by James Axler
The Manta rotated again, its speed diminishing as Kane finally brought the vehicle under control once more, lifting it high over the vast shape of the monster that rushed just a few feet beneath him. The monster itself seemed to ignore Kane, instead busily pursuing his partner’s craft as Grant’s Manta sped through the ocean just a few dozen yards ahead of it.
“You okay back there, Baptiste?” Kane asked, aware that Brigid had been tossed about in the seat behind him.
Brigid groaned an affirmative, rubbing at her head where she had been slammed into the side of the vehicle during their fierce, uncontrolled spin.
As the Manta swooped through the ocean, Kane finally saw the full shape of the creature highlighted on his sensor display. It was roughly cylindrical in shape, bulging in the middle like a swollen torpedo. Eight vast, curling forelimbs dragged it through the ocean, each one of them curling and uncurling with each whirring movement as it raced after Grant’s Manta, like the long tentacles of a squid. The thing moved with such speed through the ocean that it seemed almost effortless, despite its breathtaking size.
“I’m picking up an analysis now,” Kane stated over the Commtact link he shared with Grant. “Looks like some kind of giant squid, and it’s definitely alive. Scope here shows it’s about 170 yards from nose to tail, plus those arms almost double its size.”
GRANT GROWLED TO HIMSELF as he navigated out of the path of those mighty, swinging tentacles sweeping through the ocean toward him. He was working in darkness down here, but his sensor displays were alive with information, bright lights rushing across the field of his heads-up display inside the dome-shaped helmet. The Manta slipped between two swinging tentacle arms as the sea behemoth reached for the fleeing craft. Then, just as they appeared to be in the clear, another tentacle cut through the gloom, slamming into the bottom of the Manta with an almighty thud that made the whole vehicle shake.
Grant shouted unintelligibly as he struggled with the control yoke, trying desperately to regain control as the Manta flipped over and over in a dizzying spin. Behind him, somewhere to the rear of the Manta, the engines shrieked as they strained to right the vehicle once more, sounding for all the world like an animal caught in a trap.
The lights of Grant’s heads-up display were flashing with increasing urgency, and a bright orange blip appeared to the upper right of his vision, assuring him that they were now in an emergency.
“I know, I know,” Grant growled as the orange light winked on. He grasped the control stick with both hands, urging more thrust to the engines to try to level their course as they plummeted toward the great, squidlike beast that loomed beneath them.
Then, as Grant brought the Manta back under control, he realized that there wasn’t just one beast out there; there were two.
“Kane?” Grant yelled over the Commtact as he yanked the control yoke hard to the right, neatly slipping past another of those swinging tentacles. “It’s twins, buddy! We’ve got two of these things out here.”
AT A HIGHER LEVEL, now just skimming the edge of the crater, Kane discussed Grant’s message with Brigid, for she, too, was tuned into the communications via her own subdermal Commtact receiver.
“Well, any ideas, Baptiste?”
“They’re the librarians that Balam spoke of,” Brigid realized, the information coming to her as if from nowhere.
“What’s that?” Kane shouted angrily, swinging the Manta through the waters to join his flailing partner, even though he had no idea what they were going to do to get out of this mess.
“While you were off finding Clem, Balam told me about the librarians,” Brigid said. “He explained how only Annunaki are allowed access to the Ontic Library, that the librarians would never allow anyone else entry. That’s why he wouldn’t come down here himself.” Of course, Balam was telepathic, Brigid realized, and it was entirely possible that that knowing smile he had offered her in the interrogation room had been as he placed a telepathic suggestion deep in her subconscious.
Kane checked the information scrolling across his scopes, confirming that there were two of the city-block-size creatures moving in the darkness. “Librarians, huh?” he snarled. “And they couldn’t just shush us?”
“They’re more like sentries or guardians,” Brigid postulated. “I don’t think they’ll let us pass.”
As Brigid pondered the crazy situation, Grant’s voice came over the Commtact that linked them together. “Got two on my tail now, and they are closing real fast.”
