“Killer whales?” she asked.
“Hourglass dolphins,” Dutch said. “Rare as shit.”
She looked again. One of them jumped ten feet into the air, spun, and then dove back into the water. She had never been to Sea World as a kid, but she imagined that's what the animals in captivity were trained to do on command. It was strange to see it here in the wild, strange and oddly beautiful.
“We're coming up on the platform,” the pilot called. “Sit tight.”
The S-70 slowed to a halt and hovered in mid-air. Kate looked out the opposite window and saw Mason's chopper doing the same. A few seconds later, she heard a bunch of radio chatter from the cockpit. It all sounded like gibberish.
The team around her, animals on the beach, were now sitting with their equipment in their laps, as docile as sheep. The tension was palpable, and they were all feeling it. Kate herself never did like sitting still when she was anxious. She unbuckled her seat straps and stood up, able to balance more easily now that the chopper was hovering. AJ put a hand on her wrist, but she shook it off and stepped forward, moving between the ceiling handholds. She reached the flight deck and the pilot turned.
“Ma'am?”
She looked past him out of the front windows. “That's it, huh?”
The platform was still two miles out, but she could see it on the horizon, a clenched fist rising from the water. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but she thought anything would have surprised her equally. If its current state held a surprise, it was how normal it looked. There was no smoke rising from the structure, and she could make out at least one crane still intact. There seemed to be something wrong with the bottom of the platform, but at this distance, she couldn't tell what it was.
She heard footsteps behind her and turned, expecting to see AJ, but it was one of the men from the beach.
“It don't look like much, huh?”
She was about to tell him to back off, but instead, she said, “Do you think they're dead?”
“Don't know.”
“What else could it be? I mean, the place doesn't look like it's burning down or anything.”
He shrugged. “Could be nothin' more than a dead com tower and an accident that's got 'em scared. That's what the boss says, anyways.”
“But you don't think so?”
A smile crossed his face, but she didn't like the look of it. “Yeah. Yeah, I reckon we'll find a tomb. Only thing that makes sense, don't it?”
She shivered.
“You stay close to me, baby, you'll be fine.”
“You finish med school, Melvin?” AJ said, coming up behind them.
The other man's grin faltered. “Why? You planning on getting shot out there?”
“That didn't answer my question.”
“Man, you know I'm a field medic. What's the point?”
AJ grabbed a handhold. “I just think if you ain't got a philosophy degree, you should keep your stupid ass opinions to yourself. You're scaring the girl.”
“You want it to be like that, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you do get shot out there, I'll see if I can remember enough training to save you. How about that?”
“How about it?”
Kate sighed. Without even trying, she found herself in the middle of another pissing contest. She didn't know how they found the time to start so many.
“Hey,” the pilot said. “If you two are going to argue, get the hell away from the flight deck.”
“And away from me,” Kate added.
Then, the radio in the cockpit crackled. “That's a negative, Hal. They're still not responding. Let's give them one more try on your end.”
The pilot hit a switch, ignoring the group behind him. “Roger. Trying now.” He hit another button. “Platform Aeschylus, please respond. This is Alpha One-Niner, rescue team inbound on behalf of Valley Oil corporate. Please give us a sit-rep, over.” He waited a few seconds, then tried again, repeating the message.
“Time to go,” Melvin said, pushing past AJ and returning to his seat.
Kate was tempted to do the same but didn't want it to seem like she was following. Instead, she stood her ground, feeling awkward. AJ was looking down at her—staring, really—and she didn't like it.
“Don't do that.”
“Do what?”
“Stare at me.”
“I'm not staring.”
“You're staring,” she said. “It makes me uncomfortable.”
He cocked his head. “A lot of things make you uncomfortable, don't they?”
“Yes, and the sound of your voice is one of them.” It was infuriating. Back home, she could have just gotten up and left. Here, she was stuck in metal box with nothing but six feet of space on either side.
In the cockpit, the pilot hit another switch. “That's a negative, boss. No response here.”
The reply came fast. “That's a roger. We're going to have a look.”
The second helicopter roared forward, and out of the window, she saw it thunder towards the platform. They were low enough where the whip of the blades left a wake on the ocean surface. By the time the water settled, the helicopter was a spec on the horizon.
The pilot turned to her. “Have a seat.”
Kate hesitated.
“Move it!”
With a grimace, she turned towards the passenger bay, found her seat, and buckled up. The men were staring at her. The man next to Melvin whispered something to his friend and smiled. She wanted out of the cattle car more than ever.
A moment later, they all heard Mason's voice crackle through the radio. “Alpha come in. Your path is clear. You better come on up, over.”
“What's the situation?” the pilot asked, clicking on the radio.
“The helipad is secure. The rest, you have to see for yourself.”
Then, they were lurching forward, the chopper skimming the top of the water as it blasted towards the metal skeleton ahead.
4
As the S-70 came upon the platform and circled round, Kate looked out the window and found that her first impulse, barely stifled, was to scream.
