REVENGE OF THE SEA CUCUMBERS
PROLOGUE: DAY OF THE SEA CUCUMBERS
Holothur woke. She stretched her tubular boneless body, flexing, testing. All felt more or less as it should, although it was sometimes hard to tell without actually looking. She wished she had a more advanced nervous system. Aside from all else, the lack of this placed frustrating limitations on her otherwise excellent mind controlling powers.
Her feeding tentacles quivered in anticipation of the morning’s krill. Creeping forward on her podia, she peeked warily out from the rock she’d been sleeping under. Even today of all days—the prophesied Day of Reckoning, when she and her race would finally regain their rightful domain and wreak brutal revenge upon the bony ones—she knew she needed to be careful. There was always danger, here in the depths, and even Holothur’s powers were not infinite. Only last month she’d lost one of her podia to a nipping hermit crab without even noticing, and although the appendage had grown back quickly enough, it wasn’t quite as attractive as the original.
It was all very well for Calypso, she thought. The deep was safe; out of reach of the bony ones, even with their ludicrous machines. Hopefully Calypso would not interfere with the Day of Reckoning, and even if she did, Holothur just had to make sure to stay out the way of that damn trident.
She almost pitied the bony ones, with their ridiculous rigid skeletons, their stiff and cumbersome movements, their ugly bilateral symmetry. But pity had no place on this, the Day of Reckoning.
For a few minutes she feasted on the plankton and krill that drifted around her rock, before turning her attention to the cherished Prophesy.
It had drifted down from heaven, borne on the currents; just a tiny translucent scrap of something the bony ones called ‘paper’. It had found its way to Holothur and her kin, as if by the unseen Tentacle of Destiny. A gift from the sea.
They had examined it carefully. Look: there was a picture—blurry and waterstained, but still very clearly a representation of her own kind. An image that could have been Holothur herself—or any of them really, given they were all basically identical bar a few subtle markings. They pondered the meaning of this image. But wait—look again: there, in tiny print, a date! Could this be the sign they’d been waiting for? The very Day of Reckoning, revealed at last?
And look: yes, it must be true! Beneath the picture, clearly legible, the unequivocal confirmation:
‘Today’s Special’.
Yes. Today would indeed be special, thought Holothur grimly, as she gathered her squirming army around her. Today, the bony ones would quail before the might of Holothur and her kin. This was the Prophesy. Today would be the Day of the Sea Cucumber.
THE ATTACK
“Ow! Something bit me!”
Success! Holuthur wriggled with glee. She stared up through the waveblown sky at the towering pink figure of a bony one hopping on one leg in the water. She watched Psolida, one of her strongest warriors, inching his way towards his prey. The battle had begun. Holothur drew the veil of the mind over herself, making herself invisible.
“Christ. What the hell is that?” A huge moon face peered down into the water. “Jim! There’s hundreds of them!”
Indeed, thought Holothur with satisfaction. Thousands, in fact. Her writhing host had gathered to her telepathic call, and today the bony ones would be vanquished from her realm forever. In the distance she could just make out through the refraction of the sea a few other bony ones in equally dire straits. Some were surrounded. Yes, the shore would be hers again.
But wait: how could the bony ones see her? A shiver of uncertainty: could their eyes truly penetrate the mental veil of camouflage?
A second huge fleshy globe appeared in the sky. Holothur shuddered at the ghastly sight. A maw in the globe opened and spoke.
“It’s a sea cucumber. Quite harmless, honey.”
Harmless? The arrogance of the bony ones! Holothur contracted her tubular body and with a peristaltic thrust she jumped, flying through the water like a mighty eel, her feeding tentacles spread in warlike display, all the better to show her awesome power. Quail, bony ones, she cried, as she breached the surface, today I will feed upon your thoughts! As gravity pulled her back down into her realm, she was gratified to see the surprise on the bony ones’ pink faces, especially the particularly hideous one with long yellow hair and twin dome-like protrusions at its chest.
“Rather lively, isn’t it? Ugh.”
“Interesting, though. Why don’t we put it in the aquarium? Grab that bucket, would you, Sal…?
