by Matt Betts
“Ozzie?”
“I’m okay.” He went silent for a second while the sound of pouring water took over. “Uh… I’m stuck on my side and there’s a lot more water coming in.”
“Hang on.” Cass cycled through the warnings again and found that Ozzie’s compartment was blocked by some damaged panels and wouldn’t auto-orient itself to make him level. “Okay I see the problem; I’m trying to find a way to fix it.”
“We need to get up,” Rina said. “That thing is coming in again. Ozzie? Can you push us up?” They’d been fighting in fairly shallow water, but it was still deep enough to cover most of the Cudgel’s arm.
The reply was garbled somewhat, with the audio cutting in and out. “I’ll try…lot of water…and rising fast.”
“Takis, see if you can get us up, or help Ozzie do it.” Once again, Cass found her question too late as the creature dropped on them and began to encircle them with tentacles, more cautiously than last time, but the added weight was still forcing the Cudgel deeper down into the sandy bottom of the bay.
“Holy shit,” Ozzie said. “The more weight… puts on us… faster the water comes in.”
Cass saw the flashing warning. The water was backing up through the vent she had opened to help drain it in the first place. Additionally, sea water was coming in through the crack the Lusca had caused above the arm unit. “Just get out of there. Do you hear me? Ozzie? Just unstrap yourself from the arm controls and the seat and you can still push your way out through one of the hatches. The main one is above you right now.”
“Ozzie?” Takis was suddenly alarmed, fully evident in his voice. “Ozzie get out of there and come over here with me.”
Rina turned to Cass, her face pale in the flashing lights. “Ozzie?”
59
“It’s chaos over there.” Holli turned to look at the others. “We have to help them,” she said. Tsui and Ornn could barely look up from the controls of the drones as they dealt with however many of the slags as they could. Ornn had confiscated a drone and began to imitate Tsui’s strategy of smashing as many as he could. He was heartened to see that others in the shipyards had taken up the idea as well. They were doing a decent job of keeping the slags from getting beyond the beach.
This wasn’t news to Linden. He’d tried to reason with Braun and anyone else he could reach, but no one wanted to unscramble the remote control signal and allow Linden’s team to help control the Cudgel.
The open line filled the room with the shouts from the crew. “Takis, I’m going to check it out from here. Stay where you are, we need you to push us up.” There was no response. “Takis, stay there.”
It was horrifying for them all to hear what was happening, without being able to help. Linden paced near the door, kicking an end table as he went. There was more they could do. There had to be. “Tsui. Take control of Mister Punchy and attack the Lusca. Fly around the thing’s eyes and ears. Just see if you can distract it.”
“Ears? You see ears on that thing?” Ornn asked.
There was no way of telling if the beast had ears from looking at it, but Linden had hopes.
“I get what you’re saying. It has auditory sensors,” Tsui said. On the large screen behind him, Mister Punchy’s view rose from the beach suddenly, still carrying three of the slags along with it. One of the fat hands clamped shut hard, squishing a slag easily. The two others fell off and out of the camera’s sight. “It’ll take a minute to get there.”
“I’m going to go plead my case in person to Braun, if I can find him. If I’m not back in half an hour, I’m either in the brig or I decided to fight the Lusca with rocks and seashells.” Out in the hall, Linden took a breath and turned for the stairs. Standing silently, not four feet away, was Lieutenant Johnson. “Jesus. You scared the crap out of me.”
“I’ve been standing here for the last maybe three or four minutes.”
Linden relaxed a little. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Somewhere to the west, sounds of gunfire erupted.
“Any particular reason?”
“I’ve been trying to decide if I should give you this old slip drive with the new communications code for the Cudgel.” Johnson held up a thin piece of plastic in her hands.
“That thing will get us back in control?”
“Yep.”
“And you’ve been debating whether we should have it?” Linden couldn’t help but stare at the tiny drive. “Why?”
