And absolutely, undeniably, lethal.
While he was sitting here in an overstressed tin can with no weapons, and no means of propulsion… Surrounded, outnumbered, and quite literally out of his depth.
Now I know what a fishing lure feels like. If they all decided to come for us at once…
It didn’t bear thinking about.
“Hey,” he said to Balentine, hoping to lighten the mood, “this is your first negotiation underneath half a mile of water, right?”
“Correct,” Balentine nodded.
“Well hey. No pressure.”
16
The nestships either side of the shuttle eased them down onto the rocky ledge.
From this angle, directly in front of it, the twisted architecture of the palace skewed off in all directions like a game of pick-up sticks on a megalithic-scale.
“We will exit via the dorsal airlock,” Kreon told them. “Take the additional air tanks, one apiece. The Empress claims to be providing us with pressure-mitigating ‘bladders’.”
Jokes about incontinence flashed through Tris’ mind, but he managed to keep them from reaching his tongue. His shared experience with the Empress had left him feeling oddly distant, as though matters of life — and specifically death — no longer seemed as important.
“Stay with me, sweetie,” Ella told him, rapping him on the side of the helmet as she climbed out of the pilot’s seat. “I promised your mum I’d keep you safe, remember?”
Tris winced as he caught Kreon’s expression. The comms were locked open, as ordered; he’d just discovered something far worse than death.
Kreon cycled the external door of the airlock, and they watched on a monitor as a large Siszar — that had to be the Empress — pushed a translucent white oval in through the hatch. Tris was surprised to see her out of her ship, but of course the water wouldn’t bother her. The depth must also not be a problem for her species, but Tris knew it would squish him like a grape, armoured suit or no. Hence the strange objects the Empress had gathered for them, and was still feeding into the airlock one at a time.
When she was done, Kreon shut the outer door. After a minute he opened the inner one, and they got their first look at their new outfits. Gelatinous ovoids, they resembled elongated eggs of a semi-transparent, jelly-like material. Following mental prompts from the Empress, Tris found a slit in the side of one and wormed his way inside.
The jelly fought him, pushing back and making him work until the last minute. When everything above knee-height was inside, something displaced and he was sucked the rest of the way in. He found that the stuff held him firmly; he could move, but only with a lot of effort. He could also see through it, albeit with a slight haze as though looking through fog. Currently he was being treated to a glorious view of the deck on which he was lying. Sweating and panting with the effort, he was glad Kreon had advised him to bring a spare oxygen tank.
“Anyone know how we’re meant to move in these things?” he asked.
Kreon’s breathing was also laboured, suggesting he was struggling into his own bladder. “Once we are all encapsulated, I will trigger the airlock with my transponder. From that point on, the Empress will have to provide our means of locomotion.”
A muttered swear word or four came from Lord Balentine, as he fought his way into his bladder. Tris didn’t need to check on Ella; he knew she’d have no trouble. Not that he could have checked on her, even if he’d wanted to. Now that he’d started to relax, the gel had tightened around him. He could barely move his fingers, much less try to stand up.
“Damn it,” he said, aware of the open comms. “Now I’ve got an itchy nose. I knew this would happen!”
“Yes of course,” Balentine agreed. “It’s a well-known side-effect of being immobilised by alien goo at the bottom of an ocean.”
The airlock triggered with an audible hiss, and water came flooding into the chamber. The bladders were buffeted around, bouncing off each other as the level rose; it would have been fun, were it not for the spectre of an agonising death by compression.
When the hatch opened fully, the Empress was there waiting for them. Towering next to her was her consort, a brute that looked more than capable of tearing her to bits. Tris knew otherwise, though; as she had often told him, women were both strong and clever.
Reaching in, the two Siszar pulled the four bladders full of humans out of the ship, and started pushing them towards the palace. It was a smooth ride, as the strange eggs floated gently, nudged on every so often by a spare Siszar tentacle.
The Empress was controlling Kreon as well as Tris. These things are amazing! he told her.
They are used for transporting fragile items up or down the water column, she explained. As far as I am aware, this is the first time they have been used for live cargo.
Tris decided not to let that admission worry him. They were in her world now; literally anything around here could prove fatal, so he had to trust her judgement. I like them, he sent, though the full-body restraint was more than a bit unnerving.
As with most of our products, they are harvested locally.
They’re, um, not actually bladders though, are they? he asked.
No. That is simply an analogy, relating them to pressure-regulating systems in other organisms.
Ah! Phew.
In fact, they are formed from the reproductive organs of a particularly large marine animal.
Oh. Tris stuck his tongue out. Bollocks.
The ground they passed over was a mixture of rock and deep green moss, with occasional fronds like heather sticking up to sway slowly in the current. No other Siszar could be seen outside the palace, though shadows from the nestships passing above dimmed the low light even further. The Empress had brought more of her followers down than he’d realised, though without being able to turn his head he could do no more than guess at their numbers.
