Lobster Trap
Larry Mann
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"X-COM: UFO Defense" and "X-COM: Terror From The Deep"
Copyright (c) 1994 MicroProse and Mythos Software

"X-Com Saga" Copyright (c) 1994 Russ Brown
"X-Com Saga II: Tales From The Deep" Copyright (c) 1996-97 Larry Mann

ASPECT FOUR:: Lobster Trap

- - -

TWO MONTHS LATER
SOMEWHERE IN THE NORTH SEA

	By the time the Triton had touched bottom the hold had already filled 
with water. Some of the troopers tensed up for a minute, both at the chill of 
the seawater and, for those few troopers who hadn't been true aquanauts 
before their recruitment (this included several of the troopers who had been 
removed from cryo in the past few months), the fact that the water now 
surrounded them on all sides. Lyudmila felt that tension gnawing at her, in 
fact, but quickly fought it off. It wouldn't do for her to be having problems 
now. Morale was shaky enough as it was, and now that she'd been 
promoted to Commander and given a whole base to worry about, her 
presence could very well make or break the mission. She'd be damned if it 
was going to be the latter.
	The other Commanders, not to mention Captain Collignon, would 
have preferred that she run her base from the base's holographic geoscape 
map, primarily for morale reasons, since the presence of a high-ranker in a 
field op could cause undue tension, and loss of the same could be downright 
devastating. At the same time, they also conceded that Lyudmila's skills, 
not to mention her increasing `sixth sense' about the tactics of the enemy, 
made her an excellent field operative, Commander or not. When it came 
right down to it, she was probably the biggest help to the war effort -- it had, 
in the past two months, officially been labeled the Second Alien War -- while 
in the field.
	And like it or not, X-Com was needing all the help it could get.
	As soon as she'd hit the release button on the hatch, the large 
Coelecanth next to her rolled out and quickly scanned a large semicircle of 
space just outside the Triton. No bug markers flared on Lyudmila's HUD, so 
she gave the order. "Far Squad out, left. Near Squad to right. Tank, go with 
Near Squad." (It was a hell of a lot easier to say `Tank' than `SWS' or 
`Coelecanth'. And the machine understood her in any case.) Lyudmila and 
her troopers hurried out of the sub and ran -- `ran' being a relative term in 
light of all the water surrounding them -- for the cover of a yellow and orange 
structure a few meters away, while Otto and Himiko took their troopers and 
the Coelecanth toward a cluster of pipelines in the opposite direction.
	"USO ahead... sheeze..." Marcelle started to report before his 
observation degenerated into a comment. The enemy submarine was very 
large, a three-decker which was vaguely reminiscent of the old battleship 
UFOs, except that the old enemies hadn't had any visible windows on their 
outer surfaces. Marcelle voiced that very comparison a moment later.
	"That it does--" Lyudmila started to agree when a new light flared on 
her HUD. "Bug! Right!"
	Marcelle saw it first as he and the other troopers immediately 
crouched low, trying to find cover. It was a new species, and it looked for all 
the world like a human-sized lobster. Except, of course, that it was armed 
with a sonic cannon, the largest weapon of the sonic family according to the 
techs back at Tsunami, who'd been working overtime trying to get X-Com up 
to par with the new enemy tech. So far they'd figured out how the small 
pistol weapons worked and the rifles were close to being deciphered, but the 
heavy pieces hadn't even been touched yet.
	Something in the back of Lyudmila's mind told her that, in this case, 
that was not so good.
	Marcelle swung his gauss rifle forward and had time to squeeze off a 
3-shot burst before diving to avoid the green ball of death which sailed 
through the space his body had occupied. His aim was very true, and all 
three shots impacted with the creature's chest.
	It didn't appear to care.
	"Hell!" Lyudmila hissed as the thing started to aim its weapon again 
to take another shot at Marcelle, who was not thrilled with the situation he'd 
just found himself in. She started to raise her own gauss rifle, but after a 
quarter second of consideration let it drop and grabbed her brand new sonic 
pistol instead. Quickly she took aim and squeezed the trigger. The weapon 
made a squawking noise and sent a green death-ball of its own toward the 
lobster creature. This time the effect was much more noticeable as the shot 
fractured the creature's chest shell, making a noticeable crack and 
staggering the beast. Lyudmila aimed and took another shot, which blasted 
through its chest completely, spraying a greenish ichor into the water. And 
with a scream which Marcelle would later describe as reminiscent of a 
particularly obnoxious, badly-tuned french horn, the thing fell to the sea 
floor.
	"Whoo..." Marcelle heaved a small sigh of relief as he righted 
himself. "Thanks Lyu."
	Lyudmila didn't bother acknowledging him, as she was busy 
contacting Near Squad. "Zen. Lyu. We've got a new bug type. I'm calling 
`em Lobstermen."
	"I copy, Lyu," Zander's voice replied tensely. "Just got a solution on 
one." Sure enough, the bug marker on Lyudmila's HUD flared and pointed 
that very fact out.
	"Use sonics, Zen, or tazers if you can hack it. These things eat 
gauss for breakfast."
	"Roger that-- GRENADE!!" Zen's acknowledgement turned into a yell 
