Undercurrents by Robert Buettner

my injured fist, grimaced, but hooted at the scorpion anyway. “End of the line, dumb ass!”
    Ten minutes later, the dumb ass and I continued to drift out to sea locked together, only one of us really fighting anymore. He may have been uncomfortable in salt water. He may have feared open-water predators bigger than himself. But he was too dumb to let go of a meal once he had clamped onto it. No wonder his kind were headed for extinction.
    I pushed myself up against the bug’s claws and stretched my neck. The waves were only a couple of feet high, but that was enough to obscure my vision. I couldn’t see any friendlies. If they had hung around the landing zone, if they had ever been at the landing zone, they probably couldn’t see me.
    If night fell and the friendlies gave me up for dead, I might as well be. The distance between me and my objectives would be as unbridgeable as the light-years I was from home. I might as well have hit the mud at terminal velocity, or become bug food back in the swamp.
    I was down to one option. I hated to use up my one and only signal pyrotechnic. If a bomb explodes in the ocean and no one hears it, does it make a sound?
    I eyed the sinking glow of the sun beyond the overcast. Time was running out.
    Digging into my suit’s thigh pocket, I tugged out the pyro signal canister and hefted it. It felt heavier than the Mark II I was used to. I read the stenciled instructions.

    MARK IV ENHANCED SEARCH AND
    RESCUE PYROTECHNIC DEVICE

    PULL PIN AND THROW

    Well, that part remained idiot-proof. There was more.

    CAUTION: DO NOT DEPLOY
    WITHIN THIRTY YARDS OF PERSONNEL
    OR CONCUSSION-SENSITIVE EQUIPMENT

    Seriously? It was a glorified firecracker, for God’s sake. I reduced the gain on my helmet audio and pulled the pin. Then I chucked the canister into the water, where it splashed down four yards away.
    Foom!
    Even muted, the sound knifed my ears. Blue sea spouted against the gray sky, and threw me and the bug twenty feet.
    We splashed back into the water, sank, then surfaced in a froth. I said, “Wow.”
    A pall of purple marker smoke blotted out the daylight as it drifted across me.
    Not us. Me.
    The bug was gone. Maybe dead. Maybe scared. I didn’t care which.
    I was free at last. I floated on my back and paddled my unencumbered feet. “Woo hoo!”
    The purple smoke dissipated.
    I stopped woo-hooing and listened to the waves as they metronomed against my helmet. There was no other sound, such as a friendly voice.
    I trod water and thrust my uninjured arm above the wave crests so I could periscope the vicinity with my finger cam. I didn’t see land. The estuary outflow had carried us farther than I had realized.
    I was free. But I was alone. And it was getting dark. I said to nobody, “Oboy.”
    At least it couldn’t get worse.
    My foot felt cold. And wet. The pyro’s concussion had ruptured a suit seal. I was sinking slowly, but I was sinking.
    Blup .
    I turned my head as a dead fish bobbed to the surface alongside me. They had been serious about the thirty-yard safe radius.
    Blup . Blup . Blup .
    Two minutes later I stopped counting the concussed, belly-up Paleozoic fish that surrounded me.
    I periscoped another brief snapshot. Silver in the distance, a fin that appeared to be attached to something bigger than the scorpion cut the water. It was inbound toward me and my fish fry.
    The brief about open-water fauna I had paid attention to. Tressen sea rhizodonts reached lengths of up to twenty-five feet, had four hundred needle teeth per jaw, foul dispositions, and insatiable appetites. They ate pterygotid eurypterids, if any ventured beyond the swamps, for breakfast.
    I trod water and reached for my bush knife as the cold of inflowing water in my suit reached my knee.
    I had been wrong. It could get worse.

Fourteen
    Ten minutes after I spotted the first fin, the first rhiz brushed against my thigh plate as it swooshed past in the twilight, mouth agape to scoop dead fish into a lower jaw