Opal stared at the cart for a few moments. The loud vibration from the wall-embedded pipe made her nervous. She tried to drag this cart out of the way too, but it wouldn’t budge. The wheels seemed locked in place, or even stuck to the ground. She climbed over the obstacle instead. It didn’t move.
She looked behind, in case it was meant to be a distraction. Just pale walls stretching to the shadow beyond the silverlight.
“So, what’s the plan?” she asked, tired of them both adopting the silent treatment, and wanting to cover up the ominous thrumming sounds with human words.
“I decided it is best if you continue towards the bridge. Perhaps when you are near the fore of the ship you could have a conference with myself and VigMAX. He has agreed to share information with you directly, and answer your questions. If he can convince us of what he claims then we will judge things at that point.”
There were more greenish pipes in the wall now, but still mostly embedded. They resembled varicose veins.
“You know he’ll lie, right?”
“I do not know that, but I will consider it. My main evidence will be your biological reactions to the evidence and the discussion.”
“Of course. Use this damn suit as a lie detector machine.”
“Nothing so blunt. I know your training enables you to subvert such primitive tools.”
“What, then?”
“It is best if I do not reveal that yet.”
A heavy pipe – the green tarnished enough to look like patches of moss – was embedded into the walls on both sides and crossed the passage at an angle. Opal ducked under it.
“And is the assassin going to play along with this temporary truce too?”
“Unfortunately, that is unlikely. There is no communication between VigMAX and Xandrie.”
“I call bullshit.”
“Apparently they suspected I would have the ability to intercept, block and impersonate their communications and use that ability to entrap them. They overestimate me, but their caution is admirable. Xandrie will continue with her mission independently until she communicates with VigMAX via some undisclosed signal.”
Another pipe, lower down and at a shallower angle. Opal stepped over this one.
“VigMAX could be lying.”
“Yes.”
Yet another pipe, vertical floor-to-ceiling this time, and more beyond that. She weaved her way through them. She scanned them in infrared, and they showed higher-then-ambient signatures as they glowed in the red wavelengths.
“Either way, I’ve probably still got a deadly assassin tracking me.”
“That is likely. There is a possible light on the horizon though. When I disabled the hidden trackers in your warsuits I stored ways to replicate and alter them, in case that came in useful. With access to computerised networks I can create fake pings for your location, but since the assassin seems to be using no two-way communication there’s no way to fake your location via software. However, the assassin presumably has access to the details of the disabled trackers, and would be alerted to any real signals via passive scanning. I’ve worked out how to prime a grenade to act as a signal device, which will replicate the trackers that used to be in your suit. I can create one at your request and have added it to the menu of options. It may be useful for throwing the assassin off your trail at some point, if that becomes a necessity.”
By now the passage was so crowded with criss-crossing green pipes of varying thicknesses that Opal had to contort her body to fit between some of the gaps. Even then, she had to crawl through a hole that became a short tunnel. She reached the end, held a high pipe and lowered herself to the ground. The corridor looked empty ahead.
Something made a rumbling sound behind her. She spun, extending her nanoblades, but it was clear that the sound had been the pipes moving, sliding, and the hole disappeared, the way back gone. Just an impregnable web of tightly interconnected metal, almost like some kind of puzzle. And when she faced away from it she realised the floor was different – it was now a thick wire mesh again, above a wide pool of liquid that extended under all the floor space she could see. Solid ground was an illusion that was always being stripped away from her.
The liquid began to move.
Grappling
< 30 >
“THAT ISN’T A SHALLOW channel,” said Athene. “It seems to extend deeply, as if we were above the grinder’s putrefaction tank again.”
“Oh great.” Opal watched the surface warily. The disgusting fluids pulsed and rippled, occasionally rising enough to flood through the holes in the grille before draining away again.
“And the disturbance is caused by things moving below the surface.”
“What kind of things?” Opal asked, keeping her eyes on the orange-tinted liquid underfoot.
“The shapes are hard to discern but resemble what you swam away from last time. The large squid-like organisms in the flooded tank.”
Estimated positions and neonised outlines now expanded beneath her feet as Athene tried to visualise the data and overlay it on the HUD.
One of them passed just beneath the surface, creating a wake that flooded the corridor just ahead before sluicing away and leaving a sticky yellow residue. The grille seemed sturdy enough, but Opal didn’t want to trust her life to words like seem. Who knew how strong those beings were? And yet, the only way onwards was to walk this pulsing corridor above a sea of gore.
She watched one of the outlines, tracking its passage. It rose nearer to the surface. And then ... it seemed to rotate and extend upwards. Long, strangely-jointed translucent limbs extended through the grille. Within each clear limb were pulses and lines, moving and overlapping patterns like primitive fireworks of colour bursting and fading before the next began, in shades of green and orange. The limbs rippled in the air, extending to half the height of the corridor, like thick-stemmed aquatic plants undulating in the current. But what fascinated Opal more than the hypnotic patterns (which she avoided looking too closely at, in case they really were hypnotic patterns) was the fact that the translucent extrusions passed through the metal grille as if it wasn’t there, shifting not just in the holes but across the jointed parts without seeming to be impeded. Were the limbs insubstantial? Liquid-based? An illusion?
