by Greig Beck
The report crumpled in her fist. She should have demanded to come along. On paper she was an assistant, but Sonya was one of Mironov’s personal guardians, recruited by Valery from Harvard for her mind, but then sent to Israel for bodyguard training in the Mossad combat camps. She’d excelled, and had been with him now for eight years. It was no secret that she loved him, and she’d die for him… and if need be, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill for him.
Sonya pushed thick blond hair back from her face, and continued to stare at the clocks. Her mind worked; what would they want? Money? Valery was worth billions. Influence? He was also involved in numerous business dealings in too many countries to count.
She touched her lips as her mind worked. In a way, they already had taken him hostage. So if he wasn’t dead yet, then they wanted something else. Sonya looked again at the bank of clocks on the wall. There was nothing she could do, until she knew more. Until then she must wait, listen, and watch. When they made their next move, she would act.
Her hand curled into a fist, and her stomach knotted. One thing she knew; if they harmed him, she would follow them to the four corners of the world and kill every one of them, personally.
CHAPTER 11
Huge jellyfish, five feet across, their clear bells hung with bulbous, red chandeliers drifted like dirigibles in a night sky. In amongst them, scudding about was what looked like scrolled seashells, trailing small tentacles that reminded Cate of Chinese lanterns.
“There are no secrets that time does not reveal.” Mironov clasped his hands to his chin, as if in prayer.
“Well, anyone still want to ask if down here might be a dead zone?” Greg said, a grin splitting his face.
Dmitry was on his feet. “But this is impossible. How could things like this survive?”
Jack couldn’t take his eyes off the window as he leaned on Cate’s shoulder. “Life will adapt or die.”
Cate looked up at him briefly to nod and then turn back as something like a tiny shrimp stuck momentarily to the curved window. “And if the water remains warm, oxygenated, and circulating, then the life forms will thrive. Heat is all they really need to do just fine.”
“But so many… and so big.” Dmitry’s mouth gaped.
Mironov leant forward to examine the small creature. “It is unusual, but has its precedents. There’s a cave in Brazil called the Olonga-Ringa cavern that has a sunken lake; there’s a species of nine-foot eel that hasn’t been seen on the surface for twenty million years.”
Jack tapped Cate on the shoulder. “Time to go to work.” She turned and rose from the seat, and he slid back in.
Cate stayed just behind him. “And we’re still at mid water – let’s take it down and have a look at the bottom.”
Jack nodded and turned to Yegor. “Down fifty feet, Mr Gryzlov.”
“Da… yes, sir.” Yegor pushed the u-shaped wheel forward a half-inch and Prusalka angled down a few degrees, and began to plow through the forest of jellyfish. The huge bells bounced soundlessly off the curved window.
“Anyone know what type they are?” Abby asked.
Cate’s eyes remained firmly fixed on the window. “No, but Jack might have a clue; he’s our expert on all things underwater.”
“I can recognize most,” Jack said. “Growing up I had a voracious appetite for all things to do with sea life – past and present. Aquatic paleontology was my first real hobby.” He stared. “But no idea on the jellyfish – not modern, and as they’re so soft, they never really left any fossil record trace behind. As for the seashells, I’d say nauteloids – those were around for hundreds of millions of years, and still around today – just not at that size.”
“Nautiloidea is an ancient class of cephalopods – related to squid and the octopus,” Mironov said evenly. “Most died out prior to the Ordovician period.”
“Cephalopods? Great, hate to be stuck in a dark cave, underwater, with anything with too many arms,” Greg said.
“You and me both,” said Cate. “I’ll tell you about a nightmare I had once after reading a book about being trapped under the dark Antarctic ice.”
Jack half turned. “The giant man-eating squid thing again?”
“Great,” Abby said.
Cate squeezed Jack’s shoulder, hard. “Don’t worry, Abby, even I know that nothing like that exists in the fossil record.”
“Leveling off at ten feet above sea floor… I mean cave floor,” Yegor said.
