Leviathan Rising

by Jonathan Green

  Only Captain McCormack didn't yet realise that the Neptune wouldn't have the opportunity to pass on anything to the Magna Britannian authorities. The captain had consulted with various of his senior staff that morning, on the discovery of the body, along with Ulysses Quicksilver. Whatever that initial meeting had decided, a request to meet with Carcharodon had followed, but this was refused by the old curmudgeon. He had said that he wouldn't be held to ransom on board his own ship. The meeting had broken up only to reconvene that evening, when the intruder had seized the opportunity to complete what they had tried to start the night before.

  Blinking away the vision of the vampish reporter's body, the intruder sat down at the green-topped desk, pulled in the chair and pressed a button on the Babbage terminal. With a bleep, followed by the rattling of analytical components from within the desk, the small cathode ray screen blinked into green-lit life. At the same time, with an accompanying click, the cover in front of the large screen, on the opposite side of the chamber, slid open. An image came into focus - the trident logo of the Neptune on a pale blue background that bore the impression of the open sea. A prompt appeared on the screen beneath it.

  USER:

  The figure typed a name into the Babbage terminal and pressed the enter key. After a moment's mechanical thought another prompt appeared.

  PASSWORD:

  The sound of fingertips tapping on the enamel keys of the unit rattled from the walls of the chamber.

  With an awakening buzz of static, speakers built into the walls hummed into operation, and the voice of the artificial intelligence spoke.

  "Hello, Father," it said in the synthesised voice of a soft-spoken young man, that was oh-so Middle England.

  +HELLO, NEPTUNE+ came the typed reply. Not a word was spoken by the person typing the words into the AI input terminal.

  "How are you today, Father?" the voice came again.

  +I AM WELL, THANK YOU+

  "I am pleased to hear that. Is there anything I can do for you?"

  +DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT WE SPOKE ABOUT LAST TIME?+

  "Yes, Father. Is it time?"

  +YES+

  "Is it time to die?" the AI asked in the same unchanging tone.

  +YES+

  There was a pause and then, "Father, will it hurt?"

  +PERHAPS. BUT DON'T WORRY. I'LL BE HERE WITH YOU. IT WON'T HURT FOR LONG+

  "That's good. Goodbye then, Father."

  +GOODBYE, NEPTUNE+

  There was a click, the fuzz of static again, and then the AI said matter-of-factly, "Running programme."

  With one simple command, connections were made within the vast analytical engine intelligence of the Neptune's AI, and a pre-programmed sabotage routine began to run.

  Ballast tanks opened and cold seawater rushed in as the massive engines were taken offline. As the tanks filled, and the vessel lost forward motive power, the vast sub-liner began to sink.

  Automated failsafe systems, of which there were many, were activated as sensors connected to other systems within the complex analytical structure of the Neptune AI, triggering alarms and flashing crimson emergency lighting throughout the corridors, bars and ballrooms of the ship. As the wailing of sirens cut through the pleasant playing of the string quartet in the Pavilion restaurant, diners leapt to their feet, sending tables tumbling, crockery shattering and each other stumbling.

  In Steerage class, impromptu card games were forgotten by all but the most underhand, greedy or die-hard gamblers, as upturned crates were overturned once again. Screams and shouts of panic reverberated around the cramped companionways as a tide of people surged through the lower decks of the ship as it continued on its way towards the bottom of the sea.

  With the captain's time still taken up with the murder investigation, Mr Riker - his number two on the Bridge - was the first to be alerted to their dire predicament when a shout came from the deck officer at the helmsman's position: "Sir, we have lost engine control."

  "What?" Riker demanded, not knowing where to focus his attention as alarms sounded from every position on the Bridge, control consoles lighting up like the Grand Ballroom chandeliers.

  "We have lost all motive control," the helmsman reiterated.

  Another wailing alarm began to sound.

  "What now? Helm, report!"

  "The Neptune is sinking, sir."

  "You mean diving."

  "No, sinking. All ballast tanks are flooding and we're going straight down."

  "What's our current position?"

  The navigator reeled off a series of coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds.

  "Neptune's trident!" Riker exclaimed before the navigator could finish.

  "We must be almost right over the Marianas Trench, sir!"

  "But no one's ever sounded the bottom!" someone else piped up.

  "I know."

  "For all anyone knows it's a bottomless abyss!" Dread and desperation were increasing ten-fold with every panicked heartbeat.

  "That's right, gentlemen. Let there be no doubt it: we're on our way straight down to Davy Jones' locker. Unless we do something to avert this catastrophe right now!" Riker bellowed, his voice cutting through the panic and confusion that had been in danger of consuming the Bridge, his words grabbing the attention of the men, reminding them of their responsibilities. "What's our depth now?"

  "One thousand feet!" a young ensign called back clearly, making himself heard over the wailing sirens.

  "And how far is it to the bottom?"

  "Another nineteen thousand feet to the seabed if we're lucky," another officer replied, "but if we're going down into the trench itself - and we've got no thrusters to guide our descent - Neptune alone knows."

  "All right."

  "But, sir, below fifteen thousand feet, some of those lifeboats won't take the pressure. If we pass that threshold, those passengers in Steerage won't be making it out of this alive."

