Distortion Offensive (12 page)

The alleyway leading up was where the prostitute had indicated. Perhaps Edwards was up there. Domi could ask around, but the trail was an hour old and already going cold.

“You don't like chicken, you don't like egg?” the man in the fez asked, blowing out a plume of smoke from his lips. “What you eat?”

Domi looked at him, a feral smile appearing on her
ghostlike face. “People,” she told him, her red eyes glaring.

The man in the fez hat suddenly found something more pressing that required his attention, and he couldn't apologize fast enough as he disappeared back inside his falling-down shack.

Domi shook her head, muttering something nonsensical under her breath. She was being paranoid. Edwards had gone off to clear his head, bullet-bitten ear and all. Surely an ex-Magistrate like Edwards could take care of himself.

“Huge” was an understatement, Clem realized a second later, as he saw an incredible form rush toward them through the tiny slit of window in the rear of Grant's Manta craft. It looked like a swinging column of darkness, a vast line cleaving the water amid the dimness of the undersea crater.

Piloting the vehicle, Grant banked to port, turning the sleek craft over on itself as he avoided the thing he could see on the scopes. “Hang on back there, Clem,” he instructed as he maneuvered away from the colossal creature that was hurtling at them through the ocean.

Kane's voice came to Grant over their linked Commtacts. “What's going on down there?” Kane demanded. “Just saw you take a sudden dive.”

“We've got company,” Grant summarized. “Big company.”

As Clem was jostled about in the backseat of the Manta craft, he struggled to get a better look at the thing that had surged toward them out of the shadows. Even in the near-total darkness of the crater, he could see that it was colossal, comparable in size to buildings, not living creatures.

“Any idea what that thing is, Clem?” Grant shouted to his shipmate, raising his voice now over the straining sounds of the air pulse engine as it struggled to power them through the swift evasion maneuvers that he was
running through. Up became down as they banked once more as the vast shadow swung toward them through the darkness, the waters churning in its wake.

“I can barely see it,” Clem admitted, peering fretfully as the huge shadow rushed at them through the ocean gloom. “I'm not sure, but the size of it…could be a whale or…” He stopped then, watching the huge thing get bigger still as it came at them once more.

“Or?”
Grant prompted, flipping the Manta over to avoid the huge creature that plowed toward them on the scope.

In that moment, Clem and Grant both realized that the thing that came at them had been merely a limb. Behind it a hulking shadow maneuvered through the darkness of the crater, powering itself through the ocean currents. The limb itself was the size of a building, it was like trying to navigate around a swinging skyscraper tossed at them from the ocean bed. And as for the creature behind that limb—neither of them wanted to guess at its size.

“Or it could be prehistoric,” Clem finished finally, the words sounding uncertain even to his own ears.

The sensor readouts in Grant's heads-up display were going insane. Lights flashed and information scrolled so fast that he could barely take it in before a new blip of information vied for his attention.

“Kane,” Grant barked, once again engaging the Commtact within his skull, “are you seeing this?”

 

S
TRAPPED IN THE PILOT
seat of his Manta, Kane gripped the control stick, fighting for control as the backwash of the huge creature's movements threatened to send his own craft into a deadly spin.

“I'm trying to get to higher ground,” Kane spit in reply to Grant's question, “but we're getting tangled up in the backwash.”

Even as he said it, the engines whined and Kane found his Manta circling in a spin, almost entirely beyond his control.

“Dammit,” Kane growled, “pull up, damn you.”

Despite the safety harness he wore, Kane was slammed against the side of the craft as it hurtled through the ocean, entirely out of his control for a dangerously prolonged instant as it was swept up in the vicious current generated by the movement of the monstrous creature ahead of him. From behind, Kane could hear Brigid shouting something, her words unintelligible over the sounds of the straining engines. The heads-up display was flashing contradictory information, too, a blur of shapes and identifier tags popping up in strobelight flashes before fizzing out again to be replaced by something new.

Kane wrestled with the control yoke, yanking it against the pull of the ocean current, urging the Manta out of its fearsome spin and back to a straight course. Ahead, he saw the outline of the sea creature, its shape drawn in glowing lines by the Manta's powerful sensor equipment. With no reference point, it was hard for Kane to accurately assess the creature's size, but he could guess it was well over two hundred yards from tip to tail, roughly the length of a Cobaltville block.

