XIX
The water tanks towered high above the small group as they made their way through the cramped confines of the network of support pipes and structures holding them up, the air around the storage tanks noticeably cooler in comparison to the rest of the cargo bay. Condensation trickled from the network of overhead pipes, and a steady trickle of clear liquid trickled from a cracked pipe, the escaping water vanishing through the grilled floor and into a sluice channel below the tanks, feeding the liquid back into the main aquatorium below.
The narrow alleyway between the largest of the water tanks ended in a small cul-de-sac with a hatchway fitted to the floor, dominating almost the entire walkway. Sunken an inch into the ground, an access panel lay beside the sealed opening with a keypad nestled beneath a protective transparent covering. According the Knight, the number of buttons on the keypad presented almost five million possible combinations to pop the lock, and would take days for even the most skilled com-tech to crack with a dedicated server. For the first time in over a week, Stevens encountered his first bit of good luck, and uncovered a folded scrap of paper taped to the inside of the cover. He unfolded it, not expecting much, but gave a soft laugh when he read it aloud.
"Dave, the code is "FATHER'. For Christ's sake, don't forget it, or leave this lying around for anyone to find."
"Thank you, Dave," JT muttered under his breath, watching as Stevens hammered the code into the lock. With a click, then a hum, the hatchway parted slowly, giving way to a vertical shaft with three of its four walls lined with a network of pipes and conduits and the fourth housing a ladder that spanned the distance down into the darkness of the dome beneath them.
"How far down is it?"
Stevens fumbled for one of his pouches attached the his combat webbing, pulled out a pair of plastic sticks and cracked their casing, shaking them up and mixing the phosphorous chemicals together before tossing them into the shaft. The luminous green sticks tumbled into the darkness, bouncing of the walls and spinning end over end until they hit the ground with a clatter. A muted green glow in the pit of darkness told Stevens that there was a bottom to the shaft, but it was further than he'd thought.
"About fifty meters. Give or take. Okay, first one down, quick. We need to get down there, secure the entrance, then seal this up tight."
"If only we had another sentry cannon to set up to guard the hatchway," Knight said, almost wistfully as he watched the first of the marines lower themselves into the opening. Stevens looked at him through half-closed eyes, frowning as he was deep in thought.
"A robotic gun emplacement… are you volunteering to sit watch up here?"
Knight didn't respond. Stevens raised an eyebrow, looking at the android and waiting for him to reply. Finally, the combat synth acknowledged the remark.
"Is that an order, sir?"
"Get down the ladder," Stevens shook his head. "Much as I hate to admit it, you might actually be useful to us at one point. We might need to rip you open and use some of your metal guts to heat up an MRE."
After keeping everyone covered, Stevens was the last man down the shaft, slowly making his way down the slick rungs of the ladder, almost slipping on a couple as the condensation as the surroundings became noticeably-cooler and beaded with droplets of water. As long as what covered the walls remained water and not the secreted resin that the alien creatures tended to leave behind them.
He reached the lower level to find that the remaining Marines had already fanned out to cover all entrances into the shaft, and nodded a confirmation to JT, who stood poised over the control panel. He pulled down on the lever, and all eyes turned briefly to the heavens as the hatchway far above cycled shut. The locking bolts slammed into position with a loud, deep clang, and as one, everyone assembled at the foot of the pit let out a collective sigh.
"We did a quick sweep," Dawes reported, nodding towards the different corridors, each well lit and welcoming, the confines of the area a comforting contrast to the open hangar they'd previously lived in: an agoraphobic's dream, but a claustrophobic's nightmare. "Everything seems fine. Completely deserted, though. Considering these things should be manned all the time, that's probably a little worrying."
"Not really," Stevens gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "Civs are brainless when it comes to shit like this, no offence intended," he quickly motioned towards JT and Evelyn. "Don't get me wrong, you've done fantastic here, guy, but if you were in charge we'd be totally fucked. A civ holds up down here, they're unprepared, they've got no rations, their worried about their pet hamster that's still in their quarters, or their best friend that works in the shit pits on the lower decks: they leave here to find comfort in something they find familiar, and in doing that, they get picked up by the bastards and glued to a wall. They closed up behind them, which kept it clear for their return. They never came back."
"What if they do come back?"
"You two," Stevens waived to a pair of Marines. "Set up here, watch the hatch. 4 hour shifts, in a rota, we all take turns. Dawes, you and Johnny are up next, then me and Evie. We'll sort the next shift out from then. Civs, always paired up with a Marine, for their own protection. Other than that – spread out, look around, see if we can find anything to eat down here, something to make our rations spread further. See if we can find something for water, too. We're in the middle of an aquarium; we must be able to get some pure drinking water sorted out. Dig up whatever you can, we'll set up a centre of operations… Dawes?"
Dawes, clutching her portable terminal, tapped the screen that showed the largest area of the dome that wasn't filled with water.
"Aquatic operations. Okay, we're dropping aquatic from the title. Spread out, search, and bring everything back to Operations, okay?"
He waited a beat.
"I still see people here, c'mon people, move."
