Aladdin nodded, while Christóbal, making the final fitting of his oversized wet suit, shook his woolly head. “And what,” he asked, “if we cannot make it back to a supply boat within the alotted time?”
Crispin’s thin smile was humourless. “Then your lungs will burst and you’ll die.”
From the shell of the transport, where they waited along with the other soldiers, they could not see what was going on inside the control cabin. Now and again some junior officer came through the oval passage to give brief instruction to the squadron commander of the group, a dour and severe figure of a man, monstrous in his wet suit and military regalia on which insignias of rank were emblazoned. Aladdin could understand little of the conversation, only catching a few words here and there referring to the Inner and Outer Zones, a quick comment about new search-and-destroy tactics employed by the enemy in the assault upon the undersea labouratory.
Aladdin glanced back and forth across the gloomy blue-shadowed hull of the vessel. The drone of the rotary blades was ceaseless. Clusters of brass rods, attached to the metallic overhead traversed the central corridor, and fit onto panels in the central control room, which regulated the submersible’s outer fins and other steering devices.
“I’d like to have a look at the pilot’s room,” said Aladdin.
Crispin shook his head. “Afraid that’s impossible now, old boy. Not during Action Stations. For now you’ll have to confine yourself to the outer corridors. This isn’t the time for a tour.”
“But Rufio himself assured us — ”
“Don’t be looking for any more problems than you can handle,” the adjutant told him coldly. “Where we’re going, you’ll have plenty, anyway, I promise you. An excursion in a turtle is not the same as traveling a transport during silent running. In fact,” he lowered his voice to less than a whisper. “We shouldn’t even be communicating. Instruction is given by hand signals only.” Aladdin saw the rough-and-tumble squad commander doing precisely that, gesturing stiffly with his hands to the men in his charge.
“What’s he saying?” asked the adventurer.
As Aladdin peered at his own reflection in the young soldier’s massive-framed goggles, Crispin frowned. “General commands, not of importance to you. But — ”
A soft whistle cracked through the corridor. At once, the several dozen suited troops began to stir, and grasp their strapped-on humming knives and peculiar spear-like harpoons lying at their feet. Their faces remained sober and impassive, like surrealistic figures of men who were not quite men at all. Aladdin watched them tighten the straps of their tanks, check the gauges, then stand in their webbed fins, clinging to the overhead bar for support.
“That’s the signal for our having reached the Combat Zone perimeters,” said Crispin. “We have only a few moments until disembarkment begins. Hurry; we’ll get you fitted.”
Aladdin could feel the transport begin to surge, the propellers spin more furiously. The submersible raced sharply upward toward the ocean’s higher altitudes. Aladdin’s and Christóbal’s ears popped with the changing pressure. Outside the double-glassed portholes, glimmers of light appeared amid a frenzy of swirling water.
Crispin helped his charges strap on the cumbersome air-tanks. “Remember what I told you about the aqualungs,” he reminded them as the two men adjusted their goggles and placed the mouthpieces firmly between their lips. Aladdin sucked in a breath of sweet and good air. The demand-regulator valve opened and closed automatically as he inhaled and exhaled.
“All personnel to the pressure chamber...” came the crackling voice from the pilot cabin. At once the Cinnabarians began to march single file toward the rear of the transport.
“Water pressure is greater than on land,” Crispin said as he led the strangers to the disembarkment chamber. “At our current depth, about five times greater. A swimmer breathes twice as much air under the sea as he breathes on the surface or in Cinnabar. Be careful, both of you. Breathe as naturally as you can. If you try to rise too quickly, the increased air molecules in your lungs will cause your blood and body tissues to become saturated with nitrogen. Gas bubbles can form and block the blood’s flow. The result is what we call decompression sickness — the bends. It can cripple or kill an inexperienced diver.”
Christóbal grimaced and looked through his goggles at Aladdin. “Now he tells us!” his eyes cried.
They reached the tubular decompression chamber. The steel door to the passageway was shut and tightly sealed. Above, huge unseen wheels began to crank open. The squadron commander dutifully checked the tanks of his men and gave a few last instructions. Foaming water began to rush inside; within seconds it was higher than their knees, then their waists. Soon it came rushing like a waterfall.
