The Serpent's Nest by Jason Henderson

Author:Jason Henderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

12

WHALES APPEARED ALONGSIDE them and then disappeared in a blue blur as they whisked through the water. “Oil platform,” Peter said, and suddenly they bent sideways, the Kekada going lateral as it slid around a large concrete platform. When he straightened out again, he called, “There she is.”

“Disengage,” Gabriel called and the Kekada came out of SC drive, zooming at a regular fifty knots toward the surface. The front camera showed the dark skies through the waves before they punched through, landing on the surface.

“Nebula, this is Kekada, how far away are you?”

“Fifteen minutes,” Nerissa said.

“Ugh, it’s raining,” Gabriel said. On the screen, the view of the night was murky as sheets of gray rain fell, droplets flowing down the camera of the drone as it hung in the air. Through the water they could see a ship of about three stories listing to the starboard, smoke belching from somewhere just above the waterline. It was about two hundred yards away. The view zoomed in and Misty read aloud the markings.

“It looks like a medium-sized cruise ship,” Peter said.

“Bruno III.” Misty tapped a few keys and then said, “It’s a Dutch cruise ship that crosses half the Atlantic, does some river cruises. Seven hundred passengers.”

“Figure three crew for every ten passengers,” Gabriel said.

“So that’s thirty percent.” Misty bit her lip. “So total, nine hundred and thirty-three people.”

What were they going to do? They were just a little ship.

“Nerissa, you listening? We’re looking at possibly nine hundred and thirty-three people to get off that ship,” Gabriel said. All along the ship, yellow lifeboats were bound to the side of the hull. Most of these were the new type of lifeboats: large, completely covered vessels that could hold fifty people each. Plastic and yellow, they looked like giant bathtub toys. Some of these were already in the water. Countless people were lined up on the decks, some of them climbing in. “They’re loading the lifeboats.”

Nerissa came back. Very likely she was watching from a drone she had sent before her. “They’ll wait until each is loaded before extending it out and dropping it into the water.”

Just as she said this, one of the yellow boats lifted off the deck on a pair of mechanical arms, sweeping out over the ocean. The arms lowered it about ten feet, leaving about twenty feet of air. Then it released. Gabriel watched the lifeboat drop into the water, waves splashing all around. Then it began to move.

Just then on the other side of the ship something blew—black smoke and flame punched through the side. People swarming on the deck began to push and run as sections of the deck disintegrated. Gabriel saw two of the lifeboats topple, ripping away parts of the ship as they went. The people running, packed together, looked like dolls, far away and impossible to count or distinguish.

Misty clamped her hands over her mouth in horror at the scene.

The hair on the back of Gabriel’s neck prickled as he thought of several

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