Dead in the Water_A Space Team Universe Novel

by Barry J. Hutchison

  "It'll work," said Dan.

  "Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see," replied Artur. "Although, we won't, because there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that we're going to come across the fecking—"

  BUMP.

  The sub rocked, just a little. A torrent of bubbles appeared at one of the windows closest to the back, blocking their view of whatever was out there.

  "What was that?" Ollie asked.

  "Something bumped us," Finn whispered.

  "Yes, we worked that part out," Dan hissed. "What was it?"

  Finn prodded at the controls. "Hold on, I'll see if I can..."

  The black and green map appeared in the air again. Everyone stared at it for a while, nobody speaking.

  "So..." began Artur. "We'd be the little yellow dot there, is that right?"

  "Right," said Dan.

  "And the black bit... that would be the surrounding ocean?"

  "It would," Dan confirmed.

  "Right. That's what I thought," said Artur.

  There was silence for a while longer. The bubbles had all rolled up off the window now, but only darkness was visible beyond.

  "I suppose, if I'm honest, it's the green parts I'm worried about," said Artur. "Ye know, the way there are five or six of them just sort of circling around the yellow dot there."

  Dan nodded. Those were definitely a concern.

  BUMP.

  The sub shuddered again as something clipped it from below. Its frame creaked, the noise sounding oddly squeaky this far under the water.

  This time, when Dan glanced down, he caught sight of a gray shape vanishing into the murk. The way it moved through the water immediately worried him. This thing was big enough to move a submarine, and swam like it fonking owned the place. Even from his brief glance, he could tell it had 'Apex predator' written all over it.

  "What should we do?" asked Ollie. "What is that?"

  "I think our best bet is to stay very, very quiet," Artur whispered, then he immediately screamed as a shark-like snout thumped against the closest window, its soulless black eyes staring hungrily at the occupants of the sub.

  "We're lunch," Artur whimpered. "We're a fecking meal in a can in here. Oh, I so should’ve listened to me old mammy!”

  “Why, what did she say?” asked Ollie.

  “She said a lot of things, Peaches, and I’m pretty sure ‘Don’t get eaten by a big fecking shark-monster’ was somewhere on the list.”

  "Wise woman," said Dan. He stood and moved to the front, leaning on the benches to support himself as the sub was nudged once again.

  A squirming mass of fat gray tentacles oozed past the front window, before being swallowed by the murk again.

  "What was that?" Dan barked. "Swing the light round on it."

  Finn peered at the controls. "Uh... I don't know how to do that."

  "Then turn the fonking sub!" said Dan, grabbing the stick and yanking it to the right.

  The submarine lurched suddenly, throwing Ollie and Artur against one of the windows just as one of the shark-things hammered against the other side.

  Out front, Dan and Finn caught a glimpse of teeth and tentacles. They got a very brief, yet deeply concerning impression of the thing’s size, then one of the sub’s lights blinked out, hiding it from view.

  Something hit them from underneath near the back, turning the floor into a steep slope running down toward the nose. Ollie stumbled and Artur tumbled to the front, only for a tail or some other appendage to strike the sub like an open-handed slap, lurching it sideways.

  Another of the spotlights flickered, then blinked out.

  “What the feck are those things?” Artur whispered.

  “Don’t know, but they’re intelligent,” said Dan. He gazed out through the window, but saw mostly his own reflection looking back.

  “Me arse. If they were that intelligent, they wouldn’t be living in the fecking ocean,” Artur said. “They’d have a house somewhere nice and dry.”

  “They’re smart, all right,” Dan insisted. “They’re going for the lights. They want to leave us in the dark.”

  “The bastards!” Artur cried. “The dirty fishy bastards.”

  Dan charged to the back of the sub, grabbed one of the working rifles, and swung it onto his shoulder. Fishing in the pile, he found a blaster pistol, double-checked the charge, then wedged it into his holster. It didn’t fit perfectly – not like Mindy – but it would stay in until he needed it.

  The sub rocked. The final light blinked out.

