Procedure said you issued challenges: Halt! Drop your weapons! Get on the ground! Procedure said you gave the perps a chance to surrender. Procedure said you called for backup if the situation looked dicey and then you moved in carefully. But when Purvis’s throat went dry as the creatures appeared, he forgot all about Procedure.
He’d fired several shots and the creatures…things…whatever the hell they were—had gone down fast. Now one of them lay writhing in the shallows and pedestrians—civilians-- were starting to gather.
“Stay back! Stay back…it’s still moving—get way back there!”
The crowd pulled back about fifty feet, while Purvis crept forward, his gun still in firing position. The nearer creature was moving, it sounded like squeals or clicks or something, thrashing about in the sand and water, flinging up dirt as it writhed. The farther ones were mostly in the water, smaller in size, but still—now one of them removed something from a side pouch and aimed it in the general direction of the pedestrians.
Purvis came up. What on God’s green earth--?
The beast—for that was what he had started calling it in his mind—was not a dolphin. It wasn’t a shark. It had legs and arms and what looked like armor plating. It had holes in the armor and water was spouting out of the holes. The beast squealed some more. And what the hell was that device in its hands?
Purvis got on the radio, ringing up Dispatch.
“Kitty, this is Quissett Two-Five…I got some kind of disturbance down here on Oyster Pond Road…I don’t know how to describe it…I have fired several rounds—need backup immediately…and something else: would you call Division? They’ve got more firepower…we may need some of that down here…and hurry!”
That’s when the Omtorish team lit off their suppressors.
A strong eye-blinding light went off, followed by a deafening BOOM! It came again, the light and the BOOM! Civilians nearby were stopped in their tracks and squealed as if the sound had injured them. Up on the side of the road, two more arriving officers had been knocked to their knees by the concussion, but got up. One of them—it looked like McNulty—regained his senses and went after the creatures. And now there were at least half a dozen…Purvis stared dumbfounded as more figures emerged from the waves, at least half a dozen, all clad in the same strange gear, armored gator skin was what it looked like.
Kok’tek ordered more suppressing fire. “Spray the area, Klatko! Keep them down…Pelspo, get the stek’loo out and send it up! We need to sniff out eekoti Chase quickly…before the Tailless overwhelm us!”
Pelspo was just dragging himself up out of the water and trying to stabilize himself in his mobilitor. “Kah--!” he muttered to himself. “It’s so hard to move these blasted things.” But Kok’tek wanted surveillance, so he got himself upright, then dug the stek’loo out of its egg-shaped pod and flung it into the air.
Its wings snapped out smartly and the device spun up its bi-rotors and took off, climbing quickly into the sky, sniffing for the scent trail of eekoti Chase. To Officer Steve Purvis, still lying on his side, his ears ringing and bleeding, his head pounding from the suppressor burst, the sight of the pterodactyl-like creature swooping and diving and careening overhead made him figure he was dreaming some nightmare horror show of a dream. Presently, as Purvis struggled to stay conscious, he squinted out of one eye and saw the flying beast from a million years B.C. began to circle meaningfully and intently over the roof of the McLean Lab building, a few hundred yards up the hill. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the assault team of sea monsters—for that’s what they looked like—begin to move out, clambering awkwardly up the sand hill toward Oyster Pond Road, the squad arrayed in perfect diamond formation with weapons trained outward at every compass point.
Man, Purvis told himself, this is no circus troop. These guys are pros.
When the next suppressor burst came and the sky filled with a deafening white light, everything became a blur and Purvis passed out again.
Kok’tek led his rescue team steadily toward the building above which the stek’loo circled, having picked up the scent trail of eekoti Chase. He was mildly surprised at how effective the suppressors had been, having leveled everything around them in a several hundred-yard radius. He knew it was only a matter of time before the Tailless mustered greater forces. They would have to hurry.
Eekoti Chase was somewhere inside this building and the Metah had charged him with rescuing the half-breed and spiriting him back to sea, back to Keenomsh’pont.
