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  “I’m just not thinking about it right now,” she’d admitted. “Survive first, think later.” That was the right way to think, so he did his best to emulate her.

  Somehow he managed to get to sleep. When morning came, he felt no less heartbroken, but he had more resolve. Survive first, think later.

  “Kray, are you out there?” he called to the orca.

  “Kray here. Pod here.”

  “We think the habitat was destroyed,” he told the orca leader.

  “We know,” he replied.

  “How?”

  “We hear long way,” the orca explained.

  Terry nodded. The cetaceans had sonar sending and hearing; the dome’s implosion had probably been detectable for a hundred kilometers. “Can you have the bottlenoses scout?”

  “Already look. Full water. Big crabs. Strange things there.”

  Terry sighed. Katrina was sitting next to him, back in the sub, so they could talk with the orcas. Kray swam into view, looking at him with a big eye. “What kind of strange things?” he asked the orca leader.

  “Like Wardens. Bigger. Breathe water.”

  “Selroth,” Terry said.

  “They bad?” Kray asked.

  “They and the crabs killed all our people,” Terry said bitterly.

  “Then we kill,” Kray said.

  “No!” Terry said.

  “Selroth kill Wardens. Crabs kill Wardens. Pod kill them.”

  “I wish you could,” Terry said. “We all do. But Selroth and crabs have weapons that can kill you.”

  “Some. We kill more them.”

  “How do I explain this so they don’t get themselves killed?” he asked Katrina.

  “We need you,” Katrina said. “We need you to get food and protect us.”

  “Young Wardens need stay safe?”

  “Yes,” Terry said, pouncing on Katrina’s brilliant idea. “If you go to fight, the Selroth or crabs may find us and kill us, too.”

  “We protect now, kill later.”

  “Thank you,” Terry said.

  “Need fish?”

  “We have enough food now. Please ask Sunrise Pod to watch for enemies nearby.”

  “Kill them?”

  “If they come near here, yes.”

  “Terry!” Katrina said. “Without a chance to talk?”

  “They killed everyone, and didn’t give us a chance to talk,” Terry said sternly. “Your mom and dad are dead. My mom is dead. Everyone is dead.” She looked away. He felt a little bad for being so rough on her, but his feelings of loss were slowly changing to anger. The idea of taking the sub with the orcas and killing every single alien sounded pretty damned good. But what about everyone else? They had the one sub. Either the Selroth or Xiq’tal would find them and kill them, too, or they’d slowly starve.

  No, he had to stay and help take care of them. Doc had said something once. “As long as you’re alive, there are always options.” Maybe he’d come across a way to even the score. Later.

  “We watch. Selroth, crab come, we kill.”

  “Thank you, Kray.”

  The big orca swam away to tell the others, and left Terry to decide what to do next.

  His other friends and the adults organized and began to bring order to their meager living space. While the inside of the extractor was larger than the sub, it wasn’t spacious. As kids do, the younger ones began to explore and found a pair of bathrooms. They were the Selroth style, the same ones they’d found when first occupying Templemer, but they were usable. Sanitation would have been a problem if they only had the one tiny toilet in the sub. It was one more thing off their plate.

  The adult women with them took the kids under their care, freeing Terry and his friends to work on other problems as best they could. Many of the children were despondent, especially the ones old enough to fully understand what had happened. The ones older than five and younger than ten were the ones who didn’t fully grasp their parents were dead, and thus running around exploring.

  It was late in the afternoon when one of them came back, reporting they’d found a door that wouldn’t open. Terry hadn’t asked them not to explore; they needed something to keep their minds off what had happened at Templemer. However, he had told them, under no circumstance, should they open a locked door.

  “Show me where it is?” he asked the young boy, who nodded. “I’ll be right back,” Terry told Katrina, who’d become his co-leader for the group of survivors. She nodded, and he followed the eager young boy.

