Arena Book 3

by Logan Jacobs

Aurora and I floated back to back and scanned a hundred and eighty degrees of ocean each. She had pulled her slender spear gun from its holster on her leg and charged it with a dark matter harpoon. The quiet of the serene ocean was unsettling. Like waiting for a jump scare in a horror movie.

  A moment later, PoLarr appeared in a ripple of water with the tanks in her hand. We took turns changing out our nearly empty tanks so that we had a full ten minutes of air plus one in back up ready to go.

  I glanced around again. I had started to get very worried that for as far as I could tell, we were all alone in the great deep blue sea. Much like the cheesy, but surprisingly good movie of the same name, I knew it would be any minute before some horrible sharp-toothed underwater killing machine would shoot out from a hiding spot and eat us whole.

  As if the ocean had read my thoughts, I saw six champions explode out of the cave opening in a flurry of bubbles, sizzling laser fire, and underwater explosions. The odd thing was they weren’t shooting at each other at all but behind them. A second later, I realized why it wasn’t strange.

  A massive prehistoric looking sea creature swam out of the cave close on their heels. It was bright red and white, as long as a semi-truck trailer, with huge, powerful alligator-like jaws. It swam with an undulating snake-like motion and cut through the water as if it were air. The laser blasts bounced off it harmlessly, and the depth charge like explosion just seemed to piss it off. It swam after the group of six champions hungrily as they tried with all their might to evade the beast's teeth.

  The group split in half, into what I assumed were alliances, with one group barely dodging the jaws while the other concentrated fire at the things head. The blasts and flashes in the sea monsters eyes slowed it momentarily but then it opened its giant mouth and squid-like tentacles shot out, wrapped around the group that shot at it and pulled them into its maw. I felt the crunch of armor and bone alike as it ate them from where I was over fifty yards away.

  “We’re going to need bigger guns,” I said with a gulp. “Let’s swim casually away and keep looking for tanks while twenty thousand leagues under the sea there keeps those other champions busy.”

  Aurora, PoLarr, and I swam down and began to scour the ocean floor. I saw a thick overhang of coral reef that had a person-sized alcove under it that looked empty. I pointed to my alliance mates, and without a word, we took cover under the overhang which protected our back and gave us a good view of anything that might come our way and try to eat us. I looked up to check the clock. We’d been in this Sea World from Satan’s butthole for only fifteen minutes.

  “Okay, we need more tanks,” I said as I checked my air gauge. “This nonsense has already gotten old. Okay, same as last time. PoLarr you stay close to the bottom and search for caches while Aurora and I cover you.”

  We came out from under our hidey-hole and found things had gotten a lot more chaotic. There were now about ten groups of champions either looking for air tanks or fighting off all manner of hellacious aquatic life.

  “Marc, I’ve got eyes on a good sized haul,” PoLarr said over the comm, and she engaged her jet-pack and shot across the sea floor. She weaved in and around the coral reefs and rocks like a fighter jet. I caught sight of a nine foot long barracuda-eel lying in wait just ahead of her, brought the Eradicator up to my shoulder and squeezed off a short burst.

  The gun hardly kicked at all in the pressure-filled underwater world but the three tiny arrow looking flechettes flew out of the barrel. They covered the distance fast and struck the sea eel in the head. It went motionless and sank to the bottom, ribbons of bright pink blood flowed out of the tiny wounds to stain the water.

  PoLarr snagged the bundle of air tanks, pulled into a tight roll, and hit her boost to get back to us. Unfortunately, the pink blood from the dead barracuda had drawn the attention of a group of champions and several predator fish.

  The champions began to fire on her with a combination of harpoons and sizzling laser fire. PoLarr dodged them all easily but then her jet packs burst of speed ran out. She didn’t miss a beat, reached out with her Equalizer pistol and fired off a volley of torpedoes at two giant piranha looking fish that were close on her heels. The little self-propelled projectiles tore through the water with little cavitation trails behind them. They hit the fish and exploded with muffled fhwumps. A cloud of purple chum was all that was left. The pursuing champions blew through it guns blazing.