The Manta rotated again, its speed diminishing as Kane finally brought the vehicle under control once more, lifting it high over the vast shape of the monster that rushed just a few feet beneath him. The monster itself seemed to ignore Kane, instead busily pursuing
his partner's craft as Grant's Manta sped through the ocean just a few dozen yards ahead of it.

“You okay back there, Baptiste?” Kane asked, aware that Brigid had been tossed about in the seat behind him.

Brigid groaned an affirmative, rubbing at her head where she had been slammed into the side of the vehicle during their fierce, uncontrolled spin.

As the Manta swooped through the ocean, Kane finally saw the full shape of the creature highlighted on his sensor display. It was roughly cylindrical in shape, bulging in the middle like a swollen torpedo. Eight vast, curling forelimbs dragged it through the ocean, each one of them curling and uncurling with each whirring movement as it raced after Grant's Manta, like the long tentacles of a squid. The thing moved with such speed through the ocean that it seemed almost effortless, despite its breathtaking size.

“I'm picking up an analysis now,” Kane stated over the Commtact link he shared with Grant. “Looks like some kind of giant squid, and it's definitely alive. Scope here shows it's about 170 yards from nose to tail, plus those arms almost double its size.”

 

G
RANT GROWLED TO HIMSELF
as he navigated out of the path of those mighty, swinging tentacles sweeping through the ocean toward him. He was working in darkness down here, but his sensor displays were alive with information, bright lights rushing across the field of his heads-up display inside the dome-shaped helmet. The Manta slipped between two swinging tentacle arms as the sea behemoth reached for the fleeing craft. Then, just as they appeared to be in the clear, another tentacle cut through the gloom, slamming into the bottom of
the Manta with an almighty thud that made the whole vehicle shake.

Grant shouted unintelligibly as he struggled with the control yoke, trying desperately to regain control as the Manta flipped over and over in a dizzying spin. Behind him, somewhere to the rear of the Manta, the engines shrieked as they strained to right the vehicle once more, sounding for all the world like an animal caught in a trap.

The lights of Grant's heads-up display were flashing with increasing urgency, and a bright orange blip appeared to the upper right of his vision, assuring him that they were now in an emergency.

“I know, I know,” Grant growled as the orange light winked on. He grasped the control stick with both hands, urging more thrust to the engines to try to level their course as they plummeted toward the great, squidlike beast that loomed beneath them.

Then, as Grant brought the Manta back under control, he realized that there wasn't just one beast out there; there were two.

“Kane?” Grant yelled over the Commtact as he yanked the control yoke hard to the right, neatly slipping past another of those swinging tentacles. “It's twins, buddy! We've got two of these things out here.”

 

A
T A HIGHER LEVEL,
now just skimming the edge of the crater, Kane discussed Grant's message with Brigid, for she, too, was tuned into the communications via her own subdermal Commtact receiver.

“Well, any ideas, Baptiste?”

“They're the librarians that Balam spoke of,” Brigid realized, the information coming to her as if from nowhere.

“What's that?” Kane shouted angrily, swinging the Manta through the waters to join his flailing partner, even though he had no idea what they were going to do to get out of this mess.

“While you were off finding Clem, Balam told me about the librarians,” Brigid said. “He explained how only Annunaki are allowed access to the Ontic Library, that the librarians would never allow anyone else entry. That's why he wouldn't come down here himself.” Of course, Balam was telepathic, Brigid realized, and it was entirely possible that that knowing smile he had offered her in the interrogation room had been as he placed a telepathic suggestion deep in her subconscious.

Kane checked the information scrolling across his scopes, confirming that there were two of the city-block-size creatures moving in the darkness. “Librarians, huh?” he snarled. “And they couldn't just shush us?”

“They're more like sentries or guardians,” Brigid postulated. “I don't think they'll let us pass.”

As Brigid pondered the crazy situation, Grant's voice came over the Commtact that linked them together. “Got two on my tail now, and they are closing real fast.”

Kane urged more power from the Manta's thrusters, diving into the crater once more as he located Grant's vehicle on his readout display. “I'm on my way,” he assured his partner.

“Kane?” Brigid snapped. “What the hell are you going to do? The Mantas are unarmed. We couldn't fight back even if we wanted to.”

