The Monster Missions

by Laura Martin

  I was just turning to leave when I spotted the screen of her computer. Displayed across her monitor was a large map of the ocean with a few small lights blinking on the screen. I leaned in, quickly spotting the tiny iridescent miniature of the Britannica as it made its way around the now-submerged heel of Italy. It wasn’t the only illuminated vessel on the screen, though, and I inhaled as I found the Atlas moving off to the left of the screen. Without even realizing I was doing it, I reached out to touch the tiny ship that I’d called home for my entire life, a stab of homesickness lancing through me so sharply I felt tears press against my eyes.

  I stood there for a minute, staring, before it occurred to me that it was odd for the Atlas to be on the captain’s computer. There were thousands of ships out there, and hundreds in the Britannica’s precinct alone—why keep track of the Atlas? I noted that there were a couple of other ships on the map. More interesting than that, though, were the tiny sea monsters, each no bigger than my thumbnail. Some of the names I recognized from Mr. Weaver’s lessons, while others were completely new. As I looked at each one, making a mental note to look them up in my encyclopedia that night, I saw a name that I recognized all too well—the red hydra. Captain Reese had mentioned on our first day on the Britannica that they’d managed to get a tracker on the monster that had attacked us, but I hadn’t realized that she could see its location with this level of accuracy, and I realized with a rush of fear why the Atlas was on her map.

  I reached out with a trembling hand and placed my thumb on the hydra and my pinky on the Atlas. They were far too close for comfort, and as I watched, I saw the tiny monster get a hair closer to my ship, to my family. I took a step back, feeling numb. Somehow I’d gotten carried away in adjusting to my new life aboard the Britannica and let the fact that a sea monster was stalking the Atlas slip to the back of my mind. I hadn’t forgotten about it, not at all; it just had seemed like some problem that would be solved eventually. Now those two little images on the screen made that problem immediate and terrifying. Captain Reese was tracking the monster in case it caught up with the Atlas, and from what I’d read in the encyclopedia, it was only a matter of time until that happened.

  My time to figure out a way to protect my family wasn’t in some distant future, when I’d gotten all the ins and outs of life aboard the Britannica figured out. The time was now—yesterday, even. I had no idea how I would do that yet, but I did know a good place to start.

  11

  The next morning, I slid into my now-customary spot at the mess-hall table.

  “Nice to see you dry,” Max said, smiling wickedly.

  “It’s nice to be dry,” I said. The day before, I’d had the joy of walking into the mess hall still sporting soaking-wet clothes thanks to Elmer’s “nice to meet you” dunking. It had been embarrassing, and I’d smelled faintly of rotten fish for the remainder of the day, but the look on Garth’s face when he caught sight of me had almost made it worth it. He’d tried to hide his grin for a second before giving up and letting it take up his entire face, showcasing the dimple in his left cheek that I hadn’t seen since we’d left the Atlas. I’d made a mental note to make sure that smile made an appearance again soon.

  “Don’t worry,” Garth said glumly as he plopped down into the seat beside me. “I’m sure I’ll be wet soon enough.”

  “Want to switch jobs again?” I asked, and Garth paused with a bite halfway to his mouth to stare at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “What?” he said.

  “Man,” Kate said, shaking her head. “I knew you were nice, Berk, but I didn’t think you were that nice.”

  “No one is that nice,” Garth said, leaning in to peer at me suspiciously. “Not even you. What are you up to?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Utterly unconvincing,” Garth said, leaning back and crossing his arms as he stared at me.

  I stared back, doing my level best not to let my face give me away. Garth had been my friend long enough that he could tell when I was lying, and although I did want to switch jobs, I wasn’t exactly telling the whole story, either. For one reason or another, I still hadn’t told Garth what I’d learned that first day about the hydra that had attacked the Atlas. Which, considering I’d made a habit of telling Garth pretty much everything for as long as I could remember, felt wrong on a lot of levels. I just kept justifying it by reminding myself that he already knew how important it was that we made it here, and that terrifying him about a monster stalking our families’ ship wasn’t going to do anything but worry him. If I was honest with myself, though, it was really because telling Garth would make it that much more real, that much more terrifying, and my brain already felt overloaded.

