A New Night

Murder-cats in a Blue Submarine

We were so close to escaping! Under the water, we waited to climb the wall. However, it seemed like the most difficult challenge was now. Looking up, I saw the cloud of emergency drones assembled above us. The small waves on the water’s surface distorted my vision of them, somehow making them a little more intimidating. As I watched, several watercrafts reached the wall—close enough to dock with the wall.

I … didn’t know what to do. So, I propelled myself to the submarine’s glass bottom, where I could see the others.

“What’s happening, Bassella?” Dro asked, looking at me through the glass. I was slightly surprised to hear his voice so clearly through the water, even knowing his language didn’t require words.

“The yellow Alpha Predator drones are waiting just above us,” I replied without making any audible sound. Feeling awkward at just thinking these things without saying anything, I pointed up at the surface. However, I found that this just made me feel more uncomfortable. I shook my head and continued, “Boats are here, too.”

Krebba looked up toward the surface and bared her teeth. “I gather that if we get out, we won’t have time to fight before they attack.”

Romalla imitated her scowl, adding, “And we can’t sneak somewhere else under the water without the red sea-demons seeing us.” She was, of course, talking about the underwater drones I had sunk earlier.

“Wait, why can I hear Romalla?” I asked, even more confused.

“I’m voicing her thoughts for you,” Dro answered.

“You can communicate for her …” This gave me a vague idea of how to get us out of this situation. I pointed inside the submarine and tapped on the glass excitedly. “When I was in the jungle, Gar forced me to see my nightmares. Would you be able to make me see something real? Could you show me what you are looking at in the submarine?”

Dro thought about this for a moment and then nodded. He began to glare at me with a haunting intensity. His eyes seemed to shake, and his tail darted around the crowded submarine as best as it could.

Within a few seconds, my vision faded away. By the time it came back, I was not looking up through the glass bottom of the submarine. Instead, I was looking down at my own robotic form floating in the water, illuminated by the dull blue glow of my frowning animated face.

In my thoughts, I wished for Dro to look around at the space around him. Seeming to hear me, he looked exactly where I wanted for a good minute. It didn’t take long to find several levers and a screen that showed the level of oxygen and the condition of the craft. Of course, the only reason I could recognize any of it was that it was all simplified—meaning this was probably just another recreational vehicle for people who wanted to see the sea life without diving.

I urged Dro to touch one of the levers, just a little. When his hand touched the first lever, the submarine came to life and moved slightly forward. I willed him to test each one—sending the submarine up, down, to all sides, and backward. Then, he hit one that rotated the external part of the craft a few inches … but not the interior. The glass observation and the exit hatch began to change positions while the inside of the submarine remained as it was. It was as if the inside of the submarine were a ball that was completely disconnected from the outer part of the submarine. Which meant that the hatch and observation glass could face any direction.

Dro picked up on the idea that my mind was forming and began acting independently. He pressed the lever until the glass bottom became a glass top. Doing so, he broke off my line of sight, and our connection was broken. He proceeded to drive the craft upward until it breached the water’s surface.

It wasn’t long before I heard the muffled sounds of metal clashing together, bending, and shattering. Then there were hundreds of splashes, and misshapen yellow drones hit the water with splashes and sank all around me. They went right down to the bottom of the fake ocean. This continued for about a minute until all was quiet, and the submarine was righted the way it was. With the hatch again at the top, I could see through the glass bottom as they disembarked through the top hatch. I was relieved to see Gar carry his unconscious companion with them.

I rose to join them, propelling myself until I splashed over the water’s surface. I looked around and then grabbed onto a ladder built into the wall, which my companions had already begun climbing. One by one, they reached a ledge that they could step onto. I was the last up.

Though I had been around here before, this was the first time I was really looking at the wall itself instead of the city or Romalla flying away. At the top, it was about six feet wide and lined with various small structures that went indoors—presumably down into the wall itself. That … would have been useful to know before. An alarm was blaring, and red lights flashed all around us. Then, I heard a heavy mechanical sound as the closest door began to open!

“Bassella!” Romalla shouted.

Large blue crab-like robots stepped onto the platform via the doorway and rushed us. Without warning, they grabbed several of the Hunters. Only Dro and Scraa seemed prepared for the robots holding onto them with oversized, padded claws. Krebba was nearly caught, but Gar—one arm already securely pinched—managed to drag his attacker forward and grab hold of her attacker.

I pulled out my ring gun. However, a floating blue drone with a plastic shield blocked my shot. It took position between the Hunters fighting the crab-bots and me. Soon, two more of these shield robots joined in. These two defended against Dro and the Queen.

