Deep Trouble - part 1
by Direwolf

Chill water enfolded him. He knew the North Atlantic was cold enough to kill a man in minutes, pulling the heat from exposed skin as the waves tossed him about like a scrap of broken wood before dragging him down into black oblivion.

"Good thing I'm not really a man then, isn't it?" he thought as he knifed through the dark water.

His reinforced body took the crushing pressure as his eyes gathered in the faint light generated by the deep-sea life around him. The world was tinted blue and gray with scattered points of bright neon colors. A jellyfish pulsed by, its dome ablaze with magenta sparks, nearly blinding in the dim reaches. A long worm squirmed across the sea floor, vanishing suddenly into the mud. Above him, a school of cod swum lazily in search of food, their streamlined bodies lithe and quick.

"So much beauty, I never even thought of it all those years I harvested the sea."

Man-o-war paused, his body coming upright in the water, his feet brushing the muddy bottom. He could taste the sea and was amazed at how much it told him of tales no man had ever learned. And the water was alive with sound, the deep melody of distant whales, the chirps and grunts of fish and the click of small chitinos claws on rock. There was a deep, resonate feeling, too low to be a real sound, that he knew was a the pulse of waves modulated through the oceanic currents flowing in their never ending gyre. The call of the sea, offering so many mysteries that he was free now to explore.

Since coming back to Patriot City from the Time Masters realm, he had felt a growing unease, a longing for something. At first, he thought it was no more then sadness at Man-bot's sacrifice. But that wasn't the answer. The answer was here. As much as he might enjoy the company of his fellow heroes of freedom Force, Man-o-war knew he was different. The sea was his home now and he would never be free of her solitary call.

Well, not exactly solitary.

"Jeepers, Man-o-war, what's making that noise?"

Man-o-war barely suppressed a smile. The high pressure and cold seemed to have affected Sea Urchin's voice, making it sound as high pitched and squeaky as an excited dolphin.

"You talking about the whales, are you lass?" he rumbled, reflexively holding his place against the faint currents with his webbed hands.

"No, but there it is again!" The blue skinned girl pointed excitedly into the distance. "Over there. Come on! Let's see what it is!"

She was off in a moment, arrowing through the water like a mermaid of legend. Man-o-war had no choice but to follow, his powerful strokes matching her supple movements.

"Your curiosity'll be the death of us yet," he muttered, and then convinced himself the sudden chill he felt was no more then a stray arctic current across his back. But he realized she was right, there was an odd noise he hadn't noticed, something metallic, a rhythmic thud that made him think of the time he sailed past a piledriver building a new pier. And the sound seemed to be moving in from the open ocean and back towards land. Puzzled, he swam on.

The noise grew as they approached, the thump of metal on the sea floor with the occasional ring of steel on rock. And there were lights ahead, the harsh yellow glare of sodium vapor stabbing through the pastel world.

"What is it, Man-o-war?" Sea Urchin asked.

"I can't say," he answered, ''but it sure is devilishly big! And it's coming our way."

They stopped to observe, drifting above the sea floor as the leviathan approach.

Man-o-war shielded his eyes against the bright light to better see the huge machine. The vessel was immense, like a blimp in size and shape, with a hull that seemed a patchwork of metal plates. Some of the plates bore letters or numbers, the identifications of ships he realized. The long cylindrical body sported a swarm of appendages, cables thicker then his thigh. Some ended in search lights that swung through the water, casting their beams for hundreds of yards. Others sported robot claws that lifted debris from the mud. The items collected were brought to other tentacles that ended in what looked like some sort of elongated camera and either tossed negligently back to the mud or dropped into a bin on the side the camera pod's side. And several dozen of the long cables ended in odd triple talons. As Man-o-war watched the talons stretched out before the ship and buried themselves into the bottom. The cables contracted and the whole vessel slid forward as new cables reached out. It crept through the dark water like some warped insect.

"I don't much like the look of this," Man-o-war growled. The leviathan had an ominous unnatural look to it, like something Mr. Mechanical might have created to stripmine the oceans for metal.

"There, right on the nose, can you make out what it is?'

He looked closer to where she pointed. There defiantly was something emblazoned on the front of the craft. "Can't make it out."

"Let's look!"

She was off as quick as an otter and again, Man-o-war followed.

The water shuddered with each impact of the talons into the mud. Man-o-war noticed and odd tang to the sea as well, as taste of oil and steel and the smell of ozone. He noticed that sea life had fled the area as well; anything that could move avoided the huge machine.

"The fish have more sense then we do," he muttered.

"Don't be a grouch, Man-o-war," Sea Urchin insisted. "I just want a look. It could be important. If this is something that Sukov made, Minuteman needs to know!"

"That's not a Hammer and Sickle on the front, though..."

And it wasn't. The front of the ship sported a huge white disk emblazoned with a design of tangled tentacles, the arms of an immense squid. In the center of the arms, a single red eye blazed with an inner light. Talons slammed relentless into the sea and the armored ship slid forward, bringing them closer to the eye.

"We'd best be out of its way," Man-o-war suggested. Just then, one of the searchlights locked onto the aquatic pair. With sudden certainty, Man-o-war knew they had lingered too long.

The light was painfully intense. He sought to shield his eyes from the harsh glare but others had swung into position. He felt the water surge and tried to swim clear. The claw snatched him, pinning his arms to his sides. The shriek of alarm told him Sea Urchin was caught as well. Helpless, he spun though the water for a dizzying moment and then found himself staring into one of the camera pods.

"It's not a camera at all, there's a person in there!" he gasped. What he'd taken at first for some sort of camera was in fact a midget submarine, hardly larger then the man it contained, hooked to a long cable tether. The pod was made of some sort of clear material, allowing the occupant to see out. The driver gripped a yoke in his hands that Man-o-war suspected had to be steering. Thin banks of switches and dials lined the capsule. As Man-o-war watched in amazement, the pod driver kept his minicraft pointed at the illuminated hero and spoke into a microphone, the words too faint to hear.

But he heard what came next.

"Ah, the celebrated Man-o-war, and his meddling sidekick Sea Slug." The voice was huge, painfully loud, and evidently coming from speakers in the huge ship.

"That's Sea Urchin, buster!" Sea Urchin complained from within the grip of her own talon.

Man-o-war struggled against the claw holding him, but its robotic strength was too great even for his muscles.

"It hardly matters that you have found me now, I knew I would have to deal with Freedom Force soon enough. You two will just be the first to fall to CAPTIAN KRAKEN!"

Man-o-war gathered himself. One good water surge should be able to pry open the talon and then he could free Sea Urchin. He was sure they were faster than this lumbering craft. But Captain Kraken had other plans. The robot arms lashed out and down. Man-o-war heard the echoes of diabolic laughter and Sea Urchin's cry of alarm filling the seas as the claw smashed into the ocean floor with crushing force, driving him deep into the mud and sand.

"Even Mechanical didn't hit that hard," Man-o-war thought as the he slipped into unconsciousness.

The vast sea ship moved forward as the cables contracted. The talons emerged empty from the sea floor and reached ahead. Kraken's ship continued its relentless progress towards Patriot City. In its wake, the craters dug by its claws were still, except for the swirls of silt torn up by the impacts. The silt haze hung in the water for a few minutes until the relentless action of the currents cared it away. Then all was still.

To be continued...