  Garth just kept staring at me, and Max and Kate shot each other a look and then went back to eating their breakfast, leaving us to it. I shook my head, trying to put my thoughts together. Garth wasn’t going to believe a lie. Ultimately, I decided that the truth, or a version of it, at least, was my best option.

  “Fine,” I said, holding my hands up in surrender. “It’s because I want to spend more time around the sea monsters.”

  “Because you like smelling like fish and having near-death experiences?” Garth said.

  “It’s just that, well . . . that’s why we’re here. Right?” I said. “To learn everything we can about sea monsters so we can figure out a way to protect the ships?”

  “And you don’t get enough of them in Weaver’s class?” Kate said. “Gosh, by the time class is over, I’m so tired of hearing about the three-headed this and the forty-foot-tentacled that, I could just scream.”

  I shrugged. “I just figure being around the real thing would be helpful.”

  “Hey,” Garth said, holding his hands up, “I’m not complaining if you want to switch. That’s fine by me. I’m with Kate—I get more than my fill of sea monsters in Weaver’s class.”

  “Don’t forget about the never-ending research assignments,” Max chimed in. “Those are a barrel of laughs.” Suddenly there was a loud, blaring beep overhead, and everyone in the mess hall froze in anticipation.

  “Code five. I repeat, we are about to experience a code five,” said Captain Reese’s voice over the loudspeaker a moment later. “Report to your stations immediately.” There was a burst of static, and the loudspeaker went quiet. The room stayed frozen for another heartbeat, and then everyone seemed to move at once. For a second the entire room was filled with the scraping of chairs, the shouting of panicked voices, and the pounding of feet as everyone took off running in a different direction at once.

  “What’s a code five?” I asked, scrambling to my feet to follow Kate as she whipped out of the mess hall and down the closest hallway.

  “We’re about to be swallowed!” Kate yelled back over her shoulder.

  “Swallowed?” I said. There was no possible way I’d heard her correctly. Kate took a sharp left, and I raced past the hallway and had to double back to catch up with her as she hurtled into the dive room. Six crew members I now recognized as part of the Britannica’s diving crew were already there in various states of dress and undress as they worked to get what looked like thick hazmat suits on over their regular gear. Kate flew into action, tightening a strap here, helping with a flipper there, and I took my cue from her and jumped into the fray. I zipped up wet suits, sprayed defogger inside face masks, and handed out what appeared to be long, sheathed knives to the divers.

  “We haven’t had a code five in months,” someone said. “The last time we got swallowed it took us an entire day to get out.”

  Kate was suddenly by my side, carrying over her shoulder six black dive belts, which she shoved into my arms. “Here,” she said. “Give everyone one of these.”

  “We’ve been swallowed before?” I said, still not believing that this was actually happening. There was another loud beep overhead, and we all froze to listen as Captain Reese’s voice came back over the loudspeaker.

  “Prepare for impact!” she yelle
d. Everyone grabbed on to something, and Kate yanked me down next to her. A second later the sub jolted violently to the left, and I watched in horror as the small circular windows that flanked either side of the hatch went from the dark blue of the ocean to pitch-black. We really had been swallowed.

  My brain was still fighting to process the concept as the dive crew did one last gear check and hit the button to open the hatch. Kate and I stood there panting and sweating as the door slid shut behind them, and we heard the whir of the water entering on the other side.

  “Come on,” Kate said. “We have a debriefing to get to.”

  “A what?” I said, walking over to the closest window and peering out. The lights of the Britannica shone on either side of me, but there wasn’t much to see besides a murky darkness that made me uneasy.