Operations was a room almost fifty meters in each direction, a perfect cube that nestled near the top of the dome, closest to the underbelly of the craft and filled with a banks of monitors and computer consoles. Each screen displayed different areas of the blister attached to the underside of the craft, screens showing layers of kelp beds, tanks filled with smaller fishes of different colours and designs, and rocks covered in lumps of coral, crawling with large red crustaceans that fed off the algae and smaller creatures that darted in and out of the artificial reefs.
One wall was a thick sheet of glass almost a foot thick, looking into a murky tank that, according to the maps, formed almost two thirds of the aquatorium: a tank that was inhabited by a number of large oceanic beasts that were bound for a research centre in the far reaches of space that, in all likelihood, they would never reach.
Stevens had left his weapons on the control panels that sat in the centre of the room, and stood in front of the large observation window, his face pressed up against the glass as he stared into the dark green murk of the water. He rapped harshly on the glass for the seventh time in as many minutes, but still was disappointed when nothing came to his beck and call.
"What's supposed to be in here again?"
"A school of about eight Mako sharks, and a larger fish, something called a Draconis shark."
"Draconis? Never heard of them," Stevens shook his head. Dawes looked briefly up from the control panels and the console she was tapping commands in to. She pulled up the manifest for the large pool again.
"It's some kind of genetically altered, man-made creature. Says it's something like eighteen meters long."
"Can't see it," Stevens shook his head, then rapped the glass again, speaking in a low, drawn out voice. "Here, fishy fishy fishy."
A slight smile spread across his lips as something shifted in the murk of the dark water, a patch of darkness that glided effortlessly through the mire of the tank. "There's the big boy," Stevens grinned, turning around to look at the people gathered in the operations room. "At least we know they can't come in from there," he said, jerking his finger towards the large glass viewing port. "Fido'll keep them out."
"An aquatic guard dog," JT said with a grin. "As long as they try to paddle in, we'll be safe."
"As long as they keep the fuck away, I'll be happy," Evelyn said, glaring at the window into the home of the monolithic creatures and its smaller brethren. "How long until we're back at Gamma?"
"Too long," Stevens muttered, motioning to the pile of rations and supplies that his men had found in the dome. As it was primarily filled with water, there wasn't much space for any maintenance crew, with equally just as little space or need for supplies. The rations the Marines had managed to salvage from the watery outpost would barely be enough to keep one man going for a week, let alone the ten people remaining in his squad for a fortnight. Beside the food supplies, hanging on rows of exposed pipes and support beams, there were ten pressure suits, each with a helmet and full stock of air. The scavengers had brought them there after their initial perusal of the aquatorium, but they were doing nothing but get in the way where they were. He decided that when Knight returned from his tour of the lower level and knew for sure where the airlock was, he'd get him to move the helmets and air tanks down there: have them ready, just in case.
"Suit up," he ordered, nodding towards the pressure suits. Other than Dawes, the only other people in operations were JT, Evelyn and a grizzled private named Elroy. A seasoned Marine, he had a scar that encircled his left eye, traced down the side of his face and across his neck, which left him mute. His left hand was also missing the two knuckles of his small finger. He sat on the ground in the corner of its room and worked over a collection of weapons that had been handed in: a pair of pulse rifles, a riot gun and three handguns. He had already stripped, cleaned and reassembled the rifles and the shotgun, and was working over the pistols when Stevens gave the order. He didn't argue, just simply stood, tore off his body armour and coveralls off, then grabbed one of the suits and pulled it on.
Elroy came across to Stevens as a run-of-the-mill lifer in the Marines – he'd served his time, did what he was told, and just wanted to live through one day to see the next. Even privates pulled a decent pension if they got through a full service in the Marines, it's just that there wasn't that many that survived that long. Elroy seemed to be one of those men that was happy enough to live through the monotony and collect his golden handshake at the end of it all, and would make sure followed orders to the letter if it meant he was going to survive a little longer.
The suit he'd pulled on was a thin garment, protected along the chest and spine by padded armour, and fit his form as snug as a glove. The toughened material wasn't meant for prolonged exposure to deep space or heavy combat, just regular maintenance on the ships hull like patching holes, or a quick outer transfer from one airlock to another. The armour of the Marine fitted back over the pressure suit with a snap, and he returned to his work, performing the required maintenance on the weapons.
"I'd take ten of him over Knight any day of the week," Stevens nodded as he stripped himself down to his regulation undershirt and shorts and pulled the pressure suit on, before reattaching his own armour once more. "Dedicated, not too twitchy, and doesn't give me any fuckin' lip about statistics and survival."
"He gives me the creeps a little," Dawes confessed as she left her station at the control panel and stripped down before pulling her own suit on.
"Knight gives me the creeps a lot more," confessed JT as he grabbed his own suit and fastened it up as best as he could. It was clear to him that the Marines were familiar with these suits, and had been issued with similar clothing before. JT was in unknown territory, and had to get Stevens to help him out and check all the seals were intact before he felt a little bit more secure. Evelyn reluctantly removed what she could from her own attire and pulled on a fourth suit, allowing Dawes to help check the suit. At least if anything happened now, all they had to do was snap their helmets on and grab one of the oxygen tanks.
"I don't like that," Evelyn announced, nodding towards the oversized glass panel looking into the shark pool. "Fish freak me out, especially giant fish."
"Relax," JT grinned as he walked closer to the glass panel and rapped his knuckles on it. "It's real thick, like the window in a shuttle. None of those things will get through here."
