From the Deep of the Dark j-6

by Stephen Hunt

  At least a hundred of the underwater war vessels surfaced within Daunt’s line of vision, and their guns didn’t stay silent for long. The crash of cannons swelled into a near continuous rumble of thunder — answered with plumes of explosions from the volcano slopes and treeline, the Isla Furia’s beaches shattered in a salvo of fire and shrapnel. The towering rise of the volcano shielded the Nuyokians from the worst of the invaders’ barrage, warm liquid from the lake raining down as shells landed in the waters beyond the town.

  The sea thrashed beyond the thermal barrier, water frothing and bubbling as the gill-necks expended underwater projectiles and torpedoes by the tonne trying to destroy the devices creating the heat field. Daunt was no engineer, but even he knew they weren’t going to break it that easily.

  Given targets unshielded by the sea, the volcano’s spitting fury had swelled to a crescendo, rocks spinning out towards the surfaced fleet, passages traced with fiery spirals, contrails of dark volcanic dust marking their wake. The projectiles disappeared, tiny motes in the sky, followed by explosions flowering across the fleet. The volcano’s hidden launchers were firing with a rapidity that no natural eruption could match. The Court had abandoned their base’s camouflage as a natural phenomenon, launching projectiles so fast that their launch pipes were echoing with hollow reverberations, a stuttering expulsion of rocky mass. To the sailors and marines on the Advocacy fleet, the missiles must resemble gull motes swelling to the size of houses, a brief prayer to the mother of the ocean that they would land somewhere else, then their fierce impact, tossing the massive war machines in the sea. The impact on the gill-neck armada was apparent now, the rain of high velocity rocks striking the enemy hulls, flying vessel fragments and explosions of debris audible from within the town’s walls. A tinny booming as if the invaders were beating drums on their approach.

  From back inside the city came a jarring screech. Daunt turned to see a pair of gigantic cannons being pulled down the translucent streets, a caterwauling rising from their steel wheels, eight on either side of their recoil carriages. Articulated barrels stretched over ninety feet, with each of the red-tipped shells following in a long ammunition train standing taller than Daunt. These two giant artillery pieces were clearly of the city rather than the Court, the barrels raised on hydraulic struts with carriages constructed to be anchored on steel turntables waiting either side of the gates. Shrine keepers walked backwards in front of the rumbling monstrosities, swinging globes of scented oil and tossing holy liquid and blessings over the advancing gunnery. The antique artillery pieces were every bit a match for the ornamentation crafted into the Advocacy war cruisers halted outside the thermal barrier. Both barrels gleamed evilly as dragonhead jaws, angelic-winged women coiled around each piece, while their wheels turned as gargoyles with grinning, leering metal teeth as spokes.

  Morris cursed and one of the Nuyokian soldiers on the line clapped Morris’s back between the shoulder blades. ‘Is Santo Ruidoso and Santa Bocainfierno, yes? They speak for the city today.’

  ‘It’s not those two howitzers that worry me, it’s the automatics you got manning them.’ He pointed to the chains being used to haul the pair, each the weight of anchor chains and borne by thirty to forty metal forms lugging the tonnage forward. It was more of the same automatics the Court set to work in their volcano’s gas mine, the hulking machine-men — as large as they were — clearly straining against the mass of the town’s artillery.

  ‘Who better to pull those two brutes?’ said Daunt.

  ‘The cardinal rule of soldiering,’ said Morris. ‘You never bring automatics within a mile of real battle. They haven’t got the brains for it, see.’

  Daunt frowned. ‘I believe you’ll find the steamman knights would beg to differ on that point.’

