Young Captain Nemo: The Door into the Deep

by Jason Henderson

  Misty crossed the deck as Peter said in Gabriel’s earpiece, “I see one—no, two—shapes in the water. One is moving away…”

  “There!” Misty shouted, and Gabriel ran to her side. He saw a missilelike shape moving fast just below the surface, away from the boat.

  “The first shape is right under the stern,” Peter hissed.

  The boat rocked hard toward the rear as water splashed. A strange call warbled across the air.

  Misty shouted toward the stern of the boat. “It’s there…” And that was all she got out before she stopped, her mouth hanging open in a perfect O.

  All the world slowed to a crawl as Gabriel felt adrenaline wash through his system, his chest tightening.

  A great tentacle the size of a fire hose flew up over the rear of the craft and slapped down. Metal popped and groaned. Gabriel and Misty struggled to keep their feet.

  Misty backed up, spitting out her words. “We gotta get off this boat.” A hissing sound came from where the tentacle landed, and Gabriel smelled burning paint. The end had a wide, flat, leaflike sort of frond, and as the frond vibrated, metal began to melt. The tentacle punched through the deck as another one came roaring up from below, whipping from the side, landing near Gabriel’s feet.

  He stared at it. Small shapes he could only describe as bulbs vibrated on the frond, folding back their husks and emitting a red, burning core. The tentacle swept toward him, and he hopped away.

  “The second creature is coming back toward you on the starboard side!” Peter shouted in his earpiece.

  Gabriel heard a loud splash and looked out to the water. The missile shape was coming fast.

  Just then, the owner of the two tentacles they’d seen so far started climbing up and poked its head into view.

  Gabriel gasped despite himself.

  What in the name of all the oceans is that?

  It had a long snout like the head of a crawfish, with multiple tentacles moving around, feeling along the deck. It was calling loudly.

  “Look out!” Misty cried as another tentacle flew up and swept toward her on the deck. She backed up against the starboard bulwark, cut off.

  Gabriel triggered his pincer gun and jammed it into the tentacle, and the creature screamed, jerking the tentacle away. The crazy tentacle frond jiggled in the air above their heads as Misty joined Gabriel at the center of the craft.

  There was another roar in response, and Gabriel looked back out to the water.

  Something was rising from the waves. Gabriel saw the propeller first, looking like a nose as eyes protruded above. Four wings emerged next, two stacked on each side. The creature whipped its wings and rose, plastic beads and water streaming down as it took to the air. It was a World War I biplane. For a moment Gabriel was stunned, taking in the strange tentacles hanging from the body of the plane and the faded blue barnacled tail, split into sections and pulsating with strange flesh and tendrils swishing from side to side as it swooped toward them.

  The biplane was approaching swiftly, angrily, flapping its wings in a way biplanes were never meant to do.

  No, no, no, this was too much. What was he thinking? This wasn’t a slide show; he was about to get himself and his friend eaten by an airplane.

  Shut up! he shouted at his own thoughts. Move. “We’re done. Get to the ladder.” They staggered with the rocking of the boat as the bigger creature steadily tried to eat—put on? he thought wildly—the fishing boat from the tail up.

  He had seen the images Nerissa had gathered and thought he was prepared to see one of the Lodgers, but now that he was faced with two of them, he realized he had been a complete fool. He wasn’t prepared for the alienness of them, the bizarre transfiguration that went into taking human machines—machines of war—and wearing them. In the library he’d approached them like a scientist, but in person he was near frozen with fear.

  No. Don’t give in to fear. Fear is not your enemy. It’s just there. The adrenaline pulsing through you isn’t the enemy. It’s just getting your body ready. What’s the enemy? Freezing. That’s the enemy. You’re afraid? Just don’t freeze.

  The biplane twisted in the air, bending its body like an Olympic diver headed for the pool. It hit the water and disappeared under the starboard side, crashing along the hull as it went.

  The shock sent them stumbling into each other, pellets flying under their feet as they scrambled toward the ladder on the port side. Misty reached it first, holding back her hand to grab Gabriel and help him up. She put her hands on the railing of the ladder, preparing to climb over.