I hope this is worth it, Kok’tek told himself. He heard, then saw, the small fleet of more police cars screeching to a halt down the road and ordered all suppressors and stunners to be discharged at once. The Omtorish were well protected in their mobilitors but the deafening BOOMS! shattered windows and set off sirens up and down the street. Bodies littered the road and grounds as the Omtorish team crept forward, their suit motors whirring and straining in the full gravity of Notwater.
For good measure, Kok’tek had Klensbok hang back at the rear-guard position and let loose a full discharge of mah’jeet. Nobody knew if the toxic bloom of tiny creatures would even have any effect on the Tailless but the fog of the discharge would at least make them cautious about approaching any closer.
Kok’tek reached the entrance of McLean Lab and easily forced his way in. Four more team members followed, while Klensbok and Potok stayed outside to protect their rear.
Inside, Kok’tek crept along the corridors, following the stek’loo’s cries and screeches until they came to a corridor labelled Research Pool: Authorized Personnel Only. He fired one burst of his prod, and the door sizzled and smoked, and he was able to kick his way in. Two more Omtorish followed immediately, sweeping their prods and stunners across every sector.
There were three Tailless inside. Two female and one male. They stood frozen in terror at the sight of the Omtorish and slowly raised their hands. Not understanding the gesture, concluding that it was in fact a threatening move, one Omtorish fired his prod. It hit the male, who crumpled immediately to the pool deck, twitching and shaking as he writhed on the wet tile. The other Tailless immediately went to their comrade and bent to help.
Kok’tek had the only echopod but it was tuned to address and receive words from eekoti Chase. He gestured to his troops who then moved on the females and forcibly shoved them both into a corner of the room, where they cowered and whimpered in fear.
In the pool, Kok’tek saw the eekoti, limp and floating in some kind of sling. He waded into the pool, and released Chase from restraint.
“Eekoti Chase, are you all right?” It was clear that the half-breed was only semi-conscious, having been heavily sedated by the Tailless bastards. He lolled and drifted, his head wobbling around as Kok’tek carried him up and out of the pool. The chief prodsman motioned for his troops to assist him and they hung at each side of Chase, supporting him as they exited the pool. Back in the corridor, stepping around more Tailless who shrank down and cowered in humps along the walls, Pelspo made a hand gesture and the stek’loo abruptly returned to his shoulder, folding and stowing its winds and powering down its rotors with a defiant screech, whereupon Pelspo crammed the creature in its storage pod and resumed helping Chase limp and stumble his way back to the front gallery of the Lab building.
They left the McLean Lab, picking up Klensbok and Potok, and saw immediately that the Tailless had recovered and were moving on their position in great numbers, surrounding and flanking them so that the route back to the beach and the Vineyard Sound was now cut off.
“We’ll have to fight our way back!” Kok’tek announced. He quickly took stock of the situation, realizing with dismay that fighting in the land of Notwater was really a two-dimensional affair and they were restricted to surface operations. Combat in the sea was inherently a three-dimensional matter, where you could dive and ascend and get around flanking maneuvers much more easily. They hadn’t trained for combat in this strange world. Nobody had.
Then he had an idea.
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“Pelspo, get the stek’loo out again. Now!”
At once, Pelspo withdrew the now-dormant creature. “Power up?”
“Yes, yes, at once. Power up! And bring me your suppressor. That mah’jeet sack too! Hurry!”
There was a momentary scramble, made easier by the extreme caution with which the Tailless were making their approach, creeping forward bush by bush, parked car by parked car, ever tightening the noose around the front of the Lab.
Kok’tek knew they had to hurry. He spat out orders left and right.
“Give the mah’jeet to the stek’loo…pull the draw, so it will spill when he takes flight.”
