Deep Black Sea

By David M. Salkin

“Science fiction at its best, a realistic tale of exploration and danger, written by a man who knows the details of deep-sea exploration firsthand.” —Ben Bova, Hugo Award-wining author

With a crew of seven, the Challenger sea lab submerges three miles below the waves for a one-year mission to study the hidden world of the deep black sea. How is it that sea animals can live and reproduce in water that should boil them on the thermal vents known as “black smokers?” Superheated water that is full of toxins and heavy metals and contains almost no oxygen should be void of life on planet Earth—and yet it is teeming with it. The answer to the puzzle lies in the bacteria.

Researcher Ted Bell is a NASA scientist with his own agenda: getting humans to Mars. When he purposefully infects a member of the crew in an attempt to harness the power of the Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria, he quickly loses control and unleashes a terrifying new creature. His botched experiment quickly becomes a battle for survival—three miles below the surface.

With the research vessel nearing catastrophic failure, and terrifying alien life forms running wild through the ship, the crew must figure out a way to battle something that is no longer human while trying desperately to reach the surface alive.

“Crichton at his best is the main author who comes to mind as a comparable influence when reading Deep Black Sea . . . The informative and fascinating science that fills each page really elevates this book to a higher grade.” —Horror Novel Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781618682673

Book preview

Author’s Note

Much of what you will read about in this novel is based on real science. The deep sea is mostly an undiscovered place, full of diverse and extremely unusual life. While mankind has spent trillions to explore the universe, there’s still so much we don’t understand right here in our oceans. Our oceans are overfished, polluted, and taken for granted. I’m a scuba diver, and I can tell you firsthand that I’ve seen evidence of man on almost every dive, no matter how remote the location. I hope you enjoy this story enough to become curious about our endangered oceans and the deep-sea life herein, and go on to do some research on your own. We all need to be aware of the destruction of the world’s reef ecosystems and the growth of what is known as the ocean gyre garbage patches—vast mini-continents of floating plastic trash. The future of the ocean depends on all of us.

Dedication

This book is dedicated first and foremost to my wife and best friend Patty, who continues to be my biggest motivator and literary fan. Patty, Rachael, and Alex are the center of my universe. They are also my own personal dive team. I look forward to our days underwater together, in tranquil seas that don’t hide monsters.

While Mom won’t get to read this one, I’m thankful that Dad is here and still reading. At 85, he’s reading on the 89-year level.

My family, Eric, Stacey, Missy, Jesse, Jake and Mike, Kathy, Kathleen and Gabriel, and way too many awesome friends to list . . . thank you for your encouragement and friendship. I am surrounded by people I love, and I am truly blessed.

Thank you to Jon Ford for editing assistance.

To Anthony Ziccardi and Michael Wilson at Permuted Press, my extreme gratitude for making me part of the team. You guys rock!

And finally, I can never do an acknowledgments page without thanking those who have served in uniform in defense of this country, particularly those who have come home injured, sometimes with invisible scars. Thank you for your service. Because much of the action in this book takes place underwater, I’d like to add a special dedication to the members of SEAL Team Six who killed Osama Bin Laden, and those same SEAL Team Six members and Night Stalkers who died when their Chinook went down in Afghanistan. True American heroes.

PROLOGUE

Since the beginning of life on Earth, the majority of the planet’s creatures have resided in the ocean’s depths. From that first human contact with the edge of the sea, early man understood that there was food to be had in the mysterious ocean—and death awaited those who did not respect both the water and the creatures that called it home.

As humankind advanced over the ages, its populations flourished along the coasts, using the water for food, transportation, trade, and exploration. And whether it was Norse legend or tales from Boston whaling ships—every culture that lived with the sea told stories of terrifying creatures.

Like biblical stories that explained that which cannot be seen, old seagoing tales warned of the hidden dangers that lurked deep below the water awaiting careless sailors. Those early sailors and explorers brave enough to set out into waters unknown returned with stories dismissed by modern, educated men. But why? Is it because believing such tales would keep us all on land forever?