  “Debriefing,” Kate repeated, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me out of the dive room. “Don’t you want to know what swallowed us?” I followed her numbly, not really sure how you even began to answer a question like that.

  “Swallowed,” Garth said a few minutes later as we sat around the table in Weaver’s classroom for our debriefing. His face was the same color as the white shirt he was wearing, and I could see the slight tremor in his hands despite the fact that he had them folded in front of him so tightly his knuckles were white. “Like something just ate us?” he said.

  “It’s one of the downsides to hunting sea monsters,” Max said with a shrug. “Sometimes they hunt you.”

  “You’re playing this awfully cool for someone who almost passed out the first time this happened to you,” Kate said.

  Max opened his mouth to reply and then shut it again and smiled a bit sheepishly. “Happens to the best of us,” he said. He glanced over at Garth. “So, see? There’s your silver lining of being swallowed. Eventually, you get used to it.”

  Weaver looked up from his tablet then, practically bouncing with excitement, and we all fell quiet.

  “Who can tell me what a leviathan is?” he said.

  “A gigantic sea monster mentioned in the Bible,” Kate said.

  “Very good,” Mr. Weaver said. “Now, depending on the translation you choose and the book of the Bible you’re looking at, the leviathan is depicted as everything from a dragon to a serpent. The one thing all the descriptions have in common is the size of the creature. For that reason, we call all the colossal sea monsters we encounter leviathans. Simplifies things.”

  I raised my hand, and Weaver nodded at me. “But how do we get out of it?” I asked. This felt like a really crucial bit of information, and frankly it irritated me that no one had mentioned it yet.

  “Unfortunately, we probably have to kill it,” Kate said.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call that unfortunate,” Garth said.

  “It is,” Weaver sighed. “Being swallowed is usually a bad sign that a monster is dangerous to ships and other submarines.” Garth shot me a wide-eyed can you believe this? look, and I just shook my head.

  “The good news is that now that we are inside it, it will be much easier to kill. We’ve had to help out other submarines with leviathan attacks, and incapacitating one from the outside is ten times as difficult. Which is why we seem to encounter so many of them. They have very long life spans and no predators.”

  “So we are going to kill this thing and then get out?” I said.

  “Yes,” Mr. Weaver said. “If we simply blasted our way through the creature’s stomach and rib cage to escape, the creature would be so enraged it would rip the Britannica to shreds. Instead we send out our dive team to do some reconnaissance. Once they have located the vital organs, we will know where to focus our attack. After the creature is dead, then we make our way out by force.”

  “Sounds easy enough,” I said dryly.

  “The tricky part is that we can’t spend too long in the stomach,” Weaver went on, “or the acid will damage the sub.”

  “So that’s why the dive team had those suits on over their regular diving stuff?” I asked as my own stomach flopped uncomfortably. “Because they would get digested otherwise?”

  “Gross,” Garth said. “Please tell me that whatever you need us to do doesn’t involve stomach acid?”

  Mr. Weaver smiled. “Luckily for you, Garth, this type of mission isn’t one recruits assist on.” Garth sagged in relief, and I waited for the same relief to wash over me, but it didn’t. To my surprise I felt a slight pang of disappointment. “Since it appears things are pretty well covered, I’d like all of you to report to the hub. You’ll have a front-row view of the proceedings, and I’d like a report from each of you on Tuesday about the various techniques that you witness. Captain Reese thinks we will be able to be out of this creature within the hour, so you better hurry.”

  With that we were dismissed, and we headed single file to the front of the ship.

  “Swallowed,” Garth grumbled. “Unbelievable. This never would have happened on the Atlas.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Max said. “We think ships get swallowed every now and then. I mean, we don’t have proof, since any ship that got swallowed wouldn’t really have much of a chance to call for help, but some of the small ships do disappear mysteriously.”

  Garth looked over at me, and I knew we were both wondering if the Atlas would qualify as a small ship. Kate and Max fell in step together in front of us, and I noted absentmindedly that Max’s limp was becoming a lot less pronounced.

