“By the way, although we don’t have sonar signature confirmation, I think we’ve got a lead on Typhon,” Grayson announced.
“What kind of lead?”
“You already know about the Rorqual – that big schooner that went down off the coast of Marathon, correct?”
Dirk nodded. “Yes, but other than that mysterious, partial SOS, we’ve got nothing to go on. No survivors, no--”
Grayson cut him off, “No witnesses, I know. Well, we just got a message relayed from a luxury yacht that claims to have been attacked less than five miles from there. It’s a foreign vessel and a touchy situation. But it’s well within our Economic Exclusion Zone. Which gives us every right to investigate.”
“When you say a ‘message,’ you mean a distress call, right?”
“No, it was a text message from someone’s cell – a guest on the yacht, apparently. No distress call was sent. And any radio transmissions from the Coast Guard or from us have gone unanswered.”
Dirk pursed his lips. “That’s odd. It could have been a practical joke, or a misidentification by some girl who had a few too many and thought she saw a sea monster.”
Grayson’s head bobbed once. “Could be. According to our satellites, the ship appears intact, and we’ve got no echolocation readings in the area, not even whales. But we know Typhon’s a cunning codger. He could be running silent, like before. So let’s cross our fingers, because maybe, just maybe . . .”
“How do you want to proceed?”
“How far along are we with the repairs on Antrodemus?”
“If we cut a few corners, two more days.”
Grayson drew in a lungful and let it out in a sigh. “I can’t risk losing an ORION. The plan is to hold Dragunova’s boat back until repairs are completed. I spoke to your brother a little while ago and he’s ready to start the hunt.”
Dirk’s head yanked back hard on his shoulders. “You’re sending Garm out alone? I thought we agreed a tandem attack was in order?”
“Relax, it’s just for reconnaissance,” Grayson reassured. “If he gets target confirmation, the decision to engage is his. Hell, if he can just nail that SOB with a locator so we can track him once Antrodemus is functional, we’ll be halfway there.”
“I see,” Dirk said. His hand lingered in his lab coat pocket, feeling the flash drive. He considered telling Grayson about it, but once again decided to hold off. “I have a question, sir.”
“Of course, Derek.”
“Assuming we find Typhon again, and if we capture him--”
Grayson raised a corrective finger. “Not if, my boy, when.”
“Okay. When we capture him, and after he succeeds in impregnating Tiamat, you do realize we can’t keep her here for the gestation process, correct?”
“Of course,” the old man said, nodding. “We don’t have the facilities for her to spawn properly. Probably not even for proper prenatal development.”
“So, you’re prepared to release her?” Dirk could feel his right eyebrow doing the dubious Spock thing.
Grayson walked over and hit the nearby shield button, his dark eyes following the smooth partition’s edge as it retracted back up into the ceiling. “Release is hardly the word I’d use,” he said. Two hundred yards away, Tiamat picked up the familiar sound of the barrier being raised and turned immediately back toward them.
“With our current implant technology, we can track the two of them anywhere in the world,” he said, watching in apparent enthrallment as a 445 ton engine of destruction swam toward him, stopping less than twenty yards away. “We can give them free reign to do as they please – keeping them out of mischief, of course – and once she’s produced her first clutch, we’ll sweep in to gather up the offspring.”
Dirk folded his toned arms across his chest. “And you’re not at all worried about the possibility of losing your precious pet?”
“Losing her how?”
“Oh, I don’t know. To the military or maybe to some other carnivore . . .”
“The military?” Grayson scoffed. “We are the military! And another carnivore?” He shook his head as he turned back around and gestured with widespread arms at the humungous titan lurking right outside the window. “Don’t be ridiculous, Derek. You and I are the guardians of the mightiest predator on the planet. What could possibly challenge her?”
* * *
Thirty miles off the coast of the Dominican Republic, in the bowels of the Hispaniola basin, the gray-hued female prepared to feed. Like a giant bear trap, her ten-foot jaws yawned wide, her scarred lips peeling back to expose batteries of triangular teeth up to eleven inches in length. Her maxillae extended up and out, increasing her reach, and she powered her torpedo-shaped body forward with a flick of her two-story tail. There was a tremendous thump, reminiscent of a wrecking ball striking a concrete wall, as she rammed her maw into the dead humpback whale’s side.
