by Hunter Shea
“This is the same pod that attacked the freighter?” Rosario asked.
Lieutenant Commander Wolf had been standing just to their left with his hands clasped in front of him. “Yes, part of the original pod is there.”
“So we know they’re not just out for a little exercise,” she replied, eyes glued to the screen.
“Not in a pod that big,” Chet said. “There’s a purpose here. They’re hunting.”
“But hunting what?” Wolf said.
The back of Chet’s scalp prickled. No matter how much he rubbed it, he couldn’t get it to stop.
“Anything that gets in their way.”
“What happens when we get in their way?” Rosario asked.
The lieutenant commander just looked at them, his eyes shifting to his feet.
“They blow them out of the water,” Chet said. “Am I right?”
“It would be a last resort,” Wolf said.
“And what would be the first?” Rosario said.
“That’s what we’re hoping you can tell us. Professor Lund promised an answer, but unfortunately, he can no longer provide it.”
Chet’s gaze snapped away from the mega pod. “Professor Lund? I didn’t know you were working with him. Is he on board? I’d like to see him.”
Never a big fan of Lund, Chet was aware that the man did have decades more experience watching orcas than he did. His observations could be very useful.
“Professor Lund was here, but there were complications.”
“Complications?” Chet said.
Lieutenant Commander Wolf cleared his throat. “He passed away. In fact, his body is still onboard.”
“How did it happen?” Rosario asked.
“We believe it was a heart attack. It happened not long after we showed him that video.”
“In here?” Chet asked.
All Wolf could do was nod.
Chet’s skin wanted to crawl off his bones. For all he knew, he was sitting in the very same seat where Lund had recently died. Rosario got up from her chair, chewing on her thumbnail.
Chet said, “I wonder if seeing a pod as massive as this, knowing that the greatest killing machines in the ocean were gathering in force, scared the life out of him. Lord knows, when they were pummeling that oil rig in Portugal, I had my fair share of heart palpitations. Lund was an old man. He shouldn’t have been here.”
Wolf was quick to absolve the Navy of any wrongdoing. “He came here voluntarily. In fact, he approached us.”
“As opposed to your banging our door down,” Rosario added. Her nostrils flared just enough for Chet to realize things were going to get heated if he didn’t do something fast. He understood where Rosario was coming from. A man had died and now they were here to do what? Watch the Navy drive a species to extinction?
Chet watched the video of the mega pod. It was impossible to confirm from the vantage point, but he’d bet there were two types of orcas in the mix: resident and offshore orcas. Resident orcas were known to form the largest pods, though nothing like this. Much of the lifestyle of the offshore orca was still a mystery. Offshore orcas were smaller than resident orcas. He saw hundreds of orcas on the smaller side in the video, but without being there, up close, he couldn’t tell if they were full grown adults or adolescents. They were named offshore orcas because they were known to travel the greatest distances. It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that a majority of the mega pod was made up of the sub group.
He could only imagine the Tower of Babel going on under those waves with a hundred plus orcas of different dialects talking at once. It boggled the mind that they could function as one unit, considering the mass confusion that should be going on.
“Look, from what I can see, the only thing unusual in their behavior is the fact that they’ve gathered into such a large pod. That’s the problem here. It’s like a switch goes off in their heads. In the marine parks, there was no warning, and because they’re in such confined quarters with people nearby, fatalities were unfortunately inevitable. Yes, this mega pod is terrifying to look at, but they’re in the middle of a vast ocean. From all of the orcas we’ve observed, whatever sets them into a rampage just as suddenly switches off. In fact, the orca we were working with in Florida exhibited no signs of distress or violence since the attack on her trainer. Once she came out of sedation, it’s as if nothing happened.”
Wolf took a deep breath, his barrel chest and shoulder rising. “Are you suggesting we tranquilize a thousand killer whales?”
Waving him off, Chet said, “No, that would be impossible. What I am saying is that we need to keep tracking their progression and clear the route they’re taking. Warn any ships ahead to get the hell out of there as fast as they can. If we buy enough time, whatever it is that’s driving this behavior may just burn itself out.”
He felt Rosario’s hands on his shoulders.
“Don’t engage. Just observe and keep other ships aware,” the lieutenant commander said, mulling over Chet’s words.
“It’s the moral thing to do. We don’t know why this is happening, but I can assure you whatever it is, it’s outside the control of the orca population. They’re somehow being manipulated, but by what, I haven’t a clue. That’s why I need those lab results from Barcelona tomorrow. Until then, we need to keep both the people and orcas safe.”
Rosario gave his shoulders a sharp, painful squeeze. He knew it was a warning not to say anything about Jamel the custodian’s HAARP theory. HAARP had been the Navy’s pet project, after all. He wasn’t sure Wolf would take kindly to being blamed for the outbreak of violence.
“In fact,” Chet continued. “It’s best we keep our distance from them. They will launch a coordinated attack on this ship the second they see us, no matter how impossible it would be for them to take it down. You can’t in good conscience just let them kill themselves in the process. Right now, they’re not posing any direct threat. Let’s try to keep it that way.”
