KRONOS RISING: After 65 million years, the world's greatest predator is back.

by Max Hawthorne

  Willie shrugged. “I dunno. He’s tough, dat one, and he’s got a hard head too. I tink he’ll be fine. I worry more about us right now.”

  “What do you mean?” Amara said. She touched her bruised cheek and winced, then looked around to make sure they were alone.

  “I checked da ship’s status . . .”

  “And?”

  Willie hesitated. “Well, let’s just say dat I have an alacrity in-”

  “In sinking?” Amara gasped as she recognized the all-too-familiar quote. “We’re sinking? Are you serious?”

  “Yep, dat last hit was too much.” Willie looked grimly at her. “It’s takin a while because I closed all da flooded compartments, but we be goin down by da head, bit by bit.”

  “God . . . how long do we have?”

  “A coupla hours. Maybe tree or four, but dat’s about it. Unless it hits us again, in which case . . .”

  “Jesus.” She grabbed onto her chair’s armrests and sank slack-jawed into it, her overtaxed mind reeling from the news. She took a deep breath, holding it until she was forced to breathe. She felt lightheaded and nauseous. Despite the traumatic takeover of her ship, it never dawned on her she might lose the Harbinger permanently. She figured that, no matter what the outcome of Dean Harcourt’s manic quest for revenge, she would somehow end up getting the old whaler back. With the creature captured or dead, he’d have no use for it. The notion that her beloved vessel would soon be nothing but a reef for the region’s resident fish population was something she just couldn’t wrap her head around. It was preposterous. And yet, it was happening. She shifted awkwardly in her seat, the all-too-familiar reality of her aching hip helping her once more to focus. She turned back to Willie. “What should we do?”

  “I been tinking about dat . . .” Willie glanced up at his screen, checking the room and doorway before he continued. “Da way tings is goin, I don’t see dis bunch of killers helpin us. Fact is, dey probably don’t want witnesses . . .”

  Amara swallowed hard, nodded her agreement of his grim-but-accurate assessment of the situation. “Does Karl know how bad the damage is?”

  “No, and I don’t tink he will.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I turned off da damage control alarm system and dimmed da warning lights ta buy us time.”

  “Shit.” Amara’s pale eyes bulged wide. “Buy us time for what?”

  Willie’s voice became a whisper. “We gotta free Jake and get away, as soon as we can.”

  “How? They’re everywhere.”

  “Nah, dere’s not dat many of dem left,” he said. “And when dey go into da water, dere will be four less. When dey go under and get busy wit dat damn critter, dat’s when we make our move.”

  “On what? There’s nothing to escape on but the Sycophant.”

  “Exactly. Dere will be only two of dem left, and dat crazy senator, mon. We’ll take da Zodiac and run.”

  “Run from the Kronosaurus?” Amara shivered, her memory of the pliosaur’s speed as fresh as ever. “You’re crazy. It’ll be all over us before we get half a mile!”

  “No way.” Willie’s grin was huge. “It’ll be too damn busy eatin your stupid husband and his hired tugs.”

  Not sharing his optimism, Amara focused on the sonar screen, watching for the reemergence of the horror that continued to stalk them like something out of an R-rated monster movie.

  CRETACEOUS OCEAN

  65 MILLION YEARS AGO

  If the ensuing pandemonium of the lesser sea creatures fleeing the embers from the sky was great before, it was magnified tenfold by the sight of the great wave bearing down upon them. Turtles, mosasaurs, marine crocodiles, and plesiosaurs all swam for their lives, clawing and clambering over each other in their frenzied rush. Occasionally, two would collide, furiously tearing into one another and reddening the sea before sinking beneath the waves.

  Of all the great reptiles, only the four pliosaurs appeared unfazed by the approaching wall of water. Spread out in a skirmish line, the giant predators floated serenely atop thirty-foot seas. Their ages ranged from thirty to over a hundred. All had survived numerous gales at sea, with waves that often measured a hundred feet in height. Even though the one sweeping toward them now was at least three times that size, they stoically prepared to face it.

