During high speed maneuvers, however, such as evading a rival or closing on prey, the flippers functioned in unison. The broad rear flippers worked in conjunction with the front and took advantage of the suction the pectoral flippers provided on their return stroke to aid them in theirs. Both sets reached maximal extension at the same time. Then, both sets pushed powerfully backward through their respective planes of motion.
In such a manner, macropliosaurs took full advantage of their quad-propulsion system, using all their flippers simultaneously to generate twice as much thrust as a seal of similar size could. Moreover, they could alter direction at will and on the fly. The end result was a whale-sized predator with incredible speed and unparalleled maneuverability.
The Ancient’s throat muscles rippled in waves as he emitted bursts of long-range broadband clicks, designed to locate prey. This far from the surface, the tiny warm-bloods and their dangerous metal constructs were no longer a threat and he was unconcerned about his sound sight being tracked. Unfortunately, so far he had found nothing.
With a loud snort of irritation, followed by a sudden burst of power that displaced enough water to fill three Olympic-sized swimming pools, the great beast angled sharply upward. Accelerating rapidly, he reduced his depth to 10,000 feet in a matter of minutes and remained there. His internal clock told him that, two miles above his wedge-shaped head, night had come and gone. Cloaked as he was in perpetual blackness, he had seen none of it.
Maintaining his depth, the bull pliosaur increased his speed. He was three hundred miles past the Cayman Islands, traveling between Jamaica and Cuba and heading for the turbulence of the Windward Passage. Beyond, the sparkling waters of the North Atlantic waited with their rich hunting grounds. There would be bountiful feeding then, but at the moment, that mattered not. His need was too pressing to wait.
He needed flesh. And he needed it now.
As he passed worthless schools of miniscule fish and a foot-long, deep-dwelling octopus, the Ancient’s glittering scarlet eyes suddenly widened. His sound imaging had detected the presence of a potential prey item: something sizable, at the very periphery of his sensory field. It was high up in the water column, barely 3,000 feet from the surface, and too far to make out in detail. Rather than spook whatever it was, he ran silent, relying on his phenomenal sense of smell to get him within striking distance.
Hurtling through the chilling blackness at nearly fifty miles an hour, the scaly titan was two hundred yards away when he wrapped his target in a blanket of sonar. His thick-scaled lips contracted as he realized he’d detected nothing more than a prowling billfish, feeding on a tightly-packed school of squid.
With a groan that was the saurian equivalent of a sigh, the annoyed beast increased his speed to maximum and threw himself at his prey. It wasn’t much, but if he could catch the speedy, fifteen-foot fish it would go a long way toward taking the edge off his growing hunger.
Of course, catching it was the problem.
Despite being caught at the feeding trough, the 1,400 lb Atlantic swordfish was far from defenseless. Used to battling Nature’s cruise missiles – mako sharks – it was equipped with an array of senses that made it both an efficient hunter and an elusive prey item. In addition to its lateral line, special organs on the sides of the fish’s head heated its huge eyes and brain, giving it unparalleled underwater vision, even in complete darkness. It picked up the pliosaur’s sonar the moment it was pinged and spotted the fast-approaching mountain of teeth and muscle long before it felt the powerful pressure wave preceding it.
With frantic stokes of its four-foot tail, the frightened Xiphias gladius abandoned its feeding run and took off. Angling steeply upward, it accelerated with astonishing rapidity. With a top speed of over sixty miles an hour, the broadbill was one of the fastest fish in the sea. Its powerful musculature and sleek, fusiform design, culminating in the five-foot razor-edged sword for which it was named, made it incredibly fast and agile. It would not be taken easily.
Like an onrushing nuclear submarine, the Ancient barreled toward the fleeing swordfish. Jaws yawning wide, he plowed clean through the school of defenseless squid, enveloping several hundred of the foot-long cephalopods and gulping them down as he continued toward his primary target.
Its streamlined form gleaming like a polished rapier, the Xiphias darted to and fro, with the ravenous pliosaur less than three body lengths behind it. Twice, the Ancient thought he had his meal and powered hungrily forward, and twice he ended up disappointed. The second missed strike was particularly frustrating, as he ended up with nothing but a mouthful of disgusting kelp.
