by J G Cressey
As they caught up with Toker, a large swell rose up behind them. For a horrifying moment, Cal thought it was the shark, but not even that monster was large enough to displace so much water. “Wave coming in.”
Nothing more needed to be said. Focusing on his speed and timing, Cal did his best to remember everything he’d learned. If there was a time for he and Eddy to pull off a good, solid ride and for Toker to master his panic enough to do what he’d done a million times before, this was it. He tried to rustle up some calm by telling himself that the shark probably wasn’t even pursuing them and that the barrier had most likely held out. But bullshitting yourself in such situations wasn’t an easy thing.
The swelling wave steepened, rapidly taking shape beneath them. Praying that his timing was right, Cal reluctantly released Eddy’s ankle. Remaining close on either side of him, his young friends filled his peripheral vision as all three of them gained speed and became one with the wave, gliding across the water as if they were born to it, boards vibrating, the cool wind teasing their hair and skin. Then, in almost perfect synchronicity, they smoothly popped to their feet, boldly facing the building mountain, all fear forgotten as if it had never even existed.
Then, demonstrating that same near perfect synchronicity, all three of them fell off.
Bouncing down the near vertical tower of water, Cal felt as though he’d picked a fight with a giant, its fists wider than he was tall as they repeatedly punched the air from his lungs. Then the wave swallowed him, flipping the world into a strangely muffled, bubbly din of liquid turbulence. Sealing his mouth shut, he did his best to suck on his gum breather and replenish some of the air that had been so violently stolen away. An age seemed to pass before the twisting and turning began to ease. Then, there was a moment of calm, a little slice of serenity that briefly allowed senses to be regained.
Cal’s goggles had been ripped off again, but before he could reposition them, he caught a blurry glimpse of something large, dark, and terrifyingly close. Then a stark mass of bright, serrated teeth that set his heart pounding. With a stream of shocked curses that projected like a warped, liquid scream, Cal kicked out—an instinctual reaction that cared little for the woeful mismatch of bare feet against large, razor sharp teeth. Thankfully, his kicks fell short, and for the first time that week, he was gladdened by the feeling of being sucked back into the very same wave that had just pummeled him so mercilessly.
Cal caught a muddled glimpse of someone getting drawn over next to him. His brain was too scrambled to discern whether it was Toker or Eddy, but with the power of the swell, he was confident that both would be joining him. Doing his best to relax his limbs, Cal gladly encouraged the wave to swallow him up and do its worst.
Chapter 2 Hotdogs
Sand had never felt so good sticking to wet skin. Cal lifted his head and spat out his spent gum breather. The little device had run dry at some point during the white wash, but fortunately, he’d had just enough strength to pop his head out of the water a few times to gulp in some air. He could see Eddy face down in the sand a few meters away. Toker was face up, lying over her legs and breathing hard. Relieved to see them both in one piece, Cal turned over with a groan and drudged up the will to sit.
Peering out past the breaking waves, he saw no sign of the shark. The beast was out there somewhere though, and with the protective barrier down, it wouldn’t be long before others were joining it. He took a moment to check the beach. Just as it had been all week, it was practically deserted. Towering clumps of palm-like trees sprouted from the thick, orange sands, lending patches of shade over rows of white, bubble-shaped accommodation pods. Only a few of the pods were occupied, and thankfully, it seemed those visitors were still tucked up in bed.
Cal shook his head and took a few more moments to curse, mostly at his own stupidity. One of these days, he really was going to get eaten, especially if he kept offering himself up on a plate like that. With a groan, Eddy turned over and joined him in a bout of cursing—hers directed toward the vast, purple-tinted sky. Remaining relatively silent, Toker climbed off her and clumsily set himself on wobbly feet as he looked toward the main hotel: a wide, low building constructed of huge sheets of smart glass, all neatly encased in stylish curves of modified wood.
Despite feeling as though he could sit for another hour, Cal forced himself onto his feet and wordlessly followed Toker as he hastily stomped his way up the beach.
