by Laura Martin
“It was an oversight, sir,” he said.
“An oversight that cost us precious seconds,” Captain Brown said. “We may lose five of your scavenging team to decompression sickness, and the ship had almost no warning of the attack.”
“Gizmo didn’t warn you when he took off screaming instead of alerting the rest of the scavenging team?” Garth said sarcastically.
“That’s enough out of you, Watkins,” the captain said. The use of Garth’s last name made us both squirm. Last names were only used when you were really in for it. “Our ship sustained serious damage, and the cost to fix and replace our lost supplies is going to be astronomical. That’s not even taking into account the lost credits of the scavenging crew who will be in pressure tubes for the next week. I get a sense from your tone that you’re unaware of who is being held accountable for that?”
“I’m really hoping you’re going to say Gizmo,” Garth said. Now it was Gizmo’s turn to scoff as Captain Brown slowly shook his head from side to side.
“You think this whole mess is our fault?” I said, my insides turning to ice as it dawned on me what he meant. The expense of everything he’d just listed was more than all the credits I’d make in my lifetime—in my family’s lifetime, for that matter.
“You can’t blame us for this,” Garth said, his voice hard. I wished I sounded like that. Instead my own voice had gone up about five octaves and become squeaky with outrage.
“I can, and I will,” Captain Brown said. Behind him, Gizmo was practically beaming at this news, and I shot him a dirty look that he ignored before turning back to Captain Brown.
“We could never earn back that many credits,” I said. “Not ever.”
“No,” Captain Brown agreed. “You can’t. However, we have contacted a nearby work ship, and you two will be transferred there in the morning. It won’t repay your debt, but it will help.”
Garth’s face suddenly drained of all color, and I felt the walls of the room closing in on me as I stared at Captain Brown. “A work ship?” I repeated, certain I hadn’t heard him correctly. Work ships were the closest thing we had to prisons after the Tide Rising. They were usually reserved for pirates or members of a ship who had committed major crimes. The prisoners of a work ship were forced to do hard labor under pretty terrible conditions until their debt to society was repaid. Something that rarely happened, as conditions aboard a work ship weren’t exactly conducive to a long, healthy life.
“Our parents will never allow this,” Garth said.
“Your parents have no say in the matter,” Captain Brown said, but there was something about the way his eyes flicked guiltily to the side that made me think he wasn’t telling the whole truth about that. Did our parents know about his plan? I doubted it. Captain Brown gave a curt nod to the officers flanking him and pushed himself to his feet. “You will remain in Gizmo’s office tonight, and we will launch a boat to take you to the work ship at dawn.”
“We don’t even get to say goodbye to our families?” I said as numb disbelief at what was happening enveloped me. Captain Brown just ignored us and turned for the door.
“I’m going to take that as a no,” Garth said. His comment was ignored as Captain Brown and the other officers left. Only Gizmo remained as the door clicked shut behind the rest of the crew.
“Why are we being held here?” I said. “It’s not like there is anywhere we can escape to. Why not let us have one last night with our families?”
“Don’t you get it yet?” Gizmo said. He shook his head slowly as he studied us. “This isn’t so much a punishment as a gag order. Do you think the captain wants you two blabbing about what you saw down there to the rest of the ship?”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Doesn’t everyone know we got attacked by a sea monster?”
“You mean the diseased whale that blundered into our ship?” Gizmo said. “Everyone knows about that. They were told about it when the entire ship went into lockdown. Of course, no one saw it besides the scavenging team, but most of our team is currently not in a state to talk, and if they recover, they will be sworn to silence or receive the same fate as the two of you.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “Why are you covering this up? Shouldn’t everyone know about the sea monster? I mean, this could happen again!”
Gizmo rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ignorant,” he said. “You think this is the first time the Atlas has come face-to-face with one of those nasty pieces of work?”
“It’s not?” Garth said.
