by Scott Baron
Bawb laughed. The poor Tslavar was so out of his element it was funny. “I know what happened here. And I know why you are going to fail in your efforts. But you’ll not hear the story from me.”
The captain stared at him a long moment. He was wearing his konus, and casting the torture spells would be as easy as breathing for him. But the way the Wampeh was calmly staring at him almost seemed a dare.
No. He would let the underlings handle the dirty work for now.
“It’s been nice chatting with you, Wampeh. I do look forward to our next conversation.”
With that, Sindall left the room. Soon enough, his men would begin the torture once again. And once more, Bawb would easily endure.
It was one of the benefits of being the rare strain of Wampeh that he was, able to absorb the powers of natural magic users by drinking their blood. It had been some time since he had drained the powerful Emmik Yanna Sok, but some of her power still lingered in his veins, and with it, he was able to negate most of the effects of the Tslavar torture.
Of course, they didn’t know that, which made their lack of progress even more frustrating.
“What was that all about, Bawb?” the imprisoned cyborg on the other side of the partition asked.
His name was Tim, Bawb had learned, and he had been a maintenance worker prior to his abduction. While some of the metal men with flesh skins were foppish and soft, designed for service and manners, Tim was a bit of a character, his initial programming making him more relatable to the humans working in his field. But they had all died in the war, leaving him no choice but to tone down his gruff language for more polite company.
But now, as a prisoner, his old ways were beginning to show once more, and Bawb couldn’t help but like the spunky cyborg.
“I’m sorry you could not understand, Tim. If I had my tools, I would gladly equip you with a translation spell. But as it stands, I shall play the role of translator, for the time being.”
“So, all those rumors I’ve been hearing about magic users arriving on Earth? It’s a real thing, not just talk?”
“Indeed.”
“Huh, so that’s why I could understand them for a bit when they took me into the other room for questioning. A translation spell, you say?”
“Indeed.”
“Funny. I don’t think they realize how good a cyborg’s hearing is. And even though they walked out of human earshot, man do those guys talk. Especially the one you were just talking to.”
“That was the captain who visited me. And he wishes to learn what happened to the planet. About the war. And why your people are not affected by their spell. It would seem they still have a hard time understanding how your kind works.”
Tim let out a chuckle. “Yeah, they tried the whole, “cut-into-him-and-make-him-talk” thing, but I just muted the pain receptor alarms in my systems. That seemed to annoy them to no end.”
Bawb laughed. “You know, Tim. For a man built with no heart, you seem to possess one all the same.”
“Thanks. I just wonder when they’ll realize they can’t magic a machine. Still, it sounded like some crazy big plans they had for Earth.”
Tim relayed what he had overheard, and the scheme at work was indeed audacious. But if they were able to put the right pieces into motion, Bawb feared they may very well gain a solid hold over the planet, setting the stage for a full occupation.
“We need to get this information to Cal and the other AIs,” he said, testing his restraints once again. They were firmly attached, as always. “This could be critical for them to know. We need to escape.”
“I’m with you on that,” Tim replied. “But how?”
Bawb gazed at his surroundings once more with his calculating eyes.
“I’m working on it.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ara sat perched above Downtown Los Angeles, her mind racing as she tried to devise some way to reach her friends on the bottom of the ocean. From her vantage point, the blue of the waves could be clearly seen, but while they’d been a soothing sight on other days, on this one they merely served to remind her of Charlie and Leila’s plight.
Far below, inside Cal’s command center, Rika paced back and forth, barely containing her agitation, while Ripley sat on a couch, her leg bouncing incessantly. Both were on edge, and with good reason.
After the victory in San Diego they had hurried back to Los Angeles to plan the next course of action and coordinate a warm welcome for the Tslavar invaders when Charlie and the submarine drove them ashore.
Then it all went to shit.
All of their planning immediately shifted from a capture operation aimed at a craft emerging from the sea, to a rescue one for the sub now trapped beneath it. Both were difficult prospects, but the urgency of the current situation had sent everyone into overdrive, including the network of genius AIs.
Unfortunately, no one had been able to come up with a solution as of yet.
“What about modifying Eddie, or one of the other ships?” Rika asked, pivoting on her heel one hundred eighty degrees and setting off across the room in the opposite direction.
“They are not designed for that type of pressure. The vacuum of space is far different than the ocean,” Cal noted.
“Please, stop pacing,” Ripley said. “You’re making me nervous.”
“You should be nervous. We all should be nervous. They’re stuck, Rip.”
“I know. But I can’t think with your pacing. I’m trying to come up with a way to save them.”
“We all are. And I think better when I’m moving.”
“Ugh! You’re so difficult,” Ripley groaned.
“Please, ladies. We have to focus our attention on the situation,” Cal interrupted, hoping to put a stop to their back and forth. “Now, from what I have been told by Ara, because of the extreme depth at which the sub has come to rest, no magic will hold out against that pressure long enough to reach them. It is simply too deep.”
