Then Tonaka saw the problem. The lagoon that they had just helped the Great White into, was not her own, but the Hammerheads’s enclosure. For right now the Great White was alone, gliding through the water as if she hadn’t just been in a water spout then flung by her tail.
“Get the QXs in the water,” Callum said into his walkie-talkie. “We’ve got to get her back into her enclosure.”
“It’s three lagoons away, Dad,” Dillon informed his father.
Callum’s face fell as his head hung for a moment, then that look of resolve was back in his eyes. “We’ll just have to be careful with the gates and have the robots form a buffer around her.”
Dillon loved his dad but there was nothing simple about what he suggested. First of all, the shark was going to try to eat the robots that were protecting her. Secondly she had been scraped up during the water cyclone and subsequent rescue. She was oozing blood into the water.
Once blood was in the water, all bets were off. Feeding frenzy didn’t even really come close to describing it.
But they had to try and his dad’s plan was the best one they had.
“You need to get back to the control room,” Dillon reminded his father
“Why?” Dillon could tell that his dad wanted to stay out here with the action.
“The nuclear option?” Dillon prompted. “You have to be in the control room to trigger it and only you can order it.”
His father’s jaw muscles clenched up and down as if he wanted to argue, but couldn’t find the words since Dillon was right. This was exactly why the nuclear option had been built into all the enclosures.
The first zap should stun everything in the tank into unconsciousness. The second zap would kill everything and Dillon was pretty sure a third zap would set even the water on fire.
Three zaps would drain the entire island’s battery supply. And given the storm, the solar panels would not be able to recharge them for days.
“Keep in touch,” his father said. No matter his own personal feelings, his father would always do right by the island. He’d learned that in the Tactical Assault Groups and was trying to teach Dillon. The team, in this case, Salechii always came first.
Dillon tried to remember that as the first splash of a robot entering the water broke the rippling surface of the lagoon. The Great White snapped around, swimming straight for the QX, however he was carrying a shark prod. The great girl must have recognized it because she broke off her attack a few feet outside the reach of the prod.
The QXs weren’t quick enough into the lagoon though. A group of three Hammerheadss came streaking from the other side of the enclosure.
They brushed past the robot, the lead shark enduring the prod, without a flinch. The three rammed the Great White, knocking even the big girl for a loop. Gabby tumbled over, trying to veer away from her attackers.
The Hammerheads’s mouths weren’t nearly as large as the Great White’s. They liked to batter their prey first, then munch on them. The Great White had barely righted herself when they attacked again, knocking her back, disorienting the big girl.
More QXs jumped into the water, trying to form a barrier between the white and the Hammerheads, but the battle line was fluid as the Great White turned, chomping on the first robot, decapitating him. His head floated to the surface as she completed her turn and went to take on her attackers, head on.
Guess Gabby didn’t feel like she needed the protection.
The Hammerheadss looked ready to rumble, speeding toward the Great White’s open mouth.
She waited until the last second then turned sharply to the left. Her jaws clamped down on the side of the one Hammerheads’s lateral cranium, ripping off an eye. Blood poured from the wound as the shark flailed, in shock. The Great White seemed a little pleased with herself as she ate the Hammerheads’s skull in one gulp.
The other two Hammerheadss broke off their attack but too late. The Great White flipped around, grabbing one by the pectoral fin, ripping it from its body. The third maneuvered out of the way just in time, coming back around, slamming into the Great White’s torso.
Dillon didn’t think the attack would have worked so well, except the Great White was injured. He imagined that she had a few broken ribs on that side as the Hammerheads got leverage, slamming the Great White against the acrylic glass. The robots tried to intervene, but that was like saying the robots could turn back the hurricane.
Blood clouded the water making it hard to see as the Great White turned her head, snapping at the Hammerheads as it ground her mercilessly against the barricade.
The injured Hammerheads, looking a little like an unsewn Frankenstein swam by, bleeding so profusely that it blocked their view.
Dillon pressed up against the glass, desperately trying to see what was going on. Was his dad going to go nuclear? Could he go nuclear with all those QXs in the water?
Then the water cleared and a robot hand floated past.
Once the red washed away the only thing left in the lagoon was the Great White. She swam by as if nothing in the world had happened. There weren’t even any carcasses. Just the one robot hand and nothing else.
Maybe Nami wasn’t so paranoid.
* * *
Nick looked around as the red flashing lights blinked off. Whatever emergency was there seemed to be over. He knocked on Nami’s door again although he was pretty sure where she was at. The closet.
“Honey, I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
To his surprise Nami answered the door. “Come on in.”
Equally Nick was surprised to find that she had shutters down over the windows. She had a perfectly “shark-free” zone. What a relief.
“How did you do this?”
Nami indicated to a small device on the bedside table. “It’s a program on the remote.”
“You okay?” Nick queried his daughter. She seemed good, but she’d seemed good before.
“For being stuck on an island surrounded by sharks?” Nami asked. “Not too bad.”
Youth, so resilient. He had come to the island not traumatized and now he could feel his hands wanting to shake.
