The ocean has its silent caves, deep, deep, quiet, and alone. Though there be fury on the waves, beneath them there is none. Over the course of the last few weeks of training, I had memorized nearly every facet of the
and the quality of the personal submarine's craftsmanship never ceased to astound me. It was a remarkable feat of engineering, this little beast, designed with such care that even the equipment on the hull could withstand more water pressure than the sea could muster up at any achievable depth. It was my Pegasus, my Trojan Horse, my very own Apollo 11, and inside this matrix of layered
I would follow the ballast to the gratuitous and unexplored depths of Higgins' maw.
I began the separation sequence and the deep diver fell from the escort and dipped beneath the surface of the Pacific with silence and grace and a few knots of speed. And then I was consumed in a whole new world, albeit one I'd frequented, that of the sea. Schools of fish swam by me and when their cloud passed through a sunbeam it glinted silver and beneath them swam rays that rolled their wings to the beat of the current.
and out in the rocks crawled the crustaceans and sat the plant life that spruced up all the whitewashed stones there like holiday ornaments. But I had an appointment to keep, and the oxygen tank was a demanding clock. So I dove right on past the old reef and out into the open waters where the seabed couldn't be seen for many, many miles yet.
50,000 feet below the surface, Booker. 50,000. Do you know what that means? It means it's a whole hell of a lot deeper than the Challenger Abyss." She nodded at that. Are you ready to make history? Was I? I thought I was. I'd prepared for this lonely dive and nothing else for some years now. It was the culmination of a lifetime of work and study in the field, and so tight was its grip on my mind that I often dreamt of it in my sleep.
of what I'd find at the bottom, and what it would mean, and what monstrous things might take offense to my presence there. No, no. I shoved that thought aside. Tuscany was all the protection I needed in that regard. It offered technology on the bleeding edge in lieu of a heavy hull, and that was enough to withstand enough water pressure to crush bones beneath skin and inches of steel.
What animal had jaws more powerful than the ocean itself at Fathom? So I hit the thrusters and down I went, like a bullet to the pitch. I eyed the depth meter as much as I did the sea. One hundred feet. Two hundred. Sharks and turtles and uncountable fish swam past me. Three hundred feet. Five hundred feet. Seven hundred. A thousand. Twelve fifty. The inversed height of the Empire State Building.
1500, 16. The water began to blur and grain up and darken as the sunlight struggled to push on through. 2000, 25. 3000, 32. Where the light no longer shines. And soon, all the light I had to glow the path ahead and down were the lights of the Tuscany. I continued the descent for hours. The pressure meter ticked up in spasmatic bursts, but up it went.
Up, up, up, soon ticking past the point where the weight of the sea would have crushed the steel of another vessel. One mile down, 1.3, 1.6, where even sperm whales hit their lowest dive. I could now claim with confidence that no mammal on earth was as deep down at that very moment as myself. And still I dove. Two miles. 2.1. 2.2.
The water was as black as space now, except for where the lights of the Tuscany pierced through it, and the thickness of the fluid made it look like ink or oil or some kind of alien sludge that smeared up against the reinforced windows and slimed its way across the hull. Things were tight down there, despite the vastness of it all. Yet I still dove.
The pressure stands at 11,000 psi. I saw an angler float by, and it was startled by the sheer volume of light spread by the tuscany that dwarfed its own bioluminescent glow. It swam away, and I dove further. Fifteen thousand feet. Three miles. Three point one. Now things get interesting. Mankind had visited these depths almost infrequently enough to count the expeditions on a single pair of hands.
I was now ranked among an illustrious few explorers, and although I wasn't the first to hit these marks, I'd hit the deepest one yet before this journey was over. I was determined, and I was capable, so I checked the depth chart. 16,281.4 feet, nearly half way to the world record. The Tuscany continued to dive. 20,000 feet down, the Hottel Zone.
The pressure here is 1,100 times what it is at the surface. 22,000 feet. 26,000. 29,000. The height of Mount Everest. 30,000. 30.5. 31,000. The same distance from the surface as a commercial airline at the peak of its flight.
The Challenger Deep, what had previously been the lowest recorded place on the seabed, sat at roughly 36,000 feet below the surface, in the depths of the Mariana Trench. No light from the sun had ever come close, and to the best of counts, life existed there, but only sparsely, and the pressure is unspeakable. But I was going somewhere vastly deeper, even than that.
Dwarfs the Grand, sitting dead center in the Pacific seabed, about 12,000 kilometers west of Hawaii and another 900 south and near as we can figure, some 50,000 feet straight on down. 36,000 feet. I was now tied for the world record. 50,000 feet? Why the hell are we just now seeing it? 36.5. I did it. My heartbeat swept up to a faster rhythm.
I was officially a world record holder. No human being in recorded history had been as deep below the surface as I was at that very moment. The new seabed scanning technology helped, gave us a more detailed topographical map of the hydrosphere than we'd ever had before. And once we got back the results, we took a look and there it was, just waiting for us, inviting us down. 37. So, what's down there? 37-3.