Evelyn was watching him as he talked, but the colour drained from her face as he finished his sentence, her eyes wide in shock and awe, and JT almost felt the creature looming behind him.
"Jesus fucking Christ," muttered Stevens, stepping closer to the window and placing his gloved hand against the window. "You're the biggest, ugliest mother fucker I've ever seen…"
On the other side of the glass, the giant Draconis Shark glided silently past in the murky waters outside, though it took some time for the people in operations to grasp the sheer scale of the leviathan as it swam past. Seen from the side, the dark grey skin of the shark almost shimmered in the muted light of the tank, and as it slowly moved past it blinked its gargantuan eye, a black, almost lifeless disc the same size as a car tyre that rolled back beneath an opaque eyelid. A mouth filled with row upon row of razor sharp teeth, each the size of a man's head and locked in a permanent grin slowly opened and closed, exposing the red-raw flesh of its gums and the mass of scar tissue that had ravaged half of its head. The wounds continued along its head and onto its trunk, with deep gouges and tears covering the vast majority of its dark skin, exposing pale skin that was on the way to healing, but would surely leave a mass of unsightly scar tissue. Its ventral and dorsal fins had suffered an equal amount of damage, looking like a shoal of smaller fish had attacked it.
"Ugly son of a bitch," Stevens repeated his comments again as the thick rudder of a tail sailed out of view and the creature vanished back into the murk. "Looks like he's seen some action, though. Must've put up a hell of a fight."
"Fought with what, though?"
"Well, I've not seen those other sharks that are supposed to be in there. Maybe they got into a little fight?"
"Shit hit the fan over a week ago. Maybe they got hungry, and decided to eat each other: they tried to take a bite out of the big guy, but looks like he won."
"Freaks me out," Evelyn muttered again, snapping the last of her armour on over her suit and glaring at the window as the shadow of the mutilated fish appeared once again for a brief moment in the distance.
"There's a ladder that leads up to an observation platform that encircles the pool," Stevens nodded to the far corner of the room and the solidly constructed ladder that ascended to a secure hatch in the ceiling. "What say we take a look up there?"
"Count me out," Evelyn shook her head, but JT nodded and followed him to the ladder.
"We need to check it out, anyway, make sure it's secure. You three stay here; keep an eye on things. If Knight turns up, detain him; I need to have a word with him. Johnny?"
JT was first up the ladder, making quick work of the rungs and spinning the heavy lock that kept the door sealed shut, like a bulkhead in an old ship on Earth, and with good reason: while magnetic seals and shielding could keep a ship airtight, water had a habit of corroding or shorting these magnetic and powered locks, and in these cases an old fashioned bulkhead with rubber seals were more than adequate.
The hatch opened outwards into the walkway that surrounded the pool, and as JT and Stevens pulled their weight up onto the gangplank, the first thing that struck them was the overpowering scent of salted water and rotting meat. The source of the former was obvious, but the latter took the pair a while to discover the source. Stevens was worried he was going to find a shattered carcass of a maintenance worker with his chest ripped open from the inside, but it turned out to be a pile of rotting meat that had spilled out from an opened drum of shark feed. The room expanded for over two hundred meters in from the wall Stevens and JT stood beside, a semi-circular shaped pool that took up over half of the inverted blister in total.
Following the catwalk around the edge of the pool, the pair moved slowly and surely, keeping hold of the handrail that lined the walkway. Stopping by the overturned meat container, Stevens prodded the exposed mess with his foot, noting that although the spilled contents had began to rot, it hadn't completely turned yet.
"Feeding time," Stevens muttered, picking up a chunk of grey-pink meat and hurling it into the perfectly still pool, watching is it bobbed on the surface before the head of the gargantuan fish broke the water and engulfed it in its massive jaws before sinking back into the murky depths. He stood motionless on the catwalk, staring out into the water as the captain of a boat would from their bridge.
"Hit the lights up here," he finally said, motioning towards the control panel on the wall behind JT. He did as he was told, wiping his hand across a bank of switches and watching as, one by one, the lights dotted across the expansive ceiling blinked to life, chasing away the gloom of the observation deck. As well as the lights above the tank, illuminations within the water itself flickered on, chasing away the shadowy murk of the water and picking out the overwhelming shape of the aquatic predator in his kingdom. On the far side of the tank, almost invisible in the depths despite the new illuminations, he could see seven smaller specks floating in the water.
"There's the other sharks, then," muttered JT, nodding towards the specks. "Seven. Looks like you were right, and the big guy must've finished one of them off himself."
"Or the seven from that group turned on the eighth and devoured it," Stevens offered, looking up from the water and far across to the other side of the room. He could see cranes hovering above water, machinery used to tend to the denizens of the deep, take readings and monitor their vitals, along with a small one-man submersible vehicle secured in its moorings. He followed the catwalk, motioning to JT to do the same, and slowly made his way towards the gathering of equipment. A hundred meters from the equipment, half way across the walkway, Stevens slowed his approach and lifted his weapon, something not sitting right with him as he neared the amalgamation of sensors and submersibles.
"What's the matter?" JT asked, bringing his rifle up just as Stevens did, falling in behind the soldier as he carefully approached the pile of innocuous-looking material.
