Nerissa was wearing a black rain hat and held it in place against the whipping wind. She had to shout for Gabriel to hear her.
“Here,” she called, reaching into her jacket with her other hand as she steadied herself with a wide stance. She produced a seashell about the size of her fist. Gabriel had seen it before—it was a hard drive, basically, and Mom had given it to Nerissa as a going-away present the last time they were together. It had everything the Nemos knew about the location of the Nautilus. Gabriel reached out for it, and his hand met Nerissa’s, but she didn’t let go.
“What’s the problem?” He looked into her eyes, and for once her harshness had melted away. She implored him with wide eyes.
“It’s a wild-goose chase, don’t you see that?” Rain pelted her face. “These people have Mom. We need to find her.”
“Have you made any progress?” Gabriel shouted, ignoring her rehash. It was settled.
“Argh. You’re crazier than I am.” She let him have the shell, and he pocketed it quickly. “The answer is some. My notes are there. But it’ll take…”
“I’ll do it.” Gabriel meant it. A wave splashed against the catwalk, and they both had to grab on.
“I think you believe that.” Nerissa looked back at the Nebula. “So, I guess that’s it. I don’t have to tell you not to waste any time. If you find yourself lost, Gabriel—quit. Come join the hunt. That’s the best advice I can give you.”
“They asked for the Dakkar’s Eye,” Gabriel said. “And they hold the cards.”
She nodded and gestured for him to come close, and then she hugged him and patted him on the back. “Then I guess this is your mission,” she said. “We should reconvene in the morning.”
Gabriel wiped rain from his face and gestured with his head back toward California. “You should know, we were followed out of the Institute. The Maelstrom sent one of their drones. I think we’ve lost them now.”
Nerissa took in the information and seemed to sort it wherever it needed to go. She shrugged. “Okay. We’re submarines. We’re supposed to be chased, and we’re supposed to hide. Thanks for the heads-up.”
Gabriel looked at his sister and felt the need to say something. “It’s my fault,” he said.
“What is, Gabriel?”
“If I hadn’t begged Mom to start the Institute, she wouldn’t have been there.”
Nerissa reached out her hand and put it against the side of his face, and he felt warmth through the rain. “Mom makes her own decisions. And so does Dad. It isn’t your fault.” She bent slightly to meet his eyes. “I want you to believe me. Because we need be making good decisions now.”
“But you don’t even believe in what I’m doing.”
“There’s where you’re wrong,” she said. “We decided, and you’re going to pursue this. I don’t want you to think for a minute that you don’t know how to. If it doesn’t work, you’ll join me. But you’re not gonna think that again. It’s not your fault.”
He sniffled and breathed. “Okay.”
Her wristband chirped. “Now, let’s go, little brother.” She hugged him once more, tousling his hair. Then she let him go and he jumped back to the Obscure’s prow as the walkway started to retract. He watched her recede with the walkway, straight and trim as she merged into shadow.
Gabriel scrambled back aboard the Obscure. As he reached the bridge, the Nebula dove and disappeared from the sonar screen.
“I got it,” Gabriel called, holding up the shell.
“Boy, she didn’t keep that very long,” Peter said. “Where to?”
“Hold this position,” Gabriel said. “Everyone into the library. Let’s see what we have.”
The library of the Obscure was Gabriel’s … well, his sister called it the Sanctum Sanctorum—the holy of holies. On a US Navy vessel, it would be called the ready room. It all amounted to the same thing—the place where the captain did his thinking. The library was patterned after images Gabriel had seen of the Nautilus. There was no pipe organ (Captain Nemo was said to have played the organ while he contemplated whatever went through the head of a guy who went around trying to rule the seas), but there were two giant windows that showed the water sweeping outside, with exterior lights that drew curious fish even now. There were bookshelves full of books—replicas, mostly, but a few real and very old, because sometimes Gabriel liked the feel and smell of old paper.