Well, doctor, if we knew that we wouldn't be sending you, would we? 37.9 I suppose not. 38. 38.5 The awful spirits of the deep hold their communion there, and there are those for whom we weep, the young, the bright, the fair. Higgins Maw, according to the best information available to me at the time of departure, is a pit, roughly a full kilometer across.
It begins at approximately 46,000 feet below the surface and is estimated to bottom out at Higgins Deep, a small valley that sits at its base, some 5,000 additional feet below that. The Ma is the largest and deepest such formation in the hydrosphere, and yet its dimensions and location are the only things concretely known about it. That of course is where myself and where the Tuscany come in.
43,000 feet down, I hit the floodlights underneath the Tuscany and the glow washed over an alien landscape that likely hadn't seen light in over a billion years. There were mountains here. Mountains. Ones that rivaled the Alps and wild arches and plateaus that stretched far off to a murky horizon before being shrouded by seawater. I even saw life down here in the depths.
A squid-like thing of simply monstrous size swam on by my boat. It stopped for a moment, and during that moment I thought it might have taken offence to me. But after looking hard at the Tuscany and brushing a tentacle down the port side, it swam off in search of other things. Hatter girl. I descended further. 44,000 feet. 45. And then, all of a sudden, there it was.
maw. My mouth hung by the jaw as the sheer scope of the beast came into view. It was a breathtaking sight to behold, a monstrously large and equally dark hole in the crust of the earth that plummeted to inconceivable fathoms. I descended a bit further, forty-five-five, forty-six thousand feet, and Tuscany fell into its yawn. Somehow, things were even blacker in the depths of the thing.
Even though sunlight had long since been blotted out, 46.5, 47, 47.2, I began to become aware of a low current pulling me downward. It wasn't particularly powerful, but it was unexpected, and it was therefore alarming, and yet I couldn't bear to pull myself back up. Not yet. I'll turn around if it gets too bad. So down I went.
deeper and deeper and deeper still into the cavern. Forty-eight thousand feet. Forty-eight five. Forty-nine. Forty-nine one. And then I saw it. A glow. I squinted and dimmed my lights to confirm the intuition. What in the name of God? It was there indeed. A dim reddish purple. Then green. Then purple again. And then blue.
Floating on a mist of current some few thousand feet down, I resumed the dive to chase it. 49.5, 49.7, 49.9. The glow, whatever it was, was getting deeper and wider and brighter. Soon it filled up the whole path down and ahead. I dimmed the Tuscany's underlights to their lowest setting and by fifty thousand feet,
I could see that the glow was coming from somewhere not directly beneath me, but off to the left and around a wide corner. This cave isn't a straight pit. And sure enough, the hole bottomed out there, and then opened up to its left. Holy god. It was a cavern chamber, at least a full kilometer up and deep and side to side and across, and only the enormity of its radius maintained the darkness of it.
Despite the presence of thousands of floating bioluminescent pods that pulsed purple and green and blue and red and dimmed in the interim, I took the Tuscany in deeper and her cameras were to life. Calmly the wearied seamen rest beneath their own blue sea. The ocean's solitude are blessed, for there is purity.
The cavern became darker still when the pods faded into the water behind the ship, but there were more things to be seen here than rocks. Tuscany, about a quarter hour after entering the chamber, soon floated on by a bizarrely rope-like plant of utterly impossible size, one that appeared to stretch nearly across the height of the cave and grew wider at the base. Although the bottom of it was shrouded in blackness.
I took the submarine in for a closer inspection and hit her lights to their fullest setting. My heartbeat slammed. There were suction cups on it, each one as big as the Tuscany herself, and they writhed and pulsed across and down the length of what was now very clearly a tentacle. In a panic, I shoved Tuscany back and away from the thing, but when I tried to turn her around, the base of the hull collided with the beast and stuck fast to one of the cups.
I gunned the thrusters and could hear a wet tearing sound as the machine ripped itself free from the cup's grasp. But then the tentacle came to life. It whipped and whirred and smacked around the cavern and pressed itself to the roof. And then it fell down, deep beyond where the darkness blanketed the floor. Come on, baby. I hit the thrusters again. The Tuscany rocketed off the way it came.
through the darkness and off towards the pods, whose glow I hoped would afford me an opportunity to shut the lights off the ship and make my escape, if I were so lucky. But very soon I began to hear and feel the movement of something unspeakably titanic rolling across the floor of the chamber. It rumbled and thundered and shuddered and shook and soon…
Clouds of dirt and rock flew up out of the black pitch and blanketed the view forward, and I could hear boulders smack against the ceiling of the cave before sinking again to where they'd been.
The sound had erupted across the entire breadth of the cave at once. My eardrums nearly burst and likely would have had it not been for muffling of the explosion provided by the walls of the Tuscany. The submarine shook too, but she held her integrity well enough for me to fly on past the floating pods, some of which were now knocked about on their sides and rolling, and back towards the yawning mouth of the tunnel that would take me back out into the open deep sea.
