Hammerhead

[Mal]

I'm obviously not known for my short stories or actual stories at all, more like concepts and synopses. But during my time away from Brackenwood, I dabbled with a possible animated movie idea. Since my concepts are somewhat long and elaborate, I'm breaking it up into three parts so that you guys don't get too overwhelmed.

The premise for it is Alien/Aliens in a steampunk setting. Whether you want to call it a tribute, inspired by, or rip-off is up to you. None of them are pretty much wrong.

I give you Hammerhead

Characters

Arthur Holmes: Fish’s father. Killed by crew of the Scarlet Ann. Wife died of Cancer.
Cecil Grayson: First mate aboard the Bronco
Estelle Bannon: Cook aboard the Bronco.
Fish Holmes: Real name Isabelle. Arthur’s 7-year-old daughter.

Capt. Nathaniel Cervares: Captain of the Nausicaa. Wise and patient
Orville: First mate aboard the Nausicaa. Tough-talking, heavy-built, respectful man
Shorty: Wiseass mechanic aboard the Nausicaa.
Giles: Navigator aboard the Nausicaa. Kind of a dick, but a valuable ally.
Fletcher Crowe: Medic aboard the Nausicaa. Jovial, but a tough individual
Dr. Clara Verne: Science Officer aboard the Nausicaa. French
Kibo: Cook aboard the Nausicaa. African.
Dodson: Chief Diver aboard the Nausicaa. Has a mechanical right arm
Joyce: Female Crewmember aboard the Nausicaa. Black Irish
Carson: Crewmember aboard the Nausicaa. Norwegian
Edward: Newest crewmember aboard the Nausicaa

Prologue

In the distance of a dry, arid desert, we see three figures on horseback walking across the sandy, rolling terrain. We then switch views to discover a man waiting on a cliff. He’s of short stature, not much more than 5’2”. He has dark, medium-length, brown hair and tan skin. He a large pair of pocket-ridden shorts, a pair of leather sandals, a few tribal necklaces, a humble rosary, and industrial goggles; nothing else. His arms rest loosely behind and over a large, mechanical, long-range rifle resting against his shoulders, across his back. He spits and lazily grabs his rifle by the handle and takes aim. Viewing through the scope, we see he is targeting one of the men on horseback. He adjusts his head for a clearer view. Blam! He fires and discharges the case via bolt-action. Blam! Again. Blam! The gunshots echo across the open desert.

All three of the horsemen are now dead. The horses run in panic. Through his scope, the rifleman sees a loaded saddlebag on one of the horses. He gives a sigh of frustration and fires again.

Memories

A train chugs its way along an elevated railroad through an industrialized Victorian-style city. It stops at the station and a crowd of dirty, lower-class laborers pile out onto the platform. Among the crowd is a man with an aged face, broad shoulders, and thin, brown hair. With him is his daughter, a young girl at the age of seven years; pretty, green eyes and straight, brown hair. She clings to her father’s hand as they make their way through the crowd. They get out of the station, into the streets of the bustling city. The daughter spies food displayed through a window of a restaurant and licks her lips. But her father pulls her away, saying they can’t afford it.

[The following is the basic idea of a previously long-ass chunk of the story that somehow got deleted because Microsoft Word is a FUCKING BITCH!!!!!!]
The girl’s dad meets up with a friend named Jasper. They are both out of work because the steel mill they worked for burnt down. They board a passenger ship for America in search of work. These scenes are interrupted several times by shots of the girl in the brig of a late 19th century pirate ship. Cecil and Estelle, two crewmembers aboard a tramp steamer, get captured. Estelle is almost raped by the pirates but the first mate stops them, saying that the captain gets first dibs. The captain chooses to do so the next day. Before the next day comes, though, the pirates get attacked and killed off ninja-style by 3 goggled divers who climb onto the ship from out of the water. It’s awesome. One of these divers has a mechanical arm. These divers turn out to be Dodson and friends. Cecil, Estelle, and the girl are rescued.
[FUCK YOU, CLIPPY!!!]

Dodson

Cecil, Estelle, and the little girl sit against the rail of the ship as Dodson and another swimmer (Carson) move around some cargo on the deck. Cecil explains to Dodson that his and Estelle’s ship was attacked by the pirates and they were brought aboard, as the only two survivors. When asked about the little girl, he replies that she was in the brig when they came on, and that she’s not much of a talker.

