TWENTY SIX, dead guys to port
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"YOU ARE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE," Clarisse said. Aster hadn't even dried off from the mud yet.
They'd just finished a ship tour they didn't want, through dark rooms overcrowded with dead sailors. They'd walked through the coal bunker, the boilers and engine, which huffed and groaned like it would explode any minute. They'd seen the pilothouse and the powder magazine and gunnery deck (Clarisse's favorite, of course) with two Dahlgren smoothbore cannons on the port and starboard sides and a Brooke nine-inch rifled gun fore and aft—all specially refitted to fire celestial bronze cannon balls. It was sort of terrifying, in an awe-inspiring way.
Everywhere they went, dead Confederate sailors stared at them, their ghostly bearded faces shimmering over their skulls. They approved of Annabeth because she told them she was from Virginia. They were interested in Percy, too, because his name was Jackson—like the Southern general—but then he ruined it by telling them he was from New York. They all hissed and muttered curses about Yankees. The soldiers didn't like Aster very much either, because apparently her first name was "too progressive." They also didn't take too kindly to where she grew up, Vermont.
Tyson was terrified of them. All through the tour, he insisted Aster hold his hand, which she was not thrilled about at all.
Finally, they were escorted to dinner. The C.S.S Birmingham captain's quarters were about the size of a walk-in closet, but still much bigger than any other room on board. The table was set with white linen and china. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips, and Dr Peppers were served by skeletal crewmen. Aster wasn't particularly fond of eating anything served by ghosts, but she hadn't eaten since yesterday's dinner, so the hunger overruled any good judgment she had.
"Tantalus expelled you for eternity," Clarisse told them smugly. "Mr. D said if any of you show your face at camp again, he'll turn you into squirrels and run you over with his SUV."
"Sounds better than being turned over to Tantalus," Aster muttered under her breath, which she hoped Clarisse didn't hear. Luckily she gave Aster no indication that she did and continued to eat her sandwich.
"Did they give you this ship?" Percy asked.
"'Course not. My father did."
"Ares?"
Clarisse sneered. "You think your daddy is the only one with sea power? The spirits on the losing side of every war owe a tribute to Ares. That's their curse for being defeated. I prayed to my father for a naval transport and here it is. These guys will do anything I tell them. Won't you, Captain?"
The captain stood behind her looking stiff and angry. His glowing green eyes fixed on Percy with a hungry stare. "If it means an end to this infernal war, ma'am, peace at last, we'll do anything. Destroy anyone."
Clarisse smiled. "Destroy anyone. I like that."
Tyson gulped.
"Clarisse," Annabeth said, "Luke might be after the Fleece, too. We saw him. He's got the coordinates and he's heading south. He has a cruise ship full of monsters–"
"Good! I'll blow him out of the water."
"You don't understand," Annabeth said. "We have to combine forces. Let us help you–"
"No!" Clarisse pounded the table. "This is my quest, smart girl! Finally I get to be the hero, and you three will not steal my chance."
"Where are your cabin mates?" Aster asked, looking around. During their entire tour, Aster didn't see one alive person other than Clarisse. "You're allowed to have companions on quests, those are the rules."
"They didn't... I let them stay behind. To protect the camp."
Percy looked at Clarisse with a cross between guilt and smugness. "You mean even the people in your own cabin wouldn't help you?"
"Shut up, Prissy! I don't need them! Or you!"
"Clarisse," Aster said, her voice pleading, "Tantalus is using you. He doesn't give two shits about the camp—he'd probably love to see it destroyed. He's setting you up to fail. We can't trust him."
"No! I don't care what the Oracle–" She stopped herself.
"What?" Percy said. "What did the Oracle tell you?"
"Nothing." Clarisse's ears turned pink. "All you need to know is that I'm finishing this quest and you're not helping. On the other hand, I can't let you go..."
"So we're prisoners?" Annabeth asked.
"Guests. For now." Clarisse propped her feet up on the white linen tablecloth and opened another Dr Pepper. "Captain, take them below. Assign them hammocks on the berth deck. If they don't mind their manners, show them how we deal with enemy spies."
Aster had a surprisingly peaceful sleep. No arguments between gods came, nor did the evil entity that seemed to haunt Camp Half-Blood in her dreams. Yet, she was a little disappointed. Aster had been expecting a message from somewhere, someone telling her what her purpose was. All she could do is hope that the conversation between Zeus and Hestia wasn't about her.
Aster woke earlier than her friends and went up to the deck alone. She figured they could use some more sleep, if they didn't have to be up any time soon.
On her way up the stairs to the main deck, Aster came across Clarisse's quarters. She was sitting at a very fancy desk, and she looked like she was about to cry. Aster heard a few spare sniffles, and she creaked the door open. Clarisse looked up at her and rubbed her eyes, putting on a gnarly expression.
