Chapter Text
“Dr. Richards wants that data.” Diane said to me, short dark hair barely falling past the backs of her ears. She was dressed in swirling psychedelic patterns, a base of deep sea green with crescents and reaching coral limbs of red and pink and blue.
“Dr. Richards will get that data. If he wants to find a better way to get a reading of strange mineral deposits several miles down and three hours sail off the coast of Oahu then he can do it himself. Until then, he'll take the time table I give him.” I said, standing up tall.
Diane stopped, a smile kinking up the right side of her lips.
A stark white bodysuit and crimson shorts, boots and gloves. A red strike up the center with a starburst taking up most of my chest and a helmet tucked under one arm with no facial features save for a curved arrow pointing down. The suit's “cape” or “wings” extended down from each arm, segmented with long stripes like the feathers of some titanic sea bird.
“What?” I asked her, smiling as if I didn't already know the answer while she approached me. She set down the clipboard against the bolted down table on the deck of our research boat. She pushed herself up on her tiptoes and kissed me.
I sighed, closing my eyes softly and wrapping my arms around the small of her back. Cursing the suit's environmental seal for not letting me feel her warmth on mine.
“Just thinking about how dashing a figure you cut, Stingray.” She said, taking the helmet out from under my arm. She fitted it over my head gently, clicking both latches shut in one motion. With a shrill little beep the helmet's HUD flashed to light in a squint inducing shade of red that wouldn't be lost against the ocean backdrop.
“'Stingray' is for when I'm doing something unwise around people with guns or who can toss trucks like footballs. Now what you CAN say is that Dr. Walter Newell, savant oceanographer and inventor cuts a dashing figure. Stingray is a part-timer.” I said, sweeping her back up into my arms and getting close. “Your husband is here for every second.” One of my gloved hands reached down over her forearm and laced my fingers into hers, running the tips of my fingers along the gem of her wedding ring. A teardrop of aquamarine in gleaming silver. Yes, Aquamarine. No one can ever accuse “us” superheroes of not being blunt as battering rams.
“When you get back from your day job, Mr. Part-Time. I'd like to take you up on that...” She said as I stepped up on the edge of the boat.
“Mmm, careful. Bad for the ecosystem if I start turning sea water to steam on contact.” I said and thrust my arms out to either side, wings snapping up, glittering red in the sun.
I dove down and pushed with a practiced motion against the suit's internal mechanisms and before I could blink I was shooting away from the boat and almost straight down into the threatening depths.
People compare the depths of the ocean to a lot of things. A frigid, hostile darkness. A yawning, open maw. The inky void of outer space.
They're all wrong.
As I rush straight down like a rocket through the salty ocean water I pass a half dozen worlds in miniature. Every layer of the ocean receiving slightly more sunlight than the one above, the building block resources of entire ecosystems changing drastically by distances that could be measured in yards.
Sparkling schools of tropical fish decked out in colors from every band of the rainbow parted like motes of dust at my passing, followed in looping dances by dolphins and porpoises. Below them more sluggish creatures floated and wriggled through the twilight color tide, eels and sharks that waited for the instant one of the upper denizens reached an inch too far over the line and was snapped up by something with teeth of broken needles or wicked serration. Packs of seals rolled and swirled in infinity spirals, their barking yelps coming through clearly in their insistent melody.
Beyond that the world truly did grow darker, colder, more dangerous. But not because of some lifeless emptiness. No, down in the depths were the water swallowed every mote of sunlight and every inch of caloric energy was a resource worth dying for the cold and darkness was informed by the fact that you were very much NEVER alone.
The pinging of my radar showed the almost liquid flowing of a colossal squid somewhere just below me, another blip showing the approach of a battle scarred sperm whale just up ahead. Every instinct in my mind had to resist the pull of just waiting and watching the confrontation, a fly on the wall to a battle of oceanic titans. I shot on, though. Grumbling to myself about adult responsibilities and scientific time tables.
When my feet gingerly drifted to the ocean floor was the only moment when the space comparison became apt. The way my feet kicked up sand that drifted only lazily back to earth, blackness stretching out in every direction outside the small lamp of vision my suit afforded me. If this was an alien world though, it wasn't dead.
Crustaceans and bottom feeders scuttled and swayed in the frigid “winds”, creatures so adapted to life without the light that both color and sight were as alien to them as telepathy or echolocation would have been to me.