  ‘I’m not talking about King Steam’s lads,’ said Morris. ‘I’m talking about the kind of automatic that clank fresh out of a Kingdom mill with the badge of one of our industrial lords stamped across its shiny bum-cheeks. You can train their kind to simple tasks with enough repetition, but stick them in a fighting regiment and as strong and as armoured as they be, you’ll end up with as many casualties on your own side as the enemy’s.’ He pointed to the creations setting up the cannon. ‘Rely on them as loaders and they’ll be fine for a few shots, until one of ’em has a funny turn. Before you know it, a shell will be slotted in nose facing down-ways rather than up-ways, followed by an explosion that’ll tear the gates off the town walls. Every few years you get some green-arsed colonel that sets up a battalion of automatics, promising a revolution in warfare. They’re usually cashiered out after the steamers have bayoneted a few too many of our own side’s redcoats, that’s if the officer’s pretty head hasn’t been sabred off by one of his automatics.’

  The Nuyokians had obviously reached the same conclusion as Morris. As soon as the two cannons were nestling behind the walls, their barrels raised over the battlement like metal giraffe necks, the automatics lined up and marched back down the streets towards the volcano. Human artillery crews swarmed over to crew the weapons. Daunt looked up at the volcanic slopes of the Isla Furia. Somewhere up there, Boxiron was recovering in the Court’s healing tank. Still oblivious to the world and the turn of events that had brought the forces of an entire nation hammering on the walls the steamman and Daunt had taken refuge behind.

  It didn’t take long for the city’s two cannons to add their fury to the fusillade from the Court’s volcano launchers, the length of the barrels recoiling back along their pneumatic segments, shortening as the great guns rocked on their carriages. They sucked in the air after each ear-splitting shot, dozens of the gunnery crew mounting the ramparts’ steps with hand pumped water hoses and spraying down water that sizzled and turned to steam along the length of the pieces. Nuyok’s long-guns sounded more like instruments of war than the mock eruption from the volcano, but the flowers of destruction that blossomed among the distant fleet was distinctly less impressive than the savage impact of the Court’s hidden launchers. Still, the artillery crews cheered wildly, while all along the ramparts the armed citizenry joined in, hollering and waving their rifles in the air.

  Hovering above the volcano’s slopes, the squadron of aerospheres turned as if tracking something. The reverberation of a darkship clapped above their ears in the sky while the weapon assemblies beneath the Court’s airships traded electrical lightning between their dishes, a web of burning energy traced in the air above the city. The darkship passed through the lattice, a second later shattering into an explosion of waxy fronds, leaving the air above the lake filled with smoking, drifting strips of an oily dark substance. Boxiron created a similar effect when he held his monthly bonfire of all the newssheets and periodicals which Daunt subscribed to.

  There was a second clap, another darkship operating in the air, this one flying underneath the web of deadly energies cast by the Court’s globular airships. At first Daunt thought the darkship had been affected by its proximity to the energy web, its mantaray shape diving into the lake’s waters. But it regained a semblance of control and skimmed out towards the distant harbour gate, bouncing like a tossed stone and clearing the inlet before ricocheting off the sea and back into the sky. In its wake, Daunt saw the evidence of the curious cargo it had deposited before fleeing. A slick of pollution bubbling to the lake’s surface, followed by a bobbing school of egg-shaped objects, each constructed of the same inky substance as the darkship.

  ‘That thing’s laid some spawn,’ said Morris.

  ‘Bob my soul, but I believe you are right,’ noted Daunt.

  The slick crawled up towards the shore of the basin, forming an unctuous crescent in the corner of the lake. The eggs appeared to be rolling towards land. As they touched down on solid ground, they each sprouted six pincering legs and the rise of the volcano turned dark at the foot of the shore. The Isla Furia’s queer invaders were moving up through the beard of tropical woodland and into the crevices of the mountain. Swooping downwards, the Court�
��s squadron of aerospheres came in to investigate, their weapon assemblies rotating as they dived, preparing to lash this peculiar black army of fist-sized marching spheres with the energies stored in the airships’ capacitors. A hideous screeching sounded from the little eggs as the airships plunged to fifty feet above the shoreline.