"Something smells… rank," Stevens admitted, "You getting that? Smells familiar…"
"Just the rotted meat," JT offered, "What else could it be?"
A pungent mix of burning oil and smouldering rubber…
"Fuck," Stevens spat through gritted teeth. "That stink… it's them!"
"Where?"
Stevens carried a small motion detector, though he'd turned to volume down and left it hanging from his belt since setting up base in the control room below: with the constant motion in the tank, and of his troops going backwards and forwards on patrol, he'd decided that he didn't need its persistent bleeping. Now he picked it up from his belt, thumbed up the audio controls, then span around on his heels, scanning the room. Other than JT and the fish in the giant tank, there didn't seem to be anything out the ordinary.
"Stink smells exactly like them," growled Stevens. "You have one of those fuckers clawing over you, you're going to remember that stink for a long time. But there's no sign of them…"
"Maybe they were just passing through?" suggested JT. He seemed to perk up, then lowered his weapon completely. "Maybe the smell's just clinging to your clothing, like smoke? And this is the first time you've been in relatively clean air to breathe? I mean, look at the size of those vents, there's no way those creatures can fit through there."
"'Cept maybe their snake forms, the… what did Knight call them in his report? Calf?"
"I always thought that was a baby cow, myself."
"Tin Can's got a lot of words in his mechanical head. Can't argue with some of the shit he comes up with. Unfortunately. He's talked about these creatures quite a bit, managed to put together quite a report while we were camped out in the landing bay. Won't let me see it, though, some bullshit about not enough security clearance. Asshole."
He blindly fumbled for the comlink he wore, activated it and spoke in a hushed voice.
"This is Stevens. Everyone get back to the control room, double time."
"Stevens?" Dawes' voice was weak and distorted. "Something wrong?"
"Maybe…" his voice trailed off as he continued his assessment of the giant tank, something floating on the surface of the water glistening as it floated out from beneath the walkway. A mass of pale colourless tissue, almost shapeless in mass but then, as Stevens dropped to his knees and peered at the flotsam, he could see a mass of lifeless tissue, a collection of what looked to be horseshoe crabs floating on their backs, legs coiled in around their exposed undersides. Crabs, or giant spiders, they were something new to Stevens, but they seemed out of place… and they had the same pungent stench that Stevens had associated with the creatures.
"Mother fuckers," he hissed, jumping to his feet. He'd forgotten about the other form of the creatures, the fleshy spider that they'd tried to pry from the body in the elevator… how could that happen? Lethargy was the soldier's worst enemy, and it was clear that in this case, Stevens had forgotten a vital aspect about the morphology of the creatures.
"Knight called them the larvae," JT said, backing away from the shapeless raft of dead creatures. "What killed them?"
"Maybe the salt water," Stevens said with a shrug, levelling his rifle on the mass. "Or maybe they did what they were designed to do."
"Which is what Knight said was to impregnate hosts, right?"
"Fuck," Stevens spun, marched for the hatch that would lead back to the control room. "That's it, we're bugging out. Get the fuck out of here, Dawes, prep the team, we're out of here. This isn't a drill."
"What?" JT was hot on the heels of Stevens, casting nervous glances over his shoulder at the floating bodies of the larval creatures. "What's wrong?"
"I just put two and two together, and hope to shit that my maths is wrong."
In the water, the group of seven smaller creatures stirred, shuddered, and one of them broke away from the school, flickering its way to the surface of the water, moving in an ethereal and ghostly way as it neared the surface. It moved fast, and broke the surface with a deafening screech before Stevens was able to make out any details.
Over seven feet tall, the glistening hide of the creature was slick with salt water, a dark green sheen to its otherwise grey-black carapace, with a slightly flattened and widened head. Its talons were short and stubby, webbed with a thin opaque membrane, and its long, flowing tail tipped by a pair of curved chitinous blades, shaped like the crescent of a shark's tail. It lowered itself into a crouch, twisting to one side as it moved, and exposed its back: where most of the creatures had a collection or tubes and spines, this had a thick, black dorsal fin, almost a foot in height. Pressing its body low to the floor, it slithered forwards and opened its mouth, thick drool slipping from its open maw as it exposed three rows of serrated teeth, each set back further from the next. Deep in the recess of its cavernous throat, the pointed stumps of its inner jaw glistened wetly, a threatening hiss escaping the barrel chest of the creature as it pressed forwards.
Stevens lifted his rifle, fired blindly, and a salvo of round slammed into the deck inches from the creature, spraying it with fragments of metal from the grated flooring. It screamed, reared back, then stumbled forwards with another deafening cry. It wasn't as graceful out the water as its brethren, giving Stevens and JT the edge they needed to outrun the creature, stumble through the hatchway back into the control room and cycling it shut. The locks had barely slipped into place when a frantic, loud thumping sounded on the other side of the barrier, the hatch shaking, but holding tight.
For now.
"What's going on?" demanded Evelyn, staring at the sealed hatch and wincing at the thunderous pounding. They all knew the strength the creatures were capable of, and they all knew the hatch wouldn't hold forever.
