Misty didn’t look satisfied. “We could have told Mr. Dorn, at least.”
Gabriel said, “I know—”
“The deal is we’re not secret anymore. Maybe from the other students, but the Obscure isn’t a secret to our parents or to the Institute. That was the point.” The point of joining the Institute, she meant. Before this, they had been working completely in secret while they all went to school on the mainland.
“I know, but if we had told Mr. Dorn, he might have tried to stop us.”
“Because your father’s plan doesn’t involve us trying to find the Dakkar’s Eye,” Misty said. “I’m just saying that doesn’t make me comfortable.”
“I know,” Gabriel said. “But it’s my mom out there. We have to cover every base, and we can’t get stuffed in our rooms for days on end.”
“What if,” Peter offered, “we all send messages when we’re another hundred miles out. ‘Emergency mission. Sorry.’ Something like that. We’ll be too far out for them to come after us.”
Gabriel put his hands on his hips and looked up at Misty. “Good?”
“Yeah, okay,” Misty said.
Gabriel nodded. He was thinking of the ransom message. “Do you think they know the location of Nemolab?”
“Your dad said they attacked a rover in the Valley of the Lodgers,” Misty said. “Nemolab is hidden about fifty miles from there. I mean, it’s possible.”
“But think,” Peter said. “If they knew where Nemolab was, they would have attacked it.”
“Maybe,” Gabriel said. “But then maybe it would be easier to attack a rover if they just wanted information.”
“But then, but then,” Peter moaned. “You don’t know. You can’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Misty said. “Don’t think about the things you can’t control.”
She was right. Gabriel had to keep his eye on the mission. “How long till we reach the rendezvous point?” Nerissa was turning back east to meet them while they moved northwest. Luckily, she hadn’t been more than six hundred miles away.
“Another hour,” Peter said. Then he glanced at his screen and said, “Huh.”
“What is it?”
Peter flicked his hand over his screen and sent the sonar to fill the main screen. A little green blip had entered the outer ring, pulsing every time the sonar hand swept around to light up anything big enough to be interesting. The blip was moving in at an angle, chasing after the Obscure steadily.
Gabriel felt adrenaline pulse through his shoulders. “Is that a torpedo?’
“Uh … no.” Peter was listening with one earphone to his head. “At least it doesn’t sound like one.”
“How far away?”
“About two miles.” That was too far to see with cameras through even the clearest water. “Should I increase?”
Gabriel thought. Increasing the sonar ping would help them identify the shape of the thing coming their way, but it would also make themselves more visible. He looked at Misty. “Yes. For one revolution only, then drop it back.” She nodded her agreement.
“Open torpedo bay doors,” Gabriel said. “Just in case.” Misty echoed the command as Peter swept the sonar hand around the screen. A perfect circle showed itself—literally, the thing was shaped like a ball. Then it fell back to a small blip.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say we’re being chased by a dense beach ball,” Peter said. “It’s about four feet wide, but heavy, that’s how we picked it up.”
“How fast?”
“Sixty knots,” Peter said. “And it just came within a mile of us.”
“Can we hear it?”
Peter made some adjustments on his screen and then flipped a switch, and the sound of the thing filled the bridge. It was whining and warbling mechanically. “I hear water … It’s got propulsion, obviously.”
Gabriel’s dad’s words shot back through his mind. “Dad said they were attacked by a Maelstrom drone.”
“Yeah.” Peter nodded.
“They must have been watching for a sub to leave the Institute. If we were farther out to sea, I don’t think they could find us.”
“I hope not, because if they could, it would mean they could track us,” Gabriel said. “No, I think it was left behind by the Gemini. But why?”
“To spy on us?” Misty offered. “Your dad said the last drone was an information sucker.”
“I don’t want to find out. Time, Peter?”
“Forty-five seconds.”
“Evasive maneuvers, move off, let’s see how it handles.”
Peter shouted aye, and the bridge tilted as he started to steer the Obscure down and to the right. The ball was smoking its way through the water.
