Space Sharks, page 9
Charlie pulled open the cabinet and removed one of the emergency suits from it. “I’ve never put one of these on,” she said. “Is it difficult?” Twitch. Twitch.
The second twitch told Tina that whatever damage Charlie had suffered was creeping and compounding with her movements. The android might not survive no matter what they did. “Just like getting dressed in the morning,” said Tina. “You might find it easier to pull on over without other clothing, but that’s up to you. It stretches. Oh, hey…” She spotted something in the cabinet that would aid in their escape. “Toss me one of those mini-seismic charges. That ought to do a number on the windows and let us get out of here.”
Charlie reached for the small cylinder.
“Don’t arm it,” said Tina. “I’ll do that.”
Charlie flipped the cylinder into Tina’s waiting hands. Despite her bulky space gloves, she caught it and prepared to blow out the bridge of her starship.
Despite the waist-deep water, Charlie managed to get the emergency suit over her hips and was just starting to tug it up to her shoulders when she disappeared into the water so fast that it was almost like she’d never been there at all.
“Charlie? Charlie?” Tina screamed, trying to spot the shark in the near darkness. She’d thought for sure they were alone on the bridge but apparently a shark had found its way in ahead of them. She looked around, desperate for a weapon to fight back with, but the water was hampering her search.
Charlie and the shark, a small great white, splashed in the water as they fought. The eerie silence from the shark was offset by Charlie’s stream of digital invectives that would have curled the toes of any other android had they been overheard. The shark didn’t have quite enough water depth to really use its strength and swimming against Charlie, but then she was hampered by a useless arm and a general lack of skill in hand-to-hand combat. The two seemed evenly matched.
Tina didn’t know what else to do, so she jumped up onto her Captain’s chair, teetering precariously in her vacc suit as she tried to get completely out of the water. Any sense of remaining in command vanished and all she wanted to do was get away.
Charlie swung herself up onto the shark’s back, digging the fingers of her undamaged arm into its dorsal fin for balance. The creature’s blood spurted between her fingers to mingle with her own white internal fluids that ran from fresh slices on her torso. She had her teeth bared in a very human display of aggression as she rode the shark like a rodeo cowboy on the back of a raging bull.
The shark’s thrashing became more pronounced and from her high vantage point, Tina could see blood running away from wounds along its sides where Charlie gripped it with her legs. She realized that the android was crushing the life right out of the shark between her legs. Tina wondered if that particular trick was something the former sexbot had learned in her previous career.
Then, with a sickening crunch that carried even over the sound of the splashing, Charlie brought her legs together hard enough to crush the entire shark’s body inward. Blood gushed out to darken the water around them and blotchy shapes that might have been internal organs burst out from the shark’s gaping mouth. The creature’s panicked movements dissipated into only a few involuntary death twitches.
“And thatthat’s how we do thingthings where I come from, bitchtch!” crowed Charlie, her speech modulator malfunctioning.
Another shark leaped out of the water like a dolphin, twisting sideways in mid-air to catch Charlie across her torso.
“Charlie!” cried Tina as the second shark dragged the android under the water, leaving behind a bright streak of her milky fluids and the tooth-scored metal of her internal framework.
Tina had no weapon, nothing to use to fight the shark. And then she remembered the microseismic charge in her hand. She armed it and with her other hand, pulled her vacc suit visor down to seal it. “I’m sorry, Charlie!”
She threw the charge at the main forward windows and ducked away to protect her delicate visor. The charge exploded against the windows with a bright flash and crashing shockwave that sent ripples across the water in the bridge. The windows shattered outward and suddenly a hurricane tore at Tina as the air and water on the bridge rushed out of the opening. The force pulled her off her perch on the Captain’s chair and she tumbled head over heels, heading for deep space.
Her flailing hand caught a stanchion and wrenched her shoulder painfully, but she managed to hold against the blasting air. A shark crashed into her, gashes all over it as the rapid pressure loss tore it apart. The impact nearly jarred her loose. As the dying shark flew out the window into the great ocean of space, Tina caught a glimpse of Charlie’s remains as they followed the shark. The android had been severed in half, leaving only her shoulders, head, and part of her spine intact. Charlie’s gaze met Tina’s for a split second even as her eyes were icing over and she raised her one good hand in a final wave before spinning out into the darkness beyond.
Finally, the last of the air on the bridge evacuated itself into the void, leaving behind only the last of the shark tank water, boiling itself into snowflakes and coating everything with ice. Tina pushed herself away from the bulkhead and headed outside the bridge onto the Baldwin’s hull before she, too, became immobilized from ice buildup. Her vacc suit boots kept her in contact with the ship’s hull. She glanced once up at Poseidon, straight overhead, and knew that the Baldwin was doomed to die a fiery death in its atmosphere.
She didn’t intend to go down with her ship. That kind of bullshit was for romantic movies, and she had more important things to do than fulfilling the traditional Captain’s role. Tina began making her way toward the shuttlecraft she knew was docked at the aft end.