I allowed myself to drink in the sensation of walking on the sea floor, even if continuing to swim forward would have been faster and more efficient. Something about me just thrilled at the blessing I had been given. The one mortal man permitted to step with his own feet a mile below the surface, hundreds of feet past the point where any other man in history would have been crushed by the pressure.
I was too busy marveling and frolicking to notice a small, ghostly pale crab get scooped up by the forward motion of my feet and dumped onto his back. Kicking his needle thing legs impotently and trying to right himself.
I felt something in my heart seize, hunching down and reaching out to cup him and the sand underneath him in my hands.
“Oh! Oh no no no, I'm sorry little one!” I said with all the sincerity I could muster. The idea that I might have caused undue harm in this undisturbed place by not watching my feet made something cold flow down the back of my neck.
The crab couldn't understand me of course, just swiping out at the water until it managed to roll back to its feet in my hands, scuttling off to find cover. I looked over my shoulder, any time spent on open ground would be a death sentence for the little crustacean. I bit my lip and reached out, mussing my fingers through the sand to either side of the crab, kicking up a murky dust devil that billowed and bloomed outward in a slow motion explosion of opaque soil. It wasn't some messianic rescue but it might give the crab a few extra seconds to slide back beneath the sand and rocks he called home. I have rudely scooped him up from his hiding spot, so I was able to justify it to myself that I was only righting the scales...
...Then I saw the crab scuttle over something beneath the bleached ocean sand. A cylindrical mass about twice as wide as my arm and stretching off somewhere I couldn't see. I sent up a silent prayer I wasn't going to disturb the tip of some hungry, undiscovered species of sea serpent as I reached down and brushed my hand over it.
The sand fluttered away and left a window to its hidden treasure. It was a serpent alright, but not a live one. Coated in scales of glittering jade molded together with gleaming bronze, both materials in far too good of shape for how long it must have been underwater. I checked my HUD and sure enough it was either the source of the indescribable energy, or very close to it.
Descriptions given to me by Namor, my grumpy friend and king of mighty Atlantis flashed past my mind's eye. A serpentine motif, buried in the impossible depths of the Pacific, spared the ravages of time by some metric or process unknown. A Lemurian artifact, Atlantis' Pacific counterpart.
A shiver ran up my spine that had nothing to do with the water's ever present chill. I'd only had close calls with one Lemurian artifact for sure, a piece of work called the Serpent Crown, the talisman of some dark primordial god. If this was even in the same pantheon than leaving it here to be discovered was not an option.
In the same instant my hand reached up to radio Diane on the boat I felt a ripple of motion in the water behind me, something heavy moving fast in the direction of my lower spine. I kicked off the seafloor and glided maybe ten meters up before I spun to look down at my attacker.
He was burly, seven feet tall if you counted the flat golden “horns” of his beast mantle helmet, a golden breastplate flaring upward past each shoulder with pointed menace, his legs and arms protected by navy blue links of masterful chain mail that was a shade or two darker than the tropical azure of his skin.
“Attuma.” I said, turning on the suit's special radio that let me be heard even this far underwater. The would-be Atlantean conqueror looked up at me with eyes as black as a trench, a heavy stone javelin thumping two feet deep in the sand right where I had been standing. His right hand clutching to a sword, four feet long and branching outward with one blade to either side of its main, each secondary edge sporting shark tooth serrations.
“I had hoped that the royal whelp would see to delivering me my prize. I am insulted at having to deal with his human pup.” He said as a floated back down to his eye level, keeping my feet off the floor in case of a hot exit.
“I'm not “his” anything, other than his friend. And being his friend means I know you're bad news. I appreciate the correct term for a juvenile stingray though, for some reason I had the idea that you didn't pay much attention in biology class. Too busy flunking out of ethics 101.” I said, my fingers twitching like a gunfighter waiting to draw.
Attuma swam like a polar bear. Solid, lethal if he closed distance on me, with the length and power in his arms and legs it would take him maybe two strokes to bound the ten yards from me to him. He was faster than he looked but even still I had him beat in maneuverability by a nautical mile. If I could avoid getting crushed into powder in his first charge, I could stay out of reach...