5
Grotesque, black shapes encircled the bottom of the spar, strangling the base of the platform like vines. They seemed to have grown up out of the water, huge amorphous strands unlike anything she had ever seen. Whether native or allochthonous, the things looked almost like they were a part of a carnivorous plant. It was as if the bottom of The Aeschylus was being swallowed—or cocooned—by a mass of tentacles.
“What the hell is that?” someone moaned.
“Man, I don't like the looks of this,” Melvin answered.
Kate found that her distant impression of the upper Aeschylus wasn't entirely accurate, either. Circling the platform, she saw that while the central derrick was mostly intact, a nearby crane was almost completely severed. It hung over the side of the platform like a dead finger. A communications dish lay crumpled nearby, shattered by the same force that had cracked the crane. And there was more: broken hallways, a collapsed stairwell, debris and broken metal visible on the drilling deck.
None of these things had been visible from the satellite images, and as they rounded the top, Kate realized why. The satellite looked almost straight down. The organic mass, the collapsed catwalks and stairs... none would be visible when looking at the square from above.
And there were no people.
Kate wasn't sure if she found this more upsetting or not. If she had seen corpses piled across the platform, as horrible as that would have been, it would have provided some kind of closure. It would have meant that whatever struggle had taken place here was over. Of course, finding a group of refugees waving a white flag on the main deck would have been the best outcome, but she hadn't been naïve enough to expect that. What she found instead was that the mystery didn't end. If the crew were alive somewhere, if they were hiding, or if they had been swallowed by something in the ocean, there was no way to tell.
&nbs
p; The helipad at the top of The Aeschylus was wide enough to accommodate two helicopters, but a burnt shell of a machine occupied one of those spaces. Kate realized it must be the helicopter she had seen from the satellite images in her father's manila envelope.
Kate's pilot, Hal McHalister, touched down next to the old husk, powering off almost as soon as the legs touched. She breathed a sigh of relief when the platform didn't collapse under their weight. Ridiculous maybe, but seeing those things below, they had no idea how much of the undersea structure remained intact.
Next to her, Markus Reiner took off his sunglasses and brushed back his cowboy hat. “Stay here, sweetheart. The rest of y'all know what to do.”
“Where do you want us?” AJ asked, indicating Dutch and himself.
“Right behind us. Take your piece. It looks quiet, but we don't know what's out there. You get it?”
AJ nodded.
The rest of the men filed out, rifles in hand. It happened so fast, Kate blinked, and they were gone. They took position around the square, scanning the area through the sights on their weapons. A few, Melvin included, took position by the burnt chopper, using its walls for cover.
Mason's bird hovered at the edge of the platform, unable to land, and the man himself jumped across the gap onto the concrete. He walked towards the center of the helipad and greeted Reiner in the middle. The two men exchanged words, and then Reiner jogged back towards the hovering helicopter. He stepped off the platform and into its open hatch, fearless of the gap between solid ground and aircraft. He shut the door from the inside, and in seconds, the chopper was gone, flying up and over the water.
Mason motioned towards Kate. “We're all secure here. Come on out.”
It took her a moment to get moving. She was supposed to get up, but it felt strange. She was going out there. Her knees began to shake as she stood.
Kate wasn't afraid of heights, but she felt nothing but vertigo as her feet touched the concrete. The helipad was just an elevated square overlooking the rest of The Aescylus, the highest point save for the crane cabs. Water stretched beyond two of the sides, the steel bones of the rig beneath the other two.
Mason whistled and swirled one arm in the air, his index finger to the sky. Four men broke position and jogged back to the center. She saw that one of them had a grenade launcher, and she shuddered, wondering if that kind of firearm could have caused some of the damage to the upper platform.
“All right, listen up!” Mason said. The men huddled. “High ground is secure. There's nowhere to go but down. We stagger movement and secure this place sector by sector.”
“I never thought I'd be hoping for some jihadies,” the one with the big gun said. “This is some weird shit, man.”
Mason shook his head. “Different shit, same day. In any case, you know the drill. No chances.”
“And what exactly were you told?” Kate asked.
Mason looked at her, his expression unreadable. “We have our mission, and you have yours. When we clean up the mess, you can decide how you want to report it. That is your job, right? Figuring out how to report this to the shareholders?”
Kate put one hand on her hip. “It's a little more complicated than that, thanks.”
“So is our job. And if you don't mind, we'd like to get to it.” He turned to AJ. “Only one stairwell down, is that right?”
AJ nodded. “That's right, it goes right to the main deck. There are three paths down from that point. The northwest end leads to the employee barracks and housing units, the southwest end to the storage tanks. Drilling operation is one level down from there. And the east stairwell goes to security and the generator levels. They all connect at the bottom where the boat deck is. That's a hike no matter which route you take.”
Mason nodded. “Yeah, that gels with the blueprints. You think more than four men are needed to secure the top deck though, huh?”
AJ looked at Dutch and then back. “Considering we don't know what we're dealing with, I'd say so.”
Mason grunted. A moment later, he jogged off, sending the four men ahead of him to the stairwell.
Kate turned and was surprised to see AJ looking hard up. “You all right?”
“Yeah. I guess I didn't think it would matter so much being here.”
“And it does?”
He shrugged. “She's my baby. I didn't build her, but it was my job to make sure she stayed safe.”
