Ulysses punched the emergency eject and the airlock blasted open in a torrent of bubbles and swirling seawater. The abominable pressures working on the craft at these depths sucked out the air, the pressure suit and Ulysses with it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sea Change
Bubbles of escaping air blinding him, the hull of the Ahab nothing but a blur in the whirling confusion of light from the one remaining suit spot and the surrounding hungry darkness of the deep, Ulysses flung out the left arm of the suit. As the pincer touched the second sub, he pulled hard on the closing mechanism built into the arm, the effort of his exertions jarring his shoulder just as much as if it had been his own arm that had grabbed hold of the speeding vessel. The pincer teeth seized a protrusion on the outside of the Ahab and snapped shut, biting into the fin they had captured.
For one heart-stopping moment, the two subs touched, the collision barely more than a kiss but one which still sent the two craft reeling away from one another, the Ahab spinning on its axis. Ulysses clung on for dear life, but he needn't have worried; the vice-like grip of the steel lobster claw held fast. However, this didn't stop the suited Ulysses from being thrown against the hull of the sub, rebounding with a metallic thud that left him feeling nauseous and disorientated.
He reached out with his other arm, the gauntlet-hand taking hold of another protruding part of the vessel. Heaving on that hand as well, he was able to bring himself under control again. He was now flat against the hull of the Ahab, facedown, cinched tight to the curved surface, a tail fin in one pincer and a maintenance ladder rung held tight within his right gauntlet-fist.
To his right he could see a porthole, yellow sodium light washing out of it. He was so close that he could almost see inside the sub, but he wasn't quite close enough.
His curiosity frustrated, instead Ulysses focused on his primary task, that of reaching the Ahab's lateral airlock access. Hand over cautious hand he pulled himself along the side of the submersible, first releasing the pincer and then, when that was securely clamped around another handhold, loosening the grip of the suit's over-large robot hand.
And all the while the Ahab continued powering through the water, heading inexorably for the surface, forcing Ulysses to battle the drag of the slipstream, which tugged horribly at the unstreamlined pressure suit.
Slowly but surely he traversed the exterior of the Ahab, the convoluted construction of the hull providing him with plenty of handholds with which to heave himself up, until eventually he came alongside the entrance to the vessel's airlock.
Where those who had made the journey to Marianas Base from the incapacitated Neptune on board the Nemo had had to exit through the conning tower airlock - as Ulysses had just done again himself - when they had surfaced in the pressure dock pool, Carcharodon's cronies aboard his private submersible had been able to stride out through the lateral dock and down a gangplank to the deck below.
Ulysses found himself alongside that same hatchway now and, grabbing hold of the door's opening mechanism cranked the manual override. With a shunk the door opened and Ulysses pulled the massive bulk of his suit inside, manually sealing the airlock again from inside.
He realised that one of the things he did not have working for him, given this approach, was the element of surprise. Those on board the Ahab already knew that the Nemo was on their tail, the two, thankfully unarmed, submersibles having already scraped together. They would also have heard Ulysses' clanking progress as he struggled up the side of the craft and would now be listening to him operating the airlock. But he did have something else on his side. He was, of course, encased inside an armoured suit that made him twice as tall as any other man, and ten times as strong, a suit that had resisted the horrendous pressures exerted upon it down in the ocean depths as well as the attentions of a fully grown Megalodon.
It wouldn't be a matter of what Carcharodon could do to him now that would be the problem, but what he might do to his hostages in desperation, as he stared into the gaping jaws of defeat.
With the hiss and suck of water being drawn out of the chamber, the air inside the airlock equalised with that inside the craft, allowing the inner door to be opened. Spinning the wheel-handle with a flick of his wrist, readying himself - his breathing slow, his heart racing - Ulysses opened the hatch.
He took in the scene that greeted him inside the cabin of the Ahab in a second. Constance Pennyroyal was huddled in a corner, tied up and gagged. Her eyes widened first in shock at seeing the bulky mass of the deep sea diving suit crammed into the airlock and then brightened noticeably on seeing who it was inside.