The Tuscany buckled and rolled with an impact. The tentacle, I realized, had shot up from the ground and hit the bottom of the ship between her ballasts, but luckily it knocked her with force upwards towards the tunnel. I rolled Tuscany with the hit and managed to regain some control, and I boosted the thrusters into the turn and up again, now back into the maw. Then I began to climb. 52,000 feet. 51,500. 51.
What's down there? Come on baby, come on, don't you fail me now. Don't you fucking fail me now. Well doctor, if we knew that we wouldn't be sending you would we? 50.5, 50, 49.9, 49.6. Tuscany ascended with panicked speed and all the while she did it I could feel the rumbling of the tentacles pursuit in the walls of the pit. It smashed its way on through the tunnel and whipped and thrashed but Tuscany was too quick a runner.
47.5, 47, 46.8, 46.4, 46,000 feet and climbing high. I suppose not. Tuscany burst out of the maw and was about to rocket straight on back up to the surface, but then the tentacle flew out beside her, nearly smashed in her front window. I bent the controls to the edge of their set casing, and Tuscany tanked to the left and up a bit, and missed the ground by inches.
I hit the lights again to navigate the labyrinth of rocks as I struggled to remount the climb, but in the light of the ship I saw it. These weren't rocks after all. They were other ships. Massive vessels. Imperial warships from ages past, bent and crooked and broken at the bottom of the sea, pulled down here by whatever it was that now threw its back to my devouring. The tentacle smashed along behind me.
The main masts and battlements and flat decks and rusted iron and wooden boat hulls were splintered up and tossed to the winds of the sea, never again to reconvene. I took Tuscany through this nautical graveyard with far, far too much speed for my safety. Under the ship towers we went and through cannon mounts and past the blades of dead engines and around upended rudders. The cacophony of my flight.
and the destructive path set by my hunter awoke the life in the place. Fish washed out of holes in cabins and captain's quarters and deep deck stair flights and soon joined me in my effort to escape. But it seemed there was no escape to be found here. The entire ground for countless miles shook and rumbled with seismic force. It was thunderously loud, and it picked up speed and violence with time.
Tuscany finally flew up to miss a splintered crow's nest atop the mast by less than a foot. And finally, used that directed momentum to put away distance between the seabed and herself with as many knots of speed as her thrusters would allow without bursting from the effort, the depth charge began to rise. 45,9, 45,2, 45,000 feet, 44,8.
And then, out of nowhere, Tuscany was no longer the only thing spilling light to the abyss. An orange glow flashed across the sea and for an instant illuminated nearly the entirety of its vastness. Then it blinked, and then flicked on again and stayed active. I shut off Tuscany's lights to preserve every molecule of power for the ascent. 44-2, 44, 43-7.
I could make out other creatures retreating too, ones of spectacular size, again, that mankind had never catalogued and that I, sadly, would not have time at all to study. There were city bus-sized manta ray-shaped things wrapped up in clouded wisps of transparent jelly. And even that squid, the size of a building, all flying upwards in a mass panic. I led the charge. 43-1. 42-8.
I looked behind me and down through the rear window. The maw had moved. God almighty, I was in the Leviathan's throat. I was in its fucking throat. I saw its tentacle tongue lash out of the maw and collect enough fish to feed a small town. Tuscany rocketed ever upwards as the Leviathan whipped even larger tentacles behind it and gained speed with the force of a hurricane.
The Leviathan opened its maw yet again and spewed forth its tentacle tongue, and with it it whipped up several Olympic swimming pools worth of water into a gale-force maelstrom. The mammoth squid was caught in its fury, I saw, and then it vanished into the pit forever when the maw snapped shut with a thunderous, echoing snap. The Tuscany, meanwhile, continued to rocket upwards and managed to escape the whirlpool by a foot. 39.5
Thirty-nine, thirty-eight-seven, thirty-eight-two, thirty-eight thousand feet and climbing. But the Leviathan pursued me relentlessly, riding on the flood of its own current. Its tentacles, each dozens of feet across and a mile long, beat the water back and tried to gain speed for their host. Thirty-seven-five, thirty-seven, thirty-six-four.
The pressure gauge now fell in jumps. It remained in the red and would for some time, but it was falling steadily, even as the depth charge rose. 29,000 feet. 28,3. 27,5. But the Leviathan hadn't given up the chase. Not yet. I could feel it doubting its efforts. The displaced water rocked the Tuscany, and she buckled and rolled in the synthetic current. Then I heard the maw open up behind me.
and water began to whip and swirl itself into a frenzy by the ocean load. I punched the thrusters to the breaking point. Come on! The encasing syntactic foam was pressed to its limits. The reinforced glass began to chip ever so very slightly, but the chips broke into cracks and then those cracks began to crawl across the width of the windows. I checked the gauges. 20,000 feet.
