“We got company,” Bell said, not bothering to disguise the fear in his voice.

28
GHOSTS

“What the hell is going on down there?” Orr wanted to know.

He waited a minute, another. He could feel his anger and impatience rising. Finally, the radio squawked and Javonivic’s voice came through: “I don’t know yet, sir. They’ve run into something. I’m not getting anything from them.”

Orr checked the screen on the console. It was blank.

“Video?” he said.

“It’s down, sir,” she said.

He cussed under his breath. He could feel an ulcer working at his belly with teeth.  “Bell? Murphy? Goddammit, what’s going on down there?”

A crackling hiss, some static. Nothing else.

Orr felt something tighten inside him. He was not a man who accepted defeat very easily, but, dear God, he’d been waiting for something like this. Something to go terribly wrong. Down there in that damn city…well, it just had to happen.

“You getting vitals, Javy?”

“Aye, sir. Coming in strong and steady. They’re alive…just not answering.”

“Shit,” he said.

Sitting there in the comm room, surrounded by all that cutting-edge technology, he felt completely helpless. Best-case scenario was that they’d track the anomaly, identify it, and set their charges. Get the hell out and get back to the habitat. Then the mission would be at an end. They could take the submersible up to the LSB and the lot of them could go back up to Kharkov. Screw this damn lake. And screw that damn city and all the horrors gestating in its dark belly.

Best case scenario, that was.

“What’s going on, sir?” Anderson asked.

“Fuck if I know, son. What you getting?”

Anderson hovered over his console, checking screens. “I’m getting bio-signs just fine, sir. Heart rates up, respiration up…something’s going on.”

And that something was what Orr did not like. Because something down in Lake Vordog meant anything. Things you couldn’t even begin to imagine.

Or wouldn’t want to.

There was a sudden bark of laughter over the radio.

Orr nearly fell out of his chair. What the hell?

“Squid,” Bell said. “Of all the goddamned things…a school of squid, sir. Bioluminescent squid. Thousands of ‘em. We’re caught in a blizzard of them.”

“So damn bright right now I’m squinting my eyes,” Murphy said.

Dammit.

Orr sighed. “I see. In the future, gentlemen, if you don’t mind, when I hail you, you fucking answer me, got it? I don’t give a shit if Moby Dick is swallowing your asses, you answer. Is that a roger?”

“Aye, sir,” Bell said.

“You boys are giving me gray hairs,” Javonivic said, the stress apparent under her words.

“Sorry, Javy,” Bell said.

“You getting video on this?” Murphy asked.

“Nothing,” Orr told them.

“Amazing…” Murphy paused. “Each one is about three-inches long and brighter than a sixty-watt bulb.”

“Passing away now,” Bell said.