Penelope’s belly had been deprived of non-turnip-related options for so long she didn’t know where to begin. Around the mess hall, penguins chatted quietly, their plates and silverware sliding as the ship rocked ever so slightly. One table over, a penguin stuck a tiny fork into a mountain of something blackened and glistening. “What’s that guy eating?”
“Sautéed krill. Delectable little fish. Can be prepared a thousand and one different ways, each of them magnifique.”
“I’ll have…the pizza, a sloppy joe, potato chips, two wagon wheel pancakes, a bowl of squid soup, and a scoop of ice cream.”
“What flavor?”
“Chocolate?”
“Chocolate? Any flavor at your fingertips, any topping you desire? No, no, no, no, no. Use your imagination, s’il vous plaît.”
Penelope thought for a moment. “I’d like a scoop of strawberry–peanut butter–fudge brownie ice cream topped with rainbow sprinkles and stuffed with chocolate chips. And caramel on top.”
“And to drink?”
“Root beer.”
The little chef disappeared into the kitchen.
Penelope ran her fingers over the leather-bound cover of Floyd’s dossier, embossed with the following words:
MISSION: Operation Thunder Strike
CRAFT: AF Delphia
RT#: 101198796428
C/O: XO Decker; Cmdr. Beardbottom; P. March
PREPARED BY: Yeoman Douglas Floyd
SECURITY CLEARANCE: Highly classified
STATUS: Destroy after reading
She opened it and devoured every word. Words and phrases danced out at her—long-range torpedo…targeted assassination…history of brutality…possibility of mass casualties. She thought of Omar, Martin, and Lucas, so gung ho for action. Did they have any clue how dangerous this mission was? At various points, her mind drifted to Buzzardstock in his melting house on Glacier Cove and to Coral, who, according to Martin, had not spoken a word in solitary confinement.
Dupree brought out Penelope’s lunch plate—actually four plates. She started slowly, savoring each delicious bite. Soon she was shoveling in everything, reaching for the sloppy joe, then the pizza, then the ice cream, then all three at the same time and no longer caring which was which so long as it wasn’t turnips. She burned the roof of her mouth, got brain freeze, and dripped syrup down her chin. It was the best meal she had ever eaten.
Eventually she realized the penguins at the next table were watching, mouths open in shock. One of the penguins mumbled something to the other two in Penglish. They glared at Penelope and nodded to each other. A minute later, they got up and left.
When Dupree cleared her plates, Penelope pointed at the empty table. “What did they say?”
“That humans eat like pigs. And that you have a chip on your shoulder.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No, literally. You’ve got a chip on your shoulder. Potato chip, I think.”
“Sit, sit,” Floyd said. “Please, get comfortable—or as comfortable as possible, anyway.”
Penelope looked at the little circular table in the yeoman’s quarters. The four penguin-sized wood chairs looked like dollhouse furniture. She eased herself onto one, so low to the ground that her knees were practically over her head. But the chair held.
“I trust that you’ve explored the ship a bit?” Floyd asked. “Have you had a chance to try Chef Dupree’s omelets? I’m told the krillburgers are also pretty good. I wouldn’t know. I don’t eat fish. How are your bunking accommodations?” He winked at Penelope. “Apparently you had no trouble sleeping.”
Decker entered the room, stiff as ever. Floyd stood and saluted the officer.
“At ease, people.” Decker tried to laugh, but it came out more like a nervous harrumph. He patted the dossier on the table between them. “I hope you’ve had time to digest this, Miss March, and you understand what we’re up against. We must act quickly but deliberately. Would you care to summarize, Floyd?”
“Yes, sir. Various sea creatures that we’ve enlisted as spies and agents around the ocean have reported strange accounts in the past twenty-four hours. Giant shadows, horrible shrieks. Trails of mangled fish along the ocean floor. Of course, we’re not certain this is the work of Nyx, but if it is, she appears to be moving west at fifteen hundred feet from the ocean’s surface, roughly seven hundred fifty nautical miles from where we are right now. And she’s killing everything in her path. Assuming a speed of thirty knots for this craft, it would take us forty hours before she was in torpedo range. She’s got a big head start.”
