1
The creature took a step towards Callum, stopped and cocked its head. With deliberate poise, it leant forward as if in mid-bow, then parted its arms and puffed out its feathers. The long plumes on the undersides of its arms, and those remaining along its nape, stood erect. Its tail lifted until visible above its shoulder, and the feathers adorning the tip fanned out and quivered. The shorter plumes across the rest of its body seemed to shimmer, creating a silvery white blur that mirrored the surrounding mist.
There was something mesmerising about the display. It was the first time that the creature’s eyes, mouth and claws hadn’t been the focus of Callum’s attention. For the briefest of moments, he felt his panic recede. He was looking through his fear, seeing something as vulnerable as it was fearsome.
But his feelings were short-lived, as the creature’s head began to bob rhythmically, its jaws chomping together in time. Seconds crept by, and the creature maintained its stance. It appeared to be in a trance; head bobbing, teeth grinding, harp-strings of saliva now trailing from its chin. Why did it not attack?
Callum took a tentative step backwards. At this, the creature stopped its posturing. Its feathers flattened out and it raised itself back up to full height. Vocalising a series of loud clicks, it advanced another step.
“What does it do?” Darya whispered over his shoulder.
“I think it’s playing with us.”
She peered up just as the creature bowed once again, brought its arms apart and raised its plumage. This time its feathers flushed with colour. The white became an amber glow, spreading in veins from the base follicles to the very tips of its erect feathers. The amber then intensified, becoming a deep red inflammation that seemed to scorch the surrounding mist.
On impulse, Callum retreated another step.
Again the creature was sensitive to his movement. With an agitated bray it followed.
One step.
Darya’s voice drifted through to him. “You are wrong.”
“What?”
“You are wrong,” she repeated. “It is not playing with us.”
“Then what?”
“I think it is challenge you.”
On cue, the creature bowed its head and repeated its colourful display: white, silver, amber, red.
“Challenging me?”
“To fight. It sees you as rival male.”
Callum’s mind raced at the suggestion. As unlikely as it sounded, it actually made sense. If the creature could remember him, then it would remember that he had won their last encounter. He had proven himself a worthy adversary, and now… now it wanted a rematch, complete with formalities.
“What do I do?”
“There is only one thing,” she replied. “You must win.”
“Win? Win how? That thing could tear me to shreds!”
“Yes,” Darya replied. “But this is not physical fight. Not yet.”
There was a silence, as Callum searched desperately for a solution.
Then something dug into the side of his ribs. “Take these.”
He reached backwards and took hold of the objects in Darya’s hand. Without looking he could tell that they were the two remaining glow sticks.
“But…” His mind skipped back to their first encounter with the three little creatures back on the foreshore, when their untempered aggression had marked them out as youngsters; Darya’s words repeated themselves: In the wild, the adult animals will avoid conflict, because of the risk of injury. The adult is more likely to use posture and vocalisation than physical force…
He brought the glow sticks out in front of him, and the creature ceased its display. All colour bleached from its feathers and it stared at the two dull tubes. Its mouth cracked open and it watched intently as Callum brought his shaking hands together and snapped them.
The same high-intensity luminous green light that had illuminated Ngana’bta’s face burst from one of the sticks, while the other produced an intense iridescent blue. Their glow was scattered and reflected in the mist. The suspended water particles enhanced their lustre and produced two wide penumbras of colour that increased their luminosity ten-fold.
The creature snorted at the sight and let out a high-pitched crow. It hopped in agitation from foot to foot, its talons shredding strips of moss from the rock.
“It is working,” Darya said, unable to conceal the surprise in her voice. “You intimidate him.”
Without any semblance of a plan, Callum raised the glow sticks. Despite the cold, his palms were slick as he began to move them slowly, forming sweeping S shapes before him. The pressure was exhausting. His trembling arms felt stiff and his movement uncoordinated. Any second and he was certain that he would drop the sticks, leaving himself and Darya defenceless once more.
The creature looked in confusion from one light to the other, tracing the progress of each as they cut through the moist air. It stood silent and still, hypnotised.
Adrenaline surged through Callum’s veins. He took a deep breath and stepped forward.
The creature crowed out in alarm but held its ground.
“Move back!” Callum shouted, his voice deep but breathy.
There followed a tense pause. Then the creature moved backwards. One step.
“Move back!” he shouted again, advancing another pace.
This time the creature did not retreat but stood firm and retaliated. With a screech, it rebowed its head, parted its arms and puffed out its plumage. Instead of red, its feathers now turned the same neon green as the one glow-stick, before flushing the blue of the other. The two colours pulsed effortlessly into being, one after the other, as the creature’s head bobbed and the sound of its teeth grating shredded the air.
Callum’s heart sank. Did he really think a couple of glow sticks could intimidate such a lethal prehistoric predator? Maybe. Maybe not. But what option did he have?
Summoning all of his courage, he stepped forward once again. Speeding up the flailing of his arms, and roaring from the bottom of his gut, “Move back! Move back now!”
