The Shadow Beneath The Waves

by Matt Betts

  Cass looked around from her vantage point at that height but couldn’t see much beyond the electronics, bundles, casings, and everything else. She took a breath, just to steady herself, but as she did, she saw her companions holding the body of the long-dead crewman, and she felt anything but steady.

  She climbed down the rungs and joined her companions who’d put the body on the deck. “You think he did this to himself?” Jakob asked.

  “I do,” Cass said. “I don’t see any other way. Unless his fellow crew members killed him for some reason. I guess being trapped down there could’ve driven them mad after a while.”

  “Shit,” Takis said. He backed away toward the door a few steps.

  “What?”

  “It moved.” Takis pointed at the suit. “The damn suit moved.”

  She found it troublesome that she’d just been talking about someone going crazy in the Cudgel right before Takis made another strange comment. “Just air blowing out of the suit, I’m sure.”

  “Or the bones and whatever else is left of the poor guy settling in there,” Jakob said. It made Cass happy that one of her party had a level head at least.

  “I’m telling you.”

  Jakob walked up to Cass, looked at her, then looked at the body in the flight suit. After a few seconds, Jakob looked at Cass, then back to the body.

  “Keep watching.”

  They did. And nothing happened.

  “Damn it,” Takis said. He left the doorway and pushed the others aside. “It fucking moved.” He pulled his leg back and kicked the body as hard as he could. The flight suit broke in two, brittle as leaves, pieces flying into the air and the parts sliding toward the middle of the room.

  They were silent as they looked from Takis to the suit.

  “Jesus,” Jakob finally said. “What did you do?”

  As Takis stepped toward the top half of the suit, the skull fell off the top and cracked in two, half turning to dust and falling away. Several bits and pieces fell from the torso portion as the dust settled. They were parts of bones, ribs and spine, and four prickly orbs the size of apples. They looked just like the slags that had attacked the crew onboard the Adamant, but they were a quarter of the size or less, wrinkled, and grey. Their shells were dented and caved-in. They sat among the small pile of bones- each part gnawed on and half-gone.

  “Shit,” Takis said. “Shit. I told you.”

  “Did they live off the crew for a while?” Jakob asked.

  Cass was just as curious as Jakob, but probably as nauseous as Takis was about the past crew of the Cudgel. “Looks like it.” She reached out with her gun and poked one of the slags with the barrel. It gave way slowly, like a balloon, and then expanded when she removed her gun.

  “Disgusting,” Takis said. He backed away, waving his hand in front of his nose. “Like rotting fruit.”

  He was right, Cass could smell the awful stench clearly emanating from the slags now that she was closer. Backing away from the smell, she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. One of the slags moved slightly, she was sure of it. Then another one extended a leg. “Guys?” The others turned to look just as the two creatures began to pull themselves forward slowly.

  “Oh shit.” Takis encapsulated what Cass was thinking perfectly. She watched the slags crawl at a snail’s pace, leaving a trail of black sticky mucus behind them. They were not the fearsome monsters. Two others wobbled slightly, then rolled, but didn’t advance.

  “They’ve been alive this long?” Jakob asked.

  “Barely,” Cass said. She looked to Takis, who was barely containing his reaction.

  “See? I told you it was moving.” He seemed thrilled and horrified to be right. He smiled slightly. He unslung his rifle and stepped forward. “We’re not saving these to study this time, right? Not after what happened the last time.”

  “They don’t really seem to pose a threat right now, so…”

  “We’re not saving these. Right?” Takis asked. He raised his weapon and brought the butt down on one of the slags that were crawling toward the group. The impact cracked the surprisingly brittle shell, and smashed the body of the creature that was inside. It was quickly just a black mass with thin slivers of white shell sticking out of it. Takis lifted his rifle and stepped closer to the next one.

  Cass and Jakob did nothing to stop him as he repeated the act again with each of the four emaciated slags. As he did, Cass looked around the room, looking in nooks and between equipment for more of them. Had they been the larger size, they would be easy to spot, but at this size, they could hide or nest nearly anywhere. Her search turned up nothing, and when Takis was done with his smashing, she keyed on her mic. “Guys? Rina? Ozzie?”

  “This is Ozzie. How is the exploration going?”

  She took a breath, mainly to get over the ammonia-like smell of the creatures. “Not well. We haven’t gone far, and we’ve run into more of the slags.”

  “Shit.” It sounded like Rina in the earphones.

  “The good news is they are small, slow and seem to be starving. They’re easy to kill.”

  “Bad news?”

  “No idea how many of them there are. Could be one, could be one thousand.”

  “You’re a real ray of sunshine.”

  “I said it was bad news, didn’t I?”

  Takis turned his mic on as well. “Ozzie? Hey! I killed four of them. It was gross and awesome and…”

  “Slow down,” his brother said. “You okay, you sound pretty freaked out.”

  Takis looked at Cass and Jakob, and must’ve noted the concern on their faces. He shook his head. “Hey. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. Drink some water. Deep breaths,” Ozzie said. “You must chill.”

  Takis laughed. “You must chill.” He pulled the plastic straw connected to his backpack and took a long drink. He seemed more relaxed almost immediately.

