The bridge of the Obscure was the nerve center of the ship. It was where the commander of the ship had at his beck and call all the major systems and the officers in charge of them—navigation, weapons, life support. On US Navy submarines, such places were called control rooms, but on very old ships they were called the bridge, and the name had stuck for the Nemos. The Obscure bridge was oval-shaped and toward the front of the ship. It had no windows or portholes—instead the crew relied on a large view screen that, besides its ability to show sonar and maps and pretty much anything the crew could pull up from the internet, displayed whatever was shown by a collection of cameras mounted around the ship.
But it was more than that. The bridge of the Obscure was Gabriel’s home, more than anywhere else. More so even than the multiple-domed underwater complex at the bottom of the sea where he’d spent most of his life. It was the place where he felt truly alive.
As he arrived, Gabriel began flipping on the engines and interior lights. He pulled a tablet from its cradle on the front wall, right under the view screen, and opened a checklist that they had to go through every time they took the ship out. Misty and Peter chattered as they went to their stations.
“You got Navs on?” Peter called as he slid into the helm seat and snapped his restraints over his shoulders and waist. Navs was short for navigation, the systems the crew used to determine and control the direction and speed of the ship.
“Yeah.” Gabriel paced as they ran through their checklists.
Misty dropped into her spot—operations, defense, basically everything that wasn’t navigation. “Lemme take over the checklist?”
“You bet.” Gabriel leaned on the back of his own seat. Each of them needed practice doing the others’ jobs. Peter’s was navigation, but he needed to be able to run Misty’s defenses even if he wouldn’t normally be called to. Gabriel, in command, needed to be able to do everything.
Misty called out, “Prepare to dive.”
“Prepare to dive, aye,” Peter echoed. Engines in the walls of the Obscure chugged to life, filling the tanks in the walls with heavy liquid. They would need to dive down and exit through a hangar door about twice as wide and half again as high as the Obscure. Gabriel felt the ship drop and spin around as Peter pointed the nose down toward the exit.
“Dive,” Misty said, and Peter echoed her as they dropped like a stone, the engines taking the ship as they zipped down and out into the sea.
Half the view screen showed the front cameras, dim green water that swam with colorful sea life. They began to move at flank speed, regular speed for piloting near anything that would be dangerous to hit, like another craft or a school of fish.
“Wring her out,” Misty said. “Full speed.”
Front lamps lit up the water as they began to move toward the image on the sonar screen. The Obscure began to move, and as Gabriel watched the water move faster past the view screen, he felt more at home than he ever had in his life. “Sonar,” he said. “Let’s see who our visitors are.”
“Sonar online,” Peter said. “There you go.” The giant view screen sparkled to life as pings of sound went shooting through the water and bounced back to the ship, mapping out the area and showing up on a circular map.
“There it is,” Peter said. On the screen was a large shadow, slowly moving in their direction, now about four miles away.
“How big is that?” Gabriel asked.
“Three hundred feet, I’d estimate. And loud.” Peter flipped a switch, and now the sound he was hearing on his own earpiece came through over the speakers on the bridge of the Obscure. The distant engines churned, clanging and scraping loudly.
“That is the strangest thing I’ve ever heard.” Gabriel scrunched his face.
“I doubt that’s true,” Misty observed.
“It is weird, though,” Peter agreed. “That clanging sounds like something in their rotors is damaged. That’s one reason we can see them so well on the sonar—we’re getting way more sound than you’d usually have from even a big sub like that.”
“Is it navy?”
“Nope, at least not US Navy.” Misty flipped through reports on the navy subs in the Pacific. “Not likely, anyway. All the subs this close to the coast are accounted for.”
“Well, they don’t make everything public,” Gabriel observed. Locations of US Navy subs were generally secret, although the navy made it known roughly where the ships were.
“You ever hear a navy engine sound like that?”
“You can turn that off.” Gabriel winced at the agonizing sound of the strange rotors. “They sent an SOS; that’s all we need.”
“They were approaching the Institute before they stopped.” Peter cut the sound of the strange sub.