of imminent danger. Several yellow markers on Lyudmila's HUD scattered 
away from a set of pipes, and in the next instant a flash and a shockwave 
disrupted the water several meters away. This was accompanied by a 
series of ten more explosions as several sections of gas pipeline detonated, 
kicking up sand and clouding the water with a wall of bubbles. Zander's 
marker began to flicker.
	"Zen?! ZEN!! Hell! Marcelle, secure these buildings and get to 
cover!!" Lyudmila barked, and then she was running, again not giving 
Marcelle a chance to reply. She had the only medi-kit; the requisition for the 
extras was still on order from Tsunami, damn it all to hell anyway.
	Before she'd even realized it she'd crossed the area separating the 
two squads. The area which had been disrupted by the grenade and 
subsequent gas explosions was still full of bubbles, the remnants of the gas 
pipes themselves spewing rather large ones up toward the surface, but 
through it all she could see Zander on the ground, and she could see the 
Lobsterman, this one with a rifle weapon, advancing on the scattered and 
slightly panicked rookie troopers. She dropped down on her knees, raising 
her pistol.
	But before she could shoot, she was rather startled to see Zander get 
back to his feet. He did not look too good from this angle: Lyudmila could 
see crimson leaking from rends in his aqua-armor, and her field experience 
told her he didn't have much time left with that kind of damage. Hell, at that 
range he should have been dead, flat out.
	But, like the Lobsterman she'd downed earlier, Zen did not appear to 
care. He lumbered forward, thermal tazer in hand. The Lobsterman was 
apparently startled by the reappearance of the trooper, probably just as 
surprised as they were that he'd survived that chain of explosions. But 
before it could bring its weapon back to bear, Zen had gotten right in its face, 
and shoved his tazer into a soft spot where one of its arms connected with 
the body. The creature twitched violently, and then toppled without a sound.
	"Ho-ly shit..." Himiko remarked at the sight. The other troopers had 
similar commentary. Lyudmila was only frozen for a moment, galvanized 
back into action when Zander sagged down on top of the stunned enemy. In 
a flash she was down there, plugging her medi-kit into the contacts on Zen's 
armor, dumping the maximum safe amount of coagulants and stimulants into 
him. He stopped bleeding, and regained some measure of alertness.
	"did i get him...?" he mumbled weakly as Lyudmila tapped her 
helmet against his, allowing them to speak privately.
	"Oh you got him all right," Lyudmila wanted to smile but couldn't, not 
with her second squad leader down. "Can you walk?"
	"ow... i think so..."
	"Okay, get your butt back to the sub and stay put. Marcelle," she 
activated her comm unit again. "We need to regroup, single squad. All units 
take up holding positions at fifty meters from target, keep your grenades 
ready and for god's sake stay away from the pipes. Tank, scout the 
perimeter."
	The Coelecanth obediently rolled forward, sweeping its gauss turret 
from left to right as it surveyed the unsecured perimeter for hostiles. The 
sandy terrain was flat and open except for the few pipeline constructs, which 
made detecting the lack of additional hostiles around the USO very simple. 
Marcelle acknowledged Lyudmila's order and pressed ahead with his troops. 
Himiko was in the process of acknowledging when she noticed something on 
her own HUD.
	"Wait a minute, where's Greer?"
	Lyudmila heard and checked her own HUD. Nobody'd been killed, as 
far as she was aware, so there should have been ten small markers 
representing the troops and one big one for the Coelecanth. There were only 
nine small markers.
	Another bad feeling.
	"Where was he, Himiko?"
	"He was back by the-- what the *hell*?!" Himiko and Lyudmila both 
saw it at about the same time. It was Greer... or more correctly it *had been* 
Greer. The thing coming toward them was a bloated, green-skinned, hunch-
backed zombie. Which, to Lyudmila and Himiko's experienced eyes, looked 
like it was about ready to finish its rapid gestation. Not good. At all.
	Himiko acted first. "Sorry about this, Greer!" she yelled, kicking 
forward, just a couple meters away from the zombie. It swiped at her 
viciously, but she dodged the blow and unloaded three rounds of gauss into 
its chest. It staggered backward, and then its body began to bulge outward 
as the transformation began.
	But what exploded out of the body was totally unexpected, and far 
more terrifying than any Chryssalid had ever been. This thing looked like 
something right out of one of Lovecraft's books: a giant brain with a beak as 
its only facial feature, and green tentacles that even now were reaching out 
and trying to snare Himiko. Again Himiko acted quickly and decisively, 
blasting the monster with another three-round burst. Thankfully, this 
creature did not share its companions' resistance to gauss, and it collapsed 
in a heap, orange-colored blood oozing out of its shredded brain.
	"Wha--what the hell was that thing?!" one of the rookie troopers 
stammered, backing away, the combination of a fellow trooper dying and the 
thing that had burst out of his corpse clearly unnerving her.
	Lyudmila was in her face the next instant, shaking her hard. "Keep 
your head on, soldier!!" she barked. "And get used to this! You hear?!"
	"Yes ma'am!" the rookie instantly replied with an almost squeaking 