There was a grand old desk Gabriel had chosen from a collection of antique Nemo furniture while they were building the Obscure, and several settees, little couches you could lie on or read from with rich red cushions that matched the thick curtains around the windows. And a table, where the crew now sat with their tablets. They kept their attention divided between the tablets and a large screen behind the desk.
Misty tabbed through the files on her tablet while the screen in the library showed the pages as she moved. “There’s not a lot here.”
“I’m trying to understand how this is organized,” Gabriel said. After a moment he found a summary of notes, started by Mom and recently appended by Nerissa.
Misty was still controlling the screen, so she opened the summary and started to read. “According to this,” she reported as she scanned, “Captain Nemo was en route from Nemobase to Brazil. There’s a note here about a worker rebellion that he was interested in supporting. That would have been a long trip, all the way down around the tip of South America and up. Was that the kind of thing he did?”
“Yes,” Gabriel answered. “So what happened?”
“Looks like they never made it. There’s a map here that shows the route to Rio de Janeiro. Apparently, Nerissa did a scan of that area but didn’t have a chance to go around again.”
“What about the Dakkar’s Eye?” Gabriel asked.
“Found it—well, I found something,” Misty said. “There’s a note here in the summary—DAKKAR/LAND. Meaning what, like it was on land?”
Gabriel sat back in the settee below the screen. “Land.”
“What?” Peter asked.
“It’s not land, not like ground. There was a guy, a crew member named Land, aboard the Nautilus during the whole adventure with Professor Arronax. Is there anything indexed to the name Land?”
“Ned Land…” Misty brought up the entry on Ned Land. The drawing showed a sailor in a Canadian uniform with a harpoon. “He returned to the United States after the Nautilus was nearly destroyed by the maelstrom—the storm, not the group. This is another Land—Mickey Land, Ned’s nephew. Looks like he kept a journal. He made it out. He claimed to be the last survivor of the Nautilus.”
“A journal?” Peter asked. “Do we have the journal in the files?”
“Nope,” Misty said as she read. “Got a Boston Herald article about how people thought he was lying. Everyone had heard of the Nautilus and thought that it had sunk in the 1870s, so they took it as proof he couldn’t have escaped a wreck of it in 1910. But get this—Land told the papers that they were carrying the Dakkar’s Eye, a vital prize that he begged people to help him go look for.”
“But the journal?” Gabriel asked. “Do we have it?”
“There’s a note from your sister that she looked for it. And she gave up.”
“So it’s lost,” Peter moaned.
“Not lost,” Misty said. She hit a button and shared what she was reading to the screen.
LAND, MICKEY—JOURNAL
SEAMAN MICKEY LAND KEPT A JOURNAL. PRIVATE HOLDING, LAND SHIPPING, JAMAICA. REQUESTS TO EXAMINE REFUSED BY LAND FAMILY. DAMAGED IN FIRE—HALF OF ORIGINAL JOURNAL SURVIVES.
UPDATE: JOURNAL SOLD AT AUCTION AMONG NAUTICAL CURIOS OF LAND FAMILY TO CMDR. T. BOUTROS, USN.
“Sold at auction?” Gabriel asked. “Who is this Boutros guy?”
“That sounds familiar,” Peter said.
Misty flipped to another screen. “I’m checking … Commander Theodore ‘Teddy’ Boutros, US Navy. Says he’s an avid collector of, yeah, nautical antiques. He keeps his prized possessions in a glass displ
ay in the captain’s quarters of his ship and moves it with him whenever he changes ships.”
“Wait a minute.” Gabriel tried to place the name. “Boutros. What ship is he on now?”
“You’re not going to like this,” Misty said. “The Alaska.”
Gabriel winced as she brought up an image of the Alaska, a six-hundred-foot submarine he already knew well.
“Yeah, that hollow feeling,” Peter said, “is because that is the ship that we happened to hit with EMP mines and cripple a few months ago.” An EMP was an electromagnetic pulse. They had used the devices to knock out the submarine so they could get away. “What do you want to bet he holds a grudge?”
“I would.” Gabriel sat back down, looking out the window as a shark passed by. Was it possible to get a journal out of the hands of the US Navy? “I wonder.”