“Yeah, we know that,” Rika said. “But what if we were to break out the stockpile of konuses and use them to power some kind of super spell?”
“Again, I have discussed this with Ara, and she says a spell simply will not last. It is not that it couldn’t be cast. But rather, it is that the spell would not withstand the forces working against it long enough to make the dive to over nine thousand feet.”
“So not even if we triple up the konuses?”
“I am afraid not.”
“Even if Ara taught us the protective spells, it wouldn’t last, is what you’re saying? So what if we take a lesser sub, one that can’t dive quite that deep, and only cast the spells when we get close? That would drastically cut down the amount of time the spell would be required to hold out.”
“I will ask her,” Cal said. “Please stand by a moment.”
He opened the comms line to the improvised communications nest on the roof of the nearby building, where he’d set up an array of displays to share data with the dragon, and relayed the question.
“An interesting idea,” Ara said. “And one I wish could work. But the maximum depth of those craft is simply not sufficient, from what you’ve told me. To avoid being crushed by the pressure, they would have to stop several thousand feet above the trapped sub, if I am not mistaken. And that far away, the spell would still dissipate long before they reached them,” she said. “Five minutes, I would estimate. That’s all they would have.”
“Your spells work how, exactly?”
“The ones that would be of use would create an air pocket, as well as providing protection from the pressure of the waters,” she replied. “I’m sure you know, the problem that most creatures have with those kinds of conditions is the way their bodies react to those forces. If, say, they were to exit a pressurized craft into an unpressurized setting, well, there are a number of unpleasant ways they could die.”
“And if they didn’t, by some miracle, the return to the surface could surely give them the bends, or an air embolism.�
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“I do not know these terms, but I assume they relate to the shift in bubbles within the fluid areas of a body,” Ara said.
“Very astute.”
“I’ve been around, and have seen a great many unpleasant things,” she replied. “In any case, the simple answer to your question is no, it simply won’t work. With more time, I could teach them the spells, certainly, but even then, they would not last long enough to carry out a rescue.”
“Thank you, Ara. I will relay to the others.”
Cal shifted his focus back to his command center.
“Ara says that at that depth and pressure, you would have perhaps five minutes, tops,” Cal relayed. “But given the range of our smaller subs, you would be too far out to reach them in time.”
Ripley punched a cushion on the couch. “No, I don’t accept this. There’s gotta be a way.”
“I’m sorry, Ripley. I truly am. But it is looking as if we do not have an option, here.”
“But their sub was able to make the dive,” Rika noted. “Surely there are others.”
“That was a highly specialized war sub, designed to survive extreme combat conditions and depths. The only other submarines anywhere near that one’s capabilities are still simply research craft. Subs that have not been launched in hundreds of years and would need an overhaul before use, I might add.”
“So we figure something out. Modify one of them or something.”
“Yeah,” Ripley agreed. “Like, what about building some kind of diving bell and dropping it down the last way to them once a sub hits its max depth? So long as it’s pressurized, it should be able to survive the drop.”
Rika gave her a curious look.
“My folks liked to make me watch educational shows when I was a kid,” Ripley explained.
“That is a very creative idea, Ripley. However, the problem still remains that there is simply not enough time to attempt your plan, even if it could be made to work. The clock is running, and without power, the sub’s air scrubbers undoubtedly remain offline. Even with the cyborgs on the crew not using much air, they’ll still run out by morning. I’m sorry, but there’s simply nothing more we can do.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Without power beyond the battery reserves, the temperature aboard the stranded submarine had dropped steadily in the frigid depths as it rested on the sea floor. The cyborgs were unaffected by it, simply turning off their sensory input for temperature.
Charlie and Leila, however, sat on the sub’s deck, wrapped in blankets and huddled against each other as they leaned against a slightly less chilly interior wall. Under other circumstances, it might even have been a little romantic. In their current dilemma, that was most certainly not the case.
They’d spent the first hour on the bottom of the ocean working through options. Potential escape plans, mechanisms that might be jury-rigged to allow them to at least surface. One and all had resulted in a dead end. Emphasis on the ‘dead’ part.
What was really bothering Charlie––even as he faced a watery demise––was that as they sat there, thinking and conserving breath, he had actually come up with what he thought might be a working means to detect the enemy craft from afar, allowing them to launch a sneak retaliation before they even knew what hit them.
“Bioluminescence,” he said.
“I’m sorry, what?” Captain Watkins replied.
“You know, the stuff in sea water that glows a little when you swish your hands around in it in the dark.”
“Right, I get that bit. But how does that help us?” the captain asked.
“Stuck here, it doesn’t. But for tracking the Tslavars? Big-time oversight on their part. Their shimmer––if they get it working again––makes them invisible to the eye, but if we adjusted scans for tiny traces of organic light in a linear pattern, the fluorescence they cause when they churn up the water, that might be enough to track them. To determine their next target, and even prepare a defense against them.”