Gabriel turned to Misty. “Can you shoot that thing?”
“Can I hit a torpedo with a torpedo?” Misty asked quickly. “No way.”
“Options?”
Misty bit her lip. “I can hit near it; I can arm a pincer torpedo to explode ten seconds out in its path. Maybe shake it up.”
“Yeah, good,” Gabriel said. “Do it.” Misty was already tapping fast, setting the charge of the torpedo.
“Away,” she shouted.
On the screen, a silvery missile swept out of the ship in a stream of bubbles. By now they could see the ball, a quarter mile away. It looked like a space satellite sailing toward them. It was curving in its path.
The torpedo burst in the water, and they felt the shock wave back to the ship. The ball was caught in the explosion, and Gabriel saw it pitch up and around before it emerged from the bubbles and began closing in.
“Wanna go again?” Misty called.
“Too close,” Gabriel said. “Time to impact?”
“Forty seconds,” Peter said.
“Dive and increase speed. What about countermeasures?”
“It’s not a torpedo,” Misty said. “It won’t go for that.”
“Dive and increase, aye,” Peter said, and Gabriel held on to his chair as they pointed downward. But the sonar began to beep insistently.
“Too late,” Peter called. “Brace!”
What if it’s a bomb? Gabriel’s mind raced. What if it’s a bomb and not a drone? “Be ready to close off sections of the ship.” He rattled off commands as they spun through his brain. “Misty and Peter, remember your first aid and be ready to find your emergency kits. Locate emergency rebreathers in your mind and be ready to find them—”
Wham. A metallic thud shuddered through the ship. They kept moving. If it was a bomb, it wasn’t going off yet.
“Where is it?” Gabriel cried. “Did it bounce off? Level off and see if you can—”
“Found it.” Peter brought another camera in view. “Topside, aft section.”
On the screen, bathed in the yellow aura of one of the Obscure’s floodlights, something that looked like a silver spider perched on the shining plates of the hull. The ball’s thick legs held on by way of thin, spindly fibers that appeared to have grabbed on to the most minute seams and rivets.
“Yeah, it’s a spider drone,” Peter said.
Water began to spin and bubble around the belly of the spider as the thing split open and a thick protuberance began to emerge and spin, working its way down toward the hull.
“Not good,” Misty said. “If that thing breaches the hull, we’ll flood.”
It’s worse than that, Gabriel thought. That drill would send in more fibers to seek out information on the ship. But Misty’s concern was the more pressing in the moment. “Can we hit it with an electrical charge from the intruder net?”
The Obscure, like all Nemoships, was fitted with an intruder net, a device that would send an electrical charge over the entire hull. A holdover from the original Nautilus, it would send a shock to anyone who tried to sneak onboard or mess with the hull.
Peter said, “I … I’ve never used that. Where is it?” He started flipping through menus on his screen, searching.
Gabriel shrugged.
�
�Hang on—that’s a weapon,” Misty said. “Just a weird one.” She found a menu on her screen. “I’ve got it. The drone’s not alive, so I’m going to use full charge.”
“When ready,” Gabriel said, and Misty hit the button.
The Obscure shook as the water around them turned instantly to steam, yellow bolts of electricity flying around outside on the cameras. The electrical charge would have fried any living thing on the hull. But the bolts swept over and around the spider. When the charges disappeared, the spider remained. And now it was drilling into the hull.
“Okay,” Gabriel said. “Okay.”
“I think…,” Misty said.
“Yeah. We gotta get up there.”
10
98:51:25
“PINCERS AND GRAPPLING hooks,” Misty advised as she unlocked the door at the farthest aft end of the main corridor.
Gabriel hit the switch to start flooding the dive room of the Obscure as soon as he and Misty got in. The dive room, an oval compartment whose walls were lined with racks and lockers, was about a quarter of the size of the bridge. The pair moved fast, fluidly, the way teams that have been working together for a long time can when they’re very lucky. Gabriel grabbed a pair of pincer rifles out of a locker and turned, tossing one to Misty, and she caught it just after throwing him a mask with a rebreather already attached.
