Kraken Rising

CHAPTER 18

Cate was smashed into Alex’s body. Her face became immediately wet, and she knew her nose was gushing blood. The upside was, her goggles were still around her neck and hadn’t cracked. She shifted position and groaned. Every part of her ached — muscles, bones, and even though she had covered up as much as she could, she could feel blisters under her wetsuit. But what she felt, and endured, must have been nothing compared to the man above her who hadn’t been covered in thermal sheeting and had literally acted as a shock absorber for her body. She had felt him go limp, and knew he was either unconscious or dead.

Inside the capsule it was blacker than anything she had ever experienced in her life, and a moment of disorientation washed over her. Then there came the sensation of the capsule turning slowly as it settled correctly in the water. That’s something, she thought. She had seconds now before the launch, and blindly reached up to find and then feel the soldier’s neck — thank god, a pulse. She lifted his mouthpiece and pushed it between his lips, automatically starting the oxygen. She covered her face with her own goggles and jammed in her mouthpiece.

Below them, there commenced a minute electronic vibration running up through the skin of the hull, and then came a more ominous sound — rushing water, welling up. She had a moment of panic, but swallowed it down, remembering what that meant: the outer doors of the capsule had opened, and Orca was about to launch.

Here we go, she thought, and reached down to wrap an arm around one of the propulsion struts, and then hung onto the limp form of Alex with her other arm.

Like a ten-foot torpedo being launched from its shaft, Orca, the deep-water submersible, began to slide free, taking Cate and Alex with it.

She felt an unbearable sense of alarm, as they were pulled out of the capsule and into the inky black water, miles below the Antarctic’s icy surface. Cate screwed her eyes shut and instinctively held her breath.

Darkness, warmth, and saltiness. She opened her eyes. Cate Canning’s laboratory readings had told her to expect it, to assume a near tropical environment of a constant seventy-eight degrees in the underground sea. But now, only when she was immersed, could she really believe it. What she hadn’t expected was the blue glow radiating down from above — bioluminescence, she thought. If she was at the surface, the radiance would still only be like twilight, but at least it wouldn’t be anything like the impenetrable nothing that was below her.

Orca pulled them along a few dozen feet below the surface, and Cate’s scientific mind took over, and blanked out any thoughts about what could be down underneath. The inky blackness fell away to crushing depths of over a thousand feet, and she knew there were organisms down there, big organisms, and she just hoped she could get herself and Alex to the nearest shoreline before they were detected.

Cate had one hand looped through a strap on Alex’s shoulder, and the other she gripped tight to one of the submersible’s rear struts. Her shoulders screamed from the strain, but Orca’s gentle speed made it easier. Still, she knew if she lost her grip on Orca, they would be stranded, and if she let Alex go, his heavy kit would take him down, and he would be lost.

She turned her head to look back towards the surface of the underground sea. She could just make out their bubbles as they merged and then raced upwards. They were a silvery thread that ascended to a watery blue ceiling. She could imagine them popping on the calm sea, and she longed to be up there with them.

She turned back to the depths, and impatience started to take hold. One, two, three, four — she kept her mind occupied, and began to count seconds as Orca traveled onwards. The submersible’s propulsion units whirred softly, almost a purr beneath the water as the hydro-jets pushed liquid back towards them and over a bank of fins that guided it through the depths. Cate had programmed the machine herself, and knew one of its first searches was to be towards the east, before it was to head back out, and then dive deep. They needed to be well gone by then.

She looked back again at Alex’s limp body, his large arms and legs deathly still and trailing as they glided along. She wished she could check on him, but for now, hanging on was all that mattered.

Suddenly Orca slowed, and Cate’s head snapped back in alarm. The cigar shaped machine gave a little reverse thrust, to then hang motionless in the water. The submersible’s neutral buoyancy allowed it to be suspended without sinking or rising. She gritted her teeth, as she remembered her own program protocols — it would take audio readings now, and even though the propulsion units were near-silent water jets, it would also shut these off as it listened for the most minute of sounds.

