Endless Blue

by Wen Spencer

  "It sank," Mikhail said. "Everything but the engine sank."

  "It—It's like a hundred meters tall!"

  "The water must be deeper." Mikhail moved back then, letting Moldavsky see as he considered their find.

  Mikhail was sure that this had to be the remnants of the Fenrir. But this only raised more questions. If the engine was operable, why had the survivors settled on this bleak island? If it was just to repair the engine and warp back to Plymouth Station, why hadn't they taken the effort to send back information on this place? It could be that the survivors far outnumbered the available room on the engine, and those left behind would be left with nothing. A mutiny could have taken place but where had the unidentified Reds come from? And what did the modifications made to the engine indicate?

  They were questions that could only be answered by investigating the wreckage and interrogating any survivors. If the nefrim were involved, that could be a dangerous course of action.

  "We need to know everything about that island. Feed images to the tactical computer and get a full rendering of it."

  "Yes, sir. What about the other carrier? Should I query its IFF?"

  "No. Maintain radio silence. Do a scan on it after the island and see if tactical can match its profile to known lost carriers. Make sure pre-United Colony ships are included; that ship has been there for a while."

  Moldavsky nodded and then glanced beyond Mikhail at the Red who'd been standing guard. "Sir," she whispered. "Can you get me a different Red up here? One of our veterans? This one is . . .I'd rather not be alone with it."

  "What's wrong?" he asked quietly.

  She blushed and looked away. "It's—it's being . . .lewd."

  There was a word he'd never heard attached to a Red before. "What's he doing?"

  The blush deepened to a brilliant shade of red. "It's spending an inordinate amount of time looking at . . ..my privates. It told me that it knew how to use its mouth. And it said that we could use wire to tie it up since we don't have restraints. I—I think its last owner slutted around with her pride."

  Mikhail remembered how furious Turk had been when he returned from Paradise. Had Turk been maneuvered into using himself as part of the payment for the replacements? Turk hated cat fanciers because he knew that they saw him as nothing more than a perverted sex toy. A crèche-raised Red wouldn't bring that mindset to the encounter. To a normal Tom, sex would be a much sought-after treat. Had the woman slept with all of her pride? "I'll swap him out."

  10

  Fenrir's Rock

  Moldavsky's surveillance during the hours that it took them to dig the Svoboda out of the sandbar showed no human activity on the island except the lone energy signature. Mikhail decided to treat it as a hot zone and that they would go in expecting trouble. By then, Tseytlin had the Tigertail set up to act as the Svoboda's bridge.

  Mikhail took the Svoboda in low and fast, approaching in a wide curve so the island itself screened them from view until the last moment. And then with the left wingtip nearly brushing the gray rock face of the sheer cliffs, they circled the island until the engine crater came into view. They landed in the large flat field of rubble that was once a small town and was now only a jumble of rocks. Ocean and beaches might be strange things to his crew, but bombed city rubble was familiar ground. The gunners gave the all clear signal. The hatch of both Red pits opened. Cautiously, the Reds moved out to secure the area. In the Tigertail's command center, Mikhail watched the feeds from the Red's combat suits. Three dozen eyes scanned the wreckage and fed him data.

  Any doubts Mikhail had about this being Fenrir's crash site vanished as the Reds explored. Fenrir been named after a wolf in Norse mythology. The survivors of the crew had embraced the image. It was painted onto the prows of boats. It was stenciled onto flags. It was painted onto the gray cliff walls.

  Fenrir's crew had lived off the bounty of the sea. Fishing gear was strewn everywhere. Shattered boats. Broken fish cages. Stray net floats. The military command had given way to New Washington democracy; the buildings had been homes, storefronts, and judging by one broken sign, a restaurant. When bored, the inhabitants were prone to colorful graffiti; most were joyous proclamations of existence. There had been children whose toys remained left behind. Obviously this had been a thriving town with hundreds of inhabitants, all leveled in the blink of an eye.

