From the Depths

by S. J. Sanders

  Parts of the ship were closed off due to lack of crewmembers, and the population was showing an alarming decline in births. At their current rate, generation six had less than half the population, and those among the adults who were attempting to mate were experiencing fertility issues. They were going into extinction mode and the behavior of the people reflected that. The hydration baths found at numerous points throughout the ship were too often at maximum capacity, whereas most social and education venues were sparsely occupied. That was a huge concern to the medical teams since it indicated that their population was steadily slipping into depression and retreating into the therapeutic waters as a method of escape.

  The baths themselves were unique because they were wholly necessary for the mental and physical welfare of sirei, and for that reason, by law, no sirein could be denied access at any time for any reason. Even though they were constructed with the intent of regular use to keep their bodies adequately hydrated and to provide much needed minerals to enter their blood system, any attempt to regulate the use of the baths had been met with riots until the commanding bodies capitulated. At this rate, however, it wouldn’t be long before they exhausted their reserves and the baths would dry up. When that happened, it would be a matter of a week, maybe two, before their people would start dying en masse.

  Command was certain that they would find something soon. Commander Ji’wa of the Li’lal’fa pod wasn’t sure if it was delusion speaking or desperation. They were wrestling with the reality that they had to find something, because not finding it was unthinkable. Ji’wa took no pleasure in his daily tasks that offered no hope, reminding him every day of the sirei’s slide into death.

  He frowned at the medical data scrolling by on the holographic screen, one hand cupping his cheek thoughtfully. His fin at the end of his tail threatened to unfold from its casing in his agitation, but with the restraint of a lifetime of discipline he kept it shut.

  “Are you sure this is right?” he asked the pod’s lead medic as he battled down a wave of anxiety.

  “They are correct,” En’il remarked with a weary sigh. “Our pod is now out of the bath’s nutrients and low on water. Ji’wa’sa, if we don’t find a planet within the next few rotations, we are going to lose our people.”

  “What if we attempted to gather supplies from the other pods…”

  “‘Sa, no one has any to spare. All of the pods will be out in a matter of days.”

  En’il bowed his horned head with respect but with a finality that sent Ji’wa’s heart plummeting. He dismissed the hologram screen and closed his eyes.

  “This is it, then. The twilight hour of the Li’lal’fa has come. I will speak to High Command and let them know to seal our pod. If the others are ahead of us by a matter of rotations, they may last long enough to find a world.”

  What went unsaid between them was that it would only do so because the sealed pod would prevent anyone from leaving and rioting in the other sectors of the ship.

  His people would die, and the rest of the pods would continue for as long as they could.

  Ji’wa hurried down the long corridor, his tail snapping with urgency behind him as he took the elevation tube up to the top decks and strode through the upper halls to the fore-station at the top of the ship.

  Entering the fore-station, Ji’wa drew up short. The command crew was attending to their usual tasks, but High Commander E’heem had all of the pod commanders clustered around him and was speaking with them in a low voice. Noting his arrival, the High Commander looked up and smiled.

  “Ji’wa, excellent timing! We’ve been having a difficult time getting through to the Li’lal’fa pod.”

  Ji’wa cleared his throat, drawing his long tail around his ankles in a show of respect. “The Li’lal’fa pod is the reason for my presence. I must sadly report that in light of water shortage and that our nutrients supply is exhausted, we are sealing the pod.”

  E’heem sighed and rubbed his brow just below the base of his black horns. When he glanced up, his eyes were beyond weary. “We can only hope then that the probes brought back accurate information.”

  “’Sa?” Ji’wa inquired softly, not daring to hope.

  The commander of the Si’moor’da pod grinned as he cut into the conversation. “The probes have brought back visuals of a blue planet. It has been through some calamities and there are signs of sentient life, but the geological events that have recently shaken it—and from our readings recently flooded much of the landmass—have miraculously provided the exact situation our civilization requires. The waters are blue, rather than green, but the nutrient levels are right. We may have found New Sirenx!”

  “We mustn’t get ahead of ourselves.” E’heem sighed. “There are still many tests that need to be run and we have to establish the threat of the sentient native species already dwelling there. We cannot force them from their homes.”

  “‘Sa, we cannot afford to wait,” another commander objected harshly. He gestured at Ji’wa in emphasis. “We have one pod close to being lost to us, and another twenty pods that will follow shortly. In my pod alone, there are four females who are getting close to bearing. We don’t have enough bath nutrients to provide an optimal birthing area for them. We have to take our chances. We must activate the colonizer!”

  The other commanders mumbled their agreements, and Ji’wa had to agree with them. With his own pod being sealed, activating the colonization sequence was his people’s only chance for survival.

  “Every one of my people would take their chances in the waters of another world,” he conceded as he caught the High Commander’s eye and held it for a moment. “We have no other choice if we wish to live.”

  E’heem looked from one commander to another, males and females standing at attention to obey whatever order was finally decreed, and he inclined his head. “Very well. With the majority in agreement, we will initiate.”

