Dark Sea Rising

by Barry Broad, Drew Mendelson

Overview

Madness engulfs an oil platform

A remote deep-sea oil drill blows apart, pushing the cash-strapped energy company that owns it toward bankruptcy. Madness and murder engulf the oil platform. A probe shows intelligent life on the deepest sea floor, evolved from long-lived cephalopods to whom the oil is sacred. Though peaceful, they will defend the oil at all costs. Alerted to the intentions of previously unknown humans the undersea intelligence is pushed toward a conflict that could destroy both civilizations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770531765
Publisher:	EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, Inc.
Publication date:	06/11/2018
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Barry Broad was born in Los Angeles in 1957. He is a lawyer by training and has spent his professional career as a lobbyist, representing a variety of union clients from the Screen Actors Guild and the Teamsters to the Longshoremen and Jockeys' Guild. His work has brought him in contact with people from all walks of life and he has used those people and their stories to dive deep into the lives of the characters that animate his fiction. He earned his law degree from the University of California, Davis and attended King's College, Cambridge University, in England and U.C. Davis as an undergraduate. He is the author of two espionage thrillers, Eve of Destruction and its sequel, Requiem for the Damned.

Drew Mendelson is a novelist and short story writer born in 1945 in Kansas City. He has worked as a labor journalist and photographer and as a political speech and op-ed writer for California's governor, state senators and state treasurers. Drew is a Vietnam War combat veteran. He and his wife, Susan, now live in Sacramento, California. He holds a master's degree in creative writing and is a longtime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. His other longer published works include two science fiction novels, Pilgrimage and Marin 2120 CE, and a Vietnam War novel, Song Ba To

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Above: Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii

Gusman felt like hell. No, it was worse than that: he felt like death. It had started out as a cold but had gotten nastier the farther west he flew. By the time he completed the first leg of his flight from O'Hare to LAX, his head felt stuffed enough to explode. Just before he took off from LAX, he dry-swallowed four ibuprofen and a couple of Sudafeds. He didn't think he had ever experienced such sinus pressure. The pain spread from his temples and across his forehead, settling like a dead weight behind his eyes. He kept massaging his temples and pressing gently on his eyes to ease the pain. It barely helped. He downed more ibuprofen.

He made his way over to the private terminal to wait for the arrival of the company plane that would take him to Midway.

The next thing he knew, he was being shaken.

"Wake up, sunshine," said a disembodied voice.

He groaned and put a hand to his neck, which had a huge kink in it.

"You look like shit, Gusman."

Gusman looked up at the co-pilot and attempted a half-assed smile. "Hey, Butch. As a matter of fact, I feel like shit."

"Too bad. You ready?" Butch looked at his watch. Not much sympathy.

"Time to go," he said.

Gusman didn't argue. He got up, shouldered his duffel, stumbled out of the shabby waiting room, and followed Butch onto the tarmac.

The company plane was an old surplus C-130 Hercules. It was great for carrying cargo and could land just about anywhere, but it was slow. Although Midway was technically at the beginning — or end, depending on your point of view — of the Hawaiian Islands chain, it was still 3,000 miles and a nine-hour flight from Honolulu on the C-130. His final destination — Platform Faith — was another 500 miles west of Midway.

When Gusman got on board, there were two other passengers already waiting: a pair of roughnecks on their way back to Faith to relieve some guys who had finished their six-month tour. They nodded at him, but didn't try to make conversation, which was fine. Gusman just wanted to sleep.

Butch handed Gusman a couple of little white pills. "Take these. They'll knock you on your ass. You'll sleep the whole way, I guarantee it."

"What are they?"

"Dunno, exactly. Gorazapam ... Dorazaman ... something like that."

"I'll take it on faith," Gusman replied, swallowing the pills.

The co-pilot snorted.

Gusman didn't even remember the plane taking off. He woke up briefly a couple of times during the night, both times grasping fleetingly at the fragment of a watery dream that promptly dissolved as he lost consciousness again.

