He stopped shooting, the barrel of the Spencer repeater burning hot, to reload the magazine.
The Lieutenant leveled the Vetterli from the window, as Grant shouted, “I got the four-up! Use the door Colt if you need it!” before pulling himself onto the Driver’s seat, his game leg dangling.
The Lieutenant fired, ripping the coach’s side, sending chunks of lacquered metal flying. Grant brought the coach around, the Spencer next to him. But he didn’t grab for the rifle; he stayed the horses, wrapping the reins around both hands, the leather cutting deep, as the team fought to bolt.
The next shots blew apart the coach’s side lanterns. Grant didn’t flinch, didn’t look back for the shooter’s face. He snapped the reins, moving the team as one, before breaking them into a full-charge gallop, away from the burning waterfront.
The Lieutenant cursed the old dog handling the horses, and wanted a real showdown with Grant. A real test. But he was following his strict orders, and fired his last, the bullet striking the back of the coach, leaving a gaping hole where the Presidential seal had been.
The target he’d been aiming for.
25
DARK WATERS
Five thousand fathoms deep, the shapes of the sea canyon walls had become invisible. The rock face was there, all harsh cuts and boulders, but unseen in this ocean-black. Fighting the void, Nemo held the steering bar hard-to-starboard, angling himself as if his muscles were pushing the Nautilus, toward something only he knew existed in the miles of darkness beyond the front portals.
The one sound throughout the ship was the steady echo of the engines. A distant pulse. No violent waves punching the hull, or whales calling. No crew voices. Grave-quiet.
The running lights shut down.
Sara hung to the struts beside the navigation station, hoping for a tiny reflection in the glass of a compass; any hint of light to adjust her eyes. But there was only the black. She could see nothing.
“Closing shutters, we’re running dark. No lanterns, no light until further orders!”
Nemo’s command roared out of the dark to the crew call as gears engaged and steel plates rolled up from the Nautilus’ deck on hinged arms, fanned out like playing cards, then interlocked completely around the observation dome, coffin-sealing the glass with a metal clang.
The air on the bridge was now thin and hot as Nemo ordered, “Engage the prow, Miss Duncan.”
Sara felt her way in the dark, measuring her steps to get bearings, turning on a heel, facing the other side of the bridge that was all pitch corners and alcoves.
“You rebuilt the ship, you know the levers! Now!”
Sara moved forward, hands out, trying for a throw-switch, feeling along the panels and counting them to the place she knew the prow control was.
Jess’ hand clamped on top of hers, moving it to an iron hatch wheel mounted on the wall. “This one’s tougher than a fiddler’s bitch.”
Fingers laced, they pulled back on the heavy wheel with all strength, straining, rotating it once. Below, a turbine whirled. Then, the sounds coming from the bow: iron fighting iron as the grinding of metal and the thunder of rock being pulverized filled the bridge.
Boulders pounded the shutters from outside, smashing at them, sending anchor bolts flying. The grinding was louder. Metal screamed. The noise avalanched through the submarine as stones tore against the deck and bridge, the vibration shaking its steel skeleton, echoing in the pitch-black decks and hatchways.
The Maori Whalers stayed to the curved walls by the engine room, knives out, as other crew stumbled blindly past them, the sounds surrounding them as if the hull were being gutted. Some panicked for a life-craft. Anything. Another threw his feet to the wall, and held a tattered Bible to his chest. Posed, ready for death.
* * *
Sara stood in the bridge’s center, the pounding of the steel, the metal slamming, coming at her from the complete darkness. Closing in. Inside a kettle drum. Near-deafening.
Nemo steered a straight course, steady in the dark, and ignoring the cacophony, as if he were immune. Staying fixed, knowing his ship, and what furies she could stand.
His voice carried over the noise: “The prow’s designed to slice through a frigate, or chew away the stalactites blocking an underwater cave. That’s what you hear. You dreamed of what it’s like to be on my submersible boat”—the grinding and crashing were reaching a crescendo—“this is the reality.”
