Decrypted

by Lindsay Buroker

  “I saw something,” she insisted.

  “Yes, I gathered that from the shriek.” This time Rias leaned in for a closer look.

  “It wasn’t a shriek.” Tikaya scowled at his back. “It was... a high-pitched exclamation of surprise.”

  “You’ll have to explain the difference to me sometime.”

  “It’s a Kyattese distinction.” Tikaya climbed to her feet. “Do you see it? It looked like a snake. No,” she said, changing her mind as she remembered where they were, “a tentacle. One belonging to an octopus or a squid, though, if it’s the former, that would technically make it an arm.” Lovely time for vocabulary distinctions to pop into her mind. “That doesn’t matter. What’s odd is how big it was.”

  Rias looked at her.

  “Giant squid and octopuses are more common in deep, temperate waters, aren’t they? I’ve never heard of anything more than a foot or two long making an appearance here.”

  “Perhaps, due to being startled, you overestimated its size.”

  Another shudder pulsed through the submarine. The craft lurched to the side.

  Tikaya stumbled again, this time catching herself against the hull. “And perhaps I didn’t.”

  The view of the coral outside had shifted several feet to the side. Rias leaned close to the viewport again. This time the vista did not remain empty. The tentacle, a slimy grayish-green appendage, slapped the glass and stuck to it. Tikaya wouldn’t have minded if Rias shrieked a little, or at least grunted in surprise, but he merely issued a thoughtful, “Hm.”

  “That’s definitely from a creature more than a foot or two long,” Tikaya said. “Do you think it’s wrapped around us?”

  “It seems so.”

  Rias clasped his hands behind his back, his legs spread so the intermittent vibrations—was that creature trying to drag them off somewhere?—didn’t upset his balance. Tikaya chose to keep a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the console.

  “You’re correct,” Rias said. “Giant squid and octopuses have occasionally harassed imperial ships, but always in northern latitudes. And usually, according to hesitant suggestions in reports from captains who’ve survived the encounters, under the influence of otherworldly persuasion, or so they believed.”

  Tikaya didn’t like the implication that some of the captains who encountered the creatures didn’t survive. “Do you mean to imply that some practitioner convinced this critter to visit?” She thought of the ice condor that had poisoned her in those desolate Turgonian mountains. It had been controlled by Nurian assassins practiced in the mental sciences.

  The tentacle disappeared from the porthole, and the Freedom jerked again. This time the movement took the submarine closer to the coral.

  “Would you be able to tell?” Rias sat back down at the controls and pushed a lever. “If a practitioner was controlling it?”

  “Another animal telepath might be able to, but if someone is controlling it, he or she is far out of the range of my senses.” Tikaya thought of all those people gathered on the docks. It could be any one of them. The high minister—was he a practitioner? She couldn’t remember. “But if it smashes us against that big hunk of coral, I think we’ll have an answer.”

  “I understand octopuses are quite intelligent. Perhaps it’s mistaken us for the shelled prey it favors, and it simply plans to hurl us against the coral to break the submarine open and extract the innards for a meal.”

  “That’s not any more reassuring than the practitioner hypothesis,” Tikaya said. “Here’s an idea: why don’t we try to escape its clutches.”

  “I have been trying.” Rias tapped a lever that he’d pushed to its maximum position.

  “Oh. It’s... holding us?”

  “So it seems.” Rias eyed a panel near the hull to his right.

  Tikaya squinted to read the label. “Weapons?” What kind of weapons had he managed to lug down the docks in front of everyone and load onto the boat?

  “Torpedoes,” Rias said.

  “Tor-what?” Tikaya had never heard the Turgonian word.

  “They’re self-propelled weapons driven by compressed air that can travel at speeds between fifteen and twenty knots. There’s a charge in the head that explodes upon impact. It was named after the torpedo fish.”

  “By whom?” Tikaya asked, suspicious that he knew the origins of the name. Though she’d reconciled herself to Rias’s martial past—mostly—it chilled her to imagine him sitting at a desk, designing weapons. “The same captain who invented that echo ranging contraption?”

