Kraken

by Eric S. Brown

  “Tell you what, buddy,” Fox nodded at him with a sly smile. “We’ll let the commander know you’re here. I can’t promise he’ll see you, but it’s the best we can do. Cool?”

  “Sure,” Lex agreed, not seeing that he had any other option. He certainly couldn’t shove his way past two heavily armed marines. On a good day, he figured he might could have taken Fox if luck was on his side, but that Diana…with her, he didn’t stand a chance. Ever.

  ****

  Spraker sat in his command chair. The trio of frigates was underway with the Peart in the lead. Spraker was making sure they kept their speed at normal levels despite that every nerve in his body longed to give the order to push their engines to the breaking point. He had no desire to enter an engagement with the squids. Knowing they had apparently taken out a quartet of destroyers and not having any details on the squids’ numbers or remaining strength, doing so was just too dangerous. Cordova had made the argument that the creatures were just animals and that a coordinated attack could prevail against them, but Spraker just wasn’t willing to gamble with the lives of those of DESRON 22 who were still alive.

  Arron stood beside him, looking as nervous as Spraker felt. It was odd to see Arron on edge. His XO was one of the most level-headed officers Spraker had ever known. If Arron was creeped out, that meant things were really bad.

  So far, there had been no sign of the squids. Luke sat hunched over the sonar station, running sweep after sweep, as he kept an eye out for the things. Megan worked frantically at the communications station, still trying to get the long-range comm. back online. From the nasty expression she wore, Spraker could tell she wasn’t having any luck at it. Whatever was causing the strange interference remained a mystery. The ship’s own systems were fine according to Megan. Beyond that, there was nothing else she could tell him.

  Luke suddenly sat up straight as if a jolt of electric shock had run through his body. His eyes were wide as he called out, “Commander Spraker! I am picking up numerous contacts, subsurface and closing fast.”

  “It’s them,” Arron whispered behind him, barely loud enough for Spraker to hear.

  “E.T.A.?” Spraker asked, shifting in his chair to look at Luke.

  “E.T.A. in ten, sir. They’re still a long way out,” Luke told him.

  “Good work,” Spraker smiled at the sonar officer. “Have the fleet increase speed to maximum. Give us everything she’s got,” he added to his own helmsman.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Arron cautioned.

  “They know we’re here, Arron, and they’re coming whether we run or not at this point,” Spraker pointed out. “We may as well make them work for it.”

  Arron grunted in agreement but stayed silent otherwise.

  “The squids are increasing speed to match!” Luke reported.

  The next two minutes ticked by like hours as the squids continued to close on the formation of frigates.

  “If you’re hoping they’ll give up and break off, I think you’re out of luck, sir,” Arron commented.

  Spraker glared at him. He was right but that didn’t make the news any easier to hear.

  “Sir!” Luke interrupted. “The Rogue! She’s changed course, sir.”

  “What?” Spraker raged, nearly leaping from his chair. “What the blazes does Cordova think he’s doing?”

  “I don’t know, but he’s changed his heading towards the squids!” Luke reported.

  Megan interrupted Luke and Spraker. “Commander Mills is requesting to speak with you, sir!”

  “Put him on,” Spraker ordered her.

  “Spraker, Cordova’s changed his course to engage the shoal of squids. Do we follow?” Mills asked, the confusion and fear in his voice clear.

  “No,” Spraker slammed a clenched fist into the arm of his chair. “That idiot is going to get himself killed. Maintain your original course and speed, Commander Mills. That’s an order.”

  ****

  Cordova grinned like a madman as he stood on the bridge of the Rogue staring out the ship’s forward window, his hands locked behind his back. His crew was in full support of his plan. If there were those onboard who weren’t, they were keeping their mouths shut about it.

  Selena stood beside him. Her blue eyes were filled with a deadly eagerness. If anyone backed him on this, it was her. He had briefed the crew of the Rogue extensively on his plan. It was simple. If the chance arose, he hoped to engage the squids at a distance and use the Rogue’s long-range weapons, including her newly hull-mounted torpedo launchers to take the squids under guns at good distance out and blow the creatures to pieces before they ever reached what was left of DESRON 22.