Suddenly it made sense to the captain.
“So you mean to use aerial surveillance to pick up bioluminescence as their ship moves. With all of the whales, sharks, and other creatures frozen in place, it would be the only signature out there,” she said appreciatively. “Hot damn, that’s actually a clever idea, Charlie.”
“Thanks. Now, if only we could get word to the surface, they might be able to actually put it into practice. But comms are down, and at this depth, even my link with Ara isn’t working.”
“Your what with who, now?”
“Ara. The dragon. We have a sort of connection. A bond. It lets us communicate across pretty great distances.”
“But not underwater?”
“Not this deep, no.”
“Seems like a kind of flawed system,” she said, laughing grimly.
“Yeah, but we never tried it out this way. Surprise,” he grumbled.
After that, he resigned to settle into as comfortable a spot as he and Leila could curl up in, the couple talking quietly, conserving air, while saying things they might not have another opportunity to voice if things didn’t take a turn for the better.
They’d only been together a short while––romantically, that is––their time living together as king and queen notwithstanding, as they only consummated that situation at the end of their reign. But they’d been through a lot. More than most couples have to deal with in a lifetime, and they’d handled it with great aplomb in just a matter of months.
And now that things were finally going well, and they’d made it back to a version of Charlie’s world that had running water and didn’t include ample amounts of mud sticking to your clothes no matter where you went, this had to happen.
“You know, even if it all ends like this, I’m glad you were my queen,” he said, arms firmly wrapped around her warm body. “I mean, obviously, I’d rather we don’t die at the bottom of the sea. But you know what I mean.”
Leila turned her head and kissed him gently, then rested her head back on his shoulder. “Things certainly didn’t turn out the way I thought they would, that’s for sure.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I figured I’d live out my days working Visla Maktan’s estate, looking after his animals and never leaving the planet. And now look at me. On another planet, in another system––that’s in another galaxy! Oh, I wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me this would be a possibility.”
“I know. Kind of like how I wound up in a magic world instead of a tech one. But here we are. Two fish out of water.”
“But surrounded by it.”
“Touché.”
She nestled in closer, breathing in his smell she knew so well. “We turned out pretty good, though, didn’t we? After all we’ve been through, you and I, we’re good, you know? Like, real good.”
“I know, babe,” he said, softly.
“And I don’t want this to end. So don’t give up just yet. I need you to use that brilliant brain of yours and think of something. You’ve done it before, so I’m challenging you now. Do it again, Charlie. Figure out a way to get us out of this mess. Promise me you’ll try.”
“I swear I will,” he replied. “Or die trying.”
He sincerely hoped the latter would not be the case.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“New Jersey?” Rika said. “Seriously? Last we saw them, they were off the coast of California. How in the hell did they get to Jersey?”
“I don’t know,” Cal replied. “But if their cloaking tech––I mean, magic, has been repaired, it is entirely possible they took to the air and cut across the continent. Conversely, we don’t know exactly how fast they are able to travel underwater. Magic is far different than technology, and any estimates I would normally make based on water pressure and hydrostatic resistance are moot points where it is concerned.”
Ripley was too busy staring at the display showing the location of the sunken submarine to partake in this particular discussion, though sh
e did catch snippets of it peripherally as she focused on the image in front of her.
Something was nagging at her, tickling the back of her brain. Something just on the tip of her tongue. Or, mind, more appropriately.
“What has Ara said?” Rika asked. “Has she smelled any of her magic surfacing from the ocean?”
“She has not mentioned anything to me, but I will confirm with her.”
Ara had been listening in. Cal had left his comm link open at her request so she could better follow the goings-on inside the command center while she simultaneously scanned the horizon for signs of their enemy. As of yet, she hadn’t sensed a thing, visually, olofactorally, or otherwise.
“You may inform Rika that I’ve not smelled anything, but given the length of time they’ve been submerged, as well as depth they descended to, if the Tslavar craft moved far enough away from these shores before surfacing, it could make detecting them––even with my magic coloring their ship––significantly more difficult.”
“Thank you, Ara,” Cal said. “Rika, Ara has informed me she has not sensed anything.”
“Well, that’s just fucking great. So somehow these bastards made it clear across to the Eastern seaboard, then went and snatched a half dozen people right out from under Atlantic City’s AI’s proverbial nose.”
“Which would imply their camouflage is functional once more.”
“No shit. And they’re still at it. Whatever it is. I just don’t get it. How the hell did they move so fast?”
Suddenly, Ripley started bouncing up and down excitedly. “Holy shit! The loop tube!”
“What are you talking about, Rip? There’s no way the Tslavars are using the loop tube.”
“No, not the Tslavars. Shit, hang on,” she said, flipping through display options. “Hey, Uncle Cal, can you put up the map of the loop tube network on the big display?”
