“It won’t matter if they shoot the Obscure with guided missiles. What I’m suggesting is that you and Peter take the dinghy now, and head for California. I got you into this, and I can’t … what Misty said is right.”
“What did Misty say?” Peter asked.
“She said you couldn’t possibly have told your parents how dangerous this would be, because you didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know, either,” Misty observed. “And I already said I’m in it for the Lodgers.”
“Oh, come on. I can’t have it on my conscience if we sink.”
“Then don’t sink,” Peter scoffed. “Because you’re crazy if you think I’m getting in the escape dinghy now.”
Misty crossed her arms. “Gabriel, you’re not forcing us. I can’t speak for Peter, but this is the mission. I am here for the mission. And … I’m staying.”
“She can speak for me if she wants.”
“And we know some neat tricks. I think we’re better here.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Oh, come on—look, time’s up.” Misty clapped her hands. “You’ve made your speech, and you’ve made us aware that we’re in danger. Now, as far as I can tell, we don’t have time to go over it again.”
“But—”
She cleared her throat. “Let’s try this. Gabe, you want to ask us one more time if we want to get off?”
“Uh…” He wasn’t following her.
“The words you’re looking for are, ‘Would you like to leave?’”
Fine. “Would you like to lea—”
“No!” they both shouted.
Misty stamped her foot. “Now, what’re your orders?”
He was lucky to have them in his life. They loved the life—
“Obscure?” came Nerissa’s voice. “We’ve spotted the Lodgers.”
Peter looked back at him, and Gabriel flicked his hand at the screen. Peter put up the sonar screen.
“There they are,” Peter said. A mass of spots on the sonar image, some as small as the biplane and some as large as the British man-of-war, were amassed and traveling west toward the center of the Garbage Patch. They’d caught them.
“We have a feed from Bubo 4,” Nerissa announced over the intercom.
Peter called for the feed, and the upper half of the view screen filled with an image of the ocean shot from a drone flying overhead at several thousand feet. They could see faint shadows under the water, and then the Lodgers emerged—submarines and old ships shooting from the water before diving back. They could hear the sound of wind buffeting the drone.
A loud roar split the air and the image shook. The camera on the drone shifted up as another roar came fast, with a plane in view this time: A sleek white jet flew about a thousand feet above the drone, threatening to crack the microphones with its engine roar.
“What was that?”
“I’ve seen that.” Misty put her palm her forehead. “My mom loves them. That was a Boeing F/A 18E/F Super Hornet. It would have to have come from a carrier.”
“Nerissa, you copy that?” Gabriel called.
“Copy. It must be looking for the Lodgers. And if we’ve spotted them, they have.”
“Show us the carrier group?”
The image craned forward and zoomed in. They could see a line of ships far off the horizon. There was a carrier—that would have been the ship that Gabriel was talking to earlier, and he reminded himself the admiral was named Waring and he had better be ready to talk to him again. Plus two more ships on either side. And a helicopter zipping around.
Another loud engine screamed past the Bubo and flew by.
Gabriel took it in and nodded. “Okay, we have the Crabsiren, and our goal is to get the Lodgers away and not get hit by anything. And we don’t have much to defend ourselves with.”
“Do you want to ask Nerissa for some real torpedoes?” Misty asked. “There might be time.”
“No … Let’s face it, it would be a mistake to fire a missile at a navy ship. Even pincers, which at most do electrical damage. That would be … that would be it. Every ship would fire on us.”
“So what’s left? If we’re gonna travel with no weapons.”
Gabriel thought, looking out at the water swirling with plastic. They were inside the Garbage Patch now. Very soon they would meet the enemy. “Buoys.”
“Sonar buoys?” Peter asked. “What for?”
“How many do we have?”
Misty tapped at her console. “We have five sonar buoys—they’re in the aft section below, science tube.”
“Peter, keep on this heading. Misty, let’s go find the buoys. We’ll need some tools.”
