Mr. Ruins: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

orange as they churn within this body's Molten Core, driven by magnetic and gravometric forces too huge to imagine.
    I wonder briefly how I know this about forces, when I know nothing else, but then I remember that knowing will not help us survive, and survival is all I can think of now.
    I focus harder through the periscope, sweeping side to side. What I'm looking at is a magmic storm, dense enough to shred all the hulls we have if it catches us wrong, at a confluence. The cooling systems to the bricks will be nothing but a brief sizzle of ice in a volcano if I can't steer us through it fast.
    Reports ring in from all decks, called out by Doe.
    "Ti's jettisoned the screw. New one's toothing to the engine."
    I feel the slowdown in the patterns of liquid metal ahead. Their buffeting gets stronger the slower we get,
    "Tell her to make it bite now," I shout.
    Another trim-tank vented by Ray sends us yawing deeper, almost wrenching the periscope out of my hands. I lean back in and watch as a great yellow wreath of molten rock bubbles up toward us, wondering if this will be the one to take us out. I only need to find the bearing to drive us through, and the propulsion to do it, and perhaps we'll make it.
    "So and La say the engine's cooling at maximum," calls Doe, "we've got two layers of ablative bricking left, the outer one's completely shorn. Three trim tanks left."
    "It's only getting hotter," I call back. "We need more…"
    The new screw bites and I can't finish my sentence as the periscope punches me hard in the face. Stars, and Doe is tossed from her feet behind me.
    "Backwash, clearing the gunk," Doe shouts, getting to her feet. "Me, we have to move now." 
    Blinking away the pain, I glimpse the outline of it, the black mass of the Solid Core like a fuzzy island through the magmic haze, corporeal to gamma rays in a way the flows are not.
    Any port in a storm.  
    "Arc 23 degrees," I shout out to Doe, "flank speed, get us the hell through this."
    I hear her ring out the order on the Engine Order Telegraph, two bells for direction and three sharp rings for full steam ahead. The thrum vibrates up through the floor, as Ti deep below decks drives the engine to new straining heights.
    The thrust jerks me back from the periscope, as the sudden vector cavitates the magma ahead. Liquid rock bubbles and groans and then we're churning through it, moving too fast for the cooling magma drag to peel off, giving us a replacement layer for as long as the thought engine can take it.
    "Arc 25, Hail 47, Veer 306," I call out to Doe, each navigation met by a ringing on the EOT, swerving us like a fish between the densest points of the lava storm. We thread it, and I rattle out a long stream of minute corrections that may just be enough to spare our insulation and to get us through. The room around me rings with the chime of the EOT bell as Doe relays everything to Ti far below, a high trilling melody over the deep bass thrum of the Molten Core.
    "Arc 23, lock it in," I finish, then pull out of the periscope. We're almost to the surface, and there are other things I have to do now, to ensure we all survive. As I pull back another trim tank blows and jostles us slightly, lightening the load, speeding us.
    I stride to the display bank and tap the dial for internal cabin pressure. It's coolest here, hottest down where Ti is, and not long to go. There are streams of sweat pouring off Doe already, along with a flow of blood down her cheek.
    "Bit my tongue on the last yaw," she says. "You should see your eyes, you look like a panda."
    My head aches, but there's no time. We have to get out of this one-shot bucket before we burn up.
    "Call them all up," I say. "Have Ray get Far. We'll breach the surface in T-minus ten, and we need to be ready."
    She aye-ayes and gets to the con, starts relaying my message throughout the ship. 
    I rub my eyes and take a deep breath.
    What in hell are we doing here?
    At the back of the conning tower is the captain's