  Turning away, he strode through the command station, the fin at the end of his tail fanning out and snapping closed in time with his steps. Taking the central podium, he stood among the crew, each of whom turned to show respect.

  “Initiate colonization sequence New Sirenx, approval code High Commander E’heem isha val zorn.”

  The crew turned in their suspension domes and with quick fingers carried out his orders. One dome turned and the crewmember hooked into it looked at them vacantly, her voice coming through the systems from the dome.

  “Colonization sequence initiated. All crew members must return to their colony pods and prepare for imminent impact.”

  Ji’wa didn’t wait for further orders. A glimmer of excitement bloomed in his breast as he tore through the halls, abandoning all etiquette and decorum. A loud siren was going off overhead, and he had no doubt that everyone was going to be confused. He had to get to their sector guards and begin the lock down process to prepare for entry.

  A wide smile broke over his face.

  His people would now have a chance to survive. There would be opportunities for true, traditional matings in the wide seas and young would be born and cared for among the rocks. Water and stone… The time had come. He only prayed to their ancestral gods that it did not disappoint.

  Chapter Two

  Terra used the edge of her knife to force open the oyster shell, her belly knotting with hunger as she salivated. She rarely found something meaty when she scavenged with her bucket. Still, the island she had called home for the last five years was her own private paradise. Truthfully, it wasn’t much. It was small, with rocky cliffs and only a small patch of dense forest that offered some fruits and vegetation during different times of the year, but it was all hers.

  She’d sailed a long distance away from the normal nomadic routes. It was dangerous for anyone on their own, man or woman. The great cataclysm had not only reshaped their planet, leaving much of it buried in water, but also transformed society. Land was for the wealthy few. True arable land, not diminutive rocky islands like she found herself o
n in the middle of nowhere, were the real paradises filled with technologies and foods that commoners could only dream of. For those who weren’t wealthy, or a member of the landed-serf class, it meant facing a lifetime of hardships at sea.

  Pirates looted freely among the wide expanses of the waterways. To be alone on the open sea routes meant death. There was only relative safety in forming sailing communities, but not even the floating cities were free from attack. As soon as she’d been old enough, she stole a small boat and left with nothing more than the idea of finding peace somewhere among the islands that dotted the seas. Most were nothing more than rough rock and brush. She’d been ridiculously fortunate to crash her boat on a tropical island.

  Thetis, the mother of the seas, had surely delivered her.

  It was hard to remember when the sun beat down mercilessly and the breeze barely cooled her enough to be comfortable in the summer, or in the lean seasons when food was more difficult to come by. It was winter, and though the cool temperatures weren’t unendurable even if she did shiver most of the nights, food was scarce. She’d spent hours combing the short sandbar on the beach and the rocky tidepools looking for sea cucumbers—a deceptive name for something that wasn’t a kind of vegetation—and shellfish. Though there had been nothing but a few tiny crabs in the tidepools, the sucking, wet sand had offered up a handful of oysters. What a find! A haul was such a rarity that she had cried with relief. She couldn’t wait to extract the salty meat right out of the shell… if only she could get the damned thing open.

  “Fuck! Come on, damn you! Open!” she snarled at it.

  She shouted with triumph when at last it pried open revealing the rather disgusting looking glob of flesh within. Her stomach grumbled as she loosened it with her knife. Eager to satisfy her hunger, she put it to her lips, tilted her head back and swallowed it down. The texture was disgusting and the salty tasty made her eyes cross as she shuddered, but it felt good to have something substantial in her belly. It hardly satisfied her, but it was at least something.

  Dipping her hand in her bucket, she pulled out the next one. She was just beginning to pry it open when a bright light caught her attention from overhead. She lowered the oyster to her lap and frowned at it. Was it a patrol from the land bases? She’d never seen one over her island, though she knew that the government sent patrols to the few island cities and floating cities to collect taxes and search for any sign of rising insurrections.

  It didn’t look like a patrol flyer, though. It was larger and glowing red-hot as it descended through the skies at a sharp angle. The shape was also strange. Although it had a pointed nose like most vessels, the body was round like a teardrop.

  The air around her roared loudly as it flew over her island to dive into the water some distance away. The water sprayed up, shooting into the air with the velocity of its impact. Alarmed, she dumped her oyster back into her bucket and clutched the handle as she scrambled off her beach into the safety of the cliffs.

  Tucking herself into her rock shelter cut by the elements and the gods into the cliff, she curled around her bucket and wrapped her arms around a large stone jutting up from the rear of her home. She heard the tsunami when it hit her beach. It was worse than any storm. It crashed against her island with a voice like a shout from some angry deity from the depths.

  The cliffs protested with sounds of distant cracking as stones broke free. As she expected, water sprayed inside her shelter, but with minimal force compared to what struck the stony barrier. Still, she screamed as the icy water hit her back and stung, though her cries were drowned out even to her own ears. Even when the water finally ceased spraying inside of her shelter, she still clung to the rock for several minutes, unable to loosen her grip as her heart threatened to burst from her chest. She clung to it until the loud sounds of the waves breaking over the island finally quieted.

