Adrift

by W. Michael Gear

  Michaela got a ping on sonar, watching the Doppler that marked the creature’s approach from off to the left. Given the signal return, it measured close to four meters, but seeing it appear out of the blue, first as a shadow, only to solidify into a four-flippered . . . No, that was wrong. These were like four underwater wings that shot the organism forward, then, at sight of the sub, flashed to spin the creature into an impossible right-angled flight where it disappeared into the distance.

  “Nothing can move like that,” Michaela whispered her awe. She pulled up the visual recorded by the camera, studied the beast closely. Got a really good look at the head with its meter-long, needle-like beak that parted into three jaws, an eye behind each. The body was covered by what looked like pelage rather than scales or skin. It changed from blue to red and then bright yellow as the organism spun and fled. The mobility came from the four wings. They allowed the creature to turn in its own length. To Michaela’s eye, the wings might have been feathered, or rather, some morphological feature that might have served a similar function. She ached to have a sample so that she could work out the physics of how the structures would function in a liquid rather than gaseous medium. What kind of drag would they have? Did they achieve lamellar flow, or maybe serve as compressors to shoot water back as they contracted with each stroke? Or did they function like an anhinga’s wing back on Earth?

  “Did you catch the sound?” Casey asked. “How it changed when that thing fled?”

  “Yeah. Like it let out a squeal and the background mimicked it. And did you notice? The tubes all disappeared. Like so many things down here, they went invisible. Makes you think that four-winged flyer was a predator.”

  “Pretty magical,” Casey said, her voice filled with wonder.

  Before Michaela could respond, Jaim’s voice came through com. “We’re done with samples, descending ten meters.”

  “Roger that, We’re on station.”

  Michaela kept an eye on the monitor as Casey dropped them down, carefully keeping her position ten meters off the other sub’s stern. As they descended, the light began to change, the color seeming to wash out of the tubes as they flicked past the transparency. What had been a light-blue turquoise in the distance had taken on a bluer tint.

  “Not so many hits on the sonar,” Michaela noted. “And the background singing is deeper, as if the higher frequency creatures are getting fewer.”

  “Yeah, but look at this. Appearing just on our right as we descend.”

  Michaela watched a thick spear of something lance up beside the sub’s transparency. As they dropped past the organism, arms that had been folded close to the central trunk detached, reaching out with remarkable dexterity; the ends seemed to explode with wispy fingers that stroked along the transparency’s glass surface.

  “Ten meters,” Casey announced. “Neutral buoyancy. Holding steady.”

  Michaela shot a quick glance at the monitor where Varina’s sub was nose-first in a profusion of pale blue and green biota. She had to reach through the growth with the mechanical arm in an attempt to obtain her geological samples. The mass of living material apparently didn’t like it. Michaela watched a ripple move outward as the massed biota shifted, shoved, and tried to get out of the way. This was accompanied by a bursting dispersion of colorful shelled creatures from where they’d been hidden in the biomass. Sand puffed and squirted, leaves, paddles, and tentacles all waving in the disturbance.

  A thump on the side of the sub brought Michaela’s attention back to the transparency where the armed spear was now leaning toward them, more of the wispy fingers tracing the sub’s sides and transparencies as the long green stem bent toward them.

  “How tall is this thing?” Michaela wondered, checking her depth meter. The bottom was a good nine meters below them, and the top of the spear had to be another meter and half above.

  “So, it’s like a tree?” Casey wondered.

  “You tell me, you’re the expert on the kelp forests.”

  “This thing doesn’t have leaves like kelp, and kelp doesn’t have arms and feelers. Being blue-green, it can probably photosynthesize, but I’m betting that with the arms and these feather-like feelers? This is a predator.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a slew more of them around us. Pretty much all along the bottom for as far as we can see.” Michaela glanced beyond the delicate feelers to see spears of various sizes poking up. Sonar pinged, and one of the mysterious torpedoes appeared out of the blue haze to drift their direction. This was Michaela’s first good look at the creature, and she made sure the camera caught its entire passage. Torpedo wasn’t a bad name. Three large eyes were placed equidistantly around the head, the tripartite mouth open as it approached. The long length could barely be seen to pulse along the scintillating patterns of color that ran down its sides. Three fins gave it a rocket-like appearance, and as it streamed past, Michaela was able to see three vents surrounding a short stinger-thin tail.

