Dead in the Water_A Space Team Universe Novel

by Barry J. Hutchison

  Ollie’s eyebrows dipped. “Him what? What him?” she asked, stumbling over her tongue. “I don’t know what you mean,” she insisted, but the rising inflection in her voice and the reddening of her cheeks suggested otherwise.

  Dan tutted and turned his attention back to the screens. “Play all,” he instructed, and all four images became alive with movement. And death. Lots and lots of death.

  “Holy father,” Artur whispered. These were the only words anyone spoke until a second black shape appeared on both top screens, confirming the ‘two monsters’ theory.

  The screens all flickered, then went dark. At first, Dan thought there was a problem with the feed, but then realized he could see some light spilling in through the parking lot door in the lower right image. The cameras hadn’t been cut, but the lights had. The whole mall was in darkness, and it was impossible to make out anything but the vague sense of movement.

  And then the footage stopped. The lights returned as the feeds looped back to the start, ready to play again.

  The three of them sat in silence for a while, taking in what they’d seen. As usual, it was Artur who couldn’t keep his mouth shut for long.

  “So,” he said. He reached for a few possible follow-up options, but none of them was particularly inspiring. “There’s two o’ the bastards.”

  “Looks like it,” Dan said.

  “That we know of,” Artur continued. “There might be—”

  “More. Yes. We established that,” said Dan. “For now, let’s assume two.”

  Although the images had stopped moving, Ollie continued to watch the screens. “Look at all those people,” she said, whispering in case she somehow startled them all away. The footage was pre-attack, and everyone looked… happy. Happier than they’d look in a few seconds time, at least.

  She reached a hand out and tried to brush her fingertips against the face of a girl down near the front of the crowd. The girl had a soft toy tucked under one arm, and a look of awe on her face as she gazed around at the busy mall. The image rippled and distorted as Ollie’s fingers passed through it, making the girl look as if she were standing in a Hall of Mirrors.

  “Did everyone die?”

  “Not everyone,” said Dan. “But enough. Still think that thing was suffering?”

  Ollie bit her lip. “Maybe,” she said. Her voice cracked a little, but Dan and Artur both pretended they hadn’t noticed. “But it should suffer more.”

  “My thoughts exactly, Peaches,” said Artur. “Now what’s the news, ye smelly bastard? Did ye get us some weapons?”

  “I did,” Dan confirmed. “Not sure how much good they’ll do, but I got them.”

  “And did ye get us a boat?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Ah, bollocks. Why not? There’s not a whole lot we can do without one. Unless ye plan on swimming, like. In which case, fair play.”

  “No, not swimming. We have something. You’ll see it tomorrow. We’ll load up and go out then.”

  “Tomorrow?” said Ollie. She tried to touch the girl with the soft toy again, then shook her head. “No. Let’s go tonight.”

  Artur and Dan exchanged a glance. “I understand yer enthusiasm, Peaches, and it’s a credit to ye. But don’t ye think it’s getting a little, ye know, dark for us to be out there roaming the ocean waves?”

  Dan rubbed his chin, considering this. “Except… It won’t matter.”

  “What won’t matter?” asked Artur.

  “The dark. It won’t matter.”

  “Why won’t it matter? How can we look for them if we can’t see feck all?”

  Ollie clicked her fingers. “A torch!”

  “No, not a torch. Not exactly.” Dan stood up. “Ah, what the Hell? Let’s do it”

  “Yes!” cried Ollie, jumping up.

  “Have ye both lost yer minds?” said Artur. “Ye can’t seriously be thinking about heading out on the ocean at this time o’ day. Ye remember what happened last time? And that was in full daylight.”

  “We’re not going out on the ocean,” Dan said. He smiled grimly. “We’re going under it.”

  SIXTEEN

  DAN, Ollie and Finn stood on a floating jetty, gazing down into the water as it shimmered and sparkled in the glow from the Up There engines. The only sound – assuming you discounted the distant wailing of sirens, the hubbub of traffic and the occasional gunshot – was the lapping of the waves against the jetty’s sides, and the faint creaking of an older boat moored somewhere over on the right.

