[Original Novel] Pressure: First Encounter, Part 12

^{source
Previous parts:} 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Angie paced in the background while Nate sat hunched over at the table refusing to acknowledge the discussion. “Okay, so how are you gonna lift it out of the trench so that it’s in range of the array? On battery power, the sub lasers might just give it a blister.” He seemed to enjoy playing the contrarian foil, even under these circumstances. It no longer frustrated Eliot, instead he’d come to value the moderating influence.

“I still say we dump the reactor on it. Not as if it’s doing us any good.” The evidence was all around them. Several days on emergency power had depleted the battery bank to near empty and the air storage indicator had read zero since morning. Only the fact that the Arygo had been engineered over spec kept them alive.

“You keep saying we should dump the reactor on it, and I keep telling you we have nothing that could budge it. The reactor’s what, five hundred feet from the edge? And it’s at least a dozen tons negatively buoyant. The minisub is a backup, not even sufficient for research needs, it’s a glorified elevator between here and topside. It couldn’t tug a mussel off the hull.”

It was by this point a very familiar feeling, to be completely out of options. Nate wouldn’t eat. Angie had given up pleading with him when he told her the average human could survive for a month without food and it was doubtful whether they had even a day left.

“We could try talking to it.” Nate jolted upright. Angie took notice only because of Nate’s reaction. When it became apparent that Nate had nothing to say and was in fact waiting anxiously for Leo to continue, he did.

“We keep discussing how to kill it. I dunno if it can hear us while we’re awake or only while we’re asleep or both, but look at us from it’s perspective. Who knows how long it’s been lying down there, crippled and alone? The argyro crews have probably been it’s first contact with intelligent life in what, centuries? More? And all they do is flip out and think up ways to kill it.” Eliot interjected: “He’s the one trying to kill us!”

Nervous glances ricocheted through the chamber. “I’m not sure. For the most part it’s just been trying to trick one of us into surfacing. It does seem to be getting desperate lately, but who here can say that they didn’t at least give passing thought to killing it the moment they first saw it on the imager?” Another volley of worried looks were exchanged. Angie recalled that moment in the sub when she’d received soundings of the body. Leo was dead on, something primal in her had convulsed at the sight. Almost instinctively.

“Cute, Leo. Enough devil’s advocate. We need to start seriously discussing how to get out of here before-” Nate, who’d gradually settled into his chair while Leo spoke, once again bolted upright and interrupted: “You said it. You named him. I know what you’re going to say but you named him just now and that’s exactly what we dealin’ with here.”

Eliot cradled his brow in one hand, from which Angie inferred that he knew something she didn’t about Nate’s meaning. It became clear before long. “And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”

All eyes were locked on Nate, unblinking and glazed over in confusion. “He ain’t done shit ‘cept lie to us whole time we been down here, right? If he wanted to talk he coulda said hi, first contact with an alien race, erryone’s happy. But he didn’t, right from the get go all he does is trick us. Ain’t any honest intention in that, just one illusion after the next. And why not? He’s the father of all lies, even appeared to Angie as a serpent. Ain’t that right Angie?”

An awkward silence stretched thin the air between them. “Nate, I don’t think Leo literally meant that-” Nate started forward and pounded the table. “Don’t. Don’t you patronize me Eliot. You done this from the moment I set foot on this tub, from when you saw the Bible in my bag and when I prayed over our first dinner.

I dealt with guys like you erry step of the way up the ladder, fags who thought I wouldn’t do my job right ‘cause I’m a man of faith. Well here we are, maybe three miles above the devil or whatever’s so close to the devil you can’t call it nothin’ else. Now’s not the time, Eliot. Now’s not the time to call me the crazy one for believin’ in what’s right down there in the trench, same as what it says in scripture.

I see you tryin’ to find some place to stop me and tell me to shut my fool mouth but I ain’t gonna. You sit there and listen till I’m done. We seen it in the dream, it fell from space just like scripture said, and God sealed him away in the deep until the stars are right. Well, maybe now the stars are right, Eliot.

Maybe that’s why we down here and got no choice left but to go up. We ain’t here to keep it trapped. We here to set it free, so the end can get started, just like in my dream. We gotta set it free so all that’s written can come to pass.”

He stood absolutely rigid for a few moments following the end of his tirade, possibly to gauge reactions or just for added effect. Either way he didn’t wait for questions. Angie, Leo and Eliot were left speechless, all eyes on Nate as he climbed up into the observatory.

The hatch was left slightly ajar but it was plain to everyone that he wasn’t interested in company. The remaining three parted ways. Angie spent the next two hours going over the dream recordings while Eliot went to manually measure the remaining oxygen, and Leo prepared supper. She couldn’t figure out when he got the chance to do it, but when Angie opened the hatch to her bunk she found a small written note from Eliot which said simply “Keep an eye on him”.

An implicit alliance. Perhaps Leo was given a similar note. It wasn’t clear yet whether they’d have to do anything about Nate, but it did seem as if Eliot’s EVA encounter was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Some straw, too. After a moment’s reflection Angie decided she couldn’t find it in herself to blame him, and that at some point after supper she’d set aside some time to talk him down.

“I need to speak with you. Privately.” Eliot’s eyes said as much as he pulled her by one arm into the lab module. “It’s fine, I got your note.” He seemed elsewhere, peering both ways through the narrowing gap as he eased the hatch shut behind them.

“There’s more. The last team through here weren’t astronauts.” Angie laughed despite everything. “No Angie, listen. They were Navy Seals. It was a Seal exercise.” Before she could connect the dots, he did so for her.

“There are guns onboard. High pressure models, supercavitating rounds, designed to work with the suits. I’ve told Leo, and now you know, but Nate doesn’t. At least not to my knowledge. Do you want to know where they’re stored?” She was by this time wide eyed and stiff. “I....I don’t know, do I? Eliot, are you planning something? Nate’s not that far gone, let me talk to him.”

He shook his head and grimaced. “I don’t think it’ll come to that. But if he does go for the guns, and he figures out you know where they are, he might hurt you until you tell him. I’ve never known him to lay hands on a woman that way, but he’s not in his right mind. That’s why I want you to know where the cache is. So if he goes after Leo, and Leo tells him where to find it, you can get there first.”

A few things struck her in sequence as she inched her head around the corner, peering into the galley. First was the powerful stench. Some patches of wall were visibly discolored by the beginnings of a microbial film.

The meager illumination from the emergency lights was apparently enough, along with the now intolerable humidity, to start a bacterial garden on the inner hull. Momentarily overcome, Angie realized that in a few days’ time the bacteria, algae and other growth might be all that survived within the Argyro, slowly growing over and feeding on their remains.

Just briefly her legs wavered beneath her, but recalling her purpose she quickly regained composure. Inwardly, she reviewed the most likely scenarios. The first, that Nathan was reachable and only temporarily unstable because of fear and stress.

It was not an unfamiliar condition. The next, that Nathan had selectively interpreted his dream and the others in a way that confirmed, for him, an apocalyptic narrative of which he could not be disconvinced.

Angie had met through friends working in more traditional areas of neurology a handful of individuals who satisfied that description. A few believed they were messianic figures, one of which ran off and started a commune in the Arizona desert. Another believed world leaders to be shape shifting reptilian extraterrestrials, something that had seemed a whole lot more far fetched before her recent encounters.

---

^{Stay Tuned for Part 13!}