He swam away, hurt and disoriented, and watched from afar to see what would happen next. The neo-whale parent regurgitated more of its cylindrical offspring. There was a series of fiery explosions and the stricken vessel began to ooze body fluids and list. Its vast infestation of bipeds quickly abandoned their mortally wounded host, crying out in terror as it was drawn beneath the waves. Many of them lay in the water, dead or dying, and around them, their blood formed tantalizing clouds.
The Ancient was intrigued. After the neo-whale sent its offspring to attack it kept its distance, ignoring both the dying host and any surviving parasites. The attack must have been a territorial one, as the parent was not interested in feeding. He, on the other hand, had no such reservations. He moved closer, and when the steel-covered cetacean failed to react to his presence, began to eat. Weaving in and out of the debris field, he swam open-mouthed. Like a blue whale ingesting clouds of krill, he inhaled dead and dying bipeds by the dozen. They were small – seal-sized at best – but fatty and nutritious, and consuming a hundred was comparable to eating a full grown basking shark, except without the invariable struggle.
After he finished feeding, the Ancient went on his way. A few days later, however, more of the underwater explosions drew him back. He began to associate the deafening sounds with food and came running whenever he heard the dinner bell. Eventually, he took to following the metal whales, albeit at a safe distance. As big as they were, they were slow and clumsy, and without their sound sight, apparently blind. As long as he stayed behind them, following silently in their swash, he was invisible.
Eventually, he came across the biggest neo-whale he’d ever seen. He was fascinated by its mammoth size and for weeks pursued it, starting in Europe and then crossing the Atlantic. The whale was undoubtedly migrating, as it spent most of its time submerged and kept moving, stopping only occasionally to make kills. Still, feedings were plentiful when they took place, so the pliosaur continued the game, pacing the noisy behemoth like a scale-covered shadow and, in between meals, supplementing his diet with nearby sea life.
One moonless night, the neo-whale surfaced and moved into the shallows, a risky move, as it occupied a depth not much greater than it was long. It remained there, silent, immobile, and hovering a dozen miles from shore. After several hours of this inactivity, the Ancient, hungry and impatient, rose in the water column. From only fifty yards out he watched, his binocular vision piercing the water’s surface as he spied on the inert whale.
He was shocked to discover the hard-shelled titan was infested with the same warm-blooded bipeds as the huge constructs it hunted. There were dozens of the tiny creatures, slinking out of holes in their host. Some crawled over its wide back, cleaning it of other, less noticeable parasites, while others perched atop its massive dorsal fin and stood guard.
Then, something odd happened. It turned out the neo-whale had an eye situated in, of all places, its fin. There was only one such eye, and it gleamed a phosphorescent yellow. Two of the bipeds were annoying the whale by touching its eye, causing it to blink repeatedly.
When, far in the distance, another such eye began to blink back, the Ancient deduced the truth. The iron-hided behemoth had, indeed, been migrating. It had sought out its mate and was now communicating with it.
A sudden hunger pang began to assail the bull pliosaur’s empty stomach and he ground his teeth in frustration. The need to surface was also upon him, and he succumbed to the combined stimuli. Slipping stealthily closer, he approached the neo-whale perpendicular to its dorsal fin, with the intentions of plucking a few parasites from its back. If he was subtle enough, he was sure the colossal beast wouldn’t mind.
Spouting loudly twenty-five yards out, the great reptile made for the nearest cluster of bipeds, his monstrous jaws opened, his red eyes gleaming. To his amusement, the defenseless mammals sprang into action the moment they spotted him. Screaming cries of alarm, they scurried this way and that, with several rushing forward and twisting at a vestigial fin that protruded, spike-like, in front of the neo-whale’s great dorsal sail.
Then, something astonishing happened. The bipeds spun the spike-like fin toward him and one of them uttered a loud squeak. A blinding burst of light lit up the darkness and the fin spat fire and thunder. The blast came right at him, striking the water a few yards to his right and causing it to erupt. A powerful shock wave slammed into him and he felt a sharp spasm of pain as one of his pectoral fins was ripped open.
The Ancient snorted in alarm and sounded. As he did, the spiked fin spat fire again, causing the water above him to explode, and tearing a network of foot-wide holes in the thick skin of his back.
