Papers
“Papers.”
The surly odontocetar speaks with a perfunctory tone. Yuhi has now passed through this officer’s “checkpoint” four times today. The first time everyone behaved with exact precision, feeling the weight of their roles and how they fit into the massive apparatuses they are small parts of. However, such technicality could not live under the barrage of repetition. Yuhi has learned that she should not even try to pronounce the officer’s name who insists that she simply call him Tik. He is almost 100 years old.
“Tik” is the representative cetacean that is observing the reclamation of a sunken human fishing vessel. The debris field is a several square kilometer zone strewn between the Crystal Shoal Vents and the Nautilus Tide Corridor. Normally the humans would be very within their rights to reclaim their own dead, but the vessel, The Longfin, was poaching and a cetacean-courier, some low-level nobody, is missing. Hence the odontocetar presence. It seems to Yuhi that Tik’s job is just to swim around the reclamation platform while acting as cranky as possible. He was a true meathead whose surliness and unsubtle disdain for the humans suits him admirably for his task, if his charge were monitoring a simple reclamation job.
While on paper Yuhi is spearheading the retrieval of the bodies, that is a mostly automated process as the remote operation drones are handling that part of the job. Yuhi’s actual charge is a bit more sophisticated. As the drones handle the reclamation she is trying to reconstruct what happened to one particular bit of cargo, one that will not be found on the ship’s manifest. While in the mind of Tik and his superiors this is just a normal story of human’s sticking their noses where they have no reason to tread, breaking the rules just to access some better fishing grounds. In reality, The Longfin was a smuggling vessel bringing experimental weaponry to a place that is not yet a battlefield.
Her just completed sortie should be the final one for she has finally found the latent surveillance core, a tiny chip intertwined with the vessel’s normal emergency system. With that in tow she can plug it into her ship’s system and project a recreation of the vessel’s final moments, therefore making the retrieval of the QGPC trivial. As she shows her identification to Tik, his small black eyes look her up and down. In her mind Tik was probably told to make sure that no illegally harvested fish was reclaimed, so Yuhi stands arms outstretched, hands obviously empty. Little does he know that the actual target of her mission was a chip the size of her pinkie finger which is now stowed discreetly on her person. Tik did not give her any more trouble other than pro forma curtness. Yuhi plasters on a face of calculated annoyance before she allows herself to duck inside the command center of the floating platform.
Inside the command center and away from the prying eyes of Tik, the initial diagnostic scan of the chip reveal it to be operational but it has sustained some damage. She immediately sets it to begin constructing the model from available surveillance inputs, it will not be perfect but it is what she has. All that is left for her to do is lock the door leaving her to pace around the small hold. The VR-models can be quite engrossing and she would not want Tik deciding to glue some feet on and barge into the room demanding an inspection while she is totally immersed. He does not seem like the type but Yuhi does not want an audience while she discovers the last known location of the Quark-Gluon Plasma Cascade. For the first time, the feeling of excitement reaches her. Acting as if she were merely retrieving bodies has forced her to adopt a permanent somber scowl out of respect for the dead. Behind locked doors and with the true object of her search reclaimed she can switch to giddiness, the mystery of what happened to the vessel and her objective are close at hand.
The VR node lets loose a small chirp, communicating that the simulation has been completed. Yuhi dons the helmet.
The Flooded Brig
The temperate water wakes Markus with a kiss to his brow. The sensation sends adrenaline through his body as he jolts into a rigid posture. His panicked pants join the gentle dripping of moisture from his short hair into the pool of water below.
The panic dissipates quickly and is replaced with the cold desire to analyze the situation. Something has gone terribly wrong. Markus’s hands and ankles are bound, totally contained within the vessel’s magnetic stock system. Rotating his head to the right reveals that just about half of the brig is full of water. Granted the brig on a fishing vessel is not particularly large but given the fact that it is not totally dry is a cause for alarm. The stock system is bolted to the floor, but the floor has now become a slanted wall as the ship lists to an almost complete 90-degree angle. Looking down into the water reveals wisps of black and crimson red which cloud the otherwise pristine depths. And depths in a very literal sense of the word, something has wrenched open the hull of the ship, steel and hard-cased plastics are twisted and shattered giving Markus a very good view down into the murky waters.
He cannot see the bottom.
