gone_byebye | (no subject)

Mid-January, 2008
RCMP/Ministry of Extraordinary Threats Emergency Hangar
Alert, Nunavut, CA

Even in times of the highest tension and most danger, people find ways to keep themselves busy, and neither the Ghostbusters nor the men and women of the world's northern watch bureaus were any great exception. "Ray? Ray! Ray, check it out." Venkman shook his friend's shoulder. "Egon's in a fight with one of the Inquanok guys."

Ray opened an eye and glanced sideways. Several of the Danish contingent and a couple of the Pohjola Project's Sami members were gathered in a semicircle centered on Egon and a broad-faced, dark-eyed man in Danish uniform. "Wow. Spengs is looking kinda..."

"Green," Winston finished for both of them. "That's freaky. What are they fighting about?"

"The worst thing they've ever eaten," said Venkman. "Eske's winning."

Ray and Winston exchanged glances. They both knew Egon's eating habits. "How?" Ray finally asked.

"That's not food," Egon suddenly said, loud enough to be heard over the snickering Greenlanders. "That's biological waste. You can't consider anything with that level of ammonia in it to qualify as edible."

"This from the man who admits to eating casu marzu," said his opponent with the serene smile of a man who knows he's won. "Hákarl is nothing-"

Winston shook his head. Ray gave up on the possibility of a nap and stood up. "Has anyone seen where Captain Korpan went?" he asked, and one of the Finns pointed. "Thank you."

He found the Canadian in the tiny office attached to the hangar, one hand pressing his headset against his ear and the other taking frantic notes. As Ray walked in Korpan lifted his eyes, winced, and held up a piece of paper that read:

Magnetic fields flaring
Deep ones report Russian helicopter near 82.7° N 114.4° W
Radio comms dorppinng like brick

A moment later Korpan scribbled one last line:

Dammit, I can spell. Marines on the way. Tell the others. We're going in.

Ray shuddered, nodded, and went in search of a better door.

[OOC: Assume everyone will be arriving from Milliways within five minutes of each other. Also, don't click on the food links above if you have a weak stomach.]

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From:

gone_byebye

In the distance a small blackish smudge in the midst of the white and blue grows into a larger blackish smudge, and then resolves itself- a gap in the ice of a shape too regular to be anything but artificial. Huddling along one side are a group of about twelve humanoid figures; Tsybenko grunts. "You talk," he says as they draw closer. "I have no experience. Deep Ones are not so much my thing."

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

"I'm sure that they won't seem that difficult to handle once you get to know them." Jim is clearly quite sure of himself.

From:

gone_byebye

"Americans are trouble enough," Tsybenko mutters, but he lets it drop as they pull up.

The Deep Ones present range in height from six feet tall to nearly seven. Their skin tones vary from dull greenish-grey to a grey-blue reminiscent of certain species of shark. Overall, their body designs are awfully similar- at least, to anyone who's read The Shadow Over Innsmouth and consequently expects a wider set of unwholesome mutations. Their eyes are too widely spaced to look them in both eyes at once comfortably, but it's obvious they have at least some degree of binocular vision, and they're all garbed in some form-fitting substance that hides the majority of their finnage from view.

Not the ones on their heads, though, or the webbing between their five fingers- one of the taller ones raises a hand in greeting. "Well, now," he says in passable English, "what do we have here?"

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

"This is...Cosmonaut Tsybenko, formerly of the Russian Federation, and I'm James Kirk of the United States. I guess you can say we're representatives of the Ministry of Extraordinary Affairs. Doctor Stantz sent us, to try to deal with the submarine."

Jim tries very hard not to look surprised. How many aliens has he met, after all? But there is something a bit strange, a bit harsh, and a bit familiar. These, he thinks, are not really aliens, are they?

From:

gone_byebye

Four hundred thousand years of evolution goes a long way in a species formerly immortal and ageless. It might be safest to say their ancestors were aliens.

The speaker nods, cocking his head to one side in an almost birdlike gesture so that one eye fixes on Tsybenko. "Comrade Tsybenko doesn't look very happy to be here," he observes. "Drafted?"

"Volunteer," says Tsybenko, and mutters something under his breath in Russian. A translator would be able to tell it was less than complimentary, at best.

The speaker shakes his head, his gill-slits flaring briefly, and turns back to Kirk. "Ah. The ambassador. All right. I am Lua'al-rei of the Greenland Shark Moiety of the Deep One people of Ahvenanmaa Province. We come to Beaked Whale's waters at Y'ha-nthlei's request, to find the humans who want to pry the walls open between this world and the one from which we came." He pauses. "Beaked Whale has had... rather more and closer contact with humans than we."

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

"And is there any update on the situation. Aside from that the skies are rather...foreboding?" Jim chooses not to offer a handshake of any kind. (That's one of those things you learn from years with a Vulcan - never offer any body contact without knowing what the response will be.)

From:

gone_byebye

Lua'al-rei dips his chin, then brings his head up in something like a nod. "Beaked Whale's scouts confirmed the helicopter on the surface maintains contact somehow with the submarine below," he says. "The submarine moved from its linear course into a holding pattern a few minutes ago. Or so it looks to us; the sharks of deeper waters do as much when they have a school in sight."

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

"Then we should hold for the moment." Jim wonders how long he needs to wait to see the next move, and suspects it won't be long.

From:

gone_byebye

"Our vessel is still rising anyway," agrees Lua'al-rei. "We have several in place already, monitoring. Moving the men may take several trips."

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

Jim sighs. He isn't a fan of waiting, but he knows he has to. "I guess we wait."