'Yea, “Stingray” and then what? Water dance him into submission?' Something sarcastic in my head droned. I shut it out, pulling the ounces of heroic confidence I had into the center of my mind and holding them there. I didn't have to use my heroic bravado that often so I had a long time to recharge. Too bad my proverbial tank was about three inches deep. I reached down, hauling the artifact up against my chest. It was a thick pipe about as tall as my torso. It must have weighted the better part of 300 pounds. Each end of the pipe sported the head of some wicked looking serpent, head decorated in long
lashes and spines like a tropical viper. Either head's eyes were inset with massive, oily pearls, two sets on each head. The pearls were...wrong, the crescent shine of a pearl's surface instead reflected blacks and purples that reminded me only of a toxic infection or a hard bruise.
I was almost too entranced by the primordial artifact to remember that Attuma intended to kill me getting it.
He didn't wait for me to say something biting and clever. He surged forward, moving through water like an Olympian athlete would move through air. I kicked my weight back, throwing my head inches out of the arc of his sword. I fulfilled the motion and took off like a fighter jet into the open blackness. I scrambled through open space toward a crest of rock that my radar picked up, pock marked with arched and blind caves where I might be able to even the odds.
I was looking down at my radar when I realized he wasn't on it. A quarter ton of Atlantean muscle and I didn't have a clue where he had gone after the first charge.
That was, until the shape of the rock came into view and I saw him standing at its peak with a massive column of stone hoisted over his head like a club.
He swung it impossibly fast underwater, I was barely able to bring my arms up in front of me as its crushing impact pinned me to it surface. If I was caught between its weight and the ocean floor I would pop like a can of sardines under a hydraulic press. I pushed to the right with every ounce of strength I had and managed to scrap over its curves with feet to spare, watching the stone shatter into chunks the size of trucks on landing.
Again Attuma was evading my sensors but this time I didn't wait for the sucker punch. I dove forward into one of the caves that looked wide and deep enough for a moray the length of a train. Which was not the kind of mental image I needed to be focusing on right now.
I rolled gracefully through sandy caverns and kept one wall in sight at all times, if only to reassure myself I wasn't diving down something's waiting throat. I heard angry thumping and the rending of rock somewhere to one side. Attuma hadn't found me squished flat where he expected and it has just ruined his whole day. I tried to kill the snickering grin that spread over my face as my radar pinged off the walls and found me a route out. A shaft that would put me up towards the surface, toward the boat, toward backup.
When I finally pushed free of the cave system I didn't have time to react to Attuma's blade striking out ward my center mass. The massive bronze artifact in my arms too most of the blow, on account of I wasn't currently bisected chum in the water but I was knocked spinning through the sea, the suit's internal gyroscopes barely keeping me from throwing up as open ocean and the rocky floor flashed past my vision in alternating layers.
Attuma leapt at me, both hands wrapped around the hilt of his blade for a downward strike. Even if the blade didn't carve me like sushi, the pure metal impact of the weapon would do the work of a warhammer just as well.
I pulled my arms into my chest and my wings curled together into a red cocoon, like I was turtling up to survive the blow. I waited, watching him on radar imaging for a split second until just before his blade made contact. I kicked out with my feet and slammed both of my heels into his thighs, pitching him forward and leaving him falling head first into my wings when I SLAMMED my arms outward. The pitiless edge of my wings scraping along his cheeks and shoulders and sending whirling ink blots of near black blood into the water. Our weights pushed against one another and we were both harshly pushed away from center but at least I had stopped spinning.
I landed on my feet and watched him land with a plume of sand on his. I noted with some satisfaction that my attack had bent the left horn of his helmet nearly horizontal.
“You cannot win.” He said with the certainty of a man saying that the tide would come in that day.
“Considering what you would do with...whatever the hell this is. I have to try.” I said. I was exhausted, and aching. My left shoulder protested loudly in my mind. I think my right pinkie toe was dislocated and my lungs screamed with the exertion, trying to make me explain to them what the hell I thought I, a lifelong academic, thought he was doing right now skating by on this much exertion and adrenaline.
I banished them with my memories of Atlantis. The stories Namor told me of blue skinned children circling with laughter on their faces. Of great museums and gardens made of coral and sea grass. Amphitheaters made from titanic golden shells that hosted music so melodic and deep it was something you felt in your chest rather than your ears.
Even if Attuma's grand design never laid finger on the surface world, I would never let him put any of those images under his despotic boot while I was still alive to prevent it.