Although much of the cetacean’s caloric-rich blubber and musculature had already been stripped away by smaller scavengers, the humpback bull’s nutritious internal organs were still available, encased deep within its protective rib cage. And she would have them.
A sickening cracking sound split the water as she brought the full power of her jaws to bear. Powered by massive mandibular muscles that exerted a bite force exceeding forty tons, her finely-serrated teeth functioned like sharp-edged chisels, smashing clean through the whale’s heavy ribs.
Shaking her thick-jowled fourteen-foot head from side to side, the ravenous behemoth wrenched a five-ton mouthful of rib chunks, stomach, and liver from the fleshy crater she’d excavated in the whale’s flank. Ragged gobs of flesh and bone the size of a human head spewed forth from between her broad-based teeth as she gulped it down. She pushed greedily forward, past a viscous cloud of blood and tissue fragments, and carried on with her gruesome feast.
As she continued to savage the fifty-foot humpback’s remains, the female was rewarded with a second mouthful, this time consisting of the cetacean’s huge heart and lungs. Like a curtain of pile drivers coming down, her toothy jaws closed again and again, macerating the fibrous masses of tissue into pulp before they were summarily inhaled.
Pausing suddenly, she swung her blunt snout from side to side, surveying the surrounding waters. Age and experience had taught her to err on the side of caution, and her black, basketball-sized eyes rolled in their sockets as she scanned the deep for potential threats. Although her sense of smell was her greatest asset, her eyesight was equally keen. Two thousand feet down, the seas were shrouded in perpetual blackness. But her eyes were designed to master the abyss. Her retinas were backed by a layer of mirrored crystals that defocused light, reflecting it back and allowing her to better perceive objects. For her, complete darkness was as twilight for the giant mammals she fed upon.
The female saw nothing – nothing except the bright red light. Each time it flared, it registered in the corner of her eye; a tiny setting sun. She had no idea where it came from. It first appeared several weeks before, after a parasite affixed itself to the top of her right, foremost gill plate. Despite the initial sting as it penetrated her rough skin, it was hardly injurious. But it was annoying. Unfortunately, she couldn’t reach it with her jaws, and after several failed attempts to dislodge it, she pushed it from her mind.
The dead marine reptile was another story.
Unlike other predators, which wisely gave way when she moved in to appropriate a carcass, the fifty-foot saurian had come at her like a demon. Fast and maneuverable, it dodged her powerful rushes, slashing at her flanks and belly with its crocodile-like jaws. Her body and fins bore the marks of its many teeth. Unable to inflict significant damage, however, the smaller predator eventually grew frustrated and tried for the kill. Sweeping in past her guard, it struck with phenomenal speed, burying its fangs in the thick skin of her throat and hung on.
The tactic proved to be its undoing.
Although its bite was surprisingly powerful, the saurian lacked suffici
ent size to inflict a fatal wound. The two combatants rolled this way and that, slashing and thrashing. Eventually, with a tremendous head shake, the female managed to close her powerful jaws on her undersized rival’s neck and shoulder. A single, crushing bite was all it took. The decapitated pliosaur’s body spun away like a leaf and sank into the void.
All that remained were its wedge-shaped jaws, clinging like a pit-bull to her heavily muscled throat. Even in death, she could feel its sharp conical fangs clamping down, the wound itching and burning.
Finally, the irritation caused by her weighty albatross became too much and the female began to shake. Thrashing her gigantic body from side to side, she whipped her gaping jaws up and down. Finally, centrifugal force did its job and her teeth closed on the severed neck. Biting down, she yanked her head savagely in the opposing direction, tearing the dead reptile’s jaws free in a cloud of their combined blood.
Angered by the gaping rents the saurian’s teeth left behind, the female lashed out. Pouncing, she engulfed its severed head in one bite, bringing her teeth together repeatedly until she reduced the armored skull to an unrecognizable mass. A moment later, her lips crinkled up and she spat the distasteful remains out. She watched dispassionately as it twirled end over end before sinking, ghostlike, into the darkness, a phantom head, searching for its body.
