Quest for the Nautilus

by Jason Henderson

  “Of course,” Misty said.

  “Good. And then meet me in the tower.” He spoke up. “Mr. Dorn? We’re nearly there.”

  The ship dipped as Peter guided it down and up into the entrance to the hangar. As they began to drift toward the surface, Gabriel said in a low voice, “Ask maintenance to swap out the damaged torpedo bay door. Tell them I’m sorry I can’t do it.” He was agitated, bouncing. He wanted to get up to the office and talk to his dad. Luckily, they had minor repair materials here at the Institute. But if the breach was large, they’d be out of luck. The only place to do heavy work would be at Nemolab or Nemobase, both of which were thousands of miles into the Pacific.

  “You bet,” Misty said.

  “Then come meet me,” Gabriel said. He wasn’t sure if he’d already said that. Every time he began to think clearly the image of his mother, kidnapped, washed through his head.

  “We’re docked,” Peter said.

  Gabriel hurried through the school, but he wasn’t seeing anything around him clearly anymore. The speckling brilliant light on the ocean outside the windows of the library shimmered and made him dizzy as he ran.

  He reached the control room and burst in.

  The first thing he saw was Mr. Dorn, massive and tall, like a tree. Behind him, on the screen, were two faces. On the right, in a box that floated in a field of deep blue, was Nerissa, Gabriel’s sister. On the left was their father.

  “Gabriel!” Nerissa shouted as soon as she saw him on her screen. “Good.” Nerissa was a fugitive, dedicated to living the Nemo life almost exactly as envisioned by their ancestor. On the screen, Gabriel could see half her body as she stood in her private sanctum just off the bridge of her ship, the Nebula, which was on the be-on-the-lookout-for lists of every navy on the planet.

  “Where are you?” Gabriel asked.

  “I’m about six hundred miles out,” Nerissa said. “You saw this sub? We need to gather everything we can about it.” Even as he nodded, something struck Gabriel as very strange. She was ordering him around like she always did, but there was a softness in his sister’s voice that he didn’t recognize. A concern that he found deeply frightening.

  “I’m so glad you’re both safe,” Dad said. Dad sounded strange, too, but it was a strangeness that Gabriel did recognize. Dad was hiding himself now, hiding his feelings in formality, duty, and purpose. Once when Gabriel was very young, a math tutor from India, someone Dad had treated as another son, fell very ill. Dad sat vigil and worked day and night to find the right cure—but the harder he had worked, the less emotion he’d shown. It was as though a blast shield behind Dad’s eyes closed to a sliver and stayed that way until the problem passed.

  Which was fine for Dad, but he seemed to forget: The rest of us are outside the shield.

  “I don’t understand,” Nerissa said. “Who would kidnap Mom?”

  “I blame myself,” Dad said. Words. No emotion. “I think it might have been the same people who attacked my rover in the Valley of the Lodgers a few days ago.”

  “Wait, what?” Nerissa asked. “Someone attacked your rover?”

  “A drone,” Dad said. “Dr. Kassam and I are still analyzing the computer systems to see what might have been taken, if anything.”

  “We gotta be faster than that,” Nerissa said. “From right now, anything happens, anything weird, we gotta tell one another.”

  “Who was it?” Gabriel asked.

  “My best estimate is the Maelstrom,” Dad said. “Signatures in the search protocols their drone used, plus the engineering of the drone, which is clearly based on stolen Nemotech. Yeah. Yeah.”

  Gabriel and Nerissa looked at each other through the video and then Nerissa asked, “Who’s the Maelstrom?”

  You don’t know, either? Gabriel thought.

  “Someone we haven’t heard from in a long time,” Dad said. “They’re a … a group, an organization. Enemies of the Nemos—I mean, I heard about them when I was a kid, and even met some when we went into … It doesn’t matter. I thought they were gone.”

  “You have an enemy organization?” Misty said as she and Peter emerged from the door.

  “Wait,” Mr. Dorn said. “We can’t have students…”

  “Please,” Gabriel said. “I need them.”

  “Yes,” Dad said, ignoring them to answer Misty. “I thought we didn’t anymore. But apparently we do. I have a … I have a slide presentation. It’s a few years old, but I could share it with you.”