What followed was a deep silence while the video of the mega pod played on. Wolf seemed to be considering Chet’s recommendation. Chet didn’t know Captain Stanson from a hole in the wall. How he would react to having a civilian basically tell him to stand down was anyone’s guess.
One thing he did know was if they willfully engaged the orcas and murdered them, the world would find out. Chet would make sure of it, no matter what the cost.
“Stay right here,” Wolf said, his chiseled features softening. “I’ll talk to the Captain.”
The second the door closed, Chet and Rosario exhaled their held breath.
“Do you think he’ll listen?” Rosario said. She still refused to sit. Professor Lund could have died in any one of those seats.
“I may sound delusional, being one guy versus an aircraft carrier full of Navy personnel, but he better.”
Chapter Nineteen
“There’s a call for you, sir,” the voice said outside Chet’s cabin.
“I’ll be right there,” he grumbled, getting out of what passed for a bed. Rosario stirred beside him but didn’t wake. She’d been assigned her own cabin, but had snuck in to his in the middle of the night. Neither of them could sleep. He looked at the clock, figuring he’d gotten a cool two hours of z’s.
Slipping into yesterday’s shirt and pants, he opened the door to find a kid waiting for him. If he was nineteen, Chet would have been surprised.
“I’ll take you to the bridge,” he said. “It’s easy to get turned around here.”
“Lead on.”
Chet had only seen a small portion of the John Adams and could see how one could get easily lost. Oddly enough, the floating behemoth reminded him of the Mall of America in Minneapolis. He’d visited there once, walking around for five hours. The multilevel mall was jammed with more stores and restaurants than most metropolitan cities. It even had an amusement park and aquarium inside! When he’d told a local what he’d seen, she’d said, “Oh honey, you only saw like twenty percent of the mall. You need a few days to re
ally take it all in.”
Captain Stanson was there to greet him on the bridge. Unlike Chet, he looked like he’d gotten a peaceful night’s sleep, if that was even possible when you were in charge of something as massive and impressive as the John Adams.
Chet’s estimation of the man was perhaps larger than the supercarrier because he’d pulled back and out of the way of the mega pod. They kept tabs on their progression by constant air surveillance. Before Chet retired that night, the mega pod had grown to over twelve-hundred orcas. That meant whatever was driving them was still strong as ever. Chet prayed that they had splintered off overnight.
“How’s the mega pod?” he asked.
“Living up to its name, I’m afraid.”
“Damn.”
“I have a call from Raquel Suarez and Ivan Padron for you,” the Captain said, offering him a cup of coffee that he couldn’t say no to. He handed Chet a headset, wheeling over a plush chair and giving him some space.
“Ivan, Raquel, I hope you have something good to tell me.” He burned his lips and tongue on the coffee. It was so strong, he felt like he’d been goosed.
“Fuck hope,” Ivan growled. “We have nothing.”
“Nothing? How is that possible?”
Raquel spoke up. “Every single test is negative. There’s no sign of any foreign antibody or contamination.”
Chet stared out the row of windows at the vast, endless expanse of blue sky and bluer sea. This was not a good way to start the day.
“That’s impossible.”
“That’s what I said,” Ivan said in the background. Chet pictured him pacing around the room, looking like a lunatic. “We’re asking the lab to run every damn test again. If they screwed up the first time, I’ll have their balls.”
“Most of them are women,” Raquel added, dryly.
“No difference. I know plenty of women with more balls than most men.”
Chet sat straighter in his chair. The tension building in his lower back threatened to lock him into a hunch. “What about the brain?”
“Normal,” Raquel said.
“Not even a single thing out of the ordinary?”
“I wish I could say yes.”
He noticed Captain Stanson throwing concerned glances his way. Chet moved the attached microphone closer to his mouth and spoke lower. “Would concentrated radio waves have a lasting impact…shit, any impact on an orca brain?”
Ivan and Raquel were silent for longer than Chet wanted.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ivan said.
“I’m not entirely sure. Raquel, you’ve seen more orca brains than me. Would there be a visible difference in a brain subjected to massive radio waves?”
She sighed. “No one knows that answer because it’s never been studied. Why do you keep talking about radio waves?”
He gripped the coffee cup so hard, a dribble of scalding coffee blistered his hand. He was too preoccupied to care. “It’s just a theory. If you were here, I could go into it in more detail.”
“Then tell your captain to get us there,” Ivan said.
“I’m not sure that would even be possible. We’re deep in the Atlantic, following a pod of orcas twelve-hundred strong and growing.”
“Twelve-hundred!” Raquel exclaimed. That was followed by a very obvious call to God, Jesus and the Virgin Mary in Spanish.
“Where are they going?” Ivan asked, sounding closer to the phone. He was probably leaning over Raquel, breathing coffee breath in her face.
“We don’t know. The Navy is keeping tabs on what they’re calling a mega pod while also keeping their distance. All ships have been warned to stay the hell away.”
“Orcas are fast. They can change direction in seconds and you’d never catch up to them or be able to warn people in time.”
Chet’s empty stomach gurgled, a bubble of acid tingling his throat. He either needed food or a Valium.
