Prologue

July 2015, 0342h
Somewhere near the Mariana Trench
5km below sea level

If God were real, on the first day, he forgot to bring light to this part of the world. Barring some minor disturbances, not a spark had been seen here for the last 170 million years. Life had evolved to exist without luminance, and within this icky blackness, fish so strange but never seen by human eyes roamed in this brine desert. And it was quiet. No wash of the waves, no horn of a passing liner could reach down this deep.

Today was a day like any other, in the land which time forgot. Key operative here being 'was'.

A bright beam lanced over the seabed, revealing its rippling, duney form for the first time. The life that was here retreated post-haste, not from the light, but from the throbbing racket that was the yellow bathysphere's capillary drive slowly cruising along the deep.

"This is Deep Sea Nine," the pilot said into his radio, chuckling briefly at his geek joke. "5,021 meters and trawling. All is well."

He spoke without taking his eyes off the dark world outside his pressured fiberglass dome. There was a brief pause, then the PA cackled again. This voice was female.

"Topside here. Leave your idiot jokes up here, Marco. Are we done yet? You're 12 minutes overdue."

"Not yet!" The bespectabled mariner called. "My spidey senses are a-tingling! Yaaar."

There was a sigh from the other end. "Spare me... I want to sleeeeep."

DS9 laughed. "I'll catch with my sleep the first year I'm dead!"

"Then die already, you idiot!"

"Ah~~ Abuse me more~~"

"...aaaah mou why am I stuck here with a spelunking hikkikomori again?"

"Because the pay's good."

You could almost hear her flop upon the work bench.

"Damn those Foundation heads. It's already been 3 years! What are they expecting to find? The bloody thing intact?"

"I'm not complaining," Marco said as he marked more unreadable notes on his scribe, then put more commands into the computer. The bathysphere nosed gently to port a few degrees, then carried on. "They pay for my gear, my ship, my clothes, my research, and my lovely girlfriend~~"

"Not nearly enough!" was the indignant reply. "I haven't had sex in months!"

Marco opened his mouth to reply, but somewhere in the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something glint in the distance. He tapped on his screen, and the sub sent a sonic pulse pinging through the world in front of him. The machine fed back an all-clear, as expected of a world worn flat by millennia of currents.

"Oiii. Heeellooo."

Marco chucked his workpad into an alcove and reached down to the bike-like controls.

"I think I saw something. Deviating from the search pattern!"

"What? Hey wait! I haven't correlated with the GPS!"

"Then, do it now!" Marco grinned as he up the throttle. The pulsing of the capillary drive became quicker, and so did the yellow submarine surge forward. Annoyed shadows shrank away as the invader from above barreled through. The brightly-lit machine was the only visual life for kilometers around, and the darkness grew thicker as the sea floor fell away. There was little need for excitement. Things hadn't changed here since the dinosaurs, and a few seconds shouldn't make a difference. But truth be told, some part of him wanted to find some treasure, and the fruitlessness was starting to gnaw at him.

Marco was almost on top of the Mariana Trench now.

"Got the GPS lock yet?"

"Not when you keep moving!"

Marco looked to another screen and twiggled a joystick. The screen reacted and panned about, looking for signs of the earlier spark. He was certain it was around here somewhere.

"Eh. GPS locked on. Relaying coordinates now..."

"Attagirl~~"

"Bleah."

As the machine worked through the very faint signal beam, Marco took a moment to admire the vacant world around him. Even now, Mankind knew more about the moon than there was about the bottom of his backyard pond. This place was as harsh, and as old as the lunar surface, but Marco always felt it would be easier to get down here. After all, gravity would help rather than hinder. But somehow, only few were willing to bother. Instead, people on the surface were worried about the next pay check, the effect of global cooling would have on the economy, who's hiding the latest IS technology from inspectors, when the next African Civil War would be...

Short-sighted and blind like landlubbers always have.

