Devilfish -- Part Five

The diminutive shuttlecraft of Landale V landed at the Drasgow heliport soon after Tidal sent its plea to Zelan. Doctor Rolobin greeted the craft. His beak was initially bent into a forced smile, but when he saw a gaunt Dezorian walking only with assistance and a mere Whistle-type emerge from the shuttle instead of one of Wren's intimidating subordinate androids, his smile vanished.

Rolobin turned to two of his engineers, who stood behind him. "What the Hell did Wren send a greenie for?" he asked. The other men, one of whom had a Dezorian grandmother, shook their heads. It was rare to hear a racial slur in that day and age. And to hear it from a Motavian, considering how Motavians were often the most sensitive about such issues, was even more startling.

But Rolobin was oblivious to the attitude of his men. He stormed over to the shuttlecraft and cried, "What in Algo is this?" He marched right up to Tiro's face and bellowed, "Tell me! Who are you?"

Tiro blinked and nodded slightly. "I am Doctor Tirotul Urbanich," he said. "With me is Betty, my personal assistant and friend."

Betty nodded, in her way.

"We have been sent by Zelan to assist you," Tiro added. "What can we do for you?"

Rolobin sneered. "What help could you possibly be? Whistles aren't known for their physical strength, and you look like you're half--"

"I happen to be one of Algo's preeminent zoologists," Tiro said, his lipless mouth tightly pursed. "I have personally discovered more than fifty species of land and air animals during my studies on Dezo's northern glacier. And I have studied, catalogued, and explained the behaviors of those species. Zelan sent me because I can surely assist you in handling this...monster you've uncovered. My expertise lies in finding new species and analyzing their behavior."

Rolobin sighed. "Yes, you probably can with all that. But what about the team that's lost down there? Are you going to go down there and rescue them, in your condition?"

Tiro glared at Rolobin. "No. And I would appreciate it if we could drop the matter of 'my condition.'"

Rolobin shrugged. "But what about my team? Vice Director Carmis is down there, you know! I'll tell you, I am good friends with Director Mallos, and she'll have your head if she finds out that you botched this assignment!"

Tiro shook his head and thought for a few seconds. Finally he said, "Maybe we can help your team help themselves. This reminds me of something that once happened to a friend of mine, and-- Well...." Tiro gestured toward the massive tower of the Drasgow Command Center, which rose into the sky before him. "Take me inside," he said, "and show me what you've got."

Veya was beginning to wonder how long the corkscrew could possibly go on. Around and around and around she and Silverton marched. The scenery was unchanging. Although they continued to move upwards, Veya began to worry that, somehow, they weren't making any progress.

Silverton, fortunately, had regained his strength and was walking on his own. Veya regularly shot a look at the back of his hand, to see if the mechanical-looking patch had grown. So far it didn't seem to have spread any, but Veya wondered if the same might not be true for the affected areas out of her sight.

The two of them were rounding yet another corner in the near-darkness when a shape appeared before them. Neither Veya nor Silverton could see it clearly, but they sensed it well enough. Veya backed against the wall and made to run if necessary. Silverton stood a little in front of her, took up a fighting stance, and wished that he still had his gun.

The shape came a little closer, and then stopped. Veya heard a popping sound and, despite the darkness, she saw a thin arm come up to salute.

"It's one of Tidal's robots," she said aloud. "It can't hurt us."

Veya came up next to Silverton, who was still tensed. She nodded and said to the robot, "How do you do? What are you doing here?"

The robot was indeed of the same type that had piloted the ferry and that had suddenly appeared early on in the tunnels. The robot started to speak, but stopped mid-word. After that it looked confused, as if it had forgotten how to talk.

"Does this one have a serial number?" Silverton asked. "I'm telling you, that last one didn't."

Veya knelt down and looked at the robot's right hip-joint, where she knew drone serial numbers were often stamped. There was an unnecessary plate laid over the robot's skin, as there should have been. But oddly enough, there was no serial number on it.

"No number. What was it Mect and Kaeblin were saying about Rolobin...? That it was conceivable that he might be running non-approved experiments? Well, maybe he's making his own robots, too."

Silverton rubbed his square chin. "I've heard of that happening," he said. Veya hovered about the robot as he spoke, and the robot stared at her dumbly. "It's actually pretty common in the out-system colonies, like Trask and whatnot. The thing is, I've never seen a homemade robot that looked this...authentic. Fakes are usually pretty obvious if you see them this close up. Even in the dark."

"This robot is identical to the standard issue," Veya added. "I can't see anything about it that looks in any way unusual, except for the lack of a serial number."

"Try speaking to it again," Silverton said.

