The harpooner was drunk.

Quinn lay passed out on the floor of his quarters, naked, stinking of sweat and cheap whiskey. The shouting of his colleagues could not rouse him, nor could their pushing and shaking. The boatswain finally left the room and returned quickly with a bucket of cold seawater, which he threw in desperation onto the motionless shape on the floor. Quinn stirred, bolted suddenly awake, and twisted around toward his crewmembers.

“Battle stations have been called, you sotted bastard!” the boatswain shouted at him. “There’s a stonking giant squid out there! Sober up up and man your goddamn harpoon! It’s the only stonking reason you’re here, your only bloody job on this damn boat, and you’re too drunk to stand!”

Quinn roused in anger and tried to stand to punch the boatswain, but the ship lurched and they both lost their footing and fell to the floor. As the ship’s tilt increased they slid across the floor side by side, and as they slammed simultaneously against the far wall of the room they realized that their fight ranked rather low on the list of priorities facing them and the rest of the crew aboard the underwater seaship known as the Kraken. Quinn stumbled upright, bolted out the door, and ran toward the entrance to the conning tower, ricocheting crazily from wall to wall as he did. The boatswain left the room and raced off in the opposite direction, toward the hatchway that lead into the super-structure of the ship.

* * *

“Hard aport forty degrees, full speed, lower the bow rudders, twenty-two degree declination,” bellowed Captain Eperia to the crew on the bridge of the Kraken. “Steady on the wheel, navigator,” she added. They were now too deep for the mechanical multi-lensed Eye that functioned as their periscope to work effectively, so she had taken her seat in the Captain’s chair, her face and hands pressed against the fused quartz glass portal of the viewing port at the front of the bridge, peering into the dark waters, trying to discern the shape of the squid in the frigid unknown beyond.

The hellish thing swam down into the blackness, maddeningly beyond her sight. The Kraken followed.

A clubbed arm, lined with sharp barbed hooks, appeared suddenly out of the inky depths of the water and hammered into the viewport. The entire ship shuddered, but the hull held, the fused quartz glass of the portal did not crack. The arm disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. A tentacle flopped against the glass, suckers probing, searching for purchase, then disappeared as the clubbed arm had before.

“Dive, dive, dive!” cried Eperia. “We must meet this demon beast on a level battlefield!”

The beast, clearly a thinking creature, had a different plan. It could not be seen, but every man and woman aboard the vessel heard the whispering slide of tentacles, the slithery grip of suckers attaching themselves to the thin metal alloy shell of the hull. They felt it with their ears, their skin, their teeth, felt it inside the marrow of their bones. They had all heard the sound before. It was, to a crewmember, the most terrifying sound in their experience. It meant the hellbeast was on the hunt.

The Kraken abruptly halted its forward motion as the tentacles gripped the hull. The ship canted to a nearly forty five degree angle. Crewmembers tossed about the interior of the ship like dolls.

“Where the devil is our harpooner?” growled the Captain.

“Not in position yet, Captain.”

“Are galvanic defensive systems ready?”

“Report on galvanic defense, systems, boatswain,” asked a crewmember through the speaking cone of the aerophone.

“We are charged and readied,” reported the disembodied voice of the boatswain, from his position deep within the hull.

“Let the Damned Thing have it, then, 80 per cent, on my mark!” ordered Eperia. “And...now...take the shields live!”

The lights dimmed as a low hum filled the air of the ship. The hum quickly morphed to a crackle, and the viewport exploded with bright blue light as electricity flooded the hull.

* * *

Quinn needed two assistants to wrangle him into his diving suit, between his drunkenness and the tumult of the vessel: Tess, the Captain’s secret lover, who stood in charge of the conning tower and airlock whenever battle stations were called, and her assistant, a young woman named Anne. Quinn’s inability to stand up straight made the job difficult, as he weaved in drunken counterpoint to the motions of the ship, overcompensating for every lurch the vessel took.