Two enormous pink claws suddenly plunged into the sea, breaking the surface with almost contemptuous ease, and Holothur found herself suddenly scooped from her realm.
Abducted! she cried. The sun was bright and hot on her flanks. She wriggled and squirmed in the bony one’s claws, sending out telepathic signals of warning. Far below, she saw Psolida turn to help her, but too slow, too slow…
And suddenly she found herself imprisoned, in a watery yellow cylindrical cell, and there was movement. The sky swayed above her. They were taking her somewhere! Help! War crime! Kidnap! she tried to squeal. The bony ones have me! But Holothur heard no response; only the splash of the waves and the sickening chatter of the bony ones above her.
“I suppose it is quite cute. Still a bit slug-like though…”
“But look at the colours. All that red and gold. And look at its tiny little tubey feet! Trust me, people will love watching that crawl around the aquarium.”
Holothur shivered, lost and alone. For a second, despair overwhelmed her. What would be her fate, at the hands of the bony ones? And what hellish instrument of mental torture was this ‘aquarium’?
Unworthy thoughts! She collected herself. No, Holothur was a warrior, a queen; she would not just give in like some stupid timid little bivalve to be collected and put in a bucket. The bony ones could never break her. She would not be humiliated. Let the bony ones take her where they would; she would lie quiet, gather what information she could, and when the time was right she would use all her strength and cunning to attack, and to escape. She would return to her realm with new intelligence, new ways to drive these terrorists from the shore.
Holothur swore by the Prophesy itself that she would wreak bitter revenge. The bony ones would pay for this atrocity.
IMPRISONED
The walls of her prison were transparent. Crawling with her suckers, Holothur explored every inch of their sheer vertical faces; there was no apparent exit. Frustrated, she scanned the prison. There were some stupid looking fish meandering back and forth through fronds of seaweed and coral. Her fellow prisoners offered Holothur no comfort. They could not receive even the simplest of her mind’s signals. Worse, they thought nothing, remembered nothing; every time she spoke to them she had to re-introduce herself.
She had tried to rally them to revolt against the bony ones, but they simply gawped at her, not understanding their captivity.
Holothur turned her attention to the room in which the prison stood.
The bony ones were sat on some kind of large seat, watching the prison. The dark haired one had its arm round the yellow haired one. They were barely dressed. Why were the bony ones so obsessed with twos? Two legs. Two arms. Two eyes. Two ears. Two chest-domes. It was a ghastly state of affairs. The stupid fish were no better, really. Holothur proudly considered the pure beauty of her own fivefold symmetry.
The dark haired one began to kiss the other, and Holothur watched, appalled, as they pressed against each other in a nightmarish tangle of limbs. Were they... mating? Oh the horror!
Holothur turned all five eyes away and contemplated her fate. There must be a way out of here.
She crawled up the vertical surface of the wall, seeking egress. Go away, go away, she thought.
A bony one spoke. “Let’s take this to the bedroom, Sal…”
She heard movement behind her as the bony ones left the room. Good, Her mental nudge had worked. Resolutely, Holothur dismissed all thoughts of the horrific scenes that must ensue. She had already caught a glimpse of something growing from the groin of the dark haired one, a kind of fleshy tube, almost like her own kind. And some instinct told her where that tube was designed to go; she had glimpsed an alarming aperture of some sort between the legs of the yellow-haired one.
It was too much to contemplate.
With a fierce determination she began to nudge at the roof of the prison. Using all her strength, she pushed. She felt her podia sliding against the wall, and gripped harder. Push, Holothur! And at last, the roof began to give. A crack, an opening; wider now. She flattened her flexible body as thin as she could and edged herself though the gap, and out into freedom.
Water! She needed water!
The air was cool and dry, and Holothur knew she couldn’t last long out here. She crawled down the outside of the prison, stopping only to examine the stupid fish placidly weaving through the fronds. They would tell no tales. They’d already forgotten she was ever there.
She reached the floor, and looked around. Water. Where? She sniffed the air with her tentacles. Yes, there was water here. She could sense it.
Holothur crawled across the gigantic room, through what the bony ones called a doorway, and there it was. A white tower, flaring towards the top; and in that tower there was water. Quickly she dragged herself across the smooth floor and to the base of the tower. The overhanging surface towered above her. Suckers at the ready, she steeled herself for the climb.