  The ocean became a gulf of darkness around them.

  “That’s not good,” Finn muttered.

  “Everyone wait here, stay quiet, and hold on,” Dan said. “If you can turn out the inside lights, do that.”

  Finn turned out the inside lights and the blackness became absolute.

  “I meant once I was out,” Dan sighed.

  The lights returned.

  “Sorry, brah.”

  Dan hit the button that opened the rear airlock. The wall spiraled open like the shutter of a camera, revealing a small space beyond. It was barely big enough to hold two people, but that was good. Big things couldn’t fit into small spaces, so as long as Dan stayed inside, he’d be safe from the sharktopii.

  He hoped.

  “Be careful,” Ollie told him.

  “I always am,” Dan said, stepping through the opening.

  “Well, that’s definitely not true,” Ollie began, but the airlock door had already closed, so Dan missed most of it.

  There were two tether cords attached to a heavy metal hoop on the floor. Dan tied one around his waist, yanked on it a couple of times to test it, then tied on the other one, too, just in case.

  The sub jerked. The single light in the airlock blinked out. Dan had now way of knowing if Finn had turned it off, or if the black-eyed fonks outside had done it. Either way, the darkness suited him just fine.

  He slapped at the button that opened the outer airlock door, but missed it. He fumbled around for the next several seconds trying to find the thing, his eyes gradually adjusting to the complete absence of light.

  He eventually found it. He still couldn’t see that he’d pressed it, but was able to figure it out from the way the wall spiraled open and the ocean crashed in, slamming him against the inner door and holding him pinned. A lifetime of instinct made him gulp down a desperate – and unnecessary – last breath, before the water swirled around him and up over his head.

  SEVENTEEN

  THE WAY the sound changed was the first thing Dan noticed. The creaking of the sub sounded muted, yet somehow amplified at the same time, like it was bypassing his ears and kicking the shizz out of the aural receptors in his brain.

  The second thing he noticed was the mouth. It was hard to miss, due to the way it opened wide in front of him giving him an up-close view of some very large and nasty teeth before they snapped shut again just beyond the outer airlock door.

  The dead-eyed, pointy nosed head squashed into the gap, its mouth gnashing and gnawing at nothing but water as it tried to chew Dan up.

  Dan had an urge to deliver a witty quip. Something along the lines of how you should never eat rotten meat - he hadn't fully workshopped the punchline yet - but the fact he was both fully underwater and mostly full of the stuff made him decide against the idea.

  Instead, he shrugged the rifle off his shoulder, held it at waist height, then pumped a couple of rounds into the octo-shark's gaping maw.

  Even underwater, the rifle performed admirably. The shark-thing's internal organs and rectum, less so. They exploded outwards in a tumbling ball of blaster bolts and gore. The monster's mouth stopped with all the biting nonsense and fell open with a rubbery flop.

  Placing a foot on its nose, Dan shoved the thing back from the airlock. It drifted away and sank down into the darkness, its blood blooming around it like a cloud of red mist.

  One of the other shark monsters quickly homed in on the blood scent and set to work tearing the d
ead one apart. Dan watched, fascinated, as teeth the size of his hand chomped and hacked and tore at the dead monster’s flesh.

  He was so busy watching, in fact, that he didn’t see another of the fonkers closing in until it was almost too late. He threw himself back against the inner airlock wall just as the octo-shark hit the sub at ramming speed.

  The force of the impact shoved the sub on and spun it out to the right. Dan scrabbled for a handhold on the wall, but found none. He swung out from the airlock on his tether ropes and the battering-ram shark’s tentacles all squirmed at once, propelling it towards him.

  Roaring bubbles, Dan opened fire. He heard the hiss of the blaster bolts as they were spat one after the other from the barrel of the gun, followed by the kersplurks of the impacts as they slammed into the shark-thing’s hide.

  These things, Dan realized, were a whole lot softer on the inside. The blaster fire left deep glowing craters in the monster’s side, but it was still alive, still moving, and even more angry looking than it had been a moment before.