Anne held the opening of the suit open as Tess attempted to steer Quinn’s continually moving body into it. Apparent to both women was the huge erection Quinn bore, flopping wildly in the slip and sway of his exertions, bouncing about like an over-eager puppy. Tess wasn’t sure he was even entirely aware of it, until, after they had finally marshaled his legs into the suit, when he slowed his flailing limbs long enough to ask, with a thick, heavily slurred Irish accent, “Excuse me, ladies, for my profound state of tumescence. The imminent promise of combat brings it out in me. The blood of the beast calls to my own. I shall soon stain my harpoon with that blood.”

Most of his body was now contained within the suit. Anne fitted him with a shell-like diving helmet (of Captain Eperia’s own design, of course). Tess reached down and frankly grasped his thick shaft in her hand. “Quinn, you risk your life for our lives, the lives of all aboard this ship. Bless you.” She gave his cock a healthy squeeze. “Come back to us alive, and I will make sure this fleshy harpoon is well stained. Godspeed, sir.”

He lowered his eyes to her. “I may not live to see another day,” he said “May I have one last taste of a beautiful woman before I leave this ship to enter the teeth of the battle?”

Tess reached up and hung her arms around his neck, kissed him deeply. When he had finished, he turned to Anne and accepted the same pleasures from her mouth.

Captain Eperia encouraged an atmosphere of sexual openness and fluidity on board the Kraken. Similar to her rejection of most traditional Western institutions—family, religion, government--she considered traditional gender roles, monogamy and patriarchy to be needlessly restrictive, their true intent not a concern with morality, as claimed, but rather a need to control the populace and keep the exploration and satisfaction of sexual desire controlled, repressed and demonized. Her goal was to create an independent free-floating sovereign state, a utopia where every man and woman answered to no authority but their own free will.

These beliefs extended to the sexual lives of the crew. Monogamy was allowed, but polygamy was the assumed norm. Most crewmembers had several sexual partners. Consent was assumed as an absolute necessity but beyond that creativity and experimentation were encouraged. Captain Eperia’s goal had been to create a sexual utopia as well as a social, governmental and technological one.

Anne locked and sealed the helmet of Quinn’s onto Quinn’s suit, knocked on plating of the helmet three times and yelled, “Ready!” Even before the word was fully out of her mouth Quinn reached to the rungs of the ladder that led to the entrance of the conning tower and pulled himself upon it.

“Clear the airlock!” he commanded in a slur. “Close the seal behind me and flood the chamber. Let me at this hellish thing.”

An iris-like aperture closed in the floor, with a motion similar to a camera obscura. Three knocks ringing on the floor under Quinn’s feet signaled the all-clear. Cold seawater flooded the small chamber in a frenzy, but the calamity soon subsided as the pressure equalized.

The iris of the hatch above him opened.

He climbed the ladder slowly, deliberately. He mounted the conning tower and fit his shoes into the locking mechanisms at the base of the tower that kept him electrically grounded, supplied him with air, connected to the aerophone on the bridge, and held him firmly attached to the ship. The vast blackness of the ocean depths surrounded him as he blindly attempted to get his bearings.

He never got the chance, as everything seem to happen at once: leaping arcs of electricity shot over his head in great blue curving jets, lighting up a swirling mass of tentacles flailing in the frigid water, in constant churning motion, each arm attempting to get a grip on the vessel so the monster could still its motion and crush it.

To Quinn’s left a series of enormous iron harpoons hung strapped to the railing, taller than any man, rising easily above his head. They all looked identical, black and sharp and cold as death, save for three specially designed harpoons at the back of the quiver, larger than the others, wrapped in fur to keep them cushioned. They were the glass harpoons, made of the same fused quartz as the viewport of the bridge and the visor of the diving helmet. Quinn had never fired one, and was unsure of their purpose. He only knew that Captain Eperia insisted not only on their inclusion in Quinn’s array of harpoons, but that they be checked and maintained scrupulously.

Directly in front of Quinn stood the harpoon gun.

