Archerfish Ch. 11

14:30 hours (UTC +10), 35°07'21.7"N 153°12'50.9"E

Day +5

We regrouped and followed the remaining Abyssals. We had pulled some of their ships away with our radio transmission, so we decided to see if that ploy would work a second time. I made the phone call, though, because I had a clever idea. I didn't trust whether the Abyssals could understand us or not, or if they had possibly broken our encryption. Highly unlikely, but just in case, I told my fairies to open a channel.

"Green Arrow to Jean-Luc Picard. Green Arrow to Jean-Luc Picard. Are you there?"

"Oliver? What the hell?" came Elizabeth's reply.

"Hello Jean-Luc." I said, emphasizing the name. "Do you remember The Search for Spock, and how Kirk and Scotty went by the book?" C'mon, c'mon, I thought. You're smart. You can figure this out.

"What in the world are you on abou – oh! Wait." It was an eternity before she spoke again. "Yeah, I think I do. The hours seemed like days, if I remember right."

Wha-hoo! She got it! "You do remember right, Jean-Luc! So, Yooper and I and the Unicorn were causing a Commotion; play Despacito 10 times."

She snorted into her mic. "That's pretty good news. Did any of you end up like Greedo?" Oh, she definitely got it. And mixed up her metaphors.

"Negative. All Han Solo over here," I replied. "I'm thinking we should keep playing Admiral Akbar, maybe run it again."

"As you wish," she replied. "Oh, and to go meta for a moment? Jar-Jar, you're a genius."

Ha! Thank you Darths and Droids! I turned to face the others.

"So, what I said was. . . " I started.

"Yeah, I understood what you said," interrupted Nicole, "but not why you said it like that."

"It was in that first bit", Michele explained, nodding at me. "You know how Oliver got his nickname, right? Oliver Queen – Green Arrow/Archer. Well, Jean-Luc Picard was captain of the Enterprise in Star Trek: the Next Generation. In the movie, The Search for Spock, Captain Kirk is trapped on a planet, surrounded by Klingons, and the transporter doesn't work."

"That's not unique," snarked Nicole.

"No," I replied. "But Kirk told Scotty that they'd have to do things 'by the book', and asked for his best estimate of when the transporter would be fixed. He said the hours would seem like days until they saw each other again."

"And then Scotty gave them an answer in days, when he meant hours, because the book says that you should never transmit unencoded messages over an open channel when they could be picked up by an enemy." Michele finished, smiling at me.

"Okay," frowned Nicole, "First of all, that wasn't Kirk and Scotty, that was Kirk and Spock. Secondly, that wasn't The Search for Spock, it was The Wrath of Khan, and it wasn't the Klingons, it was Khan Noonien Singh, played by Ricardo Montalban at sixty-two with no shirt and amazing pecs. And lastly, it was Captain Spock and Admiral Kirk. No wonder Elizabeth was confused for a moment!"

"Nobody likes a math geek, Scully." I muttered, chagrined.

"Are you sure?" asked Michele.

"Yes." said Nicole. "We can look it up on IMDB once we get back. IF we survive this, that is."

Oh, right. Middle of a battle. Not the best time for Nerd-dom. "Well, the gist of it was understood. We killed ten of theirs, and we should keep doing so, for as long as the trap works."

"You mean the one where we talk, and the Abyssals keep sending ships back to take us out, thus splitting their fleet?" asked Nicole, rather snarkily.

"Yes!" I said.

"Well, good, because we've got more incoming." Her smugness knew no bounds.

I wasn't entirely sure if they sent ships back because we were transmitting, or because the first set hadn't checked back in. Either way, they weren't fooling around the second time. We had four more destroyers, a light cruiser, and ten freakin' submarines inbound on us. We spread out and went deep; I was to target three of the subs, and two of the destroyers; Nicole, likewise. Michele had more torpedoes left, so she would take four subs and the light cruiser.

I dropped down to 200 meters and waited. The destroyers came in first. I picked one to follow and trailed her for about half a mile, watching as she veered slightly southward from her fellows. I took a deep breath, and brought my M32 up, and swam directly below her. I was thinking about hitting her amidships, but was then confronted with a pair of feet skating over the water. Feet. Right. People. Ship people. Ship girls. I was directly beneath a girl. Who was wearing a tattered skirt.