  Artur leaned out of Dan’s breast coat pocket and joined the others in gazing into the depths.

  “I don’t follow,” he said. “I thought we had a boat? I don’t see it.”

  “I told you, not a boat,” Dan replied. He leaned forward and addressed the ocean. “Voice imprint authorization.”

  Dan straightened again, and they all watched as lights illuminated deep in the darkness and bubbles rolled up to burst on the surface.

  “We’ve got a submarine.”

  “Whoa!” said Finn, his eyes widening as a smooth, sleek, but unmistakably bright fonking yellow submarine rose up from beneath the waves and bobbed to a stop beside them.

  “A submarine?” said Artur. “Hold on now. Wait a fecking moment. Going on a boat is one thing, but ye can’t seriously want us to go under the water – where all the monsters are, mind – in this mustard monstrosity?”

  Dan nodded. “That’s the idea. Doesn’t matter if it’s day or night up here. Soon as we get down a little, it’s going to be pitch blackness.”

  “I have some very grave reservations about this, Deadman. I don’t want to go into the details, but let’s just say I’ve had some bad experiences underwater in my time. Some very bad experiences. Know what I’m saying?”

  “Not a clue,” Dan said.

  “No. I suppose I’m being quite vague,” Artur admitted. “But just take my word for it. No good can come of this, Deadman. No good at all.”

  He shrugged. “Still, I’m game if everyone else is.” He was doing his best to sound more confident now, but Dan could tell he was worried. “I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?” he asked.

  Finn opened his mouth.

  “Make any attempt to answer that question and I’ll wedge meself in yer throat until ye suffocate,” Artur warned.

  Finn closed his mouth again.

  “I like the color,” said Ollie.

  “The color is awesome,” Finn concurred.

  Ollie couldn’t have looked more pleased. “You like it, too?”

  “Are you kidding? I love it. It’s like… when the sun shines through the gaps in the cities Up There, and hits the ground just right. You know?”

  “Not really,” Ollie admitted. “But it sounds awesome!”

  Dan rolled his eyes and muttered something mildly disparaging just loud enough for everyone to get the gist of it without picking up any of the specifics.

  “What do you think of the color, brah?” Finn asked him.

  Dan fixed him with a cool stare. “What do I think? I think it’s yellow.”

  “Yeah, no. I mean, I know it’s yellow, but what do you feel about it? What does it say to you?”

  “It says ‘get in the fonking submarine,’” Dan told him.

  “And how do ye propose we do that?” asked Artur. “I’ve been looking at the thing for the past minute and a half, and I’ve yet to see a door.”

  “Maybe we sit on top?” Ollie guessed.

  “That would be impractical, Peaches,” Artur said. “Not to mention suicidal.”

  “I thought it was a great suggestion,” said Finn, smiling encouragingly at Ollie.

  Dan grunted. “Because you’re an idiot.” He leaned over the edge of the jetty. “Open.”

  A line of four green lights illuminated on top of the submarine, and part of the roof folded in on itself like unnecessarily complicated Origami. A single pilot’s seat was revealed at the front of the sub, with two padded benches lined up behind it
. It looked like it was designed to carry eight or nine people. Three and one-tenth people would be no problem.

  “Want me to drive?” Finn asked.

  “No, I do not. Sit there at the back,” Dan instructed. “Ollie, you go behind me.”

  “Ye ever driven one of these things before, Deadman?” Artur asked.

  Dan peered down into the sub. The controls, from what he could gather, amounted to a single stick.

  “No,” he confessed. “But how hard can it be?”

  THE SUB CRUISED ELEGANTLY AWAY from the harbor, blue light playing across its sleek curves as it banked down into the darkening depths. It found a current and let itself be carried onward into the ocean, its nose pointing forward, its course straight and true.

  Artur whistled appreciatively through his teeth. “Nice driving,” he remarked. “Sure, it barely even feels like we’re moving.”

  “Thanks,” said Finn, flashing a smile back over his shoulder.

  “Better than this hopeless bastard, anyway,” said Artur. He nudged Dan, who was sitting next to him on the bench. “I mean, how can ye crash before ye’ve even started the engines?”

