by Sean Wallace
“Anything. Everything! This is a phenomenon unheard of since the closing of the moon. There have been some claims of smaller migrations, but to have the elder crabs from off the continental shelf join in, why, it’s just amazing. Imagine what we could discover! This is going to be one of the most exciting nights of my life.”
Thirteen ducked her head and slunk over to the beacon station. His fervour was cute, but she had to wonder about anyone who thought an exciting night involved crabs. Marine type crabs, anyway. The control panel grudgingly opened.
“But this isn’t just about crabs, is it?” She stabbed the rotation button. It did nothing. Cursing, she began spinning the winch furiously. “Hermit crabs don’t get together of their own accord. That’s why they’re called ‘hermit’ crabs.”
The beacon began to turn with a squeal. The blue light lit up the seething waters, showing up little flashes of silver as fish darted about. It turned slowly.
“Well, it is highly irregular—” Doyer, Thirteen decided, would be perfect to play poker with. He had no bluffing skills.
“I’m part Salt Fae, you know.” The com chattered quietly, something about growing up in a trailer park, and she hit hard enough to make some nasty feedback. “My great-great-great-great grandmother lived in the reserves.”
“One sixty-fourth?” he snorted laughter, which became a choke with the dead stare she leveled at him. “Well, I mean, you know, that’s not, that’s really not a lot. Um.”
With pursed lips Thirteen turned back to the winch. If she ever met someone whose first reaction wasn’t to laugh at her heritage, she’d marry them.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.” His coat rustled as he moved. “It’s just that I’ve never come across anyone who was actually proud of having faery blood.”
Thirteen couldn’t remember the last time anyone had apologized for getting her back up. “When you grow up in a caravan with an alcoholic mother and clinically depressed father, pretending you’re a special faery princess has its appeal.” Honesty made her tone raw.
“Oh,” Doyer said, taken aback. He was quiet for a moment. “Do you know much of the history of the Salt Fae?”
“I know they shepherded the crab migrations, and I know that’s the real reason you’re here.”
This time his silence was heavy with tension. “I see,” he said. His voice was a closed book, and she could read nothing in it.
The beacon was nearly turned now, and her arm muscles were tiring. “Can you see anything yet?”
His coat rustled again, and there was a strangled gurgling noise.
“Doyer?”
She turned.
It was bigger than she expected.
Crabs had always been cute little scuttling things with googly eyes, irritating but harmless pinchers, and great-tasting with a bit of ginger and lemongrass.
She’d never realized how hideous they really were.
It towered above them; her thoughts stuttered at that. It dwarfed her rig, her enormous tidal rig, which she had always likened to a beast risen from the murky depths. Now she faced the real thing. The bloat of its shell was mottled brown. Barnacles and growths ruptured its surface like rancid pustules. Seaweed of all sorts hung from it in fat greasy clumps.
Something even bigger than the crab had left that shell behind.
Thirteen let out a little squeak.
The com crackled. “Thirteen, you okay?”
Like normal hermit crabs, its legs clustered to the front, bony, covered in short red bristles, and stiff and sharply segmented. It was too big for her to comprehend; she couldn’t fit it all inside her head. So many legs! One rose, slow and ponderous, and reached forward. The water surged as it plunged down. Thirteen thought she felt the rig tremble, and couldn’t help imagining that she could hear the terrible shell, dragging along the sea bed.
“Doyer?” she said softly, as if afraid speaking would attract the monster’s attention. The scientist was frozen, a conflict of horror and delight on his face.
Beady black eyes stood high on thin stalks. It had no face to speak of. Little arms grew where the mouth might have been, and feelers flowed out among them, flicking about heavily in the open air. Her stomach lurched as though a trapdoor had opened in it, and Thirteen closed her eyes, unable to look any longer.
The sea churned as the crab took another step forward. This time she was sure the rig shivered.
It was unstoppable. The realization hit her and the world tilted sickeningly. She steadied herself on the beacon. The sodding idiot creature was going to walk straight into her rig.
“No! You went around the rock! Go around us, too!”
