I just stared at her with my mouth open as she turned and gutted a couple of attacking Deep Ones with her sword. What kind of answer could I give to a bunch of gibberish that continued to make no sense? Merging pathways? Transport? Save the world? And, hey, running away from the monsters right here and right now seemed a sorry start to the world saving process.
Besides, pounding these Froggies into chum just felt so good!
"Look back at the sacrificial basin," Fand said as I grabbed another head and gave it a three-quarter twist.
I glanced back at Liban's point of departure and Fand's port of entry. The swimming pool was limned in an actinic black glow.
Don't ask me how the color black can glow and even give the impression of being too bright to look at directly but, there it was. The pool suddenly fell through the floor and the edges of the pool-shaped hole smoked and flickered in an oval shaped line of red-orange. Meanwhile the black glow started to move away from that empty hole in all directions. What ever it touched disappeared in gouts of odoriferous smoke. Flooring, pool chairs, bodies—anything.
"Don't let the glow touch you," Fand said unnecessarily.
At the rate it was spreading, the room's floor would be wholly consumed in less than seven minutes. Well, before that, in maybe two minutes, the room would be bisected where the ends of the pool were closest to the walls. As the divide widened, we would be forced into the arms of the Deep Ones as we ran out of flooring and the chasm widened at out backs!
It was time to retreat.
"Fall back!" I yelled. "And don't anybody touch the dark lights!"
As we retired from the field, the Froggies followed. When we jumped the widening divide, they jumped after us. So we turned and beat them down until the gap was so wide they were falling into the eerie area of effect.
The Deep Ones weren't fast learners. Even the sight of their comrades falling against the dissolving edge of the floor and being chewed in half by the boiling black light didn't deter them. Wave after wave made the attempt, screaming, "Ia! Ia!"
Zotz yelled: "Hey now!" and I yelled: "Hey now!" and we yelled: "Iko, iko, un-day!" to taunt them forward. Occasionally we'd change it up with "Old MacDonald had a farm, Ee-i-ee-i-oh!" It worked far longer than it should have: fifty or more fell into the glowy pit where the pool had descended through the decks below.
And now the sound of rushing, churning water began to rise from those same depths and the entire ship began to shudder.
"We've been holed!" Zotz said, peering over the edge. "We won't make it back out the way we came in, in time—even if we don't encounter any resistance."
"I'm thinking there will be resistance," Cuchulainn observed, wiping his sword on a discarded towel.
"We go up to an outer deck and lower a lifeboat," Samm said.
I looked at Fand. "Okay, you dissolve the ship. Fine. Force us all back into the water. The water's their element, not ours!" I yelled.
"First of all," she answered, we destroy their breeding chambers—"
"We caught a couple of the little buggers breeding. Have to say I'm not impressed."
"Not the Deep Ones!" Fand yelled, pointing at another door, "The shoggoths!" A carpet of bubbling goo was pouring into the room and rolling across the cowering line of waiting sacrifices who had not yet fled during the confusion. I felt a flash of pity mixed with annoyance at their bovine stupidity. Then relief that one problem had been taken out of my hands.
Checking the scorecard: more monster than human, now.
"We destroy their temple!" Fand continued as the pudding flowed to the edge of the pit and began to hiss and burn where it made contact with the flickering field of black. "That buys you time."
"Time? Time for what?"
The floor was half gone and so was the shoggoths. We had to leave now.
"Time to go!" Zotz yelled as the ship lurched and tilted some fifteen degrees to starboard.
* * *
We ran, looking for an exit before it all turned into The Poseidon Adventure.
Every few minutes the ship would shake and groan and tilt some more as it settled deeper into the water. We threaded our way through a three-story theater and showroom, the multi-tiered rows of seats providing a diabolical obstacle course in their canted, new positions. We came to a five story atrium but the glass elevators could not be trusted so we made due with ramps and companionways that were doubly steep now and angled to where we often split the difference between walking on a wall or a floor.