Cate breathed in and out evenly, waiting, impatient, the only sounds she heard were her own exhalations, loud in her ears. She momentarily held her breath, and then there it was, all the clicks, squeaks, tapping, and pops of a living ocean. Around her, stars floated — tiny specks of light, either gliding or flashing before being quickly shut off. It was the silver biological glow of creatures in a dark sea, used for attracting mates, prey, or as a warning. To Cate, it seemed like she was floating in a night sky, not underwater, but high overhead, looking down on the stars in an endless universe.

Orca coming to a complete stop made her feel it was safe enough for her to let go of its strut. She lowered her arm and flexed her fingers, feeling immediately relieved. They were stiff and sore, but they’d be fine. She then dragged Alex up towards herself, looked into his face mask — his eyes were closed tight, but there was still the rhythmic pumping of his breather as he sucked in and expelled air. She decided she’d take the time to better secure him, and she dragged him closer, and unclipped his belt, then threaded it through her own belt at her back, so he was now lashed to her. It would cause more drag, but at least it gave her two free hands, that she could now alternate to share the load.

Orca hung in its aquatic inner-space a moment more before its nose-cone lit up as a bright ring of lights surrounding the camera eye came to life. To Cate in the dark water, it was as if the cigar-shaped probe was like some sort of deep-sea fish that had stopped to search for prey midwater.

The probe’s glowing eye created a pipe of light to try and illuminate the void. But it was a hopeless task as the darkness swallowed the glow without ever revealing the hidden world Cate knew was all around them.

But then from the corner of her eye, movement. Something the size of a hubcap glided past. It was circular, ribbed, and trailing ribbon-like tendrils. Cate concentrated, straining out from the probe to see it before it moved past the range of the light. Instead of disappearing, it stopped, and turned, drifting back towards them. Cate grinned around her mouthpiece.

You beautiful thing, she thought. Neuteloid — Cyrtoceras, I believe. It was banded blue, white, and black, something that never would have been known from the fossil record. The thing was a survivor of the ancient Ordovician Period. Their ancestors were around today, but much, much smaller.

The engines started up again, and the Crytoceras turned and sailed away. She then felt the fan of water on her face as the machine eased forward. She grabbed it and leaned out and to the side again, a passenger watching the strange world go by. From time to time, something would dart away from the beam like a laser had scalded it. The eyes of the sea creatures were probably more adapted to the dark, only ever having to deal with a soft, twilight glow whenever they rose to shallower waters.

Cate thought of her team, huddled together in a cold laboratory room over a mile above her, watching, recording, and marveling at everything they saw via their screens, while she saw it live. She hung on for her life, wishing Orca would stop again just for a few seconds so she could claw her way to the nose-cone. There, she could somehow communicate with them, tell them she was fine, and ask if they could shut down the light. Though the powerful globes pushed out a lot of energy and lit a pathway some forty feet in front of them, the wall of dark was only ever just pierced. But from out beyond the curtain of blackness, she knew its powerful beam would be seen for miles — the speck of white light would attract anything that hunted by sight.

Five hundred and one, five hundred and two… She counted more seconds as Orca sailed on. Her body began to ache again, and she changed her hands on the rail. She briefly wondered what would happen if she slipped — the probe would quickly leave them behind. Her team above may suddenly detect an improvement in maneuverability, but it was unlikely they would know to turn around for her. She could reprogram Orca. After all, she was its designer. But she was down here.

More than likely she and Alex would be cast adrift, a couple of slow moving non-aquatic mammals left to float in a fathomless dark sea. She shuddered at the thought and started to count again, trying to remember the probe’s search grid, and how long it was before they could expect to near any type of land. Alex had said it would be there, and close. She prayed he was right.