“Then we'll run interference until Grant can get himself clear,” Kane snarled, “or I'll play the shortest game of chicken you've ever seen.”

“No,” Brigid muttered. “There has to be some other way. We just need to figure out what it is.”

Kane piled on the speed, rushing faster and faster into the darkness. “Then you had better figure a whole lot faster!”

 

W
ITHIN THE COCKPIT OF
the other Manta, Grant and Clem were reaching the same conclusion as their vehicle weaved dangerously close to the writhing tentacle arms of one of the squidlike behemoths.

“I'm not normally one to advocate the overt use of force,” Clem said, “but I wonder if you might consider—?”

“Can't do it,” Grant growled. “The Mantas don't have any weapons. We're unarmed.”

“Has this never been an issue before?”

“Clem,” Grant snarled. “Three words for you—not, the, time.”

Clem put his hands together and closed his eyes as the bronze-hued craft was buffeted by the colossal movements of the creatures just beyond its frame. “Oh, I don't want to be Jonah,” he muttered as the Manta lurched on the fiercely churning current.

Via the viewing displays, Grant could see the two creatures moving toward him through the darkened undersea crater. Despite their size, they moved through the water with exceptional grace and speed, their huge limbs uncoiling and rushing at him like rockets, dragging themselves forward. Despite himself, Grant physically ducked as one of those snakelike appendages cut through the water just a few feet above the bulge of the cockpit. He flipped the Manta, turning its belly toward the nearest creature and darting lower into the ocean depths. According to the sensor scan, they were at ten miles below sea level and there seemed to be no end to the depth of the massive crater.

“If you're going to pull something out of the bag, Kane,” Grant growled, “you had better do it now.”

 

G
RASPING THE CONTROL STICK
of his Manta, his hands slick with sweat, Kane powered the vehicle down toward where the monsters awaited. As he closed in, one of them turned and he saw it darting toward him, those colossal, swaying limbs preceding the bulk of its tubular body.

“Nothing's supposed to come down here,” Brigid said, thinking aloud. “So these librarians investigate anything that does appear.”

“I would call this a little more than investigation,” Kane growled as the Manta craft was buffeted in the wake of another swinging limb a city block long.

“To us, maybe,” Brigid agreed, “but from their point of view we're just interlopers, little more than flies buzzing around the room.”

With a resounding crash, the tip of a tentacle skimmed against the wing of the Manta, and Kane clung tightly to the control stick as the vehicle spun once more, knocked from its path. In his sensor scope, he could see that Grant's own Manta was faring little better, just barely avoiding the slew of tentacles of his primary foe as it grasped for his vehicle through the shadowy depths.

In the backseat, Brigid wedged herself against the tight sides of the craft as she was tossed about in her chair, slamming against the starboard side as Kane struggled to right the ship. “There must be stuff down here for these things to eat,” she reasoned, trying to focus on the problem of the immense squids. “Things would drift here all the time.”

“Yeah, like us!” Kane growled as he zipped between two more of the colossal, writhing tentacles as they
grasped for the Manta. “Come on, Baptiste, I thought you'd have an affinity with this shit.” As he spoke, Kane urged the Manta ahead, rocketing just ten feet beyond the side of the nearest gigantic tentacle.

“Cut the power,” Brigid said suddenly.

“Are you out of your mind?” Kane asked, struggling to be heard over the complaining engines as a tentacle swung at them through the water.

“Just do it,” Brigid said, a firmness in her voice that Kane recognized from other escapades with the ex-archivist.

Despite harboring his own reservations, Kane cut the drive and felt the vibration of the engines cease as the Manta's system rapidly powered down. Behind him, Brigid Baptiste was relaying the same instruction to Grant via Commtact, assuring him that she knew what she was doing.

 

I
N HIS OWN
M
ANTA,
whirling amid the grasping arms of the massive sea monster, Grant accepted Brigid's order without question, his fingers racing across the dashboard and cutting all power in a second. Where, just moments before, the Manta's complaining engine had been a whining shriek that grated on the passengers' ears, now it went deadly silent, the whole interior taking on the aspect of a mausoleum. The small bank of interior lights generated by the cockpit's dashboard winked out, too, leaving the whole craft in an eerily sudden darkness.