by Greig Beck
Janus then introduced the muscle. The guys who were the weapon tradesmen—Rick Croft, the hawk-eyed marksman; Lawrie Williams, the explosives specialist; and Chris Angel and Chuck Watts, demolitions and heavy weapons, and both with the size to match. Also, Joe Edison, smaller and bespectacled, and appropriately in communications.
Janus held an arm out to the last two members of the group. “Last but not least, our submersible pilots, Albie Miles and Joni Baker.”
“We’ll get you there and bring you home, count on it.” Joni Baker flick-saluted them with two fingers.
Jane thought they were a likeable bunch. But she needed them to be ready, and likeable or unlikeable, she doubted they were yet ready for what was to come, or what they might face.
She tapped Janus on the shoulder. “Do you mind?”
“No, please, go ahead.” He took a step out of the way, and then turned to the soldiers. “Listen up, people.”
They focused on Jane, and she folded her arms. “How many of you read the briefing report?”
All hands raised.
“Good.” She nodded. “Now, keep your hand up if you believed everything you read in it?” She looked along their faces. “Be honest. I’m here to answer questions.”
Most of the hands came down.
Jane nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I expected. And if I was you, I probably wouldn’t believe it either.” She looked along each of their faces. “We have all heard of a place called Hell. From our schooldays, church, or movies. It’s supposed to be a place of infernal heat, red skies, and full of demons, right? And it has its ruler, a devil, or the devil.”
Some nods, mostly flat stares.
“Well, let me tell you something that might keep you all alive. Believe me when I tell you that Hell is real, and we’re going there.” Jane lifted her chin, daring them to challenge her. “And the devil and its minion are real.”
The group shifted, some looking uncomfortable as they probably wondered at Jane’s sanity.
“We are limited by what we know, and can see, and perhaps, imagine. But consider something that is beyond your imagination.” She smiled, but with little humor. “Let me ask another question—how many of you have ever heard of giant sea creature legends, like the leviathan?”
Janus smiled as he watched her.
Nina raised her hand. “The leviathan was a biblical beast,” Nina said. “It’s a myth about a giant creature that either comes from Hell or guards the gates of Hell.”
Captain Loche nodded “That’s right. I remember reading once that Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was inspired by the legendary creature.”
Janus Anderson nodded. “When the gates of Hell opened, the first beast through was the Leviathan.” He smiled. “That’s from a clay tablet recovered from a tomb in Babylonia and dates to around four thousand years ago.”
“You’re referring to Dagon, aren’t you?” Matt Kearns asked. “The slumberer below.”
“Yes,” Jane said.
Janus turned to Matt. “Professor Kearns, have you come across reference to this, ah, creature, in your research?”
“Many times,” Matt replied. “It’s one of the most ancient deities, and some of the first recorded references were from the Mari texts in ancient Syria, some 4,500 years ago.” Matt seemed to search his memory. “The Babylonians dreamed of Dagon continually. Interestingly, it was the Babylonians who first depicted Dagon as the fish god, the sinker of ships and eater of men.”
The room was quiet for a few moments.
Jane went on. “The bottom line is, Dagon is mountainous in size, intelligent, carnivorous, and we don’t even know if it lives for a hundred years, or a million. Or even if it can be killed at all.”
“But by your own report, you said you wounded it,” Loche replied.
Jane nodded. “We only think so. We certainly scared it off.”
“If it fears physical harm, then that is because it can be hurt, and therefore, killed,” Loche replied.
“We’ll deal with whatever comes at us. That’s why we’re paid the big bucks.” Janus lifted his chin. “Any other questions?”
There was silence.
“We took your report seriously, Jane.” Janus nodded slowly. “Why don’t we take a tour of our vessels, and maybe that’ll give you some assurance that we can deal with whatever we encounter down there?” He held out an arm. “This way, please.”
***
Loche and his team stayed up in the mess, while Janus led Jane, Mike, and Matt down to the bowels of the ship.