  “Think our families are okay?” Garth said after a second, and I glanced over at him.

  “I hope so,” I said. “I feel like Captain Reese would mention to us if something happened to the Atlas.” Garth nodded, and I felt the guilt tug at me again for keeping all the information from him. What I needed was a plan, something definite about how to protect the Atlas, and then I could tell him. “Hey,” I said, “I never even got to ask you how your day with Hector went. Was he mad we switched?”

  Garth shook his head. “He said that as long as I worked hard, he couldn’t care less. Still, I felt like a fish out of water with all the stuff he had me doing. I miss scavenging.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “For one thing, I was good at it,” he said with a sheepish grin. “For another, you and I got to work together. I feel like I barely get to talk to you except for meals.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “Well, meals and when we get swallowed.”

  We made it up to the hub, which felt weird with its pitch-black windows and brightly lit interior. The headlights were shining on what had to be the pink, undulating side of the creature’s stomach, and I shut my eyes and took a deep breath to steady myself.

  “Welcome,” Captain Reese said, turning from the monitor she’d just been studying. “How’s everyone’s morning going?”

  “It’s been better,” Garth said, plopping down on one of the benches where we’d sat on our first day aboard the Britannica. Through the front window we saw six tiny lights approaching through the darkness, and a few moments later the divers I’d helped gear up swam into view. One of them flashed the hub a thumbs-up, which Captain Reese returned, and they swam around to the newly fixed hatch. There was a loud beep, and the large computer monitor in front of Captain Reese suddenly showed a diagram of what I assumed was the inside of the creature.

  “We’re in luck,” Captain Reese said, stepping forward to study the diagram more closely. “We are very close to the heart, and by cutting straight down, we can avoid most of the bone structure on our way out.”

  “This isn’t happening,” Garth said faintly, his face an unfortunate green color.

  “Shush,” Max said. “It’s almost time for the good part.” The intercom next to Captain Reese chirped, and I heard a crew member report that all the divers were back inside the Britannica and the charges were secured.

  “Thank you,” Captain Reese said, her face all business. Something moved to my left, and I saw Tank leap into Garth’s lap and settle in. Did he know who needed him the mos
t? Or was it just a lucky coincidence? I didn’t have time to ponder that thought, though, because Captain Reese was making a sub-wide announcement.

  “Brace yourselves,” she said. “We will initiate our exit and detonate the explosives the dive team set pretty much simultaneously.” She glanced back to make sure that we were all seated and nodded in approval. “Ready the saw,” she said, and Officer Wilson pushed a few buttons on his monitor. There was a low whirring noise as four large silver disks appeared in front of the Britannica. From where I sat, I could see the metal disks begin to spin rapidly in the murky water.

  Max leaned forward excitedly, and I covered my eyes. A second later I felt the Britannica make contact with something—probably the thing’s stomach, since we’d have to get out of there before we could exit the beast altogether. I shoved the thought away, pretty grossed out by the whole thing. There was a terrible screech, probably from the creature itself, and I heard Garth make a gagging sound beside me. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and put my hands over my ears to block out the noise. I felt someone gently pry my hand off my ear, and I looked over at Max, who smiled at me.

  “The worst is over,” he said. “Trust me, you don’t want to miss this.”

  “Detonate the charges,” Captain Reese said, and Officer Wilson pressed a button on his computer. Suddenly the entire ship shook as something exploded behind us, and then we were out, leaving behind the murk of the creature’s stomach.

  “Time to get some distance from this thing,” Captain Reese said, and I was practically thrown backward in my seat as the Britannica surged forward and away. A minute later the sub came to an abrupt halt, and Captain Reese spun the wheel so we faced the opposite direction. There was a whistle of appreciation from behind us, and I noticed that the entire crew of the Britannica was standing along the back wall of the hub, some of them still dressed in wet suits.