The wait was far worse than actually being flushed out into the ocean. What made it so unpleasant was the multiple false starts. First the chamber’s volume of liquid sloshed me violently when we exited the slipstream effect caused by Whalehunter’s shield.

Then again as The Hornets Nest maneuvered hard, getting into formation so the other ships wouldn’t violently ram into us as they also exited Whalehunter’s slipstream.

Finally, the doors clunked into an unlocked position with a blaring alarm.

By the time the bottom door opened, and my chamber violently dumped me out into the ocean depths, it was a relief just to be out of the ship’s belly. All around me, vaguely dolphin shaped drones spun into motion, streaking off in different directions in a trail of bubbles.

I started moving. The drones were my smoke-screen, but I would get noticed if I didn’t take advantage of them.

The HUD in my helmet pinged a direction, down and toward the front of our ship. I focused and started flying through the water toward it. Weak sunlight dappled the area, but visibility was still low. I could see hulking shapes above and in front of me, all moving aggressively in formation.

Flashes of light erupted, torpedos detonating on countermeasures, and lasers boiling the water around the hulking dark shapes in the distance. Thresher had told me to avoid the primary battle, but my course would have taken me directly through the enemy fleet.

I dove. The ocean floor rushed up to meet me, and I halted my momentum toward it before impact. The gravity harness hauled me through the water without issue, as promised, and I hoped my specialty suit was up to the pressures.

The water darkened, and I felt the cold seeping through even my advanced wetsuit. In the distance, above and behind me, explosions rocked across both sides of the battle. I couldn’t make out anything specific, but it looked like most of the explosions were happening on the Dearth side, so I hugged the sandy bottom and streaked toward my HUD indicator.

I fell into an almost soothing flow, rushing through the water with the shape of the land. All I had to do was focus on keeping myself a hand-breadth from the bottom while moving forward, and the gravitic drive did all the rest.

The sounds of battle and explosions drifted further and further behind me, until it was nearly out of mind. Like fireworks in the distance.

As soon as I began to relax and enjoy the experience, the ground beneath me vanished, and I veered down a cliff face toward a shapeless, undulating mass.

MortMobile appeared in my headset, gave me a grim look, and said, “You are entering a MortMobile blackout area.”

I hauled back instinctually, stopping the gravitic drive from plunging me straight down. My HUD blinked light at me, drawing a frame around my diving mask, and informing me I had arrived at my destination. Shapes moved in the depths below my feet, and I tried to get a sense of scale.

The HUD helped me out, by drawing the shape of Kraken’s bulbous body with a thin orange line of light on the diving mask.

I had come in over the lip of the trench, and Kraken was laid out before me on the shelves. A light cloud of silt obscured its lower portions, including the tentacles, as it dug deep into the earth, dragging more and more of its body into the trench’s bottom, and then deeper.

A large, oblong sack of its body rested across miles of sea-floor, spread out and sighing with soft motion. As I floated and looked, the HUD drew broad circles on the surface of the creature below, indicating bulged areas of its suit that likely housed critical systems. Lines spread out between the bulges, drawing themselves as I watched.

Movement flashed out from the silt cloud below, and two gargantuan tentacles flashed toward me from the murk. They rose in unison, the water they displaced shoving me back up against the cliffside, as the massive, flaring tentacles rushed to cover my entire frame of vision.

I lurched into movement, jetting out of the way before the first suited tentacle slammed into the cliff-side and crushed it. A wave of force and displaced water shoved me further, faster, and I swerved down to avoid the next blow.

Both tentacles were in motion, and my HUD provided flashing warnings telling me which direction the attacks were coming from. The entire thing blared from every direction, while a tentacle the size of a skyscraper rushed past.

I tumbled, the violent waters more than I could handle. Each attack gave me just enough time to see the next one coming and get out of its way, and silt from the nearby cliff-face began to further obstruct my limited vision.

One of the massive, unending tentacles swung up, curling on itself as it wound up and snapped me tumbling with the sheer force of the water. The other swept across the ocean directly above my trajectory, and I was wrenched in multiple directions at the same time.

