The key was stealth. As they’d discovered shortly thereafter, most of the floating constructs were propelled by the same noisy geysers that moved the iron iceberg they observed, a day earlier. They were capable of speed – enough to escape unless taken unawares. The trick was to stalk them under cover of darkness and strike while they rested. Once the titans of the deep had immobilized a vessel with their steely tentacles, the succulent mouthfuls hidden within were theirs for the taking.
As the female stopped to explore a seventy-foot hole gouged into the rocky slopes, the male’s thoughts diverted from his stomach to the impetus behind their current search. Although his monstrous mate was as hungry as he, at the moment she wasn’t hunting. At least, not for food.
The male’s eyes gleamed as he watched his bride squeeze her massiveness inside the ragged cave. No sooner had she entered, when thousands of colorful reef fish occupying the tiny grotto came scurrying out. Like a rainbow-hued wave, they swirled around the outside, waiting for the mammoth mollusk to either settle down or abandon their abode. The female’s bark-like skin blackened at the sight of the tenacious fish and she lashed out with one of her well-armed tentacles. Several fish were maimed or killed by the strike, but the rest danced away, unharmed. Hovering nearby, they returned like a cloud of locusts, fearlessly exploring the length of the female’s sucker-lined arm and feeding on their dead and dying brethren.
The cow octopus’s eyes narrowed and she hoisted herself upright. Her writhing tendrils carried her bloated body like spider’s legs as she exited the cave, one of them snapping off a ten-foot stalactite that hung in her way and crushing it into fragments as she flowed back outside. She looked around before emitting a watery rumble of frustration – a loud bloop that echoed up the nearby slopes.
The male drifted back, carefully gauging his irascible mate’s mental state. She was understandably frustrated. Everywhere they checked it was the same – each cave or chasm was swarming with tiny fish or squid. They were too fast to catch, too tiny to eat. But they were a serious threat. Not to the male or his mate. That would have been ridiculous.
The danger was to their offspring.
The female octopus was heavy with young. She was due to birth soon, and her need to find a suitable nest, free of predators and parasites, was pressing. Unlike other cephalopods that lived only a few years and died shortly after spawning, Octopus giganteus were a long-lived species. The female reproduced seasonally. Moreover, the pair worked together to protect their nest until the eggs hatched. They took turns guarding their clutch – often 200,000 strong – with one acting as sentry while the other left to feed.
The problem with this cave was the same as all the others. Even working in concert, the pair could not fend off thousands of tiny egg thieves. They would die from exhaustion and their larvae would be stripped until none were left. Back in the abyss, they had, on occasion, faced similar conditions. But that was before the whales vanished, and then there had been many of their kind. By sheer volume, enough of their young survived to adulthood to ensure the continuance of the species. Now, with their numbers so reduced, they could no longer afford to take chances.
They must either find a suitable nest or risk perishing.
The male watched as the female’s eyes turned upward. They had reached a point where the rocky slopes of their crevasse turned completely vertical; a crumbly, anemone-infested wall of rock that soared over a thousand feet straight up. At the summit was the beginning of the Continental shelf. The water there was shallow and teeming with life. Food was plentiful, but the warmer temperatures made life uncomfortable for the great cephalopods. The copper-rich proteins in their blood transported oxygen best under cold temperatures and low oxygen pressure. Their bodies were designed for the void of the abyss. Still, where the female went . . .
As his mate unexpectedly jetted straight up, the male’s tentacles bunched up and then drooped – an almost human shrug of frustration. He ground his beak, then filled his mantle with seawater and sped after her. Up she soared, with him following in her swash. High above them, the gray surface light grew less dim by the minute.
Suddenly, the female’s progress came to an abrupt halt. So fast was the male traveling, he had to unfurl his arms like a parachute to avoid plowing into her. He stopped barely a dozen yards away and then pulled back. They had reached the summit, a gnarled edge of seaweed-dotted stone and coral, bordering the vertical drop into darkness. Beyond, lay the shelf’s inexorable rise. Twelve miles up that slope was the roaring surf. And beyond that, dry sand.
