by Ellis, Tara
POINT OF
EXTINCTION
The Extinction Series
Book 1
By
Tara Ellis
Mike Kraus
© 2020 Muonic Press Inc
www.muonic.com
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
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Special Thanks
Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.
Thank you!
EXTINCTION Book 2
Available Here
Prologue
Day One
Moho Island site, Atlantis Bank
600 nautical miles SW of Mauritius Island, Indian Ocean
Bubbles rushed past the viewport as the deep-sea vessel dropped toward its destination seven-hundred meters below the surface of the Indian Ocean. Dr. Henry Crane kept his eyes focused on the thick glass and swallowed hard. No matter how many times he’d boarded Alvin, the three-person submersible, he always experienced a brief moment of claustrophobia. Henry was acutely aware of the massive pressure that encased them. It was more than a thousand PSI at their depth, and the pervasive, cold darkness of the ocean, whenever the external lights shut down, was a reminder of how instant death was poised and ready to spring.
“You okay, doctor?”
Henry waved a hand dismissively at the middle-aged pilot at the helm, while taking in a deep breath tinged with the scent of hot oil and ozone. “I’m fine. Just fine. Allow me a moment of panic, will you Mr. King?”
Issac King was a new pilot assigned to the program, and still unfamiliar with the doctor’s normal routines. Henry was happy with the distraction of breaking in the newbie. He’d been a college professor for over ten years, and was pulled from retirement to come back into the field. As the leading Marine Geophysicist in the world, he was the natural choice to head the investigation into the…anomaly.
His heart settling back into its normal cadence, Henry turned his full attention on the pilot and smiled pleasantly at him. Any evidence of rising panic was gone. “Military?”
“Yes, sir,” Issac barked. “Captain, US Navy.” The pilot sat up a little straighter despite the cramped quarters and gave a sharp tug at his uniform.
“I have no doubt you’re one of the best the Navy has to offer or else you wouldn’t be here.” Henry chuckled and then tapped at the glass of the nearest viewport. “Tell me what you know about our underwater volcano.”
Issac glanced at him sideways, gauging the older man’s intent. “I’ve been fully briefed, Doctor Crane.”
“Yes, yes. Of course, you have. But what do you know, Captain?”
An alarm blared momentarily and Issac slapped at a button to silence it.
Henry tilted his head questioningly. He didn’t like alarms.
“Just a temperature fluctuation,” the other man explained. The pilot’s hands moved with a flourish over an assortment of controls before he shifted in his seat to face Henry. “I know how the undersea eruption began eleven months ago.”
Henry envied the younger man’s ability to dismiss the potential danger so easily and proceed as if nothing were amiss. He, on the other hand, couldn’t help but eye the viewports with more intensity. Henry could swear there was additional sediment and bubbles rising to meet them.
“The eruption occurred approximately two weeks after the Mohorovicic Discontinuity was successfully breached,” Issac continued. “The seafloor appears to have collapsed into what is believed to be a massive magma chamber.”
Henry raised a hand to stop the other man, clearing his throat. “I don’t want to hear a recital of the Wikipedia entry,” he grumbled. “Tell me why you are currently piloting this forty-million-dollar vessel and a semi-retired marine scientist to the bottom of the ocean.”
Captain King smirked as he turned back to the monitors. Alvin shifted slightly and then slowed. The outside lights revealed what looked like a smaller version of the Grand Canyon. “For that,” he said simply.
Henry’s features lit up and his broad smile betrayed the charade of being a mad scientist. The fissure had been located two weeks prior, some ten miles south of the submarine volcano. Although their present excursion was only the second to retrieve samples from the warm currents of water flowing from the mysterious trench, he already knew they were on the brink of a massive scientific discovery.
“Scuttlebutt’s this is another breach of the MOHO,” Captain King continued without further prompting. “And that some of the stuff coming out of there is…unusual.”
Arching his eyebrows, Henry nodded approvingly. He appreciated directness and suspected he and the captain would get along just fine. While he normally flinched at the nickname given to the mysterious layer sandwiched between the earth’s crust and mantle, Henry was willing to let the slang slide for the time being.
Opening his mouth to comment, he barely uttered a word as Alvin suddenly plunged several meters, like a dip in a roller coaster. Henry’s stomach rose to meet his throat, and he gasped in terror while grabbing at the arms of his thick-cushioned seat.
“Methane pocket!” Issac shouted, reaching for the radio. “Outlander, Outlander, be advised we’ve experienced a methane pocket. I repeat, methane pocket observed.”
