Tanis Richards: Masquerade - A Hard, Military, Science Fiction Adventure (Aeon 14: Origins of Destiny Book 2)
Page 19
Torfin rallied the bulls of his pod, telling them to prepare for battle. Then he sent the cows of his pod to other groups to tell them of the beast that had taken Ameonia. When they were assembled, he led fifty bulls to the crevasse, and they scouted it carefully, searching for the monster below.
There were no bubbles coming from the dark depths, and he feared for Ameonia’s life. He resolved that, if she had perished, her loss would not go unanswered.
After much searching, the bulls left two watchers below while the rest surfaced for fresh air. When they dove back beneath the waves, Torfin and his bulls saw the very face of horror itself crawling out of the gash in the ocean floor.
It was an octopus so large that Torfin believed it would dwarf even the greatest of the blue mothers. Its coarse hide had allowed it to blend in with the crevasse’s deep shadows, but now it shifted from grey to red in color as its massive tentacles lashed out at the two orcas left behind to keep watch.
One dodged the attack, but the other was bowled over, slamming into a rock outcropping and going limp.
“It is the Worldrender!” one of the bulls called out in fear, but Torfin would not be cowed by the beast, so great was his love for Ameonia.
He directed two of his bulls to bring the injured orca to the surface, while the rest dove toward the great beast, dodging its ponderous limbs and biting where they could.
One of the bulls was caught by the beast’s tentacles, which began to crush the fighter, but the rest of the bulls rallied and tore at the monster’s flesh until it let go.
Another bull began to convulse, and Torfin’s fear that the beast was venomous came true.
Torfin knew that unless he did something decisive, he would lose many of his kin that day. Confronting the danger head-on, he dove through the monster’s writhing limbs and tore at its face, biting one of the fiend’s eyes.
The taste was sickening, but he ignored the bile that spilled out and went for the other eye as well.
Emboldened by his attack, the rest of the bulls pressed forward and, though the writhing beast fought mightily, the orcas were triumphant, ultimately tearing off the Worldrender’s very limbs, and leaving the carcass to drain its lifeblood out for the creatures of the deep to feast upon.
Torfin cared nothing for the beast’s remains or why it had attacked the pod. He dove into the crevasse, searching for Ameonia. He raced along the sandy bottom, praying to the earth thunder that he would find her, when suddenly he did.
Ameonia’s beautiful white and black body had been pushed under an overhang, not moving, but seemingly unscarred. Calling for help, Torfin began to push at her tail, trying futilely to get his love free.
Hearing his call, a dozen bulls came down to his aid, and together they nudged Ameonia’s body clear of the overhang and lifted it to the surface. Holding her blowhole above water, they nudged at her chest, trying to make her breathe.
But Ameonia did not draw breath, and one by one, the other bulls drifted away in sorrow until only Torfin remained, holding his love’s blowhole above the waves.
All through the night and into the next day, he held her aloft. The bulls and cows of his pod came to him, trying to tell him to let her body fall and return to the sea, but Torfin could not bear the thought and continued his vigil, though his strength was greatly flagging.
As the night grew deep around him, a luminous presence appeared in the waters below.
At first, Torfin thought he was seeing things, but the light grew and grew, until an eye larger than Torfin himself surfaced next to him.
It was the greatest and oldest of the blue mothers, Usuria.
Torfin quaked with fear, knowing she could swallow him whole should she choose.
But she only said, “Why do you still hold Ameonia above the waters, Torfin?”
Torfin did not know how to express the great sadness that was balled up within himself, and he could only shake his head, even as Ameonia began to slip from his grasp.
“Let her fall, Torfin,” Usuria urged. “Let her fall so she can swim forever in the oceans above.”
“I cannot leave her,” he finally managed to say.
“Your love is strong,” the blue mother whispered with a thunderous rumble that vibrated through the waters. “But Ameonia is already in the sky ocean. She is that light you see rising above the sea even now. She waits for you.”
The sorrow that cut through Torfin’s body was so great that he could only keen his pain, the very nature of anguish pouring from his throat.
Pods far and wide heard his cry and wondered at what great tragedy had befallen one of their kind.
“I have a gift I can offer you,” Usuria continued to whisper, her voice pushing away the clouds on the western horizon. “You have killed the Worldrender, he who sought to break apart the seabed so the deep fires would swallow all life. Because of this, I can give you a gift. I can send you to be with Ameonia now. You can swim together in the sky ocean.
Torfin could only muster one word: “Please.”
Across the northern ocean, pods looked into the sky and saw a blinding light flash through the heavens and stop next to one of the evening stars.
Rumors spread of the battle of Torfin’s pod against the Worldrender, and the blue mothers told of his reward, reminding the pods that through his great love and bravery, Torfin saved the oceans from the Worldrender. They told the pods to remember his sacrifice whenever they saw the two intertwined stars.
As the final notes of Tanis’s song died out, she turned to see Saniyah sitting on the floor of the amphitheater, mouth agape.
“Wow, Silversquid. That was…that was amazing,” the shell-encrusted woman finally said.
“Then it was sufficient for the audience?” Tanis asked, forcibly suppressing the emotion that the song had brought out in her.
Saniyah nodded vigorously. “Oh hell yeah. Who would have thought a silly debutante like you could sing like that—even if that is one of Mauve’s voxboxes…it was masterful.”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” Tanis replied.
Five minutes later, the amphitheater’s doors opened, and the crowds that had heard of this new performer began to file in. Tanis stayed below the stage, waiting for Saniyah to give her the signal to begin her performance.