“They left the first crew out to dry by sending them out in an ill-prepared craft, even though they knew what they were getting into.” Johnson closed her fist around the drive. “But if they’d only sent a party to look for them earlier, if they’d just had the Cudgel equipped like it should have been, it could’ve handled this thing easily.”
“That’s probably true.”
“And now they’re fucking your people over, too.” She took a few steps closer and handed the slip to Linden. “This’ll get your communications back, and it will give you a little more control. It’s the same basic control scheme that we used in training. The training officers used it to take over the ship when the trainees needed assistance. You can commandeer any and all of the Cudgel remotely.”
The rectangular drive felt like nothing in his hand. “We could use your help. You know this ship better than we do.”
Johnson was halfway down the hall. “I won’t be responsible for another crew dying.”
“If they die, we all do.”
“Then make sure they don’t fail.” She hurried to the stairs and took them two at a time.
A door slammed on the floor below and then the little hotel was quiet around Linden. He looked at the drive again and hoped it was all she said it was.
“Stop everything and try this.” Linden entered the room a little more dramatically than he’d intended. The group looked up in unison and then went back to their screens.
“What is it?” Ornn asked in his gruff annoyed navy voice. “We don’t have time to stop everything.”
Raising his hands in truce, Linden rephrased his request. “Not everyone. Just Holli.”
She was clearly just as annoyed as Ornn. “What, Linden? I thought you were going to beg for mercy so we could help them. You were gone all of what? Three minutes?”
“Yes. But something just fell…” Linden caught a glimpse of the larger screen on the wall and was appalled by what he saw. “Is that Mister Punchy flitting around the monster’s eye?” It was comical, like a gnat buzzing around a cow. Except, it wasn’t as funny when he considered that gnat constituted the bulk of the nation’s defense effort. “What the fuck?”
“I’m doing my best,” Tsui said.
Before he could come up with a snide aside, Linden turned back to Holli and the more important task at hand. “I left, but the training officer was in the hall. She gave me this. Claims it’s the training controls for the Cudgel.”
“Training controls?” Ornn stood and quickly crossed to look at the thin drive. “She just gave them to you?”
“Yes. Remorse for the first crew, it sounded like.”
Ornn turned it over and shrugged. “Could be anything. I mean, they’re trying to shut us down, right? Could be another code entirely, that does just that.”
Holli took the strip and held it next to the drive on her computer. “’Do we take the chance?”
They all looked back up at the monster on the screen that was pummeling the Cudgel while a gnat zipped around its face.
“I’m doing my best,” Tsui said.
The rest of the group nodded and Holli inserted the slip into her computer.
60
With the Cudgel on its side, and the compartments in various states of orientation, it was a surprise to Cass when Takis lowered himself from the ceiling into the main control room. She was in the process of trying to unlock Ozzie’s compartment when Takis dropped in and helped her turn the emergency release on the door.
“I still can’t get any response on the com, and the cam
eras are out. I don’t know what’s going on in there.” Rina came to the door as well and stood looking over Takis’s shoulder.
The whole robot shifted as the Lusca began to wrap its tentacles tighter. The Cudgel’s frame groaned and crackled from the pressure. Cass thought about the fact that no one was at the controls except Jakob, who she hoped was still safe in the compartment with the leg controls.
Between the two of them, Takis and Cass pried the door open and lifted it upward on its hinges. Below them, there was a fairly small room with a twisted mass of metal beams and cables, and it was nearly completely flooded.
“Ozzie?” Takis whispered. He moved as much debris aside as he could and then dropped himself into the water without another word.
There was nothing else Cass could do but follow. She sat on the side and slipped over the edge, falling into the salty water and wires. She found Takis, trying desperately to move a panel that had fallen across Ozzie’s chest. The compartment was large enough that she could swim around to the other side of Ozzie’s controls. She braced herself against a wall and pushed with Takis, moving the metal piece from his brother.
