Republic

by Lindsay Buroker

  Father flipped some final switch and bounded forward of his own accord. His helmet tilted up—he had noticed her coming—then twisted to peer over his shoulder. He saw the trouble. Good. He jerked a wave to Maldynado who was fiddling with a final battery on the far side. Sespian ran toward Father, his dagger out. Something rose up and tripped him though. Mahliki chomped on her lip. She wasn’t going to get there quickly enough.

  Maldynado flung an arm up. The circuit was complete. Mahliki held her breath, expecting some grand explosion of light and electricity. But Father was waving to get everyone’s attention and pointing up. Maldynado fiddled with his weight belt, then rose from the lake bottom. Father rose as well.

  By now the submarine had reached the far side, and Mahliki shifted it to block those three vines. Father had something in his hand. A controller? A fine wire attached it to one of the batteries. He was waiting for something. Oh, Sespian. His boots were still on the ground as he worked to pry free the vine that had grasped him. Maldynado swam down, waving the wand from the generator on his back. He stabbed the vine attacking Sespian and a blue streak of lightning shot out.

  “Huh, it does work underwater,” Mahliki said.

  Sespian patted Maldynado on the arm, and they rose from the bottom together. Father did something with the controller. Ah, there was the surge of energy. She didn’t see much, but the effect on the plant was immediate. Everything on the ground around the battery circle, and inside it as well, grew black and started to disintegrate. The affected area stretched out nearly fifty meters in every direction.

  Father landed near the middle and pulled a big black box out of his own pack. Sespian and Maldynado touched down on either side, facing outward, ready to protect him. The ground was bare of the plant though, with small black debris drifting away on the current. At a wave from Father, Sespian knelt and started digging with the dagger. Would he be strong enough to cut into that film? Mahliki waited, not certain if she would be called over to help drill. While Sespian dug, Father set up his final weapon. She didn’t know what it was, another battery of a sort, but he had warned her he would have to attach it to some special connector on the submarine so it could utilize the engine’s power.

  He stood and waved for her to come down. Mahliki let air out of the tanks to descend again, nudging the nose in Father’s direction. But too much air was pumped out of the tanks, and the craft lowered more quickly than expected. The steering grew sluggish and unresponsive as well. Instead of turning toward Father, the submarine picked up speed and traveled straight ahead, toward a rocky outcropping beyond the battery circle.

  “What the— Major, can you check the ballast tanks? Is something going on back there?”

  Even if it was, the steering shouldn’t be affected. It wouldn’t be controlled from back there. Mahliki scowled, trying to compensate for both problems. With her focus on the control panel, she didn’t notice the major coming up behind her until something moved at the edge of her vision. It moved fast.

  She started to turn, but it slammed into the back of her head. The pain of a sledgehammer blow rang through her skull, and she pitched forward. She tried to catch herself before tumbling out of the seat, but her limbs reacted too slowly. Everything seemed to be happening slowly as she clunked to the deck and banged her head one final time.

  Chapter 30

  Maldynado liked the plant zapper, as he had dubbed the generator with its long metal fork. He almost regretted when the gray boxes were activated, forming that field that destroyed all of the greenery around. More vines waved in the far distance—in the dark water, the visibility was poor, but the powerful submarine lamp helped illuminate the surroundings. He had an urge to trot over and zap a few more of them for fun, but Starcrest might yet need his help. Things looked to be under control—he had just waved the submarine down to help with some final task—but one never knew. Besides, Maldynado had a feeling he might get zapped himself if he tried to step over the battery line. If that electricity could shrivel a tree-sized plant into ashes, he didn’t want to know what it might do to a man’s love apples.

  Sespian tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the Explorer.

  Odd, it wasn’t coming close, the way Starcrest had gestured for it to. It was dropping quickly and veering toward a large rock outcropping that had been revealed when the plants had been seared away.

  “What’s Mahliki doing?” Maldynado wondered, though Sespian wouldn’t be able to hear him underwater. He could sign the question, but doubted he needed to. They must all be wondering the same thing.

