ARC: Under Nameless Stars

by Christian Schoon

  They were all gasping for breath by the time they reached the airlock leading to the Benthic Tson.

  “Well, Groom,” Liam said, bent over, sucking in air, hands on his knees. “Anything up your sleeve for getting through this ship? Got some spare gills on ya?”

  Treth activated a monitor screen on the wall. “All waterships of this class are equipped with auxiliary service craft,” she said. “Pressurized submersibles for maintenance and emergencies.”

  “There’s a submarine?” Liam said.

  Zenn noticed the look of concern on Treth’s face as she frowned at the screen. “Treth? What is it?”

  “There is a problem,” Treth said, dialing up another image on the monitor.

  They all moved in to see what the Groom was seeing on the screen. It was a murky underwater cam shot of a small, bulbous craft suspended in a circle of gloomy green illumination. The service sub sprouted numerous utility arms and sensors from its dull yellow hull, and a thick cable could be seen running from the craft to the nearest bulkhead.

  “The sub is moored near the opposite airlock. It is not responding to commands. Charlie?”

  “You can repair it, perhaps?” Jules said, moving closer to look at the screen. “Maybe it is a fuse thing? Or it needs further computer input?”

  Charlie poked tentatively at the screen’s keypad. “Won’t respond. Not from here.”

  “But what do we do, then?” Jules’s voice had risen in pitch. “How do we get through the quantity of water inside the ship?”

  “Charlie, is the service sub’s interior still pressurized?”

  Charlie punched up a schematic image. “Yes. But it will not detach from its mooring. Command link is dead.”

  “Won’t be much help to us all the way over there, huh?” Liam said.

  “Charlie, can you go around the direct command system, bounce a signal to the sub off the Tson’s exterior com dish?” Treth asked.

  “I suppose I can.” He brought up a virtual keyboard that floated in the air before him and began typing, using his two index fingers. “But it will need two bounces, won’t it? The signal, that is, bouncing it off the secondary com dish. Spex might notice that bounce.”

  “We’ve got to risk it,” Treth told him.

  Charlie typed in the commands. They all waited, watching the screen expectantly. Then an alarm tone sounded abruptly from the panel, and Charlie pulled his hands away as if he’d been shocked.

  “Bad luck, bad luck.”

  “Nine Hells!” Treth pulled the engineer away from the screen so she could see it more clearly.

  “What?” Liam said.

  “Trip wire,” Treth said, typing furiously at the keyboard. “They set a trip wire code on the com dish. They were expecting someone to try this. We need to go. Everyone, back into the Dancer. Maybe we can–”

  A strangled, angry burst of garbled sounds behind her made Zenn turn to the door leading into the Dancer. There, blocking their way, was Lu. At least Zenn assumed it was Lu. The simstriss was indeed angry. Unable to maintain a single form, she rapidly changed her appearance, uncontrollably shifting through one organism’s shape after another.

  “Charcharch-harlie.” The Lu that said this was a tall male Alcyon, lizard tongue flicking in and out. This form faded and resolved again into a Loepith, then a Reticulan, the alien’s bovine face contorted.

  “Software’s gone unstable,” Treth said. “Everyone stay away from her.”

  “Naught-naughty Charlieeeee.” Another shift and Lu was momentarily a shrieking human child, then a Cepheian Drifter, then a massive, tri-horned Gargani, which lumbered into the airlock chamber on two thick, furry legs. “No more tricks from you,” the sim-Gargani bellowed, then she grasped the rags of the cowering Charlie in a huge, clawed hand and lifted the Loepith off the floor.

  “Charlie, no,” Zenn screamed. As Lu made for the doorway, the simstriss blurred once more but was unable to fully re-form again, becoming a disjointed, unfocused composite creature, part Loepith, part writhing Cepheian tendrils, part Gargani legs and torso, part beaked-and-feathered Ornithope. Zenn watched in horror as the departing sim-monster bore Charlie back into the Dancer, holding the weakly struggling Loepith aloft in a claw, a tendril, a paw, until the sight was hidden by the closing door.

  “Charlie…” Zenn said, her voice breaking.

