The Omega Project (18 page)

Shadows catch his eye. He focuses again on the curved wall, detecting faint movements.

Unable to scale the slanted deck in the bedroom, he returns to the living room, using the sofa to reach the dangling drapes, the drapes, in turn, serving as a guide rope. He touches the cool interior of the curved wall. Analyzes the green coating.

Algae? I’m underwater!

He presses his face to the cold glasslike surface, but is unable to see beyond the thick growth.

Backing away, he sees his reflection.

The greasy dark brown hair flows down his back, the matching beard falling off his gaunt face—a face he recognizes.

Roy … Rick … Rikenbrawn.

Ike?

“Ike! I’m Ike … Eisen? Eisner? Eisenbert … Eisenbraun! I’m Ike Eisenbraun, and this is
Oceanus
!”

*   *   *

It was as if my brain was a light and I had stumbled upon the switch, turning it on. Giddy, I looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time, the anxiety matching my confusion. “Sweet Jesus, what the fuck happened?”

Before I could begin to analyze my altered surroundings the reverberation hit me—a tingling sensation registering deep within my bones, followed immediately by a muted siren’s scream—the sound of buckling metal!

Oceanus
toppled forward amid an avalanche of rusted steel, an unseen force leveling the habitat out, causing loose objects to slide toward me across the tilting floor. The sudden inertia parted clumps of seaweed and algae, allowing me a small fluctuating porthole of visibility to view the event unfolding outside the vessel.

The northern support arm was collapsing, redistributing the awkwardly displaced weight of
Oceanus,
which had already lost its southern appendage. For a brief moment, the sphere balanced on its eastern and western legs, until the western leg began bending beneath the habitat’s teetering center of gravity.

The sphere began rolling again, this time to my left. Gripping the curtains, I slid into the far wall, my eyes focused on a clear patch of sea that parted the algae. Standing on the wall, I pressed my face to the viewport and looked up, expecting to see an ice sheet, but instead I saw only deep blue sea.

It’s what I saw when I looked down that scared the bloodstained piss out of me.

A deep, dark canyon cut a jagged path across the seafloor, the lone remaining anchor leg no more than a hundred yards from its nearest edge. When it too collapsed, the forward inertia would roll the giant sphere across that infinitesimal expanse and into oblivion.

Jesus, Eisenbraun, you’ve got to get the hell off this ship!

Fleeing the stateroom, I sprinted down the dark, rotating corridor—stopping at the science lab.

“Andie…”

I tried the door, but it was sealed. “GOLEM, open the lab! GOLEM, acknowledge!”

A shudder shook the habitat, the reverberation building like a massive seaquake.

The last anchor arm … it’s collapsing!

There was nothing I could do, nothing to grip. Suddenly I was flying backward down the corridor, and then sideways through an alcove, headfirst into the arboretum thicket. I dragged myself to my feet as the jungle around me continued its slow, gravity-defying roll, the trees forcibly suspended sideways, their cracking branches crashing, igniting growling sounds from unseen wildlife.

And then my back met the bruising embrace of a tree limb as my world thankfully stopped rolling.

From what I surmised, the remains of the western leg was momentarily acting like a brake, preventing the giant sphere from falling into the canyon. How long it would hold—I had no idea, but I needed to get to the mini-subs, and fast.

In a pseudo moonlight cast by the blue emergency lighting, I realized
Oceanus
had inverted 180 degrees and that I was lying on the ceiling of the arboretum, a ravaged, upside-down inverted forest above me. Scrambling on all fours, I became entangled in vines as a loud buzzing filled the chamber. Looking down through a hole at the upper deck I could just make out the dark cluster of hives that occupied the entire domed ceiling.

The creaking of metal caused me to look up. Through the hole that had housed the spiral stairwell, anchored to the lower deck floor, was the remains of my cryogenic pod—only the base was never intended to support an inverted crypt. As I watched, the heavier back end of the half-ton assembly wrenched free, leading the front end to begin inching its way toward freedom—freedom being a free fall through the middle deck to the dome below and what easily sounded like a trillion bees.

Move!
I climbed the branches of an inverted mango tree like a one-armed, wounded ape.