Henry knew of the dangers to surface ships from pockets of methane gas. It was the only real threat from submarine volcanos hidden beneath the surface, as they could cause a momentary change in buoyancy and sink even a large ship. If it proved to be an actual methane release from the fissure, it might complicate things.
“Outlander copies. Do you have an approximation on size?”
Issac scowled at one of his monitors before keying up. “Temperature fluctuations appear to be scrambling some of my readings, Outlander. We only experienced a brief variance.”
“Received.”
The captain ran his hand through his hair, increasing Henry’s anxiety. The motion was clearly a gesture the
man made when he was distressed. “I don’t like it,” he grumbled. “There are too many variables at play here, Doctor. I think it’d be wiser to spend some time studying MOHO Island until things settle down here.”
The two-mile wide island was slowly rising from the deep, born from the volcano. The scope of it was almost incomprehensible and had been the focus of the international team of scientists after the initial seafloor collapse, until the fissure developed.
Shaking his head in disagreement, Henry turned from Issac to focus again on the viewport. He was close. Close to having enough evidence. Not even his harshest critics would be able to deny it.
“Doctor!”
Henry’s head snapped up at the tone of the captain’s voice. He shuffled close to the other man’s shoulder. “What is it?”
The seventeen ton, twenty-three-foot-long submersible shuddered as the pilot pulled back on the controls, bringing them close to a full stop. Isaac pointed to one of the sonar displays and then ran his hand through his greying hair again. “I reviewed both the footage and full operations report from your dive earlier this week, so I can say with some certainty that the crevasse has grown.”
A small surge of adrenaline made Henry’s stomach go cold and his heart raced again. He didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified, a predicament he rarely found himself in. “What kind of growth are we looking at?” he pressed, glancing over at the third and empty seat in Alvin. Peta, his top protégé, would have his hide if she missed the opportunity to witness the Mohorovicic breaching first-hand. He’d left her at the lab to decipher the samples they collected on the first dive. He didn’t trust anyone else with the task.
“It has to be at least another hundred meters,” Issac replied, his voice low from either fear or awe.
“Why didn’t the surface support ship pick it up?” Henry demanded. Moving to the larger viewport at the front of the vessel, he pressed in close, trying to get a better view of the seafloor. It would explain the extra debris in the water, and maybe the methane. Though it didn’t help to calm his growing unease. The external floodlights were incredibly powerful, but they could only push back the oily blackness so far.
Issac shook his head, obviously unhappy. “Because it’s happening right now—”
“Outlander to Alvin, do you copy?”
Reaching automatically for the radio, the pilot glanced nervously at the doctor standing close by his shoulder. “This is Alvin. Strong copy.”
“Sonar is picking up a change in the seafloor near your location. We’re also tracking an impossibly large displacement rising beneath us. We have begun an emergency withdrawal. Recommend an immediate abort on the dive. Can you confirm the size of that methane pocket?”
Henry turned his focus back to the viewport as the pilot conversed with their support ship, idling on the surface hundreds of feet above them. He frowned. The area visible to him was becoming striated, similar to how the surface of a road appeared when heat rose from it. Though the underground river he’d found streaming from the original fissure had been thirty degrees warmer than the frigid surrounding waters at forty degrees, it wouldn’t account for what he was seeing. The outer lights flickered.
“Captain?”
Issac paused in his conversation, his hand hovering with the mouthpiece several inches from his face. The lights flickered again, and he dropped the microphone at the same time that another alarm started blaring, only louder and more persistent this time.
“Captain!” Henry shouted with more emphasis as he stumbled back to his seat. Reaching for the harness seatbelt, sweat dripped from his forehead. Was it getting hot?
A familiar rumbling sound echoed through Alvin as Issac jettisoned the two-hundred-and-eighty-pound weights used to provide negative buoyancy for a rapid descent. “External temperature just jumped to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit,” the pilot explained.
“Certainly, Alvin can handle that?” Henry decided it was terror he was experiencing. Definitely terror.
Another, unusual booming sound echoed, humming in the thick metal walls of the submersible. “Something seismic is occurring,” Issac barked. Without waiting for any further orders from the doctor or the support ship, he flipped several switches and then turned Alvin back the way they’d just come.
Henry’s mouth began to open in protest to the abandonment of his scientific quest, but then he snapped it shut. He might be willing to risk his own life, but had no right to request it of Captain King. They would wait for the event, whatever it was, to pass and then return when things were more stable.
Another alarm blared to life.
“Changes in pressure!”
