Precipice

by Thomas Webb

  Montclair kicked the dish, sending its contents splattering against the walls of his tiny prison. The jar, however, was a different story. He grabbed it like a drowning man clinging to a floating piece of debris. He allowed himself one gulp, the water warm, but clear and good, before remembering his training. Small sips only, no matter how thirsty.

  With most of the water and some time to process came a certain amount of clarity. He had to get out of here. He’d be no help to his love locked in this damned dog pen. He refused to let the notion that she may no longer live breach his thoughts. He sat, clearing his mind and trying to meditate through the problem the way Ueda had shown him.

  His belly growled. He wished he hadn’t been so hasty in kicking away his dinner, spit and all. Much as he hated to admit it, his brother’s soldier had been right. He would need that energy.

  He flexed his clockwerk hand open and closed, open and closed. As twilight deepened into night, he heard a noise, a shuffling. Someone was trying to sneak about in the dark, but doing a terrible job of it. Almost like a child would.

  "Is it true, Uncle Julius?"

  Montclair attempted a smile through cracked lips. “Is what true, Phineas?”

  Christ the Healer, the pain at speaking! And the sound of his own voice, so hoarse and dry it sounded like it belonged to someone else.

  “Is it true what papa says about you? That you betrayed our family? And our country? That you soiled our name?”

  Montclair’s heart ached for the boy. In the brief time he’d known him, he’d seen the child’s gentle nature, the better part of his mother winning out over the viciousness of the Montclair bloodline. The world was a cruel place for something so good and pure.

  "You're a good boy, Phineas. There are things in this world, complicated things, that you don’t yet understand."

  Phineas’ silhouette hung its head. “Oh.” The boy, saddened only for a second, perked up with the resilience only a child could muster. “Wait a minute! I almost forgot. I have something for you! It’s from my mother.”

  Montclair watched Phineas slide the ‘something’ into his cell. He picked up the tin and opened and sniffed it. Rice and red beans with gravy.

  “Mama says they’re your favorite. Papa told her about it. He talked about you a lot to us, Uncle Julius.” The silhouette sat down with a rustle of cloth. “Mostly good things.” A pause. “Sometimes bad. It was like he wanted to hate you, but he couldn’t quite make himself, not all the way.”

  Montclair put the food in his mouth. He’d loved this dish when his mother had prepared it. Now, it was nothing more than fuel, enabling him to do what was needed. Now, he barely tasted it.

  “Do you like it, Uncle Julius?” That bright voice was a beacon in the night.

  “It’s delicious, Phineas. Thank you. And please thank your mother for me. Can you do that, nephew?”

  Montclair sat up before the boy had a chance to answer. He heard the approaching footsteps coming but too late to warn his nephew.

  “Phineas?” Randall asked.

  "Papa!" Phineas leapt to his feet. "I-I didn’t mean to…”

  "It's all right, Phineas,” Randall said, his voice even.

  Montclair listened. There was no malice, no anger, nothing there to indicate Randall’s mood or intentions.

  “Your mother’s looking for you, son. Be a good boy and go on back up to the house. Leave your uncle and I be for a minute.”

  Phineas looked at Montclair then at his father, before running off in the direction of the Montclair manse.

  Randall kneeled in the dirt next to the cage. “My men tell me you screamed for the native woman all afternoon.”

  Montclair locked eyes with his brother, focusing all his anger and hatred to disguise the fear and pain.

  “Not like you at all.” Randall chuckled. “Probably the dehydration. You always did get a little loopy.”

  Montclair said nothing, just held his breath, waited, and prayed.

  “Her fate is no longer any of your concern, Julius.”

  Montclair nearly collapsed, a flutter of his one uninjured eyelid the only outward sign he gave. Randall’s response meant there was still a chance Ayita lived. He hung his head, fighting the deep-seated Catholic urge to cross himself. He wanted to weep but didn’t know if his body could even produce the tears, nor would he give Randall the satisfaction of seeing them.

