Deep Dive

Down, down, down. The DSV Kelpie had been descending for nearly four hours into the Challenger Deep.

A year prior a massive submarine earthquake originated from the Challenger Deep. The earthquake wreaked havoc on the surrounding islands, but the Philippians suffered the most damage. Shortly after the earthquake sonar readings of the Challenger Deep showed that the Challenger Deep had grown significantly in depth. This happened in the central basin, and if sonar readings were correct it showed the new depth at just under forty thousand feet.

Cho and Paul patiently watched the inky black of nothingness go by as Azriel calmly piloted the Kelpie further into the depths. For the first fifteen minutes, Paul had asked, “are we there yet,” once every minute. The joke had quickly lost its charm, and it was about an hour afterward before anyone said anything else on the long awkward journey down.

The descent, which the three had initially viewed with exploratory optimism, slowly began to develop an anxious air the deeper they went. Every once in a while, the vessel would give a mild shudder, giving the impression that something was odd with the propellers, but it would quickly end and the mission would continue after determining that there was no structural problem with the Kelpie.

Azriel announced when they came tot the previous maximum depth of the Challenger Deep. Both Cho and Paul became glued to the viewports as their descent into the unknown truly began. Excitement and trepidation flooded the Kelpie as the three continued dropping into the dark. Azriel kept a close eye on the passive sonar while Cho and Paul strained their eyes to see anything in the void. Then, two hundred feet from the bottom, Azriel swore.

Enamored though they were, Cho and Paul were not so distracted to not notice Azriel’s profanity, or speculate wildly on what it might mean. Azriel explained, showing the display for the passive sonar. It appeared that the new bottom of the Challenger Deep might not be the new bottom, but the top of a spire that formed at the new perceived bottom.

“Its like a mountain ridge with a gap on either side,” Azriel explained. “Sonar read the top of the ridge as the new floor of the Deep, but it seems to progress both down and to the sides for a long way.”

“It could be a cave system that was exposed during the earthquake” Cho exclaimed.

“How far is, ‘a long way?’” Paul probed.

“That’s hard to tell,” Azriel began to explain. “sound is being bounced around, so it is difficult to get a clean reading. Potentially thousands of feet down and in either direction.”

Cho and Paul spent a few moments studying the passive sonar display.

“In theory the Kelpie is rated to depths of forty-five thousand feet.” Paul said.

“I’d rather not test that theory,” Cho replied, to which Azriel plainly nodded in agreement.

“Then we can at least go down to the top of the new mountain ridge and look around.” There was no disagreement, and they continued down towards the precipice. When they got within fifty feet of the ridge there was a gentle and audible bump from the port side of the Kelpie.

“The hell was that?” Cho whispered. Paul groped for the control board and turned on one of the outside lights. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness contrasting the darkness of the depths. The water had a silty quality to it, like something had stirred up the sand and sentiment of the ocean floor. At first, they feared that there had been some kind of underwater landslide, and that they might be buried underneath several tons of sand and rock. They waited, but there was no shower of stone upon the Kelpie.

“I know we just got here,” Paul broke the silence, “but I am suddenly feeling very claustrophobic and would like to head back to the surface now. Neither Cho nor Azriel disagreed, and Azriel gently began the process to empty the ballast and raise the Kelpie. Before they could reach their maximum ascent speed of two and a half knots, the Kelpie came to a jarring stop. All three men sat, silently, as the Kelpie continued to gently try to ascend, and made no progress.

“Let’s stay calm,” Azriel said while reaching for the panel with the light controls. “We should conserve power until we figure out what is going on,” and then he turned off the exterior lights.

The iridescent glow from the exterior lights dimmed, but it did not disappear entirely.

“Cho, what is that?” Paul was the only one to speak, though all three were looking out of the viewport. Outside there was a mass of lights, orange and green, moving and pulsating around the Kelpie.

“Azriel, stop the ascent,” Cho breathed. Azriel moved very slowly to the controls, and filled the ballast tanks to neutralize the buoyancy.

