Page 19 of Music of the Ocean

Thank the gods for autopilot and the ability to do just about anything in his dreams.

The crew in the shuttle bay vacated the area quickly. Lights flashed down the runway, warning of an upcoming launch. The urge to get to the ocean was all-consuming.

He jettisoned the clamps, powered the thrusters, and the shuttle bucked from the deck. Inertial compensation lagged, and he slammed back in the seat, pressure flattening his chest and compressing his lungs.

The screens flared, warning lights leaping in a half dozen colors—collision warning, comm override, unauthorized nav trajectory, hull breach risk.

He’d never felt more alive. Every nerve was singing, every muscle in his body quivered with the need to move faster, to reach the planet’s surface, to submerge himself in the water.

Saxby locked the controls for automated descent, the computer shrieking about safety protocols and command overrides, and focused on the viewport as he launched.

Haze shrouded the planet, but nothing could hide that impossible blue. The shuttle’s nose punched the upper atmosphere and the hull sang with heat and friction.

Saxby could feel the vibration through the seat, up the bones of his spine and into his jaw. The ocean yawned below, endless and hungry. The urge to dive into that expanse was so strong it left him shaking.

His vision doubled for a second, and the colors bled, the ship’s interior vanishing as he blinked. Suddenly, he was in the water already, salt and chill and darkness all around him. The water welcomed him this time, not just with the pull of need but with a sense of belonging, of homecoming.

He snapped back to reality as the shuttle’s alarms hit a new octave. Altitude: critical. No approach vector. Hull integrity: borderline. Manual override required. He was coming in hot.

Fuck that. This was his dream. He could do whatever he wanted.

Right?

The atmosphere blurred past, then the clouds, and the endless blue below as the shuttle screamed toward the surface. The nav computer shrieked, but he ignored it. It wasn’t like he needed to survive the landing. Something out there wanted him alive, and he trusted it more than himself.

Then, he hit the water hit, hard.

The world went white as the shockwave hurled Saxby against the harness, squeezing all the air out of his lungs. Every sensor on the shuttle went nuts as the cabin filled with the sound of metal tearing and the ocean rushing in.

For a moment, there was only the sound of raging water and his own heartbeat, slow and thunderous.

The cockpit filled, icy wetness clamping around his chest and flooding his mouth and nose. He tried to cough, but water poured in, burning cold, then hot, then cold again. Clawing at the harness, he fought to release it. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t—

Then, suddenly, he could.

His lungs seized, filled, and then accepted the water like it was oxygen. He choked once, twice, and then his body adjusted as something on both sides of his neck fluttered. The pain vanished, replaced by clarity.

His muscles stopped cramping. The headache was gone, and he was no longer air hungry. In fact, he felt normal. Better than normal, actually. He opened his eyes, and the water was so clear it was like seeing for the first time.

Holy shit, none of this had been a fever dream.

Chapter Eight

IT DIDN’T swim so much as surge, propelling itself through the ocean with a velocity that would’ve stunned any terrestrial biologist.

Every appendage served a purpose—paddling, steering, controlling microturbulence. It knew, by the song of the water and the strengthening mind link, exactly where the shuttle had breached the surface and sank. The taste of sharp metal lingered in its mind.

The impact had been seismic, a shock wave that had briefly confused the planktonic clouds and stunned the simpler organisms.

In the aftermath, particulate matter from the shuttle’s hull—paint flecks, sloughed ablative, minute bits of charred composite—descended through the upper layers of the water column in a glittering rain.

It rode through the debris, ignoring the stinging cinders as they brushed its sensory nodes.

Its human had come back on his own.

Chapter Nine – Saxby

FOR A long moment, Saxby didn’t know which direction was up or down. He floated in the pilot seat of the shuttle.