He said, “So far, the mega pod is maintaining a pretty straight line, sticking to a latitude of twenty-five degrees north. That would put them on a trajectory towards Western Sahara.”
“Why would they go there?” Ivan asked.
“For the shopping, of course,” Chet said, exasperated. “I don’t think they give a shit what body of land stands in their way. I just keep hoping whatever is making them gather like this will stop before they even get close to land…and civilization.”
“Get us on that ship,” Ivan said again.
Chet jumped when a hand touched his shoulder. “Where are they?” Captain Stanson asked.
“Huh?”
“Ivan and Raquel. I understand they’ve been working on this since the start of the outbreak.”
“You were listening to me?”
“This is my ship, and everything that happens onboard is my business.” He didn’t say it as a threat, just as a matter of fact. As much as Chet wanted to be mad, he had assumed his conversation was being listened to, which is why he didn’t go into detail about the whole radio wave theory. After coming up snake eyes on the lab tests, he didn’t have much else to cling to. “So, where do we need to go to pick them up?”
Chet locked eyes with the captain and said to Ivan and Raquel, “You guys might want to pack a bag.”
Chet was reviewing the latest film when Rosario burst into the room.
“The mega pod stopped!”
He slowly rose from his chair, pausing the video.
“What do you mean, stopped?”
Rosario’s hair was pulled back and tied with a black band. She’d complained earlier that she’d forgotten to bring any makeup, but she looked stunning to him. He was sure most of the crew would agree.
“I just ran into Wolf. He’d been on the bridge when the call came in that the pod is in some kind of holding pattern. They haven’t made any forward progress in the past ten minutes.”
“Have they broken up?”
He knew that once the mega pod splintered off into dozens and dozens of groups, whatever it was that was herding them together had lost its hold. The hope was that it happened before the mega pod came in contact with any ships.
Rosario shook her head. “Not yet. But the Captain is sending more jets to do some flybys.”
Tapping a pencil on the conference table, Chet wondered aloud. “What made them stop? And why?”
“Maybe they’re just resting.”
“Normally, I’d say over a thousand orcas taking a siesta at the same time was completely insane, but I’m not so sure. We’ll need to see the latest video to be sure.”
She held her hand out to him. “And that’s why I’m here. We’ve been summoned to the bridge so we can watch it live.”
They hustled to the bridge, only getting turned around once. Lieutenant Commander Wolf stood next to Captain Stanson. Both men were staring at a monitor above them.
“That’s a live feed?” Chet asked.
“As live as it can get,” Wolf said.
The image was surprisingly clear and steady. Chet assumed it was being taken by a helicopter.
Seeing a thousand orcas in motion was terrifying. Watching them congregate in an enormous circle, packed together tightly, was enough to dry up all of the saliva in his mouth.
“Any chance they can get closer or zoom in?” he asked.
Captain Stanson told the crewman sitting beside him to order the surveillance team to get a tighter shot.
Seconds later, he had a clear view of a section of the mega pod. The orcas were moving about lazily, rising and clearing their blowholes so they could breath.
“A little closer,” he said, hands gripping the back of an empty chair.
“I was right,” Rosario said.
“Looks like I’m rubbing off on you,” he replied.
He didn’t bother to face the look he knew she was giving him.
About a hundred orcas of every size imaginable filled the screen. He’d been right, too. These were resident orcas mixed with offshore orcas.
“Just
wild,” he whispered.
“What do you make of it?” Captain Stanson said, pulling Chet’s attention away from the monitor.
“They’re sleeping.”
“All of them?”
“Can you ask them to pull back now? I want to see the perimeter of the mega pod.”
When the view changed, Chet jabbed the screen with the pad of his index finger.
“See that?”
Chet guessed about a hundred orcas milled about the sleeping mega pod.
“What am I seeing?” the Captain asked.
“They have sentries watching out for the pod. See how it looks like they’re patrolling the edges?”
While orcas had to be in constant motion in order to stay alive, there were degrees of movement that told an experienced marine biologist which ones were asleep and which ones were not. The sentry orcas moved faster, covering their seemingly assigned territory over and over again. They were all adult orcas. Guarding the mega pod was too important a task to leave to the young. Chet wasn’t surprised. Orcas were exceedingly intelligent. Having the wherewithal to post sentries was more chilling than shocking.
Lieutenant Commander Wolf narrowed his gaze at the monitor. “Now would be an optimal time to see if we can get them to disperse.”
“How do you plan on doing that?” Rosario asked.
“We could drop a small explosive right in the middle of the mega pod,” Captain Stanson replied, sounding as if this wasn’t something he’d just come up with.
“You can’t do that!” Chet said, holding himself back from grabbing the Captain’s arm. That wouldn’t go over well at all.
The Captain said, “I can, but for the moment, I choose not to. I only hope I don’t live to regret my decision.”
“Sir, they’re going to descend to get as close as possible,” the crewman said, one hand on the headset.
“Tell them to proceed. Might be the best chance we get.” The Captain turned to Chet and Rosario. “You ready for a gift?”
“A gift?” Chet said.
“We’ve made plans to tranquilize one of the smaller killer whales and bring it back to the ship so you can study it.”