The ascent was slowing. Come on baby, come on, come on, come on, please God, be with me now, be with me. In the orange glow of the Leviathan's eyes, I could see how quickly the water was slipping by Tuscany and getting swept up into the maelstrom. The submarine began to sway port to starboard and shudder and shake. 17-4. 17,000. 16-9. 16-3. 16-1. 16,000.
I watched the gauge with a nauseating desperation. 1595, 1592. I could feel her slowing to a crawl. Come on, come on, come on. 15925, 1594, 1596. And that was it. Tuscany was caught, and no sooner did the depth charge begin to slip.
than did I feel the whole submarine lose all sense of control and tumble backwards and around. I was thrown out of my seat and smacked my nose against the roof of the pilot sphere. Blood exploded and it drenched my shirt and sprayed the glass in the entirety of the control set. I grabbed my face and began to apply pressure to slow the blood loss, but Tuscany again flipped ballast over ballast to starboard in the whirlwind and spilled me into the hatch ladder.
I felt my shoulder dislocate and my kneecap smack into the bottom rung. My head swam and still, Tuscany tumbled backwards. The cracks on the window spread faster. 16.3. 16.4. I could smell the inside of the Maw through the hull of the ship. But then, all at once and not a moment too soon, I got an idea. It wasn't a particularly good one, but hell if it wasn't better than nothing.
I managed to limp and tumble my way to the controls and grip the handles as the ship rolled. Wait for it. Wait. Now! The sound of the roar was so close, every last control surface in the sphere rattled in its case. My eardrums rattled too, but then I flared up the thrusters again, full blast and at an angle. And the Tuscany shuddered and flipped and shook and, with fortune, fell straight out of the maelstrom with inches to spare.
I felt the edge of the Leviathan's Maw graze the starboard side, and the impact again sent me into the roof while the ship rolled end over end over end again. I smacked my ribs up on a dip in the alcove and fell back down into the seat, head first, and then out onto the floor. I managed to right myself with my good arm and get my bearings. I was free, but only just. The Tuscany banked and tumbled again and rolled, slower now in the absence of the Whirlpool's
but not yet in control of its pull. I tried to steer away, but it was hopeless. The ship flipped around the back of the Leviathan's titanic maw and up over its head as the beast flew on by underneath me like a freight train. And for the first time since catching the monster's eye, I began to fully appreciate the magnitude of its size. Its back was an endless, snake-like and sharp, thin spine the size of a minor mountain range.
and only quick maneuvering moved Tuscany away from the jagged back fins that chugged up towards me and sliced up in the sea itself. They missed me by feet, and the blast of the current they'd swept up sent the submarine reeling backwards, off a bit further and into relative safety.
I quickly dimmed the lights to their lowest setting and caught my breath as the full form of the Leviathan washed on past me. It stretched far away into the abyss below for well over a mile, and dragging away behind it were thousands upon thousands of tentacles, a forest of the things, each the size of a six-lane highway and tipped with razor-sharp hooks and a flurry of wing fins. It took a full three minutes for the beast to pass by me fully.
And then it curved around in the other direction and swam off in search of other things to devour.
The form soon slipped away into a shadow, and then it was gone. I surfaced hours later, having allowed the battered Tuscany to take its time with the journey. She was solely responsible for my escape. My quick thinking be damned. A marvel of engineering indeed. Once I did break the surface, I dispersed a distress beacon and then promptly collapsed from exhaustion. Evidently, I was picked up by the coast guard some hours later.
a few hundred miles southwest of Hawaii and pulled from the near wreckage of my submarine and taken to a hospital on the mainland. It was there that I woke up a full day later. As I recovered, I heard some isolated chatter of tremendous seismic activity near where I'd been and how the whole ocean floor had changed and moved and shifted form. But I couldn't care less. I told the bastards what I knew. And on top of that…
They have the Tuscany and they have all the recorded evidence. And you now know this recorded account. What everyone does with this information is entirely up to them. All I know is that I won't be doing any more diving any time soon. I've come to the realization that mankind has more than enough space to expand throughout and live upon and thrive in above and near the surface and on land and in the skies and soon, hopefully.
out there amongst the stars. But there are things in the sea that hold ownership of the deep, and perhaps it's best to leave it that way. For all our sake.
The Earth has guilt, the Earth has care. Unquiet are its graves, but peaceful sleep is ever there beneath the dark blue waves. The USS District of Columbia deployed its cargo, a two-man Eisenhower-class Navy stealth sub called Agincourt, on which I served as navigator alongside Engineer Lovell, and once it was loose it slipped away into the Pacific and began to part with its escort.
The sea was in shambles here, there were dead fish and splintered boat hulls floating in the current, but it was far from unexpected. It was recently estimated, in fact, that since that Leviathan awoke some months ago, it has critically disrupted over 400 trillion cubic tons of water and all the life therein, and was becoming a potential threat to shipping lanes as well as naval operations.
