gove
rnment sponsored, top secret scientific applications. Societies and their overl
ords tended, even now, to keep a close eye on anything that could potentially be
Earth-shattering. Some of their latest work near Black Holes involved focused
quantum gravity, which could theoretically cause serious astronomical collisions
from up to light years away.
"Jones, get the plates, would you please?" Tucker said. He switched his HUD vis
or wavelength so he could clearly see the edges of the gash in the hull. He twe
aked a virtual dial slightly above center with a twitch of his right eye muscle
and uploaded the visual settings to his team. Jones came back, his suit support
ing two tons of special emergency construction plates, and set them down on the
floor. The team set to work.
The plates were constructed of a relatively cheap base metal, coated with an org
anic fiber polymer that reacted in strange ways to electromagnetic fields. The
suits were equipped with all sorts of tools, one of which was an directed electr
omagnetic pulse, which, when applied to the plates, would manipulate their basic
structure and cause them to intertwine on an atomic level with any surrounding
material. Once the plates were in place, a directed shot from their suits charg
ed the plates, and they fused with their surroundings -- even the water, to a sl
ight degree.
It took about 4 minutes to set the plates in line, fuse them, and check for any
leaks with their enhanced visors. A thin gel coating of water, held in place by
the fusing process, was attached to the surface of the repair, and it would rem
ain after they were finished pumping out the water. Once the pump and hose were
attached to the outlet tube, Tucker radioed Markus to tell him the job was done
.
"Spasibo, Corporal," said Markus, messing with Tucker, who had been in the milit
ary as well, but brought up on charges of and eventually dismissed after strikin
g an officer who was cheating at cards in the mess hall. He didn't like to talk
about it, and everyone knew it -- though only a few very brave, or very crazy,
men would rib him about it. Tucker grunted, and muted the communicator.
Captain Stevens, having received the update from Markus in the minutes following
the repair, rolled over and went back to sleep.