Domain by Alten Steve

Author:Alten, Steve [Alten, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Archaeologists, Science Fiction, End of the World, Contemporary, General, Fantasy, Suspense, Mayas, Life on Other Planets, Thrillers, Antiquities, Fiction
ISBN: 9780765324665
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2009-05-12T04:00:00+00:00

Aboard the Scylla.

8:40 P.M.

“It’s a maelstrom!” Captain Furman is thrown over a control console, the floor twisting out from under him as twelve tons of steel drill pipe are hurled across the lower deck.

Sounds of screeching metal rend the air. With an agonized groan, the upper deck of the seven-story platform sways against the monstrous current, the Scylla listing at a sixty-degree angle as half a dozen submerged mooring lines attached to one pontoon refuse to yield to the growing vortex.

Technicians and equipment slide across the open decking, plunging helplessly into the raging emerald sea.

The remaining moor lines snap, releasing the rig from the seafloor. The buoyant superstructure rights itself—then spins, bobbing and pitching within the swirling mouth of the luminescent whirlpool.

Alarms howl against the night. Bewildered crewmen stagger from their cabins, only to be battered by flying debris. As their world gyrates around them in dizzying revolutions, they stumble down aluminum stairwells, moving to the lower deck, where a dozen lifeboats hang suspended from winches.

Brian Dodds clutches the lines of one lifeboat, his ears filled with the howling roar of the maelstrom. The craft is suspended six feet below, but the Scylla is now tossing so violently that climbing down to the lifeboat is no longer an option.

The oil rig lurches sideways, caught within the centrifugal force of the maelstrom, which pins the Scylla against the wall of the funnel. The NASA director opens his eyes, forcing himself to look upon the dazzling source of energy radiating upward from the center of the turbulent sea. Dodds holds on, sucking in a desperate breath as a forty-foot wave washes over him, crashing through the lower deck as it snags the last of the lifeboats in its fury.

Dodds’s stomach lurches sickeningly, his eyes widening in disbelief as the center of the vortex suddenly drops to the seafloor, the rig spinning precariously atop the two-thousand-foot watery precipice. Within the blinding emerald madness he sees something—a black, winged creature, levitating steadily upward through the whirlpool’s vortex like a demon rising from hell.

The winged beast soars past him, disappearing into the night—as the Scylla tumbles sideways, free-falling into the mouth of oblivion.

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