‘Truly?’
‘Ain’t the worst job I had,’ Karmon said, and laughed.
‘Food’s okay,’ the other maid said. ‘Work’s okay. No danger. Just hard. Long hours.’
‘Long hours,’ Karmon said. ‘And we never see land. Trouble is, costs are high on a job like this. Uniforms, food, cabin, water. I got me an even bigger debt now. Your sister too, prob’ly.’
The story was too familiar to make Pod very angry, but still it rankled. ‘But she was okay, the last time you saw her?’
‘She’s okay. Don’t worry.’ Karmon paused, looking at him curiously. ‘So are you working here now? Got a job in the kitchen?’
‘Not exactly,’ Pod said. ‘Hey, you ever see Blossom again, you tell her I’m doing good now. And tell her I’m looking for her, okay?’
‘What do you mean you’re doing good?’ Karmon stared at him, her eyes widening. ‘You free or something?’
The maid in charge of the monitor had come out to see what all the chit-chat was about. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘why ain’t you working?’
Karmon and the other maids scrambled. The maid from the work station glared at Pod. He hurried back the way he’d come, shedding his kitchen hand’s jacket, and went out onto the deck to find Essie, his head pounding with excitement.
He hadn’t found his sister, but he’d found the next best thing: he knew the name of the ship she was on.
Essie was still sitting in her deckchair when he emerged into the sunny dazzle of the deck. She was deeply immersed in her shell and didn’t seem to notice him until he was standing right in front of her.
‘We’re good,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Essie nodded and they were about to head back to the companionway that led off the ship when the sound of a siren split the air.
At first the people around them merely seemed startled, but then an alarm began to blurp, loudly and repetitively, in a way that seemed guaranteed to prevent rational thought. The passengers looked variously startled, disgruntled, confused. Only the staff made it clear: they looked terrified. Something was going on.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Essie, grabbing a steward.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ he gabbled, ‘everything’s under control. Now please return to your cabin and stay there until you hear the all-clear.’
Essie and Pod stared at each other and ran as one to the gate.
Too late: the companionway was being raised.
There was no way off the ship.
Pirate submarine
‘How do we get off this thing?’ cried Pod.
‘I don’t know,’ Essie said. ‘It’s too far to jump.’
‘I’m not jumping,’ Pod said.
‘Maybe there’s another deck below this one. It wouldn’t be so far—’
‘I’m not jumping,’ Pod insisted.
‘We have to get off somehow!’ Essie said.
They were interrupted by a scream. They turned; passengers were running to look over the opposite deck. Pod and Essie ran with them, and saw something in the water below them.
It was a long, curved metallic shape floating just above the waterline, bristling with guns and turrets. Inflatable boats were deploying from it, filled with men carrying big guns, and other men in diving gear.
‘That’s a pirate submarine,’ Pod said.
‘A what?’ said Essie.
‘They put mines on the bottom of the boat. Captain don’t hand over the boat, company don’t pay the ransom, they blow it up,’ said Pod flatly.
Essie looked at him in horror. ‘We really need to get off this boat,’ she said.
With a blast, water cannons began to roar, pouring torrents of water off the cruise ship and down onto the submarine and its submersibles. The submersibles scooted out of range of the water cannons, and when they were visible again to the people up on deck, their cargo of divers had vanished—presumably somewhere under the boat.
‘Where do you think Will and Annalie are?’
‘Hopefully, where we left them,’ Pod said.
Essie began to run towards the stern of the boat, in the vague hope that they might be able to see the Sunfish. They reached the back deck and looked out. There was no sign of them.
‘Oh, what are we going to do?’ wailed Essie.
‘Look,’ Pod said. He dragged Essie over to a map of the ship that had been posted on the wall with many detailed instructions about what to do in case of emergency. ‘Where are we now?’
Essie looked frantically around her. ‘Um . . . we’re on this deck,’ she said, pointing.
