Spy School at Sea by Stuart Gibbs

Author:Stuart Gibbs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2021-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

15 EVASIVE ACTION

Engine Room

The Emperor of the Seas

May 17

1900 hours

Three of the engineers were carrying crowbars, which they wielded like clubs. The fourth had a gun. He seemed to be in charge, although English was not his first language. “Put hands in air!” he demanded.

We ran instead. This was not my idea. Catherine bolted first, and the rest of us had no choice but to follow her.

The engineer with the gun promptly opened fire. There was plenty of machinery around to protect us, but since almost everything was made out of metal—including the walls—the bullets ricocheted about wildly.

“Careful!” Catherine screamed at them. “You’ll damage the artifacts!”

“And us!” I added. “Don’t damage us!”

The engineer kept firing as we ran. More bullets pinged off the metal surfaces. Pipes ruptured, venting steam, which created more cover for us, but also turned the engine room into a sauna—and made it hard for us to see. Suddenly, we found ourselves trying to run through a fog, surrounded by dangerous machinery and even more dangerous enemies. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the floor was moving.

The storm outside appeared to have gotten worse just in time to complicate our escape. It would have been challenging enough to flee through an obstacle course of steam and gadgetry, but now we had to struggle to keep our balance as well.

Fortunately, the engineers were in the same situation we were. From somewhere in the fog, I heard the distinct sound of someone running headlong into a turbine, followed by cursing in a language I didn’t know.

Catherine and Erica simultaneously recognized that the steam was an advantage and decided to make more of it. Each snatched up a wrench and deftly knocked the valves off other pipes, which resulted in more steam venting into the room, further concealing our escape.

“What was it you realized earlier?” Erica asked me casually, as though we were merely on an errand at the drugstore, rather than running for our lives. She had a habit of doing this. It was a little bit unnerving, as it always gave me the feeling that maybe Erica didn’t think I was going to survive long enough to tell her the information later.

“Murray knew all about this reactor!” I explained, clambering over some pipes. “About the housing and how it was bolted down and everything!”

“So?” Mike vaulted over the same set of pipes with much more grace than I had.

“Why would Murray know about this unless it was important to him?” I asked. “Murray’s not the kind of guy who just happens to read up on shipboard nuclear reactors. Or who reads up on anything, really. Plus, the fact that this ship even has a reactor is supposed to be a secret. His plot must have something to do with it.”

“Nice thinking, Benjamin!” Catherine said, in a way that made me feel fantastic. “Oh, and duck.”

I did, and she deftly lobbed her wrench over me. It whacked one of the angry engineers on the head as he emerged from the fog and promptly rendered him unconscious.

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