The Megalodon accepted the challenge. Matching the marine reptile’s depth, she launched herself at it, her giant jaws split-apart and beckoning. The seas before her were a blur as she closed on her mark. The distance between them was 250 yards, then 150 . . .
WHUMP!
The two colossi smashed face-first into one another with a sound NOAA would interpret as two icebergs colliding. The impact left both predators stunned and disoriented, with neither of them moving. The seconds ticked by, and like a pair of giant clay figures whose ends were mashed together, they hung suspended in the water column. Their jaws were interlocked, their forequarters obscured by a billowing cloud of scarlet, intermixed with cascading particles of flesh and broken teeth.
As they spiraled slowly in the current, the two finally separated and fell away from one another. The damage they had absorbed was considerable. Both were missing teeth and their gums looked like raw hamburger. In addition, the Megalodon had suffered a huge cut in her jaw, so deep that the hard cartilage that made up her mandible was nearly severed. The pliosaur was hardly better off. It had sustained horrific facial damage; a six-foot section of its lip hung in tatters and its white tongue lolled from one side of its jaw, half-amputated and gushing blood.
Still comatose, the two began to drift apart. The less buoyant shark started to sink, her massive body turning sideways with the tide as she descended. The Kronosaurus drifted gradually upward, its eyes closed and jaw agape.
It was the Megalodon that recovered first. Surging to life with a tremendous shiver, she looked around to get her bearings before righting herself and starting forward. With painful slowness, she moved through the darkness, her black eyes staring out from her mangled face, gazing toward the light, six hundred feet above.
Her gaze fell on the drifting body of her unmoving foe and she opened and closed her jaws. A sharp pain shot through her torn mouthparts and an unpleasant clicking told her to stop. In addition to the deep slash in her mandible, two of her gills were terribly damaged. She was hurt and she knew it. Still, she had survived. And if her opponent did not recover, she had won.
A sudden sense of pending danger motivated her to leave the field and she prepared to do so. Blood continued to seep from her wounds and dozens of smaller scavengers appeared. Already, three large mako sharks circled in the distance, shadowed by a pod of a half-dozen Xiphactinus. All had heard the dinner bell and, despite the presence of vastly superior predators, were drawn to a potential meal. The female ignored them and turned northwest. Her stiffness began to fade and she moved steadily, desirous of putting as much distance between her and the battlefield as possible.
All of a sudden, her body’s floodgates opened and an avalanche of energy surged through her. Despite her wounds, she felt alive and euphoric. Then something else kicked in. She looked back at the immobile pliosaur and realized the battle was not yet over. She could not leave until her rival was finished. There was no choice. She had to deliver a killing blow. She had to gouge out its black heart and eat it.
Tingling in anticipation, the Megalodon dismissed her injuries and turned around. The bleeding from her gills had slowed and she absorbed as much oxygen as she could. Then, she angled her torn snout steeply upward and accelerated once more, rapidly increasing her speed to maximum. Any scavengers caught in her path were bowled over by the force of her passing as she shot toward the surface.
She was a vengeful demon, and her target was the immobile Kronosaurus.
* * *
The battle was nearly over.
As he eyed the view from Ursula’s locator camera, Judas Cambridge could already taste the sweetness of his impending victory. If it wasn’t already dead, the aged Kronosaurus imperator bull was adrift like some whale-sized rag doll, two hundred feet below Insolent Endeavor’s slow-rolling hull. Three hundred feet deeper and two football fields away, his monster Carcharodon megalodon had just started her attack run.
Jude smiled. In seconds, a pliosaur second only to Tiamat herself would be destroyed and he would have it all on video, to ram down Eric Grayson’s throat. He was going to ride his shark into Rock Key a conquering hero.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Kat Feaster’s shoulder-length red locks flared like an angry lion’s mane as she wheeled on him. “What the hell were you thinking, boosting her again?”
“She needed the epinephrine,” Jude replied defensively.
“She ‘needed’ it? She’s hurt, you idiot! She was leaving!”