Markus is drawn in, hypnotized into wondering how far down it goes, if the magnets in the stocks gave out how long could he hold his breath? How long would he sink down before his feet touched something solid?
His reverie is interrupted by a human torso floating by the hole in the hull, clouds of red sloughing off it. It looks like its limbs were shorn off and then it was popped open, like maize on a griddle.
Such a sight snapped his thoughts from the abstract to the urgent. How is he going to get out of here? None of the emergency systems on the vessel are operational, as they would be lighting up the place and sending all sorts of warning signals on every sort of frequency on every sort of form of radio-based communication system. These types of safety systems are meant to be nigh-indestructible and while the ship clearly has seen better days Markus does not think that the ship has sustained so much damage to render the emergency systems totally dysfunctional. Also the fact that the magnetic stocks are clearly still receiving power means some degree of back-up generators are still operational.
A surprisingly high-pitched groan erupted from the vessel, likely the superstructure is starting to bend due to the weight of the water it is taking in. Which means not all bulkheads are sealed, which means the boat will continue sinking, which means Markus will drown and not starve to death. If he were given the option he would take that deal every day of the week, better to expire from all of the oxygen leaving your body than having it eat itself from the inside out.
Although slightly palliative in nature, this thought process paradoxically motivates him to do the action he grimly determined was useless. He cries for help.
Shaking his body in the small manner the stocks will allow him, he spasms, tears form in his eyes. He does not want to die. He was not supposed to die. It was supposed to be an easy job.
“Please, help me.”
His words reverberate back to him in the flooded brig, the damp echo returns his voice with a foreign timbre, it is no longer his own. He blinks away the tears as the motions of his body become more like a panicked thrash. After a few moments of this he lets his body go limp, the right side of his body occasionally tickled by the water.
A light cuts through the water beneath him, again causing his body to jolt into a more active position, are the emergency beacons activated again? Were they on a timed release switch? Markus directs his gaze down into the water below him, but instead of seeing emergency lights or autonomous repair drones floating through the waves he spies a single delphinar swimming through the hole in the hull. It appears to be in total aquatic form and Markus does not think it is armed.
Play Stupid Games
It pokes the top of its head above the surface of the water. A small screen flashes between its eyes as text starts printing. This really must be a low-level courier to not even get total sonic-translation equipment.
WHAT A MESS.
“Excuse me? You don’t have a sonic-translator, can you understand me?”
IT REALLY DID A NUMBER ON YOU, HUH? WELL PLAY STUPID GAMES WIN STUPID PRIZES.
“Hey asshole! Can you understand me?”
NOW ARE YOU REALLY IN THE POSITION TO BE CALLING ME NAMES?
Markus stares at the top of the delphinar’s head, he could swear he could see a smug grin forming on its pale face.
“I…. I’m sorry. It has been a rough day. I am not feeling like myself.”
ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT? SEEMS LIKE YOU ARE ACTING LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN TO ME.
“Listen, hey… my name is Markus. What is yours?”
YOU CAN CALL ME YOUR MASTER AND GOD.
“... seems a bit cumbersome, M-m-”
As Markus tries to form the insulting syllables on his lips the delphinar rotates its body and slaps its pectoral fins together, as it lets loose a shrill high-pitched cackle. It is laughing at him.
YOU REALLY WERE GOING TO DO THAT. MAYBE YOU ARE NOT SUCH A BAD SPORT AFTER ALL. YOU MAY CALL ME TEYSIS.
“Listen Teysis, I do not know about you but I am not really in the joking mood.”
YES, ALL OF YOUR FELLOW HUMANS ARE DEAD. AN OSTEOS GOT THEM. A BIG ONE. I WOULD HAVE COME BY SOONER BUT I WANTED TO MAKE SURE IT WAS NOT TOO CLOSE. I AM SORRY.
Markus had no claims in knowing every pelagic megafauna species but he would have assumed that he would have at least heard of the most dangerous species who are capable of such destruction. This did not seem to be the handiwork of a shark, kraken, or irukandji which were the normal non-sentient boogeymen of deep-water expeditions.
“An osteos. I have not heard of such a creature.”
GOOD LETS KEEP IT THAT WAY I HAVE NO INTENTION OF GETTING ANY CLOSER TO ONE.
“Teysis are you going to let me die here?”
The question hangs in the air, for the first time he sees emotion flash across Teysis’s face.
THIS IS A BIT OF A DILEMMA.