When it came, she rose up once more, spreading her limbs, and began to sing of Torfin and Ameonia’s love for one another. Looking across the crowd, she saw that the oligarch himself was down in the front row, his face turned up toward her in rapture.
She’d just reached the part of the story where the bulls attacked the Worldrender, when something caught her attention. A quick glance to the right revealed a series of small darts, slicing through the water toward the stage.
Ducking out of the way, Tanis avoided almost all of them, except two that hit her arm-tentacles.
Tanis scoured the seats as her song faltered, looking for the attacker, when more darts streaked toward her. She avoided them deftly, only to realize that she wasn’t the only target. Some were streaking toward the oligarch as well.
His guards had already moved in to shield him, their light armor deflecting the incoming shots with ease.
Tanis was moving toward the tunnel’s cover—which was a little difficult, with two of her right arms spasming from the breach nano—when she saw one of the oligarch’s guards holding a fistful of the darts, driving them toward the Jovian leader.
Demetri!
She surged forward toward the man, stretching out a limb to wrap around his arm, but it was too late.
He plunged the darts into Oligarch Alden’s side, just as Tanis got a tentacle around his wrist. Demetri’s eyes grew wide and he turned to Tanis, gesturing wildly at her.
Half a dozen of the oligarch’s guards turned to Tanis and began firing flechette pistols at her as their leader fell, spasming and clutching at his chest.
Twisting away, she made for the hole in the stage, her arti
ficial limbs registering impacts, but luckily, her frantic swimming managed to keep her body and head obscured.
Once in the tunnel, she picked up speed, reaching the staff halls as a general alert began to sound. She heard a voice calmly telling all patrons that there was a security issue, but to remain in place.
Darla said, as Tanis rushed through the back halls, pushing through a group of mermaids and knocking a divesuited man into a wall.
Though her voice wasn’t panicked, Tanis could tell that the AI was more than a little worried.
Tanis didn’t hesitate. She pushed one of her ‘arms’ into a pocket tucked in where her tentacles emerged and drew out her lightwand. She set it for underwater use—causing it to fire a charged gas out of the hilt as the blade activated—and then deftly cut off the two twitching tentacles.
Tanis pulled up the Blue Lagoon’s map and saw that the entrance to the air-breathers’ quarters was nearby. She swam as quickly as she could toward the moon pool that led up into the aired-up section.
Not even slowing, she surged out of the water, landing heavily on the floor of the room above.
There were three people in the room, all pulling on their divesuits; one cried out in surprise at Tanis’s explosive entrance, tripping over an air tank as he backpedaled.
“What the hell?” another yelled.
“There’s shooting down there!” Tanis exclaimed, surprised that her identity hadn’t been plastered all over the staff or public network yet.
“Seriously?” the man asked as he pulled himself back to his feet. “No way I’m going down there, then. Damon can kiss my ass.”
“We have to at least take a look,” one of the women said.
While the trio argued, Tanis slithered as best she could across the room and out into the hall beyond. Pulling herself along the deck by grasping anything within reach, she made her way to Arnold’s room and opened the door, flopping inside on her back.
“Shit! Who are you?” a woman’s voice asked, and Tanis twisted around to see a mermaid laying on the sofa with a large bowl of popcorn on her lap and a mug of coffee in her hands.
“There’s shooting out there,” Tanis gasped, doing her best to sound terrified.
“Up here?” the mermaid asked, her eyes growing round.
“No…down in the water,” Tanis spoke as breathlessly as her voxbox could manage while shaking her head. “At least, I didn’t see any, once I got up here. Arnold gave me his codes, said I could come here if I needed to….”
The mermaid nodded. “He’s good like that. Gets that we’re still people. Shit gets weird under Europa’s ice—easy to forget what’s real.”
Tanis wiggled a few of her tentacles in the air. “I can’t imagine why. I’m Claire, by the way.”
“I know,” the mermaid said with a wink. “I saw something on the net about you being a rich woman who gets off on being a servant automaton. I didn’t buy it, though. Smelled like Damon’s usual bullshit. Oh, I’m Alice. Welcome to Wonderland—little joke of mine.”
Tanis laughed more at Alice’s quirky smile and the fact that there were popcorn bits all over her seashell breast coverings than the joke. “That seems to apply. Out in the ocean, things are juuust normal enough, but this place seems to have tipped over into the surreal.”
“Not sure where you’re from, but even out in the oceans, it can get pretty weird. I think that’s why the dolphins like to keep us at arm’s length.” Alice finished off the statement by shoving a fistful of popcorn into her mouth.
“I wonder how long it’ll take for them to secure things out there?” Tanis asked
“Hmmph.” Alice shrugged, giving an exaggerated ‘I don’t know’ expression as she munched on her food.
Darla sent over a data packet, and Tanis opened it up. It contained communication log entries noting messages that had been passed back and forth to the Infiltrator Chameleon.
Tanis pulled up the long string of characters, wondering what she was looking for.
Tanis shook her head, sending her top tentacles flopping around her face.
A sickening feeling settled in the pit of Tanis’s stomach.
Darla didn’t respond for a second.
Just as Darla said those words, Alice squealed in surprise, spraying bits of popcorn everywhere. “You! You’re the murderer! You killed Oligarch Alden!”
Alice began screaming, and Tanis snapped a tentacle across the room, wrapping it around her neck and squeezing gently.
“Go to sleep, Alice.”
The mermaid thrashed on the sofa for a moment, and then passed out. A quick check showed that she was breathing easily, and her bloodflow was fine.