  I nudged Aurora, and we both began to lay down cover fire. We had to be much more selective in our shots instead of just being able to blaze away with our guns. The water made everything slower. Our shots stitched their way across the ocean floor with little puffs of sand, and we completely missed our targets who had taken evasive maneuvers the second the first shots flew past them. Grizz hadn’t been kidding about these champions not being dumb, easy to kill brutes anymore.

  PoLarr kicked with all her might, and her dive fins helped her get as much speed as she could under manual power. Two more shots with her Equalizer caused a rockslide that crushed two of the three pursuers. A few dark matter blasts from Aurora’s harpoon gun made the lone champion break off and go to the aid of his fallen pals.

  As PoLarr reached us, we retreated to the relative safety of our little alcove. My instincts were to go balls to the wall and blast everything in sight, but the water combined with the skill of our enemies made that a very bad idea. The strike and hide technique seemed to be the best way to ensure we’d live long enough to see the hour. PoLarr set the tanks down, and I noticed a severed arm that still had a death grip on the rubber band that bound the tanks together. PoLarr unsheathed a silver bladed dive knife from her calf and cut through the band. The arm floated off into the deep.

  I started to feel a touch light headed and noticed that my main tank had pegged empty. I toggled the switch on my helmet and a fresh blast of oxygen filled my facemask. We each took turns changing out our empties so that we all had a full oxygen load of twenty minutes.

  “Okay,” I said as I glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes were left. “Halfway home, kiddies.”

  I kicked my feet to look over the back of the alcove and nearly peed my wetsuit. Three monstrous crabs, each the size of a Fiat, skittered toward our hiding spot. Their two foot long, razor pronged claws clacked angrily. Six eyes on top of gross looking pale yellow stalks locked in on my position, and the creepy underwater spiders with shells scuttled faster toward me.

  “Fuck!” I yelled as a claw clamped shut not a foot in front of my feet. I kicked back as hard as I could and swung the Eradicator around, but it seemed to take forever. Finally, the barrel came in front of my eyes, and I let go with a full auto burst. I took out one stalk eye but the rest of the flechettes ricocheted off the crab's dark maroon shell. The crab reared back in pain, and I swam for all I was worth in the opposite direction.

  PoLarr had managed to blow the claw off another crab and had just fired a torpedo that hit the ocean floor beneath it. The resulting explosion threw the crab up about ten feet. It spun wildly and clacked its other claw furiously. It was just about to start sinking back down when two hammerhead sharks struck it from opposite angles. The crunch was loud enough to hear even though the water. As soon as the crab’s egg drop soup looking guts began to float in the water two more hammerheads rushed in.

  PoLarr gave her jetpack a short burst to put some distance between herself and the sharks so as not to get caught up in the feeding frenzy.

  Aurora battled the last of the crabs. It had caught her cloak in one of its claws. She launched dark matter harpoons at the crustacean but its shell absorbed them with a ripple of energy as the purple-black bolts slammed into it. I thought she might have been in real trouble for a second as its other claw snapped closed on her ankle. She managed to shield her flesh with dark matter the second before it closed shut. Aurora then expanded the shield until the things claw snapped like an all you could eat crab feast at Red Lobster. It let out a very high-pitched squeal of pain and let go of her. With a
flutter of red and black, Aurora dove under the creature, and a second later, it exploded outward sending bits of uncooked crab meat in every direction.

  “You guys okay?” I asked as I started to swim back toward where PoLarr and Aurora had met up.

  “I got a little scratched up by that walking appetizer,” Aurora said. I could hear the strain in her voice. “But other than that I’m right as rain, sugar.”

  “Same here, Marc,” PoLarr added, “but my pack only has three more boosts left, and I used up a good amount of air.”

  I glanced at my gauge and saw I was almost out again. I switched over to my reserve tank. I had ten minutes of air and there were still twenty minutes left in the match.

  “Looks like it's time to go fishing,” I said as I changed the magazine on my Eradicator. It took way longer than it should have. My fingers felt heavy and clumsy, and the refraction of light through both the water and my mask threw off my depth perception.

