Gravedigger 01 - Sea Of Ghosts

by Alan Campbell

  Eight of the crew had gathered on the port side, while one of the officers – probably Mellor – was handing out carbine rifles to them.

  The deadship drew closer. There did not appear to be any crewman aboard. Her hull and sterncastle had been forged from iron, but now Maskelyne could see that she had been damaged by intense fire. Yard-long sections of the bulwark had been scorched black and warped out of shape. Cables slumped around her tower like worn shrouds. He counted the remains of six guns mounted along her port side, strange metal weapons, each with a conical arrangement of circular plates fixed to the end of its barrel. They looked charred, melted, inoperable. An iron figurehead in the likeness of an Unmer maiden remained upon her prow, now stripped of paint and partially reduced to slag. The corruption gave her a ghoulish grin. Dragonfire did this, Maskelyne thought. Dragonfire.

  Every crewman had his rifle trained on the Unmer ship, following her as she slid by mere yards from the Mistress. Under the steady thump of the dredger’s engines Maskelyne fancied he could hear the groan of the old ironclad’s buckled hull and the rush of seawater caught between their two keels, and then something else – a faint, high-pitched humming sound, almost at the limits of his hearing, seemed to emanate from that tower.

  A heartbeat later, the Unmer ship had passed by. Maskelyne watched her dissolve into the fog.

  He let out a long breath.

  ‘Is it true what they say about deadships?’ Lucille asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’

  ‘Mellor thinks the dead crews still steer them.’

  Maskelyne frowned. ‘Something steers them, but it isn’t ghosts. Their engines draw electrical fluid from the air.’ He rubbed his eyes and then rested both his hands on the wheel again. ‘I don’t know . . . the energy is probably transmitted from somewhere, a station or a bunker, somewhere the Haurstaf and their allies didn’t penetrate.’

  ‘You think there could still be a free Unmer community out there?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  She shivered. ‘I’m going to check on Jontney.’

  She left Maskelyne alone in the wheelhouse. For a long while he peered into the gloom, watchful for anything unusual. The rumble of the Mistress’s engines failed to calm his nerves as much as it usually did. An Unmer ironclad, still sailing these waters after god only knew how many hundreds of years? The souls of her sorcerous crew burned into her very metal at the Battle of Awl? He couldn’t accept that. The Unmer captains were long dead. The Brutalists and operators were long dead. The ship was still receiving its power from a distant station, which meant it might also be possible to steer it from afar. A free Unmer community? Maskelyne knew of only one Unmer warrior still at large. He tried to remember the line from the old children’s rhyme he’d learned at school.

  And to the storm Conquillas brought,

  A dragon clad in armour wrought,

  By Hessimar of Anderlaine.

  There was more, but the rest wouldn’t come to him. Those great serpents, led by Argusto Conquillas, had allied with the Haurstaf and risen up against their Unmer masters. Conquillas had decimated the Unmer fleet at Awl and thus betrayed his own kind for the love of a Haurstaf witch.

  The lookout’s bell rang out again.

  A sense of dread crept up Maskelyne’s spine, for through that red and turbulent air beyond the window he spied the dim hulk of the deadship bearing down on them once more. There could be no mistaking that hideous rusted tower, that weird droning sound. Evidently it had come about in the fog. He spun the Mistress’s wheel full lock to starboard, then flung open the wheel-house door and called down to the foredeck. ‘Get Ianthe up here, I need her sight.’

  The deadship drew nearer, and for a heartbeat Maskelyne thought he could see a group of figures standing motionless upon her fog-shrouded deck. But then the vision faded, and the ship appeared deserted once more. Nothing but burned iron, a mess of cable. The mists were playing tricks on his eyes.

  The two vessels were on a collision course. Maskelyne gunned the Mistress’s engines and attempted to take her past the Unmer ship once again. It would be close. Down on the foredeck his crew rushed forward to the bow, training their rifles on the approaching threat.

  Sixty yards now.

  The Mistress began to turn to starboard. The Unmer ironclad maintained her course.

