The First Ambassador to Crustacea - 13

13. Big Fish

Zip’s reaction to watching Pilsen swallowed whole was a mix of absolute terror and guilty relief. The terror was obvious. In all her travels, she had seen horror-inducing, unimaginable creatures, but none of them had ever made her feel quite so helpless as the behemoth swimming before her. The relief came from the limiting of her options. There was no longer an ambassador to save. Her contract, what remained of it, consisted of getting back to the ship and getting the hell away from Crustacea.

“Zip, what is happening down there?”

And then of course, there’s the shrimp. “Well, rescuing the ambassador is off the table. I’m heading back topside.” She was already kicking in the reverse jets to begin her ascent.

“And what of Huron?”

I’m not getting paid to rescue Huron. “She hasn’t moved, Tom. I’m not sure she’s still among the living.” It was harsh, but mostly true. All she could see of the platform was the two lobsters staring out at the beast in rapturous admiration.

“You have to at least check, please.” The mechanical nature of Tom’s voice made it hard to convey any real emotion, but Zip suspected he was pleading.

“I go down there, odds are, I’m not coming back.” With each passing second, she could see the platform less and less.

“I understand.”

Zip’s finger was over the ballast controls. One press and she’d be shooting toward the surface, toward safety. Stupid fucking conscience. She let out a growl. It’s going to get you killed. She willed herself to press the button, to save herself. A simple press and she would be too far away to do anything of use. “Do I need to remind you that my weapons had no effect on that thing?”

“I said I understand.”

“A passive aggressive shrimp. Who would have thought?”

“I assure you, I meant nothing other than—”

Zip stopped listening. Bright sparks of electricity lit up the platform. One of the lobsters was on the ground, twitching. Illuminated in the stark light of a stun torch was the silhouette of a crab. “Your lucky day, Tom.” This is a stupid fucking idea. Below, the beast was turning, no doubt looking for more food. Pilsen couldn’t have been more than an appetizer. “Huron’s alive, and I’m going to get her.” Zip did her best to hide the regret she felt in heroics.

“Oh, happy—”

Zip clicked the radio off. The last thing she wanted during a fight was a distraction. She slowed her breathing and shot forward. The white lights glinted off her suit’s metallic armor, no doubt turning it into an undersea beacon. If the beast didn’t want me before, it sure as hell wants me now. Zip brushed the suit’s triggers aside and grabbed the melee control stick. While micro missile launchers were nice, they weren’t likely to spare Huron, even with precision.

On the platform, Huron struggled with the remaining lobster. A cloud of white detritus formed around them, and odd chunks of debris floated through the water. Zip pushed a toggle and extended a blade from the suit’s right arm. Then, she increased her speed. Lobster shells were tough, but nothing would stop a metal edge at forty miles an hour. Bracing for impact, Zip ran through the next steps of the battle as quickly as she could. Entrance, stab the big fucking lobster. Intermission, recover from hitting the rock wall at suicidal speed. The suit could take it, but her body wasn’t going to be happy. Finale, grab Huron, rocket to the surface. As far as plans went, it wasn’t the most complicated, but simple often won the day.

She finished running through her mental checklist about twenty feet out. The large lobster was hovering over Huron, pinning her down with both claws. Zip could now clearly see that one of the pieces of debris was Huron’s arm. Can crabs bleed out? If Zip had known they were going to a bug planet, she would have done more research about the bugs. No time to worry about that now. Sticking her sword arm in front of her, Zip rammed into the back of the lobster, pushing the blade through what she hoped was its head.

The impact of the ground was immediate, shaking and sending spiderwebs of pain through every bone in her body. Impact alarms blared and flashed red warning lights. Zip ignored them and reversed the suit’s jets with her free hand. With the other, she lifted the lobster, putting it between her and the wall. The suit’s servos whirred with effort but held amid the strain. Streams of bubbles erupted in front of her making it impossible to see, but the sudden slowing of momentum was clear. The suit’s feet ground against the platform, sending up ribbons of stripped metal and sparks. Zip tried to relax, letting her body go limp before the impact, but it never came.

The bubbles cleared, revealing a very dead lobster skewered on the end of her blade and a rock wall about five feet ahead. Small miracles. Intermission. Zip flicked the blade forward, sending the dead lobster sliding off the edge. Then, she turned toward Huron. The crab was clearly unconscious and dealing with the consequences of multiple severed limbs. Long shot. Zip flicked a series of switches on the suit. Several small grapple cables shot out the side and she worked at attaching them to the unconscious crab.

When she had finished, the sound that left the world during battle came back. At first, it was only the quiet hiss of the suit’s oxygen, circulating through the cockpit, but then she heard the steady beep of the sonar. And you forgot about the giant fish. Knowing exactly what she would see, Zip looked out at the ocean. Sure enough, the creature had turned around and was heading right toward them. The second lobster still lay sparking on the edge of the platform, providing a great piece of bait. But, if Zip was for gambling, she wouldn’t bet on the beast’s finesse.

The debris of battle swept up in a strong current. Huron’s body slid out behind Zip, drawing the tow cables taught. The behemoth’s mouth opened wide, skimming the edge of the long platform with its chin. Inside its maw was a horror show of thick, jagged teeth in impossible numbers. Zip stood her ground, realizing what the finale of her one woman show had to be. “Usually, the things I play chicken with are a lot smaller than you.” She hunched, pointing her body up and to the right, ensuring the tow cables had no slack. This is going to be tight. The creature needed to be close enough that it couldn’t turn to chase her, but far enough away for the suit’s stabilizing jets to overpower the current.