Unable to shake its dogged pursuer, the terrified swordfish banked steeply upward and made for the surface. Its crescent-shaped tail pumping frantically, it sped toward the beckoning sunlight, hoping to lose the giant predator amid the glare and noisy surface traffic.
Although he preferred the comforting shelter of the deep, the Ancient refused to abandon the tasty morsel and stayed glued to the broadbill’s tail. The Xiphias’s top end speed was more than a match for his and he couldn’t begin to compete with its maneuverability. But stamina was his forte. If he could wear the billfish out, it would be his.
Hurtling upward like a WWII battleship, rising from the grave, the voracious Kronosaurus closed on his meal. His shearing jaws were closed tight to reduce friction, his four, barnacle-edged flippers pumping hard to send him rocketing upward. The distance to the surface began to disintegrate: 1,000 feet, then 800, then 600 . . .
As his crimson eyes registered the painful sunlight lancing through the ocean’s phototropic zone, the Ancient felt his body’s dramatic response to the sudden decrease in pressure. His compressed lungs expanded and his heart rate increased, the Volkswagen-sized organ pumping blood away from his body’s dense core and back toward its periphery.
The beast ignored the intense physiological changes and continued the pursuit. If he’d been a whale, the rapid ascent and onrushing nitrogen spewing into his bloodstream would have crippled or even killed him. But the 65 million years his kind spent prowling Diablo Caldera’s 10,000-foot depths had served them well. Over the countless millennia, their bodies adapted more and more to the crushing pressures associated with deepwater hunts. Unlike their Mesozoic ancestors, whose bones still possessed a spongy core vulnerable to sudden, rapid decompression, modern-day pliosaurs had skeletons like an Emperor Penguin – solid bones that were all but immune to mechanical barotrauma.
They were the ultimate deep-sea killers.
With a vicious powerstroke that propelled him up into the dazzling daylight, the Ancient closed to within a few yards of the rapidly-fading swordfish. He could sense the chase was almost done and his enormous jaw muscles began to throb in anticipation.
A moment later, a loud, jarring noise struck the gigantean hunter like a physical blow. He snorted in alarm, his four flippers flaring out like the air brakes on a B-52 bomber, bringing him to a sudden and complete stop. He lay motionless in the water, less than two hundred feet from the surface. His sound senses were inert and his eyes, ears, and nostrils worked feverishly to analyze potential threats.
Three hundred yards away, a large ship passed overhead. It was emitting passive sonar only and didn’t appear to be actively seeking him, but that could change at any time. Worse, however, there was a trio of noisy flying things passing overhead in a wedge-shaped formation close to the surface. They were low enough to detect his huge, shadowy form.
Gnashing his teeth in silent frustration as the swordfish made good its escape, the Ancient played dead, allowing his huge body to sink back into the darkness. Once he’d reached the 1,000-foot mark and was confident his movements could no longer be detected, he started forward. His flippers resumed their alternating stroke pattern and he began to cast about.
Unwilling to chance using his sound sight, he scented the surrounding seawater, drawing it through the scoop-shaped openings in his palate. His powerful nostrils were chemically-enhanced fish find
ers, and could track wounded prey across many miles of ocean.
A grumble of frustration escaped the old bull’s scarred lips as he picked up the swordfish’s fading scent. The broadbill was long gone. Still hungry, he shifted in the water column, his flippers undulating as he spun like a colossal sundial, scanning the sea one quadrant at a time.
Suddenly, the Ancient’s triangular skull twisted sharply to one side, his humped body spinning to follow it. He hovered in place and continued to taste-test the surrounding seawater. Then his gleaming eyes narrowed. He had detected another possible food source. Unlike the lightning-fast Xiphias, this one appeared to be injured and in distress – an easy kill.
The scent was faint. It came from the surface and far off, near the termination of the Cayman Trench and approaching the Windward Passage, between the islands of Cuba and Haiti. The old bull knew the region well. The water was warmer and shallower, but still close to 6,000 feet deep. There was plenty of room for him to maneuver and numerous places to hide if the need arose. He would come in from the deep and survey his target from below, before moving up to snatch it.
