Dark Waters by Lucas Pederson

Author:Lucas Pederson [Pederson, Lucas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2018-05-15T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

His lips press against Emma’s, and oh god she tastes so good. He pulls her closer and…

“…all this?”

Miles, emerges from the dream, blinking at the ceiling of the cockpit. “Huh?”

“I said, are you seeing all this? What’d you do, pass out on me?”

There have only been a few moments when he actually wanted to strangle someone. This is one. Still, he sits up and squints at the ocean beyond the cockpit. He told Jenna to keep the depth at two hundred feet maximum and now they find themselves in a shipwreck graveyard.

Emma hadn’t been kidding. How a marine biologist knew about this is beyond him, nor does it much matter. Because…

“There’s the USS Reaper,” he mutters.

“I lost two friends when it went down,” Jenna says.

He nods. “I know. I remember.”

They pass over the Reaper and Miles is struck by all the death spanning before him. Ships frozen in their underwater graves for all eternity, or until they rust into nothing anyway. Which, judging by most, nothing is approaching. And yet…

“That’s not…”

Jenna gasps. “Oh my god, it’s a pirate ship!”

Not really sure what to say, he nods.

Jenna asks the question building in his mind. “How is it still even intact?” She slows the STAV so she can really look at the ship. “Wouldn’t wood break down?”

“Yes. Unless…it fell into a deep trench and spat out on the Shelf when the earthquakes happened.” Miles shifts in his seat. “If there were still museums they’d pay millions for this ship.”

The ship is blanketed in barnacles and various small corals. All green and mossy looking in some places, even though he knows that’s not moss. It’s life living off death. Life breeding on the skeletons and creating something new.

As they drift over the pirate ship, Miles’ gaze latches onto a human skeleton half in and half out of a door in the deck of the ship. It’s covered in barnacles as well, though still very much identifiable. A pirate, probably as the ship was sinking, woke up and tried escaping the ship. Maybe his pant leg got snagged on a nail. Maybe he was hurrying so much he tripped and cracked his head on the deck hard enough to knock him out. Whatever the case, he died as the ship sank.

Jenna expertly maneuvers through the shipwrecks.

“Why are they all in this spot, though?” Miles asks.

Jenna huffs out a breath. “Maybe the earthquakes and everything stirred them all up here?”

It makes sense. Unless this is a focal point of attack by…something…

And if so…what?

If there’s something out here that sunk these ships, it has to be one aggressive, mean bastard.

Then again, that’s all speculation. Maybe the quakes fucked everything up. Sucked ships from other locations in and spat them out on the newly formed Shelf. It’s possible, he supposes.

It’s also very possible there’s something big stalking these particular waters.

He checks the thousand-yard scan. Nothing but a school of some fish or another and what might be a pod of orcas since humpback and grey whales and dolphins have been extinct for a dozen years or so now.

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