About three days ago, or even earlier, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, near a small gray-brown island.
A flock of skuas were circling over the sea, trying to pick out a few unfortunate children from the churning schools of fish gathering below to fill their stomachs.
Here, at a small confluence of ocean currents, the warm equatorial current, carrying seaweed and biological debris, formed a fierce thermal convection with several cold currents. One side attempted to continue northward, while the others surrounded it. This contradiction was the source of a biological carnival.
But recently, things have changed. Amidst the turbulent waves, several schools of fish have gathered in a U-shaped shallow bank not far from the island's shore. They aren't here to feed or breed; they're simply fleeing. It's difficult for their tiny brains to comprehend the gravity of the situation, but instinct has saved them for now. They instinctively seek a relatively flat, shallow bank, where predators' size often render them useless.
Farther out to sea, several sperm whales swam relentlessly around the island, driving away the fish. Typically, only social animals like dolphins and sperm whales hunt in groups like this, and their groups tend to consist of sisters or mothers and daughters, not brothers or fathers and sons. They'd been lingering there for hours, and other opportunistic predators had already arrived, causing the two younger, larger ones who looked like younger sisters to become increasingly restless.
"Beep!" The American submarine "Valkyrie," having drifted at sea for nearly two months, activated its active radar for a rare occasion. According to the holographic chart, this area was not only considered safe, but also boasted complex hydrological conditions. The "Valkyrie" was their nation's new tactical submarine, approximately thirty-five meters long and weighing approximately six thousand tons. While it was certainly small compared to the tens of thousands of tons of supersubmarines of the past, considering the current underwater situation, this submarine was actually almost five years behind the times. "I guess there aren't any seas without hunter-killer drones anymore, right?" the submarine's captain had noted in his logbook. Ever since that damned nation dumped its "garbage" into the sea, the so-called freedom of navigation on the high seas had become a complete joke—now all routes had to be registered in their database!
Registration and use of the navigation database are free, but unfortunately some people think it's just a scam. Perhaps this has something to do with their own worldview? Perhaps some people are truly like this: "I'm the only one who can do this, and I won't allow others to do it unless they pay extra."
Sound waves travel three to four times faster in water than in air, so the sperm whales, more than a dozen miles away, could hear it clearly. Perhaps because they found the sound too loud, or perhaps because they recognized it and were preparing to respond, they also began to emit ultrasonic waves, and the silent water surface suddenly became lively.
"Boom!" The submarine's super-reflective radar was operating normally, fully recording the nearby echoes on the tactical holographic panel. The command platform displayed an acoustic image composed of green dots of light. The dense, clear, rugged surface at the bottom represented the seabed, while the dense, clear, relatively smooth surface at the top represented the sea surface. "It seems to be windy now! Navigator! Check the weather!"
To combat the elusive bionic drones, the Motherland and its allies have exhausted their resources. They've deployed countless monitoring buoys on the high seas, capable of randomly firing electromagnetic pulses for a few seconds, allowing them to artificially create pockets of clean air. However, that's only a delaying tactic; the drones are nearly omnipresent, some even able to penetrate cities through sewage outlets.
"Submarines will probably become obsolete in the future, just like machine guns eliminated heavy cavalry," the captain wrote in his logbook. It's true that there's always someone to defeat, and it's natural selection.
"Wait, what's that?" The cartographer gestured at the chart, somewhat surprised. Why didn't it match? He discovered a huge hole over a hundred nautical miles to the west, like a grave of sound waves.
He immediately called the deputy captain: "Report, an unidentified object has been spotted!"
Upon hearing the news, the deputy captain immediately dispatched radar operators to search for possible hostile targets and ordered the activation of the active electromagnetic shield. The submarine's surface was equipped with an electromagnetic detonator that could cause the hunter-killer drone to self-destruct if it approached within five meters of the hull.
"Target position confirmed: azimuth 263 degrees, depression 1.5 degrees, distance 103 nautical miles." He paused. "Target speed 34 knots, approaching us!"
"What is it?" Beads of sweat appeared on the second-in-command's forehead.
"I don't know, never, it's never been recorded in the database!" The hydrophone operator frantically searched the database, but similar things only made him think of "vacuum", and only vacuum looked like this now.
"Whatever it is, let's run away first." After hesitating for a few minutes, the deputy captain decided to adopt a relatively safe strategy. "Is the captain awake? Why is this happening to me right after my turn?"
The sailors on the side didn't dare to say a word. Waking up the captain would be disobeying the captain's order, and not going would be disobeying the deputy captain's order.
The hook-nosed deputy captain glared at the person beside him, then ordered: "Call our aircraft carrier formation, we need a reconnaissance plane!"
"Now? But we are running away now! Once we send out a signal, we may be entangled by a drone!" The communicator wearing headphones was a little confused.
"Order: Call for reconnaissance aircraft support!" the deputy captain said coldly, "We are now on our own territory. No one dares to act recklessly here!" Then he muttered to himself in a lower voice, "May God bless us!"
The reconnaissance planes were very fast. In fact, there were several of them patrolling the area.
"Look over there, George, the sea's turning black!"
"I saw it coming! It happens all the time here!"
"Hey, are you new here? The water here is so deep in some places and shallow in others!"
"Oh huh~ Just like a girl sunbathing on the beach! Deep in one part, shallow in another!"
"Do you want to do it like this, with some deep and some shallow? I know several places!"
"Ha, look, he's blushing!"
Everything's business as usual? What the hell is business as usual? The Valkyrie's deputy captain, having been chased by the shadow behind him for two hours, grabbed the radio operator's headset and roared, "We're being chased by a giant like a dog, and you're actually thinking about which beach to go to pick up girls this afternoon?"
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