Gabriel and Misty hurried back through the passenger section but stopped short of the dive room, dropping down through a hatch in the floor and heading toward the engine room. Behind the engine room was a room for prepping and deploying sensors and buoys.
Gabriel bent his head to avoid the low ceiling and peered at a stack of metal shelves. Stacked neatly and secured were large, round buoys that reminded him of giant clams about four feet wide and three feet tall. Gabriel rolled the first one out on a wheeled cart and put his hands on the sides.
When the buoy went in the water, it would send a radio signal back to Misty’s console. You could let it float fifty miles away and still get a signal, the only problem being that you either had to attach a cable to it to bring it back, or you had to go get it later.
“Here, let’s grab the rest,” he told her. He and Misty rolled out the next four and let them rest against the wall next to a small hoist to lift the buoys into the torpedo tube.
They sat on the metal floor, looking at the buoys, and Gabriel grabbed a drill. He looked for the rivets in a panel on the side of the buoy, right below the N swirl. He opened it up and Misty looked in beside him.
“So what are we doing?” Misty asked.
“We need to be able to stop the navy before they get themselves blown up, and we can’t shoot them. So we’re gonna open up these sonar buoys and convert them from sound-listening devices into static-electricity amplifiers. Strong enough to stop a ship in its tracks, at least until we get the Lodgers away.”
“Static-electricity amplifier, huh? Wow.” Misty looked at the opened buoy. “An electromagnetic pulse. You’re building an EMP device.”
“Well,” Gabriel said, “we are.”
By the time they had the devices converted, Peter was calling them back to the bridge, because the ships were getting close.
* * *
“Oh, boy,” Gabriel said. The sonar screen now showed the playing board: The naval ships were farthest away from the Obscure, coming west. The Lodgers continued east, leaping their way toward the center of the Patch and the ships. And the Obscure was still trailing the Lodgers by miles.
But where—
“Where’s Nerissa?”
“I don’t have her on sonar,” Peter said.
“Well, she didn’t run away, so she’s gone quiet.” Gabriel didn’t like not knowing where his sister was. “This is getting dangerous.”
“What do you want to do?” Peter asked.
“Uh … give me the US Navy frequency.”
“Got it,” Misty said.
When she opened the channel he said, “Obscure to Admiral Waring. We’ve found them, we’ve spotted the Lodgers, and we request permission to corral them and lead them away.”
“We have, too,” Waring said. “They’re exactly where they’re supposed to be.”
“Admiral, I say again, if you shoot them, you will take extensive damage. They are highly volatile, like … shooting an oil tanker volatile. It would be like shooting a bomb.”
“You need to clear off. Is that you in the submarine?”
Gabriel was about to say yes when Nerissa came online. “No, sir. That’s me.”
The Nebula appeared on the sonar screen. She had dived deep and come around the Lodgers to put herself between them and the navy.
“Who’
s that?” Waring asked.
“Nebula. Check your files. I can wait.” Onscreen, the Nebula surfaced, right in the center of the Garbage Patch, not far from the Lodgers. There was a chuckle in her voice as she said, “Boys.”
“Torpedo in the water!” Peter shouted. A white missile burst from underneath the Nebula and shot across the water, far clear of the Americans but in their direction. A shot across the bow, but still.
Gabriel jumped on the intercom and howled, “What are you doing?”
“Gabe, trust me. It’s a warning shot.”
“Return fire!” Waring ordered.
“Wait!” Gabriel shouted. “That was a warning shot! A warning shot!”
A large helicopter zipped from somewhere behind the carrier and dropped a payload that hit the water with a splash. Nebula was already diving, and when the torpedo hit the water about two hundred yards from her position, the Nebula was gone.
“Halt! You are under arrest!” came Waring’s voice.
“Going silent,” Nerissa said quickly. “Finish the job.” And then she was gone.
Horns rang out as a quarter of the ships broke off, following Nerissa’s direction.
“Obscure,” Waring said as he came back on. “We don’t have any arrest warrant on file for you. So this is your last warning.”