  He’d found an access everyone else had missed; a door that appeared to be a panel cover. When pulled, it opened like a door to reveal a ladderway. “Wow,” he said, “good job!”

  “Thanks,” the boy said and set off down the ladder. Terry fell in close behind.

  They traveled downward further than Terry had expected. After a minute be began to wonder how far they were going, and if the boy was playing a prank on him. Then they reached the bottom.

  The ladder emerged into a circular chamber that looked like it had once contained piping or hydraulic equipment; he couldn’t be sure which. A single door was set into the floor, a pressure-type with a circular handle and glass gauge. Terry knelt next to the door and examined the gauge. It showed more pressure on the other side than in the chamber.

  It was a damned good thing the boy hadn’t tried to work the lock himself, as it swung inward. He couldn’t tell the pressure difference, but even a few PSI would be enough to explosively launch the boy across the chamber, and flood it in seconds, perhaps endangering everyone above them, as well.

  “Good job,” he told him. “Try to find something to put a warning on the door above us, okay?”

  “You bet, Terry!” the boy said and set off back up the ladder.

  Terry spent a few more minutes examining the chamber, wondering what it might be for, and what it used to do. Looking closer at the door, he noticed electronic connections, so he took out his slate and checked for wireless connectivity. He found it.

  “Well, okay,” he said. “Let’s see what we can see.”

  He allowed the slate to link and opened protocol to receive data, and instantly a huge file began loading. A really huge file. “Woah,” Terry said, and activated the slate’s protective program. A second later he recognized the type of file; the same strange 3D structure he’d downloaded before from an extractor.

  He quarantined it and allowed the file to complete downloading, then began examining the communication protocol attached to the connection. It was all inbound to the extractor’s computer link; nothing was outbound. To top it off, his slate tagged the new program as hostile. Whatever was on the other side of the pressure door had just tried to take over his slate.

  Terry rejoined Katrina and the others in the overcrowded living area they’d made. He quickly confirmed all the kids were back, and none of the others had found anything like the area he’d been investigating. Next he explained what he’d found to Katrina.

  “Do you think it’s a Selroth thing?” she wondered.

  “No,” he said. “The Selroth program was supposed to make this extractor set up a storage location for them to get the minerals later. This is different.” He scratched his chin and shook his head. “It’s almost as if something else has taken control of it.”

  He took his slate out again and linked with the extractor’s computer. He had to be careful now, knowing hostile programs were buzzing around. At least the dangerous ones were all extremely large, so he set his slate’s buffers to the slowest setting. That should keep an attack from easily succeeding.

  Working for a minute, he found the extractor’s subprogram which controlled storage. It showed a small amount of minerals. There should have been hundreds of tons. Had someone else found the cache and taken it out from under the Selroth’s noses? It didn’t seem likely. Then what was happening?

  “Terry?”

  “Yeah, Katrina?” he replied on the headset radio.

  “Trouble. You better come.”
>
  * * *

  Terry arrived back at the living area less than a minute after her call. She had a little slate from the submarine and was huddled with the other seniors. It’s Tri-V was showing camera views from the submarine, part of the sub’s hull and dark water.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Watch,” Dan said.

  A second later there was a bright strobe-like flash, then another. Suddenly a bottlenose came racing toward the camera at breakneck speed. It was Wikiwiki. In moments she was within hydrophone range.

  “Terry, Terry! Crabs!”

  “Calm down, Wikiwiki,” he said. “Tell me what happened?”

  “Chaw spot crabs. We watch, like you say. Then looking. One come this way. Chaw kill. CRUNCH! Taste funny.”

  “Jesus, did they eat the alien?” Taiki asked.

  Terry shrugged. “Maybe. What are those flashes?”

  “More crab. Look.”

  To Terry’s astonishment, the slate began to receive an image file. There was little doubt he was seeing the POV of a bottlenose dolphin swimming at incredible speed through the water. Suddenly it turned and crashed into a Xiq’tal. The crab’s carapace shattered, and a cloud of blue blood flowed out into the dolphin’s headlamps. It looked to the side, and another dolphin was trying to evade a second crab. The alien had a harness welded to its back with weapons and propulsion. A bright beam of light lanced out and pierced the dolphin, who jerked and stopped swimming.

