The Castle in the Sea: Quest of the Sunfish 2 Read online

  Annalie realised the list must be an inventory of the Sunfish’s contents. She was relieved they hadn’t left the money behind for the pirates to find. ‘Is there some other way we can pay?’ she asked.

  From the corner of her eye she saw Pod scowl at her, but she knew she had no other option.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Wirehead said, ‘there is.’ Wirehead picked up a shell and activated the display. An image of a piece of computer hardware was projected into the air between them.

  ‘This is the Loudon Multi-Phasal Scanning Module,’ Wirehead said. ‘It’s part of the Admiralty’s new-generation weather array and it’s much better than anything they’ve had before. They’re rolling it out to their top-of-the-line vessels at the moment, and we want one.’ Wirehead rotated the image, which turned in 3D, revealing its various angles. ‘I want you to steal it for me.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about thieving,’ Annalie protested. ‘Why do you need me to do it?’

  ‘We need someone small,’ Wirehead said. ‘Like you.’

  The Admiralty had a base on the eastern edge of the Moon Islands. There was a technical crew there that did the high-end maintenance that couldn’t be done at sea, including upgrading and installing the newest technology. The Kangs had discovered the base had recently received one of these modules; their spies had identified which warehouse it was kept in, and acquired the code that would let you into the storeroom where it was kept. They had also identified a tiny window, high up on the perimeter wall, which a small thief could wriggle through.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Wirehead said. ‘Are you game?’

  ‘If I can get this device for you,’ Annalie said, checking the terms of the deal, ‘you’ll fix my boat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ll help me find my friends? And Dan Gari?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  Pod jumped in. ‘We’ll be totally square? No bills, no extra money owing?’

  Wirehead smiled. ‘Didn’t I tell you I’m an honest gentleman of the sea?’

  ‘And once the boat’s fixed, we’ll be able to leave here on it, free and clear?’ Annalie said.

  ‘That is the nature of the deal, yes,’ Wirehead said, starting to sound irritated. ‘So what’s it going to be? Yes or no?’

  Pod looked at Annalie. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he murmured.

  ‘What choice do we have?’ Annalie said.

  ‘None,’ Wirehead said. ‘Let’s go steal some tech!’

  The Sunfish would have taken weeks to get to the Admiralty base, but the Kangs didn’t move at such a leisurely pace. That same day, Annalie and Pod were loaded into the back of a Kang boat, and soon they were motoring through the rocky channels of Dasto Puri and out into the open sea. Annalie had told Graham to stay with the Sunfish while they were gone, but Graham didn’t trust the pirates. ‘Graham go ashore. Graham like land. Find nice tree.’

  ‘Please be careful,’ Annalie said.

  ‘You be careful,’ Graham retorted.

  Annalie had also tried to tell Pod that he didn’t have to come with her on the mission, but Pod was having none of it.

  ‘It’s my boat,’ she said. ‘I made the deal. No point both of us going down for it.’

  ‘Who’s going to keep you out of trouble if I don’t come?’ Pod said.

  Wirehead insisted they spend some time studying the device as they travelled. The storeroom would be full of tech; any of it, obviously, would be welcomed by the Kangs, but he wanted to be absolutely sure they stole the right device.

  Not far from the island where the Admiralty base was located, they met with a rickety-looking fishing boat that would take them ashore. The Kangs were not so foolish as to take one of their own vessels into the Admiralty’s harbour. Annalie, Pod and Wirehead clambered across from the Kang boat onto the fishing boat, which reeked, unsurprisingly, of fish. The Kang boat roared off to wait at a safe distance, while the fishing boat puttered towards their destination.

  ‘Just remember,’ Wirehead warned them, as they entered the harbour, ‘if you try to go to the Admiralty about your mission, you’re dead. Tell them what we looking for, tell them we put you up to it, try to make trouble for us, you’re dead. Understand? If I hear you’ve snitched—and I will hear—you’re dead. Doesn’t matter what deals you think you’ve made with them, you’re dead. We got eyes everywhere. We know everything. So don’t even try it. Okay?’

