Beneath surface Thanos Kalamidas The Ocean Sagas BeneaTh s u r f a c e Thanos Kalamidas Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Beneath surface Beneath surface Thanos Kalamidas Thanos Kalamidas An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Beneath surface T he USS Franklin Pierce, a hulking steel levi- athan, cut through the Atlantic depths like a ghost from an older war. Its crew, sharp with training and dull with boredom, performed their duties under the harsh glow of fluorescent lighting and the constant drone of machinery. Captain Jonas “Red” Mallory, whose beard was red enough to start fires in fog and whose temper could match a torpedo blast, sat in the command chair like Neptune incar- nate. “Depth, Mister Taylor?” Mallory asked without turning his head, sipping weak coffee from a chipped ceramic mug labeled Property of the United States Navy Thanos Kalamidas “Four hundred feet and dropping steady, sir,” re- plied Ensign Taylor, a man so young his mustache was still classified as pending. “Good. That’s where we’ll stay. Deep enough to mind our business, shallow enough to outrun our regrets.” “You mean sonar range, sir?” “Sonar, regrets, same thing. Both bounce back louder than you expect.” The crew chuckled lightly, more out of habit than humor. That was Captain Mallory’s way, cryptic, cyn- ical, and possibly clairvoyant. You didn’t command an atomic submarine through Cold War waters with- out picking up a few ghosts and government secrets. It was supposed to be a milk run: monitor Soviet chatter off the Greenland shelf, make sonar sweeps, play a little hide and seek beneath the pack ice. Stan- dard cloak-and-dagger nonsense. Except there was the matter of the Ping. “Captain, sonar’s got a strange contact,” said Chief Petty Officer Dugan, tapping at his console like a Beneath surface piano man with the blues. “A high-frequency ping. American signature. But it’s... wrong.” “Define wrong,” Mallory said, already feeling the hair rise on his forearms. “Off-pattern. It’s coded in Morse, but not Navy standard.” “Let’s hear it.” The control room filled with a faint, rhythmic ping... ping-ping... ping-ping-ping “It’s repeating,” Dugan added. “Every minute. Mes- sage reads: WHALESONG FILE EXISTS. DEEP THROAT ALIVE. TRUST NOBODY. ” “Holy Neptune’s undershorts,” murmured Taylor. Mallory stood. “That’s either a prank from a very drunk dolphin... or someone’s using my taxpay- er-funded sardine can to pass secrets.” A pause. Then a voice from the back, Petty Officer Carmi- chael, muttered, “Sir, wasn’t Deep Throat that guy from Watergate?” Thanos Kalamidas “No, Carmichael. That was a different Deep Throat. And keep your browser history clean, sailor.” * * * * * An hour later, in Mallory’s cabin, the air was thick with conspiracy and burnt percolator coffee. He sat with Lieutenant Nina Rousseau, the ship’s intelligence officer, whose multilingual resume was only slightly more terrifying than her ability to read lips in reverse. “This message,” Rousseau said, peering through a folder labeled CLASSIFIED in red, “was broadcast on an obsolete sonar frequency, only used in early ‘60s spy boats.” “So someone’s reaching out from the Cold War graveyard,” Mallory said. “Not someone. Something. Project Whalesong. ” Mallory blinked. “That old CIA fairy tale?” “No. It was real. Codenamed for its cover, acoustic studies of whale migrations. In reality, it was about deep ocean surveillance cables laid near Soviet territo- Beneath surface ries. Some said they had a recording of Khrushchev singing ‘Volga Boatman’ after three vodkas.” “God help us all.” “And here’s the kicker,” Rousseau said, lowering her voice. “Files on Project Whalesong were sealed in 1971. Only a handful of officers had access. One of them... your predecessor. Captain Rickard Voss.” Mallory froze. “Voss? The guy who took a ‘medical leave’ and ended up running a bait shop in Key Lar- go?” “The very one. Except he died last year... suppos- edly.” “Supposedly,” Mallory repeated, suddenly realizing that the ocean wasn’t the only thing full of pressure. * * * * * They traced the signal to an underwater ridge near Jan Mayen Island. A place where no sane man would dive, unless one had a death wish—or a secret to bury. The Pierce rose cautiously over the abyss, sonar flickering with echoes. And there it was, a hatch em- bedded in rock. Fused steel and rusted bolts. Amer- ican design. Thanos Kalamidas “Looks like a Cold War listening post,” Dugan said. “A corpse with ears,” Rousseau added. “Get me a diving team. We’re going spelunking in Neptune’s crypt.” * * * * * The dive was madness. Cold, dark, and thick with silt, as if the sea itself was trying to erase the past. Inside the hatch, they found a hollowed-out ob- servation post. Rusted tape decks. Dials still ticking. And a body. Or what was left of one—wrapped in a tattered uniform. “Dog tags,” Rousseau said, pulling them off. “Voss. No doubt.” “Looks like he sealed himself in,” Mallory mut- tered. “Why?” Then Rousseau found the reel. They played it back onboard. The tape hissed, crackled, then a voice, raspy, panicked. “If you’re hearing this, it means the Whalesong tapes survived. They recorded more than Soviet Beneath surface subs... they heard us. Everything. The dirty deals. The friendly fire. The nukes that went missing and the war that nearly wasn’t. The truth is deeper than any of us, and it’s still leaking.” A pause. “I didn’t defect. I disappeared. For your own good, don’t trust command. Trust the ocean. It never lies. Just drowns things slow.” * * * * * Mallory sat alone in his cabin afterward, staring at the black tape reel. Command would expect a report. The kind with heavy redactions and bolded lies. But Mallory had a choice. He turned to his ship’s log and wrote: “Located abandoned sonar facility. Recovered clas- sified Cold War materials. Facility compromised. Rec- ommend no further investigation.” Then, with the calm of a man who’d stared at too many truths and found none of them satisfying, he sipped his coffee, leaned back, and muttered to the empty room: Thanos Kalamidas “Well, Voss... you were right. The ocean doesn’t lie. But it sure as hell knows how to keep a secret.” The door creaked open. Carmichael poked his head in. “Captain, sir, per- mission to speak freely?” “Speak, sailor.” “You gonna tell Washington the whole story?” Mallory smirked. “Nope.” “But... what if they find out?” He raised the chipped mug. “Then I’ll deny it.” Carmichael blinked. “And if they send someone to investigate?” Mallory grinned, eyes twinkling like a shark who’d bitten a lawyer. “Then I’ll serve them coffee and a submarine sandwich. We’ll see which one kills ‘em first.” And somewhere, far below, the ocean chuckled. Fin. Beneath surface Beneath surface The Ocean Sagas Thanos Kalamidas Ovi eBook Publishing 2025 Ovi magazine Design: Thanos Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Thanos Kalamidas Thanos Kalamidas The Ocean Sagas BeneaTh s u r f a c e Thanos Kalamidas , a multipublished writer, cartoonist and illustrator; born and grew up in a picturesque neighbourhood on the moun- tainside of Hymettus in Athens, Greece. Then his life took him to Berlin, Germany and to London, UK for studies. After a brief stay in Yorkshire he moved his life to Paris, France while working in Tokyo, Japan and in Cape Town, South Africa. In the last 25 years he became a permanent Scandinavian resident and recently, in his glorious sixth de- cade, he moved to a scenic village in the Växjö area.