“Why because I am a human? Listen we are not at war yet! Sure it seems inevitable but it doesn’t have to be the case! We-”
NO. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. AS I APPROACHED YOUR VESSEL I SCANNED ITS ENERGY SYSTEMS. I COULD PATCH MYSELF INTO IT AND DISENGAGE THE MAGNETS THAT ARE TRAPPING YOU. BUT SUCH A DISCHARGE OF ENERGY WOULD BE NOTICED BY EVERYTHING IN A HUNDRED KILOMETER RADIUS WITH HALFWAY DECENT ELECTRORECEPTION.
“I am assuming that includes the osteos.”
YES, HENCE THE DILEMMA.
“You are a delphinar, surely you must be faster than whatever monster caused this much damage.”
PERHAPS. BUT IF YOU WERE IN MY POSITION WOULD YOU RISK IT?
“Could you call the nearest pod of odontocetars for help?”
DO NOT PLAY DUMB MARKUS. YOU KNOW AS WELL AS I DO THAT YOUR HUMAN FRIENDS PICKED THIS LOCATION BECAUSE HOW FAR AWAY IT IS FROM NORMAL POD MOVEMENTS. I MADE THE REPORT AS SOON AS I SAW YOUR VESSEL BUT I FEAR WE ARE STILL MANY HOURS FROM ANY ASSISTANCE.
“So you are going to let me die.”
I SAID NO SUCH THING… WHY HAVE YOUR HUMAN FRIENDS IMPRISONED YOU?
“I… I don’t remember. I fear when the osteos attacked I must have experienced some cranial trauma, I don’t remember what I am doing here I just woke up to me being locked up on a sinking ship.”
I THINK YOU ARE LYING MARKUS.
“Fine… it is just… It’s embarrassing.”
WELL IF YOU CANNOT BE HONEST TO THE STUPID WHALE THAT WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE WHO CAN YOU BE HONEST TO?
“I was locked up for… public drunkenness.”
More of that horrid high-pitched laughter. This time Teysis repeatedly slaps the water with his fins in amusement.
WELL IT IS LIKELY THAT BEING RESTRAINED PREVENTED YOU FROM BECOMING OSTEOS FOOD. SO MAYBE THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS DRINKING IS GOOD FOR YOU.
“Yeah maybe.”
I JUST HAVE ONE MORE QUESTION.
“Yes?”
DO YOU HAVE A HANGOVER?
What the Model Left Out
Yuhi removes the helmet. The normal ocular ache pulses through her head as her pupils adjust to the light inputs in the hold. She notes several things, the first is that the system created a model of the vessel after it was already sinking, which leaves several options: either the damage to the chip means the AI got confused with the recreation or the true cause of the vessel’s destruction has not happened yet. Yuhi believes the latter to be correct given the status of the Longfin’s superstructure in the recreation, which while the boat was clearly sinking in the model it was all mostly one piece, the same can not be said for the debris field now.
Next she checks the list of notables on the vessel. This “Markus” who the AI has made the point-of-view was the agent for military intelligence. He was the one who knew about the QGPC. This proves that the AI knows well enough that he is the person that the model must follow for Yuhi to find the weapon. Hopefully Teysis whom she identifies as the missing courier does not just leave Markus to die.
After recording these notes Yuhi puts the helmet back on.
The Bridge
Markus rubs his sore wrists as he clambers through the holding bays of the leaning vessel. The first order of business is seeing if the defense equipment is operational. Something with a bit more stopping power than a captain’s sidearm. It is an open secret that every fishing vessel of this size has one, something to make a lot of noise to keep the krakens at bay.
Once that has been established then he can do the grim work of seeing if there are any operational life boats. Normally the order of his priorities would be switched, but given how scared that delphinar was when it told him about the osteos, holding a weapon would make him feel a lot better about his current situation.
Teysis was easily able to unlock the stocks but the little bastard did not stay around long afterwards, whatever an osteos is must really have them spooked.
Markus reaches the bridge of the ship, which is still mercifully above the waterline. Walking on the walls Markus is able to see what armament this particular vessel is accompanied with. He is heartened to see that there is a non-rotary autocannon right outside the front window of the bridge. While the object of his search is what immediately draws his attention, afterwards his focus shifts to the mess that is the bridge. The captain and navigator’s corpses lie mangled on the floor. Like two birds bludgeoned to death by shaking their cage. They are still too fresh to smell.
