4. Cyro
CYRO
Navigation is for morons from Mars!
My tentacles flicked across the navigation console, the touchstones of my home world’s technology familiar and reassuring. I’d trained on this system for several solar cycles; I knew it like the back of my tentacles.
The ship was an extension of myself and my kind.
It pulsed around me in rippling waves of bioluminescent aquamarine, responding to my commands as we prepared to enter Earth's atmosphere. This primitive planet, mostly water with inconvenient landmasses interrupting the oceanic perfection, would yield samples critical to my research. Our own seas back home were drying. If we couldn’t replenish them, we’d need to abandon our planet.
As we sliced through the weak atmosphere easily, I allowed myself a moment of satisfaction, my skin shifting to a pleased lavender hue.
After all, I was Cyro, respected xenobiologist of the Thalassar system, and this mission was proceeding exactly according to plan.
I expected no different; I’d led a dozen flawless trips to various worlds.
"Trajectory locked for deep trench insertion," I announced to my crewmates, not bothering to hide the smug undulation rippling through my mantle.
"As predicted, the gravitational pull is precisely as calculated in my pre-mission assessment.
We should be able to collect and extract within six terradunes. "
The living walls of our vessel contracted and expanded in a rhythmic pattern. The artificial intelligence and the oxygen-dependent nature of the newer vessels made them feel truly sentient. My companions and I had coined the ship Shada-Vey.
“Slight fluctuation in the salinity system,” Kalith notified me, the tips of three tentacles flying across his own engineering station.
“Concerning?” I questioned, shifting my eyes, not my head, easily watching him through narrowing slits, the colors around me highly contrasted as light split and flowed around objects.
“Barely a blip,” he lifted two tentacles into the air, curving them and using them to shrug dismissively.
“What have I told you, Kalith?” I admonished.
“If it’s not important, keep my mouth shut?” Kalith mumbled in irritation.
I monitored the readouts with half my attention, confident in my calculations.
The other half of my consciousness was already anticipating the water samples we would collect—pristine specimens from Earth's deepest trench, crucial components for my synthetic terraforming research.
From early probes, we knew various creatures protected the fathomless bottom of what humankind coined the Marianas, but they were peaceful unless provoked.
The first sign of trouble came as a subtle vibration through the gelatinous floor beneath me.
I dismissed it initially as minor atmospheric turbulence, nothing more.
The second sign was harder to ignore: a discordant tone from the navigation array, followed by a ripple of crimson warning lights across the console.
"Interesting," I murmured, three of my primary tentacles stretching toward different sections of the control panel. The ship's interior, normally a soothing, watery blue, began pulsing with anxious amber hues that matched my rising concern.
“Concerning?” Kalith quipped, mocking my earlier question.
“Bashta,” I shot back, basically telling him to quiet himself or tear out his own tongue.
“Mah-dar tash,” Kalith volleyed, hitting me where it hurt, calling me a smooth tentacle, a highly offensive insult on our planet.
My confident lavender skin tone faded, the color draining away and leaving behind only silver, as I steeled my focus.
This wasn’t going right. Our entry point had shifted by several leagues.
Our angle of atmospheric penetration was too shallow.
The calculations had been perfect—I had verified them myself multiple times before we’d launched off world, leaving behind our own glorious world.
Yet the readouts now indicated a deviation that I wasn’t sure I could correct.
"Adjusting course," I announced, trying to keep the uncertainty from my voice as Vantor and Kalith continued their pre-landing preparations behind me.
My navigation arm, outfitted with the connection implants, extended to its full length, connecting directly with the ship's neural interface.
The familiar sensation of melding with the vessel's consciousness usually brought comfort, but now I felt only the ship's confusion and alarm reflecting my own.
Deeper shadows seeped into the metallic of my skin.
I couldn’t botch this mission. It was too important.
"Status report, Cyro?" Vantor's voice carried from his station, his tone already sharpening with suspicion.
"Minor course correction," I replied dismissively, unwilling to admit the growing problem. "Nothing I cannot handle."
But the ship didn't respond to my commands.
The neural interface flickered, connection unstable.