“Stay as close to me as you can at all times,” cautioned Crispin as he set his mouthpiece into place. “Humming knives sheathed — and don’t bandy your spears about, either. We’re in this zone strictly as non-combatants, and I intend to keep it that way. Understood?”
The adventurers nodded.
The first Cinnabar soldier kicked his fins and swam toward the open hatch. A long trail of air bubbles followed as he exhaled and made his way through. One by one, the others did the same, until the chamber, now at pressure equal to the sea, was empty except for Crispin and his charges. Crispin’s hand indicated for Aladdin to go next. Aladdin drew a deep breath and, in imitation of the soldiers, kicked upward, and began to swim through the wide opening. Christóbal followed on his fins.
A strange but alluring world of colour and light sprang to life as they left the darkness of the transport and came into the open world of the ocean. Aladdin stared around in wonder. Far below and shimmering in the current, were spectacular hills of coral rising across a plateau. Flickering prisms of what he knew to be sunlight streamed down from every direction. He tilted his body and lifted his head upward, staring through the haze of his yellow-tinted goggles. He could almost distinguish the top, the ocean surface. They were less than fifty meters below the surface, he realised in wonder, a depth which allowed a maximum of human manoeuvrability.
Schools of colourful fish swam alongside as Crispin indicated for his charges to follow him. Aladdin and Christóbal swam side by side. The sea around them was tranquil and stunningly lovely. Neither adventurer could believe that somewhere close, a fierce battle was raging.
That feeling, though, did not last long. The big Spaniard reached out and nudged Aladdin’s elbow. Aladdin turned and focused on where Christóbal was pointing. With wide-eyed astonishment, Aladdin saw the figures moving in the distance. Figures, which, incredibly, seemed to be riding horses.
“By all that Allah has created!” gasped Aladdin.
They were riding! Cinnabar soldiers. He could make them out more clearly now. Cavalry — undersea cavalry. There was no other way to describe it. Each soldier was garbed in wet suit and air tank, and armed with a peculiar undersea recurved bow slung crosswise over his chest. Quivers of arrows adapted for undersea combat hung at their sides. But it was the mounts they were riding that left Aladdin stunned and incredulous. Sea horses! Not the tiny marine variety, which any surface sailor or diver is familiar with, but a mutant variety, as large as the stunted ponies of Cinnabar itself. An incredible sight, which left him doubting his own senses.
At the urging of their riders, the sea horses swam forward, side by side, in double file, moving quickly in the direction of a distant looming mass which at first glance Aladdin assumed to be another undersea mountain. Reined and saddled, they were wrapped in consecutive rings of body armour as thick and protective as lizard scales. Their horse-like heads were tilted, with long tubular snouts curving gently into small, very horse-like mouths. The eyes were set wide apart and each sea horse was able to move independently of the others, as a frog does. A single soft-rayed fin protruded from their backs directly behind their saddles. Flapping prehensile tails, forward curled, protruded in a graceful arc from the end of their bodies, helping to propel them forwar
d. But for all their grace and beauty, these sea horses were not weak swimmers and virtually harmless creatures, as were their lesser cousins. Rather, they were rugged, well-adapted, undersea fish, well-trained for military purposes.
As amazed as Aladdin already was, he could only gape at what came next. A flanking cohort of dolphins came swimming up from below and behind, fanning out and directing the cavalry. Accompanying the dolphins were wet-suited Cinnabarians — not swimming, but lying flat upon slenderly curved boards, driven forward by tiny propellers which lashed at the water around them. In their hands they carried long-shafted, razor-sharp harpoon guns. And the speed of the men on the boards was more than equal to that of even the fast-swimming dolphin scouts.
Crispin signalled for the adventurers to follow closely behind. In the wake of the cavalry, another submersible rose from depths below. This ship, the largest Aladdin had yet seen, was easily twice as big as the cumbersome transport. Huge propellers fanned in frenzy through the water; the craft was directed on an upward slant, then quickly headed for the undistinguishable mass. Which was no undersea mountain at all, Aladdin realised, as he slowly followed the lines of combatants. Saucer-shaped, standing on great stilts embedded deeply into the mud and gravel of the plateau far below — he was staring at the smooth steel lines of the Academy labouratory.
