Chapter No. 21 Demonic Locusts

Captain Stubens had just settled down in his bunk to read when his intercom buzzed. He allowed it to make annoying noises for a few seconds before he punched the talk button. "Yes?"

Carl's voice had a hint of stress. "Captain, we have a contact at fourteen thousand meters. Bearing: two zero seven. It appears to be paralleling us."

"What is it?"

"My guess is that it's a Russian SSN, probably an Akula class."

Silence for several seconds.

"Captain?"

"I'll be right up."

Carl could sense disgust in his captain's voice. He's not surprised. They had been through quite enough submarine warfare. The Nautilus wasn't designed for it, and they weren't getting paid for combat duty. But, on the other hand, survival requires extreme effort.

Stubens wasted no time in making it to the control room. He popped out of the hatch and hurried to Henry's navigational station. "How do you know it's a Russian SSN?"

"It has a very quiet signature," Henry said, pointing at the waveforms on a screen. "See this blip here. The main shaft noise makes a blunt head on the primary wave. Most subs' are sharper, but the Akula class subs are good--better than ours."

Stubens rubbed the side of his face. "Hmm." He turned to pace, but he didn't move. "Maybe they think we're an American boomer."

"If they do," Carl said, "they're idiots. Our signature doesn't match up to any American ballistic missile sub."

"Maybe they are idiots," Henry said.

"I don't know about that," Stubens said. "But what I can't understand is why there's so much activity out here in this big ocean. You'd think we were on the Santa Monica freeway."

Carl and Henry exchanged glances. Was their Captain becoming unglued?

Their Captain paced back and forth a few times before he spoke. "Let's see how interested they are." He turned to Carl. "Take us down to three hundred meters. Eight degrees bubble."

Carl moved the control joystick forward and adjusted a few trim controls. The sub tilted down. "Eight degrees down bubble."

After several minutes he reported: "Depth at three hundred meters."

"Hard right rudder."

"Hard right rudder," Carl repeated as he moved the joystick to the right. The sub leaned into the turn.

Stubens placed his hand on Henry's shoulder. "Any change in the SSN?"

"Contact-one is now moving lower with us. They've come to course zero eight five. Range is now nine thousand meters."

Stubens' eyes widened. "Contact-one? You have more than one sonar contact?"

"Yes sir. Contact-two is at bearing: zero-seven-four. Range is twelve thousand meters."

"What is it?"

"It's probably an American SSN, Sir. The main shaft blip is sharper--and larger."

The Captain exhaled loudly. "We are on the goddamn Santa Monica freeway. What the hell's going on here?"

"Maybe they're shadowing the Russian," Henry said.

"Maybe the Russian has mistaken us for the American SSN," Carl said.

Stubens wasn't convinced. "I find that hard to believe. We're not a military vessel. Our systems are not all that quiet. Surely, they must hear the difference."

"Maybe they do know who we are."

The Captain's scowl deepened. "Take us down below the thermoclime layer. Increase speed to full"

Carl moved the joystick forward. "Ten degrees down bubble. Increasing speed to twenty five knots."

The water in the holding tank sloshed over the observation ledge, thoroughly wetting Eric's trousers. He held tightly to the railing to keep from pitching headlong into the water.

"Why are we diving so steeply?"

"I don't know," Margaret said from the edge of the tank. "But it's upsetting the creatures." Her clothing totally soaked, she held on to a section of railing that was under water.

The upset creatures were swimming around in circles at a high rate of speed, adding more froth to the already churning water.

"I don't know about them, but it's definitely upsetting me," Eric said, straining to maintain his grip. "I hope they're not going to shoot more torpedoes at us."

"Why don't you go up to the control room and tell the Captain that the creatures are in jeopardy from his maneuvers."

Eric glanced at her and then at the creatures' frothing wakes. "Yes, maybe I should."

He hand gripped along the railing until he arrived at the hatch. He had to make a lunge toward the door, grabbing the hatch wheel and turning it while struggling to maintain his footing.

Making his way up the passageway and then up a narrow ladder to the control room consumed fifteen minutes. By the time he made it to the control room hatch, the Nautilus had already leveled off.

Good timing.

"What is it?" the captain asked him.

"The creatures are not reacting favorably to the sub's movements. If they get out of control, we may lose them."

"That may be irrelevant. We're being stalked by two attack submarines."

Eric's right eyebrow rose. "Two?"

"Yes. A Russian and an American."

"Why are they picking on us?"

"Look, Hauptman. The answer is down there in the holding tank." The Captain pointed down.

Eric stared at him for several seconds before he stroked his beard. "If they're interested in the creatures, I doubt that they'll destroy us. They're just trying to scare us into surfacing."

"I hope you're right, but I can't take any chances. Maybe they--whoever they are--don't want us to have these creatures. Maybe they figure that it would be easier to destroy us here and now rather than risk having their existence made public."

"If that's true why haven't they destroyed us already. They certainly have the capability."

"Yes they do. But, we have certain advantages over them; we can dive deeper. That's what we're presently doing. If we remain quiet they'll lose contact and we can be on our way."