Jude pushed his glasses into place and folded his arms defensively across his chest. He wasn’t used to Kat lashing out at him and her icy stare would have chilled him even if he wasn’t shirtless. “Look, I need this. We need this. We need the win.”
“Bullshit. You should have let her go.”
He shook his head emphatically. “She’s too damaged to fight another day. This is our best chance. We need to record her kill.” He eyed Ursula’s monitor. “And we’re about to.”
Kat snorted in disgust. Her blue eyes ascended to the articulated monitor as the wounded Megalodon angled sharply upward, heading toward the drifting pliosaur at high speed. The marine reptile was directly under them now, only 150 feet down, and still showed no signs of life.
Jude eyed their fathometer and sonar screens. “She’s coming in from the northeast. Speed is sixteen knots, distance seven hundred feet. Make that six hundred . . . five . . . what the hell?”
Kat’s head swiveled toward him. “See? She broke off her attack.”
On the fathometer, Ursula’s pixilated image inexplicably veered off. Angling away from her target, she began to descend.
Jude’s frustrated fingers turned to talons, frantically clawing at the air in front of him. “No, no, no!” He reached for the keyboard and started typing fast.
“What are you doing?”
“I-I’m juicing her; there’s no other option!”
Kat stared at him in utter disbelief. Her eyes swiveled back to the monitors then peeled wide. “Shit! Wait, don’t do it!”
“I’m sorry, I have to,” Jude said, his fingers tapping away. “Don’t worry, she can take it.”
“You don’t understand. The . . . no!”
Jude grunted in surprise as Kat pounced on him, her lithe hands grasping, desperately trying to pull his keyboard away. She was surprisingly strong but he turned his shoulder to her and hit the enter key before she could get a decent grip.
“It’s done,” he announced. “Relax, she can--”
Buh-thump!
Jude’s mouth went slack as Insolent Endeavor shuddered and the deck inexplicably slanted. He looked around, befuddled. When he glanced at Kat for an explanation, her look of contempt spoke tomes.
“What happened?”
“You dumb ass, I tried to tell you!” She speared an accusatory finger toward their hull camera monitors. “It’s right under us!”
Jude felt like vomiting. The unconscious Kronosaurus imperator had floated up and impacted on their hull, practically lifting them out of the water. It was so huge, he could see parts of it on different screens; its thick-scaled hide on one viewer, a flipper’s edge on another, and on the last, a close-up of the side of its huge head. Its crinkled, football-sized eye dominated the lens.
Thankfully, it was closed.
“Shit,” he breathed. “Okay. It’s okay, it’s not moving.”
Kat shook her head vehemently. “No, genius. But Ursula is!”
Oh, God.
Jude turned the color of mayonnaise as the full weight of his folly hit home. Right under them, the adrenaline-charged Megalodon was preparing to breach at flank speed, her giant jaws yawning. She was a 210-ton locomotive and they were dead on her tracks.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” he yelled, grabbing the yoke and throwing the inboards in gear. “Hold on to something!”
Kat’s fear-filled eyes welled with tears as she reached up and gripped the handle of one of their suspended big-game rods.
Jude put
the hammer down and held on. The 50-foot Monte Carlo MC5 lurched forward, its engines roaring loudly, but then stopped. He gaped at the monitors in dismay.
“Jesus, we’re stuck on him!” he yelled. His heart sank into his feet as Insolent Endeavor’s deck boards started to vibrate and then wobble. He’d dealt with enough giant predators to know a displacement wave when he felt one.
“Throw her in reverse!” Kat screamed. “Hurry, she’s rising fast!”
The whole ship was shaking violently as Jude changed gears and reached for the throttle. Just as he was about to gun it, he clocked the monitors showing the pliosaur’s eye and Ursula’s POV. When he saw hers he cursed aloud.
It was too late.
Then two things happened simultaneously. The strobe light on Ursula’s locator went off, blacking out the screen. And the pliosaur’s ruby-red eye opened.
There was a tremendous rushing sound and Insolent Endeavor torqued savagely to port. A second later, Ursula struck, her steely body a gigantic torpedo, slamming into the awakening pliosaur and them.