"Stop it!" Volpea growled at Zotz.
I looked at the werefox and the Bat-demon who were jogging, nearly side by side. Volpea caught my look. "He's humming 'My Heart Will Go On'!" she explained. "I hate that movie! Even more so, now!"
"Zotz turned his head and grinned at her. "But . . . Leo . . . ?" he pleaded with mock sincerity.
"Don't make me have to separate you two," I wheezed. The nanos were getting testy about my energy consumption this past hour. Either they were getting greedy or I wasn't taking enough time to refuel.
The Deep Ones were somewhat distracted by the destruction of their little city on the sea but they hadn't forgotten about us. We still had to fight our way through clumps and clusters and, more than once, were turned back when a corridor was flooded with a rising tide of shoggoth pudding.
A couple of times we turned the corner to find the corridor or stairs disappearing in a flicker of black light.
After an eternity of confused staggering and stumbling we emerged from the Hell-red glow of emergency lights to the death-dark purple of night sky.
A row of lifeboats were arranged about twenty meters up from where we emerged. It was an uphill climb now as the cruise ship's angle of descent quickened and sharpened. The good news? It was only a three-story drop to the water now instead of seven.
The bad news? Another set of lifeboats some eighty meters behind us were much closer to the waterline but a rising tide of glow-in-the-dark tapioca was bubbling out of a row of smashed view ports and re-congealing around their support struts. If the boat tilted any more we'd be sliding down to dinner—it's, not our's.
More bad news: the connecting lattice-work of wrecked boats and the tipped oil platform, itself, were now infected with traveling bands of black light. Getting to our own boats in time would be a very near thing.
Samm groaned. "Can it get any worse?"
I tried to shush her but it was too late: another group of Froggies burst out of the hatches farther up the deck and began rushing down upon us.
"We don't have time for this!" I snarled as I fumbled with the covers on the nearest lifeboat.
Fand said: "Keep working!" And she and Cuchulainn stepped away from the release controls, redrew their swords, and walked toward the approaching hoard of Deep Ones like a gladiatorial defensive line with orders to run out the clock.
I started after them but Zotz got in my way.
"Hey, Professor," he grinned planting a huge, taloned paw against my chest, "don't be gettin' your Classics all confused here. We're doing Horiatius At The Bridge, tonight, not Thermopylae. Get everyone else off the boat."
I pushed back. "Yeah? Who died and made you Chichen Itza of the Sea?"
He smiled. "Hey," he said quietly. "You gotta let me do this. Remember when I first came 'round, asking to learn from you? Well, I've learned a lot and now it's dissertation time. I don't think I can learn any more in this classroom so I'm going to transfer my credits and do a little internship with Dr. Fand, here, before I graduate. This is my coursework, not yours, Teach. You've got other fish to fry." He clapped that weird-ass hand of his on my shoulder. "See you at the class reunion." He turned and took several long strides to catch up with the diminutive Fand.
I stood there, numb, watching him go. Then it was time to check on the others.
Samm was working the controls at the release station while Volpea assisted Irena into the lifeboat.
I looked back down the deck way. More pudding was seething and bubbling and picking u
p speed and mass as it boiled toward us from below. I felt something push against my ankles. It was a somewhat less mangy Burmese cat with two tails. I picked her up and put her in the lifeboat. Turning the other way I watched as Cuchulainn and Zotzalaha Chamalcan form a line across the deck with Fand in the middle. It wasn't wide enough. Some of the beasties were going to get through.
"Can we launch this thing?" I asked Samm.
"Almost got it," she said, frowning.
The Froggies were almost to the line Fand was trying to hold with even more Deep Ones spilling out of the doorways behind them. They wouldn't be able to hold them for more than a few minutes.
And they'd never be able to rejoin us before we launched.
