by Craig Allen
Commander Wallace leaned in closer to the viewer. “Enhance it, Corporal.”
He zoomed in on the underwater shadow. The surface wavered and fluctuated, as if it were nothing but a river of black and gray.
“What—” Bodin began.
The black mass stopped moving. Its center darkened as a bulge formed in the water. For a moment, it remained motionless, and then the dark shadow burst forth from the water. In the next instant, the image showed only static.
“Were those local critters?” Monroe asked.
Wallace stared at the dead feed for a moment before speaking. “Did we successfully launch the bridge-sat?”
“Unknown, sir,” Forester said. “We were hit in the middle of deployment.”
“Were we attacked?” Walters asked. “Is that what happened?”
“Sure as hell felt like it to me,” Monroe said. “If that’s the case, sir, I don’t think we should head for the surface.”
Wallace nodded. “Whoever hit us might be still out there.”
“Must be the Spicans,” Forester said.
“The Spicans say they have located all known outposts of theirs,” Cody said. “There hasn’t been contact with lost garrisons for some years now.”
“If everyone believed that,” Wallace said, “then we wouldn’t have brought you here, Dr. Brenner.”
Cody could only nod. He had really hoped the trip would be little more than an interesting outing. He hoped it wasn’t the Spicans who had shot them down. Spicans would never accept humans as equals without the message designed by the Spican government—and that message could not be transmitted over traditional communication gear. The Spicans would need to link their nervous system directly to the specialized transmitter that still sat in Cody’s quarters. That meant the marines would have to wipe out any Spicans on the planet before they could learn that their governments were at peace.
The last contact with lost Spicans had been five years before, when a garrison had been found on Betelgeuse—closer to Earth than any other post. The encounter might have come to a firefight if the interpreter hadn’t managed to submit the message ahead of time. Once the Spicans had absorbed the message into their nervous system, they contacted their home world. Communication was the Spicans’ specialty, and the outpost received details across hundreds of light years in a matter of minutes. They processed the information over a minute or so. Then half of them committed suicide. The other half surrendered.
“Corporal,” Wallace said. “Try to find Lieutenant Kelly and Corporal Carson. Tell them to get here ASAP.”
“Comm system has been sketchy, sir,” Deveau said, “but I’ll do my best.” He shrunk the image to a more manageable size and began going through various views of the ship.
Wallace turned back to the ship schematic on the image in the center of the room. “Now, let’s see about getting out of here.”
“There are emergency jettison tubes on the aft side.” Forester zeroed in on the section near the tubes. “They should be…”
Thirty jettison tubes along that side of the Spinoza were each embedded about fifteen meters inside the ship. The crash, or maybe weapons fire, had damaged the main impellers, but overall, the section seemed intact. However, each and every jettison tube was red.
“What are the chances of repairing those, Chief?” Wallace asked.
Forester touched each section in the image to bring up details about damage to the tubes and the recommended repairs, but it all added up to the same thing. “None at all, sir.” The chief rubbed his chin as he stared at the damage report on the schematic. “From what I’m seeing here, they’re pretty much gone, along with the hoppers sitting inside of them. We’d need to replace them in dock.”
The hopper was a craft for dropping troops onto a planet. It was the only way they would be able to leave the ship without swimming.
“Gotta be another way.” Bodin snapped his fingers. “Hey, Chief, wasn’t there a busted hopper in the launch ball?”
“It was busted when we got it,” Forester said. “Some goofball on Luna got his paperwork mixed up and didn’t get around to fixing it. I had to work on it in transit.”
“But it’s working now?” Bodin asked.
“Yeah, we finished yesterday,” Walters said. “It’s locked down in the launch bay.”
“Looks like that’s our ticket out,” Monroe said.