  With the wave literally looming over them, the female and the three males acted as one. Drawing huge breaths, they sounded, propelling themselves under the approaching avalanche with powerful strokes. Downward they plunged, diving deeper and deeper, with the current and water pressure escalating around them.

  Suddenly, they gravitated back and started to rise. All realized that the vacuum power at the base of the mountainous wave was too much for even their might to overcome. With their huge flippers straining, they managed to reach the surface, spouting dense cones of vapor as they did. The bird’s-eye view that greeted them was unmistakable. The four had breached the very top of the tsunami, with only fifty yards separating them from a four hundred-foot free-fall into its deadly trough.

  The power of the wave was unstoppable, its current irresistible. The pliosaurs had one choice. Turning in the same direction as the wall of water, they began to backstroke. Stroking furiously, the huge female assumed the lead, a hundred feet from the crest of the rapidly growing monster. The males doggedly followed her, their tenacious mating instincts rekindled by the seeming chase.

  Together, the pliosaurs prepared to ride out the tsunami.

  Five miles to the south, the caldera waited for them, its craggy mouth gaping wide like the maw of some impossible beast. Rising up from the seabed until it reached a height of over two thousand feet above sea level, the semi-dormant volcano had remained silent for a million years.

  Eons earlier, the mountain had erupted with a massive explosion that blew off its entire top and expelled over fifty cubic miles of magma into the surrounding seas and sky. With the majority of its magma reservoir depleted, the volcano’s structural support slowly gave way, caving in on itself and leaving behind a bowl-shaped circular depression over eight miles wide and ten thousand feet deep.

  A hot spring formed from tropical rains lay within the center of the caldera, its steaming waters superheated by the remaining magma reserves that lay barely twenty feet below the surface. The steam rose in billowing clouds, sending a white plume of smoke that spiraled up and out of the volcano’s crater-shaped mouth a mile into the air.

  As the tsunami approached the volcano, its already vast vertical height grew in direct proportion to the shallower water. Atop its crest, the pliosaurs found themselves riding atop a volatile mountain of seawater measuring a towering 2,500 feet in height and traveling at five hundred miles an hour. Worse, they were on a collision course with a jagged wall of solid stone.

  With their point of impact in clear view, the four pliosaurs turned to flee. They were paddling with all their might when an unexpected newcomer burst through the surface of the wave. One of the giant mosasaurs had survived the tsunami’s impact by traveling within the wave itself. Gasping for air, the fifty-eight foot long, twenty-ton sea lizard unwittingly rose up under the striped Kronosaurus bull, bowling the heavier predator over with the force of its rising.

  Surprised and already on edge, the upended pliosaur reacted instantly, locking its giant jaws onto the scale-covered rib cage of the equally astonished Tylosaurus. With a frightful hiss, the mosasaur twisted its serpentine body around and fastened its own deadly jaws onto the neck of the writhing Kronosaurus. Locked in a deadly embrace, and bereft of any stabilization, the two struggling titans slipped inexorably forward with the current. Tumbling over the crest of the wave, they plunged two thousand feet to their deaths.

  A second later, the tsunami smashed full-force into the side of the caldera. The impact defied imagination. Cubic mile after mile of seawater traveling at nearly the speed of sound exploded against the sides and over the top of the volcano with a concussive force that was heard a hundred miles away. So large
was the wave at the moment of impact that it enveloped two-thirds of the caldera, swamping it completely before continuing on. Huge sections of the volcano’s jagged walls, including giant boulders weighing a hundred tons, were smashed loose by the impact and washed away like grains of sand.

  As the wall of water came crashing down over the lip of the caldera, the pliosaurs swam for their lives. The wave dumped billions of gallons of seawater over the top of the mountain, filling its enormous, bowl-shaped depression in seconds. Everything swept up by the wave: rocks, trees, fish, and marine dinosaurs were all deposited inside the caldera in a single, devastating moment. Anything still alive faced being dashed against the bottom of the mountain or crushed by the relentless avalanche of water and debris that hammered down from above.