“Thirteen!”
She jumped at her name over the com. “Sorry guys.” She patted around the deck until she found the ammunition pack, and dragged it over to the cannon. “I, ah, can’t quite talk right now. Doyer!” The harshness in her voice snapped him out of his daze. “Whatever it is you’re trying to do, do it now.” Looking at the shells, covered in sigils and hexes, a twinge of doubt made her hands shake. How much effect could they have against a creature covered in its own armor?
Doyer crouched low over one of his consoles, hammering away on the keyboard. He glanced over at her, face pale and a faint sheen of sweat on his brow. “What are you doing?”
“Loading the cannon.”
“What? You can’t!”
“Cannon? Thirteen! What’s going on?”
She turned to the huge clunky gun mounted on the platform. From the crash of the sea she knew the crab had taken another step. Its stench filled the air; rotting seaweed and mud that had never known open air. Her hands shook as she pushed the shell into the chamber and locked it in.
“You’re going to shoot it?” Doyer was aghast. “But you can’t! I, we, you can’t do that! We have to study it, there’s so much to learn, why would you do such a thing?”
He wasn’t so cute now, and the look she shot him said as much. Taking hold of the trigger grips, she swiveled the gun around till the barrel pointed straight at the crab’s mouth. She was unlikely to miss.
“Mr. Scientist, you do what you do. I’m trying to stop it from trampling my home. Kindly shut up.”
What if shooting it made it angry? Before her courage left, she pressed the triggers.
Whumpf! The concussion left her ears ringing. Doyer shrieked and flung himself flat. Leaving a curling trail of smoke and resonating with the now active enchantments, the shell spiraled through the air.
The crab lifted a leg to take another step, moving it into the path of the round. Without waiting to see the shell hit, Thirteen broke the barrel. The empty casing popped out and lay smoking, unheeded, as she pushed another into place. There was another crack of noise, barely heard, as the first round impacted on the crab’s heavily armored leg. Doyer yelled something incoherent at her.
She turned and realigned the crosshairs. This time she would get the timing right.
“Come on,” she muttered, gnawing her lip. Her pulse throbbed in her fingertips. She could smell her own rancid sweat. A small blackened crater was the only evidence of her first shot.
And . . . now.
She felt rather than heard the shot, which blew the last of her hearing away. In total silence she watched the shell curve through the previous trail of smoke. Her breath caught in her throat.
The shell hit. Bullseye.
She let out a whoop. It felt wrong not being able to hear it. The crab was so close it filled her vision. It stopped and pulled its horrible beady eyes inside its shell. The little arms around its mouth waved in panic. One of them hung limp.
Doyer grabbed her shoulders and spun her round. He shook her violently, his glasses skewed, spittle flecking his chin, mouth open and teeth flashing as he screamed soundlessly at her. Thirteen shoved him. He clung to her like a mad man.
“I can’t hear you!” she cried, “I can’t even hear me! Let go!” She hooked her leg around his shins and swung him down. He grappled
with her coat, expression gone from fury to shock. The platform jumped with his impact. The man had clearly never been in a bar brawl in his life.
Thirteen stepped back from him as he scrambled to his feet. He slowed, the rage slipping from his movements, and stared over her shoulder.
Not again.
She half turned. One of the crab’s eyes slunk out from the shell. She was positive it stared straight at them.
Then it started moving again.
Thirteen closed her eyes briefly. It had taken a shell right in the kisser. Why hadn’t it stayed hidden in its shell? She would have. Despite a growing sense of helplessness she grabbed another round. The spent casing dropped on her foot and rolled across the platform silently. She snapped the barrel back into place without a sound, and took the triggers again.
Doyer grabbed her around the waist and flung her from the cannon. She landed hard. Something crunched beneath her. One of his gadgets. Good, she hoped it cost a lot.
She scrambled clumsily to her feet, unable to find her balance. Her shoulder throbbed. Doyer crouched suspiciously, hands in weedy little fists, and obviously had no idea what he was doing. His lips moved around clenched teeth.
