The Farpool
Copyright 2016 Philip Bosshardt
Chapter 1
It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.
Buddha
Scotland Beach, Florida
June 5, 2121
8:30 pm
Angie Gilliam squirmed a bit more but it was no use. Something sharp was pinching her butt. The weight of Chase Meyer on top of her made it hurt like crazy.
“Ouch…that hurts like hell…what the hell are you doing?”
“Sorry…just trying to…it’s the Cove. Water’s choppy today—“
Angie twisted and contorted herself to ease the pressure. That was better.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, huh?”
They had packed a meal and grabbed a boat from Turtle Key Surf and Board—that was Mack Meyer’s shop, Chase’s Dad. They had puttered along the coast off Shelley Beach until they came to Half Moon Cove—they always did it in Half Moon Cove—and found a secluded spot a few dozen meters off shore…right under some cypress trees. Always smelled great there.
Then Chase and Angie wolfed down their sandwiches, dialed up the right music on Chase’s wristpad so they could slam some jam properly and settled down to business.
That’s when the wind fetched up and the Cove got way choppier than it usually did. Most of the time, you could lay a place setting on top of the water and have dinner like home, it was so placid. But not today.
“Ouch…look…let’s give it a rest, okay…something’s not quite right…”
Chase groaned and pulled out of her, cinching up his shorts as he did so. He lay back against the side of the boat, and turned the volume down on his pad…whoever it was screeching on that go-tone needed a few more lessons. He checked the growing waves beyond the Cove and that’s when he spied the waterspout.
“Jeez…look at that!”
Angie pulled up her own shorts, ran fingers through her dark brown page-boy hair and sucked in a breath.
“Wow---that’s so wicked--“
There was a strange, wave-like agitation on the horizon just beyond the Cove, maybe a few kilometers out to sea, past Shell Key, easily. For a few moments, a slender multi-hued waterspout danced just above the waves, like a gray-green rope writhing and hissing on the horizon. It only lasted a few moments, then it collapsed. There was a calm period, then the ocean began seething again and became more agitated than before. Waves piled into the Cove, nearly upending the little boat. Before long, another spout had formed, all in an odd sort of rhythm.
Angie shuddered, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. The air had become noticeably colder and a breeze had picked up, blowing onshore. “Maybe we should get out of here…you know, like head back—“
Chase shook his head. “This is weird…I never saw anything like that. Could be a storm or something. Let’s go check it out.”
“Don’t be an ass—just let’s go back to the pier, before that thing starts up again.”
But Chase was already firing up the outboard. He untied the boat from the cypress knee they always used as an anchorage and steered her out of the Cove, heading for open water.
“Chase—what the hell are you doing…you can’t get near that thing…it’s a tornado, for Chrissakes! Go back to the pier.”
“I just want to see what’s causing all those waves…that’s not normal…just a little further out…I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
Yeah, like I never heard that before, Angie told herself. She knew better than to argue. They’d already argued that afternoon anyway, mostly over little things. Angie told him she wanted to go full time with Dr. Wright’s clinic when she graduated from Apalachee. Chase just shrugged. I want to make something of myself, she told him. What she didn’t say, because she didn’t have to was: you should too. But that was a lost cause.
Chase steered them further out to sea, through heavier chop, and Angie got more and more nervous.
“Chase, I’m sorry I said what I did…if you want to work at the shop—“
But his eyes were on something else. “Hey...what the hell is that?”
A pair of silvery shapes nosed out of the water just a few meters off their starboard bow. Rounded humps, slightly scaly, even plated like some kind of suit.
“Dolphins?” she offered. “At least, they’ve got enough sense to leave the area.”
“Those aren’t dolphins…too big. Maybe some kind of whale—there they are again—“ He stood up, letting the tiller go for a moment and pointed. Waves nearly knocked him overboard and he fell heavily right into Angie’s lap. They both rolled and scrambled to get back up.
