"Where's the beast now?" Wates asked, his voice steely in tone, a sign of the pressure he was under to remain focused in such trying circumstances.
As if in answer to his question the Kraken dropped down from above and ahead of them, effectively cutting off their route to the base. Constance's screams filled the cabin again, joined now by the womanly cries of Dr Ogilvy.
And then the Nemo's salvation seemed assured once more as the terrifying shark-like creature Ulysses had witnessed emerging from the depths of the trench cut through the sea after the Kraken, followed by another two of its kind, the monstrous Megalodons butting the massive bulk of the over-grown squid with the bullet-tips of their noses, snapping at its tentacles and trying to take a bite out of its side.
Ulysses saw one of the huge fish catch a tentacle between its jaws and then shudder as an electrical explosion lit up the abyssal gloom, throwing the creature away from the leviathan. Another of the huge predators dived down at the Kraken and attempted to close its jaws around the top of its head, but the crustacean-like armoured plating there seemed to do the trick, the attack leaving little impression on the sea monster.
However, the giant sharks were not beaten yet. Their persistent attack on the Kraken - which Ulysses could only imagine was down to it invading their territorial waters - was serving to distract the beast from pursuing the Nemo. Ulysses fancied he saw purple blood-ink clouding the water around the leviathan. There wasn't one thought to the contrary in his mind that the sharks' attack against the Kraken was a happy accident as far as those on board the Nemo were concerned but then serendipity was playing its part quite nicely nonetheless, and suddenly the facility was a viable objective again, the open hole of its docking gate within reach.
As the Megalodons continued to harry the Kraken, the squid-monster retaliating with violent electrical discharges cast by its deadly tentacles, and attempting to catch the fish between its own not inconsiderable jaws, Mr Wates made the most of the opportunity. He pushed the little sub as hard as it would go, all caution thrown to the wind in his desperation not to be denied the way to safety a second time.
The shadow of the shelf loomed over them, all that was visible through the front of the craft the open door to the docking bay. And then, they were through.
Torch beams stabbed the darkness, pulling shapes and shadows from the depths of the bay around them. Ulysses paused at the lip of the conning tower, as he prepared to descend the ladder to the quayside, and took in great lungfuls of musty air. It was redolent with the smells of rust, stagnant brine, mildew and salt.
The penetrating beams of the high-powered torches Captain McCormack, Selby and the others had procured from compartments on board the two subs, swung wildly through the darkness, gradually giving form and shape to the chamber in which they now found themselves.
Those who had travelled aboard the Ahab had already disembarked, and were now huddled together, some draped in coarse grey blankets for warmth on the dockside, beside which their vessel had now been moored. The Nemo sat behind it, Wates and Swann helping its passenger compliment climb down from the conning tower to the quay.
Every member of the party was gazing around the hold in wonder. Ulysses was interested to note the expressions on the closely gathered group that consisted of Carcharodon, the Major, Lady Denning and Professor Crichton in particular. There was a haunted look on the faces of most of them - the shipping magnate just looking as sour-faced as ever - and Crichton was drawing deeply from the flask that had barely been out of his hand.
There was a grating and a reverberating clang as a huge switch was slammed into the 'On' position. At once a powering hum reverberated through the echoing chamber of the dock and within a few seconds the first of a dozen arc lights began to glow into life above them.
Another wheeled handle was turned and the submerged pressure gate, still below the waterline, rolled shut.
The party remained dumbfounded, gazing in amazement around the vast hall in which they now found themselves. Far above them, cast into a steel lintel in letters three feet high were the words:
Marianas Base
"Where have you brought us, Captain?" It was Harry Cheng who was the first to break the silence. "What is this place?"
"In all my years of travelling, I've never been anywhere like this," Haugland said, his words trailing away as he stared in wonder at his surroundings.
"What I want to know," said Ulysses, getting to the heart of the matter, "is, who built this place? Why? And where are they now? What happened to them?"
An ominous silence descended over those present. Ulysses felt the eyes of the four gathered senior members of the party on him. He observed them again in return. They were four disparate people who had once apparently had nothing in common until they had come together on the maiden voyage of the Neptune and suffered the fate that had brought them all to this point. So now, here they were, thousands of feet below the Pacific Ocean, at the edge of the deepest place on the planet, hunted by a giant squid, the like of which had never been recorded, in the territorial waters of a race of prehistoric sharks that had previously been believed to be extinct.
He was suddenly being made to feel like a pariah.
Something didn't feel quite right. A forbidding air pervaded the base, he couldn't shake the feeling that by coming to this place, of their own free will and volition, they had committed some terrible hubris.
Now, truly, they were entering the belly of the beast.
ACT THREE
Leviathan Rising
August 1997
You have carried your work as far as terrestrial
science permits. The real story of the ocean depths
begins where you left off... wonders that defy my
powers of description.
(Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Marianas
The sounds of destruction chased the child as she ran the length of the twisting corridor. Amidst the ringing metallic crashes and the groans of metal buckling under terrible pressures she fancied she could also hear the screams of those attempting to flee the carnage, like her.
