Shipwrecked: Dragon Island

By Carey Fessler

The battle has begun, and the pirates want blood.

Twelve-year-olds Emma and Scott are on board the dive boat the Sea Urchin, anchored at night off Dragon Island, when a band of trigger-happy marauders board their boat.

So begins their battle to survive a modern-day pirate raid and escape their hostage situation so they can r

• Language: English
• Publisher: Foeg
• Release date: Dec 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9780992514525

Carey Fessler

About the Author I grew up in a military family and moved around more often than a gypsy until we planted roots in Albuquerque, New Mexico. With my head always in the clouds, I learned to fly and parachute as well as scuba dive before dropping out of university and enlisting in the US Navy to roam beneath the seven seas in a submarine. When my hitch was up in the Navy, I unpacked my seabag in Sydney, Australia, where I worked as a postman, an international flight planner for QANTAS, and an animator for Disney before awakening my imagination and becoming a children's author. For more information, visit my website at careyfessler.com

Book preview

Chapter 1

Emma Fitzpatrick played with the emergency whistle around her neck—a nervous habit she hated. The dive boat tugged against its mooring lines and bumped against the rickety pier. Slumped in the bench seat of a dinette table, Emma stared out through the saloon window of the boat. Across the grounds of the ranger station lay a twelve-foot-long Varanus dragon.

The man-eating lizard was lifeless. A headhunter had shot and killed the beast with a poison-tipped arrow less than thirty minutes ago. Soon after, Emma and her three fellow survivors had fought him off.

Why’s the captain doing repair work while he’s still tied to the dock? Emma fidgeted in her seat. All I want to do is leave this horrid island.

And get to civilization, said Harrison Wade. The gangling teenager pushed his glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose.

A faint breath of sea breeze teased the hair stuck to Emma’s sweaty face and brought some welcome relief from the suffocating tropical heat. The smell of salt air and seaweed replaced the earthen tang of the jungle.

Banging and cursing erupted from somewhere belowdecks.

Sitting opposite her on the aisle, Scott Fitzpatrick finger combed his messy dark hair. I want to get the heck away from this place before anything worse happens—if that’s possible.

Brock scratched at the lesions in his neck, which resembled gill slits. No one knew the mutant’s first name. Especially since bad things come in threes.

Emma agreed. After all, they’d been shanghaied and shipwrecked. What next? Skinned and skewered by a tribe of cannibals? She scanned the tree line. Would the headhunter be back with reinforcements from his village to finish the job—taking their heads as trophies?

What’s the holdup? Emma asked. Cannibals are hunting us!

The captain is trying to repair a broken bilge pump, someone said from among a group of passengers sitting at a nearby table.

Being unable to pump seawater from the bilges could result in the boat flooding, or even worse … sinking. Emma had abandoned one sinking ship this week. The last thing she wanted was to go through that nightmare a second time.

The boat swayed, and something churned in her stomach. She grimaced. Even though she was prone to seasickness, she was grateful to be on board and on her way back home to Australia soon, but … not soon enough. She jiggled her leg. Bad luck had followed them like a shadow these last several days. She’d hoped to leave their misfortune behind on that island. Have we been cursed?

A ship’s clock on the wall showed it was just past 2 p.m. Emma gazed blankly across the water. Roughly ten minutes earlier, the dive boat Sea Urchin had been cruising nearby when it responded to the emergency flare Scott had fired into the sky. Which was how the four of them had come to be here, in the dining saloon, moored at Naga Island—Dragon Island.

Slide out, squirt. I need to get up. Brock gave her a gentle elbow. A few patchy mats of woolly hair crowned his head, and knots of muscles flexed under his dark skin. He stood in the aisle, eyeing his companions. Anyone else want another drink?

No thanks, they chorused.

About a half dozen real guests lounged around and mingled in the saloon. Emma had overheard the group had chartered the Sea Urchin for a weeklong diving trip. This was their last day. They gave the mutant a wide berth and avoided talking to him. That didn’t stop them from whispering and stealing looks in his direction.

After Brock had returned to his seat, Emma leaned over, saying, I think they’re staring at your gill slits.