“But, Kok’tek…there are still mah’jeet inside—we’ll be--”
“I know, I know…but we’ll use the swarm as cover. Here, Klensbok, give me your suppressor.” Kok’tek took the weapon and secured it to the stek’loo’s beak; the creature resisted but eventually gave in, resigned to carrying the device around its face. “Now, when it turns to follow us, I’ve set the suppressor to fire, maximum discharge. It’ll sweep everything around here, us included.”
“We’ll be knocked down, Kok’tek. We’ll never—”
“It will work,” Kok’tek insisted. “It has to work. All we need is some cover to make it back to the water.”
He made sure they had Chase firmly in tow, checked the rest of his force, then gave the signal. Pelspo twisted his mobilitor hand just so and the stek’loo leaped into the air.
“Now! Go…move quickly!” The force hustled across the road, just as the Tailless opened fire. Klensbok was hit, and went down heavily. Pelspo hung back to attend to his comrade but Kok’tek yelled at him.
“Leave him…we can’t stop! Keep going…keep going…go…go…go!”
The stek’loo, as expected, turned to follow the rescue team and when it did, the momentum of the turn opened the draw of the mah’jeet sack. Swarms of the toxic creatures spilled out, raining purple death down on the Tailless, though no one really knew if the poisons were fatal to Tailless. But it made effective cover, that and the suppressors going off all at once.
The Tailless quickly took cover and retreated, and Kok’tek used the moment to rally his force through the striped arms of the security gate, across Oyster Pond Road and down the sand embankment toward the waters of the Sound.
They slid and stumbled and dragged Chase past a small cottage with a sign reading Shore Lab and plunged into the waters. Small arms fire from the hill behind them peppered the waters with zings and hisses as a fusillade of rounds poured into the water.
Kok’tek sniffed and hunted for their kip’ts and found them all buried nose deep in the seabed, right where they had been left. The team got Chase into one of the sleds—he seemed to be gradually regaining consciousness—and loaded their gear, then themselves as well, and at Kok’tek’s signal, powered up their jets and scooted off the sandbar and headed deep.
It was a two, maybe three-day trip, back to Keenomsh’pont and it was only when they found deeper water and set the sleds to sniffing out their destination, eventually picking up the trail as a faint essence of familiarity in an ocean of unknown, that Kok’tek finally began to relax and let the fatigue and accumulated stress wash over him.
They had done it, somehow, some way. It had been close, too close. Kok’tek knew how vital eekoti Chase was to Omt’or and to the Metah. Now they had him and during the long voyage south to the Muir seamount, he wondered how many more times they would have to battle the Tailless to maintain the kel and their very lives on this strange, even threatening world.
We’ve invaded their territory, he told himself. They react as we would, just trying to protect their families, their communities, from us, from beings they don’t understand. We’re the outsiders.
Maybe the Metah was right. Eekoti Chase was their best hope, maybe their only hope, for dealing with the Tailless.
There had to be some way for the Humans and the Seomish to get along and live together on this peculiar and perplexing world of Urku.
Department of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C.
June 9, 2115
0930 hours
Seth Cameron had been Secretary of Homeland Security for only six months, but he had found the job just challenging enough and intriguing enough to keep his interest focused away from his real love, which was sailing, preferably on the ocean in his sixty-five foot beauty of two-master Devil May Care. At least, most of the time his interest was inside the office behind a two-acre desk and period furnishings that the Department bestowed on its top executive in compensation for having to deal with one crisis after another.
Honestly, six-foot swells and sea state five and a twenty-knot following wind were way better than this.
Cameron looked up at the FBI Director Jesse Hill and the Navy Secretary John Roark and took his glasses off, wiping them down idly with the end of his tie.
“This is legit? I mean…this really happened? It wasn’t a stunt or some protest thing or a movie being made?”
Hill pursed his lips and reviewed the Boston station chief’s report. “One dead, ten injuries, one critical…I’m pretty sure this was no moviemaker. I don’t know whether they were Russian divers or terrorists or some other nutcase with an agenda, but they basically made an amphibious assault on the Quissett Campus like professional soldiers, had a definite target in one of the buildings, located and secured their target and withdrew, using weapons and tactics that would have been worthy of the United States Marines.”
