The Monster Missions Read online

  I was halfway through when I felt someone grab me and rip me backward. Something sharp and metallic was pressed to my back, and I stiffened as I was hauled roughly to my feet by my hair. I yelled and twisted, kicking and biting with all my might, but it was no use—the grip just tightened. The hub was pure chaos, with some of the pirates battling monsters while others battled my friends. Captain Reese was slumped on the floor, but I saw with some relief that the crew members who hadn’t been tied up had thrown themselves into the fight like their lives depended on it. Which, of course, they did.

  “Berkley! Duck!” I heard someone yell, and I turned to see Weaver expertly holding the loogie by the tail. I obeyed, and I felt the slimy fish brush the top of my head before smacking into my attacker’s face. The hands holding me let go, and I twisted away and back toward the tied-up crew members. To my surprise, the only thing left where they’d been sitting was a pile of ropes, and I turned just in time to see Hector pick up a tablet and bring it down hard over a pirate who was about to go after Wilson.

  Within a few minutes it was over, and the crew of the Britannica was back in charge. Two of the medics were hunched over Captain Reese, and the pirates who weren’t unconscious were being wrestled into the very same restraints they’d used on the Britannica’s crew. I glanced around, locating each of my friends, reassuring myself that they were all in one piece. Garth had a bloody nose, and the stinging nettlefish had apparently done a number on Max, but other than that everyone seemed okay. Weaver was hurrying around with buckets, expertly scooping up his precious specimens, a few of which were still attached to pirates. My surge of relief at the victory won was short-lived, though, as I spotted the clock on the wall. How long had it been since the Atlas sent that distress call? Had they managed to stay in front of the sea monsters tracking them? Were we already too late?

  “Well, that was fast thinking,” Hector said, coming up to clap me on the shoulder. “I was more than a little worried about you lot. By the time I made it up to the hub to warn the captain, those brutes had already gotten the jump on them. Got the jump on me, too, as a matter of fact,” he said ruefully as he rubbed a large black-and-blue goose egg on the back of his head.

  “We got a distress call,” I said, my voice much louder and more high-pitched than I’d ever heard it before. “From the Atlas, my home ship.”

  “Mine too!” Garth pitched in from across the room.

  “They are being chased and maybe even attacked by a hydra. Probably the same one that attacked them before. We have to help.”

  “I’m sorry, youngster,” Hector said. “But there is no way we can help anyone right now. Those pirates have wreaked havoc on this place. The captain’s down, and who knows what the hatch looks like after they forced entry.” He shook his head in disgust. “How these mongrels managed to infiltrate us that easily is going to haunt me until the day I die.”

  “Where is the pirate captain?” Kate asked, spinning in place as she silently accounted for the downed pirates.

  “What?” Hector said, turning.

  “Their captain,” Kate repeated. “The one who hurt Captain Reese. Where is he? Did anyone get him?”

  “The first mate is missing too,” Hector said, turning to inspect the pirates.

  “There they are!” Garth said, pointing out the front window. We all turned as five divers, each loaded down with what I recognized as the dive crew’s weapons and various other bits of technology from the Britannica, swam by.

  “We have to go after them!” Kate said.

  Hector shook his head. “They’ll be back in their rust bucket and firing on us before you’re halfway there. That is, if they don’t have a small crew on board already, just waiting for us to stick our necks out.”

  “Speaking of firing on us,” said another crew member, “if we don’t move, they’ll do just that.” Those who were able hustled to the Britannica’s controls and began flipping switches and turning knobs as they worked to wake up the submarine. Within seconds we were moving, angling up and away from the black submarine with its ominous skull and crossbones.

  “Do you think they’d really fire on us, even with most of their crew still on board?” I asked as Kate came up to stand beside me.

  “Pirates,” she said simply, and I guess that was answer enough. A tense silence followed, with no sounds but the clank and grind of the Britannica as we worked to put some distance between ourselves and the pirate submarine.