  Finally, I got the damn thing into the rifle and felt the bolt slam home, and forty more rounds of the tiny, but effective flechettes were ready to rock-and-roll.

  “We’re going to switch things up a bit here,” I said. “Time for some active camouflage. Aurora, I want you to extend your cloak as far as you can and make it look as much like a manta-ray as you can. Then I want you to throw up your veil. PoLarr and I are going to swim along underneath with our backs just off the ocean bed. Hopefully freaky fanged fish and champions alike will just think you’re a harmless stingray looking for food.”

  “Marc, that is insane,” PoLarr said, “but it might just work.”

  “Let’s do this,” I said as I re-checked my air gauge, and ammo count on the Eradicator. “Team Havak, go!”

  Aurora’s cloak floated out around her as she swam over PoLarr and me as we swam down close to the ocean floor. It flowed into the rough shape of a very large stingray as she activated her veil. I could still see her outline like the way artists drew Sue Richards in comic books, but from a distance, she’d just look like a ripple in the water. Once she was set, we began to all swim in unison.

  It took Aurora a bit to get the flap-like motion of a stingray down but soon we swam over the ocean floor like any other sea creature.

  “Marc, sugar, we’re coming up on some champions in about twenty feet,” Aurora said through heavy breaths. The concentration added to how physical it was to swim constantly was taking it out of her. “We’re maybe five feet below them, and it looks like each of them has an extra air tank hanging from their belts.”

  “Let me know when we’re under them,” I replied and got the Eradicator ready.

  “Now,” she whispered even though no one else could hear us.

  I twisted around on my back and edged around the edge of her cloak and sure enough, there were three Ogre like champions with huge turn of the century dive bell air rigs on their ugly heads.

  They were busy shooting at what I could only describe as a sharktopus. Except this one had the front half of an octopus with eight sucker-lined tentacles and the back half of a large shark. I took careful aim and fired off three quick shots.

  The flechettes hit them each at the point where the air tanks connected to their belts. The tanks sank to the bottom while the three of them swatted at their hips where the flechettes sank into their flesh. The wounds weren’t deadly, but the sharktopus took advantage of their distraction, wrapped all three of them in its tentacles and drug them off into the deep.

  “Sorry, fellas,” I said to myself, “all is fair in love and the Crucible of Carnage.”

  Aurora lazily swam us over to where the air tanks had fallen. PoLarr and I scooped them up and changed out each other's empties. We had enough air to make it the last ten minutes of the match. Now, all we had to do was make sure we didn’t get shot or eaten.

  I was about to help Aurora change her tank when she was hit from behind with the force of a train which slammed us all into the bottom of the ocean. A huge sand cloud billowed into the water around us and made it impossible to see.

  A strange, claustrophobic-like terror started in my gut, tingled up my spine like cold electricity and landed in my brain like a horror-filled epiphany. It was if every cell in body suddenly had a flashback to a time when our genetic ancestors swam in prehistoric waters and feared for every second of life.

  I wanted to scream but managed to pull myself together in an instant. I kicked my feet to clear some sand and swam up to get out of the cloud. When I finally emerged from the tan curtain that had filled my view what I saw stopped me dead in the water. I was pretty sure if fish could get into my face mask they would have been able to swim freely in and out of my mouth which hung completely open.

  Aurora floated in the water five feet away from me, literally nose to nose with a huge Great White Shark. The little section of the mask that covered her mouth had slid back and her lips were mere centimeters from the razor tooth slaughterhouse mouth of the shark that had become completely motionless.

  Bright blue life force flowed from deep within the bottomless pit that lay behind the shark’s teeth. Its ink black doll eyes were rolled back in its killing machine head in ecstasy.

  I realized the shark had been the runaway train that had slammed into us. It must have seen what it thought was a relatively defenseless stingray and dove into it from above. The black-eyed killing machine was a slight flaw in my grand plan, but little did it know that it had tried to eat a soul-sucking space vampire.

