Distortion Offensive

by James Axler

  Chapter 10

  Less than an hour later, twin Manta craft soared through the air, glistening in the rays of the midday sun. They were like two streaks of lightning as they surged through the cloudless skies above the ruins of Snakefishville in their swift pursuit toward the coast. In the passenger seat within the tight cockpit of the lead aircraft, Clem Bryant peered through the thin window down at the shattered ruins below.

  “Well, there’s no getting away from it—I suppose I’m in the big leagues now,” he muttered as the ruins rushed beneath him while the craft continued on its urgent errand.

  Sitting in the pilot’s seat before Bryant, his head entirely encased in a domelike helmet of the same color bronze as the graceful craft’s sloping wings, Grant turned as if cocking an ear at his passenger. “What was that, buddy?” he asked.

  “Nothing important,” Clem admitted, idly stroking at the whiskers of his goatee beard. “I was just thinking about how this is a step up for me. Going on a field mission in one of these amazing spaceships. I rather feel like I’ve hired a limousine to take my sweetheart to the prom.”

  Grant shrugged, not entirely comprehending Clem’s twentieth-century nostalgia. “Well, I’m no substitute for Mariah,” he admitted.

  Unseen by Grant, Clem sat up a little straighter in his seat, his eyes widening with surprise. “And why would you say that?” he asked.

  Grant laughed. “‘Sweetheart’? I just thought that you and Mariah were—” He checked himself. “Well, it’s none of my business.”

  Clem turned his attention back to the view through the window once again, while Grant continued to pilot the almost-silent aircraft over the California coastline.

  “It’s funny,” Clem said after a minute or so, “but this will be the first time I’ve been under the ocean’s surface in, well, whatever it is—two hundred years.”

  “You’re a freezie,” Grant pointed out, aware that Clem had spent two hundred years in suspended animation on the Manitius Moon base. “Time’s screwy for you. Why’s that so funny?”

  “Because it was only a couple of weeks ago that I was promising that I’d teach Mariah to scuba dive,” Clem admitted. “Just before her…well, accident, I suppose you’d call it. It’s the first I’d really thought about it in a long time.”

  Hidden beneath the faceplate of the pilot’s helmet, a broad smile appeared on Grant’s face. He knew from experience that love could make a fool of any man, but it was also the one thing that made everything that the Cerberus team endured worthwhile. Grant’s own sweetheart—the beautiful Shizuka, leader of the Tigers of Heaven—had more than once saved his life, and not always in the traditional sense of removing him from harm’s way. Having someone to live for could make all the difference in a harsh world.

  As he considered that, Grant’s thoughts turned unbidden to his colleagues Kane and Brigid. Neither one of them seemed to be able to commit to a real relationship, and the whole thing seemed all the more messed up because they shared their anam chara link, that special bond of soul friends. Some had proposed that this meant the couple would eventually be lovers; they had even been shown prospective futures where that appeared to be the case, although the validity of those visions was ever in question given the duplicitous nature of their many enemies. No, their bond to each other seemed to have settled into an almost siblinglike arrangement, not romantic love so much as a deep concern for the welfare of the other. Grant smiled. They sure as hell bickered like siblings; he had seen that with his own eyes.

  Both Kane and Brigid had taken lovers, that was true. Most recently, Brigid had begun a tentative relationship with Daryl Morganstern, a handsome, advanced mathematician from the Cerberus personnel roster. Yet it seemed, to Grant at least, that the anam chara bond that his two friends shared somehow scuppered any chance of long-term fulfillment in a relationship, as if the pair’s very closeness was their downfall. It was the old trap—they were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.

  Grant turned his full attention back to piloting the Manta as a warning icon appeared on his all-encompassing heads-up display to inform him that they were coming within range of their destination. Whatever it was that Kane and Brigid did, he assured himself, they were fighting for something. Who knew? Maybe he was the only one of their tight trinity who needed to put a definite face on that nebulous goal.

