by Steve Alten
Aboard Dragon Pod-3
“All stop.”
“All stop, aye.”
Captain Simon Ng closed his eyes and listened to his ship. “Tech officer, what is that humming?”
“It’s our reactor.”
“How long will it take to restart it if we power down?”
“Twelve minutes. We’ll also lose our life-support system. If we can’t make air—”
“Yes, I know, Mr. Lin.”
“Sir, I was going to say we’ll lose our ability to maintain neutral buoyancy.”
“Captain, these Dragon Pods were built for these excursions,” Misha stated. “We’re way too big around to bite; there is simply no way for the Meg or any other creature to hurt us.”
“I’ll reserve my own judgment on that proclamation after we locate Dragon Pod-2. Mr. Zheng, where is the Megalodon now?”
The sonar tech glanced at his screen. “One-point-three kilometers to the northwest.”
“Shut down all exterior lights. Restrict interior lighting to emergency lights only.”
“Sir, I’m receiving a message from the Yellow Dragon. A Comm Link has been established; they are requesting a status report.”
“Inform them that we are about to make contact with a V.L.P.”
Terry turned to Dulce. “V.L.P.?”
“Very Large Predator.”
“Sonar?”
“She’s inside fifty meters, sir. We should be able to see her.”
The crew spread themselves out around the bay windows, unable to see a thing.
“Twenty meters…”
Terry cupped her eyes, pressing the edge of her hands against the aerogel glass. “I saw something.… I think it’s circling us.”
“I still can’t see a damn thing,” Duane Saylor said.
“Activate night vision,” Captain Ng ordered.
The blackness faded, becoming an empty olive-green void—
—and then they saw it … barely.
The Megalodon’s eight-foot dorsal fin and its back, from the tip of its snout to the upper lobe of its conical tail, was pitch-black. As the dark camouflage met its mouse-gray flank, it formed rib-cage-like stripes that narrowed to points along the underside of its belly.
As the crew watched in horror, the monstrous shark turned and charged, the underside of its snout’s dark pigment wrapping around its upper jaw and mouth like war paint, the effect increasing the fright factor by ten.
Dulce grabbed Terry by her arm and pulled her away from the window as the eighty-one-foot shark struck the aerogel surface, knocking out three of its teeth.
“That’s right,” yelled Misha, doing her victory dance. “Can’t bite us, can’t eat us, or mistreat us—we are invincible.”
Captain Ng casually wiped a sweat bead from his cheek. “Restart propulsion units. Continue intercept course with DP-2.”
Aboard the Mogamigawa
Monterey, California
Jackie scooted her chair closer to the laptop’s monitor so she could see her real-time image in the lower corner of the Skype video call.
The crown prince appeared a moment later. “Ms. Buchwald, this is an incredible feat.… You and your crew have accomplished what many of these so-called experts claimed was an impossible task. How long will it take you to bring the Liopleurodon to Dubai?”
“As soon as you pay us our bonuses, we will be under way.”
“Your bonuses will be paid upon delivery of the creature to Dubai-Land, not a moment sooner.”
“That’s not going to work for us.”
“Those are my terms, Ms. Buchwald. Accept them, or get off my ship.”
“We’ll be happy to leave your ship.… We’ll dock it in San Francisco right after we deliver the Lio to our other buyer.”
“Another buyer?”
She turned the monitor around to face David Taylor.
“Hey there, Prince Walid. How’s life treating you?”
The Arab’s thick dark eyebrows knit together. “What is it you want?”
“I want my Lio. I caught it the first time and you refused to pay for it; therefore I still own it.”
“The creature was hunted down and captured by my crew; it is aboard my ship! Captain Blackwolf, throw this man overboard!”
David turned the laptop so that it faced Cryss Blackwolf. The tanker’s captain was playing cards with four of his officers—guarded by armed men wearing rubber dog masks.
“The crew mutinied, Your Highness. They want to be paid; so do we.”
