The Monster Missions

by Laura Martin

  My thoughts shifted from the night before and back to the here and now of my first morning aboard the Britannica. My eyelids felt fuzzy, which wasn’t much of a surprise since it had taken me what felt like hours to fall asleep. Around me the submarine creaked as its metal and glass muscles flexed, keeping the ocean waters at bay as it sliced through its briny depths like a hot knife through butter. It wasn’t time to get up yet, but a lifetime of waking up early was hard to break, so I rolled over in my bunk, careful not to whack my arm on the ceiling, and pulled out the tablet Weaver had assigned me. I carefully pushed the button to wake it up, and smiled when a dim yellow light illuminated the inside of my bunk.

  It took me a second to find the sea-monster encyclopedia, but I finally did and clicked it open. The first entry was an account from a crew member of the Britannica from almost twenty-five years ago. As my new cabinmates snored, I tapped to the H section and pulled up the profile of the monster that had attacked us. The first image was a close-up of the illustration from the monster map Weaver had shown us the day before, followed by a few blurry images of the monster itself and a recording of the ships it had attacked and damaged. I noted that the newest entry was about the Atlas and blinked in surprise when I saw my name as well as Garth’s listed in the account.

  The profile went on to discuss how many eggs a female hydra could lay in its lifetime, as well as the fact that it was lethally poisonous, its bite capable of stopping a whale’s heart in seconds. I swallowed hard as I remembered just how close I’d come to those poisonous teeth. I was about to flip to the next monster on the list when the end of the article caught my eye:

  The ruby Hydramonsterus serpentinius is one of the few monsters that appears to hold a grudge. If it is attacked by another sea monster or even by a ship, for that matter, it will hunt that monster or ship down relentlessly until it can be found and destroyed. For this reason, it is imperative to kill a ruby Hydramonsterus serpentinius after any kind of altercation.

  I looked up from the tablet and clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle a gasp. The monster that I’d accidently unearthed, the monster that had viciously attacked our ship until I’d managed to detain it long enough for us to escape, was going to hold a grudge against the Atlas. A grudge that would cause it to hunt down the ship until it found it. My mind flashed to my family, and I felt myself go cold as I remembered Captain Reese’s final words after our meeting in her office: that the very lives we saved might be those of our families. She’d known. Any uncertainty I’d been feeling about being on the Britannica disappeared in that moment. I no longer needed to make the cut here to avoid a future on a work ship; I needed to make it here so I could save my family.

  The bell clanged a half hour later, and I powered down the tablet before launching myself out of my bunk. Unfortunately, I was distracted by my recent discovery, and I almost landed on Max, who shot me a dirty look out of sleep-bleary eyes.

  “Do that again and I’ll use that fluffy hair of yours to scrub the deck,” he growled.

  “Do submarines even have a deck?” I said as I quickly scooped what he’d so nicely called my fluffy hair into a thick braid that trailed down my back. It wasn’t my fault that I’d inherited wild curls that stuck out in all directions unless something was done with them.

  “Chill out, Max,” Kate said from her own bunk as she stretched her arms up toward the ceiling.

  “Berkley’s head would make a terrible mop,” Garth added as he climbed down. “Far too cumbersome, and noisy.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said, wondering when I was going to be able to find a time to tell him what I’d learned. Maybe we could go to Captain Reese and ask her to do something. I wasn’t sure what that something might be, but not doing anything didn’t feel like an option either.

  “This is way too much talking for this time of the morning,” Kate said, grabbing my hand and dragging me past the boys and out the back door of our cabin. “Go brush your teeth,” she shouted over her shoulder at Max. “Your breath smells like seal puke.”

  “What does seal puke smell like?” I asked as she took a left, never letting go of my arm.

  “Fishy,” she said, pushing open the door to the girls’ bathroom. I’d learned yesterday that it was attached to the dive room, and I had to stifle the urge to take another peek at the equipment.

  “What’s the rush?” I asked as she hurriedly turned on two of the showers and rushed to grab us each a towel.

  “Do you like hot water?” she said.

  “Um, yeah?” I said, confused, as she ducked into her shower stall and pulled the curtain shut.

  “Well, you’re out of luck,” she said. “But if you want lukewarm water, then you better hurry. This sub is state-of-the-art, but if you aren’t one of the first five showers, you are going to freeze.” I quickly took her advice as the door to the bathroom opened and five other crew members hurried inside.

  A few minutes later I was done and slipping on my own pair of Britannica-issued aqua boots for the first time.

  “What do you think?” Kate asked, smiling as she watched me admire my new outfit in the mirror.

  “I’m not sure,” I said honestly. “How long does it take before all this starts to feel, I don’t know, normal?”

  Kate snorted. “I hate to break it to you,” she said, “but we don’t really do normal here.” I must have looked unsure, because she put an arm around my shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze before whipping her hair up into a wet bun on top of her head. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll get used to it, I promise. I’m just happy to have another girl recruit. Max hasn’t exactly been a ray of sunshine recently.”