As they grew closer to the palace, the surface that had looked smooth at a distance revealed itself to be knobbly and pitted, layer upon layer of a dull grey material applied so haphazardly that no two bits looked alike. It almost reminded him of coral, but that always looked hollow and porous whereas this seemed solid and dense. Like coral-based concrete perhaps?
In any case, the palace was enormous. He saw no sign of any windows, but guessed it had to have an entrance at ground level.
He was wrong.
As they came within spitting distance of the closest spire, the Empress prodded his cocoon from below, sending him drifting upwards. He couldn’t look behind himself to see the odd procession they made, but he could feel her following him, keeping Kreon floating in tandem. Like some kind of aquatic theme park ride, they drifted along within reach of the structure’s surface, which Tris could now see more detail of. Bits of it stuck out at random, too thick to be called spikes. It wasn’t until they reached the top layer, and he spotted five interconnected spikes draped at an angle, that he realised. It’s made of bones! Skeletons. Of dead Siszar, I mean.
Nestships too, the Empress confirmed. The dead drift down to the sea bed, where we harvest their remains for our palaces. Millions of my people contributed their corpses to this dwelling. She turned wistful. It is the way of us all, eventually.
Tris was hard pushed to come up with an answer to that. We… put our dead in boxes. And bury them in the ground.
What a waste! she roared. And you don’t even eat them first! Your kind is so alien to me.
Tris couldn’t help thinking that the feeling was mutual.
A few minutes later they came to float above a shallow crater, where the bone-crete was smoother and pock-marked with odd brown blotches like giant freckles. The Empress shoved them down towards one of the marks, and pressed Tris up against it face-first. For a second he thought she was stashing him away down here because a fight was brewing — but then the soft brown material puckered up without warning, swallowing him whole.
Tris might have screamed.
A tiny hole opened up, sucking
him in and squashing the sack of jelly around him through an opening less than half its size. Instinctively he pulled his arms in, finding the goop much more flexible as it squidged through a short, constrictive tunnel. A second later he was squirted out into the Siszar palace as though the walls were giving birth to him.
A scream seemed appropriate, under the circumstances.
Thankfully none of the others mentioned anything about it as they emerged, squeezed out one at a time through what Tris could only think of as a giant sphincter.
The Empress squirmed through next, in a motion that seemed entirely natural; her consort dropped from another such hole a short distance away, and was immediately followed by several more of his kind.
My followers, the Empress explained. They have come to offer moral support.
Oh! That’s nice of them.
None have ever seen an Elder in the flesh. It is an intoxicating proposition, and well worth the risk.
Tris decided not to ask her about the risk.
Still immersed in water, their jelly-sacks floated down a wide, cylindrical corridor. The inner surface of the palace looked smooth, and glistened purple in places. Light came from all around; phosphorescence in the water, Tris realised, growing brighter around every swish of Siszar limbs. The corridor — more like a tube, actually — twisted and turned as it went, growing narrower in some places, but never less than twenty feet across.
It’s like an intestinal tract, Tris thought, moving his eyes because he couldn’t move his head. Like we’ve been swallowed by some insanely massive sea monster and are slithering down into its gut.
So when they reached a wide, smooth-sided cavern, it looked enough like a stomach to make the comparison complete.
Here, he saw the first Siszar that had not come down from space with them. Dozens of the aliens moved this way and that, powerful contractions of all five arms propelling them gracefully through the water. Their colours varied enormously, from the mottled green of the Empress to much brighter orange hues and much duller greyish browns. Subtle patterns of spots or stripes ran up and down some of their limbs, and more than a few bristled with spines that looked as lethal as knife-blades. Tris gazed around wide-eyed, struggling to take it all in. In return, many of the Siszar paused to look, or adjusted their trajectory to arc around behind Tris and his group. He risked reaching out with the Gift and found more minds than he could begin to count, clustering around them on all sides. Without the Empress’s connection he couldn’t make out their thoughts, but there was no denying the two overriding emotions, wafting through the water like the scent of blood.
A keen, almost predatory interest…
And hunger.
A flurry of mental activity behind them caught his attention, and he sensed the Empress turning her mind to observe. Were they under attack? Tris wished he could move — he felt so vulnerable like this, in spite of the protective jelly. Like a big piñata, hanging up in mid-air for anyone to take a swing at. His hands itched to hold his glaive — not that his weapons would be of much use in this kind of environment.
What is it? he asked the Empress. A fight?
Several, she confirmed.
Are we in danger?
She scoffed. Not yet. The males here seek to test their strength against some of my followers.
Shit! Will our guys win?
Some will. The group will be better off either way. I have no room for weaklings in my entourage.
Paying no more attention to the fracas behind them, the Empress prodded them onwards.
Tris tried to ignore the images flashing through his mind, of the carnage the Siszar inflicted back on the Vanguard.
And that was only the young ones…
Somehow, he didn’t think juveniles would survive long in a place like this.
In the bowl-like base of the cavern they found another tube opening, and drifted down through it. This time as they went, Tris could feel the press of alien minds prowling after them.
“Into the belly of the beast,” murmured Balentine, suggesting he’d made exactly the same comparison.