  The sound of an incoming message drew their attention back to the wall monitor. They all gathered around it in time to see an image take shape on the screen. Pokt’s jowly face filled the screen.

  “You are all in attendance? Good. Oh, all but the ape. Before the sim-slave malfunctioned, it expressed a desire for the Loepith. I obliged it. Now you will want to sit for your safety. The airlock will fill with a sleeping gas. You will rest until the Spex and I arrive. We come on a shuttle. Then I am afraid there will be consequences. Of a harsh nature.” The Skirni’s image vanished. The sound of inrushing air came from above them. Zenn looked up to see threads of mist descending in lazy spirals from vents in the ceiling.

  “There – gas.” Liam pointed.

  “Novice Scarlett,” Treth said, “the intruder-defense gas on this craft will be morphazine; do you have an antidote?”

  Zenn tried to remember, her thoughts a sudden jumble, the ghastly image of Charlie held aloft by the sim still vivid.

  “Novice Scarlett,” Treth shook her by the shoulders. “An antidote?”

  “I think… I might, yes.” Zenn unslung her kit, scooted Katie to one side and dug frantically, searching for the vial. “Naloxin. Here it is.”

  Zenn pushed the vial onto a facemask nebulizer – and then she too was going down, her knees suddenly too weak to hold her.

  “Scarlett.” It was Liam, close by, strong arms lifting her, propping her to sit with her back up against the wall. Then his legs went limp and he crumpled to the floor next to her.

  Zenn could now no longer lift her arm. Treth’s hand was on hers. She took the facemask. But the Groom succumbed next, stumbling backwards away from Zenn to sit down hard before slumping over.

  Like a swimmer slipping beneath the water’s surface, Zenn watched the room go indistinct, watched it recede into the distance and, finally, watched it go black.

  When Zenn opened her eyes again, something was pressing down on her nose and mouth – the nebulizer mask. The mask pulled away, and a fishy smell filled her nostrils. Khurspex! Her body jolted upright. The blurry object bobbing in front of her face came into focus. No, not Khurspex – dolphin breath, Jules.

  “Alert? Yes, I did the correct thing.” He pulled the mask away from her face. “Quick, wake up completely, please.”

  Zenn stood, endured a brief rush of vertigo and shook her head to clear it.

  “Jules… how…?”

  “Better to wake up these two and quickly. Those Khurspex will be coming.”

  Zenn revived Treth first, then Liam. The both got shakily to their feet. Opening her pack, she was about to give Katie the antidote, but the rikkaset had apparently been buried deeply enough to avoid the sedative’s affects. Jules tried to help Zenn put the pack back on, but he moved strangely, one mech-arm hanging at his side, one mech-leg dragging behind him.

  “Jules, what’s wrong?”

  “My half-brain. The drug-fog put half my thinking to sleep.”

  Of course! The dolphin’s sleep defense mechanism. Only half his brain had been affected by the gas; the other half stayed awake. Zenn reached up and held the mask over Jules’s blowhole and told him to breathe slowly. Treth was already at the airlock panel.

  “The way back to the Dancer is locked,” the Groom said. “But I still have control over the airlock into the Tson. They saw no need to close it off. We might have time before the Skirni arrives.”

  “What about Charlie?” Zenn said.

  “As I said. That way is secured. We cannot reach him,” Treth said. “If he is lucky, the simstriss’ ethics memware will prevent any serious harm.”

  “But her memware is co
rrupted,” Zenn said. “We don’t know what it will do.”

  “We must concentrate on what is possible,” Treth said, typing furiously at the virtual keypad. Without looking up, she said, “Dolphin, how far can you swim underwater?”

  “Swim?” Jules reared back on his mech-legs, as if the Groom had taken a swing at him.

  “Underwater?” He looked from Treth to Zenn. “How far can I go underwater? This is what she wants to know?”

  “The sub is roughly four hundred feet distant,” Treth said, her eyes on the screen. “Can you reach it and return?”

  “Reach it?” The dolphin shifted nervously from mech-foot to mech-foot.

  “What about the pressure in there?” Liam interjected. “Won’t it crush him?” Jules gave Liam a wild-eyed stare.