Dodson, correctly guessing the name of their tramp steamer, the S.S. Bronco, tells them that his boat discovered the raided ship several nautical miles away and tracked the pirates’ ship, the Scarlet Ann, in order to avenge the crew, as well as reclaim its cargo. The female swimmer, Joyce, joins them on the deck, returning from the deckhouse. Dodson tells them that they are welcome to board their boat until they reach port, suggesting that the captain will surely permit them. Cecil, looking out to the sea around them, says he doesn’t see another boat anywhere. Then, a massive, spectacular submarine slowly surfaces next to the Scarlet Ann. Water pours off the sides of the submersible. Cecil, Estelle, and the little girl stand in awe. Dodson presents the Nausicaa to the three onlookers.

The Nausicaa

The six of them board the top of the Nausicaa. Two men wait to meet them. One of them is Orville: a tall, boxer-looking man, and the other Nathanial Cervares: a rough, dark-skinned man with a grizzled jaw and a blue jacket. Cervares approaches the group, introducing himself as the captain of the Nausicaa and Orville as his first mate. He welcomes Cecil, Estelle, and the girl aboard his vessel and tells them they will be provided with individual bunks and, to the group’s delight, hot showers.

Estelle is helping the little girl get settled in her bunk, but it’s like talking to a wall. She assures her that nothing bad is going to happen again, and asks once more what her name is. The little girl tells her that the pirates called her Fish. Estelle asks her what people who know her call her, to which she replies that “It doesn’t matter, now. They’re all dead.” Estelle, not knowing what to say to something like that, just hugs her.

The captain shows Cecil and Estelle around the submarine. It has all the features of a kick-ass steampunk interior, though it is relatively worn-and-torn. Cervares mentions that the boat was in much better shape when he first got it, but maintaining it with such a small crew proves difficult. They are introduced to several of the crewmembers. Kibo, the boat’s African native cook; Giles, the boat’s navigator; Edward, the newest member of the crew; Clara, a beautiful, young French woman who, holding a doctorate degree, acts as the science officer aboard the ship; and Fletcher, a charismatic, ex-navy black man who serves as the medic aboard the Nausicaa.

Estelle finishes showering and goes to check on Fish. Finding the bunk empty, she wanders down a few hallways in search of her. She comes to the door to the mechanical room, which is slightly open. Hearing someone inside, she slowly opens the door. The room is littered with mechanical parts. A giant, covered engine dominates the space. A hammock hangs from the ceiling. Before she can even get her head in all the way through the door, a man pops out from above the doorway, hanging from a pipe running along the ceiling, and thrusts the barrel of a revolver in Estelle’s face, shouting something like a foreign language.*

The man is the same one we saw in the opening prologue scene. His appearance hasn’t changed a bit. Estelle frantically tries to explain herself as the man drops down to the floor, keeping his gun pointed at Estelle the entire time. He breathes heavily, but after hearing Estelle’s brief excuse, he figures her as not a threat and lowers the gun, safeties it, and tosses it onto a nearby desk, also covered with miscellaneous little mechanical doohickeys, reasoning that she’s “too pretty to shoot, anyway.”

The man, short and shirtless, tells Estelle to enter the room, saying that she’s probably not supposed to be out in that part of the boat. Noting his bad manners, he introduces himself as “Shorty,” the boat’s mechanic. Shorty uses the mechanical room as his bunk and workshop, and was working on a rather frustrating project when Estelle interrupted him. Estelle quietly notices that many of the walls, pipes, and doorway all have lots of rosaries and crosses hanging from them; widely varying in craft and worth. The two talk for a bit, but not for too long, as Estelle still wants to find Fish. Shorty offers to accompany her, to help her out and make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble.

They find her, with relative ease, in the cargo hold/moon pool. They decide to stop at the dining room since chow is going to be served soon. Cecil is already there, talking to Kibo. Kibo kindly gives Fish something small to nibble on until dinner, telling her she looks skinny as hell. Shorty takes a flask from his pocket and takes a swig, evoking a conversation (on whether one with a crucial task such as fixing a submersible should be drinking) amongst all present, minus Fish. Shorty defends himself, implying that as long as he’s the only one who can keep the Nausicaa running, he’s allowed to follow his own rules of conduct. At that moment, the rest of the crew enters the dining room, including the captain, at which Shorty quickly tosses the flask across the floor and acts casual.

A Crew Like a Family

At the dinner table, Cecil again explains how they got there and Cervares talks more about the Nausicaa. Giles, joining late, lets the captain know that they are on course for their planned destination. Cecil asks where that is, exactly. Cervares politely refuses to disclose the location, but says that they will be able to port at Puerto Rico in 3 days. Clara expresses interest in stopping in the West Indies when they get a chance in order to study some of the endemic fauna. This provokes a discussion of evolution and Darwinism, with Edward, who appears to have a wealth of knowledge pertaining to the subject, joining Clara to defend evolution, though being somewhat more assertive than her, while the rest of the crew tends to treat it as a joke. Overall, the crew feels like a family, something Estelle and Cecil admire.