  Grabbing the tie-ropes, Dan yanked hard, heaving himself back into the airlock. He felt the sub shudder again as the shark-thing slammed against the opening right at his back, but this time managed to avoid being thrown back out into the ocean.

  Turning, he found himself almost pinned by the thing’s head. It thrashed and wriggled, eyeballs larger than Dan’s head staring him down as the teeth chomped at him. The mouth was too low down, the angle of the thing’s head blocking a clear shot down its throat.

  Dan went for the eye instead. He slammed the butt of the rifle against it, but the thrashing only became more frenzied. Metal groaned as the thing forced its way further into the opening, its nose inching ever closer to Dan, its teeth still doing their gnashing and gnawing thing.

  Fishing in his coat, he found the pistol. The shark bucked and thrashed as Dan jammed the barrel of the gun deep into its bulbous eye and squeezed off several rounds. Its tentacles slammed against the sub and pushed, and the shark’s head popped from the opening like a cork from a champagne bottle. The blaster, still wedged in the thing’s eye, was wrenched from Dan’s hand. He went back to the rifle and opened fire.

  A crater erupted on the shark-thing’s snout. Another on the side of its head, right beside its gills. Neither one stopped it. Its oily tentacles thrashed and wriggled furiously, launching it into another charge. Dan wedged his arms and feet against the sides of the airlock, trying to prevent himself from being knocked out into the ocean again when…

  Oh.

  Oh, shizz.

  The thing that rose up from the depths was bigger than the octo-shark. If Dan had to put a number on it, he’d say it was probably bigger than four or five octo-sharks, although a lot would depend on how you positioned them.

  Its head was long and crocodile-like, but disproportionately narrow for its smooth, shiny body that resembled some sort of slug.

  Narrow or not, the thing’s jaws made short work of the shark-thing. Dan both heard and felt the crunch of its bones snapping and, the shhkt of its tough gray hide being torn apart.

  There was a rush of bubbles, a flick of a tail, and then both creatures – the living and the almost-certainly dead – vanished into the darkness beneath the sub.

  Dan hoped the appearance of the whatever the fonk that thing was would scare off the other octo-sharks, but no such luck. He could clearly see two circling around, but got a vague impression of at least another two a little further out. He tried to remember how many green blobs they’d seen on the scanners, but ‘too many’ was the most accurate answer he could give.

  He checked the rifle. The charge was dropping fast. It wasn’t quite flashing a warning at him yet, but another shot should do it. After that he’d have three, maybe four more before the charge was fully depleted. Not enough. Not nearly enough. He could only hope killing a couple more of them would be enough to send the others a message. Although, considering they hadn’t batted an eyelid when one of their number was devoured by something four times its size, Dan had some pretty serious doubts.

  One of the shark-things curved towards him, its body changing direction without any apparent effort on its part. The tentacles coiled lazily then kicked out, firing the tooth-filled head and pointed nose at the sub like a guided missile.

  Dan brought up the rifle, but didn’t open fire. The hide was too thick on the outside, and he didn’t have the ammo to waste trying. He kept his finger on the trigger and waited… waited… waited for the mouth to open and the cavern of its throat to be exposed.

  The sub lurched suddenly as something struck it at the front end. Dan catapulted forward, his finger instinctively tightening on the trigger. The blaster bolt hit the top inside lip of the airlock door, ricocheted backward, then rebounded off the wall and floor before streaking on up toward the distant surface.

  As the rifle kicked, it jerked from his grip. Dan tried to grab for it and his rope at the same time, but the shark-thing was on him as he turned, all eyes and teeth and fins and legs. He swore creatively, though no sound emerged, and watched with a growing sense of horror as the shark’s jaws unhinged until they were impossibly wide, then clamped shut across his thighs.

  There was no pain. Not exactly. There was a certain level of discomfort, perhaps, which – coupled with the growing realization that he was being eaten alive by a fonking enormous shark – was causing him a not inconsiderable amount of concern.