At the other end of the cabin, Chief Engineer Selby stood at the controls, being forced to pilot the vessel with a gun to his head; a gun, which was held in the wobbling hand of Miss Celeste. Next to her, Jonah Carcharodon sat hunched within his wheelchair, his back to Ulysses.
"Quicksilver? Is that you?" Carcharodon challenged.
"Miss Celeste," Ulysses said, speaking through the intercom of the suit. "Put the gun down. It's going to be all right."
"So it is you. I thought so," said Carcharodon, weariness evident in his voice. "Who else would it be?"
"I'm sorry, Mr Quicksilver," the PA said in a quavering voice, "but I can't do that."
"Whatever hold Carcharodon has over you, it's finished. I know what he's done. It's over now. He can't hurt you anymore. I won't let him."
"But, Mr Quicksilver, it would appear you have made a terrible mistake."
Taking the gun off Selby, Miss Celeste turned, spinning Carcharodon's chair around with her free hand at the same time - in which Ulysses now saw she was also holding a moth-eaten rag-doll - and trained her weapon on Ulysses, for all the good bullets would do against the abyss-resistant armour. A look of surprise flickered across her face as she took in the imposing figure of the dandy adventurer sheathed within the massive pressure suit, but only for a moment. A second later, it was replaced by a cruel frown, a dark expression which filled Ulysses with a sense of unaccustomed foreboding.
The passing look of surprise on Miss Celeste's face was nothing compared to the shock which possessed Ulysses' features on coming face-to-face with the ageing shipping magnate once more.
He was wearing a bright yellow, yet deflated lifejacket, tied tight around his neck and waist. The pockets, pouches and ripped open inflation chambers had been loaded with sticks of dynamite, the same explosives the escapees had found in their search of the divers' prep chamber. The cobbled together bomb-jacket was packed with enough dynamite to obliterate the Ahab and all on board. Twists of wire protruded from the explosives, connecting them to a black box in Carcharodon's lap, on the front of which was a dialled timer.
"You've been busy," was all Ulysses could think to say.
"Oh, he doesn't know the half of it, does he, Madeleine?" Miss Celeste said, addressing the doll in her hand. The doll she had rescued from the base. The doll Ulysses had seen in a flaking sepia-tint in the hands of -
"The little girl," he said in wonder. "The child in the photograph."
"You recognise me then?"
"Now that you mention it, yes, I do see a resemblance. Your father was Felix Lamprey."
"Little Marie Lamprey?" Carcharodon uttered in disbelief.
"Yes, you doddering old fool." She hissed. "All this time, right under your nose. And you never knew. And not so little now, nor so helpless! The cuckoo in the nest."
"More like the viper in the nest," Ulysses said quietly to himself.
"Well, I..." Carcharodon blustered.
"What? Assumed that I was dead like my father, left behind for the sea to claim? Didn't give me a second thought? Never wondered what happened to that little girl you all left behind? Didn't care what had happened to her? Is that what you're trying to say?"
Ulysses had never heard the young woman say so much during all time they had spent together.
"It all makes sense now," Ulysses said.
"Oh, does it?" she snapped. "I'
m so pleased. It took you long enough though, didn't it, Mr Consulting Detective? Had to see it for yourself before you would readily believe it, didn't you? We had to show him, didn't we, Madeleine?" The doll said nothing. "Well perhaps you can explain how I can make sense of it all, tell me why they killed my father and left an innocent little girl behind to die, a sacrifice to the beast, just like my mother, because I don't understand it!"
Ulysses stared deep into her eyes. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, then the soul he could see reflected in these particular orbs was a damaged, tarnished thing. She was wild now, any semblance of the mousey deference she had managed to maintain for so long entirely gone. They were now seeing her true face. The quiet, patient, ever-tolerant, uncomplaining, subservient Miss Celeste had vanished, to be replaced by the wrathful, vengeful, violent and unpredictable Marie Lamprey. And where Miss Celeste had seemed like a perfectly rational and reasonable individual, her alter ego was utterly mad.