Booting up the ship’s central system reveals only an error message. Clearly whatever power shunt that Teysis did to access the stocks was temporary, the vessel is not receiving enough power to operate fully. There goes the initial plan of setting up the autogun for remote use. However, with the current power levels Markus is able to force through a request for an emergency geo-scan, a printout of the ship’s current coordinates and a radar ping. Hopefully whatever trickle of power that Teysis pumped into the ship to access the security measures would allow for that.
In response the screen immediately starts spitting out numbers. Just like he suspected, the ship is in the southern Nautilus Tide Corridor, in other words hundreds of kilometers from any dry land. He doubts the current geo-scan has the juice to send his signals to any orbiting satellites, but hopefully he won’t be staying here for long.
His map study is interrupted by a long low-pitched beep emanating from the scan. The screen print out switches to more local information, he is in over 4,000 meters of water, the wind is coming from the southwest and…
All these trivialities are stripped away as the cold wash of fear wraps around him. Less than a kilometer away is an over 30-meter biological “something” in the water, and it is heading his way. Not quickly but not exactly slowly either. For the first time in his life he is full of a desperate hope that it is a Mysticetar coming to detain the vessel for poaching.
He opens up the door leading to the gangway that is positioned towards the sky and pulls himself up onto it. Making sure of his footing he then climbs up onto the external side windows of the bridge, the now-highest point of the doomed vessel. From this vantage point Markus scans the horizon. It is closer than he thought. A frothing bulge in the waves coming his way. Every few seconds of watching a black fin shoots out from under the waves. If he had any guess it is likely as long as the ship he is currently standing on. The ship that is currently sinking. Sinking into that monstrous creature’s domain.
Point-Blank
Balance and fear of falling be damned Markus runs towards the autocannon. Hopefully there is a localized power source hard-wired to the weapon that has not been damaged. Hopefully the lack of power has only affected the remote fire functionality. Hopefully Markus can get it to work. Hopefully it will present itself as a clear target instead of just coming up from underneath the vessel and capsizing it.
That’s a lot of hopefullys.
He reaches the base of the turret and is heartened to see that it has a seat for manual firing. It is clearly not a solely remote-fire weapon. However, that presents another challenge. The turret stalk shoots out from the deck vertically in order to provide the greatest height to fire from. Now due to the list of the vessel, the word vertical has lost its meaning. Markus will now need to climb “up” the base of the turret to reach the self-enclosed battery in order to see if the weapon is functional and as he does so he will be dangling over the open water. Deciding that in a battle against a gigantic pissed-off fish he would bet on the human with the weapon of war he begins clambering up the ladder towards the battery. His adrenaline fueled body makes short work of this obstacle as he jumps and climbs his way across the sideways ladder. Feeling confident he grabs onto one of the rungs and allows his body to hang off one side so he can get a better look at what he is soon going to be (hopefully) shooting at.
It is now only several hundred meters away, he sees a large black shape encased in a shell of effervescent water. It is more slender than he imagined. The autocannon should chew it up. As the bulge in the water goes over a rolling wave the monster breaches, its colossal head erupting from the roil of its own creation. Its head is jet but has an effervescent sheen. Where Markus expects to see teeth and scales he instead sees only gigantic slabs of onyx-colored armor plating its face. Its mouth opens slowly as the beast continues to ride the wave.
Before Markus can resume the climb the fish reaches the apex of the wave and plunges back into the water, as it does so Markus feels an explosion and clap of thunder. Erupting from around the front of the fish a gigantic column of water bursts upward, a dozen meters high.
He feels the pressure of the explosion reach him and it makes his bones rattle.
Was someone firing at it? He looks over his shoulder and around the vessel, looking to see what could have caused such a mighty burst. Is there a submarine somewhere? Have the odontos arrived?
The fish resumes its approach, this time keeping the top of its head out of the water. Its maw opens again. It did not look injured from the explosion. In one motion it snaps his jaws shut and reopens them, Markus sees the water around its mouth boil then erupt upwards. It is only after seeing it does he hear it, metal scraping on metal making a sonic boom. Another column of water erupts from around its head.
It wasn’t getting shot at, it was making such explosions by cavitating the water around its mouth.
This beast did not brute force its way through the hull; it burst it open by snapping its jaws. The bizarre injuries where it looked like the dead crewmates were killed by heatless explosions have suddenly been explained.