  “We have good news and bad news of our own. We’re into the system and just about everything is coming online. We ran a systems check and most of the reports are good,” Ozzie said.

  “The bad news is, not everything is good. We have errors coming up in a control junction on the left side. It controls the right arm and some of the connections to flight control in the main cockpit. We aren’t going anywhere until that is fixed,” Rina said. “We can’t. We’re fucked.”

  “Did someone call me a ray of sunshine?” Cass nodded to the door and the others followed, though Takis lingered to look at the shredded flight suit, and the bones.

  “Shouldn’t we do something for him?” Takis asked.

  Jakob turned. “Like bury him?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re on a giant robot,” Jakob said.

  “Right now, we need to clear this thing and see if we can get it going. I wasn’t the one that suggested this. If you want to stop and take care of all of the victims here, I’m all for it,” Cass said. She wasn’t angry with him, but she felt herself being more forceful than she intended. She pushed him, but it was meant to get him moving, not give up. As much as she hated feeling it, she wanted to get the Cudgel moving and get it to fight. It was a thrill that seemed just within reach.

  “We aren’t fucking backing out,” Rina’s voice erupted in the earpiece. “Get your shit together Takis, we can take care of other stuff later.”

  “You mean we aren’t backing out, unless that junction you mentioned is beyond repair, right?” Ozzie seemed to want to qualify Rina’s statement.

  In the background of Ozzie talking a familiar buzzing started. “Cass, I think you left your phone up here with us,” Rina said. Her voice getting more distant. “Hello?”

  45

  “They should stop. There’s no reason for this.” Martin flipped around the news channels and mumbled to himself. His eyes drooped as he fought sleep and his head spun, probably from the lack of blood he’d experienced.

  A news drone showed footage taken a mile away from the creature as it attacked a naval station
in the Pacific. It had been made from a group of three abandoned oil derricks that were made into a rally point during the war. It was still used for weather and for fueling drones and other ships as they made their way across the ocean. The water was relatively shallow, all things considered.

  The Lusca had torn apart one of them, sunk some smaller ships, and, according to the announcer, drained the power from all of the derricks before disappearing under the ocean and off radar.

  “They could use that to land if they needed to. There’s room,” Martin said. He reached over and grabbed a cup and threw it toward the hall. “Hey.” The cup fell just past Martin’s bed. “I have an idea. Depending on the condition of the Cudgel’s storage cells, they may need to recharge before they reached the Lusca. Assuming the base got back up to speed quickly, they should have power to help.” Martin yelled again, but he was quieter than planned. The wires in his arms and chest seemed to go everywhere, strapping him into his bed.

  “Hello?”

  46

  “Are you concerned at all about losing the signal if the Lusca gets between us?” Cass asked. “I’d hate for you to have flight control and suddenly have the signal blocked and we have to go into emergency mode.” She was thrilled to have more people involved in running the Cudgel, even if they couldn’t be in the machine itself. The plan was to let Holli control the flight, while everyone took the time during the six hour journey to try using training modules and simulations to learn their prospective jobs and positions.

  “It’s a possibility, but we’re bouncing our signal off the same satellite as the sat phone, so as long as we don’t lose power, we should be fine. The signal will go directly over the interference,” Holli said. “We’ll do our best to stay out of its range, but I’m setting the autopilot to kick in if you lose touch with us.”

  “Great, I’m going to check in with everyone and get them settled,” Cass said. Leaving the control room., she looked around at all of the banks of controls and lights, switches and panels, and felt overwhelmed. The area was bigger than she expected, a tall ceiling, wide view screens and two rows of work stations for the crew. She was hardly a substitute for so many people. In the early days of the search she’d read their bios carefully, gotten to know their families, their talents. She barely had the skills of one of them, yet she and Rina would be alone on the bridge, covering all their jobs, with Holli’s help of course.

  Cass stepped onto the lift that took her down toward where the repairs were happening. She grabbed the handle and held on, the ride was silent and slightly dangerous, as the lift was only one square coupled magnetically to the walls of the maintenance shaft. As she swiftly descended, she could already hear shouting below. She stepped off and walked up behind her crewmates.

  “This…” Jakob held up a tangle of wires. “…needs to be removed completely. We don’t need it.”

  Rina was having none of it. “We don’t even know what it is. We can’t just fucking remove it.” She looked to Takis, who was standing beside her with an armload of tools, for confirmation.

  “How in the hell should I know?”

  Cass keyed her mic. “Holli? If you can find our position, we’re running into a problem fixing the damage. Can you key in on our location and bring up a schematic for us?”

  “Oh, thank God you’re here,” Rina mumbled. “We’re saved.” She turned and shined her light on a wall panel and opened it. Jakob walked up and leaned close to her and started looking over her shoulder. “Get back.” Rina was clearly annoyed at having her ideas challenged.

  Jakob kept on. “Look. This blackened wire leads to the junction marked ‘Override’ up there. We…” He reached around Rina and grabbed at the wire. The compartment suddenly shook and Cass threw herself backward from the wires. A loud rumble of sound trailed off into the distance.

  “What the hell was that?” Linden’s voice came through the headphones. “What in the hell was that?”