  Rias cleared his throat. “Actually, he was a lieutenant at the time, and the project was foisted on him by a particularly bloodthirsty superior officer.” He seemed to be studying his controls and avoiding her eyes—maybe he could guess that it discomfited her to think of him inventing new ways to kill people. “I built these on board when nobody was around, and I have some stationary mines that I can deploy too, but neither will do any good against something wrapped around our hull. We’d just blow ourselves up with it.”

  “Let’s save that for a last resort.”

  “Unfortunately, I was thinking of the possible need to defend ourselves against Nurian warships, not hungry sea life.” Rias sounded annoyed with himself.

  Tikaya gripped his shoulder. “As evinced by the empty tissue holder in the head, one man can’t think of everything.”

  Rias snorted.

  “Maybe it’ll get tired of toying with us and swim away.” Unless it truly was being controlled by a practitioner, Tikaya thought grimly.

  Without warning, the Freedom was thrust forward in the water. Rias lunged for the control panel and yanked the wheel that controlled lateral movement. He spun it all the way to the right, but the coral outcropping came up too quickly. They glanced off it with a bang and a screech. The deck lurched, and if Tikaya hadn’t still been gripping a beam she would have flown to the other side. An image of the hull bursting open and water flooding inside flashed into her mind.

  Rias calmly maneuvered the controls to right the craft. He pushed another lever. “I think it let go to hurl us. I’m attempting to move away and rise before it catches us. It’ll take time for the air to push out the water in the ballast tanks, but we can travel forward at—”

  A warning bleat came from the echo ranger.

  Rias spun the wheel hard. As the submarine turned, a myriad of colorful coral skimmed past.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I had a map of the reef in my head, but the octopus must have moved us more than I—”

  A shudder raced through the craft again. Rias sighed.

  “At least it doesn’t seem to be strong enough to crush us,” Tikaya said. “Or maybe it hasn’t thought to try.”

  Rias spared her a glance, and she wondered if it meant her random thoughts weren’t helpful.

  “Why don’t I check out that science station you mentioned and see if there’s something that might be useful in prying stowaways off the hull?” Tikaya suggested. “You mentioned tools for collecting samples, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, one of my helpers just finished installing extendable arms with gripping hooks and shovels. But they’re designed to pick up small samples, not pluck off gigantic octopuses.” Intent on piloting the vessel, or perhaps keeping the creature from hurling them against the coral again, Rias didn’t look at her as he spoke.

  “I’ll see if I can come up with something. Holler if you need me. Or if it succeeds in opening the sub like a tin of sardines.”

  “That will not happen.”

  Tikaya hoped he was speaking to the craft’s superior engineering and not simply choosing to remain optimistic.

  “Some maiden voyage,” he added under his breath. The words didn’t reassure Tikaya.

  She hustled to the rear of the craft, to a hatch on the opposite side from their cabin. She flung it open and found herself in a cubby half the size of the sleeping area. Metal cupboards filled the walls, their doors all secured with clasps. She picked up an upended stool
and set it before a desk secured to the deck in front of a porthole. The desk had a few control levers along the sides, presumably for manipulating those extendable tools.

  Tikaya spun a wheel to unlock a porthole cover and found herself staring at the gray-green body of the octopus. “Lovely.”

  The hum of the engines increased, and a soft tremor ran through the craft, one that had nothing to do with the creature’s attack.

  “I’m pushing the engine,” Rias called, “to wrest back some control. I’m going to steer close to the coral and try to scrape the octopus off.”

  Now why did that sound as dangerous for them as for their attacker?

  “I understand,” Tikaya called back, already opening cabinet doors, seeking inspiration in case Rias’s plan didn’t work.

  A surprisingly thorough collection of specimen jars, digging tools, maps, and mapping equipment waited within, as well as alchemy substances useful for dating archaeological finds. Rias must have talked to a field researcher, or maybe he’d found someone to put the collection together for him. The man certainly knew how to recruit useful people.