  “Jet propulsion,” Casey announced, her head slightly cocked. “Like the tubes, but bigger.”

  “Michaela?” Varina’s voice came through the com. “We’re done here. We’ve got the samples stowed. We’re ready to descend.”

  “Roger that,” Casey told her, easing the controls forward. “Wait, what’s this?”

  Past where the spear was feeling its way along the side of the transparency, Michaela could see that some of the other arms had wrapped around some of the light mounting hardware. It seemed to be hanging on, unwilling to let go.

  “I’m on it.” Michaela said.

  She maneuvered the mechanical arm to reach around. Grasping the spear’s restraining arm, she used the hydraulics to crush it next to the stalk, and actually severed the clinging arm. Suddenly freed, the sub rocked, sank, and ripped away from the feeling tendrils.

  Immediately, the spear reacted, striking viciously at the sub as it sank along the thing’s tall stem, the lower arms reaching out. As it did, the hydrophone erupted in what sounded like a ululating scream. Michaela could see the spear’s trunk vibrating in the water.

  “Get us away from this,” Michaela called, as the spear began to bend toward them. “Full speed.”

  Casey accelerated out beyond the spear’s reach. Michaela watched it drop behind in the rear cameras. The spine-chilling scream began to recede, morphing into a plaintive kind of peuwww peuwww call that dwarfed the musical background she’d grown used to.

  “Jaim? You might want to steer clear of the spears. Uh, these really tall tree-like things. They have arms that shoot out from the trunk to grab hold of you. That’s the sound that is overloading your hydrophones.”

  “Roger that. We had the same problem with the bottom growth. Several of the life-forms kept grabbing the remote arm, and others tried to attack the mechanical hand. When I pulled us back, we ripped a couple of plants out of the bottom. They’re still refusing to let go.”

  “Varina? What’s your call?”

  “Let’s go for another fifty meters. Give it a look-see.”

  “Roger that. We’re on descent, but we’re out about twenty meters after our escape from the spear. Once you establish a position, we’ll maneuver in as closely as we can to cover you.”

  “Roger that, Michaela,” Varina replied. “We’re giving it a once-over. Trying to see where there’s an opening that won’t disturb the plants so much. Okay, so plants might be the wrong word. These things are way too interactive. And it’s so weird the way they scamper along the bottom on their roots.”

  “Yeah, welcome to a whole new world.”

  Michaela heard the first ping from the sonar. She watched the signal grow. The thing was rising up along the sloping bottom, ascending from one hundred fifty meters. Maybe attracted by the “tree’s” distress call? Perhaps like a coyote reacted to a wounded rabbit’s vocalizations?

  “We’ve got a hard contact,” Michaela said. “Coming
up. One hundred twenty-five meters and rising.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Casey asked.

  “Position us right behind Varina’s sub,” Michaela said thoughtfully. “We’ll just go neutral buoyant, hold position, and let the thing pass. Maybe it will just ignore us if we play dead.”

  “Good plan,” Casey agreed, looking at monitors as she maneuvered around, keeping a careful distance from the closest spear as she backed in toward Varina’s sub.

  “Fifty meters. Everyone hold your positions. Freeze, now.”

  “Roger,” came Jaim’s voice. “Wow. Big sucker! Would you look at that!”

  Michaela craned her neck to peer down the irregular slope as the bottom dropped off into the indigo depths below. The creature rose from the shadowy deep, body elongated, but thicker in front. As it came near, she could finally make out its form. If she had to draw an analogy to a terrestrial creature, the three giant claws made her think of a lobster—but one without legs and made up of three armored backs conjoined along the ventral axis. Three eyes, each on a stalk behind its claw, nasty tripartite mandibles that clicked and gnashed around the central mouth. More to the point, the creature had to be a good forty meters in length, the claws measuring a meter and half from tip to hinge.