  “It is the equivalent of two hundred feet in depth,” Treth said. “Cannot dolphins swim at that level?” Jules didn’t answer but waved his head back and forth in agitation.

  “Yes,” Zenn said, a little reluctant to join the discussion with Jules so obviously upset by it. “They can go as deep as twelve hundred feet. As long as the pressure on them rises gradually.”

  “The lock is equipped with an equalization chamber.” Treth pointed to a thick observation porthole that looked into the chamber. “Water is pumped in until the pressures are the same on either side, then the exit door into the Tson will open.” The Groom stepped over to Jules. “You are the only one among us who can reach the sub and release the mooring cable. But you must go now.” Jules shrank back from her again, emitting a twittering squeak that his Transvox didn’t even attempt to interpret.

  “Jules.” Zenn went to him and pulled his head down to her level. She could feel his body trembling with fear. “What is it?”

  “Zenn Scarlett, do not stand apart from me now!” There was stark panic in his voice.

  “Jules, what’s the matter?”

  The dolphin’s black eyes stared into hers. The Transvox was barely audible.

  “Zenn Scarlett… I do not know how to swim.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Seriously?” Liam said, unable to control his disbelief. “A dolphin who can’t swim?”

  “It’s not his fault.” Zenn was in full protective mode now, standing next to the quivering dolphin with her hands on his heaving flank, hoping her touch would calm him. “He just told you. He was taken from his family right after birth. He’s spent his entire life in walksuits.”

  “The institute thought it would be counterproductive. To the walksuit program. If my body got used to swimming. They wanted me to learn walking. I learned very well, you have certainly seen. Walking I can do.”

  “There is no time for this, dolphin.” Treth waited until Jules met her gaze. “We have only one escape path.” Jules stared, imploring, at Zenn, then looked back at Treth again, and his trembling seemed to diminish. Zenn could sense him struggling with his fear.

  “If you can’t do it,” she told him, “we won’t think badly of you.”

  “No, of course we won’t,” Liam said, but his nervous laugh betrayed what he was really thinking. “But, um, you are a dolphin, aren’t you? I bet you’ve got the lungs for it. What if… What if I bet you? How’s this – five units says you can do it.”

  “Liam,” she scolded.

  “Hey, it worked before.”

  “Jules,” Treth said. “We understand. It is no easy task we set before you. We will not think badly of you. But it is the only way out for us.”

  “I have practiced at holding my breath,” Jules said, as if admitting a secret. “Simply to see how long I could do it.” Treth cocked her head at him, waiting for him to come to his own decision. “Swimming would be like that, yes? Holding my breath, I mean, and… moving… through the water.” He gave his tail fluke an experimental twitch, glancing back at it uncertainly.

  “Yes, something like that,” Treth told him. Zenn gave the Groom a look, and Treth added, “It could be more involved than just holding one’s breath.”

  Jules looked at the pressure chamber as if it was the mouth of a large, hungry animal.

  “Will it be a complicated journey – getting through the water to the sub?”

  “No. It is a straight route to the other side,” Treth said.

  “Jules.” A thought had occurred to Zenn. “Do you know how to echolocate?”

  “Yes, I have done that.” Some of Jules’s former enthusiastic tone returned. “I often put just my head below the surface of the pool at the institute. I could sound-see many yards into the water and learned to recognize many things.”

  “Sound-seeing is good, Jules,” she told him. “That will help you navigate inside the ship. It will be dark.”

  “Oh? Very dark?”

  “Yes,” Treth said. “At least until you reach the sub. It is illuminated. Swim to that light.” Treth opened the hatch leading into the pressure chamber and told Jules the manual key code he would need to detach the mini-sub’s umbilical from its outer hull. The keypad was designed with large pressure pads, and she thought he would be able to manipulate them with his beak. She made him repeat the code to her. Then, she said, he must turn around and come back quickly before his breath ran out.

  The equalization chamber was dank and smelled of mold and seawater. Jules hesitated a few seconds, then crossed the threshold and turned to look back at them.

  “When the water is halfway up the wall, release your walksuit and let yourself float up as the level rises,” Treth told him. “Just before the water reaches the ceiling, take your last breath, a big breath, and prepare to swim out of the exit hatch when we open it. Ready?”

