“We’re looking for a set of islands running in a ring, something like a big atoll,” John said. “Shallow water between them, with deeper water outside and a very deep trench right off the coast to the west.”
“I’ve located three sites which could correspond with that data set,” Majel said. “One stands out as most likely, due to proximity of the trench.”
“We’ll try that site first then,” John said. “Make for those coordinates.”
“How will we know if it’s the right one?” Dan asked.
“I have a feeling my little friend will let me know when we’re close,” John replied.
Seven
The Satori settled down on the small, rocky island. This place was so much like Earth that John felt pangs, looking out the windows. The water was a blue you would have called Caribbean, on Earth. The sand was jet black, like he’d seen on a handful of volcanic beaches. There didn’t seem to be a lot of vegetation on the ground. Perhaps they’d discover more under the water?
“We’re splitting the team.” Dan paused before continuing, “Again? Are you sure you want to do that?”
John took a deep breath before replying. He was taking a chance. But they were always taking risks, out here. They always would be. How best to keep the team on board with those decisions though?
“Linda needs samples. She can’t get them underwater. But we need the Satori to bring me to the alien colony,” John said.
“We could do one first, and then the other?” Charline said.
The alien in his ear was put out by the idea of waiting any longer. It was home. It wanted to be back with its people and was quite adamant about expressing that. If John delayed much longer he wasn’t sure what it might do. It had already learned that it could damage a human with its abilities, and while he had worked out a decent arrangement with the being, he didn’t want to push it past a breaking point.
“We need Linda to get some samples quickly. With at least a preliminary analysis, we’ll have something we can tell the Cyanauts,” John said. “I don’t want to give them false hope.”
“Why tell them about the bacteria at all?” Dan asked. “Just keep it quiet until we know for sure.”
“Telepathic race,” John said. “They don’t understand the idea of keeping secrets from one another. I’m not even sure they can keep secrets once they are close enough to form colony bonds.”
The things were alien, much more so than the Naga when it came down to it. They were colony beings, collective intelligences which used their telepathy to join minds into almost a single being. Almost. It was more like a chorus of voices all talking at once, from what John had been able to glean. He wondered what talking to such a being was going to be like.
“So you’re dropping Linda and I off here,” Charline said.
“I’ll get a mobile lab up and radio you as soon as I have any information,” Linda added.
They were a good team. John had considered sending Andrew along with them, but this might not be a case where more was merrier. If anything, more bodies might make it easier for the Naga to find them.
“No radios,” John said. “Remember, the Naga can track us by even the smallest radio signals. We’ll come back topside as quickly as we can.”
“Assuming everything goes well down there, sure,” Beth said.
“Which is why I want Linda to bring all of her bacterial samples with her,” John said. “It’s insurance. Just in case this doesn’t go as well as we would like, it would be good to have a bargaining chip up on the surface.”
All of them nodded. As much as the little alien seemed grateful they were returning it home and working on a solution to the Cyanauts’ problems with the Naga, they were still alien. They were as different from human beings as John could imagine a life form being. He had high hopes that they would find common ground against the Naga, and become allies in their fight. But he would be a fool not to have a backup plan.
Charline and Linda departed, setting up shop in a set of caves not far from the shore. Andrew and John scoped out the caves - which were shallow and uninhabited, this time - while the others unloaded supplies.
Then they were off. The Satori hovered briefly over the sands, its invisible form blowing out spinning gusts over the beach. The ship glided out over the water and then descended rapidly. John watched the water splash up over the nose of the ship as they dove beneath the waves. He held his breath for just a moment, then exhaled as they continued to descend.
If the land was barren, the sea was anything but. As soon as they passed beneath the waves they were flying through the middle of a forest of greens and blues, tall waving fronds of sea-plant rising from the soil beneath them. The Satori brushed against some of the weeds, and fish darted off on all directions. Sunlight flashed off their forms for the brief moment before they were gone. Some of the fish looked strangely Earth-like. Others looked uncanny, but that could have been because of how short a glimpse John had.
“You sure we have to go down into this trench?” Dan asked. “I don’t really know the crush depth for the ship.”
“We’re not even going to come close,” Beth said. “We won’t run into trouble until we’re at least three hundred meters deep, and crush depth should be much lower. Those coordinates only place us down about one hundred meters.”
“Sure, but it’s the position that bothers me. Right over the deepest part of the ocean around here,” Dan said. “Majel, how deep is that thing again?”
“A little over four thousand meters,” Majel replied quickly. “Not even much of a trench, in Earth terms.”
“Still deep enough to be trouble for us,” Andy said.
“Those are the directions I’ve been given,” John said. He thought at the alien in his ear, questioning, asking why here? There was no answer. The thing might not know how to dissemble with its own species, but John had the feeling he wasn’t being told everything. If it was giving them directions to a meeting, it had to be in contact with others. Had it already blended into a colony? Was this being already part of a collective of Cyanauts?