  Thirty yards.

  Ahead, the great dark vessel loomed large. Now Maskelyne could see her figurehead with its melted grin. It seemed to know it was going to collide with them.

  The deadship struck the Mistress a glancing blow on her port side. Even from up here in the wheelhouse Maskelyne felt the force of the impact. Abruptly his vessel lurched to one side. He heard the other ship’s hull boom, and then a hideous groaning and scraping sound as the icebreaker’s reinforced prow scraped along the Mistress’s side. That blow would have crushed a lesser ship, but Maskelyne’s dredger was a tough old girl. Engines thumping, she thundered on, pushing the schooner aside.

  Slowly, the two ships separated. The Unmer vessel drifted off into the fog.

  Maskelyne’s heart was thumping. He cut power to the engines, then opened the wheelhouse door and called down. ‘What damage?’

  The crew were picking themselves up from the deck. One by one they began to peer down over the port side, sweeping gem lanterns back and forth across the hull. Mellor sent a man running towards the midships hatch, presumably to check for internal damage.

  ‘There’s no obvious breach, Captain,’ Mellor called back. ‘But she’s taken a hell of a pounding. I’ve sent Broomhouse to check the bulkheads from fore to aft.’

  At that moment the midships companionway hatch opened, and another crewman appeared with Ianthe. He led the girl by the arm to the wheelhouse ladder and bade her climb. She looked nervous and shaken and had been hurriedly wrapped in an old whaleskin cloak.

  Maskelyne took her hand and helped her into the wheel-house. ‘We’ve been hit by another vessel,’ he said. ‘An Unmer deadship.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘It’s still out there somewhere,’ Maskelyne said. ‘I need you to watch out for it.’

  ‘There’s no one aboard it,’ she replied.

  It struck him as an odd thing to say. ‘I’m not one to pander to superstitions myself,’ he said. ‘But that vessel has already come straight at us twice. Someone has to be steering it.’ He thought about the figures he’d glimpsed momentarily upon the deadship’s deck, but chose not to mention them.

  Ianthe merely shrugged.

  The door swung open, and Mellor’s head appeared at knee level. He was clinging to the ladder outside. ‘Four of the engine room bulkheads have been buckled, Captain, but it’s not too grim. Our hull is intact, engine sound, and we’re still tight as a drum. Repair crews are working on it now.’

  ‘Tell them to go easy,’ Maskelyne ordered. ‘I don’t want them putting the bulkheads under any more stress. We’ll refit back in dry dock at Scythe. No cross-braces. Have them raise props from the motor housings only and weld the plates in the meantime.’

  ‘Aye, Captain.’ Mellor reached up and shut the door.

  Maskelyne gently increased power to the engines and spun the wheel to port again, keeping an eye on the ship’s compass as he brought the Mistress back on her original course. Red-brown fumes drifted over the foredeck and the dim figures of his crew. Through the starboard window he could see the dun lantern of the sun, almost directly to the south. It was almost noon, although it felt like dusk. Like the seas are burning. With any luck they would be out of the border waters and into the Mare Regis proper by mid afternoon.

  For
a long while Maskelyne kept his gaze on the mists ahead. Neither he nor Ianthe spoke. The lookout’s lantern on the prow burned like a solitary star. The old dredger rocked gently back and forth as she ploughed on through the poisonous waters, her engines maintaining a steady rhythm. Maskelyne could sense the uneasiness of his crew in the way they moved about the deck and in the fashion in which they clutched their rifles. He noted how each man kept himself apart from his companions. The fog drew denser and bloodier until it coiled around the cranes like dragon’s breath. Maskelyne had the impression that they were moving into some strange borderland that was not a part of this world.

  The lookout’s lantern began to swing for the third time.

  ‘Where is it?’ he asked Ianthe.

  She was clearly terrified. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The lookout can see it,’ he growled.

  She pointed straight ahead. ‘There!’