  That was when the biplane rose again at the side of the boat, not far from the ladder and the dinghy, their only way off. He could see its face now, bulbous, with great snail-like stalk eyes which swiveled as it sat, its wings undulating as its eyes finally found Gabriel and Misty.

  “Yahhhh!” was the only word Gabriel could think of as they shrank back. The creature opened its mouth underneath the propeller, showing rows and rows of thin whales’ teeth. The whole metal body pulsed up and down slightly under the water, and Gabriel backed up. It looked ready to pounce.

  The creature whipped its body hard and smashed into the dinghy with its tail, tearing the boat free and sending it bobbing away.

  No! That’s our way off.

  Okay. Okay. “Peter!” Gabriel called as he and Misty moved back, trying not to slip, toward the center of the boat. “We’ve lost the dinghy; we need you.”

  Peter didn’t hesitate. “I’m coming to get you.”

  Misty shouted, “How close can you get? They’re focused on the aft and port side now. I guess we’ll head as far forward and starboard as we can?” She made eye contact with Gabriel, and he nodded quickly.

  A roar came from the rear as the giant crawfish continued climbing upward, bulwarks snapping as tentacles swarmed the deck.

  Gabriel wanted to scream.

  Gabriel and Misty reached the starboard side at the bow of the boat and looked out. All they could see were beads of plastic floating in the water. Those things could choke you in an instant, he realized. “Try not to breathe in any of that gunk when we get in the water. Peter, where are you?”

  “Right here,” came Peter’s voice, as the platform of the Obscure broke the surface two hundred yards away to their right.

  A tentacle swept toward Gabriel from the rear of the boat, and he turned his pincer on it, sending a sizzling arc of electricity. The arc impacted the thing’s flesh, and smoke rose off it. The creature screamed again.

  In response, the biplane leapt out of the water, landing on the starboard side of the deck, and started scuttling toward them, lashing out with its tentacles. Misty cried out as one of the tentacles smashed against her shoulder and her pincer went clattering. It wrapped around her waist, lifting her, and Gabriel yelled. He fired again, sending an arc of energy over Misty’s shoulder into the tentacle. The biplane screamed and dropped away from the boat.

  Misty dropped to her knees, shaking. “Shockkk…”

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry, come on.” Gabriel slung his pincer onto his shoulder and pulled her to her feet. Shakily, they began to climb over the side. “Keep fighting, come on.”

  Misty was still stunned; the shock of the pincer arc had sizzled through her and left her barely awake. Idiot, he told himself. Idiot. You’ve made this a disaster. “Here we go.”

  The shock of the water hit him as he came up under Misty, his arm around her and his hand under her chin. He began to kick, swimming backward toward the Obscure. Two hundred yards to safety. There were beads everywhere. Gabriel even felt some of them on his lips as he spat them away and shouted to Peter: “Move sideways toward us and spring the hatch!”

  A hatch popped open on the platform as Gabriel and Misty neared the side of the Obscure. “Come on!” Peter shouted in his ear.

  Waves were lapping over Gabriel and Misty, and he prayed the biplane was done for now. “Misty, wake up,” Gabriel hissed. “Wake up, I need you.”

  Just k
ick. Just keep kicking.

  His back slammed into the bulkhead of the Obscure, and he turned, pulling Misty toward a ladder a little way ahead on the ship. Realizing there was no way he could lift her up and climb at the same time, Gabriel fumbled, trying to loop her arm through the ladder.

  Misty sucked in air and jolted in his arms. “I’m awake, I’m awake.”

  But she wasn’t. Not awake enough, Gabriel, can’t you see that? And you can’t very well lift her up a ladder yourself, can you?

  He shook his head. Come on, solve it, solve it.

  There was a hook, a lassolike rescue hook fastened to the railing of the platform. He could use that. Yes. Now you’re thinking.

