Warning! This blog post will contain
spoilers for anyone who hasn’t finished reading Shark Station yet. Skip
this post if you haven’t finished reading the story.
Like with Allie’s Return, there were several
chapter rewrites and extensions added on to different scenes to enhance the
story in Shark Station. In this blog post, I’ll be sharing only one of
them, but it is an entire chapter. I hope you enjoy!
Originally, chapter 14 was the first chapter to
introduce Shark Station and it was much shorter than the one in the final
version. I wanted the exploration of the station to be more gradual than it
was, so I added several additional pages to chapter 14. Here was the original
chapter 14:
Chapter
14
The stationed loomed ahead—all
four floors of it. A mild light shone from the myriad of windows on each level.
Circular, most of it jutted out from the trench wall. It appeared as if part of
the wall of the trench had been carved into to anchor the station and the rest
of it bulged out from it. It reminded me of a house on a hill, where some of
the house resided inside the hill and the rest of it hung over it.
“Wow, that place looks
amazing.”
“Let’s see how well it has stood
up the pressure all this time. We won’t know what we’ll find when we get in
there.”
I knew that voice. It was Dr.
Avraham. Why was she here? Shouldn’t she be in the control room guiding the
ship in?
As if to answer my question,
she explained, “The ship will do the docking automatically from here. According
to Mayor Cho, an access code is necessary to open the docking bay. I’ve entered
it into the system, so we should be good to go.”
“Where is the docking bay?”
wondered Samantha. Maybe she’d forgiven Dr. Avraham, but I hadn’t. I’m one to
hold a grudge.
“On the bottom level of the
station facing directly toward us. We should be docking in a matter of
minutes.” Her voice diminished as I heard her walking away. “Best to get your
stuff ready so we can go. I don’t think any of us want to be on this ship
anymore.”
Or with her, I thought but
didn’t say anything.
The crowd around the window
broke up and the majority of us went to the sleeping quarters to gather the
rest of our things.
Being eager for this day for a
while, I had already packed most of my stuff earlier today. Only a few things
remained outside my bag, so I quickly stuffed them inside and returned to the
kitchen viewport.
By now, we’d arrived so close
to the station that it took up the entire viewport. The doors of the docking
bay started to slide aside. Compared to the docking bay doors of Oceania, these
were tiny. I began to wonder if the Spirit
of the Sea would even fit. Glad for the computer systems guiding the ship
in instead of one of us, I watched as the interior of the docking bay became
visible.
Just as in Oceania, a blue
light lit the interior of the space. Five seacrafts already were inside. Two
seamobiles, two exploration vessels that could seat two, and one mid-sized
vessel. Still, there was plenty of room to dock the Spirit of the Sea on the
right side of the bay where it was empty.
A sound a whoosh pushed us
forward as the docking bay doors closed. A blaringly loud sound erupted from
somewhere and the blue lights began flashing red.
“Is something wrong?” I
wondered aloud.
“I don’t know. It’s hard cause
none of us have been here before.” Dylan came and stood beside me, his bag
slung over his shoulder.
The two of us watched as the
water was removed and then the lights stopped flashing and turned from red to
white.
“I guess they designed things
a little differently here than they did in Oceania.” Dylan shrugged and spun
around. “Come on, let’s get off this ship.
Agreeing wholeheartedly, I
grabbed my bag from the floor and went to the staircase. At the bottom, Dr.
Gomez was already there pressing the button to open the hatch to the docking
bay. With a hiss, the door released and a whirr emitted from the floor as a
stairway came down from under the floor of the bottom deck.
Waiting until the stairs
reached the bottom of the docking bay, we stood behind Dr. Gomez.
“I better go outside first.
There’s no telling what condition the robots of the station are in. If they’ve
malfunctioned, I want to be able to attend to them. You two stay behind me.”
Dr. Gomez began descending down the steps.
Dylan and I followed, staying
a few steps behind Dr. Gomez. When we reached the floor, I noticed it was still
a little wet.
Odd, that was different than
Oceania. Most of the water was always drained out. It could be described as a
little damp, but wet—never.
