seaQuest DSV
To Dare Cerberus - Book 1
by katirene (XMP) & Paula (APB)
Valley of the Shadow, Chapter 1
19 Sept. 2032
2320 hours
Bangkok, Kungpong SoundFace down in a puddle of beer. Too much noise. Raucous yelling, mostly male, mostly encouraging, not quite sober. Beat-driven music, pounding away at the remnants of sobriety. Smoke filling the lungs, making it difficult to breathe. Cold, wet, clammy clothes. A nightmare from a lifetime dead and gone.
Trey Barlow moaned, protesting the intrusion of her past into the present. If she could move, she'd turn down the radio, that would make it better. She pushed her head up off the hard surface, shaking it slowly with her eyes closed, testing to see if it would fall off or not.
"Trey? Trey."
The voice, accompanied by a feather-light touch on her shoulder, reminded her again that this was all a dream, because that voice, that touch didn't belong in the confusion of her past. Gratefully, she turned toward him, opening her eyes with a smile of welcome.
"Tim," she said happily, at first seeing only him. Then the scene behind and around him clicked into focus and she stared, stunned, surprised, shocked, unable to understand.
"Tim?" she said again, her voice coming out like a small child's. A shiver ran down her spine, nested in the small of her back and gave birth to a litter of shakes that fled at once, full grown.
"Oh hell! She's going into cryo-shock. We've got to get her warm." Tim O'Neill, seaQuest communications officer, pulled the shivering woman into his arms, holding her and trying to will his own body heat into her.
"Here!"
A uniform jacket dropped down on her shoulders and Tim shifted far enough so that he could position it around her. As Trey hunched into the depths, she identified the subtly scented warmth. Jim Brody. Her boss on the seaQuest.
"You!" she heard him snap at someone. "Coffee. The biggest mug you've..."
"No. No no nononon," she interrupted, shaking her head.
"She doesn't drink coffee," Tim explained, looking up at the security officer. "Hot tea. Or cocoa. Maybe even soup. But ..."
The misery of cold consumed her and the rest of the world faded away. Trey was dimly aware of an argument, four-sided, and she knew that she ought to recognized the voices, but she couldn't concentrate enough to accomplish it. Someone forced her to stand up, to walk and finally, they let her sit again. A hot cup appeared in front of her, her hands wrapped around it. It lifted to her lips and the welcome heat trickled down her throat.
Slowly, fractured reality reassembled, like a kaliedoscope, into a new image.
She was sitting at a table, Tim beside her, watching her with that anxious, endearing expression of his. She tried to smile at him.
"Tim." Then she remembered and looked around. "What's going on? Where's the seaQuest? Am I ... Is this some kind of cryo-induced amnesia."
Trey had spent more than thirty years trapped inside an experimental suspended animation system. The flaws in the design continued to haunt her, in the shape of nightmares and, even more troublesome, cryo-flashbacks, when her body tried to shut down and return to the state of lowered metabolic function. Literally, she could die of hypothermia in the middle of a Saharan day.
"If it is, then I've got it too," he answered bitterly, urging her to drink from the mug she held.
"We all do. Jim's trying to find something out and ... Tony!" he exclaimed, looking past her. "What did you find?"
The young, Brooklyn raised, street wise sailor came into view, his arms filled with brightly colored cloth. With a broad, proud smile, he grabbed one and shook it out into a large rectangle of fabric.
"Saris," he announced. "I thought we could, you know, drape them around her and.... Oh, hey, Trey! Glad to see you're back." He handed the unfolded rectangle to Tim to start wrapping around Trey and picked up a second. "You know, you guys are lucky that I won all that money. Our credit chits aren't working."
"Of course they don't," Jim Brody said, appearing suddenly from behind Trey. "We're listed as MIA, presumed dead. And have been for ten years."
"Ten Years!" Tony exclaimed.
Trey stared at the burly security officer, appalled, shocked speechless and in denial. Ten years. Thirty years. She was out of time. The world went black on her again and she gratefully slipped away into oblivion.