Jude had no time to react. All his terrified mind could do was register Kat’s terrified shriek and what sounded like a bomb going off.
Then there was black.
* * *
Dirk Braddock remained standing as Stacy Daniels, Acting Security Chief Oleg Smirnov, and the first mates of Gryphon and Antrodemus departed Tartarus’s oval-shaped conference room. Stacy was obviously agitated about not being asked to remain behind, but it was Smirnov who was the last to depart. The barrel-chested Ukrainian gave Dirk, Garm Braddock, and Natalya Dragunova an appraising look before nodding and exiting.
“Garm, seal the room, please,” Dirk said. “We want privacy for this.”
His fraternal twin walked over and pressed one palm against the pneumatic door’s biometric control pad, then keyed in a privacy code that, outside of those present, could be overridden by only three other people.
“What ees going on, Doctor Derek?” Dragunova asked with her inimitable Baltic-Russian accent.
Dirk gestured for her and Garm and the three seated themselves at the far end of the conference room table. At the opposite end, Grayson’s empty CEO’s chair loomed like some dark-hued sentinel, brooding and silent.
Dirk grabbed his glass and gulped down a quick swallow of water. Between Stacy and his mentor, his chest felt like he was wearing a weighted vest, laden with guilt and trepidation. There was no helping it; he was committed to his course. “I have some additional information to disclose,” he began. “It’s for you two, alone.”
The two captains exchanged speculative glances.
“What’ve you got?” Garm asked. The big submariner knew his brother’s moods and behavior patterns better than his own and his pale blue eyes shone with curiosity.
Dirk cleared his throat. “I was digging around in mom’s quarters and I came across a concealed file on her desktop.”
“Sure, she had secret stuff,” his brother acknowledged. “That doesn’t surprise me. But your take on it does. Concealed how?”
“It was basically hiding in plain sight,” Dirk replied. “Under a title that only you or I would notice.” He held up the tiny portable drive.
“What ees that?” Dragunova asked.
“Our mother’s last lab report.” Dirk slipped the drive into a port directly in front of him and waved one hand to activate it.
The room’s lights dimmed and a slim LCD monitor emerged from the center of the table. It swiveled until it faced the three of them and then lit up. There was a flash of static and, seconds later, Amara Braddock’s face appeared.
Dirk glanced at Garm, gauging his reaction. He’d seen the video several times. His brother hadn’t. As the sight of their mother’s face, the big man’s expression softened. His rugged jaw drooped and his eyes began to widen, like a child taking in some natural wonder.
“Doctor Amara Braddock . . . formal log entry twenty-two-six, January 6th, 2045,” she began, glancing briefly down at some notes she carried. Dirk smiled sadly as he took in her visage. Even at fifty-nine, his mother still looked amazing. She had almost no grays or wrinkles and kept herself fit and trim. Only her eyes gave her away, peering over the tops of her vintage horn-rim glasses. They were like Garm’s eyes – gleaming, almond-shaped opals. Except hers were tired and sorrowful, worn down by the tragic losses she sustained, starting with her husband.
As Amara held up a tiny remote, the recorder pulled back, showing her from the waist up. Dirk could see the footage had been shot in her quarters. She was dressed in her omnipresent lab coat and, over her shoulder, one of her ivy gardenias could be seen, bursting with lush pink flowers as it draped down from its hanging pot.
On the desk beside her, Amara had set up a portable holographic projector. As she pointed, it sprang to life. A swirling globe of colored particles four feet across took shape, flashing and coalescing until they formed a white, movie screen-like shape.
“The subject of today’s presentation is captive pliosaur X, designate: Tiamat.” Amara announced.
As she spoke, black and white security footage of the giant Kronosaurus queen appeared, cruising soundlessly within the confines of her paddock pool.
“A considerable amount of time and resources have been devoted toward establishing a breeding program for this animal, with the ultimate goal of its offspring becoming additions to GDT’s already formidable collection of bio-weapons.”
The camera panned sideways, causing Amara to vanish and the hologram’s images to dominate the screen.