But she was alone in her flight. And a moment of calm and silence descended like a shroud over the base. Now it was that silence that seemed to be chasing her along the tunnel, marking the stark echoes of her ringing footfalls on the grilled path beneath her. But she just knew that it wasn't over, that something even more terrible was coming.
She ran on, her legs having a purpose all of their own now, her lungs heaving from the exertion of her flight and her sobs. The halogen lamps flickered and dimmed as power relays somewhere within the base short-circuited. The lights died.
A howl of dread and grief escaped her lips, tears streaked her face, her eyes puffy, snot hanging in strings from her nose. But a moment later a red glow began to permeate the tunnel, as emergency lighting took over, bathing everything in its ruddy glow. It made her feel like she was running along the pumping artery of some massive undersea beast. That image certainly didn't provide her with any sense of comfort, considering her current situation. Another set of lights coursed along the sides of the passageway as if they were running with her along the corridor, showing her the route to the escape pod.
And then the silence was broken, first by angry shouts, then by a high-pitched scream, and then by the retort of a single gunshot.
"Daddy!" she wailed, unable to stop herself, the mass of emotions threatening to overwhelm her at the last. "Daddy!"
Automatically she sought comfort from her ever-present companion, only now she wasn't there. "Madeleine!" she cried again, hugging herself tight with her thin arms, until her words became unintelligible sobs. And then they too were wrung from her and she had nothing left to give.
Her feet sore from running, she stumbled to a halt at last, directly in front of the circular hatch to the waiting escape pod. Against all the odds she had made it.
"What the hell is this pla
ce?" John Schafer said, wringing the water from a sock. He sat on the bolted base of a huge steel bracing pillar that ascended all the way to the solid steel roof above them. His voice carried eerily in the hollow space. Constance sat next to him, shivering, and trying to tease the knots from her bedraggled hair. Ulysses found himself thinking that if the two of them could make it through this experience and live to tell the tale, then a lifetime's matrimonial union would be a doddle by comparison.
Selby had found the means to provide the base with basic light and power, although Neptune alone knew where the facility's power came from. With the two subs still their only guaranteed way out again the entire party had filed out of the dock, through a solid, circular bulkhead door along a short corridor, then through another such hatch and into a second domed chamber.
Like the undersea cities of Atlantis and Pacifica that they had visited, the base appeared to be divided into a number of sections, each one capable of being separated from the others by means of thick, reinforced bulkheads and airlocks, meaning that if a hull breach occurred anywhere within the facility, that area could be locked down, and the rest of the base kept secure.
So it was that they now found themselves one step closer to the main dome of the facility and possibly one step closer to finding the answers to a host of new questions that were springing to Ulysses' curious mind.
As well as the way back to the submarine dock, there were a number of other, smaller chambers leading from the larger one they had gathered within, each one closed off from the main space by other, solid circular doors. Approaching one and peering inside, Ulysses could see diving equipment - aqualungs, oxygen tanks and a huge, armoured suit, twice the height of a man. Through the small circle of thick glass in another door Ulysses saw a bare chamber and another door on the other side bearing peeling hazard markings of yellow and black. He took this to be an airlock. It must have been from this chamber that work crews prepared to dive, to maintain the outer structure of the facility, or ventured out to the seabed and the edge of the trench beyond - but for what purpose?
The whole place stank of age and neglect. It was not a pleasant smell, and certainly didn't do anything to help make the new arrivals feel at home.
But for Ulysses, taking in every detail of the dusty, neglected space, such things as the aroma merely helped his brain form a greater impression of the whole complex and merely brought more questions to his marvelling mind.
He found himself wondering how long it had been since anyone else had been inside Marianas Base. No signs of human life had been detected by the Neptune AI as it had scanned the abandoned facility. Curious, albino crustaceans scuttled away from their probing torch beams, seeking shelter in the dark corners of the chamber to hide from the light, and some of the girders and joists had acquired their own covering of barnacles and other tube worms that must have found enough sustenance in the moist atmosphere to thrive on. But the only human life present were the survivors of the lost sub-liner Neptune.
The mystery of who had murdered Glenda and why, the mystery of who had sabotaged the Neptune and sent it plunging into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, and the mystery of the origins of the beast that seemed so intent on pursuing them through the primordial abyss were put aside, to be returned to at another time, as he considered the new mystery of the sanctuary they now found themselves within.
"So, what do you suggest we do now?" Carcharodon asked, directing his question at McCormack.
McCormack looked at him with undisguised contempt, as if he felt that his employer was continually testing him, challenging his ability to lead, and that he had had enough of it.
"I would suggest that we split up into groups and search this facility as quickly as possible. We need to see if there is a working comms array, so that we can notify the rest of the world that the Neptune has gone down and send out a Mayday signal so that, once rescue teams start looking for us, we can be found.