  “Good to see the Britannica didn’t sustain any serious damage,” Hector mused to himself as he bent low over the computer Captain Reese usually used. He looked up and glared at the pirate submarine a minute before shaking his head in disgust. “Here’s hoping they won’t be able to pilot their hunk of junk with such a small crew. Keep us at full speed,” he instructed. I came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to look at me, and I stood up straight. I had no idea what my face looked like, but I was hoping it was conveying more determination than desperation, even though I was feeling both things pretty equally at that moment.

  “The Atlas,” I said, slightly surprised by the command I heard in my own voice. “We have to go after the Atlas.” He stared at me for a second, blue eyes intent, but he finally nodded.

  “Wilson,” he said. “Did those knuckleheads bang up our system too badly to look up that distress call the kids are talking about?”

  “I’ll check,” Wilson said, and I held my breath as he rapidly typed something into his computer.

  “Got it,” he said. “We’re actually headed in the right direction. We just need to bear north by a few degrees.”

  “Do it,” Hector said. He turned to the medics still crouched on the floor. “How’s the captain?” he asked. One of them looked up and shook his head, his face grim. I felt my heart sink as I realized we might lose her.

  “Not to interrupt or anything,” Garth said tentatively, and we all turned to look at him. “We have seven pirates in the large-specimen room we probably need to check on,” he said. “Assuming Elmer didn’t drown them for the fun of it.”

  “Yeah,” Max said, “and we also have pirates locked in the bathrooms, the crew’s cabins, the dive room, the mess hall, and a couple of storage rooms.” He turned to me. “Berkley, where are Weaver’s keys?”

  “Here,” I said, fishing them out of my pocket and tossing them to him.

  “Right.” Hector nodded, then turned to the crew assembled in the hub. He pointed to the dive crew. “Grab some of these pirates’ weapons and three of you head back to the large-specimen room. The other two take Megan and see about the crew’s cabins.” The others were dispatched to the storage rooms and bathrooms, and everyone took off at a run.

  “Wilson, do you need me up here? Or are you good?” Hector said. Wilson gave a thumbs-up, never looking up from his monitor. Hector quickly took stock of the remaining crew, and I noticed that many of them were sporting injuries of their own, whether from the first pirate invasion or from the recent take-back of the Britannica it was hard to say. Hector’s brow furrowed, and then he shook his head. With a quick jerk of his chin at Garth and me, he turned and headed out of the hub.

  “That means we’re supposed to follow him,” Garth said as he jogged past me after Hector. I didn’t point out that I knew that already, that I had been the one to work with Hector first. I just followed. Hector zigzagged us through the sub and into the newly unlocked dive room, where we all skidded to a surprised stop. The place was a total and complete mess.

  “Whoa,” Max said, coming in behind us. “What did those jerks do?”

  “More like what didn’t they do,” Weaver said, emerging from behind an overturned bench, the two-headed beaked sea snake in hand. The snake thrashed, but Weaver didn’t seem to notice as he picked his way over the trashed diving equipment toward the door, the snake held a safe distance from his face. I tried to take in the utter destruction in front of me. The pirates had seemed to plan on making the Britannica their home, but they’d rui
ned almost everything there.

  “This was their captain’s doing,” Hector said as he picked up a wet suit that had been slashed in half. “One last stab at the Britannica before he stole what he could and left.”

  “It could have been the pirates we locked in here too,” I pointed out. “They had some time on their hands after we locked them in.”

  “What a bunch of jerks,” Garth muttered as he inspected a shattered face mask.

  Suddenly the intercom system let out a hiss of static, and we all froze in nervous anticipation. Wilson’s voice crackled through a moment later. “We will be approaching the Atlas in less than five,” he said. “I’m sending what’s left of the dive team back to prepare.”

  Hector turned to Garth. “Run up to the hub and tell him not to bother. We don’t have anything to hunt a sea monster with that isn’t in pieces or damaged.” Garth’s lips pressed together in a tight line before he opened his mouth to argue. Hector raised an eyebrow at him, and Garth snapped his mouth shut and took off.