  “Pus-sucking son of a bitch,” Casey whispered as the thing floated up to within a couple meters of the transparency.

  Michaela’s mouth had gone dry, her heart hammering in her chest. She fixed on the closest of the eyes, a dark and gleaming orb. It might have been peering right through her soul. She ignored the frantic calls from the Pod, like everyone was yelling over everyone else.

  “If that thing attacks . . .” Casey said hoarsely. “Shoot it, Michaela. Right now. While you’ve got the chance.”

  “I . . .” She swallowed hard. Damn it, the thing was as big around as the sub. If the torpedo didn’t kill it . . . She accessed the firing control through her implant, her breath coming in hard pants. What the hell should she do? Some part of her brain was screaming: Too close! The detonation will destroy the sub!

  “We’re leaving!” Varina’s panicked voice came through com. “Surface! Surface now!”

  “Varina! No, wait!”

  But it was too late. To Michaela’s dismay, through the hydrophones she could hear Varina’s sub blowing ballast.

  Before Michaela could react to the movement, the thing shot past with incredible speed; its passage knocked the sub sideways with enough force to slam her viciously in the seat restraints. The last she remembered was the bang, lightning shooting through her head as it hit the monitor beside her. And a descending gray mist that . . .

  46

  Varina gasped when the great three-clawed apparition hit Michaela and Casey’s sub. From the way both monster and yellow sub bounced off each other—not mention the audible bang—it had to be quite a bump. Just the sight of the thing defied belief. Three claws, three carapaces that faded into segmented rows of armored plates running down the length of the tail. But most of all, those outlandish eyes on their stalks and the central mouth with its three triskelion-oriented mandibles.

  After hitting Michaela’s sub, the creature collected itself, the three eyes still on Varina and Jaim, as though it was focused on them through the transparency. Then the mouth opened, and the monster shot toward their rising sub. Impossibly fast. Like something propelled by a jet.

  Varina gaped in stunned disbelief as it loomed. In just a matter of a heartbeat, the three claws extended, the mouth yawning as the mandibles clicked together and parted.

  Huge! So . . . huge!

  It filled her vision.

  Jaim was screaming, crying out, “No! God’s sake, no!”

  With a resounding crack it hit the transparency. Varina was slammed forward against her seat restraints. Her arms, head, and feet whipped forward and back. Pain shot along her nerves, the world blurring. She barely heard herself scream. Everything loose was bouncing around the cabin, coffee cups, the logbook, her personal pad, Jaim’s graphite-fiber bag, the lunch tray as it lost its cover and flung food across the glass and soaked her short hair.

  The whine of the pumps, the hiss of air flooding the ballast tanks, along with the bang and clatter of cascading cans and personal items, mingled with an intense warbling that rose into a pulsating, almost painful squeal. The creature shook the sub as it uttered a series of crescendos and vented its rage.

  Clearing her vision, Varina wiped at the soup trickling down her face, felt her heart battering against her sternum. The three mandibles were sliding across the glass less than an arm’s length from her face. Wicked things, each reminded her of a brown-freckled scythe a half meter in length. They parted, widened to encompass the submarine’s nose, and slid back together as they slipped across the glass.

  “Michaela? Do you copy us? Michaela. Hello?”

  Nothing.

  “Kevina? Anyone in the Pod. Hello? Do you copy?”

  More silence. Not even a crackle on the com. She glanced at the readout. Dead.

  “Oh, God . . . Oh, God . . .” Jaim kept whimpering from the driver’s seat.

  Varina felt, as well as heard, metal buckle and snap, the submarine shaking as something outside collapsed under the power of the claws. She whimpered. Grasped the chair arms in a death grip, as the sub lurched sideways, spilling the loose items along the transparency’s concave surface.