Marco knew he wasn't the idiot, they were. Because no one had enough funding, there was still an imperfect system in place to warn the nations sitting around the Ring of Fire when trouble would strike. Instead, Marco and his expedition of a handful had only sketchy lines and probabilities to work with.

Even worse than the weather, he griped as his computer bleeped its job complete. Marco absent-mindedly touched the screen to launch the synchronized GPS marker into the soil below.

Because of this lack of information, anyone would be inclined to believe anything, even to those bordering on frank superstition.

Like for example, the marker striking the seabed causing an earthquake via butterfly effect.

Marco didn't have time to brace. Like a giant awakening, the Trench bellowed deep and rough as the built-up tectonic stress came free all at once. The plate slipped like a spring come loose, dropped a few centimeters across the entire trench but sucking a tremendous volume of sea altogether. The currents suddenly bore down upon the tiny craft and into the gaping jaws of darkness. Caught powerless, the yellow bathysphere bounced off the sea floor and tumbled along, shattering bulbs and robot appendages along with rocking its contents for a good measure.

Up above, the half-naked woman tending to Marco could only hear his screams and things crashing in to one another. She was wide-awake now.

"Marco! What's happening? Marco!"

She felt the ship beginning to list as the dragged submarine hauled on its lifeline. An alert from Manila University screamed Ritcher 7.6. She reached for the winch then stopped. She wanted to pull Marco back to the surface, but that would be fighting the currents pulling the u-boat downwards. If the cable snapped, there would be absolutely no way Marco is coming back up.

Another alarm blared. The tension in the cable was reaching critical limits, and the creaking of the winch brakes resounded throughout the ship. Concerned Tagalog voices could be heard as crewmen roused from sleep. The girl's hand hovered over the toggle. Up? Or down? But how far was he? Was the bathyscape near its maximum depth? She went over all the instruments, but nothing told her what she wanted to know.

"Marco? Marco!"

The hiss of static was her reply. The comms was damaged, and at that depth, shortwave radio was almost useless. She could hear the captain ordering the boat to about-face and throttle up. The old chugboat roared to life, and the list became a rising pitch as the crew turned the ship and crane until the submarine was off the aft then compensated the drag with horsepower.

She planted her face in her hands, and prayed.

The pitch lessened in the passing seconds. The roar of the engine died down as the gyroscope leveled out. The girl looked up and at the wall of dials once more. There were no more alarms, no more flashing lights. Manila's feed had gone silent too.

But, so were the instruments recording the state of the bathyscape.

"Marco...?" She tried again.

This far above, in the clear night sky, anything that happened below, stayed below.

But again, this was not a typical day.

A screen bleeped. This was a recording feed meant for relaying coordinates and monitoring power to the submarine. It was delivered by digital signal, and so while it had a short delay between pulses, it was most reliably for emergency transmission. And the last line read:

"Found it."

Without voice, there was no way what was actually happening down there could reach up there. But the girl nonetheless took off to notify the rest of the ship. Meanwhile, as Marco nursed his bleeding head, he was screaming with glee:

"We've found it! We've found it! We've fucking found it!"

The cheers from the bathyscape spread up to the host ship, by one way, above the waves, to the listening ears of the researchers back in Manila. Those cheers rippled from the submarine into the deathly quiet of the Mariana Trench like a party outside a fish tank. And below that bathyscape sat a large, olive-green craft. While some battle-damage could be seen, the built-for-everything machine was preserved by three years of slit, and the sudden rush of water had rinsed that off. Dead center in the beam of light, was the mark of the Asean Foundation, and the lost Infinite Stratos Carrier, [Copernicus]. The prize they all seeked.

Yet beneath that pristine hull, past armored bulkhead after bulkhead, though vacant corridors and bolted hatches, over the odd mummified figure or two, those sounds of life had died out. In this frozen world, seated upon the Captain's Chair in the airless bridge, was a desiccated corpse. In life, he wore a white labcoat that was now bloodstained and ragged. Cradled in his arms, was a single hollow cylinder.

And for a brief moment, it flickered with a faint red light.