Eric lowered his eyes. "Well, if we're not tilting, at least the creatures won't be disturbed."

The captain nodded.

Eric left the control room and made his way back to the holding tank. He found his wife sitting on the edge of the access ledge observing the creatures.

"How are they?"

She looked up at him briefly. "They've calmed down, but they're still edgy."

Eric sat down next to her. "Stubens said that we're not going to be moving for a while."

"Good." She looked into his eyes. "What was the wild ride all about?"

"Stubens said that we're being followed by two attack subs: an American and a Russian."

"Russian? What the hell do they want?"

"Same thing the U.S. Navy wants."

She shook her head. "They're all crazy. These creatures are intelligent beings. To make them slaves would be a crime against nature."

Eric guffawed. "You know that and I know that, but I doubt that it ever crossed their minds."

His harshly spoken words caused the creatures to stop their circling momentarily. Both Eric and his wife riveted their attention on them.

"We had better be quiet," Margaret said in a whisper. "We're disturbing them."

"Maybe we should leave them alone."

Margaret looked at her husband for a few seconds and then got up. "Yes. I agree."

Stubens hovered over Carl's shoulder to get a better view of the main instruments. "Let's see if they're still around. Get under way at one-third. Remain under the thermal layer as long as you can." He turned to Henry. "Don't use active pinging. We don't want to give our position away. Deploy the towed array out at full extension."

Henry activated the main passive sonar. A receiving hydrophone began playing out from the starboard horizontal stabilizer on a long cable. With the hydrophone over six hundred meters away, interference from the noise of the Nautilus was minimized.

He adjusted the main view screen to display a detailed infrared image of the ocean depth directly ahead.

After several minutes, Henry turned. "I'm not picking anything up on the array."

"Good," the Captain said. "Bring her up to two-thirds."

Carl moved the main throttle forward. "Increasing speed to twenty knots."

Henry turned around again. "Captain, we will penetrate above the Thermoclime layer in ten minutes."

"Look smart," Stubens said. "They could be right above us." His face had a contemplative expression, but it suddenly brightened with an idea. "Wait. Let's assume that they are above us. What would they expect us to do?"

Henry answered the rhetorical question. "They must know that we're trying to head back to the Institute."

"Right. So, let's head in the opposite direction."

"That would be one nine five," Henry said.

"Change course, but do it slowly. A nice lazy circle."

"Changing course to one nine five," Carl said. "A nice lazy circle."

"How are we going to get back to the Institute?" Henry asked.

Stubens smiled. "I'll figure that out later. Right now, I just want to get us out from under those two bandits."

###

Eric leaned over the edge of his bunk so that he could check out his wife in the bunk below.

Now, where did she go? Yeah, right. As if I didn't know.

He carefully climbed down, hoping the sub didn't tilt as he was making his way to a solid footing. Quickly pulling his Reeboks on and wrapping himself in a robe, he made his way to the holding tank.

As he had expected, he found his wife sitting on the tank ledge watching the creatures.

"Can't get enough?"

She looked up at him and then pointed at the three creatures perched on the tank ledge at the far end. "They're eating one of George's Wallebacki sea lions."

Eric winced. "Oh, shit. Old George is going to be madder than a wet hen."

"He'll get over it."

Eric saw a reflection from a metallic object. "What the hell is . . . is that one using a knife?"

"Yes it is."

"Where'd it get the knife?"

"My guess is that it's from the . . . whoever that was in the cavern."

Eric's eyebrows rose. "Oh, oh. We've introduced something into their culture that has no business being there."

"We," she bellowed, "didn't do anything. It was the idiot who tried to capture them--and failed."

"Was he doing anything different than we are?"

Her brow wrinkled. "We're not trying to enslave them. They came to us by choice."

He could see that she was getting hot. "I know. I just hope that the world will not judge our motives."

Margaret was not concerned, at least on the surface. "We'll just have to wait and see, but I'm not going to worry about it. This is the greatest opportunity we'll ever have to find a new genus. It's equivalent to an astronomer finding a new planet. We can't allow idiots out there to deter us."

"I agree, Love. I just hope we can survive this great discovery of ours."

"If we don't," she said with somber tones, "no one will even know about these creatures--except the military. Idiots!"

"More reason to expose their existence to the world. The light of day is the only power we hold over these military idiots."

She bowed her head. "I just hope we can tell the world."

"Amen to that."

The sounds of lapping water soothed both scientists for several minutes before Margaret turned briefly to her husband. "This is very strange."

"What's strange," her husband asked without turning.

"They're eating the seal by cutting thin strips of flesh instead of just biting into it like other carnivores."

"You're right. They look like a family on a casual picnic instead of predators at a feeding frenzy."

Margaret slicked her hair back. "They have sharp incisor teeth. I wonder why they don't use them like . . ."

"Maybe it's a sign of intelligence."

"Could be," Margaret said. "They don't really act like carnivores. They seem civilized."

Eric chuckled. "A civilized predator; what a concept."

Margaret frowned. "That's what humans are supposed to be. Maybe these creatures are better behaved than humans."

"Indeed."