  A third of the monitors in front of Mikhail were off; a constant reminder of the Reds that they'd lost. Mikhail avoided looking at Turk's for an hour, telling himself, "Don't go picking open wounds. You don't need that hurt right now." Finally he could resist the urge no longer and reached out and flipped it on. Turk's suit was still transmitting but the vital monitors showed no signs of life. The screen remained black; the camera must have broken.

  He stared at it. The blackness of the monitor leeched into him, filling him with nothingness until he was drowning in it.

  "Sectors one through five clear." Butcher reported over his comline.

  Anger was better. Anger at least gave him sharp focus. Mikhail snapped Turk's monitor off and found Butcher's among the unlabeled monitors. The handles of their veteran Reds had been added to their screens; the replacements were just numbers at the moment. At Mikhail's level, "Top Cat" was usually an invisible rank, not shown by any of the displayed data. Watching the monitors, though, it had been obvious that the other Reds were centered on Butcher. They moved when he moved, took cover when he took cover, looked first to him for orders.

  Butcher had the obeisance and respect that came with Top Cat. Mikhail hated him for it. The hate pulled him out of the darkness, but he had to hold it in tight control, lest it too became all consuming.

  Tseytlin was down in Alpha Red, trying to piece together what happened. Once it had been drained and repaired, they had to use it since Beta Red had been overcrowded. With all the Reds out on the mission, this was the first time they could closely study the red pit. Soon Mikhail would know if Turk died in a simple accident or if Butcher killed him like he claimed. But if Butcher was guilty, could Mikhail afford to execute him? The Reds were a cohesive fighting unit; putting Butcher down would trigger a dominance battle. In this strange place, they could ill-afford the Reds battling each other.

  The attention light flashed on Rabbit's monitor. Rabbit's feed glowed shades of green; the night vision on the camera had kicked on. Where had Rabbit found so much black in this night-less world?

  "Where are you, Rabbit?" Mikhail asked the little Red.

  "Captain, I've found a tunnel. Lots of tunnels actually. It seems like a good place for an ambush, sir."

  Obviously, Rabbit was afraid that Butcher wouldn't recognize it as such. Turk had always valued Rabbit's intelligence, but probably not his crèche-raised replacement. Mikhail prioritized Rabbit's line with the mapping computer, letting the program try to make sense out of the confusion of greens.

  Since the Reds had stayed focused around Butcher, the software had already built a detailed model of the city immediately around the ship. Rabbit had strayed off into uncharted territory. His course was a series of disjointed turns in white space.

  "All sectors clear. Awaiting orders." Butcher reported. He'd done exactly what he'd been ordered to do, where Turk would have grasped what was actually needed to be done. Functioning perfectly didn't mean he was adequate to the job. Rabbit's intuition made him a better replacement, but he'd never be able to gain the Red's respect.

  "Rabbit return to the ship." Mikhail ordered.

  "Captain?" Rabbit's doubt was clear his voice.

  "Return to the ship to escort me into those tunnels." Mikhail explained.

  "Yes, sir!"

  Turk had a spare command suit on the Tigertail. Mikhail took it out of its locker and pulled it on. It smelled of Turk, and for a moment, it was all not true; Turk was there, a solid quiet presence, firmly in command of the Reds.

  Stop picking at the wounds , Mikhail told himself and strapped on his service pistol. He checked to make sure it was loa
ded with tranq rounds; he didn't want to kill any survivors that they found, no matter how hostile they might be. But just in case he got into a more serious firefight, he took a clip of regular ammo.

  * * *

  The blast doors from a fighter bay had been set into the cliff. It stood open, but there were indications that it was in working order and could be sealed to keep out waves. Beyond, the floor of a large natural cave been leveled with cement to make a large hallway.

  With Butcher taking point, Mikhail moved cautiously down the corridor. They went several hundred meters, passing smaller hallways and staircases branching off into darkness. At each, Butcher followed standard procedure and signaled a pair of Reds to stand watch on the opening.

  Deep in the core of the island was a large cavernous harbor. Shafts of sunlight came through skylights cut into the ceiling. The soft lap of water on stone spoke of an invisible current moving the dark, still water. They'd come in at an angle to a canal leading toward the outer harbor; the landslide would have blocked the canal. A stone dock lined the edge of the harbor. High on the sheer walls were steel girders, strung with block and tackle.