“Admiral, please! I can drive the creatures off to someplace safe.” He turned back to Peter. “Are we caught up to the Lodgers enough to use the Crabsiren?”
Peter flipped on the front camera and they saw a twisting, living 747 flying through the water behind a tentacled battleship. “Half a mile away.”
“How far are they from the navy?”
“Another five miles.”
“Start the Crabsiren,” Gabriel ordered. “A two-second blast.”
A loud, piercing trill shot from the speakers of the Obscure, emanating toward the Lodgers. He saw the submarine creature in the end of the procession look back as if surprised.
“We’ve got to get in front of them. Shut it off.” Peter doused it.
“We are receiving your message to the creatures,” Waring said. “Back down or you will be fired upon.”
“I’m trying to lead them away,” Gabriel answered. “You guys need to halt, and I can take care of this.” He keyed the mic off and turned to Peter. “Dive deep, then under the Lodgers, and up. Put us between the Lodgers and the navy.”
“Aye, Captain.”
The ship tilted sharply and they dove, dropping down hundreds of feet as streams of tiny plastic ran over the screen.
“Fire the Crabsiren again, two-second burst. Aim it down. I don’t want the Lodgers to be surprised when we show up again.”
Peter nodded and blew the horn again, two seconds, and shut it off as they dived. After about thirty seconds they leveled off and Peter listened.
“The water’s a whole lot colder down here. The layer of cold water will be like … a blanket; the sonar from the carrier won’t be able to reach us down here. We’ll be invisible to the ships above.”
For several seconds they traveled toward the shapes on the sonar, passing under the family of Lodgers, which Gabriel counted to be about thirty. The navy ships were above and forward another couple of miles.
Peter gasped suddenly.
“What?” Misty asked.
Peter pointed at the sonar, which suddenly lit up with a single other shape. “We’re not alone. There’s another ship down here.”
“Onscreen.”
The rearview cameras filled the screen. Coming up fast was a shape like the nose of a whale.
And it kept coming, flowing into view, an enormous gray submarine. Across its nose were the words US NAVY and a name: USS ALASKA.
“Oh my,” Misty said. “It’s an Ohio.”
Gabriel blinked. “Yes, it is.” Ohio class, that was. Biggest submarines in the US fleet. Five hundred and sixty feet long. Forty-two feet wide. And equipped with a full battery of six fifty-pound, twenty-one-inch-wide guided torpedoes. Plus a nuke or two.
And it had taken Gabriel’s dive as an act of aggression. Warnings were over.
An explosion of air burst from below the ship, and Gabriel saw the shape hurtling toward them even before Peter shouted.
“Torpedo in the water!”
26
THE SOUND OF the sonar echoing off the torpedo beeped loudly, growing in intensity.
“Evasive maneuvers, hard right rudder, dive!” Gabriel shouted. “Fire countermeasures.”
“Countermeasures, aye,” Misty repeated.
“Dive, aye!” Peter shouted. The Obscure turned on its side as it dropped and slid to the right.
Onscreen, from housings on the left and right sides of the Obscure, small barrels fired off and propelled themselves into the water. Each one had a loud, rattling screw, kicking up clouds of bubbles as they shot out, putting themselves in the path of the oncoming missile.
The torpedo sliced through the top of the first’s cloud but caught the second like a scent, turning to charge. It closed on the barrel.
An explosion split open the water and rocked the Obscure as they completed their dive, curving around.
“What now?” Misty shouted.
I have no idea! I’ve never gone to war with the US Navy before! Gabriel wanted to shout back. Instead he asked, “Ideas? We could run.”
“Ram them,” Peter said. “This is a Nemoship; you could ram them.”
“I don’t know if we’d survive that. They might be expecting that—that ship looks big enough to battle the Nebula. And … you’re talking about sending a lot of people into the water.”
“Use the EMP buoys,” Misty offered.
“Right, right!” Gabriel pointed, nodding. “And Peter, you’re onto something. We can’t ram them—but we can get close.”
