Shark Wars (3 page)

“GRAY, THAT'S INTO THE OPEN OCEAN FOR SURE,”
Barkley said. “And you're grounded!”

“Oh, come on! That's still Coral Shiver homewaters.” Gray nodded to himself, salivating. “And dumb fish are always fair game! Why, we could get in trouble for
not
eating them!”

Barkley smiled sarcastically. “I know the rules on what to eat and when to eat it better than you, megamouth.” The dogfish tapped him on the belly with his tail. “By the way, have you gained weight since this morning?”

“Hey, I'm big cartilaged!” Gray said indignantly. “And if you're done insulting me…” He waggled a fluke at the fish.

“Fine, Overbiter is on duty for shiver business. Let's tell him about the drove. We'll be heroes!” Barkley swished his tail happily at the thought.

Gray snorted. “Please! Overbiter is like a hundred and sleeps all the time. He can't swim fast enough to catch these blues. You don't want to make him look bad in front of everyone, do you?

Maybe embarrassing Overbiter wasn't Gray's main worry, but the lemon shark
was
half senile. By the time they explained everything to him, the bluefin would be long gone. Barkley hesitated as he glanced longingly at the tuna feeding on the swarm of shrimp. “I'd hate to embarrass him, I guess.”

Barkley drooled a little and Gray knew he had him. “Let's get our fill, and then go tell everyone. We'll still be heroes!”

The dogfish flicked his fins up and down in agreement and flashed forward so suddenly it momentarily surprised Gray. He did not just do that! Gray sped up, overtaking his friend. He aimed for a plump bluefin but never got there. Two others accidentally swam into his open mouth just before he was going to strike, along with a load of shrimp! It caught Gray by surprise and he gagged. This would be a story told around the glowing algae pylons for years to come—Gray the big, bad reef shark chokes to death on dinner! An extremely large blue slammed into his throat, kicking in a reflexive swallow. I really should remember that spot on my throat, he thought to himself. But later! The combo of bluefin and shrimp was scrumptious!

Gray and Barkley laughed and ate. It was crazy! No sooner were they done with one fish than they each caught another. The pair tried to keep count of who caught the most but gave up; the bluefin were eaten so fast and furiously. Then, as all groupings did, the fish thinned and disappeared. Pretty soon only a couple of woozy shrimp were all that was left. Barkley listed to the side. “Ohh, I think I might have eaten too much. By the way, where are we?”

Good question. How long had they been feeding? Gray wasn't sure. The reef wasn't in sight anymore. In fact, nothing around them looked familiar. Gray couldn't even see the bottom. They were definitely off the reef and into the open waters of the Big Blue now. They would get into serious trouble if someone found out.

Gray was about to say something when he felt a prickle of electricity go up his spine, a fin flick before a gray-and-white blur screamed into view. This alarm system saved Gray's life at least twice when he was younger, once when a huge moray eel hiding in a crevice surprised him. It was a vague buzzing that set him on edge right before danger struck. He now knew it was a survival instinct, but Gray hadn't felt it for a long time, not since his growth spurt.

Just in time, with a stroke of his powerful tail, he was able to deflect a shark's headlong attack at his dorsal fin. It was a tiger shark and he was massive! Larger than Gray was, even!

Barkley was indignant. “What's your damage, jelly-brain? We're trying to digest here!” He coasted in front of Gray protectively as the tiger carved a turn and rushed at them once more. It must have dawned on Barkley that being a motionless target wasn't the brightest idea because he dove underneath the gnashing jaws of the tiger. The big flipper only gave a halfhearted snap at the dogfish. He was plainly after Gray, since his size made him the main threat.

Well, he's got that right! Gray thought as he sped up. They were lost, probably in trouble, and now some flipper was trying to eat them! Enough was enough. Gray accelerated out of the tiger's way before slashing his own turn downward and underneath the attacking shark. The tiger lost sight of Gray for a moment and hesitated. It was all the time Gray needed.