Old engravings from the whaling era show giant squids pulling entire tall-masted ships under the waves. Impossible? Not to those who have seen giant squids destroy a sperm whale, or who have seen schools of Humboldt squids shred their prey in a feeding frenzy.

And while many of the world’s giant fish have disappeared over the eons, who knows, really, what lives in the deepest parts of the ocean? The Marianas Trench is deeper than the Himalayas are tall, with creatures living in the cold darkness more terrifying looking than any monster from Hollywood. As man turns his exploration from the stars to the oceans, he finds new life-forms here on his own planet that seemingly defy the laws of science—creatures that can live without sunlight or oxygen, and entire ecosystems that exist in ways we cannot yet begin to understand.

Throughout modern history, man has almost always engaged with a new species by conquering it in some way. He has turned it into a new food source, used its hide or fur for clothing, researched its potential uses for medicinal purposes, or hunted it for sport. The arrogance of armed man has always pushed him to pursue exploration and exploitation of the natural world with impunity. No creature has ever successfully repelled the invasion of the human race for very long.

Until now.

************

When President Jeff Roberts was elected president in 2020, his inaugural address included references to exploring inner space and the oceans as a priority that could no longer be ignored. While his predecessor had promised a Mars mission that excited NASA, President Roberts immediately began making sweeping changes in the funding priorities of NASA, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and the United States Navy. The fact that President Roberts was a retired naval officer wasn’t lost on any of the protesting department heads at NASA.

Not since Thomas Jefferson had the United States seen such a Renaissance man in the Oval Office. A US Navy hero, Roberts was also a brilliant physicist, scientist, and statesman. Within two months of taking office, Roberts had replaced the head of NASA with former US Navy pilot-turned-astronaut Rear Admiral Thomas Antus and unveiled his bold plan to see a deep-sea research station built to rival the International Space Station. Citing the need to address similar hurdles in both space and deep-sea exploration, Roberts announced that the station would be a joint effort between NASA, NOAA, and the navy. What it meant for the Mars mission was a huge budget cut that would essentially shelve the program for decades, but for those scientists who had been the pioneers of deep-sea exploration, it meant funding the likes of which they never could have dreamed.

With a budget of six billion dollars (the cost of two Virginia-class submarines), the deep-sea research station quickly became a reality. By comparison, the Alvin, one of the most famous deep-sea exploration vehicles ever built, was constructed and later refurbished for under a million dollars. With six billion dollars, the new Office of Deep Sea Research could take deep-sea exploration to the next level—tantamount to NASA first going to the moon.

Putting astronauts, astrophysicists, and rocket scientists alongside submariners, navy research scientists, and divers caused as many immediate problems as it did offer up new ideas. While forming ODSR, President Roberts noted the similarities between space travel and deep-sea exploration and claimed to have assembled the brightest minds in American science to achieve the vision of real deep-sea research—one that could lead to great discovery and perhaps undersea colonies. But when it came to the hazards of each environment—space versus the deep ocean—there were quite opposite problems to overcome.

Space was a cold vacuum that threatened to suck a ship’s life-sustaining atmosphere and even its occupants out into the endless black void. In contrast, the deep ocean, also completely dark and cold, exerted enormous pressures on the undersea ships, and the thousands of pounds per square inch threatened to crush vehicles like thin aluminum cans. In either case, everyone died. But in trying to engineer vehicles for these two modes of travel, there were two worlds of science that didn’t speak the same language.

To the NASA bureaucrats, the new Office of Deep Sea Research was an insult that destroyed their Mars project and sucked out their budget like the vacuum of space. They referred to the Office of Deep Sea Research acronym ODSR as ODS-Are and would say things like, "Odds are they’ll spend six billion dollars to drown a bunch of guinea pigs." Of course, the early days of the space race weren’t much different, as the navy bunch would always remind the complainers.

To his credit, the new head of NASA, Admiral Antus, used his background to smooth feathers in both camps. Over the course of his illustrious career, the retired rear admiral had been a navy combat pilot, an astronaut who flew a space shuttle mission, and a scientist who lived aboard the International Space Station for six months. He ultimately returned to the US Navy to finish his career in the Pentagon heading the fleet research department. He had the respect of both groups of scientists, and both camps felt they had a sympathetic ear with him. In his role as director of ODSR, Admiral Antus played referee with only one goal in mind—completing his mission of establishing the world’s first deep-sea research station.