"Fucking sharks," spat Stevens, motioning to Elroy to hand him the shotgun he'd been working on. "The things killed the fucking sharks, came out of them. We've got a group of swimming creatures out there… eight Mako sharks, seven creatures left. Maybe that's why the big guy had an ugly face, he ate one of them and they've all kept their distance. Mutual respect? Doesn't matter, we need everyone back here now!"
"They're on their way now," Dawes nodded her head. "They should be back in… Jesus!"
The oversized observation window was filled with creatures, now: a school of five creatures swimming back and forth, exploring the glass with their webbed talons and tapping it with the tips of their pronged tails. Their rattling claws scrapping the glass were an eerie accompaniment to the desperate pounding from the hatch, pounding that seemed to have increased in intensity, a sign that two of the creatures were working on the hatch while the rest explored the glass for a way in.
Transfixed by the sight of the creatures gliding gracefully through the water, almost as if they were playing like dolphins, Evelyn jumped, startled, as JT took her hand and squeezed it softly.
"It's okay," he spoke, his voice soft and reassuring. "That stuff's reinforced, a foot thick, they can't break through. Even if they had the strength to… have you ever tried throwing a punch under water? The pressure's all different, it doesn't work."
"What about the hatch?" she nodded vaguely towards the thumping opening, not taking her eyes off the curious creatures as they continued to probe the sealed window.
"That won't hold," Stevens shook his head. "Where the fuck is Knight?"
"Here," the android entered the operations area, instantly approaching the viewing window as a moth would be drawn towards a flickering flame. "Fascinating. Another genus of the species; clearly aquatic, derived from the Mako shark, no doubt."
He stared at the window, placed a flattened palm against the window, almost aligned with an exploring talon on the other side. "Fascinating," he repeated, the look on his face reminiscent of a child staring at a Christmas tree.
"We need to get everyone out of here, now," Stevens snapped, indicating the oxygen tanks, helmets and unclaimed suits that still lay around command centre. "We need to get out of here, out the airlock. Where's the rest of the squad?"
"Still scavenging," Dawes whispered, watching as four of the aliens suspended in the brine continued to press themselves against the glass, while the fifth sent a ripple through its powerful body, propelling it upwards, out of view. The ferocity of the pounding on the hatchway increased once more, and the metal started to buckle and twist, allowing the smell of the salty water and rancid meat to seep into the control room.
"They're breaking through," Stevens snapped, grabbing his rifle and crouching beneath the hatch, muzzle pointed upwards as he waited for one of the creatures to present a clear target.
"We've got bigger problems," Knight said, his monotone voice almost raising in pitch as he motioned towards the aquatic viewport, and the dark and distant blur that was speeding towards the window as the group of survivors in the control room watched. The Draconis shark moved swiftly towards the group of aliens exploring the window, and at the last minute rolled itself to the side, slamming into the creatures with its oversized flank and crushing them against the window. One of the creatures was crushed beneath the weight of massive shark, its chitinous carcass cracking and spewing acid into the briny waters as it was instantly killed, while the rest of the creatures tried to swim away, nipping limbs and tails between the wall and the marauding leviathan as they tried to escape. Acid blood oozed from the crushed extremities, it's caustic properties rendered impotent by the neutralising affects of the seawater, and the yellow-green liquid floated in a haze around the frantic creatures in the tank. The hammering on the access stopped, and Stevens warily switched his watchful gaze from the hatch to the window as the aliens dived back into the water and joined their brethren, swarming around the giant shark as it pulled the battle away from the window and into the middle of the pool.
"Fascinating," Knight repeated again.
"They're here?" Evelyn muttered, then turned to face JT. "How'd they get in here?"
"As far as we can tell," Dawes answered, tentatively returned to one of the consoles and hammered the controls, "They're the only ones. Patrols have covered almost every inch of the service corridors here, and they've not seen any sight of any other creatures."
"Still, there's still six of them out there. And unless that big-ass shark wipes them all out, then they'll still want to get at us in here. No amount of flash welding'll hold them off for the time it'll take for us to get to Gamma."
"We've not got anywhere to go, other than the airlock."
"Here they come again," Knight motioned to the window, indicating the darkened blurry shapes in the distance as they flitted from one side to another, darting back and forth before turning and hurtling their bodies towards the viewing port.
"Is the big guy chasing them?"
"Looks like it," Dawes stepped closer, watching the approaching creatures. She frowned, stepped closer to the window. "They're not slowing down."
Stevens stepped closer to the window, curling his lip slightly as he neared the combat android, then watched the rapidly approaching creatures. "She's right, they're not slowing down."
He paused, swallowed hard.
"They're not stopping," he repeated, fixated by the speeding creatures and the monolithic titan chasing them. The aliens were moments from impact before they twirled their bodies around in the salty solution and flicked their tales, propelling themselves away from the window, while the pursuing Draconis shark, unable to rival the dexterity of the smaller, lither creatures, barrelled onwards, its snarling visage bearing down on the window.
"Fuck!"
The shark struck the glass with its pointed snout, the thick glass cracking and splintering from the impact. Stunned by the blow, the eyes of the shark rolled to one side slightly, an incapacitated creature that was an easy target for the aliens as they swarmed around it, tearing in to the hide of the stunned animal with their webbed talons and burrowing into it with their snapping maw. Stevens' attention wasn't focussed on the bloody carnage that had erupted in the holding tank, though: he was more concerned with the fractures that covered half the porthole, and the rate at which they were spreading outwards from the main point of impact. He glanced around the control room feverishly, saw that the air tanks and helmets had not yet been removed, and made a lunge for them.