Change of Plans

A tropical storm headed for the Gulf of Mexico prevents the Nausicaa from allowing the passengers off at Puerto Rico. In light of this turn of events, the crew holds a meeting, without the presence or knowledge of their passengers. They discuss the complications that their guests create in their previous plans, which are not directly stated for the audience. It is implied that the Nausicaa is one to move to claim something of extreme value, and must do so quickly, as they suspect they are not the only ones after it. The issue the crew faces is whether to wait out the storm and drop the passengers off at a port afterward and then pursue their prize, or to go for whatever it is they want, with the passengers still on board, and risk them knowing certain details they shouldn’t. After a somewhat tame argument and vote, the crew elects to go after their prize with the passengers on board. They tell the passengers their plan, but do not mention what business they will be conducting before they attempt to port. When asked what it is the crew normally does to sustain itself, Cervares gives the vague answer of “venture salvaging.”

Cecil, thinking long and hard about it, and realizing that he has nothing to go back to, considers trying to become a permanent crewmember aboard the Nausicaa. He tells this to Estelle, and asks if she’ll join him if he does, but she says she probably wouldn’t because she feels she’d need to take care of Fish, and doesn’t think the Nausicaa would be a good environment for the girl or whether she even wants to be there in the first place.

Cecil goes outside into the hall and argues with himself about the decision. He sees Edward, remembers that he is the newest crewmember, and asks him how he’d go about joining the crew. Edward casually advises him against it, but after Cecil presses a little more, Edward tells him to talk to the captain.

Cecil does. Cervares seems skeptical and hesitant, but he acknowledges that he is always in need of new hands on the boats. (It was previously made a point that most submersibles, which are almost universally smaller than the Nausicaa, require a much larger crew than the measly 11 that currently serve.) He asks if Cecil has any skills that can be of use. Cecil claims to have previous experience in the boiler room of the Bronco back when he first joined its crew. Cervares looks him over and admits he could be of some use, and agrees to give him a chance if he really wants it, but warns him he won’t be making a full share for a while.

The Prize

Estelle enters the room. She tells Cervares Fish told her that she thinks the crew of the Nausicaa might be pirates, as evidence from the small crew, shabby state of the submarine, and ulterior motives. Though Estelle is somewhat suspicious herself, she is grateful for their care and is careful with her words. She claims to trust the crew, but needs to tell Fish something to calm her fears, and doesn’t think it right to lie to the girl. Cecil, too, becomes concerned.

Cervares, conflicted, is hesitant to reveal information, but soon relents and lets the two in on their current task. About a month ago, the crew acquired some documents from some pirates in the Arabian Desert. These documents were a map and a torn journal entry of a Spanish explorer as a vague record of the lost city of Ta’ok Ma: The last remnants of a civilization no one has come into contact with or even heard of in over a thousand years (logically an exaggeration, but let’s forgive the nice captain.) According to the reference in the journal entry, the city was home to a highly revered relic referred as the “Crown of God” or something along those lines.

Due to the pirates’ troubles within the politics of organized piracy, some other groups of pirates became aware of the existence and potential wealth of Ta’ok Ma. Not knowing whether they had “the only chart to the uncharted island,” the Nausicaa crew had to move relatively fast in order to claim the discovery and relic first. They are on a simple, yet not-so-simple, treasure hunt. The sensitivity of the undertaking within the pirate “community”(?) is why they kept such secrecy, as well as the involvement of passengers who would return to mainland civilization post-discovery with information on the whole incident.

Fish appears at the doorway to the room, supposedly having eavesdropped. Estelle tries to convince her to go back to her cabin or to go bother Shorty, offering to go with her. Once they exit the room, Fish asks Estelle what would happen if the Nausicaa is not the first boat to find the ruins, and if so, what would happen if the pirates were still there. Estelle comforts her by asserting that the crew is obviously capable when it comes to dealing with pirates, or else they wouldn’t have been rescued.

An hour or so later, Giles calls the captain up to the bridge. When Cervares gets there, Giles enthusiastically activates the lights around the submarine, illuminating the clear blue water around them. Cervares is speechless as an entire city’s worth of ruined structures come into view, littering the ocean floor. They have found the breathtaking remains of Ta’ok Ma. Cervares calls everyone up to see it and their reaction is predictably similar. Fish presses her face against the glass like a kid on their first trip to the aquarium. They scan the floor looking for places of importance to guess the location of the Crown. Clara asks them to move slower, so she can sketch some of the sites in her journal or something. Giles tells her he’s decreasing the speed, when in reality he does absolutely nothing.