Furious at being injured, the great bull submerged to a depth of two hundred feet and sped in a wide arc. He heard a series of loud clangs and thumps emanating from within the neo-whale, coupled with the dampened cries of its mammalian parasites as they moved around inside its digestive system. He realized the creature was preparing to sound.
As the iron-hided whale descended to one hundred feet and began emitting active sonar, it occurred to the Ancient that perhaps the bipeds were more than just parasites. Perhaps a symbiotic relationship existed between the two, like that between him and the small fish that cleaned leeches from his skin and food particles from between his teeth.
His ponderings evaporated as the great metal beast matched his depth and swung slowly in his direction. The familiar ringing sounds that preceded it spewing forth its young told him everything he needed to know.
The neo-whale wanted to fight.
The Ancient’s mighty chest cavity expanded with unfettered fury at the thought of an intruder challenging his eons-long reign. He uttered a thunderous roar and rushed forward. The neo-whale spun to meet his charge. Seconds later, two of its lethal young erupted from its mouth. The Ancient slowed, watching as the tree-trunk-sized creatures raced toward him. His lips snarled back, and with a power stroke displacing a hundred thousand gallons of seawater, he accelerated straight at them. The distance between them vanished in seconds. Then, at the last moment, he flared his fins and dove downward, causing the fast-moving younglings to speed right over his broad back, missing him completely and continuing impotently on out to sea.
Having dodged his adversary’s first strike, the enraged pliosaur wasted no time. Using his superior speed and maneuverability, he weaved around the cumbersome behemoth, before coming up under it and slamming headfirst into its lower jaw and throat. Although he’d never seen the neo-whale bite, he wasn’t taking any chances. Like a thunderclap, his armored skull impacted on the whale’s vulnerable underside, caving in its thin metal skin.
For the pliosaur, it was a costly maneuver, one that left the interlocking scales covering his head bleeding and badly lacerated. But the effect on the wounded cetacean was far more devastating. Oozing oil, it broke off its attack and turned to flee. The Ancient was far from finished, however, and pursued. Spiraling around his oversized opponent, he slashed repeatedly at it, cutting painfully noisy grooves in its hard flanks with his sixteen-inch teeth as he searched for a vulnerable spot.
As the neo-whale reached its top speed and made a run for the nearby dropoff, the pliosaur moved rapidly away from it. Trailing blood, he retreated. A thousand yards out, he turned back, his crushing jaws agape and murder in his eyes. Gone was the notion of systematically dismantling his adversary. He was going to stop it and its nest of parasites before they escaped into deep water.
He was going to destroy them.
Hurtling straight toward the steel cetacean’s flanks, he broadsided the brute at a speed exceeding fifty miles an hour. The impact echoed across the submarine canyons for twenty miles, as an explosive blast of shattered metal and pressurized air was released. With a horrendous groan, a huge rent appeared in the stricken whale’s side, quickly lengthening and expanding. As its nose dipped and it plummeted toward a nearby underwater ridge, the Ancient realized he had broken the thing’s back.
Seconds later, the paraly
zed whale impacted headfirst on the sand-coated rock of the seafloor and collapsed, its thunderous impact creating a rapidly expanding cloud of sand, oil and blood.
Still not assured of his victory, the giant bull circled his fallen adversary, scanning it with powerful pulses that penetrated the obscuring debris. He could both “see” and hear the sounds of water flooding the dead whale’s insides, along with the muffled screams of surviving parasites as they drowned. A few minutes later, there was silence.
The Ancient held his position, offsetting the current with occasional flicks of his fins. He continued to eye the fallen giant, watching as the tide cleared away the billows of blood and blackish oil that seeped from it. A wave of dizziness suddenly came over him and he shook his head. When his vision cleared he was back in the present. The wreck of the neo-whale was transformed. Its once shiny hull was overgrown with seaweed and algae, its bow and tail section partially concealed beneath the shifting sands. Even the cavernous rent in its side had changed; its once sharp edges were draped with reddish rusticles, giving it the appearance of an infected wound.
