Cate felt the warm water return as they passed out of the freezing current, and Orca rose to its proper investigation depth. She resumed her somnambulant count once again. Thirteen hundred and twenty-five, thirteen hundred and twenty-six…
Cate felt the slight touch of a pressure wave push at her side, and momentarily create more drag on Alex’s body as he lurched on her back. A tingle raced up her spine — other than the vortices, there were no currents down here — something in the darkness had just moved past them. From far out behind them there came the sound of thump and then a grinding, metallic crunch that made her flinch. At first she struggled to understand what it was she could be hearing, but then knew it could be only one thing — the shell of the probe. The capsule would have been still floating on the surface, due to the pocket of air trapped inside its rear. It was a bigger physical signature than they were, and it was being destroyed, no, she thought, attacked.
Shit, how much farther? she wondered, just as the sound of the attacks grew louder, and then ceased. That meant whatever was occupying itself with the probe’s shell had either sunk it or had lost interest, and might be now on the lookout for something else — something more palatable. She began to kick her legs, hoping the minuscule amount of extra thrust would help in getting them further away from what was going on, maybe only a half mile to their rear.
She looked back over her shoulder — nothing but darkness and the limp form of Alex. She cursed him, the big tough soldier, now little more than dead weight. You bastard. She jerked one arm back, striking him in the back of the head. Big fucking help you turned out to be.
Would she cut him free if they were attacked? She’d like to think she wouldn’t, but it might not be in her control. And besides, if it came down to both of them dying or just Alex, then she’d vote for life every time. Sorry buddy, but for all I know you could be a braindead beanbag anyway.
She turned back to Orca, kicking hard now, and biting down on her breathing tube. Her neck and scalp tingled; the darkness surrounding her was impenetrable, but that was only to her. She knew something was out there now, and could feel the huge presence in the water close by.
She kicked harder, adrenalin giving her a burst of energy. Her breathing was becoming ragged, and she knew she was burning up her oxygen, but wasn’t able to help it.
Fourteen hundred and sixty, one hundred and sixteen, two hundred… she couldn’t focus, and whimpered around her breathing tube. Once again, she felt the gentle push of water against her, first from one side, and then seconds later from the other — they were being circled by something very large and very fast. For all she knew, it was close enough now for her to reach out and touch.
What are you? her mind screamed. She couldn’t help thinking back to the image of the huge eye she had seen on her screen all those years ago. It had baffled her and most of her marine specialist colleagues. Now, she would find out.
Orca powered on, and Cate and Alex were dragged along with it. She knew that in the control room miles above them, the instruments would be screaming at Bentley, Schmidt, Timms, and Sulley, and they might be whooping with excitement as the sensors told them of the approaching behemoth. Maybe by now they had swapped visuals and moved to either thermal or light enhanced to try and pick up the thing’s silhouette.
Cate concentrated, trying to pierce the darkness. Would the thing see them as intruder or prey? Would it matter to the outcome? No, she thought. To whatever was out there, there was only one question: would they be edible?
Orca’s light was a beacon to it — she needed a distraction. Cate eased a hand down to a pouch at her waist and drew forth a flare that she then jammed against her thigh and pushed out to the side to let go. It sank slowly, and she turned to watch it fall away into the void as Orca gently pulled her and Alex slowly away from it.
The ball of glowing red light continued to sink, illuminating and scattering tiny creatures as it dropped lower and lower into the darkness. Twenty feet, thirty, fifty. Once again, Cate couldn’t help feeling like she was floating in space, but this time, her tiny ship was under attack from some giant alien beast. The human side of her didn’t want to know what was out there, but Cate Canning, PhD in evolutionary biology, and the nosy scientist, desperately wanted to catch a glimpse of the creature. It was why she had bullied Alex into bringing her along.
The tiny red halo of flaring light sunk lower, and lower, two hundred feet down and behind them now. Cate had to crane her neck to see it. And then, a feeling like an electric shock passed through her body — there it was. The leviathan moved past the light, its hide painted a hellish red by the flare. It came again, and this time a hubcap-sized eye swiveled to stare briefly at the light, before the creature glided on.
There was an unmistakable, primordial sensation that all humans experienced when they were suddenly in the proximity of a large predator. Cate felt it now, her bladder swelling, making her wanting to urinate, her heartbeat racing, and a swoony, light-headedness overcoming her. It was like when the body was going into shock, it automatically pulled the blood away from the extremities and brain into the torso. It did this in preparation for severe trauma and loss of limb.
Deep down, the massive creature passed underneath the flare. Four massive paddle-like flippers, and striped, like a tiger, she thought, as a surge of adrenalin ran through her. Probably the coloring was to make the predator even less visible to anything on the surface by creating a ripple effect. It was hard to judge its exact size from the distance, and in the dark water, but measuring it against the dot of red light that had just been in her hand, she guessed it was close to sixty feet in length.
A pliosaur, she guessed, but a goddamn big one. The massive marine creature swam in the ancient Jurassic-era oceans of 150 million years ago. But to be this size, the thing must have been a species that had simply been labeled Predator X, until it was finally classed as a member of the Pliosaur family only a few years back.
Cate felt her heart rate kick up. The creature had a head twice the size of a T-rex. She stopped moving. If that’s what it is, she thought, then they’d be lucky to make it much further even if they were in a speedboat.
The creature vanished again, and Cate held her breath, waiting and watching, and then there came a gentle push of water against her body and Orca was eased offcenter, its fins angling to put it back on course.
How long had they been traveling under the water — fifteen minutes, twenty, more? Surely they were coming close to their next objective. She tried to remember the configuration of the course she had plotted. The launch, then midway they would stop and scan, and then they would approach a shoreline and breach to capture some surface readings and images. They must be close. Wherever they were by now, Cate knew time was up.
If they were to survive, she needed a change of plan, and at present they were vulnerable from every direction — she could at least reduce that by one. She tried to release her grip on the rear strut, but her fingers were locked tight. Fear had caused the muscles to seize up.
Frustration and fear surged within her as, stretched out like she was, her belly and groin tingled as she felt how exposed the soft parts of her body were to the giant leviathan below. Cate bit down hard on the rubber mouthpiece and screamed into the breather, commanding, cursing, and then pleading with her hand to let go.