“I don’t get it,” Kivi said to me privately. “Is Carlos the bait, or is it the bombs?”
“A little of both. I know it had a lot of fun dropping those on us earlier. Maybe it wants to do so again.”
Several long minutes passed. During that time, we peered into the gloomy ocean and kept trudging uphill. Now and then, I thought maybe I saw something, but it could have been the shadows. The ocean was full of dark, distant shapes. Usually they were just rocks.
“McGill, it’s back,” Kivi told me, whispering for no reason at all. “I think it’s stalking Carlos.”
“Okay. Don’t say anything. Just let nature take its course. “
“He looks so forlorn back there, all by himself. This is going to be harder than I thought.”
From my point of view, it was pretty damned easy. The monster darkened the water overhead, and the dark patch became larger every second. Finally, even Carlos noticed.
“Holy shit!”
“Place a bomb, Specialist!” I shouted back to him as he began to run. “You’re slacking!”
Hurriedly, Carlos dropped a bomb. Then he took ten hopping steps and bent over to place another.
That was it. The creature apparently couldn’t take being mooned by Carlos any more than the rest of us could. He dipped down that long silvery wire, with a loop tied into the end. Carlos spotted it, and he dodged, whooping. He began to run uphill, and no amount of orders from me to stand and take his medicine managed to slow him down.
“Carlos is really moving,” Kivi said.
“Yep. People think he’s a potato with arms and legs, but he can get up and go when he wants to.”
We watched as the one-sided contest went on. In the final moments, the wire caught up to him. Deftly, the sea creature slipped a knotted teardrop-shaped loop around his middle, and he was snatched upward.
“Dammit! He dropped the sack of bombs! Kivi, hit the detonator!”
She slammed her palms together, depressing a switch she’d held at the ready. The signal went out, broadcast to the bombs.
“Everyone, get down! Throw yourselves flat!” Following my own advice, I dove onto the seabed. Behind us, the ocean lit-up with a flash, then a shockwave of bubbles and water hit us in the butts like a runaway truck.
Several legionnaires were caught off-guard and tossed into the field that protected us. I could hardly blame them for that. We hadn’t discussed our plans with anyone. Doing so would probably have spooked Carlos and blown the whole plan.
As it was, no less than seven people lost their lives in the next thirty seconds, including Carlos himself.
The creature seemed stricken. He was still up there, I could see him as a darker patch of water, but he was drifting off to the right side. He was coming lower, too.
“Sargon! Leeson, get your weaponeers back here, on the double. We’re going to fry up some calamari tonight!”
The five remaining weaponeers staggered to their feet and came walking down toward me. They were all the biggest men in the unit. Hulking figures with massive powered armor and belchers on their shoulders.
“Over there, to the right. You see it? He’s hurt, I think.”
“More than that,” Sargon said, “I think he’s dead. He’s not moving, sir.”
“Let’s make sure. Light him up.”
They set themselves in a row, and as one they began beaming the monster’s side.
This was the closest I’d ever gotten to the thing. I took photos with my tapper, and I did some guesstimating. The body was ropy, as if it was built out of a bunch of thick tubes of meat. Each tube was the size of a massive tree trunk. And the whole monster? I don’t know… I couldn’t see all of it. Gray skin, mottled with white and pink splotches. Whatever it was, it was big, and it was sinfully ugly.
After that single, long glimpse, I lost sight of it. This was mostly because Sargon and his sidekicks had done as I’d ordered. They’d all released a long blast at once, like a firing squad.
As a result, the water between us and the creature turned into bubbles and super-heated steam. The water seemed to burn in spots, and that was weird.
Criss-crossing lines stitched into the creature’s hide. That much I was sure of. They were burning it, and they were burning it good.
“All right, ceasefire!” I shouted. “All these bubbles are getting in the way, in any case.”
“Is it dead?” Sargon asked. “I think it’s dead, Centurion. Nothing could have taken a volley like that.”
“You’re probably right. Give the water a chance to clear and—”
That’s when something came out of nowhere. It was big, it was round, and it was as thick as a column on a Roman temple. The arm, or stalk, or whatever it was, slashed violently into our midst. It came right through the field that surrounded us, and it struck Sargon squarely.
He didn’t have a chance to do anything about it. One second, he’d been boasting about his kill, and the next he was knocked ass-over-teakettle straight backward.
Although he scrambled for a grip on the seabed, it was hopeless. He was knocked over the rail and into the open ocean. A moment later, he was doing that gulping, spazzing dance we’d all seen before.
“Burn it again!” I shouted, angrily. I picked up Sargon’s belcher, and I fired it with the rest of them. The water went white with all the bubbles and released energy.
When it all cleared, we were down low, panting and gripping the seabed.
“Do you see it? Do any of you see it?”
“No, Centurion. There’s nothing there. It’s gone.”
I cursed up a blue streak. Who had played who? I was sure it had been hurt, but maybe it
