“Holy--” Bane nearly choked. “Is that pool filled with those?”
“Gotta feed the inmates, doc,” Garm said. He watched emotionlessly as the flailing two-ton fish was hauled straight up to a height of one hundred feet, before heading purposefully toward the first pliosaur tank.
Ten feet below the surface, the dark Kronosaurus cow labeled “Thanatos” remained motionless. Only her glittering green eyes betrayed her as she tracked the approaching fish. As it drew closer, her powerful throat muscles started to spasm and her echolocation clicks resonated through the air. When the pincer assembly hovered fifty feet above the surface, another claxon sounded. The pincers opened and . . . BOOM! Like a grenade exploding in the water, the giant predator’s fanged jaws struck, seizing the hapless Bulldog fish the moment its head pierced the water. There was a ferocious struggle as the doomed Xiphactinus flailed against the grip of its natural predator, followed by a wet, crunching sound. With a low rumble, Thanatos shook her misshapen head from side to side, until the waters of her enclosure were clouded with blood and scales.
“Yikes,” Bane said. Above them, a series of lift assemblies moved to the Bulldog fish pool, made their drops, and then headed toward the pliosaur tanks with their thrashing burdens. “Note to self: swimming in pool, not advised.”
Garm nodded. Alongside, every Kronosaurus imperator waited impatiently for its meal, their ratcheting sonar clicks bonding together to form a low-pitched hum that vibrated even Gryphon’s heavy hull. Garm rubbed at his forearm as his arm hairs stood on end. Soon, the dock resounded with the sounds of bones being splintered and flesh rent as the grisly feast increased in scope and frenzy.
Bane cast about. “So, is that all they eat, those fish?”
Garm shook his head. “They have a varied diet. We have a series of oxygenated pools containing an assortment of large fish that we breed specifically for them, including bluefin tuna and beluga sturgeon.”
“What, no great white sharks?”
“Reproductive rates are too slow.”
Bane blinked. “I was kidding.” She gnawed her lower lip. “I’m afraid to ask, but is there anything else you feed them?”
“Not unless you count the livestock on the lower levels.”
“You mean cows and sheep?”
“Cows yes, sheep no. Too small. But we have Bactrian camels, Cape buffalo, American bison, and giant eland, if memory serves.”
Bane was aghast. “Wait, you feed them mammals . . . alive?”
“I don’t feed them anything,” Garm said coolly. “Pliosaurs prefer their food bloody and still twitching. And yes, they do seem to relish mammalian flesh.”
“Any cetaceans?”
“No. There’d be a pile of lawsuits if word got out. And besides, my brother would never allow it.”
There was a sudden vibration as Gryphon’s forward maneuvering thrusters fired. “Brace yourself,” Garm advised. There was a series of thumps as the hull thrusters continued to fire short bursts. Seconds later, the submarine came to a complete stop.
There was a ten second delay, while waiting dock crews loitered around. Then, with a high-pitched whining sound, Gryphon’s hydraulic-powered boarding ramps extended from her flanks like insect legs, locking her onto the platform and providing access for those on it. A final shudder shimmied through the sub’s thick hull, punctuated by a loud thunk, and then silence.
“Time to disembark,” Garm announced, gesturing toward the sail door. “Gather your things. I’ll meet you on the starboard dock in ten.”
“What then?” Bane asked, looking around at the football field-sized docking station. She gazed apprehensively up at the nearby menagerie of ravenous marine monsters.
“We’ll find out where you’re supposed to be. In the meantime, try not to get eaten.”
Bane’s eyes flashed angrily. “You are not funny, Garm Braddock!”
“Who said I was being funny?”
CHAPTER
7
“I’m surprised your people aren’t ready to mutiny,” Commander Jayla Morgan remarked, studying the drawn faces of Gryphon’s battle-weary bridge crew as they stood around the dock, waiting on their commanding officer. “After you let Dragunova take their prize . . . and bonuses.”
Surrounded by bookkeepers, Garm looked up from signing an electronic tablet and cocked a grin. Despite Jayla’s habit of flirting with insubordination, he liked his thirty-two year old second-in-command. The buxom, dusky-hued, five-foot-nine South African had been with him for two years now and was one of the few people he trusted to command his vessel during those rare times he left the bridge; usually only to eat, sleep, or use the head. He especially liked how her normally-dormant accent flared up when she became irate or agitated.