  Dan sighed.

  “And into a wall, no less. We’re underwater, and yet he somehow finds a wall to drive us into head-first!” Artur shook his head. “I mean, a wall! It was like ye were driving with yer eyes shut.”

  “OK.”

  “Like a blind suicide bomber, so ye were.”

  “I got it. Thank you,” Dan grunted.

  “On roller skates.”

  “Yes. OK. So, it wasn’t my finest moment.”

  “Never mind finest moment, I thought it was me last fecking moment.”

  Dan chose not to continue the discussion, and instead looked around the interior of the sub. Up front, Finn was holding the single steering stick, but was surrounded by the bewildering array of holographic readouts and touch controls that had led to Dan’s collision with the wall, not to mention his collisions with the jetty, two boats, and a rusted shopping cart someone had rolled into the sea.

  From the outside, the sub had looked like solid metal, but inside there were large windows taking up the majority of the walls and ceiling. Even the floor beneath the seats was transparent, giving the impression they were all floating in mid-air above a dark and watery abyss.

  There were a couple of storage lockers at the back. One of the doors had kept flapping open, revealing a gray diving suit inside. On Dan’s instruction, Ollie had wedged the door shut with a box they’d brought from the car. A box that contained – and this was really something of an understatement – a fonkload of guns.

  The sub itself packed a torpedo launcher and a couple of robotic limbs. Neither would fare particularly well against any of the larger predators they might come across, but the back of the sub opened into an airlock, blasters worked underwater, and Dan didn’t need to breathe. If anything came after them, he felt confident he could at least make it regret that decision.

  Ollie sat on the bench behind Finn, her knees brushing lightly against his back. Dan had no heartbeat of his own, but he could practically feel both of theirs thumping through the floor.

  He wasn’t sure why it bothered him, exactly. If you ignored the ‘brah’ thing, then Finn seemed like a good kid.

  It wasn’t jealousy, either. He’d never thought of Ollie in that way, and even if it hadn’t been for the whole ‘being dead’ situation, he was old enough to be her father.

  He put it down to his deep-rooted distrust of people he didn’t know. Although, in fairness, he trusted most people he did know even less. While he’d never admit it, he… felt responsible for the girl. He didn’t want her getting hurt because it might trigger some outburst of demonic power that could level the whole city.

  And, well, because he didn’t want her getting hurt.

  “So, what’s the plan?” asked Artur.

  Dan looked down at him, then gestured out into the depths of the ocean. The sub’s powerful torch beams picked out a startled-looking fish in the middle distance, which quickly turned tail and zipped off out of the vessel’s path.

  “This is the plan. We’re doing the plan.”

  “What, just drive around until we find it? That’s yer idea? I thought ye’d have brought, ye know, some sort of fancy tracking gizmo, or what have ye.”

  Dan shook his head. “Well, I didn’t.”

  Artur leaned back to look up at him. “So, ye mean we’re just going to cruise around underwater all night, dodging assorted big monsters in the hope of finding the one specific monster that we’re after? That’s yer grand scheme?”

  “Have you got any better ideas?”

  “Yes!”

  Dan pushed back his hat. “OK. Let’s hear them.”

  “Well I don’t know the details yet, exactly,” Artur admitted. “But if ye give me five minutes I’m bound to come up with something.”

  Finn turned his chair so he could address the rest of the group. “I’ve been looking at the controls, and I think there’s, like, a scanner thing that should show us anything nearby. Looks like we can set it to show only stuff over a certain size, too. Should I try that?”

  “Aha! Now that sounds like a plan,” said Artur.

  Dan gave a begrudging sort of a grunt. “I guess that can’t hurt,” he admitted. “Sure. Go for it.”

  Finn faced front again. He poked hesitantly at the controls. “OK, so… Right. I think if I… And then…”

  A fuzzy black and green image appeared in the air in front of him, partially obscuring the view through the front window.

  “Bingo!”

