As Harper watched, his hands snapped tight on the railing as a giant torpedo-shaped shadow passed underneath the boat. The reptilian part of his brain screamed a warning, automatically recognizing the primordial danger of a giant predator close by, and it formed a single thought: shark. But the logical part of his brain refuted it as being too fast and too big; it was something else entirely – had to be.

He shook his head to clear it. During storms at sea, men had been seeing things for hundreds of years. It must have been a shoal of fish, wave-shadow, or a whale, or anything but what his gut told him it was. He shook it away; if he had the time or inclination, he’d have his team check the fish-finding sonar, if it didn’t mean he had to recalibrate it from looking down at the depths.

Harper licked salty wet lips, and turned back to the winches, urging them on. They’d been running for a good thirty minutes, the nets must be close by now, and—

The ship jerked and then sagged in the water as it was dragged hard to starboard. One of the cranes bent and screamed, and the sound of metal under enormous stress overshadowed that of his men frantically yelling to each other. There was a sound like singing, and it took the captain a few seconds to work out it was actually a cable attached to one of the nets that was now piano-wire tight, and was strummed like a guitar as spray was flicked away from it.

The Omaru groaned and turned sideways in the crashing surf. Harper exploded into action, racing back to the cabin where his crew was fighting controls, yelling and shaking their heads. As soon as he entered, he brought calm, but only for a few seconds before questions and guesses were flung around the small room.

“We’re snagged on something! The starboard net’s not budging. Brakes are now on.” Ethan Minnez looked from screen to screen, his face now sweat-slicked, even though the room was like an icebox.

“Well, fuck it then.” Harper wasn’t worried about the ship. To avoid the boat capsizing if the trawl snagged on the sea floor, the Omaru had winch brakes and auto-safety-release systems built into its boom stays. He was more pissed off about the potential of losing his catch. They were already heading in early; it’d be a goddamn sorry assed trip if they came in even more tons light.

“We’re not going anywhere, Captain.” Minnez turned to him, waiting.

Harper tore off his slicker and flung it to the corner. “Fucking wrecks, bottom is littered with too many of these bastard sunken shit buckets.”

Minnez grimaced, shaking his head. “We’re at five hundred feet; bottom is another thousand below that. This is no wreck.”

The ship jerked again, and the stability alarms sounded.

“Gonna lose it, Captain.”