The male studied his mate. Her golden orbs were wide with excitement. As he peered over her vast bulk, past the edge of the precipice, he understood why. A hundred yards away lay the rusted remnants of some metal monstrosity. It was huge, more than twice the female’s length, and draped along the very edge of the dropoff.
The object had an almost whale-like shape to it. It was partially buried in the sand and had been there for many seasons. Its nose was badly crushed and its tail twisted and bent, but it was its body that attracted the female. In the center of the ancient iron construct was a crack – a break in the unyielding metal. It started from the dorsal and ran all the way to the seafloor: a ragged, rusticle-draped gap measuring forty feet in height and thirty feet in width.
Strangely, inside there were no fish to be seen.
The female wasted no time. Brushing aside a warning touch from one of the male’s tendrils, she rushed forward to investigate the site. Arcing up and then coming down directly on top of it, her tentacles poured over the exterior like a mating ball of anacondas, tasting, testing and probing. Brownish clouds of rust particles mixed with sand billowed up as a result of her explorations, but to the male’s surprise, no marine life was disturbed.
Content with the construct’s exterior, the female made for the opening. His body tensing, the male flew to her side. Experience told him the wreckage was devoid of life because something – perhaps even one of their kind – had laid claim to it, and he was prepared to do battle. But when his mate inserted one of her tree trunk-like tentacles into the opening and probed inside, she found nothing. The wreck was uninhabited.
Moving boldly forward, the female began to insert herself into the jagged gap. Like liquid metal, her tentacles flowed inside, followed by the rest of her. The narrow entrance was easily bypassed, even by her thirty-foot mantle. With the exception of her beak, the only hard portions of her body were segmented links, a vestigial shell that formed a sort of internal armor. The protective shell segments were easily compressed and did not detract from either her flexibility or ability to squeeze into tight spaces.
Once fully inside, the female coiled up, her gold-colored eyes swiveling as she measured the space for comfort and studied its interior. From her body language, the male could tell she was content with the find. He moved to the entrance and peered within. The space was suitable. It could hold their entire clutch of eggs and allow at least one of the adults to squeeze inside while the other stood guard or hunted.
As the male explored the sand-strewn bottom of the wreck, his probing arms uncovered two things of interest. The first was a small skeleton. He knew at once it was the remains of one of the tiny warm-bloods they targeted as a food source. The bones were old and incredibly fragile; they crumbled to dust the moment he grazed them.
The second find was more intriguing. Under several feet of sand, he came across the rotted remnants of several wooden cubes. They were small – barely the thickness of the base of one of his arms, and broke apart when touched. The contents of the boxes were far more interesting: mounds of black, crystalline powder that had lain concealed beneath the seabed.
The male touched one of the piles of black powder and recoiled. The chemoreceptors on his suckers detected an acrid, unpalatable taste. Moreover, the granules left his body tingling where he’d touched them. Alarmed, the male reached for his mate, encouraging her to leave, but she steadfastly ignored his entreaties, even snapping at him when h
e persisted. She was satisfied with her nest and would not give it up. This was where she would birth their clutch. And from this place, their offspring would spread into the seas beyond.
Frustrated with the female’s stubbornness, but knowing better than to press, the male did the only thing he could; he used his tentacles to scoop sand over the piles of black particles, covering them as best he could. This accomplished, he signaled to his mate. The sun was going down and it was time to hunt.
While she wormed her way back out from her pending nursery, the male scanned the surrounding sea. A few miles away, perched atop the surface over deep water, was another of the floating constructs. It was similar in size to the last one they’d encountered. This one was immobile, yet even at this distance it gave off a litany of discernible sounds. It was heavily infested.
With food.
The female wasted no time. The need to gorge her gigantic body on fresh, warm meat was overpowering. This was her last chance to feed before she laid her eggs and she was not about to miss it. Expelling high-pressured seawater from her siphon, she shot toward the target at maximum velocity.
