“Don’t get too excited on their behalf just yet. Word out in the Quarter says they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.”
He frowned. “Really? You don’t think they can take it back?”
“I don’t have any idea. I know precious little about the bay these days, or the people who inhabit it. Besides, there’s a curfew — hadn’t you heard? The chain of gossip would run a little smoother if the goddamn Texians hadn’t been shutting down the Quarter.” As she said the part about the goddamn Texians, a strange look crossed her face. Like she was reconsidering something, or reevaluating it. But she continued, “The important thing is, it’s good news for us.”
“You think?”
“The Rebs at the forts will almost certainly head out to help Texas, so the way downriver will be clearer than it might have been otherwise. Fewer eyes watching, and even if anyone sees us, it’ll take them half of forever to recall their forces. We’ll be in the middle of the Gulf by the time they can rally any response.”
Cly turned away from her, revisiting his seat at the captain’s chair. “This is all worth knowing, but there’s been a change of plans. We’re stopping at one of the canals. We’re cutting through it down to the…” He trailed off.
Fang shot Cly a look that no one on earth but the captain could’ve read. The look was fleshed out by a smattering of signing. You’d better lie to her.
And until that moment, Cly hadn’t even realized that this had been his plan all along. It was as if he’d been deluding himself so successfully that the truth hadn’t dawned on him until he was confronted with adjusting it. But this had been the plan, hadn’t it? Ever since he’d first heard that the bay had been taken, and that his fellow unlicensed tradesmen were planning to take it back.
Fang didn’t blink, and didn’t look away.
Cly returned his attention to Josephine and said, a bit too brightly, “Anyway, plans are made to be adjusted, aren’t they? We’ll work it out as we get farther downriver. We’ll have to stop in the canal’s general vicinity to top off our air and fuel supply, anyway. From there, we’ll see how it goes.”
“Andan, I don’t like—”
He interrupted before she could go on fretting about protocol. “We’re sitting inside an advanced military machine like nothing the world has ever known. This thing is armored from top to bottom, and it’s armed to start a war, or stop one. This is just a detour. Nothing’s going to slow us down.”
She frowned and gently bit her lower lip, an old habit of hers that Cly had forgotten until he watched her do it again. It made her look younger, or maybe it only reminded him of when they both were young. “If you understood exactly what I’d risked, what I’d compromised to bring this about—”
“It wouldn’t change a thing,” he assured her. “You did such a great job that the rest of this will be smooth sailing. The hard part’s already out of the way.” He approached her and put his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look up at him.
She did, and she told him, “Maybe you’re right, but we won’t know until it’s over and we’re on board the Valiant. But I hope we get to stand on that deck, so I can turn to you and tell you that you were right all along. Just get us there, Andan. Get this craft to the Gulf. I don’t care what it takes, and we are not taking the canal.”
“Stop worrying.” He might’ve said more, but Troost came back down the hatch. Shortly behind him came Deaderick Early, moving slowly but resolutely.
Josephine extricated herself from the almost-embrace and went to her brother, about whom she was still allowed to worry. “Rick, you’re not looking well.”
“I’m getting stiff as I heal up, that’s all. You worry too much.”
Cly let out a laugh that sounded like a cough, and changed the subject before she could accuse them of ganging up on her. “Everyone get back to your places. Josephine, find someplace where you can hold on — this thing jumps and dives like an otter. Someone turn off that generator, if we have the air to keep us alert and alive for the next run?”
“All right,” Troost said. He looked less ill, but still not altogether well. He went to the generator switch and turned it off, then pulled the lever to retract the air circulation hose. “Where’s Mumler?” he asked.
“Right here,” Mumler announced himself as he came down the ladder. “Is this everyone?”
“Looks like it,” Cly confirmed.
“Then I’ll close up the hatch and call us ready to set sail. Or set screws, or start charges, or whatever this thing does. Goddamn,” he grunted, as he turned the wheel to seal them all inside. “They’ll need to invent a whole new lingo for boats like this.”
Josephine stood in front of the window beside her brother. She appeared to be transfixed by the scenery, dark, swirling, and largely undecipherable though it was. “I’m sure sailors the world over will be up to the task. Or airmen,” she amended the sentiment, flashing Cly a look of honest gratitude that gave him a pang of guilt.
He already knew that this wasn’t about to go as smoothly as she’d hoped. He didn’t have any intention of telling her while there was still some trouble she could make about it, and he didn’t yet know how Deaderick or Mumler would handle the news that their detour at the canal would be more extensive than expected, so he didn’t say anything about it yet.
For the moment, though, he didn’t have to. He only had to get Ganymede back into the river and as far as the canal. What he’d told Josephine off the top of his head was correct: It couldn’t go much farther than the canal without needing its air circulated anyway, so it was a good excuse to pull over when the right place was located.
When all was in order once more, the craft shoved off, its propulsion screws churning at the rear, and the ballasting fins and pumps all working in accordance with the hands and feet of Cly and Fang. Troost called out degrees and directions, helping to adjust their course. Mumler kept an eye on his watch, Houjin kept his eyes plastered to the visor scope, and Josephine kept an eye on her brother — who watched his own reflection in the window, since there was little to be seen on the other side of it except for the black vortex of the river at night.