Sara kept her hands over her ears. “My God, it’s like being buried alive!”
“No,” Nemo said.
He turned the bar, upped the speed. Sara felt the Nautilus shift beneath her, move into a strong current. The pounding of the boulders eased. Rocks hit the shutters with less force, bounced to the hull, with smaller pieces rolling off. The outside sounds muffled to scattered thuds, and the grinding gears halted, stopping the iron saw-blades of the prow, but the bridge was still dark.
Nemo had waited to speak. “I’ve been buried alive, Miss Duncan. In dungeons around the world.”
The iron shutters folded back from the dome, retracting into the decking, revealing the water’s darkness being broken apart by a distant glow of blue light, soft and above the surface.
He said, “It was nothing like this.”
Nemo kept the bow upward, toward a current that was a distorting wave through the dark water. The bow pierced it; the running flow of an underground river. Freshwater fish suddenly darted across the dome, their silver scales a reflecting rainbow, coming from nowhere as pieces of white swirled in the currents carrying them; illuminated snowflakes dancing.
Nemo said, “There’s Heaven, and you were nowhere close to death.”
Sara reached out for the dome, fingers brushing the glass, the white just beyond her touch. Her feeling of the dark tomb, the dread, now gone as Nemo said, “Sailors believed these pyrite flakes were sea sprites. They weren’t far wrong. Surfacing!”
The river fell away, the waters a bleeding wash of colors as the Nautilus surfaced into the mammoth cave, stabilized, and shut down engines.
Sara shielded her eyes. The glow she saw from below the surface became like blue sunlight emanating from the wet cave walls around them: cool, but very bright.
Nemo spoke via the crew call. “All hands on deck for inspection and repair!”
In a hatchway, the Maori Whalers leaned against a storeroom door they’d broken down with their shoulders, passing a bottle of medicinal brandy, cork life preservers from the stores, and a snapped-in-half harpoon strewn around their feet. Nemo’s voice repeated in Swahili: “Mikono yote juu ya staha!”
The Whalers shrugged, an empty brandy bottle rolling from between their knees. They sheathed the broad knives they’d used to split the liquor case, and finished off their current bottle, shattering it against a bulkhead, before standing.
26
BLUE FIRE
The Cave of the Blue Fire was a massive natural cathedral at the bottom of the ocean, supported by volcanic rock arches growing from its walls, with veins of pyrite decorating their surface, like wide strips of stained glass.
Phosphorus rain from the cave’s ceiling was the fire’s brightness, becoming blue as it flowed through the arches’ centuries-old lava pores, lighting the pyrite from inside, before waterfalling into the underground lake where the Nautilus was anchored.
“C’mon you sneakin’ bastard apes—pull it!”
Standing on the bow deck, the Whalers followed Jess, jamming thick arms around a piece of stalagmite; a huge stone fang stuck between the saw blades of the submarine’s prow. They held it firm, to give Jess a clear target for his double-sided pickax. Jess swung. A hard blow, skidding off the stone, sparking its edge.
He dropped the pick. “That didn’t mean a kiss to a salt maid!”
Nemo grabbed the pick, told Jess, “Take hold!”
Jess crouched with the Whalers, letting them see the small-caliber Colt he had stuck in the top of his boot, before grabbing at the prow’s iron teeth and pull
ing them back. Just enough. Nemo brought down the pick with great force, smashing the rock to pieces that he pried from between the iron with the ax handle.
He tossed the volcanic rubble into the lake, breaking the shimmering surface, before vanishing under the liquid mirror.
Jess said, “Cap, I thought this place was just spit ‘n’ legend, but these damn rock spikes is real enough!”
Nemo slapped the ax back into Jess’ hands. “It’s all real, Mr. Jess, and I want everything cleared in fifteen minutes!”
Jess said, “If them’s the orders.”
Nemo stepped around a crewman who was dipping his hand into the swirling blue and coming back with fingers covered in bits of light. He grinned at his captain, then got back to tightening the bolts around a hatch.