Veya looked the robot in the eyes. "Hello?" she said. "Can you understand me?"

The robot tried to speak again, and once more it failed and looked confused. Then, however, it nodded the affirmative.

"You do understand me?" Veya asked.

The robot nodded again, even more emphatically than before.

"Do you know how to get out of here?" Silverton asked it.

The robot shook its head no.

"Well, then how did you get here?"

The robot thought for a moment, but then shrugged.

"Great." Silverton winced and wrapped one of his arms around his midsection tightly. But after a moment he was able to stand again.

Once it was clear he was all right, Veya said, "We'll take this robot with us; I want to ask Rolobin about it. And we'll keep going the way we were headed. I think that's the best thing for us to do."

"I sure hope so," Silverton muttered. "We don't have long until that bomb goes off."

Veya took a deep breath. "I know. Hopefully it's below us. Far below us. Then we'll be fine, right?"

Silverton shrugged. "Maybe. But I don't think so. And even if so, what if it's above us, or too close to us...?"

"I know," Veya whispered. "Well, let's be moving."

So, they walked a while longer. The winding tunnel continued on as it always had. Veya took the lead most of the time, with Silverton passing her occasionally, but falling back again when his strength waned. The robot stayed at the rear, doing nothing and expressing nothing. Silverton glanced back at it often. It would stare back at him blankly, and then look away.

Eventually they reached a point where the ceiling lights flickered instead of remaining dead at all times. The ever-present glowing moss stopped abruptly. There was a perfectly straight, razor-edged line the moss would not traverse -- the line where the glow from one of the overhead lights met the shadows of the winding passage.

Not that the light beyond was very bright. Even when, for a minute or two, it would stay on consistently, it was still quite low. Veya figured that the filaments that kept the lights working must be very old, and were probably ready to fail.

They walked through the lit tunnels for a while, but then stopped suddenly. For as Veya rounded yet another turn, the floor simply stopped. Just millimeters from where Veya had planted her foot stretched a gaping chasm. It was about ten meters across and sheer-sided. Veya gasped and looked over the edge. She could hear rushing water far below, but whatever lay in those depths was concealed by the lack of light.

Veya looked back at Silverton. "How are we going to get across this?" she asked.

Silverton stepped up to the edge. He knelt down carefully and examined the break in the floor. "It almost looks like this entire section was pulled in from below. See how the floor folds in before it ends?"

Veya looked. "Yes, you're right," she said. "Could that creature be strong enough to do something like this? To pull the entire floor in on itself?"

Silverton felt movement behind him, which made him jump. He looked around in time to see the robot step blindly off the side of the ledge. "Hey!" he cried. But it was to no avail. The robot calmly walked over the side. However, it only fell a few dozen meters before a slimy tentacle reached up and grabbed it in midair.

Veya and Silverton looked at each other. "Robots are so predictable," the agent said. "Consistently stupid."

"Just perfect!" Veya said.

Silverton shook his head. "At any rate, it looks like we've found the creature's nest."

Veya backed away from the opening slowly. "Yes.... It's too bad we don't still have that bomb," she added.

Silverton stood and also backed off. "There doesn't seem to be any way across this chasm," he said. "It's much too far to jump all the way across. I could jump down and try to grab onto the other side of this hole, and from there climb up to the top...."

"But that thing would grab you before you'd even reached the other side," Veya said. To test the theory, she picked up a head-sized chunk of metal that had fallen off of the ceiling. She threw it towards the metal face of the opposite side of the gorge, and as she'd guessed, a sucker-covered tentacle reached up and snatched it before it had gone very far. It cracked like a whip as it curled and slithered back down the hole. Veya sighed. "What now?"

Silverton just shook his head. "I don't know. I don't know."

A moment passed. Then, Veya snapped her fingers. "Wait! This can't be the way I came here. There's no way I could have just been washed right over this giant pit. There must be another way up to the surface somewhere down below us!"

Silverton did not have the type of face that lit up. Ever. His expression was always stony and betrayed nothing. Even when Veya made her revelation, all Silverton did was raise one of his thin gray-blue eyebrows.

Veya, however, was pacing back and forth. "There has to be another route to the surface. This way might not even lead to the surface at all!"

Silverton nodded. "Fine, but how would we find it? Where do we go now?"

Veya glanced back down the way she had come. The thought of hiking all the way back down the twisting tunnel nearly made her ill. She shook her head and said, "I do not want to go back there again. I mean, we've got to move fast if we're going to get out before this whole place blows!"

"There may be only one way," Silverton said darkly.

Veya looked at him with apprehension. "What do you mean by that?" she asked.