  His gunnery officer, Len, was already acquiring his targets when Cordova gave the order, “Len, give ’em Hell.”

  “Yes, sir,” Len answered, smiling back at Cordova.

  Len emptied everything that the Rogue had at the squids in one massive barrage. Deck cannons boomed as torpedoes splashed into the water from her twin front-mounted tubes to go streaking at their target.

  “Direct hit!” Len informed him.

  Cordova watched the distant impact through a pair of binoculars through the Rogue’s forward window. Geysers of erupted from the ocean’s previously calm surface as massive shells splashed down upon the shoal of squids. The waters were already thickened by the blackness of the squids’ blood as the torpedoes reached them only moments later. A second round of explosions detonated beneath the waves.

  Gary, the Rogue’s on-duty sonar tech yelled out, “The shoal’s main body is breaking up, sir! It looks like some of the squids are trying to alter their course and run.”

  “Some?” Cordova barked. “I need more than that.”

  “The bulk of the shoal is still on course for us, sir,” Gary replied. “The shoal has taken a lot of damage though. At best guess, I’d say the shoal has lost around fifteen percent of its density.”

  “Gary, if you would.” Cordova waved at the gunnery officer.

  “With pleasure, sir.” Len showed his teeth as his fingers danced over the controls of the weapons’ station and loosed two more waves of death at the squids.

  “The squids are taking evasive maneuvers this time, sir!” Gary yelled.

  Cordova continued to keep an eye on the water through his binoculars.

  The second volley from the Rogue struck the squids. It wasn’t as devastating as the first, but it still did a great deal of damage from the looks of things. The third followed closely on its heels. By now, a massive swathe of the ocean, in front of the Rogue, had become a churning sea of blackness.

  “Sir!” Gary shouted excitedly. “The Drake has come about to join us. She’s just opened fire on the shoal of squids herself!”

  “I’ll be da—” Cordova started but Selena cut in over top of him.

  “I am really starting to believe this plan of yours is going to work, Commander Cordova,” Selena purred, drawing closer to him. Inappropriately close, but Cordova didn’t care. He was too busy savoring his victory to even notice.

  “Between the fire from the Drake and our own, the shoal’s density is down by over fifty percent sir!” Gary was beaming as if Cordova’s plan had been his own.

  Selena pulled away from Cordova as the comm. officer waved her over. Selena bent and spoke with the officer hurriedly. When she was done, she walked back towards where Cordova stood.

  “Commander, Spraker is on the priority channel for you,” she chuckled. “He’s rather a bit upset it seems.”

  “I bet so,” Cordova laughed loudly. “I bet he’s wishing he had the balls to try what we just did.”

  “You know he’s going to court martial you.” Selena placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Let him try,” Cordova urged. “I think the results of my actions speak rather loudly for themselves, don’t you?”

  Selena cocked her head with a wry grin. “Results are what matter the most to command.”

  The Rogue and the Drake had continued firing
on the shoal. Len had just launched the Rogue’s sixth volley when Gary motioned for Cordova’s attention.

  Cordova was still watching the distant carnage through his binoculars. Selena nudged him and pointed at Gary. Cordova let his binoculars dangle on the cord that bound them to his neck as he left his ship’s window and moved towards its sonar station.

  “Sir, I’d estimate the squids have taken more than sixty percent losses. They’ve broken off their course towards the fleet and are scattering randomly in the water,” Gary told him. Cordova sensed a but coming though.

  “Good.” Cordova squeezed Gary’s shoulder with his right hand.

  “But there’s something else out there, sir,” Gary tapped the sonar screen with his pointer finger.

  Cordova leaned forward to glance at the screen over Gary’s shoulder. His eyes bugged as he saw the size of the image on the screen. “What in the devil is that? It’s big enough to be a freaking island.”