“We’ve been going a while,” Tris replied, more to dispel the unnerving quiet than for any need of an answer. “Are we there yet?”
They passed through a number of smaller, rounder chambers, off which many tube mouths yawned. The Empress pressed unerringly on, not even pausing to check the direction. It all looked the same to Tris; he hoped to hell they’d never have to escape from this place, because he’d been lost within five minutes of arriving. He considered reaching out with the Gift, to see if that subtle web of energy permeated this place too. Maybe that’s how the Empress is finding her way? But even thinking about it brought his mind back to the swarm of Siszar behind them.
It was growing larger with every chamber they passed through.
As they descended through a wider cavern, the phosphorescence dwindled with their lack of movement. The place was even scarier in the semi-darkness, and Tris closed his eyes for long seconds to help them adjust. In the deepest recess they passed, he could make out the occasional alien by a soft glow coming from the creatures themselves.
Bioluminescence? These guys have got every trick in the book.
He half-expected the Empress to weigh in on that, but it was her consort that battered into his mind. WE ARE SUPERIOR IN EVERY WAY!
Huh. Stress was finally starting to weigh on Tris, but still he couldn’t help himself. You’re modest, too.
I AM FAMED FOR MODESTY! The consort replied. NONE WHO LIVE ARE MORE MODEST THAN I!
It should have been funny, but Tris was suddenly sick to his stomach with fear. He hadn’t bargained for this; in his mind, the meeting with this Elder had been conducted in a grand stone hall like the Wardens had on Atalia. He should have known better of course, but this endless labyrinth of unmarked tunnels was the stuff of nightmares. And that was before he took into account the horde of murderous aliens following them, or the spectre of the being they were going to meet.
No wonder Dad wanted me to be a teacher.
When they reached a small, almost spherical grotto, with walls like burnished mother-of-pearl, he knew they were getting close. Only one tunnel mouth could be seen, and it was screened by waving fronds of some iridescent plant that grew all around it. The water here was still, and so clear he could see every sparkle as he drifted forward. His suit, designed for space, was keeping him warm, but he felt sure the temperature of the water had dropped several degrees.
She is used to hunting the depths, the Empress agreed. Warmth breeds laziness in our kind, or so we say.
So she is here?
She is in the next chamber. We have been invited in.
Ha! Said the spider to the fly…
Tris sensed her exasperation. If you imagine yourself to be prey, you cannot expect others to think differently.
Fair enough. He decided to take that under advisement.
“Tristan.” It was Kreon’s voice coming through the comm, stern as ever. “The Empress has informed me that the Elder may prefer to communicate with you. If she expresses this desire, I will abide by it; please think carefully before you disclose anything that may cost us our lives.”
“Hello? I am still here you know,” a slightly-irked Lord Balentine put in. “The peace negotiations should go through me.”
“I fear that may prove impossible,” Kreon said. “Unless you’ve developed a talent for the Gift in recent years.”
“What?” Balentine spluttered. “You mean to say, this whole deal is going to be conducted in your minds?”
“My apologies, old friend. Had it occurred to me soon enough, I could have furnished you with my Kharash gem. However, it took many years of painstaking effort before I learned to use it.”
“So I’ve come all this way— And I’m down here, surrounded by—” he broke off with a muttered curse.
Tris was groping for something conciliatory to say, when two shadows detached themselves from the far wall. Spreading their l
imbs, a pair of enormous Siszar swept towards them. Tris braced for impact, but they both pulled up just short of a collision, their mighty beaks clacking.
Door guards? he hazarded.
But the Empress was too occupied to answer him. She moved out from behind him, and one of the aliens turned to match her movement. The other mirrored the action, twisting in the opposite direction…
And in a blur of motion, the Empress’s consort slammed into him.
The two aliens pinwheeled across the cavern, thrashing and biting. Tris looked on in horror as the opposing Siszar, recognisable by his size advantage and more reddish colouring, wrapped the consort in a deadly bear hug. He managed to break free, dealing his opponent a heavy blow, and they circled each other warily, limbs twitching. This time the larger male attacked, all five limbs swinging in like sledgehammers. The consort disappeared from view, but emerged again behind his attacker, a plume of black liquid streaming away from him like ink.
The larger alien was on him so quickly it was hard to follow. They threw themselves at each other, clashing and retreating over and over, until the water around them grew hazy with blood.
The Empress watched it all with interest, but made no move to help. Tris wanted to scream at her to do something, but he knew it would make no difference. And if the Empress were to get herself killed like this…
Things would go downhill pretty rapidly.
The consort dived away again, this time fleeing from the larger alien. But he was also slower, and the other caught him easily. All five arms swung in again, like a mighty hand reaching out to crush the life from him. But at the last moment he flipped his arms up and dived, swinging around underneath his opponent to come up on his back. The consort climbed his opponent like a ladder, driving his great beak into the scaly flesh and tearing huge gouges in him. The big alien began to tremble, his limbs going stiff as something vital was severed — and the Empress’s consort, twining his great arms around his opponents’, tore the giant alien clear in half.
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