  “So, what now?” I asked. “Send out the nets? A blood bomb? What?”

  “We’ll figure that out when we see what we’re dealing with,” Hector said. “If Weaver’s put that snake away, we need him back here. With the captain down, we’re going to need his expertise on the beastie.”

  “I can get him,” Kate said, coming into the dive room just to spin sharply on her heel and head back out the door. I followed Hector back to the hub. The first thing I noticed when we walked in was that the pirates were gone. When we’d left, there had been a group of them bound and gagged against the far wall, as well as a few who had just been tied up right where they lay. I looked around to see where they’d been taken but didn’t spot a trace of them.

  “How’s it look?” Wilson asked, glancing over at us, and I immediately stopped worrying about where the pirates had gone. All my thoughts turned to the Atlas.

  “Worse than we thought,” Hector said, bony arms crossed over his chest. “We won’t be battling this monster from the water, that’s for sure. Any gear they didn’t steal, they busted to smithereens.” I felt a fresh flash of fury at the pirates for crippling us so badly. If there had still been a few lying around, they might have received a swift kick just for spite. It would have felt good.

  “If we can’t battle them from the water, we battle them from the sub, right?” I said. “There has to be something we can use.”

  “Let’s hope,” Wilson said with a grimace. “We got another distress call from the Atlas about a minute ago, and it sounds like they have more than one monster attacking them.”

  “Two?” I said, choking a little on the word. Garth sat down hard on the floor of the hub as the blood drained from his face.

  “Let’s hope it’s not an alpha,” said Weaver, coming up to stand beside us with Kate and a heavily panting Tank.

  Garth let out a groan and covered his face with his hands. Tank let out a low woof, but even the little dog’s presence couldn’t do a thing to calm my nerves this time.

  “Well, we’re about to find out,” Hector said as the shadowy outline of the Atlas came into view.

  “Don’t let us be too late,” I whispered, and I reached out a hand to grip Garth’s shoulder for support as the ship we’d called home for our entire lives came closer. I inhaled sharply as I saw the thick red bodies twisted around the Atlas.

  “Three,” Garth breathed. “There’s three of them.” Suddenly I wasn’t numb anymore. The fear that had been holding me in place seemed to explode all at once, and I gasped as I felt a sensation that had to be similar to having a bomb detonate inside your chest. The monsters were doing everything in their power to dismantle the ship. I could already see a rainfall of supplies, crates, plants, and metal showering down to settle on the bottom of the ocean.

  “Do something,” I said, turning to Hector. “Shoot them, net them, something!”

  Hector’s face was grim. “We can’t,” he said.

  “What?” Garth and I yelled simultaneously.

  “He’s right,” Max said, his voice flat as he came to stand beside us. “The nets will just hit the ship, nothing for them to wrap around. If we fire a harpoon, the odds are we will hit the ship and do even more damage.” I shook my head, my hand over my mouth. One of the monsters detached long enough for me to see its massive head as it swam swiftly under the ship and launched itself out of the water on the other side.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Weaver said. “See the size of the one on the left? That’s an alpha. The smaller two must be his mates.”

  “My family is on there,” I said. “My dad and my older brother. Garth’s mom and dad and his little sisters.” Even as I said this, more familiar faces flooded my mind—the cook who always let Garth swipe an extra helping at breakfast, the guys who worked with Wallace and my dad in the engine room, my old teachers and the tiny kids who followed them around like a school of fish on field trips. Even Gizmo. The Atlas had been my whole world for almost my entire life.

  “Fire a blood bomb,” Hector said to Wilson. “Maybe we can lure them far enough away from the ship to use the electrical net and a harpoon.” I wasn’t sure if it was desperation or hope, but something made me cling to his words like they were the only thing keeping me from drowning. If we didn’t do something, if I sat here, helpless, and watched the Atlas go down, life would never be the same again. Not ever. Wilson nodded and launched one of the glass domes I’d helped fill. It exploded twenty feet from the ship, and I held my breath as the water turned red, waiting for the monsters to take notice. They didn’t.