  The smoke like lifeforce got thinner and thinner until it stopped altogether, and the shark sank slowly to the ocean floor. The sight of a thirty foot long, three ton, nature’s perfect predator completely motionless was more than a bit eerie.

  “You okay, Aurora,” I asked and started to swim over to her.

  She turned on me in a flash, and I could see the purple glow of her eyes through her facemask. Her geometric tattoos pulsed with pure animal energy. She bared her teeth in a shark-like grin before the door of her rebreather closed, and her cloak swirled and shot her past me as fast as a speed boat.

  Purple-black energy formed around her and transformed her into the shape of a shark. She tore into a group of champions who had just swam over the ridge of a large coral reef behind us with dark matter teeth, and the sea ran red with blood. Her sleek black shape looked like a Mako as she sliced through the water as if she had been born to it.

  A giant neon angler fish the size of a bulldozer with huge translucent teeth thought she looked like an attractive meal and chased after her. Mako Aurora zipped around the fish as if it had been standing still, blew through the giant teeth and into the thing's mouth. A few seconds later purple dark matter teeth chewed through the fish’s belly and exploded out in a shower of slimy guts. The angler’s bright lure blinked and then went dark as the fish’s carcass sank.

  “Didn’t know she could do that,” I said as I finally regained my composure.

  “Marc,” I heard PoLarr’s very weak and strained voice in my helmet comm. I whipped my head down and saw her still on the ocean floor where the shark had slammed into us. Her right arm hung limply at her side, and I could see a large bulge in the forearm of her wetsuit that looked dangerously like a bad compound fracture.

  I bent at the waist and kicked hard with my feet to shoot down to where she tried to get up. I got to her in what seemed like no time flat and put my arm around her shoulders and helped her get off the thick, pillowy sand. Once her feet were under her, she was able to kick lightly and keep herself afloat.

  “You okay?” I asked, very much afraid of the answer.

  “No,” she grimaced as a water current buffeted her right arm. “It’s broken. Bad. And, I think my pack is malfunctioning.”

  I turned her around gently so that I could look at her jetpack and rebreather harness. Sure enough little blue electric sparks fizzled near the jet exhaust ports. The force of the shark as it slammed into us must have damaged it. A stream of air bubbles also leaked from the house that connected her air
tanks to her face mask. I glanced at her air gauge and could see the dial move slowly toward empty. She had maybe a minute of air left.

  I jerked my head up and saw that we had seven minutes left in the match. I was already on my last tank so I couldn’t give her one of mine.

  “Aurora?” I almost shouted into my helmet mic. “Aurora? Do you copy?”

  All I heard back was a feral growl and saw a purple-black flash as it went after a group champions who fled from her mako shark form in sheer terror.

  “Okay, Aurora has left the building,” I moaned. Absorbing the lifeforce of one of the most powerful predators the universe had ever created must have overwhelmed the psychic protections she had to keep her Shriike nature at bay and she was rampaging on pure instinct.

  PoLarr was going to be out of air in a matter of seconds. Aurora was rampaging like she was patrolling the waters off of Amity. The surrounding water was full of dangerous aquatic monsters, and there were at least fifteen hardened champions who wanted us dead swimming through all of it.

  “Aw fuck it,” I said, my voice full of determination.

  I grabbed hold of the top of PoLarr’s pack and kicked as hard as I could toward the surface of the water.

  There was no way in hell I was going to let my friend die.

  “Marc, what the hell are you doing,” PoLarr’s voice said through my helmet speakers. She was more than a bit dismayed.

  “You need air, so we’re going to go get some air,” I answered as I tried to keep my breathing as steady and paced as I could even though my legs worked overtime.

  “Did you forget about the humongous shark that patrols the surface?” She asked nervously.

  “Nope,” I replied without more explanation, and a moment later we broke the surface with a splash. The sun glinted in the fine mist and created a rainbow halo around PoLarr’s helmeted head. I quickly disengaged the airtight seal and flipped her facemask up. She took in a big lung full of air. “Stay here and don’t look down.”

  “But, Marc--” She said in as close to panic as I’d ever heard PoLarr sound.