After a brief demonstration of collar-like radio devices Shorty invented for the diving crew, (from which he gets very little recognition) Dodson, Carson, Joyce, Orville, and Edward prepare their diving suits and get ready to descend into the water from the Nausicaa’s moon pool. Edward is nervous, as this is his first dive with the Nausicaa.

Outside, the diving crew explores the ruins around what is thought to be a temple or something. After a few technical problems with Edward, they stumble upon a chamber that holds a structure with what they assume to be the Crown. The crown is shaped like the skull of a mythical beast (facing up from where the head of the wearer would be, instead of forward) with two long protrusions coming out from the sides, like large horns curving inward, but with large, angled sections rising out towards the sides from the contours of the horns (like the teeth of a large gear.) The dive team notes the awesome masonry and carved murals covering the walls around the chamber. On the other side of the radio, Clara becomes annoyed that she is not able to study the said murals, or the rest of Ta’ok Ma, for that matter.

After a profound realization by Dodson (The crown is too large for any human to wear and not be crushed by the weight, therefore confirming that the Crown belongs to a God and not to any king, because no man can wear it) the dive team retrieves the artifact and hooks it up to some cables, and it is slowly pulled up through the moon pool.

Cecil is helping Shorty move some equipment and supplies around in the cargo room. Estelle is also helping with securing the equipment. Fish is also in the room, quietly playing with Shorty’s goggles. We enter in the middle of a conversation between the three involving the crew’s acceptance of Fletcher and Kibo. (The two black men.) Meanwhile, Fletcher and Clara are busy fixing a long, loose pipe along the ceiling of the infirmary. Cervares tells Shorty over the intercom that the dive team is coming up.

The team gets the Crown into the cargo bay, supporting it with cables so that it’s suspended in the air. The crew admires the crown. Meanwhile, we get flashes of views from underwater of something(s) swimming through the ruins of Ta’ok Ma. Giles sets the Nausicaa to cruise slowly and he and the captain join the crew in the cargo bay. Outside, in one of the underwater flashes, the thing clings on to the side of the Nausicaa. The crew hears the contact from the inside. Shorty sends Edward to go check on the pressure gauges to see if anything is damaged and Cervares sends Kibo to get Clara and Fletcher.


Part 2 coming soon.

[Foster]

Okay, you twisted my arm, I'll review your story.    I'm actually glad you did, it's off to a good start.  The bones are still showing, but that's alright.

It follows a pretty basic premise, what with a misfit crew and some newcomers being after fortune and glory.  Not a problem yet, but don't get caught being too derivative.  Having inspiration from other works, and using homages to those works is not a bad thing per se, but make sure to make this your own story.  The premise can be close so long as you do something different.  Otherwise you're just changing the setting to a story that has already been told.

That being said, I'm wondering about the setting.  Steampunk is cool, but how exactly is your world different from ours?  At what point did the histories diverge, if they ever shared it?  You should have that sort of thing clear in your own mind, even if you don't divulge everything to the reader out front.

Can't wait for the next installment.

[Mal]

Fuckin' FINALLY! Now I can upload some more of this damn thing. S'been burning a hole on my harddrive for months...

In terms of story uniqueness and setting, this is to the Alien series as A Fistful of Dollars is to Yojimbo.

Or as The Departed is to Internal Affairs.

Only without the interesting parts....

Yes. i have a list of notes about the surrounding world and all that technical stuff, mostly things i wrote down while I was still writing this thing so that I wouldn't forget them. I'll post 'em later along with a bunch of quotes. I just don't want to give anything away. In fact you'll occasionally see asterixes in the text. Those are linked to the notes that you can't see.

The Hunt Begins

A minute or so after the two have left, Joyce, who is standing by the moon pool, is suddenly attacked by the thing. It is a ferocious creature with a strange and dragon-like body**, though rubbery like a shark’s instead of rough scales. It has the tail of a shark, and two menacing dorsal fins on its back. Its claws and feet are dinosaur-like. The front half of its body is somewhat scaled or plated with an unknown armor, with some spikes formed on the arms and shoulders. Its head is completely armored and has a long, protruding chin and jawbone. It has four slit-like eyes, and a pair of horns set on the side of its head that curve out and forward. This creature is hereinafter referred to as a hammerhead.