“I’m good, dad,” she said. “You can go back to your date or whatever you want.”
“I think the date ship has sailed, I’m over an hour late.”
Nami shrugged. “I think she’ll forgive you.”
Nick sat down heavily on the bed. “My experience with women? I doubt it.”
Nami plopped down on the bed next to him. “I really don’t think you should extrapolate mom’s faults to all women.”
“No, no, I guess I shouldn’t.”
Nick took in a few breaths sitting next to his daughter. For the moment safe. Funny, it took getting stranded in a shark park with a phobic daughter to have some quality family time.
“Dad,” Nami said then abruptly stopped.
“Yes?”
“If this trip has taught me anything, it’s that our life sucks.”
Nick sat up straighter. “That badly?”
“Yah,” Nami said then laughed. “Yah, that badly. We are living a lie, every single day. Just divorce her, Dad. Don’t let us linger in this weird limbo.”
Nick sighed. It sounded so simple when Nami said. She was still young to realize the absolute crap storm that would hit if Hollywood’s #1 couple broke up. If she thought the media pressure was bad now? The press wouldn’t let up until they had humiliated them in every way possible.
“Who cares about what people say about you, Dad. Isn’t that what you keep telling me about high school?” She took on his lecture tone, “”Be your own person. Stand up to bullies’….Do I need to go on?”
Had he been hiding in cowardice? Had he been putting his entire family through the ringer to protect his own pride? He knew what the press would say. It was what the press always said when a wife was found to be gay. That somehow the husband wasn’t man enough for the wife.
That was bull. Talia was gay as gay could come. She’d only
hidden her sexual orientation because she wanted the high profile of dating then marrying Nick Flack, which made her a conniving bitch but not a sexually unfulfilled wife.
It had gotten her on the runways in Paris and that was all the mattered to Talia.
They had kept up appearances for nearly two decades. Showing up to premiers arm in arm. Flashing fake smiles for the cameras. And all for what? To ruin his daughter’s life?
He’d thought he was doing it for Nami. All the statistics showed that it was better for parents to stay together for the child. Clearly none of those researchers had met Talia.
“Just file the papers and give her whatever she wants so this is civil.”
Nami had no idea what Talia was going to want. She wouldn’t settle for anything less than fifty percent of his estate.
“That’s going to be a lot,” Nick commented.
“So she gets a billion. You still have another billion,” Nami stated. “How many billion do you need?”
Well, the more billion he had the more power he had in Hollywood. Splitting with Talia would seriously undercut his leverage to produce his next movie.
“Dad…”
He looked down into his daughter’s eyes. It was thinking like that which had kept him in this sham marriage. Keeping his daughter from having a real mother.
“As soon as we get to the mainland, I’ll call the lawyers” he reassured her.
Nami smiled, a real smile. A smile like she used to have before the tragedy with Rusty. Then his daughter flung herself into his arms. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“No,” Nick said, kissing Nami on the top of the head. “Thank you. I should have done this years ago.”
Nami leaned back away from him, now with a more playful smile. “So is this maybe a good time to talk about moving to Aspen?”
“It’s a great time,” Nick said. “I’ll give my realtor instructions to bid on the cabin you keep forwarding to my email.”
His daughter flashed another smile, this one illuminating the dim room. She fell back into his arms.
“Life is going to be great,” she said.
Nick couldn’t agree more.
Now they just had to get off this damned island.
CHAPTER 9
Shalie held QX42’s head in her hand. It felt like such a Horatio moment, but he was a robot and she probably shouldn’t wax poetic for him.
42 had been the first of the second generation of robots Yashimoto had sent. He was a good robot. He didn’t deserve this.
At the least she had his head. She also had QX9’s hand. The rest? Well, the rest were presumably inside of Gabby, along with three Hammerheads sharks.
Gabby was looking pretty bloated right about now, for good reason.
She laid 42’s head down next to 9’s hand. They’d lost six robots beside the three Hammerheads. It had been a catastrophe. They had never prepared for several sharks to attack another.
Clearly they’d had too rosy a view of what would happen during a category five hurricane. They had to do better next time. Because clearly, this would not be the last time sharks would be intermixed.
God help them.
Events spun in her head. Replaying over and over again. She shouldn’t have sent in a lone robot at first. She should have had them get their sleds first. She should have had a more coherent plan of defense, factoring in all of the variables.
Simply put, she should have saved them.
QX59 entered the room. His tone was hushed. “Are we going to have some kind of service?” he asked.
Tonaka entered from the back of the laboratory. “For what purpose?”
QX59 squirmed about as much as robot could squirm. His tail twitched above his head “Isn’t it the proper thing to do?”
“Funerals are for the living,” Tonaka said. “And the robots aren’t quite living are they?”
QX59 refused to look at his creator.
“What is it 59?” Shalie asked.
“Quax, it’s Quax.”
“Of course, Quax, just spit it out. You won’t get into trouble.”
Quax raised a stainless steel eyebrow. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
“She said to speak,” Tonaka ordered.
However Quax just looked at the man. “Where did you get him?”
“Quax, please,” Shalie asked.