  The Freedom turned hard enough to send Tikaya stumbling into a wall. A bump and a scrape followed, and a ripple went through the gray flesh flattened against the porthole. The octopus was only adjusting itself, not releasing them. More hard turns and bumps followed. At least Rias had regained some control, though the deck vibrated hard enough to rattle Tikaya’s teeth, and she wondered how long the engine could maintain the output required to fight the octopus. Maybe the creature would tire and give up first.

  “There’s a wishful thought,” Tikaya muttered, then raised her voice so Rias would hear. “Do you have enough control to take us to the surface?”

  “Possibly, but it’s pressing down on us with a lot of weight. We’ve hit the ocean floor twice now. It’s as if, when it’s not hurling us against the coral, it’s trying to smother us.”

  “If we could make it to the top...” What, Tikaya? How would the situation be improved up there? Unless they could drive the submarine up a beach like a runabout, the octopus wouldn’t likely let go.

  “Do you know someone waiting up there with a harpoon launcher?” Rias asked, his tone dry, even as he navigated them close to something that elicited another shuddering bump. Again the octopus shifted its grip, but did not let go.

  “No,” she responded. If anything, someone waiting up there might want to help the creature finish them off.

  Tikaya opened a long, tall cabinet and found shelves filled with books, tightly packed so they wouldn’t fall out. After a quick perusal of the titles, she plucked out an encyclopedia on sea life and flipped to the octopus section. Maybe they had predators she and Rias could mimic or fears they could exploit.

  “I’m getting some different readings from ahead,” Rias called. “You said there are wrecks down here?”

  “By the harbor mouth, yes. There was fighting near the island at the end of the war, and the president sacrificed a few ships to fire to blockade the harbor at one point.” Her first thought was that Rias should know all about those events, but then she remembered that he’d been on Krychek Island during the last year of the war. After he’d disappeared from the theater, the Turgonians had been at their worst, ignoring treaties and using more direct and desperate tactics in an attempt to subdue her people. That was a lot of what the Kyattese remembered and why people might never welcome Rias. Thoughts for another time, she reminded herself when another shudder coursed through the craft. She sat down to read.

  “I’m going to head in that direction, then,” Rias said. “There’ll be more chances to scrape this fellow off, and maybe he’ll have a claustrophobic streak.”

  Doubtful, Tikaya thought as she skimmed through a paragraph on ways octopuses defended themselves, which included hiding in holes. They also expelled ink, camouflaged themselves by changing color, and poisoned creatures with venom. “They have all sorts of defenses,” Tikaya muttered, “but how do you kill one?”

  The next bump was so hard that it hurled her from her stool. “Did we hit the ground?” she called.

  “Yes,” Rias said. “The structural integrity should remain intact through quite a bit of abuse, but this is a more taxing maiden voyage than I had in mind.”

  “I guess that means canoodling is out.”

  “Unless you think that would be useful against the octopus.”

  “The book doesn’t mention it.” Tikaya located her page again. This time, she stayed on the deck to read.

  “Finding anything useful back there?” Rias asked after a few moments. “It’s taking all my concentration—” a squeal of metal rang through the hull as they bashed against something, “—to keep this thing from preparing us for a suitable meal.”

  He sounded so equable. Tikaya struggled to keep her own thoughts calm. If he could joke, surely the situation wasn’t too dire. She snorted, remembering that he’d made jokes when they’d been outnumbered, outgunned, and trapped on an enemy vessel before.

  “Still looking,” she responded as she continued to skim the octopus entry. In an attempt to show him that she could also stay calm and make jokes when their lives were in danger, she tapped a paragraph and added, “Apparently, octopus wrestling is a Turgonian sport increasing in popularity on your west coast. There’s even an annual competition in Tangukmoo. Too bad we missed that when we passed through.”

  When Rias didn’t respond, she assumed he thought the factoid too silly to comment upon. A moment passed, and she’d moved further down the page when he spoke again. “Would a dagger in the eye kill one?”

  Tikaya almost dropped the book. He wasn’t thinking of going out there, was he? “Rias, that was a joke, not a request for you to wrestle with this one. The octopuses in that area are a maximum of eighty, ninety pounds and aren’t poisonous to humans. Whatever’s out there must be five times that size if it’s giving us such trouble.”

