Leviathan

In the deepest reach of the ocean the crew of an experimental submarine find something... and it finds them.

Leviathan

 

          Doctor Jack Runnel checked the luminescent screen of the chart in front of him again. The waving lines of the sea floor topography showed white on black on the back-lit screen. Two larger, distinctly straight lines intersected in the centre of the map, dividing a wide, long blank area into four. The Mariana Trench.
     Or Marianas, depending on who you asked. At 2,550 kilometres long and roughly 69 wide, the deep crescent scar in the earth was the deepest part of the earth’s ocean, its lowest point of nearly eleven thousand meters. So deep, it could easily fit Mount Everest with kilometres to spare. And they were going down, into it.
     From the forward main observation bay, the dark of the western Pacific Ocean seemed to shroud the vessel around him in shadow. Were it not for the internal running lights, Jack knew they would have been plunged into the deepest black, unable to see mere centimetres ahead.
     The forward viewport of the observation bay was a large hemispherical bubble of ultra-strong polymer, over five inches thick. It stood nearly as tall as he did, and from where he sat at his workstation before it, the ocean outside filled his view, seemingly about to rush in at him at any moment. Jack ran a gnarled hand over his greying hair and sighed, watching his reflection in the glass mimic him.
     He shivered slightly in the cold steel chair and pulled his fleece lined jacket closed, zipping it up hurriedly. They were still having problems with the heating system, damned it all. He understood the nature of the prototype design of the vessel, yet it seemed every bug and glitch they had experienced over the past week of test dives and operation checks had been aimed solely at delaying this, his ultimate goal. The final depth test.
     As the only scientist on-board concerned with things biological rather than mechanical, he’d tried to stay out of the way of the teams of specialist engineers monitoring and patching or reworking the great many of the new submarines systems, yet he still felt vexed every time a dive was interrupted by a non-critical system failure. But not this time. This time, on his final dive he would not let a simple heating malfunction rob him of his hard earned achievement. Not to mention that in a couple days, his grant would be up for review at the college, and without this deepest, final dive and the results he’d already hypothesized, he would have very little to show.
     With a sharp clang and a hiss, the bulkhead door behind him in the back of the cramped room opened to admit Lars, his German associate and his own personal maintenance liaison aboard. While his passage on the submersible was temporary and the owners and operators aimed to operate it commercially as a hire to scientists as himself, he was honoured to be their trial-run guinea pig. Especially if he got the results he wanted out of it.
     Lars crossed the short distance to the front of the observation bay and clambered into the paired seat next to Jack. The bulky German had a wide, unshaven jaw and spoke with a thick accent, as he did now.
     “Doktor, I am informed ze heatink will soon activate and ze final stages of our descent will commence.”
      Jack nodded eagerly to his comrade.
     “Yes, yes, very good. All this delay over heating! But now, the things we may see my friend. The things we will see!”
     The big German merely grinned at the excited doctor and settled in to watch the viewport and look over the charts suspended in front of them on the hinged screen. Jack felt less sheepish now he saw the European was also dressed warmly.
     There was a slight jolt and a tremor began to run through the steel decking beneath their feet. The engines both to the fore and aft had kicked in. They had begun their descent.
     The Helicoprion was an extremely new breed of submarine. Its ultra-reinforced seamless hull was made of titanium alloy designed by some of the world’s premier textiles scientists.
     Painted a stark white, from the outside the submersible appeared as a massive perfect ellipsoid, or oblate sphere.
     It had two decks, with the bubble of the observation bay protruding out underneath the sharp bulge of the bridge above. Four pod-like water turbines were mounted equidistantly on either side of the bow and the stern, each capable of rotating for individual omnidirectional movement. In short, the submarine was nothing short of an engineering and scientific marvel.