Jackie swung the laptop back around so that the monitor was again facing her. “The wiring instructions have been sent. Ten million dollars will be deposited into my account to cover our promised salaries and bonuses; another fifty million will be wired into David’s business account to pay for the Lio. The banks open in Dubai in seven hours. If the funds are not received by 11 a.m. Dubai time, which is midnight our time, the Lio will be released into the Tanaka Lagoon.”
Aboard Dragon Pod-3
Captain Ng stood before the bay windows in the command center, his pulse quickening as his vessel continued its descent, the damaged DP-2 located somewhere along the bottom of the Panthalassa.
“Mr. Zheng, increase shell luminosity to a hundred thousand candles.”
“Yes, sir.” The sphere’s soft amber glow brightened, causing the ancient seafloor to bloom into view four hundred fifty-two feet below the ship—along with a frenzy of life caught in the path of the descending sphere.
Hordes of jellyfish were caught in the DP-3’s bow wake and flung sideways. Fifty-foot rays were swept up by a school of lancetfish. Moving as one, the gruesome ten-foot-long sailfish swerved to avoid boiling streams of superheated water flowing from a trio of six-story-tall hydrothermal vents, forcing the ten thousand fish to plow through an abyssal jungle of dancing white stalks, each tube worm over one hundred feet tall and twenty inches around, their tulip-shaped, bloodred mouths snapping at the assault, the blind giant riftia attempting to devour the blind prehistoric sailfish.
The sphere leveled out and continued to the northwest. After several minutes the hydrothermal vents and tube worm clusters gave way to a vast plain of gray soot.
As the DP-3 passed overhead, its propulsors swept the thick particles aside—revealing a graveyard of bones.
There were vertebrae belonging to long-necked plesiosaurs like Mauisaurus, Elasmosaurus, and Styxosaurus and short-necked pliosaurs like Kronosaurus and Mosasaurus. Basilosaurus skeletons were piled next to the vacant shells of giant turtles, and there were countless ichthyosaur remains, though the size of these dolphin-like marine reptiles indicated the creatures had been juveniles when they had perished.
“Terry, what is this place?”
She turned to Dulce. “It’s a killing field.”
Captain Ng pointed to a large mound of gray ash up ahead. “There she is. Mr. Lin, circle the DP-3 and see if you can clear the debris from its shell. Ms. Boltz, any creatures we need to know about on your grid?”
“Lots of peripheral activity,” Misha reported, “but no close contacts. They seem to be giving this area a wide berth. Can’t say that I blame them.”
A blizzard of thick gray flakes obscured their view for the next several minutes while the helmsman attempted to use the ship’s propulsors to blow the refuse off the downed pod. When he was through, the sphere and the surrounding seafloor had been swept clean, the DP-2 lying on its side.
“Mr. Lin, circle the DP-2. Use the smart glass to zoom in on the ship; have the computer run a visual inspection of the aerogel shell.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain—” Terry pointed to a massive hole in the seafloor, the smart glass calculating the opening to be thirty-three feet in diameter. A beam of light was quickly directed into the furrow, the smooth rounded walls dropping several hundred feet before gradually curving out of sight.
An identical vent was discovered farther to the west, two more to the south.
“Thoughts?”<
br />
“Captain, it could be a lava tube,” Quentin Zheng suggested.
Misha agreed. “That would explain the volcanic ash and the graveyard.”
“Captain, the computer confirms DP-2’s aerogel hull is intact.”
“Excellent. Pilots, prepare to launch our Sting Rays. Let’s get our people out of there.”
* * *
There were two Sting Ray submersibles aboard Dragon Pod-3. Lee Deng and Duane Saylor were assigned to the vessel berthed atop A-Deck, Dulce Lunardon and Terry Taylor to the inverted craft mounted beneath E-Deck.
The two women entered the pressurized alcove and resealed the door behind them. Dulce pressed ENTER SUB on the keypad, causing the convex hatch on the floor in the center of the chamber to pop open and swing upward, while the Sting Ray’s matching convex hatch dropped inward, allowing the two female pilots to climb down into the belly-mounted craft.
“I’ve never been inside one of these subs,” Terry said, standing on the cockpit ceiling as she struggled to figure out the secret to securing herself into the inverted bucket seat. “They’re so much larger than the Mantas.”