  "You know what, Julius?” Randall asked, either not noticing or pretending not to notice Montclair’s pain. “It saddened me to order the native woman’s death. It really did. Killing her was necessary, but it just didn’t feel as honorable as I would liked.” He shrugged. “And honor is all we have, after all.”

  “Couldn’t have been easy for you,” Montclair croaked, every word like the scraping of an iron rasp across his esophagus. “My killing Truveaux. You always hated to lose.”

  “I have to say, Julius, that was a surprise. To kill an unarmed woman, even one like Truveaux? I would have thought you’d been raised better than that. You were raised better than that.”

  You’re one to talk, brother of mine. Montclair took another sip of his precious water. Even those few drops eased his raw, parched throat. “Why are you doing this, Randall?”

  “It won’t be long before they figure out to come here looking for you,” Randall said. “Your friends, I mean.” He stood and brushed the dirt from his trousers. “No matter, though. We’ll be ready for them. And by then, it’ll be too late, anyway.”

  “Too late?” Montclair asked.

  “You being here actually did me a service, Julius. With Therese out of the way, the territories are mine for the taking. So much easier to have the Union do the dirty work for me.”

  “That was your plan all along?”

  “No. I really did want one last, good evening with my brother and my family. Your ridding me of Therese was just a fortunate side effect.”

  “Never figured you for a criminal, Randall.”

  “I was always more of a silent partner. Not so different, really, the military and the underworld. Tactical strategy or committing felonies, smuggling routes or troop movements, resupply or payoffs… it’s simple logistics, Julius. It all comes down to leadership. Now, with Therese gone, it’s mine for the taking. All of it. I just have to reach out and grab it.” Randall pointed to the tin tray in Montclair’s hand. “I trust your last meal was appetizing? Your favorite if I recall.”

  "Good of you to remember," Montclair croaked, still processing what he had just heard.

  “Rebecca made them herself.” Randall’s eyes narrowed. “She insisted. I hope you ate up. I want you to get your strength back. I want it to be a fair fight between us.”

  Montclair wondered how he’d arrived here, at this place. What had he missed? What was he still missing?

  A single word passed his dry, split lips. “Why?”

  Randall laughed, the sound laced with stinging hatred.

  “Why?” Randall asked. "Why do you think, brother?” He clenched his teeth. “You betrayed us!” he spat. “You turned your back on everything we’ve ever known! Your family, your name, our father’s legacy…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Even your own brother. Surely, you remember enough of your heritage, of your family, to understand what must be done? What I must do.”

  The words broke Montclair’s heart. At last, the truth of it. Finally, he could have his say, after all the years separating him from his kin. He needed Randall to hear his truth. He needed him to know, needed to be allowed to plead his case. He needed to make his brother understand.

  “The Confederacy was wrong, Randall! Everything they stood for was wrong. It was all a lie, built on the backs and the toil and the blood of the enslaved! And now, they wage an internal war to suppress those same freed people even after they have the clockwerks. It’s madness, Randall! One day, the Confederacy will be judged on the wrong side of history.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Randall said.

  Montclair
’s eyes grew wide. Perhaps he’d misheard?

  “None of it matters, Julius! All that mattered, all that does matter, is family! Now, you’re going to make amends for all you’ve done when you die tomorrow.”

  “And if I win?” Montclair asked.

  Randall looked Montclair in the eye before turning to leave. “Rest well, brother,” he said. “Tomorrow, we duel."

  20 The Mississippi River - Submerged, October 1866

  Scarlet peered through the twin glass portholes of her diving helmet. She activated the aether lamp mounted atop the helmet, the action in vain against the murky waters of the Mississippi. She spared a backward glance to where the Kraken had dropped them, but the whale-sized submersible ironclad was already wending its way, unseen, back upriver. She turned back downriver, in the direction of the objective.