  Annalie gulped and nodded. She had no doubt that he meant it.

  The Admiralty base was vast and sprawling, made up of a huge assortment of buildings both old and new, ringed around with walls and fences. They walked and walked, through the civilian town that surrounded the base, along busy streets filled with bustling night markets, past places to eat and drink and be entertained, and then on to the warehouse district. There most of the buildings had already been locked up, and the few people who remained were in a hurry to get home. There were no streetlights here, and although one or two warehouses had their own light over the door, they did little to penetrate the gloom.

  Finally Wirehead stopped in a street filled with rundown warehouses and nodded towards a building. ‘There it is.’

  The building was made of dark old brick, two storeys high, with just a few small windows in the otherwise blank facade. There were no keep out signs, no warnings. No lights shone from anywhere inside. It was so dark they could barely even see the window they were supposed to climb through.

  ‘Go on,’ Wirehead said. ‘Don’t muck this up.’

  Thieves

  The window was indeed tiny. Annalie squeezed through, and Pod followed. He was rake-thin, but his shoulders were broader than hers, and for a moment it looked like he was stuck, but somehow he managed to squirm through.

  The warehouse was entirely dark. Wirehead had told them that at night the building was locked up and there were guards on all the doors, but they were stationed outside; they shouldn’t expect to see anyone inside. Following their hand-drawn map, the two of them hurried down the hallway. Every step seemed to echo; although Annalie knew no one was supposed to be in the building, every sound grated on her nerves. She tried to tread more quietly.

  They found the storeroom without difficulty. Annalie hesitated over the numeric keypad, stopping yet again to check the number she had memorised. She entered it, afraid that this might be the moment it all went wrong, fearing a light would turn red and an alarm start wailing.

  The door gave a cheery chirp and a click. They pushed the door open and stepped into a large warehouse filled with metal shelving which ran floor to ceiling. It reminded Annalie of Spinner’s workshop at home, although everything Spinner had was second-hand, home-made, reconditioned. Everything here was fresh from the factory, brand new and shiny. It was shelved according to numbers and codes, which would have made it easy to find what you were looking for if you knew the code. Unfortunately, the Kangs had not provided them with that information.

  ‘Let’s split up,’ Pod whispered. ‘Be quicker.’

  Annalie started at one end of the warehouse, Pod at the other, and the two of them began working their way down the aisles. Annalie shone her torch on rows and rows of gadgets, realising it could take them hours to find what they were looking for.

  ‘Hey, Annalie,’ hissed Pod. ‘Come look at this.’

  She hurried to join him at the far end of the storeroom. To her dismay, she saw him shining his torch on a secure area of shelving protected by a metal cage.

  ‘Reckon that’s where they keep the good stuff?’ Pod said.

  Annalie shone her torch through the bars and ran it along shelves filled with expensive-looking high-tech gear. Sure enough, there, in the middle of a row, was the Loudon Multi-Phasal Scanning Module.

  ‘How are we going to get in there?’ Annalie said, dismayed.

  Pod walked over to the gate. It had a keypad, just like the main door. ‘Reckon it’s the same number?’ he suggested.

  ‘Wouldn’t be very secure if it wa
s,’ Annalie said, inspecting the keypad. ‘Why didn’t the Kangs find out this number? We can’t do anything without it.’

  ‘Maybe there’s some other way to get in,’ Pod said.

  They prowled around the cage, studying it. The bars were too close together for even a skinny child to slip through, and went right down to the floor, so there was no chance of sneaking underneath. There was a metal roof sitting squarely on top of the bars, so there was no way of sneaking over the top either. They returned their attention to the gate.

  ‘Maybe it has another key?’ Annalie said. There was a desk beside the cage, where a guard presumably sat during the day. She began to examine the desk. ‘Maybe there’s some kind of manual release. A spare key, or a button you can press.’

  ‘If you find one, don’t press it,’ Pod said. ‘It’s probably alarmed.’

  Annalie took half a step back, afraid of accidentally triggering anything. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said helplessly.