His crew, on the other hand, didn’t care for her. Jayla was by the book, with almost no sense of humor. That was terrific when it came to keeping things tight and orderly, but Garm learned early on that men and women facing death on a daily basis needed to relieve stress. In his eyes, if that involved some occasional banter on the bridge, that was fine.
But Jayla didn’t see it that way. She hated the camaraderie amongst the bridge crew. Cunningham, in particular, got on her nerves. The friction between them was just one more reason why Garm only left Gryphon’s backup team to her tender mercies.
“Really?” he replied, scrawling his name on one digital form and pressing his thumb print to another. “I don’t think so, but let’s see.” He snatched up a nearby tablet. “Our tallies for this tour included seven Gen-2s, four Gen-3s, eleven Gen-4s, and that little rat bastard Gen-5 that killed that surfer off Miami.” He did some quick fingering on the tablet. “That means you primaries each made a whopping $29,457.00 over the last sixteen days. Anybody unhappy with that – maybe want to string up your captain?”
“No, sir!” came the universal reply. Cunningham saluted sharply and added, “We’d follow you into hell, captain. Even without the money.” He gave a lopsided grin and added, “Of course, getting paid does help . . . sir.”
Jayla’s hazel eyes moved from Ho to Ramirez to Rush. “Sure, that’s a nice payday, but wouldn’t you rather have had the extra ten grand each that bringing in a confirmed Gen-1maneater brings?”
“Oh, but they’re getting the ten Gs each,” Garm retorted. He watched Jayla’s mouth do the fish-out-of-water thing before he turned to his team. “You heard me. You guys pulled our asses out of the fire back there, so consider your bonuses earned.”
“Uh, how are you going to do that, boss?” Ho asked confusedly.
“I’m giving you the money.”
As the bridge crew exchanged surprised glances, Jayla shook her head.
“Bridge crew dismissed,” Garm said, giving them all a casual salute. “Go get drunk, sleep, workout – whatever makes you happy. And Cunningham, go see that pretty wife of yours. I’m sure she misses you. You guys have three days to kill, with nothing to kill. And you’ve earned them.”
As his ecstatic crew shouldered their bags and dispersed, Jayla shot Garm a disapproving look. “Permission to speak freely, captain?”
“Of course, First Officer Morgan.”
“You’re spoiling them, sir.”
Garm accepted one last form to sign, passed it back, and nodded. “Yes, I am. But they deserve it. Besides, you should talk; you and your guys got to sleep most of the last twenty-four hours, and you still got paid.”
Jayla laughed. “Sleep, with Ho driving the Gryphon like she’s offroading in her Jeep?”
“I dare you to tell her that,” Garm said, smiling humorlessly. He shook his head. “Enough chit chat, Commander. You’re Officer of the Deck until further notice. I want munitions replenished and the galley restocked by 1600 hours. Have the reactor crew run a full diagnostic and the base engineers do a complete inspection of both hulls. We may not have taken any hits, but between the heavy maneuvering and the ammunition expended, I’d like to make sure we don’t have any unpleasant surprises waiting for us.”
“Very good, sir!” Jayla said, saluting smartly. “Who do you want on the bridge?”
“Brown and Alvarez will be fine. Skeleton crew only.”
“Aye, captain.” Jayla smiled jauntily as she turned on her heel and began barking orders at the hapless crew of a waiting munitions truck.
Garm grinned. The woman certainly enjoyed being in charge. He had a momentary vision of her dressed in a leather dominatrix outfit and holding a riding crop and shuddered.
After excusing himself from the remainder of Gryphon’s receiving crew, Garm gestured for Dr. Bane to accompany him. She’d been standing around watching the festivities, and waiting to find out where she was supposed to be. They’d walked but a few steps when he noticed her wearing a befuddled expression.
“Something wrong, doc?”
She cleared her throat. “I’m confused about the money. Are you authorized to arbitrarily hand out bonuses?”