Hatches were opened on the large submersible, and a host of marine soldiers, with fins flapping and weapons in hand, joined the converging forces.
Shafts went flying. A band of figures began to surge forward from the darkened areas around the great Academy structure. They were men — but not the forces of Cinnabar — green-suited, as opposed to the soldiers in blue. Web-gloved and web-footed, they were long and more lithe than the forces of the subterranean nation Aladdin was familiar with, and somehow far more menacing. Aladdin realised he was now face-to-face with the enemy.
A harpoon gun blasted. The shaft punched through the water at a speed that startled Aladdin. He saw one of the cavalrymen take the blow, which hit with such impact that he was sent flying out of his saddle. Blood stained the aqua-marine water around him. The soldier doubled over and grabbed onto the shaft piercing his belly. The bubbles rising from his mouth ceased. Dead, he floated aimlessly while companions charged by.
More harpoons were fired, from every direction. Dolphin scouts darted courageously in and out of the fire zone; here and there, some gravely injured Cinnabarian took hold of the loose straps dangling from the dolphins’ backs and allowed himself to be whisked away to the rear. A medical transport stood waiting at the edge of the plateau, already receiving dozens of wounded.
Aladdin swam away as a series of harpoons were propelled through the water. Crispin dove; Christóbal followed close behind. In a frenzy, the adjutant signalled for Aladdin to join in the dive to the safety of lower depths, but the adventurer refused. This was his first opportunity to witness the forces of Hellix closely, and this overrode his fear of the strange battlefield. Kicking out, he made his way steadily closer to the looming hull of the Academy. One gloved hand was closed deftly around his spear; the other drew the humming knife from its metallic sheath. The blade began to vibrate.
A submersible rose and headed for the fray; Aladdin hurled himself away as a torpedo-like projectile hissed out from the forward hatch and shot out like an arrow. The guided water weapon was targeted for a group of swimming Hellixians. A heat-seeking device much like the humming knife, it focused quickly on the enemy. Affixed to the torpedo tip were a series of claw-like rotors, which spinned faster and faster as the projectile gained in speed and altitude. Water moved in a virtual whirlpool around the spinning blades. Aladdin winced in morbid fascination. The green-suited Hellixians attempted to scatter. The heat-seeker bore down. The whizzing blades tore into flesh. There were garbled screams, terrible unheard cries. Sickened, Aladdin saw the enemy troops being tom apart — literally. The razor-like rotary blades hummed, decapitating heads, disgorging limbs from torsos, shredding bloodied entrails. Moments later, there was nothing left of the attacking group; nothing except an unrecognizable pulpy mass floating with the current. Food for the fish.
It was then and only then that Aladdin realised the true magnitude of the hatred that each warring side harboured for the other. In all the wars and campaigns he had seen and participated in, there had never been such wanton carnage. On the surface, men fought equally well and hard — but an enemy was still a human being, dying nobly, for a cause. Here below the sea, there were no niceties. Only death, savage and unmourned.
Along the massive hull of the Academy, some of the advancing Hellix troops were now tossing ropes. Tied to the ropes were magnetic devices, cubes, which instantly held fast against the metal structure. The Hellixians began to climb the ropes, using them like grappling hooks. Harpoons were shot out in unison from opening hatches mounted across the broad middle of the lab. Several of the attackers reeled backward with the impact of the spears. But there were far too many enemy troops ascending the hull for the barrage to be of much use. A few Hellixians had already gained the roof of the multileveled structure and were trying desperately to open the release valves of the cumbersome hatches, which dotted the structure like chimneys. Hatch wheels creaked.
They were trying to flood the upper decks, Aladdin saw, in order to allow the ocean to burst the top levels with water before those trapped inside could equalise the pressure. If the Hellixians succeeded, the upper decks would explode from the onslaught. The pressure of the water — Aladdin didn’t know how many tons per square inch — would literally tear the hull apart, section by section, deck by deck, until the entire structure, at least one hundred feet high, would contract and explode. But by that time, it wouldn’t matter to those still inside. Their human lungs would have burst and killed them long before the Academy itself became a floating hulk of twisted steel.