  Cass, Jakob and Rina all stared at each other.

  “Hello? What the hell just happened out there?” This time it was Holli. “I can’t see anything on my monitor.”

  There was a second or two of silence before static broke in and Ozzie’s voice came through from up in the control room. “Uhhh. That was a finger.”

  It was silent in the maintenance shaft as the three looked at each other and thought over those words. “What?” Cass asked.

  “A finger. We just shot off a finger. One of the fingers of the Cudgel’s right hand just launched like a missile,” Ozzie said. “What did you guys do?”

  Rina pointed to Jakob. “I don’t know what the hell any of this stuff does. Do not look at me. It was him.” Jakob was speechless.

  “Which finger?” Linden asked.

  “Pinky finger. Right hand.” The crackling voice came back.

  Cass lifted up her pad and started cycling through the camera inputs until she found the channels with outside feeds. The one set up closest to the right hand showed nothing but smoke, so she switched again and again, until she found one that showed the trail of that smoke leading off into the sky. And once it crackled into focus, they could see the flare of a rocket booster propelling the finger skyward. It was faint but they managed to watch as the booster became a tiny red dot in the feed, then, as it got about two miles out, it exploded in a bright burst that rained down pieces the camera couldn’t follow.

  “Cass,” Linden said, his tone suddenly grave. “Uhhh… Let’s be a little more cautious.” It was clear he was upset about the mistake from his tone, but they had come this far, he couldn’t really make them stop now.

  “We’ve got four more, boss,” Cass said.

  “Next one we lose comes out of your paycheck. Fingers are expensive.” The line went quiet.

  “We still have the middle finger,” Rina whispered into the mic. Cass watched as Rina began carefully untangling the wires Jakob pulled.

  “That’s true,” Holli laughed. “Linden left. He has to coordinate with the ground troops here. He suggested we take Mister Punchy along in one of the bays just in case we need a drone.”

  “Already working on it. Securing it in the main bay,” Rina said. “We’ll leave Champ with the Adamant.”

  “Okay, how does everything look?” Ozzie asked.

  There was a break and everyone else on the ship checked in, ready to go.

  “Other than that one junction, I see no problems, nothing stopping us,” Holli said. “Solar collectors have your power at about fifty-seven percent, guessing it’ll be at seventy percent by the time you’re ready to get in the air.”

  “I can live with that,” Rina said.

  I hope we all can live with that, Cass thought.

  Once Holli walked Rina and Jakob through the repair, they all met back in the control area.

  “We need to hand out jobs, and then we need to get in the air.”

  The radio squelched again with an update from Holli. “Okay, the brothers have the arms and weapons, Cass has the Cudgel’s brains and other weapons, Rina navigation and more weapons, and that just leaves you Jakob.”

  “Finally,” Jakob said. “What’s my job? Missiles? Lasers?”

  There was a buzz on the radio and Holli responded. “Legs.”

  “Legs?” Jakob looked at Cass and Rina. “Did she say legs?”

  “Don’t look at me, I’m the brains,” Cass said. She’d tried to make things lighter since she revealed her employer. It didn’t always work. “Look.”

  “Head down to the lower section—level two. Take the yellow ladder on your left, leading out of the control room, go down four levels. Let me know when you’re there,” Holli said.

  “This is Cass; I’ll accompany him down and help get him in position.” She could tell he wasn’t excited about any of this. His face was frozen with his eyebrows furrowed. She keyed off her microphone. “Come on. It should be pretty easy on you, if I recall. You don’t have too much to do.” Jakob stepped onto level two and hand-cranked the door open
.

  They stepped into a mostly bare room in the bottom of the machine’s mid-section. In the center was a harness for Jakob to put his legs in, a set of gloves for him to control other aspects of motion and what angles he could see on the screens that surrounded him. “Let’s get you strapped in,” Cass told him. He stood on the leg stirrups and let Cass work on fitting the braces properly on him. “Should feel a little snug, but not overly so. We wanted you to do this because you probably have the best leg strength, and you’re about as tall as Ellis, he was the guy that had the job originally.”

  It was obvious Jakob wanted a lot more instruction. “So, I just walk?”

  Cass nodded. “Yep. Fairly simple. You walk, the control keeps you hanging in place without actually moving anywhere.” She pointed to the controls at his waist. “This changes the camera angles that are featured on the screen in front of you. If you look down on the floor in front of you, you’ll see what’s below you, including the Cudgel’s feet.”

  “Okay. But what if something goes wrong? What…?”

  Cass took Jakob’s hand and guided it to the red emergency release lever. “Pull this and the leg restraints release you.” She took his hand and raised it over his head. “If that doesn’t work, there’s a release up here to pull yourself free of the mechanism. You may end up walking around with the leg restraints on, but at least you won’t be trapped in the machine.”

  “All right.”

  It wasn’t real training, but it was all she remembered from the notes. “Look. We’re going to test working together soon, but there’s a training program to get you up to speed a little more, okay?” She stepped away from him for a second to raise their small support team in Oregon. “Holli?”

  “I heard. Jakob? There will be a flashing light on your console. Push it once Cass leaves.”