Written Sy Wyatt at the now infamous MWM Live! in Bristol, May 2009.

Pressure. Emmett had dealt with pressure his whole life. Pressure to deliver. Pressure to perform. Today, however, he was concerned entirely with the pressure on the outside of his deep sea exploration suit. The soft pinging in his ear told him he was safe, and still attached to the survey ship, thousands of feet above, by the umbilical.

“Can you see it, Emmett?”

“I’m pretty much on top of it. Another hundred or so feet and I’ll have contact.”

Emmett imagined the whoops and back-slapping going on on the ship. After months of searching, they had found her.

Emmett’s heavy boots hit the shell of the wreck. There was no give, ships like the Inca Queen were built to last, built to keep their cargo safe. Emmett couldn’t speculate what kind of ordnance could have sunk her.

“Can you see it? Emmett, can you see it?”

Emmett turned slowly, the high powered lights on the shoulders of his suit skimming along skin of the hulk. They reached a ragged gash, a hole punched in the side of the majestic Inca Queen. Inside, gleaming under the powerful spot lights, was her cargo. Untouched, perfect, preserved by intense pressure and cold of the Inca Queen’s deep grave.

Row after row of containers, their contents still a perfect, creamy white and, along the sides, a tell-tale flash of gold.

Emmett smiled. It would be biggest haul of his career.

“I have it. There’s at least eight thousand pints of gold top down here.”

Emmett flicked off the radio link before he was deafened by the cheers. Since the bovine flu epidemic, milk had become the most expensive commodity on the planet. The contents of The Inca Queen, once the star “milk float” of the global “Creamy Corporation”, was worth enough to make Emmett and his crew richer than God.