by Stephen Hunt
Charlotte crawled through the kelp towards the broken hull of the Purity Queen. Maeva was in the lee of a rent, oxygen from the crippled craft streaming out behind her as she held onto the prostrate form of Commodore Black. The surface of the old u-boat man’s suit appeared burnt and there was no way to tell if she was cradling a corpse or not.
‘Just like when we first met,’ Maeva’s murmurs carried across to Charlotte’s helmet. ‘Always pulling you out of the wreckage of your mishaps.’
‘Leave them, girl-child. Find the sceptre,’ ordered Elizica.
‘Shut up.’ Charlotte banged her helmet’s side as if that was enough to silence the bodiless ghost.
There was a crackle of exploding speaker boxes behind her. The darkship was looping back, passing over the human nomads of the seanore, felling them with the proximity of its ear-bursting shields. The seanore didn’t have any rotor-spears left, all their projectiles spent in the initial attack. A couple of shock-spears fired licks of energy at the darkship, too far away, their foe moving too fast. Close enough to hit it with their hand weapons was near enough to be cooked by its mere proximity.
In front of the ship, a party of five seanores emerged from ambush among the underwater forest’s fronds, flinging themselves towards the darkship in a suicidal frontal assault. Korda was among them. The leader of the Clan Coudama diving forward with a crystal-bladed harpoon, raising it to impale the supernatural vessel. They rushed the enemy vessel despite the agony they must be undergoing, its hymn of fear rupturing their eardrums, but the darkship and whatever agency propelled it into battle cared not a fig for their bravery. The evil craft accelerated through the war party, running them down, its surface briefly spiking out into a thousand small spines like a bloating pufferfish, a terrible cloud of floating limbs and skewered pieces of the fighters left behind.
Ignoring the roar of static from her speaker box, Charlotte fell back as the darkship’s central weapon extended and carved the Purity Queen’s remains in half, riding through the boiling, bubbling water of the discharge. The darkship closed on her position. Charlotte’s helmet phones squealed with all the distress of a swine feeling its throat slit, her helmet’s machinery overloading under the fury of the vessel’s dark radiations.
Daunt broke away from Sadly’s grip as the first of the shallow-draft boats hit the beach, sprinting around a tiger crab’s abandoned shell and vaulting the boat’s gunwale. He was seizing one of the spare capacitor packs in the stern as Sadly and Morris caught up with him.
‘We need that to return to the submarine,’ one of the sailors in the rescue party yelled at Daunt. ‘My battery’s almost spent.’
Pulling the pack onto his back, Daunt twisted the trident off a side-clip connected to egg-scented chemical batteries by a dangling cable. ‘Don’t worry good fellow, I have an intuition that the tiger crabs won’t be in the water on our return journey.’
Dick Tull was retreating backward, firing his rifle and reloading from the satchel of charges, bursts of sands and spouts of sea water all around him as the camp guards divided their fire between Boxiron’s suicidal assault and the escaping prisoners. Sadly blocked Daunt’s way, the Court of the Air agent’s face incredulous as he saw the ex-parson trying to delay their departure. ‘Are you cracked? You can’t fight half the bleeding camp’s guards with that!’
‘There’s too many of ’em, amateur.’ Dick agreed.
‘I don’t intend to fight the gill-necks,’ Daunt said, slipping past the hobbling agent. ‘But I don’t intend to leave Boxiron behind either.’
Not today. Not ever.
Sadly cursed the ex-parson, the cane that had contained the tracking isotope suddenly pressed into service to push him after Daunt’s retreating form. He turned to the sailor in the prow of the first rescue boat as the second craft slid in under fire. ‘Get these two men to safety. Tell the sub commander to hold steady.’ He pointed at a sailor on the front of the second boat. ‘You, wait for me.’