Two glistening humps were less than ten meters away, riding along the surface. They were easily twelve to fifteen meters long, multiple dorsal fins, but the skin was all wrong. It wasn’t like anything Chase or Angie had ever seen. The skin wasn’t smooth, but textured, almost plated, as if the creatures were encased in some kind of armor. Spouts of air blasted into the sky as they glided along.
“What’s that…some kind of cage--?” Angie spotted something following the creatures. She realized it was attached; they were towing some kind of enclosure.
Chase saw it too. “I don’t know…but that’s a dolphin…look inside the cage.” He steered the boat alongside the convoy, holding off about five meters. Thrashing about inside an open-grill enclosure was a bottle-nose dolphin, maybe a calf, perhaps two meters in length. It banged and crashed inside, trying to get out. The other creatures in the armored suits were towing it, toward some kind of seething vortex that was churning up the surface of the Gulf, less than fifty meters away.
“Chase, maybe we ought to—“ But before Angie could complete her sentence, the convoy stopped dead in the water. One creature circled back, managing the cage with its beak and forepaddles. The other creature nosed further up out of the water, showing its entire forebody. It had forepaddles like a dolphin but the paddles had fingers, and grasped in the fingers was some kind of barbell-shaped device. The creature slapped back down in the water and began circling their small boat, now rising and crashing down on waves spiraling off the vortex nearby.
“Chase…Chase, what’s happening—“
Chase Meyer stood up and struck out at the creature with the end of his paddle. He missed and nearly went overboard. The paddle slipped out of his hand and went into the sea. “I don’t know…maybe they’re some kind of shark—I never saw anything like—“
That’s when the circling creature reared up again and aimed the barbell at their boat. There was a bright flash. Angie fell backward into the boat, landing on the picnic hamper, which crumpled.
Chase staggered, then was blinded again by another bright flash. Everything went dark. He pitched forward, clipping his chin on a bench and fell awkwardly into the bow. A dark tunnel opened up and he quickly lost consciousness.
A loud horn kept blaring and bleating and Chase fought his way back to something like a dull stupor. His chin hurt, and there was dried blood—he could taste it and feel it as he wiped his face. He sat up, wobbling around as the waves bounced the little boat back and forth. A big wall blocked out the early evening sun, now setting to the west. The wall had a big red stripe on it.
With a start, he realized he was staring at the gunwales of a Coast Guard cutter. He could dimly make out the words Medford on her sides.
Moments later, Angie came to. She sat up with a jolt, wide-eyed at the ship hove to less than twenty meters away.
“Jeez…what happened…where are we?”
That’s when they saw the raftbots circling their small boat. The drones circled them fo
r a few minutes, gauging distance, then closed in and looped towline over the bow end of their boat and took them in tow.
Five minutes later, the raftbots had towed them into the cutter’s well deck. Crewmen secured their boat and helped Chase and Angie out. They were whisked above decks to a sick bay crammed with beds and equipment. Corpsmen checked them out, head to toe.
After the examinations, Chase and Angie were escorted by two bearded yeoman to a room along a narrow passageway on the Medford’s main deck. It turned out to the captain’s stateroom.
“Stay here and don’t try to leave,” one yeoman told them. “Cap’n will be by in a few minutes.” They shut the door. Chase tried the lock—it was unlocked—but he could hear movement just outside. They were under guard.
“Guess we’re stuck,” he muttered. Angie was pale, still groggy from passing out. They sat down in adjoining chairs. She leaned her head on his shoulders.
“I don’t feel so good,” she admitted. “Everything’s swimming…just kind of dizzy.”
“I wonder—“ Chase stopped in mid-sentence. The door opened. It was Captain Rainey. The Medford’s commander came in, shutting the door behind him. He was tall, with a buzzcut and gray temples. A faint line of moustache arced over his lips. The moustache twitched like a mouse.
“Corpsman said you two will be okay…mind telling me what you were doing out in such rough seas? There were all kinds of weather warnings this afternoon.”