It has been classified for these reasons and others as a severe national security threat. And so the Navy built the Aging Court on Tuscany's blueprints and selected Lovell and myself to man it, and then instructed the pair of us to hunt down the Leviathan and lure it up from the deep so District of Columbia could move in for a swift kill without exposing herself in the chase. For some hours after we entered the sea, there was little else but quiet there.
and the hulking mass of the District of Columbia as it followed. But then even that faded into the seawater, and when it did, Lovell and I found ourselves alone in the midst of the ocean. He descended the hatch ladder from the operations center and joined me for a moment in the sphere. So, Lautner, you're the nav. How do you plan on finding this thing in the middle of the ocean? I said back, I'm already tracking it. You see that?
I pointed up at a corridor of seawater that was moving north and that carried on for miles. We'd been following it for some time. Lovell pursed his lips. Didn't realize there was a draft that big out here. There wasn't, I said, until earlier this morning. That leviathan swam on down this way a few hours ago, and it left this as a little present for the two of us. Well then, we'll be sure to thank it. How much longer before we see the damn thing? Not long.
Look at those fish." I nodded towards a school of the things. You ever see anything like that? He shook his head. They look panicked. And they're swimming towards us for a reason. Closer we get, more we'll see. Just wait. And we did. What started as an isolated school of fish soon became several, and then the nautical retreat boiled over in scale and number into a mammoth, seething cloud of life.
I'll whirled up into a frenzy and pushing desperately south against the riptide, like birds from a storm cloud, or the onset of winter. The two of us said not a word until the crowd broke. The Agencourt again found itself floating in the open and quiet sea. And then I brought Agencourt to a full stop and Lovell said, Holy God! Ahead of us, and not more than two miles off, was a titanic mass of shadow.
unmoving and so breathtakingly huge that not even all of its edges could be fully seen. It was the Leviathan. Blue whales and dinosaurs themselves paled in comparison to this monstrous, mountainous thing. And as Lovell and I sat and stared at it, it made its first move, a turn away into the depths behind it, followed by a sharp dive. In doing so, of course.
The silhouette of its full form came into view, and the sight of it stole the breath right from our lungs. We couldn't have said a word at that moment, even if we'd known the words to say. We simply stared out at the thing and did our unworthy best to appreciate the magnitude of its vastness. It was as long as they'd said it was. An enormous, slithering serpent thing whose tail broke into a thousand other tails that drifted and g—
curled and dragged lazily behind it and fell deep away into the blackness. But seeing it in person was altogether a new experience. Before saying another word to me, Lovell hopped back to the ladder and climbed up to the operations room.
We're giving chase, but it's moving fast and it's moving down. Look to the riptide. Advise the district follow our mark, but stand by to engage until we've brought it back up to you." I gunned the thrusters as he spoke and followed the slipping shadow away and into the deep. 12 knots of speed. 12.2. 12.4.
Lovell came down the hatch ladder a few minutes later. District is en route. Making speed? She's moving, but she's not coming out in the open until we've got this fucker where she wants it. Any idea on that front? A moment passed before I said, You seen the footage from the Tuscany? Bits and pieces, yeah. Well the pilot caught the Leviathan's attention and it chased him straight up to the surface. But he made it, didn't he? Yeah, by the skin of his teeth from what I hear.
gave up deep diving altogether. What's your point? Point is, Agoncourt's faster than the Tuscany. If we can get the thing to chase us, we can outrun it, and then get District on its flank. Couple of torpedoes to her side and boom, we have ourselves a 300,000 ton museum piece. There was another pause, and then Lovell broke it with the worst question of all. And what if District can't put a dent in that thing? You saw how big it is.
Well then, I suppose we'll need to find another ride home." The agon court filled up her ballast and followed the Leviathan down into the depths of the Pacific, past where the water stopped the sunbeams at the gate, and before long, all that could be seen was nothing at all. From that point forward, it was the boat's humble capacity for sonar that kept us moving in the right direction, with an occasional nudge from the monster's own flood current.
And what's the plan? At the moment, I'm just trying to get the damn thing's attention. The closer we are to district when it notices us, the better. But as it stands, we're getting in too deep. Way too deep. And we were. By the depth chart, we'd just passed 15,000 feet, and we needed to get things turned around. Go ahead and strap yourself in." He did, in the passenger chair behind me. And then I hit the front lights and gunned the thrusters.
What the hell are you doing? Like I said, I'm getting its attention." But then I stopped and eased back on the thrusters. The lights of the agoncourt spilled their glow to the whole of the abyss and they found it empty. Where the hell did it go? I dialed up the brightness of the lights and brought the boat to a full stop. I don't know. We scanned the water for hints of movement or shadow, but there was no movement.
And there was nothing but shadow and silence. I moved Agancourt from a rest to a light cruising speed, and her searchlights swept and swooped and cast themselves to the rocks. Nothing. Damn. Unless… I hit the lights off. Now what? What is it? There's no way in hell something that big just disappeared. So where did it go? I blew the ballast and adjusted Agancourt's heading for the surface.
and then I gunned the thrusters harder than ever. It didn't go anywhere. It knew we were here all along. It just dragged us down into the dark to shake our tail. What? A thing that size is afraid of being hunted? It's not being hunted. We are. Agancourt lifted herself up through the water with as much speed as she could muster up for the running, but time was against us. Up ahead, we saw the shadow of a titan moving fast to block off our escape.
