Below

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  Something flickered in his eyes, but his expression hardened. “Don’t.”

  “Why?” she cried. “You have to know I knew nothing at all about that. You have to! As many times as you’ve entered my thoughts, wouldn’t you have learned it?”

  He stood abruptly and moved away from her. “I never thought you did.”

  “Why then? Why have you withdrawn? Why are you so cold?”

  “Because nothing I believed I could have can be mine!” he said angrily. “Not you. Not the life I wanted. It’s pointless to pursue something you know you can never have!”

  “You said you loved me,” Victoria said quietly.

  “I will always love you, Victoria.” He said, almost tiredly as his anger subsided, then smiled wryly. “But my always will not be nearly as long as I thought.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “You read it. We’ve become a glitch, not human, geneoids.”

  Victoria thought for several moments that she would cry. She mastered the impulse with an effort. “You are not a glitch—none of you are. You’re just as human as the rest of us ... and I don’t give a damn what it said. They were wrong before! What makes you so certain they’re right now? I’ve seen nothing, in any of you, to lead me to believe they know what they’re talking about.”

  “The whole point is, they don’t know. What if the acceleration ages us ten years for every month of life? Or twenty? And even if they’re wrong about that, what if we reach a point where we can no longer even leave the sea? I will not be human then, even if the aging stops. I can not have a life with a human woman when I must live in the sea. And if none of it is true, and they’re wrong, we will never leave this place. The company would terminate us first.” Raphael scrubbed his hands over his face, dragged in a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I suppose I’m a coward, but, knowing what I know now, I thought it would be best for you if I left you alone. Before it mattered to you. Before you could be hurt.”

  Victoria smiled with an effort. “Too late.”

  She moved toward him, stopping only when she was toe to toe with him. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away. “Aren’t you going to ask why?”

  He shook his head. “You should have just left it alone, Victoria. You should go now.”

  “If you love me as you say you do, don’t do this to me. Don’t push me away. Stay with me now.”

  He stared at her a long moment. “If you cared for me, you wouldn’t want to give me more pain than I can bear.”

  It was an inarguable truth. It would, ultimately, be nothing but selfishness to take all he offered, perhaps to make it that much harder for him, knowing that she would be taken away from him when and if a ship came, and that he would be left behind. And still she felt the selfish urge to insist until he gave in. It took an effort to turn and leave.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Slowly, inexorably, rage filtered through Victoria. She wasn’t going to let the board of directors get away with it. They’d gotten away with too much, too long. They had grown so wealthy and powerful they believed they were beyond the reach of the law.

  It was no accident that Johnson had left the file. He’d hoped it would be found and used to give those who’d lost their lives justice. She knew very well that he would’ve been given standing orders to destroy any file marked EXTREMELY SENSITIVE once he’d accessed the information.

  Rifling through the drawers of the desk, she found a recording chip, deleted the information from it and began reading through Johnson’s files, selecting any that contained information regarding the company’s efforts to cover up the disaster on Kay and recording them on the chip.

  It was almost three AM by the time she was satisfied that she’d collected as much evidence as there was to be had. Rising, she strode from her living quarters and made her way up to Tuttle’s quarters, rousing her. “I need you to implant this for me.”

  Tuttle, still fuddled with sleep, merely stared at her blankly. “What is it?”

  “Something I can’t afford to loose. Can you do it?”

  “Now?”

  “Right now.”

  Nodding, Tuttle stumbled from her bed and into the bathroom. She looked far more alert when she emerged some minutes later and the two of them went down to medical. “Mind telling me what this all about?”

  Victoria stared at her a long moment. “Criminal negligence and conspiracy among the company’s board of directors.”

  Tuttle looked as if she might faint for several moments. She moved closer. “If what you say is true, it’s worth more than your life to them,” she whispered, glancing nervously around as if she expected security to leap out at them at any moment.

  “I know. That’s why I asked you. You’re one of the few people I know that I’d trust with my life.”

  Tuttle gulped, nodded jerkily. “Where do you want it implanted?”

  Victoria thought about all of the more usual places and discarded them. She removed her tunic. “Here, above my heart.”

  Tuttle blinked, and then a slow smile curled her lips. “Like a heart monitor, or a neuron chip?”

  “Exactly.”

  Tuttle was frowning as she worked, however. “It won’t fool the company. They have your records.”

  “Security won’t have access to my medical records. All I need to do is get it past them.”

  “All,” Tuttle said faintly. She shook her head as she finished sealing the edges of the incision with the laser. “Is it really worth the risk?”

  Victoria thought it over, but decided she couldn’t give Tuttle any more information. The mining crew was telepathic. They probably knew too much already. Otherwise, Tuttle couldn’t divulge information she didn’t have. “It’s worth it,” she said simply, climbing off the table and pulling her tunic on once more. She stopped Tuttle as she turned to go back to her quarters. “Promise me something.”

  Tuttle looked terrified, but she nodded.

  “If you make it and I don’t, promise me you’ll retrieve the chip if you can and hand it over to someone you trust to do the right thing.”

  Tuttle swallowed with some difficulty. “Raphael?”

