Titan Watching

Dear Director,

            I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to you as I continue my current assignment out in the Pacific Ocean. As you may be aware (or not, how would I know what reports you’re looking at?), Shen was detected out at sea and I was sent to monitor his movements aboard one of our naval vessels.

It has come to my attention that an expedition is being planned for Station 1, through the Antarctic Vortex. I would like to volunteer myself and my assistant, Chloe Janes, as science personnel for the trip. 

Why, you ask? Well, I would like to carry out a simple cartography mission. The hollow earth remains a vastly unexplored domain. To use an analogy that is well-known already- we know more about the Moon than we do about the hollow earth. This is not to say that the hollow earth is an easy place to access, I understand that the process is far from it and a lot of specialized equipment is required. Nonetheless, the more we do it, the more likely we will be able to carry out these missions with the certainty and confidence required to continue pushing forward. Is that not what Monarch should stand for, as a scientific effort to study these awesome creatures we have come to share our world with?

I eagerly await your reply on your decision regarding this matter.

Dr. Vansh Pali

I stare at the e-mail for a couple of seconds more. Is it too friendly? Too casual? But I cannot imagine myself writing any more formally than this. It would not feel like me anymore. I noticed my phone beginning to shuffle. I reached for it and looked at who was calling- Chloe.

Answering the call and putting it down, I spoke into my earbuds.

“Hello?”

“Sir, we have movement here,” she said.

“Movement how?” I replied

“Shen is surfacing,”

“Surfacing?” I repeated back, “For what joy?”

“No clue, he’s never done it this close to a ship either.”

“I’m on my way up, pray he doesn’t change his mind,”

“Well, I suggest you hurry up either way.”

I hung up and looked at the e-mail again. No, this can wait. The expedition won’t even begin preparation for another couple of months anyway. I have an awesome creature to look at right here, right now. I close my laptop and rush out of my compartment. Vaulting through the corridors and up ladders I finally found myself on the deck on the aft-starboard side. Besides a couple of sailors minding their own business, Chloe was standing on the deck leaning out with a camera pointed towards the horizon, its strap dangling precariously overboard.

“Straps on, Chloe…” I said pulling the camera’s straps around her neck.

“Oh right, my bad…” she said barely looking away from the camera.

I could not blame her. The sight to behold was spectacular. Have you ever been whale-watching? I have not either, at least not specifically. I have seen my fair share of whales whenever I receive a sea-faring assignment. But what I am looking at now is not a whale, even if its silhouette resembles one. As if on cue to my thought, a giant streamlined mass lifted out of the water and brandished itself at us. This mass was nearly a quarter the size of our vessel, of respectable size itself. But this mass was not the creature itself, oh no, this was the creature’s claw. The claw itself could have been a monster in its own right. It looked like one too, sporting markings that looked like eyes and gills. The mass then momentarily retreated into the water as the creature’s carapace breached out of the water.

This is Titanus Shen, the wandering shellfish. The creature looks much like your average shrimp, it is just the size of a warship. It swims flapping its tail, much like a whale would, but this creature could very well prey on a whale if it wanted to. Presently, however, it seemed content to cruise alongside us. We’ve been trailing him for about three days now. Shen is pretty elusive for his size, and he appears rather erratically, so we collect all the data we can get every chance we get to do so.

Shen continued to glide gracefully through the water, and then he smashed his tail on the water quite violently and we heard a low groan emanating from the water as well as the hull of the vessel. All of the sailors around us stopped what they were doing and looked out at Shen.

Chloe was too, now without the camera, “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“Was it something we did?”

“I doubt it, we’ve shadowed him for 3 days making all sorts of disturbances, including having a nuclear power source, right next to him. I can’t imagine he decides to snap about us now. Well, he absolutely could have…”

Shen then groaned again before diving down, breaching out and diving again. The wake he produced rocked our vessel as Shen dove deeper and faster. The onboard announcement system then crackled to life.

“All hands, proceed to your muster stations, all hands to muster stations.”

“Back to our compartment Chloe,” I said as I picked up her bag

“Don’t have to tell me twice!” she said as she followed.

“Dr. Vansh, report to the bridge, Vansh to the bridge” the announcement system crackled one last time before alarms began to sound on the ship.

We stopped dead in our tracks. “Okay, new plan…” I handed her bag back to her, “You head back to our compartment. And remember to…”

“Give way to any sailors rushing by! I know!” she said adjusting her bag onto her shoulders and scurrying away down into the ship.