“So,” Penelope said, “we’re launching a torpedo at Makara Nyx?”
“Affirmative. We don’t know for certain that she has the Shard, but without it on her body at all times, she’d be too weak to unleash the level of destruction we’re seeing. We want to be careful not to destroy the Shard….”
“But how—”
Decker smoothed his wing feathers. “That’s where you and your brother come in. When we get within firing range, the two of you, armed with an elite amphibious troop led by our finest SEALs, embark on a special-ops mission to recover the Shard. Once you have succeeded and have removed yourselves from harm’s way, we fire the torpedo.”
“Then we collect you, pop a bottle of bubbly, and go home,” Floyd added.
Penelope waited for more. “That’s the plan?”
Decker and Floyd exchanged a concerned look.
“More or less,” Floyd said. “There are certain details to be hammered out.”
“How do Miles and I breathe underwater?”
“It will all be explained to you,” Decker said. “Tomorrow, oh-four hundred hours. You and your brother will undergo accelerated amphibious training.”
“I know this is a lot to take in, Penelope,” said Floyd. “Why don’t you go check out the library? I understand you enjoy books. We’ve got all the classics and plenty of rarities as well. Penguins tend to be pretty eclectic readers. And though we work hard, there is plenty of downtime on a submarine.”
“But not for too long,” Decker said before Penelope could get excited. “We expect you to brief Mr. March on the details of the mission. Within twenty-four hours, we will be on war patrol. At that point the ship must remain quiet at all times while we search for the enemy. When you’re off watch, you’ll be required to stay in your bunks. All off-duty hands will. The easiest way for us to get caught is by making noise, and I don’t intend to get caught.”
—
Miles paged through the dossier in the library, a glorious oak-paneled lair lined with books from floor to ceiling. “This is absolutely bananas! How are we supposed to…I mean, what if…Who’s gonna…Oh, for crying out loud, it’s just bananas.”
“I agree. Bananas.”
“Did someone say bananas?” Omar thrust his body into the library, followed closely by Martin and Lucas. “Hey, whatcha got there?”
Miles snapped the book shut. “Nothing.”
“That your dossier? Operation Thunder Strike?”
“I thought this was classified,” Miles said.
“Dude, we’re SEALs. We know everything. It’s our mission too. The boys and I are itchin’ to get some action.” Omar’s face darkened. “Even if it’s against, you know, her.”
A silence shrouded the library until Penelope said, “Why is everyone so afraid of Makara Nyx?”
The penguins looked at one another.
“You wanna handle this one, Marty?” Omar asked.
Martin inhaled sharply. “Years ago, a penguin, let’s call him Roy, was off Snow Island. It’s breeding season and Roy’s doing his thing, you know, waiting for his egg to hatch, balancing it on his feet and covering it with his brood pouch and all that stuff. He’s been there for two months, waiting for his wife to get back with food. He’s huddled with the colony. They’re all starving and freezing, wind blowing snow in their eyes.
“Just beyond the edge of the breeding ground, the water goes dark. Roy sees
this…thing…pass by under them, like a shadow under the water. Before he knows it, a giant fin shoots out of the water. It’s like a manta ray’s fin but a hundred times larger. The fin swipes a row of penguins into the water. Takes ’em away. Like seventy or eighty, gone just like that. Guys standing a few feet away from Roy. The water turns red. And the thing doesn’t even stop. It keeps swimming and it’s gone.
“Roy’s terrified. His friends are gone, broken eggs everywhere. He spends the next five days with the survivors, still trying to incubate their eggs. When his egg hatches, Roy breaks down and cries. That egg turns out to be my mother. She was a few feet away from never being born. Which means I was too.”
Martin shook his head. “We’re talking about pure evil here. Nyx has no feelings, no reasoning, no nothing. She just kills. And she doesn’t care. That’s a bad combination. She could be anywhere, anything, anyone.”
“Heck of a pep talk, Martin,” Lucas murmured.
The five of them sat in the library and let Martin’s words sink in. What could this tiny crew possibly do against an enemy like that?