"Okay," I said, cracking my knuckles. "Start the launch sequence as soon as you can and get in the lifeboat. Bring a speedboat around if you can. If you can't, hold off just far enough to pick us up if we can clear the ship before it goes under. If you're likely to be caught in the suction or by these finny bastards coming in after you, pull away fast. Anything else means what has been done here today, what has been sacrificed—was all for nothing! Do you understand?"
She nodded reluctantly and I turned to move toward the Cséjthe-sized gap in the Cuchulainn-Fand-Zotzilaha line.
Volpea was in my way. "I concur," she said. She stepped into me. As she had shifted back to her human form she was nearly my height. She grabbed me, pulling me close and my face was an inch away from hers. "I made a promise to you and to your former enforcer," she said. "I'm on the clock, now."
Her bone and muscle mass had the density of a lycanthrope's. She lifted me with little effort, shifting her grip and tossing me into the lifeboat on top of Irena. She hissed reflexively. Then began to sniff at me. By the time I was able to untangle myself and peer over the gunwale, Volpea was shifting back to fox form and laying in to a couple of Frogs that had slipped past the line.
"Got it!" Samm yelled as the life boat gave a lurch. She hurried over and I helped her in as the launch began to descend.
"Zotz!" I bellowed. "ZOTZ!"
He glanced back and grinned.
"We're going!"
"Bon voyage, Professor!" he called back. "Remember when I first came 'round, asking to learn from you? Well, I'm going to transfer my credits and do an internship with Dr. Fand for awhile! You've got other fish to fry!" And then he was too busy to talk anymore.
We dropped below the deck level and lost sight of them in another twenty seconds. I had three women now to think of—only one of them human—but I kept hoping I could bring the lifeboat around to where they could jump and we could retrieve them.
Our descent probably took less than two minutes but it seemed longer, watching and waiting for scaly foes to come slithering down the release lines on top of us. None did but then there was the matter of getting our keel in the water when the big ship was practically locked in by so many smaller craft in a jammed-up floating carpet of wood and lines netting and sailcloth. We slid between a couple of overturned motorboats and unshipped the oars. Pushing away debris more than paddling, we eased the launch around to see if we could find a path closer to where Fand and the others were last holding their ground.
The way seemed closed: boats upright and sideways and upside down choked the area like a bone yard.
Then the first body leapt over the side and went crashing through a hull.
A second form jumped from above and landed on the side of a hull. Scrambled up and turned toward us. It was one of the Deep Ones.
Now dozens of Froggies were hopping over the side, hitting the water, landing on solid sections of hulls, or crashing through weak points in the debris field. They were coming from the point of battle with our friends.
"That's not good," Samm observed.
Maybe the fish-heads thought we had the greater target value. Or maybe Cuch and Fand and Zotz and Volpea were already down for the count . . .
"Or maybe they already done the sensible thing and your elf friend opened her a door now that we have got away," Samm said, looking at me like she could read my mind.
"Only we haven't gotten away," I said. "Not yet." I pointed back at the Deep Ones scrabbling after us like a wolf pack on a succession of ice floes. "Everybody grab an oar!"
As I struggled to fit my oar into the rowlock closest to me, Irena stood and stretched. Fortunately it was dark, further reducing the distraction that her now human form would have exerted as she had no clothes on. She leaned over as she moved aft and nuzzled my neck. "I like the way you smell," she purred. And then licked me, just once, behind the crease of my jaw.
I shivered. "If you really like my smell," I muttered, "you'd pick up an oar."
She ignored the suggestion and settled herself at the back of our little craft. A moment later an engine coughed to life and we began to pick up speed.
Thank you, Captain Pantera!
The oars were still handy for pushing debris and helping maneuver through tight impactions of flotsam and jetsam.
Then we got stuck.
By that time we'd raided the boat's survival stores and donned lifejackets. I loaded the flare gun and fired it at a section of the boat-jam where our pursuers were getting a little too close.
Were we in a Hollywood movie, the boat I hit would have caught fire and, within ten seconds, blown up spectacularly with a gigantic fireball silhouetting dozens of Deep Fries flying majestically in all directions.
