Young Captain Nemo: The Door into the Deep

by Jason Henderson

  “What in heck is that?” Peter asked.

  “I…” Gabriel couldn’t believe the next words to come out of his mouth. “That … is a British man-of-war.”

  The creature took the lead and barreled toward them, looking to batter them with its iron-plated nose.

  “And it’s fast … okay, belay, forget maneuvering. Dive.”

  “Dive, aye,” Peter echoed. The nose of the Obscure dipped, and Gabriel rocked on his heels as they slid downward in the water, picking up speed as they went. But now he heard a mechanical groaning inside the Obscure.

  “What’s that?”

  Peter scowled. “Engines are fighting the plastic sludge in the water, Gabe. Depth four hundred feet and diving.”

  The man-of-war creature altered its course to match them.

  Misty pointed a thumb at the screen. “Can that thing catch us?”

  “It won’t.” Gabriel hoped that was true.

  But it was moving faster now, the great body zooming toward them. Of course the Lodgers would have remarkable moving power, he thought. They had to be incredibly strong to soar out of the water the way they did. He doubted very much that anything as big as a British man-of-war could lift itself out of the water, but they were in its element now.

  A huge burst of bubbles, some unknown gas, spewed from the man-of-war, and it picked up speed.

  “Oh, my…” Gabriel stared, his mind flip-flopping madly between fear of being crushed in the jaws of a living ship and pure amazement at the wonder of the thing. Had his sister felt the same way when she saw them first? “They have some way of pushing out air to get heavier. A natural ballast system.”

  “Yeah, that’s fascinating,” Peter said. “It’s gaining on us. We are at six hundred feet and diving, and that thing is definitely closing.”

  A high-pitched beep erupted from Misty’s station and started repeating. “Proximity alert, Captain.” The beeping continued.

  “Uh … okay. Forget diving. Expand gases and surface again. Maybe the sudden change of direction will—”

  “Aye.” A distant hissing came from the bulkheads as chemical reactions fired and oxygen flowed into the ballast tanks. They pitched upward, heading for the surface once more. “Crap, we’re getting sixty percent of the power we should. And we’re hot; the engines are running hot.”

  “Come on; give up,” Gabriel muttered as the whale-of-war kept diving.

  Then he saw its sides expand. It leveled off. And it kept coming.

  They were moving fast, buoyancy and the engines working together to rocket them up.

  “Depth three hundred feet.” Another proximity alarm rang out, clanging insistently over Peter’s voice.

  “Current speed?” Gabriel ran to the wall and smacked the proximity alarm to shut it up.

  “Seventy knots. That’s top speed right now—we’re gonna burn out.”

  “Okay. Speed of the pursuer?”

  “Sixty-eight knots.” Peter looked up. “That thing is swimming at seventy-eight miles an hour. Wait…” He consulted the screen. “Seventy-nine. It’s speeding up.”

  How?

  “Battle stations.” Gabriel shook his head. He had never said the words before. “Misty, prepare weapons. Peter, activate the water mics. I want to hear it.”

  “Uh … okay.” Misty sounded like she was racing to make the same transition Gabriel had, running through training they’d all been through but, honestly, had never taken all that seriously. She clicked her safety belts shut around her waist as she rattled off the systems. “Defensive measures online. Torpedoes?”

  “Yes.”

  The water microphones came online then, and they heard the roar of water pushing around the pursuing creature. And more: the whining cry of the Lodger, warbling through the water.

  “Pincer torpedoes … ready, you just have to tell me how powerful to set them.”

  “Seventy-two knots pursuing, Gabriel. Time to impact…” Peter calculated. “Sixty-five seconds.”

  “Open torpedo bay doors.” Gabriel closed his eyes for a moment. Breathe. Don’t let the enemy in, and don’t let your own mind get ahead of you.

  “We should fire,” Peter insisted. “Maximum load, that’ll probably be as powerful as a real torpedo.”

  “What? Maximum load could destroy it.”

  Peter pointed at the screen. “Gabe, look at that thing. Anything less isn’t even going to slow it down. Can’t you see that?”