  And then Maskelyne spotted it. The deadship reared suddenly out of the thick fog like a cliff. It was almost upon them. Maskelyne cursed and spun the wheel hard to port. He wrenched the engine throttle into reverse. But he already knew that it was too late. The Unmer ironclad was going to crash straight into their starboard side, and there was no way Maskelyne could avoid it.

  Granger crept along the crew deck companionway until he found a hatch leading down to the gun deck. He listened, and, hearing nothing, slipped down.

  A low space ran the width of the ship, divided here and there by mast-collars and monstrous steel-reinforced ribs of dragon-bone. The firing hatches on either side were open, and the emperor’s ranks of bronze cannons gleamed dully in their tackles and breech ropes. The guns were antiques, Imperial Ferredales, forged in Valcinder at least three centuries ago – extraordinarily old and rare, and yet crafted with such skill and precision that their power and range could match many modern shell weapons. Granger almost choked to see that the lanyards now connected to retrofitted flintlock mechanisms in each breech. Each gun must have been worth three million gilders before Hu had ordered them vandalized in this way. Rams, swab buckets and powder rods lay upon the floor beside each gun, while stacks of various missiles – sacks of grapeshot, chain shot and troughs of heavy iron balls – filled the central space between the opposing bulwarks. The powder would be held in the deck below, accessed via a series of smaller hatches he could see in the floor. There was not a crewman in sight.

  Granger’s skin itched and burned, but the pain had diminished somewhat. His eyes still felt hot and raw. He paced the gun deck, marvelling at the size of these reinforced dragon-bone arches. Sixty mature serpents had been slaughtered to construct this ship, among them Garamae the Betrayer, who was said to have devoured Lord Marquetta’s baby son during the armistice in 1403. He crouched down and pulled up one of the powder hatches and sniffed. A sulphurous odour filled his nostrils. A faint green glow illuminated an iron floor.

  Granger walked over to one of the port gun hatches and peered out. He could see the bone corral upon the dockside, the emperor’s podium, and the Administration Buildings rising up beyond. Most of the crowd had spread along the water’s edge and were staring into the brine, along with many of the emperor’s crewmen. Hu himself stood by the harbour steps beside his launch, guarded by his Samarol bodyguards. He appeared to be having an animated discussion with Administrator Grech and Briana Marks.

  Granger padded back to the powder hatch and dropped down. He found himself in a small iron cell. Parchment cartridges of powder stood in neat stacks against the walls. Shelves held boxes of flints, coils of cambric fuse, shredded sailcloth and sealed jars of phosphorous that gave off a dim green luminance. He grabbed an armload of cartridges, then stuffed a handful of flints into his pocket along with a few yards of fuse and climbed back up to the gun deck.

  One of the forward hatches offered him the best angle of fire. He sighted along the cannon’s barrel, and, satisfied, winched the heavy gun carriage back on its wheels using the rear tackle. He swabbed the barrel interior, then shoved the powder cartridge down inside it, followed by a cloth wad. Then he picked up a ram and tamped the powder home. From the centre of the deck he took one of the grapeshot sacks and rammed that down the barrel after the charge. Lastly, he forced in another wad of cloth to keep the shot in place, and then heaved the gun carriage back up against the bulwark by alternating between each of the side tackles.

  Granger took a moment to catch his breath. His arms ached from the exertion. His own sweat stung his altered skin like vinegar poured into a wound. He felt sore all over, irritable, impatient. His every instinct screamed at him to get away now. Find the bridge, fight your way in if need be – lock the doors, gun the ship’s engines and get out of here. He could turn the Excelsior back into the Glot Madera, run as far as he could before the skeleton crew broke the door down, use a powder bomb to bluff his way out, or just blow himself to hell and take as many of them down with him as he could. But his need for revenge wouldn’t let him leave yet. He took hold of the lanyard behind the gun’s breech and peered out of the hatch again, letting his gaze roam over the milling crowd of jailers, administrators and soldiers. He couldn’t see the emperor anywhere.