-operational-
The gun platform chirps to life as he rotates the barrel towards the target. Instead of relief Markus feels nothing. This is just a job. He has fired guns at bad guys before this is just a particularly big one. Locking onto the fish proves trivial as the gun’s interface says it is just over 200 meters away. While this weapon is intended for soft-bodied targets, the fact that it is point-blank range should mean the weapon has more than enough stopping power. Through the screen on the weapon he can barely make out the eyes of the monster he assumes is the osteos. Its eyes are small and as black as the rest of the armor encasing the rest of its skull.
Markus feels no hatred in his heart as he commands the gun to fire. A thin stream of energy and condensed gases erupt from the barrel and make direct contact with the osteos’s head. The first thought that Markus thinks is how much he missed the now antiquated projectile based-weaponry, but with the latest recycling legislation the usage of bullet casings and conventional ordinance were put on the chopping block as “unnecessary material waste.” Still Markus misses the kinetic satisfaction of tearing up a bad guy with hot metal.
The beam of energy and gas collides with the fish’s skull; its approach gets slowed as its body buckles and compresses as if it swam into a wall. Maybe it is for the best that projectile weapons are being phased out, as shredding a fish of this size would have created an enormous mess. Markus has no pretensions of understanding exactly how this gun works or what exactly it fires but he is pretty sure most of the damage it deals is internal and based on radiation, so the osteos should be going belly-up any moment now.
-target 117 meters away-
The crown of dispersed gases and steam dissipates around the advancing osteos. The matte-black plates around its head bear iridescent scorch marks but otherwise attest to no serious damage. Markus fires again. The water around the front of the fish vibrates and boils, the energy read-outs from the gun platform show that the water around it is directly sublimating to plasma. The electric purple and yellow lights from the cannon disperse as they strike the head of the colossal fish whose approach has not slowed.
Something Other Than Its Armor
In response the osteos rears its head out of the water, the barrel of the gun automatically follows the fish’s movement as it continues its barrage onto the locked target. The osteos opens its mouth once more and then porpoises, its entire arced body submerging under the waves, as soon as its head goes under the gun stops its fire.
Markus checks the readouts to see that the weapon’s sensors can still detect the osteos coming his way and fast. It has reduced the distance to now less than 50 meters.
A colossal column of water erupts as the fish breaches and it snaps its jaws. The roil of the water gets quickly drowned out by the sonic boom that erupts from its maw. The horrible noise peaks and then disintegrates in Markus’s ears. Although he can no longer hear the shriek he can still feel the pressure in his skull and a foreign wetness forming on his cheeks. Before the osteos returns to the waves from its jump he slowly reaches up and feels the slow trickle of blood oozing from both of his ears. His own mouth forms a curse on his lips that no one can witness. When the fish lands it sends buffeting waves towards the doomed vessel. Markus knows his sense of proprioception has been severely impaired, but that knowledge is unable to help him as he too lists in the seat, unsure of how to even articulate what shape his body is taking.
If he were not so disoriented he feels like he could reach out and touch the monstrous fish which is now roughly parallel to the sinking ship. It again lifts its head up out of the water, its small eyes each the size of his fists stare at him. Lidless.
Markus, trapped in a body that feels no longer his own, is convinced that he is going to die. He will be killed by a large fish. That goddamn delphinar could have told him how dangerous the osteos is. How the armament on a fishing vessel will be useless. How it can cause explosions by just snapping his jaws. He is going to be killed by a fish and it’s that smug asshole Teysis’s fault.
A blinding flash shows that although Markus is disoriented he still has enough control over his body to shut his eyes. He tells his hands to rise and rub his eyes and he ends up slapping himself across the face with his forearms. After a few seconds he blinks feebly and his eyes open. He sees the caudal fin of the osteos disappearing into the dark water, swimming away from him. Teysis bobs smugly in the waves underneath the turret. After a few moments the interface begins printing out text, blown up large enough to be seen even by Markus’s bleary eyes.
WHAT DID I TELL YOU.
“I have gone deaf.”
YEAH, THAT WAS A POSSIBILITY.
“What did you do to it?”