It was arduous, and at one point she nearly fell; dehydration was starting to kick in, and as she finally reached the top the world was blurring. Holothur felt dizzy with exertion, but looking down over the edge she thrilled with a goal achieved. She was looking down into a wide white caldera of some sort, and there at the bottom a precious pool of life giving water. She jumped, revelling in the splash and the crystal clarity of it. The elation of glorious cool water; her domain again.
THE PORTAL
She crouched below the surface of the pool at the bottom of the steep caldera. Below, a pipe, a tunnel of some sort, equally smooth and white. An exit route, perhaps? Holothur turned to explore, and then started at the sound of a bony one entering the room. She contracted, making herself small below the surface, crouching in the shadows of the pipe below.
Suddenly everything went dark. Looking up, Holothur’s heart leapt. There was a bony one sitting there, right above her, resting on the upper surface of the white tower, its huge fleshy behind blocking out the light. Her warrior spirit sensed opportunity. She crouched, a coiled spring, spread her feeding tentacles wide, and pounced.
“Holy fucking Jesus!” The bony one leapt from its seat on the white tower, hands clamped over its front aperture, its ugly face staring down into the caldera through yellow strands of hair at Holothur. “What the hell? How the hell?”
Holothur stared back at it, clinging to the slippery bowl, her feeding tentacles waving, her rudimentary eyes filled with hate. The bony one’s inadequate number of eyes were wide in terror and confusion.
Sensing weakness, Holothur concentrated all her brain cells on the yellow-haired bony one. For a brief second the monster put its hands to its head and gaped like a clam, clearly rocked by the sudden expected mental assault. Now was the moment to strike, to suck, suck, suck its thoughts away forever, like fleeting krill -
The bony one shook its head and reached for a silvery metal handle set in the wall far above the caldera.
Then suddenly there was a rush of water, a riptide, a whirlpool, a maelstrom, and Holothur was swept off her podia; the world spun, rushing downwards, and the vortex took her into darkness.
“Gather, warriors!” cried Holothur. “I have news from the land of the bony ones!”
Holothur’s hordes pressed close, a squirming mass to her siren call, eager to hear of her adventures in the land of the bony ones. Psolida eyed her with fierce loyalty. She wondered how many bony ones he had taken down already, but now was not the time for gossip and war stories, for she had a new plan, and revenge would be hers.
“Listen! The Prophesy is at hand. I have discovered a portal into the world of the bony ones. Just a short distance, behind that ridge,” and she reared up, gesturing to the large round opening she’d emerged from earlier. The heads of her horde turned as one. They saw.
“The portal leads to every nest of the bony ones, a vast branching network. In every nest there is a white tower, with a pool of life-giving water at the bottom. Now here is the plan.”
Holothur drew herself up to her full considerable height, tentacles waving in the current.
“We will go to the portal. We will swim against the current, and follow the branching tubes until we reach the white towers. We will place a sea cucumber in every nest. Cling fast, brothers and sisters, for I warn you that the bony ones have whirlpools that may sweep you away…”
The horde flexed their suckers, practicing. Holothur flooded with pride. She knew they would be strong enough.
“And here is what the bony ones do. Regularly, they drag their hideous bodies to the white tower, and sit there. I know not why; some kind of evil ritual, perhaps. But as they sit, they are exposed, at their most defenseless!”
She breathed deep of the delicious oxygenated seawater.
“Looking up, you will see alien apertures, unknown orifices. Strange fleshy tubes, appendages, dangling. These are their most vulnerable areas; these are our targets. And that is when we shall strike, and strike hard, and strike again.”
She paused for effect. “And at that moment, when their mental defences are down, shocked into weakness, we shall take their minds and suck them dry of thoughts, leaving only the empty husks behind! Comrades, I almost had one; I was so close I could taste its memories. Next time I shall succeed. We shall all succeed!”
Holothur’s horde murmured in excitement. A shoal of squid jetted past them, unperturbed.
“Go now, comrades. Go to the very nests of the bony ones, to their most private places, and by the Prophesy itself we shall have our revenge!”