The lights continued to move, though their movement was slower. If any of the three men had to guess, they would say that they appeared calmer.

“How much elevation did we gain before we stopped?”

“We got up to one hundred-fifty feet from the ridgeline” Azriel answered.

Paul took a moment to break his gaze from the viewports and started digging through the one bag he was afforded on the trip. From it he withdrew a camera.

Azriel looked at Paul with concern. “What are you doing?”

“Is that a rhetorical question? I’m getting video evidence of this.”

“We have cameras on the outside of the Kelpie for that!” Cho hissed.

“Why are you so upset,” Paul started to ask while lifted his camera up to the viewport, “about me getting my camera?”

There was an audible click and a strobe of light as the camera’s flash went off, and the lights in the water very noticeably tensed then stilled.

“If we get out of this alive I swear I’m going to feed that camera to a wood chipper.” Azriel breathed through clenched teeth.

Not ten seconds had passed before the lights started vanishing with a cascading effect. When the last light in the depths disappeared, the only remaining luminescence was from the control monitors in the Kelpie. There was a gentle rumble as massive amounts of water outside of the Kelpie was displaced, then the Kelpie was turned with a sudden lurch. When the Kelpie stopped the starboard viewport was encompassed by a different kind of light. This light was a dim, reflective, green.

The angle of the dim green light shifted and twitched noticeably in the viewport. “That… that’s an eye.” Paul squeaked.

“Its massive.” Cho was in awe. “We’re just seeing the pupil and it is completely encompassing the view.” Cho slowly approached the view port and tried to get a better angle to view the entirety of whatever was with them in the depths. “I can’t see any other part of the eye. The pupil has to be at least four meters. Whatever it is, it is massive…”

“That’s fascinating and all,” Azriel interrupted, “but what are we going to do?”

“What can we do? Whatever it is has the Kelpie restrained and judging from how it moved us around to get a better look, it could easily destroy the Kelpie.”

Then, as quickly as it had taken up the complete view of the viewport, the eye disappeared.

“Where did it go?” Paul croaked.

With a perceivable tug, the Kelpie started moving, downward.

“There’s got to be something we can do!” Azriel yelled.

“The lights!” Paul scrambled to the control panel.

“The lights didn’t do anything before.” Cho exclaimed as he kept his eyes glued to a viewport.

“That was one exterior light, the Kelpie has 14, four of them articulate.” Paul switched on all the exterior lights, one after the other, and the ocean deep illuminated violently. The Kelpie’s descent stopped, and vibrations displaced water as the enormous creature thrashed about churned the Kelpie upwards.

“Ascending now!” Azriel yelled while emptying the ballast tanks again. “You two man the aimable lights!”

It wasn’t long before the Kelpie had reached an ascent speed of two and a half knots. “Can’t this thing go any faster?” Paul whined.

Azriel adjusted the direction of the turbines and gave it full throttle. “About five knots is the best we can do, but that’ll suck up our batteries.”

A low growling screech echoed from beneath them.

“That didn’t sound happy.” Cho said while moving two of the lights around.

“We need to know where that thing is if we’re going to use these lights effectively,” Paul pointed out. “Why didn’t that think show up on the sonar?”

“We were using passive sonar, it was probably on part of the sea floor and didn’t show up.” Azriel explained.

“Well I don’t think it’s on the sea floor anymore. Can you ping it with active sonar so we can get an idea where it is?”

No sooner than Paul had asked, Azriel triggered a ping.

“Holy shit…” Azriel muttered. “Port side, down forty degrees!”

Paul angled his lights down, from the viewport he saw a portion of an enormous face that looked oddly like a portion of an angler fish. The face turned away sharply and sank back into the depths.

“Jesus Christ, if we get out of this I’m never going on the ocean again!”

“Keep up those pings,” Cho ordered, “every ten seconds.”

“The rate that we’re pushing everything we will lose power at about five thousand feed depth.” Azriel triggered another ping. “Aft, eighty-five degrees down!” Cho angled one of his lights down. The creature was out of his range of sight from his viewport, but the low grown from the creature suggested he had caught it in the lights.