It was the difference in shade between deep twilight and midnight black. We gotta move, I said. See if you can't raise the district. Lovell unbuckled his seatbelt and flew to the hatched ladder and climbed it in two rungs at a time. And not a moment later I heard the static of the radio as he lifted a hail. Hello? District of Columbia. This is Agancourt. Do you read me? Over. Static. Even audible in the pilot sphere. The sheer bulk of the Leviathan was blocking the signal.
Keep trying to raise the escort. I'm going to get out from under this thing and clear the way." The agent called out to the captain. He said, Hello, hello, District of Columbia. This is Lieutenant Lovell of the Agon Court. Can you read me? Over. The Agon Court banked hard over to her starboard flank and I allotted her all speed for the escape. 17 knots flat. 17.3. 17.5. 17.7. I looked up. The Leviathan's shadow bathed the whole of the seabed in its mass. Still we ran.
Hello? District of Columbia, this is the USS Aging Court. Can you hear me? Over. More static. 19 knots. 19-2. 19.4. The Aging Court was moving faster than most vessels already, and yet the shadow above us had not struggled at all to keep us within perimeter. So big was its source. 21 knots. District of Columbia, this is Aging Court. Can you read me? Over. Respond.
Still nothing. 21-9. 21-2. I looked up. The shadow was murky and ill-defined, but I could make out the monstrous alien forest of its mighty tentacles, which wrapped and curled and spread out on all directions in the absence of movement. It looked like a black star seen through a bent lens of time, but it was slipping back behind us. Agankurt was more than a match for speed. 23-5.
Hello District of Columbia, this is Lieutenant Lovell of the Aging Court, can you read? Still I heard static, but there were bursts of clearer sound too, just barely over the threshold of audibility. We were getting into the clear and quickly. 25 knots, 25.3, almost too quickly. Hello District of Columbia, this is Aging Court, do you read? Over. Can you hear me?
I looked up and back over my shoulder. Twenty-five eight. Twenty-five nine. Twenty-six knots. Fuck. The Leviathan wasn't pursuing us after all. It was moving back up. I fired up all of Agonkwoad's lights and thrusters and blew her ballast. We began to climb. Luffle! What is it? Any luck on the radio? None yet. Why? Leviathan's not moving after us. It's going up. Good.
District will hit it when it gets close then. It's not going to get close, it's going to come up right underneath the boat. Sub won't be able to use its armament at that range. There was a pause. 23 knots now. We lost speed when we moved up. 23.1.
Move goddamn it, move! Get us up there!" AGHENKORP Just keep trying to raise the ship! 25.4 knots, 25.7. The massive shadow of the Leviathan was moving up into the brighter waters, and I could see its tentacles falling into line as it gained speed. AGHENKORP continued her climb, and gradually, as she did, the waters began to brighten. The pressure gauge began to fall, and the Leviathan, now swimming fast far above and to the left of us, came closer into view.
Only then did I understand fully. District of Columbia stood no chance. Even in an unfair fight, this beast was unstoppable. Hello? District of Columbia, this is Agancourt. Can you read me? Over. Respond. Respond! 1500 feet to the escort's test depth. Hello? Jim Court? It's District of Columbia here. Reading. Over. We're moving.
Listen to me," Level said. Listen to me, Ensign. We're telling you we do not have the Leviathan in tow. I repeat, we do not have the Leviathan in tow. It got between us and is heading for the coordinates I listed earlier. If you're there, you need to fall back immediately. Do you copy? Leave now!
Breaking up, the coordinates listed tie 3.4 by negative 150.45 ending by package. Wait, wait! District of Columbia, do you copy? This is Lieutenant Lovell of the USS Agincourt. Are you there? Do you resp-
The heartbeat kicked up into my throat. I knew that sound. The roar of the Leviathan from the Tuscany tapes. Clearly the beast had exhausted its usefulness for stealth, and that could only mean a single thing. Damn it. Lovell joined me in the pilot sphere. Jesus, what the hell was that? We're too late. That's what it was. We're too fucking late. And we were.
Although Agincourt's current speed swept us in closer before I pulled it to a full stop. It was a stop with a view though. A helpless and terrible view. We saw the mountainous back of the Leviathan and its great maw covered with the shield wall of its writhing tentacles absorbing a series of torpedo charges from the escort sub. It discharged a flurry of Mark 48s from the pods, those torpedoes left on rockets and detonated in waves.
And for a fleeting moment, I thought it might be enough, if properly targeted, to turn back the Leviathan or wound the damn thing or something. But the beast took the hits and only crawled forward, and before long the sub only had its ballistic arsenal. Nothing appropriate for a fight like this. It began to throw its whole effort to a retreat, but in Ohio class is a hulking mammoth.