At fifty-eight, Admiral Antus was still a striking figure with his thick white flattop crew cut and slim build. He wasn’t particularly large in stature, but he had a presence that was felt when he entered the room. He managed the teams well, separating their missions into projects that made sense for each of their areas of expertise. Inside of eighteen months, ODSR staff had designed new metal alloys, hull designs, oxygen production and atmospheric scrubbing systems, biofuel systems that could run on algae, synthetic diamond double-paned glass viewing portals, and revolutionary new concepts in undersea living. After approval of the final plans, construction was finished thirty months later—on time and on budget, thanks to Admiral Antus’s oversight. When the Challenger rolled out of the specially built dry-dock in Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, in Honolulu, Hawaii, its enormity shocked the world.

The three-hundred-foot, nearly spherical sea lab was almost as wide as a United States Navy Seawolf-class submarine, but that sub was only forty feet at the beam—not three hundred feet tall. If placed next to the Statue of Liberty, the Challenger would only be five feet shorter with its legs retracted. The five short, weighted, telescopic legs on the bottom of the ship would be deployed to stabilize the vessel when it neared the seabed. These same weighted legs would be jettisoned when it was time for the Challenger to surface.

The name of the ship, Challenger, made both camps happy. It paid tribute to the astronauts of the space shuttle Challenger that exploded January 28, 1986, while also acknowledging the proud history of deep-sea research. The Challenger Deep is the name given to the deepest surveyed point in the ocean, located at the southern end of the Marianas Trench. At a depth of nearly thirty-six thousand feet, Mount Everest could be placed on its bottom and still have almost seven thousand feet of water over its summit.

While the maiden voyage of the Challenger was not, in fact, to the Challenger Deep, it was tasked with a one-year trip to the hadal zone at a depth of twenty thousand feet—roughly four miles down. For the NASA teams, a year in such an isolated, dangerous environment would serve as an experiment for a Mars trip they hoped to someday resurrect. For the navy scientists, this was the journey they had always dreamed of. The deepest oceanic explorations by humans never lasted more than a few hours—to place humans on the deep seafloor for a year meant observations and experiments that would change history.

And, in fact, it would.

ONE

Office of Deep Sea Research

Admiral Antus was seated at the end of a long table in a nicely appointed conference room. He was surrounded by the seven-person crew that would spend the next twelve months almost four miles below the surface of the ocean. It was a send-off breakfast and rehearsal of sorts for the media show that would follow. After the meal, they would board a sub tender and sail west before entering the submersible and testing fate. When everyone had been seated, the director stood up.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, he began, toasting them with fresh-squeezed orange juice. They raised their glasses back to him and showed their excited smiles. Next week at this time, God willing, you will be comfortably seated twenty thousand feet below the sea. I can’t help but smile as I look around at your tans. I can see you’ve all been soaking up every ray you could get before you go under. I don’t blame you. The tanning beds we have onboard for you won’t be the same.

There were some polite and nervous chuckles.

"Although we have individually gone over most of the following presentation countless times before, I thought we’d take one final run through our amazing journey thus far as a group. You’ll notice you’re the only ones here. You’re to speak absolutely freely and express any final questions or thoughts about the mission as we go through the presentation. Commander Lewis will be operating the slides from the laptop. If he screws this up, I suggest you all abort the mission now."

A few more nervous chuckles, and a stiff salute from Jim Lewis, the Challenger’s pilot and mission commander. A former US Navy ballistic submarine captain, he would be guiding the Challenger down to its new home in the deep black sea. Like Tom Antus, he wore his white hair in a military flattop, although he was a head taller and much wider at six three, 220 sinewy pounds of muscle. Jim pressed the button on the laptop and a photograph of the Challenger appeared on the white screen.