From:

gone_byebye

"It won't be long," says the Deep One. "It has to take on more air before we can board. Neither you nor the Russians will be in our parts of the vessel." He looks pointedly at Kirk's neck, and its marked lack of gill slits. "Establishing an atmosphere is tricky business."

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

"Yes, I'd heard that. About submarines, that is. I've never been on one." Spaceships, yes. Subs, no.

From:

gone_byebye

"I understand Y'ha-nthlei's shipgrowers are- ah, there..."

The dark, dark water is beginning to roil and bubble, swelling like bulging green-black glass as something rises from below. Lua'al-rei gestures with one webbed hand to Kirk and Tsybenko to step back as the topmost edge of a streamlined, pearlescent shape breaks through the surface.

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

Jim is silent as he watches the ship emerge. It's unlike anything he's ever seen.

From:

gone_byebye

Lua'al-rei eyes the ship with an expression that a human might consider one of guarded distaste. "Ship-growing is an old art," he murmurs. "It seldom means anything good, to have to use one. I only hope that we attract no notice by using these... well." He shrugs expressively and turns to watch several of his smaller comrades hop nimbly from the ice to the pearlship's top. When it slides open a moment later, the smell from inside is...

... well, remarkably clean, actually, with very little smell of fish or the sea. Only cold, cold air that sets Tsybenko to muttering about the heating system.

"We may be adapted to colder waters in Greenland Shark than the people of Y'ha-nthlei Province," says Lua'al-rei with some amusement in his tone, "but we are warm-bloods, to use the human term. You may not like the temperature inside, but no one will freeze or die of it. Are there any other questions, before we board?"

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

He has many. None of which are relevant right now. "NO, I'm ready."

From:

gone_byebye

"I hate this," Tsybenko mutters as the smaller Deep Ones roll out the access ladder. "Did I tell you, Kirk? When I move to America, I buy my house in Texas. Nice and warm, even on the bad days. Sometimes I go entire week without thinking about working in miserable cold conditions."

Chekov, were he here, would probably smack his countryman.

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

Indeed. But then, Chekov would also never move from Mother Russia.

"We do what we have to, Tsybenko. And I am sure that if we succeed, Ray will be glad to make sure you get to go someplace even warmer."

From:

gone_byebye

"I think maybe the Caribbean," says Tsybenko as he clambers up the ladder and then starts down into the ship. "Hurricanes are better than winters, if you ask me."

Inside the ship the lighting is low-level- enough to read by, although one wouldn't recommend it for all that long. It comes from raised tubes and dimples that grow outward from the walls, and tends towards blue-white or purplish-white. The ceilings are surprisingly high- or perhaps not surprisingly so, given Lua'al-rei's own height. He drops to the corridor's floor behind the humans without bothering to make much use of the ladder. "I would say to stay in the areas with these colors of light," he says, "but these colors indicate the presence of air. You would have other things to worry about if you found somewhere with different lighting."

There's something to his tone that might almost indicate a joke. It's hard to say.

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

"I think we can be careful enough." Jim doesn't get any sense that there is a sense of humor at work here. "This is all quite...remarkable."

From:

gone_byebye

"Humans aren't used to organic technology," says Lua'al-rei. "Our ancestors lost the original arts of our people, and had to develop them all over again. It's simpler to grow what we need than it is to force it into being. This way, please."

The lighting grows a little brighter as Lua'al-rei leads the two humans through a few short corridors. When they reach the end of it, the room's entire ceiling glows that soft blue-white, and much of the wall space is taken up by glowing purple-white disks. There are curved benches here that look a bit like they were meant as couches for bodies somewhat larger than the average human's, and panels in the wall or rising out of the floor that vaguely resemble sonar displays or something similar. "We're already descending," he says. "Are your ears at all uncomfortable? I'm told that may be a problem."

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

"I feel it a little, but I've been through worse." Though not in some time. "Humans are fairly resilient anyway." He lets his eyes get used to the lighting, and studies what has to be something like sonar.

From:

gone_byebye

"That's something," says Lua'al-rei. "The only humans we're much familiar with in my moiety are the French ambassador and the English one, and the English one no longer has a body."

Tsybenko exclaims sharply and sits up straight at that. Lua'al-rei slants one eye at him. "Something wrong?"

"The Englishman- does he stammer when he speaks?"

Again, Lua'al-rei dips his chin, then lifts his head. "All the time. It makes him hard to follow, but the trade-off is worth it."

"Bozhe moi. I know that man-"

As the discussion ensues, Kirk can see that the displays are somewhat fuzzier than a typical sonar display; they give the impression of being more of a visual display of an entire region's energy fields than a true sonar reading. Although there are at least two different field readouts, each on a different monitor. While the images coincide to some degree, not everything present on one shows up on the other.

At the top-most edge of one of the displays, something is moving in a long, slow curve.

From:

works-in-space.livejournal.com

Jim just smiles about the brain in the jar finding a new job. "Are you really surprised? I'd say he's uniquely suited for the position." But that is not the matter at hand.

"Is that the Russian sub?"

From:

gone_byebye

"Bah. The English probably gave him the job to get him away from Parliament," mutters Tsybenko - but he looks happier than he has since all of this started.

Lua'al-rei tilts his head to one side to get a single-eye view of the monitor. Then he nods. "It is. And it's slowing, by the look of things. The lateral scan is... not a good sign." He points to the readout that looks less like a true sonar display. "We have a physical sense few land species possess that lets us sense ambient electricity, and other energies like it. This is a wide-range outgrowth of that same sense. It is... I don't know how to describe it in your language. 'Running hot' is the best analogue, I think."