“Okay, fine, why not leave them in space then? It’s not like there’s no room to leave it. It’s called space,” Delphine said in her most ‘duh’ tone of voice but she felt it was a dumb question the moment she said it.
The captain pointed a screwdriver at her from below. “That is the worst place to leave a defunct spaceship. Cause when it breaks down, and it will, from micrometeoroids, gravity forces or disintegrate from radiation, those little bits will become space debris. And debris maintains momentum due to the lack of friction.” He was arms-deep in grease by now. “So these little pieces fly like bullets around the place. Even the tiniest rivet can make a hole in a ship.”
“Don’t we have Antigravel for that? Shake, click, spray, keeps the micrometeoroids away?” Delphine said, reciting the ad jingle.
The captain nodded. “That’s true. But you can’t leave broken down spaceships floating around in orbit. It’s dangerous, they’re like a reef, just waiting to cause an accident. So the safest thing is to crash them and the safest place to crash them into is in Point Nemo.” He gestured with a flourish and pointed a greasy finger downward. “This reduces the risk of human casualties from scorching hot space debris to practically zero.”
Delphine took in a breath. “I still don’t get what you need me for.” She unconsciously lifted her t-shirt up a bit to cover her decolletage. It’s not like she wasn’t gonna give in if he made any advances, the captain was squarely in the tall-dark-and-handsome category, but she preferred to have the option of running away if things got weird, and this was the exact opposite situation.
Besides, she was curious about the job now.
She watched him tighten bolts or screwing screws or whatever people did when tinkering with machinery. The rusty crane was wobbly, and there was some sort of orange robot dangling from chains. It looked like an art installation on the futility of technology and the chains it imposes on our being, or some other highbrow crap. There was silence for quite some time as she watched him work.
He looked up. “What, no more questions?”
“Oh, I do have plenty. But I thought you needed to concentrate.”
“How considerate. Yes, almost done here.” He clicked a switch on and then pointed at a rugged tablet on the deck. “Could you tap the initialise button? I’m greasy.”
“Yes you are,” she said and did so. “Done, now what?”
“Now it’s your turn,” the captain said and lifted himself back on board the Iuncus, the ship that bellowed out black smoke as it went and barely held together. It had a crane at the back and plenty of precarious chains for holding down the loot.
“My turn to what? I’m a temp. As in office temp, you saw my resume. I can barely operate a photocopier, what am I supposed to do here?”
The captain smiled.
“Put on the VR helmet.”
“Ew. No, it’s filthy.”
“There are some hand wipes over there. The disinfecting kind.”
She used the whole pack. He patiently waited as she did so, cleaning himself up from the grease.
Then she put it on. “If this is an elaborate prank… Woah!”
“Meet Jimmy.”
She was swimming in the sea. She looked up, and she could see the hull of a ship matching Iuncus’ size. She looked down and raised her arms. They were robotic.
“My hands are orange. Do they come in other colours too?”
“Unfortunately, no, cause it needs to be visible. Jimmy is a deep-sea robotic drone with the full dexterity of a human. He basically looks like a friendly diver with seajets instead of legs. Stereoscopic vision, haptic feedback, low latency response, the operator can do things as if he was there himself under the water.”
She moved her arms around, scaring some fish away. She took the VR helmet off. “Again, temp here. I don’t know how to work this thing.” She put her mouth inside the helmet and whispered, “Sorry, Jimmy.”
“Oh yes you do. You have a high ACA.”
“Of course, right. I get complimented for that all the time,” Delphine said flicking her hair.
“Asterism Control Aptitude. Means you can control these alien machines with finesse.”
“Oh, so that’s what that weird machine thingy was during those interviews!”
“Yup. Now, take a swim.”
She paused. “But I don’t have my bathing suit.”
“Inside Jimmy. Take control of him and take a swim.” The captain pointed at the makeshift VR control unit.
She put on the helmet and took a virtual dive. She had to admit to herself that this was kinda fun.
“Play with it for a while, get the hang of it.”
She did. There was an umbilical cord, but other than that she had complete freedom to spin around in every direction. The seadrone wasn’t that fast, but it made up for that in dexterity and making you feel like you were there.
“Niiice,” the captain said. She realised that immersed in VR she had spun around. “Now take it all the way down.”
She gulped. It was so real, felt like taking the plunge herself. “How deep?”
“All the way to the bottom, right where the treasure is,” the captain said and popped a beer open.
Chapter 2
It took about half an hour. You’d think the dive would be boring, but Delphine was enthralled. There was everything down there, floating seaweed, schools of fish making iridescent patterns from the sun above. The sun himself pierced the depths with his rays but eventually even he, lost. Light blue colours became darker and darker, but there were still things to see. At one point she yelped cause a gigantic lump of… something swam right next to her.
Must have been a whale. She felt the backwash push her around. She only knew which way was up from the instruments glowing on her field of view.
The captain was outside, making sure the umbilical unwound properly from a huge reel.