  Starcrest’s waves had grown larger and more urgent, but the submarine cruised past him without slowing. It was about to cross over the battery line. Maldynado didn’t quite know how that thing worked—would something swimming above it be as affected as something walking close to it?—but was sure the vessel disappearing into the lake depths, or smashing into those rocks couldn’t be a good thing.

  Sespian jogged in that direction, and Maldynado bounded after him, pushing at the water with his hands to gain greater momentum. Starcrest dropped a copper cube he had been holding and halted Maldynado and Sespian with a raised hand before they could get near the circle. Right. Shriveled love apples.

  The submarine crossed over the line, no more than a few feet above the ground, and great sparks and streaks of lightning flew from the dark hull. Maldynado didn’t know if it indicated damage—it sure looked impressive—or simply a meeting of two electrical fields, but he doubted it was good either way.

  The craft’s running lamp flicked out. Darkness swallowed the lake bottom.

  Maldynado hadn’t realized how much they were depending on that light to see what they were doing. A great crunch and scrape came from the rock outcropping. He stared, trying to pick out the submarine in the gloom. It was clear what had happened, but he couldn’t tell if the craft had been breached. Were Mahliki and the engineer in danger? There weren’t any more diving suits in the cabin. Of course, the surface ought to only be twenty or thirty feet up at this point in the harbor, so they could swim up before running out of air, but only if they were conscious and weren’t pinned by wreckage.

  Maldynado’s thoughts took him forward again, but he halted, remembering the barrier. How were they supposed to get over there to help?

  Sespian tapped him again and pointed. Starcrest had recovered the controller he had used to turn on the batteries. Yes, of course. He ought to be able to turn them off again. Maldynado didn’t know what would happen with the plant—with them—without that protection, but there was no choice. They had to check on the sub.

  Indeed, Starcrest was already running for it. When he bounded across the cable without any of his favorite parts being zapped off, Maldynado assumed it was safe. He raced after Starcrest. Sespian charged along beside him.

  Maldynado’s eyes adjusted to the dimness. Some light filtered down to the bottom from the sky above, enough to make out the dark cylinder of the submarine jammed against the rock. It wasn’t enough, however, to judge the damage from a distance. Starcrest had already reached the submarine. Maldynado thought he would go straight for the hatch, but he swam around to the viewing port instead. Of course. If he opened the hatch, it would flood the interior with water. Anyone inside would have to go up at that point. And how could they finish the mission without the rest of the team? They would have to go up and try and help Mahliki and the engineer—even if they were only fifty or a hundred meters from shore at this point, there was no way two swimmers could make it past all those plants without being impeded—or snatched up by boa constrictor-like vines.

  Starcrest pounded on the viewport. Maldynado stopped in the sand by the submarine’s side. He didn’t know what Starcrest saw, but those choppy hard blows looked angry. Maldynado was surprised he wasn’t being shocked from the electrified hull, but maybe the crash or sailing through the battery barrier had caused it to stop working, like the lamp.

  Sespian pointed, then pushed off, half swimming and half cli
mbing to navigate to the hatch on top. Starcrest pounded a few more times—he might have shouted something too, judging by the faint sounds that reached Maldynado’s ears, but it was impossible to see his face behind the dark faceplate. Then he swam up as well, joining Sespian on top.

  “We’re going in?” Maldynado yelled, hoping they would hear him. The others had to realize doing so would flood the inside, but he felt compelled to ask anyway.

  Starcrest ignored him. He waved and pointed at the hatch handle. Sespian nodded and gripped it. He tried to tug it open. Starcrest shook his head and bent over the side of the hatch, fumbling with a gloved hand. Some sort of emergency access panel? His hands were shaking and he had trouble prying it open. It could have been anger, but it could have been the effects of the poison too. He had been looking worse and worse all night.