  “How are you showing me this?” he asked. The bottlenoses’ harnesses only had rebreathers and lights. There were no cameras.

  “Think save,” Wikiwiki said.

  “Who was hit?” Katrina asked.

  “Chaw,” she replied. “Chaw dead.”

  “Terry.” The hydrophone relayed the sound of Kray’s distinct voice. “We drop rocks. We shoot sonar. Not get close, or light burn.”

  “It’s called a laser,” Terry explained. “Stay out of range. Be careful, they probably have other weapons that can hurt from a distance.”

  “Shot metal fish at me,” Wikiwiki said.

  “Torpedo,” Colin suggested.

  Terry nodded, then pressed the mute. “I don’t know what to tell them to do,” he admitted.

  “They want to fight,” Taiki said. “Let them.”

  “It wouldn’t be fair,” Katrina said, shaking her head. “They don’t know how weapons work. They’ll get killed.”

  “She’s right,” Dan agreed. “You remember the video Doc showed us in MST? The aliens have been doing this a very long time. They’re good at it.”

  “I’m also more than a little worried about the feed Wikiwiki sent,” Terry said.

  “Why?” Katrina asked.

  “It was a pinplant recording. They’ve never done that before, and we had no idea they’d figured it out.”

  “That’s good, right?” Katrina asked. “I mean, they’re understanding how they work.”

  “But why haven’t they been telling us about it? Dr. Orsage has been carefully keeping tabs on them and their pinplants. He does routine downloads all the time, to make sure they’re not having problems.” Though he said he’s mostly watching the orcas because the bottlenose weren’t showing any unusual traits like the orcas had, he thought. Now I can’t ask him what this means, because he’s dead.

  Terry shook his head. Too many things going on all at once. He was only 13 years old, he couldn’t be responsible for all of this. He gave a little sigh. I miss mom.

  “Terry want us kill?” Kray asked.

  On the screen an orca swam into view. It was Ki’i, the former leader of the Wandering Pod before the two pods merged. The big male orca had half a dismembered Xiq’tal in his mouth and was flipping it around as he swam, casually crushing the alien’s armored shell. Damn, he thought, they don’t care that this is life or death.

  Doc had said, “I’ve found when it comes to life, you either stand, or you fall.” He didn’t have the luxury to fall. Too many were depending on him. “They’re coming here,” Terry said. “They must be. They might not know the exact location, but they know the area.”

  “What do we do?” Katrina asked.

  “We need to go somewhere they can’t find us.”

  “Where?” Dan asked.

  “Yeah, where can we go that they can’t find us?” Colin asked.

  Terry unmuted the hydrophone. “Kray?”

  “What Terry want?”

  “Can you lead the crabs away? Lure them?”

  “Not kill?”

  “No,” he repeated. “Just give us time.”

  “We do. We do.”

  “Okay,” he said to his friends. “We’d better hurry. Get your drysuits from the sub; I need some other stuff, too.” The others looked at each other, then got up to follow him. “I think we might have an option.”

  * * *

  “Where does this go?” Katrina asked, examining the hatch.

  “I have no clue,” Terry said above. He was busy setting the emergency pressure door into the ladderway above the hatch, part of the equipment in the submarine Honcho had mentioned off hand during his quick lesson.

  Basically an inflatable ring with powerful adhesives and a double zipper similar to a spacesuit, it was meant to create an airlock to facilitate evacuation or boarding of a damaged submarine. Honcho had said he wouldn’t need it, but it had turned out he was wrong.

  It took Terry a few minutes to figure it out; luckily, there were instructions in the duffel holding it, and he also found a demonstration video on his slate. Once he understood the principle, the rest was easy.