Omar turned to Penelope. “So, wait, there aren’t actually any bananas?”
—
At 0400 hours, after a breakfast of fresh raspberries and muffins, the March siblings were led into a hidden chamber behind the electricians’ room. There they found Decker standing beside a transparent sphere with a hatch at the top. “This is an L-80 submersible vessel,” he said. “A deep-diving pod ship capable of maneuvering and combing the ocean on stealth missions.”
“That’s so cool!” Miles exclaimed.
“Yes, it is quite impressive,” said Decker, running his wing over the smooth rounded walls. “Made of titanium and steel. Equipped for independent voyages of up to six hours. Seats ten penguins comfortably. Or five penguins and two humans slightly less comfortably. You’ll be seated in back. Climb in.”
Miles and Penelope carefully lowered themselves into the ball and into their seats, which sank down low enough that they had a few inches of clearance from the rounded plexiglass ceiling. The dashboard had an imposing panel of knobs, switches, and dials.
“Don’t worry,” Decker assured them through the plexiglass. “Our team of SEALs will pilot the ship.”
“So what do we do?”
Decker’s beak curved into a strange shape, one that Penelope recognized as a look of disgust. “I understand that Mr. Buzzardstock has provided you with a full stock of…what do you civilians call them?”
“Dream cookies.”
“Yes. These cookies apparently are crucial to our mission, and you’ll be expected to bring them aboard. From what our engineers tell me, if you ingest a few bites, both of you will be able to exit the craft at great depths without suffering any adverse effects.”
“What adverse effects?”
“When you’re fifteen hundred feet underwater, you can’t just go from inside to outside. Normally if you try that, your lungs rupture, your brains boil, and it feels like a million bugs are crawling under your skin. Otherwise, it’s pretty painless.”
Penelope and Miles climbed from the sphere with stony faces, which seemed to please Decker. “But you won’t have to worry about any of that,” he said. “You have…the dream cookies.”
At that moment, two muscular penguins strutted into the room. Each had a tattoo on their wing peeking out from under their uniform and a puffed-up cheek, as if they were storing nuts for winter. Both saluted Decker.
“At ease, sailors,” Decker barked. “These are Chief Special Warfare Operators Sparks and Pooley. They will be copiloting this mission.”
Pooley stuck out his wing to shake Penelope’s hand, bone-crushingly hard. “Pleasure, ma’am.”
Sparks stuck out her wing, too, and spat a giant wad of brownish-orange juice on the floor.
“For Pete’s sake, get a cup, Sparks,” Pooley hollered. “This ain’t the tundra, sister. Here.” He handed her his cup.
“Sorry.” Sparks smiled at Penelope. “Krill tobacco. Tryin’ to quit. Disgusting stuff, really.”
Penelope liked her instantly.
Decker sighed. “I believe you know these gentlemen,” he said, gesturing to Omar, Martin, and Lucas, who had entered the room slapping each other on the back. “You may have noticed that Commander Beardbottom gives this outfit an awful lot of latitude. Too much if you ask me.”
“It’s all latitude and no longitude,” Omar blared.
Martin scoffed. “That doesn’t even mean anything.”
“It’s a shame you clowns are such effective sailors,” Decker said. “The only one who doesn’t talk, talk, talk is Lucas over there.”
Lucas grinned. “Saving it all up for your funeral, big guy.”
Everyone hooted and high-winged Lucas and made a general racket until Decker reminded them that the Delphia was about to be on war patrol and a quiet atmosphere was necessary. Which made them laugh even harder.
But when Decker left, the SEALs were all business. “Basically, we’re cramming eight months of training into a few hours for you kids,” Pooley said. “So listen good.”
They learned how to keep out of sight while swimming, spot and defuse bombs, and attach a limpet mine to an object underwater. They studied rare photos of Shards from the past and got acquainted with the dry suits—puffy astronauty things that Pooley described as “a submarine you can wear.” They learned how to operate the wireless voice system inside the helmets that would enable them to communicate underwater.
“Do we get guns?” Miles asked.
