Phosphorescent foam surged up over the hull in freezing sheets. Inez de Calavria, apprentice armsman of the league, gripped the safety line in one gloved hand and raised the repeater with the other. The bow of the Arxregnum plunged downwards and icy water rushed up over her waist, chilly even through a vacuum rated environmental suit. The winds, close to cyclonic, howled around her whipping the wave tops to ragged flume. The starship rose again, riding up the face of the thirty meter wave until it reached the crest.

Inez had a half a second to look out over a heaving ocean of wind ripped waves. The purplish sky above crackled with a skittish tracery of green lightning that parted the auroral ribbons like cracks running through stressed ice. The view held for a half second and then she was rushing back down into the trough, vision obscured by a storm of flying droplets.

“How is it going out there,” her communicator crackled, carrying with the fury of the permanent storm above.

“Stand by, I…” Tentacles as thick as Inez’ waist exploded from the front of the wavefront, slapping down heavily along the curved silver hull. Unlike its equivalent on Earth, the thing was covered with gripping cillia rather than suckers. A dozen more tentacles followed the first, grappling the ship with dozens of enormous limbs. Inez fired the repeater one handed, it kicked like a steer but she held onto it. A three round cluster, lead by a tracer snapped from the barrel, the explosive tipped bullets shredding a tentacle into hundreds of pounds of fishy offal. The beast went wild, slapping at its wounded appendage with a half dozen of its limbs like a man trying to put out a fire. Inez hurled herself forward, unclipping her line and snapping it to another stanchion. She slipped on the soaking deck and went over snagging up against the line as it drove her harness into her ribs. She sucked in a lungful of spray, half choked and scrambled for purchase. Her hand closed around one of the exterior sensors and she pulled herself to her feet. A tentacle hit her across the chest with the force of a medicine ball and she was punched upwards and away from the hull. Gelatinous tendrils held her as the beast heaved against the safety line. The woven beryllium line could have lifted the ship, unfortunately her bones and sinews had a somewhat lower threshold.


“Fuuuuck!” she screamed as the beast worried at her, trying to pull her towards it’s as yet unseen maw.

“What was that?” the comm cracked, “I cant hear…”

“Shut!” Inez fired, “the fuck,” she fired again, “up!” The last burst caught the base of the tentacle close to the wave front. It exploded in a geyser of spray and blood and the thing dropped her. Inez plummeted to the deck below. Pain exploded across her hips as she bounced off the steel plating and plunged into the frigid water. The helmet was sealed but it didn’t have external air, the filters snapped closed and her available air flashed amber.

“Is there really any need to swear?” the voice in her comm asked pevishly. Inez hauled herself upwards, using the buoyancy of a rising wave to drive her body upwards. Thank the Black Lady for the line because the glittering phosphor bacteria in the water made it impossible to tell up from down. She broached and scrambled up onto the hull. She ducked another slashing tentacle that carried away a secondary communications mast in spray of sparks.

“I have it under…” a giant tripartite beak hammered into the hull, dishing one of the plates in with shattering force. Inez rolled sideways, catching a sensor head between her legs and wrapping them around it. She tensed her screaming muscles and pulled herself upright the beak drew back, revealing three dinner plate sized eyes staring malevolently at her. She flicked a switch on the repeater, deactivating the explosive charges and switching to solid shot.

“Control!” she concluded and emptied the magazine into the things eyes. The fifty caliber rounds punched through the eye in a spray of jelly and blood, they smashed into the nerve ganglia, destroying the primitive equivalent of a brain that motivated the giant creature. Tentacles slashed and battered but the water was foaming with black ink as internal bladders voided, internal buoyancy failed and the thing slipped beneath the waters, washed clear by the next wave.


“It really dosen’t sound like it,” the voice complained. Inez pulled herself to her feet.

“Just open the damned airlock,” she replied, and half limped, half crawled her way back towards the lock.

[@POOHEAD189]