The slightest of movements distracted Ulysses for a split second. In that moment his eyes jerked a fraction of an inch, and refocused on the figure of Selby, but only for a moment. But that was all it took for Ulysses to inadvertently betray the engineer.
Marie Lamprey, her own psychotic stare transfixing Ulysses' eyes, as much as his were locked on hers, saw the miniscule change.
She spun round as Selby heroically moved to stop her. There was the concussive retort of a pistol firing and a spray of red, grey and white splashed the viewing port beyond the pilot's position, as a soup of blood, brains and skull plastered the inside of the reinforced cockpit. Selby collapsed, looking like a puppet that had had its strings cut.
Constance gave a muffled scream from behind her gag and even Ulysses, who had seen far too much mindless violence in his life, gave an involuntary cry of shock. But despite that, the second Marie Lamprey moved against Selby, Ulysses took a long step forward in the massive suit.
And then the gun was back on him.
"Don't come another step closer," the insane young woman warned him, "or you know what I'll do."
"That? Against that suit of armour?" Carcharodon pooh-poohed, unable to stop himself, having got away with treating people like inferior beings all his life. "Don't be ridic -"
Carcharodon was silenced by Marie bringing the butt of the gun down hard on the back of his head. The old man gasped in pain, his head dropping onto his chest.
"Shut up, you senile imbecile!" she snapped. "I mean it, I'll start the countdown on that bomb you're wearing. And once it's started, there's no stopping it."
"Why?" Carcharodon slurred, unable to take in everything that had happened in so short a space of time, desperate for some reason to be given to rationalise the irrational.
"Why?" she shrieked. "You want to know why? After all this time, only now do you wonder why all this had to happen? Why you all had to die? Isn't it obvious?"
"Revenge," Ulysses stated bluntly, "pure and simple. It usually is."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Marie railed, turning on Ulysses. "Don't think for one second that there was anything usual about what happened. Everything happened for a reason, the most important reason of all: for my father's good name! I couldn't have him remembered as a psychopath or worse, forgotten about!"
"Oh no, I can see that. The name of Lamprey is going to be remembered for a very long time," Ulysses said. "You've certainly made sure of that. You'll be infamous after what you've done, but it still won't be your father that people remember, not when the name of Marie Lamprey is plastered across the headlines of broadsheets across the Empire."
"Why, you!" she spluttered, reaching for the timer dial on the hastily-constructed device.
"I understand why you believed Carcharodon here, Lady Denning, the Major and Professor Crichton had to die," he went on. Marie's hand froze, hovering over the dial.
"You do?" Carcharodon bristled.
"The Professor practically gave the game away himself. He actually told us what your motivation for committing this series of cold-blooded crimes was. You wanted revenge on all those you saw as being responsible for your father's death, for driving him to do what he did, once they had turned their backs on him. The other leading figures of the Leviathan project. You even planned to ensnare Josiah Umbridge, the industrialist, in your little trap; only he didn't take the bait. He sent that wretch Sylvester in his stead.
"And it was thanks to you that all the right people just happened to be on board ship for the Neptune's maiden voyage, wasn't it?"
Marie Lamprey said nothing but continued to fix Ulysses with her disturbing wild-eyed stare.
"Your own employer's confession should have given you away long ago."
"What confession?" Carcharodon groused, one hand clamped to the rising bump on the back of his head.
"It was over dinner, that first time at the captain's table. You said yourself, Jonah, it hadn't been down to you that any of us had been invited on board for the inaugural round-the-world cruise. You told me that your PA had sent out all the personal invitations. You said that she did everything for you. That way she could make sure that she had everybody here who she needed, or at least that's what you had hoped for," he said, turning back to Marie. "But as we've already established, Umbridge escaped the end you doubtless had cooked up for him, by dint of being at death's door already and being too unwell to travel.
