by Stephen Hunt
Had civil war broken out among the hive? Some fundamental disagreement over what to do with the crown? Then Amelia saw a sight that she never thought she’d see on a Daggish patrol boat — a steamman, a four-armed steamman on the deck no less. Ironflanks! His seed ship cut through the lake waters, interposing itself between the bathysphere and the enemy submersible, the flame squirt on the prow whistling as compressed incendiary fire licked out along the length of the Daggish u-boat. Whatever prohibition stopped members of the hive from attacking one another had been broken by the prize vessel, and the seed ship was wreaking havoc in the confusion. Overjoyed at seeing Amelia still alive, Ironflanks spun in a frenzied tribal dance on the prow.
Bull spotted his uncle standing behind Veryann at the rear of the cabin as the seed ship drew up alongside the bathysphere ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
‘Who’s piloting that boat, old steamer?’ Amelia tossed across the bathysphere’s guide rope so both craft could moor together.
‘Billy Snow,’ Ironflanks called back, his eyes extending telescope-like towards the Daggish armada on the centre of the lake, the enemy seed ships making full speed towards them.
Veryann leapt across the gap before the two craft tied up, landing on the bathysphere’s hull. Bull stepped back, expecting an assault as payment for his marooning of her, but she ignored both Amelia and the slaver, instead diving inside the craft. None of the other expedition members looked as if they had been expecting the Catosian woman to plunge inside Amelia’s bathysphere, but Commodore Black had other fish to fry.
‘Bull,’ roared the commodore, hauling the bathysphere in to thud against the seed ship’s bony hull. ‘Bull, you treacherous stain on the House of Dark, where’s my Sprite? Where’s my beautiful u-boat?’
Bull thumbed at the hive’s approaching fleet. ‘Talk to her new owners, old man.’ He slapped the top of the bathysphere. ‘You can have this diving ball back for your troubles.’
Ironflanks and T’ricola had to restrain the commodore from trying to leap across at the news. Amelia jumped the gap, landing on the aft of the Daggish prize vessel. ‘They’ve laid anti-submarine nets across the mouth of the Shedarkshe. We’re going to need to break them to get out of here.’ She glanced across at the Daggish fleet. ‘Sweet Circle, how many ships have they got? And how did you know-’
‘Billy softbody said you would be here,’ answered Ironflanks. ‘He told us he felt your presence.’
Amelia looked at the steamman as if he had lost his mind — if he had ever fully possessed it to begin with. Bull crossed the gap between the bathysphere and the patrol boat, making sure he stayed out of reach of the commodore. ‘And I feel the presence of half the Daggish Empire coming down on us.’
Two explosive cracks from the bathysphere made Amelia flinch. It wasn’t incoming fire from the Daggish. There was a splash as a metal panel ejected from the bathysphere and hit the water, followed by a boom as something fired out of their diving ball’s hull.
‘A rocket,’ said Ironflanks, tracking the projectile heading towards the firmament.
‘You don’t carry rockets on a submersible,’ said Bull, confused. ‘You carry torpedoes.’ He looked up. ‘And that one’s missed the fleet.’
Commodore Black made to throttle his nephew, before changing his mind and running to the patrol boat’s rail. ‘Veryann, get yourself out of that blessed sphere. Billy, hold your fire on the u-boat, she’s dead in the water now. Can you-’
But Billy Snow had already abandoned the cabin and was coming out of the door, the seed ship left a mindless derelict with the controlling witch-blade in the sonar man’s hand.
Amelia glanced behind him into the cabin. ‘Billy, what in the name of the Circle is going on here?’
‘A long tale for a less desperate time,’ said Billy. ‘I am glad that you survived, Amelia — but not to see you with that.’ He pointed at the crown in Amelia’s hand.
‘This is what we came all the way out here for,’ said Amelia. ‘The things we’ve seen under the lake’s waters, I can’t begin to tell you. The crown holds the secrets to the location of Camlantis in the heavens, I can feel it.’
‘It holds many things,’ said Billy, ‘but the location of Camlantis isn’t one of them.’
‘You can’t know that.’
‘Give it to me,’ said Billy.
‘What for?’