  The name sent agony flooding through her. She shook her head. “Raphael will never leave this planet.”

  * * * *

  Returning to her quarters, Victoria ripped the work schedule from the board and posted a meeting the following morning. She slept little. The murmur of voices woke her a few hours later. Rising, she showered, dressed and went out to face them.

  They began pelting her with questions the moment she emerged. She held up her hand for silence. “Is everyone here?”

  Everyone looked around. “Pretty much,” one of the miners volunteered.

  “Pretty much isn’t everyone. Round them up while I grab a half gallon of coffee.”

  Tuttle, looking tired and anxious, was the last to arrive. “Roach is awake and demanding to talk to you.”

  “Later,” Victoria said shortly.

  “He said it was important,” Tuttle said hesitantly.

  “He thinks everything that concerns him is important. I’ll talk to him later. Has he been moved to the brig?”

  Tuttle nodded. “Late yesterday.”

  “Good. He won’t be going anywhere until I’ve had a chance to talk to him.”

  She looked out over the assembly. “I called everyone here because I’ve finally had the chance to review all of the information we gathered regarding the incident that preceded our arrival. I’ve determined that the threat is ongoing.”

  “What kind of threat?”

  “What is it?”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Victoria held up her hand. “I don’t know what it is.”

  That comment stunned everyone to silence for about five seconds.

  “I thought you said you’d determined there was a threat?”

  “How could you know there was a threat and not know what it is?”

  Victoria pounded her hand on the ta
ble. “If you’d rather just discuss this among yourselves, I’ll leave you to it! If you want to hear what I know, or think, shut up, damn it, because I’m not going to try to shout over you!”

  At that, an almost deafening silence fell. Victoria studied them a long moment before she tried again. “I know it’s ongoing, because there wasn’t a living soul here when we arrived. If they’d even managed to fight whatever it is off, there would have been some survivors. I knew this from the start.

  “Unfortunately, I can’t find any reference to whatever it is, nothing to identify it because it seems no one who saw it survived to talk about it.”

  Tuttle raised her hand. “I don’t think I follow.”

  “There’s nothing in the reports. They were picked off, one by one, while everyone decided those who went missing had just had an accident, or wandered off, which means those left had no warning.”

  “You think it’s some kind of animal?”

  “Some kind of predator, yes. Probably something territorial that was stirred up by the activity here. From everything I’ve gathered, it looks like the miners might have dug it up. The disappearances began after they’d sunk the first mine shaft.”

  “So what’s your assessment?” Raphael asked.

  Victoria glanced at him and then looked away. “It’s fast. It’s either small, and travels in numbers, or it’s big and has some sort of natural camouflage that makes it hard to see. Red maybe. Everything on this godforsaken place seems to be red. Visibility is poor and very limited. It blends extremely well with its surroundings, moves fast, and attacks swiftly—fast enough nobody seems to have been able even to cry out and alarm anyone near enough to hear.”

  Brown was frowning thoughtfully. “What about something like a jelly fish? Kinda clear?”

  Victoria’s brows rose. “Maybe—certainly something that would be very difficult to see.”

  Brown looked as if he might say more, but he was interrupted by one of the miners. “What are we going to do?”

  Victoria looked at them for a long moment. “We’re going to hunt it down and kill it.”

  The comment caused an uproar of debate. Victoria studied them for a moment and finally sat down to wait them out, listening to the arguments as she drank her coffee. When they finally subsided, she addressed them again. “This isn’t up for debate ... or a vote. We can wait for it to come and get us as it did the others, or we can go out and find it first.”

  “But ... we don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  Victoria shrugged. “So we kill everything that moves.”

  Everyone gaped at her in stunned silence. It was Tuttle who finally spoke, however. “It’s against the law to ... to maliciously destroy indigenous life on any world.”

  Victoria gave her a look. “Would you prefer to be the alien life form the indigenous life form wipes out? This is survival, people. We don’t have a choice. We’re stranded. We have the right to protect ourselves, with malicious force if we deem it necessary. Everyone goes out on this hunt ... everyone. Nobody’s going to sit back in the habitat and straddle the fence, just so they can claim innocence while everybody else risks their lives to protect them. We’ll take motion sensors and every weapon available. Once we’ve cleared the area, we’ll set up a grid of motion detectors all the way around the habitat in case another predator decides to claim the territory.

  “Air breathers, suit up. You won’t be any good to us in the Cat.” She turned to look at the cooks, who’d been listening from a position inside the kitchen. “This includes the four of you. Short shifts—I know none of you are familiar with underwater gear, but no one is excluded, for any reason.”

  As everyone began filing out of the room, Brown approached her. Victoria looked at him questioningly. “What is it, Brown?”

  “I don’t know, but I thought I ought to mention it.”

  Victoria nodded, trying to contain her impatience. “And?”

  He shook his head. “When we started processing the ore, we found something. I didn’t think much about it at the time ... thought it was like sea weed or something. Now I’m not so sure.”

  Victoria got up abruptly. “What did you do with it?”

  “Scraped the shit off and kept working.”

  “Show me.” She looked around the room and finally spied the person she was looking for. “Tuttle, you’re coming with us.”