Sitting diagonally across from her, Harrison scoffed. I wonder if they know early human embryos have slits in their necks that look like gills.

"Is that because we go through some fishy stage in our mother’s womb?" asked Scott, sitting on Harrison’s left.

No. It’s because humans and fish share some DNA and a common ancestor.

I’ve always felt connected to dolphins, Scott said.

"They’re mammals, not fish."

Oh. I must have missed school that day.

Or skipped. Emma had never missed a single day of school, no matter how hard Scott tried to persuade her to cut classes. He, on the other hand, wagged class at least once a week.

Emma stole a glance at the other guests. She understood their looks of confusion and concern. After all, she’d been in their shoes a few weeks ago, having never seen a mutant in the flesh before. Now, she tried to see Brock as just a person—one who had external gills that resembled a salamander’s. No big deal. Emma had seen worse mutations when she had been shanghaied—kidnapped and forced to work as part of the crew of the nuclear submarine Blackwolf.

Scott chucked a grape at her. After all this mess I got you in, am I still your favorite cousin?

"Ha-ha. You’re my only cousin." She tossed the grape back across the table at him, and he caught it in his mouth.

A man sitting at the table next to them looked at her skeptically. If y’all are cousins, why do you speak like an American and him like an Aussie? The man had a Texan accent that twanged like a steel guitar.

My family moved to Australia last year to help care for our sick grandmother. Emma sighed. She had hated her parents for making her leave her best friends, but things were different now. After all she’d been through these last several days, she couldn’t wait to give her parents a huge hug and a kiss.

A smile grew across her face. Her parents had already bought her a new telescope tripod for her birthday in a couple of weeks. Emma wanted to be an aerospace engineer like her mother and maybe even rocket to Mars and help colonize the red planet. She loved stargazing and knew all eighty-eight constellations.

She caught Scott’s eye. Are you still coming to my birthday party?

Sure, if we get home by then. I hope you aren’t having another bubblegum ice-cream cake. That was so gross.

I know. Blame my dad. He chose it.

Not even Molly would touch it, and beagles hoover up anything.

Emma’s and Scott’s families lived in the same seaside suburb in Darwin, which had made the overseas move a little better. She liked that they went to the same school, except when he got into mischief, which was often. A few weeks ago, he got in trouble for ditching the school swimming carnival and then he escaped from the detention room through a skylight. Emma worried that her reputation would suffer by association.

Being an only child, Emma loved having family around—a family who would be searching for them. A few days ago, Scott had talked her into sneaking on board a visiting submarine. How could she say no? It had been his birthday wish. And just maybe she’d also agreed to trespass into the off-limits area of the engine room, where they’d found Harrison handcuffed to piping. The mutant crew had taken them prisoner too, and then the Blackwolf quickly left port. Not long after, though, the mission went terribly wrong and the crew had to scuttle the sub off Dragon Island, where the three of them found themselves as castaways.

The dive boat bumped against the pier, and she glanced around at her new surroundings. And now they were seagoing hitchhikers. Gran always said to never accept a ride from a stranger.

Captain Supomo strode into the saloon. He had a few silver threads among his coal-black hair. He wore a T-shirt with SEA URCHIN and a scuba diver logo over the left chest. A pair of shabby khaki shorts revealed his hairy chicken legs.

Good news, he said, wiping his greasy hands on a rag. I’ve made a temporary repair to the bilge pump. We can now depart. Sorry for the delay.

Are you still taking us across the strait to Mora Island? Emma asked.

Yes. I’ll be dropping you off in the town of Tapi—it’s our homeport.

Emma smiled. Have you been on the radio and reported we’ve been found? We’ve been missing for nearly a week.

We’re beyond radio range. Marine VHF is line-of-sight radio. It’s good for twenty nautical miles—Tapi is more than eighty.

So nobody back home in Australia knows we’re here?

I used my satellite phone to contact the local authorities in Tapi and let them know you’re all safe. They’ll pass the word to your embassies in Jakarta.