I HIT IT WITH MY EMERGENCY SIGNAL FLARE AND POSITIONING BEACON. I DID NOT USE IT FOR ITS INTENDED PURPOSE. I JUST WASN’T DUMB AND AIMED AT SOMETHING OTHER THAN ITS ARMOR. I FEAR IT WILL COME BACK AND I MUST DEPART FOR GOOD AS THAT WAS MY ONLY ONE.
“I can’t move, I am going to die.”
NONSENSE YOU ARE JUST DISCOMBOBULATED. YOUR SENSES SHOULD RETURN IN A FEW MINUTES. YOUR HEARING HOWEVER MAY HAVE DEPARTED YOU MORE PERMANENTLY.
“No, Teysis, thank you for saving my life but I am doomed. I can maybe get on a lifeboat but the osteos will catch me and kill me. If the osteos lives I cannot. If you can escape you should.”
Although Markus is unable to hear his own words he is sure he is supplying it with enough gravitas and pathos. For the first time in their brief acquaintance Teysis does not respond immediately. Teysis turns their head slightly as if to look at the colossal osteos receding away from them.
SO MELODRAMATIC FOR A HUMAN.
“Teysis what if I told you I have a way to kill it.”
UNLIKELY. AS YOUR WEAPON HERE WAS TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE.
“Do you trust me?”
Another pause.
NO.
“What if I start being honest with you and tell you that I was not put in the stocks for public drunkenness. And the fishing job is just a cover story.”
I AM LISTENING.
“I am a smuggler for a military outfit. I am smuggling a new weapon that I do not even fully understand towards the Cycgel peninsula. I do not know why. I was locked up to give truth to the lie that it was an unofficial operation. If I were found by some regulatory body the fishing company could claim that I was acting independently and that I was getting punished for my smuggling by being locked up. But in reality no matter what the weapon is getting to the destination.”
I WILL HAVE TO REPORT THIS.
“Of course you will. But I would prefer to spend time in a cetacean prison than get killed by that thing.”
WHAT ARE YOU ASKING OF ME?
“I can feel my senses returning and I could maybe access the hold where the weapon is. But I will need time to activate it and fire it once the osteos returns. Can you keep it busy until the time is right?”
ALRIGHT MARKUS. I WILL HELP YOU NOT DIE. BUT AFTERWARDS I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO SUGGEST TO THE COMING ODONTOS TO ARREST YOU.
Markus manages to unbuckle himself from the turret’s seat and shakily get up. He feels the wind tickling his ears but he cannot hear it. He gives Teysis a solemn nod and makes his way back towards the bridge. Moving his body allows himself to acclimatize himself to how he feels without hearing. He feels good. He feels capable. He feels like he can disappear.
A Void of Dead Pixels
Yuhi throws the helmet off of her head. Stumbling up she reaches the medical interface and starts jabbing at the button that dispenses pain killers. It is only after the shot in her arm does Yuhi regain her sense of balance. It was a perfect storm of unpleasantness that made the latest segment of the recreation give her an excruciating headache. The cry of the monster while obviously not as dangerous as it was in meatspace was still remarkably painful. And beyond the diegetic pain of the recreation there was also the limitation in the recreation technology. Since Markus is the POV for the model and he looks far away from the boat and therefore outside of the vessel’s surveillance umbrella the model has to do some guesswork as to what he was looking at. While Yuhi could feel what Markus was feeling when “she” was looking at it through his eyes all she saw was a non-space, a black void of dead pixels. However, despite the fact that she did not see the osteos she can still remember what it looks like as the recreated Markus’s memories are now her own. Yuhi’s brain is trying to reject such a contradiction, the memory of the shapes of the osteos turns into a shadow as it conflicts with the void she herself saw.
Panic replaces the receding pain as the medication dulls her nerves. Markus broke confidentiality and told that damned delphinar about the QGPC! While it is true that Teysis is missing that does not mean dead. This would be a total nightmare if Teysis is not dealt with, he could divulge the true nature of the operation to all uplifted species. Even beyond the classified technology there is the simple fact that humans were smuggling military equipment for some purpose. This being leaked is unacceptable.
She also must confront the one fact that she was trying to repress. It seems that Markus is going to try and operate the QGPC without any form of training, and with that potential looming on the horizon the most probable cause for the total destruction of the vessel also has become apparent.
Yuhi gingerly positions herself back in the seat by the AI node. Hoping that this will be over soon.