  Weaver shook his head. “I was worried that wouldn’t work,” he said. “Blood isn’t a siren song for them like it is for a megalodon.”

  I noticed that Garth was still shirtless. While he’d scrubbed the majority of Elmer’s ink off himself, there was still a thick blue strip of it along his hairline and down his neck and arms, and I remembered my realization about Elmer’s ink back in the large-specimen room. I gasped as I felt an idea click into place like a missing puzzle piece. The ink was the answer. If a blood bomb could attract a monster, why couldn’t an ink bomb repel one? My tongue felt thick in my mouth as I clutched at Garth’s shoulder and swiped a finger through the blue stripe of ink on his arm.

  “What?” Garth said, looking from me to the Atlas and back again. “What now?”

  I grabbed Weaver’s shirtsleeve, my knuckles white as I yanked at it to get his attention. He turned to me, eyebrows raised. “I know what to do,” I said, holding my ink-covered finger up so he could see it.

  “What?” Weaver said, brow furrowed as he squinted at my flailing hand.

  “I know what to do,” I said, louder this time. “During the pirate attack, I think I figured out a way to keep sea monsters away.”

  “That’s right!” Garth said, his eyes wide. “How did I forget about getting dunked in the hydra tank?”

  “You got dunked in the hydra tank and survived?” Max said.

  “Spit it out,” Hector said. “How do you keep a sea monster away from a ship?”

  “Octopus ink,” I said with a grin. “Come on.” With that I raced out of the hub, down the hall, and back to the large-specimen room. I skidded inside a minute later and immediately glanced over to the tank we’d locked the pirates in earlier. It was empty now, and I made a mental note to ask Hector where exactly they kept prisoners on board the Britannica. Weaver, Garth, Kate, and Max came flying into the room behind me, and I pointed at Elmer’s tank, which was full of blue-black octopus ink.

  “Oh my,” Weaver said. “We need to drain and refill his tank before he poisons himself. I held out a hand to stop him before he could head back to the control room and shook my head, breathing hard.

  “Watch,” I instructed, and raced up the stairs to the top of the tanks. Elmer’s tank was still unlocked, and the ink had begun to pool in greasy slicks on top of the water. I plunged my arm into the tank and swirled it around until it was well coated with th
e oily ink. I pulled it out and showed it to the group below, who were watching me as though I’d lost my mind. Ignoring Weaver’s cry of protest, I turned to the hydra tank and thrust my arm inside, praying that my experiments before hadn’t just been a fluke. I waited, eyes closed, but nothing bit me. I glanced down to see all the monsters crowded on the far side of their tank in a writhing, unhappy mass.

  “Amazing,” Weaver said, stepping forward to peer in at the tiny sea monsters. “It’s the ink?” he said. “How did you discover this?” Then he seemed to shake himself and looked up at where I was still crouched, armpit-deep in a tank of sea monsters. “Get your arm out of there now,” he commanded. “You’ve made your point.” I removed my arm and gave it a shake.

  “I never thought of ink,” Weaver said, walking up to look into Elmer’s tank. “It makes sense, though. Otherwise these noble creatures would have died out long ago.”

  “That’s awesome and everything,” Kate said, “but how does that help your ship now? Do we throw Elmer at them and hope he inks them? Because I hate to break it to you, but like a lot of bullies, he may seem like a tough guy when he’s on his own turf, but he’s a great big wimp as soon as you shove him out of his comfort zone. Why do you think he’s stuck to the Britannica like glue?”

  “I’m one step ahead of you,” I said, hopping down and running into the small workroom where I’d spent countless hours with Weaver. I snatched one of the empty glass orbs out of the crate Hector and Garth had delivered the week before, orbs that were supposed to be filled with blood to make blood bombs. I turned and held it up. “Why not an ink bomb?” I said. “If we shoot enough of these around the Atlas, it should repel the monsters away. At least long enough for the Britannica to get a clear shot, right?”