Enemy of Oceans (15 page)

“THERE THEY ARE!” CRIED HOKUU AS HE
stopped pushing the current under Grimkahn and his forces with his dark-kata powers. He was more tired than he would have liked, but no matter. They numbered over a hundred jurassics and frills. Riptide had barely three hundred fins total, the majority of them regular sharks, not prehistores.

What a delightful massacre! Hokuu thought.

“At last!” cried Grimkahn. “The cowards will plead for death for making me chase them all this way!” He released a screeching roar, and the other jurassics and frilled sharks shook off their weariness and locked eyes on their king. Grimkahn gestured with his flipper at the plateau-ledge where Gray's pitifully small armada hovered. “No survivors! And leave the Seazarein to me!”

They were less than a quarter mile from the pup and his mariners when the Riptide sharkkind suddenly disappeared!

What happened?

Then Hokuu saw. A mass of floating kelp had drifted into an eddy in front of their position. This was odd, but not unheard of.

Still . . .

“Grimkahn!” Hokuu said. “The greenie blocks our view!”

“So what?” the mosasaur spat. “There isn't enough to hide from me!”

“Perhaps we should be careful—”

Grimkahn roared, the sound hurting Hokuu's ears and stopping him mid-sentence. “When I want your opinion I'll command you to speak! Otherwise, shut up and attack!” With another terrible shrieking cry Grimkahn dived toward his prey with the rest of his mosasaurs and frills close behind.

Hokuu slowed as more and more greenie gathered in front of the plateau where the Riptide mariners hovered. There was no reason to be in the first group, after all.

Gray willed the greenie stalks swirling a hundred feet in front of him to increase in number. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the first ones. The kelp wasn't being carried away by the current. It was gathering up into a large globe.

That most likely meant Takiza was here.

They had a chance if that was the case. There was still so much that needed to fall into place, though. And the timing would have to be perfect. Could Takiza do his part? Gray couldn't worry about that. The ancient Siamese fighting fish didn't need anyone to do that. Besides, Gray had bigger things with which to concern himself.

Grimkahn and his jurassics, for example. The mosasaurs were immense.

Some were as big as a fully grown blue whale. Any of them could swallow a mariner whole. Riptide couldn't afford to let even one of the monsters onto their small plateau. If they had to fight the giants snout to snout without the advantage of the rip current, every Riptide shark would surely swim the Sparkle Blue.

Shear and Striiker watched the mosasaurs and frilled sharks drive fearlessly into the far end of the thick greenie. They would be through in less than a minute.

“Protect the Seazarein!” shouted Shear to the six finja prehistores hovering around Gray.

“Forget that!” Gray said. “Make sure none of Grimkahn's forces get onto this ledge!” He turned to Striiker and gave a fin signal.

“Riptide armada, divide battle fins into double clusters!” ordered the great white. The command was clicked out by the battle dolphs over the rush of the current and the increasing rustle of the swirling greenie. Everything would hinge on keeping their position, so each battle fin of a hundred now separated into groups of twenty. Instead of the entire armada acting as a single formation, groups of twenty sharkkind would attack any jurassic or frill that managed to make it to the ledge.

Striiker turned to his mariners and yelled over the noise. “Very soon a bunch of flippers are coming to try to eat us! You remember Hokuu? I sure do! It's him that we're fighting! He may come in different shapes and sizes, but it's the same filthy worm that destroyed our homes!” Striiker shouted as loudly as he could, “RIPTIDE MARINERS! WE ARE GOING TO WIN THIS BATTLE! WE WILL HOLD THIS LEDGE UNTIL EVERY STINKING MONSTER IS DEAD OR GRAY SAYS DIFFERENT! DO YOU GET ME?”

“WE GET YOU, SIR!” the Riptide mariners roared.

“They come,” said Shear to Gray.

The first through the greenie were the frilled sharks. The eel-like creatures didn't look fast but that was an illusion. They were lightning quick. They didn't blast out of the greenie so much as squirt from between the stalks forming the globe.

“DOUBLE CLUSTERS AT THE READY!” Striiker shouted.

The initial wave of frills didn't roar straight at them. They tried to juke and jitter as Gray had seen Hokuu do in battle. It was hard for a defender to stay in position to defend when a frilled shark could shift to either side and strike at a flank.

But these attackers were fooled by the calm waters within the greenie. Since it wasn't moving fast why would the water thirty feet away by the ledge be any different?

Mistake.

The wicked current took the frills totally by surprise. Two of the first five were folded in half, their flexible spines not flexible enough to withstand the pressure. The other three were mashed into each other. They were swept into the rocks, which crushed their skulls and scraped the skin from their bodies when they hit the jagged mountainside.