“You lose,” said Barkley from his hovering position above the momentarily confused tiger. Gray heard a satisfying “Whuufff!” as he rammed the shark in the soft underbelly by his liver. The tiger tried to turn but was momentarily paralyzed. Barkley hammered the dazed attacker next. Or he tried. Because of his small size, he bounced off like a sea horse against hard coral. Gray wouldn't let his advantage slip away, though. He bore down on the tiger, ready to rip a fin off with his razor teeth.

“Wait! Wait!” yelled the tiger. “I'm with Goblin Shiver, and you're dead meat if you touch me!”

Gray chose to ignore this, but had to come to an abrupt halt when Barkley swam right in front of his mouth! “What are you doing?”

“Saving our lives!” Barkley whispered before turning to the tiger. “Sorry for the misunderstanding!”

“Misunderstanding?” Gray sputtered. “He tried to eat us!”

The big shark recovered somewhat, and the chance to send him to the Sparkle Blue passed. Gray hoped Barkley knew what he was doing. The tiger wouldn't be easily beaten a second time.

“Listen to your friend,” said the tiger. “This is Goblin Shiver territory. You don't have permission to hunt here unless Goblin, or maybe Gafin, give their say-so. And I know you don't know Goblin. So, do you know the urchin king?”

Gray understood little of what the big tiger was saying. “We need permission to hunt?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Of course you do! I thought you were from Razor Shiver, poaching our feeding grounds,” the tiger commented, watching Gray and Barkley for their reactions. “But I can see I was wrong. My name is Thrash, by the way.”

“I'm Gray and this is Barkley.”

“Where are you from?” the tiger named Thrash asked suspiciously.

“Coral Shiv—” Gray began, but Barkley cut him off immediately.

“A coral reef where we rested! But there were landsharks so we left. Now we're here. Nice to meet you!”

Thrash dismissed Barkley but swam around Gray, looking him over. “I thought you were a great white, but you're not. You're just a pup! Don't think I've seen a shark like you before. What are you, anyway?”

“I'm a reef shark,” Gray answered proudly.

Thrash laughed. “Oh, that's good! Yeah, right, reef shark! Goblin loves a sense of humor. Sometimes.” The tiger indicated the direction he wanted them to follow. “Come on, he's going to want to look you over.”

Neither of them moved. “Look us over?” asked Barkley.

“To be a part of Goblin Shiver,” answered Thrash. “We're at war with Razor Shiver and can always use another shark who knows how to fight. Whatever you are.”

Barkley swam between the large tiger and Gray. “Actually, we're not real big joiners, Thrash. We're more rogue fish.”

“Rogues swim alone,” said Thrash with a hint of malice. “That's why they're rogues.”

Barkley got flustered. “Sure, we know that, everyone knows that! We're a rogue
pair
. It's a new thing we invented. Again, nice meeting you. We'll be going now.” The dogfish kept his voice low when he passed Gray. “Let's get out of here while the getting's good.”

Gray followed, unsure why Barkley was acting so strangely but knowing deep down he didn't want to be involved with a maniac tiger shark that talked about wars and had almost eaten him a moment ago. “Yeah, rogue pair. That's us.”

Thrash caught Gray's eye before he swam away. “You'll have to pick a side sooner or later, pup. Everyone will have to pick a side.” With a chuckle and a dismissive flick of his tail, the tiger shark left.

“Let's go home,” Barkley told Gray, who quietly followed his friend.

Their first trip into the open water had been a real eye opener, but not in a good way.

“NO, NO, NO!” YELLED GOBLIN LOUD ENOUGH
to attract attention all around his homewaters. He gnashed his teeth so hard he felt one break and saw it drift to the sandy bottom. A crab scuttled over and began probing the tooth to see if there was anything to eat inside it. It almost made Goblin laugh, but the situation was too serious to allow that right now. “We need to keep up
all
our patrols! Razor Shiver isn't going to rest and neither can we!”