"Geez, Barley Face," she said, her voice sounding caught in her throat. "Don't you know how to knock?"
Aster took a step into the cabin. "Sorry, Clarisse. You just seemed upset. Are you alright?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" Clarisse looked at Aster like she was dead meat, but Aster pressed on.
"You know, Clarisse, we don't have to be enemies. If you have a problem, you can talk to me about it."
"Why would I want to talk to you about anything?" Clarisse sneered. "And besides, nothing's wrong."
Aster sighed and turned towards the doorway. "Whatever you say, Clarisse."
Right before Aster had left the cabin, Clarisse spoke again. "What did you mean by saying we can't trust Tantalus?"
Aster paused in the doorway, looking over her shoulder. Even though the rest of her body language told Aster to stay out—her arms crossed, her lips in a perpetual frown—her eyes were pleading. Aster turned and came back into the room, leaning against the back wall.
"I mean, someone told me not to. And they're usually right."
"Who?"
"The trees."
Clarisse scoffed. "The trees? What are you, the Lorax?"
Aster chuckled softly. "Sort of, I guess. It's one of my Demeter powers. I can speak to the trees—more like they talk to me in riddles, not that different from a prophecy. They told me not to trust the spirit, and Tantalus is the only spirit that I know."
"And you trust them?"
Aster hesitated. "Yeah, they've helped me a lot. They're the reason I made it to camp in the first place." There was a long silence, with Clarisse and Aster just studying each other. Clarisse was looking at her like she was some battle strategy she had to figure out. "I'm not saying you have to trust my word blindly, but it might be something to think about.
Aster stood from the wall to leave, but Clarisse stopped her one last time. "Hey, we're about to cross through the entrance, so you might want to get above deck. There's something I have to take care of."
With a small smile and nod, Aster went up the stairs to the top deck. Annabeth and Tyson were up there, waiting for her and Percy most likely. They were arguing about something—more like Annabeth was arguing against something that Tyson was saying, using too big of words for him to comprehend. Aster caught something about 'eating a pigeon' when she interrupted.
"Hey guys," she greeted them, and Annabeth let out a sigh of relief.
"Finally," she said, taking a step closer to Aster. "You weren't in your hammock. Where were you?"
"Oh just having some riveting conversation with a Confederate," Aster grinned. "Almost got me to buy a plantation." Annabeth gave her a look, but she ignored it. "Where's Percy?"
"Still asleep when we got up here, but I'm sure he's not far behind."
Suddenly, alarm bells went off, echoing through the ship. Tyson held his hand over his ears.
The captain's gravelly voice sounded: "All hands on deck! Find Lady Clarisse! Where is that girl?"
His ghost form shimmered, appearing next to the three of them. "Attention! We are approaching the entrance to the Sea of Monsters!"
He sounded a little too excited about that for Aster's liking.
Soon Percy joined them, a knapsack on his back, looking troubled and not well rested.
"What's wrong?" Aster asked him. "Another dream?"
Percy nodded, but didn't elaborate. Aster knew that he'd talk when he was ready, so she didn't press further, and neither did Annabeth.
Clarisse came up the stairs right after Percy, who avoided looking at her. Aster's eyebrows knit together, but she didn't ask. Clarisse grabbed a pair of binoculars from a zombie officer and peered toward the horizon. "At last. Captain, full steam ahead!"
Aster looked in the same direction as she was, but she couldn't see much. The sky was overcast. The air was hazy and humid, like steam from an iron. If she squinted real hard, Aster could just make out a couple of dark fuzzy splotches in the distance.
The engine groaned as the ship increased speed.
Tyson muttered nervously, "Too much strain on the pistons. Not meant for deep water."
Aster didn't know how he knew that or what it meant, but it made her nervous.
After a few more minutes, the dark splotches ahead of them came into focus. To the north, a huge mass of rock rose out of the sea—an island with cliffs at least a hundred feet tall. About half a mile south of that, the other patch of darkness was a storm brewing. The sky and sea boiled together in a roaring mass.
"Hurricane?" Annabeth asked.
"No," Clarisse said. "Charybdis."
Aster felt her blood run cold. "Are you crazy?"
"Only way into the Sea of Monsters. Straight between Charybdis and her sister Scylla."
Clarisse pointed to the top of the cliffs, and Aster swallowed hard. She knew what lived up there, and she preferred not to meet it today—or ever.
"What do you mean the only way?" Percy asked. "The sea is wide open! Just sail around them."
Clarisse rolled her eyes. "Don't you know anything? If I tried to sail around them, they would just appear in my path again. If you want to get into the Sea of Monsters, you have to sail through them."
"What about the Clashing Rocks?" Annabeth said. "That's another gateway. Jason used it."
"I can't blow apart rocks with my cannons," Clarisse said. "Monsters, on the other hand..."
"You are crazy," Annabeth decided.