Orca suddenly dropped about twenty feet, and Cate felt a bone-chilling cold as the water temperature plummeted. She had heard there were temperature anomalies down here — silos and columns of hot and cold water. Her group had hypothesized that the warm water columns were caused by hydrothermal means, but the cold columns, they were the conundrum. One theory they had was that there could be a vortex in the underground sea. It literally breathed in and out, sometimes taking in cold water, and sometimes expelling warm. There was evidence for an open vortex, as the expellation had a physical manifestation — just recently a behemoth Antarctic algae bloom was seen off the Antarctic’s coast that was so large it showed up on satellite imaging from space.

She’d make a mental note, and hopefully one day they’d get to… she grinned around her mouthpiece. One day they’d get to what? She was stuck here, and the only thing she’d be doing from now on was simply trying to survive.

Cate felt the warm water return as they passed out of the freezing current, and Orca rose to its proper investigation depth. She resumed her somnambulant count once again. Thirteen hundred and twenty-five, thirteen hundred and twenty-six…

Cate felt the slight touch of a pressure wave push at her side, and momentarily create more drag on Alex’s body as he lurched on her back. A tingle raced up her spine — other than the vortices, there were no currents down here — something in the darkness had just moved past them. From far out behind them there came the sound of thump and then a grinding, metallic crunch that made her flinch. At first she struggled to understand what it was she could be hearing, but then knew it could be only one thing — the shell of the probe. The capsule would have been still floating on the surface, due to the pocket of air trapped inside its rear. It was a bigger physical signature than they were, and it was being destroyed, no, she thought, attacked.

Shit, how much farther? she wondered, just as the sound of the attacks grew louder, and then ceased. That meant whatever was occupying itself with the probe’s shell had either sunk it or had lost interest, and might be now on the lookout for something else — something more palatable. She began to kick her legs, hoping the minuscule amount of extra thrust would help in getting them further away from what was going on, maybe only a half mile to their rear.

She looked back over her shoulder — nothing but darkness and the limp form of Alex. She cursed him, the big tough soldier, now little more than dead weight. You bastard. She jerked one arm back, striking him in the back of the head. Big fucking help you turned out to be.

Would she cut him free if they were attacked? She’d like to think she wouldn’t, but it might not be in her control. And besides, if it came down to both of them dying or just Alex, then she’d vote for life every time. Sorry buddy, but for all I know you could be a braindead beanbag anyway.

She turned back to Orca, kicking hard now, and biting down on her breathing tube. Her neck and scalp tingled; the darkness surrounding her was impenetrable, but that was only to her. She knew something was out there now, and could feel the huge presence in the water close by.

She kicked harder, adrenalin giving her a burst of energy. Her breathing was becoming ragged, and she knew she was burning up her oxygen, but wasn’t able to help it.

Fourteen hundred and sixty, one hundred and sixteen, two hundred… she couldn’t focus, and whimpered around her breathing tube. Once again, she felt the gentle push of water against her, first from one side, and then seconds later from the other — they were being circled by something very large and very fast. For all she knew, it was close enough now for her to reach out and touch.

What are you? her mind screamed. She couldn’t help thinking back to the image of the huge eye she had seen on her screen all those years ago. It had baffled her and most of her marine specialist colleagues. Now, she would find out.

Orca powered on, and Cate and Alex were dragged along with it. She knew that in the control room miles above them, the instruments would be screaming at Bentley, Schmidt, Timms, and Sulley, and they might be whooping with excitement as the sensors told them of the approaching behemoth. Maybe by now they had swapped visuals and moved to either thermal or light enhanced to try and pick up the thing’s silhouette.

Cate concentrated, trying to pierce the darkness. Would the thing see them as intruder or prey? Would it matter to the outcome? No, she thought. To whatever was out there, there was only one question: would they be edible?

Orca’s light was a beacon to it — she needed a distraction. Cate eased a hand down to a pouch at her waist and drew forth a flare that she then jammed against her thigh and pushed out to the side to let go. It sank slowly, and she turned to watch it fall away into the void as Orca gently pulled her and Alex slowly away from it.