     In front of Jack and Lars, nothing much changed through their window into the abyss. The small gauge on the screen in front of them both read a steady decline of several meters per second at a current depth of eight thousand nine hundred meters.
     Around them, the descending vehicle gave no sign of the incredible pressures acting upon it. Indeed, the marvel of engineering in its design was that the more pressure exerted upon its frame, the more it would withstand in a cyclic re-distribution of force. Now and then there would be a distinct groan from deep inside the vessel, seemingly coming from its bones, surrounding them. At his worried glance, Lars reassured him that such noises were normal as the metal in the frame re-settled under the stresses. Jack remained sceptical.
     As they approached the nine thousand meter mark, the view beyond the window changed. A huge wall, an impossibly enormous cliff rose past and above them to their left as they descended below the abyssal plain that was its shelf. Now they could see its rocky texture some dozen meters distant, rising up past them rapidly as they descended.
     The small hand-held radio on Lars’ shoulder squawked, and he dutifully answered it in German, and then switched to English for Jacks benefit.
     “The Captain says in the next five minutes we will descend to your ‘site of interest’. The one we located yesterday with sonar drone, yes?”
     Again, Jack nodded eagerly.
     “The fissure, yes. I believe it to be a volcanic vent of some kind, perhaps with thermal currents. If my hypothesis is correct, there may even be a significant populace of biological life surrounding its environment, in the warmer waters. Hopefully…”
     He trailed off, his nerves finally starting to swell as he reached the final point of validation… or disappointment. He hadn’t voiced his other prediction, and in the reverent silence that followed he sat still, glued to the viewport. Biological life, he’d said. And something else. His Jack’s eyes flicked back to the thick, bisecting lines on the ocean chart. Triangulation lines.
     The sheer rock face rose adjacent to them for slow minutes as they waited in silence.
     Finally, after the tense silence in the observation bay, the tip of a long, deep fissure split the wall of the trench before them. It widened slowly after a dozen meters, and then quite unexpectedly, its width flared outwards, the edges widening and racing out of sight behind the submarine and extending away in front of it.
     After some time descending, the submersible halted with a hum of its engines. They’d stopped. Next to Jack, Lars’ radio squawked yet again. He spoke in rapid German then talked to the waiting biologist.
     “The captain says the cavern in the trench wall levels out about twenty meters down. He’s going to bring us about-face for your observation”
      Jack nodded and thanked the liaison.
     With more deep vibrations, the entire length of the sub pivoted on its nose, rotating its entire length so that it was now face-on with the yawning fissure that gaped open before them.
      Through the thick glass of the viewport, Jack squinted inquisitively. In the inky black of the even darker underwater cavern, there seemed to be a flurry in the shadows. Dim shapes barely perceived flickered through the permeating dark.
     “You can activated the undercarriage spot-beams for light” came Lars’ whisper at his side.
     Wordlessly thanking him, Jack reached forward to the steel arm of his chair and to the row of stud-like buttons fixed to its end. He pressed a round black one with the image of an outlined spotlight.
     Bright white beams lanced forth from somewhere underneath the viewport. Jack’s breath caught as the fissure was revealed.
     The space was vast, extending deep into the rock of the oceanic shelf. The water wavered with thermal mixing as the warmer current issued forth from the chasm and churned into the icy trench.
     They were closer to the rightmost wall, and through the murk on the edge of the spotlights beam Jack could see it was incredibly smooth but for a long curving crevice that ran from the middle of the cave right back into the rear where the passage curved off to the left and out of sight.
     And the chasm was alive.
     Euripterids, long scorpion-like anthropods scuttled through the water in small schools. Each was at least the size ofa man, their hardened shells glossy and thick around paddled tails and long, arachnid-like grasping arms and mandables.
     Massive Xenophyophores dotted the walls and floor of the void, the frilly blue coral structures shining luminescently in the bright glare.
     Strands of strangely coloured weeds, like rainbow fronds of kelp lashed the walls in vibrant hues of violet, orange and red.