Blue Fire had been claimed by explorers a century before, and described in a seaman’s diary that had washed ashore in the Caribbean. Assuming it close to the islands, others had tried finding it, but failed. Miserably. Money and years gone, they wrote Blue Fire off as another grog tale. Of course, they didn’t have a submarine. Nemo allowed himself a brief smile, some pride, at that thought.
He looked to the crew. “We’ve made it to Blue Fire, gentlemen. A place most of you have only heard whispers about, but we’re here, and it took the Nautilus to bring us. You’ve been told this mission’s about monsters. It could all be rummy piss, or it could be something real, but no matter, we’re going to be living under the sea. That’s the only way, and some of us might be dying there. If you’re not ready for that, say so. We’ll put you ashore at the next land crop.”
Work stopped. The crew threw glances. Crewman with the pyrite hand said, “But if we stick, we get paid our full?”
“You’ll get full wages. And more,” Nemo said.
Jess piped, “Provided you live, you sod!”
The crew laughed, as they knew, and Jess cleared the deck of volcanic rock, saying, “Fifteen minutes, sir!”
* * *
“This was most definitely not our route,” Sara said, using handholds on the narrow deck from the conning tower, her eyes taken with the blue fire. “It’s incredible. But where are we, the center of the earth?”
Nemo said, “Spiritually, not far from it. We’re fathoms deep, in an air pocket. Perfectly safe.”
“I’m not afraid,” Sara said. “We were guided by your humpback?”
“To his habitat, which I knew was very close to here. But we’re also more than a hundred nautical miles closer to the site of the British steamer’s sinking. That’s the mission, isn’t it? Our purpose?”
He checked the iron plating protecting the side portals and fins, the hinge works and mechanics, and said, “Your repairs are holding.”
Sara said, “I didn’t imagine we’d have to blindly break through the wall of a cave.”
“The stalactites blocked our entrance, and our progress.”
Nemo started around the port side to the stern, the pyrite in the water outlining the ship with a rope of light. “You have an annoying habit of interpreting every comment as a criticism. You need to correct that.”
Sara unfolded the paper tongue, the coordinates wrinkled across it. “You didn’t follow any of this, you avoided it. Why send me to that box?”
Nemo said, “So you’d see the traps they’ve laid. Those coordinates, they’ve been set down for me to follow without question. Your father assumed I’d use that device to navigate this voyage, but when I saw that map of the attacks, I recognized they followed a direct path.”
“Yes, to the European shipping lanes.”
“To Brigand’s Trench.”
Jess looked up at Nemo’s mention, but Sara didn’t notice his reaction. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Nemo said, “Like this place, a legend that’s true. It’s not been charted, but anyone who truly knows the history of the oceans knows it.”
Sara still held the paper, letting it cover the poison ring she now wore on her right hand.
She said, “And we’re going to this place? All of the attacks are still in the European shipping lanes.”
“There’s deliberation at work. The route we’re expected to follow, those mines that were set. For us? Or to destroy the harbor? I don’t know who’s behind all of it, but they’ve made a study, they know the oceans,” Nemo said. “So, we must counter expectations.”
Sara said, “Against the unknown forces.”
“If it’s a government, one is as bad as another; they can devour each other, and probably will. I am happy to stay beneath the waves while the world burns.”
“Even if we find a common enemy?”
Nemo said, “I leave that conceit to Grant and your father. That’s why they have a Navy. My enemies belong to me alone. We’re to find answers to the sinkings and be done with it.”
Jess and a burly crewman, head shaved, eye scar-lanced, pulled iron shutters from the doored slots around the dome, knocking out their twisted bolts with a sledge. The crewman grabbed the iron, about to throw it.
Nemo’s voice boomed. “These waters don’t want our trash. Scrap goes below. Mr. Jess, timing for the repairs?”
Jess said, “Soon!”
Sara said, “Take the bolts from the sides first, then pull the plates. They’ll line up better that way.”
“Well, surely sounds like she knows,” Jess said. “Get to it!”