  “It’s an unknown biological,” Gabriel said through clenched teeth. “I can’t be the first human to kill one of these creatures. I won’t.”

  “Time to impact: forty-five seconds.”

  Misty spoke intently. “Gabe—you’re right. They’re a mystery, and it would be terrible. But you can’t commit suicide because those creatures don’t know who their friends are. We can’t.”

  Would the creature try to punch through them? Or bite them? It was growing now, the sharp metal nose and grinning, toothy mouth wide. Its shrieking mixed with the roar of the water.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  “Let’s not start at World War Three,” Gabriel said. “Okay? Not maximum.”

  “Would you just make up your mind?” Peter shouted. “You’re lucky I don’t blow it up for you.”

  Gabriel nodded dramatically. “I hear you. Okay. Electric warheads … fifty percent load. On my mark.…”

  “Twenty-five seconds.”

  “Fire.”

  Misty punched a button. “Torpedo away,” she said, and a silvery missile that glowed with shimmering mother-of-pearl spun like a bullet through the water.

  “Okay, that should distract it. Dive twenty meters!” Gabriel said.

  Peter sent them lurching into a dive, and Gabriel staggered back to his seat, snapping on his safety belt. They leveled off as he kept his eye on the missile flying toward the gnarly teeth of the creature.

  The torpedo impacted just below the prow. First, a ball of gas exploded all around it, obscuring the view. Then a cloud of electricity arced in the same ball, tendrils of energy dancing out of the explosion and sparking up and down the gnarled face. Pincer energy sizzled in the masts.

  The creature slowed and Peter sped them up.

  “Let’s make distance,” Gabriel said. “While it’s still…”

  The creature shook its great head back and forth and seemed to chuff, gases exploding from its sides. And then it started moving again.

  The great teeth snapped as it lurched toward them.

  “Oh boy, I think we made it mad,” Peter said.

  Gabriel shook his head. So that was it. Just like that, he had failed at everything his sister had asked. “Misty, let’s take it out. Maximum load,” he said dully. “Fire when ready.”

  “Ready,” Misty said. Then she pushed the button.

  Light flickered in the bridge and the engines roared, followed by a chutting sound.

  No missile appeared on the screen. Just the pursuing monster.

  “What happened?” Gabriel shouted.

  “It’s not firing!” Misty slapped the controls.

  “Engines are choked with garbage, they’re burning out, all power is diverting to the engines,” Peter shouted rapidly. “I’m sorry, that means…”

  “Weapons are offline,” Misty said.

  The bridge went dark for a second; then red auxiliary lights filled the room. The screen still flickered, weak and snowy. So they could see their own doom. The creature was charging fast.

  Gabriel struck his forehead with his fists. Heck of a ship you got here, Nemo.

  “Gabriel!” Peter shouted. “Time to impact is eight seconds!”

  Gabriel opened his mouth to say the word brace when he heard a massive, churning engine roar and drown out the sound of the whale-of-war.

  Peter shouted, “Captain, there’s another—”

  “Obscure,” a female voice said, crackling to life over a speaker in the ceiling that Gabriel had never had occasion to use.

  Gabriel loo
ked up at the sound.

  “Brace for wake,” the voice said rapidly.

  “Nerissa?”

  She came up from below.

  The nuclear-powered engines of a much bigger submarine roared and blasted over the speakers as a long, tapered nose sixty feet across came into view. The man-of-war was still closing, twisting upward to strike—it was going to bite them after all—when the nose of the Nebula smashed into the front of the man-of-war, battering it out of the way, bits of wood and metal flying through the water. The Nebula kept coming, soaring up past the Obscure’s cameras, its sides all shimmering with mother-of-pearl, its portholes sculpted in the same manner as the Obscure’s and even the long-lost Nautilus’s.

  The wake of the impact sent them tumbling, and for a moment they were spinning. The Obscure pitched up on its side, and papers flew as the crew strained against their safety belts before systems kicked on, air hissing and stabilizer wings moving to right the ship.

  “Report!” shouted Gabriel.

  “Bulkheads secure, but we have damage to auxiliary ballast tanks and pumps from that tumble we took.” Misty read her screen as fast as she could. “Batteries … are at twenty-five percent.”