“You’re children,” Pooley said. “We’re not giving you guns. Anyway, you won’t need them. But you’re crucial to this mission. Penguins can swim underwater for twenty-five minutes, tops, so if we’re out there longer than that, you two are on your own.”
Miles struggled with the onslaught of information. Penelope, on the other hand, picked it up quickly. It was basically spy training, and she was having such a blast that she almost looked forward to the mission inside the orb, which the SEALS called the Trouble Bubble.
During a break, while the others were playing slaps with Miles, Sparks sidled up to Penelope. “How’s it going, March?”
“Good, I think. I mean, I’m just sort of winging it here.”
“Maybe so, but I’ve trained a lot of SEALs, and I’m impressed by how fast you’re learning.” Sparks wrapped her wing around Penelope’s back. “I gotta tell you. I think it’s super cool that you’re the one.”
“The one what?”
“The one. The missing piece that’s going to help us get Nyx.” Sparks grinned and spat tobacco into her cup. “When I heard it was you, I felt, you know, proud.” She looked over at the others yukking it up. “Nothing wrong with the guys. They work hard and they’re fine sailors. We girls, though? We’ve got to stick together. Right, March? Besides”—she held up her wing—“down here, we’re all winging it.”
The seven of them—Penelope, Miles, Omar, Martin, Lucas, Pooley, and Sparks—departed at 0500.
In their enormous dry suits, Penelope and Miles felt considerably more cramped in the Trouble Bubble. As the vessel lowered from an airlock into the water, Penelope felt a trickle of sweat run down her temple. Miles couldn’t hide his nausea. “Don’t ralph in that helmet,” Omar said. “Unless you want to live with it awhile.”
Sparks and Pooley hit a few buttons on the control panel and the craft jetted off into the dark water, churning a frothy wake behind it.
Headlights shined a bright beam on the path before them, and Penelope couldn’t believe how barren the ocean was—just a few sickly white fish, some depressed-looking krill, and a handful of disoriented squid. Otherwise, just blackness in all directions.
“Not much exists down here anymore,” said Martin’s voice in her earpiece. “Almost no sunlight reaches this far down to allow even the tiniest plankton to grow. The area is so cold and hostile, it’s less a food chain than a prison populated by species that don’t know any better.”
“Thank you, Professor,” said Omar.
“Sonar aboard the Delphia indicates an enemy at fifteen nautical miles west,” Pooley said, rubbing his beak. “Why don’t we just sneak up on her? Whaddaya say, guys?”
“Not too fast. Young Miles back there might lose his breakfast.”
The craft accelerated and pitched downward into a giant mountain range more beautiful than any Penelope had ever seen in a book. They zipped between soaring ridges and deep valleys until they were near the scarred ocean floor.
That was when the crew went silent.
The picked-over corpses of every once-living thing lined the rocky ground.
Bush sponges ripped apart, sea urchins in shreds, scallops and worms torn to pieces. Nothing had survived. This was not the work of nature. Something had come through here, bloodthirsty and indifferent, and annihilated it all. Penelope reached out to squeeze Miles’s hand, which didn’t feel like much considering they were both wearing thick gloves. But his shaking hand squeezed back.
Sparks tried to lighten the mood. “I’m curious. How do these cookies work, exactly?”
“I have no idea,” Penelope said. “They just do. For us, anyway.”
“What happens?”
“You feel like you’re leaving your body and traveling through space or time, and seeing things happening. Other times, you’re in your body, but it’s doing things that bodies don’t do.”
“What do they taste like?”
“Eh. They’re not very good.”
“I’m showing something two-point-three nautical miles northwest,” Pooley said. “Something dark on the ocean floor. Bank right, Sparks. Toward that tunnel.”
Sparks turned the wheel and they sailed through a gravelly corridor that appeared to pulsate around them. The crew spotted the end of the tunnel in the distance of their craft’s murky yellow lights.
“Everybody quiet,” Sparks said. “Hit the lights. Interior and exterior.” A moment later they were in a dark so pure that it seemed to go on forever. Eventually, the tiny black-blue glow at the end of the tunnel appeared, and they crept toward it.
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