  Sespian produced the black dagger and waved for Starcrest to move his hands. He pried the panel open, catching the cover before it could fall away. Starcrest pushed a switch inside, then he and Sespian returned to the hatch. They tugged on it together, clearly expecting it to open.

  It didn’t.

  Starcrest swore loudly enough that Maldynado heard some of it. Something that sounded like, “He’s sabotaged it,” reached his ears.

  Sespian kept trying to tug open the hatch, and Starcrest swam back toward the viewport. Maldynado wasn’t sure how to help, so he chewed on his lip and gazed around them. Plant stalks waved in the current behind the rock, reminding him that they hadn’t destroyed the thing yet, not completely. They were beyond the barrier, too, a barrier that had been turned off. The plant might figure that out soon and attack.

  Maldynado pushed away from the submarine and headed back into the circle. When he reached the device Starcrest had pulled out of his pack, a copper box a little smaller than the gray batteries, he grabbed the cable extending from it. Starcrest had been holding it when waving for Mahliki to bring the craft closer. There were a couple of prongs on the end. He had meant to attach it to some socket on the hull. Maldynado remembered that much from their hasty briefing, but not where that socket might be. One thing was certain: the cable wouldn’t reach. He doubted the submarine was going anywhere anytime soon—especially if Sespian and Starcrest flooded it—so he would have to move the device, and hope it could do its job from a different location. Given how precise Starcrest and Mahliki had been with their map, he wasn’t certain it could, but he had to try.

  He lugged the thing toward the submarine, all the while monitoring the increasingly active stalks behind the rocks and keeping an eye on his companions as well. Sespian still had the dagger and was trying to find a way in—the hull was truly designed well if it could withstand that blade—while Starcrest... He had swum back to the viewing port, but dropped down lower than it, his boots on the lake floor. He was leaning against the rocks, his helmet drooping to his chest. Maldynado couldn’t believe the legendary admiral would give up, but if he had exerted himself aggressively, maybe the poison tainting his veins was taking advantage.

  Maldynado kept dragging the device and the cable closer. What else could he do?

  • • • • •

  Mahliki lay on the deck for a moment, in part because she was truly stunned and it took her body some seconds to start responding again, and in part because she wanted to figure out what in all the Kyattese sea channels Major Rydoth was doing. Betraying them, that much was obvious, but what was his next step, and how could she recover enough to stop him? Stop him and tie him up somewhere so he wouldn’t be any more trouble.

  She wasn’t wearing any weapons, not even her utility knife. She had left it back near the science station where she had used it last. The major, on the other hand, wore his pistol as well as a dagger, both hanging on his uniform belt, which Mahliki had a unique view of from below him, her cheek plastered against the cold metal deck. He stood over her, his hand on the rudder control. Steering them where?

  He seemed to have presumed her unconscious—he must not know how much padding her braids gave her back there—and wasn’t checking downward often. Mahliki put down her palm, with a notion of leaping up from behind and trying to lock her arms around his neck, but the submarine crashed first.

  Rydoth had been prepared, and he braced himself against the controls, but the force flung Mahliki forward, ramming her into the base of the control panel. The most painful scrapes she had ever heard echoed through the submarine. She lay on her back, looking up at the major. His face was screwed up in a rictus of emotion that she had trouble reading. She would have expected triumph—wasn’t this what he had wanted?—but regret, pain, and chagrin seemed closer to the reality.

  If he felt bad about it, maybe he shouldn’t have crashed it... Bastard. He had served with Father, hadn’t he? Mahliki thought he had been chosen because of trust. Father so rarely read people wrong. How had he done so with this engineer?

  Something to muse about later. If it was possible, Mahliki needed to get the Explorer off the rocks and back over to help the others. If they didn’t stop the plant now, before it recovered from the shock of the batteries, everything they had fought through would have been for naught.

  But launching an attack from her back wouldn’t work well. And catching him by surprise would be difficult when she was lying at his feet, her head not three inches from his boot. Maybe if she bit him in the ankle...