“What the hell, man!” Toker bellowed, finally breaking his silence. Without slowing, he approached a young, olive-skinned man—who, before being shouted at, had been snoozing in a broken anti-grav sun lounger—and roughly grabbed at him.
“Hey, hey, easy,” the man protested as he broke free of Toker’s grasp and stumbled back, feet sinking awkwardly into the soft sand. Despite the assault, he managed to crack a grin as he straightened up. It was a wide, white-toothed grin, not unlike the one that Toker usually wore—which was perhaps unsurprising seeing as the pair of them were related. “Something bothering you, cuz?”
Cousins, in fact.
“Bothering me!” Toker roared.
Cal took hold of him and bodily hauled him back. “Take it easy, Toker. Just take a breath.”
Toker ignored the suggestion and shrugged him off. “Check your anti-shark fields much lately, Mike?” He thrust a thumb back toward the sea, almost poking Cal in the eye in the process. “A massive frickin’ shark just tried to chomp us like a frickin’ hors d’oeuvre.”
“Oh yeah?” Mike ran a hand through his long, wavy, brown hair. “Damn. Sorry about that,” he said, not sounding overly so. “Had a nasty feeling something like that might happen sooner or later.”
Toker seemed struck dumb for a moment, but Cal had a feeling it wouldn’t last. The two cousins had spent the first day shedding tears over loved ones lost during Earth’s destruction. Then, they’d spend time reminiscing about the good times, all laughs and slaps on the shoulder. But since then, they’d argued with a vigor that only family members could achieve.
“You had a what now?” Toker shrieked, the pitch of his voice close to inhuman. “A feeling! A nasty bloody feeling!”
“Hey, cuz,” Mike said with raised hands and a slight falter to his grin. “Don’t blame me. These are troubled times. Both our techies have gone AWOL. One packed it in to be with his family, and the other hitched a ride on a passing transport to get some spare parts. Haven’t seen him since. I can’t help it if the tech stuff starts to go wonky.”
Cal had heard words to that effect a lot of late—pretty much from every ship, space station, and colony they’d visited in fact. He wondered—and not for the first time—whether the Insidion invaders were aware of the level of chaos they’d created. He suspected they were; from the little he knew of them, chaos seemed like something they’d strive for.
It was the disruption of the interstellar communications that had become the biggest problem. When they’d been intact, the thousands of human colonies throughout chartered space had made up an intricate but highly efficient network with most parts relying on others, not unlike a living entity. But without communication, that entity had quickly become fractured and fragmented. Not dead but badly wounded and left to fumble forward as best it could. For the most part, the individual colonies were being forced into self-sufficiency, but the results were proving hugely diverse depending on available materials and, perhaps more importantly, knowledge and experience.
“Jesus, Mike, you could have at least warned us,” Toker said. “You’re supposed to be the beach manager for christ’s sake! You’re supposed to check once in a while that your guests aren’t going to get swallowed, digested, and shat out.”
Mike’s grin faltered a little more. “Come on, man. I haven’t had a lot of time.”
Toker practically choked on the response and swept his arm in a wide arc, indicating the smooth stretch of orange sands completely unsullied by footprints. “There’s hardly anyone here. No one’s in the mood for vacations anymore, Mike
. You’ve got nothing but frickin’ time.”
“Okay, okay, peace, man,” Mike said, raising a hand of truce. “I’m sorry.” He offered them both a look that suggested he was close to meaning it. But the look didn’t last, and soon, he was gazing out at a new set of swelling waves. “So how big was this shark?”
Toker grimaced. “It was bloody ginormous. So about half the size of your idiocy.”
“Yeah, but how big exactly?”
Toker couldn’t bring himself to answer.
Cal glanced at the building swell. “Big enough to swallow a person without bothering to chew,” he said, the memory of the beast sending a shiver down his spine that proved impervious to the morning heat.
Mike nodded with raised eyebrows. “Oh yeah? Impressive.”
Toker bent over, hands on knees and looking like a man trying his best not to vomit. “Soon as I get my strength back, you’re a dead man, cuz, I swear to god.”