Accelerating to his top cruising speed, the Ancient moved rapidly along – a monstrous, dark-hued hunchback, filled with insatiable hunger. At his current speed, he would reach his target long before the great burning eye reached its highest point in the sky.
He would finally find the sustenance he needed. And woe to any creature that came between him and his kill.
CHAPTER
21
“So, Ward, I take it you were satisfied with our little demonstration?” Eric Grayson offered. The tapping sounds his Barker Blacks made were easily overpowered by the clopping of Admiral Callahan’s size-thirteen Oxfords as the two men walked side by side across Tartarus’s stone-gray amphitheater floor. They were at the far end of the cavernous underground stadium, moving along the base of the towering PBI wall that made up the aquarium’s curved, 100-foot high, see-through window.
“Are you kidding me?” Callahan spouted. He glanced over his shoulder at the black MarshCat ATV that sat idling, forty yards away. In it, his aide and Security Chief Dwyer quietly conversed. “After seeing that ballsy girl come out of your juggernaut’s mouth in one piece? Shit, sign me the fuck up!”
Grayson sighed and continued several paces more, stopping finally after they’d passed one of the massive steel buttresses that curved up from the rocky floor like a colossal tendril, its riveted length reinforcing the twenty-foot-thick thermoplastic barrier. “So we should anticipate receiving future orders from you?”
“Hell, yeah.” Callahan paused abruptly, his brow furrows contracting. “Hey, wait a minute . . . do my current purchases come equipped with those advanced control units?”
“Of course. Just like you saw.”
“Sweet!” Callahan rubbed his thick hands together like a child surveying a treasure trove of toys on Christmas morning. “What about the older models, the ones we’ve already got in the field? Can they be upgraded?”
“Of course,” Grayson said with an easy smile. “But keep in mind, each one will have to be brought in and receive a full overhaul – implant upgrading, synaptic reconditioning, the works. It’s not going to be cheap. In fact, I’m afraid the final cost will be almost as much as a new purchase. Is that an issue for you, budget-wise?”
Callahan scoffed. “No worries. When it comes to guarding our sovereign waters, Uncle Sam’s got deep pockets.”
Both men stopped talking as Tiamat’s shadow suddenly passed over them. With a silence reminiscent of the interior of a tomb, the scaly behemoth swam past, ignoring them. She was on their level and less than two hundred feet away, yet Callahan still had to take five steps back to take all of her in. His jaw dropped and he whistled, low and long.
“Mother of God, she is a beast! How old is she, a hundred? Two?”
Grayson pulled a tablet from his lab coat and combined checking Einstein’s feeding schedule, running a remote reactor scan, and inspecting GDT’s real-time stock positions as he responded. “She’s a Gen-1, one of the hatchlings from the initial clutch produced by the Paradise Cove cow. That makes her around thirty years old.”
Callahan shook his head in bewilderment. “B-but, why is she so big? She must be a hundred feet long, easy.”
“Per our last bio-scan, she’s 119.8 feet exactly, and weighs just over 445 tons,” Grayson corrected, his eyes still on his screen. He smiled. Excellent, the market’s down. Just wait until news of the new Navy contracts leaks . . .
“Holy shit!” Callahan sputtered. “But how come she’s so ginormous?”
“I detest that bastardized word,” Grayson said. “And to answer your question, Cope’s Rule postulates that life forms increase in size over the course of their evolutionary history. However, I’m afraid Tiamat is too large to be just a single step up on the evolutionary ladder. That makes her a bona fide mutation – a genetic anomaly that caused normal growth inhibitors to be bypassed, resulting in an animal of unheard of size.”
“She’s a mutie, eh? Like in the comic books and stuff?”
Grayson fought down the upchuck of disdain that sought to spew from his mouth. “Not exactly.”
“So what made her get so big?” Callahan persisted. “I mean, look at her!”
“The prevailing theory is she’s the byproduct of a normally dormant gene – some sort of evolutionary response triggered by environmental pressures.”
