TEOTWAWKI (An Original Novel - Episode 32)
Encounter with
Now was when the real fun began. Henry put the Sue on autopilot in a wide circle. The water was deep, nothing could happen to damage her before it got his attention. Now he and Wilbur could go sport fishing. Emphasis on Sport! This was gonna be FUN!
To do so they each used a smaller version of Sue, drones about the size of a jet-ski. The Drones were fast enough to catch any fish and armed so that they could kill it with no visible damage. The dead fish was then carried back to Sue by smaller shark-sucker like drones to be ZAP’d and preserved as a trophy fish while they each looked for more.
It was a lot of fun. They intended to only catch five or ten. They got carried away and caught a lot more, each. A whole lot more. They finally closed up shop and headed back to the barn.
“Dammit Boy!” Henry said. He was tele-operating his CFFD, in hydrofoil mode, back to Sue personally. He could have put it on ‘return to sender’ and it would have found it’s way back by itself, but he was enjoying the view. Wilbur’s CFFD (cuddle fish fighter Drone) was slaved to his.
“Wazamatter?” Wilbur asked, somewhat distracted. Henry had been seeing a lot of neat stuff, like pods of whales, dolphins and flying fish. Henry was also hard of hearing, and was thus loud when he spoke. He spoke to himself a lot when he saw something new. It was an old ingrained habit acquired over the years from being alone all the time.
“You got to see this” Henry almost yelled. “It’s a Coast Guard Cutter. It’s fighting sea monsters!
“Say what?” Wilbur was done processing the game fish, just barely. He tuned in to his CFFD.
“Well I’ll be damned” Wilbur agreed “ If that’s not a sea monsters I don’t know what it is. Hell it looks like it has babies with it.”
“Oh shoot!” Henry almost screamed. “It’s trying to get a mouthful of Seaman. If it does it’s going to swallow.”
Sure enough. A sailor was in trouble. He was wrapped in tentacles and fighting for his life.
“Gotta do something” Henry muttered. He put the pedal to the medal and sent his drone toward the fight. The drones were already in hydrofoil mode and were almost instantly skipping across the water at sixty knots.
“Hang on buddy, don’t let it pull you down.” Henry muttered to himself.
Just as the Sailor was pried free from what he was holding onto Henry’s CFFD’s leapt from the water and landed on the creature that had aholt of the sailor. Henry clamped down HARD, had the drone bite it’s antagonist and dumped the full load of reserve energy from the Drones accumulators. A megawatt equivalent of electricity fried the creature’s tentacle. The tentacle fell off and released the sailor who scampered inside the ship.
The drone was dead. It had no power. It couldn’t move. It would take awhile to recover sufficient power do anything more than watch.
“Here you go Wilbur. Keep an eye on things with this one. I’m taking over the other one now” Henry handed over the de-powered drone to Wilbur and took control of the one that still had a charge.
The drones had been operating remote a long ways away from Sue. By the time Sue could get to the fight it would be over, unless desperate measures were taken.
The electrical shock had destroyed one tentacle and gently encouraged the huge Kraken to back away from it’s prey. It had burnt the equivalent of a finger. That thing STUNG. The monster disengaged from the Horatius and as the ship steamed free deck guns were brought to bear. The tentacled monster had caught it by surprise. It’s prey was no longer unaware. The deck guns chewed the monster apart.
“I bet that hurt” Henry said.
“For a very brief time” Wilbur agreed. The two sat and watched. What would the Patrol Boat do?
The captain of the The USCGC Sentinel Class Patrol Boat, Horatius decided discretion was the better part of valor. The ship turned and run.
Shelby: Sea Monster?
Wilbur: yeah. Hard to believe ain’t it? But you got the video’s.
Henry: Big bastard to. It had crawled partway up onto that Coastie and it was causing trouble. That was not a little ship either, but it leaned over pretty good. The critter was HEAVY.
Shelby: Thanks for telling me about it.
Henry: We thought it was the thing to do.
Wilbur: Yeah. Kinda scary ain’t it?
Shelby: It certainly is. Bye now.
Henry: Bye
Wilbur: Bye.
I’ve extended the underwater
surveillance net and increased it’s resolution.
It will go off if anything bigger than a catfish
get’s within twenty miles.
There WILL be false alarms.
Even so please treat this seriously.
Dangerous SeaLife has been
spotted in the water.