“Take it easy, Toker,” Cal suggested again. “It wasn’t his fault the barrier failed.” Certainly no more than mine. “I’m sure any number of things could have caused it.” He was about to state his case further when he caught sight of a man and a woman emerging from a nearby pod. The pair were garbed in swimwear and were approaching a stack of surfboards.
“Here we go,” Toker said, still bent over as he thrust a finger toward the couple. “You can cheer up, Mike. More victims have arrived.”
Doing his best to quiet Toker with a flap of his hand, Mike moved to greet the couple.
“I tell you, Cal,” Toker said, managing to straighten up. “If he wasn’t my cousin…Just one good punch to put an end to that grin of his. You ever seen such a ridiculous grin?”
Cal remained quiet while Toker shook his fist.
“It’s coming, Cal; I tell you it’s coming.”
“Well, just don’t go busting your hand. The resort medic’s gone AWOL too.”
Turning to check on Eddy, Cal saw that she’d already trudged up the beach and was lingering close by, surfboard gripped tight in her cybernetic hand. Since losing her arm to that Insidion crab-like beast, Cal had noticed far more caution in the girl, to the point that he now considered her just plain reckless. Viktor had done an excellent job constructing the synthetic limb, and the surgeons on Alvor had attached it with similar skill, the melding of skin and synth-flesh utterly seamless. They’d also integrated a network of smart nano threads into the bones of her upper torso, helping to protect her frame against the power of the arm.
“You okay, Eddy? You look…cold.” Bar the ever steady prosthetic, the girl’s petite frame was shivering.
“Course not,” she replied, sounding a touch affronted.
Cal scooped up a towel from a nearby deckchair. “Here, take this anyway,” he said as he tossed it to her.
She deftly caught it then briskly rubbed it over her spiky, black hair.
“Oh, and thanks for getting us to shore intact.”
“Sure thing,” she said with a brief, unconvincing smile. “Gonna head to my hammock for a bit.”
Cal nodded and watched her go. She seemed about as content at hanging around on this beach as he was—in other words frustrated to the point of being cranky as hell. The break had been forced upon him by Jumper, Viktor, and Toker in an effort to calm him down. They’d confronted him like he was some sort of addict in need of an intervention, voicing the opinion that the search for Kaia was literally beginning to unhinge him. A month ago, Cal would have felt the diagnosis a little strong, but if he was honest, he really was starting to feel strung out, enough that he feared he might burst something in his brain.
Kaia’s whereabouts was all that he thought about—loose theories and conjectures consuming his mind in merciless loops. Since the rescue mission on C9 and their brief stop at Alvor, he’d been leading them from destination to destination with barely a breath in between, latching onto even the thinnest rumors of pirate attacks. Not only that but upon arriving at those destinations, his methods of gleaning clues and extracting information had become precipitous and aggressive to a level that occasionally surprised even Eddy.
The bottom line was that he was getting desperate. In recent weeks, he’d been plagued by mental images and even occasional nightmares of Kaia’s fate. He had no way of knowing her true situation, but he’d had many dealings with pirates during his military days and had witnessed first-hand their capacity for cruelty. The more months that passed, the more dire he imagined her plight. His only consoling thought was that she had value. They wanted her alive and intact; Rekvit had given that order clear as day. They had use of her. Wanted her knowledge and expertise. But there were many ways to extract such things. And what happened when that knowledge ran dry or Kaia refused to give it?
With gritted teeth, Cal shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Using a towel to rid his skin of the fine, orange sand, he looked to the horizon. Despite the undeniable beauty of the vista, he couldn’t shake his lingering tension. It had only been three days, and already, this so-called rejuvenating break was making him worse. At least when he was actively searching for Kaia, he could try and convince himself that he was getting closer to finding her. Just one clue. Just give me that.
“No no. This is no good.” Cal turned to see that Mike was wagging a finger at the newly arrived couple—both of whom were now holding a surfboard. “I can’t accept Fed credit sticks. You know as well as I do they’re worthless now. Local currency only…or I might be willing to consider trades.”
