The Farpool_Exodus

by Philip Bosshardt

  Diversionary feints and small-scale attacks would be performed by the remoras, the remote autonomous robotic drones, of which the operation would use five. The remoras would, at the synchronized moment of H-hour, launch probes around the periphery of the settlement, set off stun and depth charges and provoke maximum chaos well away from the assault teams’ approach vectors. If all went well, the diversionary attacks would pull any Sea Peoples’ defenses toward them, clearing a route into the heart of the settlement for the actual assault teams.

  Equipped with electric stingers (the troopers like to call them ‘Eel prods’), additional stun charges and limpet mines, more remoras, satchels of a toxic dispersant called ‘Mad Mist,” and more containers of smart fog, programmable nanobotic swarms that would disassemble any built structures the teams encountered, the combat divers planned to make several spiraling approaches into the compound, destroy any and all structures they could, deal with any resistance and exit along the escape vector to rendezvous with Felix One and Two, which would relocate autonomously to the exfiltration coordinates while the assault was underway.

  While Lieutenant Commander Rick Gage recognized there were about a million things that could go wrong with the whole stunt, he was guardedly confident that UWAT 3 and UWAT 4 had been well trained and could pull off the mission with maximum chances of success and minimal casualties. Intel could provide only rudimentary data on possible defenses and weapons the Sea Peoples possessed…but such was the nature of war. Few war plans ever survived first contact with the enemy anyway and Gage was certain the Barracudas could handle anything they encountered.

  Now the time had come to prove that.

  “Go…go…go…go!” Gage watched as his troops rapidly and efficiently exited Felix One’s lockout chamber and lit off their Diver Propulsion Units, known as DIPs to the troopers, whirring away from Launch Point in a blur of waves and bubbles. The Barracudas spread out into approach formation, line abreast, spaced ten meters apart, as they closed on their target. Team leader Chief Petty Officer Justin Honeycutt checked his sounder echoes and got a solid lock on the first structures along the settlement’s perimeter. That would be their target, as soon as the remoras did their job. He settled onto a steady cruise speed of four knots, hugging the blocks and hills of volcanic tuff, sweeping around thatches of kelp and sea grass and arrowing through the farthest fields of hydrothermal smokers, their twisting columns of smoke corkscrewing toward the surface several hundred meters overhead.

  So far, so good, Honeycutt told himself. He checked his dive chronometer, figured the Tigersharks would be well underway by now and did a quick scan on his helmet head-up display, noting depth, oxygen left, mixture setting, weapons status and other indicators. Any moment now, the first stun charges from the advance remoras would be going off. When they heard that and felt the shock waves, Honeycutt knew that was Bingo time, the time for the big charge into the Sea Peoples’ home.

  Honeycutt didn’t, indeed couldn’t have known, that the approach of the minisubs Felix One and Two had already been detected by Ponkti repeaters circling several kilometers beyond Keenomsh’pont. Word had been quickly passed to the Metah Lektereenah and defenses marshaled for what had long been suspected, for the treachery of the Tailless could never be underestimated.

  “Release the puk’lek!” Lektereenah had commanded and her chief prodsmen scurried off to open the gates of the seamother enclosure and let the beasts loose. In addition, several details of Ponkti prodsmen, soon accompanied by Skortish squads already alerted to the danger, began deploying to blocking and flanking positions along a low ridge that paralleled the approach route of the enemy. Armed with blinders, stunners and sound grenades, the defensive force bided their time, easily sounding the approach of the Tailless force. It was hard to hide something that sounded like a freight train to the Seomish troopers.

  As soon as UWAT 3 had passed by the outer sounding fences, the Ponkti acted. Sound grenades were lobbed right into the middle of the force, detonating with a concussive BOOM! that deafened all the divers. Immediately, their attack formation discipline was disrupted as ear drums were burst, equipment shattered and valves and seals loosened. An explosion of bubbles with arms and legs flying soon enveloped the area.

  Then the Ponkti let fly with a barrage of blinders. The explosion of light seared eyeballs, disrupted instruments and destroyed whatever was left of formation tactical discipline. The stricken divers of UWAT 3 were scattered, slammed and barrel-rolled into a chaotic jumble of thrashing and flailing bodies.

