[Episode 50330] [Episode 50330]Yuri Makorov always feels nervous when he steps out of the Triton submarine onto the ocean floor. He knows, in his forebrain at least, that his pressure suit will insulate him from all harm as well as keep him at a cool 70 degrees... but still, there's that voice in the back of his head that's screaming "You're two miles below the surface! You'll be crushed like a bug! You'll drown! You can't be down here!" After 14 salvage expeditions of various degrees of success, Yuri still has been unable to silence that voice.
"All right," he says over the short-band radio built into his pressure suit, "This is our biggest prospect yet, so listen up. What we have here is your standard extraterrestrial colony ship. Now this model had a large engine and a large fuel supply, being as it was built to travel long distances and set up self-sufficient alien outposts. There's a lot of Elerium hiding in that son of a bitch, more than enough to keep us in the black for the rest of our lives."
"Man, that might even be enough to get Jackson laid!" came the voice of Mark Tower. Tower was the kind of guy who, despite his utter lack of wit, was always convinced that anything he said was the most hilarious thing to ever fall onto human ears. Consequently, he was also the kind of guy most of the other members of the salvage team wanted to throw out of the airlock without the benefit of a pressure suit, preferably with multiple slow-motion cameras recording his death so that it could be watched again and again. Yuri really wanted to get rid of him, but he couldn't afford the loss of manpower; alien salvage wasn't the land of milk and honey that it had been fifteen years ago, and few people wanted to sign on for gruelling tasks with small chances of any real finds.
"Shut the hell up, Tower," Yuri responded, "And in the future, don't you NEVER interrupt me while I'm talking. As I was saying, there's a lot of Elerium hiding in this beast, and at this depth we have to be real careful that we don't expose it to the water, cause these ships were not designed to hold at this depth. Use shaped charges if you absolutely have to crack the hull, but I want you to use existing doors or holes if at all possible. There's four levels to the ship, and the reactor housing should be on the second, near the command chamber. Tower, Wallace, you're with me on the right. Jackson, Frost, Roper, you guys head around the left. And guys -- don't fuck this up."
His spiel completed, Yuri pointed out the directions to take around the craft, as if his men couldn't tell left from right. He checked his cutting torch and winch one more time, then began to swim along the side of the barancle-encrusted hulk.
It really is peaceful down here, Yuri thought, when the prick Tower isn't talking. Nothing but the sound of your own respirator to keep you company... Yuri always seemed to get philosophical on these trips, but he couldn't help it: Two miles under water, putting your hand on the smooth and un-corroded hull of an alien ship from another world, shot down two generations ago in the greatest war the Earth had ever seen... You had to think about SOMETHING, or else the facts of your situation would overwhelm you.
Yuri didn't know how long he was spaced out, but Wallace brought him out of it. "Uh, Makorov?" came his young and uncertain voice over the radio, "I found a point of access... It's wierd, though. It's too small to be a hit from a missile or a plasma beam, and too neat -- there's no blast markings, I mean. It's like, well, it's like the ship got cut open with a can opener."
"Hah, the ship knew I was coming and just decided to let me in 'afore I blew its ass up!" Tower, again. Yuri decided not to dignify him with a response.
Roper did not feel the same way. "Man, I'm getting real sick of your shit, Tower. You couldn't get into the Marines, and this isn't the Underwater Marines. Shit, the closest thing you have to a gun is your winch cable, so I'd appreciate it if you'd cut this Semper Fidelis crap and just do your damn job."
"Wallace, are you sure that it was cut open, and it wasn't blown?" Yuri tried to sound unconcerned, but the thought that this ship full of dead monsters might have something still crawling around in it creeped him out. It had never happened before, not to him or anyone, but the voice that told him he couldn't be out here didn't seem to know or care.
"I don't know. I mean, it looks clean and all, but maybe it was just a small hit. Like, like the fusion ball detonated before it hit the hull and only got a little piece... That's happened before, right?"
"Man, I don't know what you're afraid of. Even if the aliens could swim, they sure as shit can't breathe water. I'm going in, and fuck you guys if you're too chicken."
Yuri sighed, but he was glad that Tower had gone first, rather than forced him to do it. He sunk a few meters, then swam as gracefully as he could toward the small hole in the ships hull. He was barely small enough to fit in, but the pitch darkness of the interior made the little hole seem like a yawning, miles-wide alien mouth. Once inside, Yuri could see nothing beyond his own hands; it was as if the darkness was eating the light from his headlamp as soon as it was born. Yuri got the shivering feeling that he was being eaten by this ship, and to dispel it, cracked two chemical flares from his belt and tossed them to his left and right.