Billy extended his witch-blade, the evil thing thrumming, tasting the opportunity for fresh trouble. ‘You know what I’m going to do. What you should have done, rather than bring that terrible thing back into the world.’
Bull rushed at Billy Snow, and the sonar man kicked out almost gently, tapping Bull’s left leg above the knee. The slaver collapsed, howling as if Billy had cut off his limb, silenced into unconsciousness as the old sonar man ducked down and tapped him on the back of the neck.
‘Have you lost your mind, Billy?’ shouted the commodore. ‘If that gem is a crystal-book, then it’s what we rolled all the way up this wicked devil’s river for.’
Billy waved his sword at the approaching commodore. ‘You came for it. I only came to make sure you didn’t get it.’
‘Billy,’ begged T’ricola, ‘I don’t know what this is about and I don’t care, but while we’re arguing the Daggish are getting closer.’
Amelia stepped back. ‘The knowledge on this crystal-’
‘You’re not ready for it. Jackals isn’t ready for it,’ said Billy. He nodded at the approaching Daggish fleet. ‘They’re certainly not ready for it. Give it to me now. I don’t want to hurt you, professor, but I’ll take off your arm along with the crown to obliterate that terrible thing.’
‘You can’t destroy a crystal-book, you can’t destroy knowledge. I was meant to find this!’
‘Prophecy is a poor substitute for intellect,’ said Billy, advancing menacingly. ‘And that thing is not just a crystal-book.’
Ironflanks had been slowly trying to edge behind Billy, but the sonar man wagged a finger at the steamman. ‘I may be blind, old steamer, but I know all about your militant order’s fighting forms. Your voicebox won’t work on me, my body is hardened against the frequency the knights steammen use for paralysis.’
‘You were the traitor on the u-boat,’ said Ironflanks accusingly. ‘I thought it was the commodore’s nephew trying to force us to turn about, but all the time it was you sabotaging the Sprite. Destroying the scrubbers, calling in the thunder lizard when we were filling up for water …’
‘Billy,’ pleaded T’ricola. ‘That isn’t true?’
‘If you only knew what was at stake, you would understand.’ Billy Snow lunged at Amelia, faster than the eye could follow, striking her wrist and capturing the falling crown. Amelia punched out with her massive gorilla-sized arm — the good one he had left her — but the sonar man wasn’t there anymore. His boot kicked out and she got a taste of what Bull had received. Pure nerve fire pulsed along her left leg, as if the bottom half of her limb had ceased to exist. She fell back, trying not to scream.
‘My steam is up,’ roared Ironflanks, charging Billy while the sonar man was busy incapacitating Amelia.
Billy’s witch-blade flexed to the diameter of a sewing pin and without turning around he stepped back, the tip of the impossibly thin sword emerging from the back of the steamman’s hull. Billy stepped forward and Ironflanks fell sideways, grasping for the side of the boat and as weak as a kitten.
‘I’ve sliced your circuit line for spatial balance,’ said Billy, making the slightest bow in the direction of the fallen steamman. ‘You should be able to reroute around the damage using your self-repair routines. But not-’ he rested the crown on the boat and converted his witch sword into something capable of smashing a near-indestructible crystal, all claws and blades, ‘-before I’ve had a chance to account for this filthy thing …’
‘My body,’ begged Ironflanks. ‘Please, I need that crown to pay for my body to be cleansed of my siltempter corruption.’
‘Not
with this,’ said Billy, raising his sword to strike. He hesitated as something like a meteor hit close to them, a whistling trail of heat, followed by a spout of lake water erupting into the air — then the firmament above was filled with fiery scratches impacting all around them. As Billy moved to smash the crown into pieces, a pair of weighted bolas wrapped around his abdomen, the attached net landing on his back and shimmering with a field of sparks. It was as if a wall had collapsed on top of the sonar man. He fell to his face with a single moan.
Veryann’s legs were wedged around the bathysphere airlock, a discharged bola launcher resting against her arm. ‘That was designed to paralyse a Daggish drone, but it seems to work as well on our unusually adept sonar operator.’
