Protocol, p.18
Protocol, page 18
part #1 of Burns Series
And down we went.
The view soon filled with blue, white and green. We plunged into high cloud. Our weight returned, and we dropped down into the seats. The shuttle shook and the instruments on the control panel spun as the temperature soared on the hull. Tongues of flame licked at the window's edge.
'This is it,' said Chen, tightening his harness. 'We're either going to gently touch down, or we're going go out in a blaze of fire and black metal.'
Then, the problem I had been dreading but not daring to think about suddenly reared its frightening head.
'Brace yourselves for landing, boys,' growled a dark and horrible voice behind us. It wasn't coming from the hold. It was close by.
I turned and there it was: the full nightmare, right at the entrance to the cockpit. The Romans, the galactic visitors, did not really look like humans, of course. Now, here was the truth about their appearance--or one of their appearances. In the entranceway was a huge and horrible face. Beneath it was sinuous neck that must have been attached to a body so large that it stood all the way up from the deck way below.
'What's the word for close?' I yelled.
'I still don't know,' said Chen. 'Ferma, shut-o.'
'How about muerte?' said the deep voice, filling the cabin as if it were from a loudspeaker.
The clouds gave way to a clear view of the sea, grey and shining below. It would have been a marvelous, reassuring sight, if there were not the problem of our approach speed. We had not slowed down. Nor had we flatted out. The shuttle was still traveling at an angle that would hit would the water nose first.
'Seal-o,' Chen said, hopelessly. 'Close-o.'
'Hang on,' said the horrible voice at the entrance.
I had the rifle in my hands. I loosened my harness, turned and aimed at the enormous head and the tentacle that now stretched inside.
'We're going to hit the sea!' yelled Chen.
'Thanks for the ride to the Accord of Nations, guys?' said the creature. 'I'll be making the world more diverse, and diversity is our strength, right?' And it, or she, or whatever it was laughed deeply and mockingly, as if this escape of ours had all been part of a plan.
So, with the shuttle about to crash, I pulled the trigger. As the rifle fired and the recoil threw me into a backward twist, the whole craft decelerated rapidly, slamming us forward in our harnesses.
Then, as if it had misjudged its own approach speed, the shuttle, hit the water, bow first, and plunged down with an almighty crash.
The view through the window turned milk white and then dark green as we went under. Chen and I were slammed forward a second time, the harness straps cutting into our chests. The hull shrieked as the body of the ship caught up with the bow. The shrieks were followed by tearing as if every rivet and seal was pulled and stretched and twisted.
Then, with the nose deep under the surface, the shuttle rolled like an old crocodile. We rolled one way and then the other and then, slowly, painfully, the massive shuttle's nose surfaced and the entire vessel settled upright on the sea.
'Is that it?' gasped Chen.
'I don't know,' I said.
'Is that thing gone?'
I looked around. The entrance way was clear. But that didn't mean the creature wasn't waiting just out of sight.
'For now,' was all I could say.
'Are we safe?' said Chen.
'We're alive,' I said.
No sooner had I spoken when the shuttle began to complain all over again with a series of moans and terrible tearing. The bow began to tilt upward. The window filled with the sky and the clouds, which could only mean one thing: the shuttle was sinking. The hull had been breached and now the giant, empty hold was taking on water.
'Now what?' yelled Chen.
Warning alarms began to sound all over the shuttle, and a voice spoke something in Latin, over and over.
Chen was shouting, but I couldn't hear him. I was thinking about how we could get out. The ports in the hold and the passageway were out of the question. The creature was down there. Water would be flowing in. Plus there was a huge drop to reach the deck.
So I looked at another way out--from the cockpit itself.
But all I could see was black metal.
'Aperta!' I shouted over the alarms. 'Aperta!' I shouted again. Then, to my amazement, a crack appeared in the hull, then a wider crack. It was opening up. There was a hatch up there after all.
Fresh, salty air rushed in.
Against all odds, against all logic, and good sense, we had made it back to Earth from a hostile alien warship.
But new troubles were just beginning.
37
CHEN AND I watched the hatch inch open. Earthly light and fresh air flowed in. The air was cool and salty. It was familiar and reassuring. We breathed deep and relaxed a little. Soon, we would be out of the shuttle. The Navy helicopters would show up, thumping over the water. They would take us to the nearest AONS.
And once there, I could warn senior command about the danger posed by Octavia--if they would listen.
But no sooner had we breathed the wonderful air when the escape hatch stalled. It got as far as six inches open and then stopped dead.
'Aperta!' I yelled.
Nothing.
'Aperta!'
The hatch didn't move.
'Don't tell me we've come all this way only to be trapped at the end,' said Chen.
'It's not over yet,' I said.
I reached up, got my hand on the edge of the hatch and pulled. Then I pulled again.
The hatch didn't move.
'At least we're floating,' Chen said.
As if it were listening in, the shuttle released a long and plaintive moan that started at a low tone, then rose in pitch, higher and higher. It was joined by other moans from other sections of the shuttle, until there were three or four competing moans, a chorus of complaints.