“Slower, too. But at least you don’t have to relieve yourself in a diaper. Here, watch me.” Dulce slid her feet between her seat cushion and a roller pad, wedging herself in upside down before buckling the harness across her chest. “Let’s do this checklist real fast before I puke up my lunch. Fuel cells?”
Terry scanned the dials and gauges before her as she climbed into her seat. “Fuel cells … fully charged.”
“Batteries?”
“Batteries … Where are the batteries?”
Dulce glanced up and to her right. “Batteries—check. Supplies—check. Sonar, oxygen, carbon dioxide scrubbers—check, check, and check. Hatch is resealed, docking chamber secured. Disengaging docking clamps … and we’re out of here.”
Terry hastily buckled herself into her upper-body harness as Dulce rolled the Sting Ray out from beneath the DP-3’s lower docking berth. Righting the sub, she descended rapidly—
—only to realize Sting Ray-4 was already aligning its concave belly with the dome atop the powerless Dragon Pod.
Duane Saylor’s voice crackled over the radio. “Sorry ladies. Snooze … you lose.”
“DP-2’s lower berth is inaccessible,” Captain Deng said. “We’ll take the first load, you get the stragglers. Docking clamps are in place; sealing docking ring now … damn.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. The indicator light is flickering back and forth from red to green. Stand by, I’m going to disengage and try to get a better seal.”
Dulce muted her microphone to speak with Terry. “At these depths, anything less than a perfect seal—”
“I know.”
They watched as Sting Ray-4 detached its docking clamps from the titanium oval mounted along Dragon Pod-2’s outer shell before slowly advancing again, the sub’s five prongs inserted cleanly into the berth’s corresponding apertures, the clamps tugging the two vessels tightly together as the O-ring sealed the connection.
“Crap! We’re still getting flickering lights. Dulce, did the connections look clean to you?”
“Yes. Deng, it could just be a short in the docking circuitry.”
“That’s certainly possible. The pod looks like it’s taken a beating.”
“What about the other docking berth?” Terry asked. “We could use both Sting Rays to roll the DP-2 just enough to—”
“No disrespect, Mrs. Taylor,” Duane said, cutting her off, “but the equipment aboard these pods wasn’t designed to do one-eighties.”
“Is there any way to signal their crew? They probably have no idea we’re even out here.”
“They should have seen our lights,” Dulce stated.
“If the power is down, the smart windows are down,” Deng replied. “Emergency batteries are used exclusively for life support after the first seventy-two hours.”
A moment passed, followed by the sound of metal clacking against metal.
“What’s that noise?” Dulce asked.
“Duane’s tapping the hatch with a ratchet. Forget it. If the docking chamber is sealed—which it should be—they’ll never hear you.”
“Excuse me,” Terry said, “but how will you be able to enter Dragon Pod-2 if the docking chamber is sealed?”
“The Sting Ray’s hatch can open both doors. Once we get inside their ship, we’ll have access to their internal communication system and video monitors. At that juncture we’ll know if there are any survivors.”
“We’re getting a flickering green as well as a red,” Duane said. “That means there has to be a sealed connection, right, Dulce?”
“I only pilot them. I don’t build them.”
“Ng here. The Yellow Dragon has been advised of your situation. It is your call as to how you wish to proceed.”
Captain Deng turned to his copilot. “What do you think, Duane?”
“I didn’t come all the way out here to let these people die. But if something does go wrong, my wife and kids better be taken care of.”
“As is specified in the life insurance policy attached to your contract,” Simon Ng stated. “Captain Deng?”
“Dulce, give us some room—we’re going in.”
“Shit.” Pressing both feet to the floor pedals, she turned the joystick hard to starboard, distancing her sub from Sting Ray-4.
* * *
Captain Deng powered down the sub’s engines while Duane Saylor pressed his ear to the watertight hatch. “Anything?”
“It sounds solid. Of course, there’s nine miles of ocean sitting on top of us.”
“Shh! Did you hear that?”
Duane listened.