  “Thanks,” I said, glancing around at the other crew members getting ready around me. I’d grown up on an overcrowded ship where personal space was rare, but life on the Britannica was even more close.

  “You okay finding your way to the hub?” Kate said. “You’re supposed to report there for your morning work assignment.”

  “Sure,” I said, feeling fairly confident that I could find my way back. “Where are you going?”

  “Early-morning cleaning of the large specimen tanks,” she said, and rushed off before I could say anything else. I wondered if I was going to get to see the large-specimen area anytime soon, but I pushed the thought aside as I made my way into the maze of passages.

  “Good morning, Berkley,” said a voice behind me, and I whirled in the tight hallway as Captain Reese emerged from her quarters. Unlike the recruits that I bunked with, she had her own small cabin, probably a quarter of the size of the one I’d shared with my parents and brothers back on the Atlas, but still a luxury here where every square inch mattered. I noticed with envy the way her curls stayed in place, bouncing a little as she shut the door behind her. Maybe that was what I needed to do, I thought: just chop off the whole mess and only leave a couple of inches behind to do what they would. I discarded the idea almost immediately. While her curls were perfect little springs, mine would just fuzz out and make my head look like the mop Max had so kindly compared it to that morning.

  Captain Reese smiled at me, and I found myself smiling back. Her gingerbread-colored skin made a sharp contrast to a lot of the other crew members, whose skin had taken on translucent paleness from a lack of sunlight. I’d never really thought about what a life spent below the waves without sunlight would do to a person, and I glanced down at my own golden, freckled skin and wondered how long it would take before all evidence of my life aboard the Atlas faded away. Kate had mentioned something about vitamin D supplements and special light bulbs aboard the sub, but it hadn’t made me feel much better.

  “Heading to the front?” she asked. I nodded. “Lovely,” she said. “I’ll come with you. We’ll see what kind of progress Officer Wilson has made while we slept.” I quickly flattened myself against the narrow passageway so she could slip by. She probably wouldn’t have minded following me, but I knew myself well enough to realize that I’d be a jumpy bundle of nerves, tr
ipping over things that weren’t there, if I was leading the captain through her own submarine. No thanks.

  The sound of toenails clicking on metal resounded to our right, and we turned as Tank came trotting around the corner, a large biscuit of some sort held proudly in his mouth. Tank reminded me a lot of Garth: stocky, smashed-up nose, and a bit bowlegged. Not that I’d ever tell him that. Tank trotted by us, head held high. He might as well have shouted, Make way, people—I’m busy!

  “Sometimes I think he believes that he’s the captain,” Captain Reese said, shaking her head.

  As the little dog headed off down the hallway, I glanced over at the Britannica’s captain. I needed to ask her the question that had been needling me for over an hour now, and I had no idea if I’d get a chance to talk to her one-on-one again anytime soon.

  “I have a question,” I said, the words tumbling out in a rush before I could lose my nerve.

  “I have an answer,” she replied with a quick smile.

  “I was looking at the monster encyclopedia this morning,” I said, gesturing to the tablet in my hand, “and it said that hydras hold grudges? Is the one that attacked the Atlas going to attack it again?”

  Captain Reese sighed and put a hand on my shoulder. “I was hoping you’d have a chance to get adjusted a bit to life here before you ran across that bit of information. It’s why I didn’t mention it earlier. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for you. The truth is that we don’t know. Sea monsters in general, and the hydra in particular, are still very much a mystery. It’s why we devote so much time and effort to research. The more we know, the better we can protect ships and the people who live on them. All I can tell you for sure is this—we attached a tracker to the hydra, and we should be able to give the Atlas fair warning of any future attacks.”

  “Just a warning?” I said, feeling my heart sink.

  Captain Reese nodded. “We can’t follow one ship around just in case it gets attacked. Our job is to protect as many ships as possible.” My hands clenched into tight fists as I tried to process this, and Captain Reese noticed. “What I told you yesterday still holds true. Learn everything you can from Professor Weaver, work hard, and you might contribute to the breakthrough that helps protect your ship. It’s all any of us can hope for these days.” I nodded and followed her silently down the hall, my brain churning. Being able to warn the Atlas was good, but it wasn’t enough. There had to be more I could do, and I felt the familiar itch in my fingertips to fix the problem at hand, only this time I knew it was going to involve more than making a nifty flashlight.

  A minute later we made it to the front and entered the glass-enclosed hub. My eyes were immediately drawn to the ocean as we sliced through water so deep the sun’s rays hadn’t found it yet. There was nothing to give away that it was actually morning except for the faintest hint of lighter blue water directly above us. The sub’s powerful headlights were turned on, casting two thick beams of light that occasionally illuminated a school of fish or the body of an octopus or squid as it hurried to get out of our way.

  “Anything interesting to report?” Captain Reese asked, jarring me from my admiration of the sub and back to the task at hand. Officer Wilson turned from where he was inspecting a computer monitor over a sailor’s shoulder and smiled at Captain Reese. Like most of the crew on board the Britannica, he was short, with a wiry, muscular frame that made it easy for him to maneuver inside the sub. He was older than the captain by a good ten years, or at least the gray-and-white hair at his temples made him appear that way. I was terrible at guessing the ages of adults. They all just looked like different variations of old, and it was rude to ask, so I never did.