“We should have been greeted
by the robots upon entrance.” Dr. Gomez’s brown eyes searched the area, not
moving a muscle. “This is weird.”
Another hiss emanated across
the way to our right. All three of our heads spun towards it.
“Hello, welcome to Shark
Station.”
I released the breath I hadn’t
realized was stuck in my chest. An older style robot, gleaming metallic silver
had come into the docking bay. He was a hover bot, meaning that he had no legs,
only a torso, arms, and a head. His body appeared to be made of a bunch of
different circles. His head, joints, torso, arms, and everything but his hands
were made up of circular pieces of metal.
“How may I assist you? My name
is Zoid.”
“Hello, Zoid. I’m Antoine, the
chief engineer on this mission.”
“Hello, Antoine, nice to meet
you. Who are your other mission mates.”
“This is Dylan Baker and Allie
Baker. There are seven more in the ship. They could use some assistance
unpacking all of our belongings. Are you the only functioning bot here?”
“Oh no, there are four of us
in all. Myself, Xeta, Yeta, and Weta are all fully functional and capable of
helping you along with your mission here. Should I call the others to come to
help you unpack?”
“Yes, that would be helpful.”
“Very well. It is complete.
They will be here momentarily.”
“Thank you, Zoid.”
“You are welcome.” Zoid headed
up the stairs and inside to help.
“What should we do?” wondered
Dylan.
“You two can help me check out
the station and see what condition it's in.” Dr. Gomez slung his bag over his
arm, holding it in place as he spoke.
“What
about Max?”
“He
can catch up later. If I find anything wrong, I’ll ask him to help me fix it.
Now, come on.” Dr. Gomez took off in the direction from which the robot had
appeared.
Following
him, we jogged to keep pace. When we reached the door, it opened automatically
for us and we found ourselves in a corridor wide enough for four people to
stand abreast.
“Which
way now?” I wondered, wishing we had the blueprints or at least a map of the
station downloaded on our c-coms.
“Let’s
try every door on the corridor and see where it leads.” Starting with the door
across from the docking bay, Dr. Gomez peeked his head inside. “That’s the moon
pool room. Let’s go inside.”
This
moon pool room made the one on the Spirit of the Sea look like a child’s
playroom. This one was massive. A hole probably the size of half an
Olympic-sized swimming pool took up the center. The cover was on it, so there
was no telling what was underneath. Hanging from the ceiling were cranes and
other equipment I didn’t recognize. On the right-hand side was a set of
closets, hooks, and what I assumed was a changing area. A pod that resembled a
submersible was off to the side of the pool. Clad in all yellow, it was hard to
miss. Two ROVs rested against the wall.
“This
room looks fine, let’s check the next one.”
Dr.
Gomez led the way out and we followed him around the corner to a dead end with
one door to the left. It led to a storage room, so we moved on from there,
deciding to check it out at another time. Turning around, we weaved back to
find a wet lab and the maintenance room before finding the stairs and going up
them.
The
second level reminded me of a space ship. It was cool. There was one corridor
that appeared to wrap around the entire station. Large viewports were cut into
the outside wall giving us a big black view of nothing. Still, if there was
something to look at, we’d see it.
Not
far from the stairs was a doorway that led into a room that took up the entire
rest of the level. At the moment, it was mostly empty except for a few plants
growing in small trays near the center of the room.
“This
must be the Hydroponics Room,” surmised Dylan.
“Yeah,
I think you’re right,” assured Dr. Gomez, walking inside and inspecting the
trays. “We’ll leave the assessment of this room up to Dr. Avraham. It looks
like we need to get this up and running soon so we can support ourselves.”
Dylan
walked around the room and I did too, but it wasn’t long before Dr. Gomez
beckoned us up to the next level. It was similar to the second level, except
the central area was split into rooms. There was still a wraparound corridor
that had viewports all along the corridor walls. We found the Med Bay, Kitchen,
Exercise Room, Sleeping Quarters, and even an Entertainment Room on this level.