  “Here, here. Hold on.” Gabriel put Misty’s hand on the ladder and felt her grip it before he let go, scrambling up. At the top, he unfastened the hook. It was a loop of cording at the end of a two-foot-long pole. He held the pole, pointing the lasso end toward the water. He thumbed a small trigger on the side of the pole, and it clattered out another eight feet, the lasso splashing into the water next to Misty. At least that worked. But now you have to use it.

  It took two tries, even with Misty’s help as she came to more and more, to get it under her shoulder.

  Misty shook her head as she climbed up the ladder, the rescue hook pulling her as she went. She shook her whole body as if wringing it out and scowled. “Did you shock me?”

  “I know!” he said again as she climbed down into the hatch. “It was an accident, I’m sorry!”

  Gabriel waited till she had gone through the hatch before he dared to look back at the fishing trawler. The boat was smoking and swarming with tentacles now. He saw the trawler’s seams rip apart and tentacles burst forth up and down its side.

  The biplane had left the trawler’s deck already and was sticking up out of the water, its bulb eyes swiveling toward Gabriel and the Obscure. Locking onto them, he realized.

  Gabriel pulled the hatch closed.

  12

  “PETER, GET US out of here!” Gabriel shouted as he came down the ladder into the bridge.

  “You don’t have to ask me twice.” Peter shoved the throttle stick forward. “Man, are you guys all right?”

  “What was that?” Misty demanded. Absently she ran her fingers through her hair, and a few burned pieces fell out. “Ugh. You singed me. Saved me but singed me.”

  “I know!” Gabriel slumped, wringing his hands. “I know, and I’m sorry. I didn’t think that would happen.” Because you’ve never fired those things under any kind of pressure before, have you?

  “I know, I know,” Misty said. “It’s just hair, it … grows back.”

  “Were those them?” Peter demanded. “Were those the Lodgers?”

  “I think so.” Gabriel quickly went to stand at the front, leaning on the stations below the view screen.

  “Are you telling me we came out here to study those things and they tried to eat you?” Peter shouted.

  “One of them was trying to put on the trawler, I think. The other one seemed to be acting as a guard,” Gabriel said.

  “Why did it attack us?” Misty asked. She sounded hurt, and with good reason. But it was more than physical. Up to now they had been thinking of this as some sort of mercy mission, but the creatures they were here to help hadn’t seen them as anything but a threat. He knew he had no right to, but he felt genuinely betrayed.

  Don’t be ridiculous. Would you feel betrayed by a shark?

  “I think it was just bad luck,” Gabriel said finally. “I don’t know; I think they attacked us because we were threatening. And then when I used the pincer on a tentacle to get one of the Lodgers out of the way, the other one flipped out.”

  “People aren’t gonna be too patient if they keep trying to kill anyone who gets in their way,” Peter grumbled as he steered the ship.

  “Argh. We’re supposed to be studying these things, not antagonizing them.”

  “Who’s antagonizing who?” Misty harrumphed.

  The whole ship rocked with a new collision.

  “What was that?” Gabriel glanced around the walls of the bridge. “I’m bringing up the side cameras.” He went to a console on the wall and quickly brought up a menu that usually showed on Misty’s station. He didn’t want to ask her. Sorry you were nearly electrocuted; can you get right on bringing up pictures for us?

  When he switched to the side cameras, the radar map that filled the main screen dissolved into an underwater image lit by floodlights, plastic blobs making the image snowy. Nothing. He panned down.

  The ship shook again, two solid whumps in rapid succession.

  The camera’s view moved downward until he could see the side of the Obscure. The biplane had grabbed onto the submarine and was chewing on the side, its lower wings flapping against the ship as its upper wings floated free in the water.

  The biplane pulled free a strip of mother-of-pearl, shaking its snout, letting the strip of rocklike substance fall free.

  That was not good. There were a lot of layers to the Obscure’s hull, but every piece yanked away was one piece closer to the real enemy: water. Whatever a submarine might face—enemy weapons, enemy subs, mines—all of those were just tools that other people used to let the water in. To let it crush you by ripping the body of your ship open.

  They were under attack now, and if he didn’t figure out the right thing to do to help his friends and hope they could figure out the right things, too, it would end just one way: death.

