Eric Brown - The Kraken Rises

Two members of the battleship’s crew and Chuck joined Hawks at the railing as Hawks struggled to reload his rifle. They opened up on the remaining squids and blew them to bits before Hawks was even able to get his fresh magazine slammed home.

“Clear!” the crewmen next to him yelled back in the direction of Robbie and Hyatt.

“Clear on all sides!” Robbie shouted back after checking the screen of the tablet he clutched. “We need to get inside before they try again!”

“No!” Hyatt contradicted him. “We need people out here to hold those things off until the Braxton is able to put some distance between us and them!”

“Roger that!” Robbie yelled back at him over the wind. “I’ll let the XO know we’re going to need help out here.”

Hawks ran to them and grabbed Robbie by his arm. “Not you! I want you inside with the survivors from the platform! Somebody needs to let Captain Weaver know what we’re up against out here!”

Robbie nodded. “Yes, sir!”

“Ladies, you’re with me!” Robbie shouted at Cheryl and Bailey.

Hawks watched the three of them go as they headed for the closest entrance to the battleship’s interior. He wanted to go with them, but he knew that whatever crewmen the XO sent out to hold the squid creatures off were going to need all the help they could get.

The USS Braxton was well underway now. She was pulling over thirty knots and continuing to build speed. Her CIWS was set to auto and every so often sprang to life, sending a barrage of fire at masses of the squid creatures that got too close. Captain Weaver sat on the edge of his command chair, watching his bridge crew at work around him. The squad of marines and the few survivors from Platform Alpha One were finally onboard and he needed to meet with them very badly. The more he knew about the squid creatures he was up against, the better.

“Ennis,” Captain Weaver called to his XO. “You have command until I return.”

“Yes, sir,” Ennis said, sliding into the command chair as Captain Weaver left it.

Ennis watched the captain leave the bridge. It was disturbing that there were still squid creatures in the water to set off the CIWS. Ennis had figured they were localized around Platform Alpha One. The ship was a good distance from the platform now though and still, it was encountering swarms of the things. There had been no sign of the creatures this far out on their approach to Platform Alpha One. So much was unknown about the creatures and their origins. Ennis hoped Captain Weaver would be able to find out where the things came from and what they were from the survivors. In the meantime, it was up to him to keep the Braxton going and safe from the monsters.

Captain Weaver had ordered a course set for the coordinates of DESRON 2. Like the Braxton had been before receiving the distress call from the platform, the DESRON was on maneuvers. There was something to be said for safety in numbers, and more firepower was always a good thing. Captain Weaver had made the decision to join up with Surface Commander Hoffman’s force after they had seen that the squids were relentless in their pursuit of the ship. They might not be as fast, but the Braxton ’s sonar confirmed that main swarm of the things were still after the ship, despite how much they had fallen behind it.

A yeoman brought him a mug of coffee. Ennis nodded at the crewmen, thankful for it. He blew on the hot, streaming blackness inside the mug before taking a sip from it. The coffee was strong and black just as he liked it. He hadn’t realized just how much of a toll the situation had taken on him until the caffeine started hitting his system.

“Sir,” Lancaster called to him from the sonar station. “I think you might want to see this. Contact to aft.”

Ennis carried his coffee with him as he got up from the command chair and walked over to where Lancaster sat. “What is it?”

Lancaster shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. It might just be some kind of echo but…”

Ennis looked at the image Lancaster was pointing at on the sonar screen.

Barely managing not to spit out the mouthful of coffee he’d just drank, Ennis sat his mug aside and leaned over Lancaster, bringing his eyes closer to the screen. “That’s no echo. Look at it. It may be matching the Braxton ’s movements like a shadow, but it’s not doing so perfectly.”

“I’ve run a level-one diagnostic, sir, but the system appears to be operating without any glitches,” Lancaster added.

Ennis was having a hard time trusting his own instincts given the size of the thing the sonar was picking up, but they told him that whatever it was, it was alive and after them.

“The squid creatures seem to be giving whatever it is a wide berth,” Lancaster told him.

“Don’t blame them,” Ennis said. “That thing is massive.”

“Twice the size of the Braxton , sir,” Lancaster confirmed. “Surely, it can’t be…”

Ennis accepted what his mind didn’t want to acknowledge. “It is. It’s something like those squid creatures. Some sort of new species we’ve never seen before and it’s after us.”

“Sir, it’s increasing speed,” Lancaster sputtered.

“I can see that,” Ennis growled and headed back to the command chair.

“Helm, increase speed,” Ennis ordered.

“We’re already at maximum, sir,” Watkins reminded him.

“Smith,” Ennis called out.

“Sir?” the weapons officer answered, sitting up straighter at his station.

“Take the large contact to aft with guns,” Ennis ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Smith said.

“All batteries,” Ennis added.

Smith blinked at the command but went to work targeting the massive aft contact.

The Braxton ’s main guns that could be angled for such a shot rotated on their turrets to engage the contact. It sounded like a storm ripping unexpectedly across a clear summer sky as they fired. Ennis had called up an image of the area behind the ship on the personal display of the command chair. He watched as explosions hammered the water where the contact was located. In the wake of the explosions, black blood stained the waves rising up from beneath them.

“Direct hit!” Smith shouted.

Ennis nearly lost it at the sight of what happened next. A long, thick tentacle broke through the surface of the water and rose towards the heavens. The thing was half as thick the Braxton . It splashed back down angrily into the waves as if whatever it was attached to was flipping the Braxton off.

“Again!” Ennis snapped at Smith, leaning forward on the edge of the command chair.

The Braxton ’s heavy guns fired once more, churning the water with a second round of explosions.

“Contact is changing course and breaking off, sir!” Lancaster shouted.

Ennis slumped back into the command chair. “Did we hurt it?”

“No way to know for sure, sir,” Lancaster said, “but from the looks of things, we did.”

Ennis agreed with that assessment. The blackness in the water had to be the thing’s blood. He knew the squid creatures bled black. The tentacle that had risen up in the wake of the explosions looked very similar to those of the smaller squid creatures. At the very least, they had given the monster pause. Ennis didn’t doubt that it would be back, but for now, the volleys from the guns had driven it off.

Captain Weaver had been right to set an intercept course for the nearby DESRON. Ennis didn’t relish the idea of facing that thing alone. His gut told him that the monster could make short work of the Braxton anytime it felt like it.

Ennis hit the internal intercom button and hailed engineering. “Chief, I understand you guys are doing the best you can down there, but we really need more speed. Do whatever it takes to make that happen.”