She stared at the oncoming creature, taking in every detail. If she was going to die, which she wasn’t, she wanted to take every last second from life. It had been a hard one, but there was always beauty in the things that were worth doing. Rescuing Huron, that was a thing that was worth doing. The sea creature before her was hideous, but the sheer magnitude of it was awe inspiring. There were interstellar battle ships that could have fit in its gullet. The myriad of milky eyes atop its wide, wrinkled head implied a long history of living in the dark. Zip wondered how many of its kind there were and what other creatures lurked in the far reaches of Crustacea’s ocean.

A hundred feet or less. The current lifted the dead, sparking lobster off the ground and flung it against the rock wall. She wondered if Ambassador Pilsen had felt any pain in that gaping hellhole of a mouth. Fifty feet. Now or never. Zip turned on every jet, booster, or other means of propulsion the suit had. The elastic supports of the cockpit’s haptic rig strained, pressing her against the back metal wall. The world outside became nothing more than a blue blur.

A mighty crash cut through the ocean’s calm, followed by a deep rumble of rock collapsing. Bubbles and debris blocked the cockpit’s viewport. Alarms blared around her, reminding Zip once again that she was not using the suit as its maker intended. She ignored them. So long as rivets weren’t popping off like champagne corks, they were alive. A red readout said the tow cables were struggling but holding. There was a chance that the force would rip Huron in half if Zip had attached the cables wrong, but she had faith.

The world shook and shifted. Zip watched the depth gauge counting down. The bubbles and debris cleared. Light blue above silhouetted the black edge of the continental shelf. She adjusted the boosters, aiming for the edge, far away from the unfathomable deep. With ample hesitation, she checked the sonar screen. Several pieces of debris let out weak pings, but the behemoth wasn’t following. They skimmed forward at immense speed, clearing the continental shelf in a matter of seconds. In the distance, Zip saw the twinkling lights of Crustacea.

“Holy shit.” She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and flipped the radio switch. “Tom, I’ve got her. You need to get me a medical team and whatever the hell a Crustacean equivalent of a beer is.”

Epilogue

Zip sat against the plush fabric of her captain’s chair, cradling a bottle of distilled Crustacean liquor and looking out at the setting sun. A day had passed since her journey to The Deep, and each night she woke in a cold sweat, remembering the size of the horrors that lay there. Immediately after returning, she had gone to The Hog’s medical bay, running every conceivable scan. While the mech suit had held up, the pressurization hadn’t been perfect. Zip’s body showed elevated levels of nitrogen. Luck, for once, was on her size. According to the scan, all she needed was a day’s rest before space travel. A day spent checking The Hog’s systems and coordinating Crustacean mechanics to patch the jagged holes in its belly. It sure as hell beat dying of a brain bleed at warp.

A small timer in the corner of the cockpit clicked over to zero and blurted a gentle alert. “About time.” Zip keyed in a series of buttons and dials, her personal code to make sure no one could ever fly The Hog without her. Then, she turned on the shipboard comms. “You said you wanted to see takeoff, right? Well, you’ve got about five minutes.” Zip looked over at the plastic sheet she had hastily taped to the co-pilot’s chair and the bucket beneath it. She would say it was for queasiness, but in reality, The Hog’s upholstery wasn’t made to endure constant dampness.

The cockpit door irised open and Tom bounded through it, racing toward the copilot’s chair, brick of fish flakes in one hand, metal translator in the other. His hydration apparatus dripped foul-smelling seawater onto the floor. “I do wish we could have waited for Huron to wake up.”

Zip nodded. “Doctors say she’s going to do just fine, right?”

“Right.” Tom nodded. “You’re right.” He fiddled with the straps of the chair, trying to get them around the odd proportions of his body.

“Oh, don’t bother with those.” Zip indicated her own lack of a belt.

“But the safety restraints.”

“Almost purely decorative. Anything that’s turning off our artificial gravity and pulling you out of that seat is going to pulp us long before a seat belt matters.”

Tom’s eyes twitched nervously, side to side. “This is a good idea,” he reminded himself. The blaring volume of the translator made quiet self-pep talks impossible.

“Remember what we talked about?”

“Yes.”

“Well, repeat it back to me then.”

“We stand a better chance at a relationship with the UCP if we send back an ambassador of our own rather than an empty box meant to represent the corpse of yours.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself. Much smaller chance that they nuke this planet from orbit when they meet you, Tom.” Zip ran through her final pre-launch check, careful to keep an eye on Tom as she did so. There was a certain thrill that could only be found in watching someone’s first exposure to space flight.

“Nuke us from orbit?! Is that really an option?! I thought—”

“Only kidding, Tom, you’re going to have to get used to that.”

“Right…” He fiddled with his abundance of hands.

“The first ambassador from Crustacea, huh? What an honor.” Before Tom had a chance to respond, Zip punched the engines and they rocketed forward into the black night sky.

The End

That's it for Crustacea! Thank you for coming on this adventure with me, I had a blast writing it and loved reading your comments. Someday soon, I'm going to run a Kickstarter to get this put into paperback, but until then RIP Pilsen, godspeed, Zip, and live long, Tom.

--Mac