Fundamental Particles
Markus feels but does not hear the presence of the osteos nearby. He is making his way back to the bridge, hardbox locked to his wrist, when the entire vessel shudders. Bracing himself on the wall-turned-floor proves difficult with the added heft of the hardbox, but he manages to not lose his footing. He needs to get out there fast, his plan depends on the delphinar keeping the fish busy long enough to neutralize it. He promised that he would kill to keep this weapon a secret, and he is aware of its theoretical effectiveness, but he still needs to be able to operate it. If the ship sinks too fast, all the firepower in the world will not save him.
Rushing through the ruined vessel he climbs up onto a pile of broken boxes of bait and preservatives. Once on top of the haphazard mound he is able to reach the wall-now-turned-ceiling. Reaching up towards a large open porthole Markus pulls himself through the window which brings him onto the exposed upper hull of the vessel. Where Markus stands would normally be above the waterline but now it is almost perfectly horizontal. The list of the Longfin inches past 90-degrees as the keel slowly emerges from the waves. The illusion that such a location will provide solid ground to stand on is thoroughly shattered as the osteos breaches; causing a large wave to crash over the exposed hull of the vessel, wetting Markus up to his waist. The wave mercifully recedes but he does not want to see how many of those the ship can tolerate before it totally founders.
Teysis breaching 30 or so meters away from the osteos makes a much smaller splash, the osteos slowly rotates its colossal head in the direction of the small delphinar.
NOW HUMAN.
Markus gets down on one knee and opens up the lockbox. Inside it is a small gun, QGPC. He does not know how it works but he does not need to understand such things.
NOW HUMAN.
Markus aims and fires. Defiant to the last he aims straight at its head once more, no recoil. A white dot forms in the fish’s head which spreads outward in 4 dimensions. The osteos unravels. Its flesh turns to gas which deteriorates to more plasma, all before the electricity flowing through its nerves can register pain. The expanding white sphere makes the air catch flame. It spreads out from the form of fundamental particles that once was the osteos. The surface of the water does not have time to boil, it instead just disappears.
Yuhi’s consciousness enters the simulation. She notes that this must be where the corrupted data exists while also noting that she should not be capable of such thoughts. After this moment of Yuhi being Yuhi, her perspective oscillates between the dying. She experiences both deaths. The expanding wall of white reaches Markus and Teysis at the same time. It consumes them both faster than they ought to have realized, the neurotransmitters and chemicals in their brain are basically standing still. However, the simulation overwhelmed Yuhi with the emotions that they would have felt if they knew they were dying. When Yuhi is Markus she is in a very good mood because the last thing he remembers doing is pulling the trigger of a gun while pointing it at something. This good mood is then tempered by the simultaneous demise of himself and the whale. He would claim that this is just one more insult in a cruel world that is full of them. When Yuhi is Teysis she is also in a good mood, they always enjoy watching the failures of humans, a shipping vessel that is breaking laws to be here being destroyed by their own hubris? It was just delicious comeuppance. When made aware of the fate they share with that rude human Teysis would simply lie to themselves, and claim that they could appreciate that last bit of irony.
The model, now thoroughly corrupted even briefly flings Yuhi into the perspective of the osteos which does not know what death or pain is, this is no comfort.
Without a POV the model calms itself. It adopts a simple isometric video perspective, the ball of expanding plasma consumes the QGPC and the entire middle third of the vessel, the remnants of the vessel either melt into a liquid or wrench apart. The hole of water that disappeared from existence is quickly filled-in with on rushing waves. Molten flesh from the rear of the osteos disappears as the wound in the ocean is smoothed over. The last solid debris of the ship take their turn descending from view.
The screen goes black.
Let the Dead Lie
Yuhi removes the helmet for the last time. While towards the end the model had to do a lot of backfilling in order to extrapolate how the sinking exactly went, such a question is no longer relevant. In both senses of the word her headache is gone. The pain medication is working and Teysis is dead. The only evidence of the smuggling has been vaporized. Her job is done. Yes, the prototype of the QGPC has been destroyed, but there is nothing preventing them from making more.
Let the rest of the dead be where they lie. A proper burial will not save the unknowing fisherman whose opportunity to be an unwitting part in a great victory for humanity has unfortunately come and gone. Yuhi has a report to deliver.
The truly great leaders do not always win, rather they never lose. This is an inconvenience, a trifling problem in the true scale of things. There will be more opportunities, there always are.