Water was up around his calves as he brought the dive mask over his face, then fitted the pen-sized rebreather over his mouth.
Misty spun and opened another locker, grabbing a pair of devices that looked like thick rubber bicycle handles, each with a spiky hook sticking from the end. She tossed one to him, and he clipped it to a loop on his belt just as he unclipped a pair of cable reels about the size of a large clam—and in fact, they were shaped like large clams—off a rack and tossed one to Misty. The reel had a carabiner on its side and another one attached to the line inside it. He clipped the reel to his belt next to the grappling hook.
Gabriel looked down past his feet to see the dive iris, an escape hatch at the bottom of the room, ripple with green light indicating it was unlocked. They couldn’t open the dive iris until the room was full, otherwise seawater would explode into the empty areas of the room and likely bash them both against the ceiling.
“Hear me?” he asked, speaking into a mic on the rebreather. He slipped the pincer rifle over his shoulder.
“Loud and clear,” Misty’s voice came back in his earpiece.
“Copy,” came Peter’s voice.
The water was up to Gabriel’s mask now, and then the room was full.
“All right, Peter, we’re headed out.”
“Better you than me.”
The dive iris opened with a thump Gabriel could feel in his dive shoes. He nodded to Misty and then stepped in, dropping instantly through the floor and below the sub. He immediately grabbed on to a handle next to the underside of the iris before the ocean swept him away.
Looking to make sure nothing was coming at him, Gabriel pulled the line from his waist and unreeled it, clipping the carabiner end to the handle. By then Misty was clipping hers, too.
“It’s on top, right above you, more or less,” Peter said. Gabriel copied back, and he and Misty started to swim, their reels unspooling but keeping them tethered to the ship.
The Pacific water was cool at 150 feet, but Gabriel had air rippling through his thin suit, shooting oxygen around his body and maintaining a constant livable pressure. It could get a lot colder and he’d feel no discomfort at all. As he and Misty swam up the side of the hull, past long slivers of mother-of-pearl-and-black plating, he heard the quiet thrum of the engines, right below his own breathing. Then as they reached the top, he heard the sound of the drill.
They hung on the side and poked their heads up. About twenty feet away, the spider drone was working away, a reddish glow coming from the tip of its drill. To Gabriel, it looked like the proboscis of some kind of insect, like a tick ready to suck and poison. Except this thing was out to suck information.
Misty floated next to him, pointing. “See the monofilament lines around the drill? If I had to guess, those are going to come into play once it punches through the hull. They’ll grab on to cables inside the ship and try to find one that’s carrying information.”
“What do you think they’re looking for? Information on the Dakkar’s Eye?”
“Probably,” Misty said. “Maybe they don’t want to put all their trust in Dr. Nemo handing it over, and they’re hoping to find out what we know.”
“Okay, you’re security. Say when.”
“You aim for the center, I’ll aim for the drill.” Misty scuttled crablike over the hull and dropped to her belly, bringing her rifle over and aiming. Gabriel followed, and when they were both in position, she said, “One. Two. Three!”
They fired bursts of yellow energy, concentrated and whipping through the water until they reached the ball. It shuddered and moved to the side as the tendril of energy caught it. Misty stopped and fired again at the drill as Gabriel kept firing on the thing’s ball body.
Suddenly the drill burst, the drill bit flying away. The ball danced, spinning its spider legs around. “We broke the drill!” Misty shouted. She immediately shifted to firing on the ball with Gabriel. “Maybe…”
Suddenly the spider drone began running toward them. It only had to go a few feet before it leapt. Misty was still firing, but her arcs went wide as it flew over her, landing on—no, around—Gabriel.
Gabriel gasped as the thing’s metal legs slapped to the hull like a cage around his body. One of them hit his rifle, and as he let go of it, the rifle fell to pieces. He saw his own reflection in the drone’s silver body. The creature had no face, but he swore it looked angry as it lifted one of its legs and slammed it down toward his face. Gabriel was shaking. Those claws could tear him apart, but even if they just snagged his suit, he could drown.