It was obvious to Cass from the moment they uncovered him, that Ozzie wasn’t moving. Nonetheless, Takis started tugging at the harness, trying to remove it. Cass’s air was running out, but she didn’t want to leave the brothers to struggle alone. She unlatched the shoulder harness as Takis unlocked the lap restraint and pulled his brother upward.
Cass moved to join him, but movement caught her eye. The crack where the water had likely poured in, was filled with the long thin legs of slags trying to get in. Above her, Takis and his brother were out of the entryway, so she opted to swim upward instead of engaging the slags.
When she pulled herself out, she turned and shoved the hatch shut. She turned the wheel to lock it and started to ask for help to make sure it was cranked tight enough when she saw everyone gathered around Ozzie. He was laid out near the consoles, with Takis giving him chest compressions, and Rina trying to breathe life back into him.
The Cudgel shook and it spurred Cass into action. She found the defibrillator and emergency kit by the main hatch and brought it back, starting the charging mechanism as she went. She got closer and Rina took it, hooking it up and placing the leads on Ozzie’s chest.
As she watched the two work, she heard multiple voices in her earpiece. Jakob wanted an update, Holli had questions. As soon as she was sure she couldn’t help with Ozzie, Cass moved to a spot out of earshot of the others, hoping they had taken out their earpieces. “The breach in our outer armor led to a similar crack in Ozzie’s chamber.”
“He’s okay, though, right?” Jakob asked.
It took her a long few seconds to respond. “They’re trying to revive him now.”
“What?” Jakob said. “Revive him?”
Holli’s voice came next. “Cass? Jakob? I need you to focus for a few minutes on the Cudgel, otherwise, you’re all going to be crushed by this thing. Got it?” No one responded to her. “Guys? We’re depending on you to help.”
Cass looked back at Ozzie. “Yeah.” She walked back and knelt down to take over CPR from Rina. Once she did, Takis stood and walked away toward the chamber they’d pulled Ozzie out of. Over all the other sounds, they could hear the scratching of the slags on the other side of the metal portal.
“You fucking monsters.” Takis put his hand on the lever to open the door and grabbed Jakob’s shotgun with his other hand.
“Takis, don’t do that,” Cass said. “You’ll kill us all.” She looked for a pulse on Ozzie and couldn’t find one. There was a monitor on his other hand that Rina had applied and all the stats it showed had flatlined.
“Aren’t we all going to die anyway?” His tears continued as he spoke.
“We don’t know that,” Rina said. “But your brother…”
“Don’t say it.”
Cass raised her hand to him to calm him down. “He gave his life trying to do something right.”
“He’s not dead.” Takis knocked the shotgun to the floor. “He’s a swimmer. He can hold his breath. He’s a better swimmer than me.” He stopped talking then, and sat himself on the floor with his back to the portal and the clawing beasts, and cried for his brother.
61
“I’ve got full control,” Holli said. “It worked. It fucking worked.”
If the drive didn’t work, Linden was out of ideas. “Get them out of there. Get that thing back up on its feet and move it as far away as you can.” Linden and the others had watched the screens helpless as the crew on the Cudgel screamed for help and shouted for Ozzie.
“Working on it. I’m doing everything myself here, no one is at the controls over there.”
There was static on Linden’s headphones, but he keyed the mic anyway. “Attention Cudgel. This is Linden. You need to get somewhere secure. You need to buckle in, we are taking over the controls.” He waited but the group remained on the floor with Ozzie.
“Can I help?” Ornn stood up from his laptop. “Give me something to do.”
“I’m sharing the control board with your workstation. Once I coordinate this thing enough, I’ll have you fire up their thrusters and engines and take over the flight controls,” Holli said.
“Perfect. That’s right in my wheelhouse.” Ornn started tapping his keyboard and moving the additional controls he’d pulled from his laptop-a joystick and a mouse-like square that Linden couldn’t place.
“I have an idea, if we can get that thing upright.” Tsui sounded confident.
Linden waved him off. “We need to get them out of there. That’s the only idea we need.”