He woke once more when the plane bounced hard on the runway at Midway before braking to a stop.

No dreams this time as Gusman groaned and tried to clear the cobwebs from his brain.

One of the roughnecks was looking at him.

"Hey, dude, you snore."

"Sorry," Gusman replied. "I have a cold."

"No biggie," the roughneck said with a toothy smile.

As usual, the mid-Pacific sun was blazing. The Midway atoll, famous for the naval battle that took place in 1942, was no longer the home of the US Navy. It had been turned over to the National Park Service to manage as a wildlife reserve because about a million seabirds nested there. It was also the staging area for the company's drilling operation on Platform Faith. The company had expended considerable political influence to obtain permission to use the airport.

The three men headed over to the helipad on the far end of the island, where the company's Sikorsky Jolly Green Giant, a reconditioned but still creaky Vietnam-era war bird they all called "The Beast," was waiting for them. The Beast was painted orange. The words "Clearsea Energy" were emblazoned across the length of its long, sausage-like fuselage in huge white letters, except for the first letter in Clearsea, which was bright green and spiral-shaped. The company's original name, West Texas Offshore Drilling Corporation, had been unceremoniously dumped some years earlier in the wake of a huge disaster at one of the company's platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The spiral-shaped logo was green for a reason and — along with the company's new slogan, "For Our Planet" — was intended to convey Clearsea's commitment to environmentally sustainable oil production.

This corporate "rebranding" — in the terminology of the Madison Avenue experts who dreamed it up — was total. It got a jump start when the old CEO, a craggy, plain-talking Oklahoma oil man right out of central casting, was fired after he infamously joked that the fish die-off resulting from the oil disaster was "a shame ... hell, some of those fish would have made damned good eating." In a move that surprised Wall Street and delighted the press and public, he was replaced by the company's charismatic young General Counsel, Enrique Gonzales. Gonzales was a Harvard-educated former-Republican Attorney General of Texas, whose calm competence was matched by his amazing rags-to- riches story. Gonzales had risen from being the impoverished son of Mexican farm workers to a leading light of the American legal profession and a potent symbol of the increasing power and influence of Latinos.

"From this day forward," Gonzales said at his first press conference, "Clearsea will be a new company, dedicated to the stewardship of our planet's resources and measuring success not simply by profit, but by our contribution to repairing our world. I apologize for the disaster that has occurred and pledge that we will spare no expense to restore the Gulf. As a company, from now on, Clearsea will — and must — be forthright, transparent, and humble. We will do everything in our power to regain the confidence of our shareholders, our government, and, most importantly, the American people. Ultimately, we recognize that our world must end its dependence on fossil fuels and, while that may be an unpopular thing to say in our industry, it is the truth. Until that day comes, Clearsea is committed to producing energy safely and sustainably."

The remake worked, leavened by Clearsea's massive financial commitment to environmental restoration and alternative energy projects around the globe. Clearsea returned quickly to profitability. Its stock, which had lost a third of its value in the wake of the Gulf oil crisis, rebounded — and then some. Gonzales was awarded the Malcolm Baldridge Award for corporate excellence and named Time's "Man of the Year." The disaster soon faded from public attention, except for some hard-core environmentalists, like Gusman's marine biologist sister, who could never bring themselves to trust an oil company, regardless of its sincerity.

As Gusman plopped himself down on one of the webbed seats of The Beast, he felt the full impact of his depleted physical condition. His throat was raw, his sinuses throbbed, and his back was stiff. Even his teeth hurt. He still felt woozy from the pills Butch had given him, although at this point he wouldn't have minded swallowing a few more. It was 500 miles to Platform Faith ... a long way in the slow-moving, fearsomely noisy, vibrating Sikorsky. At least the weather was calm and they'd be flying at low altitude, sparing his wounded skull further punishment.

CHAPTER 2

The Below

There is turmoil in the Dream.