  * * * *

  Despite the vast number of lights that crisscrossed the ceiling, the bins containing the raw and processed ore, and the equipment, combined to block out a great deal of light, leaving heavy shadows. It was chilly and damp in the room, far cooler than on any of the living levels, primarily because the company hadn’t seen fit to consider the comfort zone of the workers. As long as it was adequate to keep them from freezing to death, it was sufficient.

  The refuse bins were full of the slimy material. It had the appearance of mucus. Revolted, Victoria merely stared at it for some moments, finally she reached to touch it. Brown grabbed her hand, stopping her. “Don’t!”

  Victoria looked at him in surprise. “Why not?”

  “Makes you go numb where ever it touches bare skin. But it burns like a son-of-a-bitch, too. That’s why I asked about the jellyfish. I got stung by one when I was a kid. I’ve never forgotten it. This stuff even looks a lot like one.”

  Victoria felt a jolt of both excitement and fear as she studied the glutinous mass again. Finally, she looked around for something to use to collect a sample of it from the trash bin. Finding nothing ready to hand, she stepped out of her shoe and used it to scoop up a specimen. “Take this to the lab, Tuttle. See if you can figure out what the hell it is, and, more importantly, what’s in it that causes the numbness and what might counteract its paralyzing characteristics. I’ve got a feeling this is how the creature managed to snatch so many people when there were others close enough they would have heard them cry out.

  “It would also explain how it is that these things seem to have managed to get in despite of all the efforts to stop them. They’re invertebrates. They could probably slip through the crevices under the door.”

  Brown frowned. “But ... how would they have gotten the bodies out?”

  “The access pool. Let’s just suppose they have some means of reaching the top of the habitat—maybe they were able to climb, maybe they have the ability to fly, or soar, or even leap to great heights. They attack the habitat from above, driving the crew down to the lowest level, and there the majority of the pack are waiting.”

  Tuttle shivered. “Wouldn’t that mean they’d have to be a higher life form? Intelligent?”

  Victoria shrugged. “Only in the sense that some creatures on Earth do much the same thing--surround their prey and use their greater numbers to overpower it, like a pack of wolves or a pride of lions.

  “This would also explain why no one’s ever seen it. As poor as the visibility is down there, being virtually transparent would make them almost impossible to spot.

  “When Raphael and I escaped the collapse of the mine, some force struck us. Raphael assumed it was a shock wave, at first. If it wasn’t ... if it was one of these things, then they’re huge ... probably at least the size of a grown man, maybe even bigger.”

  “Are we still going out to hunt it?” Brown asked.

  Victoria thought about it. “Tell Raphael there’s been a delay. I want everybody to make a sweep of the immediate area, though, and set up the motion grid. Tuttle, take that specimen and let us know what you can find out as soon as possible. I’m going to have a talk with Roach.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Victoria stared at Roach through the bars for a full five minutes before she finally unlocked the door and entered. If she’d hadn’t known it was Roach, she wasn’t certain she would have recognized him. He was curled up in a tight knot on the bunk, rocking, staring into space with haunted eyes.

  “You wanted to talk?” Victoria prompted, subduing a welling of pity with an effort.

>   Roach looked at her for several moments as if he’d never seen her before.

  Victoria might not be a psychologist, but she recognized pure terror when she saw it. Roach had almost certainly seen their monster.

  “Roach! I don’t have time for any of your games. Do you want to talk or not?”

  Roach blinked. “I s-saw s-something.”

  “What?”

  “D-don’t know.”

  Victoria sighed. Pity was very rapidly giving way to irritation. “That’s not much help, Roach. Where? What did it look like? How big? What was it doing?”

  He stared at her for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. “Kichens.”

  The single word was like a punch in the solar plexus. “You’re sure?” She knew the moment she said it that it was a stupid question. They were the only humans on the planet. If it looked like Kichens, it must have been. She just couldn’t seem to accept it.

  She frowned. “They must have found her body....”

  She saw that Roach was shaking his head.

  “You think it wasn’t an accident? That one of them got her while she was up top?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know! But ... there was something about the expression on her face, you know?” He shuddered and began rocking again.

  Victoria knelt before him. “I’ve got to know everything you know, Roach.”

  He seemed to make an effort to pull himself together. “I figured, long as I was out, I’d have a look around. So I waited till nobody was paying any attention and headed out.”

  “Which direction?”

  “The other side of the habitat from the mine ... straight out, I think. That was what I meant to do, anyway, so I couldn’t get lost. I thought I saw something once I got on the other side, though. I was trying to get a better look at it. I wasn’t paying too much attention to where I was going.

  “The habitat ... I mean it’s huge ... lights all over it. It never occurred to me I wouldn’t be able to see it for miles. I wandered around ten minutes, maybe fifteen tops. Never got any closer to whatever it was, but then I got to looking around and I couldn’t see the habitat. Scared the shit out of me. I panicked. I was going in first one direction then another. Next thing I know I hit something, or something hit me. I flip over, ass over appetite and then I’m falling ... it must have been a hard down draft, pulling me down. That must’ve been when I broke my ankle, ‘cause I couldn’t get up for a minute or two.