The hammerhead attacks Joyce briefly, ambushing out of the moon pool and biting onto her leg, and pulling her back down into the water. The entire crew is surprised and completely freaked out. Joyce is holding on for dear life to the side of the moon pool screaming for help. Carson, Cervares, Shorty, Dodson and Orville rush over to Joyce, and try to help her. Estelle runs to get Fish, but a second hammerhead bursts through the walls and cuts between them. It lunges at Estelle, but Giles pulls a revolver from his side and shoots at it. The bullets damage its armor, but it is by no means dead or even stopped. Its attention is however shifted to Giles, who has used all of his bullets.

Cecil grabs Fish and runs up the stairs towards the door, telling Estelle to follow. Joyce stops screaming and the crew manages to pull her up, but everything below her torso is gone and she is dead. The hammerhead leaps out of the water, tackling Carson. Dodson grabs a small, unsecured crate and launches it at the hammerhead that just killed Carson. The crate breaks over the hammerheads back, stunning it.

Orville grabs a metal pipe and lures the other hammerhead away from Giles. The hammerhead lunges at Orville. He counters with the metal rod and a short skirmish breaks out between the two, but Orville is completely outmatched and ripped to shreds. The water of the moon pool is spilling out onto the floor and the cargo bay is slowly flooding. Amidst the chaos, Edward yells through the radio system that he thinks the hull in the cargo bay is breached, seeing the pressure gauge for that are dropping significantly. The survivors high-tail it out of there and try to lock the door to the cargo bay behind them, but the previously stunned hammerhead follows and attempts to attack them, getting itself caught in the door.

Cecil, Cervares, Giles and Dodson struggle with the door, trying to close it, but the hammerhead persists. Shorty orders Edward to seal the cargo bay chamber from the engine room and within seconds, the emergency locking door slides down between the doorframe onto the hammerhead, decapitating it and sealing the cargo bay. The blood of the creature splashes onto Giles, and he freaks out for a few seconds. The other beast is trapped inside the flooding room and the crew tries to collect themselves. Clara, Kibo, and Fletcher come rushing to the scene.

Biology Lesson

The crew is gathered around in the infirmary. They have also apparently brought the severed head of the hammerhead with them. Clara, who has apparently studied it, discusses possible explanations for the biology of the creature, with Edward listening through the radio. Among the crew’s speculations for how it survives in these depths and can still function completely out of water is that it is amphibious, living in both the sea and underwater caverns with air pockets; possibly even dry pockets within the structures of Ta’ok Ma. Clara states that the armor is actually a developing shell, with material similar to a conch shell, only much denser.

The fact that the shell is only partially covering the animal suggests that it is developing or losing the shell feature through evolution. One thing the crew did not notice before is that the jaws of the hammerhead is like none they’ve ever seen: It has two spiral sets of teeth on the top of its mouth and a larger, single spiral on the bottom of its jaw which fits between the two like a natural can-opener. (Similar to the prehistoric Helicoprion shark, but they don’t know of that.)

After a comment from Clara that she’s never seen anything like it before, Dodson claims he has, saying it distinctively resembles the Crown of God and suggests that the people of Ta’ok Ma knew about these creatures. This brings up the issue of whether the creature is evolving from land to water, or from water to land, but they cannot conclude anything.

The captain orders that the crew go get their weapons, and after some clarification from Shorty of where to shoot and not rupture the hull, the crew goes to load up. Using an assortment of weapons consisting of revolvers, shotguns, (Giles and Kibo saw theirs down) and Brody SMGs. Armed and ready, the crew splits up into teams to hunt down the hammerheads. Shorty tells Edward to stay in the maneuver room in case they need him to remotely activate/reroute/control anything. The teams consist of Dodson, Giles, and Shorty; Cervares, Clara, and Kibo; and Fletcher and Cecil. The original plan called for Estelle and Fish to wait in their cabin, but Fish did not feel safe. Since the hammerheads have shown that they can burst through walls, Cecil relents and allows them to join him and Fletcher.

Locked and Loaded

Fletcher’s group takes the second deck, Dodson’s group takes the third deck, and Cervares’ group takes the fourth (bottom) deck. After some tense searching and a few close calls, the hammerhead ambushes Cervares’ group through the ceiling. It lands on Kibo and slashes him with its claws, but cannot finish the kill as Cervares and Clara pepper it with bullets. Wounded, the hammerhead retreats and escapes. Cervares and Clara drag the mortally wounded Kibo back to the infirmary where Clara tries to treat him with her limited knowledge as a physician. Cervares contacts Dodson’s group with the radio in the infirmary (only Dodson and Edward have collars) and tells them the hammerhead is on the bottom deck.