  The lead Ponkti prodsman honked out a command for a swarming and enveloping response and the prodsmen charged into the middle of the melee, prods sizzling with rapid-fire discharge while the divers fought back with their Eel prods, fists, knives, spear guns, anything they could use. Close-quarters combat underwater was all about position and leverage and the combat divers of UWAT 3, well trained and ruthless though they were, were no match for the swimming and lunging ability of well-armed Ponkti prodsmen. Surrounded and outgunned, the Tailless divers were hopelessly overmatched by scores of Ponkti and Skortish defenders, well-equipped with stunners, blinders, prods and toxic scentbulbs, all of which steadily overwhelmed the resistance of the humans.

  When a pair of seamother calves appeared from out of the murk, honking and bellowing and thirsty with the scent of blood, the Ponkti and the Skortish withdrew and let the beasts finish off the attackers.

  It wasn’t pretty and the waters were soon choked with blood and viscera and entrails.

  The attack of the Tigersharks of UWAT 4 fared no better, on the other side of Keenomsh’pont. Early intel for the UWAT teams had given the divers an approximate idea of what the Sea Peoples’ settlement would look like, visually and more importantly, on sonar: a hilly seabed and lower flanks of the seamount dotted with tent-like structures, pod things floating free, with some attached by fiber to the sea bed and others drifting loosely. Caves and burrows along the flanks of the seamount were covered with fabric nets and surrounded by odd ‘bubble curtains,’ while additional structures surrounded many of the hydrothermal vents, evidence, said the geniuses at ONI, of an effort to capture the heat and the minerals of the smokers for industrial and possibly domestic use.

  The Tigersharks were certain they knew what to expect, what they would encounter, but they hadn’t counted on the coordinated response of the Omtorish and the Orketish, from that part of the settlement. Literally seconds after the Shark’s remoras had lit off their stun charges and the divers had moved out in formation from Felix Two, the Omtorish had guided a trio of seamothers into their path. The Orketish, for their part, had lobbed a volley of sound grenades into the midst of the Sharks’ formation, scattering and disrupting their tactical discipline, while the seamothers, now fully enraged by the sound bursts, waded in and began tearing Tailless divers limb from limb, in one case, swallowing a hapless diver whole, his suited legs kicking wildly as the puk’lek engorged herself on a new and unexpected meal.

  When the seamothers were done and the waters above Keenomsh’pont were thick with heads torn off, chewed-up torsos, pieces of legs and arms and a blood-soaked mist drifting down over the settlement, the Omtorish let loose a small swarm of mah’jeet to finish off the intruders and mop up any entrails. The mah’jeet had been specially designed and bred to seek out Tailless flesh and when satiated, they would burst open and the contents of their digestive sacs would be dispersed in the prevailing currents.

  After half an hour, what was left of the Tigersharks was essentially the fading scent of their own fear and entrails, spreading like a fine film over everything on the far side of Keenomsh’pont.

  Lieutenant Commander Rick Gage knew the mission had failed and pulsed out the Fall Back signal to all troops. He wasn’t sure how many were left and he hadn’t heard anything from Bostik and the Tigersharks since H-hour started.

  The whole damn mission had somehow gone belly-up and for that, Gage was both mad and sad, mad at ONI for failing to accurately d
iscern the defenses they would be facing and the weapons and tactics the Sea Peoples would put up, and sad for the senseless loss of life, the irreplaceable loss of well-trained combat divers that the Navy had spent millions on recruiting, testing and preparing for missions just such as this.

  Gage waited for ten minutes at the outer lockout chamber of Felix One but only one other diver from the Barracudas ever showed up: Seaman Rodrigo Sanchez, and he was badly cut and trailing a stream of blood from penetrations of his hydrosuit. Sanchez struggled with Gage’s help into the lockout, nearly out of oxygen, and cycled through into the pressure compartment of the sub.