Bolts and plates were pulled. Sara crumpled the Kraken’s tongue. “Beside the fantastic box, there were uniforms. Pictures.”
Nemo measured his words. “What’s left of the crewmen who gave their lives for the Nautilus.”
“Is that what you expect of us?”
Nemo said, “We’ll be taking the river out the other side of this cavern to the ocean, and the direct path of the British wreckage. Given the tides and drift, I calculate we’ll be within a mile of what remains. You should prepare yourself for the worst.”
“I don’t think you could sound more ominous,” Sara said.
“It’s the truth of what we’re doing.”
“You’re not afraid.”
“Death will not be a surprise to me; I can’t speak for anyone else.”
Nemo and Sara were now standing on the far stern of the submarine, over the propeller and rudder works, and watched the last of the iron shutters being bolted, the sections aligned by the crew.
He said, “Look at these men.”
The blue light of the cave cast no shadows, and to Sara they were specters moving about the deck; hazy in this cave, with the indistinct features of dead men.
“They’re not who signed on when the Nautilus was created. Those were idealists, these are seafarers, following orders for pay. Most running from the law, or worse. You didn’t agree with my dictates, but this is the crew this mission demands.”
Sara said, “They’ll take any risk for money?”
“You sound like you’re on a jury, making judgments. There’s something to be said for the purity of the mercenary. Motives are always clear.”
“And I had to fight my way on board.”
“True,” Nemo said, “because you have something to prove. You’ve studied my ship, you want my acceptance. Which means you’re the one crewman who might actually understand why, and what, I have to do.”
Sara accepted the grudging compliment, acutely aware of the poisoned metal band on her finger.
* * *
The pain from Grant’s shoulder was a wave, breaking down his side to his hip, where his leg was unmoving. The weight of the Spencer rifle was too much, and he’d taken the pistol from the coach’s door pocket. He raised it with both hands, aiming at the glass insulator above him.
The shot killed the glass, its pieces flying, and cut the telegraph wire from its pole. Whipping wild and singing, it landed in the wet grass next to Duncan, who was putting on gloves. Grant fell back on the coach steps, exhausted, as Duncan snapped the lid on the portable dial-telegraph, attaching the fallen wire to the terminals, gingerly screwing
them down.
Grant put the gun beside him and looked out at the blue-green of the Virginia hills, the smokeless sky, and the long stretch of road where he’d pulled the coach over to give the Driver water. Duncan filled a bullet-dented canteen at the bend of a cold-running stream, and Oliver coughed out most of it, but managed a swallow through the dried blood sealing his mouth.
Barely alive, Grant thought, watching him. But enough to make the ride home, and be buried.
It was a judgment he’d made too many times on the battlefield, and today had been as bad as any he’d fought. He took a heel of the water from the canteen, wishing it was bourbon, as Duncan set the telegraph’s alphabetic dials.
The horses fed on the tall grass edging a road rutted and broken with artillery craters. Grant was trying to remember who had bombed this county, who had given the orders, when Duncan said, “We’re connected, Sam.”
“Tell Mrs. Grant that we’re safe, and coming in.”
Duncan flipped the brass needle on the sender, indicating each letter, the coded words sparking.
“And the message to the vice president.” Grant rubbed his eyes with his fists. His words were the last things he wanted to say. “We’re on full war footing. Every member of the cabinet should be ready to report at sundown.”
A message chattered back. Duncan read: “They want a location, to send a special detail.”
“Naturally. Turn this into a damn parade. We’ll be in Washington in a few hours. No detail. But start preparing the airship.”
Duncan reset his glasses on his nose. “Really?”
“Norfolk’s in flames, and we haven’t got a clue.” Grant wiped blood from his hands; the Driver’s, the soldiers’ in the street, all mixed together. “I hate this, but if Nemo’s got the oceans—he’s an arrogant son of a bitch—but if he’s got the oceans, then we need the air. It’s the only way to see who’s gunning for us.”
Duncan stammered. “P-P-Perhaps—everyone?”
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