[Original Novel] Pressure: First Encounter, Part 11

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Previous parts:} 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Sounded like Eliot. Looked like Eliot, too. The tiny camera inside his helmet sent back a familiar face contorted by stress. “Eliot. You know we have to ask. I’m going to let you into the lock, but I won’t depressurize until you confirm some things for me.”

He made muffled sounds of frustration but obligingly climbed into the airlock as the outer hatch swung open. Once both were safely inside, Leo confirmed on the display that both suits were showing vitals. “The suits are real, at least.”

“Leo, don’t play games with me. Nate’s hurt, start depressurizing now.” Leo looked tempted, but held firm. “That may not be your brother” Angie muttered, one hand gripping his shoulder. “Don’t tell me what I already know. He’ll stay out there until he answers my question.”

Inside, the dim green lasers from both suits flickered randomly, their battery power on the verge of giving out. “Eliot, on my eighth birthday mom gave me a gift. It was something I wanted more than anything else in the world. What was the gift, and what color was it?”

The brightness of the laser connecting the airlock’s emitter to Eliot’s suit fluctuated, matching the intensity of Leo’s voice as he spoke. Both waited breathlessly for his reply. “It wasn’t yours.” Leo raised an eyebrow. “Pardon?” one elbow on the console already, he leaned further in so as not to miss Eliot’s answer.

“Mom didn’t give you the tricycle. She gave it to me. It was green. You cried because you wanted a trike so badly, but she gave it to me instead. I hated green, and I hated to see you cry. I gave you the trike and told you that you’d owe me forever.” Angie looked at Leo, waiting for a reaction. Suddenly he grinned. “Initiating decompression cycle.”

But as he reached for the controls, Angie seized his hand. “Leo, look at the vitals.” Eliot’s suit read 14.7 psi, surface normative. Nate’s read 9,860 psi and the internal temperature was just above freezing.

“Eliot, how’s Nate?” It took a moment for him to check and report back. “He’s weary, but breathing fine. Says he’s scared. Why?” Angie’s body became rigid, and in a faltering voice she whispered back: “Eliot, I don’t know what’s in that suit but it isn’t human, and I’m not letting it inside.”

In the lock, Eliot struggled to parse the message. He went over it several times in his head before the meaning clicked for him. Chills ran through his body as he looked down at his injured friend, meeting his gaze through the thick borosilicate viewport of the damaged suit.

“What’s wrong? Why aren’t they draining the lock?” It looked and sounded exactly like Nate. For a moment he wondered if Angie could be mistaken. “Something’s wrong with the pumps. We need to wait outside while they fix it.” He’d never been a good liar, least of all under stress, but the thing masquerading as Nate seemed to buy it.

“Help me up, let’s get this over with so I can get inside and have a hot cup of coffee, haha.” Eliot didn’t laugh. Inside the suit he’d begun to sweat, hauling Nate’s suit out of the lock yet also struggling to touch it as little as possible.

It was right next to him. Whatever it was down in the trench, it was also here, very much in physical form and separated from him only by two layers of armor and a few inches of ocean. Not nearly enough.

“I thought we had to wait outside”. Eliot halted on his way back to the outer hatch. His mind raced as he formulated a reply. “It’s dangerous. The pumps are acting up, depressurization would be uncontrolled. I’m just going to stand on the open hatch so I’m in laser range, I want a play by play of the repairs.”

Nice. He’d felt more confident that time. Deceit was not his strong suit, but he was learning quickly. “I want to wait inside with you.” His stomach turned. “No, no, you stay out here. If the hatch closes I can get clear in time. You’re hurt, it’s a bad idea.”

It was beginning to look like he’d overestimated his skill. Nate’s voice became frantic, with a subtle hint of anger. “Don’t leave me out here. I’m so cold, don’t leave me alone Eliot, don’t let me die.” He began to crawl towards Eliot, who instinctively jammed his thumb on the thruster control and made a beeline for the open hatch.

Nate cried out, his voice audibly wavering between its normal pitch and a barely concealed inhuman screech. Eliot glanced at the rear view video feed. He had a solid lead but Nate had entered pursuit and was slowly catching up. More battery left? Out of the corner of his eye he saw the outline of Nate’s suit fade into something else, a large black silhouette which grew more distinct as it closed in.

Finally it took on the form of an enormous, pale face with beady black eyes, and a wide open mouth full of sharp little teeth. Eliot convulsed but kept his thumb on the hat switch. It was no use, on the suit’s HUD he saw his velocity dropping precipitously as the batteries finally went flat.

With a loud reverberating clag, the outer hatch closed. Seconds later the entire station rocked violently as whatever had been chasing him impacted the airlock. “Eliot, what the fuck was that? Are you okay?” He wasn’t, his heart threatened to explode and his lungs felt like they were on fire but he lied.

“I’m fine Angie. Drain the lock and depressurize, now.” It took twice as long to get the suit off because Eliot couldn’t stop shaking. “Are you that cold? Let me feel your face.” He brushed her hand away and struggled to free himself from the cumbersome exoskeleton. “I’m not cold. It’s fine. Boil water, I need some tea.”

Even with a change of clothes and a warm cup of earl grey, his hands still visibly shook. “Angie, if you don’t get that thermometer away from me I am going to break it. That’s warning number two.” She’d tried to sneak up behind him but somehow he knew. “I really wish you’d tell us what happened out there. You look terrible.”

He smirked. “That’s some bedside manner.” She wanted to fire back but resigned herself to being pleased that he was making jokes again. “Well, I’m not that kind of doctor anyway. But if you’re really okay, get some sleep.

Tomorrow, we need to start taking steps.” He didn’t ask what she meant as it was implicit. The thing in the trench was becoming desperate, each new attempt on the station bolder than the last. It was only a matter of time before it got in.

“What does it want? It’s been in here four or five times that I can recall, disguised as someone different every time.” Eliot shook his head. “Those were illusions. It was never physically inside the station with us. But it badly wants to be, and I think I know why.”

That caught their attention. Before Leo or Angie could ask, he gestured towards the dream imager sitting beside his bed. “That’s not everything, I think. It’s one half of the weapon we saw in my dream. I don’t know if we have the other half, but it obviously thinks we do.”

Leo started in with fear evident in his tone. “But it never tried to hurt us before, just trick us into surfacing. I don’t think it means us any harm.” In retrospect it was true, the creature had focused up until recently on convincing isolated crew members to break protocol and head topside.

Eliot’s episode outside the airlock was the first time it had shown openly malicious intent. “We’re down to two days battery and less than four days oxygen, and I think he knows. We’re no good to him dead, he needs live brains to carry the signal.”

Angie cocked her head. “Him?” He sighed. “Him. Her. It. Whatever. It needs living brains between here and the surface to get a signal topside. But we know all its tricks now, there’s no way it’ll get one of us to surface at this point, and that makes us as useless to it as if we were dead. All that’s left is to finish us off and wait for the NOAA to send replacements, so it can try again.”

“Who says those were lasers? Could’ve been anything.” Leo and Eliot had spent the better part of an hour following the EVA arguing animatedly over possible methods to kill the creature. “They sure as hell looked like our comms lasers from what I saw.”

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 12!}