voice. She knew a drill sergeant's command when she heard it. And she 
wasn't going to argue with a commanding officer who had the build of a 
Russian bear anyway.
	"Everybody, stay frosty," Lyudmila said into her comm. "We've got 
at least one Chryssalid analog--"
	She was interrupted by a yell which sounded like it came from 
Marcelle, and then the sound of a tazer being discharged cut through the 
channel. Lyudmila looked up to see another brain-creature sagging to the 
ocean floor, Marcelle standing over it.
	"Well that takes care of that. I hope," Lyudmila remarked. "Okay, 
people, let's get ready for some serious fishing."
	Slowly and cautiously, using every available means of cover, the 
troopers shuffled forward while the Coelecanth rolled ahead of them, serving 
as the advance guard. The snarl of a sonic blast cut through the water as a 
green pulse lanced out from one of the windows on the USO's second deck, 
knocking out one of the Coelecanth's headlights and making a noticeable 
dent in its front armor. The tank's turret snapped around and squeezed off 
three gauss rounds before Lyudmila ordered it to get clear of the window. 
Crouching behind a lightpole, she aimed at the spot where the shot had 
come from and fired her pistol. The green pulse shot into the darkness of 
the window, and then another trumpeting scream rang out.
	"*Nice* shot, Lyu," Himiko said with a quick thumbs-up.
	"Thanks," Lyudmila made her reply very brief before giving her new 
orders. "Okay everybody, we're looking at a lot of catwalks and open 
spaces on the second deck. Spread out and circle the outside, and hug the 
walls; there may be more snipers up there. Tank, can you reach the door?"
	While the troopers fanned out and surrounded the enemy vessel, the 
Coelecanth rolled forward, trying to reach the inner hatchway, but banged 
against the outside wall with a dull clank. It backed up and tried again, but 
the passage was too tight.
	"Well, there went that idea," Lyudmila sighed. "Okay, Himiko, take 
two troopers and get under that catwalk ASAP. I'll cover you. Marcelle, any 
more entrances on your side?"
	"One more," Marcelle answered. "3 o'clock side. Dujardin, Tonida... 
anything on your side?"
	"Nothing at twelve," Dujardin reported. "Another catwalk and a 
window, but no hatchways."
	"Same at nine," Tonida seconded. "No entrances here."
	"Okay," Lyudmila ordered. "Tonida, I want you back at my location 
yesterday; we're going in soon as you get here. Dujardin, link up with 
Marcelle and take the east entrance. Remember people, use sonics if you 
have `em, tazers if you don't." Passage of ten seconds found all the 
troopers clustered in position. Himiko and the troopers with her raised their 
tazers in the water in acknowledgement.
	"Go!"
	As one, Himiko and Marcelle and their charges blazed through the 
hatchways, practically colliding with a Lobsterman who was heading for the 
south hatch. Himiko nailed it with her tazer before it even had a chance to 
react. Quickly the troopers took up guard positions while Lyudmila and 
Dujardin ran forward with their units. No shots were fired, a fact which did 
not escape Lyudmila's notice.
	No snipers and no reception committee? she thought. Bet there's 
a nice party waiting for us topside, then.
	"One door at twelve, passages at 1:30 and 4:30," Dujardin reported. 
"Looks like there's a lift at the end of both."
	"I've got two more passages over here, 10:30 and 7:30," Himiko 
added. "And we've got another door, and one big lift in the center here."
	"Damn, lotta exits to cover," Lyudmila grumbled. "All right, two 
troopers on each corridor, two more check out those doors. Marcelle, we're 
guarding the lift area."
	Marcelle and Lyudmila crouched down, peering into the small central 
alcove. The four-person lift was empty. "Wish we could've gotten the tank 
in here," Marcelle grumbled.
	"Probably would have gotten stuck on the upper floors anyway," 
Lyudmila replied.
	"Lyu? I've got an empty chamber on the second deck. Doesn't go 
anywhere!" Himiko's voice could be heard.
	"Same over here. Dead end," Dujardin reported from his end. The 
other troopers reported similar findings, and the trooper who had inspected 
the area beyond the doors presently reported that it contained only a few 
empty devices which appeared to be cryos. "Looks like the center lift's the 
only way up."
	"Who *designed* these things?" Marcelle quipped.
	"Maybe we'll find out after we're through here," Lyudmila answered, 
indicating the unconscious Lobsterman behind them. "All right people, 
regroup at the lift. We're going up."
	The four-person lift stopped at the second deck, which turned out to 
be similarly deserted, three of the four passages ending in lifts which went 
to small engine compartments and nowhere else. The veteran troopers 
recognized the pattern and were getting more and more cautious, while the 
rookies weren't sure whether to be happy or nervous because of the lack of 
opposition. The north hallway ended in another four-person lift, and from the 
layout they'd seen already they knew it only went up.
	"Game time, people," Marcelle said in his best Hicks imitation as the 
first group of four troopers took up position on the lift and headed up. 
Lyudmila made a mental note to clobber him when this was all over.
	Doors to the east and west and a small room to the south greeted 
them as they reached the third deck. A quick check of the south passage 
showed that it ended in a small chamber with two small windows in the far 