His mouth awash in anticipation, the male hurried to catch up.
* * *
Thank God it’s just a short drive . . .
Dirk’s nose wrinkled like a desiccated prune as he sat in the rear bench seat of one of Tartarus’s diesel-powered ATVs, wedged between Dr. Grayson and Admiral Callahan as they sped past the seemingly endless row of pliosaur habitats. He compressed his shoulders and overlapped his arms to avoid getting squished, then focused on breathing through his mouth. Callahan may have held the keys to the Navy’s bank vault, but the heavyset naval officer’s deodorant had given up the ghost a long time ago, and he absolutely reeked of cheap cigars and cigarettes.
Smoking was a vile and disgusting habit, Dirk thought. He turned his face from Callahan and shook his head. Even sea air mixed with the pungent odor of pliosaur couldn’t overpower the man’s stench at this range. At least Grayson was sharing his misery, albeit more stolidly. Knowing all his mentor’s aches and pains, there was no one better at suffering in silence.
As a reminder ping emanated from his tablet, Dirk took a quick breath and leaned forward, talking around Callahan. “Dr. Grayson, I forgot to mention, it looks like we’ve got another locator on the fritz.”
Grayson’s eyes stayed focused front but he nodded. A “locator on the fritz” was their code for an employee going AWOL. “Whose locator is it?” he asked quietly.
“Security officer McHale’s, sir,” Dirk replied. “I ordered a scan, but the signal is off grid. I suspect it’s a transponder issue.”
Grayson sighed, then leaned forward and addressed their driver. “Phillip, drop me off here, please.” As the ATV came to a stop, he climbed carefully out. “Admiral, Derek will take over from here. I’m afraid I have some technical issues to address.”
“No problem,” Callahan said, thumbing his mustache. He glanced around. They were at the far end of the pliosaur tanks, past the submarine turntable and within walking distance of the fenced-off rear portion of the complex. To the far left hung the ominous, three hundred-foot black curtain that cordoned-off a heavily-guarded area marked “Restricted” from the rest of the docks. To the right, an SUV drove slowly past, towing a trailer loaded with bales of hay. Callahan grinned and clapped Dirk on the shoulder, unintentionally spraying spittle in his face, “I’m in good hands.”
Dirk greened but managed to keep smiling. “If you can’t make the procedure, sir, I’ll email you the video and data files.”
Grayson nodded and shuffled off, heading toward a nearby elevator.
“Phil, we’ll get out here, too,” Dirk informed the driver. He hopped out, waiting as Callahan hoisted himself from the other side. Judging by the way the MarshCat’s stiff shocks noisily rebounded, Dirk calculated he outweighed Garm by a stretch. No small feat.
“What the hell?” Dirk’s eyebrows lifted.
“Something wrong, sport?” Callahan asked.
“Yes . . . and no,” Dirk muttered. He touched his wristband to the lock on a gate leading past a twelve-foot chain-link fence. The lock popped free and the gate swung open. “Close it behind you, please,” he said over his shoulder as he walked briskly through.
Four hundred feet away, past a network of canals and a huge, gated pool, lay the heart of the facility’s surgical center. A smaller, hundred-foot healing pool formed its core. Around one side of the pool, arranged in a semi-circle, stood a series of heavy-gauge shelving units, stocked with a vast array of scalpels, hemostats, and assorted medical devices – all constructed on a colossal scale. Looming high above everything else stood a platoon of searchlights. They were similar to those used during nighttime baseball games, their fifty-foot towers arranged around the pool in an oval, their powerful halogen lamps angled downward. The lights were dimmed at the moment, but the SUV-sized generators and comparably-scaled compressors the generators backed-up, that handled everything from IVs to transfusions, were already powered up and running.