  Gabriel thought about all of this and could feel his skin tingling, because if something tore the Obscure apart, it would tear his friends apart as well.

  He touched his shaking right hand with his left. But he could not let his crew see just how scared he felt. Not because it would embarrass him, although it would. Not because it would frighten them, although that was certain. But because if he showed that fear now, if he let his voice quiver now, it would throw them off, and they would make mistakes, and then he would make mistakes. And that was how people died.

  Another crash, this one sending shivers through the Obscure from the front.

  “Oh, boy, Peter,” he said. “Let’s move.”

  “Cameras are my thing, Gabriel,” Misty said, and he turned to look at her. “Let me take that.” She was hunched over her station with her hands on the menus. She seemed to have recovered.

  Or was he just telling himself that? “Are you sure you’re a hundred percent?”

  She shook her head and smiled a little insincerely. “Hundred percent, but we are definitely going to talk about this.”

  Okay, so he was in trouble. “Absolutely. Front cameras.”

  Misty brought up the cameras showing the prow of the ship. They had picked up another Lodger—an old, small submarine, probably Russian, was curling around the prow of the Obscure and chewing on it. It blocked the camera as the rusted metal and undulating tendrils swished back and forth. Sharp teeth gnashed in close view.

  Knock it loose. It’s gonna tear us open. “Peter, dive ten meters.”

  “Dive, aye.”

  The Obscure’s prow dipped as they picked up speed and the submarine creature lost its grip, dropping out of sight for a moment.

  “Rear camera?” Gabriel hoped there weren’t any more around. Through the snowy image he could see the biplane, still in pursuit. Then the submarine they had knocked off the prow soared into view from the side.

  It grew in size now, and Gabriel realized with a sinking sensation that the creatures were drawing closer.

  “They’re gaining on us,” Peter said.

  “Copy that.”

  Misty spoke clearly and slowly. “Gabriel, what do you want to do?”

  “Ideas?”

  “We could keep running,” Misty said. “They’re biological; they might tire out.”

  Peter scoffed. “Or what, we lead them to Japan? They’ll love that. The Japanese, I mean.”

  “Are you recommending we shoot at them?” Gabriel asked. “On our fi
rst encounter, we fire pincer missiles at them?”

  “They’re just energy missiles,” Misty said. “It should just stun them. I think.”

  “Yeah, exactly,” Gabriel said.

  Misty shook her head. “We need to see all around. I’m bringing up the front and back cameras.” The screen split. On the left side of the screen, they saw the nose of the Obscure as water swished over the top, garbage-filled blackness as far as they could see.

  On the right, the pursuing creatures split up, the submarine aiming for their hull and coming fast.

  It was aiming its hard nose at them, coming at them like a torpedo.

  “Evasive maneuvers,” Gabriel said. “Grab onto something.”

  Peter yanked the stick, and they swung hard to the left and dipped, putting distance between themselves and the submarine creature. But the movement slowed them down, and now both the creatures closed in again.

  Peter shoved the throttle forward and the engines rumbled harder.

  On the right screen, the little biplane fluttered slightly, changing its position and moving off in the water. The submarine fell back and rose to the side as well.

  “Uh-oh,” Misty said. “I think they’re getting out of the way of something.”

  At first all he could see was a large swirl of displaced plastic beads. Then, bursting from the darkness below, a massive shape swam up and pulled into view.

  Gabriel’s first thought was whale—not a real whale, but a big, fat, wide cartoon whale that swallowed fishermen and boys, an angry, hungry thing of myth. It was vast, some forty feet across and surely longer, though he couldn’t see the whole thing. Its skin was a pulsing, tentacle-teaming fabric of rusted metal strips and iron panels covered in a crazy patchwork of rotting wooden planks black with moss and aged grime. Its eyes peered out from crooked holes on either side of the ancient prow. Broken masts and tarry British banners flapped and flopped across its deck. Its nose was a long, crooked beam of waterlogged oak slicing toward them. And below this it had a mouth—no, two mouths, one the ripped and jagged armor of metal and rotted wood, and the other, behind that, a hungry maw of needle teeth.