Quite a bit after that, she saw the first cliffs, peeking from the abyss below. Jimmy had very sensitive cameras and a powerful LED panel so she -it- could see. But the water just swallowed it all after a few metres. The cliffs were rough, full of life themselves in every nook and cranny.
“Take him down over there,” the captain said, and she saw more indications on her field of view.
“All right,” she said and dove into the darkness.
Something shone in the mud.
“Yes!” the captain said.
“What is it?” Delphine’s heart drummed faster.
“I was so right, wasn’t I? Come on, get closer, carefully.”
She did. In fact, at that moment, nothing could pry her away from it. “It’s a spaceship, isn’t it?”
“That she is,” the captain said in a naughty tone.
“How do I get in there?” Delphine bit her lip.
“Excited are we? Right on! Take a look around so that we might figure out where the bow is.”
She swam in a circle around the sunken spaceship. It was damaged, but not as much as one would expect after a crash landing. The surface was like a mirror. She took a sudden glance of her face and was terrified for a moment. An orange head with dead eyes stared back at her. Silly Delphine, it was so easy to forget she wasn’t really down there.
She shook her head. Jimmy shook his too.
The captain tapped furiously on a keyboard and sucked through his teeth. “Okay, this must be how it sank. Seems to be at a thirty degree angle down portside. So this…” he tapped, and an indication showed up, “is your point of entry.”
“Okay!” Delphine swam towards it. She wiped some mud gently, then remembered that the thing was made for space travel and it wasn’t gonna break any more so she just pushed entire handfuls away.
She raised her palms up. Jimmy did the same. “Now what? I don’t see any handles.”
“Now, you’ll feel something weird, don’t be alarmed, okay? I’m gonna link your ACA to the seadrone.”
“How?” Delphine asked and began to remove her helmet.
“No, don’t take it off!” he stopped her. “Trust me, it’s no big deal. I don’t understand this scientific crap myself, but we’ll just fool the ship for a second to think that you’re down there and wanna get inside.”
“By linking my ACA.”
“Exactly. It’s like matching your brainwave patterns and emitting it through Jimmy.”
“Okay.” Delphine shrugged. Jimmy shrugged too.
The captain hit a few keystrokes. “Doing it. Remember, you’re perfectly safe on the boat, okay? Nothing can happen to you.”
“Nothing is happening,” she said impatiently.
Then she felt immense pressure crushing her lungs and freezing cold numbing her limbs.
Chapter 3
She panicked.
“Don’t panic!”
She panicked some more. Her scream was so ear-piercing, that the captain covered his ears and grunted in pain.
“What’s happening to me? What- No, I’m drowning, no!”
He spoke calmly and clearly. “Just breathe and air will fill your lungs, you’re not underwater.”
“I’m underwater,” she said trembling from the cold.
He shook her by the shoulders. “You are not. It feels like that, but you’re perfectly safe up on the Iuncus, remember? I got you, nothing will happen to you.”
She relaxed a bit and hesitated. She was certain she was about to breathe in the murky waters of the ocean floor. She took a much-needed breath, just a shallow taste, then some more.
Oxygen had never felt so good before in her life.
She composed herself and straightened her back. “What the fuck did you do to me?”
“As I said, I linked your ACA with the seadrone’s. Now you can operate the ship.”
“How the fuck is that possible?”
“Al-”
She interrupted. “Alien tech. Naturally.” She sniffed and cracked her knuckles.
“Feeling okay?”
“I’m fine. Let’s steal this thing.”
Chapter 4
She was no longer controlling the seadrone. She was down there, swimming. The currents gently pushed her around, the mud stuck in her belly as she leaned forward.
She touched the alien spaceship and an interface panel glowed. The shiny surface turned yellow, and she tapped a button.
The ship’s door opened. She braced on the frame, but there was less water rushing in than what she expected from this size.
“Must have been a hull breach, there was just a small pocket of air.” The captain had let go of her and was tapping on his computer, seeing through her eyes.
She looked up, and the bubbles were indeed rushing upwards, vanishing in an instant.
She pushed herself inside.
The ship felt… normal. Door dimensions, seats in the main area, a couple of glasses swimming around.
“This doesn’t feel as alien as I thought,” she said, exploring the interior. “Well, if you ignore all the water, I mean.”
“You haven’t been off-world, have you?” he said.
“No,” she said defensively. “Have you?”
He pfted. “No. I’ve travelled the globe, but off-world. Nah. Anyway, my point was that these Asterism people, these aliens we’ve been dealing with? They are panhuman.”
“Heard of that before. Slight variations on the human form. Two arms, two legs, two eyes, two sexes.”
“Right.”
“I read,” she shrugged. She touched a device that looked a lot like a microwave. Sleek and spacey and surviving a crash from orbit to the bottom of the ocean, but a microwave. “This is a luxury yacht, isn’t it?”
“Precisely. The details of why it was trashed are sketchy at best, but what we know is that it was a diplomat’s ship. You can see that these guys travel in style.”
