[Review] Breakwater by Simon Bestwick (Tor, 2018)

Breakwater by Simon Bestwick (Tor, 2018) is a meet-cute lesbian rom-com novella. It is also a sketch of future war between two Earth species with asymmetrical histories and technologies.

One species, Homo sapiens, has leveraged underwater habitats for war against their rivals:

....Some scientists had continued to believe the first fatal encounters with the Bathyphylax were accidents, misunderstandings, but no-one listened to them—or, later, to those same scientists' more accurate reports that the Bathyphylax's actions, far from being motiveless acts of "evil," were in fact in response to the ongoing destruction of their deep-sea habitats.

Dr. Cally McDonald serves as a civilian contractor aboard HMS Dunwich, a militarized underwater platform her late husband Ben designed and christened Breakwater.

Cally may be a widow, but she's still got it:

....Cally saw herself in the polished brass: a small, lean woman in her late forties, deep red hair and a strong-boned face. Jeans, sweater, biker jacket, a grey butcher-boy cap.

When a Bathyphylax sneak attack wrecks HMS Dunwich, Cally is trapped in the flooding, disintegrating superstructure. Her only help comes from the magnificent Chief Petty Officer Hanover.

….The Chief Petty Officer's damp clothing clung to her tightly, and particularly to her firm, round bottom, which Cally had a fairly magnificent view of as it swayed above her on the ladder.

     She'd never made a secret of her sexuality with Ben. University had been where she'd begun to shake off her rather repressive religious upbringing; unlike some, she hadn't shagged everything that moved, but there'd been a couple of longish relationships, and for one awkward month she'd secretly dated a lean, pale dyke called Paula. It hadn't lasted—Paula had, understandably, wanted a girlfriend who wasn't afraid to be seen as one, and Cally had been far too concerned about her parents finding out and the reaction of the church congregation back home. A pity. Paula had been a nice girl and a good lover. Come to think of it, Hanover looked a little like her.

     A few years out from college Cally had met Ben, and that had been that: bi or not, she was the old-fashioned monogamous type, despite all Ben's half-serious joking about threesomes. The emotional intimacy she'd shared with Ben had been what mattered. Of course she'd felt desire since he'd died, but it had never been anything more than an itch to scratch. In so many ways, she knew, she was frozen at the point of loss, unable to move on; she couldn't remember the last time a flesh-and-blood human had inspired any lust in her.

     Until now, when she was responding to Hanover's lean, lithe body as she hadn't in years. Looking at those buttocks swaying above her, Cally pictured them bare and white—and beneath them, at the juncture of Hanover's thighs, the ripe swell of the mons Veneris, the lush thatch of wiry black hair—

     Jesus Christ, McDonald, get a fucking grip.

     Hanover hung one-handed from a ladder rung above her. "You okay down there, Doc?"

     "Fine."

     "Looking a bit flushed." Hanover grinned. "Let me know if you need cooling down." And then she was back to climbing: did Cally imagine it, or did the other woman put an extra wiggle in her behind? Cally shook her head and followed. Maybe Hanover had good gaydar and wanted to add a little extra motivation. If so, Cally had to admit, it wasn't doing any harm.

Breakwater goes on, following the peril-as-foreplay line longer than we might expect.

Then the fireworks.

*   *   *

Breakwater's tone is serio-droll. In 2019 I enjoyed Bestwick's noirish, waterborne thriller "Deadwater" in the at-best uneven anthology The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea edited by Ellen Datlow (2018). A stronger Bestwick story, "We All Come Home", can be found in After Sundown edited by Mark Morris. Both, like Breakwater, are worth reading.

Jay

14 April 2022