“Fantastic,” Cate breathed. “And it is a sea; just one no one knows about.”
Outside the underground sea floor was a plain of grasses, with huge fans waving their gossamer wings, and the odd bulbous sponge poking up like brown cabbages. In amongst the plant life, creatures that resembled tiny many-legged skateboards were busily darting about.
“Ha, trilobites,” Abby pronounced. “One for me.”
“Yes. They were our world’s first real survivors, existing for nearly three hundred million years. Some were the size of your thumb, and others, like these guys, as big as a loaf of bread.” Jack smiled. “My first fossil was a middle Cambrian trilobite – four hundred and ninety million years old.”
A cloud of darker fluid puffed up from out to their side, drawing their attention. One of the trilobites was caught in the claws of a foot-long creature that looked like a long flat lobster.
Jack frowned. “Heeeey, that could be a sea scorpion.” He grinned. “It was one of the apex predators in the shallows of the primordial seas.” He half turned. “Did you know they were the first creatures to leave the water, and they were big? The Eurypterids grew to nearly nine feet, and over half a billion years ago, they crawled up onto desolate Cambrian shorelines. The fish only followed them millions of years later. But they were a little smarter, evolving more efficient lungs and then turning into amphibians. The result was they pushed the sea scorpions back into the ocean, and went on to grow big and then rule all the lands.”
Abby blew air through compressed lips. “Imagine what our world would have been like if the scorpions had won the race – makes you wonder, if we, humans I mean, would even exist.”
“Sure we would,” Greg said, cheerily. “We’d just have exoskeletons and eyes on stalks.”
“Gaak.” Abby stifled a giggle.
“Look.” Greg pointed at something easing its way up behind the dining sea scorpion.
“Attracted by the blood,” Jack said.
“That is truly weird.” Abby tried to lean out over Jack’s shoulder, and Cate pulled her back.
“It’s more than that,” said Mironov softly. “It is a breathtaking wonder.” He leaned forward. “Anomalocaris, I believe. What do you think, Mr Monroe?”
Jack’s forehead furrowed. “Anomalocaris – impossible, impossible, impossible.” He exhaled slowly. “But if that’s what it is, it is a ghost from Earth’s earliest time, and one of evolutions marvels.” He turned briefly to Mironov, before going back to the strange creature. “Nature trying its hand at the weird and wonderful – nothing like it exists today, and nothing has for hundreds of millions of years.” He folded his arms, still shaking his head, as he remained staring at the thing.
The three-foot-long creature slowed as it approached the sea scorpion. It seemed to hover, its stealth approach unmistakable as it glided in and out of the thicker grasses. It had an oval ribbed body with flaps on the edge that gently undulated; golf ball sized glossy black eyes on stalks, and armor plating. But its front end seemed the work of a mad artist commissioned to design the most terrifying predator he could imagine. Below the head, two long appendages were tightly coiled as it came nearer the scorpion, then each began to slowly unfurl like a double elephant trunk.
Jack eased the submersible to a full stop, and the entire crew crowded in at the curved window. The team could see now that the coils had spikes on the underside and were in fact arms used for gripping and holding prey.
Jack carefully turned to Cate. “Thank you for bringing me.” He slowly eased back around as
though worried a sudden movement might send the monstrosity darting away into the dark. He leant on the u-shaped wheel. “My bucket list is now officially empty.”
Cate just nodded and smiled, not letting on it wasn’t her decision to bring him at all. She kind of liked that he thought it was.
When the Anomalocaris was within a few feet, the hovering creature lunged, its long appendages fully extending to wrap around the sea scorpion. The thick glass allowed no sound to penetrate to them, but all could imagine the crunching of the carapace that was taking place in the dark water. The Anomalocaris, scorpion now held tight in its spiked embrace, resumed its slow hovering as it carted away its meal to be dined on in peace in whatever lair it occupied.
“Holy shit,” Greg said. “That was intense.”
“The rule of tooth and claw.” Mironov turned and went back to his seat.