Amelia tried to pull herself up, massaging life back into her leg and ignoring the pain in her sprained wrist. Had the world gone mad? Billy Snow turning on them, a rain of fire falling from the heavens? On the distant shore, the Daggish nest’s flame cannons were jouncing in their cradles, answering the volley coming down on them with streams of fire of their own. The objects Amelia had mistaken for meteors were surfacing across the lake in their hundreds, long iron capsules opening like metal flowers to give birth to boxy-looking landing craft. Periscopes, steam engine stacks and clockwork-stabilized cannons pushed out from the landing crafts’ hulls, metal lobsters extending their claws.
Veryann leapt back across to the seed ship. ‘Don’t touch Billy Snow,’ she warned the crew. ‘Leave him in the incapaci-tator net. If anyone tries to free him, I’ll kill him.’
More capsules came thumping down towards the edge of the lake, against a background of tinny explosions from the Daggish city, a pall of smoke rising above the jungle canopy of Liongeli and the twisted organic towers of the nest city. There was a second rain following now, silk chutes, detached from the engines of war they had been designed to slow, following in the invaders’ wake like a rain of blossom.
Amelia shaded her eyes against the bright afternoon sun. The invaders were pushing out of the lake and up onto the distant shore — amphibious horseless carriages moving on caterpillar tracks similar to those some of the steammen favoured. Tiny figures dismounted from the rear and moved up beside them as they trundled along.
The commodore came to Amelia’s side, helping her try to raise Ironflanks back onto his feet. ‘We’re in the middle of a shooting war now, lass.’
‘And I think I know whose …’ Amelia looked with resentment at the Catosian officer.
‘A raid,’ said Veryann, ‘not a war. With a very specific objective.’
On the centre of the lake the Daggish armada was scattering, heading for the shore to protect their city. Tree-head Joe must be in apoplexy by now — far more than a few gnats in danger of penetrating his sanctum and threatening his ancient purity.
‘You can’t beat the Daggish, Veryann,’ said Commodore Black. ‘They’re like a blessed weed. You’d have to burn down hundreds of miles of greenmesh to finish them off.’
‘We’re just giving their kind something to think about,’ said Veryann, picking up the fallen crown. ‘Into the bathysphere, if you want to live.’
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Amelia.
‘Preserving your crown’s precious knowledge. We haven’t got long. You have two choices. Enter the bathysphere and live, or stay on board the Daggish boat and die.’ She tossed the prone weight of Billy Snow over her shoulders. ‘Help the steamman to his feet. As for him-’ she pointed at the limp form of Bull Kammerlan, ‘-leave him here like he left us marooned in the jungle.’
‘I can’t be doing that,’ said the commodore. ‘There’s precious few of my blood left now, for me to be abandoning the mortal few that survive. Don’t ask me to do such a terrible thing.’
‘If he is truly of your line, you will be uncontaminating it by removing him from the breeding pool,’ said Veryann.
‘You may be right, lass, but your people follow a hard code — abandoning the runt of the litter on a mountainside is not something old Blacky can do.’
Amelia limped over and scooped Bull’s unconscious body up, trying to avoid using her burning, sprained wrist. ‘You help Ironflanks, Jared, I’ll carry your damn nephew.’
‘How can such a powerful nation be populated by such weaklings?’ Veryann shook her head in disgust. ‘You make a religion out of your softheartedness. The fact that Jackals has endured intact to this day without falling to one of your enemies is one of life’s eternal mysteries.’
T’ricola and the commodore heaved the barely functioning body of the steamman across to the bathysphere, his limbs shaking as he tried to re-establish enough control to leave the seed ship.
‘You appear to have been touched by some of our beliefs, then,’ said Amelia, nodding towards the sonar man.
Veryann lowered Billy Snow through the hatch. ‘You think saving his life is an act of compassion? I assure you it is not, professor. In his way, this old man may be just as valuable as your Camlantean crown.’
Commodore Black wheezed, half the weight of Ironflanks on his shoulder. ‘I’ve seen those fighting tricks before, when Billy’s kind come down from the sky to make a shambles of the honest rest of a poor old seafarer, long retired from adventure and danger.’