  “Just lie still, Sanchez, will you? Stop shaking so much—”

  “…can’t …help…it…so…cold…Skipper,” the diver dribbled words out of his mouth, along with more blood, while Gage activated the repairocytes inside Sanchez’s body with a small pulse device, which he passed over the injured areas. As soon as he was sure the bots would stanch, then suture up any internal tissue damage, Gage crawled up to Felix’s main panel and got the propulsors turning. He didn’t set a course just yet, anywhere would do as long as it was well away from here and as fast as possible.

  When Felix lurched to a start and was soon humming along at her emergency speed of ten knots, Gage set the bow planes on EMERG ASC and lay back on the deck in a pool of his own sweat and blood. He dimly heard the insistent beeping of the sounder, warning him of a large moving object dead ahead, but he didn’t care anymore. He just wanted to rest, to gulp in huge swallows of precious oxygen, let the fans cool his face and settle back into the blissful peace of those who had somehow miraculously escaped violent death.

  He was only semi-conscious when Felix One barreled right into the gaping maws of the seamother that had tracked them up from their seabed departure point.

  From a kilometer away, Chase Meyer was appalled at what he had just witnessed. He had heard the explosions, seen the flashes of light, the detonations of sound, and winced as the seamothers attacked the human divers. The whole affair lasted half an hour and once the humans had been driven off—their surface ships were still circling the area overhead and small subs prowling several kilometers away—and the seamothers corralled into their holds, Chase maneuvered his kip’t carefully through the screen of prodsmen guards and drifted over the settlement, examining the extent of the damage.

  The worst of it was along the outer rings of camps, mostly Ponkti to the south and southwest, Omtorish to the north, along the seamount. The interior tents and holds and canopies and shelters and bivouacs and other structures that had been erected, were mostly intact, though the seamount itself was still shedding tons of rock and mud down its steep slopes.

  Many of the outer structures had simply been flattened or blown apart by the human depth and stun charges. In the Omtorish and Orketish zones, past the ever-present bubble curtains that the kels had set up to denote their territories, the continuing slide of mud from the seamount had destroyed hundreds of caves, warrens, niches and burrows, many occupied by refugees from Omt’or itself.

  Chase grew anxious as he surveyed the extent of the damage in this sector and decided to hunt down the Kelk’too, the Lab and its surrounding pavilions. He drove his kip’t toward where the Lab spaces should have been, wary of the slow-motion slide of rock all around and found many of the caves buried in several meters of silt. Still, the Lab was open and a flurry of activity heartened him as he left the kip’t with its nose buried in a small declivity.

  One of Likteek’s assistants came scooting up, glad to see Chase. It turned out to be Klatko, a young intern just finished with his Circling when the great emigration had begun. Klatko nuzzled Chase around the face and chest, in the Omtorish way, until Chase finally grabbed him by the fins and held him off.

  “Klatko, you’re all right. It’s good to see you. Any idea where I can find Likteek?”

  Klatko’s flanks bore recent scars but the boy still had the energy of a dozen midlings. “We’re just pulling everything we can out of the caves, eekoti Chase…I mean, Kel’metah Chase. A lot was damaged, it’s true. The Tailless surprised us…” he looked up at the looming bulk of the seamount, towering over their heads, “and the explosions have set off slides that we can’t stop. Likteek says we’ll have to leave these slopes until the slides stop.”

  “I’m sure. And I can help. But where’s Likteek now?”

  Klatko thought for a moment. “He took a small team up—there—” he pointed upslope, to the seamount’s chaotic zone of cross-currents above them, near the summit. “They’re looking for ways to stop the slides.”

  “Thanks. Keep up the good work.” Chase kicked himself up and followed the steep flanks of the mountain toward the top, dodging larger boulders and streams of rock crashing down the sides.

  He pulsed upward several times and got an echo he recognized and stroked toward it.

  The echo turned out to Likteek and his party. They were wedged into a small hollow, protected from the slide until it began petering out.

  The scientist motioned Chase into the hollow with them and made quick introductions. There were two others: Terpy’t and Ponti, both Lab assistants. Terpy’t was a beatscope expert that Chase had met before.

  “We’re probing the ground here,” Likteek explained. “This rock is different from Seome. It’s denser, harder. It shouldn’t be sliding so much. We’re trying to find out why.”