After passing through a final watertight portal door, they beheld why the ship was so vast—inside wasn’t filled with cabins or storerooms but a single cavernous room, and at its base were two crafts, each about seventy feet long and more torpedo shaped than the usual pill shape for DSVs.
They stood at a railing, looking down as technicians crawled in and over the two crafts.
“Meet Abyss-1 and Abyss-2.” Janus shrugged. “But A1 and A2 is fine.”
“They look fast,” Matt observed. “Not something I expected to see on a deep watercraft. What’s their depth tolerance?”
“They’re designed with an internal ovoid steel matrix that actually increases in strength the deeper we go. The design means we can carry less steel and therefore be more maneuverable and more, ah, reactive when and if we need to be.”
“They’ve been to the bottom of the trench?” Matt asked.
“No, but we’ve tested them in the laboratory to ten tons per square inch. The water pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is eight tons per square inch. Or about a thousand times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. We’ll be more than safe.” Janus smiled
He looked back at the two crafts. “And other than the slim and liquo-dynamic shape, there’s something else you wouldn’t expect to see on a DSV.” He turned. “Torpedo tubes.”
“Warheads?” Jane asked.
Janus nodded. “We have an arsenal of four miniaturized, high-impact warheads, also two nukes apiece. They’re low yield but pack enough punch to destroy a city block. That should afford us plenty of underwater defensive capabilities. And that’s not all.” His brows went up. “The turbine engines can be supercharged to deliver a shock either over the entire skin of the vessel or throw out a pulse for a hundred feet in all directions.”
Jane was impressed. “And above water?”
“We have a range of armaments onboard, from small arms to rocket launchers. Plus, several of the crew were selected for their marksmanship and overall skill with weaponry.” He smiled. “Jane, I can’t put my hand on my heart and tell you nothing will go wrong. But we have prepared for what we know, and what you described.”
Jane nodded but turned her gaze back to the craft. They were matte-black but with a red-striped camouflage. Another instance of them paying attention to the red environment they’d encounter, Jane thought. Together, they looked like a pair of metallic, tiger-striped sharks, with a single large eye at front, which was their view screen.
“Nothing will go wrong,” she repeated softly, more to herself as a talisman.
But Janus took it as her vote of confidence in him and his preparations.
“Then good.” He checked his wristwatch. “We depart in fifteen minutes. Grab your stuff and then we can begin to load up.”
EPISODE 12
Deep into that darkness peering,
long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting,
dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before – Edgar Allan Poe
CHAPTER 10
Matt was first to drop in through the Abyss-1 hatch and Captain Joshua Loche took his pack from him.
“Thanks.” He turned about. The craft was small inside, and he had to crouch. He was in a single large room with seats all facing forward toward the front window that Matt had been told was unbreakable, eight-inch-thick glass.
There was a slight smell of ozone that he expected, as he’d been in submersibles before, and it came from all t
he electronic equipment packed into the vessels. There were banks of screens all around them that would display feeds from the outside cameras dotting the length of the DSVs. There was even a small area below them, the lower deck, but this was for weapons storage.
Abyss-1 was the command craft and would house Matt, Mike, Jane, Captain Loche and Janus, the chemist Maxine Archer, as well as the pilot, Albie Miles.
The other craft held the muscle, as Matt liked to think of it, and its crew would be Lt. Nina Masters, Rick Croft, Lawrie Williams, Chris Angel, Chuck Watts, and pilot Joni Baker.
Matt didn’t envy that craft, as the last two guys with their bulk would make it feel real crowded inside.
“How long until we reach the bottom?” Matt asked.
“Captain.” Janus turned the question over to Joshua Loche.
“Normally, it takes between six and eight hours to get to the bottom of the trench, but these craft are built for speed and strength, so we’ll drop at about 23 knots.” He bobbed his head. “It’ll still take us nearly an hour to get to about 36,000 feet, then we’ll slow as we get close to the rift hole,” Loche replied
“The gravity well,” Jane added.