  He gave the hatch leading into the Tson one last, apprehensive look.

  “I am ready.”

  “Jules,” Zenn said. “I know you can do this.” He bobbed his head at her in reply, then the hatch swung shut, and Zenn could hear the sound of a rushing torrent as the chamber filled.

  Treth brought up an image on the monitor, and they all watched as the foaming water quickly mounted up along Jules’s mech-legs, then up over his body, until with a twist, he pulled himself free of the walksuit. As if reluctant to get his face wet, he held himself in a rigid vertical position, keeping his head well out of the rising flood. But when the water was almost to the ceiling, he had no choice. He took his last breath, and his smooth form ducked beneath the surface. Treth touched the panel, and the chamber cam showed the hatch opening into the Tson. It yawned wide, an oblong hole of perfect blackness.

  After a glance back at the camera, Jules flicked his tail, tentatively at first, and then, with a single powerful thrust, he arced gracefully down toward the open hatch – and slammed into the wall a foot from the opening. Floating stunned and motionless for a second, he gathered himself, rotated in the water and tried again, this time moving carefully through the hatch until his tail flukes vanished into the lightless interior of the watership.

  Treth punched up the cam shot of the distant sub again.

  “He is a brave one, your dolphin,” she said to Zenn.

  A sudden tide of emotion made it impossible for Zenn to reply, and she stood with the others, silently watching the image on the monitor, waiting for Jules to swim into sight. Zenn realized she was holding her own breath and forced herself to relax. After what seemed like much too long, a shadow flicked past the camera.

  “Look,” Zenn said, pointing.

  Then, there was another movement on the monitor. A long, slender object, undulating across the camera’s field of view.

  “That him?” Liam said, squinting at the screen.

  “No. Loose wiring. Or debris…” Treth didn’t sound convinced.

  “That’s not debris,” Zenn said. Then a huge, flattened, saucer-shaped body glided past. There was no mistaking the tapered wing tips and leopard-spot markings. “Lurker!”

  “A what?” Liam asked.

  “A black-smoke lurker. Hydrothermal vent predator. Big, really big, like a giant manta ray, with feeding tentacles
. Smart. And mean.” Zenn felt numb, her mind spinning back to the lurker they had treated at the clinic. It was an immature female, small for its age, just a bit over fifteen feet in diameter. But the memory of its vicious nature and lethally effective feeding tubes had made an impression even on Otha. The creature was almost impossible to approach, let alone work on. And it was a small specimen. An adult lurker could stretch fifty feet from wingtip to wingtip, with feeding siphons that extended twice its body length.

  “Will it interfere with him?” Treth asked. “Will it prevent the dolphin from accessing the sub?”

  “It could kill him,” Zenn snapped, unable to disguise her anger and fear.

  “Then why do they let that thing swim around in there?” Liam asked. “The Tson’s a passenger ship, isn’t it?”

  “Guard dog, I would assume,” Treth said. “Let loose by the Khurspex to prevent ship-to-ship crossings. As they did with the fire-mites in the Prodigious.”

  The lurker, in fact, was the perfect choice for protector of the Tson’s pitch-black depths. Zenn could imagine it on patrol, its immense, lidless eyes sifting the darkness for any stray photon, for the faintest trace of prey. And Jules, with no idea what awaited him, was swimming straight toward it.

  Abruptly, a familiar torpedo shape glided in and out of frame. Then Jules’s smiling face filled the camera shot. He bobbed his head up and down excitedly and, Zenn thought, proudly. Her heart was pounding and she wanted to shout at him to swim away, to hide.

  They watched Jules go to the docking control panel next to the sub. He poked the buttons with his snout but got the sequence wrong, or pushed too many keys at once, because the umbilical remained firmly attached.

  Hurry, Jules! she thought.

  He paused, then started again. This time, he got it right. With a flurry of bubbles, the umbilical popped off and the sub was floating free.

  “Yes,” Liam shouted, pumping a fist into the air. “He did it.”

  Come back – get out of there, Zenn thought, imagining the lurker gliding toward her friend, silent, hungry.