Kraken Rising: Alex Hunter 6 (12 page)

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.

Bentley pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “She’s dead.” He turned to kick the chair across the small room.

“Don’t say that,” Sulley yelled back.

“The bloody idiot.” Bentley pulled at his nose, eyes screwed shut.

“You’re an arsehole, you know that?” Timms growled through his straggly beard.

“Game over,” Bentley responded.

“Maybe not,” Sulley said, furiously hitting keys, and slowly moving a dial like a safecracker. “
Orca
might have just been knocked offline by the impact.”

“Knocked offline?
Orca
got hit by a flamin’ express train. Whatever hit us had a sonar signature that tapped out around sixty-five feet with a displacement of a sperm whale. If it kicked the shit out of a titanium hull, what would it do to flesh and blood?” Bentley came and leaned into Sulley’s face. “You do remember the teeth, don’t you?”

“Not all of us are ready to give up just yet,” Schmidt said, not turning away from his screen.

Bentley snorted. “Best case is, she’s hurt – better send a rescue team. Oh, wait, that’s right, there is no such thing.” He straightened, sneering. “Better for her if she
is
dead – it’d be more humane.”

“You truly are an arse,” Sulley said turning in his seat.

“I’m a realist.” Bentley sighed. “Better tell HQ.” He started for the door.

“The speed – that thing was moving at forty-two knots.” Schmidt turned to stare. “Holy shit, it was flying … literally flying under the water.”

“Unbelievable,” Timms said. “And how horrifying for Cate, and that other guy.”

“The other guy.” Bentley paused at the door. “He’s dead, she’s dead,
Orca
’s dead, game over.” He shouldered his way out of the room.

“
Arsehole!
” Sulley yelled, and turned back to his screen. He narrowed his eyes. “What would Cate do?”

“Never give up,” Schmidt said softly. “We can give it a while and then try a reboot.”

“Good idea. Okay, we wait then.” Sulley turned in his seat. “Who’s making the tea?”

*

Colonel Jack Hammerson read the data squirt intercepted from the Ellsworth team’s update to the UK Ministry of Science. There was no information on Alex Hunter, and he didn’t expect there to be. But the two words he dreaded were there:
Probe destroyed
.

Even though Alex Hunter’s vital sign monitor was now flat-lining, did he think the man was dead?
Probably not.
Just well out of range, he bet. Hammerson sat back, jaws clenched. Could he risk it all on a wait-and-see approach?
Absolutely not.

He had no choice, he needed to initiate his backup plan. If the front door was shut, then he’d need to kick open the back one, and forge right in.

The backup team’s mission was no longer a
stand and hold
assignment that he originally planned for. Their role had suddenly changed from defensive to offensive and they now needed to go in,
and go all the way down to hell
. He just needed one more member – a guide.

Hammerson picked up the phone, hating himself already.

“Margie, get me Aimee Weir.”

*

Cate couldn’t breathe. She knew that the Pliosaur could have easily grabbed prey from shallows and even from the shoreline. She and Alex were a tempting morsel of meat, just a few feet from the deep water. She waited, and then surprisingly, a hundred feet further out, the striped hump rose, whale-like, and then slid away, fast.

“Not that hungry, huh?” She snorted softly, but then sobered and quickly looked over her shoulder. “Or did something scare you off?”

A metallic clank from the rocks farther down the shore drew Cate’s attention back to the waterline. She grinned.

“Well, hello, you tough little bastard.”

It was
Orca
, the probe had beached. The ten-foot toughened metal body looked like it had been run over by a truck. It was crushed in places and had some rips in its super hardened steel skin, showing wires and circuitry.

She nodded to the mangled machine. “Thank you.” Then she lay down, aching, still on top of Alex.

Cate felt him stir beneath her, and she unclipped her belt and rolled off him. He groaned and she reached across to grab his hair and lift his head. He was breathing and there was an actual dent in his forehead that was so dark it looked black.

Ouch
, she whispered, and pushed him over onto his back. She knelt beside him, and used a thumb to open one of his eyes – the pupil dilated.
Good
, she thought,
no brain damage
.
But don’t know how with that damned ding in his noggin though
.

Alex moaned again and his head raised a few inches. “Wha …?” his lips continued to move.

“Take it easy. I think you’ve suffered a concussion.” She wiped debris from his cheek. “Just breathe, we’re okay now.”

She shrugged out of her own oxygen tanks, and eased Alex’s off his shoulders. He lay back, and Cate turned to the forest, looking along the line of huge trunks.
Alien
, was her first thought. It was hard to think of them as trees, as most were up on multiple stilts, twisting and slimy looking, like in some sort of haunted forest.
Maybe they weren’t trees at all, but something vastly different,
she wondered. Many rose at least fifty feet in the air, and ended in stubby palms, but their tips looked more akin to polyps rather than fronds. There were more at ground level, all of them looking soft and damp.

It was strangely quiet, with vapor hanging in the air. It reminded her of a haunted forest, and all that was missing was the hooting of an owl or a headless horseman lurking in the shadows. She continued to search the dark spaces as her gut told her that there was life in there. She inhaled deeply. There was the ever-present smell of warm saltwater, but permeating it was another odor –
mushrooms,
she thought. That’s what it reminded her of – composting mushrooms.

Above her the ceiling was black velvet, but speckled with blue dots that lit the environment in a soft twilight. Looking back at the subterranean sea, it was almost an endless flat surface of inky black liquid that swirled and popped as things broke the surface or swirled just out of sight beneath the warm, dark blanket. To one side of them, a huge cliff rose up hundreds of feet, to then curve up and over them as a ceiling. In among the blue lights there were hanging fronds that looked like upside-down corals of all differing hues.

Alex groaned again, and she turned back to him. She frowned. Did the huge dent look different? She placed her fingers gently onto it, and then immediately snatched them back – his skin was hot, damned hot. She leaned forward, and as she watched, the sunken contusion rose and flattened, and after another few moments the deep blue-black bruise lightened to purple, red, and then vanished.

“What the hell?”

Alex sat up, staring straight ahead for a few moments. He got to his feet without a trace of unsteadiness.

“Take it easy.” Cate followed him up.

He continued to stare out over the flat water. “It’s gone now.” He turned slowly, his eyes catching sight of the mangled probe. He half smiled. “Close encounter of the worst kind, huh?” He looked at her, his brows raised.

She shook her head. “Yeah, and you slept right through it, Mr. Big Hero.”

Alex inhaled, filling his chest with air. “You got us in safely. Good work, Cate.” He smiled. “I owe you a drink.”

“You owe me more than that, pal,” she said, scowling.

Alex reached for a pouch at his waist, and pulled out a small box. He fiddled with its dials, looking at the screen, and then turned to the forest. “We’re not far.” He started up the rocky shore.

“Hey, wait, you were just …”  She scoffed. “I don’t believe this.”  Then: “Ah, goddamnit,” she said, and started to follow.