‘Snow, an agent of the Court of the Air?’ Veryann’s lips pursed into a thin smile. ‘He is no wolftaker, of that much you can be certain.’ She tossed the man’s inactive witch-blade into the bathysphere. ‘Inside quick, I’m sealing the sphere.’
The interior of the bathysphere had changed since Amelia had abandoned it for the Daggish patrol boat — a whole new suite of hidden instruments had been exposed, while an open panel to the right of the controls revealed a previously concealed rack of weapons, an empty space for the Catosian’s bolas launcher.
Amelia tapped the near-empty oxygen dial. ‘We’re not going far on three minutes’ worth of air.’
‘Further than you think,’ said Veryann.
‘We’re crammed in here like blessed sardines,’ complained the commodore.
‘We’d be one lighter without your mutinous nephew,’ said Veryann, kicking Bull’s unconscious body in anger.
Amelia glanced through the porthole. Outside, the Daggish seed ship was turning in idiot circles on one hydro-tube, the mind of the craft trying to establish itself now it had been freed from the witch-blade’s control. But it was hopeless — too much of the ship’s brain had been overwritten by Billy Snow’s strange weapon.
Veryann had their bathysphere’s small periscope trained on the distant shoreline and after a couple of minutes she nodded in satisfaction and began to work the controls again. Amelia took the scope, pressing her face against the viewing hood. The Daggish city was ablaze. Neon-yellow smoke overshadowed the haze of the attack, columns of it pouring into the sky. Amelia might have taken it for dirt-gas were it not for the fact that nozzles on their own hull seemed to be leaking the same vapour, tears of bronze dye forming on the bathysphere’s portholes.
‘Who are you signalling?’ Amelia demanded.
‘The long-range flame guns of the Daggish have been spiked now,’ said Veryann. ‘It’s safe to be picked up.’ She pulled on a lever, and two antennae with a cable strung between them rose above the dome of the bathysphere.
‘Your troops are out there,’ said Amelia. ‘Is there enough space in this bathysphere for all of them?’
‘They have achieved their objective,’ said Veryann.
‘Achieved …’ Amelia stared in disbelief at the Catosian officer. ‘You’re leaving them behind!’
‘Our losses in the nest will not be significant,’ said Veryann. ‘Our worst-case plan of battle was that the Daggish would attain the Crown of Pairdan and that a full-scale occupation of their capital would be necessary while simultaneously holding off an assault by the rest of the greenmesh.’
‘In the name of the Circle, those are your own people out there!’
‘They will have warriors’ deaths, selling themselves de
arly against creatures that would make slaves of our whole race if they could. If that was my duty, I would welcome such an end.’
Amelia pointed an accusing finger at Veryann. ‘That Camlantean crown last saw the light of day when Catosia was a scratch on the map, yet you now suddenly value it enough to exchange a whole division of your troops! You guessed that Billy Snow was going to try to destroy the crown, too …’
‘Of all people, professor, I would expect you to know the value of being well read. Now brace yourselves.’
There was a whining outside, growing louder. Just in time for Amelia to recognize it as the noise made by the rotating propeller blades of an airship. Then the floor of the bathysphere was pulled out from under their feet, the seven of them sent sprawling as they swung pendulum-like, ripped out of the waters of Lake Ataa Naa Nyongmo. Bull groaned when the dead weight of Ironflanks slid into him, Amelia barely hanging on as the commodore lost his grip and came tumbling towards her. Stability returned and they were rising. The hull of an impossibly large airship was just visible above them, cannons in rotating mounts jolting as they poured shells downwards. Three aerospheres bound together in a reinforced frame, short black stabilizer wings like the flying fish of the Shedarkshe. And damned if she could see any flag. Amelia gaped, wordlessly. This airship was clearly a man-o’-war, but she lacked the chequerboard belly of a RAN craft, instead sporting a curved black shell broken by gun ports and engine casings. There was a traitor’s death waiting for someone back in Jackals. She glanced back down at the rapidly receding jungle below. If there were any Daggish gunners left with the wit to try to bring them down, Amelia could not see their answering fire.
Commodore Black stumbled towards the porthole, trying to snatch a last look at the Daggish nest and his u-boat. ‘My Sprite, my beautiful Sprite. You’re leaving her here.’