“I’m afraid not,” Deveau said. “Look at this.” He brought up another monitor. Deveau enhanced the dark image to show the view outside Spinoza from an optical reader resting atop the ship, facing forward. Deveau adjusted the monitor so that a schematic lay on top of the first view. “The good news is that this is the door from the repair bay to the launch tube.” He traced his finger along the path, which was all in the green. “Here’s the bad news.” He zeroed in on the dark rock outside the ship, covering most of the port side. “From the damage to the rock and the ship, it looks like we hit the top of this giant boulder and slid down the side, sandwiching ourselves between this one”—he panned the view to the starboard side, which showed a similar rock formation—“and this one.”
“So we can’t get out?” Cody asked.
“You give up too easy, clue,” Bodin said. “We still got cutters, right?”
“Yeah, we got several of them,” Walters said then groaned. “Oh, shit.”
Forester smiled and put his hand on her shoulder. “Ready to go swimming?”
Chapter Three
“You got it?”
“When I see you on the monitor, I pressurize.” Cody pointed to the controls again. “When it’s pressurized, I hit this”—he pointed again—“and let you back in. No problem.”
“Good.” Alice put on her helmet. She twisted a small dial on the bottom of the helmet, and it snapped into place. The suit hissed as it pressurized, and she stepped into the airlock. A three-dimensional image appeared next to the console next to the airlock, showing Alice’s vital signs.
The door at the end of a corridor straddled the Spinoza’s main starboard impeller, extending directly from the engine room. It exited about halfway down the length of the impeller.
Forester joined her in the airlock. “Keep an eye on us at all times, okay, Doc?” He pointed to a second monitor, which showed the ship’s exterior where he and Alice would be working. “If there’s a problem, let the commander know.” He patted Cody on the shoulder and snapped his helmet into place. His life monitors popped up next to Alice’s.
Cody activated the door. It hummed closed. Once it clanged shut, he activated the lock. The door wheel spun three times and locked with another loud clang, followed by a hiss. He ran his fingers through the pressure controls. The airlock flooded in less than three seconds. When the outer door opened, Forester and Walters stepped outside.
On the monitor, Walters activated controls just inside the lock. Rungs leading to the top of the ship emerged from the hull. Only then did Cody notice they were holding hands. They tapped their helmets together, and then Cody’s controls indicated their comm system had clicked off. Whatever they said was for them alone. Their comms clicked back on, and they climbed onto the ladder.
Cody turned and jogged the length of the corridor back to the engine room. His legs ached in the higher gravity, but he pushed himself. The door shut behind him automatically after he’d stepped through.
In the engine room, Bodin and Deveau sat at one console, monitoring images of different parts of the ship. Cody sat at another console, where he could monitor Forester and Walters. Wallace and Monroe stood close by, looking over his shoulder.
After a moment, Wallace spoke. “Any sign of Kelly or Jim?”
“No, sir.” Bodin continued to scan his monitors. “We’ve got more flooded sections, and more optics are down.”
“How the hell can they be down?” Deveau scratched his chin for a moment and then turned to Bodin. “Keep an eye on things. I want to check something.”
Bodin glared at him. “If you insist, C
orporal.”
Deveau snapped his head around. He opened his mouth and then closed it again. He composed himself. “Sorry, Sergeant.” His grin seemed anything but sincere. “If you don’t mind?”
Bodin growled and waved him off. “Do what you gotta do.”
With that, Deveau activated another monitor, positioning it above the other monitors they had set up around them. Images flickered rapidly. After a few seconds, the view showed a corridor with a door at the end. The door opened slowly, and water leaked.
“What are you looking at, Corporal?” Wallace asked.
“It’s what we saw earlier, Commander.” Deveau nodded at the image before him. “I want to see whatever it was that took out that optic.”
Deveau fast-forwarded the recording to the point where it went to static. He paused it just before the screen went dark. The blurry image was hard to make out. Deveau manipulated the image, which became clear in seconds. What was not clear was exactly what “it” was.
Monroe leaned over Deveau’s shoulder. “What the hell is that?”