  Though she hadn’t moved yet, Rydoth chose that moment to look down. He saw her eyeing his leg. That pistol came out faster than Mahliki could blink, and certainly faster than she could snap her teeth down on tender flesh. He aimed it at her eyes.

  She tried to read his eyes. Did he mean to kill her? Or hadn’t that been part of the plan?

  “Has the hull been breached?” she asked. “We’re going to need to swim to the top if water starts leaking in.” She hoped saying we would deter him from the idea of locking her in the cabin or something of that nature. That would be a death sentence. Worse, she couldn’t do anything to wrestle the sub back from him from there. Not that she had come up with a plan to do so anyway. Think, Mahliki. What wouldn’t he be expecting?

  “Not yet,” the major said. “But I need you out of the way until—”

  Something banged against the viewport. From the deck, Mahliki couldn’t see what, but she assumed it was one of the men. She let her head loll back, seeking inspiration from the underside of the control panel. Or from Akahe. Or some dead Turgonian ancestor. She would happily take it from anywhere.

  A memory from her childhood flashed in her mind, of playing with giant stuffed insects with her brother and sister while sitting at Father’s feet. They had been passing time during one of the long voyages. To where, Mahliki couldn’t remember, but she suspected that was the last time she had rolled around on the deck and experienced the submarine from this viewpoint. Agarik had gotten in trouble, she recalled, because he had found a panel down there and poked into it, then turned a little wheel. The end of a hose had fallen off a coil and sprayed water that had drenched Father’s trouser leg. Mother had pointed out that perhaps four-year-old children shouldn’t be allowed to play in the navigation area. Mahliki had nodded sagely at this and smiled happily as Agarik and Koanani were led into the back. As a much more mature six-year-old, she had been allowed to stay up front and help Father navigate.

  While the major was distracted by the viewport thumping, Mahliki slid her hand up the bulkhead, searching by feel for that panel. She found the small thumbhole. It was meant to be easy to access, and even from her awkward position, she managed to get it open. The cover almost fell out, and she had to do a quick grab to keep it from clattering to the floor. The movement drew the major’s eye back downward. She didn’t think he could see the opening—the control panel hid what she was doing—but she had to shift her arm up to hide the cover.

  He watched her suspiciously. “What are you—”

  A thump and scrapes from the top of the Explorer drew his attention.

  “Sounds like someone�
�s trying to get in through the hatch,” Mahliki said. She didn’t like the idea of being flooded with icy lake water, especially when she didn’t know how deep they were, but if it thwarted the major’s plans, she would root for it.

  “I disconnected the outside access override,” Rydoth said.

  When had he had time to do that?

  “Been planning this for a while, have you?” Mahliki had only meant to distract him, but her voice came out bitter and accusing. That brought his attention back to her.

  “Waffling is more like it.” His lips twisted, some of that regret touching his eyes again, but his grip tightened on the pistol. He jerked the barrel. “Get up. You can wait in the back.”

  Mahliki had inched her hand into the access panel and was trying to uncoil the hose without making any noise. She didn’t need a lot, just enough to point at his face for a couple of seconds. If she couldn’t jump up and overpower him in that time, she wouldn’t deem herself fit to carry her father’s name.

  “Wait for what?” she asked, needing a few more seconds.

  “The hull hasn’t been breeched. I need a few moments to make sure the sub is inoperable.”

  “Why?” There, that ought to be enough hose. Now if she could just turn on the faucet and point her weapon all with one hand... “Why would you sabotage the mission? We might be the only hope to save the city.”

  “Destroy the submarine, that was the deal. And the city... there are others who can kill the plant.”

  Ugh, he was working with those cursed priests. “As effectively as we can from down here?” she asked. “Do those zealots even know the roots are the vulnerable part? They haven’t studied it as closely as I have. They’re not even good practitioners. That display outside of the warehouse was pathetic. You may have condemned the whole city, and for what?”

  The certainty on his face faltered. Good. “My son’s life,” he said quietly.