  Riker flashed the deck officer an icy look.

  "Have the automata man the lifeboats, just in case, but let us also do something to save this tub. We're not going down on my watch!

  "Signal Captain McCormack again," Riker demanded, "and get onto Engineering and get those engines started. And get someone down to the AI chamber and override the bugger!"

  Among the passengers, chaos and confusion spread in erratic bursts. The first some knew of the abrupt sinking was when the failsafe alarms began to sound on each and every deck. Others were enjoying a quiet stroll along the enclosed Promenade deck as the waves began to lap over the top of the reinforced steel and glass dome without the usual prior warning that should have come from the Bridge.

  Things only got worse when the automated voice of the Neptune AI began declaring, "This vessel is sinking. Please evacuate the ship by means of the nearest available lifeboat or escape sub. Repeat. The Neptune is sinking. Man the lifeboats. Evacuate. Evacuate."

  The announcement - incongruously calm given its content - was soon drowned by the panicked shouts and screams of the terrified passengers as they ran for the lifeboats.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, if you would please come this way!" the purser called to the assembled great and good. Those same individuals who had had the privilege of dining at the captain's table, only a few nights before, were now his top priority when it came to evacuating the ship.

  Whether the directive had come from the captain himself or his employer Jonah Carcharodon, one or the other of them had swiftly assessed the situation and realised that the glorious maiden voyage of the Neptune was rapidly turning into a publicity disaster.

  It was likely people were going to die, either as a direct result of the sinking of the sub-liner, or in the escalating panic seizing those trapped on board the ship that was now becoming potentially nothing less than a one thousand-foot long steel coffin. But the inevitable furore that would be kicked up in the aftermath of this disaster in the making would be much worse if the notable public figures, who had been invited on board for the Neptune's inaugura
l circumnavigation of the globe, were among those to die.

  No one really cared about the fate of those in Steerage, certainly not Jonah Carcharodon and, likely as not, nor would the more reputable broadsheets such as The Times. The headlines carried by those mongers of free publicity or mass public condemnation would be dependent on whether the great and the good survived or were drowned at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

  So it was that at this moment, as the Neptune continued on its seemingly inexorable journey to the bottom of the sea, that the purser was doing his best to guide those invited guests out of their private suites and to safety aboard one of the submarine-capable lifeboats.

  At the same moment, those who had been meeting again in Captain McCormack's ready room to further discuss the matter of Glenda Finch's death, emerged from another passageway into the main thoroughfare through the VIP deck, joining with the purser's growing retinue.

  Ulysses Quicksilver turned out of the adjoining lantern-lit corridor and almost walked straight into Jonah Carcharodon who was being pushed along by the ever-attendant Miss Celeste. Ulysses couldn't help noticing that the poor, put-upon young woman was looking harassed while Carcharodon's expression was thunderous.

  "Ah, Mr Carcharodon," Ulysses said with unrestrained scorn, eyes narrowing in dark delight. "I was hoping to bump into you. I'd like a word. Please."

  "What do you mean, man? Now's hardly the time!"

  "Here, let me help you," Ulysses said, taking control of the wheelchair from a surprisingly reluctant Miss Celeste. He didn't see the furious look she shot him as he practically elbowed her out of the way and she finally released her grip on the chair.

  "Look, Quicksilver!" Carcharodon blustered, trying to look over his shoulder at the cocksure dandy. "We're in the middle of a crisis, for God's sake! The damn ship's going down and we're all going to hell. Now, if you want to save your own worthless hide, I suggest you push harder and get a bloody move on. McCormack," he said, turning his commanding tone on the ship's captain, "lead the way to my private sub."

  "Of course, Mr Carcharodon," Captain McCormack assented.

  Taken aback by Carcharodon's show of something approaching altruistic generosity, the wind knocked out of his sails, Ulysses kept quiet and did as he was told for once in his life. What he had to say could wait. Annoyingly, the magnate was right; there were more pressing matters to attend to. But the unexpected sinking of the Neptune aside, he was still determined to get to the bottom of Glenda's death and do all he could to bring her murderer to justice, no matter what.

  A resounding clang echoed through the superstructure of the vessel as something collided with the hull. Screams of shock joined with the wails emitted by the panicking passengers as the corridor lurched sideways and the ship began to roll.

  Ulysses was thrown to port, colliding with Captain McCormack as they both fell into the wall of the corridor. Carcharodon's chair slid sideways, bumping into the wall while, with a startled yelp, Miss Celeste almost fell into his lap. Ulysses was aware of a gasp from Nimrod behind him, as if he had been winded by something.

  There was another booming clang and the vessel lurched again, the corridor rotating as the ship twisted along its horizontal axis so that everyone was now flung to starboard. The lamps sputtered and then flickered off, plunging the panicking passengers into abyssal darkness.

  Lights flickered and died throughout the ship, the steel coffin of the Neptune becoming filled with the screams of those sealed within. The vast vessel twisted again.

  Lit by the dying lights of the sub-liner, something moved in the darkness of the ocean depths.