Tap … tap. Tap, tap, tap.
The two pilots high-fived.
Deng grabbed the radio as Duane unbolted the sub’s hatch. “This is Deng! We have survivors—”
* * *
Unbeknownst to the subs’ crews, Dragon Pod-2’s outer shell had been exposed to a digestive enzyme so acidic that it had melted a quarter of an inch of the eight-inch-thick titanium lip anchoring the sphere’s docking station to its aerogel shell. As the Sting Ray’s hatch was opened, the Panthalassa squeezed into the narrow void, inhaled a puff of air—and gulped.
* * *
The blinding flash was silent—a finality of molecules snuffed between the crushed screeching pocket of existence that had been the pressurized compartment of Sting Ray-4 and twenty thousand pounds per square inch of muted oblivion. The reverberations sent hairline cracks racing along the outer layer of the aerogel sphere, causing it to shed its two-inch-thick epidermis like a snake shedding its skin while preserving the inner cavity of six inches—just as its engineers had intended.
The energy wave rippled outward at a speed in excess of five hundred miles an hour and shook Sting Ray-5 for three terrifying seconds, even as the two-foot-high tsunami of ash raced across the boneyard and throughout the Panthalassa.
Reaching for a plastic-lined air-sickness bag, Dulce leaned over in her seat and retched.
Aboard the Yellow Dragon
Mariana Trench—Western Pacific
Catherine Ying led Jonas to the small conference room. Captain Chau was seated inside, his expression distant—as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Johnny Hon’s presence loomed over his left shoulder, coming from a flat screen mounted on the back wall.
“Jonas, we received a communication … Dragon Pod-3 about an … ago,” the CEO stated, the transmission breaking up every fifth word. “The news is not…”
“You’re breaking up, Johnny.” Jonas turned to Catherine, his heart racing, knowing the news was bad. “Would somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?”
She glanced at her boss, who nodded. “The rescue mission located Dragon Pod-2. One of the Sting Ray teams attempted to board the ship. The docking seal on the titanium berth failed and the sub imploded.”
Jonas felt the bl
ood drain from his face. “My wife?”
“We don’t know. We lost the Comm Link before we were told the identity of the pilots. Our techs are attempting to reposition the drones to reestablish contact.”
“Are you recalling Dragon Pod-3? Is there anyone even alive aboard Dragon Pod-2?”
Captain Chau looked up, his eyes rimmed red. “We have confirmation of survivors aboard DP-2.”
“DP-2 is lying on its side on the seafloor,” Catherine said. “The lower docking berth is inaccessible. Even if it weren’t, we couldn’t take the risk. The location was described as having a multitude of lava tubes. We believe magma from a recent volcanic event may have melted the titanium seal.”
“Okay, so we find another way in.”
“There is no other way in,” Chau whispered.
“What if we towed the DP-2 back to the access tunnel and surfaced it?”
Chau rolled his eyes.
Catherine answered Jonas. “Dragon Pod-2 is down to its last twelve hours of emergency power, and every volt is being delivered to its life-support system. Without power, they cannot create enough air to achieve positive buoyancy.”
Chau snapped. “Why are you even entertaining this ridiculous suggestion? Even if the sphere were buoyant, where are we supposed to find a cable strong enough to tow the DP-2? How would we even begin to rig the two ships? Or maybe we should just push it with your Manta sub?”
Johnny’s Hon’s expression changed. “Captain, do not … me to relieve you!”
Jonas ignored the insult. “Wait … you have a Manta?”
Catherine nodded. “We leased it from Emmett Industries while the Sting Rays were under construction. We used it to complete visual inspections of the access tunnel during the excavation phase.”
“And?” Jonas could see she was keeping something from him.
Catherine turned to her boss.
Johnny nodded. “Tell him.”
“The Manta we leased was Manta-4, the one Zachary Wallace equipped with Valkyrie laser units for your Antarctica mission. Dr. Jernigan used the lasers to kill the Leeds’ fish so we could remove their livers. We switched to the more humane method of drugging them before removing their organ once the Sting Rays and surgical bots were delivered.”
