Aquaman #1

The pleasure cruise to the Bahamas had turned into a nightmare! Two days out of port, the luxury oceanliner Sea Queen had been boarded by pirates. They came from a hidden Atlantic base, pulling alongside the ship in much swifter speedboats, dozens of armored men with high-powered guns. They rounded up the crew first, beating the captain and throwing him overboard, then cleared the decks, herding the terrorized passengers into their cabins.

A helicopter descended onto the foredeck of the ship, and a man in decorated robes climbed out, his face covered by a pointed hood. “Has the vessel been secured?” He asked one of the armored men.

“Yes, Supreme One,” came the muffled voice from behind the faceplate of the terrorist’s helmet.

“Excellent!” crowed the Supreme One. “Then I claim the Sea Queen in the name of O.G.R.E. There will be millions in cash and valuables onboard, not to mention the ransom we’ll fetch for the passengers. Soon, the whole world will tremble before the Organization for General Revenge and Enslavement!”

“Really?” came a dry, genuinely amused voice. “How long did it take for you to come up with that one? Did the acronym come first and you found words to fit it, or are you really for general revenge and enslavement?”

The Supreme One looked around, puzzled, his robes flapping.

“Supreme One, there!” one of the henchmen pointed to the bow of the ship. A blond man in an orange scaled shirt and green pants stood there, arms on his hips, his mouth cocked in a crooked smile.

“Aquaman,” the Supreme One sounded like he was gnashing his teeth. “How did you know?”

“The man your goons threw overboard.” A dark look flashed in the hero’s eyes at that. “Some friends of mine rescued him and sent word.”

“Fools!” The Supreme One balled his hands into fists. “What are you waiting for? Shoot him!”

The six closest armored thugs reacted immediately. They aimed and fired at Aquaman, the report of their weapons echoing out over the waves. But Aquaman made no move to avoid the assault. The bullets struck and ricocheted harmlessly off his tough, depth-hardened skin. He merely raised one yellow eyebrow, then struck back. The sea behind him erupted, as wave upon wave came up and over the bow of the ship, directly at the terrorists. They did not see the team of whales around the fore of the ship, roiling the ocean with their mighty tails, directing the attack upwards at Aquaman’s command. The whole ship rocked and tilted and the deck was deluged with saltwater, pouring incessantly down upon the heads of the terrorists. They lowered their guns and cowered under the marine assault, unable to see or move, most unable to stay on their feet.

Then Aquaman sprung into action, surefooted and swift. He wadded into the midst of them, his gloved fists everywhere, slamming into jaws, cracking helmets, and breaking rifles over one knee. Henchmen were falling in droves, but the hooded figure of the Supreme One took off slipping and sliding for his helicopter, trying to get away.

*Topo, if you please...* Aquaman telepathically sent out, bashing a thug over the head, then heaving one into another, sending them both crashing into a bulkhead.

Tentacles swarmed up over the rail of the foredeck, pulling up the huge body of a octopus giganteus, a creature most people did not even know existed. The enormous beast crawled up out of the ocean onto the boat, the mere sight of it causing henchmen to scatter, some even throwing themselves overboard in fear of it. It wrapped its tentacles around the landing skids of the helicopter, just as the Supreme One was leaping into the cockpit. The hooded terrorist screamed, yelling for the pilot to lift off. The helicopter tried to move, but the gigantic octopus pulled it back.

“Get off! Get off! Get off, you stupid squid!” The Supreme One leaned out of the copter and fired a pistol at the octopus, hitting it multiple times in the barrel-shaped mantle. Topo reared back, hurt, its tentacles unraveling from the landing skids, freeing the helicopter. It slipped back into the water as the ‘copter began to lift up and away.

Swarmed by three thugs at the same time, Aquaman flinched when he heard the gunshots. With a single heave, he threw the men off of him, sending them bouncing across the deck and leaped at the escaping helicopter. He caught a landing skid with one hand, and with his blood boiling inside him, he yanked it out of the air and slammed it sideways down on the deck. The rotors were mangled. The ‘copter would never fly again. Still steaming, Aquaman reached in and hauled the cringing Supreme One out of the cockpit, and jerked him by the scruff of his robes up to his snarling face.

“He’s not a squid, you moron, he’s an octopus,” he snarled. “And if you’ve hurt him, you’re going to have a lot more than jail time to worry about.”

And that was the end of the short, pathetic criminal empire of O.G.R.E.






Dr. Arthur Curry, marine biologist and Fellow of the Neptune Institute, supervised the transport of the octopus giganteus into the holding tank of their vast outdoor facility on Chesapeake Bay.

“Gently, gently...!” He called out to the crane operator. The procedure to remove the bullets had been a success, and now Topo was being relocated to the holding tank to recover under observation.