For many hungers now, the body of a monstrous worm has been descending from the waters Above, many arm spans away from the vents and the gathering of dwellings that is the urb. The He'e have felt its movements, but a few He'e exploring far from the urb have caught glimmers of it in the murky darkness Above, too far away to be lit by any smoker spewing its heat and light from beneath the ocean floor.

Is this worm different from the four dead giant worms that have fallen in the recent Dreamtime, whose heavy heads lie inert on the ocean floor, but whose twisted, fibrous worm bodies stretched endlessly into the Above?

One of the He'e, the hunter called P'mul, who is so skilled that he has even killed the fearsome great tentacled muhe'e, has been sent to take the measure of this massive worm. He clicks it and the returning echoes tell him this thing also stretches seemingly endlessly into the Above. He feels its pulsing movement — but not the beat of a heart, even a faint one. In the Dream of the He'e, the collective vision that stretches all the way back to the Great Father and Mother who were the first He'e, there is a memory of such a thing coming down from the endless Above to lay waste to one of the conurbations of the faraway He'e. It drove its evil head into the sacred pool of hinu and killed many He'e. Some believe the tale and some do not, but every young fry knows the story of the great devouring worm.

In the Dream, there is a ravenous mouth like a snail's radula inside the worm's massive head. The mouth is an eighth of an arm span across with a triad of biting ribbons that mesh together and rotate like nothing should that is alive. The tail is thick and segmented, and vibrations can be heard inside it. The creature that P'mul encounters is enough like that image to send him jetting back toward the urb with the frightening news that the devouring thing will soon be upon them.

Pulsing white with bursts of red fear, P'mul interrupts a meeting of the urb's Chamber of Decision. "The great worm monster will soon reach the ocean floor. It has a radula mouth like the great worm of the Dreamtale."

A shiver of fear pulses through the Dream of the gathered He'e. What this thing is may not be clear, but it is a threat. P'M'heen, the mates P'heen and M'heen who together lead the council, are disturbed by the dangerous image from the Dream and send a trio of young watchers off to observe and report on the worm.

"Is this worm like the others?" asks the venerable P'dal'o.

The Chamber of Decision has been meeting almost constantly since the four giant worms recently descended to the ocean floor, bracketing the urb and causing the whole conurbation of He'e to feel agitation and dread.

"Perhaps," says P'heen, "but those are dead worms, whose inanimate heads are made of fused sediment and whose worm bodies are made of hard and intertwined fibers like the stalk of the d'al'ma seaweed. It is more like a plant than a creature. We have already set the benthic worms upon them to dissolve those worm heads. But this beast has a devouring mouth and is much larger and has a moving, segmented worm body. A benthic worm would likely be useless against it."

The watchers soon rush back, almost incoherent, able only to warn. "The worm's tail rises high into the Above, far past where we can click it. It's not made of flesh or bone or shell."

The watchers are sent back once more and return after two hungers of silence to report that the worm is now less than ten eight-eights away from the seafloor, directly above the great pool of sacred hino that is trapped beneath the rock and sediment. It is moving slowly, but relentlessly, downward.

Aroused, four members of the chamber call out another eight of the He'e and together they rush from their dwellings in the Urb and jet across the seabed toward where the worm is descending. At the front is P'aldil, the Chief Examiner of the Strange. He, too, observes the worm and his arms glimmer with apprehension. As it did for P'mul, the presence of the worm calls up for him a nightmare vision of the devouring worm from the collective Dream of the He'e.

P'aldil believes the tale of the giant devouring worm is real. Once, on an expedition to investigate a strange object that had fallen from the Above, he encountered an ancient He'e from the nearest conurbation, who also was searching for this fallen object. They spent nearly a whole hunger pleasantly exchanging stories from the Dream, some serious and some mirthful. This He'e, whose name was P'a'l, said that the story of the worm was no falsehood concocted to frighten fry and teach them to fear the strange, but a catastrophe in a conurbation far upstream along the clockwise gyre of the great waters many eight-eights of arms away. In truth, according to P'a'l, the worm descended into the faraway He'e habitation just a few dozen generations of fry ago — at a time no more distant than the early life of his own parents — killing many He'e when it released the pressured pool of hinu under their Urb. P'a'l then told P'aldil a part of the tale of the devouring worm that he had never heard before: that the worm was not alive, but dead, and that it was fashioned like an enormous tool.

