The One That Got Away (short story)
The One That Got Away was the seventh short story in the anthology Out of the Shadows, published by Arcbeatle Press.
Summary
A Selachian soldier appears in a lake in 2019 England and attacks a fishing boat: to her, a hunting vessel run by the enemy. She kills two anglers but a third survives, and stories of a 'lake monster' attract PROBE's attention. While the local police believe the killings to be a human, Maxie Masters can see a time anomaly over the lake.
Tasha goes out onto the lake with local volunteers; believing this is probably a bust, she spends much of her time flirting with Tom Walker, the Maritime Operations Officer. To everyone's surprise, the Selachian attacks the boat and kills one of the crew. Tasha drives it off with her gun so they can reach sure but the Selachian pursues them onto land. Luckily, the enemy's armour is already damaged and PROBE shoot into the 'wound', crippling. They're surprised to find a softer, weaker alien inside the armour and see it's dying from lack of water. They ask Tom Walker where they can take it and he directs them to the local aquarium- though he's still angry about his friend's death and thinks the alien should be left to die.
Tasha calls Giles for advice on their next step: the aquarium opens to the public at ten tomorrow.
Using the translation unit in the Selachian's armour, PROBE and Tom are able to talk to it. The Selachian accuses their race of invading her homeworld, slaughtering her people, and wiping her world out for fighting back, while Maxie is horrified to realise the species had cut their own tails off to better hardwire their nervous system into their armour. Maxie and Tasha explain she's travelled in time but the Selachian doesn't care, promising to slay humans to avenge her future.
Maxie proposes they simply take the Selachian out to sea and let it go because it can't hurt anyone without their armour. Tasha disagrees that the alien's talk to mass murder is mere shock and distress though, and suggests Maxie's falling for a monster's story when there's always "two sides" - something that angers Maxie and causes Tasha to back down. Instead, she tries to reason that they don't know for sure what the truth is and can't know how they'd even prevent a future atrocity without changing time for the worse.
The argument proves academic: a vengeful Tom Walker had been telling the Selachian that he hoped she was taken away and dissected. This led to her using a concealed explosive and escaped the fish tank, which will cause her to die but allows her a chance to choke Tom Walker to death. She tells herself he may be the ancestor of the human that found her homeworld and thus she's changing history. PROBE are forced to shoot her dead to save Tom, who doesn't care the last of its species has been killed.
Characters
Worldbuilding
- A local newspaper, the Western Morning News, has the headline "FURY FROM THE DEEP".
- Ash the rescue walker was jokingly quoting Jaws ("we're going to need a bigger boat") before the attack happened.
- The police sergeant jokingly refers to PROBE investigating the Loch Ness Monster.
- Tom is a Maritime Operations Officer.
- Maxie is continuing to pretend to be human and detecting time anomalies through a 'phone app' rather than seeing them. Tasha has noticed Maxie has used no such thing.
- The Selachian calls itself "a warrior of the Selachian Empire".
- The Selachian believes the Great Mother has sent it to Earth.
- Selachians have violet blood. It makes Rorschach patterns in the draining water.
Story notes
- As of writing, this is the chronologically last Selachian story (from their perspective) and takes place before the first.
Continuity
- The Selachian refers to humanity's destruction of her species in PROSE: The Final Sanction. However, the story refers to humans as being the species that culled her race and forced them to take up arms when previous stories by Lyons said Earth only met the Selachians until after they'd already become warlike.
- Maxie is sympathetic to the Selachian, and angry at the idea all stories have two sides, as she's also had to flee her home due to violence. (PROSE: She Came From Another World!)
External links
- Official The One That Got Away page at Arcbeatle Press
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