936 Silent Hunter (1/2)

Some year, some month, some day. Some sea area. 200 meters below sea level. Twilight zone.

In that depth underwater, the sun was as dark as dusk.

Looking down, there was a dark abyss. Looking up, the top was like just after sunset: that short moment of blue sky right before the sky completely darkened.

What was really different from the real sky was that there were no tired birds returning to the forest, and occasionally there would be a streamline shadow swimming at a high speed overhead––a large shark in shallow water.

The depth was beyond the reach of at least half of the marine life, but in the faint light, there were still some things quietly moving.

Hu—

A shadow swam at a very high speed. Its body reflected a dim, silver light. Very few things could swim at this kind of speed in the sea.

It was a nearly two-meter-long, adult swordfish. Its long jaw was shaped like a fencing sword, and it wandered wildly through the sea without restraint. In the deep ocean, it had few natural enemies, besides sharks, due to its excellent speed.

Its eyes were very big, as big as tennis balls, scattered with a large number of photoreceptors. It would be impossible for it to hunt in such light without some special features on its body.

It had sharp jaws, keen vision, and hundreds of kilograms of body weight. It had a short distance speed of more than 100 kilometers per hour, and had gained the capital to be prideful. When it went crazy, it was as scary as a harpoon, and had even earned the title of, ”Piercing Through Wood Every Day”

The swordfish was not very lucky that day, however, as it had not found anything to eat. Hunger turning it into a grumpy old man. It really wanted to find something to smash––anything would be all right.

At the front of its high-speed swimming route, a big, black fellow suddenly appeared. With a slow swimming speed, the swordfish was 70 to 80 percent sure that it was a whale.

Even if it was a whale with the fastest speed, it was still not even able to eat the tailwind of the swordfish. The swordfish had a lot of confidence as it went to provoke it.

Its speed was too fast––so fast that the other party had not even seen what was happening before it rushed over. Only when the swordfish got closer did it realize there was something wrong. It hurriedly twisted its strong muscles to make a sharp turn, just managing to prevent colliding with the other party.

What was going on? Why was this fellow's body so long? It was much longer than the biggest whale it had seen before… It had a perfectly round head; its ”dorsal fin” was as thick as a reef rock; its pectoral fin was so small that it could hardly be seen; and its tail fin rotated periodically to stir the sea water. No matter how one looked at it, it did not seem like a dumb whale… Most importantly, the other one's skin seemed a lot harder to smash than a wooden plank.

Forget it, it was better to find some push-over to pinch.

With a flick of its tail, it angrily swam away and disappeared in the dim light.

The nuclear submarine, that had been mistaken for a whale by the swordfish, cruised silently underwater at a speed of six knots. Along the way, it traveled under dozens of different types of ships, including fishing boats, cargo ships, oil tankers, private yachts, and it even took the risk to venture close to the warships. Fortunately, it had not been noticed by any ship.

Behind it, it towed a long long ”tail,” longer than any tail in the natural world, and its total length was around one kilometer. It had an 800 meters long, less than one centimeter thick, towline and a more than 100 meters long sonar array composed of more than a thousand hydrophones.

The towed sonar array operated at wavelengths below 3000 Hertz, with very low frequencies varying between ten to twenty Hertz in the lowest frequency range. Through deep-sea channels and convergence zone effects, the longest detection distance reached 180 kilometers, and information and topographical features could even be obtained outside of the territorial sea boundary of other countries.

******

In the narrow sonar room.