“Predator becomes prey.” Jack ran hands up through his hair. “Let’s take her forward Mr Gryzlov; five knots.”
“Did you see those tooth-like things on its arms?” Abby asked. “Could that have been the thing that attacked our drone?”
Cate watched, transfixed, as the weird creature disappeared into the utter darkness of the subterranean sea. Abby’s voice only just registered. “What? No, no, different structure.” She could feel Jack’s eyes on her, and knew what he thought, but obviously decided to keep to himself.
“Good,” Abby said. “Because that thing freaks me out.”
“Shit!”
Jack’s yell was just as startling as the giant that loomed up out of the darkness. He twisted the wheel, hard, swerving Prusalka out of its way.
“Jesus… all stop.” He laughed nervously. “I should have expected that.” Jack exhaled loudly. “Fuck… sorry.”
The Prusalka slowed, then stopped, and Jack switched on the halogen lamps.
The forest of huge stalagmites rose from the sunken floor like giant Easter Island carvings. Things darted in and out of the waving plant life on their surfaces, and long spiny-limbed crustaceans clung to their crusted surfaces.
“Stalagmites… under water?” Greg scoffed.
“The only way they could form is if this cave had been dry once… or at least this section of it,” Abby said.
“They’re enormous.” Greg leaned over Jack. “I can’t even see where they begin.”
“This lake or sea will probably contain trillions of gallons of water, but it’s either just seepage from above, or this massive empty cave system was dry, and an earthquake ripped it open and allowed seawater to pour in, dragging all the sea life with it.”
“Or at some time, part of it drained,” Cate said. “Maybe leaking its contents to the outside world before it refilled and then was sealed again.”
“Makes sense,” Mironov added from behind them. “If this ocean world had at one time opened to allow these things in, then it stands to reason it can reopen to let them out… or has at some time in the long distant past.” He stroked his silver beard. “That might be why we see evolutionary remnants reappear that we thought were long extinct.”
Cate smiled. “Like your coelacanths?”
Mironov nodded, and then turned to his small screens.
The submarine eased past the monolith forest. Everyone’s head turned as they watch them pass by the window.
“That was a close one. We need to keep a lookout, there’s sure to be others.” Jack swung in his seat, finding Dmitry hovering behind Yegor. “I think we need eyes on the sonar screen, permanently, from now on.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Dmitry rushed to take his seat.
Jack wiped his face with his forearm. “We got distracted – can’t let it happen again. Everyone back to their seats.”
As they sat down and buckled in, Cate felt a pulse move through the skin of the submersible. She felt her stomach do a little flip. “What was that?” She noticed everyone had frozen momentarily, waiting.
Dmitry turned in his seat, head titled as though listening. “Pressure pulse.”
“I felt it too,” Jack said.
There came a soft clang against the skin of the submarine, and then from outside the window, they saw debris come raining down – silt and stones, most no bigger than a fist.
“I think there‘s been a pretty good sized tremor down here.” Jack leaned forward, looking up from under the curved window, and then out over the seafloor. “Most of the beasties look to have headed home.”
Greg snorted. “You’d think they’d be used to that – living in a giant cave I mean.”
“Maybe they are,” Abby said. “And that’s why they’ve learned to get the hell out of here when the rocky rain starts to fall.”
“Let’s hope no big pieces, yes?” Yegor said slowly.
“Very, yes,” Greg responded.
They continued on, the grasses now strewn with what looked like snow from the overhead rain of debris. However it didn’t take long for small crustaceans to reappear from their nooks and crannies and begin to pick over the new morsels of moss and lichen on the fallen rocks.
“I think… something,” Dmitry said.
Jack half turned. “You got something back there?”
“A ghost maybe – strange. I thought I saw big sonar shadow.” Dmitry exhaled through his nose. “Gone now. But there is a geology change coming up.”
“Ahead slow, Yegor.” Jack leaned one arm over the chair. “What have you got?”
“Cliff coming up – five hundred feet to starboard,” Dmitry responded, head down over his screen.
“Barrier wall?” Jack asked, and turned back to the window.
