Shark Wars by Ernie Altbacker Read Free Book Online Page B

the group now mixed easily. They learned many things about each other, except for the whale in the water. The one topic nobody brought up was why each was swimming the Big Blue and not in another shiver.
    â€œI’m stuffed,” said Snork. “We never ate this well when there were just four of us!” It turned out Snork was nearly thirteen and a half, the oldest of the group by six months, although he didn’t act like it. Striiker and Mari were twelve like Gray and Barkley, and Shell had turned thirteen just last month.
    â€œIt’s probably a good time for hunting or something,” Gray said.
    Striiker harrumphed. “Let’s go home. We don’t want to be seen by Goblin Shiver’s patrols.” For some reason, if anything was more annoying to the great white than having his leadership questioned, it was Gray being nice to him.
    â€œTheir name was much cooler when it was Riptide Shiver,” remarked Snork as he followed. “Since Goblin changed it, now we have the best shiver name in the whole Big Blue.”
    They actually had performed a shiver creation ceremony. Snork insisted. Even Striiker went along with it, probably because he got to be leader. The others voted themselves in the order they had been subconsciously swimming in. Mari was elected first, Shell second, and Snork third. Gray was chosen as fourth in the Line. Mari wanted to vote Gray higher, much higher in fact, but he wouldn’t hear of it. It did seem pretty funny that Snork—now that he knew Snork—was technically supposed to be tougher than him. Gray let it slide. He hadn’t been in the open ocean for even one moon, and he knew the others were better suited toward making decisions.
    Besides, Gray was happy to wait until the Tuna Run when he would rejoin his mother and Coral Shiver. Gray wanted to ask his new friends to come to the reef but hadn’t found the right time. He didn’t tell this to anyone, though, because he hadn’t mentioned it to Barkley yet. The dogfish’s mood was not good when he was chosen as Rogue Shiver’s fifth.
    â€œAre you kidding me?” his friend wailed. “There are only six of us, total! That’s just embarrassing!” But when Mari asked whether he would rather be fifth in the Line or the only general member of Rogue Shiver, Barkley grumbled “Fine. Fifth. Great,” and swam away. It took an entire day to calm the dogfish down.
    Their new home was only a short swim away and well hidden. Towering brown and blue-greenie waved majestically, forming a wall that made everyone feel safe. You could enter unseen by swimming beneath a short tunnel formed by a fallen cliff. And there was the perfect hiding spot. It was an old landshark ship, really old from what Barkley told them. And big!
    The ship had three levels, and when it had ridden the chop-chop, humans used wooden planks called “oars” to move the bulky thing through the water! Aside from a large crack in the bottom of the ship now, it was through these oar openings that a nice current flowed, allowing easy breathing. This was much better than sleeping in open water where you could be spotted, or down in the greenie where you could get something in your gills. There was plenty of space inside, although one room on the end was filled with shiny yellow disks that spilled everywhere because the wooden boxes they were packed into had rotted through. No one liked that area, as the moldy boxes left a tang in the water you could taste, unlike the rest of the ship.
    Even though the ship lay three times the depth of the reef, there was still good light from the sun and moon. But it wasn’t like the reef where other dwellers would talk with the shiver. Here the shellheads, lumos, fish, and urchins stayed out of the way when Rogue Shiver was around. Gray tried to ask a sea dragon if she knew Yappy, but the little dweller slalomed into the greenie without saying a word. He