Commander Sarah Chen stared at the massive hole torn through the reactor room ceiling. Twisted metal hung like broken teeth, and through the gap, she could see movement.
“Status report,” she barked into her comm.
“Hull integrity at sixty percent,” Lieutenant Torres replied, his voice shaking. “But Commander, the breach… it’s not from enemy fire.”
Sarah climbed the maintenance ladder, her boots clanging against metal rungs. At the top, she peered through the jagged opening.
Hundreds of them. Sleek, black creatures with razor-sharp claws, each the size of a house cat. They moved in perfect coordination across the outer hull.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispered.
“Commander?” Torres’s voice crackled through the comm. “What are your orders?”
Sarah watched as one creature turned toward her, its red eyes gleaming. It opened its mouth, revealing rows of needle-like teeth.
“Seal all ventilation systems. Now.”
“Ma’am, we’ll suffocate without air circulation—”
“Do it!”
The creature lunged. Sarah dropped down the ladder as claws scraped metal above her head.
“Torres, how long until we reach the surface?”
“Eighteen minutes at current ascent rate.”
Another crash echoed through the ship. Then another. Sarah ran toward the bridge, her heart pounding.
“They’re getting in through the damaged sections,” she radioed. “All crew to battle stations.”
The lights flickered. In the darkness, she heard scratching sounds moving through the walls.
“Commander!” Petty Officer Williams stumbled around the corner, blood streaming from his arm. “They’re in the mess hall. Johnson and Martinez are—”
A black shape dropped from the ceiling onto Williams’s back. Sarah drew her sidearm and fired three shots. The creature shrieked and fell.
“Bridge, this is the Commander. Emergency surface now!”
“We’re trying, ma’am, but they’ve damaged the ballast controls.”
Sarah reached the bridge to find chaos. Sparks flew from damaged consoles. Through the periscope monitor, she could see more creatures swarming the hull.
“How many crew are left?”
“Twelve, including us,” Torres reported.
The ship shuddered violently. Warning alarms blared.
“They’re chewing through the pressure hull,” Chief Petty Officer Rodriguez called out. “We’ve got maybe five minutes before catastrophic failure.”
Sarah grabbed the emergency surface lever. “Everyone hold on.”
She pulled with all her strength. The submarine shot upward like a missile.
Through the monitor, she watched creatures lose their grip and fall away into the dark water. But dozens more clung to the hull with supernatural tenacity.
“Surface in sixty seconds,” Torres announced.
A creature burst through the ventilation grate above the navigation station. Rodriguez grabbed a fire axe and swung hard, splitting it in half.
“Thirty seconds!”
The ship broke the surface with tremendous force. Sunlight flooded the bridge through the periscope camera.
“Open the main hatch,” Sarah ordered.
“But Commander, they’re still out there—”
“Open it!”
The hatch cracked open. Immediately, the creatures began shrieking. They released their grip on the hull and plunged into the ocean below.
Sarah climbed the ladder and emerged onto the deck. The morning sun blazed overhead. Around the submarine, the water churned with fleeing black shapes.
“They can’t handle sunlight,” she realized.
Torres joined her on deck. “What were those things?”
Sarah watched the last creature disappear beneath the waves. “Something that’s been waiting down there a very long time.”
She looked at her damaged ship, her decimated crew, her ruined mission. All her ambitions of glory, of being the youngest submarine commander in Navy history, seemed meaningless now.
“Set course for home port,” she told Torres. “And Torres?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“File a report that we encountered mechanical failure. Nothing more.”
Torres nodded. “Understood, Commander.”
As they sailed toward shore, Sarah realized some victories weren’t worth winning. Some depths were better left unexplored.
The ocean had taught her that ambition without wisdom was just another way to drown.