Chapter Twelve
Interstellar Transport Baldwin
T-Minus 90 minutes to Poseidon
Casper and Howard reached the airlock and realized that their worst fear had come to pass, as ice had thickened around the edges of the docking tube until only a narrow tube remained. Casper took his wrench and chipped away at the ice closest to the Baldwin’s airlock door. The problem was with the water reaching all the way to the ceiling, the chunks of ice he cut free tended to stick back to the existing ice after a minute or two.
At last, feeling defeated, he turned to Howard and touched his helmet to the smaller man’s mask so they could talk. “Listen, we’re going to have to figure something else out here.”
“H-hello?” came a tremulous voice over an unexpected frequency in Casper’s helmet. “Casper?”
Casper couldn’t believe it. “Tina? Thank God you’re still alive. Where are you? My long-range transmitter is soaked.”
“I’m coming across the hull. Everyone’s dead. I’ve lost my ship, Casper. I’ve lost the Baldwin.”
“Is that the captain?” asked Howard.
“Yes, she’s outside. Shut up for a second.”
Despite the exhaustion in his face, Howard managed a weak grin.
Casper knew how he felt. “I’m here for you, babe. I’ve got your guy Clintock with me. We’ve just got to get through a frozen docking tube and we can all go home.”
Tina sounded like she was almost in tears but instead her wry laugh was like music in Casper’s ears. “That s-sounds really nice. I’m glad it’s you, Casp.”
Casper smiled. “Me too. Give us a few minutes to clear this ice and then we’re gone. All of us.”
“Okay. I’ll wait.”
Knowing Tina was waiting for them gave Casper some new inspiration. He turned to look at the ice and wondered if he could melt it just with the warmth in his heart.
“Why don’t you use those charge things to crack the ice? We can take the pieces and push them behind us. That’ll also help keep sharks away from us. They don’t like cold water, do they?” said Howard.
“I don’t know,” said Casper. “That’s not really my area of expertise. I’m worried that these charges will rupture the docking tube. That’s not such a big deal for me, as I’m in a suit.”
Howard glanced down at his wetsuit. “Yeah, I don’t think I’d do well in vacuum, but we’re definitely not going to make any progress by sitting here flapping our gums. Give me a minute to do some math. Watch for sharks.”
Casper nodded and turned to stare down the corridor.
Howard pulled the bandoleer of charges free from Casper’s suit and turned it over and over in his hands, his lips moving behind his mask as he made calculations. “One charge? No, that won’t do more than cause a couple fractures. They’ll refreeze before we can move the pieces away. Two might do it, but they can’t be next to each other. Two meters apart? No, three.”
“Hurry up, man. The longer you take, the smaller that tube gets.”
“You can’t rush math,” said Howard. “If I calculate wrong, either we split the tube and I start breathing vacuum, or we don’t make any progress at all.”
The Baldwin shuddered, sending an underwater shockwave through the corridor that battered both men against the ice at the edge of the docking tube.
“What the hell was that?” asked Casper as he picked himself up. “Something blew up.”
“Casper? Casper, are you there?” called Tina over the radio.
“Yeah. What happened?”
“One of the D-Cain capacitors blew. The Baldwin’s starting to tumble. Are you guys okay?”
“We’re fine, babe. Are you?”
“I’m still transmitting, aren’t I?”
“Don’t get snippy.”
“Sorry. Old habits die hard.”
“I think we have a problem,” said Howard.
“Stand by, Tina.” Casper spun to face Howard. “What problem?”
“I lost the charges.”
Casper’s voice cooled to roughly the temperature as the ice in the docking tube. “What do you mean, you lost the charges?”
“When the, uh, the shockwave hit us, I hit the ice there, and lost hold of the bandoleer.”
“So where are they?”
Howard pointed. He and Casper both put their heads against the ice tube where they could see the bandoleer, sitting just beyond their reach in the ice. “Shit. Shit!” whined Howard. “I didn’t mean to drop them.”
“We’ve got to get them back,” said Casper.
“Oh, well done,” said Howard. “How? I can’t get my arm in there and I’m half your size.”
Casper raised the wrench. “We’ll chip away the ice with this until we reach them.”
“Can we get them with the wrench? It might be long enough.”
Casper looked at the tool. It had a quick-adjustable head that could be triggered from the handle. Howard was right. If he stretched his arm into the tube, holding the wrench, and he could torque his wrist down enough in the vacuum suit, and he was lucky, he might just pull it off.
On the other hand, he might accidentally arm one of the charges, and that would set off the entire belt.
“No, too risky,” said Casper. “We’ll stick with my plan. Chip away the ice.”
After a few minutes of chipping, it became apparent that Casper’s plan wasn’t going to work. The ice tube was filling with the ice chips, which were in turn making the tube freeze faster. It wouldn’t be long before they wouldn’t have any chance at all to reach the charges.
“Anything?” Howard looked over Casper’s shoulder.
“No. We may have to try to grab them with the wrench after all.”
“Just be careful. I came this far in one piece, and I was in the middle of the damn shark tank when I started.”
