by M. D. Cooper
Tanis mentally berated herself for never considering that she could be as much the target as the oligarch.
If Tanis could have groaned aloud, she would have. Instead, she had to satisfy herself with a warbling burble sound.
Tanis was surprised that Darla hadn’t put up a fight on that front, but she wasn’t about to question her acquiescence.
THE BLUE LAGOON
STELLAR DATE: 03.05.4084 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sargasso Transport Tube, Europa
REGION: Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
It was impossible not to gape at the Sargasso Mountains as they began to take shape in the distance.
While the Europan Ocean was a hundred kilometers deep, its floor was crisscrossed by massive ridges that stretched nearly to the ice crust, formed by the moon twisting for billions of years in Jupiter’s gravity.
One of the tallest series of ridge series in Europa, the Sargasso Mountains were home to much of the ocean life beneath the ice. Brilliant lights were anchored to the crust above, and luminous globes hung down in the water, illuminating the deep valleys.
Despite what Tanis had told Kaebel about Vesta and Mars having the highest mountains, the fact was that the highest peaks in the Sol System were really beneath Europa’s surface. From the ocean floor to the tops of the Sargasso Mountains, one could stack nearly five Olympus Monses.
Most people discounted Europa’s sub-ocean ridges because they were technically within the planet, beneath its crust. The argument was made that there were taller formations within Earth’s magma, and they were not counted as mountains.
But as Tanis approached the Sargasso Mountains, with their waving kelp forests growing up their slopes and schools of fish swimming throughout, she couldn’t help but think they looked like surface mountains with flocks of birds flying overhead.
These definitely count as mountains.
Here and there, human settlements dotted the slopes, many of them grandfathered into the preserve centuries before, while others were cooperative facilities run by humans and the dolphins who lived in the mountains.
When the Blue Lagoon finally came into view—situated in a shallow valley between two peaks—Tanis had to admit that the casino did look nice…if not for the fact that it shouldn’t be there. Knowing that the peoples of the Sargasso Mountains hated the place ruined its appeal.
Why are people such jerks? Tanis wondered rhetorically.
She knew the answer. It stemmed from what people prioritized above all else: the individual, the family unit, or the state.
She wasn’t sure where she fell in that spectrum—likely leaning toward the state, though she’d do anything for her crew, even if it meant going against the state.
People like Oligarch Alden clearly valued themselves above all others—which was especially disconcerting, since he oversaw the largest human population in existence.
An exit in the travel-tube appeared ahead, and Tanis twisted to the right, angling for the side-passage. The current moved her further over, keeping her from a collision with the divider, and then, with a sudden rush, she was out and into the warm waters over the mountaintops.
The first thing that Tanis noticed were the smells.
While the water in the tube had been pleasant, here it was alive. Her skin’s olfactory senses fed the aromas into her mind; the forests below, sprinkled with the scents of the life that lived within them, hints of minerals in the water, and the microbes that flourished all around.
A bale of giant turtles swam by, several of their number turning their heads to gaze at the strange creature that was Tanis as she swam past them.
It occurred to her that, given her many-tentacled, gleaming, silver body, she would seem far stranger to the sea life around her than they to her.
I’m almost like an alien, come down from space…. Beautiful and very likely dangerous.
A shadow drifted up from the depths, and Tanis watched a blue whale—with a calf tucked in close— swim by. She’d never seen any living thing so large, and the sight left her awestruck for nearly a full minute.
Darla highlighted a light blue ring above them.
What became apparent very quickly was that the majority of the visitors to the Blue Lagoon were modded for the trip. Mer-people were the most common, and some individuals looked almost normal, barring gills and webbed hands—which may or may not have been clothing or cosmetic mods. Others were more extreme, such as one…something…that appeared to be a diaphanous jellyfish.
The Link ident flagged the drifting blob as ‘Sam’ and indicated that it was a human citizen of the Jovian Combine, but Tanis couldn’t even spot anything as small as a human brain in the mass.
Tanis looked over the sprawling complex ahead. It was over two kilometers across, with towers, large buildings, and what appeared to be darker patches of water that were partially obscured by all the bubbles rising off the surrounding structures.
The employee entrance was around a small hillock and then down a gully, at the bottom of the shallow valley the casino rested in.
When Tanis reached the bottom, she could see a number of personal submarines attached to tethers near a s
hrouded set of doors.
An Auth & Auth arch stood in front of the door, flanked by a pair of guards who were rather unorthodox, which was to say that they looked like mako sharks with human-ish arms.
They floated next to the security arch, their mouths partially open, showing rows of teeth as they regarded Tanis.
When she reached the arch, she paused—careful not to let her tentacles drift too closely to the guards’ mouths—waiting until one of them gave a jerk of its head and waved her through.
Tanis gave a low whistle of appreciation,
Once inside, Tanis accessed the casino’s public network and pulled up its layout, swimming down the halls to where she was to meet the staff manager.
She passed a wide variety of people in the back passages. Everything from perfectly normal humans wearing divesuits and small rebreathers, to a wide array of merpeople, tentacled octohumans, and a few more sharks—which she steered clear of. She even saw a group that appeared to be otters with human-ish heads.