Using the cover of the abandoned shells, Daunt circled around the heart of the skirmish. Daunt gained the top of the grassy bank just as Sadly caught up with him. Hiding in the line of the everglades, the camp guards had realized their small-bore rifles were having minimal effect against the steamman. Now they were concentrating their fire on Boxiron with their heavy guns. The steamman’s chest armour had been torn up, gaping holes in the iron revealing his innards, coiled pipes and crystal boards crudely cobbled together in the human mills that turned out artificial servants. Unfortunately for his attackers, their heavy weapons had also chewed chunks out of the power limiter they had fitted to his boiler heart. Its original function had been reduced to so much scrap metal, and now Boxiron was powering up, the warrior’s stacks pouring ugly black spears of smoke into the air above him as he slipped through his gears. Boxiron lurched through their midst, fighting at close quarters, his twin machetes a dervish dance of death, lumbering, brutal, hacking and chopping. Breaking gill-neck bones with every contact of his body. If the guards had been concentrated in a single formation, Boxiron might have been able to overcome the gill-necks in the mêlée, but they were scattered up and down the beach. Their heavy guns boomed straight through their own ranks as they recognized that this was the only way to bring the steamman down. Before he turned his fury on them too. Boxiron’s chest crumpled under the volley of fire, the plating he’d been fitted out with by the Kingdom’s criminal underworld no match for the armour piercing shells loosed against him. Boxiron’s right arm blew away in the assault, the steamman staggering and nearly slipping, briefly recovering, his left arm lashing out with a blade and catching a gill-neck in the face – or what was left of it after that terrible impact.
Daunt tore his gaze away from his friend’s last stand. Down the slope was a line of rock pools, sand turning marshy where it joined the start of the undergrowth.
‘You know why tiger crabs have adapted to the land almost as well as the sea?’ Daunt said to Sadly, lowering his trident towards the beach. He didn’t wait for the court’s agent to answer. ‘It’s because this is where they lay their eggs, out of reach of their fellow predators of the ocean.’ Daunt opened up with the trident, the sparking discharge of the power electric hitting the water and scattering across the damp breach, lightning chasing along the ground. There was a furious popping and whistling beneath the marshy sand, soft pieces of shell exploding out of the water. Daunt walked along the beach, squeezing the trigger under the trident’s insulated handle, power forking out and causing the beach to erupt. ‘Forgive me,’ whispered Daunt.
‘Beg that from their mothers, says I!’ Sadly shouted.
Behind the two Jackelians there was an angry clicking as dozens of chirruping tiger crabs surfaced out of the sea, the cries and stench of their smoking young pulling in the adults.
Daunt sprinted across the marshy dune grass, down the slope towards the steamman, firing to his right as he ran, leaving a distinct trail for the furious trilling tiger crabs emerging out of the water to follow. ‘Bob my soul, but now the camp guards will have something a little more pressing to aim at.’
Disoriented young crabs – megalops – each the size of a dinner plate, emerged from the blackened sand and broke through the sugar-like crust of slagged sand left by his capacitor’s trident. Daunt zigzagged as he sprinted, but it was becoming increasing obvious that the camp guards had bigger fish to fry now – quite literally.
Salvos from the guards’ rifles grew erratic, their fire redirected. The sight of dozens of angry tiger crabs lumbering up the beach and heading for them enough to turn any gill-neck’s thoughts to self-preservation.
Sadly limped behind Daunt’s trail, his cane now being used as a mere support, the boot of his good foot lashing out to overturn a snapping juvenile version of the monsters rising out of the sea behind them. ‘That’s what I love about this job, always something new.’
Daunt reached Boxiron, the steamman on his knees surrounded by a pile of dead gill-necks, any challengers e
ither dead or retreating to cover in the tree line. The steamman was nearly sliced in two, half his chest blown away by the guards’ heavy weaponry, exposed pipes ruptured and fountaining hydraulic liquid over his broken human-milled machinery. With only one arm left, he was flailing about, trying to stab the ground with his remaining machete. Daunt didn’t know if there was purpose to the movements, or if the pain of his wounds had overwhelmed the steamman. Thank the Circle, his precious steamman skull looks undamaged. At least, no more dented than normal.
Boxiron’s words fell out distorted from his shattered voicebox. ‘I am finished here. Finished here.’
‘Help me!’ Daunt begged Sadly, the rat-faced agent moving in to support Boxiron’s gashed open side where his right arm had been sheered off. Daunt took the weight of the semi-functioning steamman under the remaining shoulder, jagged rents in his friend’s clavicle plate cutting through the cloth of Daunt’s shoulder as he attempted to spur the steamman forward.