Still hungry, she surged forward and re-attacked the humpback’s ravaged remains, gnashing through its thick vertebrae and devouring whatever soft tissues she could find. When she finished, she shoved the butchered remnants of the once-proud bull aside and continued on. Her senses stretched forth like a net, tasting and testing the waters far in advance, scanning for potential meals and rivals.
For the moment, there were none.
Her throat wounds began to throb and a feeling akin to cold fury welled up within her prehistoric breast. Between dwindling food sources and environmental changes, her species had been vastly reduced in number. If nothing changed, they would soon face extinction. Until then, however, they would remain monarchs of the sea, with few rivals. Their traditional adversaries, the sperm whales, had shrunk in size over the last two centuries and no longer possessed the strength to defeat them. On the other hand, the packs of pugnacious Orcas that roamed the coastlines of the world remained a threat. Fortunately, the wolves of the sea were shallow divers and easily avoided.
As evidenced by her recent battle, however, a new enemy had appeared on the horizon, in the form of a species of monstrous marine reptile. The scaly giants’ sudden arrival was unprecedented and they were adversaries not to be taken lightly. She’d seen the first one decades earlier, and watched with fear-filled eyes as it disemboweled her mother, moments after her birth. Even as a pup, she recognized her ancestral enemy. During the Cretaceous, pliosaurs and their ilk had all but annihilated her forebears, and all the while grew bigger and more powerful.
In the present, they were even worse. As their numbers exploded, they did more than just alter the food web; they shattered it. The whales, whose drifting remains were the primary source of sustenance for the adults of her genus, were nearly wiped out, with the survivors fleeing to colder climates. Her species fared no better. Territorial brutes that they were, many of the more dominant adults stood their ground, only to find themselves outmatched by their wily, cold-blooded foes. One by one, they were killed off.
Too small to even consider facing her primeval nemeses, the young female followed the relocating whales all the way to the chilled waters of Antarctica. There, fortune smiled upon her and she found not only a wintry sanctuary, but food in abundance. The Norwegian, Russian, and Japanese whalers that hunted the region’s big baleen whales unwittingly provided an unlimited buffet for her, and she grew rapidly in size and power. Eventually, she reached titanic proportions, dwarfing even the largest of her kind.
Now, nothing could challenge her. Not even the great sea dragons of old.
Two weeks prior, shortly after she’d whelped her last litter of pups, and right around the time the annoying parasite attached itself, the female experienced a sudden and irrepressible desire to return to the seas she’d forsaken. She succumbed to the strange urge and began the arduous journey back from the Antarctic Circle. She followed the coldwater Falkland Current up past Patagonia and continued on, traveling along the Eastern coast of South America and spreading terror as she went. Banking into the South Equatorial Current, she traversed thousands of miles of the North Atlantic, until ending up at her current location.
The female’s primitive brain was incapable of understanding why she continued to respond to the pull. She traveled day and night, with it directing her relentlessly onward. Most of the time she remained deep, surfacing only when swathed in darkness, and feeding as opportunity permitted. During the day, she preferred the blackness of the ocean’s depths. Not because of an aversion to the sun – her vision was ten times better than a human’s in bright light – but rather, for the temperature. She was descended from a coldwater-loving species and, as she moved further into the tropics, the chilled temperatures of the abyssal plains consistently beckoned to her.
With an adjustment of her limousine-sized pectorals, the female rose gracefully in the water column, powered by rhythmic strokes of her towering caudal fin. She ascended to the nine-hundred-foot mark and remained there, soundlessly scenting her way along the thermocline. The twin nares on the underside of her scarred snout flared, drawing saltwater into her sensitive olfactory sacs as she sniffed the surrounding sea. Combined with her superior eyesight and the electroreceptor pores that dotted her head, she had an array of long-range senses at her disposal.
Accelerating to her normal cruising speed, she hurtled along, dispersing frightened schools of fish and squid. For no apparent reason, a sudden burst of adrenaline shot through her and she struck a belligerent pose, her back arching, her fins extending like blades. At a full eighty-four feet in length and weighing 210 tons, she was a flesh-eating machine the size of a blue whale. Nothing could threaten her and anything foolish enough to try was simply added to her menu.