  Nerissa looked stunned. “Dad, Mom’s been kidnapped, we don’t need a slide show. What…?” She looked at Gabriel, and he shrugged. So, Dad’s in shock and barely there. Great.

  There was a sudden, steady beeping from Dad’s window. “Wait,” he said. “I’m getting a message.”

  “Let’s see it,” Gabriel said.

  “I’m sharing it with you,” Dad said.

  At first all Gabriel heard was a voice from a blank white screen.

  GREETINGS TO THE NEMO FAMILY.

  WE HAVE DR. YASMEEN NEMO.

  LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY.

  6

  WE KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU.

  The voice over the video was barely human. Whoever was speaking was pushing their voice through a device to change it into something deep and distorted. Gabriel stared as the field of white became the blue of the ocean, water splashing across the lens of a camera. The camera appeared to be floating on the surface off the side of one of the twin subs. Gabriel could see the other twin sub floating about fifty feet away. The latticework complex protruded from the water all around the two, connecting them and rising twenty feet in the air. Water poured off the connector. They had just surfaced.

  THESE IMAGES ARE LIVE, BROADCAST TO YOU FROM THE EXTERIOR HULL OF THE MAELSTROM SHIP GEMINI.

  So it had a name. Gemini. A twin sub named after twin stars. But what is the …

  DAVID NEMO, WE KNOW EVERY DETAIL OF YOUR LIFE—AND YOUR WIFE’S LIFE, FROM HER COMING TO YOUR HOME UNTIL NOW.

  WE REPEAT, THESE IMAGES ARE LIVE.

  Now the hatch on the Gemini opened, and two men emerged with Mom between them. She struggled against them as they brought her up onto the catwalk at the top of the sub. She stopped fighting. The two men and Mom were hard to see, silhouetted against the horizon.

  WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IS UP TO YOU.

  The screen now filled with a drawing of a sinking ship, its bow and masts sticking up through the waves.

  WE ARE THE MAELSTROM.

  WE WERE BORN OF THE CRIMES OF NEMO. AND WE HAVE LEARNED ALL THAT YOU COULD TEACH US AND MORE.

  Now Gabriel saw a swirl of images he couldn’t keep track of, the video sweeping down the corridors of a busy submarine. Every crew member wore a silver tactical suit with a spiral and an M at the breast.

  YOU HAVE TORMENTED THE SEAS WITH ARROGANCE, WHILE WE HAVE PROTECTED IT WITH OUR WISDOM. YOU HAVE BRAINWASHED THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD WITH LIES ABOUT YOUR BENEFICENCE.

  That’s nuts, Gabriel thought. Governments barely trust us.

  The image changed back to the camera angle of Mom held by the two men on the surfaced sub.

  WE DO NOT WISH TO RETAIN YASMEEN NEMO. WE ARE TAINTED BY THE PRESENCE OF YOUR BLOOD. WE WILL NOT KEEP HER.

  Gabriel imagined the men pushing her off the side and closed his eyes briefly against the vision. No no no, don’t do it, don’t do it. But he had to watch the screen.

  THERE IS ONE THING IN YOUR POSSESSION THAT WE WILL TAKE IN RETURN FOR HER: THE DEVICE CALLED THE DAKKAR’S EYE.

  Gabriel looked at Nerissa’s window in complete confusion. Her eyes were wet and angry as she listened. What in the world were the kidnappers talking about?

  THE EYE MUST BE DELIVERED BY YOU, DAVID NEMO. THIS IS OUR NONNEGOTIABLE PRICE.

  Now the screen filled with a drawing, an image of Captain Nemo, the original, Gabriel’s ancestor. He was working in a lab, looking through a slit in a black iron wall. He had goggles over his eyes.

  WE KNOW YOU ARE IN POSSESSION OF THE
GREATEST GIFT OF CAPTAIN NEMO.

  BRING US THE EYE AT MIDWAY ISLAND. COME ALONE IN A PERSONAL CRAFT. DO THIS, AND WE WILL RETURN YASMEEN NEMO TO YOU.

  YOU HAVE ONE HUNDRED HOURS.

  The image faded to Gabriel’s mother again, a black silhouette surrounded by two captors, water lapping up over the camera. Then the screen faded again.

  To a clock.

  100:00:00

  99:59:59

  99:59:58

  The screen went black.