‘There’s another deck here,’ Pod said, pointing to another deck below the one they were on. ‘Let’s get down there.’
They ran to the nearest stairs, but the crew were busily locking them down. ‘Return to your cabin!’ they shouted.
‘But our cabin’s down there!’ Essie said.
‘Go via the main stairs.’
‘But these are right here! I promise we’ll be quick!’
The crewman unlocked the gate, let them through, then slammed and locked it behind them. Pod and Essie clattered down the stairs. At the bottom, the gate was already locked.
‘Hey!’ they shouted. ‘Help!’
But there was no one nearby. The deck was littered with overturned deckchairs, abandoned magazines, lost shoes and tumbled towels.
‘Help!’ they shouted, rattling the gates.
At last a crewman stuck his head out, looking pale and frightened. ‘What you doing there?’ he called.
‘We’re trying to get to our cabin, can you let us out please?’
‘We’re locked down!’
‘Please!’
The crewman dashed out, unlocked the gate, and set them free. As he did so, a stream of armed men came pouring from a Staff Only door.
‘Get off the deck, quick!’ the crewman said, and fled back to where he’d come from.
Essie and Pod ducked for cover as the armed security guards spread out and took up positions, looking over the sides. None of them seemed even slightly interested in the two children: all their attention was on what was happening in the water.
‘How hard do you suppose it would be to launch a lifeboat?’ Essie whispered. She could see one, not far away. The instructions for its use seemed very detailed.
‘Hard,’ Pod said.
There was a shout, and the security guards began to fire. The noise was deafening. Orders were barked, and they heard radios squawking, then the guards closest to them were running forwards.
‘Come on,’ Pod said, and started running in the opposite direction.
Something was clearly happening up the front of the boat; the sound of gunfire grew more intense and there was more shouting.
Essie grabbed two lifejackets and handed one to Pod.
‘No,’ he said.
‘You want to get off this boat or not?’
They scrambled into the life jackets, fumbling with clips and straps, and headed to the observation deck in the stern.
A security guard was standing there, monitoring the approaches. Fortunately he had his back to them and they avoided being seen.
‘We’ll have to go over the side,’ Essie said. ‘Don’t want any of them to see us.’
‘No,’ Pod said. ‘Specially not the pirates.’
They peered over the sides. The water cannons were still blasting—if they jumped directly into the path of one they would get pummelled. They crept along the deck, afraid that the security guards might return at any moment.
‘Here,’ Essie said. ‘We have to do this, Pod. It’s the only way.’
Pod knew she was right. So he did what he’d learned to do years before when he’d been sent down into some flooded factory with only a leaky hose to rely on. He made his mind go blank, and focused on doing the very next thing that needed to be done. That was the trick: take this step, then this step, then this step, and not think about it.
He climbed up the rail. He held on. H
e took Essie’s hand. He let himself fall.
Into the churn
And oh, how far it was. So far and so far, falling with his stomach travelling at its own separate and sickening pace, and then he hit the water, his body ready to keep flying down into the terrifying green, but the life jacket had other ideas. It smacked him in the chin as it pulled him back up to the surface and he was floating awkwardly and Essie was beside him.
‘Swim!’ she gasped, and began breaststroking awkwardly, hampered by her life jacket.
Pod paddled with his arms as best he could.
It was mayhem above them, mayhem in the water. The water cannons still roared and he could hear the whine of the motors on the pirates’ inflatables. They had jumped into the water on the landward side; the submarine was on the other side, so they could not see what was going on. An inflatable roared past, only metres from Essie’s face, the pirates in it spraying the upper decks of the great cruise ship with gunfire. Gunshots pinged down into the water all around them and Essie screamed in terror, afraid she might be caught in the crossfire, but the inflatable roared off and the shooting went with it.
Then, from the other side of the boat, they heard a thud, and then, a moment later, they felt a shockwave roll through the water around them. The huge cruise ship barely moved.