  He grabbed for one of its eyes, curving his fingers into claws, but it thrashed violently, throwing his arms out above his head as he was dragged left and right in the water.

  The thing’s saw-like teeth had just about reached his thigh bones when it spat him out and drew back, its tongue flapping around as if trying to wash the taste away.

  “Too gamey for you, huh?” Dan said, although he had to say it in his head on account of the whole being underwater thing. Still, as quips went it was pretty poor, and as the octo-shark wouldn’t have understood him, anyway, it was no great loss.

  Black blood oozed from the ragged tears in his thighs. Seventy percent of his pants were hanging on by threads. He’d also lost a shoe. All things considered, it could’ve been worse.

  He remembered the other shark-monsters who had yet to be put off by his taste, and realized there was still plenty of time for ‘worse’.

  Grabbing his tether ropes, he pulled himself back towards the sub.

  Or tried to. The pulling part was easy. The ‘back towards the sub’ part was where the problem lay. The ends of both tethers floated limply in the water, neatly cut in half. At first, Dan put it down to a bite from one of the shark-things, but then he saw the end of each rope was scorched, and realized the blaster rifle ricochet must’ve been responsible.

  Fonk.

  Fonkity-fonking fonk.

  Turning, he searched for the sub, but saw nothing but darkness, monsters, and an awkward-looking orange fish that was beginning to realize it had made a grave navigational error. There was a large shape looming off in the distance which might be the sub, but might equally be something mean and toothy, with a less-refined palette than the shark-things had.

  Fonk it.

  Dan started to swim. His coat didn’t help with this. Nor did the fact his legs were only partly attached. He shrugged the coat off, figured there wasn’t much he could do about the legs, and started after the submarine.

  Blobs of congealed blood trailed behind him as he pulled himself through the water. He didn’t look back. He didn’t have to. He could sense the bamstons behind him, their lust for blood – even his blood – drawing them to him like flies to shizz.

  One more bite and his legs would be gone. Without those he wouldn’t be able to keep swimming. He’d sink and probably end up stuck down there on the ocean floor for years, until he either rotted away completely, or convinced some passing crustacean to cave his skull in with a rock.

  Balls to that.

  He swam, powering himself clumsily through the water as best h
e could. If those fonks were going to eat him, he was going to make them work for it.

  Up ahead, the sub slowed. The shark-things behind him noticed this, and seemed to draw back. Dan burped out a bubble of triumph. They’d noticed he was gone. They were stopping. They were going to come back for him.

  The submarine flicked its tail, and Dan’s hope sank as he realized it wasn’t the submarine at all. The glossy, slug-like body curled around in the water, revealing the elongated head and mouth that had snapped one of the octo-sharks in two.

  Its eyes were two bulbous globes, each one the size of a beach ball but with none of the fun-factor. They worked independently, each one swiveling and rotating as they searched the surrounding water.

  First one, then the other eye locked onto him. Tiny fins stood on end along the length of the gelatinous body, then all flicked at the same time, propelling it through the water. Dan stopped swimming forward and kicked upwards.

  He wasn’t sure how far he was from the surface, or what he’d do even if he got there. He just knew he wanted to be as far away from this thing as possible. There was no chance this thing would spit him out after a nibble. It would swallow him whole, and while the subsequent indigestion he might cause it would be of some small consolation, he’d much prefer not to wind up in its stomach in the first place.

  The shark-things scattered, shooting off into the darkness with annoying speed and ease. Damn. He’d hoped they might try to take a bite out of the big thing and buy him time to escape, or at least a few more seconds of not being fish food.

  He risked a glance down. If his heart had still been beating it would have stopped right there, right then. The thing’s mouth was open just twenty or thirty feet below him and closing in fast. The ocean whirlpooled into its fleshy tunnel of a throat, and Dan knew that this, now, was it.

  First his life, then his afterlife flashed before his eyes. He wasn’t particularly happy about either of them.

  He thought of his wife, Vanshie. Of their child that never was. He thought of the handful of people he’d helped and the vast crowds of those he’d hurt. He thought of dying and of coming back.