“No, a cliff, and we are on top of it. Deep water, falling away to depths,” Dmitry responded.
Jack eased Prusalka back another few knots. Out of the window, they could see the fields of grasses and sea life began to disappear, and then the seafloor became a barren plain of dark rock. In another hundred feet, the bottom just ran out and fell into a darkness their powerful light couldn’t hope to penetrate.
“Very deep,” Yegor said.
“Hey, is back – our ghost.” Dmitry hunched forward, but clicked the sonar to speaker. They could all hear the pings.
“Where? What? Speak to me, Dmitry.” Jack stopped the submersible.
“From over the cliff edge, four thousand feet and moving parallel to Prusalka. Big, big signature – sixty feet, maybe more.” Dmitry frowned. “I don’t like this.”
“Light it up,” Jack said.
“No…” Cate spun in her seat. “Leave us dark.”
Dmitry held up a hand. “Wait. Going deep… deeper.” He licked his lips, listening for a few more moments, his forehead puckered. He began to relax. “Gone.”
They sat in silence, listening to the soft ping of the sonar. Cate could feel her heart thumping, more from excitement than fear. Jack turned in his seat, to find Cate’s eyes.
She simply stared back at him.
“What, was that?” Abby asked, eyes round.
Dmitry shook his head. “If in ocean, I would say, whale. But down here…” He made a popping sound with his lips, and then shrugged.
“Slow to stop.” Jack turned back to lean forward on the wheel, as the Priz Class deep-sea submersible glided to a halt on the edge of the precipice. Cate and the others craned to see out, but there was nothing but darkness.
“Yegor, let’s light it up – we’ll be fine.” He turned to nod briefly to Cate. “Give me a quick rotation with the spot light.”
The big Russian grunted and flicked up a few switches. The powerful beam on the top of the submarine came to life, and a huge tunnel of white light created a corridor reaching far out into the depths. Still, there was nothing to see but more utter blackness.
“Behold, the abyss.” Greg’s voice was barely a whisper. “I’ve never been in water so deep.”
“Or dark,” Abby said softly.
Dmitry stood so he could see over the top of his huge Russian compatriot. “So, we go in?”
There was silence for several seconds.
“Of course,” Cate said. “It’s why we came.”
“Good.” Dmitry clapped his hands once and sat down again. “I think now we will see if our submarine is water tight, yes?”
“How deep is it?” Greg asked.
“Deep,”’ Jack said. “I’m getting a reading of about two thousand feet, stays like that for a few miles, and then drops off my scanners.” Jack read some more numbers off his screen. “But the predictive analytics says based on the geology profile, it probably falls away to eight thousand feet – well outside our crush tolerance.”
They continued to stare in silence for several more moments. Cate could feel the fluttering of excitement in her belly and something else, a weird feeling of foreboding she couldn’t quite settle.
“Anyone else get the feeling something down there is staring back at us?” Greg looked from Abby to Cate.
“I don’t like it,” Yegor said.
“It’s not unusual to fear the unknown.” Mironov’s calm voice turned their heads. “But like Professor Granger said; it’s why we came.”
“That’s right.” Cate swallowed, her mouth dry. “The first signal buoy is ten miles to the southeast – that way.” She pointed out into the darkness, out over the shelf. “We’re here to do a job – to map, analyze, record, and understand an environment that is unique in the world. We need to understand it, so we can save it. So...”
Jack moved the spotlight around, the tunnel of light finding nothing but blackness.
“It’s like being in space, but without the stars,” Abby breathed, her eyes shining. “The ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of time.” She turned to Greg, grinning. “HP Lovecraft, in one of his more lucid moments.”
“Cool.” Greg beamed back at her.
“Okay, people.” Jack nodded to Yegor. “Take her along the edge of the cliff, Yegor. We’ll keep using the spotlight for now.”
The steady thrumming vibration of the propeller shaft only just overlaid the soft ping of the sonar as it reached out to try and touch on anything moving in the miles of darkness.