Michael Siemsen - Exigency

She looked at his intense face through the visor. She’d never seen him panicked before today, and it was good to see and hear him getting it together. “Okay, do it then. Lock us down.”

A new alarm sounded, more insistent.

Beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep… and the orange light began to strobe. From the hatch frame, a thin bar of water blasted in, striking Aether’s body and helmet, thrusting her against the seat back. She struggled to turn sideways, grasping fruitlessly for the holstered MW.

The gushing water abruptly stopped.

Aether looked down and saw that she was sitting in a shallow pool. She clambered once more to her feet, climbing back onto the seat. Outside the EV, five Sea Threck appeared to be in a heated debate. One poked another in the face. The other returned with a swipe. Two more pulled the poker away. Which one had figured out the hatch access? And why did it stop? Had the external pressure been too great to pull the hatch open more than a crack, or had the ones at the portholes seen the water streaming in and ordered a halt? Aether had suddenly become a goldfish in a little bowl.

Three Threck swam to the top of the pod, pushing down with their legs while pulling at the vines. The EV began to roll in place, sending Qin and Aether scrambling to stay on their feet.

“They’re tipping us over!” Qin shrieked, his voice atop a layer of static.

They stepped off of their seats as their world rotated forward, the pool of water splashing over the hatch, consoles, and EV controls, shorting out instruments. Lights flickered and popped off, display panels shut down.

“We might lose intercomms,” Aether warned. “Switching to DC.”

They stepped lightly onto the systems panels, carefully avoiding kicking any switches or applying weight to sensitive surfaces or screens. What the hell were the Threck doing?

Blue emergency lights activated just as the EV stopped rolling. Aether and Qin stood on instrument panels flanking the hatch and waited, their respective portholes now situated beside their faces. Aether locked eyes with the Threck floating just a half meter outside. Like the mudskippers the Threck partially resembled, its large eyeballs sucked into their sockets and popped back up like an elaborate blink. She glimpsed its siphons moving open and closed like giant nostrils. Minnie had catalogues of Threck facial and body expressions in the language DB, but Aether couldn’t bring herself to pull them up. Her eyes were glued to the thing’s face, and the reverse appeared true of the Threck beyond the porthole. Beside its head, the occasional tentacle whooshed by. Its own or another’s? Too much going on at once.

The EV lurched again and the hatch slowly sank below gurgling salt water. The water level rose and briefly splashed, but only for a few seconds before stabilizing like a moon pool, the air trapped within.

Aether watched the submerged hatch slide silently away. Had this been the Threcks’ intention? Had they earlier observed the water spraying in, resealed the hatch, and turned the EV on its side to act as a diving bell, conscious of some beings’ need for air, and aware of the moon pool effect?

Without warning, two tentacles splashed up, planting themselves on the hatch frame, and a Threck thrust itself up into the cabin. Aether and Qin fell back against their respective sides as the Threck groped about before finding a bar to grasp, then braced its long legs against two sides. It twisted on its appendages, left, right—the equivalent of turning one’s head, and gawked at Qin, then Aether, then back. It reached out and touched the dark fabric of the seats, then the smooth surface of the panels, all the while turning and angling its body in short, rapid movements, like a bird.

While it appeared more curious than aggressive, its boldness was thoroughly disconcerting. It even reached out and ran a cilia-coated tentacle end down Aether’s helmet and visor. The little hairs waved in sequence like a field of centipede legs. Aether strove to remain still as it fondled her body, squeezing, poking, and swiping. Then it turned to Qin whose expression made it clear he wouldn’t be maintaining such composure during any brief exam.

Aether activated her mic and listened one more time to Minnie’s synth voice repeat the sounds in her ear module. The Threck’s club patted down Qin’s shoulder and arm. Before Qin could lose it entirely, Aether proceeded. “Ee-shaaay-CK.”

The Threck stopped and twisted with startling speed, ogling Aether with its two bulbous eyes. It repositioned its legs to match the head as the eyes sucked in, disappearing for a second. This eye-hiding rendered the head top a featureless blue dome, save for two nearly invisible slits. Aether almost expected the eyes to reappear inside the two soda can-sized siphon orifices, but they popped back up as fast as they’d dropped, and the Threck thrust both of its clubs onto Aether’s visor, seeking to probe her cheeks, nose, lips, eyes. Unable to penetrate the transparent material, it slapped its pads onto each side of the helmet and tried to pull it off.

Awed by its strength, Aether was lifted onto her toes and struggled to keep her footing. She threw up her hands reflexively, shoving the tentacles out and away from her helmet, and slipped, her right glute landing hard against a pointy corner.

“Ow!” Her mic and PA were still active.

“Ah!” the Threck echoed. Clubs dropped to its sides and it moved its face right in front of hers.

She imagined the salty, fishy smell of its skin. It repeated, “Ah!” once more, and she could see the muscles move inside the siphon holes. Threck mouths were hidden under their bodies where the four tentacles converged, much like an octopus, and weren’t involved with vocalizations.

Sifting through options in the language DB, Aether found and activated the Livetrans app. A little box popped up in the upper left of her view, showing Minnie’s virtual Threck, Howard, standing and ready to demonstrate appropriate body language. Livetrans automatically disabled her mic and took over control of her suit’s PA speaker. Meanwhile, their guest had begun a close inspection of Aether’s neck coupler, its club tips pointed and hovering close, like a doctor moving in for the first incision. Without realizing, Aether had been recoiling from the imposing Threck, and found herself pressed into the wall, feet tripping below her.

Qin, in her helmet: “Should I shoot it?”

“No! What? Just stand quiet and don’t move. And put your damned MW away if you have it out!”

Still fidgety and with an intense, methic energy, the Threck looked down, scooted its “knees” to either side of the open hatch, and faced Aether with its hands held out to its sides. “ Ock! Ee-shaaay-CK. Sthaw-ptck tshss-ahh…” It jabbered on like this, cocking its head sideways, popping in one eye or both, arm gestures and body thrusts, bending and stiffening.

Aether tried to maintain eye contact while also watching the Livetrans app working diligently away. Words appeared and disappeared—correcting based on context and gesture interpretation—and as Aether watched the Threck’s message come into focus, she felt incredible relief wash over. Less than two seconds after the visitor stopped speaking, with an 8-out-of-10 confidence score, the app presented Aether its first translation.

LIVETRANS: Peaceful greetings. [Your] bodies and shelter [are] welcome in [my] water. No danger [for you]. [My] water [is] safe from [unknown] and Threck. Where [is your] mountain? [I am] [unknown]. Where [are you] made? How [you] know Threck words?

Aether input her response as quickly as she could, while the Threck popped its head forward in little fits that Livetrans read as “ Now you.” It glanced back at Qin.