Cody couldn’t tell how large the creature was, but if it was that close to the optical reader, then it couldn’t have been very large. It was shaped like a dart. Patterns of blue, violet, and black covered the creature’s body. One side ended in a point, and the other spread outward like an orchid’s petals. The creature had five sides, two of which seemed to be uncurled from the rest of the body, indicating each was a fin of some kind. It was probably a powerful swimmer, given how far it had launched itself from the shallow water.
“Our first local,” Monroe said.
“And not the only one.” Deveau enhanced the rest of the image. Behind the dart-creature were more—many more. They filled the entire screen.
Bodin leaned in, as well. “So that giant shadow was a bunch of those little guys, huh?”
Wallace reached for the controls and focused on the pointed end of the creature’s body. The “point” was nothing of the sort. The tip of the creature opened up like a small flower with five petals that had folded up to create a cylindrical tube. Along the edge of each petal was a row of bluish points—no doubt the equivalent of teeth.
“Guess they ain’t vegetarians,” Bodin said.
Cody swallowed hard. He doubted anyone who had survived the crash could have stood against those things.
Cody’s ear buzzed.
“Hey, Doc, you there?” Forester asked.
He turned back to his monitor. Forester and Walters already had their plas-torches lit. The water around them bubbled furiously as the thin streams of plasma boiled it instantly.
“Yes,” Cody said. “Yes, I’m here.”
Wallace cut into the comm system. “What’s your status, Chief?”
“We’re starting our cuts now, sir,” Forester said.
“It doesn’t look so bad,” Walters said. She sliced off a chunk of rock. “Most of it is forward of the launch tube.”
The image darkened for a second then cleared. Cody ran a diagnostic on the optic. Everything came out clear. Again, everything went black. It returned to normal a second later.
“Uh, guys?” Cody said. “I just saw something.”
“What is it?” Forester asked.
“I can’t tell.” Cody scanned his console quickly. “Something up near the bow. I didn’t get a good—”
For a brief moment, the monitor went black again. When the picture returned, Walters spun around, her plas-torch still in hand. “Eric, did you see that?”
“See what? I didn’t—”
In the distance, toward the aft of the ship, a black shape glided past then disappeared.
Forest turned around. “What the hell was that? Cody, are you getting this?”
“Yes,” Cody said, “but I can’t tell what it is.”
Deveau hurried to Cody’s station. “Roll back on that image, Doc.”
Cody nodded. He put the visual log file up on another monitor so he could still keep an eye outside the ship. He spun the recording back several seconds and enhanced it.
Gunnery Sergeant Monroe, who up until then had been levelheaded, stared at the view in complete shock. “Fuck me.”
The creature was almost identical to the smaller one still displayed on Deveau’s monitor. It had five sides of varying shades of darker colors. Unlike the smaller ones, this one had a large tail, which was caught in mid-swing in the frozen image. Based on the outcropping of rock, it must have been ten or fifteen meters away from the ship, yet it filled most of the monitor.
Wallace cut in again. “Forester, Walters, get inside. Now! And stay frosty. You’ve got incoming.”
“Where?” Walters crouched, holding her plas-torch in the air. “I don’t—”
A shape brushed past her. The torch plumed brightly as she waved it around the shadow that had approached her. The torchlight revealed the creature, showing dark-blue and purple flower-like flippers circling a large opening that might’ve been a mouth. Each petal flapped in unison as it sped off into the darkness incredibly quickly.
“Shit!” Forester reached for her. “Get inside now. I’ll cover you.”
Walters went to the ladder as fast as she could through the thick soup of ocean surrounding her. Several more shadows swept by. Eric adjusted his torch and fired it. The plasma erupted into flame five meters out from him. He aimed at a passing creature, and it darted away.
“Alice, just go. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Eric, I’m not—”
Digital lines rolled across her optic, distorting the picture. The monitor then went black for an instant. When it returned, everything was as clear as it had been before, but Forester was nowhere in sight.
A single dead tone filled Cody’s ears. Every indicator on Forester’s life signs spiked for a split second before flatlining.