Romalla, of course, seemed the readiest for this fight. She had already begun to dive-bomb as the crab-bots unsheathed syringes. Scraa worked with her, pulling with his tail at the small mechanical limbs holding the needles until they broke. Between Scraa pulling, Romalla kicking, and the Hunters wriggling to avoid them at any cost, they were narrowly managing to avoid being injected.

My gun useless, I charged the first shield-bot. I grabbed the outside rims of the thick plastic shield while it tried to throw me with surprising force. I held on and was thrown in every direction until the machine lost equilibrium, and we were both sent into the water. While my body was able to swim back up, the shield-bot was not so lucky. It joined its allies on the ocean floor.

By the time I splashed out of the water and climbed up the wall again, the tide of battle had changed. Another Hunter that had been pinned by a crab-bot had escaped its grasp. She was now helping Romalla and Scraa to fight the other crab-bots, clawing their faces and sensors. Together, the three of them managed to release Gar from the two robots that had already been struggling enough with just him.

Dro and Krebba, however, were having a tougher time with the shield-bots. These robots were surprisingly fast as they blocked every attack from the two Hunters with weapons. This included brief collisions whenever Hunters tried to twitch their tails and use their hypnotic powers.

I pulled out my ring gun and fired off two shots with minimal energy. The shots made me a little light-headed but stunned the shield-bots. It gave Dro and the Queen enough time to shove the two shield-bots into a couple of crab-bots, toppling them all into the water.

I heard Gar roar with fury behind me and turned just in time to see him leap onto the shoulders of a crab-bot that held the remaining two pinned Hunters, one in each claw. He curled his body around the crab-bot’s head and used his brute strength to rip its head from its shoulders. The sight left me … glad we were now on the same side.

The battle was done—robot parts and one unconscious Hunter littered the ground around us. One of the other Hunters slapped this one until he finally was awake enough to move.

We all looked at each other for just a moment. My energy levels were significantly lower than I would have liked, though there was still enough sun to keep me charged. The Hunters looked almost too tired to move. Even Romalla fell onto Scraa’s backpack and panted heavily. But there was no time to waste.

I pointed wordlessly at where I knew they would find the frozen metal wire we had all climbed to reach this point.

Gar was the last of the Hunters to reach the top of the ladder. He watched as his companions made their way down by the handholds that I had made. The journey down the frozen wire would be just as slow. Gar then looked at the enemies approaching further along the wall, on the right and left. More drones, more robots, more everything. “They won’t make it in time,” he said.

I was surprised that he said this to me, like he thought there was something I could do about it. He was right, though. Krebba and the Queen’s Hunters would be completely vulnerable while climbing. But, on the other hand, we were outnumbered; there was no way to fight off so many Triumvirate robots.

“Why are we not climbing?” Dro asked as he joined us. He peered at me intensely, wordlessly communicating the doomed predicament that we were in.

Gar was … worried … and I sensed it was for one person. It was odd—how easily I found myself now relating to the Hunter who had spent most of our relationship either using me as bait or directly trying to kill me. I looked at Romalla as I thought these things. She was hanging onto Scraa’s backpack as they approached us.

I tried to draw in a breath and then said, “Gar and I are going to stall the Alpha Predators. We’ll meet you on the mountain.”

“No, you won’t meet us,” Dro said and gave a heavily disinterested look. “You will be captured and imprisoned forever.”

“No, we’ve got a plan!” I said, forcefully playing a tune in my head so he wouldn’t see that I was lying.

However, Dro just looked at Romalla and said, “The idiot is trying to sacrifice herself so that we can escape. Kindly shake her out of this foolish delusion. We may not have time to escape like this, but our chances are better if we stay …”

I stared at him, surprised. He wouldn’t say the last word … but I knew what he meant. This was nothing like the Dro I had known, nor the young Dro I had seen in Gar’s memories. Without pretense, he was choosing to stay with us. I felt a stinging sensation where my eyes would have been.

“Don’t be foolish, Bassella,” Romalla said. She flew onto my shoulder and bared her fangs at the Triumvirate machines. “We all stay together, right Scraa?”

Scraa looked at her uncertainly but then groaned and nodded tiredly.

I nodded along, but what I really wanted was to tell them—my family—how much I loved them. The feeling of it … feeling of being this cared about was something I had never expected to experience. So, I just savored the moment as best I could for that quiet moment before the enemy reached us.

Meanwhile, Dro stared at the incoming drones and robots with the same melancholic energy he’d embodied since leaving the Calming Program. Without speaking, he lifted his stick and aimed it tiredly at the approaching robots.