Kane urged more power from the Manta’s thrusters, diving into the crater once more as he located Grant’s vehicle on his readout display. “I’m on my way,” he assured his partner.
“Kane?” Brigid snapped. “What the hell are you going to do? The Mantas are unarmed. We couldn’t fight back even if we wanted to.”
“Then we’ll run interference until Grant can get himself clear,” Kane snarled, “or I’ll play the shortest game of chicken you’ve ever seen.”
“No,” Brigid muttered. “There has to be some other way. We just need to figure out what it is.”
Kane piled on the speed, rushing faster and faster into the darkness. “Then you had better figure a whole lot faster!”
WITHIN THE COCKPIT OF the other Manta, Grant and Clem were reaching the same conclusion as their vehicle weaved dangerously close to the writhing tentacle arms of one of the squidlike behemoths.
“I’m not normally one to advocate the overt use of force,” Clem said, “but I wonder if you might consider—?”
“Can’t do it,” Grant growled. “The Mantas don’t have any weapons. We’re unarmed.”
“Has this never been an issue before?”
“Clem,” Grant snarled. “Three words for you—not, the, time.”
Clem put his hands together and closed his eyes as the bronze-hued craft was buffeted by the colossal movements of the creatures just beyond its frame. “Oh, I don’t want to be Jonah,” he muttered as the Manta lurched on the fiercely churning current.
Via the viewing displays, Grant could see the two creatures moving toward him through the darkened undersea crater. Despite their size, they moved through the water with exceptional grace and speed, their huge limbs uncoiling and rushing at him like rockets, dragging themselves forward. Despite himself, Grant physically ducked as one of those snakelike appendages cut through the water just a few feet above the bulge of the cockpit. He flipped the Manta, turning its belly toward the nearest creature and darting lower into the ocean depths. According to the sensor scan, they were at ten miles below sea level and there seemed to be no end to the depth of the massive crater.
“If you’re going to pull something out of the bag, Kane,” Grant growled, “you had better do it now.”
GRASPING THE CONTROL STICK of his Manta, his hands slick with sweat, Kane powered the vehicle down toward where the monsters awaited. As he closed in, one of them turned and he saw it darting toward him, those colossal, swaying limbs preceding the bulk of its tubular body.
“Nothing’s supposed to come down here,” Brigid said, thinking aloud. “So these librarians investigate anything that does appear.”
“I would call this a little more than investigation,” Kane growled as the Manta craft was buffeted in the wake of another swinging limb a city block long.
“To us, maybe,” Brigid agreed, “but from their point of view we’re just interlopers, little more than flies buzzing around the room.”
With a resounding crash, the tip of a tentacle skimmed against the wing of the Manta, and Kane clung tightly to the control stick as the vehicle spun once more, knocked from its path. In his sensor scope, he could see that Grant’s own Manta was faring little better, just barely avoiding the slew of tentacles of his primary foe as it grasped for his vehicle through the shadowy depths.
In the backseat, Brigid wedged herself against the tight sides of the craft as she was tossed about in her chair, slamming against the starboard side as Kane struggled to right the ship. “There must
be stuff down here for these things to eat,” she reasoned, trying to focus on the problem of the immense squids. “Things would drift here all the time.”
“Yeah, like us!” Kane growled as he zipped between two more of the colossal, writhing tentacles as they grasped for the Manta. “Come on, Baptiste, I thought you’d have an affinity with this shit.” As he spoke, Kane urged the Manta ahead, rocketing just ten feet beyond the side of the nearest gigantic tentacle.
“Cut the power,” Brigid said suddenly.
“Are you out of your mind?” Kane asked, struggling to be heard over the complaining engines as a tentacle swung at them through the water.
“Just do it,” Brigid said, a firmness in her voice that Kane recognized from other escapades with the ex-archivist.