However, something rattles the boat. Water slowly pours into the halls through some small vents. A pipe in the ceiling of the infirmary breaks and partially falls, piercing and jamming the door. Cervares can only open the door a few inches. The three are trapped in the flooding room. Dodson’s group is shaken by the strange occurrence, and Edward says they have another hull breach on the lower deck; he thinks in one of the port pressurization rooms. Dodson turns the collar to speaker and hands it to Shorty. Shorty tells him to remotely shut the door to that room to see if it stops the flooding, which it eventually does. Giles fears that another hammerhead has gotten in. The captain radios to the group that they are trapped in the infirmary and the crew rushes to help them, but before they can get there, Kibo dies from his wounds.

When the crew gets to the space outside the infirmary, they realize that undoing the damaged door is beyond their ability, and are going to try an alternative way to get the captain and Clara out. Shorty then realizes that due to some of the damage done by the damaged hull, if the lower deck floods, then the Nausicaa’s structural integrity might fail. This puts pressure on the crew to work fast. Edward realizes this, too, and tells the crew he’s going to send out a distress call. The crew, stating they’re in British water, demand that he doesn’t for reasons known only to the crew. The group leaves a spare incandescent bomb and a cigar with Cervares and Clara as they go to do their thing.

Meanwhile, Fletcher’s group is attacked by another hammerhead. The beast comes between the group and Fish. It lunges at Fletcher, but Cecil blasts it with a shotgun first, damaging its shell armor. Cecil tells Fish to run the other way. The hammerhead uses its heavy tail to knock Cecil into a wall. Fletcher uses a suppressing fire to keep the hammerhead back and hidden while the group escapes and locks themselves in the food/beer storage room just seconds before the hammerhead can get to them. Instead of crashing through the door, the hammerhead turns and begins to stalk Fish. After several tense moments of a slow game of cat-and-mouse, Fish is able to hide inside the walls and evade the hammerhead.

Dodson’s group sets up a base of operations in the torpedo room and set up another radio terminal. Shorty decides that he might be able to climb through the air ducts and enter the infirmary with supplies to disconnect the pipe from the inside. Taking a wrench, hatchet, and Dodson’s radio collar with him, he enters the cramped ventilation system.

[Foster]

Okay, read that bit.  More.

[Mal]

As you wish.

The Nausicaa Revealed

Fletcher’s group decides to sneak out of the storage room and into the mess area and Cecil leaves alone to go find Fish, promising to meet up in the kitchen. In the mess area, Fletcher and Estelle finally gain access to a radio terminal and contact Dodson and Giles.
Cecil is looking for Fish. He thinks he hears something and slowly creeps towards the source of the noise. Without warning, he is shot in the back of the head.

The killer is revealed to be Edward, who holsters his revolver, quips that if Cecil only knew better, things wouldn’t turn out they way they did. He then finds Fish moments later and coaxes her out of her hiding place, telling her she can trust him. They return to the engine room.

The crew suddenly feels the Nausicaa start to move in the water. Dodson and Fletcher both demand to know what Edward is doing. Edward then reveals to Estelle over the radio a well-guarded secret the crew has been keeping from her and the other passengers regarding the Nausicaa: They were privateers hired illegally by the American government to steal the Nausicaa from the British Navy. He and the crew pretty much reveal that the submersible is the prototype of a new secret weapon of the British Navy, which explains why the Nausicaa is more advanced than any known submarine at the time. However, the crew never gave the Nausicaa (or the HMS Ulysses as Edward calls it) to the Americans and kept it for themselves. This explains why the Nausicaa was in such bad shape, (it was designed for a much larger crew) why the crew did not approve of hailing a ship in British waters, and why Edward was apparently a very adept apprentice to Shorty, (he was given access to the blueprints by the British government when being trained for the undercover mission) and why Edward is so knowledgeable about things like evolution or whatever (He was very well educated before working in the government as a spy.)

Edward taunts the crew and simultaneously tries to convince Estelle that he is the good guy and the crew is nothing but a bunch of hypocritical pirates. Estelle is not moved, however, neither initially nor after she learns of Cecil’s death. Edward, self-righteous to the extreme, claims that by holding Fish in his care, he is protecting her innocence from the crew. Edward tries to trap the crew from moving around by locking down all of the chambers on the second and third deck and in a devastating, bastardly blow, he opens the flood doors on the lower deck, allowing it to begin flooding again, which would inevitably drown Clara and Cervares. Enraged, the crew curses Edward and try to regroup with each other in the kitchen. Shorty, desperate to save the captain and Clara as the clock is ticking, switches tasks as he attempts to manually close the flood doors from the deck itself.