  They’d entered the water just before sunset. Now, Scarlet could hardly see her own gloved hand in front of her face through the mud-clouded water, much less several hundred yards to the hull of the riverboat that would soon be passing overhead. These days, Legree rarely set foot off the Lady Luck, so they’d had no choice but to grab him while he was onboard. Seconds so easily spent in the days and weeks of preparation leading up to the op suddenly became precious. What little daylight remained was quickly slipping away.

  Scarlet continued to let herself sink, the way Carlyle and his small crew of sailors had instructed her. Finally, she broke through the river’s mud-brown middle-layer to the clearer water closest to the bottom. She impacted with a muted plunk, sinking down deep into the pillow-soft sediment of the riverbed.

  She steadied her breathing. It was stifling inside the iron suit, almost casket-like. The low light, supplied by the single lamp atop her helmet and two tiny filament bulbs inside it, only added to the suffocating sense of claustrophobia.

  She looked out into the dark depths. A bit of relief, there. At least she could see a little ways out, the water near the bottom an eerie shade of green as opposed to opaque brown.

  Her heart leapt into her throat as a pair of bulbous, glowing green eyes materialized from the waters ahead. She breathed a sigh of relief, feeling foolish. It was only the illumination system from another suit, the color distorted by the green tint of the water.

  The suit trudged closer, raising clouds of silt as it moved. As the distance between them decreased, she made out Carlyle’s smiling face through the twin glass portals. Inside his suit, beneath two bulging pieces of glass protruding from the helmet like eyes, Carlyle resembled some unholy combination of frog and man.

  One by one, the rest of his small crew of sailors touched bottom, liquid puffs of sediment marking their impact. More ghostly green bug eyes shimmered into existence, clouds of silt rising from iron-shod feet like smoke as they walked.

  They gathered in a loose circle, one-hundred fifty feet below the surface of the Mississippi. Carlyle held up three fat-suited fingers, pointed to the surface, and then held up all five. They’d practiced this, over and over, for the last week. Scarlet knew exactly what the hand signals meant.

  Target approaching. Three-hundred yards out on surface. Moving at five knots. Scarlet signaled back that she understood and watched as every sailor used hand motions to convey and confirm the information.

  Carlyle signaled again, swirling his pointer finger in the water and pointing up. If they’d timed it correctly, the Lady Luck would be, at this very moment, passing above their heads. Carlyle gripped his rifle, wrapped and bound watertight in sheepskin. The petty officer engaged his suit’s propellers and blasted away, a swirl of river mud and bubbles in his wake. The cruel curve of a hooked, harpoon-like tool, latched onto the belt of his suit, bobbed and bounced as he jetted toward the surface.

  Using the controls on her wrist, Scarlet activated her own suit’s compact motor. A hot flash of panic burned through her when the motor didn’t engage, followed by a nervous giggle when she remembered the delay in the switch relay. Sure enough, a second later, the propeller in the back of her suit kicked on. She relieved the pressure in her shoulder-mounted ballast tanks and launched upward, following the fading lights of Carlyle’s suit.

  Scarlet tried to cut herself some slack. After all, she’d only been inside this metallic tomb a handful of times and each one during tightly controlled training scenarios. She recalled the conversation she’d had with Carlyle when he first explained how the suit worked.

  “Nothing made of metal should be able to float to the surface that way,” she had told him.

  Carlyle had laughed. “They said the same thing about the first airships.”

  She had to admit he had her there.

  It was strange how only here, in the dark, catfish-infested bottom of the mighty Mississippi, did she find Carlyle’s logic comforting.

  One by one, the group of sailors joined Scarlet and Carlyle in their ascent in formation, their diving suits pushing them along, bathed in silence, nothing less than a deadly school of ironclad piranha.

  Scarlet and her new maritime friends increased their speed. She’d executed airship rappels and airship assaults, mountain ascents and tunnel infiltrations. She’d even pulled off the highly dangerous Buxton maneuver, where the agency or military operator leaps brute-back from the open cargo bay of a moving airship, several times. But she had no problem admitting to herself that this far beneath the waters, she was well out of her element.