"And what about the part of the tale where the faraway He'e kill the creature?" asked P'aldil.

"You cannot kill a thing that is already dead, but you can kill the creature that uses the tool," replied P'a'l.

"And those He'e did that — killed the maker of the worm?"

"So it is told," said the ancient one, turning his arms the darkest gray to convey his earnestness.

"But this would mean that a creature other than the He'e has been given dominance over the lesser living things and the full power of the Dream."

"Yes, it would."

P'aldil pulsed a blue-red flash of confusion, but, as the Chief Examiner of the Strange, he had always suspected as much from the odd objects that had floated to the ocean floor. But such a thought was contrary to the gift of the Great Father and Mother, P'lo and M'lo, who gave the He'e the Dream — and, with it, singular dominance over all other creatures through insight and the pulse of control. Such a thought would disturb the tranquility of the Dream, so P'aldil kept such thoughts to himself.

Could the giant worm he could now plainly see with his own eyes be another of the same evil creatures?

Just then, the worm's head awoke with a tremendous gnawing groan, its radula turning slowly. After perhaps a quarter hunger, the radula stopped turning, but the worm's head still descended relentlessly, if slowly. They jet away again, across the dark seafloor, back to the Chamber of Decision where P'M'heen and the other elders await their report.

P'aldil says, "It is like the story in the Dream where the head of such a worm came down to bite into the Urb of the faraway He'e. You must know that Dreamtale. How it bites down into the seafloor until it finds the hinu and awakens it. How the spout of hinu makes the seafloor throb with the thunder of its escape. How many He'e lived there and all their dwellings were swept away in that gush."

P'heen shivers at that. His arms curl and twine restlessly. "We all see it in the Dream," he says. "We all hear the faraway He'e click in fear as they try to flee, only to die so that they are not anymore."

The voices of the Dream declare that the worm diving from above must be insensible or it would never dive so recklessly into a chamber of the hinu essence, which is ready to burst. P'heen and P'aldil's arms lash the seafloor in mourning.

M'heen, intertwining one of her arms in P'heen's to comfort him, says, "And this worm is now the fifth such creature descended from Above with tails that also climb endlessly upward."

"But this one seems very much alive, whereas the others are dead things, whose heads are made of sand fused with small stones and whose hardened tails are intertwined and not segmented," says P'aldil. "Elders, there is something I must show you. Follow me to the Chamber of the Strange."

The Chamber of the Strange is a cavernous place that is the domain of P'aldil. It is filled with the carcasses of creatures preserved in hinu so they do not decompose, objects of metal and glass that have fallen from the Above or have been found in the stomachs of fish or squids, and all manner of colored stones and unusual formations of minerals found near the smokers. Stretching above the space is a huge object, several arms lengths across, which is suspended from the roof of the chamber.

P'aldil's grandparents — their voices still alive in the Dream — recounted it from their youth when the object came drifting down from the Above. Though crushed and now eroded by the sea water, it is finned and has a partial tail, and once must once have been as sleek as the hahalua rays whose bodies sometimes drift down from far up in the Above. Both of the object's fins, though, are broken off short. A hole a full one eighth of an arm span across pierces the carapace of the object and through that hole its inward parts dangle like dead arms. And there are other little holes, as if it was pierced by an eruption of small round stones, all of the same size. It has a thin skin of metal, which is attached to a skeleton of thicker metal.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Dark Sea Rising"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Barry Broad and Drew Mendelson.
Excerpted by permission of Hades Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

"Wow, Wow, Wow!! Prepare to be made to think and entertained at the same time. Based on a truly unique premise, the authors take you draw you in with well-developed and believable characters and make you ask “what if?” I love this book! 5.0 out of 5 stars." - Tim Hendrix

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