This time the launch was easier, and better controlled. Ganymede dipped hard only once, and swung left to right like a dog shaking its head for only a few seconds before Fang was able to steady it.
Josephine gasped and clutched at the wall, then sat down along it, only to stand again when the peril was past.
“It was worse the first time,” Troost assured her. A small burp escaped his lips, but whatever else was tempted to come up stayed down.
“You’ve got it under control now, though, don’t you?” Anxiously she regarded Cly, who nodded and cocked his head toward Fang, who did the same.
“Don’t worry about it, Miss Josephine!” Houjin chirped. “They’re getting the hang of it!”
In approximately half an hour, much to Cly’s relief on several levels, the offshoot to the canal came within spotting distance on Houjin’s scope. He announced, “Port Sulphur is dead ahead, up on the right.”
“Veer eight degrees south,” Troost called.
As if she already suspected something was amiss, Josephine said, “Wait. But we decided we weren’t taking the canal. There’s too much trouble out at the bay. We’d already decided.”
Cly almost fell into a very old pattern of explaining that we had not decided anything; she had decided something, and that was not the same as a consensus. But he didn’t. Instead he said, “We have to run the air tube up, Josie. May as well pull over where it’s safe, or safer than any old spot along the river.”
A series of taps up topside announced that their escorts either hadn’t gotten the message about Josephine’s decision, or they were prepared to ignore it in favor of a good docking spot. Either way, the tapping against the hull by the poling boaters backed up Cly’s assertion that they were, in fact, stopping.
“I don’t like this,” she said.
“Sorry. But I like having
fresh air to breathe, and the rest of these fellows do, too. We’re stopping, Josie. We’re putting up the air hose, and we’re freshening up, and then we’re headed back out again. I’ll get you to the Gulf, I swear to God. But you’re going to have to trust me, just this once.”
Fourteen
Josephine fumed to herself about the stopping point, but there was little to be done about it. The captain had made his decision, and the crew was willing to go along with it; so nothing she could add or argue would mean anything to any of them.
Never mind that this was her operation to start with. She was the one who’d arranged it, top to bottom. He had no right to overrule her.
It wasn’t that Cly was wrong. He was absolutely correct, and the air should be circulated on the half hour, as prescribed by the engineers. It was his insistence on being in charge, and the infuriating way that this stop — this one hidden docking spot, of all the hidden docking spots on the full expanse of the Mississippi — was the one closest to the greatest threat.
Josephine hated few things more than changing a set plan, and her plan had changed all over the place. No one had asked her if she thought a stop at the canal was a good idea. And now no one would listen when she told them there were better places, safer places, and that their change of plan must absolutely be reversed for the sake of the entire operation.
But what would she know, anyway? She was only the one who ought to be in charge.
While the men behind her unhitched the air hose and sent it chattering on the reel up through the water and into the open air, she climbed the ladder in order to take her foul mood outside, rather than risk being accused of being difficult, or in the way. The first man to broach either of those ideas would find himself missing teeth.
She wrenched the hatch’s wheel, and her ears popped when the seal did. She poked her head out and immediately spotted Rucker Little, who had scrambled over to Ganymede first. He stood knee-deep in the water, hanging off the rotted and disused pier while preparing to knock upon the hull to get the attention of those inside.
“Everything still good in there?”
“Sure,” she said. “They’re running the air tubes up now, and starting the generator.”
Behind her, something loud but far away cracked — and a warm yellow light bloomed in the distance. When she turned to get a better look, the glow of the far-off explosion revealed a small fleet of airships above the bay.
Even from this far away, Josephine could see that it was a motley, unofficial crew of ne’er-do-wells and pirates who occupied much of the sky. Their ships were not the uniform, predictable shapes of the Texian air brigades. The pirate craft were hodge-podged pieces of foreign ships and augmented weaponry. They were black and red, and trimmed with silver paints or flying their respective flags — not national flags, for there was no such thing among men who worked outside the law.
They flew the flags of the defiant.
They lifted their colors emblazoned with skeletons, skulls, and old-fashioned sabers, and they moved not in tidy ranks and rows, or with military discipline. They swarmed like hornets instead, menacing and independent of one another — yet everyone knew who was an ally, and who was a target.
Antiaircraft missiles blazed up from around the big island in the bay. They rose in a smattering of rockets that streaked from land to clouds, crashing and exploding against anything they hit. One illicit ship took a direct blow to its underside and began to spin — slowly at first, and then faster as it toppled out of the sky, exploding into a vivid white nova long before it hit the ground. The fire from its demise set several flags ablaze, Texian and pirate alike, and forced the ships that were fighting too close to withdraw, and regroup, and reconsider.
Josephine didn’t realize that her mouth had been hanging open as she watched, and she didn’t notice that she’d forgotten Rucker was behind her, until he spoke. “They’re losing, Josephine. Barataria’s just one more piece of Louisiana that Texas will hold.”