*It’s just for a little while, saltbrother,* Arthur told the octopus as it was lowered into the water.

Gratitude, the weary cephalopod sent back, knowing no language but emotion, like most sea creatures. Then, Regret. Pain. Fear. Friendship.

Arthur’s heart went out to his frightened and wounded friend, and he longed to shed his jacket and tie and leap into the tank to console him.

“It’s a beautiful specimen,” the man beside Arthur noted admiringly.

“Yes it is, Mr. Perkins.” Arthur turned to his elderly benefactor, wealthy philanthropist Neptune Perkins. “And Aquaman sends his thanks for patching him up.”

“Hmph.” Perkins grunted. In his youth, he had been an adventurer on the high seas, and Arthur Curry’s secret identity was more of an unacknowledged truth between the two of them. “I’m sure he does, my boy. Now come on down to the lab. The Sea Devils found something strange in the South Pacific a few weeks ago, and I want you to have a look at it.”

“What is it?” Arthur asked, as the two headed back inside the Institute, across the lobby filled with the ambient blue light of walls and ceiling that were aquariums, and into the elevator headed for the lower levels.

“Some sort of crustacean, like a starfish, but like no species we’ve ever seen before. Dorrance thinks its extraterrestrial in origin.”

Arthur snorted. “That seems like a pretty big leap. How did he arrive at that conclusion?”

The door to the elevator opened on the lab, and the two stepped out, slipping on white lab coats.

“Because the damned thing was found attached to the face of a Pacific Islander who had gone on a killing spree, murdering twelve people.”

“That’s awful,” Arthur was taken aback. “But I’m still not sure if that’s---.”

“The islander was a 92 year old grandmother, Arthur.” Neptune leveled a look at his colleague. “Dorrance said her body was still animated after she had been shot multiple times by her grandson. Didn’t stop moving until the creature was removed from her face. Ah, here it is.”

Behind the thick plate glass of a viewing tank, the thing did look like a starfish, except for the one, nictitating eye directly in the center. Arthur Curry stared at it, stretching out his consciousness, probing its thoughts.

He was assaulted by a flurry of images, all rushing into his head at once. There was the deep, empty darkness of space, then the cool, blue abyss of a terrestrial ocean. He heard the unintelligible whispering of a million alien minds, caught glimpses of a billion brothers and sisters. Above all, there was a fierce imperative to replicate and to subjugate. It was pulling him in, vying with Arthur for control of his will!

He severed the connection with a gasp, taking an involuntary step back. Neptune looked at him, concerned at what he saw.

“What the blazes...? Are you alright, son?”

Arthur shook his head to clear the vestiges of the thing’s touch. “I’m fine,” he reassured his employer. “It’s nothing. Just a little tired. How many of these did Dane find?”

“Just the one.”

Arthur was not relieved. During his bond with the thing, he had seen billions. Was this creature a lone refugee, adrift in the cosmos and lost on Earth...? He sure hoped so, judging by what it had done to that poor old woman. One thing was certain, they could not allow it to be free.

“I want to handle this one personally,” he glanced around the lab at the dozens of other scientists and researchers working on other projects. He raised his voice to be overheard. “No one goes near this specimen.”

“It’s all yours, AC,” one of his colleagues spoke for them all.

Arthur looked back at the thing in the tank. It seemed to quiver slightly.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


He worked through the night. Long after the Institute had closed and everyone else had gone home, Arthur studied the creature, pausing only once to eat a salad and check in on Topo. When he was sure he was alone, he had called up the JLA database on his laptop, searching for some insight on the strange alien starfish. Membership has its privileges, he thought, scrolling through Green Lantern’s journal entries. He had Monitor Duty tomorrow, and had made up his mind to bring the creature to the League headquarters for safekeeping--- just in case.

Long before dawn, an alert sounded on his phone. He checked it, frowning. An alarm had been tripped at his deceased father’s home; someone had broken into the lighthouse. He had almost decided to let the police handle it, so involved was he in his work, but something nagged at him. This was personal. Currys had been lighthouse keepers at Kingspoint for a hundred years; even now that the lamp was automated, he still checked it once a month. He would check on it himself, but if this was just a bunch of kids messing around, he was not going to be happy.

Securing the alien starfish, he ducked into the locker room to change into his work clothes--- he could get to the New England coastal village faster by swimming than any other way.

He cut through the waters of the Eastern seaboard faster than a torpedo. He rarely felt the need to test his limits in the open water, but he could easily reach speeds that would outdistance anything or anyone--- commercial and military vessels were a blur to him as he passed.