  Pod had returned to study the gadget through the bars thoughtfully. ‘You reckon it’s small enough to fit through the bars?’ he asked.

  Annalie came and joined him. ‘The box is too big,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, but what about the thing itself?’

  Annalie raised her eyebrows. There was probably padding inside the box to protect the gadget, which meant the device itself might just be small enough to get through the bars. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Okay, then.’

  Pod moved away purposefully, hunting the aisles. When he came back, he held a coil of thin, lightweight cable. He took out his pocketknife, attached it to the cable, then chose a blade with a hook on the end. Carefully he leaned through the bars and swung the cable towards the gadget on the shelf. His first throw missed. He tried again; this time he clipped the box, but the hook didn’t take. He tried this several more times, but it soon became clear it wasn’t going to work. The hook simply couldn’t grab onto the box.

  ‘I’ve got another idea,’ Annalie said.

  She went back to the security desk, opened a few drawers, and soon found what she was looking for: a roll of tape. She made a sticky loop of tape, and stuck it as securely as she could onto the hook.

  ‘Try it now,’ she said.

  Pod swung the cable again. The tape stuck. ‘Got it!’ Pod whispered in triumph.

  Carefully Pod eased the box off the shelf and dragged it to the bars. Annalie reached in and unpacked it, removing the components from their packaging one by one and easing them through the bars as delicately as if she was moving a baby bird that had fallen from its nest. Pod amused himself hooking some other objects from inside the cage and adding them to their haul.

  ‘That’s not what we came for, you know,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Who cares? It’s good tech,’ Pod said. ‘Pirates always want good tech. Maybe we can earn ourselves a bonus.’

  Annalie grinned, and jammed everything into a backpack. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘let’s get out of here.’

  The two of them hurried for the door, but before they could reach it they heard a sound that stopped them cold.

  There were voices coming from somewhere outside. Suddenly, light bloomed under the door.

  There were people in the corridor. And they were coming in.

  Lost on the base

  Pod and Annalie scampered back to hide in one of the rows, crouching behind some huge drums.

  ‘Is there another way out?’ Pod whispered.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

  ‘Windows?’ Pod said.

  They swivelled to look, and yes, there were windows, high up in the walls.

  ‘We could climb up the shelves,’ Pod said.

  They ran to the end of the row and the window furthest from the door. Pod climbed up first, his long limbs making short work of the climb. The shelves wobbled dangerously under him—they were freestanding and were not intended for this kind of treatment. Annalie climbed cautiously after Pod, afraid of toppling the whole thing over and starting a chain reaction that would bring all the rows of shelves down like dominoes. Pod, up on top, extended a hand to help her up.

  Outside the door, they heard beeping. Someone was keying in the code.

  Pod pushed at the window. ‘It doesn’t open,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to break it.’

  The door chirped and opened. Someone slapped on the lights. The sudden brightness was dazzling.

  Pod put his foot against the glass and kicked hard; Annalie joined in. The window shattered and they knocked the pieces of glass out.

  Someone shouted, and they could hear booted feet running. Pod wrapped his hand in a fold of his top, lowered himself out the window, and dropped.

  Annalie did her best to follow, but as she gripped the window ledge, glass stabbed deep into her hand, and the sudden bright pain made her lose her grip and she fell, landing awkwardly so one foot crumpled under her. More pain blazed up her leg. Pod helped pull her to her feet.

  They had landed in a courtyard, and Annalie realised to her dismay they were now inside the Admiralty base. It was not brightly lit, but there was enough to see two fugitive kids, if you were looking for them.

  ‘This way,’ Pod said, and pulled her into the darkness between two buildings. Annalie hopped along after him, fiery pain shooting up and down her leg. This is bad, she thought. This is really bad.

  They dropped down out of sight, both of them gasping.

  ‘What are we gonna do now?’ Pod said.

  ‘We’ve got to find a way to get off this base.’

  ‘That map any use?’

  ‘Nope.’ It only had the floorplan for the warehouse, nothing more.