Cameron studied police dronecam video that had been made of the whole affair. “What about these outfits…and their gear? Foreign made, you think?”
Hill shrugged. “Hard to say. People on the scene said it might have been diving gear. It was the weapons that got everybody’s attention.”
Cameron said, “I heard…some kind of sound and light stun field. Any theories? Could these jokers have been Russians?”
John Roark knew that Cameron had no knowledge that the Navy had been contact with the Seomish for several months. He debated to himself what to reveal, and what not to, then went ahead, against his better judgment and against the SecDef’s explicit instructions. Now that the sea creatures had come ashore and actually assaulted people, the Bureau needed to know about this.
“Seth, I have to admit something here. I’m pretty sure we know who these folks are. You know all those stories in the news lately about sea creatures, new Atlantis, an intelligent underwater civilization?”
“I’ve followed them, yes.”
“That’s who’s on the vid. They’re called Seomish, so I’m told by our Navy people who’ve met with them.”
Cameron practically fell out of his chair. “What? Met with them? When did this happen?”
Roark related how the Navy had tracked the Seomish about their settlement near Bermuda and how they had finally been able to meet with them, first aboard a destroyer, then briefly at Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk.
“Bergland, the SecDef, had this all classified SCI Purple. Only the President and a few others know about them.”
Cameron was just shaking his head. Hill looked blank in disbelief. “Sensitive and compartmented…I love it. Apparently, I’m the last to find out. You’d think the Secretary of Homeland Security would be in the loop.”
Roark went on. “Now there’s been this assault. The Bureau needs to be in on this. And we’d better let the White House in on the details as well. If the Seomish start moving against our people or facilities, at sea or on shore, we’ve got a different problem. From the earliest meetings with the Navy, we heard that they were supposed to be a peaceful race.”
Hill said, “So the news is right…this is another race? Another species…never before discovered? This is insane.”
Roark said, “We don’t know how they came to be…that’s still to be learned. But they’ve got technology…and weapons…that make them a people to be reckoned with. Now the Woods Hole people have stuck their noses in
this affair. The Navy’s been keeping the Seomish settlement…city…base…whatever it is, under pretty close surveillance. Woods Hole showed up with all their ships and grabbed a live specimen. There are some who think this ‘assault’ was actually a rescue mission…the Seomish coming after one of their own. On-scene reports from police indicate they went straight to the building where their comrade was held and sprung him out. After that, they vanished…back into the sea.”
Cameron threw up his hands. “This is just great. If these creatures hadn’t come ashore and killed some people and wrecked a major scientific institution, I guess I would have never known they even existed. You gotta love sensitive compartmented information….” He stopped when a chime on his wristpad chirped. Cameron studied the message, frowned and sighed deeply. “And here’s the best part—” he tapped at his wristpad. “It’s from Friedkin, the President’s chief of staff. POTUS wants us in the Oval Office in an hour.”
LaTonya Kendrick came into the Oval Office like the Igbo tribal princess she often tried to be in public, all statuesque and striking and strutting, almost gliding across the gold-colored carpet. She nodded faintly to everyone she passed: Seth Cameron, John Roark, Jesse Hill, SecDef Bergland, the CIA’s Dr. Kristol. The one visitor who she’d never met before caught her eye immediately and Kendrick paused in front of Dr. Josey Holland and sized up the marine biologist as a lioness would study her prey from a distance.
Finally, POTUS took a seat behind her massive oak desk, the Resolute desk, that had populated the office for the better part of three centuries, a one-time gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes. She twisted the bone and ivory trinkets in her hair idly.
“I just watched vids of the…er, incident at Woods Hole, gentlemen…and Dr. Holland.” She turned to face the biologist, seated on a cream-colored divan to her right. “Doctor, it seems like your talking fish friends…what is they call themselves--?”
“Seomish, Madame President. They call themselves Seomish.”
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