  Peter added, “And engines are at fifteen percent. Man, this water is the pits for the engines.”

  The cameras had gone fuzzy until they were righted and then popped back. “Front cameras only,” Gabriel ordered.

  They were pointed in completely the opposite direction that they had been, and as the picture came back Gabriel caught the aft of the Nebula filling the screen and then disappearing fast above them.

  Beyond, the water swirled with a cloud of detritus. Bits of wood churned as if in a school of their own. Dust billowed like smoke in the distance.

  “I don’t hear the man-of-war. Magnify?”

  “I don’t see it.”

  Just dust. As far as the eye could see. The man-of-war could be dead or alive.

  “Obscure to Nebula.” The Nemotech intercom in the ceiling communicated directly with any other Nemotech ship. It was a privilege afforded to family only. “Come in, Nebula.”

  Nerissa came back after a moment “Hi, Gabe. We have some damage here. Are you all right?”

  “Same…” Gabriel stopped, smiling so hard that he felt it in his eyes. “Same here.”

  “Meet us on the surface,” Nerissa said. “There’s been some developments.”

  13

  THE SEA WAS calm when the Obscure joined the Nebula at the surface. The Obscure, dwarfed by its sister ship, lay shoulder to battering-ram nose, and the Nebula crew made quick work of extending a gangplank between the two.

  As Misty joined Gabriel on the catwalk, she nodded at the Nebula. “So I get to meet the sister.”

  “Yeah, about that.” He stopped. Maybe Nerissa was already watching. “There’s this thing that I didn’t mention.”

  “What’s that?” Misty covered her face. “Does she have, like, one eye, like a pirate, and I’m not supposed to mention it? Because that would be awesome.”

  He couldn’t believe she was making jokes so soon after he’d nearly gotten her killed. “Last I saw her, she had both eyes.”

  “Who’s this?” Nerissa’s voice boomed through a loudspeaker.

  Gabriel winced. “She kinda doesn’t know that I brought you guys.”

  “Whatever.” Misty rolled her eyes and clambered along the catwalk toward the Nebula’s hatch. “You shocked out my hair; I’m gonna meet your sister.”

  A pair of Nebula crewmen met them at the hatch and led them down through the shining Nebula bridge. Misty looked around as they went and nodded at an open hatch into a corridor that seemed nearly as wide as the Obscure itself. “This ship could swallow us whole.”

  The crewmen led them into the captain’s study and shut the door behind them. Nerissa’s study was similar to the one that Gabriel had on the Obscure, but less obviously Victorian; there were shelves of dark coral-laced steel and rows of soft lights set in enormous, recessed clamshells. They found Nerissa standing next to a large porthole, her arms folded. In front of her was a table set with tea.

  Nerissa wore a blue uniform that Gabriel remembered seeing on a drawing board once, not long before she took off on her own. It was wide at the shoulder, with gold braids and rank insignia, though Nerissa skipped the hat that everyone else in her crew wore.

  Gabriel and Misty just stood there waiting for her to speak. Finally Gabriel folded his arms to match Nerissa’s. “Well, this is nice.”

  “No crew.”

  “Come on,” Gabriel said.

  Nerissa pointed at the wall in the direction of the Obscure. “That thing could practically drive itself, and you … what did I tell you?”

  “Hi.” Misty extended a hand that hung there while Nerissa kept her eyes on Gabriel. “I’m Misty.”

  “This mission needs a crew.” Gabriel shrugged. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “You said that you wouldn’t—”

  “I said,” Gabriel responded, “that you would hear no more about it. This was a Gabriel thing, remember? And also you’re not the boss of me.”

  Beside him, Misty seemed to roll her eyes with her entire body. “Really?”

  Gabriel grunted. He was doing the best he could. He returned to meeting his sister’s gaze. “But. Nerissa. Here you are, and thank you. I mean, really. We wouldn’t have made it without you.”

  “Yeah, well, I am glad you’re not Lodger food. And anyway, I put you in this mess.” Nerissa looked down. “So, do Mom and Dad have any idea about…?” She indicated Misty.

  “They know all about them.”