"Watch and learn, Wise Girl." Clarisse turned to the captain. "Set course for Charybdis!"
"Aye, m'lady."
The engine groaned, the iron plating rattled, and the ship began to pick up speed.
"Clarisse," Percy said, "Charybdis sucks up the sea. Isn't that the story?"
"And spits it back out again, yeah."
"What about Scylla?"
"She lives in a cave, up on those cliffs. If we get too close, her snaky heads will come down and start plucking sailors off the ship."
"Choose Scylla then," Percy said. "Everybody goes below deck and we chug right past."
"No!" Clarisse insisted. "If Scylla doesn't get her easy meat, she might pick up the whole ship. Besides, she's too high to make a good target. My cannons can't shoot straight up. Charybdis just sits there at the center of her whirlwind. We're going to steam straight toward her, train our guns on her, and blow her to Tartarus!"
She said it with such relish Aster almost wanted to believe her. She hugged her arms close to her chest, bringing little comfort. She really did hate being at sea; Aster missed the connection to nature she felt whenever she was on solid ground. She was out of her depth out here.
The engine hummed. The boilers were heating up so much Aster could feel the deck getting warm beneath her feet. The smokestacks billowed. The red Ares flag whipped in the wind.
As they got closer to the monsters, the sound of Charybdis got louder and louder—a horrible wet roar like the galaxy's biggest toilet being flushed. Every time Charybdis inhaled, the ship shuddered and lurched forward. Every time she exhaled, they rose in the water and were buffeted by ten-foot waves. It made Aster's stomach churn thinking about how that thing was alive.
Undead sailors calmly went about their business on the spar deck. They had fought for a losing cause before, so this must not have bothered them. Or maybe they didn't care about getting destroyed because they were already deceased. Neither thought made Aster feel any better.
She gripped the rail and stood closer to Percy. "You still have that thermos that Hermes gave us, right?"
Percy nodded. "But it's too dangerous to use with a whirlpool like that. More wind might just make things worse."
"What about controlling the water?" she asked. "You're Poseidon's son. You've done it before."
Percy closed his eyes, but nothing happened. "I–I can't," he said miserably.
"We need a backup plan," Annabeth said. "This isn't going to work."
"Annabeth is right," Tyson said. "Engine's no good."
"What do you mean?" Aster asked.
"Pressure. Pistons need fixing."
Before he could explain, the cosmic toilet flushed with a mighty roaaar! The ship lurched forward and Percy was thrown to the deck. They were in the whirlpool.
"Full reverse!" Clarisse screamed above the noise. The sea churned around them, waves crashing over the deck. The iron plating was now so hot it steamed. "Get us within firing range! Make ready starboard cannons!"
Dead Confederates rushed back and forth. The propeller grinded into reverse, trying to slow the ship, but they kept sliding toward the center of the vortex.
A zombie sailor burst out of the hold and ran to Clarisse. His gray uniform was smoking. His beard was on fire. "Boiler room overheating, ma'am! She's going to blow!"
"Well, get down there and fix it!"
"Can't!" the sailor yelled. "We're vaporizing in the heat."
Clarisse pounded the side of the casemate. "All I need is a few more minutes! Just enough to get in range!"
"We're going in too fast," the captain said grimly. "Prepare yourself for death."
"No!" Tyson bellowed. "I can fix it."
Clarisse looked at him incredulously. "You?"
"He's a cyclops," Annabeth said. "He's immune to fire. And he knows mechanics."
"Go!" yelled Clarisse."
"Tyson, no!" Percy grabbed his arm. "It's too dangerous!"
Tyson patted his hand. "Only way, brother." His expression was determined—confident, even. "I will fix it. Be right back."
As Aster watched him follow the smoldering sailor down the hatch, she had a terrible feeling. It didn't get any better when the ship lurched again—and then she saw Charybdis.
She appeared only a few hundred yards away, through a swirl of mist and smoke and water. The first thing Aster noticed was the reef—a black crag of coral with a fig tree clinging to the top, an oddly peaceful thing in the middle of a maelstrom. All around it, water curved into a funnel, like light around a black hole. Then Aster saw the horrible thing anchored to the reef just below the waterline—an enormous mouth with slimy lips and mossy teeth the size of rowboats. And worse, the teeth had braces, bands of corroded scummy metal with pieces of fish and driftwood and floating garbage stuck between them.
Charybdis was an orthodontist's nightmare. She was nothing but a huge black maw with bad teeth alignment and a serious overbite, and she'd done nothing for centuries but eat without brushing after meals. As they watched, the entire sea around her was sucked into the void—sharks, schools of fish, a giant squid. In a few seconds, the C.S.S. Birmingham would be next.
"Lady Clarisse," the captain shouted. "Starboard and forward guns are in range!"
"Fire!" Clarisse ordered.