  “Unfortunately, no,” said Wilson with an apologetic shrug. “The cetus is proving trickier to track than we expected.”

  “Legends usually are,” said Captain Reese. “What is our exact location?”

  Wilson turned to the monitor he’d just been consulting and shrugged. “We’re weaving our way between and around submerged islands at the moment, Captain. We’ve been angling ourselves toward the ruins of Athens, since the last rumblings of the monster came from that direction. If nothing turns up in the next day or so, we’ll make our way over the top of the old coastline for a bit to see what we can see.”

  “Very good,” said Captain Reese. I thought I’d been forgotten, and I was puzzling over what in the world a cetus was when Wilson turned to me. “What can the new recruit tell us about the cetus?” he said.

  “Um,” I said, shifting nervously from foot to foot. “I’m not sure yet, sir,” I said. “This is my first day.”

  Wilson shook his head, and I felt myself shrink a bit.

  “Perfectly fine,” Captain Reese said. “No one expects you to know all your monsters on the first day.” She raised an eyebrow at Wilson, who’d already turned his back on us to look back at the monitor.

  “Who’s asking about the cetus?” Max said, coming up behind us, his hair still wet from the shower.

  Wilson turned to Max and jerked his chin up. “Why don’t you show the new kid how it’s done. Tell us what you know about a cetus.”

  “Weaver just did a lesson on it a few days ago,” Max said. “There isn’t much to know. It hasn’t been heavily researched.”

  Wilson snorted. “You could say that about any of the sea monsters we track.”

  Max seemed unfazed by Wilson’s bluster and shook his hair back out of his eyes. “Cetus was a monster from Greek mythology,” he said. “Which is why we’re hunting near what used to be Greece. Odds are his descendants are still mucking about somewhere nearby. Legends always have some basis in truth, and if you start your hunt near their origins, you usually have the best luck.”

  “Not usually,” Wilson interrupted. “Always.” It was weird to hear Max talk about Greece. I mean, I knew what continents were and countries and all that from school, but people didn’t use them to navigate anymore. On the Atlas we moved about based on weather patterns and fishing opportunities.

  Captain Reese motioned for Max to continue.

  “The legend says that Cetus was a monster sent by Poseidon to devour Andromeda,” Max said, and then paused and glanced over at Captain Reese. “Do I need to go into the whole bit about how Poseidon was the god of the sea and Andromeda was the daughter of King Cepheus?”

  “Not this time,” Captain Reese said.

  “So anyhow, Poseidon was mad that Andromeda’s mom had said she was more beautiful than all the nereids in the ocean. Luckily for Andromeda, though, Perseus saved her.”

  “Nereids,” Wilson said, and shuddered. “If I ever see one of those again, it will be too soon.”

  “You can say that again,” Captain Reese said with a smile and a nod of approval at Max. “What are the practical applications for actually capturing a cetus?”

  “Well, the odds are that they live deep, probably in a cave under one of the islands. In the legend, Cetus is stopped by Medusa’s head and turned to stone, but he was likely just blinded with the use of a bright light. So we’ll probably use that when we are hunting the rest of them,” Max said, and I wondered if I’d ever be able to rattle off sea-monster information like that, all cool nonchalance and confidence.

  “Good to see that Weaver is doing a good job with the recruits,” Wilson said, nodding his head in approval.

  “What the legend doesn’t mention is what Cetus looked like,” Captain Reese said, “but I have a feeling we’ll find that out soon enough.” She pointed out the front of the glass, and Officer Wilson pulled back the throttle, slowing down the Britannica so the headlights could shine on the large outcropping of rock on our right. There, carved in the side of the rock, were claw marks. For a moment we hovered there, the only noise the low thrum of the Britannica’s engine.

  “What’s the measurement on those?” Captain Reese asked, breaking the silence.

  Officer Wilson quickly tapped a few things into his computer, and an image of the claw marks appeared on his scre
en.

  “They appear to be about five feet long and a foot and a half wide,” he said.

  “And what are the calculations for an animal capable of making claw marks of that size?” she asked.

  Wilson typed a bit more and then sat back and whistled. “It looks like we have at least a twenty-five-footer, Captain.”

  Captain Reese nodded and turned to me and Max. “Don’t worry about a work assignment this morning, just go grab your breakfast while you can,” she said. “I have a feeling it’s going to be an interesting morning.”

  I nodded and turned to follow Max back into the depths of the submarine, not quite sure yet how I felt about interesting mornings.

  7

  The salty smell of boiled kelp wafted down the tunnel, and my stomach gave an angry snarl. Garth and Kate were already seated at the table, their plates piled high.

  “What’s with you two?” Kate asked, raising an eyebrow as I sat down with my own plate, elbowing Garth to make myself a bit more room.

  “We were up in the hub when Captain Reese spotted claw marks,” Max said around a mouthful.

  Garth choked on his bite of kelp and spit it back onto the plate. “Claw marks?” he said.