  The pliosaurs, swimming with every ounce of strength, managed to delay being swept over the top of the volcano by a precious second or so, saving them from being pulverized against bare rock. Their great bodies twisted as they fell, and the three came crashing down into water already three thousand feet deep and growing. Forced downward, they were held powerless beneath the surface and tossed like herring. Helpless, with their powerful lungs straining, the giant reptiles were battered and pounded on all sides by boulders and bodies alike.

  Seconds later, the three were ripped violently apart from each other and vanished into the swirling blackness of the raging maelstrom.

  In less than a minute it was over. The tsunami left the inundated caldera behind and continued on – its impact with the volcano of no consequence. With the ocean rapidly deepening past where the caldera’s slopes rose up from the surrounding seafloor, the great wave dropped deceptively down once more to the two-hundred foot height it was before. Gathering strength and speed, it prepared to hit the coastline. There, it would grow to unheard of proportion and travel a hundred or more miles inland, wreaking even more havoc and destruction upon an already battered and burning world.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  A mile away from the Harbinger and suspended over the vast expanse of the Blake Plateau, the creature cruised purposefully. It emitted a symphony of ratcheting sounds as it traveled, using its echolocation to scan the plankton-rich oceans ahead, and the foreboding depths below.

  Weary of smashing itself against the nearby ship, it had departed the area in search of less resilient prey. It wanted to vent its wrath on something that could provide the vast quantities of protein it required.

  As the marine reptile traveled, the pain of its injuries continued to exasperate it. It was ravenous, and the oceans before it were barren of large life forms. Finally, at the farthest range of its sensory field, it detected potential prey. It was the school of cetaceans it had sensed the previous night. They were many miles away, far beyond the range of its sound imaging, but it could still discern their distinctive clicks and squeals. Focused on gorging itself on whale meat and blubber, the pliosaur started toward its unsuspecting quarry.

  Suddenly it detected distinctive splashes. There were two, one considerably louder than the other. Their resounding displacement waves penetrated the creature’s tiny tympanum ear openings from across the water.

  They were coming from the ship.

  Forgetting the pod of whales, the pliosaur arced back in the direction of the sounds. The noises it heard were unmistakable. Moving forms had plunged into the sea surrounding the ironclad craft that had managed to resist its fiercest assaults.

  The creature’s sunken eyes narrowed. The listing ship and its infestation of defenseless bipeds were far closer than the fast moving group of warm-blooded cetaceans. If the tiny mammals were foolish enough to leave the safety of their vessel and enter its watery domain, their fates were sealed.

  With the seas rocketing past it boiling with the force of its passage, the pliosaur closed the distance between itself and the dying Harbinger.

  Eurypterid I was ready to fight. Von Freiling and Barnes had taken up a defensive posture a hundred yards from the Harbinger’s slowly rolling hull. Hovering in place with their weapons armed and ready, they waited and watched as Stubbs and Barker’s attack sled entered the water with a loud splash.

  Von Freiling sat back for a moment, lounging in the mini-sub’s rear seat. He reached up, whistling heavy metal as he adjusted his helmet and visor. The sleek vessel’s sonar screen and weapon’s system were laid out before him like a high-tech chessboard. His position overlooked that of Barnes, who was seated directly in front and below him. His co-pilot was eager to get started, his chest leaning against his shock-absorbing sternum pad, his arms inserted into the pair of padded openings that controlled the Eurypterid’s big steel manipulators.

  Von Freiling gazed through his helmet’s lighted visor at the sub’s high resolution sonar screen and the three black and white monitor screens that served as windows for their port, starboard and aft. He scanned for any trace of their gargantuan adversary.

  “How’s the view down there?” he called to Barnes.

  Up front, his copilot’s face was pressed against the two foot-thick Lexan oval that made up their observation bubble. “Nothing to see yet,” Barnes said as they glided along. His head swiveled back and forth as he scanned the blue void before him. “Thank God the tide’s dying down. At least visibility’s improving. I’d hate to be on the hunt for this thing with clouds of seaweed everywhere.”