"We also need to see if there are any supplies down here because I don't know about anyone else," he said, looking pointedly at Professor Crichton as he uttered these words, "but it feels like an age since I last ate and I know that the Ahab and Nemo are both carrying only the most basic of rations, which certainly won't be enough for all of us to live on for long."
"The last thing we need on top of everything else is for there to be an outbreak of starvation-driven cannibalism, eh, captain?" Ulysses said with dark humour.
McCormack looked at him, brows furrowing, as if not sure how to take Ulysses' comment.
But Jonah Carcharodon knew exactly how to take it. "For God's sake man, we're in the middle of a crisis. This is hardly the time for your quips!"
"I was merely trying to relieve the obvious tension," Ulysses replied, the humour in his voice now replaced by venom.
Fuming, Carcharodon tried his best to ignore the dandy and chose instead to address the rest of the group.
"Very well, then," Carcharodon said. "We split up."
It had been Carcharodon's idea that they maintain the arrangements of groupings that their escape from the Neptune aboard the submersibles had created, and that was fine with Ulysses. The only difference was that it was obviously all getting to be too much for the distraught Miss Birkin. She refused to leave the divers' chamber beyond the dock and slumped down on top of one of a number of locked steel strongboxes. Constance, concerned for her ageing aunt, chose to stay with her, to make sure she was comfortable and that her condition didn't suddenly worsen and John Schafer - although Ulysses could tell that he was itching to explore the base with the rest of them - ever the gentleman, would not leave his lover's side.
So it was that the rest of them began to explore what lay beyond, diverging at a junction where the tunnel beyond the divers' prep room branched. Ulysses was happy not to have to spend a moment longer than was necessary with the wretched Carcharodon who, despite everything - or perhaps, he wondered, because of it - was still behaving as if he owned the place, treating his patiently attendant assistant as if she were nothing better than the scum floating on the surface of the docking pool.
He could have done without the sweating, nervously shivering, waxy-skinned doctor tagging along. And he wasn't too keen on Agent Cheng remaining with him, although he didn't appear to have half the confidence he had enjoyed when his right hand man Mr Sin had been with him.
The base was abandoned: if there had ever been any doubt in any of their minds it evaporated now. Untouched equipment rusted away wherever it lay, a curious combination of diving gear, engineering machinery, heavy duty tools, the abandoned personal detritus of whoever it was that had lived and worked here - doors to sleeping pods open, papers, clothes and personal possessions scattered over the metal grilled floors - everything having the appearance that whoever these personal artefacts had belonged to had left in a great hurry.
Dust covered everything, Ulysses noted, even here, at the bottom of the sea. As they progressed further he paused to examine some of the forsaken possessions, items of clothing and forgotten papers under the faintly glowing lamps lining the semi-circular corridor. Everything about them suggested that they were English in origin, or had at least belonged to subjects of the empire of Magna Britannia. But amidst all the chaotic detritus of a rushed evacuation his party thankfully did not discover any dead bodies, or rather, what would have been left of them. Everyone must have got away.
But who were these people who had lived and worked here? Why had they been forced to leave in such a hurry? And what had happened to them after that? There had not been any sign of other sea transports in the dock, so Ulysses assumed that they had been used to evacuate the team working in the facility; unless there was another dock they didn't know about yet, but he thought it unlikely.
Leaving the accommodation wing behind, Ulysses' party followed a tunnel as it curved around to the right - he assumed following the structure of the central dome - until it brought them to another circular steel bulkhead door. The opening mechanism miraculous
ly still operable, the heavy door swung open and they entered a larger, darker space beyond.
The unpleasant aroma that Ulysses had been aware of ever since disembarking from the Nemo was a miasmal stench here, almost as if it were a physical thing, trapped within this undersea dungeon for so long - years seemed likely - that he felt he could have cut it with his sword-cane.
Ogilvy could not hide his revulsion, gagging on the stench, whilst Haugland wrung out a sodden handkerchief and held it to his face to filter the vile stink from the stagnant air he was forced to breathe.
"What the bloody hell died in here, then?" Swann said, putting it so succinctly.
The beams of the torches carried by him and Mr Wates, as well as one that Nimrod had managed to procure, set to work revealing, piece by piece, the details of the chamber around them.
They walked between rows of large fish tanks supported on iron legs, the glass obscured with brown slime, the water they contained as yellowy green and as opaque as pea soup, the stagnant stinking liquid cloyed with decayed matter. They continued on their way through what was becoming more and more in appearance like some curious laboratory, reminding Ulysses of the disturbing discovery he and Nimrod had made below the house in Southwark, only a matter of months ago.
Ulysses stopped to peer more closely at the rank fish tanks, trying to make out what they once had held, but he could make out nothing more than the occasional broken shell or empty carapace. But then he supposed that whatever life had once wriggled and writhed within had died long ago, their flesh and insubstantial bones and cartilage becoming the sludge that smothered the bottom of the tanks.
"Herregud, hva er det der?" Haugland exclaimed, his voice carrying to the dark and distant roof before calling back to them in the cavernous vault, as they passed beyond the rows of dead tanks and came upon the first of the cylinders.
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