She pointed it out to Athene. And when Opal glanced towards another of the aquatic shapes, trying to work out if it was more like a bundle of bodiless crab legs, or a pulsing spider crossed with a hairy jellyfish, that too rose to the surface and expanded limbs upwards, feeling the air and swaying.
“They seem to be detecting the silverlight,” Athene said. “I think that’s why they’re rising as you look at them.”
Of course. Opal used her eye controls to disable the silverlight, unwilling to ask Athene to do anything she could do herself. But she wasn’t plunged into darkness as she’d expected. The tentacles – or spines, or whatever they were – glowed. Or rather, pulsing neon-like starburst patterns within the radial canals gave off phosphorescent light, illuminating the corridor so that the walls shimmered with oranges and greens like a Zoneout Dreamscape room in a backworld tenement.
“Any way to assess the danger element of these? If they aren’t properly physical, maybe I can just walk through them.”
“My scans show some level of physical presence, enough to bounce back scanning echo emissions. So what you see is real. Though the parts of them still below the surface definitely have greater solidity. They seem to alter their molecular density at will, using it to reach through the metallic floorway. The parts you see in front of you may be able to switch back to high-density limbs capable of harm. I also cannot rule out the possibility of them being able to phase through the EW suit in some way, perhaps shifting to matter-damaging densities within your flesh.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“I have consulted VigMAX, but his suggestion is to use weapons to blow up the limbs.”
“Yeah, right. Typical male. In my experience that just makes t
he things on Lost Ships angrier. Plus it might blow holes in the floor and drop me into that massive tank of liquid with them. But it does give me an idea. I want a non-active grenade.”
Seconds later she swiped it from the release pod at her waist and threw it underarm down the corridor. It clanged off the walkway and rolled past some of the swaying limbs without them seeming to detect it. It was larger than the grille’s holes so didn’t fall through. The metal disc slowed, then spiralled on an edge faster and lower until it finally sat still.
They appeared to pay no attention to the noise or movement. They might have other senses, but perhaps if she moved slowly between the gelatinous extensions she could get to the other end of the corridor without them noticing. Maybe they wouldn’t bother her anyway. She couldn’t assume human motivations or aggressive reactions. What had seemed like a potential danger may well just be a distraction that was keeping her still while the real human danger was tracking her and getting closer by the moment. She didn’t think she’d survive a second encounter with the assassin.
She took a few steps and then another wash of the liquid flooded up through the flooring just ahead of her. And when it spilled around the defused grenade the limbs nearest to it went into a sudden frenzy; one of them snatched the small disc and retracted back through the flooring, tearing a hole in the metal as it did so. The grenade was gone. Opal froze.
The liquid filtered back through the mesh but the limbs of these weird, giant inverted jellyfish-arachnids still lashed around frantically as if searching for something. They could extend and contract to alter their reach, and they whiplashed off the walls with resoundingly heavy whacks. She took a step back again, glancing nervously at her feet in case the liquid pulsed up there, too. Maybe it was only a matter of luck that it hadn’t already; maybe it was a matter of time. Neither was good. Her back thumped into the wall of interwoven pipes, and she could retreat no further.
“Yes, I saw that,” said Athene. “Maybe the liquid is an extension of their nervous or sensing systems; or maybe the liquid is sentient and what we see as creatures are actually sense and manipulation organs. We may not even be talking about single creatures. Their structure has vague similarities to zooids, connected by a central stem: a colony of multiple beings living and functioning as one. They can obviously alter corporeality and have tremendous strength, and anything in contact with the liquid triggers a response. Even silverlight wavelengths seem to be detectable by them.”
“So I could walk across as long as I avoid the waving tentacles and no liquid comes through in the area I’m walking.”
“Correct.”
Opal watched the limbs as their thrashing became less frenzied. There were so many of them, most as thick as her arm. Maybe if they were still, and she took her time, she could pass them without touching. But that increased the chances of another gooey pulse flooding up through the mesh.
“Not doable,” she said, after observing the frequency with which the red liquids spilled through the flooring.
“I agree. Walking would be too slow. But if you sprinted, and I helped with calculating a route ...”
“I still wouldn’t get far. The walkway goes beyond what I can see, so who knows how long it continues for?”
“There are a lot of risks.”
“Good job I’m resourceful.”
Opal unslung her trusty grapple gun. It looked like it was time for its final outing. She knelt and aimed upwards at the ceiling, so as to get the best penetration angle.
“Can you overlay cable length on my display? I’ll need to go for maximum range, but with a metre or so remaining.”
Immediately her view included a red laser-like line extending from the end of the grapple gun. When it aimed down the corridor it was just a thin line but where it intersected with wall or ceiling it glowed, and included a pulsing ball at the connection point. She adjusted it until she was aiming at the furthest reach. She waited until the limbs of the creatures, which she nicknamed Tentaculats, weren’t swaying into her firing line, then she pulled the trigger.