Two football fields in length and nearly 19,000 long tons of metal and rivets. It is fast, but not fast enough. The District of Columbia was doomed. D-D-
and exploded tremendously but fruitlessly upon it. And then after a moment of silence, the Leviathan unraveled itself and its tentacles blocked out the last of the sunbeams at dusk, and they swirled and curled and wrapped their vastness around the hulk of the district. And then the vessel was gone. God damn it. I pulled Agincourt away from the feasting with all speed. 20 knots. 20.1. 20.4.
USS Dixon, do you read? This is Lieutenant Lovell of the Agon Court. Respond. Over. 22 knots. Hello, Dixon. This is the USS Agon Court. Over. Requesting a pickup. Do you read? Over. 23. I felt a rumbling and a shaking and a mighty displacement in the water behind us. Agon Court buckled and rolled. I looked behind me. 23.5. 23.6.
The Leviathan had finished its meal and was turning around. Its tentacles alone forced a flood of riptide, and then, God almighty, there it was. The maw. It was big. Hideously, monstrously, impossibly big. A yawning canyon and a mouth all the same. What the hell is this thing? 24.1 knots of speed. 24.6. The Leviathan opened its eyes.
and Agancourt was suddenly awash in an orange glow. Level! Hold on, Dixon! What? 26 knots. Cancel pickup! What? Why? 26.3 It sees us. Tell Dixon to get itself to safety. We'll try to shake this thing in rendezvous. 26.8 27 Dixon, do you copy? Over. Loud and clear, Agancourt. 27.5 The Leviathan's tentacles flew into form behind it as it gave chase.
27.7. Listen to me. We are currently heading northwest with all speed. The USS District of Columbia has been destroyed. We- 27.9. I'm sorry, say again? Over? The Columbia is gone. Affirmative. The Leviathan destroyed the USS District of Columbia. We are now-
They gunned Agincourt's thrusters for all they were worth. They groaned and protested, but they did their best. If only just. 30 knots. 30.2. 30.3. Even if the ocean itself seemed to be draining into the thing's mouth by the lake load. Come on baby, come on, come on. Agincourt, this is the Dixon Actual. Confirm the destruction of the District of Columbia. Over. 32 knots. Yes sir, the Leviathan took everything District had to throw at it sir, and then it just…
32-5. 32-9. We've located your beacon, Agancourt. The destroyer group is moving in to rescue and engage. My heart stopped. 23 knots. Level! I know, I know! Dickson, are you there? Captain Gillsley, do not engage, sir! Do not engage! I promise you, sir. There is nothing short of a fucking nuke that can stop this thing. Get that destroyer group to safety and we will meet you there. Negative, Agancourt. You brought this thing into the open. We'll handle it from here.
Gillsley out. 34 knots and climbing. Dixon, respond, over! Agancourt flew admirably, but from the sound and from its own effort, it rumbled and it shook and it swam against the might of the current. 34.7. 35. The Leviathan was gaining. Whether that meant it was moving swift or simply dragging the sea itself to its yawn was unclear and irrelevant. All I knew and all I cared about was that Agancourt was failing.
Despite a mighty effort to put distance between herself and her hunter, it was a race against time and all the odds, and it was a race we were losing. 36 knots. 36.1. Every dial and needle and stick and lever rattled in their sets, and my eardrum shook and upstairs I could hear Lovell screaming in range and pounding the side of the control desk with a wrench. 37 knots. 37.3. The closer the Leviathan got…
More speed we needed just to keep ourselves alive. It was like being caught by the pull of gravity on the edge of an event horizon. One wrong move, a simple mistake, would doom us. I began to see the shadow of the MA creep over the ship. Agencourt was nearly at capacity now. 39 knots, and it wasn't enough. Agencourt to Dixon. Do not engage. I repeat.
Once again, the mass of the Leviathan blocked our signal, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. The water rushed into the maw and Agincourt went with it, tumbling helplessly and desperately and with its thrusters flaring with all their strength of arms and all their force. ''Lotner,'' he said, ''are we?'' The force of the explosion, from an anti-submarine ship-to-ship missile undoubtedly, expanded through the sea and seemed to set the whole ocean ablaze.
Dixon had arrived. Yet another explosion went off and it shook our ship to the core, and the Leviathan rerouted its course for the surface with a demonic speed. Behind us by not more than a few hundred feet, we felt its mass as it moved. Undersea waves were unleashed that enveloped and consumed the Agancourt and sent her tumbling ballast to ballast and left her nearly belly up in the water before she rolled around again. The explosions were getting closer.
level, don't they know we're down here? I don't know, they might have lost our beacon with the radio signal. What does that mean? It means they think we're fucking dead. Can you try to raise them again? I don't know, I'll… There was a mighty flash of light and then… The force of the latest depth bomb washed through the sea and through Agancourt's battered hull and into her cabin. It sent me reeling despite my restraints. My ears rang and reported back nothing but that ringing and the ship…
buckled and tumbled and groaned and shuddered and shook and the lights flickered and the alarms blared and the panels flashed red. I unbuckled myself from the toppled chair and rose to my feet, shakily and stumbled over to the controls. The explosions were no further off than before the last one, but my ears struggled now to report them properly. Everything was muffled, everything swam. My head, my vision.