“What do you wonder?” Misty asked suspiciously.
Gabriel asked, “Where is the Alaska right now?”
Peter got up and walked out of the library, his footsteps echoing as he ran onto the bridge. After a moment he called out, “Middle of the Pacific.”
“How far away?”
“Six hours,” Peter said. “If we push it.”
“All right.” Gabriel nodded, and he and Misty went back to the bridge. “Set a course to intercept the USS Alaska.”
“Gabriel, no,” Misty said. “There’s got to be something else.”
“No, this is next,” Gabriel insisted.
Misty grimaced. “Why would he give it to you?”
“I don’t think he will,” Gabriel answered. “If we ask, we’ll be arrested, and we don’t have time for that. You and I have some work to do. I’ll start pulling schematics for the Alaska. See if you can try to find anything at all about the crew and matériel onboard.”
Misty crossed her arms and rolled to her feet. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“You just said yourself that he’s not gonna just give us the journal, and we need it.” Gabriel shrugged. Like his sister had. We’re supposed to be chased and we’re supposed to hide. It’s all dangerous. It’s what we do. “We gotta figure out how to break into a nuclear submarine.”
12
89:54:25
WHEN THEY WERE within twenty miles of the Alaska, Gabriel watched the sonar spin and saw for the first time the long blob on the screen that marked the ship they were looking for. They were twenty miles away from the Alaska. Close enough—maybe too close already for a ship that would be constantly scanning for threats.
“Kill active sonar,” Gabriel said. “Run silent.”
Peter said aye, and the sonar hand stopped sweeping as the screen went dark.
“Can we catch a current?” Gabriel whispered. It was the best idea they’d come up with on the way.
Peter scanned the ship. “Currents are goin’ the wrong way,” he said. “That’s not gonna work.”
“Then how do we get near it?”
Peter ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. If we run at even half power, they’ll hear us.”
Misty stepped away from her station and went to the screen. “What if…” She looked back. “Can we risk another few pings?”
“Can we avoid it?” Gabriel asked. “I don’t want to tip them off that we’re here.”
“Don’t you think we can risk it at twenty miles?” Misty answered. “I think I saw something, but I want to be sure.”
“I think we’ll be okay,” Peter said.
“Go ahead.” Gabriel trusted the crew to know their jobs—even if they were just after-school jobs.
Peter switched on the sonar. They heard nothing as Peter held his headphones to his ear. Onscreen, the images crackled into place again. The Alaska showed clearly, moving steadily from right to left and slightly away from them.
“There.” Misty pointed as, here and there, minor groups of objects filled in. One of these groups, a milk spill of irregular blobs, was made up of many smaller objects. “What’s this?” Misty asked, indicating the group. “It’s not far from the Alaska—this is a pod of whales, isn’t it?”
Peter made some adjustments and listened. “Yes. Blue whales.”
“Can we hear them?”
Peter nodded, unplugging his headphones. The bridge filled with the sound of blue whale song, high-pitched and whining.
Gabriel smiled at Misty. “What are you thinking?”
“They’re moving roughly parallel with the Alaska. Can we … sound like them?”
“Huh.” Peter folded his arms. “Can we sound like a blue whale? Well, we sound, our engine sounds, like a rotor, a big propeller in a housing in the water. If you listen for it, it sounds like a drumming.”
“I think I see where she’s going,” Gabriel said. “How could we change the pitch of the sound of our engine?”
“You could run it faster—a lot faster.” Peter hit a button. “We could do that. We could also emit the sound of the whales. I just started recording the whale song. We could blast it out of the speakers. Mixed together, we would sound a little strange, but if we moved—”
“If we moved quick enough,” Misty said, “we could get in with the whale pod. Just run with them. And then get close to the Alaska.”
Gabriel thought for a moment. “Okay, I gotta admit, that’s pretty good,” he said. “All right, let’s do it. You have enough tape?”
“Yes,” Peter said.
“Start blasting.” A moment later, they heard the whale song emanating outside, audible through the walls.