“Oh, it’s not the CDF’s money I’m giving them,” Garm replied. “It’s mine.”
“What? You’re giving them forty thousand dollars of your own money?” Dr. Bane shook her head. “That must be half your check!”
“And your point is?”
“Well, can you afford it?”
Garm’s easy smile flatlined as they resumed walking. “When my mother died she left all her shares in JAW Robotics to Dirk and me. With the recent buyout by GDT, the value of that stock has more than tripled.”
Bane’s brow crinkled up. “So, you’re--”
“A billionaire? Pretty close, at least on paper.”
Her jaw dropped. “B-but if you’re so rich, why the hell do you go out hunting pliosaurs?” she stammered. “Is it some obsession? Do you feel you have something to prove?”
“Only to myself.”
“That’s . . . that’s insane!” she blurted out. “You could get yourself killed out there! Aren’t you afraid to die?”
“Only of dying badly,” Garm said. He looked up at Proteus’s tank as the mutant Kronosaurus imperator eyed him through the thermoplastic barrier, like some gigantic cat that wanted to play with its food. Their eyes met, then his swung back to Bane’s and he winked at her. “Everyone dies, doc. Dying well, now that’s something to strive for.”
Bane shook her head and stared at the ground. “You are a strange man, I don’t--”
“Head’s up!”
Garm’s head snapped up as the warning cry echoed from high above. His reflexes kicked in and he grabbed Dr. Bane by the shoulders, yanking her back just in time to keep her from being flattened by the falling head of a Xiphactinus. The three-hundred-pound chunk of fish smashed onto the concrete dock with the sound of a soaked bag of cement, spattering blood and brine in every direction.
Bane’s protest at being manhandled died in her throat and she stared, stupefied, at the monstrous fish head staring up at her. Alive, a Xiphactinus wore a toothy Joker’s grin. It was far more macabre in death.
“You okay, doc?” Garm wiped away the streaks of blood that lined her trembling face. A worker climbed hurriedly down from a nearby scaffold, his steel-tipped work boots ringing as he came thudding over.
“Geez, I’m really sorry, lady,” the sweating ironworker offered. He eyed Garm pensively, then pointed up at the creaking lift assembly, high above their heads. “The filters take care of most of the scraps, but any heads that are left gotta be removed with the lift. They clog the impellers.”
“I’m fine . . . really, I’m okay,” Bane managed dazedly. She shook her head as if recovering from a left hook and straightened up. To the worried ironworker’s surprise, she extended her hand. “Thank you for your concern.”
The man shook her hand, then glanced at Garm with unsure eyes.
“We’re good,” Garm said. “Just check your unit’s power calibrations. And make sure the incident’s noted in your log.”
“You got it. Thank you, Mr. Braddock,” the man said. He radioed to the lift crew, who began lowering their pincers to retrieve the slippery fish head.
Bane took a few steps and then stopped. She leaned unsteadily against Garm, one hand clutching her heart. “Jesus, I almost died. I’ve been here fifteen minutes and I was already almost killed. I’m going to die here!”
“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad,” Garm reassured. “You’re going to be in the labs most of the time, not here on the docks.”
“Oh, wait. You’re right. I’ll just be in an enclosed box working on lethal pathogens,” she remarked, rolling her eyes. “Gee, that makes everything so much better!”
“Yeah . . .” he clicked his tongue. “Speaking of pathogens, you may have gotten some Kronosaurus drool in your mouth just now. Everyone here’s been immunized, but you should get checked, once you’ve unpacked.”
Bane pointed a trembling finger at her commanding officer’s nose. “How many people have been killed in Tartarus over the last year?”
Garm hesitated. “Uh, well, we didn’t have the locator implants until seven months ago, so some people were listed as missing or AWOL . . .”
“How many confirmed deaths?”
“Forty-two. But I don’t see how--”
“Oh God, what am I talking to you for?” Bane scrunched her eyes shut and pressed her hands to her face. “You work on a sub, killing monsters all day, and when you’re not doing that, you’re surrounded by them.”
“Hey, what can I say? Some guys are just lucky.”