I fumbled at the controls and found half unresponsive and others blaring. I heard myself shout. I kept fumbling over the controls. Dials and readouts and panels were in their off state. I tried boosting the thrusters but heard only the clicking of the control in its set. I could hear my own heart more so than the battle. And gradually the shock began to fade. And when it did, it gave way to something worse.
fear. I ran from the control set to the hatch ladder and looked up. A droplet of water hit me in the eye. Then another, and another. I started to climb. As my hand hit the top rung, it slipped on fluid, but I grabbed it tighter and pulled myself into the operations center below the hatch. There was no response. Of course there was no response.
And his eyes were still and shut, and a bit of blood pooled from his right ear and down onto his shoulder, where it was washed away by a steady trickle of seawater from the bent hatch that became a stream, that became several. The lights flickered again. I reached my friend and knelt down next to him in the water. Lovable, hey buddy, hey, can you hear me? I heard not but the slightest, quietest whimper, but it was drowned out by another sound quickly.
roar of the beast. And then one far more ominous even than that. I heard rushing water from down below. When I looked over the edge, I saw the ocean inside the pilot sphere. It was rising up to meet me, but I could only see it from a sunbeam that struck through the hatch. I grabbed a wrench. Lovell, we're at the surface. I can see the sun. It's right there, buddy. That's home. Just sit tight, okay? I climbed the two more rungs on the ladder and swung at the hatch with a wrench.
It bent up ever so slightly. I swung again. An inch of progress. The water crested the threshold of the operations room. Lovell whimpered. Hang in there buddy, okay? I swung again. The light shut off for a final time. Agancourt tumbled and groaned as she died. Come on, please Jesus, please God. The hatch began to bend a bit more. The sunlight brightened.
and the water from below now had reached the midpoint of Lovell's upturned service boots. I felt a release. Got it! I had forced a hole in the hatch big enough to put a hand through, but then water dumped inside at twice the rate of the surge from below. I turned my head and slid down the ladder and stumbled back as it began to pool up. What the? Then I looked up through the hole, and only once I did did I realize the mistake. We weren't at the surface. We were merely close to it.
Not more than a hundred feet away, but many, many feet too far. Water flooded the operation room from both ends and washed me up against the wall next to Lovell. The ocean threw itself to our beating and it pounded us in waves and torrents and buckets. I couldn't breathe for seconds at a time, but I grabbed Lovell's hand and he squeezed it with all the strength he could, just enough to bend his fingers around the side of my palm. And then we began to float up to the ceiling.
I'm really, really sorry. I tried. I heard no more explosions from the battle not far off. Just the triumphant roar of the leviathan and the rush of water and my own ragged, heavy shaking breaths. I pressed my lips to the ceiling and sucked in all the air that was there to breathe, and I could feel levels slip beneath the surface and the water tightened up around my chest and then it was over my face.
Then a shadow fell over the hulking bones of the Agoncourt's hull and I felt a slamming impact and a rush and then…and then…
They're inside!" I opened my eyes up. They hurt. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know when it was. I knew nothing at all, in fact, but I heard footsteps and saw a shadow, and then I felt something grab my shoulders and hoist me up. A bucket's worth of seawater fell from my shirt and hair and face.
Hey, come here, it's okay. We're gonna get you out of here, okay? N-Sign, tell him we got a survivor. Yes, sir. I don't… I don't know. It's okay. Level… What's that? Level, is he… I don't remember. I can't… I started crying in pitiful, racking, heavy, messy sobs. Hey, hey, it's okay, it's okay. Can someone help me out here? And then I started to slip. Hey, I'm losing him.
And then everything went black. I woke up in a hospital bed. For more than a day I was delirious, but once I came to, I was filled in as I, in turn, was able to recall my story for a report. From what I was told, the following had happened. The Dixon had been destroyed, lost with all hands, along with its escorts and of course the District of Columbia. All told, the Navy lost more than 700 good men in the operation.
Among them was a lieutenant named David Scott Lovell, in the deadliest day in the history of the Navy at peacetime. But I learned something else as well, based on the important mark alongside Agincourt's wrecked hull. It is evident that after feasting on the Dixon, the Leviathan hit Agincourt and knocked her clear to the surface where another ship, the Arleigh Burke Destroyer, found her rolling in the surface with a broken hatch.
The Navy will undoubtedly make an effort to cover up this story and explain away their losses as a disastrous training failure, but I'll have no part of that, nor any further efforts to hunt down that Leviathan. No, this story needs to be told. For those men lost, and for Lovell, surely. And for you. Like the pilot of the Tuscany before me, I've accepted the fact that the thing down there should not be disturbed.
And neither should its home, for the love of God himself, do not venture far into the deep, deep pit of the wild Pacific. For all our sakes.
I hope you enjoyed the story and I'll be in the comments like I normally am. And with that said, have a good day.