“You will die today.” He said, again with a certainty to it but my determination set a grinding anger in his tone. “I will press you beneath my heel until your remains are freed to the ocean to be scavenged by bottom feeders. That cannot be prevented.” He said and did something that chilled me to the very core of my bones. He smiled. “But...you might still protect those dear to you, pup.” He said and the blood rushing in my ears was suddenly the torrent of a broken dam in stereo.
“Give me the artifact and I might spare your woman from paying the debt of your insult.” He said, hoisting his sword and pointing straight...up..
Diane. He knew Diane was on the surface...and she didn't know anything. All he would have to do is bolt out of the ocean and turn the boat into a cloud of lethal shrapnel. She'd be dead before she hit the water. Diane who had already lost her only living family to Atlantean squabbles. Who had only barely kept from falling apart. Who had caught herself from falling into the dark and now pushed herself forward to complete a degree, to match me beat for beat. A woman so brave and strong and perfect when she passed out over a marine biology text book that I ached just watching her breathe.
My shoulder settled. I dropped the artifact at my feet. I didn't need the wait. And I would come back for it when I was done with Attuma.
“Ah, see. A smart pup after a-”
My legs moved before he stopped talking. SCREW staying out of reach. I SHOT forward like I had been fired out of cannon. He would have covered the space in ten seconds. I did it in two. Straightening out my body and curling one arm so that my wing stretched and my elbow caught him in the throat. The hit rocked him back on his heels and my free hand reached up to grab hold of his sword hand. My fingers straightened, my thumbs tucked in to activate the mechanism built into my gloves.
Every single volt of my “sting” SLAMMED into his body without an ounce of care or restraint. The omnipresent soak of the salty ocean water carried the current like a living thing, a terrible, unstoppable force of nature that treated his every nerve like a live wire. Amps pumped through his blood, through his bones, seizing his lungs and heart like crushing hands that stopped them dead. He couldn't even scream as his jaw and throat both slammed shut with every one of his steel cable muscles flexing together.
His eyes, wide and straight staring looked up into my featureless mask. His gills pinned shut by the crushing pressure of every muscle flexing in his neck and shoulders. He started to suffocate, started to DROWN. His lungs unable to even spasm for oxygen as my suit's offensive battery mainlined charged death into his every screaming cell.
The fear in his eyes was truly visible only a second before they rolled back, bearing their veiny, unseeing whites. I let him look on my face without breaking for an instant. I wanted him to pass out believing, really believing that I wasn't going to let him wake up again. I wanted him to think I was capable of holding his body in place and watching it shut off like a series of cracking valves. I wanted him to THINK I was capable of it at least.
I waited that extra second and then I let him go. He floated backward for an instant before his twitching body hit the ground. I thumped him unkindly on the chest with my fist and watched his gills spring to gasping motion, his chest heaving upward with a sputtering start like a car engine coming back to life.
The suit's radio audibly fizzed as I turned it to the private channel number he'd given me.
“I'm tying a coordinate buoy to Attuma. Come get him.” I said and the shut the channel off before I got any reply. I tied the little blinking sphere to the unconscious tyrant's wrist, hoisted the artifact onto my shoulder and pushed back toward the surface.
When I finally broke out into the open air I stumbled over the edge of the boat and fell to my hands and knees on the deck. I clawed the helmet off my head and just gasped fresh air into my lungs.
“Walt?! Walt are you ok?!” Diane got down next to me and pulled me up to clasp to her shoulder. “I've been trying to raise you for almost an hour! The sensors picked up all this thrashing and booming, what happened? The diagnostic says one of your toes is broken! What the HELL is that-”
I tried to open my mouth to explain it to her, that's what good husbands do. I don't keep secrets, I tell her everything in excruciating detail but the exhaustion was like a lead weight around every moving part in my body and only one thing was pushing me to overcome it, only one thing my body deemed important enough to push saying.
“I love you, Diane. I'm so proud of your degree. I'm going to love you. And keep you safe. Forever.” I groaned as I held limply onto her. I wasn't sure how many of those words actually came out through the rocky croak that my voice had turned into.
She paused for a long moment, just holding me to her shoulder as the edges of my vision started zeroing in toward blackness.
“Walt...I'm pregnant.” She said, crystal clear as my fading consciousness made every other sensation fuzzy and distant.
'Oh.' I thought. 'Good. Good for us.' I thought like a penny dropping into a deep, dark well.
And then her husband, the part time superhero, passed out.