MEG: Nightstalkers by Steve Alten

Author:Steve Alten [Alten, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780765387974
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2016-06-14T06:00:00+00:00

17

Aboard the Tonga

16 Miles Off the Coastline of Brisbane, Australia

At 3:12 a.m., the Manta’s escape pod breached the surface, its batteries shot, its life support unit running on emergency power. David estimated the Tonga to be three miles to the northwest, the trawler too low in the water to see. Having been forcibly separated from its chassis, the Lexan sphere lacked any means of propulsion. When their air ran out David knew he and Tina would be forced to pop open the hatch. Waves would sink the unstable pod and they’d have to swim for the ships—an eventuality he hoped to avoid.

Fortunately, every Manta sub was equipped with a homing signal. Fifteen minutes after they surfaced, the trawler’s lights appeared on the dark horizon.

It was nearly dawn by the time the two Manta crews had finished briefing bin Rashidi and Commander Molony. Having captured the Liopleurodon, the trawler’s crew had failed to keep tension on the net; the tanker was too late to the scene. Bin Rashidi vowed that changes would be made to insure these mistakes would not happen again—his rant done as much for the reality show cameras as for the Crown Prince.

Exhausted, David disappeared immediately after the meeting ended. Unable to sleep, Tina Chester, Rick Frazier, and Gregg Hendley reconvened in the rec room. They were joined by Kevin Pulaski, who brought two bottles of Jack Daniels.

The chamber that served as the private domain of the Tonga’s submersible pilots was more of a counselor’s hangout at an overnight camp than a modern-day entertainment center. There were two antiquated pool tables with scuffed felt surfaces, a ping-pong table but no ping-pong balls, a kitchenette that looked like something out of a two-star motel, and a broken video poker machine. The only modern upgrades had been arranged by Liam Molony during the ship’s last port of call, when he insisted Fiesal bin Rashidi purchase a horseshoe-shaped leather sofa, a seventy-inch flat screen television, a blu-ray player, and a small library of English-language movies.

The four pilots splayed themselves across the couch and passed around the first bottle of vodka.

Kevin Pulaski took a small gulp before handing it off to Tina. “Be honest—were you really inside the Lio’s mouth?”

“Not only were we inside its mouth, we slid down its throat. Another thirty seconds and we’d have been on our way to the intestines.” She took a long drink, draining a third of the bottle. “I was so scared I peed my pants.”

Gregg took the bottle from her. “The escape pod’s too thick to digest. You would have eventually passed out it’s rectum like a giant enema.”

“Or you could have ignited the hydrogen tank; turned the pod into a rocket.”

“The chassis was gone, Kevin. The emergency burn wasn’t an option. Face it, David saved us. Who even knew you could electrify the Lexan glass? I didn’t know; I doubt Molony knew.”

Rick took the bottle from his co-pilot. “So where is the Wonderboy now?”

Tina scoffed. “Probably in his luxury suite banging the marine biologist.

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