"Helmets, seal up," he commanded. "That's not going to hold, seal your suits and start sucking on the canned air. Knight, stop staring at the fucking fish in the tank and get yourself suited up. Dawes, help out the doctor, Johnny, get here: there's enough water in there to flood the deck, I've gotten you all through the creatures so far, I'm not going to lose people to drowning. Order everyone to seal themselves in rooms if they've not got oxygen with them, we'll work out a way to come and get them…"
A loud crack sounded in the control room, and the fractures split into a thick dark crack, a geyser of dark water gushing in through the opening: once there was one leak, it wouldn't take long for another to follow; and then another, until the window lost all tensile strength and buckled under pressure. The giant shark was dead now, that much was for sure, but there was no way of telling how many of the aliens were still in there.
No one wasted any time in asking questions: even JT and Evelyn had learned that if you took time to ask anything in situations like this, you could endanger your own life, and people around you. Stevens grabbed a helmet and swung it up onto JT's head, locking it tight to the metallic rim that lined his collar, then helped him into the harness of an air tank, securing the webbing and ensuring the air hoses were tight and sealed before shrugging his own tank and helmet on. He locked it in to place, nudged the HUD controls with his chin so a variety of different opaque readouts appeared in his field of view, then started cycling the airflow.
"Can you hear me?" His voice was tinny, echoing in the confines of the helmet, and waited for a response. JT nodded, then spoke, his voice filling the helmet through the small speakers set into the plastic and metal casing.
"Fine. Little claustrophobic…"
"It'll pass," Stevens reassured him, then looked beyond Evelyn and Dawes where they worked on each other, to Elroy and Knight. The combat synthetic was trying to help the mute Marine put his helmet on. They were closest to the window, and behind that Stevens could see the aliens had rallied back around it, hammering the screen with curled fists and prying the cracks with razor sharp talons. More glass cracked and shattered, gave way and tumbled to the floor, lost in the outpour of brackish water that spilled across the deck and crept along the decking, shorting equipment as it went.
With an almighty crash and a gush of ice-cold water, the window finally gave way and the operations room was flooded with the numbing fluid that rushed in and swirled around the chamber.
Evelyn's eyes fluttered open, and she numbly looked around her surroundings as the fragments of her memory fell back into place. They came in erratic flashes that she mentally rearranged into a coherent sequence. Aliens in the holding tank, the Draconis shark ramming the porthole, cracks becoming splinters becoming holes becoming nothing as the waters washed through the operations chamber. It was the shock of the cold water against her skin-tight suit that had made her black out, and as she finally came around, she found the world around her a grim and muted shade of green as the salty water enveloped her. She moved her limbs, found that she was able too move, albeit slowly, and gently rolled her head from side to side, taking in the vista of the flooded room.
The jagged remains of the window stood before her, looking out into the giant holding tank and the miasma of gore that swam the dead body of the shark, and all around her she could see the odd winking light of equipment and readouts that had survived the immersion in the waters. She tried to move a leg, found that her feet were rooted to the spot, and looked down, puzzled. Her legs seemed fine, intact, her booted feet nestled securely against the deck, and she raised her eyes again to see if she could see anyone else who had survived.
From the murk of the distant waters, one of the aquatic aliens darted in to sight, making a beeline for her as it snaked towards her, its powerful and agile body rippling from side to side as it propelled itself through the water with deadly accuracy. Evelyn was reminded of footage she'd seen as a child of a sea snake gliding through the water, and was reminded of the vision she'd seen when these creatures had first arrived, of the glistening serpent that had risen from that engineer's ruptured chest cavity. Would the same fate befall her, especially seeing as she couldn't move with her partial paralysis?
The water around her vibrated and jostled her, and she watched as a trio of bullets slammed into the side of the creature, smashing in to its ribcage and sending it careening off to one side. It wasn't dead, Evelyn could tell that by the way it thrashed and opened it's mouth; silent screams in the watery prison, but it had been injured enough to give second thought to approaching in such a brazen manner. Evelyn turned her head, saw a figure emerge from the gloom of the oppressive water and approach her, a dull yellow light mounted atop their helmet as they approached. It reached out a gauntleted hand, took her wrist, and knocked one of the switches mounted on her bracer.
"Can you hear me now?"
Evelyn recognised the voice of Dawes over the tinny speakers behind her head and nodded a response, but within the confines of the casing around her head, she doubted that this could be seen.
"Yes," she finally managed, "Yes, I can hear you.'
"Are you okay?' Dawes said, her expressionless helmet moving up and down as she looked over the doctor.
"I can't move my legs," she confessed. She couldn't feel them, but didn't know if that was down to the cold pressure, or an injury to her spine. She felt fine.
'Suits have got magnetic locks on the soles of the feet," Dawes pointed a thick gloved hand down to her own feet, then adjusted another set of switches on Evelyn's bracer. "You'll be able to walk now, but slowly, and possibly a little clumsily, at least until you get used to it. JT said you didn't like underwater?"