It was, like the harpoons, large and black and ominous, rising from the gentle curves of the ship like a raised fist. The towering gun was the only weapon on board the craft, and the only structure with sharp edges and unrelenting straight lines; the rest of the ship hewed to Eperia’s insistence on the golden mean as an organizing principle and the winding spirals that resulted from this design.

A tentacle slapped into the conning tower, bringing Quinn back to his senses. Eperia’s voiced barked from the aerophone embedded in the diving helmet.

“Are you in position, harpooner?” she asked. “Our defensive shields will not hold off the beast for long. Respond!”

“Aye, Captain,” responded Quinn, and hefted one of the giant spears onto his shoulder to load into the gun.

* * *

“Lights!” commanded Eperia. “Let’s find this hellbeast and send it to its death.”

The dark water beyond viewport lit up as the bow lights blazed into action. Tentacles curled and spiraled, sweeping through the water. Violent flashes of blue light sparked into the water whenever the flesh of the creature touched the skin of the ship.

“Hard to starboard! Let’s find the beak of this damned thing,” ordered Eperia.

The engine of the Kraken whined with effort, attempting to make the turn, but the tentacles held fast. It was impossible to find the thick main body of the creature, or the beaked maw of its hideous mouth.

“Galvanic shields to 100 per cent,” ordered the Captain.

“We can’t hold the shields for long at than level,” warned the Galvinist on the bridge.

“We must break this monster’s grip on our vessel or we are doomed,” growled the Captain. “100 per cent, now, I command you, sir.”

The lights of the ship dimmed and flickered. The drone of the ship’s engine rose several notes under the strain. Huge arcs of electicity slashed the water surrounding the ship. Tentacles released their hold on the hull of the Kraken in an expulsive rush, as suckers detached from the metal in reaction to the shock of electricity.

“Now’s the time!” cried Eperia. “This is our moment. Let’s seize our victory.”

The ship, freed from the prison of the squid’s grip, caught traction and began to wheel around toward the body of the beast. Two bright circles of light from the arc-lamps on the bow of the ship crawled along the pebbled skin of a twitching, clubbed arm of the temporarily stunned beast, following the arm until it merged with the Medusa-like mass of snaking tentacles surrounding the mouth of the monstrous creature.

The horrid curving claw of the thing’s beak swam into view, beyond the fused quartz glass. The sight of it made even Eperia gasp, though she hid her reaction from her equally astonished crew.

* * *

Quinn loaded the first harpoon and locked it into place with mechanical surety.

Both beams of light from the forward lamps of the ship centered on the gaping mouth of the murderous thing, forming a target for Quinn. The squid snapped angrily at the ship with its beak. When Quinn swung the harpoon gun around and pointed the great cannon of the gun at the monster, the beast reacted by opening its beak wide, ready to snap the ship into pieces.

Quinn pulled back on the two arms of the cocking mechanism as if arming a crossbow. He pointed it at the mouth of the monster. His drunkenness fell away, victim to his concentration as he took aim.

“Steady, man,” told himself. “You might only get one shot at this.” He exhaled, focusing on the foe before him. His body stilled, his mind quieted. He was born to this trade, his father a whaler, and his father’s father. Harpooning ran in his blood.

His hand closed on the grip of the trigger. The ocean hushed quiet, the world fell away. His attention narrowed; only the beast and he remained.

He fired.

A tentacle snaked up from the watery blackness, slashing at the harpoon, deflecting the path of the projectile so that it arced harmlessly away from the creature and disappeared into the void.

“Damned Thing!” cursed Quinn, turning to heft another harpoon onto his shoulder and into the gun. The entire ship shuddered as a clubbed arm of the slapped at the conning tower, trying to rip the gun from its moorings.

Quinn rolled the next harpoon into place, locked the gun’s firing chamber over the harpoon. Sparks shot outward into the water surrounding the surface of the vessel. The twin lights centered on the beast’s mouth dimmed. Quinn knew instinctively what this meant: the ship’s galvanic shield was faltering.

