Primordial

Chapter 12

“What do you mean Carly will be filming today?” Holloway’s strident voice cut through the quiet morning. “What if today is the day we find it and her skills aren’t up to the challenge? I want a real cameraman on the job. That’s what I paid you for!”

“Mister Holloway, just listen to me.” Slater’s gentle tones didn’t quite mask her frustration. “Carly is more than capable. She’s done double-duty plenty of times. Besides, I’m sure Dave will be back any time now.”

Aston looked up from the sonar screen with a smirk. Dave still wasn’t back? Maybe he had found a party with all the booze, coke and hookers he could handle.

Holloway threw up his hands. “I’m fed up with irresponsible, unprofessional people. I’m paying you well to do a job and I expect you to live up to your end of the bargain.”

“I understand,” Slater said in a placating voice. “Dave’s usually reliable. I think he just partied too hard last night. Believe me, he’ll hear about it when he gets back.”

“Oh, he’s going to hear about it, all right.” Holloway spun and drove his fist into the cabin wall. “Dammit!”

Aston wondered if the man had broken his hand, but Holloway stalked out onto the deck without a word.

“That was scary.” Slater stared at the man’s receding form. “He’s got quite a temper.”

“Don’t worry about that. If he gets out of hand, I’ll settle him.”

“And leave me to deal with Joaquin?” Slater grinned. “No thanks. I’ll stick with Holloway.”

“Fair enough.” Aston returned his attention to the screen, and the great bunch of nothing it displayed. He envied Dave in a way. Tying one on and sleeping in. Anything to break this monotony. “So Dave’s still AWOL, is he?”

“Yes, the bastard. I don’t care how shit-faced my team gets when they’re off-duty, but I expect them to drag their asses to work in the morning. Bad enough he took yesterday off! If he screws up my deal with Holloway…” She finished the thought by cracking her knuckles.

Aston raised an eyebrow. “Remind me not to piss you off.”

“You’re a man. Sooner or later you’ll manage it.” Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Are we going to struggle for good sound with Carly on camera?” Aston asked, keen to change the subject from himself, direct the heat back to Dave. It was that guy’s fault, after all.

“We’ll manage. I wasn’t lying when I told Holloway she’d done double-duty in the past. So has Dave. We operate on a shoestring budget, and we have to be able to cover for one another.”

“It’s a shame, really. I was thinking a trip into town for a drink would be a nice way to unwind. I even suggested as much to Dave before he left yesterday. I doubt Holloway would be amenable to that any more.”

Slater shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps we can run it by him once Dave is back and Holloway has calmed down. I think we could all use a break, to be honest. I can kind of understand Dave’s little side trip, but the truth is, he’s being seriously unprofessional, and that reflects on me. Oh well, I’d better get ready for today’s intro. See you in a few.”

“Sure.” He watched her go with a tiny grin on his face.

“I like the look of her when she walks away,” Laine said from behind Aston. He’d forgotten the cryptozoologist was present. “Not that she’s bad coming, either.”

Aston shrugged. Slater was a looker, no doubt, but he wasn’t interested in engaging in schoolboy banter with the Finn. He focused on his screen and prayed Holloway left him the hell alone too. He needed the job, but there was a limit to how much shit he’d put up with from anybody. He realized he was letting all the general frustrations get the better of him, and maybe he was just a little jealous of Dave. “Get a grip, Sam,” he muttered under his breath.

They spent the next half-hour in blessed silence. Finally, Slater and Carly showed up, equipment in tow. Slater’s demeanor hadn’t improved much.

“Still no Dave?” Aston asked.

“Gee, what was your first clue?” Her sharp features immediately softened. “Sorry. It’s not your fault. I’m just pissed off and stressed out. But I’ve placated Holloway by assuring him we can manage even if Dave never comes back.”

“No worries.” Aston made a small wave. “Not to further burden you, but unless you want footage of two men staring at video monitors, we’ve not got much for you. This place is a dead zone.”

Slater grimaced. “I wonder how long until Holloway gives up.”

“Hopefully not for a while yet. I’ve got bills to pay.”