Directly adjacent to the pool, and anchored deep into the gray granite walls of Rock Key, was a three-hundred-ton, fifty-foot wide lift system, connected to a pair of ten-foot-thick, stainless-steel shafts that towered over a hundred feet in height. The lift was part of a recently upgraded system of high-capacity hydraulics and pneumatics that raised and lowered the Colossus neural interface system. The enormous, arm-like manipulators, with their powerful titanium-polymer actuator muscles were currently deactivated, sitting in repose on the surgical deck’s scrubbed and polished concrete floor.
What surprised Dirk wasn’t the sight of all their equipment, activated and on standby. It was the fact that their patient, the recently delivered Gen-1, was already on the operating table. The tenacious beast had been prepped and was securely strapped to the floating gurney they used for procedures. Dirk noted that several feet of the creature’s muzzle and tail hung past the edges of the near-eighty-foot platform. Judging from its inert state, and the intravenous tubes hooked up to it, the pliosaur was fully anesthetized. Of course, that didn’t seem to matter to the one-dozen obviously nervous security officers who ringed the sedated colossus, their weapons at the ready.
Of course, Dirk noted, they should have been facing outward. Their job was to keep unauthorized personnel away from the operating area, not to corral the Kronosaurus imperator if it came to. Their 10-gauge shotguns could stop a charging lion, but to an adult pliosaur the sabot slugs they fired were nothing more than annoying spitballs.
Dirk looked around, trying to locate Stacy. She’d obviously been busy while he was doing Grayson’s sales pitch, but why she wasn’t here and on top of things baffled him.
“Something wrong?” Callahan asked as he locked the gate behind them.
“No,” Dirk lied. “I was just wondering where--”
A loud claxon drowned out his words. This alert was different: longer and lower in tonality than the ones that signaled a food drop or the Vault opening. His head swiveled toward the far-off row of Kronosaurus imperator tanks. To a “man,” the mammoth predators gathered at the dockside windows of their enclosures. They were all submerged and, judging by their body postures, waiting for something.
Then the music started.
Dirk shook his head and grinned as the Cranberries hit single “Dreams” suddenly blasted from the dock’s overhead speaker system. It was so loud everyone in the complex could hear it – including the pliosaurs.
“What the hell is going on?” Callahan yelled, trying to be heard over Dolores O’Riordan’s airy vocals.
Dirk pointed at the Kronosaurus enclosures. A series of deep thuds reverberated across the tops of the tanks, followed by low whirring noises that steadily increased in pitch. Moments later, the flow of water inside each habitat changed, building up from what started as a gently circulating current until it was the equivalent of a powerful rip tide. The sand and algae inside each tank was churned up, reducing visib
ility. The pliosaurs resisted the watery onslaught, their flippers pumping hard as they held position. It soon became obvious the great beasts were enjoying a sensation similar to that of an onrushing tide. In fact, they were reveling in it. They torqued and spiraled as they paddled, casting sideways glances at one another as each tried touching their noses to the glass in front of them.
“It’s one of their daily exercise intervals,” Dirk shouted.
“Like in prison?”
“Exactly!” Dirk gestured at the powerful current generators attached to the top of each habitat. “The only way to keep them fit and not going stir crazy is to exercise them and their predatory natures. The turbine system we installed creates an adjustable current that flies straight at them. If they don’t fight it, they get pinned to the far end of their habitat. It’s like putting them on a treadmill and forcing them to run.”
Callahan’s thick-jowled head angled to one side. “They look like they’re racing. Can they see one another?”
Dirk nodded. “During their exercise interval we deactivate the iridophores that keep them isolated. Seeing one another spurs their competitive instincts.”
“What’s with the music?” Callahan remarked. “Seems a bit inappropriate.”
“Damned if I know why, but they seem to like that particular song,” Dirk said. “They get a new mix each day, but she always opens with that track. It lets them know what time it is.”
“Who opens?”
“I do,” Stacy announced.
Dirk spun around as his ex popped out of a nearby booth, wiping her hands on a dry rag. She was wearing a full-body neoprene swimsuit, like the kind used in marine theme parks. “Geez, you scared the--”
Kronos Rising: Kraken (vol.1): The battle for Earth's oceans has just begun. Page 21