“Fine… You know how 11 is so good with circuit boards?” he asked.
Shalie nodded. “He had that extra module installed.” 11 too was a second generation robot. They had lost him as well in the lagoon.
Tonaka agreed. “Yes. He was meant to help repair any computer related emergencies in the face of losing the island’s tech support.”
“Well…” Quax paused, taking in a metaphorical breath. “He was very curious about my EI chip.”
“And?” Tonaka demanded.
“Well, it is just so cool, Dillon keeps saying so. He also says you should share. Like don’t bring gum to class unless you have enough for everyone.”
Shalie’s stomach began to sink. She was beginning to understand where this story was going. Tonaka on the other hand just seemed annoyed. He had no idea.
“So you showed your emotional intelligence chip to 11?” Shalie prompted.
Quax nodded.
“You did what?” Tonaka asked, seeming to finally catch up.
“And he copied it?” Shalie asked.
Quax shook his head. “No. it was too complex to recreate, but he did fashion a mini-chip with some basic emotions embedded.”
Tonaka turned on Shalie. That was bound to happen. “What have you allowed to happen? Now all the robots have some EI?”
She wanted to remind him that he couldn’t get the EI chip to work in the first place. She was the one that got it working and now spreading. Shouldn’t he be happy?
By the deep frown on his face, apparently not.
“And what does this chip do?” Shalie asked, trying to appreciate the damage done.
Quax shrugged. “Well, they aren’t going to bawl at Terms of Endearment or anything, but they do know that their brethren have been slaughtered and they might be next.”
Shalie tried not to panic. She knew what was coming next. “And now they don’t want to go in with Gabby?”
Great, she’d made a fleet of shark-phobic shark wranglers.
“Not necessarily,” Quax explained. “They just want to have the jet skis and a coordinated plan of attack.”
“Are you trying to tell me that they would refuse orders?” Tonaka asked.
“If they were dumb, yes,” Quax answered.
Tonaka’s cheeks turned a deep red. Shalie put a hand out and patted his arm.
“It isn’t that bad. I was thinking the same thing. The QXs aren’t asking for anything extraordinary.”
“And what is next? Forming a union? Demanding health insurance?” Tonaka asked. “How can I sell robots that refuse to do the job they were bought to do?”
“Let’s cross that bridge,” Shalie suggested. Tonaka didn’t seem too pleased by the comment, however he did close his mouth, pulling his thin lips into a hard line.
“So a service then?” Quax asked.
“We will figure something out,” she promised as she herded them both from her lab. She had a far more difficult conversation ahead than these two.
* * *
Callum stared at the monitor that showed the former Hammerheads shark enclosure. It was now the temporary Great White shark lagoon.
“At the least we’ve got the babies,” Dillon tried to reassure him.
“Yes, unfortunately they are all related so can’t be used in a breeding program.”
“True,” Dillon said, still filled with that teenage optimism. “Still they will be a huge attraction.”
Yes they would be. The park needed some adults though. Granted the Hammerheadss were more territorial so they were easier to catch, it was still going to cost the park another twenty million to capture and transport three a
dults back to Salechii. Twenty million that they were going to need to do vital repairs to the park before it reopened.
The hurricane was passing quickly over the park. They weren’t unscathed, but the structure had held as advertised. Not a single guest had been disturbed by the level five cyclone. There was minimal lateral movement of the island. Seasickness should be at a minimum.
Callum knew though that the heaviness in his heart had nothing to do with money or the negative publicity. It had to do with the fact that he had let those Hammerheadss down.
He justified taking wild creatures from their homes to Salechii because he provided them a good, safe life. Those three Hammerheadss would probably be perfectly healthy and whole had they been back at their own native reefs.
They had basically been shark bait for the Great White.
And now they were dead. Gone. Perhaps their only legacy was in giving indigestion to the great girl.
He knew that he shouldn’t care for each individual animal. His job was the survival of the entire park, but he couldn’t help but feel a failure today. And who better to rub that in his face.
“That girl is a charmer, she is,” Jack said, beaming from ear to ear. The man really had no civility any longer. His career had sucked the humanity from him.
“She is just doing what’s in her nature,” Callum answered coolly.
“Yes, being a bitch!”
Callum said the words at the same time as Jack. “Yes, yes, we know your opinion. Is there anything else?”
Shalie came in from a side door, holding a tablet, looking a bit lost.
“Do you want to give an interview about how you lost 3 sharks in your first day?” Jack asked.
“No, I certainly do not,” Callum said and nodded to security. “These men will show you back to your rooms.”
“But, I wanted to see what the bakvissie has to say.”
Callum wasn’t exactly sure what the South African slang word meant, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t meant to be nice.
“Like I said, have a night cap on me from room service, but you are leaving,” Callum ordered.
Jack looked like he wanted to argue, but apparently his film crew was more than happy to get a free drink and left without him. Without his precious cameras recording his every word, the fire seemed to die out of Jack and he turned and left without another word.
Apex Predator Thriller Series Collection (Including the blockbuster new shark park thriller, Salechii) Page 13