If only all the frills and jurassics had attacked together; then maybe the battle would have been over. But that wasn't the case. Grimkahn's forces moved in a loose pack so only the first and fastest swam the Sparkle Blue. The other frills recognized the trap and stopped.

Being slower, the mosasaurs did not see this. Two pushed the frill sharks in front of them into the current, and so ten more frilled sharkkind were swept into the rocks. The first giant mosasaur, at least ten feet larger than Gray, wasn't strong enough to withstand the current. In a stroke of luck, he was the furthest up the current. When he tumbled, he took several other jurassics with him!

For a fleeting moment Gray felt a surge of hope.

They would hold the ledge.

They could not only win but maybe wouldn't lose a mariner!

That thought ended when Grimkahn blasted through the greenie a split second afterward. Yes, the mosasaur leader was surprised by the current, but he was so terrifically strong he overcame it.

Grimkahn smashed into the ledge and used his gigantic jaws to battle the lower part of the Riptide formation. He sunk the huge claws on his flippers into the rock and would not be moved. “TO ME!” he shouted. “TO ME!”

Two other mosasaurs made it the ledge, holding fast with their own clawed flippers.

“DOUBLE CLUSTERS; ONE, TWO, AND THREE!” shouted Striiker. “GO, GO, GO!”

Blocks of twenty sharks launched themselves at each one of the mosasaurs. They struck the jurassics in the face and ripped at their flippers. One monster tumbled away, but Grimkahn and his ally crunched sharkkind bodies in their terrible jaws, throwing the broken bodies of Gray's mariners into the current.

Other frills found a way to avoid the worst of the current and joined the fight. They were smaller but still twice as long as most of the sharkkind defenders. Striiker kept sending sharks to ram those that attempted to gain the ledge.

“FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN! GO! GO! GO! GO!” he yelled.

But for every frilled shark rammed back into the current, another made it onto the ledge. Once free from that obstacle, the frills were deadly. They jittered side to side, using their spiked tails to stab sharks through the gills and eyes. Gray saw one mariner die from a tail spike though the skull before he swam over and bit down on that attacker's head.

Grimkahn yelled at Gray, “Today you die, Seazarein! You will all die!”

“You must get to safety!” shouted Shear to Gray. “We must retreat!”

“No!” Gray answered. “We're staying!”

Hokuu remained five feet inside the greenie so that he was unseen as he slithered through it. He could feel that the kelp was being kept in a circular bubble by shar-kata energy.

Takiza was near.

But where?

Hokuu watched as Grimkahn fought snout to snout with Gray's mariners. The much smaller sharkkind were doing a good job protecting their position. Still, they were slowly losing ground. If Grimkahn got his entire body onto the plateau it would be over. Without the current threatening to rip the jurassic from the mountainside, Gray would be lunch.

Hokuu saw the pup Seazarein save the life of the captain of his guardians, a sickeningly loyal tiger finja named Shear. Hokuu began to weave his dark-kata power into a bolt that would send both to the Sparkle Blue. This would be detected by Takiza, so Hokuu would have to speed to a different position afterward, but the risk was well worth the reward.

Hokuu released his ball of orange energy, and it zipped straight at Gray and Shear.

But the current got hold of it.

The globe of crackling power detonated inside a group of twenty sharkkind and vaporized them. Their blackened remains were sucked away by the current. Hokuu cursed himself. He should have corrected for the rip current! If those twenty sharkkind had been with the whole Riptide formation the energy would have leapt into every mariner! All would have swum the Sparkle Blue instead of a mere twenty!

Once again he couldn't believe Gray's luck.

Hokuu thought he felt someone coming his way from underneath. He couldn't see through the whirling greenie all around him, but that didn't mean someone wasn't there. He zipped away, changing directions several times. Hokuu would make his way forward to try again.

And this time my aim will be true, he thought.

“You did that on purpose!” Barkley hissed at Velenka as the frilled shark zipped away. “Hokuu must have seen you.”

The mako shook her head. “If he spotted us we would be dead. Especially me.”

“I don't think he saw us, Barkley,” Leilani said.

The three of them could see only bits and pieces of the fight going on by the ledge above them because of all the tumbling kelp. Their position ten feet underneath the mass allowed them a clear area to view inside and sometimes through the greenie as they hid in the short and thick scrub kelp below.

They had spotted Hokuu after he released an orange ball of energy and it lit up the waters. Barkley didn't see who or what was hit. He hoped Gray and everyone else was all right. If they had just been able to spot Hokuu a little earlier they could have attacked his belly.