“Until recently, we were unable to perform a proper bio-scan on Tiamat,” she continued. “Her sheer mass prevented her from being transported onto our existing CT scanner, even using our stoutest industrial hoist. Two days ago, however, I was able to import a powerful portable resonance projector and jury rig it to a lift. Using her new neural implant to immobilize her, I suspended it directly above her and got effective readout.”
Amara’s off-screen voice took on a morose tone. “The results were disturbing.”
On the viewer, a recreated overhead view of two pliosaurs appeared, spread-eagled like mounted butterflies and lined up side by side, with a silhouetted human form inserted in the upper left corner for size comparison. The one on the right was obviously the queen; it dwarfed the other animal.
“Tiamat’s size and appearance have always been indicative of her mutative status, but now we can establish just how much of a jump she’s made up the evolutionary ladder,” Amara narrated. Footage from a moonlit beach, via an infrared lens, began to run. On it, a cow pliosaur dragged itself ponderously from the surf. “Plesiosaurs have been around since the Triassic, with Jurassic and Cretaceous pliosauridae emerging as the greatest macropredators of all time.”
The footage did a jump cut. The cow was now up on the beach and using its huge head to scoop out a thirty-foot nursery in the dry sand. “Thalassophoneans are lethal predators and the only real chink in their armor is that they are oviparous and must come ashore to lay their eggs. This makes sexually mature females vulnerable to attack during the spawning process.”
All of a sudden, bright searchlights illuminated the gravid cow. A swarm of heavily armed troops rushed forward and surrounded it. The absence of sound did little to reduce the intensity of the scene as the giant reptile was mercilessly gunned down, its jaws snapping impotently as it was cut to pieces.
Amara could be heard clearing her throat before she continued. “As a genus, pliosaurs were decimated by the Cenomanian-Turonian extinction event after their primary forage base, the ichthyosaurs, was wiped out by sub-oceanic volcanism.”
The screen changed to show an assortment of large mosasaurs, compared to a similar number of pliosaur silhouettes.
“Following the C-T event,” Amara continued. “Surviving pliosaurs began to be supplanted by encroaching mosasaurs. Although smaller, these marine monitors were highly adaptive. They also had one significant advantage over their more massive competitors – t
hey gave birth to live young. This resulted in higher infant survival rates and the elimination of adult mortality during clutch-laying. Pliosaurs soon found themselves outnumbered. Eventually, only the species we know as Kronosaurus imperator remained.”
The pliosaur silhouettes evaporated, leaving behind only a single individual, surrounded by mosasaurs. Then the camera pulled back, showing Amara once more.
“Although at first glance, and barring size considerations, Tiamat appears as any other pliosaur, our scan revealed significant physiological differences,” she said. “Non-mutated pliosaurs have body temperatures that rely on increased activity levels and gigantism to maintain their variance over the surrounding water. Whereas, and regardless of energy expenditure, Tiamat’s core maintains a consistent ninety-four degrees – near cetacean levels.”
As Amara continued, she pointed at the projector, causing a clip of the Kronosaurus queen spouting to run. “In addition to being able to thermoregulate without altering her metabolism, her adipose tissue is denser and more insulating than that of her smaller relatives. It’s more like whale blubber.”
The camera zoomed back in on the projector as an overhead schematic of Tiamat appeared. Cutaways began to pop up, showing her muscular-skeletal system and internal organs.
“The scan of Tiamat’s reproductive system confirmed my suspicions,” Amara announced. “She’s not oviparous, she’s viviparous.”
Garm’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit.”
“More specifically,” Amara’s voice continued, “She is ovoviviparous. Although she does not lay eggs, there is no placenta to nourish the young. Her eggs hatch internally and develop inside the womb, with the young feeding on any unhatched eggs . . . and each other.”
A grinning Dragunova leaned toward Garm and whispered, “I’m glad she said that part. I was seeting here theenking; can you imagine the size of the afterbirth?”
Kronos Rising: Kraken (vol.1): The battle for Earth's oceans has just begun. Page 56