‘You’ve got your strength back, old friend,’ said Daunt, rubbing the area above the steamman’s rotating calculation drum where the power limiter had been welded. Please, just enough strength to see us to the boat.
Boxiron’s legs wheezed steam from his joints as he blundered forward, his knee gimbals buckling as they headed for the remaining rescue boat. Daunt could see the lick of energy from the sailors’ capacitors as they held back the roused tiger crabs crawling ashore.
‘What gear – am – I – in?’ Boxiron’s voicebox fluttered weakly.
Daunt glanced behind him. The gearbox on his spine wasn’t even there anymore, a wreck of holed iron in its place, crystal boards sparking in anger underneath. ‘You’re in top gear, old steamer.’
‘’Ware the left,’ warned Sadly.
Daunt’s spare hand twisted the trident around and he triggered a burst of energy at the tiger crabs pincering towards them. The creatures stopped twenty feet away as the blast crackled around their carapaces, waving their claws towards him in an almost human gesture of defiance. Daunt grunted and hauled his friend forward. Moving with the steamman was like trying to walk with a house’s weight in bricks stuffed inside a rucksack. If Boxiron’s failing power gave out on them now, nothing short of a crane was going to get the old steamer to the rescue boat.
Just up this dune and across the sands to the water. We can do that. His tattered boots dug into the dunes, sand spilling into his shoes. So heavy. Just a little further. Daunt considered dumping the weight of the capacitor pack, but abandoned the idea as he saw the ring of tiger crabs closing in on the beached rescue craft.
‘Clever perishers,’ hissed Sadly, sweating as he dug his way up the slope with his cane. He was glancing behind them. The tiger crabs had formed into a line to attack the gill-necks in the tree line, an almost orderly queue, which meant the guards’ heavy guns could only be bought to bear on the lead creature. ‘Always had a taste for lobsters, says I. Never realized they were so bleeding smart, Mister Daunt.’
‘Lobsters are a different genus from tiger crabs,’ said Daunt. ‘The nephropidae family. I’ll wager you never served them in your ordinary.’
‘Too many pennies for the great unwashed,’ said Sadly as they reached the top of the dune.
There was a strange fizzing noise from within Boxiron’s exposed chest, as if some chemistry was at work, an acidic green cloud merging from the torn rents, burnt rubber and a toast-like stench. Before the fleeting tendrils of smoke evaporated they seemed to coalesce into images of steamman faces, angular and proud and angry, the sea breeze catching the mist and rubbing them out as they formed.
‘The Steamo Loa,’ hissed Boxiron. ‘Have I – earned a – warrior’s end?’
Were the ancestral spirits of his people here to help or hinder? Here to claim a noble spirit and drag him into the deep layers of code in their Hall of Ancestors?
Daunt lurched forward, swatting the smoke with the tip of his trident. ‘Away with you! You’re not even proper gods. Just fireflies pestering his corpse. Your kind never helped him in life, only I did. All these years, you never came to help him.’
Tiger crabs scuttled away from the circle blockading the boat, advancing towards the exhausted Jackelians and their wounded comrade. Daunt lashed out with bolts of energy, driving them unwillingly off, reluctant to back down now. ‘I deny you!’ shouted Daunt. ‘And so does Boxiron.’
The tiger crabs could almost taste their revenge against these interlopers who had dared make a battleground of their ancient hatching ground, but the lick of the power electric was a pain that even their toughened carapaces proved no defence against. Daunt and Sadly pushed through the gap in their ranks, the ex-parson’s trident swinging left and right, with the capacitor pack whining in complaint to be run down so rapidly, fire flung to either side
At last, in front of the rescue boat, the three of them collapsed exhausted. Sailors in simple striped shirts and black canvas breeches leapt out to their aid as Sadly ordered the steamman to be hauled on board.
Boxiron’s silver skull rested in the sand as the sailors found their purchase below his wrecked body. ‘Always – my friend.’
‘Preserve your strength,’ urged Daunt.