In the meantime, I bounded up the stairs towards the bow and the bridge. Running towards the bridge I announced my arrival and was then led to the captain and XO of the ship, both peering at some displays on their war table.

“Captain… XO…” I said, a little out of breath.

“Doctor,” the captain replied.

“So, what’s the situation?” I asked as I caught my breath back.

“Well,” The XO began, “besides the sudden scare your Titan, Shen, gave us, we picked up something on our hyper-long-range sonar.” They pulled up an image that I could make no heads or tails of. I’m assuming it’s a sonar photograph though.

“Here,” the XO said pointing to a spot on the image “that is something- something big…”

I looked up at the two of them, “You think it’s another Titan?”

The captain leaned in, “Look, I’ll be honest with you. The hyper-long-range sonar is not very reliable at those ranges. In fact, I would be very sceptical of any readings the sonar produces.”

“This pattern, however," the XO said pointing to one part of the photograph, "was detected about 15 minutes ago, and they've been getting bigger ever since.” The XO went on. “And at the range that they are being picked up contrasted to the size that they’re being picked up as… we can’t imagine it could be anything else.”

“So, what do you suggest we do?” The captain asked turning to me. “We intend to break away from your mission, but if you have anything to say to salvage it…”

I looked at the sonar photograph again. “Well… I can’t imagine it can be salvaged anyway. If Shen is diving proper, I don’t think he’ll want to surface again. There’s also the problem of this new contact.” I turned to the XO, “Do we have any resolution on the contact?”

“No,” he replied, “like I said, too far.”

“So, it could be anyone- Godzilla, Typhon, heck it could be Leviathan for all we know. Or it could be something new entirely. We might not know much about Shen, but the one thing we do know is that he keeps away from other Titans, especially from destroyer-types. And he seemed pretty jumpy before deciding to bug out.”

“So, you’re saying this contact could be a destroyer?” The captain said, some apprehension in his voice.

“I’m saying we might not want to stick around to find out,” I replied.

The captain looked at me with a slight nod, “That’s all I needed to hear. Thank you, doctor.”

“Get us out of here captain,” I said stepping away from the war table.

As I walked out of the bridge and began bounding towards my compartment, I heard the announcement system come alive again. “All hands, be advised, we are entering cruise mode. All hands, proceed to your respective stations.”

I made my way through the corridors, struggling to remember where my compartment was again, I had never been to the bridge from my compartment. I debated going to the deck again, but I cannot imagine that could be a safe thing to do right now. I ran into a couple of sailors on the way but gave way before they could call out for a gangway. Running around a little more, I finally recognized where I was and then found my compartment again in no time. I vaulted in, much to Chloe’s surprise, right as I began to hear some mechanical groans.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“You heard the announcement, right? Quick, put away anything loose or fragile.” I replied scampering around picking up my laptop and other things and hastily throwing them into my bag.

“What’s cruise mode?” she asked, picking her things up.

I turned to her. She looked back at me blankly. “Oh… oh, you don’t know,” I said with a smile on my face.

“What don’t I know? What’s going on?” she asked sounding apprehensive.

“Cruise mode activating.” The announcement called out.

“Well… you’re about to find out,” I said to her as I sat back down by my desk.

Right as I did, there was a whine and the ship shuddered and lurched ahead. Chloe, not prepared for it, almost lost her balance and caught herself on her bunk and sat down. We could then feel the ship starting to rise.

Chloe went wide-eyed, “Is this thing a plane?”

“What? No! It’s something far cooler.” I replied.

“Cruise mode enabled, all non-essential personnel may return to their duties,” the announcement system called out.

Unable to hold her curiosity any more, she carefully shuffled over to the window and peered out. “Wait, how fast are we going?”

“Now? About 60 knots.” I replied.

“This thing? It’s the size of a regular destroyer!” She cried out in disbelief.

“Well, there’s a couple of wings that just deployed below the ship. And a ship this size shouldn’t have a nuclear reactor- unless it’s ordered for a particular organization that made a good case for having one. Needing to outrun a Titan is a pretty good reason.”

“Huh… I learn something new every day.” Chloe said returning to her bunk. We sat with the drone of the ship cruising along breaking the silence. “So… this mission is over then?” She asked me.

“In all likelihood, yes,” I replied. “We’ll either rendezvous with a naval carrier group that can ship us back home or if Monarch decides to recall the whole vessel, we’ll head home.”

“Hmm, so a short vacation is in order then?”

“Maybe, but I don’t know,” I peered at my bag, the laptop and e-mail inside. “I have a feeling we’ll be looking forward to something really soon."