Seconds later, the cryogenic pod plummeted past me, crashing through an entanglement of thickly knotted branches before disappearing through the mid-deck ceiling.

Thankfully, the pod had struck a seven-foot-thick cushion of beehives, cushioning the aero gel dome—but agitating the nests!

If I needed additional motivation to move, the thought of being stung by several billion angry bees certainly did the trick. Dragging myself up through the stairwell hole, I climbed up into the lower deck, identified an exit, and climbed out into the inverted corridor.

I was in the docking area—perfect! Walking along a ceiling illuminated by flickering blue emergency lights, I located Docking Station Two … only the sub was gone.

So were the subs in stations one, three, and four.

That gave me hope that Andria and other members of the Omega crew had already abandoned ship—even as the revelation that I had been abandoned heated my insides like a blowtorch.

There was no time to dwell on either emotion as a powerful sea current caught
Oceanus
and the inverted habitat began rolling again.

I saw the crimson glow coming from inside the open egress chamber. Feeling like a hamster in a slow rolling wheel, I pushed my way inside the open watertight hatch.

Stepped through the rotating steel door frame into the tiled chamber.

Located a Steinke egress exposure suit from a pile and quickly adjusted the hood over my head.

Now get outside!

Tugging open the heavy interior pressurized door of the escape hatch using my only functioning arm, I sealed myself inside the topsy-turvy steel closet and stepped on the lever labeled
EMERGENCY HATCH
.

Seawater blasted sideways inside the rotating chamber. Seconds counted now as the flooded room rolled around me, the collapsing habitat God knows how far away from plunging into the sea canyon.

A buoyant fiberglass suitcase whacked me in the faceplate—an inflatable life raft! Gripping the handle with my left hand, I held on fast as
Oceanus
reached the canyon ledge, teetering on the precipice …

The green light flickered on.

With an explosion of bubbles the escape hatch popped open, the sudden pressure differential snapping the rusted hinges, sucking me and the fifty-five pound raft into the rumbling dark blue depths. For fifteen long seconds I was propelled horizontally through the water like a torpedo until my senses reoriented and I realized I was actually rising, being dragged to the surface by the buoyant case.

Looking down, I caught sight of the massive algae-infested sphere as it disappeared into the shadows of the trench.

“Andria!” The desperate prayers of a hypocrite accompanied me through curtains of azure light … and then the ocean belched me topside.

Blue sky, violet-tinged gray clouds.

A slanted horizon of water, viewed from a summit impossibly high—suddenly dropping a stomach-churning twelve stories into a walled valley of sea.

Dizzy, disoriented, and very queasy, I worked furiously at the latches of the suitcase as the valley rose beneath me, the swell levitating me high atop its mountainous back.

Popping the final latch, I yanked on the cord.

An explosion of compressed air blasted me sideways down the steep slope of the undulating wave. For a terrifying moment I was dragged underwater, dropping with the weight of the sea, unsure of where the raft had gone or for that matter which direction was up.

My head cleared the wild surface. The raft was nowhere in sight.

A swell rose beneath me so rapidly it caused me to puke what little food I had consumed. Floating on a two hundred foot crest, I gazed down upon the surrounding valleys of water and spotted the inflated orange island floating eighty yards away … rising on another swell, the distance increasing rapidly.

Plunging down my own mountain of ocean, I swam for it with one arm, my legs scissor-kicking me into a sidestroke, causing Yoni’s shoes to slip off my feet. Slowed by the egress suit, I paused to strip the hooded apparatus from my head and shoulders as the sea dropped beneath me again.

With my energy draining rapidly in the cold ocean, I launched into a furious sidestroke, swimming as hard as I could for as long as I could in the direction of the raft until I felt the ocean levitating beneath me once more. Righting myself, I searched the roiling surface … and finally spotted the four-man life raft floating upright less than fifty feet away, its tented shelter catching the wind like a sail.

Movement caught my eye and I looked up, expecting birds—shocked instead to see a chaotic swarm of flying predators—sinister batlike creatures covered in thick brown fur, endowed with eighteen-foot wingspans and sharp talons. Bulbous opaque eyes scanned the surface as the hunters flew in swooping circular patterns, jockeying for position in the sky directly overhead.