“Me too. I guess I’d better get to work.” Her face brightened and she turned to Laine. “Alvar, how about we let Sam mind the store while I get some footage of you talking about the history of the area. I’m sure you’ve got some entertaining stories we could use.”

“That I do.” Laine rose from his seat, brushed invisible dirt off his pants, and followed Slater and Carly out the door.

Aston took a deep breath and let it out little by little, like a leaking tire. As the air left his body, so did the tension. He didn’t know what it was, perhaps the frustration of their fruitless endeavors combined with the tight quarters on the boat, but he was too tightly-wound to put up with other people today. He turned his chair so he could keep an eye on all the instruments, propped his feet up, and leaned back.

The low roar of the engine, the repetitive sonar profiles, and the murky images on the underwater cameras, blended together in a fatigue-inducing blur. His eyelids grew heavy and a comforting warmth enveloped him. He felt himself drifting.

And then he was wide awake. A massive hit had pinged on the sonar. He sprang to his feet and shouted to the captain.

“Makkonen! Turn this thing around right now!”

Makkonen grunted and complied. The engines whined and the boat wheeled about with agonizing slowness. Footfalls pounded on the deck and Holloway burst into the cabin with Laine, Slater, and Carly hot on his heels.

“Did you say you’ve got something?” Holloway leaned over Aston’s shoulder, so close Aston could feel the man’s breath on his cheek.

“Yes, but I don’t know what.” He scooted his chair to the side to give himself some room. Uncertainty flooded through him. What if, in his drowsy state, he’d made a mistake? Perhaps it had been a waking dream, a manifestation of his desire to keep the mission going? “I didn’t get a good look at it,” he added lamely.

“Anything on the vids?” Laine asked, sliding into his chair.

“Not that I noticed. Let’s be patient and retrace our steps.”

Tension on the bridge ratcheted up as everyone crowded the monitors. Makkonen muttered that they were more or less back to where Aston had first shouted, but the results from all ports were uniformly empty. As the captain slowly and methodically worked a new grid, the excitement began to drain away.

“Are you sure you didn’t dream it?” Slater asked, unconsciously echoing Aston’s own concerns.

“May have done,” he admitted sheepishly. “But I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

In spite of his words, Aston began to think the whole thing was a mistake. He berated himself for getting carried away and realized he really wanted to find something. If he stopped to think about it long enough, which he hadn’t allowed himself to do until now, he had to admit there was enough circumstantial evidence to make his staunch denial a little shaky. A part of him, the child who still wanted to believe in wondrous things, who desperately wished there was a Santa Claus, was quietly craving a result. If there was one thing better than Santa Claus, after all, it would be a living sea monster.

But the tension had lapsed, the screens remained empty and the tight gathering around Aston’s chair slowly drifted away.

“Sorry, folks,” Aston said. “I guess whatever it was, it’s moved on now.”

“If it was anything,” Slater said, from beside the camera.

Aston realized Carly had been filming the whole sorry debacle.

“It still might have been something,” Holloway said quietly. “Mister Aston says he saw something and we’ve no reason to doubt him.”

“Except for the fact he was laying back in his chair with his feet up,” Slater said.

Aston frowned at her. She was in a really pissy mood and it was starting to annoy him. It wasn’t his fault Dave was AWOL.

Before he could say anything, the sound of the printer shucking out sheets of paper distracted them.

“What’s this?” Holloway asked.

Laine gathered up the pages and spread them on the table. “The sonar keeps a history, which we can review. So I printed it out. Each sheet is one second apart.”

They gathered around the dozen or so pages with grainy, blurred images on each one. To the trained eye, their message was clear. A large object, moving fast.

Slater pointed past the camera as Carly kept all the papers in the shot. “This…” She slapped Aston’s shoulder. “You point it out!”

Aston didn’t immediately respond, his mouth dry as he stared. How was this possible? Was it actually happening? Slater cuffed his arm again.

He shook himself, cleared his throat, and pointed to each printout in turn. “This sonar clearly shows something moving obliquely under the boat as we passed over,” he said. “You can easily see the trajectory, which proves it’s not a stationery object. It’s moving fast and it’s massive.” He looked up, scanned the excited faces around him and felt his own smile spread. “There is definitely something in this lake.”