The captain and Clara desperately attempt to escape the flooding room, but it is all in vain. A hammerhead tries to attack them from the jammed door. The captain fires his last two shots at it from his revolver, but the hammerhead hides behind the steel door and continues to gradually break through the door more and more until it is inevitable that it will get in and kill the two. Realizing their hopeless situation, they embrace each other in their arms and Cervares holds out his hand with the incandescent bomb activated. The hammerhead breaks through just as Cervares drops the grenade into the water and all three of them are electrocuted.

Shit Hits EVERY Fan

Shorty hears the bomb goes off and grieves the obvious. He drops down into the water of the lower deck, but it is too late to do anything. The deck has flooded to the point that the structure of the submarine is losing its stability. He rushes back to Dodson and Giles, and helps them unlock the doors and get to the kitchen.

The crew and Edward speak angrily to each other over the radios. Edward justifies the deaths of the crew at the hands of the hammerheads as part of natural selection. Shorty says he’s going to get into the engine room and kill Edward, but Edward brings to light that he might not even be in the engine room, and can be anywhere for all they know, adding yet another dilemma for the crew. During all of this, the Nausicaa is slowly imploding in on itself and falling apart. Edward tries to fix what he can and retain control of the ship, but it’s possible that one of the hammerheads damaged the ballast pump, meaning that he isn’t able to get the submarine to surface, and the flooding is weighing the boat down, slowly sinking it. After reading specific instruments in the maneuver room suggesting that Shorty has manually opened certain flood doors, Edward becomes fearful that the hammerhead or the crew will find him, so he starts to take Fish to the anchor room in the fore end of the boat, as some form of bait or preoccupation.

After some brainstorming, Shorty comes up with an idea to track Edward by turning down the receiver in his collar. This causes the signal strength to vary depending on the distance between the collars, allow Shorty to track Edward. Without warning, the remaining hammerhead pierces its horns through the wall that Giles is resting against, injuring him. He tries to crawl away, spraying bullets into the wall where the hammerhead was. The hammerhead instead bursts through the ceiling onto Giles and finishes him off. The rest of the crew run out of the kitchen as Dodson stays to buy them some time.

The hammerhead charges up to Dodson and pounces into the air. Dodson thrusts his mechanical arm out and grabs the hammerhead by the cranium, stopping it in midair and throwing it down onto the ground. The beast shakes off the surprising counter and springs back up to Dodson, who strikes it in the side with the hatchet and holds it out of biting range by the horn. The hammerhead slashes him in the chest with its claws and snaps at him with its jaw, but he still holds on. He hacks at it again with the hatchet, but after it plunges into its flesh once more, the hammerhead twists, throwing the hatchet out of reach on the floor. It then gains the upper hand and rips Dodson apart.

Fletcher, Shorty, and Estelle lock themselves in the bridge. Not knowing how long the boat is going to hold out, they decide that they need to prep the escape pods now, as the hydraulic release mechanism is damaged. Using the back of a map and blood from his finger, Shorty draws a diagram for Fletcher and Estelle to use so that they can go and manually repair the mechanism for the pod release. Shorty once again enters the air ducts to find Fish and Edward and Estelle stays on the radio and tries to keep Edward talking.

Edward chains Fish’s wrists to a pipe in the anchor room and reveals to Fletcher and Estelle that Fish is not with him, and that they can either find her or come after him. Shorty recognizes the sound of the machinery in the anchor room, but cannot say so over the radios as Edward can hear everything Estelle can, and he’d have to unlock the flood door to the anchor room from the maneuver room anyway.

Shorty tracks Edward to the lower engine room. He sneaks in under the grated floor panel right behind where Edward is standing, trying to fix a mechanical part. Shorty lifts the panel up and jams it into Edward’s heels, causing him to fall down. Shorty gets up on the floor and the two fight. What starts as a straight up fistfight turns into Shorty kicking Edward’s ass with some exotic martial arts. (See Spinning Tarzan Ju Jitsu from The Rundown) Shorty pins Edward to the floor, but Edward is able to draw his pistol and shoots Shorty, but the bullet skims the side of his tool belt, causing it to break and fall off. Just as quickly, Edward kicks Shorty off of him and gets back on his feet. During the fight, the hammerhead is jumping up through the grated floor, ramming the panels and piercing its horns through the floor.