“You're telling me what you want, and I'm trying to tell you what's possible,” Ripper replied evenly. The big, battle-scarred hammerhead was close to insubordination. But then he ducked his head and added, “I suppose we could promote a couple of the pups into full shiver sharks to make up for—you know—”

Goblin took time to appear thoughtful. His mother, the shiver leader before him, had always told him to do this. “Good idea. Let them flex their fins a little. When I was a pup, I couldn't wait to get into the thick of things!”

It wasn't as if he was much older than a pup now, being just fifteen. For great whites, fifteen was physically mature. But some of the sharkkind that Ripper was thinking of were a little
too
young and weren't experienced enough to survive a real battle. They could be used for patrols and as an early warning system, though, which would free up his veterans for more important things. Not a perfect solution, but it would do for now.

Goblin stared imperiously at his Five in the Line. Ripper was his first, a giant hammerhead and the only shark who might be tougher than himself. Thrash, the tiger, was his second. Goblin's third was Streak, a blue shark who was small for her kind but made up for it in sheer ferocity. Churn was an oceanic whitetip and his fourth. Goblin had known Churn since the whitetip was a pup. Then there was his fifth: Velenka, a sleek, black mako.

Velenka was undoubtedly the smartest and most beautiful shark he ever met. Such big eyes. She could have been his fourth, maybe even third. She was invaluable as an adviser. Why the mako didn't make a move up the Line was puzzling to Goblin. Velenka hadn't even won her rank by combat, as was custom when a position in the Line opened. It was done by vote after Goblin's last fifth, Hawley, was found floating on the surface in the chop-chop three months ago. Hawley wasn't attacked by sharkkind; there were no bite marks. His corpse was grotesquely swollen as if he had died a week earlier. But Goblin swam with the thresher the night before he was found, so he knew that wasn't the case. He had trusted Hawley most of all, and the thresher worshipped Goblin like an older brother. It was a bitter loss, but that was life in the open waters of the Big Blue.

“What do you want to do, Goblin?” asked Velenka. The mako spoke more than any of the others even though she was only his fifth. It was a little odd, even presumptuous, but Velenka did keep things on point. The others waited for Goblin's answer.

“Can't you see I'm thinking?” He snapped at the mako, his bulk nudging hers out of hover. “Do you have a current you're late for? Someplace more interesting to go?”

“I didn't mean any disrespect,” she answered.

“And that's why I'm not feeding on your carcass!” he yelled.

His shiver, now called Goblin Shiver instead of Riptide Shiver, had gotten their tails kicked by the bull sharks of Razor Shiver a day ago. They'd lost two soldiers and hadn't sent any bulls to the Sparkle Blue. Razor and his shiver controlled the best hunting grounds in the entire North Atlantis and also owned a prized territory for the Tuna Run. This annoyed Goblin. It was because of Razor naming his shiver after himself that Goblin had done the same. He would never admit that, of course. Razor Shiver weren't the only tough gang of sharkkind on the Western edge of the Atlantis, but they were the strongest today. Food was growing scarce, with fewer and fewer large groupings to feed on. Goblin and his shiver would stay near the muck-sucking bottom if he couldn't figure out a way to recruit more warriors and conquer new territory!

And to top things off, Thrash now swam in as though he was being chased by a prehistore nightmare with a story about a
pair
of rogue sharks named Gray and Barkley. And this Gray was a mysterious giant type of Sharkkind Thrash had never seen before! His Five in the Line and the rest of the full members of the shiver were looking at Goblin now, waiting for answers. His shiver sharks hovered listlessly behind the Line, speaking and joking in low voices with each other. At one time there would have been order, every mariner hovering in its own row, waiting for the leader's orders to be carried out by subcommanders. When Goblin was young, discipline and numbers were the mark of a true battle shiver. But now…

Everyone was always waiting for answers from him. It was what Goblin liked least about being leader. Sometimes he wished his mother were still around. She would know what to do, he thought to himself.