  FLYING IN FORMATION BEHIND Grant’s vehicle, Kane piloted his own shimmering bronze Manta along the Snakefish coastline and out over the sparkling, clear blue waves of the Pacific. Below, several fishing scows could be seen working near the shoreline, and Kane wondered if, even now, the fishermen might be netting more of the strange shellfish they had discovered on Hope’s beach. He hoped not, given how Brigid and Lakesh had reacted—anyone foolish enough to eat them would be in for a tremendous surprise.

  In the passenger seat situated directly behind the pilot, Brigid Baptiste sat with her eyes closed, going over everything Balam had told them in the preceding few hours. She was still feeling woozy from her experience with eating the mollusks. The effects had passed, but she had been left with an unspecified sense of discomfort, as if something had shifted deep inside her. In another time, in another situation, she might have called this feeling a hangover.

  Kane flipped something on the dash console and the craft began to bank. He spoke briefly to Grant via their Commtact link, confirming their location.

  “I’d guess we’re about three minutes out, Baptiste,” Kane announced in a louder voice once he had broken the radio contact. “You feeling any better?”

  Brigid assured him she was. “Just a touch of nausea. Can you fly less bumpy maybe?” she joked.

  “Sure,” Kane agreed. For a moment, he concentrated on angling the graceful aircraft around, following the path Grant was charting through the cerulean skies. Then, partially by way of conversation, partially to air something that was preying at the back of his mind, he spoke up again, directing a question at his ferociously intelligent colleague. “Can you believe all this?”

  “All what?” Brigid asked, concentrating on keeping her lunch down as turbulence rocked the aircraft.

  “This whole undersea-library shtick,” Kane elaborated. “Living creatures that work as books. Does that not strike you as a bit nutso?”

  For just a moment, Brigid was taken aback. Kane was usually cool, not one to get himself too personally involved in a given situation. Perhaps, she thought, the sight of Little Quav had disturbed him.

  “You hear me back there, Baptiste?” Kane prompted, raising his voice just a little over the sounds of air rushing all about their remarkable vehicle.

  “I guess we’re all ‘books’ of DNA,” Brigid began, “if you think about it. There’s so much we don’t really know about the double-helix code that makes up living things. There are whole reams of data therein, right there within our own bodies, that appear to serve no purpose. They call it junk DNA, legacy data that has remained with us through the evolutionary cycle even though it’s no longer required. Retrotransposons and pseudogenes—there’s a lot of crap in our systems, Kane, much more than most people realize.”

  As Brigid spoke, Grant’s voice sounded over Kane’s Commtact once more, informing him that they were one minute away from their final staging point, after which there would be no turning back. Kane acknowledged that with a word, banking his Manta to stay in line with Grant’s own Manta.

  “So, all this junk DNA,” Kane said, picking up on his discussion with Brigid, “could hold—what?—book-smart information?”

  Brigid let out a sharp bark of laughter at Kane’s obstinacy. “I rather suspect that the terms book and library are words of convenience that Balam employed to help us comprehend the rather unusual situation that we’re entering.”

  “Which is to say,” Kane said, “don’t take them so literally.”

  “Exactly.”

  “It just makes my head reel when I think about this stuff,” Kane admitted. “I mean, we’ve dealt with
a lot of strange crap, but this—the stakes involved, the outright alienness of the whole concept—well, it’s huge.”

  “The ocean is huge,” Brigid reminded Kane, “and it makes up two-thirds of the planet’s surface. There are life-forms that we’ve never seen. The Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia is home to untold thousands of different creatures, so many that no one has ever been able to adequately catalog them all.”

  “But are they all walking libraries?” Kane asked lightly.

  “Who knows?” Brigid said with a degree more seriousness than even she expected.

  Just then, Grant’s voice came over the receiver of Kane’s Commtact once again. “Staging point,” he stated. “Say when.”

  Kane looked below, peering through the glowing data feed that the Manta’s scanning equipment was providing on his helmet’s heads-up display. They were eighteen miles out from the coastline, and it looked—rather disappointingly in Kane’s opinion—like any other part of the ocean. Blue waters swirled below, the gentle waves making the afternoon sunlight twinkle across its surface, the white foam bursting into existence as opposing waves clapped together. Unlike at the coastline where the sea was an enticing, light cyan, here that blue seemed darker and more ominous.