With titanic effort he pulled back on the arming mechanism; when it locked into place he again swung the barrel of the harpoon gun around and centered on the snapping beak before him.

“Take this in your teeth and choke on it,” bellowed Quinn. He focused, remembering the lessons of a lifetime, handed down by his ancestors. Mind stilled, body quieted. Just the beast and him.

“Steady now,” he whispered.

He fired.

Another tentacle thrashed into his field of vision, right into the path of the harpoon. The point of the spear plunged deep into the flesh of the hellbeast, staining the water with blood.

The beast seemed to scream in reaction; the ocean trembled as the squid’s arms and tentacles lashed through the black water in anguish.

“This thing refuses to die!” Quinn cried in frustration, already shouldering a third harpoon to load into to gun.

* * *

“Galvanic systems will not hold much longer,” pleaded the vessel’s Galvinist. “We need to reduce the load on the shield or we will lose all electrical power.”

“We need to buy our harpooner the time he needs to kill this hellish beast!” countered the Captain. “To sweat the stonking alcohol out of his system and do his bloody job. Maintain the Galvanic charge at all costs.”

The Kraken’s engines howled in exertion. The lights of the ship, brightened, dimmed, brightened again. A hooked arm slashed through the beams of light directed at its center and thudded against the glass of the viewport. A sickening sound of cracking glass echoed through the bridge as a large crack made an almost leisurely path across the clear expanse of the fused quartz.

Then the lights went out.

* * *

Quinn had the harpoon gun loaded and locked down and aimed at the creature’s beaked maw when the sea went instantly black. Not only did the twin beams of light focused on the beast fail, but the light thrown from the sparking of the Galvanic shield and from the ambient light of the viewport on the bridge winked out as well, leaving Quinn in utter darkness, everlasting night. He could feel the backlash of water as the eight tentacles and two arms of the hellish thing came racing toward the Kraken to embrace the ship in its deadly grasp, crush it, and send it to an anonymous grave at the bottom of the ocean.

He knew he had seconds left.

He called upon the strength and skill of his whaler father and the farther before him, and the endless line of ancestors trailing back from them, to the beginnings of man, the beginnings of sea life, the beginnings of oceans.

He closed his eyes, he breathed, he let all the tension go from his body and mind.

“You magnificent beast, take my mighty spear, take it deep inside you,” he cried, and pulled the trigger handle and fired the great gun. The harpoon disappeared into the darkness, a small trail of bubbles behind it.

A silence lasting lifetimes followed. Him and the beast, alone in the silence.

The hellbeast screamed. Or at least it seemed to, Quinn could see nothing, but the water around him shook with the sound of it, and seconds after the initial shriek came a tumult of water like the shock wave of a bomb, radiating out from where the beast was thrashing unseen in the black fathoms.

The tumult gradually subsided. The sea grew quiet. Quinn collapsed against the harpoon gun, unsure of what might happen next.

After a time the ship’s engines slowly began to rev back into action. Moments later the twin beams of the bow lights illuminated a pale, dead, deflated creature, dashed on the rocks below the craft. Quinn’s long dark iron harpoon stuck out of the carcas at a sharp angle, gently swaying with the ebb and the flow of the dark underwater currents.

* * *

The crew-members who huddled frightened in the dark cheered when the lights flickered back, and cheered doubly when the beams of light revealed the dead hellbeast crushed against the rocks below-ship.

Eperia stood calmly from the Captain’s chair. “Splendid job, crew-members. Yeoman’s work. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir,” they replied, in startling near unison. Eperia looked about the room proudly, and her gaze was met by looks of subdued satisfaction at a job well done.

“Send a crew out to retrieve the harpoon, and to carve the meat and fat from the beast for our larder,” commanded Eperia, already looking to the next task at hand. “Gentleman, we need to address the structural integrity of the ship. The fused quartz-glass of the viewing portal is severely damaged and will require repair. Once the harpoon has been retrieved and stowed, and the vituals have been harvested, we will sail for the island ahead and make port there. We shall send out a landing party at first light tomorrow.”