  ‘Which way do you reckon?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Annalie said.

  Her hand was throbbing. She peered at it in the darkness, and realised blood was welling out of it. ‘My hand’s bleeding.’

  ‘We don’t want to leave a trail,’ Pod said.

  He took out his pocketknife again, sliced a strip off the bottom of his shirt and used it to bandage the cut. It did nothing to stop the throbbing pain, but she hoped it would stem the bloodflow.

  ‘They must know we’re out here,’ Pod said. ‘We should keep moving. They’re gonna come looking for us.’

  With no idea which direction they should be going in, they hurried away. Annalie’s leg hurt so much she could barely hobble. Pod kept getting ahead of her and having to wait for her to catch up. Eventually he said, ‘Here,’ and offered her his arm. Together they limped along, trying to stay in the shadows. The sounds of feet and voices seemed to be everywhere, echoing nightmarishly off the hard surfaces around them. They walked up this row of buildings and down that, choosing the darkest streets, ducking down to hide whenever anybody came near them. In no time at all they were hopelessly lost, with absolutely no idea how they were ever going to get off the base.

  Once, they came out from a gap between two buildings and actually spotted a gate. It was brilliantly lit and heavily guarded. No one could pass in or out without having their identity checked and their purpose noted.

  ‘We could make a run for it,’ said Pod.

  ‘They’ve got motorbikes,’ Annalie said. ‘And I don’t think I can run.’

  ‘Steal a motorbike?’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Find a truck and hide in it?’

  ‘I bet they’d search them.’

  Someone was coming towards them. Once again they were forced to retreat.

  ‘Maybe we’ll find another gate,’ Annalie said.

  They kept moving, rather hopelessly now. Annalie was having to lean more and more heavily on Pod. And she was beginning to worry that Wirehead would give them up for lost and leave without them.

  Then a smell caught her attention, a smell she remembered from school: the throat-catchingly fierce scent of Admiralty laundry. ‘Maybe we can make ourselves a bit less conspicuous,’ she said.

  They were standing outside the laundry bui
lding, and luckily it wasn’t locked. Inside, a collection room held bags of clean laundry, each bag neatly labelled with its owner’s name, rank and number. She searched the rows until she found what she was looking for.

  ‘Here you go, Cadet Pod. Try this on for size.’ Pod’s jumpsuit was too short, and Annalie’s too long, but they made passable cadets, so long as you didn’t look at their feet: Pod wore no shoes at all, and Annalie wore old canvas sandshoes. Real cadets would have worn boots, but they couldn’t be too fussy. Annalie picked up one of the laundry bags and concealed her backpack inside it.

  ‘We can’t keep wandering around trying to find a gate we can get through,’ she said. ‘They’ll all be like that first one—too many guards. I think we need to try and get back to that warehouse and leave the way we came.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Pod said.

  ‘No. They’ll search the place, and when they realise we’re not there any more, they’ll leave again. They won’t be expecting us to come back.’

  ‘So how do we find that warehouse again?’

  ‘I think I can work it out.’

  Annalie’s old boarding school, Triumph College, was attached to an Admiralty battleship. She’d been on the battleship’s base several times during her only term at Triumph and she knew there was an order to the way they were laid out. The Admiralty liked grids, and they liked numbers. She consulted her map once more and saw, to her great relief, that whoever had drawn the map had also written the building’s number on it. The warehouse they’d broken into was building J207.

  ‘I reckon,’ Annalie said, ‘the letter tells you what street it’s on, and then you just have to follow the numbers.’

  ‘So where are we now?’

  Annalie took Pod outside, and they saw the laundry building was numbered C466.

  ‘That sounds far.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s go.’

  They hobbled on, two dodgy-looking cadets carrying a laundry sack. Annalie’s guess proved correct, and they soon found their way to J street. The buildings on J seemed to be mostly storage rooms and workshops rather than messes or dormitories, and at night most of these were dark, quiet and empty. But even this part of the base was not deserted; guards passed them more than once, actively patrolling.