  7

  99:59:56

  “ONE HUNDRED HOURS!” Gabriel shouted. His mind raced. That meant … that meant they had to … He snapped his fingers.

  Gabriel, Dad, and Nerissa all shouted exactly the same three words: “Mark the time!”

  Gabriel’s eyes swept the room for a clock.

  “Ten twenty-three A.M.,” Misty said.

  “We need the timer back up,” Nerissa said.

  “On it,” Mr. Dorn said, and then the numbers filled in a window between Nerissa and Dad.

  99:59:50

  99:59:49

  99:59:48

  “Okay, okay,” Gabriel said. “Do you think…” He tried to steady his thoughts. “Do you think they’re telling the truth? That if we give them this thing they want—what was it?”

  “That would be the Dakkar’s Eye,” Dad said.

  “If we give it to them, do you think they’re telling the truth that we’ll get Mom back?”

  “Don’t count on it,” Nerissa said. “We need to find them and mount a rescue right away. They have a head start from you, but they’re in open ocean. We could find them if you got out here.”

  Suddenly Gabriel felt more grounded. Nerissa was arguing about the course of action, which meant they had choices. Because there were always choices. But it didn’t mean she was right. The image of his mother, overpowered and trapped, overwhelmed him and he grappled to get his brain under control.

  “Maybe,” Gabriel argued. “Or maybe these Maelstrom guys get rattled, and they shove her out of a torpedo tube.”

  “Gabriel,” Dad snapped.

  “I’m sorry,” Gabriel said. But he was picturing it just the same. “I want to go back to their demands. What … what’s this thing, the ‘Dakkar’s Eye’?”

  Gabriel was familiar with the name Dakkar. It was the original family name of Captain Nemo. In India, once, Captain Nemo had been known as Prince Dakkar.

  “It’s…” Dad scoffed, but there was no humor in it. He scoffed like he couldn’t believe he was talking about it. “They must have read about it in the data breach when they stole information from the rover.”

  “But what is it?” Nerissa said.

  “It’s a battery.” Dad shrugged. “I mean, as far as I know. An amazing, unbelievable battery. A power source Captain Nemo was working on for years. It was going to be a gift to the world.”

  “Okay,” Nerissa said. “So, whatever, it’s an old experiment. I assume it’s in the vaults? Can we get it?”

  “That’s the problem,” Dad said. “It was to be a gift to the world. In fact, it was first to be a gift to the suffering poor people of Brazil. And that was where it was headed.”

  Dad paused as Gabriel leaned forward, as though he could commune with his father’s thoughts through the screen. “Where it was headed,” Gabriel repeated. He looked to Nerissa, then back at Misty and Peter. “Oh, no.”

  “That’s just it.” Dad nodded. “The Dakkar’s Eye sank in 1910, aboard the Nemoship Nautilus, location unknown.”

  8

  99:57:23

  GABRIEL BRIEFLY FELT the room spin. A bunch of strange people had come in the most advanced submarine he’d ever seen and kidnapped his mother, and what they wanted was a rumored battery that no one even had? Or did they even … “Do they know that the Nautilus is lost?”

  “My guess is they don’t know it was on the Nautilus in the first place,” Dad said.

  “Where do they think the Dakkar’s Eye is?” Gabriel asked.

  “I have no idea,” Dad said. “You have to assume they think we have it down here in a locker or on one of our bases or something.”

  That would make sense. There were countless treasures to be found at Nemolab alone, some of which even Gabriel had never seen. Probably rumors of the Nemo vaults had been circulating for over a century.

  “So … the task they’re giving us is harder than they think it is.” Gabriel looked back at his crew. “But that’s all it is—it’s just harder. It’s not impossible.”

  “Do you hear yourself?” Nerissa shouted from her screen. “Gabriel, we are burning daylight. There is one path forward here, and it’s to catch these guys. I need to hear everything you know about their ship.”

  “A rescue mission is too risky,” Gabriel said. “Think about it, Nerissa. They could panic. And this is Mom you’re risking.”

  “What do you think I even do out here?” Nerissa asked.

  “I … you know what I’m saying.” Gabriel tried to calm his words. “We could get her killed. The moment they see you coming.”

  “They’ll never see me coming,” she snarled.

  “We have four days,” Gabriel said. The time was ticking down even as they spoke.

