“The distress call came how long ago?” – I asked the commanding officer as I suited up.
“Twenty minutes ago. The crew was on a mission in the sub, when something went wrong and they sent a distress signal. They went radio silent since then.” - the officer gave me a stern look which told me to hurry up.
“What depth?” - Jackson, my mission partner asked.
“Around 1500 m. The sub is a new type and was designed to go down to 2000 m, so even if they sank further down due to malfunction or exterior damage they should be okay, since the bottom is roughly 1800 m below surface. Your mission is to rescue any survivors. In case there are no survivors, assess the damage to the sub and secure the black box.”
“Any idea on what caused them to send the distress signal?” – I asked.
“Not sure.” – the commander responded – “This is what they sent.”
He pulled out a small device and clicked a button. A panicked voice started speaking over the device:
“This is the S-158! We have a hull breach and are in need of immediate rescue! We are South-West of your position, distance unknown! Depth 1500 m! Send he-“
The voice cut out.
“You’ll have a GPS tracker in your submersible, which should locate the sub.” - he put away the device.
Jackson and I jumped inside the vessel. The Dolphin, as it was dubbed, was able to withstand a tremendous amount of pressure and go down to 6000 m. It was not originally designed for search and rescue, but due to the urgency of the situation HQ had no choice but to let us man this vehicle. The backside of the submersible had a depressurization chamber which could attach to any other submersible externally and transport staff in and out.
“We’ll keep in touch via comms. Get moving!” – the commander said and we closed the hatch, muffling the outside noises.
Jackson and I sat in our seats and got ready to dive. His job was to pilot the vehicle and mine to operate the depressurization chamber. Jackson pressed some buttons on the machine and the submersible hummed to life. Various screens started glowing, showing depth, sonar activity and status of the vehicle. I felt a little uneasy suddenly. The deepest I’ve ever been was 800 m when looking for undetonated missiles, but the usual mission had us going no deeper than 200 m.
“Here we go.” – Jackson announced and the submersible went underwater, leaving the rays of sun above us and engulfing the entire interior of the submersible in light blue.
“Gonna take us a little bit to reach them.” – he said – “The descent is always slower.”
I stared out the glass panel, seeing a school of fish scurry away from our position. As we descended, sunlight rapidly started to fade away and the light blue color which surrounded us was very quickly being replaced with a progressively darker one.
“Look on the bright side.” – Jackson smiled – “At least we won’t be going to the Abyssal Zone.”
“Let’s just hope the crew members made it. I’d hate to be in their position right now, stuck at the bottom of the ocean in complete darkness, not knowing if rescue is coming.” – I shuddered at the thought.
Jackson shrugged:
“Well if they managed to put their deep diving suits on, they should be fine. Those can go even deeper than the sub.”
That situation didn’t seem any more appealing than the one I had just mentioned - being at the bottom of the ocean, with god-knows-what lurking around, tons of pressure that can crush you in a second and no way to get back up, being forced to wait for a rescue.
“Cheer up, maybe they managed to escape on their submersibles and we just missed them.” - he said.
It was getting so dark so fast and Jackson pressed a button to turn on the headlights, which illuminated our interior and the area in front, showing particles dancing across the beams. I glanced at the depth modulator and noticed we were at 280 m. The dark blue color quickly became black and all we could see outside was the part of the ocean which was illuminated by the headlights. Any remaining sea life that was seen up until that point was long gone now and I thought about the creatures who lived in such eternal and consuming darkness, devoid of all light save for the ones produced by themselves.
570 m… 580 m…
The increasing numbers on the depth modulator painfully reminded me that we were putting ever-increasing distance between ourselves and the surface, descending deeper into the unexplored abyss with every passing second. The darkness surrounding us seemed thick and our lights barely penetrated enough to see in front of ourselves. The pressure at this depth would be enough to crush us within seconds and the only thing protecting us from that was the heavy glass on the submersible. I tried not to think about it as we descended deeper.
900 m…
Jackson was quiet. I wondered if he felt as uneasy as me, but if he did, he was hiding it pretty well. I saw a faint light from a deep sea creature bobbing up and down in the distance before it disappeared out of sight.
“Think it’s an anglerfish?” – Jackson remarked – “I’d love to see an anglerfish in person. Did you know they actually grow up to be larger than the average human?”
“Yeah?” – I indulged him, even though I really just tried to stay focused on the mission.
“Yeah. And here I thought up until recently that it was like something you can keep in your aquarium home.” – he chuckled.
1500 m…
“We’re close now.” – Jackson said – “The bottom can’t be more than 400 m away, so chances are we’ll find the sub there.”
“Keep your eyes peeled then.”
In a matter of minutes, we finally saw something else besides the dark water.
“Hold up, we’re here.” – I pointed through the glass to the flat, sandy ground illuminated in front of us by our headlights.
“Alright, sub should be around here.” – Jackson steered the submersible in the direction of the little dot on the radar and we slowly started moving in that direction.
“No sonar activity.” - he said - “That’s not good.”
We squinted our eyes, desperately trying to look past the short range of illuminated area of our headlights, trying to spot any signs of debris, but there was nothing but a desolate ground which seemed to stretch endlessly in front of us.
And then all of a sudden we saw it. It came out of nowhere so suddenly that we almost crashed into it. A huge military submarine, just sitting on the ground.
“That doesn’t look good.” – Jackson remarked – “Let’s see the damage.”
He steered around the sub and it became apparent that it sank due to some serious external damage. The hull looked like some animal had literally chewed its way in, making a gaping hole in it.
“Holy Christ. The fuck happened here?” – Jackson became serious – “A big animal or something? It looks like some of the submersibles ejected, so at least they made it that far.”
He steered the submersible above and over to the other side of the sub and then abruptly stopped. We both stared at the sight in front of us in disbelief. The sub was sitting right at the edge of a cliff which dropped into more endless darkness below, stretching as far as our lights allowed us to see.
“I thought this was the bottom.” – I looked at Jackson.
“Y-yeah.” – he stared at the crater – “That’s what the commander said.”
Just then a loud beeping sound came from inside our submersible and I nearly crapped my pants, thinking we suffered some damage or had an incoming threat.
“What? That can’t be right.” – Jackson said.
“What?” – I impatiently asked.
“There’s a distress signal coming from one of the submersibles from the sub.”
Alright, let’s go find him.” - I started to relax a little bit, knowing we weren’t in any immediate danger.
Jackson looked at me. His facial expression told me what he was about to say wasn’t good news.
“It’s coming from 800 m below us.”