“Institute, this is Obscure,” Gabriel called. “Peter, how soon will we reach it?”
“About six minutes,” Peter said.
“Institute.” Mom’s voice came back.
“We’re underway to meet the vessel; have you guys gotten a message beyond the SOS?”
“Nothing,” Mom said.
“Here neither, but it’s strange, it sounds like they have engine trouble.” Gabriel looked back at Misty. “Maybe we can try and talk to them. Mom, we’ll contact you when we know more.”
Misty moved a slider on her screen, choosing a different channel, and spoke slowly and clearly. “Unknown vessel, this is Nemoship Obscure. Come in?” She shrugged at Gabriel.
Peter scoffed. “Gabe, this is weird.”
“They could be hurt,” Gabriel said. He sighed. If the vessel had suffered a hull breach, the strangers could be in big trouble. “Institute, we should arrive in five.”
“Mr. Nemo,” came the voice of Mr. Dorn. “You should be careful.”
Gabriel shrugged his shoulders elaborately as he turned to Misty and Peter. “Are we not always careful?” He called back, “Copy.”
“I’m just saying, they may be in trouble, but it’s still a submarine.”
Gabriel understood. Submarines often had weapons, and the last thing they needed was someone torpedoing the Obscure because they were taken by surprise or malfunctioning. He got up and went to Misty’s station, touching the call button. “Unknown vessel, do you need assistance?”
“They’re diving,” Peter said. “A little. And moving laterally.”
“To do what?” Misty asked. “To get away from us?”
“I don’t know,” Peter said.
“Put us on a path fifty feet above them. How long till we meet them?”
“Four minutes.”
“Unknown vessel, I say again—”
Now there was a cry of voices, several at once, impossible to make out. The sound burst over the speakers. Several people shouted indiscernible messages amid loud, rushing sounds behind them. Then it cut out.
“I think they’re in trouble,” Gabriel said. “Unknown vessel, we are coming to meet you. Peter, adjust so that we can come right alongside them when we meet them.”
“We can see them now.” Peter threw the image onscreen. Across the water a mile and a half away, a long, flattish submarine moved through the water, tilted, one side of its tapered face about twenty degrees above the other.
“Do you see markings?” Gabriel asked.
“I don’t,” Peter said.
Misty said, “That’s not any navy ship. It’s some kind of private sub. Like us. What do you want to do?”
Gabriel shook his head. “What are the options for rescuing people off a sub?”
Misty looked grave. “Not very good. Best is if you can get them to surface and fix their engines.”
“You can’t haul them,” Peter said. “Don’t even think it.”
“Could we set up an umbilical between the ships for people to climb through?”
“They could have hundreds of crew,” Peter said. “But yes. Okay … we’re on them.”
“Unknown vessel,” Gabriel said, “do you read? We are nearby and prepared to render assistance…” He turned
to Peter. “Put the engine sounds back on?”
The sound of the clanging engines came back as the Obscure slowed, moving steadily with the strange submarine fifty feet below them in the water. It was painted dull gray, with no markings he could see and a very thin tail halfway across the back.
As they reached the back of the three-hundred-foot vessel, the sound of the engines grew more erratic.
“She’s rupturing,” Peter said with alarm, and indeed, the tail of the gray sub began to bend outward as if being pushed from inside.
“Prepare to deploy flotation devices,” Gabriel said. If crewmen went into the water, there was some chance that the Obscure might be able to save them. “Get us close.”
“How close?” Peter asked.
“Close as you can.”
Misty gasped. “Maybe we can get under them, like nudge them toward the surface.”
“It’s an idea. That would make it safer for everyone aboard. Peter, is it possible?”
He nodded. “Yes, but we gotta be real easy about it.”
“Go.”
Peter dipped the Obscure toward the sub, moving downward. It was an absurd idea, but if there were people to save, it was what they would do.
“Okay, we’re gonna impact,” Peter said. “As slow as we can. Brace … ten seconds.”