“In layman’s terms,” Callahan said. He tugged at his medal-laden uniform’s lapels for emphasis.
“Of course.” Grayson nodded. “In simple terms, it’s the law of supply and demand. Our queen was designed to prey on something – something too large for a normal-size pliosaur to take down. That would be the supply.” He gestured up at Tiamat as she arced gracefully past. “And, voila. There you have the demand.”
“So she’s bigger. Is that it?”
“She possesses a few other peculiarities. I’m sure you’ve noticed her eyes, and then there’s her skin color. We’ve had Imperators ranging from midnight blue to battleship gray.” He turned sideways and gave the gigantean beast a smile of admiration as she circled in the distance, a lethal shadow, constantly on the move. “But we’ve never had one the color of polished obsidian. Not until we captured her, that is.”
“How long has she been here?”
“Almost ten years.” Grayson’s eyes scoured the reactor readings on his tablet before glancing back up. “And before you ask, yes, she was smaller then. Around ninety feet. Of course, even then we knew she was quite the prize.”
“She is indeed,” Callahan breathed. He moved to the thick polycarbonate barrier and wiped away some of the condensation with his palms. “She’s obviously bigger than the others. Hell, she makes even Goliath, whom I was told is also a Gen-1, look like a midget. Is she smarter than the rest, too?”
“Oh, yes . . .”
“Really? How much smarter?”
Grayson finished his system checks and stashed his tablet. “According to our research, in terms of brainpower the average Kronosaurus imperator is about as intelligent as an elephant. They’re no slouches. They’re emotional creatures and they’re also capable of rudimentary problem solving. And, like Proboscideans, they have phenomenal memories. You’d do well to remember that.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Callahan pointed a thumb at the tank wall. “What about this bitch?”
“That ‘bitch,’ as you put it, is killer whale smart,” Grayson said. As he regarded the admiral, he couldn’t help but wonder if Annapolis offered a formal class on being a tactless buffoon. “She’s crafty, calculating, and treacherous, too. So be careful. Implant or no, don’t ever turn your back on her. She’ll kill you if she gets the chance.”
Callahan licked his lips and smiled. “Tell me, Eric. Are there any more of these giant mutie bitches out there?”
“Why?”
“Because I want one.”
Grayson’s frown flatlined as the radio in hi
s pocket squawked. He didn’t bother hiding his annoyance as he reached for it. “This is Dr. Grayson, go.”
“Security Chief Dwyer, sir. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
Grayson turned and gave his distant employee a quizzical look before nodding and speaking back into the unit. “Yes, Mr. Dwyer. Go ahead.”
“You asked if was possible to accelerate the queen’s morning feeding. I was just informed that we have a viable meal loaded and ready. That is, if you’d still like to proceed.”
“By all means, Mr. Dwyer. Please do.”
“Roger that. Thank you, sir.”
Grayson pocketed the slim walkie talkie and gave Callahan a grin. “Well, Ward. It appears you’re in for a treat.”
“Breakfast time at the zoo?”
“Indeed.”
Callahan stroked his salt-and-pepper mustache as he glanced up, scanning the domed ceiling, twenty stories overhead. “Hmm. I don’t see any of that tram network you’ve got going on in the dock area. How do you feed her?”
Grayson indicated the nearest set of stairs, leading up alongside the amphitheater’s tiered seating. With the stocky navy man at his six, he led the way up to the halfway point. A moment later, there was an earthy groan and a dull vibration that could be felt in the soles of their feet. Tiamat recognized the sound immediately and sprang to life. Accelerating, her giant body curved back and away, then headed straight for the rear bulwark of the stadium’s thousand-foot pool, not far from where the Celazole barrier emerged from a vertical section of the island’s granite core.
Grayson drew Callahan’s attention to a thirty-foot section of wall, immediately adjacent to the pool and ten feet above, which began to grind noisily open. The pliosaur queen rose soundlessly from the depths. She eased her ascent, stopping and remaining fifty feet back from the lightless opening. She remained poised there, fifteen feet below the surface of the water, her shimmering orange eyes alert.
Kronos Rising: Kraken (vol.1): The battle for Earth's oceans has just begun. Page 43