Half the sailors waded into the water to refloat the rescue boat, electrical fire from the remaining crewmen licking port and starboard, the noise of the reversing screws blended in with an unholy snapping emanating from Boxiron’s exposed innards.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Charlotte looked in horror as a party of the Purity Queen’s surviving crewmen emerged disoriented from the u-boat’s wreckage. They were crawling out of an airlock in her keel; once designed to drop submariners onto the seabed from the vessel above, but now part of the upended craft’s topside. They emerged straight into the approaching darkship’s field of view, the cutting beam from its bow spine slicing out and separating the crewmen’s legs from their torsos. Maeva still had her back against the wrecked u-boat’s hull, lying on flattened kelp fronds, a bed for her and the unconscious commodore nestled between her legs.
‘Go, girl,’ Maeva urged Charlotte. ‘Swim away. You’ve no rotor-spears left and firing a shock-spear against that darkship would be like tossing seashells against a shark.’
‘My bloody sceptre is still inside the Purity Queen, I’m not going anywhere.’
‘A royalist antique won’t be any good to a corpse. There’s no glory in dying for it here.’
Damn the glory, it’s the money I want.
It was growing hard to focus on Maeva’s words, waves of pain from the nearing proximity of the enemy vessel burrowing into her skull. Charlotte wasn’t the only one feeling it. Maeva’s teeth were gritted tight behind her diving helmet’s visor.
Charlotte knelt to feel the commodore’s suit for tears. ‘How is he? Can you get him out of here?’
‘He’s sleeping and I think I’ll join him. I’m too tired to run, too tired to want to live in a world where darkships have returned. Not like you. The prophecy rests with you. You’re young enough to live through this. Go, leave us.’
Out above the kelp forest the darkship had returned to its task of cutting King Jude’s sceptre out from the wreckage of the Purity Queen. Its weapons carved the Jackelian craft into slices, pockets of trapped air streaming out as the submersible was sliced into pieces as though she were a roll of cured sausage. One of the beams boiled the sea six feet away from where the survivors were sprawled out, superheated water scalding Charlotte’s left side, her skin turning numb beneath her diving suit’s canvas. She just caught sight of the darkship angling in for another strike, condensation misting up the surface of her helmet’s visor. The next shot from the darkship would burst through the three of them, meeting as much resistance as heated cannon shot passing through rice paper. Her hands fumbled for the Eye of Fate.
Any advice?
‘You’re not alone.’ Elizica’s words formed inside her mind.
But she was. The commodore’s u-boat was cut to pieces, any seanores
minded to put up a fight were either dead or heading in the opposite direction. It didn’t seem fair.
Charlotte blinked warm tears of condensation out of her eyes. I was hoping for something a little more substantial, like “duck”.
The pear-shaped darkship was manoeuvring to open up on her when a shadow whisked overhead. For a second Charlotte thought it was the second darkship, but then she realized she could still hear a faint whining noise from her speaker box, both her eardrums intact and definitely not leaking blood down her ears.
‘You’re not alone! Your friends have returned with Jethro Daunt, and like any good churchman, he has come to drive away the devils.’
Charlotte had thought the darkships strange, but this submersible was even stranger: a rapidly moving silvery stretch of steel propelled by a spinning nest of metal tentacles at her stern, the mysterious u-boat’s conning tower a low angular slash like a shark’s fin. She had no visible portholes along her hull or plate lines and rivets, but the submersible did possess a cluster of torpedo tubes circling her dome-shaped bow, and a salvo of four torpedoes hissed in anger as she angled past the ambushed darkship. As seemingly surprised by the appearance of this late addition to the conflict as Charlotte, the darkship’s lance belatedly blazed out. Dark bolts of ebony lightning ignited three of the four incoming projectiles, each lost in a flowering explosion upending Charlotte and slapping her back into the Purity Queen’s torn length. As Charlotte collapsed forward, she saw the darkship had acted too slowly to catch the fourth torpedo, the projectile’s nose cone splitting away and shedding peels of metal, releasing a cloud of tiny warheads as though it had just given birth in the water. The fleeting school of miniature projectiles buzzed in against their quarry from a dozen directions, looping and striking the darkship as hungry and mean as a school of piranhas.