  "What are those for?" Rabbit asked as Mikhail played a light over the ropes and pulleys.

  "I think they would haul boats up out of the water." Mikhail said. "It would double how many boats they could fit into here. See, there's one."

  Mikhail spotlighted a boat far above the water, hanging on ropes. It was roughly the same size as the Swordfish had been. The stern read Kingfisher. He checked it with the suit's infiltration scanners and found it had the same type of torpedo power unit as the Swordfish had. The hull was damaged near in the bow, perhaps the reason it was strung up here instead of out in the outer harbor at the time of the implosion.

  The outside buildings had been just a small part of Fenrir's colony. Inside there had been a warren of rooms adapted from the natural cave system. There hadn't been a few hundred living here, as he supposed earlier, but thousands.

  Mikhail stood gazing at the grotto. This was why the survivors clung to this island. In this protected harbor, they could weather the worst of storms. But with the grotto harbor blocked, the outer harbor was much too vulnerable to large waves. Any fishing boats that survived the implosion would be destroyed in the next storm. Had the Fenrir's people fled the island or had something else had happened to them?

  The Reds stirred around him, growing bored.

  "Do a maze search starting from this room." Mikhail told Butcher. "Look for evidence of fighting. Laser burns. Shrapnel damage."

  Butcher nodded his understanding and turned to the Reds.

  The wall along the dock was whitewashed and then painted with messages. Some were carefully detailed like "Crew of the Passport went to Georgetown Landing on the Ben Franklin." Others were much more cryptic, requiring some knowledge of the people who left the messages: "John Q., Went to Mom's, H." The most poignant was "Everyone dead but me. Don't know where I'm going, Dennis Finway." Hundreds of messages, in dozens of paint colors, done neat and sloppy, big and small, bending and twisting not to overlap, lest their message be confused with the others.

  Nor were all in Standard; there was at least one of every language that made it into space. Japanese. Chinese. Arabic. German. Russian. He'd need to feed the images into a translator to understand what all but the last said. Eerily, the Russian stated, "Svoboda is no more. Everyone but I am dead. I go on. Mikhail Ivanovich." Svoboda was a popular name for a ship, as Mikhail and Ivan were for men. Still it felt like he stumbled across a message from himself.

  Only a few offered up the cause of the destruction. "Explosion in harbor," stated one. "Engine exploded," read another.

  The destinations interested Mikhail the most. The survivors hadn't all fled to the same place, but scattered, suggesting a multitude of human havens in this world. What's more, the sanctuaries seemed to be all ship names. He recognized the Constitution, Requin, Whyalla and Buffel; they were United Colony ships lost in infamous battles. While he didn't know the others, their names resonated as ships. The only ones that didn't were Ya-ya and Mary. If each name represented the crash site of a ship with its crew setting up an outpost of human civilization, then there were dozens of "lost" ships listed on the wall.

  What confounded him was the time frame. The Svoboda arrived only a few days after Fenrir's engine appeared at Plymouth Station; Moldavsky should have picked up a fleet of small boats moving purposely away from this island. And Fenrir had been lost for only ten years. That seemed far too short a time for the survivors to pull themselves out of the ocean, build fishing boats and carve out these caves. Even if they had accomplished so much in such a short time, it didn't account for places where the stone was worn smooth by causal wear. Or the ring of coral that had grown on Fenrir's engine.

  Time seemed to run differently in this place.

  Fenrir might have vanished out of normal space ten years ago, but its people seemed to have lived here for decades. The engine might have appeared at Plymouth Station less than a week ago, a few hundred hours, but more time than that had gone by in this bubble world.

  Time was affected by gravity. At the event horizon of a black hole, time shuddered to a stop. But run fast? How could there seem to be normal gravity here and yet time was accelerated?