As the current picked up, causing the sand in and around the downed submarine to swirl like a miniature dust storm, the Ancient began to blink. His nostrils flared and he drew in snoutfuls of seawater, sampling it. Suddenly, his football-sized eyes opened wide.
There was another scent.
He had been so intent on tracking the elusive smell that had drawn him here he failed to notice a second one, mixed in. It was the same alien scent he came across when he scouted the wreck of that wooden sailing ship.
The Ancient swung his limousine-sized head back and forth, tasting and testing the water. The foreign smell had an unusual effect on him. He could feel his pulse racing and his muscles contracting as he analyzed it. The scent was far stronger here, its source most likely close by. He looked around. Suddenly, his gaze fell on the giant wound in the neo-whale’s side.
The scent was coming from there.
Wary of using his sound sight this close to shore, the old bull moved closer, his garnet-colored eyes zeroing what was, effectively, a pitch-black cave behind the forty-foot gash. Unable to see inside from his current vantage point, he dropped down until he was suspended less than ten feet above the seabed. Then, he began to creep forward.
Closer and closer he crept, his nostrils feverishly studying the unfamiliar smell. It grew stronger the nearer he got, and although he couldn’t place it, an alarm began to sound in the furthest reaches of his primitive mind. There was something . . . primordial about the scent. Something he needed to be wary of.
As he crept to within fifty feet of the rusticle-spewing entrance, the Ancient readied himself. Caves were often inhabited by unpleasant things. His flippers began to undulate, casting up vast clouds of sand, and his car-sized heart beat faster and faster, pumping blood to his rock-hard muscles, readying them for action.
The smell grew steadily stronger.
From twenty feet out, the old pliosaur lunged savagely forward, thrusting his battle-scarred jaws directly into the opening. His armor-piercing teeth were bared and he was ready to fight.
Beyond its rusted steel ribs and a network of decaying wiring, however, the interior of the gutted neo-whale was barren. There was nothing except sand, coral, and some rotting pieces of wood. Confused, the Ancient looked left and right, then withdrew, backing away. His lips wrinkled up and he shook his monstrous head. He had pinpointed the source of the unusual smell – the scent was stronger inside the wreck than anywhere else – but whatever left it was long gone.
With a dismissive shrug of his barnacle-dotted fins, the old bull turned on his tail. He was beginning to feel the need for oxygen and angled his snout toward the surface. Like the rippling fins of a colossal manta ray, his flippers propelled his massive body upward. As he pierced the calm water above and filled his cavernous lungs, his predator’s mind switched from pondering mysterious smells to something more pressing: his next kill.
His growling stomach reminded him that it had been too long since he fed. He rested on the surface for a moment, reveling in the warm night air and listening to the sounds of bats and insects flitting overhead. Far in the distance, he spotted the lights of a passing luxury liner. He watched it glimmering on the horizon until if faded from view. Finally, with nothing to maintain his interest and a cavernous belly to fill, he sounded and sped toward the beckoning deep.
* * *
Dirk Braddock waved a gloved hand in front of his face. His eyes were tearing up and he was trying not to gag into his surgical mask, as the sickeningly sweet stench of pliosaur amniotic fluid filled the air. He checked the 100-foot healing pool at his feet. The tepid water, with its powerful ant-bacterium and regenerative additives, was a dull scarlet from all the blood streaming into it, and he could hear the filtration system’s powerful pumps straining as they fought to cleanse it.
“What’s the count?” he asked a nearby technician. He surveyed the huge mound of eggs, piled high atop a nearby flatbed. The five-man team had been busting their collective asses for the last twenty minutes, lugging the blood-streaked, thirty-inch eggs from their progenitor to the disposal truck.
The tech leaned forward, gazing apprehensively inside the gaping, ten-foot hole that had been incised through layers of scales, skin, adipose tissue, and muscle, exposing the sedated Gen-1 Kronosaurus imperator’s uterine cavity. The mammoth beast had been rolled onto its side atop the healing pool’s floating gurney and was held in position by both Colossus’s gigantic arms and a pair of yard-thick restraining belts. An esophagus vacuum tube was inserted into its mouth, past its arsenal of machete-sized fangs, and IV lines as thick as fire hoses were embedded in the folds of its ten-foot neck. “Looks like this is the last. I count eighty-four altogether, Doctor Braddock,” the tech replied. Grunting, he hoisted the weighty ivory globe up on one shoulder and staggered toward the truck. It was hard work, Dirk acknowledged, as he watched him totter along. He could see the side of the man’s face through his translucent faceplate. Even with a full-body, climate-controlled hazmat suit, he was sweating like a pig.