A flurry of motion followed her ordered as the bridge crew readied the ship.

“Suggested course, navigator?” asked the Captain.

“Twenty-seven degrees starboard, one quarter speed,” she replied. “Raise the bow rudders to fifteen percent inclination.”

“Set the course,” confirmed Eperia. “And let’s get that crew out there to reclaim our weapon from the Damned Thing below. I don’t trust these waters,” she added ominously.

“Aye, Captain,” replied the first mate, uunable to hide the pride in his voice over the victory of the Kraken and its noble crew against the giant squid, hellbeast of the South Pacific.

* * *

Quinn descended the ladder to the airlock, closed the iris above him. He stomped on the floor. “It’s cold as tundra out here. Open the bloody hatch!”

Seconds later the iris ring in the floor expanded open. Quinn attempted to descend the ladder but the combination of extreme cold, exhaustion and the lingering vestiges of drunkenness caused him to miss the first rung of the ladder, dropping him straight to the floor, the railings sliding through his hands like firepoles. His legs absorbed the shocked; he howled in response.

His erection, clearly visible through the yielding, wet material of his diving suit, had grown enormous, its size and rigidity no doubt emboldened by his victory against the giant squid. He displayed it proudly.

“I’ve delivered my harpoon unto the heart of the beast!” he cried in his graveley Irish brogue. “Now what lassie will have me deliver my cock unto her?”

Tessa pressed against him, silencing his words with a furious kiss.

Quinn returned Tess’s kiss. Her hand reached down to the frigid material stretched taught over his hardness; she could feel the heat of his blood in his cock through the thick cold weave of the suit.

He responded to her touch by roughly grabbing one of her breasts. The cold shock of the skin of his hand jolted her senses, arousing her even as she shied from it. Her nipples stood instantly erect.

Never pausing to break the kiss, she removed his hand from her breast, slid off his glove to unleash his cold, grasping fingers, then placed his hand back on her tit. The cold of his fingers hardened her nipples even further. He deftly plucked them with thumb and index fingers through the fabric of her tunic; she shuddered and moaned in delighted response.

He abandoned the kiss to hurry his other glove off with his teeth.

With both gloves off he plumbed her mouth with his tongue, pinching hard on her nipples. She threw back her head and cried out; he moved his lips and tongue and teeth to her neck and began to lick and bite at her porcelain skin.

Tess shrugged off her tunic. She deftly unbuckled his diving suit and helped it to the floor, falling to her knees as she did so, directly in front of his twitching member.

She held it in both her hands, closing her eyes as she brushed it up against her cheek. She kissed it, rubbed it across her lips. She looked up at him for a from the floor and was surprised to find that his gaze was not on her. She followed the direction of his eye to discover her assistant, Anne, entirely and gloriously naked, crossing the floor toward the two of them, a decadent smile gracing her lips.

Anne dropped to her knees alongside Tess. Their eyes locked, knowing smiles playing across their faces. Quinn’s pulsing cock radiated heat and energy just inches away from their skin. Anne, without breaking eye contact with Tess, took Quinn’s cockhead directly into her mouth, swirling her tongue teasingly around the rim of it. Quinn reacted with an animal whimper, lost to sensation.

Anne popped him out of her mouth like a candy, innocently offering his length to Tess. Tess accepted her friend’s gift, taking Quinn between her lips, her tongue resting beneath the bulb. She began to hum. Her intent had been merely to please him with the vibrations, but she found a melody inside the seemingly tuneless notes, and her song filled the room.

As she hummed she slid her tongue in and out, cradling his cockhead within the curl of warm wet flesh, her lips working the deliriously sensitive sides.

She heard a humming sound coming from a source other than her own throat, and looked to see Anne humming as well, as if she were harmonizing in counterpoint to Tess’s melody.

Perhaps she was.