Finally,
we made our way to the top level—level 4. This level reminded me of the Spirit of the Sea. At the top, there was one large area with a
wraparound window so that they could see into the corridor and the ocean
through the various viewports beyond. It was mostly empty, but there were a few
chairs scattered about. On the opposite side of that was the Engineering Lab
and robot charging stations.
Dr. Gomez
swung his bag off his arm onto the floor and stretched. “Well, I guess that’s
it.”
“This
place is amazing!” I said, walking forward to touch the durapane or glass or
whatever the windows were made of.
“I
know. It’s huge. We won’t get so sick of each other here, that’s for sure,”
said Dylan, admiring the place.
“True,
but we should probably get back down below. The rest are probably wondering
where we went off to.”
“Do
not worry about that, Zoid has told your team members of your intention to
search the station,” came a voice from behind me.
This
time I did squeal and spun around to see where the voice had come from.
“Hi,
I’m Xeta. I’m the main cleaning robot around here. I was charging when you
arrived and just finished, so I got Zoid’s message.”
“Good,
thank you, Xeta. If you could send a message to Zoid to tell him to let the
others know we’re coming back down, that’d be great.” Dr. Gomez picked up his
bag off the floor.
“I
will certainly do that. I will see you all later.”
Returning
to the docking bay, we found the others were already gone. Zoid told us that
they had taken their belongings to find room in the Sleeping Quarters. So the
three of us ascended the stairs again, still lugging our bags with us.
Before,
we’d just peaked into the sleeping quarters and not really examined it. This
time, when we walked inside, I realized just how large it was. It was spread
out with a corridor wrapping around, but unlike the outer corridor, it divided
and branched off into two smaller ones. The bathrooms were in the center of the
area with additional rooms flanking either side. Men and women had separate
bathrooms unlike on the Spirit of the Sea, but at each corner was another
smaller bathroom.
“Hey,
Allie! Over here, you can have the bedroom next to mine.” Samantha beckoned be
to her from the other side of the corridor. We took a right and went down to
the rooms only a door away from the bathroom.
“The
one next to the bathroom smells funny, so I chose the next one. I’m in room 17,
you can be in room 16.”
“We
can each have our own room?”
“Yeah,
there’s plenty enough room so we don’t have to share. They’re tiny rooms, but
still. It’s better than sharing bunks with nine other people.
Samantha
did have a point there.
Opening
the door to room 16, I noticed a twin-size bed to the left and only about one
pace to the right was a small desk and chair. A shelf on the top held space for
some belongings and a closest a tad larger than me was in the corner behind the
door.
“I
know they’re small, but you could just call it cozy.”
“True,
but to have our own space to get away.”
“Yeah,
it’s nice isn’t it.”
“You
bet.”
“All
crew members, please find your way to the corridor outside the sleeping
quarters. A meeting is necessary.”
Oh,
just great. Here we go again.
I
threw my stuff onto the bed and left the room, not bothering to lock it. It’s
not like anyone was going to steal my stuff or anything.
Samantha
and I weaved our way through the corridors and out to the outer corridor by the
viewport. Almost everyone else was already there.
“Hello
everyone. Now that we are in Shark Station, I will be in command here. Things
are going to be very different from the way that they were on the Spirit of the Sea. Now, I understand
that everyone is tired and they just want to get settled in so we’ll eat some
of the food from off the ship and we’ll decide what to do from there,”
explained Mrs. Baker. “Now, we’ve been lucky that one of the robots has
prepared a meal for us out of the remaining food, so let's go eat now and then
we can talk.”
My
grumbling stomach could agree with that.
I hope you enjoyed the final blog post for Shark Station.
In the Oceania: The Underwater Series Boxset, there is an additional deleted
scene for Shark Station you can only read there. So, if you haven’t picked up a
copy and would like to, just visit my website elizataye.com.
If you ever want to reach out to me, you can email me at elizataye@gmail.com. I love hearing from
my readers, even if it is just casual conversation. 😊
The next blog posts will be for the next novel in the Oceania:
The Underwater City series. If you want to stay updated on the book's release,
cover reveals, and the title reveal, visit my website at https://elizataye.com/news/
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