“Start the engines, maximum speed—set a course for the pod of whales.”
“Maximum speed, aye,” Peter said. The walls started to hum, and the ship began to move again.
“Kill sonar—guide by camera,” Gabriel said, and as the sonar went blank and disappeared, the front screen filled with a camera view of the open ocean, inky dark because they were using no exterior lights.
After ten minutes, they saw the pod of whales heading westward.
“Cut engines and fall in right below the whale pod,” Gabriel said, and the ship curved and dove. “Blast the engine every few moments just to keep moving. Otherwise—drift.”
They slipped down below the pod and suddenly they were part of a procession many times longer and wider than them. Sleek, gray bodies of whales emerged from the top of the camera and swooped past. The sub trembled with every passing enormous whale, and here and there little ones darted among the others.
For a moment, they all fell silent and watched the whales. “Just look at them,” Misty said. “For as long as they’ve been here, they’ve traveled the same paths, in the same enormous groups. If you were like a … giant celestial being and you drifted by the earth and saw it spinning, they would seem like a part of the ocean itself.”
Peter cocked his head. “That’s a very strange thought. Do you picture yourself as a ‘giant celestial being’ a lot?”
“Just some perspective,” she said.
Peter snickered. “‘My perspective is I like to think I’m a cosmic god.’ Okay…” He looked down and back up. “We should be about five miles from the Alaska. If we judge by their position and bearing when we had them on sonar.”
“That’ll have to be close enough,” Gabriel said.
“Last chance to just ask for the journal,” Misty said.
“Noted.” Gabriel stole a glance at the countdown on his wristband. “Let’s get to the Katanas.” Those were personal vehicles about the size of motor scooters, good for zipping around in the ocean. They kept a pair of them clamped to the underside of the Obscure. “Peter, you have the bridge. Misty? Time to run.”
As they headed out the back hatch of the bridge into the corridor, Misty asked, “What do you think, pincer rifles?”
“I don’t think so.” Gabriel shook his head. “If we get in a situation where we’d want those, it’s over.” He had no desire to threaten anyone. They would have to do this with stealth.
They ran down the length of the Obscure throu
gh several hatches—through the passenger hold and the supply room to the dive room at the rear of the ship. Gabriel closed the hatch and started flooding the room. As the water rose fast, he and Misty went through their routine once more: lockers, spin, throw, lockers, spin, throw. “I know you don’t like this. And it’s really my problem. I’d completely understand…”
“Please.” She put on her mask, tucking a few strands of bushy hair up into it. Gabriel adjusted his own mask as the water came over their heads. Now she spoke through the microphone in the rebreather, and her voice sounded in Gabriel’s earpiece. “You need someone keeping you out of trouble.”
“Too late for that.” Gabriel grabbed a shell-shaped reel from the wall and hooked it to his belt. She gave him the thumbs-up sign when she was hooked up, too.
The dive iris flickered and opened, and they looked down into the dark water. Gabriel stepped off and fell through the floor, and in a moment, he was drifting under the hull of the ship, enveloped in cold blackness. It really was a huge difference when they didn’t use the floodlights. Gabriel touched the side of his mask to turn on its LEDs, and a dim beam of light from around his face lit up the water. He swept the beam up to let it light up the underside of the Obscure, its black panels and mother-of-pearl stripes glowing in the gray. The Obscure, its engines off, was still moving and would soon leave them behind. Gabriel’s line was still feeding out at his waist, but he thumbed a lever and the line stopped. His body jerked, and the ship began to pull him along.
Misty swam next to him, the lights around her mask casting a halo in the water. She stopped her own line, and they flowed with the ship, sweeping their lights along the underside until they reached a sort of cocoon-shaped housing stuck to the bottom of the hull. They couldn’t just drag a pair of watercraft. Shapes like that caused loud disruptions in the water and also made a ship more visible on sonar. The cocoon that housed the Katanas was tapered so that it created very light resistance and made less noise.
Quest for the Nautilus Page 7