They came closer. But then the new submarine began to spin away, jostling. And then—
“What’s it doing?” Misty cried. “Oh, those poor people.”
It shook apart. Gabriel gasped out loud. At first, as the seams of the tail split open and the panels along the top separated, Gabriel held his breath for fear that a great ball of expanding gas from an engine explosion was about to send the Obscure end over end. But no: The strange vessel’s engine, a propeller inside a cage, shook loose, rattling like a windup toy. It spun into the depths as the panels of the ship sloughed off and began to float. Soon the Obscure was surrounded by a rising tide of floating panels that had been the submarine.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Gabriel said, his fear for the crew members melting into complete confusion.
The vessel had simply come apart as though made of cardboard.
“What the heck?” Gabriel asked.
Peter zoomed in toward one of the panels as it tumbled past the front camera. It seemed to be made of cheap material, foam and plastic.
The sound of the engine disappeared as it stopped, presumably at the bottom of the sea.
“It was a fake,” Misty said. “But why? What would be the point?”
Gabriel watched the panels float toward the surface.
What would be the point?
The point would be to call for a rescue.
To bring the rescuers out here.
The point would be to draw the Obscure away.
“Call the Institute,” Gabriel demanded.
Misty nodded. “Nemo Institute, this is Obscure. We have something really strange.”
They waited for a few moments. Nothing.
Misty repeated her call.
Gabriel folded his arms. “Oh, I don’t like this.”
“We’re getting a text message,” Misty said.
Words began tapping across the bottom of the screen, meaning someone who couldn’t access the microphone at the control panel still had access to a Nemo Communicator.
OBSCURE THIS IS INSTITUTE
SOS
WE ARE UNDER ATTACK
3
“WHO’S SENDING THAT SOS?” Misty asked. She tapped words that jostled onto the screen. “Who is this?”
No answer.
“We were suckers,” said Gabriel. He was ashamed that he’d been fooled, and it made him want to howl.
“Nope,” Peter said. “Someone tricked us. There’s a difference.”
“Just—”
“If you’re gonna say get us back to the school, I’m already on it,” Peter said. “Buckle up or hang on.”
Gabriel heard the engines rumble as the Obscure picked up speed. Heavy liquid sloshed out of the tanks, lifting the craft as it went, allowing Peter to use the craft’s desire to shoot to the surface to get even more speed out of her. But they were still ten minutes away at least.
Peter looked at the screen and called, “Brace yourselves—we got a boat in our way.” He yanked the stick, and the Obscure’s bridge tilted sideways as he steered clear of a large pleasure craft in their path, its lower points as deep as the Obscure itself. The blue steel of the boat sailed past the cameras as they swept around it, then they shot forward again. On the sonar screen, they were a fast-moving dot headed for the Nemo Institute, which flashed dully, revealing nothing of whatever trouble they were in.
Once he seemed satisfied with their path, Peter looked up from Gabriel to Misty. He took off his glasses and pointed with them at the screen, as though it were the source of their first message.
“Anyway,” Peter said, “we weren’t suckers. We were tricked. Suckers deserve what they get. We were tricked, because whoever it was knew we were going to go to someone’s rescue. We go where the trouble is. Okay? What would you want, that we don’t go?” He waited for a moment.
Gabriel looked down. He wasn’t used to Peter being so wise. “I’m just saying…”
“We don’t not go,” Peter said. “We went, we saw what we did, we turned around, and now we’re moving as fast as we can.”
“Okay,” Gabriel said. “Good grief. Who taught you to make speeches like that?”
“It’s from listening to you for months on end,” Misty muttered. She studied the text again. “So now what do we know? ‘SOS, we are under attack.’ From what?”
“Could be from anything,” Gabriel said. “Could be another submarine.”
“We didn’t see another sub on the scope,” Peter said. “But yeah.”
“Could be helicopters, could be regular ships. But whoever they were, they were smart enough to lure us out here with a fake sub.”
Misty said, “Yeah, someone knows how we work.” That someone knew about the Institute and knew they had a submarine to defend them.