  “Have you got the relief valve in yet?” he asked them.

  “Almost,” Colin said. He and Dan were both holding the drill, while Taiki made sure it stayed on point. Part of the emergency pressure door, it was a drill with a pressure-relieving valve and pump attached. Once the hatch was in place, you’d drill the valve into an existing door to equalize pressure.

  Terry was gambling that the higher pressure on the other side didn’t mean it was underwater. He was hoping it led to a lower area of the extractor, somewhere the alien mercs couldn’t easily follow them. Naturally a lower area would be under higher pressure. The strange computer files seemed to originate down there, too, so his escape plan could also possibly provide some answers.

  There was a pinging sound from the drill, and it suddenly stopped. They all looked at the mechanism in alarm until Colin examined its simple controls.

  “We’re good,” he said. “It’s installed.” He attached the little manifold that came in the kit, and they finally got a look at the pressure differential between their side and the other. “Difference is only 44 KPa, and no water.”

  “Rebreathers,” Terry said, and they pulled their drysuit hoods on and activated rebreathers. “Let’s equalize and see what’s on the other side.”

  Because the tap Colin installed was small, it took several minutes to equalize their side’s pressure with the other. Finally the pressure glass showed green, so it was safe to open the pressure door.

  “You sure about this?” Katrina asked.

  “No,” Terry admitted and spun the wheel on the door. It gave a clank, and he heaved it up and open. The hatch contained springs, so the weight wasn’t as much as he expected.

  As soon as it was open, he stepped back and stuck a hand into the bag he’d slung over his drysuit-covered shoulder. The grip of the laser pistol Honcho had given him felt reassuring, though nothing came out of the hatch after them. He’d already decided to go down, regardless of what came out. He removed the holstered pistol and clipped it onto his belt.

  “A laser pistol!” Dan said.

  “Perceptive,” Terry said.

  “Where did you get it?” Katrina asked.

  “Doc gave it to me just before we left Templemer.”

  “Why?” Taiki asked.

  Terry made an expansive gesture. “Are you serious?” He leaned over the open hatch, shining his helmet light down i
nside. A seamless tunnel went down for a meter, then gave way to rough-hewn stone. The extractor was connected to the extinct volcano, however there was no way to get down.

  “No ladder,” Katrina said, echoing his thoughts.

  “How much rope do we have?” he asked them. Between the five of them, they had a total of 30 meters. It was quickly tied together and secured. “I’m going down,” he said and cinched the bag tighter.

  “But you don’t know what’s down there,” Katrina said, her eyes wide behind her mask.

  “I know what’s outside waiting for us,” he said. He didn’t want to come out and say he was desperate, but he was. Even if they all climbed back into the sub and headed out, the Selroth and Xiq’tal had the advantage; they were armed and in their element. Whatever was below might at least provide a place to hide for a while. Time gave them options.

  Terry had gone mountain climbing a few times on Molokai, so he knew how to rappel, but now he didn’t have the proper climbing gear. He was forced to improvise, wrapping the line around an arm and his cybernetic leg, then using his real leg to control the descent. After the first five meters, he was glad Hoarfrost’s gravity was less than Earth’s.

  The tunnel only went another meter before he reached the bottom. He was glad, too. All the swimming he’d been doing to get back in shape after months in a coma was paying off, but his arms were still getting tired.

  Setting foot on the ground, he panned the helmet lamps around. The space looked like a partially-collapsed lava tube. He’d seen plenty of those in Hawaii, as well. He also noted in his heads-up display that the air temperate was up 13 degrees. Still below freezing, but a noticeable increase. Looks like this volcano isn’t extinct after all, he thought.

  Terry played the rope out and continued to examine the space. One direction went only a couple meters and ended in crumbled rock. The other direction angled downward and continued. He looked up and examined the tunnel he’d come down. It was rough, yet still looked purposeful.

  “There’s a tunnel down here,” he said over the radio. “I’m going to follow it and see where it goes.”