Sleek she’s not, joked the director as they gazed at the giant white ball. "But with a hull constructed of HY-950 titanium alloy, she’s the toughest thing to ever enter the water. The US Navy attack sub Seawolf was constructed with HY-100 steel, rated for one hundred thousand pounds per square inch for a maximum operating depth of sixteen hundred feet. With our new titanium cobalt-fiber steel alloy, your operating depth exceeds twenty thousand feet. Crush depths are almost theoretical at this point, but we believe the ship’s hull specs are in excess of the deepest parts of any known trench.

This mission has many parts, and the seven of you will be extremely busy. I dare say this will be the fastest year of your life. I’ll review each of your specific missions, which you’re free to discuss with the media later on, in general terms. This mission is considered classified until all the data has been collected, if for no other reason than to piss off the Russians and Chinese.

That brought a few laughs. There had been pressure exerted by both Russia and China to be included in the project and make it international like the space station. They had been politely told no.

"We’ll start with Commander Lewis. Jim will have total oversight over all individually tasked missions and final say over everything that occurs. He will guide the Challenger down in a controlled decent that will take almost two days, with the help of Dr. Clark and Sonar Chief Martinez.

Dr. Clark will be conducting various experiments of her own while on this mission, but she is also responsible for crew health and safety. Since the atmospheric conditions are theoretical to some degree, she will be drawing blood and performing psychological evaluations during your mission. While we don’t anticipate narcosis problems, we simply can’t be sure.

The others glanced at Dr. Jessica Clark. She was somewhat of an unknown to the crew and hadn’t been involved in their training very much. An attractive, athletic woman of forty, Jessica had been a navy doctor her entire career—including several tours aboard nuclear submarines. Although a pretty woman, she was a no-nonsense type who could handle herself in the roughest of naval liberty ports.

Chief Martinez will be your sonar operator, Admiral Antus continued. He will assist with ascent and descent, computer imaging and modeling, videography and photography, sample collections, and ship maintenance.

Yeah, leave it to the navy to stick the Mexican with cleaning up the ship, joked Tony Martinez with a chuckle. Of the entire crew, he looked most like the stereotypical sailor you’d find in an engine room, with his shaved head and tattoos covering his massive arms. His joking aside, Tony had been trained to operate the sophisticated new sonar systems that NASA had helped design for the ship, as well as the infrared cameras that could view and record anything that moved in the black cold water. He was technically gifted and had excelled in his years as a sonar man in the navy, reaching the rank of chief petty officer in only eight years. If his naval career didn’t work out, he looked like he might have a future as an NFL linebacker.

Tony will be making sure your ship doesn’t leak—he won’t be cleaning the head, said Antus with a smile. Doctors Theresa Meyers, Michael Ammiano, and Ian MacMullen will be the research arm of this mission. They will have a to-do list a mile long, and all of you will assist them as your own schedules allow. They will be collecting samples via the revolutionary new lock system. The lock system—as well as all mechanical systems, telescopic docking legs, atmospheric systems, and fueling rigs—are under the supervision of your number two officer, Ted Bell. With the exception of Commander Lewis, Ted has spent more time than any of you learning the systems and operation of this ship, and I suggest you listen to him when he speaks. You are on an extremely sophisticated research vessel. Mistakes may be catastrophic. Take your time, be vigilant, check each other, and remain focused. Ted, tell them about the changes to the lock system.

Ted was the oldest of the crew but, at sixty, remained an amazing athlete. He could out swim anyone onboard, although on this mission, if they were swimming, they had a serious problem. He was also a dedicated runner, biker, and martial artist. Most importantly, he was a genius. Ted could run any computer system on the ship—many that he had helped design, including the sonar systems. He was also the responsible for the biofuel plant, desalinization systems, and the sophisticated animal capture and decompression system created for the Challenger.

Ted was also the only crewman who came from NASA, and his slight resentment toward the entire process wasn’t lost on anyone. After spending years gearing up for a Mars mission, he had been reassigned to the deep-sea research project. It should have been considered an honor to be chosen, but for Ted, it was a crushing disappointment. He knew that, at his age, he would not be a part of any Mars mission that would now be many years away. And while it clearly wasn’t the fault of any of his new shipmates, there was a strain in his relationship with the others, in particular Tony and Ian, whose personalities seemed to clash with the genius from NASA. Personalities notwithstanding, the crew worked well together, which was essential aboard such a sophisticated vessel. Ted had worked extremely hard on the project, not because of his interest in oceanography, but because the vast financial resources dedicated to the cause enabled him to assist in developing systems that might also one day be used aboard a deep-space vehicle.