"Fish, I don't like fish," Evelyn corrected her, taking a tentative step. The water around her offered a lot of resistance, but she managed to cover a small amount of distance with her first attempt. "The fish is dead now… but I'd rather swim with a shark than those creatures. Where are they?"
"Stevens said he thinks he saw them swim off through down the corridor. From what we can tell, all the maintenance corridors of the blister have been flooded."
"Any survivors?"
"No, com channels are dead."
"Just the six of us, then?"
"Five," Stevens voice came over the radio as he stepped closer into Evelyn's peripheral vision: as he stood beside Dawes, the two became almost indistinguishable, the only difference being the different designs on their body armour. Another reason why they insisted on customising? To stand out in battlefield conditions where all other forms of identification weren't possible?
"Five? Who's dead? God, where's Johnny?"
"Here," another suited person stepped closer approached Evelyn from behind, wrapped an arm around her, then leaned in closer, the darkened faceplate coming in to contact with her own. At such a close proximity, and with the light from his helmet bouncing off her own faceplate, the opacity of his visor was just right so she could see details of his face. Relief, fear, worry: all these emotions, and more. She was sure he could see her, too, and she smiled, though she cut that short as she felt her lips start to tremble. There was enough water outside her helmet, the didn't want to drown in her own tears.
"Elroy," Stevens continued. "Couldn't get the suit on and sealed in time. Poor bastard. At least it was quick, though… better than being toyed with by those creatures."
"And Knight?" she asked. Though the presence of the combat synthetic wasn't the Marine's idea of sanctuary, she knew that the robustness of the android would certainly improve their chances of survival in any unforeseen circumstances.
"Operational, but silent," Stevens said. Though she couldn't see his face, she could hear him smiling. "He's not got a suit or an air tank on, but he's built to last. He might rust a couple of weeks down the line, but hopefully we'll be in Gamma by the time we have to deal with that. We're going to have to get him suited up, though. He can survive underwater, but he can't survive deep space without a suit."
"Space?"
"We're cut off, now. Those things are loose in here, and the only way we can be sure of our survival is by getting out of here and finding a safer port of call. We can't go up, they've probably taken over all the cargo decks now, made it in to their nest or whatever you want to call it, spreading out from engineering. We get on the skin of the ship, walk up a couple of levels, get in through an emergency airlock and find someplace else secure. Maybe even see if we can pass through one of the umbilical corridors and get aboard The Vengeance."
"You think that will work?"
"We've got four hours of air in these tanks, give or take ten minutes. You either drown here, stick your head out in bug central upstairs, or crawl on the skin outside. What would you rather do? Now, the pulse rifles work underwater, but the velocity of the bullet's a lot lower, so make sure your shots count. Knight's guarding the entrance, but we've still got one of the bastard swimming around here, probably in the main tank. We're going to leave, and manually seal the door behind us, hopefully keep him confined to his room. One less bastard to worry about. C'mon.'
Stevens spun on his heel and slowly plodded through the water-logged room, and after a little bit of studying, Evelyn and JT copied his exaggerated walk and traced their way to the door. They past what Evelyn first thought to be a loose suit that had been left on its hanger, but as the shade slowly rotated, she could see the face of Elroy, mouth gaping wide in a silent scream, eyes bulging and staring vacantly ahead. What little hair he did have lazily wavered from side to side as his body bobbed up and down in the small currents created by the group's movement. JT tried his best to position himself between Evelyn and the floating corpse, but in the past week Evelyn had seen a lot worse than a drowned man in half a space suit.
The doorway was guarded by Knight, as Stevens had promised, and for a moment Evelyn found the scene bemusing: while the four of them were kitted out in pressure suits and helmets, here was what looked simply like a man with a robotic arm, standing casually by an underwater doorway while papers and small pieces of lightweight equipment floated uselessly in front of him. His hair wavered in the same fashion Elroy's had, and in one hand he held a pulse rifle, in the other a motion sensor. By his feet lay his helmet, attached to an airtank, but not activated. A small bubble of air floated in the top of the helmet, a pocket of oxygen that would be flushed from the system when he donned the breathing apparatus.
"Freaky, right? Combat synths are tougher than normal droids," Stevens announced as he ushered the group through the hatchway and manually cycled the door shut, then snapped his welding torch out and started the weld the door to its surround. Evelyn had never seen anyone weld underwater, and the vision of the light blue flare fusing the two surfaces together while the unsuited form of Knight stood guard only added to the surreal nature of the underwater venture. "They're not as fragile, their skins tougher, and they can operate under pressurised environments. Not hard vacuum, they'd still pop like a ripe cantaloupe if they weren't sealed." He paused from his welding, nodded towards the helmet on the deck, then up towards Knight. He took the hint, and pulled the headgear on, sealing himself up into the suit and running through the diagnostics required to flush the system of the water.
"The rifles work underwater, to some extent," Stevens repeated himself. "Don't go full auto, that's not going to work too well. Don't rely on the trackers, either. Water's going to mess with the sensors of the thing, throw out ghost signals and everything else under the sun. You online, metal man?"
"Everything is operating under nominal parameters," Knight's monotonous voice sounded, slightly bubbly and garbled as the last of the water was vented from his suit.
"Did you get what I said about the tracker?"