Thirteen stepped up smartly, batted his punch aside, and slammed her fist into his gut. The scientist doubled over and fell to the decking, curled in a tight ball of private agony.
“Stay down.” She stepped over him and took the triggers. The crab was too close and its head too high; she couldn’t lever the barrel up enough to target it. Her mouth filled with bloody tang. She bit her cheeks too hard. It was too close, too late. Not caring where it hit, she fired.
The impact knocked her off her feet. Smoke drifted over her, dense, caustic, and fishy smelling. Her throat burned and her skin prickled. She covered her face, coughing.
It kept coming, it just kept coming.
Okay, Plan B. Think. It was too late to abandon the rig. The life raft was at the bottom, which was a half hour climb on a good day. Death by giant crab. It didn’t seem fair. Or reasonable. They weren’t even supposed to be migrating, only Salt Fae directed migrations. Crabs didn’t have initiative. Bloody crabs!
It took another step forward. The rig shook as gargantuan waves crashed against it, totally unheard.
“You can’t do this to me! I, I am Salt Fae! My great-granny was a Salt Fae! You can’t do this to me!” What was the Salt Fae word for “stop”? She knew it, she knew she knew it.
“Kavara! Kavart! K’vart! Kavara . . . kavarna . . . KAVADA!” She leapt up, punching her fist at the crab. “Kavada, you stupid animal, kavada!”
Doyer stepped up.
“What the . . . ?” Thirteen stared at him, incredulous.
For someone who couldn’t throw a punch, he sure knew how to hold a gun.
Movement caught her eye, and she glanced up at the crab. Something on its head. It was dark up there, but it almost looked as though someone was moving about. On a crab? On this crab?
Doyer gestured with the gun and Thirteen raised her hands quickly. He breathed hard and his face was red with fury.
For a moment the world was crystal clear; the chill wind at her fingertips, the smell of stagnation in the air, the way the gun glinted in the blue light.
In surreal silence, the crab crashed into the rig.
It knocked her flat. She felt the structure scream and buckle, reverberating through her body. The platform dropped down, or she fell upwards and was thrown against the beacon station. Not being able to hear her rig tearing itself apart made it worse. The acrid smell of hot metal filled the air, sharp against the soft smell of rotting fish.
After an æon of waiting for the whole thing to topple into the sea, she realized the tremors in the rig had subsided, were nothing more than the comforting shakes of the tide turning.
Without opening her eyes, she took inventory of herself. Bruised, battered, still largely deaf. Her knee hurt more than a little from where something, probably one of Doyer’s sodding boxes, had hit her. She’d bitten her tongue. Other than that, she didn’t appear to be dead, and couldn’t help feeling that this was something she was going to regret.
Cautiously, she opened her eyes. The paneling of the beacon station looked battered, reassuringly so. Gingerly, she looked about.
Doyer lay propped against the station, eyes squeezed shut. Blood matted the hair at his temple. His lips moved in nervous little stutters, almost as though praying.
The gun lay between them.
Thirteen rested her head on the hard grid. Normally, scientists didn’t carry guns, right? It was all wrong, but given the dive the night was taking, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Just her luck that it was one of the few things that hadn’t been thrown from the platform.
Slowly, she reached towards it.
Perhaps her coat rustled, maybe a button scraped against the catwalk, but Doyer heard something. He snapped out like a spring and snatched the gun up, leveling it at her head before glancing about.
It was the way he went rigid that sent shivers down her arms. She rolled over.
The crab was much, much closer than she liked. It slumped against the rig, its rigid legs resting against the platform mere meters away. At first it seemed dead it was so still, until it heaved, and the rig rocked violently. The catwalk thrummed painfully beneath her. Doyer grabbed her arm in panic, and she didn’t let out the breath she held until the crab subsided. Even then, its little mouth legs and eyes whipped about manically. The crab wasn’t happy about it either.
Thirteen tried to remember the structure of the west side of the rig. There wasn’t much call for her to go down there. The crab was well clear of the wings, but several of the pistons were partially exposed there. She turned to Doyer.