Shorty grabs his belt and uses it as a weapon, clocking Edward in the face a few times. Edward manages to grab it and throw it across the floor. He lunges at Shorty, who jumps and throws Edward to the ground by his shoulders. Edward turns onto his back and he and Shorty wrestle on the ground, strangling each other. Shorty breaks Edward’s grip and slams him against the floor once or twice before ironically repeating Edward’s taunt of Natural Selection. With Edward’s back pinned against the floor, the hammerhead once again pierces the floor with its horns, impaling Edward. Shorty jumps off, grabs his belt, and flees the room while the hammerhead manages to get up onto the platform they were fighting on.

Shorty runs to the maneuver room and opens the flood door to the anchor room (as well as locking the entire aft end of the ship in order to stall the hammerhead) and tells Estelle and Fletcher where Fish is. He stops in his bunk/mechanical room, grabs a dozen or so crosses and throws them into his bag. Lastly, he grabs the high-powered rifle we saw him use in the prologue. The submarine is now flooding uncontrollably and falling apart in standard end-level fashion. Shorty meets up with Fletcher and Estelle and they quickly rush down through the labyrinth-like halls of the sinking Nausicaa to go get Fish.

I’m Going to Get Sued by James Cameron

However, when quickly descending a ladder onto the third deck, a support beam breaks and crashes onto Shorty’s leg, breaking it and trapping him upside down on the ladder. Fletcher and Estelle help him down and Fletcher decides to take Shorty back to the escape pod and treat the injury. Before they leave, Shorty hands the sniper rifle, which he calls “Sadie”, to Estelle and instructs her how to use it. Daunted, but driven by her maternal instinct, Estelle goes in alone after Fish.

Estelle drops down onto the nearly flooded fourth deck and makes her way to the fore end of the boat. She enters the anchor room and rushes over to Fish, who is chained to the pipe. After struggling with the chain, Estelle takes her last bullet from her revolver and jams it into one of the links of the chain. She grabs a nearby broken pipe and slams the chain, igniting the gunpowder of the bullet and breaking the chain. Fish is reunited with Estelle, but the celebration is short-lived. Everything gets quiet as Estelle notices blood dripping from the ceiling. She slowly looks up and sees the surviving, wounded hammerhead clinging onto the ceiling, snarling and glaring down at them. The hammerhead jumps down into the room, separating the two girls and the door back to the rest of the boat.

Estelle tells Fish to go hide behind something and the hammerhead lunges forward. Estelle is able to dodge and, by reflex, fires Sadie. The shot goes off into the side of the room, piercing the hull, causing seawater to pour in. Estelle reloads and fires, this time on purpose, at the hammerhead. The shot hits one of the hammerhead’s horns, breaking it and shattering the front half of it. The hammerhead roars in agony and stumbles back, tripping over the large anchor chain. Estelle grabs her shoulder in pain from the recoil of Sadie. She notices the anchor suspended in the air from a pulley, and aims through the scope for the cable holding the pulley. The hammerhead regains itself and charges forward. Estelle fires and the round breaks the pulley. The anchor falls and crushes the hammerhead, as well as damaging the hull; and the hammerhead’s body slides down into the water. Estelle grabs Fish and they swim as fast as they can out of the rapidly flooding anchor room.

Estelle and Fish move as fast as they can down the bottom deck, which is now flooded to neck height. They climb up the ladder into the third deck and quickly try to close the distance between them and the escape pod. The Nausicaa has now tilted down at the fore end, creating an ever-increasing slope that Estelle and Fish must climb. They eventually get to the escape pod where Fletcher is waiting for them, holding himself up by a pipe. He helps them up and they fall through the door into the pod, onto Shorty, who is sitting with his back against the wall and has a splint on his leg. Fletcher seals the door behind them and they are saved.

Obviously drugged with morphine, Shorty asks Estelle if “She did alright?” to which Estelle explains that Sadie did alright, and places the rifle on the floor. Shorty tells her that he wasn’t referring to the gun. Estelle and Fish lie up against Shorty and finally breathe in relief. Fletcher pulls a lever which releases the pod from the Nausicaa and they slowly coast away as the giant submarine sinks to the ocean floor.

Family

Later, Shorty strings nine rosaries together as a tribute to the crew and says a few good words about them. Fletcher says amen, and the exhausted Shorty goes and lies down to go to sleep on the metal floor of the pod, while Fletcher lazily steers the pod. In the back, Fish thanks Estelle for saving her, to which Estelle says she made a promise to protect her, and nothing would stop her from doing so. Fish says she knew she would protect her because that’s what families do. Estelle confirms that all of them are family.

The last shots are that of the pod peacefully swimming through the blue waters, the Crown of God submerged underwater inside the Nausicaa’s holding bay, and the underwater ruins of Ta’ok Ma, with the wreck of the Nausicaa resting on the seabed nearby.


Next update will be all the quotes and notes.