Chase started to tell them about the whirlpool and waterspout they had spotted, and the two armored fish with their cage and their—device, whatever it was—but something made him stop.
“Must have been the current, sir. We were just picnicking—“
“In the Cove,” Angie added. “We were heading back and—“
“Yeah, it was that current—“ Chase looked over at his girl friend. His eyes said: Don’t…not yet.
Captain Rainey took a peek out a nearby porthole. “We’ll be docking in a few minutes. Both your parents have been notified. I want you to make a statement when we get to shore. My exec will take you to Security—you can have something to eat and drink there--“ With that, Rainey left the stateroom, shaking his head. “Teenagers….”
The Medford put in at her dock at Apalachee Point Coast Guard Station ten minutes later. The ship’s executive officer was a jolly, barrel-chested nearly bald officer whose name plate read Dennison. Lieutenant Dennison was mainly interested in food, from his description of what awaited them.
“Oh, you’ll love it,” he told them, as they headed down the gangway to the pier. “This time of night…wow…doughnuts, bagels, sandwiches, Coast Guard coffee, that’ll grow hair on your chest…excuse me, ma’am…just follow me—“
They wound up at the Security shack, a small cabin just inside the main gate off Spencer Road. Lieutenant Melvin Betters was the base Security Officer. Just as Dennison had said, a table full of sodas, coffee and cookies and sandwiches occupied one corner of the conference room. Chase wondered if everybody rescued got the same treatment.
Chase and Angie’s parents occupied the other corner.
Maggie Gilliam was a chestnut-haired woman with too much makeup. She melted when she saw Angie and ran over, crushing the daylights out of her daughter.
“Oh, honey…honey…are you all right? Are you hurt?” She looked over at Betters. “She’s gonna be okay? My baby—“
Betters nodded. “They both checked out fine aboard ship.”
Chase smiled sheepishly at his Dad and Mom. Mack Meyer had a full black beard-it was something Chase was still working on, unsuccessfully—and tattoos up and down his arms. Mom Cynthia was tall and wiry, short blond hair, almost ascetic—she did marathons and triathlons almost every weekend, it seemed to Chase. Mack frowned, his arms crossed.
“Did you mess up my boat, son? I told you to take care of that boat, didn’t I?”
Chase swallowed. “The boat did fine, Dad. Nothing’s wrong with the boat, okay?”
Cynthia Meyer brushed Chase’s hair back from his eyes. That one lock would never stay back. “Are you hurt? Are you okay…you did check them out--?” Her eyes went from Betters to Dennison and back. “They’re not hurt--?”
“No, ma’am. The ship’s corpsmen did the exams. They seemed to be fine.”
Mack studied his son. “Mm-hmmm…mind telling me what happened, son?”
Chase described what they had seen: the strange whirlpool and churning in the ocean, the waterspout, the armored fish and their captured dolphin, the device-thingy that had flashed at them. “I blacked out after that,” he told them. He looked over an Angie, whose fingers groped for his and entwined their hands. “Her too—I don’t know what it was—“
“Oh, Chase, you can’t—“
Mack wasn’t buying it. “You were drinking, weren’t you? Or doing scope or something---that’s what it was.” To Lieutenant Betters: “You find any drugs or beer on board my boat? And where is it anyway…I rent that thing out three times a week…this is going to cost me a bundle, isn’t it?”
“Dad, listen, will you? We saw some kind of…I don’t know…fish, creatures—“
“They weren’t dolphins,” Angie added. “But they had captured a dolphin…it was in that cage…did you see the cage?”
Betters shook his head, picked up a paper from the table. “Report says nothing about a cage. Your boat was towed in, Mr. Meyer. You can get it back, after we do an inspection, the usual paperwork. It’ll be down by the dock.”
Mack Meyer scowled at Betters, then shook his head as he studied his youngest son. “I thought I taught you better than that, Chase. You don’t go fooling around at sea, especially when the weather’s so dicey.”
“But Dad, we saw creatures…they had a gun or something. They fired at us…you should be checking that out….”