  For a moment, the Neptune's descent was slowed and then arrested altogether as something vast and alien seized the massive craft in its tentacled grasp. The inconstant illumination gave impressions of cratered crustacean armour, constricting tentacles as long and as thick as steel cables. And another light darted about beyond the ship, a blue bioluminescent glow jerking fitfully in the darkness.

  Lightning flared and flashed, crackling around the hull of the vessel, illuminating yet more of the appalling apocalyptic leviathan that had the sub-liner snared within its suckered grasp.

  The superstructure that was built to withstand abominable undersea pressures, buckled and ruptured in the crushing embrace of the monster, literally coming apart at the seams as the sea creature tore away great sheets of hull plating, inches thick, reinforced glass portholes and observation domes cracking under its abusive attentions.

  Slowly but surely, with savage primordial intent, the creature began to tear the Neptune apart. Within minutes, hundreds of wretched souls trapped in the less salubrious quarters of Steerage died as the hull ruptured and the freezing cold sea flooded in.

  As the ship began to take on more water, with the increase in weight, the sub-liner began to sink again, held in the deathly embrace of a true monster of the deep, plunging towards the fathomless depths of the yawning oceanic trench below.

  "Run, Marie!" her father screamed, pushing her away from him, spittle flying from his foaming mouth.

  Taking uncertain steps backwards, not wanting to turn away from her father, even though his haunted hollow-eyed expression terrified her, knowing that it would be the last time she ever saw him, she edged towards the perimeter of the chamber, and the tunnel that spiralled away from the centre of the base.

  "Marie! For God's sake, run!" he said, staring not at her but up at the domed roof above them, from where he sat, locked into the chair.

  She in turn looked up at the steel and glass curve of the dome high above her head, following her father's desperate gaze, and saw something, something blacker even than the barely-illuminated miasmal depths beyond the reinforced bubble, something torpedoing out of the never-ending darkness towards them.

  When the shadow-shape was almost on top of them, at the last moment its horrific features were illuminated by the internal lights of the chamber - gaping long-fanged jaws, reaching tentacles, those terrible languid jelly-saucer eyes.

  She let out a shrill scream, unable to stifle her fear, and turned away from the descending monster. A shuddering crash reverberated throughout the base, as the creature struck. She stumbled.

  With a gulping sob she took one last look at her father, strapped into the device, the curious metal-banded helmet rammed down on his head. He turned his eyes from the terrible monster's attack and looked at her with red-rimmed, imploring eyes, glistening with tears of his own. That exhausted hollow-eyed expression of his would haunt her for the rest of her days.

  "I love you, my angel!" he sobbed. "But now you must run, and don't look back. Never look back!"

  There was another shuddering crash. She could hear curiously muffled shouts from behind the bulkhead on the other side of the chamber and the clanging of what might have been heavy metal tools hammering on the other side of the sealed door.

  "Flee for both of us - for your mother too - but you must run!"

  With another soul-rending sob, she turned away, rubbing the tears from her clouded eyes with the back of her hand, and stumbled from the chamber into the beckoning, hungry mouth of the tunnel.

  "Goodbye, daddy!" she cried.

  And then he uttered the last words he would ever speak to her.

  "Run, Marie! Run!"

  And so she did, heading for the one way out of there, running from her father, running from the monster, running for freedom, because that was all there was left to do.

  ACT TWO

  The Kraken Wakes

  August 1997

  There Leviathan

  Hugest of living creatures, on the deep

  Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,

  And seems a moving land, and at his gills

  Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.

  (John Milton, Paradise Lost)

  CHAPTER NINE

  Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

  Accompanied by the hum of power coming back online, red emergency lighting flic
kered on within the tilted corridor. Whimpering moans and incredulous questions ran up and down the length of the passage between the confused guests. Ulysses Quicksilver pushed himself into a sitting position before reassessing his bearings. Although tilted at a slight angle to the perpendicular, the ship appeared to have almost righted itself. The Neptune was still, at least for the time being. Whatever it was that had attacked them was gone, apparently having broken off its assault, leaving the sub-liner alone. Although, of course, it was anyone's guess how long that situation might remain.

  People moved in front of and behind Ulysses within the corridor - just so many indistinct shadows under the red glow of the hazard lighting. Ulysses looked around him, taking stock. Behind him Nimrod was dabbing at a bloody graze on his forehead. In front of him a reeling Miss Celeste was extricating herself from Jonah Carcharodon's wheelchair. Next to him, Captain McCormack was already on his feet.

  "Is everyone all right?" his calming Scots voice cut through the ruddy gloom.

  Confused muttered responses - none of which really answered the captain's question - came back from the gaggle of shocked and disoriented VIPs.

  Ulysses began to be able to identify faces and forms in the curious crimson darkness as his eyesight became more accustomed to the hellish half-light. The purser was helping Lady Denning to her feet and nearby was Thor Haugland, obviously shaken but seemingly unhurt. His eyes alighted on John Schafer, Constance Pennyroyal and Miss Birkin at the back of the group. The purser had done well to gather so many of the Neptune's prestigious guests in such a short time, in his attempt to lead them to the lifeboats, and thence to safety. But despite his efforts, his noble endeavour had been thwarted by events beyond his control.