Silverton took a deep breath and stared into the pit before him. "That monster apparently has the ability to go wherever it wants, right?"

"Right."

"Well, how?"

Veya shrugged. "I don't know. I somehow doubt it has the ability to fly, and much of this place is free of water, so it can't be swimming everywhere. The way it gets around...it must have access to passages that weren't even on our map."

"That wouldn't be unusual."

"No, not at all. Some tunnels might be even older than this bunker; they probably wouldn't be on the map. Or, service tunnels or tunnels that were only used during construction.... They'd probably be left off, too."

Silverton nodded. "Right again. And the only way we're going to find those passages is if the creature leads us to them."

Veya took several steps back. "No way!" she shouted. "If that thing is a squid, it eats its prey live. Maybe you were able to squirm away from that thing, but that doesn't mean I'll be able to. I'm quite a bit smaller than you. And a chance at being eaten alive is not a chance I'm willing to take!"

Silverton sighed and shook his head at her. "Don't you get anything? Anything at all? Do you really think a professional agent is going to put a civilian life on the line when he has his own to risk?"

Veya scowled at him. "Why don't you just tell me what you're thinking for once?"

Silverton shook his head again. "Fine. If you need me to spell it out for you.... What I'm going to do is let that thing grab me."

Veya blanched. "What? That's crazy!"

"Look, I already know I'm strong enough to wrestle my way out of its grasp."

Veya said nothing, but she thought, Yeah, before it did whatever it did to you....

"Besides," Silverton went on, "it's already infected me with this...condition. What more harm can it do?"

"It could eat you, for one."

Silverton shrugged. "Risks like this are just part of being an agent, Director Carmis."

Veya suddenly felt sad. "So you're just going to let it catch you?"

"Don't worry about me," Silverton said. "I've got a few tricks up my sleeve. But here's how this is going to work: I'll get its attention. I saw how that thing worked before. It can only concentrate on one thing at a time. So while I'm busy giving it a good fight, you sneak past it down the tunnel. There has got to be another tunnel down there -- either the tunnel you came here in or one connected to it. So you find that tunnel and run. I'll catch up with you."

Veya grabbed Silverton's shoulder. "I don't like this. We shouldn't split up."

"I agree," the agent replied. "Unfortunately, we don't have any choice." There was quiet for a moment as the two of them read each other. Then Silverton said, "So you aren't claustrophobic. But are you afraid to jump from this height?"

Veya glanced over the edge and shuddered. "A little. I've jumped from this height into water before. I didn't like it, but I was willing to do it. Jumping from this height into God-knows-what, however, is a totally different story." Silverton raised one of his eyebrows again, but that just made Veya wave her hands at him. "All right, all right," she said. "I'll do it."

The two of them crept over to the edge and stared down into it. "Are you ready?" Silverton asked.

"I just thought of something," Veya whispered. "You said it can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Well, what if it forgets about you and goes after me? Maybe it just wants a light snack instead of a full lunch...."

Silverton shrugged. "If that happens...I guess I'll just have to rescue you again."

Before Veya could respond, they were falling. She knew Silverton must have shoved her, but there was no time to think about it. They only fell for a few seconds; it got darker as they descended, but Veya could clearly see half a dozen tentacles rise from below. A few came at her, initially, but then they redirected themselves at the larger Silverton. Veya watched as the slimy appendages wrapped tightly around the agent's body.

Then Veya felt herself landing in deep water. She could feel currents caused by flailing and thrashing nearby. She pushed herself to the surface and coughed on the water's acrid taste. She looked to her right; much of her view was blocked by an indistinct but giant, squirming shape that Veya knew must be the monster. But she didn't waste time on that. She looked to her left and immediately saw an elevated passage leading away. She could tell by its low ceiling and hexagonal shape that it was an old service tunnel.

Veya swam over to the new passage and pulled herself up into it. It was mostly dry inside, and dimly lit. At once she began running down the tunnel, faster than she had ever run in her life. She came to a turn not far into it, and before taking the turn, she glanced back to see if Silverton was behind her. He wasn't. Veya hesitated, but then, remembering Silverton's words, she looked away and continued running.

Tiro and Betty had been examining Tidal's primary controls for some time, with Rolobin impatiently explaining how the major systems worked and what effect they had on the surrounding environment. But Rolobin, though many things, was not a patient man. At last he exploded, the fuzzy hair on the top of his head standing on end and his sharply-turned beak ready to bite off a finger or two.

"Do you know what to do or not?" he cried.

Tiro jumped and then looked back at Rolobin with a calm look on his smooth, green face. He just shrugged.