  “By your mark,” Kane stated over the Commtact.

  He and Grant had discussed their plan of approach before leaving the Cerberus redoubt, and it had been agreed that Clem Bryant should be in the lead vessel as, with his oceanographer background, he had the greatest experience of situations of this sort. Thus, Grant would lead the way through the watery depths on a curving vector while Kane would follow in his own Manta at a close clip, keeping pace with his colleague while in a suitable position to provide backup support if needed. What that backup might be, no one was quite sure. Neither Manta had any armament; their offensive capabilities were nil. But keeping within line of sight while under the ocean seemed the most practical approach; if one vehicle met with trouble, the other could hopefully assist while retaining a safe distance from suffering the same indignity. They had no real idea of what it was they were to face here, and Kane wanted to be prepared for any eventuality.

  “Submerging in five,” Grant confirmed.

  “Acknowledged,” Kane stated. “Stay sharp.”

  Seated behind Grant, Clem took a deep breath, listening as the pilot counted down aloud. Then, Grant powered the Manta high in the air, looping it as he gained momentum before entering the water like a sleek dart, the aerodynamic form kicking up the barest minimum of splash in its wake as it disappeared beneath the rolling blue waves. Behind Grant’s Manta, Kane followed in his own craft, swooping so close to the ocean’s surface that spume was kicked into the air by his vehicle’s passage, before lunging into the air and banking back down to follow Grant into the ocean depths on a parallel course.

  The two sleek, identical aircraft hit the water at a five-second interval, their aerodynamic wings cutting through the surface with such grace that they barely created a mark by their passing. The Mantas were transatmospheric and subspace vehicles, but they could also adapt to underwater environments, being utterly airtight and powered using air spikes.

  And so they went. Down, down into the blue.

  The ocean had its own currents, its own eddies. The surface turned and churned, glistening with a blueness that could seem inviting. But down, away from the sunlight, the ocean became a place of gloom, its creatures living lives spent in shadow. This was the environment that the Cerberus exiles now found themselves in.

  In the lead Manta, Grant studied the sensory input from his craft’s scanning device as an increasing amount of information made itself known on his heads-up display. The Manta crafts were surprisingly maneuverable under the ocean, and something within their makeup automatically adapted to the new environment, ensuring that they could travel seamlessly through the water. Perhaps not that surprising, Grant reminded himself—the alien craft’s design seemed based on the undersea manta ray, which itself glided through the waters of the Pacific.

  Still, the ocean buffeted the crafts like strong crosswinds, threatening to knock them from their intended path, and both Grant and Kane found themselves fighting with their control yolks as they hurried through the blue-green water.

  Around them, fish and other creatures swam, darting out of their way as the metal hulks plummeted through the ocean depths. Things floated by, too, bubbling up to the surface in little pockets of air, and Kane felt sure he recognized several of the odd little shellfish that had washed ashore at Hope. Like so much else under the water’s surface, the things were swirling with the current, tossed this way and that as they slowly drifted to the white sunlight above.

  Gradually, the water became darker as they moved farther and farther away from the sunbeams, and Grant found himself increasingly reliant on the scanning equipment aboard the Manta. He took the opportunity to ask Clem if things were okay.

  “It’s peculiar,” Clem admitted, “being back in the ocean like this. Especially traveling at such speed. I was seconded to some navy operations during my time back home,” he said, recalling his work in the twentieth century, “which involved some use of small, two-man submarines. Nothing this fast, however. Do you know how fast we’re moving?”

  Grant checked his displays, but they were designed for airspeed. He gave Clem that figure, and Clem translated it as about thirty knots—fast for undersea movement.

  The weird, muffling effects of the liquid made it seem that much more alien, and Grant watched the counter increase as they got deeper and deeper into the vast body of water.

  “It’s curious,” Clem pointed out, “but I’m feeling no effects from the pressure. I wonder if we’ll need to go through decompression when all this is over.”