  The advances they’d made at Fort Defiance were far ahead of anything she’d ever heard of, much less had the opportunity to practice. From airship-borne assaults modified for moving boats to the use of these frightening metal diving suits…

  Copperhead would love this.

  A pang of sadness bit deep when she thought of her minder and of why she was here in the first place. She renewed her vow to get him out no matter what. Then, together, they’d finish McCormick. First, there was the mission. That and getting out of this damnable river.

  Scarlet followed Carlyle’s trail of bubbles until the depth gauge on her arm read twenty feet. They cut their lights and throttled down the power to their motors, allowing them to hover in place. This was the most dangerous part of the assault, completely blind, light level zero, in the muddied upper middle-layer of the river. When the entire assault force staged, helmet bulbs burning but barely visible through the murk, Carlyle blinked his own helmet lights three times. They were ready.

  Scarlet increased power to her propellers, moving through the water at a trawl. She rose until finally a hint of waning daylight reluctantly shone through the boiling churn that marked the riverboat’s wake.

  Now, the second phase of the operation would begin. All they had to do was perfectly match the gigantic riverboat’s course and speed, clamber onboard without being spotted by the Gambler’s hired muscle, and somehow manage to not get sucked up by one of the three barn-sized paddles at the aft of the boat.

  “Piece of cake,” Carlyle had said back in the briefing, even though they’d been spotted by the mock sentries on more than half their training runs.

  Scarlet rolled her eyes inside her diving helmet. Piece of cake, my ass.

  Scarlet broke the surface, relieved to no longer be completely submerged, and maneuvered her diving suit straight into the Lady Luck’s wake. The disturbance in the water spanned half as wide as the river itself. The plan was to use the rough chop to hide themselves until the last possible second, careful of the suction created by the monstrous boat’s trio of mill-sized paddlewheels.

  She leaned back low in the churn and let it roil over her glass portholes. The sun dipped below the surface of the trees along the riverbank, twilight sky melting into a strip of bloody red afterglow in the west. She looked left and right, counting the round iron helmets bobbing low in the riverboat’s tempestuous wake. A sigh of relief as a quick tally revealed ten sets of glass eyes, all the assault force accounted for. So far, not one of them had been detected. Then, her blood went cold as she pivoted toward the riverboat and saw two sentries leaning over
the rail.

  Two men, rifles leaned against the bulkhead behind them, betraying their lack of training, gazed into the river, the tips of their hand-rolled cigarettes glowing cherry red in the twilight gloom.

  River, Carlyle’s scout, swam closest to the boat. She gave the rest of Carlyle’s crew the signal to hold position. Then, she and a second sailor dipped beneath the surface and plunged forward toward the riverboat.

  They swam in at an angle, the better to avoid the danger of the paddles. Several yards from the smoking sentries, River’s helmet popped through, only barely breaking the surface. She swam closer.

  Once, while on assignment in the Florida Territory, Scarlet had seen an alligator pluck a bird from a bush. That gator had nothing on River and her partner.

  River and the second sailor launched from the water in a spray, reaching out and pulling the two surprised guards overboard. A single, still-glowing cigarette rolled to a stop on the deck next to their rifles, the only sign the two men had ever been there.

  A minute later, River and the second sailor resurfaced. Scarlet watched River twist in the water, turning a graceful one-hundred eighty degrees. She pulled a hooked tool, the same one they all carried, from the belt of her suit and attached it to the railing. Hand over hand, she used the rope loops attached to the tool to haul herself, heavy iron suit and all, up and onto the deck. Once onboard, River scanned left and right. Satisfied, she tossed both rifles and the burning cigarette overboard and then proceeded to help her shipmate up.

  Scarlet, Carlyle, and the rest of the sailors followed suit. They split into two groups, with Carlyle’s group staying aft and the other swimming ahead to board at the boat’s bow.