A squad of shielded archers came swimming over the top on their propelled boards. Recurved bows in hand, they fired in steady volleys, pounding the ranks of invading Hellixians. Mayhem reigned as the enemy soldiers turned, buttressed by additional advancing forces, and fired their harpoons into the Cinnabarian counteroffensive. It was a horrifically gory sight. Cinnabar soldiers, shrieking soundlessly, were gutted and left dangling at the edges of their ruptured boards. Hellixian troops futilely dodging the flying projectiles, were staggering and bleeding, falling off the hull one by one, floating aimlessly in tiny circles while the lifeblood drained from their bodies and stained the sea.
Hand to hand, the combatants began to grapple. Hampered by the pressure of ocean, robbed of the thrust their blows would have had on solid ground, they sprang at each other with humming knives and spears, swirling in the growing maelstrom, twisting and wrenching, stabbing, spearing, cutting the lifelines to their tanks. Aladdin watched as one Cinnabarian, his air hose severed, danced helplessly and gasped for air while his punctured tank fizzled and huge bubbles of oxygen shimmered around him. It took long moments for the soldier to die — moments in which Aladdin saw him scream, his face distort, his hands grab at his own throat. The Hellixian spear ripping through his neck was almost an act of mercy. The dead soldier, his kicking and screaming silenced, floated peacefully away from the field of battle, gloved hands still curled, stiffened and no longer jerking in spasms.
More submersibles were rising from the deep — small craft, not much different from Shara’s turtle. A line of Hellixians broke away from the sea-horse-cavalry combat and dove with a speed and agility that amazed Aladdin. He saw them fire harpoons at the ascending turtles, and was startled as one craft took the hit squarely in the underbelly, its most vulnerable spot. The rotor blades spun wildly; the submersible banked, steam fizzing from its engine, then crashed and shuddered, smashing forcefully against a rocky range along the plateau below. The shock waves were enormous. The whole sea seemed to quiver and shake; the stilts supporting the lab itself wobbled, lifting mounds of dust from the coarse sand in which it was embedded. Aladdin was sent reeling, toss
ing about, head over heels. When finally he regained his precarious balance, he tried to clear his head and recover his bearings. There wasn’t much time. Above him, he caught sight of a shadowy form diving straight for him. The green of the wet suit left no doubt as to which side the diver belonged. His spear-gun had been wrenched from his grasp during the shock wave, but the humming knife was still intact in his right hand. If it was a fight the diver wanted, well, a fight he would get. What he wasn’t prepared for, however, was his first close-up view of a Hellixian.
“By Allah!” he thought, wheezing as he sucked air into his lungs. “It doesn’t even look like a man!”
Not exactly like a man, anyway. But then, he had been warned from the first day of his arrival in Cinnabar that the forces of Hellix had adapted well to their watery world. So well that now they were something less than human.
The enemy soldier wore no goggles. His eyes were large and round like a frog’s. Strapped onto his back was a much smaller and less cumbersome air tank than the kind Cinnabarians used — but the Hellixian wasn’t using it! He wasn’t breathing air at all!
A pale and prune-like shrivelled face gaped at him. There were no eyebrows, and a flaxen fuzz, almost invisible, passed for hair atop its head. It had a mouth, thin and puckered, and a human nose with two nostrils. But on each side of its wide neck were slits — gills. And it breathed the water around it as easily as Aladdin drew oxygen from his mouthpiece.
The great, goggling eyes screwed up tightly as the combatants drew close. Aladdin watched his adversary swing out a webbed hand and slash its knife through the water. Kicking back, Aladdin turned in the water and avoided the blow. Then he jabbed with his own weapon. The humming knife seemed to pull his arm with a life of its own, surging toward the heat of its target. The Hellixian, though, moved faster in the water than any true human being could. It twisted itself away, spread its arms, and, with a flurry, swam a full meter beyond Aladdin’s reach. Then it came on again, slashing furiously with its blade, forcing Aladdin to back-peddle constantly and let himself sink deeper and deeper.
The Thief of Kalimar; Captain Sinbad; Cinnabar Page 94