  Von Freiling nodded, then clicked on his radio link. “Hey Stubbs, how’s it going?”

  “So far so good,” his second-in-command replied, the gurgling sound of swirling air bubbles partially obscuring his deep voice. “There’s nothing to see so far. We’re almost in position. You guys can get ready to pull your little disappearing act.”

  “Roger that,” Von Freiling said. He took one last look at his screens before starting to maneuver Eurypterid I. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of the tiny sled and its two riders, hovering far off in the gloom.

  Von Freiling’s calloused hands gripped the controls of his expensive craft, gradually increasing their speed. He felt the mercurial rush of water sweep unchecked over their swept-wing hull and reveled in the feel of his fast-moving submersible. The wedge-shaped craft sliced through the water like an F-35 does the air, and maneuvered with almost as much ease. It was the first time he’d been in a position to field test his older prototype outside their restrictive research and design environment, and the big adventurer found himself combating an overwhelming urge to take Eurypterid I on a high speed run, just to see what it could do .

  He maintained twelve knots, heading directly toward the Cutlass. Its black, five-hundred meter spire spiked up out of the darkness like the neck of some vast sea serpent, its ragged head nearly piercing the surface.

  “Hey Willie, this is Karl, can you read me?”

  “Dis is Willie, I read ya.”

  “How’s everything on board?” A drop of sweat poured into his eye and he blinked annoyingly before scanning his port and starboard monitors.

  “Every ting’s cool, mon,” Willie radioed. “All tings considered. I got Senator Harcourt watchin.”

  “Good. Where’s Stitches?”

  “He’s up on deck. Last I saw, he was checkin dat gear you guys left in da radar room.”

  “Guess that’s about all he’s good for. We’re going to go slink off to our ambush point. Unless you spot something definitive on sonar, maintain radio silence. I don’t want this thing knowing we’re here.”

  “Dat’s a ten four,” Willie crackled back. “Harbinger out.”

  Von Freiling adjusted the squelch button on his headset, then called to Barnes. “Alright, I’m going to take her around. Be ready, in case we have an unexpected surprise waiting for us.”

  Barnes grunted and leaned close to the observation window, while readying his grip on the arm units that brought Eurypterid I’s powerful steel pincers to life.

  Von Freiling decelerated, maneuvering the little sub at a forty-five degree angle. He made a cautious pass around a one hundred and
fifty-foot thick section of the Cutlass. Despite the fact that the tide was starting to die down, the deepwater crevasse generated a frightful current, one that swirled up and around the jagged spire with enough force to move a submarine a hundred times the Eurypterid’s size. It made the prospect of maintaining their position difficult.

  “Okay, Barnes,” Von Freiling breathed. “Give me partial on the reverse thrusters. I’m gonna keep her right here.”

  “You got it boss.” He flipped a pair of switches. “She’s all yours.”

  Glancing over at his monitors, the merc’s leader pulled back on his control lever, adjusting their position until they were almost completely concealed behind the Cutlass. With a nail-biting effort, he managed to remain there, his iron hands gingerly shifting the streamlined craft’s position as he compensated for the ongoing buffeting. He pushed a button, killing the external lights.

  To an outside observer, the darkened submersible was practically invisible, peeking out from its concealing wall of rock like a cat lying in wait for a mouse. Three hundred yards away, and less than a hundred yards from the Harbinger’s sheltering hull, the attack sled and its riders prepared to become bait for the trap. Neither they nor the operators of the mini-sub were aware of the monstrous shape that rose steadily up from the nearby abyss, unseen and undetected as it approached Eurypterid I from the rear.

  Back onboard the Harbinger, Amara Takagi and Willie Daniels sat rigidly upright, their pensive eyes tracking every movement on their underwater monitoring equipment. Dean Harcourt and Vladimir Markov peered silently over their shoulders.

  “Can you see them, Willie?” Amara leaned her elbows on the desk in front of her and stared at the monitors.

  Unnoticed across the room, the ship’s remote system station alarm continued to blink, its dusty orb flashing faster as the damaged vessel’s forward compartments continued to fill with seawater.