Rolobin was ready to strike Tiro, but Betty rolled between the two of them. "I believe I might have an idea," she said. The Dezorian and the Motavian both watched the Whistle-type as she rolled to a nearby terminal. Behind the terminal was a vast window that spanned the entire circumference of the control room. It offered a view of the blue-black nighttime ocean that stretched on and on until it vanished into the starlit sky.

But Betty paid no heed to the view. Instead she asked, "Am I correct in my belief that Tidal has the ability to redirect ocean currents and to flood coastal areas on command?"

Rolobin nodded. "Yes, it does. We often use those abilities while helping to develop the coastal areas."

"What we should do," Betty calmly said, "is use Tidal to flood the Drift."

Tiro rubbed his chin but Rolobin nearly became hysterical. "Urbanich, I think your robot is malfunctioning!" the Motavian shouted.

"The sudden influx of water will cause the Drift to swell," Betty explained, "therefore crushing the bunkers underneath it and destroying this monster, or, perhaps, these monsters."

Rolobin looked from Betty to Tiro in desperation. "This is madness!"

Betty's voice emulated a sigh. "Doctor Rolobin, may I remind you that you are the one who contacted Zelan. You are the one who decided this creature was a deadly threat and had to be taken care of immediately. I am simply showing you the quickest and easiest route to your goal."

"But flooding the Drift will only make our original problem even worse!" Rolobin said. "We've been trying to fix the Drift for years, and now you tell me to undo all of our work and make the problem the worst it has ever been! I won't do it!"

Betty waited a moment for Rolobin to calm down. Then she said, "It is my calculation that this course of action will cause the Drift to rupture. Tiro, didn't the previous Tidal team, at one point, plan to...lance the Drift?"

"That's right," Tiro said. "But Betty, they decided that the course of action you suggest was too dangerous to be tried."

"Because of the threat of a tsunami from all the escaping water," Betty told him. "But Tiro, we can simply use Tidal's control of the ocean to stop the tsunami before it starts."

Tiro smiled and looked to Rolobin. "What do you say?" the Dezorian asked. "Could we do that?"

Rolobin fidgeted. "I...don't know. I suppose--"

"I suppose it would be a risk," Tiro said. "But...will you try it?"

Rolobin thought about it for a moment. "We'd thought about this before, but we didn't want to take the chance if there was another way. But now...we don't have time to try other ways."

Tiro nodded.

Rolobin continued. "My current team is the best we've ever had. I'm confident they could handle the pressure. So yes, Doctor Urbanich, I think that we could squelch a tsunami before it had a chance to grow. And this would mean our years of struggle with the Drift would finally be over. Yes, I would do this in a heartbeat, but...what about our people still down in those tunnels?"

"If only there was a way for us to know if they are still alive," Tiro said.

"There may be a way," Betty said. "Doctor Rolobin, you have been waiting and hoping that the signals from your team's communication devices would start up again. Correct?"

Rolobin nodded.

"How about if, instead of sitting here waiting, we flood the devices with power from the station? It will destroy the communicators, but if the devices are still in existence, they will flash briefly before dying."

Rolobin's blue face lit up. "Yes!" he said with an excited stamp of his feet. "Then we will at least have an idea of whether or not the team is still alive. The communicators aren't responding normally anyway, so why not try it? If we get no signals, it's safe to set your plan into motion. But if we do get signals...."

"Rolobin, you said that your team was going to put a bomb down there," Tiro said. "The bomb was to be set for three hours, right? Well, how long will it be until that three hours has passed?"

Rolobin looked at a clock on the wall. "About twenty-five minutes," he said.

Tiro nodded. "Betty, flood the communicators."

Betty pressed a series of buttons with her work arm. On a small screen level with her one optic, a map of the underground caverns appeared. Two pinpoints of white light flashed on the map, and then slowly faded away.

"Two of them!" Rolobin cheered. "At least we now have hope!"

Tiro frowned. "Do we? If they're still down there when that bomb goes off, they're goners anyway." He took a deep breath. "In twenty-five minutes they'll be dead men no matter what we do. So in twenty-five minutes we flood the Drift."

Veya was still running down the old service tunnel at top speed when she suddenly heard a man screaming for help. She stopped and listened intently. At first she thought it might be Silverton behind her. But the voice was too high in pitch to belong to the agent. Seconds later Veya realized that it was coming from a ways ahead of her. As quietly as possible she stood and began to creep along the tunnel, hugging the wall closely. The cries got progressively louder.

Then came a point during which Veya did not hear anything for over a minute. When she next heard the cries, they were coming from directly around the corner.

Startled, Veya jumped. She thought about running back the way she had come, but remembering Silverton's sacrifice filled her with courage. She turned the corner and saw Mect, now missing his overcoat and special shot but otherwise fine, running rapidly towards her.

