Michael Siemsen - Exigency

“Calm down!” Aether roared. “Our concerns are no different from being in orbit.”

The top of the pod scraped against a rigid surface, sending a grating screech into Aether’s head. They’d been dragged beneath something solid. Forward motion slowed.

The EV bobbed side to side as she toggled the console to the external environment variables screen. The altitude gauge had switched to read “Depth.” They’d reached 156m below the surface and continued to move northwest, albeit very slowly.

Aether climbed up onto her seat back and peered out the porthole. There, a few meters away, she saw a Sea Threck swimming alongside the EV. A faint green glow was all that lit its bug-eyed face. Aether switched to IR and the area beyond the window appeared in crisp grayscale. They were in an underwater cavern, but not a naturally occurring one.

The EV stopped its forward progress and swung against its line for a moment, drifting forward then backward until the pod’s buoyancy held them straight up like a tethered balloon.

“Ahh man, so not good, really not good,” Qin murmured under his breath. He was in his seat, gripping the restraints and staring through the instrument cluster. “Wha’d’they want, wha’d’they want…”

“Start adjusting our pressure. I think we need to equalize with this depth, and fast.”

“But you said they couldn’t—”

“Qin!”

He shut up and turned to the console.

“And make sure your suit and visor are sealed.”

Aether climbed down and switched back to thermag, observing what had so rattled Qin. She estimated 30-40 Threck floated before them. Beyond the group of orange figures, the rough outline of a craggy wall appeared in wavy grays, and hundreds of vines grew upward, obscuring the rocky surface like a curtain. Several dark patches marked entrances to tunnels hidden behind the vines. From the vague features discernible through her optics, the whole structure before them looked like a magnified coral reef, whereas behind and above, the cavern appeared fashioned from enormous shells. Perhaps, she thought, shells of the huge mollusks, like the one currently anchoring the EV. They’d built onto a natural structure, creating a concert-hall-sized compound.

To her left, hundreds of small fish swam frantically within a netted enclosure affixed to the wall. Tall vines grew in clusters from small pits. On her right, half a dozen large animals drifted about, tied to the opposite wall. Through thermag, their silhouettes were smooth domes like turtle shells, but with four long, broad fins instead of legs. Could they be young versions of the massive creature that pulled the EV under? The basic anatomy matched.

“I can’t believe this,” Qin’s voice moaned in Aether’s helmet speakers. “This is unbelievable. Do you believe this? After all that to reenter?”

“It’s less than ideal,” Aether said. “Can you check our comms status? And after that, assemble a map of this cavern. We need the shortest, safest routes to the surface.”

“You expect we’ll need to—”

“No, I don’t expect anything, but we need to plan for everything. Just focus on the tasks, okay?”

Qin quietly echoed her words as he began. “Focus on task… planning and focusing…”

Aether climbed around, peeking out the portholes again. The vines were the source of the green glow. Tiny bubble clusters along the stalks, like baby grapes, appeared to be reservoirs for bioluminescent bacteria or fungi. The Sea Threck equivalent of installing street lights, or had they simply grown wild?

Two more Threck figures emerged from the tunnels behind the vine curtain. Aether and Qin watched in silence as the pair appeared to confer with their comrades, then proceeded to swim toward the still-anchored EV. Several other Threck sprang into action, disappearing deep below. The EV lurched, rose minutely, then sunk once more. Aether watched as the giant creature below them slowly exited the area from the direction they’d come, while the pod remained in place, apparently tethered to a new anchor.

“Ho-hey!” Qin exclaimed.

Two Threck now swam just outside the EV, running their long, arm tentacles along the hull. Despite all the vids and pics she’d seen on the station, it was still astounding to see them so close. In the water, with leg tentacles fully extended, they appeared so much taller than all the on-land images—perhaps half a meter longer than an average human male. Out of water, they walked on a calloused bend in the tentacles, sort of shuffling along as if on very low knees. Near the center of Threck City there was a statue of a famous historical Threck leader with his arms in the air and standing on the very ends of his “legs,” but Aether wasn’t aware of Minnie ever observing someone fully extending their legs to stand or walk on the ends. Perhaps if there were a Threck ballet.

The two Threck swam around the EV, studying the hull, until one made its way to the top and found Qin’s porthole. It summoned its companion and another head appeared in the window. Their big eyes, like flesh-hooded billiard balls, touched and slid around each other as they tried to see in at the same time.

Aether made a decision. She stood up and faced the porthole straight-on, holding her arms out at her sides in the shape of an arrow. This was the City Threck equivalent to waving hello to a distant person. The two Threck gawked at her—not moving for a moment, appearing to consider—then whirled back to life. A third swam forward, passing what appeared to be a small stone to one of the two observers, who then struck the EV hull with it.

“Nononono…” Qin’s shaky, whispering voice.

“Just one tap… stay calm.” Another tap, harder. “Your suit ran a check, right?”

“Ahh yeah… it’s fine. Hey, do MWs work underwater?”

“Good question,” Aether said, checking her waist to verify the multiweapon was still there. “Look it up for us, would you?”

A rapid buzzing alert rang out in the cabin as the ambient light flashed from blue to orange and back.

“What?” a flabbergasted Qin shouted. “He figured out the hatch access!”

Aether peered through the still-sealed hatch and saw one of the Threck fiddling with the opening mechanism. Manipulating it was not an intuitive process, and the Threck’s nubby pad just didn’t seem up to the task. Then again, those nimble little cilia…

She barked, “Shut off that racket!”

The sound stopped but the lights continued flashing.

The Threck had poked the bar that pushed the semicircular handle out (thus the alarm), but to actually open the hatch they’d have to grip the handle, pull it out a couple centimeters, and rotate it 180 clockwise before pushing it in. Aether crouched close and watched the club struggling with it. Did the Threck know that the thing it was fooling with was an access mechanism? Or was it simply the first moving part they could find? A similar latch resided at the back of the EV for skimmer deployment, but everything else on the hull was tooled on.

“MWs work underwater,” Qin said. Aether heard a new determination, as if he’d come to terms with the situation and was ready to suck it up. “Stunshocks auto-disable when submerged. It also advises lethal setting for effective defense as nonlethal is severely diminished. Also, we should reset the EV. Prep it for reentry.”

“Why?”

“So the lockdown bars reengage. I just remembered. They can’t open the hatch if we reset.”

Aether thought about it. “Will we be able to? When the time comes? And what about the pressure?”

“Yes, it’ll be like a landing simulation as far as those instruments go. The pod’s already equalized for this depth, but its environment won’t be affected anyway. Plus, our suits are handling environment individually now.”