  Gary could only shake his head. “I don’t know, sir, but whatever it is, it appears to have been hiding behind the shoal of squids or within it. Now that the squids have dispersed, it’s picking up speed towards us.”

  “Len?” Cordova called.

  “Already taking it with guns, sir. It’s so massive I don’t think I even need a firm lock to hit it.”

  “Then do so,” Cordova snapped.

  The triumphant atmosphere of the Rogue’s bridge quickly became one of fear and dread.

  ****

  Spraker was cursing like the veteran sailor he was as he watched the Rogue and the Drake engaging the squids. He couldn’t believe Mills had turned on him to support Cordova. He would’ve thought Mills had more sense than that. Spraker couldn’t argue with the results the two ships had achieved, though. Under their combined fire, the squids had been broken and driven off. He mind was reeling, trying to come up with a way to handle the situation with Cordova and Mills’ blatant disregard for his orders when it appeared the action they had taken had been the correct one.

  “This is bad,” Arron commented.

  “Tell me about it,” Spraker raged.

  “No, sir,” Arron shot him a look from where he stood at the sonar station. “I don’t mean the mess with those two idiots. I mean what’s out there in the water.”

  Spraker whirled on him, terrified he already knew what Arron was about to tell him.

  “It looks like Iver’s theories on the squids were right again, sir,” Arron frowned.

  “You don’t mean…”

  “Yes, sir,” Arron said. “The mom has just shown herself.”

  Spraker raced over to the sonar station to take a look at the screen for himself. What he saw sent shivers of cold fear running along his spine.

  “How big is that thing?” Spraker muttered more to himself than anyone in particular.

  Arron shrugged. “Hard to get an accurate reading sir. A hell of a lot bigger than us, though. That thing looks like it could go head to head with a battleship and still have the odds be in its favor.”

  “Is it coming after us?” Spraker asked. The Peart had maintained her course and speed away from the shoal of squids while the Rogue and the Drake had engaged it.

  “No, sir,” Arron said, “She’s on a direct course for Cordova and Mills’ ships. And pouring on the speed too. She’s pushing thirty-five knots at the moment and climbing.”

  “Dear God,” Spraker stammered. With speed like that, not even the Peart’s head start would matter if she decided to come after them. She’d overtake them in less than a half hour, maybe a lot less.

  “The Rogue and the Drake are opening fire on her,” Arron reported. “Should we come about to join them?”

  Spraker wasn’t the sort of commander who hesitated in the decisions he made but this time he did. He just didn’t have an answer. If he ordered the Peart to come around and join the other two ships maybe, just maybe, they could stop that thing out there with their combined firepower. If they failed to do so though, all three ships would certainly be lost. His gut told him that the mother squid wasn’t going to give up as easily as her children had. If he engaged her, it would be a fight to the death with the deck stacked in her favor. She didn’t even need to destroy the three frigates. If she managed to just hurt them badly then her children could come back screeching down on the damaged vessels to finish them.

  As he rolled over what to do in his mind, his thoughts went to Captain Wirtz. He wished the grizzled, old veteran were here. Wirtz would know what to do if anyone did. It was too bad the old man was likely dead.

  “Commander?” Arron urged him. “Your orders?”

  “Keep our course steady,” Spraker ordered at last. “I just don’t think we can take that thing out there. Not even with all three ships acting together.”

  “I agree, sir,” Arron assured him. “Besides, someone has to make it out of here alive to let the brass back home know what’s happened here.”

  ****

  Commander Mills of the Drake was quickly beginning to regret his choice to support the Rogue in her engagement of the shoal of squids as he watched the massive, almost mountain-sized thing in the water closing on his vessel. During the engagement, the Drake had slipped passed the Rogue’s forward position and now was not only directly in that monster’s path but was the closest ship to it as well.

  Never in his life had Mills dreamed things like the monster out there could exist in the real world. They were supposed to only exist in the minds of madmen and in horror films. Yet, that thing was out there and coming straight for him.

  “Take that monster with guns and fire at will!” he screamed.

  Torpedoes streaked from the Drake’s hull-mounted launchers toward the approaching abomination.