Less than four or five paces now separated the two of them in their stand-off. At this range even the mist had lost its grip. Callum could make out every detail of the creature, from the bunched folds of purple-grey gooseflesh below its eyes, to the thread-like blood vessels pulsing in its bared gums. At this range its musk was as overpowering as the reflected colour still coursing through its plumes.
The world was thrown into deep silence. All that existed now were himself, Darya, the creature and something else. It was nothing visible. It was a contract. An understanding, older than the creature itself, which kept it from simply lashing out with its hind claws and tearing his throat out.
As Callum went to take another step forward, it stopped displaying suddenly and turned its head upwards. There was a new look on its face. The colour shed from its feathers. Was he winning? Had he won? Was he about to die?
Callum was desperate for reassurance from Darya, but speech left him at the sight of the creature’s whole body bathed in a mysterious light. The light intensified, spreading out into a halo until he could barely see the creature for the glare.
As a low rumbling sound grew louder and louder, his voice returned at last: “What the hell?”
There was a crunch followed by a piercing shriek as a large mechanical arm appeared out of the mist and came crashing down in front of Callum’s face. The bucket-fist pounded the creature into the ground like a child crushing an ant, and the force of the impact vibrated through the rock under Callum’s feet.
In that moment, as Darya’s grip tightened around his shoulder, he wasn’t sure what scared him the most: the creature, the sound of gunfire, explosions and screeching that rushed to fill the air once more, or the towering mechanical beast now emerging from the mist.
The arm reared upwards, the blood-stained b
ucket clanking at its hinge. Beneath it, the creature’s lifeless body shook violently. Blood and bone burst up through its now-dull plumage. Bathed in the light streaming from the machine’s headlamps, its entire upper torso was pulped. Its legs twitched and a startled look lay splattered across what remained of its face.
“I do not think that he plays possum this time,” Darya said.
Callum said nothing. There were no words for how he felt in that moment.
2
Peterson had never given up before. It was weird. Kind of comforting. He’d always figured he would be racked with panic when his time finally came. But if anything he felt a deep sense of calm.
“Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo…”
Only, where was his film reel? Weren’t a lifetime’s worth of memories meant to be flashing past his eyes in one big cognitive chunder? There were enough of them for sure. Good and bad. But now that it came to it, there was only one thing on his mind.
Stupid! he scolded himself. You’ve known toenails longer than you’ve known her. How can you even pretend to be in love with her? Just look what you’re risking.
“Oh yeah, and what’s that then?” he slurred.
No reply.
What was that Robert Burns claptrap McJones had spouted back on the ship? But t’see her was t’love her, love but her and love forever.
“But to see her was to love her,” he repeated. Perhaps it could be just that simple. He had no real clue. Robert Burns obviously thought so, and so did McJones. All Peterson knew was that she was what he was thinking about now, as he drew his last breaths. Ava, and the knowledge that because of him she was in deep shit.
His desire to succumb was waning. He fought to regain it. Death – nice, responsibility-free death – would be so much easier. Wouldn’t it? But, sprawled out in the carnage of the upturned cabin, his sense of acceptance was being replaced by a strange, very much alive kind of restlessness.
Perhaps he was looking at it all wrong. Did it really matter what he felt for Ava or not? Whether it was love or delusion or just plain old animal lust? No. What mattered – at least, what he figured to matter – was that he didn’t bail on her without a fight. As a human being, he owed her that. As a human being suffering his consequences, he owed her those last breaths of his. And that went for McJones as well and any other sorry sons of bitches that were suffering because of his stupidity. Hell, it even went for Lebedev.
He pushed himself up off the ceiling. The decaying atmosphere was starting to make him feel sick, light-headed. He shook it off. He’d wasted enough time already. If he was serious about not bailing on anybody but Davy Jones, then it was now or never.
He wrestled the tool kit from beneath the upturned console and grabbed a screwdriver. He prised up the flooring and got to work on the reinforced panel secured across the top of the specimen chamber. The screws were structural and not intended to be removed. He had to score away the anti-corrosion paint before using every last ounce of his strength to unfasten them, all the while supporting the weighty metal panel on his shoulders like some kind of twenty-first century Atlas.
At last, hands and shoulders numb, he allowed the panel, and the better part of the underlying refrigeration module, to clatter down beside him. He wiped the condensation from the inside of his glasses and stared through into the chamber.
A deep sigh escaped him. “Here we go again.”
The gap was just big enough for him to squeeze his shoulders through. Having pulled on his Arctic wetsuit and diver’s utility belt, he tucked the IRS inhalator into a waterproof bag and fed it up into the chamber, along with his face mask and a single-use respirator. He clipped his diver’s knife and an underwater lamp to his belt and then grabbed his harpoon gun.
As he stood up and prepared to squeeze himself through, he made the mistake of glancing through the screen. The creatures were out there. Five or six of them at least. They hung, wraith-like, in the water, their collective gaze glued to the Centaur. They were expecting him, he could tell. They looked like dark angels, waiting to escort him into the next world. Only problem was, he wasn’t ready yet. His grip tightened around the shaft of the harpoon gun.