  Mikhail heard the splash of water and the slap of wet on stone behind him as he searched his com for the ship names he didn't recognize. The sound filtered slowly through his consciousness. First as an awareness that the two noises, connected, meant something had left the water and landed on the dock. Secondly that Butcher had neglected to leave any Reds with him. He was alone on the dock.

  A second wet slap echoed through the cavern, sounding closer.

  Correction. Had been alone.

  He spun around.

  There were two fish lying on the dock, half a meter long each, twitching in puddles. Their mouths worked, desperately trying to find something to breathe. The harbor churned with silvery bodies, darting through the shafts of sunlight in a frantic pace. Mikhail stared at the fish, both in the water and the dock. Why in the world would fish jump to their death?

  The school of fish in the harbor suddenly veered away from one shadowed area to race toward the dock. Individuals leapt, here and there, as if trying to flee the water itself. No; they were fleeing a shadow moving through the water behind them. There was something in the water; most likely a predator of some sort. A very large predator. The shadow widened as it arrowed toward him, as if something black was surfacing out of the depths even as it grew closer. The creature was black with spots of white, long and lean, and huge. It ignored the fish leaping out of its way, seemingly intend on him. Or something in the water right in front of Mikhail.

  There was a lip built into the edge of the dock. Someone was tucked under the ledge, just the tips of their fingers showing where they were holding on.

  "Get out of the water." Mikhail pulled his service pistol and changed the clip. He doubted his tranq ammo would work on anything as large as the incoming sea monster.

  The person in the water peeked over the stone edging, dark eyes peering through a wet mane of black hair. The black on black of a Red.

  "Something is in the water. It's coming straight at you. Get out of the water." Mikhail took aim at the creature. It was nearly at the dock. Hoping that the creature followed Earth physiology and kept its brain between its eyes, he took careful aim at the center of its head. The muzzle flashed brilliant in the grotto's shadows, the shot echoing through the cavern.

  "Oh shit!" The Red came scrambling out of the water. She was unmistakably female—wearing almost no clothing to hide that fact—and furred. A female Red.

  Reds were always male. Always.

  Mikhail was so stunned and amazed, he stopped tracking the creature. It was a fish in the water, afterall, and the impossibly female Red was on the dock, beside him, but fleeing quickly. "Wait! I won't hurt you! I just want to . . ."

  The creature heaved
out of the water and slammed into him. Massive jaws with an impossible number of jagged teeth clamped down on his side. The combat suit flashed warning as its projectile dampers resisted the sudden onslaught. Then the creature whipped its head to the side, in a move that probably was supposed to rip a hunk of flesh free, and Mikhail went tumbling across the dock. He slammed against the cave wall and lay there stunned.

  I really should have put the helmet on.

  The fish was heading toward him but he couldn't get any of his limbs to obey him.

  Then the woman was there, jerking him up with the ease of a Red. She was surprisingly short for a Red, and lean, but apparently just as strong. Her eyes were as dark as a Red's. She had their glossy black hair; only hers was curly and long, a wild mane instead of the crew-cut that all his pride sported. She wore strips of cloth pretending to be clothes; one tight black band crossed her full breasts, and another barely covered her groin. She had a knife strapped to her thigh, and the hilt of a sword-like blade showing over her shoulder. Other than an annoyed look and black fur, she had nothing else on.

  There was a metal catwalk overhead that Mikhail hadn't noticed before. It had been hidden by the deep shadows of the grotto. He was made forcibly aware of the catwalk as she flung him up onto it. His suit complained again that it had saved him from grievous harm. The woman landed next to where he lay.

  "Idiot," she growled. "How close does death have to get before you recognize it?"

  The creature splashed heavily across the dock to stand under them. Its huge mouth opened; a sudden cave ringed by thousands of jagged teeth. Its breath blasted over him, an explosive hot exhale of carrion.

  Mikhail gazed down through the metal grate flooring at the huge open jaws just inches away. "Apparently very close."

  "I could have let that thing kill you," she said. "But in this world, the only thing you can control is yourself. I don't want to be a mindless monster that concerns itself with only feeding its belly. Fix that firmly in your mind. To be is to be and no storm can change your course."