“Pressure?” Henry squawked. “What in the world—”
The doctor froze when he saw the panic on Issac’s face. They were in real trouble. He turned to his own, limited assortment of scientific equipment and tried to make sense of the readings. Extreme rise in temperature, methane gas release, pressure change, and seismic activity. His eyes widening, Henry studied the advanced mapping sonar. Though he wasn’t well-versed in the field of seabed imaging, the measures were undeniable. The seafloor was literally ripping apart beneath them, extending back toward the underwater volcano. They likely experienced only the outer edge of the methane pocket.
Issac must have come to the same conclusion because he started yelling into the radio. “Outlander! Evacuate to the south. Do you copy?” The silence that dragged out was painful, and Henry almost wished the other man hadn’t stopped the alarms from blaring.
The lights dimmed again, revealing a surreal, orange radiance permeating from the deep. It was so out of place and unexpected, Henry forgot for a moment the danger they were in.
An ear-splitting groan of metal rang through Alvin as Issac engaged the emergency separation of the main body, which would allow the titanium sphere to make an emergency ascent. As sweat rolled from Henry’s temples and he watched the onslaught of now-glowing bubbles encase them, he knew they weren’t going to make it. The seafloor was collapsing again, only this time the surface area was hundreds of times larger than the initial eruption.
Closing his eyes, Henry calmly reached for the secondary radio positioned between the two science stations and switched channels before keying up.
“Alvin to Mauritius Base. Please copy.”
Something metallic hit Alvin, ringing it like a bell.
Henry froze, the handset poised in front of his face. A sickening scraping sound began right above his head and ran the length of the vessel.
“We’re in a debris field,” Issac whispered, his voice raspy. “Outlander.”
A thick metal cord slid off Alvin and dropped in front of the viewport nearest Henry. The deep-sea vessel bobbled as the cable pulled free, tipping them down. Henry remained immobilized by fear as he stared out at the bizarre sight, lit from below. The cable belonged to the crane on Outlander, part of the assembly used to lower and raise Alvin. The main arm was tumbling toward the ocean floor, trailing the cords behind it. Tangled in the cables was a body, engaged in a macabre dance of death as it was pulled to a watery grave.
Alvin jerked back in the opposite direction as something larger struck their side, wrenching Henry away from the dreadful scene. Blinking rapidly, he shook his head and focused on the task at hand. He had to warn Peta. She would know what it meant. “Alvin to Mauritius base. Please come in. Peta! Peta, pick up the damn radio!”
Alvin tipped drunkenly, the ballasts unable to compensate for the rapidly changing pressures and swells around them. Steam began to form inside the small space and the lights surged before dimming. Captain Issac King was also on the radio, though he stared at Henry knowingly as he spoke. “Mayday, mayday. I repeat, all surface vehicles in the vicinity of MOHO Island evacuate. Evacuate!”
“Mauritius Base!” Henry tried unsuccessfully to keep the panic from his voice. Holding onto the seat with one hand, only the harness kept him from falling to the floor as Alvin tumbled, out of control. “Peta, if you c
an hear me, get out of there! Remember Fossil Island. It’s happening, Peta. It’s—”
The power went out with a dramatic sizzling explosion as several circuits blew at once. Alvin was plunged into darkness.
His breath coming in ragged gasps, Henry blinked, unable to see anything for a moment. As his eyes adjusted to the murky interior, it was barely illuminated by the rising glow from the depths of the earth. The air burned his lungs and Doctor Henry Crane’s last thought was how it wasn’t what he’d expected. The sea wouldn’t take him into her dark, cold embrace after all, but would instead drag him down into a burning inferno.
Chapter 1
PETA
Mauritius island
Indian ocean, 1,200 miles off the southeast coast of the African continent
Peta looked up from the microscope and pushed her glasses up before scribbling something nearly unintelligible on a notepad. She smiled. Henry was going to be ecstatic. The confirmation that the recently discovered lifeform from two months ago originated from the new crevasse was monumental. The implications of a whole new planetary biosphere beneath the Earth’s crust were staggering.
Leaning back on the wooden stool, Peta debated what she wanted to do first: prepare slides and ready them for the lengthy process of adding it to the growing database, or celebrate. Removing her glasses and tossing them onto the desk, she tucked some random strands of blonde hair behind her ears as her smile widened. Celebrate.
Reaching into a deep pocket of her white lab coat, Peta pulled out her cellphone and then sighed, holding it away from her face as she squinted. She’d been in such a rush earlier in the morning, she hadn’t taken the time to put her contacts in. “Pepperoni or Hawaiian?” she called out while bringing up the local pizza place that delivered.
