David Golemon - Leviathan

The dream took a different turn, as it always did at this point. Hands were pulling him away, pulling him deeper. He always wanted to shout out that he was dying, so why not just let him get on with it. Regardless of his pleas, they would still pull him down until a false bright light filtered into his closed eyes. Then the pain started as it always did, but now for the first time, a new element was added to this most uncomfortable dream — voices from the dark.

"Our guest is coming around."

"Captain, you scared me. The last I heard you were sound asleep in your cabin."

"The last I heard, Doctor, I had the freedom of my own ship."

"Yes, ma'am, I was just—"

"This man is far more formidable than you are used to dealing with, Doctor. I do not want him to know where he is, and he is not to know who pulled him from the water. Can you keep him under?"

"I can place him into a coma if need be. If I may ask, why save him if he is a danger to you — to us?"

"I have my plans for him. With what I can learn from this man, the dangers are worth the risk of his being here, and we can avoid the risk of losing our asset inside his agency."

"Captain, why the sudden change of mind about placing the implant inside this man?"

"I believe your job onboard this vessel is as physician, mine as captain. That is all you need know."

The dream was fading and the man's mind seemed to be dimming with it. The voices in the dark had an echoing lilt to them as he fell deeper into the abyss of the mind, but the man managed to force his eyes open, if only for a bright, flashing moment. There was a figure standing in the dark. Then he heard a mechanical announcement: "Captain, we have come to the specified coordinates." With that the figure turned and vanished.

A moment passed, and then with blurry vision he saw another, very much smaller form step from the back of the room. Then a soft voice —

"Why did you allow the captain to cancel this man's surgery, Doctor?"

"You heard her, she's the captain and she — what are you doing with that? The captain said no implant!"

The man tried desperately to open his eyes. He saw the small figure holding a jar, or was it a glass? The figure handed the object to a man who was sitting down. Before his eyes fluttered closed, he saw the thing in the jar — a gelatinous, tentacled mass, clear, bluish in color, and about the size of an aspirin as it floated at the center of a clear solution. The man tried to frame a thought, but as he did the world went dark, and sleep started to overtake him once more.

Before going completely under, the man saw that someone was standing over him, looking at him for the longest time, as if examining him, seeking a truth of something he could not begin to understand. The smallish figure was but a shadow, but he could swear the eyes were bright blue and ringed in green, just as the deep and cold oceans.

"We need to keep a closer eye on our captain, Doctor."

The aged supertanker Goliath made her way slowly along the Venezuelan coast, her empty oil bunkers allowing the VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) to ride high, well above her loaded waterline. The newly constructed crude depot at Caracas waited to load her with its inaugural shipment of refined oil from the controversial facility. The many construction shortcuts and current unrest of union oil workers allowed a pall of contention and outright anger to hover over the plant's ceremonious opening.

The Panamanian-flagged Goliath was no stranger to controversy herself as she plied her way toward port. The old, decrepit tanker was a constant thorn in the side of most nations and oil companies, as her deteriorating double-hulled design was continually leaking her wares into the open sea. It was only the recently rogue nation of Venezuela that kept the supertanker viable and in business, as the other exporting nations shunned her almost to the scrapheap.

A mile to her stern was her ever-present Greenpeace escort, Atlantic Avenger , out of Perth, Australia. She shadowed Goliath , taking water samples and harassing the great vessel whenever she could. The Chinese diesel-powered attack submarine Red Banner shadowed both vessels at one kilometer away, far beneath the sea. The communist Chinese government was taking massive, and some would say illegal, steps to ensure Goliath made her delivery date in the next few weeks, as the oil-poor superpower sought desperately to feed her ever-expanding industrial might.

On the bridge of Goliath , Captain Lars Petersen scanned the waters just to the south. The telltale wake of a submarine periscope was cutting a wide, intentionally arrogant path through the Atlantic as the Chinese made their presence known to the activist ship shadowing them. Petersen smiled, and then walked out onto the bridge wing, scanning his binoculars to the south and west.

The Atlantic Avenger was starting to make her hourly run toward the stern of the giant ship. They would pass close to the supertanker, filming the leakage of her bunkers and holding up their protest banners stating his vessel was the scourge of the sea.

"We have surface contact bearing one-three-eight degrees. Contact is possible Venezuelan navy escort vessel."

Captain Petersen took one last look at the 100-foot Greenpeace ship, then turned to his first officer.

"Our friends are starting their harassment run. Watch them and make sure they keep the proper safety distance."

"Aye, Captain."

Petersen stepped into the giant bridge of the Goliath and scanned the horizon. He finally spied the vessel in question, and he could see by her silhouette it was their old friend, the General Santiago , a small missile frigate formerly belonging to the French navy and then sold to Venezuela five years before.

"I have visual contact. Send to General Santiago welcome and to please take up station to our starboard beam. Inform them we have a friendly submerged contact bearing one kilometer astern."

"Aye, sir."

Petersen was about to walk out onto the bridge wing and view the Greenpeace run on his ship when a sudden, piercingly loud alarm warning sounded.

"We have a submerged contact bearing zero-one-nine at two thousand yards. This is a hard contact, we wouldn't have heard it, but — oh, my God — someone is opening torpedo tubes to the sea!"

"What?" Petersen was taken back by the sudden, stunning announcement.

"We have high-speed noises, possible torpedoes in the water!"

The captain froze in abject horror. His first officer called out he had a visual on the spot of contact, but Petersen just stood frozen to the deck.

"Torpedoes?" was all he could get out of his frozen throat.

"What do you mean, torpedoes?" Captain Xian Jiang asked loudly as he picked up a set of headphones at the sonar station and listened.

The high-pitched sound was nothing like the turning propellers of any high-speed torpedo he had ever heard. His sonar man was saying something about the new quieter air-jet powered weapons the Americans had been working on instead of listening; he slammed his fist down on the operator's shoulder to quiet him. He heard the sound of the approaching weapons when a loud pop sounded in the headphones.

"More torpedoes in the water!" the operator called out. "They are actively seeking and are bearing right on us!"

"Distance?" Xian shouted.

"Three hundred yards — closing fast!"

"Impossible. Nothing could have gotten that close without being detected."