It still wasn’t an easy notion to grasp. As individuals, each Cyanaut had a basic understanding of its own existence. It had memory of home, memory of the colony it was born into. It had enough understanding of the world around it to translate the things it heard, which was how the Naga used them - as translation tools. The Cyanaut in John’s ear would translate the spoken words of any being nearby, regardless the language. It would translate the ideas behind those words, taken directly from the subject’s mind and placed into John’s.
Privately John wondered if it could do even more. Could he get the Cyanaut to read minds? To pluck thoughts right out of the minds of other beings, even rummage through their thoughts? Basic things like knowing if someone was lying or not might be possible, at least. If he knew the right way to ask.
“I’m picking up several large objects in the water ahead,” Dan said.
“Those will be colony fish,” John replied.
When the creatures were close enough to one another they merged into colonies. They melded their intelligence into one collective whole. Most of the time members of a colony would attach themselves to a single large aquatic animal, using their bond to help the animal thrive and live far longer than it would on its own.
John watched the radar as they drew ever closer to the three large objects ahead. Three colonies. He felt a little thrill. This was exciting. This was how first contact was supposed to go, with two intelligent species meeting and learning how to co-exist and even cooperate.
STOP The thought wasn’t his, and was clear as day in his mind. That pretty much spelled out whether the critter in his ear was already operating as part of a colony or not. He wasn’t speaking with ‘his’ Cyanaut any longer. He was talking to all of them.
Eight
Andy mostly ignored the banter between Beth and Dan. The two often went at it like…well, like an old married couple. Some days he wondered why the
two of them didn’t just get back together again. Part of them clearly wanted to. He didn’t know what had torn them apart in the first place. It was obvious to anyone who watched them interact that they still cared deeply for one another. How had that gotten messed up?
He was more interested in watching the water outside the ship grow gradually darker blue as the ship continued to delve deeper into the alien sea. The ocean floor had dropped away sharply now. The forest of plants and fish they’d crossed were left behind. All that lay below now was more inky darkness.
Somewhere out there were more of the creatures like the one that had hurt him. Not just a few more, either. If they were telling John the truth even a small colony was made up of hundreds of the things. Some had thousands of members. He knew that John felt differently, but Andy didn’t like the slugs. He didn’t trust them. If it were completely up to him, he might have just dropped the slug into the water here to find its own way and gotten the hell home again.
But John wanted to make nice with these things. He’d never failed to back John up on anything, and he wasn’t about to start now.
Thinking about the man, he glanced over and saw that John had gone completely still, like he was listening to something that only he could hear.
“John, you OK?” Andy called over.
“Yes. Dan, stop the ship,” John said.
Dan looked worriedly back over his shoulder, but moved his hands quickly over the controls before saying anything. The Satori stopped, using the engines to hover in place but no longer pressing forward.
“What’s up?” Dan asked.
“They’re scared of the ship. Of our weapons,” John said. “They want us to continue without the ship.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Dan said. “We don’t know enough about these things to trust them.”
“And they don’t know enough about us to trust us. Someone has to try trusting first,” John replied.
“So you’re gonna just go out there?” Dan asked. He narrowed his eyes.
“We brought wet suits for a reason,” John said.
“Sure. Because we thought contact might be necessary. This is too big a risk.” Dan crossed his arms over his chest.
Andy completely agreed, but he kept his peace. Dan was making his argument for him. Of all of them, John was perhaps the least expendable. Of course these things would want to slice the leader away from the team. Once they had him out there, would they be willing to let him come back?
John paused, not saying anything for a moment. His face got that faraway look that Andy knew meant he was talking with the ear-slug.
“They said I can bring someone else with me, if we are worried about sending me alone,” John said.
“Good enough for me,” Andy jumped in. At the very least he would be able to have John’s back. “I’m game.”
“You…might not be the best choice, Andrew,” John said. “They know I am the only one with a Cyanaut linked to him. The only one they can talk to directly. To prevent miscommunication they insist that whoever comes with me also accept a symbiote.”
Andy froze. All of the dread and fear he felt about the creature which used to reside in his ear came back at once. It washed over him, making his heart race. He could feel his face flush as his body reacted to the visceral panic like it was an eminent attack. He took a deep breath, trying to still his reaction.
“Someone else can go, son,” John said. His voice was kind, but Andy hated hearing the sympathy there. Sympathy for his weakness and fear. That was not the sort of person he wanted to be. No - it was not the sort of person he was.
“No, I’ve got this,” Andy said. Somehow he kept his voice firm and even as he said it. He wasn’t quite sure how.
“No, I don’t think…” John started to say. But Dan cut him off.
“Actually, I think Andy is precisely who we should send with you,” Dan said. “If you go at all. He’s had experience with these things. He is an expert with weapons, which might be enough to keep you alive if things go badly.”
John faced Dan again, preparing to make an objection, but Dan raised a hand to still him.