“How will we lose power?” Paul asked. “The batteries on this should be good for eighteen hours, and should have life support backups for up to ninety-six.”

Azriel triggered another ping. “Starboard, down thirty degrees!” Cho angled his forward light. “The Kelpie wasn’t designed to put this much stress on the power supplies. We’re trying to pilot this thing like it’s a sports car while running every other power-hungry system at maximum capacity.” He triggered another ping. “I don’t have anything on active sonar.”

“Do you think it gave up? Paul asked.

“Maybe, keep pinging though, and turn off the lights to conserve power. We can turn them back on if we need to.” Cho advised.

“What is the range on the active sonar?”

“The readout goes all the way to the ocean floor,” Azriel answered, “but the display only tracks out to about half a kilometer.” Azriel triggered another ping. “Still clear.”

“Did the sonar pick up how big it was?” Cho asked.

“It is hard to tell, but I’d guess at least five hundred-fifty feet long.”

“Five hundred-fifty feet long?” Paul was obviously shocked.

“At least,” Azriel triggered another ping. “Still clear. It is hard to tell on the sonar display, but it almost looked like it has a mass of tentacles and a massive head.”

“The computer recorded the reading, right?”

“It should have.” Azriel triggered another ping. “Still clear. We should also have the exterior cameras, so if we make it back to the surface we should have some evidence.”

“It should not be able to follow us too far up, at least not at the rate we’re ascending.” Cho interjected. “If it goes up too far too quickly, the pressure change should kill it.”

Azriel triggered another ping. “Shit! It’s directly above us, three-hundred fifty-five meters!”

“Stop our ascent!” Cho hissed. “Is it approaching?”

“It’s hard to tell without pinging again, but it doesn’t appear to be.”

“What is it doing?”

“It’s waiting, like an ambush predator.” Cho guessed.

“That’s not like an ambush predator, it is an ambush predator.”

“Any ideas?” Azriel asked. “The articulating lights aren’t designed to point up very far.”

“The only options I see are that we can stay here and try to wait it out, or we can try to move in any direction to the side and then continue going up.”

“Something that massive could wait for weeks,” Cho pointed out, “if not longer. We’re not going to wait it out.”

“To the side we go.” Azriel gently repositioned the propellers and engaged them at a low throttle.

“How much space are we putting between that thing and us before we continue going up?” Paul asked.

“Until I don’t see it on the passive sonar anymore,” Azriel answered, “unless you’d like to go a little sooner.”

“You’ll get no complaint from me.”

It took ten minutes before the creature was out of the range of the passive sonar display, and Azriel resumed the ascent. All three held their breath as they approached the depth of the creature, and it wasn’t until they were several hundred meters above it that they began to feel some semblance of relief.

It was another two and a half hours before they breached the surface. Azriel cracked the hatch to the Kelpie and they all took in the fresh air.

“We might have gotten knocked farther off course than we thought,” Azriel said as he came back into the Kelpie’s cabin. “I don’t see the ship.” Azriel activated the Kelpie’s tracker. “Nothing else we can do right now but sit and wait.”

Hours passed, the sun set, and then the sun rose again. It was about halfway through the second day when they saw another boat. The vessel approached and it appeared to be military. When they were taken aboard, they were given food and water, both of which they desperately needed. The Captain of the vessel explained that they had received a brief distress call from a ship in the area. The distress call had been cut off seconds after it had been transmitted, and they were the first vessel to show up at the location. Other than the Kelpie, they had found one other survivor amongst the little floating pieces of wreckage that there were. The survivor, who was now isolated and heavily tranquilized, had initially been hysterical. She had been crying about a monster that was much more massive than the boat. How it had risen from the water, and torn the ship apart like it was made of cardboard.

It did not take much prompting from Azriel, Cho, and Paul, to get the Captain to head back to port with the Kelpie in tow. A feeling of respite washed over them as they left the seas over the Challenger Deep, but there was also concern that anything from that deep down could make it to the surface so quick, especially something so large and powerful… and live.