  Ponti piped up, “We have an idea to seed the slopes with tchin’ting, if we can get it to grow. It could stabilize the ground.”

  “Good idea,” Chase remarked. “Lik, what about casualties…in Omt’or? I surveyed the damage coming in.”

  The old scientist held up a small rock, licking it with his tongue, pulsing it with a critical probe. “Not so bad. A few em’kels lost people. And many injuries. The Metah is roaming around the zone now, taking notes. All the metahs are supposed to meet later today.” Likteek placed the rock back carefully into the cave wall. “In some ways, we were lucky. The Tailless came upon us so suddenly…we didn’t have much warning. Thank Shooki for the Ponkti…I never thought I’d be saying that. Their prodsmen were brave…fearless, even ferocious. Ponkti are like that. They drove the Tailless back…they and the seamothers.”

  “I heard.” Chase felt like he needed to apologize for the treachery of the humans. The Seomish were just trying to make a new life for themselves, in a new world. “I’m sorry for what happened. I don’t know what provoked this attack. We should meet with the humans…the Tailless again.”

  “Unofficially,” Likteek told him, “that’s what the Metah wants to do. This isn’t the first incident or provocation either. I sometimes wonder if Seomish and Tailless can ever get along…the two sides don’t understand or trust each other.”

  Chase had to agree. “Humans don’t get along with each other. They fight all the time. Faced with something they don’t understand, something unfamiliar, humans lash out. But I’ve seen that on Seome as well.”

  “True enough,” Likteek admitted. “But tell me, Kel’metah Chase…do the Tailless have any notion of ke’shoo and ke’lee, as we do?”

  This made Chase think. “Love and life? We…humans…understand those ideas. To a human though, family, tribe, clan, nation…those are the really important things. That’s what humans will fight and die for. Not unlike kels…but even stronger. Humans can’t pulse each other like you can. They study each other’s faces, expressions, gestures, things they can see, to try to judge what others are thinking. Is this human a friend or a threat? We have religions, like you have Shooki, that try to teach us to get along, to respect one another, even love one another. Those beliefs are common, even popular. But they’re not always followed.”

  “Perhaps we have more in common that either side realizes. Come…we should get back to the Lab.” Likteek and his assistants gathered more specimens, stuffing rock and mud into sacs and pods, with Chase’ help.

  They waited a few more minutes for the slide to abate and wh
en it seemed safe, Chase led them through the curtain of falling debris and they descended downslope into the bowels of Keenomsh’pont itself.

  After he helped Likteek put away their specimens and ascertained that the Lab was still functional, he went in search of Tulcheah. He found her helping some Ponkti kelke rebuild their shelters on the other side of the settlement. Tulcheah was half Ponkti herself and she was belting out an old Ponkti repeaters’song with the others as they labored to remove debris from the shelter, bucket-brigade style.

  When she pulsed it was Chase, she pulled away and they nuzzled. Chase found Seomish nuzzling a pleasurable form of ‘kissing,’ as long you liked the kisser. When the rest of the brigade came by to nuzzle too, which was a normal Seomish form of greeting, Chase wasn’t so fond of the practice. It was rather like being licked by a pack of dogs. Still, as Kel’metah, he had to put up with it.

  Chase pitched in to help the cleanup. “How much damage happened here?”

  Tulcheah went back to humming her repeater’s tune and soon the others got into the rhythm.

  “Some of the shelters burst…” she said.

  “Shock waves,” offered one of the Ponkti. “It rolled through this little valley…the cliffs focused the energy. You can see a long line of burst shelters and torn tents.”

  Chase had noticed the damage looked like a small tornado had torn through the camp. He’d seen similar destruction paths in central Florida during spring and summer thunderstorms.

  “Can it be repaired? Do you need any help from other kels?”

  A heavy-set Ponkti male at the front of the line, handling the biggest pieces, snorted in derision. “Ponkti need help from no one—”

  “Don’t talk to Kel’metah like that…we can always—”

  And the argument flared right there, with all of them passing chunks of debris to one another, sniping at one another, swearing and spitting in the Ponkti way. Tulcheah soon became embarrassed at the display. She left her position and pulled Chase aside.