Dirk wiped his blood-soaked goggles and glanced around. Other than the facility guards, who had moved to the outer perimeter and were focused on keeping unnecessary personnel at bay, it was just him, the surgical techs, and Stacy. She was seated inside Colossus’s reinforced steel cab, manning the controls and waiting for what came next. The only witnesses were Admiral Callahan, his remaining aide, Gibbons, and Garm, omnipresent and overprotective as always.
To Dirk’s surprise, the big sub commander seemed more concerned about Callahan’s capacity for causing mischief at the moment, than he was about guarding his sibling from potential harm. It was a pleasant change of pace, he had to admit.
Dirk squinted up at the blazing hot halogen overheads, then wiped his brow with his gown sleeve before talking into his chin mike. “Resuming analysis and indoctrination of newly captured Gen-1: designate: Goliath. Specimen is an adult female Kronosaurus imperator approximately 30 years old and measuring 81.3 feet LOA. Initial mass was calculated at 152.68 tons.” He paused to glance up at the ten-foot screen protruding from a nearby wall. In addition to the giant saurian’s pulse and blood pressure, its vital statistics and an ongoing real-time sonogram were vividly displayed. “Uterine contents have been excised. Post-partum mass is calculated at 137.43 tons.”
Dirk paused as the lead tech waved his arms to get his attention. Behind him, two of his subordinates had climbed into the flatbed containing the pliosaur eggs and were sitting there with the engine idling.
“Yes, Mr. Jones?” Dirk asked, clicking off his recorder.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Braddock,” Jones apologized. He glanced down at his e-pad and shook his head. “How do you want these disposed of?”
Dirk resisted the urge to glance up at Colossus’s nearby control booth. He knew how Stacy felt about aborting unborn animals, even dangerous ones. If his ex had a flaw, it was that she allowed her ma
ternal instincts to overshadow sound judgment at times. The partially developed embryos had no scientific value. They’d done in-uterine scans of the eggs and none of them qualified for preservation. And from both practical and ethical standpoints, they couldn’t allow them to go full term. The oceans simply couldn’t handle another eighty hungry pliosaurs on the prowl.
“Take them to tank four,” Dirk said, sounding far less assured than he intended to.
As the tech nodded and turned away, Callahan raised his hand like he was back in grade school. “Hey, uh, sport. Isn’t tank four the one housing all those big-ass fish – the ones with the teeth?”
“The Xiphactinus. That’s right.”
“Holy shit!” Callahan chortled. “You’re feeding those behemoths the babies of one of their natural predators? Now that is ironic.”
Dirk shook his head. “Although we’ve never had boots on the ground in Diablo Caldera, admiral, it’s a safe assumption that the lesser predators the pliosaurs fed on helped keep their numbers in check by consuming their young. As did the adults of their kind, I’m sure.”
Callahan gave him a thumbs-up sign. “Gotcha. Carry on.”
“Thanks,” Dirk remarked. Behind him the truckload of doomed pliosaur eggs shifted into gear and pulled slowly away.
“Resuming re--” Dirk sighed as he saw Callahan’s hand go up again. “Yes, admiral . . .”
“Sorry.” Callahan pointed at the sedated pliosaur’s partially-opened eyes. “So, uh, does it know any of what’s goin on? I mean, is it aware you just killed its babies?”
“She is probably distantly aware of what is occurring around her, but is, obviously, unable to act,” Dirk replied.
“Isn’t she gonna be pissed off when she comes to?”
“All the more reason for us to follow procedure and install her implant.” Dirk glanced down at his patient’s scarred head and grinned. “Besides, in case you haven’t noticed, she’s looking at you right now. And since she’ll be leaving here with you, once she’s recovered, if she does have any vestigial memories, well . . . good luck with that.”
Kronos Rising: Kraken (vol.1): The battle for Earth's oceans has just begun. Page 24