This being reality, there was some glow, some smoke, and a wee bit of fire after awhile. If we were able to wait long enough there was the possibility that something might get going within the next hour or two. If the Deep Ones left our mangled bodies aboard our lifeboat we could actually have a Viking funeral by sometime tomorrow. Maybe.
I reloaded the Very pistol and fired again.
This time there was a huge Hollywood explosion! Water erupted in double geysers and the ocean liner shook and then keeled over on its side. The resulting impact wave ripped the conglomerate of boats apart and pushed us farther away from the epicenter of evil. I looked at the flare gun in my hand and then realized two things.
The explosion took place well away from where the first or second flares had landed.
And there was a bright beam of light now shining across the water at our little boat.
Leviathan!
The light swept round and over the doomed cruise ship to the canted drilling platform where hundreds of dark forms were momentarily revealed to be scurrying like ants.
"What's happening?" Samm asked.
"Wait for it . . ." I murmured.
Another loud boom accompanied by a gout of water and suddenly a pillar of flame rose where the water was subsiding. Now there was a chain reaction of explosions, a series of fireballs that ignited flashpoints among the tangle of pipes crowning the platform. The massive concrete and steel structure was coming to resemble a giant birthday cake for an aging sea god.
The searchlight swung back around and fixed on our tiny boat again.
"What do you think I should do, Chris?" Irena asked from her seat by the rudder.
"The enemy of mine enemy . . ." I took a deep breath. "Steer for that light."
* * *
I had to sit beside Irena and help steer.
At first we were all blinded by the bright beam of light that revealed the location of our mysterious benefactor.
Then my nanites rehabbed my eyes providing sufficient filtration that the better portion of the visible spectrum was blocked and I was able to use the enhanced bookends of infrared and ultraviolet frequencies. It was a bizarre color cacophony that made no sense unless you ignored tints and limited your judgment to shape and outline.
A further distraction was Irena's groping hands. Her excuse that she couldn't see what she was doing sounded a little lame when she kept leaning into me and telling me how nice I smelled. Shortly after that she "was cold and needed to share body warmth". This was probably true given the sartorial challenges commonly faced by shapeshift
ers. It was just that her enthusiasm tended to undermine her sincerity. She seemed to think my holding hands with her was very romantic but, truth be told, it was the only way I could keep them from wandering where they shouldn't and allow me to concentrate on our quarry.
As we approached, the hive-mind programming tweaked my wetware a little more, re-tinting the color scheme and revealing a submarine. I mean, what else could it be? A careful examination with the ranging subroutines (no pun intended) built into my visual software, I could see a cylindrical body approximately eighty meters long and eight meters in diameter, tapered at both ends. It had a four bladed propeller, six meters in diameter with a pitch of seven-and-a-half meters. I could see a diving plane amidships on this side and assumed it was matched on the opposite side. The rudder set aft of the propeller was the full height of the boat. Compared to most commissioned submersibles, this was not your standard-sized submarine. Not a mini-sub but certainly not a configuration to be found in Jane's Fighting Ships, either. That might explain the lack of a "sail." Instead there was what appeared to be a two-meter, box-like wheelhouse with windows located forward and an area set apart near the vessel's midpoint where it was topped with a railing and a recessed object that may have been the upper portion of a covered lifeboat or launch. The searchlight was mounted aft.
Even though ninety percent of the sub was riding below the waterline, I could still see the grosser, submerged details. The nanites were working overtime and the resultant energy drain was creating a dangerous feedback: Irena was starting to smell good to me, too.
All of that was forgotten when a hatch opened behind the recessed launch and a creature emerged.
It was immediately obvious from the silhouette, alone, that the creature wasn't human. Nor were the three critters that joined it on deck.
The first was as tall as a man and manlike in general. His head, however, was leonine. Not in the romance novel sense of describing an older man of noble bearing, usually with a largish head of hair, great pride, and more than average strength. No, this thing had a head like that of a great cat!
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