  Where have I heard that infernal sound before? Then it came to Daunt. Inside the crystal machine of the sea-bishops when they were attempting to plunder his memories. It was a hideous murdered baby noise, far worse than fox baying. With a sudden flurry of explosions, the eggs that were still bobbing in the inky pool on the lake rocketed upward, breaching the fuselage of the Court’s squadron of aerial vessels. The aerospheres began to twist and judder, a flight of birds that had ingested a swarm of wasps and were now dancing with the pain of stings in their gullet. Then the spherical hulls of the Court’s airships started to buckle and warp, the weapon dishes underneath discharging at random before each of the craft detonated. Showers of burning metals and hull plates glanced off the lake, hissing and burning, floating briefly before sinking.

  ‘There goes the bloody RAN,’ said Morris in mocking reference to the Kingdom’s force of airships.

  Moans and wails mixed with angry curses along the wall. Daunt could sense the change in the population’s temperament. It wasn’t surprising. The Court of the Air had arrived from far beyond the unbreachable Fire Sea, benefactors who had helped end the Nuyokians’ isolation, their periodic famines and dependence on erratic rainy seasons for their crops. The Court had squatted in the volcano’s remains for centuries like fire gods, protecting the islanders in return for their humble labours. And here their benefactors were, being lain low by the invaders. Daunt looked up from the flaming devastation spread across the lake’s surface. He had been distracted long enough for the scuttling eggs to have formed into narrow black fingers crawling up the slopes, advancing towards the throat of the volcano. Oblivious to the creeping threat below, the volcano’s guns were still raining a furious toll of destruction down on the armada halted beyond the thermal barrier.

  The Court continued its shaking volley in mimicry of an eruption, right up until the top of the volcano was seething black with the fist-sized invaders, then the spider-legged eggs started leaping over the edge, the rolling barrage of superheated rocks violently halted by clouds of exploding trespassers. Daunt could imagine the eggs rolling down the vent of the crater, twisting the launchers into ragged lines of punctured metal with their explosive fury. Others leaping into the nest of gantries and stations and blowing apart walkways and murdering the Court’s personnel by the dozen with each detonation. Surely Boxiron would still be safe, deep inside the rocky chamber alongside the fruits of the Court’s super science and their great transaction-engines? The sea-bishops wouldn’t want to waste the time digging their precious sceptre out of a mountain’s worth of rock fall, would they? Daunt could hear the rolling firecracker detonations echoing inside the vent, the louder explosions of the Court’s launchers silenced, overwhelmed by this ugly black tide flowing up the slopes, filling the crater’s space with fury. As the last of the swarm disappeared over the edge a sudden silence settled over the island. No barrage from the fleet, no shelling from the Court’s launchers, no small-arms fire from the wall. The distant cheeping and whistling from the jungle beyond Nuyok’s walls, monkeys and birds, filled the quiet. The chirruping was added to by shouts along the wall, defenders pointing to the boiling ocean beyond their shoreline. Daunt raised his telescope for a better look.

  Outside the thermal barrier the same class of metal war machines the gill-necks used to entangle the Jackelian convoy’s flagship had surfaced. Starfish! They were spinning around, launching ordinance up and over the thermal barrier. Daunt wasn’t sure what they were throwing across the barrier protecting the island from the ocean, but he was certain it meant no good for their chances of keeping the city in human hands. Daunt passed the telescope across to Morris and the old Jackelian adventurer swore under his breath.

  ‘Do you recognize what they are tossing over the barrier?

  ‘Our fleet sea arm call them rolling-pins, on account of what the buggers look like,’ said Morris. ‘Landing boats, good for crossing the seabed and advancing up a shore. A big steel tube with caterpillar tracks on either end, spiked with guns and lances. I wouldn’t want to be one of the Court’s soldiers dug in on the beach — they’ll do a roll and crush job on their positions down there.’

  ‘I trust the city’s walls will hold the machines at bay?’

  Morris shrugged. ‘They’re not much good as a ram against walls this thick and high, but they won’t need to be. Each rolling pin will be carrying thirty to fifty gill-necks, depending how tight they’ve packed their marines in. There’ll be sappers with explosive charges, snipers, grenadiers, and portable artillery pieces and assault troops pounding on our walls within the hour.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘We’ve lost our big guns up there as well as our Jack Cloudies. There’ll be too many rolling-pins coming in for the few u-boats the island’s got patrolling inside the barrier to pick even a fraction of the armour off.’