“Best of all, he doesn’t trust them,” Dan said. “You do. You want this to go well, John. I can see it in your eyes. You want this to go well very badly. Andy thinks these critters are up to no good. Me, I think the truth will probably lie somewhere between those two extremes, but Andy will be an excellent balance to your optimism. If he’s up to it.”
There was no challenge in Dan’s voice, but the words felt like one anyway. Could he do this? Could he go out there and knowingly allow one of those things to climb into him again? His skin crawled just thinking about it.
But Dan was right. John wasn’t taking the potential threat these creatures represented seriously. Andy didn’t know what they were capable of. None of them did. But they were smart, and they’d proven capable of causing harm if they wanted to. He didn’t trust them not to try something again.
“I said I’m game. I meant it,” he said.
Dan locked eyes with him. Andy held his gaze long enough that his friend seemed to be reassured, or something. Dan nodded once, a small crisp motion of his head, and looked away.
“Beth, is the diving gear ready to go?” he asked.
“Sure. I’ll have to hook up the right mix. At this depth you’ll want trimix. You’re going to need to decompress before coming back aboard, though,” she said.
“I can set the airlock to decompress them slowly on return,” Majel said.
John stood. “There’s no sense in keeping our friends waiting, then, is there? Let’s go do this.”
Andy kept his seat another few minutes while Beth and John set about getting the gear ready. He’d been diving before. He knew John had as well. Neither of them had ever gone this deep before, but they had the right equipment for the job. The ship was right here, too, with a ready-made hyperbaric chamber they could use to avoid the bends.
That wasn’t what scared him. He remembered all of those dreams the Cyanaut had sent to him. He recalled the desperation in its longing, how much it yearned to come back here. How it would do anything to return home and be with its people again. Andy knew full well that this was a complex race, full of many ideas and ways of thinking which were utterly foreign to him.
But one thing the Cyanauts had in common with humanity was their willingness to do whatever it took to preserve their own kind. They’d sacrificed some of their own to the Naga to get the lizards to spare this world, and allow most of their race to retain their freedom. They’d sold their own into slavery to save the rest.
How much more would they be willing to do to beings that were not even the same species as them?
Nine
The water was a murky deep blue around John as he swam slowly away from the Satori. The pressure at this depth was enough that he could feel it pushing in against him even through the wet-suit and SCUBA gear. Flickering shapes drifted in and out of the beams of light that shot from the Satori’s bow, reminding him that even at this depth the water was not empty, not really. There were things living out there in the water, just outside of his sight.
One animal the length of a car crossed the beam close enough to catch a good look. It had rows of sharp teeth, and a predatory shape not unlike a shark. Andrew saw it too. He was swimming alongside John, and whirled as the giant fish swam by, tracking its movement until it vanished out of sight.
“Not really loving this,” Andrew said.
“Understandable,” John replied. They were communicating using a pair of very low powered Bluetooth devices. The range was terribly short. They might still be able to reach each other from as much as two dozen feet. But the power level was low enough that the Naga shouldn’t be able to detect it, especially masked by a hundred meters of ocean.
There were no guarantees, of course. They had no way of knowing just how detailed a scan of the surface the Naga were doing, now that they knew the Satori was somewhere in the s
ystem. But the power level was so low that it ought to simply vanish against the normal background radiation of the planet.
“That thing is coming back, and it brought friends,” Andrew said. He raised the gun he was carrying and aimed it toward the lead shark.
There were three of the fish now, each at least three or four meters long. They looked deadly, moving with the violent grace of a predator. John was armed too. Both of them were carrying spear-guns they’d brought along specially for this trip. They’d anticipated they might be diving a lot, and experience had taught them all that being armed was a good idea even if you thought you didn’t need a weapon.
John was hoping they could pull off this mission without firing a shot, but it looked like that might not happen. Three sharks, two spear-guns - and it would take too long to reload. Even if they hit with both shots, the third shark would be on them before they were able to fire again.
“STOP,” came the voice in his mind. “DO NOT. THEY ARE YOUR PROTECTORS.”
He squinted and realized that the sharks’ backs were dotted with small, hairlike objects. He’d passed them off as some sort of growth before, but he realized with a start what they were. The sharks were dotted with little Cyanauts, scores of them per animal.
“Hold your fire, Andrew,” he said. “These are our escort.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” John said. They had to start trusting these beings at some point, or any sort of alliance was doomed before it even got off the ground. If he was wrong, and they were out to hurt the two of them, then this whole mission was about to go south in a hurry. But his gut said that wasn’t the case. Why lure them out here just to kill them?
The sharks veered away, giving the two humans a wide berth. They began circling about, close enough to see but maintaining a steady distance. It made sense, in a way. Any other predators in the water would see the sharks and stay away. If one was daring enough to try for a nip of human anyway, the deadly predators had positioned themselves to intervene before it could strike.
Adventures of the Starship Satori: Book 1-6 Complete Library Page 46