‘What was that?’ Essie asked. ‘Do you think they detonated the mine?’
‘We’ll soon find out,’ Pod said grimly.
They swam, even more desperately than before, both of them aware, from different sources, that sinking ships could suck you down with them. (Essie had seen a tear-jerking movie about a famous historical shipwreck; Pod had heard first-hand stories about the wreck of a slave hulk.)
Behind them, the cruise ship’s horn boomed out, three blasts, and then a new roar was added to the mix.
Pod glanced back. ‘They’re starting their engines!’
The water cannons shut off. The great propellers began to turn. The water boiled.
Essie and Pod kicked frantically, getting nowhere fast. All around them they could feel the water churning. Very slowly, the great ship began to move.
‘It could still pull us in!’ Essie shrieked, and the two of them kicked and thrashed and stroked some more.
The cruise ship, huge, white, slightly scarred, moved off into open water. The churn moved with it.
Essie and Pod stopped paddling and dangled there in the water, held up by their life jackets.
‘Now what?’ Essie said.
They were still a long way from shore, and there was nowhere to land. This part of the island was edged with cliffs
Then, from around the headland, came a welcome sight.
The Sunfish was sailing towards them.
Links
‘A pirate submarine?’ Will exclaimed. ‘Really?’
‘And armed security guards,’ Essie said. ‘That’s a new thing for cruise ships.’
‘I don’t think the submarine made it,’ Pod said.
There was floating debris in the water; it looked like the submarine had been seriously damaged, if not destroyed entirely. They had decided to steer clear of it and swiftly left Kapa Island behind.
‘I found some things I think you should see,’ Essie said, when they were out in open water once again.
While Pod had been searching for his sister, Essie had made the most of the Princess’ signal and done some searches. She’d begun with the four names on the list.
‘I found a few references to them,’ Essie said, ‘but none of it’s recent. In fact, most of it’s from before we were born.’
She flicked through the little she’d found: young men and women attending university, winning medals, publishing scientific papers, appearing in campus musicals, performing with long-vanished bands, smiling from long-ago news stories. The most recent entries were fifteen years old. Then nothing.
‘They’ve all gone underground,’ Annalie said. ‘Every single one of them.’
‘Yes. But I did manage to find this,’ Essie said.
It was a photograph, slightly fuzzy, showing seven people standing on some elaborate steps outside a building. They all had Admiralty kit bags, although they were not wearing uniform. There was a man in a cowboy hat, a woman with long red hair in a plait, a big woman, and a thin, dark-eyed man, older than the others, with a dark quiff, already threaded with silver.
‘It’s Spinner!’ Annalie said.
‘Is that them?’ asked Will excitedly.
‘It has to be them,’ Essie said. ‘And look. That’s the guy who tried to arrest us in Southaven.’
His face was less grooved and his hair was much fuller, but it was recognisably Avery Beckett. He was on a higher step than the others, positioned between Spinner and a third woman.
‘Who do you reckon that is he’s standing next to?’ Essie asked.
‘I think—’ Annalie began.
‘That’s our mother,’ finished Will.
The twins leaned in closer. The woman was young and lovely, smiling at the camera. She had the same thick hair as Annalie, Will’s square jaw. The two of them studied the fuzzy image, trying to trace themselves in that unfamiliar face.
‘So that’s what she looked like,’ Annalie murmured.
‘You don’t remember her?’ asked Essie.
‘Don’t remember her, never seen a photo of her,’ Will said. ‘She died when we were babies.’
They were all quiet for a moment. Then Pod whistled. ‘Hey, Graham. Come look at this.’
Graham flew down and cocked his head on one side as he studied the picture. Then he began to squawk with excitement and fly round and round Pod’s head, words escaping him.
‘Yep. He recognises them,’ Will said.
‘I recognise the building too,’ Essie said. ‘They’re on the steps of the Ministry of Science. See?’