God help me.

Focus. She only looked like a girl. She was an evil warship bent on the destruction of humankind. That made this a little easier. I aimed up and fired. There was a huge impact explosion, and then debris in the water. The blue cloud spread slowly out and down, and when I spotted . . . chunks . . . I quickly turned my head and swam for the next target. What was the name of that psychiatrist in M*A*S*H? I was gonna need him.

I was closing in on the second destroyer when I was struck. My whole body shook, and I felt something snap in my thigh. Then the world exploded into a shower of pain. Cap was yelling at me, and barking orders, even as DamCon was sending in reports. Severe damage to screw, severe damage to engineering, emergency surface required. I was screaming, and a detached part of my brain was wondering how I was screaming underwater. This was the same part of my brain that was wondering what had happened, while the rest of me was screaming and grabbing my left thigh. I turned toward my left as I did so, and saw an Abyssal submarine behind me, bringing her gun up again. Oh no, oh no, ohnonono! I had dropped my M32 when I was hit, but it was on a tether. I rolled slightly as I pulled it back up, and then fired at her. The shot went wide, but it was still on the wire. My fairies guided it back in, and it hit her in the head, which promptly disappeared in an eruption of viscous blue. Her headless corpse drifted downward, and I grabbed my thigh again. I couldn't feel anything poking through, so I gritted my teeth and headed for the surface.

Cap was prepping her flare gun, as per protocol, and was yelling at me for getting too close. Right. Torpedoes have range, stupido. I don't need to be right on top of them to hit them. I had been concentrating too much on the destroyer, and completely missed the sub sneaking up on me, which she wouldn't have been able to do if I was safely at 200 meters. It was amazing that she saw me at all, except that I was swimming right in front of her. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

As soon as my periscope broke the surface, I found myself looking into the surprised eyes of the Abyssal Destroyer. Cold, flat, and surprised. Not a good look for her. She kicked me in the nose and screeched bloody murder. I surged up as high as I could and punched her in the stomach. She doubled over, and I pulled my dive knife, and punched her again, blade first. I grabbed hold of her shirt and pulled her with me as I sank down, continuing to plunge the knife into her midsection in tempo with the throbbing pain in my leg and the words spilling, unbidden, from my mouth. "Oh. No. You. Don't!" She shrieked and clawed at me, to no avail. "I'm. Not. Sup. posed. To. Be. Here!" She went slack, her arms flailing outward as I struck. "I. Am. Not. A. SUB!" Cap was screaming at me again, and then I lost control of my arms. They let go of the Abyssal, who was long past caring, and I surfaced again through the churning blue water as the ruined destroyer sank.

I had no control over anything. I bobbed in the water like a cork, but I would see glimpses of smoke and flames on the waves around me. I don't know how long I hung there, listening to my fairies shouting orders and replies, with Cap controlling my motions just enough to keep me afloat. Finally, my eyes focused blearily on a large pink blob in front of me, and then my head snapped sharply to the right. Everything came back to laser-sharp focus, as did the pain. Michele had slapped me. I gasped, and reached for her shoulders, sobbing.

"I'm a killer. I've killed. So many people. Not people. Ships. Girls. They're ships but they die like people!"

"Hey, hey!" She rubbed her hands up and down my arms. "Shh, shh. You're okay. I've got you. Your Captain told us you were hurt. Where are you hurt?" She kept repeating it.

It took a few minutes for what she was saying to sink in. "She shot me. She shot me in the leg. I think it's broken." I gasped.

"Okay, okay. That makes sense. I think you're going into shock, Oliver. I can't keep you warm, but I want to try something, okay? Do you remember our water rescue training? I'm going to turn you over on your back, and keep my arm around you, okay? I'm going to start swimming, and pull you along with me, alright?" She was speaking in a soothing, calm, measured tone, and I hated it. That actually scared me more than anything else had so far.

"Michele? You're using The Voice with me. Don't use The Voice." She looked down at me, where she had maneuvered me into laying flat on the water and was threading her arm under my shoulder and across my chest.

She smiled. "Then don't need it," she said. She kissed the top of my forehead, and then turned her body so she could start towing me. "C'mon – we need to find Nicole and head back to the others."

Thank you for reading. Feedback is a gift. Please leave a review.