“Maybe they were drug dealers?” Maggie Gilliam said. “Maybe they blundered into some kind of drug deal…that happens, doesn’t it?”
Betters chuckled. “It does, ma’am. But we checked the boards. There hasn’t been any activity like that around here for weeks. No, most likely they saw the waterspout that stirred up around Half-Moon Cove earlier this evening…had lots of reports about that…it was pretty impressive.”
Chase looked from Mack and Cynthia to Maggie Gilliam to Betters and back. “You don’t believe anything we’re saying.”
“Okay, son…” his Dad challenged him, “what did you see? Or think you saw-“
“I told you…two fish…they looked like dolphins but they were bigger. I don’t think they were whales or orcas or anything. Their skin was different…it was like they were wearing armor or a suit or something.”
“And that gun—“ Angie added.
“Yeah, it was…it looked like a barbell, two globes, one on each end of a bar. They aimed it at us…I don’t remember anything after that.”
Mack Meyer’s eyes met Lieutenant Betters. “Your men see anything out there?”
Betters shook his head. “Just the boat, floating around. There were some strong rip currents about two kilometers off shore of the Cove…that’s normal when a spout comes through.”
“But we saw it!’ Chase pleaded.
“You’re going to see the inside of your bedroom…that’s all you’re going to see,” Meyer warned him. “You’re grounded, for a month.”
“But, Dad—“
“You too, Angie,” decided Maggie Gilliam. She liked the Meyers. Chase was a good kid, if a bit impulsive. It didn’t take much imagination to figure what they had been doing.
Angie’s face was a mask of pain. “Mom, we didn’t do anything wrong.”
“There’s something out there that needs investigating,” Chase told them. “That’s what you should be doing…not persecuting us for just telling the truth.”
Cynthia cut in. “Chase, nobody’s persecuting anybody. It’s just that—“
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“Eight hours a day in the shop,” Mack decided. “Every day and I mean Sundays too. That’s what this little affair comes down to. First order of business tomorrow: clean up that boat and get her shipshape to rent out…that’s money, son. That’s food on the table and you’re an employee. Start acting like one.”
Betters signed off their releases and shook hands with the Meyers and Maggie Gilliam.
Mack Meyer said, “Sorry to have bothered you, Lieutenant. My son knows better. Or he will know better after this.”
Betters said, “I’m just glad they’re safe. This is what we’re here for.”
The kids were hauled out of the Security shack and off into waiting cars. As Chase climbed into the back seat of his Dad’s Jeep, he said, “Dad, will you listen to me? Something’s out there…something weird.”
“Yeah…well, it won’t be you…not for the next month. This ain’t Jaws, kid and I’m not buying it. You work for Turtle Key Surf and Board, you conduct yourself like an adult. Maybe after some hard work and long hours, you won’t be seeing any more armored fish with ray guns. Just tourists and their dollars, that’s all that matters now.”
Chase sank back in the seat, glum and dejected. He watched Angie and Maggie Gilliam speed off in her convertible. Their house was a bungalow-cottage kind of place, up by the Gainesville Highway, on Fairwinds Trail. The Meyers occupied a ranch style prefab on Rainbow Court, maybe a fifteen minute walk from the shop.
Chase Meyer closed his eyes as they drove home. Mostly it was to avoid having to look at his mother, who just stared at him over the back of the front seat, like he was an exhibit or something.
Waiting to see if I’ll grow horns or something, he decided. Physically, he knew he and Angie were okay. They were just fine. But what had they seen? Had he imagined it after all…maybe all the waves and the winds and the excitement over the spout? Maybe it was a small pod of orcas, after all. That had to be it.
But even as he said that to himself, he knew it wasn’t true. First chance he got, he was going to grab a boat, maybe even some scuba gear from the shop, and check out that area outside Half Moon Cove for himself.
He wanted to have a closer look at that barbell weapon too…sport fishermen would just die for a gadget like that.