  “Holy shoite, what’s that thing?” Artur cried, pointing to a ridiculously huge grainy green blob that took up the whole bottom half of the image. He jumped up, grabbed the cuff of Dan’s sleeve, and shook it violently. “Look at the size of it! We’re all going to die! I knew we shouldn’t have come down here. I fecking telt ye!”

  “That’s the city,” said Dan.

  Artur stopped shaking him and studied the screen. “Is it? Ye sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” said Dan. “It’s a million times larger than the sub and it’s directly behind us, so either it’s the city, or yes, we’re all about to die, along with everyone else on the planet.”

  Artur scowled. “Ye know what they say about sarcasm, Deadman?”

  “No. What do they say?”

  “They say it’s used exclusively by arseholes. Or words to that effect, anyway.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” said Dan, then he slapped his hands on his thighs and stood up. “Now, who wants to help me check out some guns?”

  DAN SLID the battery pack into a blaster rifle, pulled a variety of levers on the side of the weapon, then squinted down the sights.

  "How's it looking?" asked Artur. He was peering into the barrel of another gun, though he hadn't really explained what, if anything, he was expecting to find.

  "All good," said Dan. "Forty percent charge, so not perfect, but enough."

  He added the rifle to one of two roughly equally sized piles of firearms on the floor beside him.

  "So that's six that look likely to work, and six that are totally banjaxed," said Artur. "Not bad going."

  Ollie had torn herself away from Finn long enough to come and see what was going on. She stood over them, scowling a little disapprovingly at the weapons.

  "What's up wi' yer face, Peaches?" asked Artur. "Ye look like ye've stood in something nasty."

  "They look dangerous," Ollie said.

  "Kind of the whole point," Dan pointed out. "Not much use having a gun that isn't dangerous."

  "I don't like them," Ollie said.

  "Well, sadly we don't all have the power to blow things up using just our hands or our minds or what have ye," said Artur. "So, ye know, tough shoite."

  "You'll be thankful for them if we get attacked," said Dan. "The weapons on the sub won't make a dent in that thing that almost pulled us under last time, let alone the toilet mons
ter."

  Ollie wrapped her arms around herself. "I just don't like them," she said. "I mean, I liked your old gun - that was fun. These don't look fun."

  They all shared a moment of silence as they remembered Mindy.

  Damn, Dan missed that gun.

  "Yeah. That one was fun," he agreed.

  "I loved the shoite-yerself mode," Artur reminisced. "That one fair used to crack me up."

  "Brown noise," Dan said. He snorted a half-laugh. "Yeah. Yeah, that came in handy."

  He gave himself a shake.

  "But that gun's gone," he said. "These are the guns we have now, and they'll do the job we need them to do."

  "Helloooo?" called Artur into the barrel of another rifle. He quickly put his ear to the opening, listened for a moment, then nodded.

  "Sounds good to me," he declared, then he sat back on his haunches. "That's all very well ye saying they'll do the job, but that sort of depends on whether we get the chance or not, don't it?"

  "What do you mean?" asked Dan.

  "I mean we've been sailing for a while now."

  "Not sailing," Finn corrected. "It's not a sailboat."

  Artur sighed. "Fine. We've been submarining for a while now. Is that better?"

  "Yeah, brah."

  "And yet we've still found precisely feck all. We've seen some fish, a lot of green stuff, and - in case anyone's forgotten - that wall ye crashed us into, but not a whole lot else. This thing we're looking for..."

  "Things," Ollie corrected.

  "These things we're looking for, they could be on the other side of the planet by now. Or even five miles in any direction other than the one we're sailing in."

  "Not sailing."

  "Whatever it fecking is!" Artur snapped. "My point is, it's not just like looking for a needle in a haystack, it's like looking for a needle in a planet-wide ocean that's filled with other, much larger needles that could spring up out of nowhere and tear our eyes out through our arse at any given moment."

  "We'll find it. Or them. We'll find it," said Dan. "We found it last time."

  "It found us last time," Artur corrected. "Which isn’t the same thing. And even if we do just happen to chance upon it, what then? I mean, I'm a fan of shooting things with big guns as much as the next man, but I'm not convinced how effective it's going to be."