“It would have if you were still here, man,” Dutch said.
AJ spat, and Kate winced; it was a vulgar gesture. “Yeah, that's part of what pisses me off.”
Someone cursed below, and then Mason reemerged from the stairwell. “It's blocked from the other side. Onto Plan B.”
“There's no other way down,” AJ said.
Mason chuckled and slapped him on the arm. “That always was your problem old buddy: you don't think outside the box.”
The bigger motioned to his fire team. “Rappel lines. Here and here. Ready?”
The men nodded, drawing nylon rope from pouches on their vests. They were light and thin, each one containing a huge clamp at the end.
“Aren't you too heavy for that?” AJ asked, looking at the hairy guy who'd tackled him on the beach.
The man slapped on a clamp and flashed AJ his teeth. “Your mama,” he said, and hopped over.
It wasn't free fall, but it was a close thing. Each man dropped effortlessly, their feet bouncing against the side wall. They detached and fell the last three feet to the ground, facilely moving to cover. Mason followed, and it didn't look like his age slowed him down one bit.
Kate watched as the team scattered, setting up fire positions around the cargo containers. Their tactics were perfect, each man covering another, the whole unit moving in a wave across the deck. When they got halfway across, they held position, each man surveying the deck with the barrels of his gun.
“Excuse me,” Melvin said, pushing past Kate and Dutch. He was attaching his own rappel line to the railing.
“Just leaving us here, eh?” Dutch asked.
AJ's buddy from the beach, Nicholas, stepped through. “You'll be fine, old pal. Back in no time. Besides, Hal will be here.” He indicated the chopper behind them, where the pilot was smoking a cigarette.
“Nick,” AJ said, his tone serious. “What's down there?”
The boy's smile faded as he strapped on his harness. “You don't want to know.”
He and Melvin dropped out of sight. Kate thought that at the rate the team had been moving, they'd have the whole platform cleared in ten minutes. But it was over an hour before they heard back.
6
Reiner saw the island before his pilot did. He tapped Marten and pointed. “There it is. Hell of a good size.”
The pilot flipped a switch on the console. “Alpha team leader, come in. This is Delta. Target is in sight, over.”
Mason's voice shot back a moment later, permeated with static.
“Say again, team leader?”
This time, nothing but noise.
Marten sighed and looked at Reiner. “Your call.”
“Let's have a look.”
Marten tilted the rotor, and the helicopter began to move, revealing more of the land mass beneath them. Even at their present distance, Reiner could see more of the black tar tendrils twisting and coiling across the landscape. Their Valley Oil representative had thought it was some kind of organism that had emerged from underneath a tectonic plate. A Scotia Plate anomaly. But for all he knew, it could have been caused by a goddamned meteor. Bring up something like that in a room of military grunts, and everyone laughs at you, but he wondered if his teammates were laughing now.
“Now we don't have any notion that this new anomaly, whatever it is, had anything to do with what happened to the crew.” That's what their Valley Oil contact had said. He'd said it with a straight face too, like he really believed it. “For all we know, they could have gotten scared when it started showing up and ran off. You know how superstitious they are
down there. Or maybe its appearance caused some kind of dispute and they had a mutiny. Maybe they were hit by terrorists and its appearance is completely coincidental. We just don't know. But the fact is, the site is unsecured. We need it locked down, and we need everyone who's had contact with this new anomaly accounted for. We can send in our analysis teams once that happens, but until it's been declared safe and we get those workers away—”
“If we can find them,” Mason had cut in. “And if they're alive.”
The representative had smiled then. “Yes, of course, but let's not jump to conclusions. We just need you to assess the damage from on site, gather the workforce, and make sure no one else comes near the place. With communications down, this has turned into a bit of a situation.”
Reiner grimaced. A situation. Is that what you called it when you sent in nine men with enough firepower to level a small town? As to the three civilians who had come along for the ride, that was a dirty deal. Reiner had done too many things in his line of work to worry about dirty deals, though. Life was cruel.
The chopper closed in on the land mass. Marten had to increase their altitude; the center of the island was covered in hills and mountains. Mountains. Even the geography here was alien. The terrain of the island shifted from sand, to grass, to jutting rock, as if God couldn't make up His mind when He was trying to decide what kind of island to make.
“Ain't that something?” Marten asked.
Reiner reached into his pocket and pulled out a stick of gum. He offered Marten a piece, but the pilot shook his head. He pointed down to the buildings on shore. “You recognize 'em?”
The satellite photos had shown as much: concrete walls, metal bunkers, and rotted tarp that had all but disintegrated. Further up the coast, Reiner knew they could expect a group of warehouses and a small factory from an industry long dead. But they weren't going in that direction. They were going towards the... well, towards the source.
The executive said they had detected half a dozen fissures beneath the surface of the water. The largest of the underwater fissures, of course, was directly beneath The Aeschylus. The largest fissure of all—the source—as it had been called, was on the island. Reiner didn't know if that meant that this place was just the biggest, or if it had actually seeded the other spots, and he didn't care. Their job was to have a look, and that's what they were going to do.
The Aeschylus Page 9