Tanis said to Darla as they passed a man who had the spiny body of a pufferfish.
A woman in a divesuit floated behind an array of holodisplays, speaking without looking up from her work as Tanis arrived.
She carefully drifted down the hall, noticing that most of the people in this section were unmodified. When she came to his door, she saw that Damon, however, was not.
The man’s body was nearly jet black, and well-muscled from the waist up. From there down, he had long tentacles lined with octopus’s suction cups. Gold and silver bands adorned both his tentacles and his arms, and a silver crown rested on his head.
“Oh ho!” he roared when his eyes settled upon Tanis, the sounds transmitting through the water in a low rumble that she was able to translate into audible sound. “Well, well, Claire. When I sent up the enhancements, and Doctor Mauve said you’d agreed, I couldn’t believe it. But here you are…silver and beautiful.”
“Why thank you,” Tanis replied, dipping her head. “The dolphins I met on the way down gave me the name ‘Silversquid’.”
Damon’s expression darkened, and he muttered, “Dolphins.” Then he shrugged and smiled—not a nice smile—and added, “Still, they have good names for things. I like ‘Silversquid’. I’m changing your Blue Lagoon ident; that’s who you’ll be from here on out.”
The words carried a note of finality, and Tanis found herself not liking the…man’s…tone, nor the way he spoke in general. There was nothing in his words that was ‘wrong’; it was the way that he said them, as though Tanis was a possession of his, something he would use as he saw fit.
She supposed that, in a way, he’d already proven that such was the case. He had sent up a rather extensive list of body modifications, and—so far as he knew—she had accepted them without complaint.
The realization made her feel like a layer of oil had settled on her skin. As Claire, she was all about trying new things and simply having a good time. Tanis had adopted that feeling, and to her, the form she wore was an extension of that free spirit.
Damon made it all feel dirty, like she had turned herself into a thing that was only good for one purpose: to be possessed and controlled.
However, she didn’t feel an urge to tear herself free of the mods that were her body because he made them feel wrong. Rather, she contemplated what it would be like to slap Damon in the face with thirty-two tentacles. Repeatedly.
Tanis realized that Damon was staring at her, waiting for a response, and she nodded. “That’s fine. I’m OK with being Silversquid.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “OK, Silversquid. We need to get something straight. You may be a wealthy woman who owns a bunch of shit out in the Oort cloud, but you signed a contract. A very clear and ironclad contract. For the next year, you belong to the Blue Lagoon. So when I say that you are the Silversquid, I mean that I expect you to behave like an automaton squidwoman at all times. Do I make myself clear?”
Tanis quickly considered a scenario where she simply subdued Damon—with extreme prejudice—before searching the casino for her doppelganger.
Tanis nearly laughed aloud.
“Of course,” Tanis said without any emotion in her voice. “I am Silversquid.”
A wide—and very unpleasant—smile broke out across Damon’s face. “Excellent. Now. You’re rather unique—both because we don’t have anything in the tanks that looks like you, and also because you’re a rich woman who wants to be an autonomous object.” His smile grew toothy as he spoke. “Yes, I know what your type is into. You feel guilty about your wealth, so you want be punished for it—not so much that you’re willing to give it up, though. So after everyone has gotten a good look at you, I’m going to have you perform. A friend of mine sent me logs of you low-g dancing on the Whiskey Tango, so I know you have the moves. Can you sing, as well?”
Tanis nodded. “I took lessons as a child, I’m passable.”
Damon gave her a calculating look. “Well, I imagine Doctor Mauve gave you an underwater vocal system; it can simply be programmed to hit the right notes. We can give it the words, too.”
“I speak orca.” Tanis offered the information in an entirely bland tone, keeping to the character that Damon demanded she play.
“Oh? Well now, that will be fantastic. I’ll send that information to Saniyah, our production manager. Expect her to pass you the song you’ll be singing, and the dance moves. Ever since I told her what you’d agreed to, she’s been quite excited to put together a routine for you.
Tanis held back a grimace—not that her current facial structure could make one.
“Well? What are you floating there for?” Damon demanded. “Get moving, you stupid sea cow. Arnold is waiting for you at the tube to Tank 11.”
He waved his hand in dismissal, and Tanis floated out of the room, reminding herself that Claire would probably enjoy all this—even if the man’s treatment of her had Tanis at the edge of a blind rage.
As she drifted past the woman at the front desk, Tanis forced herself to accept that her current situat
ion required the same mindset as the final night on the Whiskey Tango, when she had been fetching drinks.
She had to lose herself in the role and really become a gleaming, silver automaton squid. It was either that, or swim back into Damon’s office and see how many tentacles she could wrap around his neck before his head popped off.
When she reached the entrance to Tank 11, a man in a divesuit was patiently waiting for her, an appreciative smile on his face.
Tanis hadn’t considered what life must be like for some of the people who worked in the casino because they had no other choice. They all seemed calm and serene in the hallways, but she supposed, with an overlord like Damon, they probably watched their behavior even in the staff areas.
Arnold only shook his head before gesturing at the long, dark tube.
Tanis decided that if Arnold was playing her, he was doing an amazing job. The disdain with which he said Damon’s name was almost palpable.
She nodded, floating serenely in front of the long tunnel.