Casper discovered quickly that it was going to be difficult for him to use the wrench as an extension of his hand. Not only did his suit glove not quite bend enough for him to get the wrench down enough to catch hold of the bandoleer, but he had to do so with his shoulder filling the hole in the ice and he couldn’t see what he was doing. With the gloves dulling his sense of touch, he kept second-guessing himself. He would lean down, estimate the distance, trying to take the distortion effect of the water, and then stick his arm into the tube, only to come up short.
“I can’t see to do this,” Casper said after several minutes. “Can you get down there and see past my arm? Be my eyes?”
“I’ll try,” said Howard. “But what if a shark comes?”
“We’ll have to work fast.”
Howard knelt down beside the tube, positioning himself so he could see just underneath Casper’s arm. “Okay, you’re not in deep enough.”
“That’s what she said.”
“Pardon?”
“Sorry. Bad joke. How about now?”
Howard glanced back over his shoulder to check on the corridor. “Tilt the wrench down. No, more. No, more than that.”
“That’s all I got,” said Casper.
“Then you’re going to have to change your grip.”
Casper cursed and pulled his arm out to adjust the way he held the wrench.
“Shark!” yelled Howard.
“Will you shut up? You’re going to attract it.”
“It’s coming this way!”
Casper turned his head inside his helmet. He could just see past the edge of the visor. A huge, scarred shark with pale white flesh was cruising up the corridor toward them. “Shit. Guide me, Howard.”
“Uh, uh go in more.” Howard turned back to check on the shark about once per second.
“Come on, Howard. Focus. Forget the shark for a few seconds. Am I there?”
“I can’t forget about it! That looks like the one that got Brion and now it’s after me!”
“Goddammit, Howard!”
Howard glanced back. “You’re there. Curl down and you got it.” He turned to look at the shark again. “Oh my God, we’re going to die.”
Despite Howard’s fear-babble, Casper clearly heard the beep of a seismic charge arming. He knew it only had a five-second delay. With the shark accelerating up the corridor toward them, and the ice tube blocking the other direction, there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. “Howard, man… I’m real sorry.”
“Wh-what?”
The entire bandoleer blew.
The force of the explosion hurled men and shark back up the corridor, tumbling like leaves in a gale. Sharp pain tore through Casper as his arm hit a protruding bulkhead and the bone snapped like a twig. Almost as quickly as the explosion threw them down the corridor, it sucked them back as the docking tube blew apart and threw them all into space toward Casper’s shuttlecraft.
Howard’s panicky flailing stopped almost immediately as his cells ruptured even as ice formed across his wetsuit. In its dying throes, the scarred great white still managed to close its jaws upon Howard, catching all of him except for one arm and his head, frozen with a terrified expression.
Casper hit the side of the shuttlecraft hard, yelping when the bones in his broken arm sandpapered together. The force of his impact spun him around and he just had enough time to scream as Howard’s remains bounced off of him, followed by the dead shark that crushed him against the hull, and finally the telephone-pole-sized icicle that came from inside the Baldwin’s airlock and skewered man and shark together like dead butterflies in a museum collection.
* * *
Tina came over the edge of the hull just in time to see Howard’s grisly end and the subsequent demise of her estranged husband, Casper Vandeen. “No!” she screamed. “You bastard, you weren’t supposed to die today!” When she made it to the airlock, where Casper had been pinned, it had only taken a moment for her to see that until death do you part had indeed happened. Bloody ice coated the inside of Casper’s helmet. She reached out to touch him, as if she could heal him or at least get a sense of the final thoughts of his life, but nothing about him spoke to her. “Son of a bitch. I’m sorry, Casper. I didn’t want it to end like this.” She sighed. “I don’t know if I ever loved you, but for awhile, you were good for me.”
She looked away as she entered the shuttlecraft airlock, cycled it, and made her way to the pilot’s seat.
“Poseidon Station, come in. This is Captain Tina Thomersen, formerly of interstellar transport Baldwin.”
“Shuttlecraft P-103, this is Poseidon Station. Where’s Casper?”
“I’m sorry to report that he didn’t make it.”
“Didn’t make it? You mean he… he’s dead?”
Tina gritted her teeth. “Yes. Furthermore, I’m reporting the Baldwin is a total loss, including all cargo and crew. I’m the only one left.”
“Captain Thomersen… what happened out there?”
The shuttlecraft flew on through the void, its target the distant lights of Poseidon Station, a great white shark pinned to its hull as mute testament to the disaster that had befallen the late, heroic crew of the Baldwin. As Tina watched, her former ship hit Poseidon’s atmosphere and elongated into a brief, bright flare before exploding into burning debris across the waterworld’s sky. She tried to think of some kind of romantic words to say. A better captain might have mustered up some kind of poetry at the death of a starship, but all she could feel was numbness. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Poseidon,” she said at last. “Bad things. Stand by, I’m on my way in.”
* * *
Connect with Ian online:
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ianthealy
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorianthomashealy
Author website: http://www.ianthealy.com
Ian Thomas Healy, Space Sharks