  Grant checked his heads-up display, mentally calling forth the relevant information. “This ship is self-pressurizing,” he told Clem. “It’ll keep adapting no matter how deep we go. In theory, it should reverse the process when we’re ready to surface.”

  “That’s quite a relief,” Clem said. “I had the bends once, early in my diving days. Not something I’d want to experience again, let me tell you.”

  The two mantas continued onward, two tiny specks dropping through the vastness of the Pacific. Lower and lower they rushed, past shoals of brightly colored fish and poisonous jellyfish, past clumpy, floating plants and tiny crustaceans no bigger than a person’s little toenail. Down and down, into the inky blue, lower and lower until Grant felt almost certain they had to be reaching not simply the bottom of the ocean, but the Earth’s core itself.

  Finally, after fully six minutes of rushing through the water at an almost perfectly vertical angle, the bottom of the ocean became visible, stretching to right and left, with hard rocks littering its smooth, silt carpet, and creatures large and small hurrying across its surface. Amid the silty banks, a vast hole waited in darkness absolute, the huge, gaping mouth to some gigantic cave or crater that sat beneath the lowest reaches of the ocean proper.

  Grant engaged his Commtact, radioing through to Kane. “I have visual on our entrance,” he explained. “Heading in on three.”

  Kane acknowledged the communiqué, assuring Grant that he was still just behind him.

  Then Kane watched as Grant’s vehicle swooped into the huge, gaping maw, disappearing from sight. For a moment, even the exceptional scanning equipment of the Manta seemed unable to follow Grant’s passage, almost as if it was being deliberately blocked, and then a light winked back up on Kane’s heads-up display and tagged itself as his partner’s Manta. Thumbing the throttle, Kane followed, banking lower before racing through the opening and down into what lay beneath.

  It was almost black down here; the whole area was shrouded in thick shadow. Refocusing his eyes, Kane flipped his attention from the heads-up display to standard visual, eyeballing the utter darkness of the vast cavern that they had entered. According to the sensors, the deep crater was at least six miles across, adopting an oval
shape at the floor of the ocean and burrowing far deeper than the sea bottom that surrounded it.

  “We are now entering an alien environment,” Kane stated, the words shocking his passenger out of her own reverie.

  “I can’t see a freaking thing,” Brigid complained as she peered through the slit windows to her left and right. “It’s like a mine shaft outside.”

  The Mantas surged onward, gliding through the water with all the grace of their namesakes.

  It took another two minutes, and even Clem began to wonder if they had somehow entered some other realm, given the seemingly impossible depth of the cavern, but finally the bottom came into view on the scanning equipment’s far distance range.

  “Instruments report that we are now nine miles below sea level,” Grant announced.

  Clem took a sharp intake of breath at that. The deepest known ocean trench—Marianas in the Pacific—was seven miles below sea level. They truly were in uncharted and slightly unreal territory.

  And, as if to make it just that little bit more unreal, Grant’s next announcement took Clem by complete surprise.

  “Shit! We have incoming!”

  Peering through the tiny slit of window in the back of the Manta, Clem suddenly saw something lunge at them out of the near-absolute darkness—and it was something huge.

  Chapter 11

  Rosalia awoke to the sound of barking. The noise was urgent and close to her ear, and it sounded strained. Automatically she reached for the stiletto blade that was hidden in its sheath beneath her sleeve, pulling the dirk free in a swift, practiced movement even as her eyes began to dart left and right as she took in her surroundings.

  It was midday, and she had been napping for several hours. Like so much else in Rosalia’s life, sleeping in the daytime was a habit that had been adopted as a precaution. A lone woman sleeping rough at night invited all sorts of trouble in the rotten ville of Hope, where a constantly shifting population absorbed and hid those who would prey on the weak. There was irony to that, of course—Rosalia herself was what psychologists would term an alpha predator, deadly, with her eyes open to any opportunity. Yet even she had to sleep, and that was when she was at her most vulnerable. While she had no love for the pale-eyed mongrel that seemed to have adopted her as its master, Rosalia knew there were benefits to keeping Belly-on-legs at her side.