by S E Zbasnik
"Swear you'll take us directly to Rune. Swear it on your sword."
"The one we left floating in space?" Orn scoffed. His captain was as likely to swear upon one of his sprite sticks as she was the hunk of metal orbiting above that orc colony, along with the frozen corpse of the last person to cross her.
But Variel grew silent, her mouth twisting as she weighed her options. Marek smirked, which churned what of his sugared ants she'd eaten to not waste food in her stomach. Finally, she nodded her head and spoke solemnly, "I swear it."
Marek placed his hand over hers, a move that did not go unnoticed by elven eyes, and said, "All right. Find me a slot to stick this into." Variel accepted the agreement and pointed him towards engineering. This was going to take a lot of work.
"What? Everyone's gonna let that sail on by?" Orn whined as his wife fell behind the two love birds. "Nothing?"
The male dulcen grimaced, though that was his default face, as his sister gathered a set of notes. Monde followed behind them, preparing for a jump.
"'It wouldn't be the first time!'" Orn shouted to the emptying room, "Gah, I have to do everything around here."
CHAPTER SIX
An inch of water slushed into everyone's shoes as the lift door opened. While not a healthy sign to find sections of a space station submerged, it wasn't exactly surprising. The landing party splashed through the slushy carpet, Taliesin investigating for mischief first, while Orn took up the rear. Not because he took it upon himself to guard against anything suspicious, he just forgot his coat and had to run back for it. They were not alone on their elevator trip -- a small man waved at the new passengers from the back of the lift, his fingers stuffed inside a pair of black mittens. Variel glanced at the stranger once, fairly certain he wasn't dangerous, before pushing the close button on the door.
Rather than waiting for the newbies to do something so plebeian as input their destination, the lift rose of its own accord. That was when the man began to chatter, "Elevators. That's the answer. These are a real marvel. Up, down, none of that fuel stuff. Just good old fashioned gravity and reverse gravity. What goes down must go up, yep yep."
Bored in the way only an elevator can stir, Variel watched the lights phasing in and out of reality on the massive panel as the lift flew past levels of the station. Their docking had been twitchy, the airlock tube filling with the scent of pine and the sounds of drum music on high speed. But there was air, and heat, and gravity. So far so good.
Their new friend crawled up from his soggy corner and leaned into Marek's uninterested face. "Have you ever seen it?"
Marek tried to bat the insane man away, but the guy only inched closer, standing up on his bagged tiptoes. "Seen what?"
The man paused before pointing his finger out the door, "The stars!"
"We're in space, they're a little hard to miss."
Orn chuckled despite it being the interloper's joke while Variel rolled her eyes and puffed out her cheeks. Taliesin remained silent, either in deadly assassin or jealous boyfriend mode. They looked eerily similar.
"And you know the best way to get to the stars?" the man asked again, circling around their lift.
"Practice?" Orn said, sniggering as it slipped from his lips.
The man turned his unhinged stare upon the dwarf, then he looked down. His head tilted to the side, half of his shorn hair falling across scattered eyes. Orn glanced to his boss, then back to the switching-to-potentially dangerous man, just as he barked a single laugh. The man bounced off his feet and, with his legs split in the air, shouted "Elevators!"
As his scraggly form landed upon the ground their Elevator! came to a soft stop. The doors buzzed open and a woman and man dressed in the comforting white of personal care entered. "Now now, where have you been getting to?" the woman cooed to the agitated passenger.
He spun about in the lift as she gently took his hand, "The path to the stars!"
"Yes, dear, that you did. Now, could you give me your other arm?" she guided it into a jacket, warm and puffy as his head lolled back to find Marek, his newest friend.
"And do you know the secret?" With his arms occupied as the nurse tried to dress him, he inched Marek forward with a lolling of his head.
Curiosity claiming sanity, Marek leaned into the insane man and asked, "What is it?"
"Diamonds! Cables made of nothing but diamonds!" and he cackled as if he'd solved all the galaxies problems before the soup course.