She’d found a second photo of the Ministry of Science to compare it with. It was a very old building with the same elaborate marble staircase the seven young people were standing on.
‘I wonder where they’re going,’ Will said.
‘The desert?’ Pod suggested.
‘I searched “Ministry of Science” and “desert” but I didn’t get very far,’ Essie said. ‘Mind you if it was top secret, I wouldn’t expect to find much.’
‘I can’t believe you found this much,’ Annalie said. ‘It’s amazing.’
‘Searching the links is what I do,’ Essie said modestly.
Later, Essie took Annalie aside. ‘There’s something else I wanted to show you,’ she said, activating her shell again. ‘After I recognised him in the picture I thought I’d look into that Avery Beckett guy too. There was heaps of stuff on him.’
He was, as he said, an agent of the Admiralty’s Department of Scientific Inquiry, and was listed with a name and photo on their personnel page as Head of the Special Investigations Section. The description of what the department actually did was brief and vague.
Next, Essie showed her a news article that had appeared six years ago in the Daily Herald, one of Dux’s main newsfeeds.
Victory in international piracy fight
The Admiralty has smashed an international smuggling ring trading in stolen technology with the arrest of pirate captain Ambo Suz Mila, 35, and his confederates. Suz Mila has been charged with conspiracy to steal, transport and sell top-secret technology taken from the Admiralty’s Department of Scientific Inquiry, and also with using that technology to carry out acts of piracy against vessels travelling through Allied Federation of Nations waters.
The investigation into the pirates has been conducted over a period of eight months, and culminated this morning in a dawn raid on Moombass Island, one of the Moon Islands, where the pirates had a heavily fortified compound. The Admiralty team overcame strong resistance to penetrate the compound, coming under heavy fire, without sustaining any serious injuries. The pirates attempted to detonate the compound to destroy the evidence of their activities, risking the lives of the f
amily members and children also living there, but they were prevented from doing so by the swift action of the Admiralty team. The team then made numerous arrests and recovered a large amount of stolen technology, weapons, and other contraband items.
‘The theft of naval technology represents a grave threat to the ongoing security of everyone who lives under the Admiralty’s protection,’ said Commander Avery Beckett, who headed the operation. ‘These people are ruthless, and they’ll stop at nothing to steal the technology that helps us keep people safe. By smashing this ring, we’ve struck a blow against the pirates who want to steal from us, and made the high seas a safer place for all of us.’
The technology recovered includes experimental communications equipment and a new kind of propulsion engine. Although the details of this new engine remain classified, Commander Beckett noted that this new-generation high-speed engine would make pirates virtually impossible to catch.
‘The recovery of this technology was of the highest priority for our team,’ he said.
The Admiralty leadership has commended Commander Beckett and his team for the surgical precision of the successful operation. The accused, who come from non-Federation countries or are non-documented persons, have been transported to Dux to await trial.
‘Yikes,’ Annalie said, when she’d finished reading. ‘That guy’s even more hardcore than I realised.’
‘Wait until you read this,’ Essie said.
The second article she showed her was much longer. It was a feature article that had been published on a newslink called Uncover.
‘What’s Uncover?’ asked Annalie.
‘It’s an independent investigative newslink published out of Barbassa,’ Essie said. Barbassa was a small, mountainous, landlocked country which had never seen the need to join the Admiralty’s Federation of Allied Nations and which maintained a lofty neutrality to the squabbles of the world.
Death on Moombass
They came in the pre-dawn darkness: four landers from the Admiralty warship Defiance, each containing an operational team of five men. They slid silently onto the beaches at 4.54 a.m., weapons ready, and moved up the beach and into the trees. Their target was a large encampment, protected by armed guards and an electric fence, where as many as two hundred men, women and children lived together. To the Admiralty, this camp was a pirate base and a vital link in the international tech-theft network. To the two hundred people who lived there, it was the only home they’d ever known.
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