Goblin turned to Thrash. “You're sure they weren't just passing through? Maybe from the Sific Ocean?”

The tiger shook his head from side to side. “Nah, they mentioned a coral reef. I think they're from somewhere near shore. They were soft.”

“Beat you, didn't they?” noted Ripper. Goblin saw that the tiger took the insult personally, but if Thrash got mad the big hammerhead could take care of himself. That's why he was Goblin's first.

“Who cares about a couple of yokels from the boonie-greenie who don't know anything about the Big Blue?” yelled Streak. The undersize blue was seething. “We lost Scrape and Jonquil to the bulls! Let's attack and even the score!”

Streak would want to fight no matter what because Scrape was her brother. But Goblin was pretty sure the blue didn't care one way or another that Jonquil was gone. He had just joined the shiver recently.

“Bad idea!” cried Churn. “We should take some time to regroup.” The whitetip had almost been eaten by Razor himself in the battle and sported a ragged bite mark across the gills to show just how close he'd come to death. Churn was now one jumpy fin and would be for a while longer.

“Coward!” Streak yelled angrily. “Swim off the Line, useless! Go find a turtle shell to hide inside!”

Churn might be jumpy, but he was much bigger than Streak. Goblin was about to lose control as his third and fourth tried to eat each other! But then, the smell of an enemy interrupted the budding fight. Everyone looked over as a solitary bull swam close enough to be seen, but far enough away to retreat. Goblin's spine tingled with the sense of impending battle. He was about to charge the bull when Velenka spoke.

“I don't think he's here for trouble,” she said.

“How would you know?” snarled Streak.

Velenka took no notice of the blue's tone but answered the question instead. “You know what an attack looks like better than anyone, Streak. What do you think?”

Streak calmed herself and watched the lone bull for a moment. “Okay, he's not on offense. But who is he and why's he here?”

“That's exactly what we should ask him.” Velenka swam forward, drawing Goblin with her. “Maybe this has something to do with the two sharks Thrash saw?” The mako seemed happiest when she was puzzling something out. Or scheming. She once told Goblin that her hero was the legendary Machiakelpi, the mako who swam in the First Shiver and supposedly ruled the entire Sific after Tyro left for the Sparkle Blue. Goblin had to admit Velenka was a schemer worthy of Machiakelpi's reputation.

“Keep your place behind me, Fifth!” He took the lead. Maybe this shark was an opportunity. If it was, Goblin wanted the credit for leading. And it wasn't as though he would let Velenka meet the bull without him.

Velenka tried to keep her excitement in check but felt her spine tingling as they swam to meet Kilo. She knew that the bull would play his part and pretend they'd never met before. But could he play it well enough so that Goblin wouldn't sense something out of the ordinary? That was the question. That was why she needed to carefully control the conversation. Goblin might be dim, but he wasn't without instinct. You didn't stay shiver leader for long without good instincts.

And who was the mysterious giant Thrash had tussled with? No one else had noticed the large tooth lodged underneath the tiger's fin. Was it important? Its shape looked so familiar for some reason. Velenka had knocked the tooth free before anyone could see, and it floated into the darkness below. She didn't need Goblin distracted just now, not when she was setting her plan into action.

Velenka would send Thrash back in the direction the mysterious sharks came from to find their home. Perhaps Kilo and his bulls could be useful in this also. Always bend circumstance to your advantage. Machiakelpi taught that eons ago. Good advice, then and now.

“Maybe I should find out why this bull is here?” Velenka asked Goblin. “That way you can watch for lies when he speaks. Besides, why should this puny flipper talk to you, our shiver leader, as if he's your equal?”

Goblin nodded as they stopped a few body lengths from Kilo. “Good,” he said quietly. “Do it.”

Velenka smiled as she swam forward. There was destiny in the current! She could feel it!