The male nurse spoke up, "Yes, there we are, all warm and safe in your calming jacket. Now we best be getting you to your room, Mr. Clarke."
"Diamonds!" he continued to shout even as his pirouetting form was led through the doors. "And some sapphires, and rubies, and a big piece of ham!" were Clarke's last words as the door slammed shut.
"Sweet merciful Gods, what the hell was that?" Marek asked, leaning against the wall.
The professional spacers watched the planeter with a cool eye. Diamond and ruby elevator cables were a typical Tuesday for people crawling through the stars. Now, if he'd pulled a chicken out of his pants and gotten into an argument with the beleaguered fowl about gnome rights it'd have been something worth talking about.
"Which of these confounded buttons do we push?" Orn asked, staring down a control panel that was both twice as tall and wide as himself.
"Try the map one," Variel gestured to a big "Where Am I?" button situated at the bottom for every child to push with glee until his or her parent snapped like Mr. Clarke and his diamond elevators.
Orn leaned into it and a voice hissed, "The Where Am I? button is out of order, you scab, line-crossing, teat lickers."
"Gnomes... Why don't they all get real jobs instead of wasting their lives at some low wage maintenance crap?" Orn asked the world. Luckily for him, no one in the carriage was in the mood or of the mind to explain to him all that was wrong with that statement.
Instead, Variel booted up her PALM and prayed her husband left enough of her computer's brain intact to help, "WEST, are you...? I know you're there. WAKE UP!"
A few gears ground awake on the projection her hand left upon the wall of buttons. The computer was planning a fine entrance for them as one giant eye opened slowly and looked around itself, "Owner 23, the pineapple is in the safe. Birds! Birds surround the towers!"
"WEST, I need you to get us to the Half 'n' Half cafe."
"Which one?" the computer asked, momentarily breaking its insane stupor character.
"Shit, it's right. There's at least thirty on this station alone," Variel said, turning towards their short master of ceremonies.
"Vida said it'd be on the non-dwarven section of the station," Orn said, knowing nothing beyond that.
"WEST..."
"I heard the bossy artichoke. I am searching..." the computer whined as it threw up the gears again to pass the time. "Press button 52 row 7. There is one of those oily caffeinated dispensing establishments located on that deck."
"You heard it, Orn."
The dwarf didn't need to be told twice and, climbing up on his tiptoes, he counted seven over and pushed the button marked 52. The lift shuddered as it dropped to switch over to a new conduit running what would be the East/West line of the station if polarity existed off world.
"So," Orn broke the silence, "anyone want to talk about their mottled past? Species differences? What makes each of us tick? Favorite weapon for fighting reapers?" Variel glared at her pilot and he shrugged, "Spoil sports."
"The music is not beyond reproach," Taliesin said, his fingers bouncing against his crossed leather arms. At the shock stares from the other three passengers, the assassin broke from his relaxed stance, "What?"
"Shoulda stuck with the battle readiness of the orcs or how dwarves are meticulously clean."
"Really? What the hell happened to you?" Variel chided her only dwarf.
"I'm special," Orn grinned as the lift began to slow. The door didn't ding or buzz but made a whomp noise and pitched the floor at a 45 degree angle tossing t
he four passengers back on their heels.
"The shit was that?" Marek asked as the doors opened to a wall of undulating water waiting patiently outside to enter. Only the fluorescent lights of the lift highlighted the inky depths of the black deck, the refraction dancing back and forth like a small child with a smaller bladder. The occasional flicker of something sparkled in the light, like those stars Mr. Clarke was so fond of.
"Ooookkaaay," Orn said, inching back from the water defying the laws of physics and wetness by remaining perfectly vertical and not rushing into their drowning coffin.
"Damn it, WEST! You got the wrong deck," Variel cursed into her hand.