I nearly jumped out of my clothing as my bare feet stepped on something sharp. Looking down, I could see a school of fish—dolphin-size creatures racing six feet below the surface like a brownish red current.

A surge of adrenaline jolted me into action. Paddling and kicking down the side of the uplifting swell, I lunged for the raft’s trailing towline. Clutching it in my left hand, I dragged the hexagon-shaped inflatable close enough to hoist myself headfirst through the opening of the raft’s inflatable tent.

Swiveling around, I zippered the nylon door behind me and collapsed, my chest heaving with each hyperventilated breath.

Blood pooled around the bottom of my lacerated feet as my shell-shocked mind caught up to the moment.
This is nuts, this is crazy! Where’d these giant bats come from? Where’s Omega’s crew? Why’d they abandon the habitat without waking me? What kind of nightmarish hell …

“Oh.”

The realization dawned on me, punctuated by a crooked smile. “I’m dreaming. This whole thing—it’s an Omega-wave dream. I’m still asleep … frozen inside the pod where those bastards left me.” I touched my feet, wincing in pain. “Goddamn, this feels so real.”

I unzipped a window panel, the scene incredible.

Giant bats were nose-diving like gulls into the sea, emerging thirty seconds later clutching bizarre eight-foot-long gilled porpoises in their talons. Each fish possessed an array of twelve-inch needle-sharp spikes set along its dorsal spines like porcupine quills.

So incredible were the sights and sounds and smells that, for a moment, I actually contemplated remaining in the dream just to see what might happen next.

To hell with that. I was shivering from the cold and my feet were in excruciating pain, not to mention the monstrous swells, which were making me nauseous. And besides, this wasn’t exactly the sexual fantasy Jason Sloan promised.

“Time to wake up, Ike. Vanilla—”

The sea dropped beneath me, forcing me to grab on to the inside of the blood-drenched raft.

“Vanilla sway! Vanilla sway! Vanilla sway!”

Nothing happened.

“What the hell? I’m vanilla swaying, Jason! Wake me the fuck up!”

A dark shadow crashed against the top of the tent, a pair of sharp lead-gray talons puncturing the vinyl. Before I could react, the tent was shredded from the raft and the massive bats were fighting greedily a hundred feet above the roiling sea to claim their share of the feast.

“Vanilla sway!” I continued yelling the password while I frantically searched the built-in compartments of the raft for a weapon. I located a telescopic oar, flashlight, binoculars, a first-aid kit, and a pack of handheld flares. I quickly wrapped my bleeding feet in gauze, bound the mess with Ace bandages, then screwed together the four-foot aluminum paddle as a brown-haired creature dove in on the raft, its talons reaching for me—

Whack!
Wielding the oar like a tennis racket, I bashed the bat’s claws, the impact chasing it away. I managed to strike a second animal as it swooped by, and then the swarm was upon me, the sky disappearing beneath a blizzard of bleating brown fur and animal musk—the pile suddenly dispersing as the sea erupted in a vertical ballet of silvery-gray streamlined bodies of coiled muscle. They were mako sharks—ten- to twelve-footers, only these mako sharks possessed caudal fins twice the size of any crescent moon–shaped tail I had ever seen—tails that propelled the predators high into the air like marlin hooked on reels. Launching straight out of the water in pairs and trios, the sharks bit the giant bats and held on, their combined weight dragging the flapping creatures into the ocean’s heaving swells and retreating valleys where they were ripped into bloody froths by a dozen more of the sharks’ converging brethren.

It was over in seconds, the makos forcing the surviving bats to the higher altitudes, the submerged bats torn into morsels, the remains picked clean by the school of gilled spiked porpoise fish whose presence initiated the choreographed feeding frenzy in the first place.

The world quieted, leaving the ocean to rise and fall in dizzying, stomach-churning heaves.

My eyes rolled up in my head and I passed out.

*   *   *

Sound, deep and powerful, bludgeoned me into consciousness.

Awash in my own personal kiddie pool of vomit, blood, and three inches of salt water, I sat up, greeted by a hangover perpetuated by a pounding surf that echoed across the surrounding sea like gunshot.

I smelled land before I saw it.