The ball of glowing red light continued to sink, illuminating and scattering tiny creatures as it dropped lower and lower into the darkness. Twenty feet, thirty, fifty. Once again, Cate couldn’t help feeling like she was floating in space, but this time, her tiny ship was under attack from some giant alien beast. The human side of her didn’t want to know what was out there, but Cate Canning, PhD in evolutionary biology, and the nosy scientist, desperately wanted to catch a glimpse of the creature. It was why she had bullied Alex into bringing her along.

The tiny red halo of flaring light sunk lower, and lower, two hundred feet down and behind them now. Cate had to crane her neck to see it. And then, a feeling like an electric shock passed through her body — there it was. The leviathan moved past the light, its hide painted a hellish red by the flare. It came again, and this time a hubcap-sized eye swiveled to stare briefly at the light, before the creature glided on.

There was an unmistakable, primordial sensation that all humans experienced when they were suddenly in the proximity of a large predator. Cate felt it now, her bladder swelling, making her wanting to urinate, her heartbeat racing, and a swoony, light-headedness overcoming her. It was like when the body was going into shock, it automatically pulled the blood away from the extremities and brain into the torso. It did this in preparation for severe trauma and loss of limb.

Deep down, the massive creature passed underneath the flare. Four massive paddle-like flippers, and striped, like a tiger, she thought, as a surge of adrenalin ran through her. Probably the coloring was to make the predator even less visible to anything on the surface by creating a ripple effect. It was hard to judge its exact size from the distance, and in the dark water, but measuring it against the dot of red light that had just been in her hand, she guessed it was close to sixty feet in length.

A pliosaur, she guessed, but a goddamn big one. The massive marine creature swam in the ancient Jurassic-era oceans of 150 million years ago. But to be this size, the thing must have been a species that had simply been labeled Predator X, until it was finally classed as a member of the Pliosaur family only a few years back.

Cate felt her heart rate kick up. The creature had a head twice the size of a T-rex. She stopped moving. If that’s what it is, she thought, then they’d be lucky to make it much further even if they were in a speedboat.

The creature vanished again, and Cate held her breath, waiting and watching, and then there came a gentle push of water against her body and Orca was eased offcenter, its fins angling to put it back on course.

How long had they been traveling under the water — fifteen minutes, twenty, more? Surely they were coming close to their next objective. She tried to remember the configuration of the course she had plotted. The launch, then midway they would stop and scan, and then they would approach a shoreline and breach to capture some surface readings and images. They must be close. Wherever they were by now, Cate knew time was up.

If they were to survive, she needed a change of plan, and at present they were vulnerable from every direction — she could at least reduce that by one. She tried to release her grip on the rear strut, but her fingers were locked tight. Fear had caused the muscles to seize up.

Frustration and fear surged within her as, stretched out like she was, her belly and groin tingled as she felt how exposed the soft parts of her body were to the giant leviathan below. Cate bit down hard on the rubber mouthpiece and screamed into the breather, commanding, cursing, and then pleading with her hand to let go.

One at a time, her fingers finally opened and she immediately reached in to the rear vents of Orca’s steering system and grabbed one of the struts, using all her strength to bend it slightly and cause the torpedo-shaped vessel into a change of direction — upwards.

In just a few seconds, the nose of Orca breached, dragging Cate and Alex up behind it. Cate spat out her mouthpiece and dragged in a deep and humid breath. After the artificial air of the tanks, everything tasted thick, moist, and… alive. The atmosphere was a deep, shadowy blue, as if a lamp had a colored scarf wrapped tightly around its bulb. She looked up at the twinkling stars of millions of bioluminescent organisms living on the cave roof overhead — they were like tiny blue fairy lights on a black cloth hundreds of feet above them. Save me, she wanted to scream at the little stars.