“That’s right,” he agreed.
“One question,” Mike asked.
“Sure, Mike.” Janus raised his eyebrows.
“It’s an obvious one, I guess.” Mike exhaled. “Those images taken of the ruins around the breach, er, gravity well entrance, by the craft that ventured inside… what happened to it?”
“We don’t know,” Janus replied. “It’s been nearly a week and we’ve had no response.” He shrugged. “But that’s to be expected.”
“Why?” Jane frowned.
“Well, for a start, and according to your own report, it takes between twenty-four and thirty hours to descend in the well, and then, ascend. Plus, the pilot would have had no idea what was happening. So, after spending that amount of time caught in the gravity well to finally pop out in an underground sea, and a red one, might have been a little confusing.”
“He’d be disorientated, maybe lost. Plus, standard comms would be useless over that distance anyway,” Loche added.
Mike nodded.
“For all we know, he might still be there, waiting for us,” Janus said.
Mike glanced at Jane, and he bet she knew what he was thinking—the likelihood of that was less than zero.
Janus looked around. “Any more questions?”
“Hundreds, but here’s hoping they’ll be answered by the mission,” Matt said.
“I’m sure they will.” Janus nodded to Loche. “Captain, load ‘em up, lock ‘em down, and let’s ride.”
“Yes, sir.” Loche organized the two teams. “Okay, people, find your seats, and then I want an update from our pilots before we drop. Let’s hustle.”
Jane, Mike, and Matt followed Janus’ instruction on where they’d be seated—thankfully, close to the front and the view window. But everyone also had a small screen close to them.
Loche spoke softly to Albie Miles, the Abyss-1 pilot, who quickly and expertly ran through his pre-launch procedures, and then patched in Joni Baker on Abyss-2 so Loche could talk to his second-in-command, Nina Masters. After he confirmed they were all ready, he turned. “On your word.”
Janus smiled and faced forward. “And the words are open doors.”
Loche spoke into the headset to the command ship’s operations room and the whine of heavy machinery could be heard. Immediately, the hull began to fill with water, and the two crafts powered up. After a few moments, the cradles were lowered in the water to below the hull and then disengaged.
The two crafts gently dropped away. Jane felt her stomach flip a little from nerves, and she had the urge to scratch at one of the scabby sores at her hairline that tingled madly.
She noticed that Matt Kearns’ face was lit blue by the glow from the sunlit ocean via the large, glass view panel. She smiled; he looked like a long-haired kid about to enter a theme park.
Mike reached out and grabbed her hand, and she turned and smiled. Even though there were the familiar red blotches on his temple and chin, in the dimming light, he was his familiar, handsome old self whose eyes sparkled with curiosity, enthusiasm, plus a little tension.
“Angle down at forty degrees, ahead 10 knots, continuous scan for UOs,” Loche said softly.
“UOs?” Matt asked.
Albie repeated Loche’s commands as he carried them out, and the captain turned in his chair. “UOs, underwater objects. You’d be surprised how many large objects there are on the first few hundred feet down, from shipping containers to basking whales. Once we’re past the top layer, we’ll open it up to greater speed and take her down in a giant corkscrew all the way to thirty-six thousand feet.”
“Thirty-six thousand feet,” Matt repeated with a smile. “Do you know that if you dropped a penny from the top of the Empire State Building, it would take nine seconds for it to hit the street. But here, if you dropped that same penny into the Mariana Trench, it would be drifting down for over three and a half hours before it hit the bottom.”
Mike chuckled. “You sure know a lot about pennies, Matt.”
Matt grinned back. “Of course. How do you think they pay me?”
Janus eased back into his chair. “Might as well get comfortable, folks. Gonna take us forty-five minutes before we get close to the floor, and once we lose the sunlight, there’ll be little to see.”