Onscreen, the Cudgel managed to roll enough to push itself up with its good arm. The crack in the opposite shoulder was now obvious even from a distance. Mister Punchy swung around getting close-ups of the area, highlighting the swarm of slags that were prying and clawing their way in through the rupture. They were streaming from the Lusca, seeming to crawl right out of its skin.
It took nearly a minute, but the machine was finally upright. “Okay, go. Get them the hell out of there.”
“We’re working on it. Still have to lock in position.”
“Don’t take off. I have an idea.” It was Tsui again.
“We don’t have time.”
“Grab the drone and see if you can pierce the Lusca’s wound again.”
“What?” It was almost in unison, everyone in the room.
“I read the drone’s manifest. Everything from the supply list is automatically accounted for.”
“So?”
“They seem to have loaded it up with a lot of explosives.” Tsui sent the image to Holli. “We know the missiles won’t pierce the thing’s hide, but what if there was an explosion inside?”
It dawned on Linden what he meant, and it seemed as good a plan as any, but only if the Cudgel and crew could get clear. “How would you set it off?”
“That’s the thing. There are some detonators listed onboard that drone, but I don’t know how to get them to activate and cause an explosion.”
“Someone might have a remote, or a password, or something, right?” Linden asked.
A voice came through the headphones. “Takis. He packed the explosives,” Cass said. “I don’t think he’s going to be able to help.” Linden wanted to ask what the situation was onboard the Cudgel. Cass’s statement was the first response they’d received since everything started going to shit. “Jakob. Jakob helped pack them in.” Cass’s voice was strained. “Jakob? Jakob, are you there? Can you help?” There was a click on the line and some shouting. Alarms went off in the background and Cass became inaudible.
Ornn spoke up. “The longer we wait, the more danger they’re in on that machine.”
The sounds from the Cudgel prompted Linden to shout into his mic. “Listen, we can figure out how to do this on our own, you just take care of your people over…”
Cass’s voice grew louder again. “His headset was off… Ja
kob, do you know how Takis configured the explosives back in the drone? Can you set them off, or tell us how to do it?”
“This is Jakob. The explosives? Sure, I can set them off. How the hell is that going to help anything?” He was out of breath as he spoke. Things were clanging in the background and the sound of rushing water was prominent.
“I am NOT going to risk these people’s lives…” Ornn said.
“What about the lives of everyone that hasn’t evacuated yet?” Linden asked. “Jesus, what about what’s left of the original coast of the United States?”
Behind the two men, Tsui and Holli had begun talking to Jakob privately, attempting to get instructions without everyone else mucking up the communications line. Linden could hear them repeating Jakob’s name. They were likely dealing with static and panic, trying to be clear of what he was saying.
“Look, the Montenegro was destroyed by this thing. You know what it can do. We have to stop it here, if we can before the Lusca can do even worse things,” Linden said. He was gambling that the cheap reference to Ornn’s former ship wouldn’t anger him more. Both men paused, which gave Linden time to turn to the others. “Do you have it? Can you activate the explosives?”
Holli nodded and sat back down at her makeshift workstation. “I have the left arm control, Tsui has the drone.”
“Bringing it up to you.” It was almost a whisper from Tsui after all the yelling and arguing.
On the screen, the Cudgel’s left arm could be seen going through a series of tests, fist opening and closing, arm turning. “I wish that shovel hadn’t been mangled so much.”
“It’ll still work.” Linden hoped as hard as he could that he was right.
“Here goes.” The Cudgel’s arm thrust forward and the blade glanced off the Lusca’s hide. “Damn it.”
“Just try again.”
On the next try, Holli managed to time it just right, to stab the Lusca and land the blow in the center of the wound. Blood flowed out again, and the Beast roared.
Holli opened the Cudgel’s arm and Tsui deftly flew Mister Punchy into the palm. In a swift motion, the arm plunged back into the Lusca’s open wound and Holli let go of the drone.