Bane shot him a look of pure venom and hugged herself as she walked. “I can’t believe I’m stuck here. Wait until I get my hands on--”
“Hold on,” Garm interjected. His eyes swung upward, focusing on a trio of enormous monitors that hung from the very center of the web-like latticework of girders, fifteen stories up. The monitors were arranged back-to-back in a triangle, so they could be viewed by everyone in the dock, regardless of location. There was a sudden crackle as snow filled the screens. Seconds later, a news bulletin popped up. It was muted, but the images needed no translation.
Footage of a breaching humpback whale dominated the screen. Erupting up under the cetacean and matching its prodigious leap was a similar-sized pliosaur, jaws snapping. As the big whale crashed back down, the marine reptile’s fangs were embedded in its throat. The helicopter’s feed zoomed in as the two giants thrashed at the surface, the humpback’s twelve-foot flukes crashing up and down and the pliosaur’s flippers flapping wildly. Within seconds, the water around them turned a brilliant crimson and the humpback’s struggles ceased.
Garm shook his head as he took in the grim scene. “Whales evolved that breaching behavior to avoid a charging Carcharodon megalodon. It doesn’t work on Kronosaurus imperators, unfortunately.”
Bane sighed, but she continued watching. The monitors turned staticky again and then a second newscast played. This one was filmed off the coast of British Columbia and showed a superpod of at least thirty killer whales battling a forty-foot pliosaur. Two of the toothy mega-dolphins had their jaws locked on each of the larger predator’s flippers and were pulling hard, holding it spread-eagled, while the other members of their troupe rammed and savaged its throat and belly. The besieged marine reptile got in a few licks, but it was hopelessly outnumbered. Soon, the Orcas began to toy with its tattered remains, pushing its body to and fro and taking turns tearing at it.
“Drawn and quartered. Nice work,” Garm said, nodding in appreciation. As Bane shot him a look, he gestured at the screen. “Surviving Orcas have taken to hanging out in communal pods to give themselves numerical advantages. They’ll flee before they take on a full-grown Kronosaurus imperator cow, but when an adolescent male that size comes a-calling, they’re not going to pass up an opportunity to eliminate a threat.”
As the broadcast concluded and the screens turned black, Bane’s eyes swept the platform. Behind them, teams were already busy carrying crates across the Gryphon’s ridged metal gangplanks, with Commander Morgan scrutinizing everything they did. A munitions crew sat waiting for
their turn, with a full brace of Naegling torpedoes laying in stabilized grooves on the back of their flatbed.
“Can we get me where I’m supposed to be?” she asked. “I’m tired and I’d like to lie down.”
Garm nodded. “I was told you’d be met across the way.” He looked around, spotted a six-wheeled MarshCat parked nearby. The rugged, amphibious ATVs were the Tartarus version of a golf cart. He signaled the driver as they approached. “Take us to the receiving dock, please.”
“Sure thing, Captain Braddock,” the cadet said, sitting up straight.
Garm helped Bane into the back and then climbed in. He made it a point to position her behind the driver, more so the ATV wouldn’t dip noticeably when he seated himself than in consideration of her comfort.
As they zoomed along, turning left and passing over the bridge-point of the central canal leading to the disc-shaped submarine turntable, Garm took a moment to close his eyes and relax. He wasn’t as exhausted as his co-passenger, but he was pretty tired.
Bane, obviously happy to be off her feet, uttered a sigh of contentment and started looking around like a sightseer on a bus tour. As they approached an enormous pliosaur skeleton, suspended from steel cables, fifty feet above their heads, she tapped Garm on the shoulder.
“Is that the Paradise Cove animal?”
Garm shook his head. “What’s left of that lizard rests on the bottom of Ophion’s Deep. My parents made sure of that.”
“So then what is it?”
“One of the first Gen-1s ever encountered,” he said over the racket of a passing forklift. “She was brought in by the Titan, a year before I came onboard.”
“The Titan? Wasn’t that the sub that was destroyed?”
Garm nodded. “She went down with all hands. A shame, her captain was a good man.”
Bane looked up and whistled as they drove underneath the preserved skeleton. “Wow, that looks as big as the one Antrodemus is bringing in.”
“Pretty much.”
“Is that as big as they get?”
Kronos Rising_Kraken vol.1 Page 13