"Veya!" he cried. "You're alive!"

"What are you running from?" Veya asked as Mect reached and passed her.

"Don't ask, just run!" Mect called back at her.

Veya began to follow him, but a loud clang behind her made her turn around. She saw Kaeblin standing farther down the hall. His entire face had been covered by metallic skin like that which had been on the back of Silverton's hand. New robotic features were slowly being formed out of the odd material, including a new mouth filled with tendrils and crooked, jagged teeth. Kaeblin's arms appeared to have been rebuilt from the inside out. The flesh was gone, replaced by tubings and wires and gyros and diodes that were hanging loosely off the bare bone. Where Kaeblin's hands had once been were weapons. One appeared to be a sonic gun and the other was undoubtedly Mect's special shot. They had somehow been grafted to the dead constable's wrists.

Kaeblin, or what had once been Kaeblin, began to slowly march forward. Veya screamed and began to run the way Mect had gone.

The gangly scientist had already run quite a way, but as Veya was the more fit of the two, she caught up to him quickly. As they were running, she spoke between heavy breaths.

"The monster got to Kaeblin," she said.

Mect nodded. "It nearly swallowed him whole! He got away but he was crazy afterwards, and then I thought he was dead. But I got lost and ended up coming back the same way I'd come, and his body was gone, but then I saw him later, and he was walking around, and--"

Veya grabbed Mect's shoulder, forcing him to stop. "But we can't go this way!" she said. "The creature is at the other end of this tunnel!"

Mect bent over and grabbed his knees. He couldn't catch his breath. "But...Kaeblin...will...."

Nearing panic, Veya looked all around. And in the ceiling not five meters back she saw a hatch built into the ceiling. She ran toward it and grabbed onto its handle. But pull as she might, the trap door would not come down.

"Mect, help me with this!" she cried. "We've got to get this open before Kaeblin gets here!"

Mect staggered over to her and also began to pull on the hatch. As he did so, Kaeblin's heavy footsteps became louder. The cyborg zombie was getting closer and closer.

"Open, damn you, open!" Veya screamed. And then, as if on command, the door fell away and a metal ladder extended down towards the floor. Veya motioned for Mect to go up first, and once he did, Veya followed. But as she was climbing she realized a problem. Kaeblin was sure to see the ladder hanging down into the hallway as soon as he rounded the corner. And then he would be sure to follow.

"Mect?" Veya asked sweetly.

"Yes?" Mect replied, still hardly able to breathe.

"Please climb faster!"

Less than a minute later, Mect reached the top of the ladder. There was another trap door there. He pounded on it repeatedly, but nothing happened. And as Mect struggled with the hatch, Kaeblin's reanimated corpse stuck its head through the trap door below them. Veya stared down at it and cried, "Mect, get that damn thing open!"

Kaeblin began to climb towards Veya. Veya bit her lip so as not to scream. As Kaeblin's remains came closer, Veya could see tiny shapes crawling around under his mask of metal skin. She wondered what they were, but at the same time, she did not want to find out. The thought of what must be under that mask made her sick.

"Mect...!" she wailed.

Mect gave the hatch above him a final hard push, and it flipped open. But as a result, a massive torrent of water poured down on he and Veya's heads. The water came full force through the new opening, and both Veya and Mect nearly lost their hold on the ladder. But it passed after a moment, and when Veya looked down again, Kaeblin was nowhere in sight.

Veya and Mect climbed up through the door and found themselves in a hallway similar to many they had passed through before. The hallway was very wet, even though most of the water had just escaped through the opened hatch. Whole sections of the passage's walls and ceiling had fallen away. It was also very dark.

"Mect, we're close to Tidal!" Veya said happily. "I recognize this place! It's just like those first tunnels we saw!"

Mect smiled. "Yeah, you're right! But...which way is the way back?"

Veya looked in both directions. "I...I don't know!"

Suddenly, a robot stepped out of the shadows. "Another one?" Mect asked. "I've been seeing these guys everywhere."

The robot beckoned for the two Palmans to follow, and then it marched back into the darkness.

"Should we follow it?" Mect asked.

"What choice do we have?" Veya answered. The two quickly ran after the robot, which in turn broke into a run of its own. The robot was much faster than either Veya or Mect, but the two Palmans were at least able to keep the robot in their sight. Before long the robot led them to a shutter door, which it opened by pressing a button next to the door. The robot then entered, leaving Veya and Mect in the hall. Veya cautioulessly walked over to the button and pressed it, reopening the shutter. Mect and Veya stepped through it then, and they both gasped at what they saw on the other side.