Despite harboring his own reservations, Kane cut the drive and felt the vibration of the engines cease as the Manta’s system rapidly powered down. Behind him, Brigid Baptiste was relaying the same instruction to Grant via Commtact, assuring him that she knew what she was doing.
IN HIS OWN MANTA, whirling amid the grasping arms of the massive sea monster, Grant accepted Brigid’s order without question, his fingers racing across the dashboard and cutting all power in a second. Where, just moments before, the Manta’s complaining engine had been a whining shriek that grated on the passengers’ ears, now it went deadly silent, the whole interior taking on the aspect of a mausoleum. The small bank of interior lights generated by the cockpit’s dashboard winked out, too, leaving the whole craft in an eerily sudden darkness.
By contrast, the heads-up display playing across Grant’s retina was in flux, as a dozen different warning signals vied for the pilot’s attention. Grant ignored the flashing signals, wondering if any of the ancient Annunaki pilots who had once used these crafts had ever suffered epilepsy. “I fucking hope not,” he muttered into the faceplate of the heads-up display helmet.
In the seat behind Grant, unaware of the order Brigid had given, Clem Bryant voiced his concern. “Are we hit? Are we sunk?”
“Oh, we’re sunk,” Grant said, “but it’s all part of Brigid’s plan.”
“I have to say that sounds a lot less reassuring than it should,” Clem voiced as the Manta began drifting in silence, its engines negated.
Just outside the smoothly curved shell, the two squidlike behemoths moved like planets orbiting the sun.
ABOVE GRANT’S VEHICLE, Kane’s Manta continued along its course for thirty seconds or so, gradually arcing downward as its momentum was lost. “We’re starting to sink,” he informed his companion as a warning light blinked on in his heads-up display.
“Exactly,” Brigid said, “and that’s just what we want.”
Behind them, remarkably, the huge squidlike monster seemed to have stopped grasping at them, and Kane saw that the same thing had happened below them, where Grant had cut the power to his own engines. Now the Mantas were gradually sinking.
“The librarian creatures are leaving us alone,” Kane growled, equal parts astonishment and fury in his voice. “What the hell happened?”
“They’re attracted to the heat of the engines or maybe just the unnatural movement of the crafts in their presence,” Brigid postulated. “With no power in our engines, they’re seeing us as no more threat than a sinking stone.”
Kane shook his head in disbelief, the bronze helmet swaying back and forth atop his neck. “Phew. When you pull it out of the fire, Baptiste…” he began.
As he spoke, Grant’s jubilant voice came over the Commtact, broadcasting directly to the Cerberus warriors’ subdermal implants. “We’re all clear,” he said. “Those big bads seem to be leaving us alone. I don’t know how you did it, but it seems to have worked, Brigid.”
As the currents of the ocean depths swirled slowly in their invisible dance, the two Mantas drifted gracefully toward the bottom of the crater, like two sycamore seeds caught on the autumn breeze.
THE CREATURES THAT BRIGID had identified as librarians did not bother the Cerberus warriors again, satisfied perhaps that the seemingly dead Mantas were no threat to their habitat. As they slowly sank toward the bottom, Kane wiped his sweating palms on the legs of his pants, and he stretched the kinks out of his muscles. It had been a trying few minutes.
“What I don’t get,” Kane said, “is how the Annunaki ever accessed this place. With those squids guarding the gateway, I mean.”
“Presumably they had some way to soothe the savage beasts,” Brigid suggested. “Maybe a sonic signal or something along those lines. Sound carries quite well in the ocean, albeit at a different rate to what we’re used to. Whales communicate through song.”
“Huh.” Kane shrugged. “Kind of like a dog whistle, I guess.”
Brigid smiled at the comment. Though his eloquence sometimes left a little to be desired, Kane’s ability to hit the nail on the head was very often second to none.
Languidly, the two Mantas sank lower, gradually dropping to the bottom of the undersea crater, whose proportions dwarfed even the vast creatures that the Cerberus team had tangled with. As they got closer to the bottom, the water became muddied, and Kane observed a number of tiny objects being picked up by his Manta’s built-in sensors.