  ‘What would you say a realistic estimation of our chances are?’

  Morris patted his gas-rifle. ‘With these fancy shooting irons, we’ve got seven or eight times the gill-necks’ rate of fire, but-’ he indicated the citizenry lined up along the battlements, ‘-you’re talking about one of the world’s great powers lining up against us out there. The Nuyokians are a game bunch, but they’re not professional soldiers, they’re farmers and shopkeepers with guns and a couple of weeks’ militia training every year. Even with the Court’s soldiers as our backbone, we’re outnumbered a thousand to one. So what are our chances, vicar? I would say our bun’s been well and truly baked. It’s not if we fall, it’s when.’

  Daunt felt his soul shrivel at the ex-soldier’s estimation of their odds. We have to buy Charlotte and the commodore the time to reach the seed-city.

  Morris pulled back the safety bolt of his rifle. ‘On the plus side, I’m going to get my choice of Advocacy heads to put bullets into. One for every day the arseholes had me as their slave, see. You might want to be getting off the wall sharpish.’

  ‘A priest’s training includes physical healing, as well as tending to our parishioners’ souls and mental wellbeing.’

  Morris pointed down to the aid station tents set up close to the wall, rows of stretchers and tables bearing bone saws and tubs of boiling tar to quickly seal wounds, all lined up incongruously across the neat lawns of the nearest row of hexagonal buildings. ‘There’ll be work for you soon enough, then.’

  His words were cut short by the wailing of sirens coming from inside the town, no obvious sign of the source, but the noise seemed to shake through the transparent streets from every point.

  One of the nearby locals tapped his nose and indicated his gas mask. ‘Air, for face.’

  Morris pulled down the gas mask on the back of his helmet and Daunt followed suit.

  ‘There she goes.’ Morris’s voice sounded muffled beneath the ceramic air drum and rubber visor, great clouds of yellow-tinged gas seeping down from midway up the volcano’s slopes, rolling across the shore and making a fog across the sea. Whatever damage had been inflicted inside the crater, the Court’s facilities were intact enough to release their final defensive barrier. As a cornered squid releases a mist of ink, so the volcano was putting out the shroud of poisonous death that accompanied a genuine eruption. Flags lifted up along the wall to monitor the direction the wind was blowing. Luckily for the city, the breeze seemed to be carrying the poison gas along the shoreline and out to sea. Unfortunately for the islanders, Daunt mused, the Advocacy fleet wasn’t a convoy of merchantmen chancing their luck against the Isla Furia’s ferocious reputation. The landing force would no doubt be wearing water breathers, and the poison gas would be of nuisance value only. It did have the effect of concealing the Court’s defences along the shoreline, t
hough. When the initial sounds of battle began to drift across the lake, the sights of the fighting were completely enveloped by high waves of rolling poison. Along the beach, different strands of coloured smoke began to mix with the yellow war gas, trenches laying down smoke cover, other forces signalling with smoke canisters. The two massive cannons behind the city walls responded to the coded signals, pounding out volley after volley, the results of their work hidden from view, but audible from the distant whoop of detonations. It was a surreal sight, the mist and clouds veined as though a rainbow, all sounds of conflict distorted by it. The distant fighting continued for over an hour and there seemed no let up in the gas — as if the volcano — having its fire silenced, was pouring all its fury into this boundless toxic veil.

  Signalling the collapse of the shore’s defensive line, the lake’s ocean lock burst open in a massive explosion, pieces of concrete blown across the lake, a deadly shower of wreckage sweeping across the battlements. A second after the detonation, the screams of pain and terror from the defenders who had taken the shockwave reached Daunt. Some townspeople had been flung off the wall, others maimed and ripped apart. Behind the city’s wall, one of the clean gleaming white porcelain towers stood with its top two storeys shaved off by the scythe of rubble.