As Aquaman drew closer to Kingspoint, his thoughts began to drift to his childhood as they so often did when he approached his boyhood home. It had not been easy being the son of taciturn lighthouse keeper Thomas Curry. The Currys were of old New England stock, proud decent people, hard-working and thoroughly ordinary, and young Arthur Curry had discovered at an early age he was anything but ordinary. He was never quite sure if his father really knew what to make of him, this boy he was raising on his own, this boy who could play underwater for hours without needing a breath, whose friends were the sharks and eels and jellyfish he called to play with him...

Arthur had loved his father dearly, but he had always known he was not meant to follow in his father’s footsteps. It was not for him the life of a lighthouse keeper, and Tom Curry knew it as well. “So like your mother,” Tom would say, looking into his son’s eyes, which were the color of the sea in storm. But when pressed, he would say little else; Tom Curry rarely talked about his wife. Arthur could plainly see it just hurt too much. All he would say is that she had come to him from the sea, that he had carried her from the waves, and that they had had little more than a year together. The rest that Arthur knew of his mother was what he could read inscribed on the headstone outside the lighthouse: that her name was Atlanna, and that she died on February 20th, the same day he was born.

Arthur knew the gifts he had must have come from her. “So like your mother,” Tom Curry had said one last time as he gripped his son’s hand during that final illness, soon after Arthur debuted as Aquaman. “She would be proud. I’m proud, too.” Arthur had so many questions, but in the end, none of them mattered. He was the son of Tom Curry and a woman named Atlanna who came from the sea with eyes the color of a tempest-tossed ocean. That would have to be enough.

As he got closer to homewaters, he called out to old friends. A school of tuna whose sires had taught him to swim as a boy, lobster he rescued from a fishing boat, and a bed of anemone where he used to play with families of clownfish. But something was not right. There was joy at his return, but he sensed a more sinister emotions at work, as well: fear.

*What is it, my friends* he became cautious. From them, he caught confused images of violence. Blood in the water. Intruders in homesalt. This was not just some kids breaking into the lighthouse, then. He had been right to come.

It was not yet dawn when he pulled himself over the rocks and out of the water, scaling the cliff to the lighthouse. The door at ground level was ajar, the lock and handle smashed. Hot anger surged through him. Heaven help these intruders if they were still inside. As quiet as the deep, he climbed the twisting stair that wound around the main turret of his childhood home. It was dark, but eyes bred to the lightless depths had no problems seeing even in pitch-black . He passed the landing where he had his old room, and proceeded to the largest room at the top, his father’s study, just one level below the lamp. This door, too, was ajar.

Making no noise at all, he entered. The room was in shambles. Tables and desks overturned, books, maps and navigational instruments strewn across the floor without a care. And slumped in the center of it all was a young man with a head of short dark curls, clad in strange, scaled garments of red and blue, oddly like Arthur’s own. There was blood on his head, from a scalp wound, and he moaned as Arthur hauled him to his feet.

“Who the hell are you, and why did you do this?”

The boy’s eyes were an unusual violet, dilated, and rolled back into his head. He was unresponsive.

“What the---?”

The room was suddenly awash in a garish red light. Arthur dropped the young man, and whirled to face a familiar, terrifying image. Through the door stepped a figure in black, with a massive, oblong helmet; the light came from the beams projecting through the oval optical screens like the tracer guides of an assault weapon.

“Manta!” Aquman snarled, balling his fists.

“I didn’t expect to see you, Aquaman,” came the eerily-pitched and distorted voice of Arthur’s archenemy. “This is an unexpected pleasure.” He stepped purposefully into the room, and Aquaman edged backward.

“What do you want in this place?” Aquaman demanded. Had Black Manta discovered his secret identity and come looking for something to use against him?

“I was going to ask you the same thing.” He raised his arms, showing Aquaman the wickedly curved fishhooks he gripped in each hand. “Instead I’ll just rip your guts out.”

The two foes lunged at each other. Aquaman was preternaturally fast and strong, adaptations of a body bred for life beneath the waves, but Black Manta’s suit evened the score, giving the villain an obscene strength and durability. Aquaman caught at his enemy’s wrists, the points of the fishhooks gleaming too close to his body. They grappled against each other, neither gaining the edge.

“Give it up, Manta,” Aquaman gritted his teeth into the face of Black Manta’s helmet. “This time, you won’t get away!”

Black Manta budged not an inch. “I’ve made some modifications to the suit. Tell me what you think of this.” There was a brief, high-pitched whine, then the red-lights of Manta’s eyebeams exploded with unforeseen intensity and force full at Aquaman. The blast was powerful enough to send the hero crashing backward, shattering a bookcase filled with childhood pictures.

