“Dr. Yamamoto said—”
Liger cut him off by striding closer, fists clenched, until his seething eyes were mere centimeters from the other man’s face. “Everyone on this boat answers to me, and that includes your captain and you. If there is any change in course, you will immediately notify me, is that understood?”
The helmsman wasn’t intimidated, but he wasn’t in the mood for a confrontation. “Da.”
Liger knew it wouldn’t help matters if he continued to stay in the wheelhouse while the atmosphere with the crew had become toxic, so he walked out in a huff, making his way down the stairs before abruptly turning left and going deeper into the ship.
He moved briskly down the corridor, pushing past a crewmember carrying a bundle of supplies, nearly knocking the other man over as he made it down another flight of stairs and down a dimly lit corridor.
Stopping in front of the door in the middle of the passageway, he swung it open and stepped inside. The Queequeg’s dining hall had been converted into a sonar room, and there now stood a set of flat paneled monitors along the walls. Underneath the TV screens were tables outfitted with computer consoles. A bolted down workbench occupied the opposite side of the area, with numerous large metal and plastic cylinders strewn on the countertop.
Dr. Hideki Yamamoto sat in an office chair as he continued to look at the computer-enhanced images of the seafloor, the glare from the consoles reflecting off the surface of his thick glasses. He was so engrossed in what he was doing that he didn’t even notice Liger in the room.
Liger crossed his arms and sneered. He hated academics, and this little oriental was the epitome of them all. “Hey!”
Yamamoto uttered a surprised cry of alarm as he wheeled around and nearly fell out of his chair. His white button-down shirt was stained with sweat, and his matted hair and unkempt appearance were a sure sign of obsessive exhaustion.
Liger wanted to punch the other man in the nose, but he needed Yamamoto. I bet this Asiatic weakling can’t even swim. As soon as we catch that damned monster I’m going to throw this wanker overboard to see whether he can stay afloat or not.
Yamamoto was the last of the Typhon research team. The others had already been taken care of, but Liger was ordered to keep him around. Yamamoto had once been the most famous up and coming genetics researcher in Japan, a child prodigy who rocketed his way into a doctorate degree while still in his teens. The rest of the scientific community took notice of his published papers, and he had eagerly teamed up with Dr. Lauren Reeves in her groundbreaking research on human genome modification. After the scandal that sent Lauren into public exile, Yamamoto hadn’t been mentioned in the media, and so mostly escaped the legal and ethical firestorm that followed.
Not long after Kazimir had hired Lauren for Project Proteus, the disgraced genetics researcher insisted upon bringing Yamamoto back into her team. Lauren considered the younger man as her protégé, and felt that he was destined to carry on her pioneering inventions and discoveries.
In due time, the project grew in both size and ambition. Kazimir had been told not just of the commercial opportunities that were on the horizon due to all the amazing breakthroughs they had made, but of the potential military applications too. At Lauren’s suggestion, Yamamoto was tasked to head a new project built along similar lines, and Typhon was born.
“W-what do you want?” Yamamoto asked nervously.
“I got a call from our boss this morning,” Liger said. “Do you know what he told me?”
Yamamoto scratched the top of his head in confusion. “Ah… no?”
Liger took a few steps forward and grimaced. “He made a complaint. He asked why we haven’t caught this damned thing you’ve created yet!”
Yamamoto adjusted his glasses. “As you know, we lost the tracker on it, so now we have to find it first.”
“We’re just going around in bloody circles, how do you expect to find it doing that?”
Yamamoto glanced over his shoulder and pointed at the computer monitors. “I think I might have found a way and I am testing it. We are currently towing a sonar probe, and I am picking up some very significant information.”
“What kind of information?”
The young Japanese researcher had a thick accent, but his English was superb. “Let me explain. With our towed array sonar, we can pick up all sorts of sounds under the sea. The problem is that our kaiju has many relatives down there, and it is hard for us to find him amongst that group of animals.”
“You called it a kaiju, what the hell does that even mean?”
Yamamoto chuckled while nodding. “Just a term from the movies I loved as a boy. Kaiju means ‘strange beast’ in Japanese.”
Liger was not amused. “I don’t care what you call it, doc. That thing killed two of my divers already, and it’s loose. It could be swimming in the Atlantic by now.”
“I don’t think so,” Yamamoto said. “It is still trying to get its bearings straight, so it would want to stay in familiar territory for now.”
“How would you know what it thinks? Can you read its mind?”
“No, but I’ve carefully studied its behavior before and after the brain transplant,” Yamamoto said. “Animals and humans have a territorial instinct, I believe, so it will be compelled to stay within the locality. Of course, as it gains in confidence, then it may very well move on to other parts of the world’s oceans.”
“Then you’d better have a way to figure out how to find it, because we’re running out of time.”
The young researcher nodded. “I believe I do.” He pointed towards the console. “I have coded a new program into the sonar software that I think will detect it.”
Liger moved closer and stared at the wall-mounted screens. “How would it work?”
“Based on its recent behavior I may have found out something,” Yamamoto said. “It is highly intelligent, and is apparently hiding amongst swarms of shrimp.”
Liger could hardly believe it. “Are you kidding me? How could it be masking itself using those little animals? It’s the size of a whale.”
“Ah, but you are underestimating the power of the little snapping shrimp,” Yamamoto explained. “These small aquatic animals may not measure more than your little finger, but the noises they can make with their claws measures at over two hundred decibels, equal to that of a sperm whale’s sonar click. In fact their claws are so powerful they can stun fish that are bigger than them if they are close enough. Military submarines have a hard time navigating underwater when there are large groups of these shrimp in the area, for they interfere with their sonar systems.”
Liger clenched his jaw. He hated being lectured. “Alright, you’ve made your point. So how will you be tracking this monster of yours?”
“Since our kaiju was created along the same lines, then we locate the largest concentrations of snapping shrimp in the area with our towed sonar,” Yamamoto said confidently. “I have adjusted the readings so that once we find a large colony, I can then narrow the pings until we spot something big within the masses of shrimp, and we’ll have it.”
“That solves one problem,” Liger said. “But then there’s another. That monster of yours is bloody deadly, doc. How are we going to bring it back into the lab?”
“We poison it.”
“What? How?”
Yamamoto pointed towards the cylinders lying on the workbench. “A sodium cyanide mixture; fishermen from the Philippines use it all the time to catch reef fish for aquariums. The seawater breaks down the mix into ions, and the effect is similar to carbon monoxide poisoning in humans. We’ll just put enough out there to disable it, tow it with the submersible, then seal it back inside.”