Ari opened her eyes abruptly, disoriented by her position, by her location, by the abrupt sense of dislocation. She was lying on a grassy knoll, a dark, starry sky overhead, nightbirds calling from the darkness and insects chirping cheerfully. Slowly, cautiously, she lifted her torso up, looking around.She could see distant lights, a town of some sort. Secure in the soft night, she sat up, folding her legs under her while she considered what she knew.
She was in her uniform, wet. raising her arm, she touched her tongue to one sleeve. Salt water wet. Then she raised her head and sniffed. She wasn't too far from the ocean here, it was possible that she'd been pulled out and brought here. But then, where was everyone? Where was Miguel?
Rising to her knees, she swayed, almost falling as a wave of vertigo hit her. After a moment to recover, she staggered to her feet, planning to walk toward the lights and try to find out her answers there. But when she turned around, she saw a horse, watching her. It occurred to her that if she could persuade it to let her get up on it's back, then she'd be down in the town even faster.
She began to move toward the beast, clicking her tongue and speaking quietly, soothingly. The animal backed up, Ari followed, barely able to keep on her feet. Focusing on the gleaming white steed, she wasn't watching where she was going and had no idea of the danger until she fell, down an abandoned, dry well shaft.
"Well now, lass, ye've made a rare fine mess a' things, haven't ye?"
"Whaa?" she asked, aggrieved, lifting her aching head to look around. She was in a dry tunnel, dirt walls leading away from the stone paved shaft that rose up to show a star staring down at her. The figure standing by her head, gazing benevolently down at her was a being out of fantasy. Barely three feet high, with a broad ruddy face and bright red hair and beard, he wore a wee golden crown and an ermine trimmed cape. And Ari knew him.
"Oh, it's you," she said with an expression of disgust. "I thought the last time was the last time."
"Aye, great-granddaughter and so did I," said King Brian of Nag Nashega. "And a rare suprise it is to see you here, too. For ten long years, I've mourned ye as one buried in the Seagod's realm. Now here ye be, not a bit older than the last I saw ye, and as quick and spry as any young lass. The question is, where have ye been and how came ye here? And why so far from your bold young man? Is it that ye've been trapped inside a Faerie Knowe? Nay, not possible. I should have known these ten years past."
"Te... Ten years? What ....? Your highness... Lowness... whatever.... What are you talking about?"
One of the little king's subjects came up to them and began to speak to King Brian, too fast for Ari to comprehend. Just trying to understand the king's English was making her head ache. Gingerly, she raised a tentative hand to touch her brow and felt a slick, thick wetness there. Bringing her fingers down to eye level, she winced. Blood.
King Brian nodded thoughtfully, attracting her attention once more.
"Ye'r vessel lies on dirt, in a far distant country as far from her place as possible. But not as far as you are from the place that you should be, great-granddaughter."
"I've told you not to call me that," Ari reminded him wearily, dragging her weary body up into a sitting position. "I'm not any relation to you. You're as untrustworthy and prevaricating as any of your kind." Looking around suspiciously, she added, "And where is Miguel?"
"Ye're in the wrong cavern, great-grand-daughter. Lass, I swear to ye, I've never played ye false."
"Never?" she repeated, her voice rising with emotion. "Never? I trusted you to keep them safe and you didn't. They died because you didn't save them. You let them die!"
"I swear to ye, on my honor as king of Nag Nashega, I did what I could. They were mine own flesh and blood, same as ye. But when the banshee cries...."
With an impatient exclamation, Ari interrupted him. "What banshee? You knew that that plane would come down. I told you. Why couldn't you...." Tears choked her. King Brian shook his head, as upset as the UEO ensign.
"I could do nothing. I tried. But I canna stop the death coach once it sets out on its rounds. I told ye that at the time." His anguish was too obvious to be ignored. Biting her lower lip, Ari looked away, trying to compose herself once more.
"So you said then. It doesn't matter, it's done now. Look, I've got to get back to the seaQuest. Could you ... help me down to the town?" she stood unsteadily and winced, touching her head again.
"Ye fell into the well, lass," King Brian reminded her. He looked over his shoulder and she noticed someone approaching. "Let my healer see to that, and then we'll get ye adown the mountain." He gave her a look of worried concern. "Ah, poor lass. Ye're in the wrong place at the wrong time, and things will go to hell in a handbasket before they come round right again."