Excerpt from 'Eye of Charybdis', part II

Far to the northeast, fog covered the Commander Islands, a normal occurrence during the summer season. Bering and Medny lie in the shadow of Kamchatka, and while part of the Aleutians, these narrow spits of land were claimed by the Soviet Union.

The hunter was exhausted. Using an alternating rhythm, he drove his oar down and back, propelling the hide-covered baidarka forward. He was called Anax, but that was just an abbreviated form of a much longer name. To his people he was known as Katmai, a title that brought to mind images of snow-swept Alaskan plains and the brown bears that lived near the top of the world.

Katmai and his tribe were Aleut, a label supplied long ago by the Russian pelt and fur traders of the eighteenth century, but the islanders themselves preferred a different appellation, Unangan—meaning ‘seasiders’ or ‘original people’. This was a nod to their way of life.

Despite their hearty constitutions, the Unangan had suffered under Russian influence. Disease brought by outsiders ravaged the population, a consequence not uncommon when two diverse peoples were met. Exploitation and hardship imposed by the trading company—again, a Russian entity—also took their toll. Not even the Unangan homes were sacred; in ages past, the consortium had uprooted entire families, relocating them to the Commanders as little more than slave labor—

Katmai shook off the fatigue gnawing at his bones. The gale sent spray into his face, and salt stung his struggling eyes. He had rowed twenty-five kilometers south of Bering Island, the largest in the Commander Chain, and now, thankfully, he was almost home again. He had little to show for his efforts. It was unseasonably cold—too much so, in fact, to hunt or fish, or be successful at either—and the shoals of the treeless archipelago were a welcome sight.

To the west, a pod of six orcas harassed a bowhead whale. Katmai watched but felt no fear. These powerful beasts were his brothers, and were much more interested in prey below the waves. At length the bowhead broke the surface for air, but the killers’ tactics proved their intellect. Swarming the victim, the orcas piled on, covering the larger animal’s blowhole. She could do little more than fight for her own survival, leaving her newborn calf to fend for itself. Even Katmai felt pity, but the outcome was nature’s way, and sunset would find the pod with full bellies.

The sudden change in weather took him by surprise, and Katmai tried to make sense of it all. One day earlier he had stood on the roof of his house, tasting the morning air and reading the winds. No warning touched his senses. The sky was clear and the sea calm. There was nothing above or below to suggest the threat of an impending storm. Only one explanation remained, and Katmai knew what that was.

He had begun his journey shortly after sunrise, embarking on a simple hunting trip, but the Spirits had other plans. They had drawn him away for another purpose—to bear witness to a spectacle no one else had laid eyes on.

Katmai almost missed it. The humidity contributed to that. The last bands of fog hugging the Commanders billowed south, following the warm currents fed by volcanism below the waves. It was the Unangan’s keen hearing that alerted him first. A deep and constant roar sounded from the west, muffled by the mists hanging low on the horizon. He thought it to be a ship at first, and then his eyesight was challenged. A broad, dull shape stretched across his field of vision—darker than the fog roiling around him—and in an instant, the winged monster ripped through the vapors masking its approach.

He had never seen anything like it. Massive in size, its speed was like something from a dream. Flying at sea level, just above the water’s surface, it was visible for scant seconds, with what appeared to be huge horns on either side of its head. The hunter felt a crushing pressure, and passing in front of him, the beast’s breath and forward momentum threatened to capsize the small kayak. Had he been just a dozen yards closer, Katmai would have been swept away.

An ear-splitting voice rose in pain as the monster skimmed the waves, and then came the sound of the sea entering the beast’s throat. A wrenching din filled the air; Katmai likened it to the cry of a dying animal, and then his view was hidden once more by the veil covering the waters like a shroud.

Blue and green lightning erupted behind the shifting cloud bank. An intense flash of orange appeared briefly before being snuffed out by the combers washing over it. Katmai could hear the leviathan’s death throes as air escaped its lungs and was replaced with brine, and then all was quiet as the beast was claimed by the sea and slid reluctantly below the waves.

• • • •

The drones were gone now.
Seventy-five kilometers to the northeast, five Czech-designed Delphin trainers left the skies above the Pacific and returned to the mainland. These planes were old and unmanned, piloted by aviators in metal trailers at a ground station nestled in the Koryakskiy Mountains. The location was austere, and one of the last outposts in the far-flung Eastern reaches of a country that spanned eleven time zones.

The first aircraft suffered a glitch, and lost contact with its control beacon before falling into the Aleutian Basin. Crews manning radar screens ashore were amused; it was an inconsequential loss, as scores of the simple jets were in service, and it was difficult enough to keep them aloft with a pilot on board—much less without one. And besides, this fixed-wing sortie was never intended to return.

The last four birds came in without incident, circling the airstrip and brushing the narrow runway one at a time before taxiing to an old hangar at the far end of the field. Air traffic controllers in the tower—the top floor of a simple three-story construct—considered letting the Delphin flight expend their fuel supplies and ditch in the sea, but the next test might come sooner rather than later, and it was decided to let the planes land and fly another day.
But that was not the original plan ...

• • • •

Katmai steered away from the angry waters and pointed the baidarka north. He rowed through the night, his strength waning, his arms and shoulders taut as the storm began to build. By dawn the fog had long since lifted, and the breakers fought against him, becoming gray and lifeless as he drew closer to the shoreline of Bering Island.

The Unangan snorted under his breath. He knew why the ocean paled. The sea had been disturbed, and digesting the mortal remains of the beast had soured her belly. Not everything was meant for the dark halls of the ocean floor, and there were many things, some evil, that would never find rest there.

In time, Katmai retrieved the seal bladders he’d left behind to mark his path. His actions had become rote. The sun hid its face, and he was chilled to the bone and numb from his experience. In the solitude of the return trip, the hunter tried to shut out the memory of the monster that had nearly claimed his life. He had no interest in sharing his story with anyone. Ultimately, he would speak of what he had seen to only one soul.

Some would see his encounter as simply happenstance. Others would view it through a different lens and call it Providential. It never occurred to Katmai that he had been singled out for a greater purpose, and that one day the account of his voyage might save lives.

The hunter harbored a secret. The sea did likewise, but that was the way of things. Something so vast could do no less, and was the perfect place for concealment. The ocean floor was the abode of riddles. Far below the surface, the unyielding depths held many mysteries.

Now they contained one more.