What before was featureless black was now a ghastly Bekinski painting given form. Monsters -- aliens, Yuri reminded himself, aliens and as mortal as any man -- floated in grim tranquility all around him. They seemed almost perfectly preserved, with decay only beginning to show on the massive heads of the Sectoids and around the cybernetic implants of the Floaters. They were in perfect stasis, moving lazily about the chamber, occasionally bumping into a wall or another corpse. In the pale green light of the chemical flares, they almost looked like they were dancing.
Yuri was glad when Tower's too-macho voice intruded on his mental buildup. "Hey Boss, are you gonna just sit there beating off, or are you gonna help me find this heap of shit?"
"Don't project your sex fantasies on me, Tower. Yeah, I'm coming, just give me a second." Yuri swam upward into the door that joined this room to the rest of the ship, throwing another flare above him to illuminate the area. "Let's split up. I go left, you go right, Wallace can check out that blast damage and tell us what's up with it. If you see anything, tell me."
"Don't worry about me, Big Bossman. Any aliens show up, I could lance 'em with my dick." Tower's machismo was almost to the level of self-parody, Yuri could tell he was feeling scared too.
Yuri went through the alien corridor, slowly, pushing himself along with one hand and keeping the other on what used to be the wall. He told himself that it was because he only had seven flares left and didn't want to waste them, but deep down it was because he didn't want to see any more monsters.
He soon came to an area too complicated to feel around, that he suspected was the main elevator. He inhaled deeply and cracked another flare, throwing it ahead of him. Luckily, there were no dead aliens in this area, and the flare only showed the smooth, square alloys of the elevator doors, casting green shadows into the levitator-shaft as gravity pulled it slowly but surely to the "V" formed by the floor and wall. Yuri drifted toward the doors and was about to attempt to force them open when he head Tower's voice again, much more unsure than he'd ever heard it before.
"Yeah, yeah, real fucking funny, Wallace. Come out from behind that alien shit so I can hit you."
Yuri placed his prybar in the crack that separated the two sliding elevator doors and began to pull. The mechanisms holding the door together had given out long ago, and they slid easily apart, allowing Yuri inside. He began to swim up the dead shaft, then he heard Wallace over the radio. "Uh... I'm still outside the ship, Tower. "
Yuri floated to the second level doors and began to place his prybar again.
"Roper? Frost? Which one of your pricks is trying to mess with my head?"
Yuri yanked the doors apart and allowed himself to fall between them.
"All three of us are right here, Tower, and we can't even see you. What the hell are you going on about?"
Yuri's boots gently hit the metal of the ship, and he slipped his prybar back onto its loop on his belt.
"Come on, ha ha, real funny, mess with Mark's head, we all had a laugh. You are messing with my head, right?"
Yuri definitely didn't like the tone of Tower's voice, and decided he'd voice his concern. "What's going on, Tower? What do you see?"
"Something is moving in here, Boss. I swear to God, I see something moving."
Yuri got down on his hands and knees, then let his legs slip from under him as he once more began to feel his way down the hall. "There can't be anything alive down here. It's just floating, that's all. Or a trick of the light." Yuri felt good reassuring someone else, it meant he wasn't having to reassure himself.
"It ain't no trick, man. That shit's moving, I swear on my mamma's grave."
Tower had once before swore on his mother's grave that he'd pay back the 5,000 Euro loan that Yuri extended him to buy equipment, money that Yuri had still not seen back. Yuri continued to feel his way down the corridor, hands passing over dead klaxons and view-ports.
"oh God... It's alive, I don't know how but one of them's alive... it's looking at me, Yuri... I think it has a gun..."
Yuri had gone from concerned to downright pissed. "Quit fucking around, Tower! I swear to Christ Almighty if you keep this shit up I'll throw you out of this outfit, shortage or not!"
Tower didn't respond. In fact, he never said anything again. The next thing Yuri heard was a blast of static, co-inciding with a great wave that seemed to shake the ship. He didn't hear any explosion, but he felt the hull of the ship vibrating hard enough to make his hand semi-numb. Then it stopped, and all he could hear was his own respirator. And, he realized, the shallow but steady pulse of something breathing... and it sounded like that something was right behind the door he was currently situated over.
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(Posted Tue, 10 Jun 2003 07:59)
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