'Feel that?' said Chen.
The shuttle's bow began to rise out of the water, swinging up until it was as high as forty-five degrees.
I pictured what would happen next on a vessel of this size. The water would rise in the hold, causing the ship's bow to swing from forty-five degrees to vertical. Then, the whole vessel would sink under the surface and begin the long descent toward the sea floor, which in this part of the AON China Sea was two miles down. The ship would fall through the dark, perhaps stern first, possibly spinning, gathering speed until it hit the sand, or rock, or mud, embedding itself. The rest of the vessel would either concertina behind it, or, if this black metal were especially strong, not bend at all, which meant the ship would rear up and then, after its kinetic energy was spent, settle slowly into the mud of the sea floor, to rest in the cold, silent dark.
Unless of course, the black material floated on water.
But that didn't seem likely.
I came out of my daydream of sinking ships, back into the world of the sirens and warnings in Latin, shouted over and over. The hatch was still closed. The bow was still tilting upward. And we were still trapped.
I picked up the alien rifle.
'What are you doing?' said Chen. He was crouching on the back of his seat.
'I'm going to shoot out the window,' I said. 'Move to the back as far as you can.'
As Chen moved, I raised the rifle towards the window and the cloudy sky in its view.
Then, I put the rifle down again.
'What are you waiting for?' said Chen.
'I'm putting my shirt behind my head to stop the effects of the recoil.'
'Why don't you just put the stock against the wall?'
'Because the recoil will sling the muzzle off target,' I said, 'and fling the rifle into one of our faces.'
'Just don't miss,' said Chen.
'Cover your ears,' I replied.
Once it was ready. I lifted up the weapon and aimed at the middle of the window and pulled the trigger. The recoil was just as violent as ever. The rifle threw my shoulder and head back against the shirt and the wall.
I looked at the window. Nothing. Not even a crack.
Alien glass.
I fired again, twice. Boom. Boom!
As if responding, the ship began to complain and sink even faster. Water appeared at the back of the entrance way, bubbling up as clear as gin.
'Nice knowing you,' said Chen.
'It's not over yet,' I said. 'I've got another idea.'
I looked at the control panels. They were still glowing. Maybe they would still respond to commands.
'What are you doing?' said Chen.
'Roma!' I called.
'What are you doing?'
'Roma!' I called again.
'Don't,' said Chen.
The image on the cockpit screen altered. Until now, it had shown a map of the Earth. Now, it changed to display a star field, then it zoomed through the stars, zeroing in on one single star, then a solar system, then on one green colored planet. Symbols like hieroglyphs flashed, and then remained static. Then the ship began to shudder, like it was flexing its muscles against the sea.
And to our disbelief, the shuttle slowly began to rise. The fact that it moved at all seemed impossible. The weight of water inside the hold was almost unimaginable in a vessel this size, and yet, up we went, slowly and tremblingly. Metallic groans came deep beneath the water in the hold.
'Now what?' said Chen.
'One step at a time,' I said.
'Stop saying that. What are we going to do?'
'If the water level drops enough, we can get to the exit port on the side--the same one we entered into when we boarded from AONS Accord Values.'
'It's a sixty yard drop from here.'
'Not when the ship's vertical,' I said. 'It's a two hundred foot slide.'
'What about you know who?' he said.
'Let's just hope for the best,' I said.
We both looked back down to the port. We could hear water sloshing around in the passageway. I moved to the edge and looked out and down. No monster. No water. Nothing but the wet bulkhead which was now horizontal, like a deck.
I slid back into the cockpit, grabbed the rifle and came back to the entrance.
'I'll go first,' I said.
I moved out onto the bulkheads. Chen came after me, careful not to put weight on his injured arm. We crawled on hands and knees along the bulkhead towards the port.
Meanwhile, the ship, groaned and complained as it rose upward, hauling its cargo of water.
'Hurry,' I said, 'Or, we'll be too high to jump.'
'Jump?'
'To the sea.'
I reached the port. Chen came up behind me.
'Aperta!' I shouted. 'Aperta! Aperta! Aperta!'
Nothing.
'Aperta!'
Nothing.
I looked at Chen, and shook my head. 'Worth a shot,' I said, 'But it looks like either the water or the crash landing broke it.'
'Maybe it responds a different word,' he said.
No sooner had Chen spoken when the ship shrieked yet another series of groans, creaks and bangs.
'What now?' I said. The ship soon provided the answer. It began to right itself from its vertical position, lowering the bow down, back from ninety degrees, to sixty, to forty-five, thirty, until Chen and I had stepped from bulkhead and back onto the passageway deck. It kept tilting down until it was nearly horizontal again.
Which was both good and bad.
Good because we were now on a familiar footing. Bad because all the water in that enormous hold now had to flow elsewhere, which meant it would come right forward into the passageway.
Which it began doing immediately.
It came sloshing in from the hold, slamming into the bulkheads, as if a dam had burst. It flowed out, either side, like a forked tongue, flooding the passageway. Within seconds the water was up to our knees and rising towards our waists.