As he moved to pull himself up into the chamber, his foot kicked into the side of the console, and the cabin came alive with the clicks and whistles of the fleeing narwhal pod that he’d encountered earlier; the hydrophone was programmed to make an automatic recording whenever it was engaged, and he must have kicked it into playback.
An idea clicked and whistled into his head. If the internal hydrophone speaker was still active, then perhaps there were other residual electrical functions. It was a long shot, but it might just work.
He lowered himself back down into the cabin and hit the button for the external speakers.
Outside, the creatures began searching around frantically. Thrown into confusion by the sudden explosion of sound, they abandoned their harrying positions and formed a defensive huddle, only metres from the Centaur’s nose. Panicked by the invisible pod, they then scattered into the murk.
Peterson’s elation was tempered by the possibility that they could return at any moment. Sure, they were gone. High five. But for how long? He dragged himself up into the specimen chamber, grabbed his equipment, and affixed his mask and respirator. Not wasting another second, he took hold of the internal door handles, braced himself and cracked open the chamber door.
The trickle of water became a torrent as he edged the door open wider. The power of the deluge forced him back against the wall. It was deafening, and he could do nothing but hold on tight and wait. In less than a minute, the cabin below was entirely flooded and the water had begun filling the chamber cavity. There was no going back.
He closed his eyes.
The sting of icy water on his face, Peterson forced the door all the way open and wriggled through.
Outside, he scanned around. The water had quickly shorted out the hydrophone. But still the creatures were nowhere to be seen. He looked to the seabed. It was subtle, but beyond the impact scar left by the sub as it touched down, there was an obvious gradient; both his experience and his instinct were telling him that if he followed it, it would lead him ashore.
He checked the respirator gauge. Ten minutes of air remaining.
With his bag tethered to his waist, and the harpoon gun in hand, he kicked off from the Sea Centaur and swam like hell for Harmsworth.
3
The machine’s horn tore through the air. The front hatch creaked open and a man’s voice called out in Russian. Other than the frequent expletives, Callum had no idea what it was saying. But the gist was loud and clear: Get in the cabin now!
He helped Darya up onto the machine’s track, then hoisted himself up and leapt into the cabin after her. The screen slammed down behind them, and there was more shouting in Russian before a hand grabbed him by the shoulder and began pulling at him.
“You stop him operating the control!”
Callum could see that his leg was blocking the joystick-like handle mounted at the front of the driver’s armrest. He clambered out of the way and perched himself on the narrow ledge behind the chair, back-to-back with Darya.
The cabin sat a good couple of metres off the ground. As the three of them peered out through the windscreen, a shadow stalked from the mist. It was followed by three others.
One by one, the creatures stopped before the machine. Their heads seemed to cock in unison as they assessed their super-sized quarry. One of them dipped its neck and sniffed at the pulverised remains of its companion. Then it turned to the others and let out a loud rasp. Screeching in reply, they rushed over to see for themselves, dipping their snouts into the mush of blood and feathers.
“What do they do?” Darya said.
“I’m not sure,” Callum replied. “I don’t think they know what to make of us.”
“Do you think they are afraid?”
“No,” he said. “I think they’re angry.”
There was a sudden whirring sound as the soldier flexed the mechanical arm, attempting to ward the creatures off. With incredible agility, they bounded backwards out of reach. But rather than turning to flee, they split up and charged the machine from multiple directions.
Callum was thrown over as the cabin span clockwise. The outstretched arm collided with one of the creatures mid-leap and batted it from view. The driver shouted out in triumph as the cabin then swung back the other way. This time the arm shaved past its three remaining targets, two of which leapt up onto the tracks, while the third bolted underneath.
The driver slammed his foot into the pedal and the machine bucked and then rolled forward. It felt painfully slow, but while the creature on the right-hand track jumped clear, the other lost its footing and crashed to the ground. With a roar, the machine accelerated and Callum felt the cabin tilt as the track drove straight over its body. Its screeches were audible even over the engine. Then they stopped, replaced by the crunching of its bones.
Three down, Callum thought. He shared a look with Darya. After feeling so vulnerable for so long, he could tell that she too was revelling in the sudden sense of power as they ploughed over the uneven ground.
“Does he know where we’re going?”
Darya spoke to the driver then relayed, “He thinks so.”
“He thinks so?”
“Yes, he thinks so.” She pointed ahead. “This way is the compound. You have better idea?”
There was a sudden crash overhead, and the next thing Callum knew they were spinning again. Only this time they weren’t doing 180-degree arcs. They were spinning round and round, continually, as the driver fought to shake the creature from the roof.
The cabin felt like a G-force chamber and Callum was thrown up against the side window. As he tried to right himself, an eye appeared on the other side of the Perspex. It peered through at him and a pair of jaws ground menacingly below it.
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