  A sudden roar came from the launch’s engines. Had Hu already boarded his pilot vessel? Granger couldn’t see him on the deck. He must already be inside. Granger cursed and rubbed madly at his burning eyes. The launch was too low in the water. The grapeshot wouldn’t hit it from this angle. The cannon’s barrel was aimed firmly at the crowd.

  But then he spotted the emperor emerging from amidst the group of administrators at the top of the steps. He was still within range.

  Granger stepped back from the cannon and pulled the lanyard.

  An enormous concussion sounded. The gun carriage slammed backwards against its breech rope. Grapeshot burst out of the barrel, scattering in the air, and tore through the dockside crowds. Through drifting smoke Granger saw dozens of men and women drop, their flesh torn open by the tiny missiles. He glimpsed bloody clothes, scores of wounds. Someone screamed.

  Emperor Hu remained standing exactly where he was, clutching his face. And then his bodyguards closed around him and bustled him roughly down the steps towards the waiting launch.

  Granger had missed his target.

  He cursed again. Then he snatched up the remaining powder cartridges, and ran with them to the nearest ladder. He climbed up and hurried through the crew quarters, his heart thumping wildly. Near the rear of the ship he found a stairwell that looked likely to take him up to the bridge. But as he started to climb, he came face to face with another man who had been rushing in the opposite direction.

  The insignia on the man’s white uniform marked him as the first officer. When he saw Granger he halted abruptly and his eyes widened with alarm. ‘You . . .’ he began. But he couldn’t find the words to finish his sentence. Granger, with his scorched flesh and howling red eyes, must have made a terrifying spectacle.

  The officer suddenly reached for the pistol at his belt.

  Granger kicked the man’s legs out from under him.

  He fell back heavily onto the stairs. He fumbled for his pistol again.

  Granger snatched the seeing knife from the band of his breeches and plunged it upwards into the other man’s neck. He pinned the officer’s arms with his knees, holding the dying man down while he choked and gurgled on his own lifeblood. It was over in a moment.

  Granger wiped the seeing knife clean on the officer’s uniform and carried on up the stairwell.

  He reached the top of the stairwell without further incident, clutched the powder cartridges close to his chest, and flung open the door to the bridge. It was empty. Three outward-sloping glass windows composed of innumerable tiny panes offered views to port and starboard, and ahead across the Excelsior’s foredeck to the Haurstaf warship
berthed further out from the quayside. A sweeping control bank of lacquered wood and gold piping curved around the silver and bone ship’s wheel. The rear wall had been exquisitely carved with dragon motifs, hunting scenes and Imperial seals. An enormous steel harpoon hung there like a trophy, over a brass plaque that read: Garamae’s Thorn. No fewer than ten gem lanterns adorned the ceiling, all shining in hues of pink, gold, orange and green. Not a man in sight. Granger could scarcely believe his luck. Evidently Hu had deemed it unnecessary to keep even a skeleton crew in charge of his own yacht’s bridge.

  He closed the door behind him. Through the port window he spied the emperor’s launch scudding across the harbour towards the ship’s boarding ladder. There was no time to spare. He scanned the engine gauges and controls. Boiler pressure, good. Water level, good. Engine oil. Fuel oil. Feed cocks. Decomp. Hydraulics. Pressure valves. Primer shunts. Everything was in order. A separate bank under the forward window contained an array of meteorological and navigational instruments – barometers, chronographs, compasses and the like – but he ignored those for now. Likewise the comspool. He had to hope the engine room crew had been lax enough to keep the main whale-oil feed line open, or he’d be running on reserve.

  He primed the engine and opened the oil feed cocks, then pumped the decompression lever until the gauge levelled. Then he pressed down firmly on the first of the three copper shunts.

  Far below he heard the engine grumble into life.

  ‘Let’s see what you can do,’ he muttered.

  Granger opened half the air shunts, spun the wheel hard to starboard and twisted open the main-line feed-through cock. Steam hissed behind the control panel. Hydraulic power valves snapped open. The great ship gave a slight tremble and then began to slide forward.