“Kid. You have no clue. And that’s the point. We realized a long time ago that keeping the general population of a ship on a need-to-know basis worked in everyone’s best interest. The captain and the officers handle sea monsters when they come up, and, thankfully, they only come up every few years.”
My mouth dropped open in shock, and I glanced over to see Garth with a similar expression. Gizmo seemed to take pleasure in our surprise, and he grinned at us, revealing his crooked assortment of teeth.
“Why do you think we have such a hard time keeping scavengers on the crew?” he said. “After an incident like this one, I’ll lose half the cowards to other jobs, and the other half might not recover from the bends.”
“No thanks to you,” Garth muttered, earning him another dirty look from Gizmo.
“You know,” he said, “I thought I’d feel a little bit sad to see you two carted off to a work ship, but I think I thought wrong.”
“You can’t really send us to a work ship,” Garth protested. “We saved the Atlas! If Berkley hadn’t gotten the monster all tangled up in the salvage net, you and everyone else would be at the bottom of the ocean right now.”
Gizmo’s face twisted in a grimace. “I forgot about losing that entire load of salvage. The equipment alone costs more credits than the two of you could make in ten years aboard a work ship, and that’s not even counting the salvaged materials the crew had gathered. There was some quality stuff in there. I’ll have to remind the captain of that in case he didn’t add it to your total.”
“Gee, thanks,” Garth said.
“You’re a real creep, Gizmo. You know that, right?” I said.
“It was either you or me going down for this, kid,” he said, turning toward the door, “and it definitely wasn’t going to be me.” The door clicked shut, and the sound of the deadbolt being locked from the outside felt deafening. My ears rang as I sank down onto the floor, my back against one of the only bare patches of wall in the cluttered office, and I put my head between my knees. A second later I felt Garth sink down beside me, cold wet shoulder pressed to cold wet shoulder. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to make sense of what had just happened, and failing miserably. It was like trying to add two plus two and somehow make it equal one hundred. It just didn’t add up no matter how I looked at it.
“Why?” I finally said, pulling my head up to look at Garth. “Why are they doing this?”
“I have a few theories,” he said, glaring at the locked door Gizmo had disappeared through.
“Tell me,” I said, desperate to understand.
“Theory one,” Garth said, holding up a finger. “Gizmo’s the worst boss ever.”
I snorted. “That’s a fact, not a theory.”
“Theory two,” Garth said, holding up a second finger. “You heard Gizmo—this is a cover-up. They need to keep us quiet, and the only way to do that is to ship us off. They don’t want everyone to panic, and everyone would if they knew there were giant sea monsters out there just waiting to eat our ship for lunch.”
“Right,” I said. “I guess that makes sense. Besides, the captain wasn’t lying about the damages. I bet they are going to cost a fortune, and if he can get rid of us and earn some of it back at the same time, he probably sees it as a win-win.”
“But our parents would never allow this in a million years,” Garth said.
“Didn’t you see the captain’s face when I brought that up?” I said. “I’d bet anything they have no idea.
” Suddenly my insides gave an angry twist as I realized something else, and I turned to look at Garth. “I bet they think we’re dead,” I said.
“What?” he said. “That’s crazy!”
“Is it, though?” I said. “How else could the captain cover this up? I mean, over half the team is in pressure tubes, and we were the last ones out of the water. The only person who even saw us come out was Gizmo, and he had us in this office in less than two minutes. They think we’re dead!”
“Whoa,” Garth said, and I nodded as I let that sink in. What was my dad doing now? How was he handling the news that his daughter was gone forever just a few years after we lost Mom? “We have to get out of here,” Garth said a moment later, already vaulting to his feet to rattle the doorknob.
“We can’t,” I said, shaking my head as I watched him fruitlessly ram a shoulder into the solid metal door.
“There has to be a way,” Garth said, turning to scan the room frantically for any other exit.
I shook my head again. “It’s not that we can’t find a way out, although that doesn’t seem particularly hopeful. It’s that we shouldn’t.”
