Goliath Read Online Free

surface
    16:48 hours
     
    The beast slows, the luminescent glow from its bloodred eyes violating the otherwise ebony depths. A disturbance stirs the bottom silt as a dozen life-forms emerge, as if birthed, from the creature’s dark underbelly. Moving ahead, they hover in formation, their own red eyes blazing green in the abyss as they await instructions from their parent.
    The devilfish settles gently on the ocean floor, displacing half an acre of sand and debris.
    A bioelectrical impulse is transmitted.
    The monster’s brood races ahead to attack the approaching fleet.
     
    Rocky Jackson jumps at the sudden flurry of whistles and clicks. She adjusts her headphones and stares at the SQR-19’s sonar monitor.
    “What do you hear?” the XO, Commander Strejcek, asks.
    “Ambient sounds, sir, but they weren’t there a second ago.”
    Strejcek picks up a headset and listens. “Hmm, biologics. Sound like orca.” Strejcek points to the blips on the sonar monitor. Twelve dots disperse, spreading out in formation across the screen. “They’re hunting. Watch—the pod will surround the school of fish, then blast them with echolocation, stunning them and driving them to the surface. Saw it on the Discovery Channel last month. Extraordinary creatures.”

    Strejcek walks away, obviously satisfied with his own conclusion.
    Fish? I don’t hear any fish? Rocky presses the headphones tighter to her ears, then maxes out the volume. The clicks reverberate in greater clarity.
    A quick glance at her sensors—the Jacksonville is moving to periscope depth. Rocky engages the spread spectrum stealth communicator and its conformal phased-array antenna and sends out a tightly beamed encrypted message. She waits, hoping the sub’s antenna has come out of the water.
    JACKSONVILLE—PLEASE CONFIRM IDENTIFICATION OF OBJECTS.
    The small objects disperse, the first five closing rapidly on the keels of the CVBG’s forward vessels. Rocky waits, nibbling on her unpolished fingernails, alarm gathering viscerally within her.
    A message appears. BIOLOGICS. CLASSIFICATION: ORCA .
    She stares at her console as four of the “Orcas” move directly beneath the Ronald Reagan’s keel. The creatures slow, as if drawn to the carrier’s propellers.
    Then she hears it—very faint—masked beneath the noise coming from the fleet’s screws.
    The sound of small hydropropulsion engines …
    “Commander, something’s not right—” She turns.
    Strejcek is gone.
    The explosions toss her from her chair, slamming her facefirst into the console.
    Aboard the USS Jacksonville
    The sonar technician turns to his supervisor, the twenty-year-old ensign’s face pale. “Multiple explosions, sir. Sounds like heavy damage. Jesus, the carrier’s taking on water—”
    The Jacksonville’s sonar supervisor grabs the 1-MC, his heart pounding in his chest. “Conn, sonar—multiple torpedoes in the water! Bearing one-zero-five, range eight thousand yards. Torpedoes are Chinese, SET-53s. Sir, two of the torpedoes have acquired the Hampton .”
    “Battle stations! Officer of the Deck, come to course one-seven-zero.” Commander Kevin O’Rourke’s skin tingles, as if he is about to step off a precipice. He turns to his diving officer as a dozen more men rush to take positions in the control room. “Dive, make your depth six hundred feet. WEPS, get me a firing solution—”
    The weapons supervisor sounds stunned. “Trying, sir, but nothing’s coming up on the BSY-1—”
    “Conn, sonar, I’m picking up a flurry of cavitation … it’s coming from
the seafloor, two thousand yards dead ahead. Sir, something massive just rose off the bottom—”
    “Right full rudder, all ahead flank—”
    “Conn, sonar, two torpedoes in the water! Bearing, one-seven-zero, coming straight at us—”
    “Change course, come to two-seven-zero, thirty degrees down on the fairwater planes.”
    Helmsman Mike Schultz is seventeen and fresh out of high school, a junior sailor piloting a