“How do you know that?” she asked without taking her eyes off the sky.
“The air pirates can only fly, and Texas has men on the air, on the ground, and in the water, too.”
“In the water?”
He told her, “They’ve taken patrol boats and moved them around the blocking islands at the mouth of the bay. Their other boats were too big to make it through. But those patrols — they’re small and sturdy enough to hold the antiaircraft guns. Texas can shoot from a dozen places at once, in every direction. Airships can’t compete with that. They move too slowly, in quarters as close as that airspace.”
Finally she faced him. “You’re telling me all this like you think we should do something about it.”
Rucker didn’t answer. He only watched over her shoulder as the bay caught fire in fits and starts, and was extinguished, and was fired upon once more. “I don’t think Texas deserves the bay any more than it deserves any other part of New Orleans. And the pirates … they saved your brother, took him into the fort when they could’ve left him out to die.”
“We can’t risk the detour.”
“I didn’t say we could.”
“But you’re thinking about it,” she accused.
“Sure, I’m thinking about it. And if you think those men piloting this crazy craft haven’t thought about it, then you’re so focused on your goal that you can’t see what’s going on around you. They’re pirates, too, Josephine. And before you curse them and their breed, just remember: you’re the one who picked them.”
“We’re going on to the Gulf from here. Down the river, while Texas and the Rebs are distracted by the bay.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that, if I were you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
From below, Cly called, “Josephine? You can see it up there, can’t you? The rockets’ red glare? We can hear it, down here.”
She could, yes. And it stunned her, both the beauty and the violence of it. She had no great love for the bay or the pirates, but they were better than the Texians, weren’t they? At least, they’d never occupied her Quarter, or closed down the streets she walked upon, or forced her to pay the taxes that kept them squatting on her city like a juicy, venomous toad.
“Rucker?” Cly saw the man’s face in the hatch opening.
“Captain?”
“We can help them, can’t we?”
“In this thing?” Rucker cleared his throat and spit over the side, into the river. “You could knock down the patrol boats one-two-three. Fish in a barrel, and they’d never see you coming. They’d never know what hit ’em.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” Cly said, to Josephine more than to Rucker.
He already knew what the man up top was thinking. He could hear it in the tone of Little’s voice, in the odd longing to see an old enemy routed — if not from the whole of the delta, then maybe from just this one small place. Maybe this one bay, this one island, which no one deserved to hold or keep, except the men who’d made it what it was.
From within, behind Cly, Josephine heard her brother — that traitorous devil. “Josephine, we could knock around the bay and cut past it to the south, right out into the Gulf. It’s a shortcut, really.”
Josephine growled and clenched her hands around the ladder’s rungs, then gave up and dropped herself down inside to face the two men who now were directly allied against her. A brother and an old lover — aligned in opposition to the woman who’d made this whole venture possible. If only they understood the depths of their treachery.…
Then again, the looks on their faces said they understood just fine, and were willing to risk it.
Cly had made her angry once or twice before, and he thought he remembered how best to engage her. “Once the air finishes circulating, we’ll have time to hit the bay and run reconnaissance around the island. We’ll take down the patrol boats, and—”
“How did you know about the patrols?” she demanded, looking back and forth between the two men.
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Kirby Troost, behind her and seated, and still looking none too healthy … cleared his throat. He told her, “Ma’am, I know some people, that’s all. They told me it was coming, and what to expect. The pirates have been working on it for the last couple of days, sorting out the details. It wasn’t so hard to learn.”
When Josephine looked to Cly for an explanation, he shrugged. “I don’t know how Troost does it. He just does. He always knows first, like he’s got a set of taps between his ears. But he’s never wrong, and he hasn’t swindled me yet, so I follow his lead when he says he knows something. That’s not the point, Josie. The point is, we can take the canal and save ourselves a few miles to the Gulf. And while we’re at it, we can help keep one small parcel of Louisiana free of Texas rule. That’s something, isn’t it?”
She was on the verge of arguing, perhaps violently, when Deaderick chimed in. “More importantly, it’ll give us a chance to test the weapons systems,” he said quickly, understanding that Cly’s cajoling would not work, and that perhaps the captain had never known her as well as he’d thought. “We didn’t have the space or the privacy to fire off charges in Pontchartrain, and we didn’t have anything to shoot at except the alligators, anyway. The admiral wants a full write-up of Ganymede’s capabilities, don’t he? How are you going to give him that full report, when you don’t even know if she can shoot worth a damn?”
She paused, uncertain of how to grant the point, yet still insist that it shouldn’t delay them. “But the weapons systems have never been called into question. It’s just the … the propulsion and steering, and the air circulation we’ve been asked to prove.”
Her brother shook his head. “The Union doesn’t need an underwater cruiser, Josie. It needs a war machine. And unless you can vouch for this bucket’s ability to blow things out of the water, you’re only handing over a curiosity. If we can show up at the Valiant with firsthand accounts of how well it thwarted Texas from the water, then you’ll have something to lift their eyebrows.”
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