“Did you hit your head down there?” Garth said. “We have to warn our parents.”
“And then what? Once they know, they’ll just be sent to a work ship too. And what about my brother and your sisters? What happens to them if our parents are sent away?”
Garth stood there a moment, his hands balled into angry fists at his sides, before sagging in defeat and coming over to sink down next to me. “A work ship,” he finally said. “Maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe all the horror stories we heard about them were just to scare us into behaving. I mean, my mom herself used to threaten to send me to a work ship pretty much daily when I was three.”
“Three?” I said, eyebrow raised.
“I was a rotten three-year-old,” Garth said with a shrug. “And if you believe my mom, a horrible four-year-old and the worst five-year-old on the entire ship.”
“It took years to become your charming self, huh?” I said, forcing a smile onto my face.
“Masterpieces take time,” Garth said with a sigh.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?” he asked, turning to look at me in surprise.
“For dropping a light cube on a sea monster’s head,” I said. “For this entire mess. Maybe if I’d just swum for the ship like you said instead of staying back to tangle the thing up, we wouldn’t have gotten blamed for it all.”
“Or,” Garth said, “we’d all be dead now. I guess we’ll never know.”
“I guess,” I agreed. And with that we both settled in for what would be our last night on the Atlas. Garth fell asleep first, his head listing to the side so it rested on my shoulder. I didn’t mind, though—even though my wet suit was almost dry, it was cold in the office, and his body heat was welcome. I stayed up for what felt like hours after he’d begun snoring, thinking about that monster. Replaying the day in my head over and over again as I tried to see a way I could have avoided getting my best friend and myself into this mess—and always coming up short. So much for creativity and inventiveness, I thought grumpily as I felt my eyes finally begin to close. Even half-asleep, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about sea monsters.
4
We woke up to the door unlocking. Garth and I both sat bolt upright, our salt-encrusted wet suits squelching weirdly as we clambered to our feet. I was still trying to blink the blur of sleep from my eyes when Captain Brown walked in with two burly ship officers. I noted immediately that each of them was holding a pair of handcuffs as well as a piece of thin black fabric that I feared would be used as a gag. I’d only seen someone sent off to a work ship once before, but the scene was burned into my memory. A man had been caught siphoning food from the kitchens, and the captain had made a show of having him marched through the middle of the ship. He was a warning to the rest of us about what happened when you broke the law.
I doubted that was how we’d be marched out. A glance at the ramshackle clock on Gizmo’s wall showed it wasn’t even dawn yet. We were being snuck out of here while the rest of the ship slept. I felt like crying, like crumpling into a ball and holding on to the leg of Gizmo’s desk so they’d have to pry my fingers off like stubborn barnacles. Instead I stood up straighter and put my shoulders back as I stared at Captain Brown, condemning him for this with my eyes. Beside me I felt Garth’s shoulder tremble, but to his credit he stood his ground too. I felt a rush of gratitude that at least I wasn’t alone in this.
“Good to see you two have come to terms with your fate,” Captain Brown said with an approving nod. “Please stand still.”
The officers came and forced our hands behind our backs, quickly cuffing our wrists before slipping the black gags into our mouths. My heart hammered hard in my chest as I forced myself to stay still through this whole process. Struggling wouldn’t help, and escaping wouldn’t do anything besides bring my family down with me, something I was determined not to do. A moment later we were hustled out the door and into the quiet of the sleeping ship. As we walked, I tried to commit the creaks and groans of the Atlas to memory, my eyes scraping over each familiar surface as though somehow that would etch it in my brain forever, because I knew full well that I’d never set foot on the ship again. The thought made my stomach twist uncomfortably, and I remembered how just the day before I’d been chafing at the idea of spending my entire life aboard the Atlas. Now I’d have signed up for that life in a heartbeat.