Taliesin inched around the dwarf trying to climb the walls like a cat and the male human with his jaw upon the floor. His elven fingers danced with the air an inch away from the water and a small charge burst against the skin. Leaning in, he began to make contact with the imaginary barrier. Both Orn and Marek shouted out "NO! You'll kill us all," but as the assassin's fingers broke the barrier, nothing happened. His hand undulated along with the water, the fingers growing eerily long in the light's refractions. As he slowly pulled it back, all the water suckered off him, leaving his skin completely dry.
"WEST, you are not hiding out of this one. Why are we on the under sea adventure deck?" Variel continued to harass her computer. Taliesin looked over at her to try and assist, not that anyone but Owner 23 had much luck when the computer was in a particularly foul mood.
Only Orn kept his eyes glued to the water, "Have I ever mentioned that dwarves aren't real big fans of deep water? We're notorious for it, really."
"Calm your trousers, Orn. It's fine. It's behind a containment shield, like what they use at aquariums," Variel reassured her pilot while threatening her computer.
"Yeah, there's a reason I never go to any of those," Orn muttered but knew he wasn't about to break through that brain trust of captain, assassin, and drooling computer. It felt wrong to have the interloper on his side but at least Marek seemed just as terrified of the endless horizontal depths.
Some of the sparkles danced together, then scattered apart upon hitting a wall, each moving in a pattern as if searching for something. A few grew closer and Orn held his breath as they bounced against the shield, shattering backwards into the black deck. The dwarf rubbed his eyes, he could have sworn he saw a flash of light, big light, slide down in the depths of the watery hallway, but it was just black on top of more black now.
"WEST!" Variel shook her hand so hard her thumbs popped.
"WHAT?" it hollered back. "I am going to spew data bits all across this ceiling."
"Where are we?"
"52, the oceanic species deck. Your drink unit is some 500 paces down that corridor."
The water moved, shifted as a whole, as if it breathed deeply. Orn jumped, "Guys..."
Variel continued to shout into her hand, "You sent us where?!"
"You instructed the not-dwarf deck. This is empty of dwarves."
"It's empty of all surface life, you insane satellite merged with a hunk of moldy cheese!"
"Where did the sparkles go?" Orn asked himself as the clearly breathing water seemed to be getting larger.
"It is somehow my fault that you cannot make your instructions more clear?" WEST pouted, "I processed your request and gave you an appropriate answer. You may not blame me."
Variel slammed her hand against the wall, even as her head fell, "The little shit's right. Gods, I hate it when it's right."
A tendril of the dark water bounded across the light threshold of the barrier and Orn shouted, "We need to go, we need to go, now!"
"I'm working on it," Variel said before lifting her hand up and smashing it against the wall a few times. The captain and computer often fought for dominance.
Marek's eyes weren't as attuned for the depths as Orn's were but even he saw another tendril, fatter than the almost imaginary first, lash across the halo of light and slam into the hallway. Variel dropped her hand from the wall and looked around at the reverberating bang still shaking their lift, "What was that?"
Orn shrieked as a thick tentacle, at least ten meters in diameter, lashed through the water barrier and straight towards the dwarf. Instincts reacting fast, Taliesin grabbed his hands onto the thing and wrapped his entire body around the tentacle, suckers digging into his stomach and the top of his head.
"We have to go, we have to go, we have to go!" Orn babbled.
"Close the door!" Marek added, his body trying to move towards the row of buttons but stopping cold as the tentacle thrashed towards his face. He shrieked in terror and joined Orn to cower in the corner.
The tentacle banged against the ceiling, then twice into the floor. Piss yellow slime oozed across the carpet in its thrashing wake, its mottled skin a sickly green baring suckers the same shade as the nurses uniforms. Taliesin still held firmly onto the creature's appendage, his fingers knitting his body tight around it while he was tossed haphazardly against every surface. Rather than screaming or even calling out cool catch phrases, the assassin stoically said, "Please forgive our disturbance."
"Our disturbance? I don't remember grabbing onto that thing and smashing it against the wall," Orn said, still himself even as a monster from the deep tried to drag everyone to their watery graves.
"Close the door, close the door," Marek moaned, his head lolling back and forth.