  “Given the force it’s able to apply, I estimate closer to fifteen times that size.”

  “Either way, you’re not going out there. Besides, I don’t know how to steer your boat.”

  “Yes, shortsighted of me not to give you a lesson during the tour. I’m—” A loud crunch sounded, drowning out his words. Outside the porthole, the octopus shifted so that it only partially covered the opening. Tikaya glimpsed little more than dark water, though she thought she caught sight of something jagged before they moved past it.

  “What was that?” Tikaya asked.

  “We’ve gone through a hole in the hull of a wreck.”

  “Was the hole there before we went through?” Tikaya asked.

  “Yes, though our stowaway broadened it.”

  “Be careful. Some of the wrecks out here are your people’s, and they’ll be made of metal, not wood.”

  “Noted,” Rias said.

  Another crunch sounded. Tikaya returned to reading. “Octopus predators include sharks, eels, some whales, and large fish” she muttered to herself, then snorted, trying to imagine the fish that could eat this creature. “Eels,” she said again, tapping the page.

  Wait, she’d been thinking of shock eels earlier. They could zap their prey with electricity, right?

  With the inkling of an idea forming, Tikaya flipped to the eel entry. “There. Shock Eel. ...more closely related to catfish than true eel... organs able to produce electricity... positively charged sodium... ion channels.” She stopped after a few more sentences. She didn’t need to know how the creature made electricity, as Rias’s generator was already supplying it. If they could use it to...

  “Rias,” Tikaya called, “can you electrify the hull?”

  A quiet moment passed, and she stepped out of her cubby.

  “Rias?”

  “Yes, sorry, I’m thinking. Absolutely, it can be done, but it should have been done in the shipyard. From down here, I’m not sure... Well, maybe. Here. Come pilot.”

  Tikaya groaned. “I should have known that would be required at
some point.” She jogged into the navigation area.

  Rias stood and was pointing out controls before she even sat in the seat. “Rudder for left and right, diving planes for up and down, engine thrust, and—” Rias lunged and made a quick adjustment, steering them toward a hole so they didn’t crash through the barnacle-covered wooden hull of a wreck. “You’ll figure the rest out. The wrecks are giving the octopus something to think about, so you might want to keep weaving through them.”

  “Oh, good, an obstacle course. The ideal training environment for an inexperienced navigator.”

  Rias patted her on the shoulder. “You can handle it.”

  He disappeared into the back before she could grumble a response. Just as well. Tikaya needed her concentration. It didn’t take more than three seconds for her to decide she didn’t have time to figure out what the needles on the display for his echo ranging system meant. Instead, she rose from the seat and peered out the viewport. For the moment, nothing blocked the opening. She made small experimental adjustments to the control levers and prayed to Akahe that the octopus wouldn’t smother the window with an arm.

  The vessel jerked abruptly, and Tikaya felt the resistance in the control wheel. She wrestled with it to keep the craft in position. Another jerk came, the octopus trying to pull them toward the reef again.

  “Oh, and stay away from Turgonian wrecks,” Rias called, his voice muffled. “There may be mines and other unexploded ordinance in and around them.”

  Mines? A bead of sweat slithered down her spine. “You know, there are times when I really hate your people.”

  “Sorry.”

  Tikaya’s adjustments to the wheel had little effect. The extra weight—and any force the octopus was applying—must affect the sensitivity. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a gauge with a needle pressed into a red area. She took a deep breath and fought for calm. And focus.

  Despite their smothering tag-along, the outside lamps continued to work, illuminating the ocean floor for several meters ahead. Another wooden wreck came into view, and Tikaya nudged the rudder control, thinking to skim alongside it. Warier than Rias—especially in lieu of his last warning—she couldn’t bring herself to search for an entry spot. The last thing she needed was to get them stuck. Maybe she’d try veering close enough to force the octopus to scrape against the barnacled hull. Rias had been doing that, and it hadn’t had much effect, but she only needed to keep the creature busy for a while, not defeat it.