  “Contact!” his weapons officer reported. “Direct hit, all rounds!”

  Mills had never taken his eyes away from the approaching beast. The rounds may have struck it but if so, they didn’t even slow it down.

  He opened his mouth to give another order but never got the chance. The mega-squid reached the Drake. The monster hit the frigate with such force that the Drake rolled in the water. Mills heard the whine of metal being bent inward and torn apart as the deck shifted beneath him and he lost his footing. He tumbled to land awkwardly on his shoulder with the cracking sound bones breaking. His face twisted into a grimace of pain as a muffled grunt escaped his lips.

  All around him, his crew was panicking. Stations blew out, erupting in showers of sparks and flames. The forward window of the bridge shattered, sending pieces of jagged glass flying like shrapnel. He watched his helmsman take a shard of glass to his throat and collapse, bleeding out in fast flowing streams of red onto the ship’s controls. The men and women of the bridge crew were screaming. Some of them shouted pleas to God for mercy while other loosed litanies of curses and other still merely howled like animals driven mad by fear.

  Mills tried to get back to his feet, but the pain of the attempt was too much for him. He could taste blood on his tongue and knew his fall had hurt him far worse than just his broken shoulder joint. He wanted to shout out the order to abandon ship but all he could do was grit his teeth and try to stay conscious.

  The Drake righted itself on the waves for a moment until something else seemed to strike the entire ship at once. In Mills’ mind, he envisioned the tentacles of the giant monster wrapping around the ship’s hull. The next thing he knew, there was water rushing onto the bridge through the busted forward window and he knew, just knew, the mother squid was taking the Drake under the waves with her.

  The wave of rushing water picked Mills up from where he lay on the deck as it engulfed him. The saltwater stung his wide, bugged-out eyes as he opened his mouth to scream and the water entered his lungs.

  ****

  Cordova watched the destruction of the Drake like a nightmare unfolding before his very eyes. One minute, the Drake had been between the Rogue and the massive, enraged mother squid, the next she was simply gone. It all had happene
d so fast. The mega-squid had rammed into the Drake, collapsing a good portion of her hull and causing the Drake to almost capsize in the water. Then, in an instant, the mega-squid had wrapped its insanely long tentacles around the Drake dragged her beneath the waves.

  “Get us the Hell out of here!” Cordova barked at the Rogue’s helmsman. “Maximum power! Burn the blasted engine up if you have to!”

  “Yes, sir!” the helmsman shouted, not needing to be told twice.

  Selena had gone pale as a ghost beside Cordova. She reached for him but he shoved her away.

  “Mind your place, woman,” he spat at her.

  Cordova saw anger flare in Selena’s eyes, but he had far bigger things to deal with and utterly didn’t give a crap.

  “Is that thing coming after us?” Cordova yelled at his sonar tech even as he ran towards the station to check for himself.

  “No, sir! It’s still pulling the Drake down.”

  “Good,” Cordova hoped the monster would take its time with the Drake. Every minute it spent delivering its vengeance to the Drake beneath the waves was that much more time his own ship had to pull away.

  “Where’s the Peart?” Cordova demanded to know.

  Selena had joined him at the sonar station, though she did her best to stay out of his reach or perhaps keep him out of hers. “Spraker never changed course. He’s got at least a good ten minutes head start on us. Even at our top speed, we’ll never overtake him unless he slows down.”

  “That coward isn’t going to slow down.” Cordova clenched his fists. “He’s going to keep right on running like what he’s done so far and that means we’re next on the list of that thing’s targets when it’s done with the Drake.”

  “We can’t outrun it,” Selena told him. “It was pushing forty knots when it rammed Mills’ ship.”

  Cordova had never felt so helpless and it only made severed to make him angrier. He couldn’t run and fighting seemed like suicide.

  “You got a plan for this?” Selena mocked him, her lips pulled back into a sneer.

  “Sir!” his sonar tech shouted. “The mega-squid has released the Drake and is on her way back up to the surface!”