wall, beyond which lay another corridor. "Can't get to it from here..." 
Lyudmila observed. "Right. Two teams, one to each door! We'll 
rendezvous at the other end of the sub, if possible." Marcelle took the east 
squad, while Lyudmila headed through the west door with her troopers.
	No sooner had the west door been opened than a shot rang out and a 
control panel not far from Lyudmila's head was reduced to rubble. Lyudmila 
dropped behind the nearest large object, another of those cryo-chambers, 
crawled around to the side, and was preparing to return fire when something 
landed on the deck next to her. Recognizing it in a heartbeat, she grabbed it 
and threw it back, ducking behind the cryo again. A sonic shockwave ripped 
through the chamber a moment later. Lyudmila glanced around the side of 
the machine, sonic pistol ready. Which was good, because the swaying but 
still standing Lobsterman spotted her and tried to shoot, but the shot went 
wild. Lyudmila aimed and fired, and the thing went down with a howl.
	"*Tough* sons of bitches," Lyudmila growled, then contacted her 
squadmates, who had yet to step through the door. "Okay, room's clear. 
Move your butts, people!"
	The next chamber was empty, but the number of walls and alcoves 
made searching it more time-consuming than Lyudmila would have liked. 
That seemed to be a trend in every USO they had encountered: lots of twists 
and turns, and a lot of places to hide. Those were good things if you were in 
your element, familiar with the layout of the vessel. The humans were not. 
Shots echoed through Lyudmila's comm as the squad on the opposite side 
engaged enemies. Two alien screams rang out, and one human one. Damn. 
At last they reached another door near the southern end of the ship. Tonida 
hit the switch and ran through.
	There was a dull thud and then a flash. Tonida collapsed without a 
sound, and Lyudmila suddenly felt very woozy. Shit... stun bomb... She 
focused the sum of her will on staying upright, and her vision cleared a bit, 
allowing her to see the bug which had just tried to stun her. The Lobsterman 
was understandably shocked at the failure of its weapon and began backing 
away, trying frantically to stuff another bomb into the launcher's chamber. 
But it never completed the task: behind it, a door opened and Marcelle 
stepped through, leveling his weapon and shattering the back of the 
creature's head with two carefully placed shots.
	"Somebody give me some stim..." Lyudmila wheezed, leaning 
against the nearest wall and fighting hard to stay upright. The nearest 
trooper, a rookie by the name of Cormier, unhooked Lyudmila's medi-kit and 
plugged it in, dumping a double dose of stimulants into Lyudmila's system. 
Lyudmila instantly felt a lot more alert. "Thank you, Cormier." She glanced 
around, taking in the room they were in. "Cormier, I need you and Gaudin 
ahead of me for the next door; your reactions are gonna be better than mine 
now."
	"Yes ma'am," the troopers answered, and edged up to the door on 
the inner wall. 
	"Dujardin, Marcelle, have your team watch those windows in the 
north wall and be ready for anything."
	"Yes ma'am."
	The door opened, and the troopers found themselves in a narrow 
corridor which ended in a right turn a few meters ahead. "Looks like this 
leads to the center," Gaudin remarked.
	"Good," Lyudmila answered, a little hyper from the rush the 
stimulants had given her. "Sooner we're out of here the better."
	A strange shrieking sound cut through the water.
	"What the hell was--" Lyudmila started to ask before a reddish-
glowing object the size of a football swung around the corner and came 
rushing at them. Then she knew. "**BLASTER BOMB**!!!" Every trooper 
who'd heard her yell hit the deck in less than a second. Time slowed to a 
near standstill for Lyudmila as she threw herself back toward the door and 
tried to pull the two rookies with her. Then the world exploded.
	Himiko grunted loudly as the giant shockwave struck her and nearly 
knocked her back a few meters, but she held her position and her combat 
reflexes put her back on her feet in the next instant. If the bug that had fired 
that weapon was still alive she couldn't give it a chance to reload. She 
checked her surroundings: the blast had flattened the corridor and some of 
the central chamber which had been inaccessible before, and through the 
wall of bubbles that had been created she could make out three human 
bodies to her west. One of the bodies was Lyudmila's.
	Rage possessed her when she saw Lyudmila's body. She did not 
think, merely acted. Ignoring the yells of her comrades, she charged through 
the opening in the wall and found herself face to face with the enemy, a new 
bomb in one of its small claws and the oddly-shaped launcher in the other. It 
dropped the weapon as Himiko lunged at it and tried to swat her with its 
massive upper claws. Himiko ducked and stabbed at the creature with her 
tazer. It staggered the beast but did not knock it down, and it swung at her 
again, connecting this time, but Himiko rolled with the hit and came up again, 
thrusting forward with her tazer. This time, success; the creature fell to the 
ground. Himiko narrowly fought back the urge to prime one of her grenades 
and stick it under the hulk at her feet. It was certainly an officer, and live 
officers were what the scientists at Tsunami and Atlantia needed right now. 
She checked her surroundings once more. Nothing else.
	Mission accomplished. Thank god.