“We might spot a cetacean or two, but we’ll be traveling down without our lights on, so it’ll be black,” Loche added. “As we near the ten-thousand-foot mark, you might spot an odd flash of bioluminescence, and that’s likely to be one of the deep-sea varieties of life. Or even a colossal squid.”
He went to ease back but seemed to have another thought. “We’ll also be lowering the cabin lights to reduce our luminescent profile. Like Mr. Anderson said, might as well just take it easy and relax.”
“Good.” Jane knew then that they believed her about the massive entity and going dark might give them some cover in the abyssal depths.
She and Mike eased back in their seats as Matt Kearns had his head under a towel as he looked at something on a small screen.
Jane heard Loche talk softly into the microphone as he coordinated with the other craft on the way down. His sonorous voice was almost hypnotic, and it allowed her mind to drift. She wondered about the small red people, and the lobster-like arthropod creatures who were the minions of the horrifying beast they’d seen in the massive inner world sea. And she also wondered about the Russian woman, Kayta, and whether she survived. Unlikely, but she hoped so.
Minutes passed and then more minutes, and then it seemed time sped by as soon Loche announced that they were just five minutes out from arriving at the trench floor.
Janus turned in his seat. “Professor Kearns, you may want to get a front row seat for the view coming up.”
“You bet,” Matt said, pulling the towel from over his head and then pushing long hair back off his face.
Janus left his seat and Matt sprung up front to take it. Jane and Mike watched by occasionally leaning forward but also using the set of controls they had to change the angle of the small external camera feeds.
So far, there was nothing but black on blackness, and as long as the silt wasn’t stirred up, it was so clear as to appear like the nothingness of outer space.
“Five hundred feet,” Loche intoned. “Slow to three knots.”
They all felt the craft slow in the water, and then saw the beginning of the trench bottom. Or rather, the beginning of the ruins.
“Holy fu…” Matt jumped forward in his seat, his eyes wide.
Columns rose to greet them like colossal fingers in the darkness. It was astounding to see them, and to see them at this depth, but what was truly alarming was the sheer size of them. They had to be two hundred feet high and fifty around.
The raised dais came next, and the stones fit together with absolute precision and
in strange geometric shapes of some sort of Euclidian design, with each being the size of school buses.
There was also what could have been a huge tabletop, fifty feet in length, toppled beside a rounded stone plinth, obviously its base, and on its surface was etched other worldly whorls and lines.
It was made all the more eerie by the absolute stillness surrounding the ruins and the darkness, which was like they had come across some alien civilization in the dark void of space.
“Can we get a little closer?” Matt asked.
Loche nodded. “Abyss-2, hold your position. We’re going to take a closer look.”
“Roger that,” Joni Baker replied.
Their DSV eased forward, down to about two knots. The massive columns rose around them and as they approached the fallen altar, something like a long, flattened eel, that may have had legs, slithered away into the darkness.
“A little more to the left, I mean, ah, port side,” Matt whispered.
Abyss-1 swiveled in the water.
“Stop here.” Matt leaned forward, his mouth an open grin. “There’s writing. A little like on the coin.”
“Can you read it?” Janus asked from behind.
“It’s picture glyphs, like a mix of Egyptian and Mayan. Each image could be a word, an entire sentence, or perhaps an expression.” He half turned. “And no, not fully yet, but I expect so soon.”
“Would you like us to take some shots?” Loche asked.
“Sure, yeah, you bet,” Matt replied eagerly.
In seconds, some hard copies were being produced, and Loche handed them to Matt.
“Why are they so big?” Loche asked.
“I don’t think they were made for human beings.” Matt shrugged. “Maybe they were made by humans, but I think they might have been designed in deference to their gods and with them in mind. After all, look at the size of the pyramids.”
“If they were made by humans, then how the hell did they get to be thirty-six thousand feet down?” Janus asked. “Even with our current technology, we’d struggle to be able to build this.”
“If it was us, we’d build it by assembling it first, and then transporting it down,” Jane said. “Matt said they might have built it but not brought it here. Someone or something else did that.”