I couldn’t tell which way was up. Light and shadows spun all around me, and the HUD flashed a constant ‘near threat’ alert at all corners of my vision. My mind went to Molls. How she twisted and pulled at my body in her passions, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

Bubbles erupted from my faceplate, and showed me which way was up. I concentrated on my gravitic drive and started plunging down at nearly one-hundred knots. Water swirled and bubbled up in a vortex above me as I raced down through the waters toward Kraken.

The oversized tentacles swiped, and missed, and I swept through their wakes in my dive. Down near the surface of Kraken’s suit, two rainbow beams sparkled wide, outlining a massive square in two separate places.

Kraken’s suit lit up, in sweeping rows of lights that illuminated the trench all around me as bright as daylight.

Rock, and Hardplace, Kraken’s oversized guardian sharks, swam from their dazzling beams into my path. My diving helmet placed a small name tag above each, and the huge creatures both surged toward me. I diverted course, trying to avoid the oncoming collision. The sharks diverted with me, both focused on my form with intense, dead-eyed stares.

With a powerful surge of its rear tail, the nearest monster shark lunged up at me. It was Rock. Where Kraken’s tentacles had felt like large buildings being swung at me, the oversized maw, bristling with teeth, felt very much like I was about to get swallowed by one.

I focused on the suit, and made a sudden course change again, sweeping lower, and faster to dodge the angry mouth clapping shut above me like two mountains crashing together. I tumbled and swirled, still focused on falling down as fast as possible, but the second shark caught me.

With a twist of its thick neck, Hardplace snatched me out of the water. My body was wrenched as a giant tooth sawed down through my hips and spine, before catching on the starfish suit with a series of sparks. I suffered the brief, disorienting experience of being bitten in half. My upper body was crammed deep into Hardplace’s gums by the motion.

Then the starfish suit got involved. My cartoon arrived to gasp at me, in a diving suit of its own. The animated creature glanced around and shook its head. “User, this is a lot of repair work. Better break something.”

I grimaced, tried to ignore the sensation of my missing lower half, and slammed a metal-covered fist into the tooth bed, even as my tendrils emerged to saw at the bone and flesh entrapping me. Lasers fired, and silver flashed as the suit got to work fixing my body at the same time as it carved Hardplace a new hole in his mouth.

A deep rumble from the beast's belly washed past me, and I was ejected from its jaws in a rush of bloody saltwater, as Hardplace roared in frustration.

Without waiting for my suit to finish repairs, I focused on the nearest dome on Kraken’s suit and dove straight for it.

“User! Stop pushing the drive so hard, I’m using that charge to repair you!” my starfish announced.

I ignored it and pushed harder, focused on more speed. Rock dove in behind me, following me directly, with his mouth open wide. The BuyMort pod and its rainbow beam chased behind.

My new spine piece popped into place, and I could feel my legs again. I pushed the gravitic drive for more speed, and bubbles began to swirl up into Rock’s open mouth. My dive boiled the water behind me as I increased in speed further.

I shot both hands forward, atomic breaker gauntlets primed and ready, and slammed into the bulge in Krakens suit.

A flash of blue light erupted as I smashed through the exterior of Kraken’s suit. The top of the dome burst, and I plunged through into a bubble of air, with a residential neighborhood below me.

I gaped as I took it in. A cookie-cutter residential area, filled with people, houses, shops, and even a park spread out below me beneath the dome. An entire town.

Debris, a huge spray of ocean, and an oversized, stone-armored shark blasted down into the dome from the ceiling.

Rock roared as we plunged toward the town below, and I swung out of his path entirely. The massive, granite covered shark fell rapidly past me, followed by its pod and rainbow beam, still set to privacy mode. A thin, gray tentacle whipped in the wind, connecting the shark and beam as they fell to the ground below.

The shark roared all the way up until it struck the ground in an explosion of force, followed by a few million gallons of seawater. An entire neighborhood was destroyed in an instant, dozens of houses blasted from the surface as metal and black, rubbery composite material were exposed below the ground.

Rock died with his face smashed against Kraken’s inner suit lining, exposed beneath the blacktop and concrete. The water that had rushed in with us splashed violently and swirled as it drained into the Kraken’s suit lining.