She touched the surfaces. Yes, now it made sense. They were practically destroyed by the water, but these were soft couches, that was expensive-looking furniture and those…
She lifted one with the tips of her fingers.
“Oh dear.”
She turned red. Or orange. Or a darker shade of orange.
The captain chuckled. “The man sure liked to party. Those are definitely gadgets for threesomes.”
She let the sex toy go. It floated gently to the floor, disturbing a puff of silt as it rested. Delphine unconsciously wiped her hand on her t-shirt and looked around.
She started tapping on the walls. “What are we looking for exactly,” she breathed out in a murmur.
“Pretty and clever, I like it. We are looking for the safe that contained the diplomatic pouch.”
She went on tapping the walls, making her way into other compartments.
“And what’s in it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“I honestly don’t know,” the captain said sincerely.
“Bullshit. You don’t come all the way in the middle of fucking nowhere, down the bottom of the sea to look around in a glorified fuck pad, to look for something that might not be worth a lot.”
“Are you negotiating for a bigger cut?”
“I’m just asking so that I know what to look for. I’m the one down here.”
He sucked air through his teeth. “Technically…”
“Yeah, I know. But it sure feels like it. Brr.” She rubbed her shoulders, it was freezing. She kept waiting for visible exhalation to come out of her mouth, but of course it never did.
So weird, this whole experience.
Chapter 5
“Found it!” she yelped, hopping in place.
“Really? Show me.”
Delphine tapped the surface, and a hidden compartment appeared, the wall sliding back. It wasn’t that big, but it was enough for a safe. Delphine expected something alien, but it indeed looked like a safe, a heavy, thick box made of metal and a keypad that waited patiently for a code.
“Right. So, here are some codes you can try. I’ve got everything, birthdates, pet names, the lot,” the captain said, and the codes scrolled through her eyes.
Delphine tried one after another. “You came prepared.”
“Hon, I make this job look easy, but it ain’t.”
She wanted to give him an angry stare for that chauvinistic attitude but she couldn’t even see him. She was completely immersed into Jimmy now, cold fingers tapping codes to crack a safe two miles under the ocean.
Nuts.
How did she even get in this mess?
Oh, right. Unemployment.
Silly girl.
She finished the entire list of probable codes. “Now what?”
“Argh. Hang on, I think I can find some more combinations.”
He gave her another list, this time with more numbers appended, combinations, reversals.
She patiently tried them all, going through the list one by one. She began losing patience, but it wasn’t like there was something else for her to do.
Other than sunbathe, maybe? But that would give the captain ideas. And she was 30 hours of straight boating away from anyone.
Beep.
The safe popped open. She was stunned for a moment, trying to realise what had just happened.
“Yes!” the captain exclaimed.
She laughed in excitement.
Then the spaceship’s door shut, and the umbilical fell drowsily on the floor, sealing her in darkness.
Chapter 6
This time, she didn’t panic. Just take the helmet off. Just move your fingers and find the straps and unclasp the damned things and take the fucking virtual reality helmet off.
Her freezing fingers touched nothing but neck.
Impossible.
Frantically, she searched for the helmet on her head. Sure, the damned thing was weighed properly to make you feel it wasn’t there, but you had to feel something.
Right?
Right? Tell me I’m right.
Now she panicked.
Suddenly she heard rushing sounds a
nd her body slammed on the floor. It took her a few seconds to realise that the room was draining the water away.
But she was still inside Jimmy. That shouldn’t happen. She should have been back on the boat, safe.
The last of the water vanished, and she fell down like an invalid. No legs. Her seajets whizzed angrily, but they did nothing on air.
The lights came on, they blinded her and she covered her face.
The room was ruined but mostly fine. She could see the umbilical running out of her butt towards the external hatch. She pulled it and there was plenty of slack. The torn off edge bled greenish fluid and sparks.
She dragged her body on the floor, grabbing on with her hands anyway she could.
“Who are you?” a voice said out of nowhere.
She looked around. “I-I’m Delphine.”
“Nice to meet you, Delphine,” the voice said softly.
“Uh… Hi. And who are you?”
“I’m the ship’s Mind.”
“An AI?”
“Much more advanced than that, but yes, that definition will suffice for now.”
She propped her back on the wall and her eyes darted around. “Do you have a name?”
“Of course I do. I’m the diplomatic ship ‘Here Are Some Shiny Beads.’”
“Seriously?” she said, finding it hard to believe. “Can I call you Shiny Beads?”
“You can.”
She waved the edge of the umbilical around. She bit her lip but didn’t actually get there. “You turned on the power, yes?”
“I did.”
“You trapped me in here in doing so, do you know that?”
“I know it now. Unfortunately, you triggered the alarm, and the automatics kicked in. When I regained consciousness your umbilical was already cut and there was not much to do at that point.”
“So… You’re saying you’re sorry.”
“I am.”
She nodded. “Okay, I forgive you. Now let me go.”
“I cannot do that, Delphine.”
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