  Jaim’s terror-laced scream matched Varina’s own.

  One of the forward-facing lights screeched as it was slammed against the sub’s hull to shine in from the right side of the transparency. It served to better illuminate those three terrible speckled mandibles. In the light, Varina could see additional knife-shaped denticles that sliced back and forth like self-honing shears behind the scythe-like mandibles.

  “We’re gonna die . . . We’re gonna die . . .” Jaim kept sobbing.

  “No!” Varina screamed. “We’ve blown the ballast! Hear it? We’re going to pop up to the surface. Any second, now, babe. We’re gonna pop like a breaching whale.”

  “Gonna die,” Jaim insisted through trembling lips. “Thing’s . . . gonna kill us. Crush us and eat us.”

  “It can’t!” Varina insisted. “We’re gonna surface. Hear the air hissing in the tanks, babe? That’s positive buoyancy. We’re gonna go up.” She swallowed hard as the sub jerked sideways, something on the hull giving way with a bang. “Gonna . . . go . . .”

  The sub twisted her off balance as it was rotated sideways and more of the loose items clattered around.

  Damn it! If she just didn’t have to stare at those clamping and chopping mandibles.

  “Let us the fuck go!” she screamed, hearing her own building terror.

  The beast shook the sub with a vengeance, the mandibles clicking and banging as they bounced off the transparency, but the thick vacuum-molded glass held.

  Varina’s fear broke free, a sob catching in her throat as she hung upside down in her restraints. A stream of bubbles began to trace their way upward across the glass, mixing with the mandibles, sucking into the clicking and clacking denticles, and vanishing down that dark throat.

  That was the worst part, that she could hear those damn teeth through the thick glass.

  “Gotta be close. Gonna surface any second,” she promised herself, unable to tear her gaze away from those shit-sucking teeth.

  In the seat below, Jaim had gone apoplectic, her arms shaking as she gripped the controls. “Please, God. Please,” she barely managed to whisper.

  “Where’s the surface?” Varina demanded, staring out at what little she could see past the flailing mandibles.

  What the hell? If anything, it looked darker out there. They should be rising into the sun-dappled light, just beneath the waves.

  Even as she thought it, the creature shifted, gave the sub a hard wrench, and with a bang, air whooshed, water gur
gling. What the hell could that have been? But the air . . . it just kept venting, as if the entire tank had let go.

  But what the . . . ?

  The valve! It snapped the valve off the tank.

  Hot tears began to stream down her cheeks. They silvered her sight, blurring the flicking and flashing mandibles ever so close to her face. There would be no surface. No positive buoyancy.

  Out beyond the mandibles, where they clattered against the glass, the light seemed to be fading.

  Glancing at the depth gauge, Varina watched in disbelief as they passed two hundred meters. The thing was taking them down. Ever deeper.

  “Tam?” Jaim asked, her voice hoarse with fear.

  “Yeah, babe?”

  “Tell me it’s not going to eat us.”

  Panic built. Varina wanted to throw up, to scream, to shriek at the fucking injustice of it all.

  Can’t. Got to be there for Jaim.

  “It can’t eat us, babe. It can’t crush the sub.”

  As if that was any consolation.

  The sound of grinding came through the hull. Then a bang.

  One of the alarms went off.

  Oh, great. The thing had somehow managed to short one of the batteries.

  More grinding, the sound of metal being bent, scraping on the hull.

  What the hell was it doing with those monster claws, picking the outside apart? First the light struts, then the pressure tanks, and now one of the two batteries?

  So, it wouldn’t take long. Not if the battery was really shorted. The electrical system would drain, the lights growing dim. The pumps would stop, the motors would slow, the heaters would fail, and within hours, they would be hanging sideways, or upside down in the dark, getting colder, and each breath would be using up what little oxygen remained.

  She glanced up. They’d just passed three hundred meters.

  Outside the pressure was building, tons of water pressing down on all sides.