After being out of contact with her parents for so long, Emma was desperate to hear their voices. She really, really wanted to talk to them and find out: How soon would they fly to Indonesia to pick her up and take her home? Had they sent out the birthday invitations yet? How was Gran coping with her dementia? Was her memory getting worse? Was Molly, Scott’s pet beagle, staying out of mischief?

Can I use the satellite phone to call my parents, please? she asked.

The captain pulled a sheepish grin. I forgot to charge the sat phone last night, and the battery is flat. I was lucky to get a short call through to alert the authorities in Tapi. The battery will be fully charged in a few hours.

She turned to Brock, sitting on her left beside the window. Of course he forgot to charge his phone.

Brock chuckled. After the week we’ve had, something going right would’ve been the bigger surprise.

True. Will you go home to your family?

My home was the submarine. And my family was the crew. They’re all lying dead at the bottom of the sea.

Emma couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose all her family and friends at once. She reached for the missing submariner’s badge that had been pinned to her top but lost during the swim. While on board the sub, one particular rad had showed her some kindness. Although McQuade looked more lizard than man, and didn’t have gills like Brock, she still hoped he’d somehow survived the doomed sub and reached shore.

What are you going to do then? she asked.

Brock shrugged. Don’t worry about me. I’m working on a plan.

That’s good, Emma said, but he didn’t sound convincing.

Captain Supomo addressed the rest of the group. I’ll be anchoring at night around the point from the ranger station. We’ll be in the sheltered waters of Red Cove, off Turtle Beach. We’ll depart for Tapi at first light.

What? Emma twisted around. Why do we have to wait until tomorrow morning before heading back?

We can’t transit these waters at night—too dangerous.

More dangerous than being attacked by a village full of cannibals? asked Emma.

The ranger told me there had been only two hunters.

"Headhunters." So she’d exaggerated a bit. How else was she supposed to make the seriousness of the situation clear to the captain?

Emma furrowed her brow. Why the heck can’t we leave now? How long would it take to make the passage? There were still four hours of daylight left. Mora Island was eighty miles away, and the Sea Urchin could probably do around ten knots, twelve if pushed. She did the math in her head. Darn it! They were roughly eight hours from port and would be lucky to travel halfway across the strait before dusk. Still …

As if reading her thoughts, Scott asked, Why is sailing at night so dangerous?

Curious boy. I like that. The captain winked at him but stayed silent.

Emma and Scott swapped a look of confusion. What was so scary about traveling in the dark? All the captain needed was a GPS to find his way to port. Back in Darwin, her father fished on his boat at night all the time and had never considered it risky.

We’re in a hurry to get home, she said. We can handle dangerous waters, but not deadly headhunters.

Her three companions nodded.

The captain gave them a hard look. Be careful what you ask for … you might get it.

Emma scolded herself. Had she jinxed them?

Chapter 2

The bald-headed Indonesian captain scanned the ocean from the wheelhouse of the bagan—a traditional fishing boat. A tattoo of a fire-breathing dragon clawed blood from his shoulder. He squinted in the late-afternoon sunlight reflecting off the water.

"Kapten!" called an urgent voice from outside.

What now? he muttered in his native language.

I hope it’s not more engine trouble, said the helmsman, tapping a gauge on the instrument panel. The old diesel had already given them one delay.

The captain wiped the beads of sweat from his shaven head and glanced at the gauge. It looked normal. Hope doesn’t fix an engine problem—a mechanic does.

Our mechanic says we need a new boat.

"He’s right … for once."

The derelict vessel would look more at home in a salvage yard than on the high seas. The many shades of rust blended in well with the chipped poo-brown paint, which had never seen a lick of fresh color—except perhaps blood red.

Hewn from hardwood, the bagan measured sixty feet long—twice as large as the local boats—and had two cargo holds. It worked as a trawler by day. However, at night, or when opportunity presented itself, the rogue crew and boat took on a sinister role.

The trawler motored on a southeasterly heading with a sense of purpose, and the water hissed as the prow cut through the waves of the Banda Sea. His destination lay over the horizon roughly fifty miles away—Naga Island.

He glanced at his wrist: 2:10 p.m. "I’ll be back in about an hour to relieve you. Report all