The grapple’s head streaked out and upwards, trailing the line; it punctured the ceiling and extended its hooks and adhesive gel, which hardened immediately to provide a secure anchor point. Opal turned and faced the tangle of pipes. A few stood apart from the others. She wrapped the rifle around one a couple of times, then jammed it into a cross-section where it locked into place. When she yanked on the cable it was taut, and sloped gradually upwards from the place where the rifle was wedged.
“If I detect movement near you, I’ll flash a warning and electrify the suit surface,” said Athene. “It may help.”
“Keep your fingers crossed.”
“Fingers and toes.”
Opal grabbed the cable in both hands and swung her legs up, wrapping them tightly around the super-tensile wire. She pulled her body in close and squeezed tight. The line was rock solid. Below her the ground swelled red for a second. She’d got off the floor just in time.
She climbed along the wire, stretch and contract, moving head first and dangling beneath it as the vibrant colours emanating from the swaying spines below her turned the corridor into an alien grotto of rippling reflections.
She could do this. If she kept her cool. Pictured the simple movements repeated, moving onwards half-metre by half-metre. That calm collectedness, she let it flow from her. It was so simple to imagine it welling out from her centre, reassuring all it came into contact with, preventing the Tentaculats from reaching up that bit higher and touching her, somehow passing through armour to sting internal organs and – no, not that thought, only comforting thoughts. Hand over hand, pull legs up behind, entwined and secure and sliding smoothly over the wire. The colours had been pretty. Focus on that, block out all else.
She remembered looking in shop windows with Clarissa, at things orphans couldn’t afford, wrapped up in gaudy papers that reflected the light, changed them to something magical in gold, and reds and greens, shininess meant nice things to a child, hand over hand, that’s all. She closed her eyes and kept the rhythm of it. Her body knew what to do. Let the serenity move it, nothing to attract attention, no ragged breathing, no jerky movements, no fear ... the game of playing dead to avoid detection. The game of playing dead to win.
And that’s when she noticed the tentacle twisting nearby, too close for comfort, but it wasn’t the proximity that jarred her from her thoughts: it was the fact that she still had her eyes closed.
Seeing
< 29 >
SHE STOPPED MOVING and opened her eyes, looked around. Everything was as it should be. She’d traversed over half the cable’s distance.
Then she closed her eyes again. The walls, her suit, the cable, that all disappeared – but she could still see the strangely-jointed tentacles in all their firework colours, and also the disconcerting shapes that extended from them, beneath the flooring. It was as if she was seeing an image made of dots of light, like a hologram projection. Even the liquid had a faint appearance as it flowed up when one of the creatures contracted and pulsed its way slug-like beneath the surface. Her spooky vision had a limited range, but it was enough to show even more of the creatures deeper down. Much more like an ocean of disgusting fluids than some shallow channel – the geometry of the place had changed, not even trying to imitate a standard ship layout. It was like what happened in dreams.
“What is the matter?” asked Athene. “Your eyes are closed and you have stopped, but I do not detect fear responses.”
Athene sounded concerned. Opal couldn’t help feeling bitterness despite that, after what they’d discussed earlier. There was still a reckoning to come on that score. But first things first.
“I’m not frightened. Just amazed. I’ve got my eyes closed and I can still see the tentacles. It’s kind of beautiful.”
“That is not possible,” said Athene. “But then again, few things here are, so I believe you. Please don’t get side-tracked, though.”
“Why?”
“There were no tentacles below this point when you started out. It’s as if they suspect something, or have a vague inkling of your presence. More of them are moving over from where you started. As such, I suggest you move faster.”
Another tentacle lashed near her back. She didn’t need telling twice, and continued to shuffle along her lifeline. Again, it was easier to do so with her eyes closed, since it removed distractions, let her focus on movement – her own, and that of the Tentaculats.
One of the limbs just ahead of her whipped in a frenzy, right across her path. She paused and waited until it calmed down again, before continuing her ascent.
She also paid attention to the locations of the creatures. Athene had been right. There were always at least a few in her proximity. Once she’d passed, they sank beneath the fluids and moved with muscular contractions to a point just ahead of her. She’d covered a distance of fifty metres and they were still performing that tag-team tracking, whilst she was running out of room to manoeuvre. The super-thin cable was now so close to the ceiling that it was difficult to keep her legs wrapped around it. But when she opened her eyes and looked ahead along the shimmering corridor, yet more creatures pulsed below the surface of the perforated walkway.
“Athene, any way to tell how long this corridor goes on for? I think I’m gonna have to hoof it.”
“Yes, you are at the end of your tether. Sorry, bad joke. EM echolocation pulses suggest the corridor ends about fifteen metres further on. I could boost the silverlight in that direction but I don’t want to attract attention to that point if you are going to make a run for it.”
“Agreed. And I can’t see many other options.” She looked down at the swaying spikes with their hypnotic internal fires. “I think I can dodge all the current tentacles, but it’s for nothing if any of that goo pulses up and they detect me. So timing is the key thing.”
Chasing Solace Page 11