We were on deck faster than I would have liked, and I gasped as I took in the damage the monster had managed to wreak in mere minutes. A huge chunk of the railing and deck had been damaged, and half the supply crates were missing or mangled beyond repair. The captain was really explaining this away with some lame story about a whale? As I stared at the teeth marks, a ripple of fear went down my spine. It wasn’t hard to picture what those teeth could have done had they sunk into me. We weren’t given time to linger, though: the officers marched us quickly to the far side of the ship, where a few small boats were kept.
One of them was already standing ready and waiting, a small crew on board preparing for launch. I glanced around the deck one last time, simultaneously hoping for a glimpse of my dad and terrified that he’d show up and see what was about to happen. What was worse? I wondered. Thinking your child was dead in some freak diving accident, or knowing they were suffering for years on a work ship to pay off an unpayable debt? Garth was hustled onto the boat first, and I followed, catching my foot on the rail and almost pitching headfirst into the boat before one of the officers managed to catch me. As it was, I barely avoided bashing my face on the opposite rail.
As I leaned over to catch my breath, I saw something move in the dark water below us. I tried to scream, but the gag in my mouth muffled it enough that I was ignored. The water below us churned again, white foam and bubbles erupting from beneath, and terror zipped through me. It was another sea monster—it had to be. I screamed again, jerking from the officer’s grasp as I tried to make the new threat known. Finally someone else spotted the churning water and sounded the alarm. There was a flutter of movement as the small boat we were on was hurriedly cranked back in so it was no longer dangling helplessly over the churning water.
A minute later, the thing emerged, blue-black in the predawn light. I thought at first that I was looking at an enormous whale. It was curved and fluid, almost like part of the waves, with a large bulbous front that tapered off to what appeared to be a tail structure at the back. A second later, something moved on top of it, and a light came streaming out the top of a circular hole. A hole that people were climbing out of.
“It’s a bloody submarine,” said one of the officers.
“That’s not like any submarine I’ve ever seen,” said the second officer.
“Pirates?” asked the first as he peered over the rail at the massive vessel bobbing beside us.
“Ahoy, Captain!” came a shout from below. �
��The Britannica, Coalition-issued submarine fifty-four, would like permission to board.” Captain Brown hesitated for a minute before giving a curt nod and signaling to the crew to lower a ladder to the waiting sub. Meanwhile, Garth and I stood forgotten, bound and gagged, as two people made their way up the Atlas’s ladder and over its rail.
The first one on board was a woman, short and muscular with dark skin and hair cropped so close it stood out in tiny ringlets less than an inch long all over her head. Behind her, in sharp contrast, was one of the palest girls I’d ever seen. She was about my age, with red hair pulled back into a thick French braid that hung over her shoulder like a friendly snake.
“Captain Brown, I presume?” said the woman, striding over to hold out a hand to Captain Brown, who shook it warily. “I’m Captain Reese of the Britannica,” she said with a wide smile that wasn’t returned. “If we could speak in private a moment?”
“Certainly,” said Captain Brown. “But if you wouldn’t mind moving your submarine, we were about to launch this boat. There is a work ship about three miles south of here, and we have some passengers to drop off.”
Captain Reese glanced over to where Garth and I stood and studied us a moment. “They are actually what I came to talk to you about,” she said. “So, if you wouldn’t mind, this will only take a moment.” She stood there expectantly as Captain Brown looked from her to us and back again. Finally he motioned for her to follow him, and they disappeared into the Atlas’s bridge. The girl stayed behind and smiled at us. Since we were gagged, smiling back was impossible, but that didn’t seem to bother her.
The Atlas rocked gently in the water, and I glanced back down at the submarine that Captain Reese had called the Britannica. Submarines docked with the Atlas at least once a month, if not more. Sometimes they docked to trade with us, and other times they docked so that their crew could stretch their legs and get some fresh air. I usually made a point to avoid submariners, mainly because most of them were downright weird. Although you couldn’t really be expected to spend most of your life in a tiny metal tube underwater and not be weird. The Britannica was no metal tube, though, and the girl in front of us seemed normal enough, even if her skin was see-through pale.