I pressed harder, forcing more of my consciousness into the link, my skin darkening further with effort.
The living tissue of the control panel began to pulse erratically beneath my touch, secreting excess bonding fluid that left slick, iridescent trails across its surface.
Warning lights flashed—violent, jarring, crimson… unlike any I’d ever seen even during training modules—and the ship’s animalistic shrieks tore through the cabin. I felt the slow tendrils of dread wrap around my gut.
Every light on the console blinked frantically.
This couldn’t be happening. I wouldn’t fail.
There was no better researcher or mission lead than me.
I was Cyro, unerring and adaptive! Now, though, I cursed as I struggled to pull the ship’s controls back into alignment.
My tentacles moved with a desperate elegance, slick bioluminescent trails marking my frantic attempts to regain command of our trajectory.
As anxiety took over, the suckers lining my appendages began to dry and snag, scratching up the ship’s undulating, fleshy surface.
The more I damaged it, the less control I seemed to have. It was futile.
The walls of the cabin breathed in and out quickly, as if the vessel truly was a creature struggling to inhale.
An acidic odor enveloped us—circuitry overheating under the strain, sparks flying as every attempt I made led to increasingly worse outcomes. The ship’s body was charring. It was in pain.
Panic crashed against my confidence, eroding my composure. I struggled against the panic climbing into my throat. I couldn’t swallow it down. It tore from my mouth with wild abandon, my own cries of frustration joining the ship’s scared keening.
“Cyro! Can you regain control?” Vantor barked.
I wasn’t sure I could, but I didn’t say that out loud.
The navigation graph screamed jagged lines—no graceful plunge to the abyssal trench, but a wild arc toward a solid mass. Land. Blasted land.
“We’re being pulled toward the northern continent,” I said slowly, horror shredding my composure.
I forced my eyes to the geo-display: indistinct browns and greens bleeding into focus—forests, cliffs, impossible terrain.
The worst place we could land. We could put on the air-to-water adapters, but if our bodies didn’t adjust, we’d suffocate.
But we weren’t locked into a land collision yet.
The point of impact was still ocean, albeit far from the trench. I needed to stop further deviation.
“Correct course!” Vantor barked, rigid as a defense drone.
“What do you think I am trying to do, Vantor? Take a vacation on Nexus Prime?” I gasped back, fear cracking my response in half.
I plunged my nav tentacle into the neural nexus again.
A bolt of feedback seared through my neurons.
Black fluid spurted from my ink sacs in a spasmodic lurch—an infantile panic I’d long since mastered but never truly forgotten.
My skin was full of shadows now; charcoal having long chased away the lilac.
“It’s… rejecting me,” I gasped, my siphon lungs gulping desperate air. “The navigation matrix seems shot! I can’t get us re-aligned!”
Another monstrous jolt pitched us sideways. Tools, cables, even my own coiled tentacles slid across the lurching deck. The view screen stabilized for one fatal second: a mosaic of trees and stone surging closer.
The ship lurched yet again violently. My tentacles lost purchase on the slick controls as I was sent sliding off the seat and across the alloy floor.
My body jerked unceremoniously as I crashed against the side wall.
A swirl of colors interrupted the slate hue of my skin in a chaotic display of stress patterns.
The fiery orange and yellow only lasted long enough to trace over the length of my body, beginning at the tips of my tentacles and terminating at the top of my head.
My gaze shot toward the large nexus monitor, finding only a land mass reflected upon it. No oceanic mass body in sight.
“Kalith! Vantor!” I hollered, dread threading through my voice, “We have no choice but to abandon course correction. We must ready ourselves for impact.”
My head swiveled, searching for my crewmates, my body still pressed roughly against the wall.
“Kalith, are you sure that solar flare didn’t damage anything?” I spoke sharply, though desperation for an answer tainted my words.
“There were no immediate signs of damage,” Kalith shook his head, then he blinked slowly. “I’ll run another diagnostic.”
Before Kalith could move, the ship tilted sideways then seemed to move strangely upward while still tilted. Then it froze. All movement halted. Time seemed to stop. Even the ship ceased its strobing lights and screams of alarm. Would we make it out of this unscathed? Could we salvage this?