  Prying herself off the rock, she stood on shaky legs and glanced around her shelter. Sand and various debris had washed up inside the entrance, but her personal belongings in sealskin satchels were still at the back of the shelter. Terra breathed a sigh of relief. It would take her a little bit of time to straighten up her home, and she would have to weave another screen to cover the entrance, but it wasn’t too bad.

  She only hoped that the forest beyond the rock cliffs remained mostly intact. She didn’t know what she would do if the trees had been wiped out.

  Grimly, she walked to the entrance and peered out.

  The beach below was a wreck. Aged driftwood was scattered everywhere, but thankfully there were only a few green fronds among them. Setting her bucket down by her feet, she leaned against the side of the opening and continued to shuck her oysters, swallowing each bite as she allowed her eyes to roam over the beach. Her canoe that she had labored an entire summer carving with her sonic tool was fortunately still wedged tightly between the rocks near the base of the cliff by some miracle, and the tidepools were full.

  She grinned at the sight. A full tidepool could mean a full belly for her tonight. There was a dwindling light in the waters in the near distance that attracted her attention as well, but she was too hungry to investigate out on the water—besides, the waves were still a bit rockier than what she’d liked to take her canoe out on. With a mental note to head out and satisfy her curiosity in the morning, she picked up her pail in one hand and descended to forage for deposits from the tsunami.

  That night, she decided to eat on the beach rather than haul everything to a cavern. After cleaning out the smoker that she’d developed near the base of the cliffs, she built a fire within it and prepared to smoke the majority of her findings while several fish roasted on spits over the fire. It had been challenging to find wood dry enough to burn, and it had forced her to squeeze between the cliffs to scour the jungle for something suitable, but once she had a tidy stack of wood she got busy preparing her food.

  Nothing was wasted. Organs that she did not eat were set aside to be used for bait in the crab pots. Often larger predators, species that came after the travesty, destroyed her pots before she could fish them back out in time, but the crabs with bodies larger than her head and legs as thick as her forearm were worth the inconvenience.

  Terra watched the sun sink lower over the water, dying the sea brilliant hues as she chewed on a mouthful of flaky fish. The water was no longer glowing with the mysterious light from whatever had sunken into its depths, but it was marked in her memory, just beyond two tallest of the rocks that jutted out from the water ringing her island. She rarely took her canoe beyond the rocks. Dangerous creatures lived beyond them that she did not want to face in a vessel as vulnerable as her small canoe.

  Was investigating worth it?

  Her skin prickled at the thought of what might drag her canoe down into the depths. Plus, she might go all that way and there not be anything worth seeing. She sighed as she scooted closer to the dwindling flames.

  She wouldn’t make any decisions until morning.

  Chapter Three

  Calling herself all kinds of a fool, Terra paddled away from the shore. The sea was calm, and the sun shone warmly down on her. She should have been using the favorable weather to look for supplies to do repairs on her shelter, not gallivanting over the water. It was ridiculous to risk her safety just to satisfy her curiosity but, in the end, she couldn’t resist going out and at least getting a look.

  The spray from the rocks soaked her as she drew her canoe beyond them, and a swelling wave along the surf break came close to capsizing her, but the gentle roll of the waves beyond as she drifted over them made her smile. There was a certain joy to being out on the open sea that she missed—well, that and having someone else to talk to. She couldn’t do anything about the latter, so she resolved to soak in as much pleasure from the moment as she could get. It was a shame she didn’t have a sail. The gentle breeze would have sent her skimming over the water to her destination. Unfortunately, hers had been damaged beyond repair when her boat crashed, and little had survived ou
tside of some scraps that had washed up.

  As the morning passed without incident, she gradually relaxed. Grinning widely, she sank her oar into the water and paddled out over the water, delighting in the glide of her canoe over the surface. She sang to herself for a time to keep her mind occupied as she worked, only quieting to laugh as a pod of dolphins zipped around her, their gray bodies bursting from the water with playful abandon. Her heart fluttered with excitement as she sped among them for a time before they dove deeper and disappeared from sight.

  Setting her oar over her lap, she panted from the exertion and stared down into the water sadly. Not for the first time, she wished she’d been able to get ahold of the deep-swimming tech that was kept and tightly regulated in the floating cities and islands cities. Used mostly for underwater repairs, few were allowed access to it for personal use… and certainly not for leisure pursuits unless one had coin to pay for the privilege. She would have given anything to explore what lay beneath the surface. Despite the gigantic predators that inhabited the water, if she could breathe underwater with one of the compact mouthpieces, there would have been no end to her explorations. She might even had been lucky enough to find something of value worth trading. Pre-cataclysm antiques were of considerable worth to the land-dwelling elite.

  For a moment, she allowed herself the indulgence to daydream of making enough coin to make her island a comfortable residence with a real house sheltered behind the cliffs rather than a chilly shelter. She could have decent clothes, and food such as grain and yeast brought from the mainlands by merchants.

  Terra chuckled to herself and shook her head. It was a waste of time daydreaming about something that would never likely happen.