  Now Mr. Dorn spoke. “David?” He addressed the screen. “We’ve heard from Gabriel and Nerissa, but this is your family and your wife. What do you want to do?”

  “We…” Dad looked down. His lips moved as he seemed to think through something. “Gabriel is … half right. We give it to them, or we … seem to. At Midway Island, they said. So that’s what I’ll do—I’ll be there, at Midway, in one hundred hours.”

  “Okay then,” Gabriel said.

  “But we don’t hand over the Eye,” Dad continued. “They don’t know what the Dakkar’s Eye is any more than we do. So … I’ll make them something that we’ll call the Eye. Look, all it has to be is good enough to fool them while we get Yasmeen … back.”

  “You want to make a fake?” Nerissa asked.

  “Now, it has to be a good fake,” Dad said. “It will need to seem extremely powerful, even pass some kind of power test. I don’t know. I can come up with something.”

  Gabriel glanced at Nerissa’s face, then back at Dad’s. He was acting calm, but this had to be driving him crazy. “Dad…”

  “I need to get to work,” Dad said. “Mr. Dorn, keep an eye on the Institute. I’ll contact you all when I have something.”

  Dad’s image disappeared.

  Gabriel asked Mr. Dorn, “Will you let me know if anything…”

  “You’ll be the first to know if anything changes.”

  Gabriel nodded and walked out with Peter and Misty. They headed straight back to the Obscure.

  “What’s our readiness?” he asked once they were on the elevator.

  Misty said, “It was a minor breach. One panel, so we got it sealed in minutes. They’re swapping out the torpedo bay door, too. We’re lucky; we only had one extra.”

  “Small favors.” The elevator opened, and the three of them ran through the library and back to the hidden entrance. Within minutes they were entering the bridge once again. “We need another plan,” Gabriel said into his headset as he put it on.

  “You’re telling me,” Nerissa answered him from the intercom on the bridge as Peter powered up the Obscure’s engines.

  “First off,” Gabriel said, leaning back against a panel and shaking his head, “is it me or does Dad seem to be acting, like, strangely?”

  “Yeah, let me show you a slide show I have on that,” Nerissa said.

  “It’s … amazing,” Gabriel said. “Okay. Options.”

  Misty asked, “So we’re not just gonna let Dr. Nemo work his magic?”

  “The magic of making a fake super-battery?” Peter responded. “Gabe’s right; that can’t be the only plan.”

  “We need to look for them,” Nerissa said.

  “Yeah. Okay,” Gabriel said. “If you go looking for the twin sub, this Gemini,” he said, “and
you do find them, then I know you have a shot. You’re the best there is. But don’t be fooled. This is no regular sub, Nerissa. That ship is nearly half again as big as yours, and I think it’s twice as armed. We barely escaped it.”

  “Noted,” Nerissa said.

  Gabriel wasn’t finished. “And … on the off chance that you can’t find them, I need to get the kidnappers what they want.”

  “Ugh.” Nerissa breathed heavily into the mic. “You’re talking about a wild-goose chase. Not just a wild-goose chase—it’s the wild-goose chase. It’s practically the hunt for the Holy Grail. And I could use you out here.”

  “You have everything you need,” Gabriel said. “And you also have everything I need. Didn’t Mom give you a cache of information, everything there was to know about the location of the Nautilus?”

  “Yes,” she said. Nerissa had called it a scavenger hunt. Which was nicer than wild-goose chase, but not by much.

  “Let’s meet up. I need the storage device Mom gave you. And then … it’s a race to save Mom. You’ll run it by trying to find her,” Gabriel said. “As for us—we’re going to do it, Nerissa. We’re gonna find the Nautilus.”

  9

  99:02:33

  ON THE BRIDGE of the Obscure, Gabriel watched the sonar screen impatiently as the ocean swept by outside. He felt the weight of the clock ticking down as he looked at his wristband. “What’ll happen when the Institute notices we’re gone?” Misty asked. “We’ve been gone forty-five minutes already.”

  “They won’t, for a while,” Peter said. “I shut off the sensors to the docking door.”

  “And when they go to our rooms to check on us at some point?” she asked.

  Gabriel sat in his chair and shrugged. “Tomorrow’s Saturday, so that won’t happen except for some random reason. We’ll be long gone by then.”