"You must have been plotting this for years," Ulysses went on, only now, as he reasoned through all the salient points, realising the scale of Miss Celeste's - or rather Marie Lamprey's - audaciously planned act of vengeance. "What probably started out as a backlash against the injustice of a world that had taken both your parents from you, fuelled by grief and a dozen other childish insecurities gradually - perhaps inevitably - became an obsession until the desire for revenge was your whole raison d'être. There was nothing left but the desire to be revenged on those you saw as being responsible for Felix Lamprey's death. Quite simply, your obsession drove you mad.
"It must have taken you years to work yourself into a position from where you could put your plan into action, to satisfy your sick irrational need for retribution."
"Don't say that!" Marie screeched.
"What? That you're sick, Marie?" Ulysses reasoned calmly. "But it's the truth. You are: terribly sick."
"They were the ones who were sick, weren't they, Madeleine," she sobbed, tears suddenly streaming down her face, "leaving a child to die having already done away with her father?"
"Ruthless, yes, but sick? I would like to be able to agree with you, but I'm not so sure. Whereas you, my dear, are one hundred per cent certifiably a fruitcake!"
"Stop it!" she screamed. "Stop saying that!" She pushed the muzzle of the gun hard against Carcharodon's head.
"So I suppose it was you who sabotaged the ship as well," Ulysses went on, managing to stay sounding calm, although he didn't feel in anyway calm on the inside. "But how did you manage that, I wonder?"
"You mean you haven't worked that out yet?"
"I thought I had," Ulysses confessed. "But I'm afraid I had this wretch Carcharodon here down as the culprit of our little morality play."
Carcharodon looked up at Ulysses, indignation blazing in his bleary unfocused eyes.
"I saw the log," Ulysses explained. "I know that the person who initiated the sabotage routine buried within the AI's memory core used the ident 'Father' to access the system, and I'm afraid I took that to be you, Jonah. I thought it was an insurance job." He paused as realisation struck. "Oh, yes. Oh, of course. If only I had seen it before. Lady Denning told us all we needed to know about the identity of the one the AI referred to as 'Father'."
"Then I take it I'm exonerated, cleared of all charges?" Carcharodon asked. "For all the good it will do me."
"Lady Denning told us that Lamprey - Felix Lamprey I mean - designed the difference engines that maintained the life support systems for Marianas Base. She also said that these more rudimentary systems were the forerunne
rs of the significantly more complex artificial intelligence created for the Neptune. Its father, as far as the AI was concerned, wasn't you, Carcharodon, but Lamprey, the creator of the original AI template. Oh yes, very clever."
Still the quivering woman returned his stare, fire in her eyes, like the hellfire surely crisping her soul even now, in light of what she had done.
"And I'm guessing you used a combination of your cogitator skills and the privileged information you had access to as Carcharodon's personal assistant to sneak into the AI chamber at a time that suited you, access Neptune and activate the programme you must have implanted inside its memory core probably months before."
"Very good, Mr Quicksilver. He thinks he's so clever, doesn't he, Madeleine? But it doesn't matter now, does it? He's still too late to stop us, isn't he?"
"All right Miss Celeste, or Miss Lamprey, or however it is you like to be known nowadays, I understand why, by your twisted logic, Carcharodon and all his cronies from Project Leviathan were doomed to die. But tell me, why did the others have to die? Why did you kill Glenda Finch?
"Even now, after all we've shown him, all we've told him, he can't see it, can he, Madeleine?"
The tenuous grasp Marie Lamprey had on reality was steadily slipping away.
"No, wait, I see now. I've just given you the reason myself, haven't I? The AI chamber. You planned to set your scheme in motion almost twenty-four hours earlier, that night after the Blackjack marathon at the Casino. But on that occasion you were seen, or at least you thought you were. Of course. Being so bound up in your own scheme, with your own psychotic need for revenge, you were always paranoid about anyone else finding out what you were up to and putting a stop to things before you were done. You must have met Glenda as she was leaving the AI, after she had been doing a little digging of her own into the Carcharodon's finances. And you couldn't risk arousing her suspicions about you as well, could you?"
"Everything had been worked out down to the finest detail. I couldn't let a snooping strumpet like her ruin everything for me before I had even begun."
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