A beeping sound erupted from Peter’s helming station.
Peter tapped the screen. “There’s another ship.”
“Onscreen.”
The main screen filled with the sonar image of their quadrant of the Pacific. A green dot was moving steadily in their direction, fleeing the Institute.
Peter picked up a big, padded pair of earphones and listened. “No. That’s a sub.”
“Another one?” Gabriel asked. “Okay, so is this one navy?”
Misty looked up from her screen. “No. I’m running the sound of its engines through our recognition routines. It’s another weird stranger.”
Something about that made Gabriel pause. He felt like the world was becoming unfamiliar fast. “Uh … can you tell how big it is?”
Peter watched the sonar line sweep around the circle onscreen and around again. “Judging by how long it takes to form that dot, I’d say you’re looking at a typhoon-sized ship.”
“What?”
Typhoon-sized. Typhoon, as in the name of a group of submarines that tended to be enormous—about 575 feet long. Not to be trifled with. And if this ship was that big but they couldn’t recognize it, that was really unnerving, because they had no idea who might be inside it.
Gabriel looked at Peter. “If it’s not navy, and it’s not a Nemoship…”
The radio crackled and Mr. Dorn’s voice came on. “Obscure! Institute to Obscure. Come in!”
“We’re here,” Misty said into her screen.
“What happened?” Gabriel asked anxiously.
“The Institute was hit by a vessel that came up from below, minutes after you left, but—do you see it? Do you have that sub?” There was an urgency and worry in Mr. Dorn’s voice that was completely unfamiliar to Gabriel. He had never heard Mr. Dorn speak with anything other than something close to boredom, even in emergencies.
“We’ve got something on sonar,” Gabr
iel said. “A big stranger.”
“Stop it. You have to stop it. But listen.” Mr. Dorn’s voice was insistent. “Cripple it. Don’t destroy it. Do you understand? Don’t destroy it.”
Gabriel didn’t have any plans to destroy anything or anyone. But he didn’t like the sound in Mr. Dorn’s voice. “Why, what’s the problem?”
“Just … stop it before it gets out to sea, Mr. Nemo,” Mr. Dorn said. “I’ll tell you more when you’re back.”
“If—” Gabriel started and stopped, thinking. When he spoke again, he had lowered his voice. A submarine revealed itself mainly by sound. Even voices inside a sub could be heard through the water. If the Obscure were to have any chance, everyone needed to stop shouting at one another. “If you want me to catch a sub, Mr. Dorn, we need to stop talking. Switch to text.” Gabriel nodded, and Misty turned off the radio, WE ARE UNDER ATTACK still displayed on the bottom of the screen.
Gabriel looked back at Peter and whispered, “Intercept course.”
“Laying in an intercept course, aye,” Peter whispered back, pushing buttons.
The green dot was moving fast as it fled the Institute, and now the dot indicating the Obscure altered course slightly to move toward it.
“Their time to our position?” Gabriel watched the screen, meaning How far away are they?
“At their speed, six minutes,” Peter answered.
“Then unless they change course, they’re gonna come to us. Kill engines. Go silent.” Gabriel stood back. The floor of the bridge leveled off and stopped vibrating as the Obscure stopped pulsing forward.
Go silent. Two simple words, a simple order that triggered a cascade of adjustments in the ship as the entire submarine prepared itself to be as invisible as possible. Gabriel said it and Peter triggered it and the world they inhabited became instantly scarier.
The lights on the bridge went dark, replaced by a dim red. Outside, Gabriel knew, the floodlights would be shutting off. The Obscure bobbed, drifting in place. They should be nearly invisible now, except that they were still using sonar to grope around them. And that could give them away.
“Kill active sonar,” Gabriel whispered. Sonar worked by firing off sound and listening for the sound to bounce back. But now a submarine was coming their way, and that submarine knew that there was another submarine nearby, one they had lured away but might well be on the way back now. So the strangers would be listening for them. Listening for engines, and voices, and sonar. All they could do was listen.
Quest for the Nautilus Page 3