“There’s a lot of debris around here,” he stated as he took in the information on his helmet display.
Brigid peered through the slitlike windows in the back of the cockpit, but she was unable to see anything other than darkness now, even the bubbles of the Mantas’ passing lost amid the intense gloom.
“Maybe it’s the library itself,” she suggested.
Her statement resonated within the confines of the cockpit, reminding Kane of how alien the whole concept of the Ontic Library truly was. Balam had intimated it was something like a coral reef, a living environment that sustained more life-forms on its surface, each of them contributing to the archive of information in some unfathomable, collective manner. These things in the water may very well be the same mollusk-type creatures that Kane’s team had initially found along the seafront at Hope, the ones that had been eaten by the teenagers beneath the wreckage of the pier.
DRIFTING A LITTLE LOWER than Kane’s Manta, Grant and Clem tensely waited in the near-total darkness, the only faint light coming from the display board that interacted with Grant’s heads-up display.
“Are we nearing the bottom?” Clem asked, feeling strangely dissociated with real life in that ghostly environment.
“About a half mile,” Grant said, translating the readings that whirred before his eyes. “But something’s coming up,” he added. “Kane? Can you see this?”
For a moment, the Commtact link was silent, then Kane’s voice came, speaking slowly. “Just reading it now. What appears to be a huge undersea structure in a roughly cruciform design.”
“Think this is it?” Grant asked, seeing the same outline on his own heads-up display.
“Stand by to reengage engines,” Kane advised. “But let’s not be too hasty. I don’t want to get into another squabble with the guard fish.”
“Roger that,” Grant replied, watching in wonder as the heads-up display began to draw in details of the structure far below.
The construction was shaped something like a giant cross, with one arm stretching out to almost twice the length of the others. At its longest point, the structure stretched to three-quarters of a mile, large enough to house a village or small town. A cloud of debris came from a section close to one of the joints, a rent seemed to have appeared there and spewed a thick, inky liquid amid the stultifying gloom. From this distance, drifting in darkness, it was impossible for Kane or Grant to guess what the structure itself was made from; they could only marvel at its vastness.
Whatever it was made from, one thing was certain—they had found the Ontic Library.
Kane widened the range beam of his scopes to their maximum, bringing input from far above them. The huge, squidlike guardians of the depths remained dormant over a mile above them, uncaring of what was going on down
here in the lower depths of the crater.
“Let’s motor,” Kane instructed over the Commtact, engaging his own engines once more as he did so.
Grant copied the request, and Kane watched on the heads-up display as his partner’s Manta stopped sinking and began a more gentle arc forward, heading in a graceful curve toward the cruciform structure below them.
Still conscious of the leviathans above, Kane tapped a little power to the thrusters and followed his partner across the ocean bed toward the undersea palace.
“We’re about one minute out,” Grant advised as he angled his craft over the ridged surface of the Ontic Library. “I’ve located an entry gate off to the port side.”
Kane checked his readouts and saw a signal flashing on his display, indicating the very entryway that Grant had just referred to. The Mantas were rediscovered Annunaki craft, and it seemed that certain information was preprogrammed into their amazing circuits for eventualities such as this.
Kane eased his hands across the control board, letting go of the control stick for a moment and allowing the Manta to glide toward the entrance under its own power. Thirty seconds later, he and Brigid were following Grant’s craft into the belly of the undersea structure, taking another step into the unknown.
Chapter 13
Outside the dirt-caked garage, Rosalia followed the group of marching humans as they continued down the street toward the beach. Besides the six in hoods, four others followed, their movements less regular and more shambolic, almost as if they were sleepwalking.
Trotting along at her side, Belly-on-legs let out an excited yip, peering back over his shoulder.
“Hush, stupid mutt,” Rosalia ordered, stepping into the shadows between the two nearest buildings, both of them ramshackle huts showing the heavy trauma of weathering.