				* * *

	No, it couldn't end like this.
	You must not die.
	There was nothing but a dull, black haze for Lyudmila, as she fell 
through a featureless void. It could not be the end. *It could not*.
	Elemental, you must not die.
	Not completely featureless. There was a face. That same face. 
Stefanie... or Steffie... that was the name attached to the face. The visage 
looked at her with eyes that were dark and seemed to be getting darker, 
almost black now. Lyudmila was becoming aware of a twisting pain in her 
guts.
	Please don't die... please don't leave me... The girl's pleading 
voice seemed to stab into her abdomen and intensify the already increasing 
pain. Then, suddenly, the image was gone.
	No! It wasn't over yet!
	Then another face, not human. It looked like an Aquatoid's face, but 
with yellow skin. Come to me, Elemental, it intoned in a deep basso 
voice. You, and your Earth, shall be mine.
	NO!!!

				* * *

	"uhhh..." Lyudmila groaned through a huge haze of pain, and 
became increasingly aware of a cold sensation in her guts.
	"Got her..." Dujardin heaved a huge sigh of relief, watching the 
readouts on the medi-kit closely. "That was close."
	"whuh..." Lyudmila opened her eyes and was greeted by the sight of 
several troopers bending over her, a reddish substance -- her blood, she 
realized -- floating in the water around them. "wha' th' hell...?"
	"Congratulations, Commander," Marcelle said soberly, but with a hint 
of awe mixed in. "You're the first person to survive a blaster bomb at 
pointblank range."
	"c... cormier...?"
	"He didn't make it," Himiko said, emotionless. "Gaudin's dead too, 
not much left. They must've taken the major force of the blow. S'probably 
why you just got eviscerated."
	About then Lyudmila realized that the odd cold sensation in her guts 
was seawater flooding her body cavity. There probably wasn't much left of 
her abdomen. She could still feel her legs, though, thank god. A corner of 
her mind thanked every deity she could think of offhand that her lungs were 
intact. Another part started to wonder how she was going to survive without 
a lower digestive tract, before the pain came back in and made itself known 
very clearly, derailing most other thought processes immediately. And she 
was getting colder by the minute.
	"get me outta here..."
	"Already on our way out. Gonna have lots of shellfish for dinner, 
Lyu," Marcelle tried to be reassuring, without much success. Lyudmila 
would have laughed but she was in far too much pain now.
	Damn... this was probably going to be one hell of a hospital bill...

END FOUR


END