Anne’s tongue explored the space between Quinn’s plump, quivering balls as she hummed, her lips and his tightening skin growing wet and sloppy in the act. Tess released Quinn from her mouth and followed the hum down to the sexy mess below her, taking one of Quinn’s testes in her mouth as Anne took the other. The loud ursine roar from Quinn told her he enjoyed the attention, the gathering corpulence in his sac told her he was cruising toward his climax.

Tess sucked harder, pulling his swelling testicle more deeply into her mouth. Anne followed her example, taking his other ball far into her own mouth. Their lips were so close now they might have been on the verge of kissing. Spittle and pre-cum dripped down their chins and necks in long, curving, sensuous threads. They hummed together, singing a song, drunk on the harmonious beauty of the music they were creating.

Tess knew Quinn was close. She let his ball pop out of her mouth, worked her way up the shaft of his now jerking shaft with almost cruel slowness. She took the head into her mouth and swallowed him fully into the depths of her throat.

Quinn’s voice came alive. He informed her, “Take me deep, lass. First the hellbeast took my shaft deep inside, now it shall be you!”

He thrust his cock into Tess’s mouth as deeply as he had driven that fatal last harpoon into the maw of the Damned Thing. Anne sucked both his balls into her mouth at once, and in reaction his cock thickened and pulsed.

“You magnificent beauty, take my mighty spear, take it deep inside you,” he cried, and thrust hard into her mouth to let forth hot thick torrents of jism deep into Tess’s throat, spasm after spasm, arriving like waves on a shore. With Tess’s mouth so full of his thickness, there was no room for his spunk to go; rivulets of it ran out the corners of her mouth, dripping down her chin, and landing in small warm puddles onto her uncovered breasts.

She sucked him dry, hungrily swallowing every drop she could coax from him. Anne turned her attentions to Tess, licking the gooey aftermath from the gentle slopes of her tits, tracing giddy moist circles around her hardened nipples.

Quinn collapsed against the wall behind him, then slid down the length of it until he was sitting. His chest heaved, his breath was heavy and ragged. Tess continued to lick him clean, Anne continued to lick Tess clean.

He regarded the two bewitching women squirming in his lap. He said, “I’ve gone a round with the hellbeast, a second round with two lovely sirens of the sea. Even my strong Irish blood needs a short rest before I can begin another round. Now who will fetch me some whiskey to quench my thirst?”

But the two alluring creatures before him were unconcerned with his thirst, too wrapped up in their own hungry needs to even notice; Tess and Anne’s lips and tongues met for a long, lingering kiss, sharing the goodness of Quinn’s pleasure, one mouth to the other, slick and sated, the tart taste of his semen resting on their lolling tongues like seawater.

The sight was beguiling. “Stonk it,” said Quinn, temporarily forgoing his need for whiskey. He thrust himself forward to join them in a wet, salty baptism of tongues and lips and teeth. The three of them kneeled together inside the gentle curving walls of the vessel, connected by their sacred kiss, sharing each other’s bodies and minds, each other’s hearts and lungs and love and labors. They lived as friends and lovers and crewmembers and compatriots aboard Captain Emperia’s personal hand-crafted utopia, the underwater seaship known as the Kraken.

* * *

Meanwhile, the ship had risen stealthily to the surface and was now motionless among the waves. On the bridge, the celebration of their victory over the squid had quieted. Though excitement hung in the air, the crew returned to their duties, knowing they must never let down their guard in such dangerous waters.

Eperia had shrugged off the euphoria of victory moments after victory had arrived. She deployed the Eye to survey her surroundings and contemplate her next actions. A gibbous moon shone overheard, panting the waters surrounding the ship in shades of whiskery grey. Low clouds scudded past, obscuring the gentle light of the stars. Before her lay revealed by moonlight the Isle of Thorns, waves lapping at the jagged rocks of the shoreline. At the isle’s peak stood a dark forest of sharp, angry, teeth-like silhouettes, capping the landscape of the island like a bloody crown.