“I think it’s stuck.” She almost heard her voice, a hazy mumble.
The scientist jumped. Thirteen felt a thump of air hit her face as he shot the crab in fright. She raised her hands without further prompting.
“I’ve already surrendered!”
Doyer scowled at her, shifting his grip on the gun. Leaning close he yelled in her ear. “On what!”
Thirteen tried to swallow. Her mouth had never felt so dry. The muzzle of the gun was inches from her face, out of focus. “Could be anything. Can hermit crabs reverse?”
The crab thrashed again. They stared at each other until it calmed. Thirteen specifically did not think of the damage being inflicted on her rig.
“It’s out of the water! Not enough buoyancy! Shell too big! How did it even get this far into the shallows?”
“You’re the ‘marine scientist,’ you tell me.” There were little scratches around the gun’s mouth that no amount of polishing could hide. It was a gun that had been used before. Don’t think about it. “We need to get off the rig.”
Doyer shook his head once.
“Look, this isn’t personal, I’m not trying to be a prick here, but you don’t seem to be seeing the whole picture. That crab is going to tear the rig apart, and if we don’t get off, we’re going down with it.”
He tapped her nose none too gently with the gun. “More important things here than your rig.”
“Yes, our lives! Please, just listen a moment. There are a couple of combat moths en route, but I don’t know how long—” The crab flailed, and the groan the rig let out echoed in her bones.
His mouth shaped the words “combat moths” as though they left a bad taste in his mouth. “Call them off!”
“I wouldn’t know how. The coast master called them in. Er,” she licked her lips, “could you maybe not point that thing so close to my face?”
“Coast master! You’re sure?”
Thirteen nodded. Doyer relaxed visibly. He slumped against the station and adjusted his glasses with a little smile. She didn’t know how he could stand waving the gun so close to his own head. He adjusted his glasses again.
Maybe, if she jumped him now. He wasn’t paying attention to her; in fact he stared open-mouthed over his shoulder. Cau
tiously, she leaned around him.
There was someone else on the rig.
Doyer reached around until he felt Thirteen’s knee, and squeezed it with excitement. Tears sprang to her eyes. That was her busted knee. With blurry vision she studied her second unexpected visitor for the night.
She lay awkwardly against the beacon station, flung there by the impact. Her skin was an unhealthy shade of gray and her round head smooth and bald. She wore a strange get-up, a dress that was almost indecent, and wet and rubbery looking. Kelp, Thirteen realized, the woman was wearing kelp.
Her mouth formed an “O” of realization. A real Salt Fae!
For a moment, she forgot the crab trashing her rig and the gun in Doyer’s hand. When he turned to see if she too saw it, they shared a giddy grin. Wishes had just come true.
Doyer scuttled over to the Fae. He reached out, but stopped just short of touching her, as if afraid she would vanish.
He said something. Thirteen shook her head dumbly. The Salt Fae was beautiful. The scientist beckoned her over.
Roaring agony exploded in her knee when put her weight on it. Dropping instantly she wheezed, cheek pressed against the cold metal of the catwalk until the knifing pain lessened. No left knee. Got it. She dragged herself over.
“You spoke Salt Fae!”
“Kind of. Not really.”
He dismissed her uncertainty with a wave and leaned close to the Fae’s face. A gleeful smile lit his expression. The Salt Fae was alive.
“Fantastic! Do you know what this means? They must have adapted. Ring in the choppers, we need to get her to a lab.”
“What?”
“Need to get her to a lab!”
“She needs a hospital, not a lab. Why on Earth do you want to take her to a lab?”
“She’s waking up!”
Both of them sat back as the Salt Fae stirred. The clean smell of salt water drifted through the air, something Thirteen hadn’t been able to smell for years. This close, she could see the gills in the Fae’s ribs rippling feebly. They oozed wetly as the Fae breathed through her flattened nose.
Nine would eat his words. So would Eight. Even Fourteen. And that jerk of a bartender at the Sunflower. And her sixth grade teacher, Mr. Evans. And—