Well, that’s new. Aquaman was dazed, his vision swimming. Black Manta was upon him instantly. A fishhook slashed downward, but Aquaman rolled aside quickly enough to avoid losing an eye, the point embedding itself in splintered wood instead. Not wasting time to free the hook, Manta, swung the other one as Arthur lurched away, the attack opening a long gash across the hero’s side.

Black Manta laughed at the bloodshed, which only served to inflame Arthur’s temper. As a boy, Arthur had admired his father’s collection of antique harpoons mounted on the wall, of his study, the wall in front of which he now stood. He reached out and seized the nearest one, tearing it free, and hurled it at his foe. It rang off Manta’s helm, knocking the villain sideways. Bellowing a fierce cry, Aquaman ran in with a swinging punch, catching Manta square in the stomach. The suit’s inertial dampners absorbed most of the blow, but it still sent Manta reeling, staggering for his footing. Only a quick slash of the fishhook kept Aquaman from moving in again.

They faced each other warily across the ruined lighthouse chamber, their combat poised on the edge of a knife, both breathing hard, both eager for more violence. The sun was coming up now, and light filled the side of the room that was all a viewing window, showing the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

“I’d love to stay and kill you, Aquaman, but I’ve got to be going. Next time, I’m going to cut off your hand and gag you with it. Count on it.”

Unwilling to let Manta escape, Aquaman sprang forward--- into the twin beams of Manta’s eyeblasts. The blow was weaker this time--- the weapon must need recharging!--- but it was more than enough to send Aquaman reeling, dead in his tracks.

There was the shattering of glass, and when Aquaman had finally steadied himself, he saw that Manta had leaped out of the viewing window, plunging into the waters of the Atlantic far below, where, no doubt, his custom-built manta-shaped submarine waited to take him away. Aquaman almost leaped after him, but a low moan caught his attention. He had forgotten about the young man!

Still woozy himself from Manta’s eyeblasts and the bloody slash down his side, he went to the young stranger, who was now sitting up, shaking his head.

“Easy, there,” Arthur held out a helping hand, which the violet-eyed stranger took, pulling himself to his feet. “I don’t know who you are, but if you were with Black Manta...”

“No...!” the boy said hastily, staring hard at Aquaman, his gaze lingering over his yellow hair. “No, that man captured me. Forced me to take him with me...”

A little uneasy at the scrutiny, Aquaman frowned. “Who are you? Why were you coming here in the first place?”

The boy blinked, looked confused. “My name is Garth. I don’t remember much. Something happened to me a while back. I can’t remember exactly... It’s all so hazy.” he gritted his teeth, dashing tears from his eyes. “But something awful. That man... Black Manta? He found me wandering off the coast a few days ago.”

“Wandering off the coast?” Arthur’s frown deepened. There was something about the way the boy said that. “You mean along the coast.”

Garth shook his head. “No, I mean off the coast. About a hundred miles out. Underwater. Do you take me for a surface dweller?”

A thrill ran through Arthur’s blood. Had this young man walked out of the ocean? Like Atlanna had done all those years ago?

“I’m on a mission,” Garth was thinking hard. He took what looked like a piece of quartz crystal from a compartment in his belt. It had a warm, purple glow to it. It twitched in the boy’s hand, one end turning to point toward the wall with all the antique harpoons. But harpoons weren’t all that was mounted there. Above them was a decorative trident, like something from a gladiator movie. Arthur had always thought it looked fake, but the boy was staring at it with something like reverence. He took it from the wall, surprised to discover how heavy it was. The tines gleamed with razor-sharpness, despite the age of the thing, which was now apparent to Arthur, under closer scrutiny.

“I didn’t tell him,” Garth raised his chin, brave through the tears that still shone in his striking eyes. “He beat me, but I told him what I was looking for wasn’t here. I didn’t lead him to it, but I can see it belongs to you. Only you can make it do that.” He pointed. There was a smattering of sapphires at the fork of the trident, and like the boy’s quartz, they were now suffused with a warm glow.

Aquaman held the trident in his hands, turning it over, testing its weight. There was a wonder building inside him he had not felt in years.

“Me? Why me? Garth, where are you from?”

“From?” Garth’s brow creased, and he put a hand to it. “I’m from Atlantis, of course. I mean I must be. I remember setting out from there, anyway. Find the Trident, they told us. Wait... Us?” The young man was struggling to pierce the veil of his amnesia, but was frustrated.

“You’re from... Atlantis?” Arthur set the butt end of the trident on the floor. “And this...?”

“Yes.” Garth said surer now. “And that is the Trident of Neptune. It may only be wielded by one of the line of Atlan himself, one of the Blood Royal.” He went down on his knees before Aquaman, looking up at the stunned hero. “I came to find the lost heir to the throne of Atlantis. I came to find you, sire.”

TO BE CONTINUED!