“Oh, God.” Alice’s voice cracked as she spoke. “Doc, I can hear that. Is that what I think it is?”
Wallace reached over and passed his hand over the console for Forester’s life monitor. The flatline tone shut off at once. “Walters, just get inside, now.”
“Oh, God, no,” Walters said. “Oh, Christ, no!”
Wallace’s shout made Cody’s ears hurt. “That’s an order!”
Walters obeyed and hurried down the ladder as quickly as she could. “Oh, God, Eric. Oh, God. Oh, God. Please, God, no.”
Monroe put her hand on Cody’s arm. “Get ready to open it.”
“I’m ready,” he said, his hand on the pressurization controls.
“Stay together, girl,” Monroe told Walters. “Just get inside.”
“D-do you guys see Eric?” she asked. “Oh, God, was he…?”
Bodin had the look of a man anxious to help but unable to do so. Deveau and Wallace looked at the monitors passively, but Cody doubted they were calm on the inside.
“I’m here.” Walters stepped off the ladder and into the airlock. Her voice sounded strained, as if she were struggling to hold back her emotions. “Watch for Eric, okay? He was right behind me.”
Monroe squeezed Cody’s shoulder. “Close outer airlock door. When it’s secure, pressurize the lock and open the inner door.”
He brushed his hands over the door controls. Slowly, the door swung shut. Walters took two more steps inside then leaned against the inner door. Her breath rasped over the comm. “Eric?”
An alarm sounded at Cody’s station as the outer airlock door stopped closing. The strain of metal came over Alice’s comm, followed by a crack as the door snapped off its hinges. The outer door disappeared into the darkness of the ocean.
Alice’s breath caught. “Guys? What’s going on?”
A dark shape hovered over the outer exit of the airlock where the door used to be. Something black swarmed just outside, and then a thick black tentacle appeared. At the tip, five spike-covered petals opened. The spikes waved back and forth briefly, just long enough for Alice to let out half a scream. The tentacle stretched around her midsection. She let out a squea
l as the appendage squeezed the air out of her lungs. It squeezed until her chest collapsed. Her life signs on the monitor howled angrily as the tentacle crushed her ribs. She hung there in the airlock, flailing wildly.
In a single swift motion, the tentacle yanked her away. Her helmet bounced off the lip of the lock exit, snapping away from her suit. It careened toward the side of the airlock and then descended into the thick water.
Her life signs fluctuated madly then changed to a single tone. Whether it was because she had died mercifully or because she was out of range, Cody couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that two people whom he had once known were gone. He would never accidentally catch them fondling each other on a deserted deck somewhere. He would never see them winking at each other when they thought no one else was around.
“Oh, Christ.” Cody’s insides turned.
“Make sure the inner door is secure,” Wallace said.
Cody only half heard him. He wasn’t sure if Wallace had spoken to him or not, but he couldn’t move. After a few seconds, Wallace spoke again. “Gunny.”
Monroe put her hand on Cody’s shoulder as she leaned over and checked the locks. “Secure, sir.”
“Good.” Wallace paused before speaking again. “Corporal, is the way to the launch bay clear?”
Deveau ran his fingers briskly through his console. “Pretty much, Commander. We have to make a few detours, but we should get there in about fifteen mikes.”
“Good,” Wallace said. “Doctor?”
He didn’t react. He kept staring at the monitors.
“Cody.”
Finally, he turned to Wallace, who asked, “How much rock has been cleared away?”
Cody reached for the control and panned the appropriate monitors into position. The holo-controls adjusted themselves automatically to his shaking hands. Eventually, Cody had a good view of the side of the ship. “It… it looks like much of it has been removed, but I can’t tell if it’s enough.”
“We don’t have much choice, sir,” Bodin said. “I recommend we bug out now.”
Wallace nodded slowly, staring at the monitors. He finally reached over Cody’s shoulders and shut them off. They winked quietly out of existence.