“Misty, shoot it.”
“Trying,” she said. “Don’t let it stab you.”
Gabriel twisted as the spiked claw of the spider drone’s leg smashed to the hull next to him. It reared up the front leg on its other side, and he scrambled, avoiding the next plunging claw.
It hit again, barely missing his leg as he moved aside. Gabriel fumbled for his grappling hook. He didn’t even unfasten the gun, just left it attached to his belt, aimed up and fired.
The hook caught the spider drone in the base of its proboscis, and it let go of the Obscure, flying up and away from the ship.
Misty shot the drone again, and it was blasted sideways, pulling Gabriel free of the hull with a lurch as it began to flee.
But he was still attached to the sub.
Gabriel’s body was yanked through the water as the drone picked up speed. He could hear the reel at his waist spinning as the drone raced away, and he felt the tug of the other cable, the one tethering him to the ship. Soon the creature was going to outrun his line, and very likely it would pull his suit apart. And then the pressure would get to him. Gabriel tried to get the carabiner of the reel open, but it was tugging so hard at the loop on his belt that he couldn’t dislodge the line. He had to be thirty yards away from the hull now, and he was going to run out of line at any moment.
“Cut your line, cut your line!” Misty shouted from her position on the hull of the Obscure.
“Trying,” Gabriel said. He wrapped his finger through his belt loop, trying to twist the grappling gun out. Hopefully he could tear it free and let it go with the drone. But it wasn’t working.
“Hang on,” Misty called.
A pincer bolt, a segment of energy the size of his arm, sizzled fast past Gabriel’s mask. If he weren’t wearing his suit, it might have electrocuted him.
The arc of energy smacked into Gabriel’s grappling hook on the underbelly of the drone, and Gabriel instantly felt the line to the drone go slack. He whipped in the water as the motion of the sub began to pull him back.
“Are you all right?” Misty asked.
“Oh, man, that was good shooting,” he said, and he touched a button on the reel. It began to haul him in.
“Peter,” Misty called. “We lost it.”
“As soon as we’re aboard,” Gabriel added, “we need to dive deep and divert. We need to lose any more tails.” And they needed to go faster. They had lost nearly a quarter of an hour and they had no time to spare.
11
96:12:16
“WE’RE APPROACHING THE rendezvous point,” Peter said.
A blip appeared on the sonar screen, very near and closing—a long blip bigger than an Ohio-class submarine, the length of two football fields. Nerissa’s voice came on the intercom. “Obscure, we are surfacing.”
Minutes later—and Gabriel, unable to take his eyes from the dedicated countdown on the screen of his wristband, counted every one—the prow of the Obscure broke the surface and leveled off. Rain spattered against the cameras as the waves churned. Stabilizers kicked in all along the ship, steadying it in the storm.
Peter swiveled the outside cameras. The view swept along, the waves dancing in the darkness and reflecting the exterior lights. And then there she was.
The Nebula, five hundred feet long and glimmering in the night, moved steadily, bringing its battering nose some one hundred yards off the Obscure’s starboard bow. Lights flickered as an unfolding walkway erupted from the nose of the Nebula, moving on small engines across the water. The extending walkway reminded Gabriel of a silvery serpent hungrily pouncing on the Obscure.
“I’m on my way.” Gabriel scuttled up the ladder in the back of the Obscure’s bridge. He reached the top and opened it with his palm. Rain fell on his face as he climbed out onto the platform. He held on to the handrails, waves splashing up over the lightweight, rubber-soled swim shoes he regularly wore.
The extended walkway from the Nebula fastened itself to the prow of the Obscure a few yards away with a magnetic clunk, and a long pair of handrails erupted from the walkway’s sides, snapping into place with a series of chittering metallic pops. Gabriel slid down the Obscure’s starboard bow, grabbed on to the Nebula’s walkway, and stepped out onto it. He looked up to see his sister as she emerged from the Nebula. They met in the middle.
Quest for the Nautilus Page 6
