Nebulae and Cosmic Filaments - A Second Anthology of SF SD Shorts

There be Monsters Here, ...

"I know, luv, I know," Lister's voice was reassuring.  "I'll mind me manners from now on."

"That's what you said the last time, Dave.  And you ended up blurting something that got you cleaning engine parts in Engineering for a month!"

Lister chuckled.

"Yeah, that smeggin' sucked.  But we're here at Alpha Piscium now, exploring AP Five's planet-covering ocean.  The task you and the colonization team were turned into mer-people for.  No more cock-ups for yours truly.  We are now on the clock!"

He paused and looked at the chamber walls that were dimly seen several metres beyond where Ariel's half fish, half human body floated.

"Speaking of which, how do we get out of the dockin' bay again?"

Ariel fought the impulse to sigh, then giggled.  Nobody could say her handler lacked personality.  It was one of the things a frightened, newly re-engineered teenager who now sported a fish tail and the ability to breathe water, found appealing when their teams were being selected back on Earth.

She had been in psychological shock from all the trauma associated with rewiring her nervous system, rebuilding her psyche and initializing her new body parts and organs when the selection had started.  Sick, depressed, lonely; she wanted, no, needed someone that could make her forget the pain and the loneliness.

Dave Lister with his quirky personality and quick wit, was that someone.  Even as they started their classes explaining why Humanity was now choosing to bio-form their colonists versus terraforming the worlds they would live on, she found herself laughing and feeling almost normal as he cracked jokes non-stop.  And when the colonization authority was telling them how they picked teenage volunteers to be bio-formed because of their physical resilience and psychological malleability, Lister had made her feel like she belonged with carefully orchestrated meet and greets with the other colonist hopefuls.

In short, Dave Lister, Technician Third Class and her scouting handler, had let Ariel Triton, Aquatic Scout First Class, be normal.  And in doing so, he had helped her survive.  Now, all she had to do was help him figure out how to get out of the docking bay.

"Sensor activated door, Dave," she gently reminded him as she got a final confirmation from her kit that it was functioning normally.  Nodding in satisfaction, she replaced it in her pouch before straightening her shoulders and smoothing her neoprene thermo-regulated wetsuit over her upper body.  It would serve to help her acclimatize to the alien ocean covering AP Five.  Then she was swimming forward with smooth strokes with her tail and pulls of her webbed hands.

At her approach, the curved entrance to the docking bay slid silently aside to reveal the space beyond.

"See?  Sensor activated."  Then she was through the opening and into the tunnel beyond, which ran perpendicular to the entrance.

Silently the sub pod followed, Lister carefully working the controls to prevent the pod from running Ariel over.

"You know, this part always reminds me of a tube station back in Old London," he commented as he swung the pod to the left and followed Ariel down the tunnel.  "The long tunnel with the curving sides, the platform sitting between the docking doors; I can almost see it packed with people from the afternoon rush.  All it needs is the station name stenciled in black on the wall."

"What's a tube station, Dave?" Ariel asked as she swam.

"Well, it was part of the Old London underground transportation grid.  The Tube was what we called our subterranean train system.  A tube station was where you got on, or got off the train."

"Ah, okay.  Makes sense."  She glanced around.  "Considering this transport tunnel is basically part of our transportation system, I can see where the comparison works.  We definitely get into the tunnel at this place, your tube station."

"Aye, if the tube station was underwater, luv," Lister said with a chuckle.  "With one end dumping out into the ocean while the other takes us back to Neo-Atlantis, our base."

"Yup."  Ariel put her hands down to her sides and put more effort into moving her tail.  And in doing so, she was rewarded with a burst of speed down the tunnel.  It felt good to exercise muscles that had begun to atrophy from her long stint in the suspension tanks.

She would need those muscles in the coming months as she and the rest of the scouting team spread out from Neo-Atlantis to begin mapping out the colony's borders.  The plan was to rapidly grow the colony's primary structures while the fleet remained in orbit, granting them access to fleet resources and transportation.  That way they'd be ready to keep growing after the fleet left in five years' time, more slowly to be sure, but steady and determined.

Then she was pushing those thoughts aside as the big door to the outside slid aside at her approach and she found herself looking out at the shimmering sapphire that was Alpha Piscium Five's world ocean.  And almost immediately she pulled up at seeing a massive, dark shape moving in the distance at a deceptively slow speed.

"Dragon shark," Lister said in her ear.  "A good three klicks away, but let's not give it a reason to come in for a closer look."

'There be Monsters Here,' Ariel found herself thinking, repeating the old saying that sailors used to ink on their maps of the oceans back on Earth, marking the places yet to be explored.  Unfortunately, in this case, such sayings were more real than not, with massive and deadly creatures like the dragon shark dominating the world ocean's food chain.  There truly were monsters here.

"Looks like it's following a herd of kelp buffalo," Lister said, his voice still filled with a great deal of caution.  "A good three or four thousand moving through the North Sargasso Bed."

Ariel let her eyes track to her left to see the massive fronds waving in the currents to mark the eastern edge of the kelp forest the survey team had dubbed the North Sargasso Bed.  And just as quickly spotted the grazing kelp buffalo, massive vegetarian creatures the size of an Old Earth transit bus, making their way deeper into the kelp forest.

"I see them," she said, pulling out her video camera to film the interaction for a moment.  As she did so, the sub pod slipped past her and out into the open water, its running lights coming on to add a little more illumination to the sparkling clear water.

"There.  Dragon shark's moved off to five klicks distance and out of range," Lister reported.  "We have the all clear to proceed."

"Cool."  Ariel returned her camera to its storage before looking over at the sub pod and it's pilot, visible through the crystal clear water.  "What's first on today's agenda, Dave?"

"Well, well, look at you, Ariel.  All rarin' to go."  Lister smiled.  "Nice to get out and stretch the tail, eh?"  He glanced down at the brief on the pod's console.

"Looks like a quick trip down the base's primary pedestal, Ariel, to the shelf it's perched on.  We're going to see how the shelf is handling the weight."

"Perfect," she said and immediately turned downward and turned on the speed.  "Let's go!"

She laughed at Lister's startled 'hey!' but didn't slow down.  Why would she?  This was the first day of her new life as a mermaid living in an ocean that covered an entire planet.

And she couldn't wait to get it started!