Three rounds were blasted into the monster's maw. One blew off the edge of an incisor. Another disappeared into her gullet. The third hit one of Charybdis's retaining bands and shot back at the ship, snapping the Ares flag off its pole.
"Again!" Clarisse ordered.
The gunners reloaded, but even Aster knew it was hopeless. They would have to pound the monster a hundred more times to do any real damage, and they didn't have that long. The boat was being sucked in too fast.
Then the vibrations in the deck changed. The hum of the engine got stronger and steadier. The ship shuddered and they started pulling away from the mouth.
"Tyson did it!" Annabeth said.
"Wait!" Clarisse said. "We need to stay close!"
"We'll die!" Percy said. "We have to move away."
Aster held the rail so tightly that her knuckles went white, trying to stay steady as the ship fought against the suction. The broken Ares flag raced past them and lodged in Charybdis's braces. They weren't making much progress, but at least the ship was staying afloat. Tyson had somehow given them just enough juice to keep the ship from being sucked in.
Suddenly, the mouth snapped shut. The sea died to absolute calm. Water washed over Charybdis.
Then, just as quickly as it had closed, the mouth exploded open, spitting out a wall of water, ejecting everything inedible, including the cannonballs, one of which slammed into the side of the C.S.S. Birmingham with a ding like the bell on a carnival game.
The ship was thrown backward on a wave that must've been forty feet high. They were spinning out of control, hurtling towards the cliffs on the opposite side of the strait. Even if Percy could control the sea right now, Aster would still say it was hopeless.
Another smoldering sailor burst out of the hold. He stumbled into Clarisse, almost knocking them both overboard. "The engine is about to blow!"
"Where's Tyson?" Percy demanded.
"Still down there," the sailor said. "Holding it together somehow, though I don't know for how much longer."
The captain said, "We have to abandon ship."
"No!" Clarisse yelled.
"We have no choice, m'lady. The hull is already cracking apart! She can't–"
He never finished his sentence. Quick as lightning, something brown and green shot from the sky, snatched up the captain, and lifted him away. All that was left were his leather boots.
"Scylla!" a sailor yelled, as another column of reptilian flesh shot from the cliffs and snapped him up. It happened so fast it was like watching a laser beam rather than a monster. Aster couldn't even make out the thing's face, just a flash of teeth and scales.
Percy uncapped his sword and tried to swipe at the monster as it carried off another deckhand, but he was too slow for Scylla.
"Everyone get below!" he yelled.
"We can't!" Clarisse drew her own sword. "Below deck is in flames."
"Lifeboats!" Annabeth said. "Quick!"
"They'll never get clear of the cliffs," Clarisse said. "We'll all be eaten."
"We have to try!" Aster said. "Percy, the thermos."
"I can't leave Tyson!"
"We have to get the boats ready!" Annabeth said.
Clarisse took Annabeth's command. She and a few of her undead sailors uncovered one of the two emergency rowboats while Scylla's heads rained from the sky like a meteor shower with teeth, picking off Confederate sailors one after another.
"Get the other boat." Percy threw Aster the thermos. "I'll get Tyson."
"You can't!" she said. "The heat will kill you!"
He didn't listen—of course he didn't listen. Percy ran for the boiler room hatch, but suddenly his feet weren't touching the deck anymore. Scylla had grabbed him by the knapsack, and was lifting him up toward her lair.
"Percy!" Aster called out for him.
Percy swung his sword behind him and managed to jab the monster in her beady yellow eye. She grunted and dropped him. Aster let out a breath of relief, but their troubles didn't stop there.
As Percy fell, the C.S.S. Birmingham exploded. Aster was lucky she and Annabeth had made it onto a lifeboat in time, but there was no sign of Tyson. Clarisse was on another boat, ordering her dead soldiers through the wreckage.
KAROOM!
The engine room blew, sending chunks of ironclad flying in either direction like a fiery set of wings.
"Tyson!" Percy yelled.
The lifeboats had managed to get away from the ship, but not very far. Flaming wreckage was raining down. Aster and Annabeth would either be smashed or burned or pulled to the bottom by the force of the sinking hull, and that was thinking optimistically, assuming they got away from Scylla.
Aster panicked and knew they had to get away from the wreckage, and she had to keep Percy from falling into the explosion. She fumbled with Hermes's magic thermos, with the intention of only letting a little bit of wind out to cushion his fall. But in her trembling and clumsy hands, Aster managed to set all of the wind out of the thermos. White sheets of wind blasted in every direction, scattering the lifeboats, lifting Percy out of his free fall and propelling him across the ocean. He spun in the air, got hit by a piece of leakage, and hit the water with a crash that would have broken every bone in his body if he hadn't been the son of the Sea God.
When they finally found Percy and swept him into their lifeboat, Aster had only one regret: not getting Tyson out of that engine room. For all their sakes.