  Nerissa scoffed. “If I ever talk to them, I’ll find out if that’s true.” Then she politely offered her hand to Misty. “Welcome aboard the Nebula. Beware, you’re now in the world of wanted men. I’m Nerissa.”

  “Misty,” she said again

  “Why don’t you sit?” Nerissa sighed, then went to the tea set and began pouring cups out of a silver pot. “So you’re the crew.”

  “There’s one more. Peter is at the helm.” Gabriel tapped his earpiece.

  “I like your study.” Misty swept her arm around the room. “Gabriel has one just like it, almost. A little less cool.”

  “Thanks,” both Nemos responded, Gabriel with considerably less sincerity.

  “We call it the Outer Sanctum,” Nerissa said. “This tea service is something you’d appreciate, Gabriel—we pulled it from the wreck of the Yamato.”

  The Yamato was a large Japanese battle cruiser sunk during World War II. And she was right; that was pretty cool.

  She handed a cup to each of them, the steam rising to their faces. “Now, this tea is a Nemo strain. Completely sea-drawn.” Nerissa turned to Gabriel as he lifted his cup and sipped. It was slightly sweet and salty, and he felt warmth travel through his torso as he drank. “Anyway. I’m pretty sure you would have done the same for me.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “With the Obscure? Forget it. Did you see that thing before you rammed it? It was a British man-of-war. Literally.” He held his hands apart just to illustrate sheer bigness.

  “Yeah, don’t tell the crew, but it’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen.”

  Gabriel heard this and threw Misty a look that said, I promise I’m not like that.

  Don’t tell the crew something’s wrong. That was sort of a rule. Don’t ever say I can’t believe it or I’ve never seen anything like this in front of the crew. Nerissa had learned and believed that admitting something like that would freak out the people you were leading. Gabriel knew all those rules, but he was replacing them with his own. His crew needed to know what he was thinking. And besides: They were his friends.

  “Since the B-17 I saw, we’ve run into a few little submarines and some downed fighter jets. But they didn’t get close. Other than the man-of-war, what about you?” Nerissa asked.

  “Nothing until we got to the Garbage Patch.” Gabriel put down his teacup. He wished his sister ha
d offered them soda instead. “But get this: The first one we saw was out of its shell.”

  “Really? What did it look like?”

  “We didn’t get a good look. It was trying to put on an old fishing trawler that was adrift. We saw tentacles and a head … like a crawfish, basically.”

  “And it attacked you. Just like the man-of-war did.”

  Misty cleared her throat and chimed in, “I’m not sure attacked is the right word. We happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think we disturbed it, the one that was, you know, naked, basically. One of the tentacles trapped me, and Gabe shocked it with his pincer gun. That ticked off a second Lodger that was swimming nearby as though … it was like it was standing guard.”

  “Right,” Gabriel agreed. “Right. That one was a biplane. When we got in the naked one’s way, it came after us. Then it chased us into the water and another joined in. Then the big one came along.”

  “Okay.” Nerissa stood up, massaging her neck. “The B-17 just jumped over us. The fighter jets, too—they flew by underwater. But what you’re describing is something like … pod behavior.”

  “Like killer whales?” Gabriel asked.

  Misty said, “Right. They’ll even split up and try to cause diversions to keep whalers confused.”

  “Which means … I don’t know.” Nerissa thought for a moment. “Maybe we can communicate with them?”

  “We can barely communicate with whales,” Gabriel observed.

  “Pod behavior. So far we’ve seen loners, twos, now three—”

  “And this water is thick with garbage. It fouls up sonar and cuts visibility. There’s no telling what we didn’t see.”

  “Argh.” Nerissa collapsed into her chair. “What are they? Are they crabs of some kind? Crabs don’t hang out in pods.”

  “What’s important is that they don’t seem prone to attack unless provoked. Maybe you can tell the navy…”

  “We don’t know they aren’t prone to attack.” Misty opened her hands. And she was right, Gabriel realized. They were making a lot of guesses. “How do the Lodgers know if a ship is empty? If it’s on the bottom of the ocean, it’s no problem, but we were on that trawler.”

  “Yeah, why were you on a trawler again?” Nerissa asked.