“What the hell are you doing, bro?” Toker was marching toward them. “What the hell are you giving them boards for?”
Mike flapped a hand at him again, his potential clients looking at Toker as if he’d had a bit too much sun. Cal shook his head—the cousins were definitely fruits off the same tree, but it seemed one had turned just a little rotten.
“We can sort payment out later,” Mike suggested as he urged the bewildered couple away. Then, he turned to Toker and hissed, “Would you shut your damn mouth? I need the business.”
Toker threw his arms up in exasperation. “What business? Professional shark feeder?”
Mike puffed himself up, seeming about to shout a retort, then sagged with a loud exhale. “Come on, cuz, look at them. They’re old. They won’t get anywhere near any sharks. They’ll be staggering back in after the first mouthful of foam.”
Toker crossed his arms over his chest.
“Okay, okay.” Cupping a hand to the side of his mouth, Mike shouted after the couple. “Stick to the white water today, eh… Strong currents out there.” He turned back to Toker with a hopeful grin. “Satisfied?”
Cal rubbed the back of his head and decided to leave Toker to it. Walking along the beach, he intercepted the “old” couple who, like him, appeared to be in their mid-thirties and carefully explained about the shark that had a dorsal fin longer than either one of them was tall. Seeing their faces turn suitably pale, he continued along the beach toward Viktor, who’d set up camp not far from Jumper’s barbecue.
“Smells good, Jumper,” Cal called out as he passed.
“Be ready soon,” Jumper replied with a wave of his tongs. “Good surf?”
“No.”
Cal found Viktor slouched on a recliner under the shade of a fully extended parasol. Just in case that shade wasn’t sufficient, he was also donning a wide-brimmed hat, on the front of which he’d attached a tiny port that beamed a holo-screen down over his eyes. As always, Melinda was by the boy’s side. The cybernetic woman was also reclined, her long, athletic form adorned in a rather flattering red bikini, her wavy, blond curls tumbling about her shoulders. Over the months, Viktor had continued his attempts to make Melinda as indistinguishable from a human as possible, both physically and mentally. As a result, Cal was consistently impressed with the boy’s attention to detail. Even now, as he looked at the synthetic woman lying in the hot, Aqualorian sun, he noticed that her flawless synth-skin had gradually started to tan—something that he knew
for certain wouldn’t have been programmed into the standard military synthetics.
“Hi, Cal,” Melinda said with a radiant smile. “How was your surf?”
“Fine, thanks, Melinda…well, started okay.”
“I didn’t see you come in this time.”
He shrugged. “Decided to come in under the waves for a change. Is Viktor awake?”
Seeming to react to his name, Viktor raised a hand and snapped his fingers to deactivate the left side of his holo-screen. “Oh, hey, Cal,” the boy mumbled, looking a little bleary eyed.
“Nice snooze?”
“I was just…researching.”
Cal gave him a half smile and nodded. “You know anything about anti-shark fields?”
The boy sat up stiffly and swiped away the holo-screen completely. “Another tech problem?”
“Afraid so,” Cal said. It seemed he’d been asking for Viktor’s help a lot of late—at least a couple of times each colony. Thankfully, the boy didn’t seem to mind, and more often than not, his skills had earned them some local currency or at the very least supplies. “A shark of generous proportions bashed into it and managed to break through.”
“Seriously?” Viktor asked, looking toward the sea.
“Yep.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“Yeah. Weird,” Cal agreed.
“They have any decent printers or spare parts?”
Those familiar questions. “Doesn’t sound like it. Their technician went on a hunt for parts but never returned.”
Viktor nodded and pushed himself up out of his recliner. “I’ll see what I can do, Cal, but without the right parts…”
“Sure, Viktor. I know. It’s good of you to try.”
“Problem?” Jumper was walking over carrying a large, silver tray that glinted brightly in the sunlight.
“More failing tech,” Cal replied as he eyed the contents of the tray. “I recommend staying out of the water. There’s a big fish on the loose that’ll snack you like one of your hotdogs here.”