Her vision popped with light, and she felt the lightheadedness return. I’m going to black out, she thought. She whimpered, as momentary panic threatened to overwhelm her. Not now, not now, she pleaded. Tears blurred her eyes within the mask, and blinking them away, she felt a thrill of hope surge through her. About two hundred feet away was a dark shoreline, with what looked like trees, a forest perhaps? But it was still so far away, and maybe too far at their current speed.

She refused to look back down into the deep, dark water in case the monster was there, coming up fast, its cavernous mouth swung open. More time, just five minutes more, might make a difference. She began to kick her legs again, her thighs burning. She looked over her shoulder and screamed.

“For god’s sake, wake up, damn you. Help me.”

She let one hand go, and wrenched her arm back, elbowing Alex in the back of the head — once, twice. “Wake… the fuck… up!”

Just then, several hundred feet out to the right side of her, there was a breach of the surface as a striped hump rose. It glided closer, and closer, passing a dozen feet in front of them, and then out to left where it slid vertically back down, finishing with the tip of a stubby reptilian tail that left a swirl of dark liquid.

“Oh god, no.” Cate knew enough about deep sea predators to know that the angle of its descent meant it had dived deep. If it followed a similar attack pattern, surging up from the depths, using speed, power, and surprise to overwhelm whatever creature it hunted, it would come up out of the dark like a colossal missile. They wouldn’t be able to outrun it, and they wouldn’t be able to get out of its way. They could only wait to be eaten alive.

She finally put her face down, and peered down into the hidden depths. There was one option left. She jammed her hands back into the steering struts and bent the fins with every ounce of strength she had, this time angling the nose downwards. Orca began to dive, taking them both with it. She sucked in a deep breath.

Sorry baby, but you have one more job to do, she thought. Cate began to feel pressure on her eardrums, and pulled her arms in, and then pushed out hard, sending the submersible on its way — straight down.

The sleek, cigar-shaped probe powered on into the depths, and Cate began to frantically swim upwards, kicking hard and fast. She kept watching as the strong white beam of light created a pathway into the deep, its white beam a ball of light against miles of blackness. She pumped her legs hard, trying to put distance between herself, the probe, and what she knew must surely be coming up fast from below.

She broke the surface, sucked in a huge gasping breath, and then began to breaststroke hard. She sank under Alex’s weight, and once again jerked her arm back at him.

“Please, please, wake up.”

She sank again, but just before she went down, she heard a cough. She kicked upwards, and broke the surface.

“That’s it, Alex, wake up.” She began to swim. “Just kick, that’s all I need from you. Kick, kick hard.”

Cate felt the surge at her back — weak, but it was enough to cancel out the drag his body was making. She dipped her head, trying not to look or even think about what was down there. From deep below them there was the sound of an impact, and then a crushing-crumpling noise that went on for several seconds. She knew immediately it was Orca’s toughened steel casing coming into contact with something that probably had a bite pressure in the tens of thousands of pounds.

The shoreline beckoned — sixty feet now at most. She dragged in a huge breath, and started to throw her arms up and over, dragging the water past herself. Forty feet, thirty, twenty, they were only a dozen feet from shore but there was still nothing but darkness below them. There were no shallows, as the shoreline must have been the edge of an underwater cliff, rather than the gradual shallowing encountered on a coastal beach. Her scalp and neck tingled, and once more she felt the sensation of something large approaching.

“Kick, kick, kick!” she screamed. In answer, she felt herself speed forward. Alex’s legs now starting to churn, even though his head still lolled groggily on her shoulders.

“That’s it, harder…” Eight feet, five feet, she looked down and saw a small rock shelf. She clambered on, not trying to stand with Alex on her back, but instead scrabbling forward on all fours. She dived and scrambled the last few feet onto a gritty shoreline, rolling over on top of Alex and looking back, just as something that was like a striped mountain breached and half rolled, so its huge eye could stare dispassionately for a second or two before it veered sharply away.

The only thing that went through her head was that the huge eye of the beast was different to the one she had seen on the monitor all those years ago. She slumped back against the rock.