Variel pushed on the button but nothing happened, it only winked the light and buzzed. "WEST," she shouted into her hand, "override the close door."
The tentacle whipped itself hard against the floor, trying to dislodge the passenger, but Taliesin flipped up just before his spine would have cracked like a piñata. Still, the assassin tried to offer apologies to the monster valiantly attempting to kill him, "Mea culpa, I beg for your forgiveness in inserting ourselves into your night's rest. It was a complete accident."
"WEST!"
"I regret to inform you Owner 23, that I do not in fact own a pair of fingers, so pushing a button is quite beyond my grasp."
"Can't you do computer shit and override it?"
"'Do computer shit?' No, I cannot 'do computer shit.' Perhaps you should remove the large obstruction and try the manual override once more."
"It has a point," Orn said.
"Close the door, close the door. Please close the door," Marek's voice babbled between their debate.
"I hate it when it has a point," Variel grumbled.
Unable to thump the pleading for forgiveness intrusion off, the tentacle began to recede into the water, dragging the elf with it. The water was slow to accept that much mass distortion, the tentacle seeming to move in slow motion as it returned to its briny depths.
"Taliesin, let go," Variel called to him.
The assassin unknitted his strangle hold but failed to drop to the ground as the tentacle's suckers adhered tight to his body. "I fear I may have a small problem," then he looked through his feet at the approaching water shield, "that is quickly growing into a larger one."
"Sod this," Variel smashed her fist to slam the control panel shut. Reaching into the elf's pocket, she removed one of his knives just before his knee vanished into the abyss.
"Variel, it is not polite too..." Was as far as Taliesin got before she plunged the dagger deep into the fleshy underside of the monster.
The suckers flailed in pain, dropping the elf who now hung suspended in the watery air by his legs trapped inside the barrier. Tentacles yanked back into the boundless depths for succor, the creature's rage speeding it up. Variel threw the knife to the floor where it jammed upright and grabbed her lover around the armpits. "Orn, the second his boots are free you slam on that close door button."
"Close door, close door."
"Yes dear, I'm doing it dear," Variel muttered to Marek's whining as she pulled on Taliesin. His taciturn face appeared rather pathetic in his helpless situation.
"Cap, not to hurry you up or anything, but it looks like ol' briney's coming around for another
go." The tentacle shimmered as another round of sparkles unleashed from within the belly. It was probing to see how far its prey had gotten away. A few bounced against Taliesin's lower half, scattering back to the creature.
"Almost got him," Variel gritted her teeth. Gods, he was heavier than she remembered. "Marek, get over here and help me."
"Close the door, close the door. Got to close the door."
"Big help, dear. Thanks a ton." Out of the corner of her eye she spotted the twisting rise of the tentacle coming back for revenge. Only the shoes to go. We can do this, no problem. She was confident, even as her brain calculated the very good chance the monster would snatch the both of them up and drown them for dinner.
Taliesin seemed to read the situation even with his eyes still focused mostly over her shoulder. "Let go," he whispered.
"No," stubbornness in the face of certain doom was a proud Yates tradition -- that and wool sculpting.
The tentacle banged against the walls, trying to throw off her balance but she shifted, putting all her weight on the back of her heels. Just a few more inches, come on, come on. Again, the tentacle slammed hard into the wall. Almost, just about...
Variel tumbled to her back, the full heft of the elf coming with her. "Orn!" she shouted as the dwarf leaned his entire hand onto the button. It lit up like a bonfire and bonged, the door closing just as the tentacle raced towards its meal and met with solid metal.
The captain's head banged into the floor as breathing returned in a rush, right in time for her to notice the full weight of an adult elf on top of her. Taliesin pushed up on his hands, trying to remove the burden and his fingers graced his own blade, mere inches from where the two fell.
"That was a near miss," he said.
"Never ride a sea monster again, okay."
He smiled, "I shall try to comply."
"If you two are done making out down there," Orn muttered, "we're still stuck on the deep sea hell deck and I'd quite like to find dry land as soon as possible."