And then, right on cue, the lights dimmed, plunging us into wet semi darkness. I tried not to imagine our friend, the prisoner, suddenly rearing up out of it.
Chen said. 'Any second now, this thing is going to try and take off to Rome.'
'One last try,' I said. 'Aperta! Aperta! Aperta!'
And then, quietly and slowly, the port slid upward, rising from the deck, letting in more fresh air and a view high over the grey and swelling sea.
Why did the port decide this was the moment to start working again? Perhaps it had to be level in order to work. Maybe its microphone had been underwater.
Whatever the reason, it now worked.
And we were going to be safe after all.
But then, right on cue, the next problem showed up.
38
IN FACT, TWO problems showed up.
The first was that the surge of water brought our prisoner, the creature, sliding out from the hold and into the passageway. The second was that the water began to pour through the open port, like a river suddenly unblocked, pulling both Chen and me with it.
So far, so good.
Except, that by this point, the port had risen two hundred feet above the sea. This was about the same height above the water as The Diversity Bridge in AON sub-territory San Francisco, which was too high for anyone who fell from it to survive.
And so, down we plunged--down through the cool air, with the grey sea rushing up meet us.
In Navy training, the technique for surviving a high fall was covered briefly in the short section devoted to seamanship, specifically, the section on abandoning a ship. This was before the training moved on to the more important subject of gender neutral bathroom etiquette.
To maximize your chances of survival, the instructors told us, you had to enter the water feet first with elbows tucked in tight. You had to keep one hand covering but not holding your nose. You had to keep the other hand holding the first hand's wrist so that it wouldn't be yanked aside when you crashed into the water. Meanwhile, you also had to keep your eyes on the horizon so that your body would stay upright. You never looked down, or you would hit the water face first. Finally, you took a big breath and tried to stay perpendicular. And you hoped the water wasn't shallow.
All well and good, but I was falling sideways. As I fell, I looked back up at the shuttle, water flowing beside me. And I could see Chen way up there too, following me down.
'Feet first!' I yelled to him. Then, I flailed in the air, trying to get myself into the feet-first position myself. My nose stung as I placed a hand over it. The wind whistled in my ears as I fell down and down. At least, I told myself, I had gotten this far, and that with a bit of luck, I would survive.
Then, fear whispered to me. It said that even if I survived the fall, Chen might hit directly on top of me. Oh well, I thought. There was nothing I could do, except to aim to go as deep as possible after I hit, and then try to veer off once under the water.
Some seconds later, I hit the sea. It was like an explosion, not a splash--an explosion and a ripping sound, as if I had torn the sea itself. Then I was going down, way down, through the layers of light and shade, into darkness and cold.
Then I stopped.
I took my hand from my nose and moved my legs. They responded. Everything moved. Everything worked. I swam away and up toward the light. I broke the surface, lungs screaming, and was immediately slapped in the face by a wave. When the coughing was over, I looked around.
'Chen!' I yelled. 'Chen!'
I scoured the water in every direction, through all three hundred and sixty degrees. I could see nothing but waves, one after the other, rolling over me.
'Chen!'
Nothing.
'Chen!'
Nothing.
'Raise your arm if you can't speak!'
Nothing.
And then a new danger now presented itself.
The shuttle, having heaved itself into the air in its attempt to return to planet Rome, had now stalled. I looked up. There it was, high above the sea, a great black, elongated shape against the blue sky, water streaming from the open port and from breeches in the stern.
Slowly, and then quickly, it lurched to port, dipped its bow, and began falling, like an enormous football thrown by a giant.
Right above me.
I turned and swam as fast as I could, AONT Australian crawl style. Seconds later I saw the huge shadow grow around me, expanding outward and thickening. I kept swimming.
And swimming.
Then I heard the enormous, groaning crash, the huge splash and then the shriek of the hull buckling after impact.
I stopped swimming and turned around to look where the shuttle had fallen.
The shuttle had hit bow first with an almighty displacement of water.
At the same time, the water already inside the shuttle had been thrown violently to the point of impact, causing the entire structure to burst, breaking off three quarters along its length towards the stern, clipping it, like a giant cigar.
Then the great vessel began to fall slowly and heavily to its side. I already knew where it was going to hit.
Right on top me.
Was there no getting away from this thing? It was as if it bore me a grudge and would do anything possible to kill me.
Or could it be that the grudge is borne by someone controlling it?
With my lungs aching, I dove under the water once more, breaststroking down for all I was worth, down and down again, pushing against the ocean, which fought to push me upwards.
Yet again, a dark shadow surrounded me. I heard the crash above the water. Saw the shadow deepen. Saw black debris shoot past me into the gloom. Then, the light disappeared as the enormity of the shuttle settled above.
Would I ever be free of it?
Not yet.
The shuttle lay directly above me, sinking all over again, so I had to keep swimming underwater to get out from under it before it came rushing down at me, catching me and dragging me with it. With my lungs really starting to complain, I pushed through the watery twilight world until I was in the light again.