Prior to the Challenger, most deepwater submersibles were either run by remote control or a crew of two or three individuals who had extremely limited bottom time because of the effects of the vast pressure on the human body. They would collect samples outside the ship and not be able to analyze them until the sub had surfaced. This wouldn’t do for the Challenger mission. Instead, the vessel had several compartments that could be sealed off independently, and their atmospheres were controlled through a central computer. The bottom portion of the sphere contained the lab and the collection lock.

The lock’s design was based on the principles of a torpedo tube. Outer doors on large collection tubes could be opened and flooded, then sealed off. Once the outer doors were sealed, the tube contents could be inspected via infrared cameras and then transferred to large vaults inside the ship. Once sealed in the sample tanks, the crew could observe any collected animals up close and personal at their leisure.

It was hoped that over the course of the year, animals could be captured, the tanks slowly depressurized, and the animals brought inside to be examined while still alive. Of course, it was unlikely that living specimens would survive such a huge change in pressure. If the sample tanks were merely opened after collection, any animals inside would most likely just explode from the pressure changes.

Ted Bell stood and addressed the room. He had a midwestern accent and thin, sandy hair. Although he wasn’t particularly popular, he was well respected, and when he spoke, the others listened. Morning, folks. Captain . . . he said, nodding his head at Commander Lewis. For the first six months, every design we came up with led to the conclusion that we’d either kill everything we collected in the process or blow the bottom of the station to oblivion.

Sounds promising, said Tony quietly.

Ted ignored him and continued. The system we ended up going with has never been tested at the depths we will be working in—but, what the hell, nothing has.

True dat, said Tony, and the rest of the crew forced smiles.

What we are aiming to do is collect as diverse a sampling as possible from the hadal zone. Ideally, we’d like to keep the samples alive, and we’ve constructed holding tanks aboard ship to bring the animals up. We believe, even going through slow decompression, that this may be impossible, however. Like most of what we’ll be doing, this is yet another experiment. As much as the research team wants to examine these animals and collect data, my primary duty is ship safety. Much of what we’ll be doing will be ‘learn as we go.’ At the first sign of any system stress or malfunction, we will attempt to devise alternate means of collections.

If we haven’t imploded, said Tony.

True dat, answered Ted with his toothy grin. That brought a few louder chuckles.

At least we’ll be entertained this year, said Jess, shaking her head at Tony.

Tony responded by wiggling his eyebrows at the pretty doctor, as if to offer more than entertainment. "You wish," she muttered.

Ted continued. "One of the great unknowns, as you are aware, will be the effects of our breathable atmosphere. On other submersibles, the crew all sounded like Mickey Mouse from all the helium. This ship will be kept at a little over one bar of atmosphere in a surface-air mix. The hull will be taking the pressure, not us. That said, we’ll still be four miles down in thirty-four-degree pitch blackness that no human has ever experienced for the length of time that we will be down there. He paused. You people sure you really wanna do this?" he asked with a big smile.

Hell yeah! responded Ian MacMullen. Although he was an American citizen and had lived in the United States for twenty-plus years, he still had his thick Scottish brogue.

You’re just trying to make this an International Sea Station, said Tony.

"I thought that was your job? asked the commander to Tony, which brought several low Ewwwws . . ."

"That is so not PC," said Tony, feigning great hurt.

Dr. Clark spoke up. "I can see I’m gonna need baseline readings on Martinez to know if he’s going crazy from narcosis or he’s just being his version of normal."

Ted laughed and motioned for Commander Lewis to change slides. The next picture showed a schematic diagram of the ship. "This is a large vessel for such a small crew. We are forced to operate understaffed because of the atmosphere issues. It means all of you have been cross-trained for multiple tasks. Teamwork will be essential to mission success and our personal safety. The computer system that NASA has designed is similar to the system used by the space