     Barnacles the size of grapefruit whipped back into the protective cocoon of their shells in the sudden light.
     Other strange creatures, some unidentifiable, lurked in the depths. Ribbon-like eels edged in fluorescent blue. Giant angler-type fish with elongated bodies and bioluminescent spines. Stingray meters across, rippling silently across the silty floor.
     Finally Jack let out the breath he’d been holding tightly.
     “This… Lars, this isn’t possible. Some of these creatures… the ones I recognise… They can’t be here. It’s impossible. They must be positively ancient. I’m seeing species here from the Jurassic period, even before. Is that a trilobite?!” He exclaimed, pointing feverishly down at a distant shape.
      Sure enough, a group of five armoured and shelled arthopods were making their way slowly and deliberately across the floor of the great cavern, segmented carapace’s shuffling. Each was the size of a car.
     Jack spun to Lars.
     “Pass me the radio, I need to speak to the captain”
     Reluctantly, the man handed over the boxy black handset. Jack depressed the call button.
     “Captain? Captain this is Doctor Runnel. This find… This find will make everyone on board to the lowest bilgemate famous. This is unprecedented. I wonder, could you take the submarine forwards for a closer look? This is simply amazing, I must get clear pictures on all hullward cameras.”
     The reply was muted, but audible.
     “Of course Doctor, an unprecedented find, you say? I hope you will be making commendations to me and the crew then eh?”
      But Jack simply ignored the captain’s humour or didn’t hear it in his excitement. He began to activate several controls on the hinged screen in front of them, bringing up the display of the outer hull cameras. Shortly, the hum of the engines engaged and they slowly drifted forward, deep underneath the roof of the cave. Around them, the waters teemed with life as inquisitive swimmers circled the ship in sparkling schools.
     “Now where was it? Ah, here! Now for me to reveal to you, Lars, the real reason for my subaquatic journey.”
     The doctor mysteriously produced a small stick flash drive and inserted it into the side-panel of the suspended screen. Control tabs flicked into being and he used the screens touch-enabled surface to navigate. He spoke while he worked.
     “Four years ago, several sonar buoys in the western pacific ocean region captured what appeared to be an extremely high frequency seismic event. In an audial sense, this meant an extremely low frequency sonar pulse.”
     Lars simply sat and watched the animated man opposite him work and babble, amused.
     “But it wasn’t seismic. At least I don’t think so. I think due to the origin of the noise �" triangulated by me to this very position through the use of those very same buoys �" that the noise may very well be biological in origin. Something new. Or old. Something very, very large. Megafauna, my friend.”
     Jack slumped back into his steel chair, flush in the face. His tinkering with the screens controls complete, he prepared himself.
      “I’ve rigged up the very same noise to the external sonar sounders of the ship �" those installed to emit whale calls and the like. With any luck, playing the noise will attract whatever made the original. All we have to do, is… push play.” He reached forward and hit the small ‘play’ icon on the touchscreen.
     For a moment, nothing happened. Jack frowned.
     A deep, basal thundering emanated from the water around them. It heightened in pitch towards the end of the long note in its horrible octave to cut short in a sharp bellow not unlike a horn call.
     Then, there was utter silence.
     Every single specimen surrounding them in the water stopped, as if frozen in the exact same instant.
     The sound was repeated around them, this time magnified a thousand fold.
     The hull of the submarine shook violently as a cacophony of soundwaves crashed through it. Jack could feel the vibration in his skull, through the bones of his jaw and inside his head.
     The utterly deep note blared for what seemed like an entire minute. Then, without warning silence crashed back in upon them. Both men looked at each other, bewildered, lowering their hands from their ears.
     Jack looked back out of the viewport into the chasm once more.
     The curving line, the crevice running along the near wall of the cave was splitting.
     It divided cleanly in two, widening and opening. The two sides of the fold rose away from each other.
     A titanic eye, liquid black and gleaming in the light from the submersible glared directly at them. It dwarfed the fifty meter long boat by sheer magnitudes.
     The sound came again.
      It was awake.