Relishing the cold water rushing through her gills, the monstrous female continued on, secure in her power. Her species had worn many guises over the millennia. To the ancient Fijians, who trembled at the sight of their gigantic dorsal fins, they were Dakuwaqa. Among pre-colonization Hawaiians, who worshipped them as gods, they were known as Kauhuhu. And, most recently, to infuriated Norwegian whalers, whose kills she repeatedly purloined, she was Tyvaktige Tispe – “thieving bitch.”
But to the rest of the world, she was something more. She was a terrifying force of nature, one that had been vilified in book, film and fable for the last fifty years. She was also a notorious whale eater, and to many, a mythical devourer of men. More than anything else, she was the largest carnivorous fish in the history of the world.
She was Megalodon.
* * *
“How’s her depth?” Kat asked, glancing up from her portable electron microscope. Her eyebrows were hiked up and she had one of those pensive-but-proud expressions on her freshly scrubbed face. It was the kind of look that made you want to reassure her, even though you knew you’d end up regretting it.
“Still holding at one thousand feet,” Jude replied, eyeing their in-dash fathometer screen. “You can stop worrying. I’ve got her beacon programmed into ANCILE. If she turns territorial again the program will override our auto-pilot and take evasive.”
“I’m not worried, Sharky,” Kat said. She extended her lower jaw and blew her shoulder-length red hair away from her face with a snort. “I’d just like to know if my station’s going to get tossed to hell again.”
“I think we’re in good shape,” Jude said. He pushed his frameless glasses up his nose with one finger as he scanned another screen. Despite his casual tone, he was grateful they’d invested in top-of-the-line engines and a military grade obstacle avoidance system.
Obstacle . . .
Jude chuckled at the word’s irony, then
leaned back into his padded captain’s chair and extended his arms up over his head. He’d been doing that more and more lately, both to relieve boredom and some of the stiffness a fifty-year-old frame acquired after being at sea too long.
Dr. Judas Cambridge, or “Sharky,” as his outspoken colleague and partner, Dr. Katerina “Kat” Feaster called him, was one of the world’s leading elasmobranchologists – a field of study that specialized in sharks and rays. His other passion was ichthyologic-based cybernetics, a field of robotics he virtually pioneered, back when it was in its infancy. At five-foot-ten and a wiry 160 pounds, Jude was your stereotypical marine biologist nerd: pale, unkempt, and unassuming-looking. He was the kind you’d expect to find hovering over a fish tank or with his bespectacled nose buried in a lab book. Of course, when inspiration was upon him that all changed, and a fire sprang up behind the Harvard grad’s hazel-green eyes that could light up a room.
Or, in this case, an expensive cabin cruiser.
Jude checked the feel of Insolent Endeavor. The refitted fifty-foot Monte Carlo MC5 represented his life savings. His and Kat’s, come to think of it. The modified motor yacht, with its wave-cutting hull, was a marvel of maritime technology. Even more so after they’d stripped away most of her luxury features and converted her into a floating lab and tracking station, cramming everything possible inside her fiberglass hull with the exception of a CT/MRI scanner. And then, only because the scanner’s addition would have necessitated them sleeping on the cold, unbosoming deck.
Endeavor was speedy, too. Upgraded to twin 1,400 horsepower Cummins marine inboards, she could hit nearly fifty knots before going into the red. More than enough for their purposes.
“How did she respond to the epinephrine surge?” Kat asked. Her blue eyes lowered as she became more engrossed in her work.
As he watched her tuck a rogue lock of crimson behind one ear, Jude smiled. Kat called the habit “battening down her hatches.” The spunky ichthyologist-turned-geneticist had been with him for five years now – since the day his contract with GDT had been revoked, in fact. Since then, she’d been his best friend, trusted confidante, and a savvy business partner. Hell, she’d even loaned him a shoulder to bawl on when his bitch of an ex-wife did the “desperate housewife thing” and ditched him for some horny muscle-head.
Kronos Rising: Kraken (vol.1): The battle for Earth's oceans has just begun. Page 46