"My own sensors are running as best the current environment allows. I shall be vigilant for any signs of the creatures, or any vital signs of anyone who may have managed to seal themselves away."
"Don't hold your breath," Stevens muttered grimly. The gallows humour wasn't intentional, but strangely it brought the slightest grin to Evelyn. "The flooding of these levels was quick, real quick. I doubt anyone had time to get sealed up, and even if they did, how are we going to get them out of wherever they're holed up?"
Evelyn nodded a silent agreement.
"And the whole area's flooded?" JT asked, his gauntleted hand fumbling for Evelyn's as he spoke.
"As soon as the large holding tank began to lose water, the large holding tanks above us were flushed into the system to keep water levels at a constant: a failsafe to protect the livestock. We estimate approximately ninety eight percent is submerged," Knight's voice rumbled through the close-circuit comlinks. JT gave a low whistle, impressed at the speed the water had spread, and the whistle carried through the speakers with a piercing screech.
"Try not to do that, Johnny," Stevens scolded, finishing off the welding and stepping back from the door. Turning around, he brought his rifle up to bear and nodded towards the ominous and waterlogged corridor trailing away from him. "Stick close, eyes open, we keep moving until we hit an airlock, then we flush ourselves out."
"Stick close to me, Johnny," whispered Evelyn, wrapping both hands around JT's and keeping hold tight. He didn't respond verbally, but his hand quickly tightened and relaxed: a nervous twitch, or a reassuring squeeze?
The corridors had been ominous and foreboding before they were flooded, but now the briny solution that filled them added even more of a feeling of impending doom. Lights set into recessed cavities in the wall and ceiling created pockets of glowing water, while others flickered and sputtered.
"Freaks the shit out of me," Evelyn confessed, watching each corner of the corridor, her movements slow and lumbering against the pressure of the water around her. "The sooner we get out of here, the better."
"It would appear that the creatures are heading for the entryway above us. I am detecting a number of ripples in the current that suggest they're moving away from us. Which is contrary to everything we know about them so far."
"They're going to pop the cork," Stevens muttered. "Let the rest of the bastards in."
"They can survive underwater, with no air?"
"Hard vacuum didn't seem to slow them down. If they've gone up, we're heading down. Get out the escape hatch, and crawl across the ship, same plan as before. Double-time, people."
The first junction they reached offered little choice in their direction: while both left and right corridors tapered off into darkened corridors, a hatchway set into the deck plating loomed ominously before them, like the mouth of a creature, hungrily waiting to be fed.
"We gotta keep going down, right?"
Dawes consulted her data tablet, the sickly green glow from her screen illuminating her expressionless helmet.
"Yeah, it's the only way down. Hatch is open, too. One of those things could be down there…"
"Fuck it," Stevens straddled the hole, his weapon pointing down through the opening. "If it's the only way, then it's the only way."
He shifted his footing, jumped up, then let his body sink slowly through the hatchway, slowly emerging in the lower deck. He signalled it was clear, and Dawes followed, then JT and Evelyn, leaving Knight to guard their rear.
The lower level was darker than above, illuminated only by the pad Dawes held, and the flashlight strapped to the top of Steven's rifle.
"Darker than shit here," he complained, panning his weapon around from left to right, up and down, slowly covering all angles. "Someone hit the power, see if we still have lights down here."
After a few brief seconds of fumbling blindly against the wall, JT finally found the relay switch on the wall, but hesitated before flipping the switch. "If I hit this, it's not going to short out in the water and kill us all, is it?"
"There is a small saline content to the water, though I doubt it would be adequate to conduct sufficient charge to kill us," Knight's monotonous voice rumbled over the speakers. "Even then, our suits provide suitable insulation against environmental hazards such as…"
"No would suffice," JT muttered as he threw the switch. One by one, the lights running the length of the octagonal corridor flickered to life, illuminating the scene before them.
An upturned corpse floating idly in the water slowly turned to face them, vacant eyes and shocked expression a mirror of the man they'd left in the control room: his death looked to have been quick, his weapon and supplies floating beside him, but his lower extremities looked like they had been ravaged by a wild animal…
And beyond the corpse, coming increasingly closer…
A whirling dervish of black resinous armour and a flurry of bubbles streaking towards them, a living torpedo bent on destruction as it flashed its teeth, flexed muscles along the length of its body, and swiftly extended its talons. Streaks of thick saliva trailed from its maw, the deathly grin of an emotionless killer as it homed in on its targets. It opened its mouth further, a silent roar swallowed by the watery surroundings as it reached striking distance.
Both Stevens and Dawes opened up with their weapons simultaneously, a muted staccato of gunfire and light that tore through the water and impacted against the speeding demon, exploding on impact, severing limbs and shattering ribs as the twirling creature halted abruptly, wounds oozing weakened acid into the water. Neither Dawes nor Stevens relaxed their pose, keeping their weapons up and raised in case there was another of the creatures in the aquatic corridor, but there were none.
"All left for the entrance?" Evelyn muttered, looking questioningly towards Knight.
"I'm sorry," Knight responded, his voice unable to convey any emotion. "My sensors did indicate that they had left. I'll run a diagnostic on myself at the earliest opportunity. Until then…"
"You'll do as you're told. Eyes open, weapons ready. If we run into any more of those fuckers down here, you can deal with them."