“Torpedo in the water!” Peter shouted, his hand to his earpiece.
The missile dropped from below the great ship. The alarm system howled as the torpedo closed in, now two hundred yards away.
“Hard left, ascend, countermeasures!” Gabriel shouted.
“Countermeasures away,” Misty said, and the barrels shot out. He saw the missile catch the little barrels and crack up, sending shock waves through the water. The Obscure shook in the water as it rose and they leveled off. Gabriel tightened the safety harness of his seat.
“Gabe,” Misty said, “that’s it, we’re out of countermeasures.”
“Okay, okay. Peter, can you get us right under the Alaska?”
“I don’t know, sure. How close? Their port torpedo tube door just opened!” Peter shouted.
“I mean close, hug them—dive down and get right underneath them. So close we almost touch.” There could be another torpedo at any second. “Hurry.”
“Aye,” Peter said. The Alaska grew in their view as Peter made the engines roar. The nose of the navy ship loomed as they got closer. Rivets and seams on the submarine were visible now.
“Closing on the Alaska. Wait. Torpedo in the water!”
“Close in!”
The missile shot out as the Alaska grew, its nose disappearing from view. Now a long section of the middle of the ship filled the screen. The torpedo shot past the Obscure, not even slowing down for them, too close to lock on.
“Hard left rudder, dive forty feet, full stop right under!” Gabriel rattled off.
“Just don’t collide with it!” Misty yelled.
“Hard left, dive forty!” Peter shouted, yanking at the controls. The Obscure dipped, spinning hard left as Gabriel’s body pressed against his safety straps.
“Full stop!” Peter cried, as the stabilizers howled and they came to a halt under the naval submarine. It looked like a vast column directly over them, still moving, ten times the size of the Obscure.
“Okay,” Gabriel said, looking up at the ceiling. “Chances are they haven’t yet figured out where we went. Flank speed, stay right with it. Prepare to release science payload.”
“Flank speed.”
“On my mark, slow one third, deploy payload, and then dive, full speed. We’ll go down, the buoy will go up. Right into them.”
“On your mark.” Peter watched the screen, his hands on the controls.
Gabriel was watching the underside of the ship. “Slow one third.”
The diving fins spun and the Obscure lurched as it slowed; the Alaska seemed to speed up onscreen. They had to fire and then get out of the way—both of their own buoy and of the giant submarine’s engines. Gabriel watched the shape passing on the sonar screen. Tick. Tick.
“Deploy payload.”
“Deploy, aye.”
On a new section of the screen, a camera hanging over the back of the Obscure watched the door open and one of the large buoys shoot out, tumbling into the water. It spun and bounced behind them along the underside of the Alaska.
“Dive full speed, punch down!”
“Full speed dive!” Peter yanked the controls back. “Hang on.” They lurched hard, the walls filling with water as the nose pointed toward the depths.
Gabriel grabbed onto his chair as his legs dangled toward the view screen. Misty and Peter held on to their controls, each of them pressing their body against their own console. “Fire!” Gabriel shouted.
“Firing buoy!” Peter yelled as he punched a button.
On the screen, the buoy beeped like a contented little creature, bouncing along the bottom of the Alaska. Then just as it reached the end of the sub, it flashed.
Brilliant light filled the screen for a moment, and the beeping stopped. As the light faded, the buoy tumbled away, dead.
“Well?” Misty asked.
“Level off.” Gabriel looked around. “Did we take any damage?”
“Leveling off,” Peter said. “No, we were far enough away.” Then he grinned. “That was pretty cool.”
“Did the Alaska?” He could see the big sub still moving forward. How would they tell if it had been affected?
But the vessel was slowing, lurching away from them about half a mile above.
Peter pointed. The currents of the ocean caught the big ship and it turned on its side, clumsily sliding and twisting. “I think they’re disabled.”
Misty put her hand to her mouth. “Gabriel, you don’t think we hurt them? I mean the people?”
Young Captain Nemo: The Door into the Deep Page 17