by Stephen Hunt
‘There’s too sodding many of them over there,’ said Dick.
‘We just need to hold them off for a few minutes more,’ called Sadly. ‘Look!’
Out at sea, a u-boat was surfacing, but not any design that Daunt was familiar with … a bulbous, almost organic-shaped hull with a rotating stern composed of large metal tentacles that gave the craft something of the appearance of a steel squid. With a conning tower set as low and angular as a shark’s fin, a hatch in her lee was opening to release a pair of low metal surface boats. Both boats angled out heading towards the shore. Sailors stood on the prows with capacitor packs cabled up to tridents, the men releasing bursts of wild energy at the tiger crabs surfacing around the submarine. Old Death-shell’s kin appeared incensed at this strange metal interloper intruding upon their realm. The creatures weren’t the only ones to spot the rescue craft. More guards emerged in front of the jungle, throwing themselves down and sighting on the dunes.
‘If we try for the sea, they’ll cut us down before we make five yards,’ said Boxiron.
‘You go old steamer,’ urged Daunt. ‘The gill-necks might have dialled down your strength near to mine, but they haven’t yet exchanged your hull for flesh. Wade out there and find Commodore Black, tell him to place King Jude’s sceptre under the protection of the Court of the Air.’
‘They must have recovered the commandant’s corpse, see,’ moaned Morris. ‘We’re dead men now, whatever we do.’
As if in agreement with the convict’s prediction, the drone of the fusillade over their heads was swapped for a strident cannon-like booming, explosions of sand in front of the dunes swelling, showering them with beach debris.
‘They have brought up the heavy guns used to do business with the tiger crabs. Pass me your machete,’ Boxiron ordered Morris, feeling its heft in his left hand as the convict did as he was bid, its weight balancing the other blade gripped tight in the steamman’s right fist.
‘Boxiron,’ Daunt pleaded, ‘do not do this.’
‘What else am I for, old friend?’ asked Boxiron. He rose to his full height from behind the dunes and charged, a lumbering zigzagging assault caused as much by a lack of motor control as any desire to dodge the guards’ bullets. Shots cracked around him as he pounded through the sand, the gill-necks adjusting their range to home in on him. A couple of guards were thrown back by Dick Tull using the distraction to increase his rate of fire, reloading from his satchel of charges like a demon. Out at sea, the boats were closing on the beach, seconds away from landing. The crewmen inside were kneeling now, riding in on the jouncing waves. The tiger crabs had temporally withdrawn out of range of the sailors’ capacitor packs, bobbing around the submersible and awaiting for their food to return. It wouldn’t take long for the camp guards to redirect their fire towards the rescue boats. And if the boats were struck by something that could discourage a tiger crab, they would be in trouble.
Dick Tull rose, firing the rifle from the hip. ‘Leg it for the water.’
Boxiron had reached the line of guards, a few gill-necks standing up just in time to face his machetes, twin windmills of death as he cut and slashed about him. He was staggering back from the blasts at short range. Not even the armour the criminal underworld had fitted their hulking ex-possession with was proof against this level of abuse.
‘Move!’ called Sadly, dragging Daunt back. ‘Right now, your noggin’s the most valuable thing on this island.’
Only to everyone at home. To Daunt, the most valuable thing on the island was the steamman about to throw his life away against the ranks of their gill-neck pursuers.
When Charlotte saw the two darkships, the only part of their description that covered what she had been expecting to see was their colour: a shining, oily darkness rippling along their featureless hulls. Nothing else about them resembled any submarine she had heard of. Pear-shaped and driving forward on the sharp of their noses, the crafts couldn’t have been more than forty feet long. Their approach was soundless. There was no sign of a means of propulsion, no portholes, no torpedo slits, no hydroplanes, no conning tower, no ventilation intakes, no rudders for steering. It didn’t take much to believe this evil pair had escaped from Elizica’s prophecy and the legends of the seanore. Demon chariots, the chasm’s seed, their skins sucked the light out of the ocean, surfaces made a rippling absence of matter, organic teardrops of devilry solidified into twin darts and sliding with pernicious intent towards the nomads’ grand congress.
Where the outskirts of the underwater forest gave way to the encampment, dozens of warriors rose from sentry positions in the wavering kelp, casting rotor-spears at the ebony teardrops accelerating towards the assembly. At least seven explosive-headed rods were heading straight for the bows of the two craft, white trails of bubbles fuming behind rotors built into their shafts, the darkships suddenly banking contemptuously into the swarm, detonating the spears. Both darkships powered forward, even faster now while the warriors below had drawn their shock spears, angling the discharge of electric bolts towards the belly of the two ships. The twin craft overshot the warriors. As they passed, the seanore underneath doubled up in agony, clutching their ears and left writhing above the wavering forest of kelp. Just being in the proximity of the darkships was enough to drive the nomads into waves of agony.
Elizica’s words resonated inside Charlotte’s mind. ‘Sound – the enemy is using sound as a shield. The seanore’s eardrums exploded when the darkships passed, ruptured like the triggers on the rotor-spears’ warheads, detonating before they hit the hull.’
How do we fight them?
‘There is a way. Head for the weapons the nomads left outside the congress.’
Charlotte swam though the panicked nomads packed inside the expanded camp of the Clan Raldama. Thousands of seanore warriors had been waiting to hear the results of the tribal elders’ deliberations. Now they had been reduced into an undisciplined mass desperately seeking the commands of their chiefs, most of whom were tightly mixed with the ranks of their rivals and neighbours. Behind Charlotte, the darkships had rammed the line of spherical nets holding the nomads’ schools of fish, kelp-rope lattices bursting apart as waves of silvery fish burned in the interlopers’ dark energies, floating dead towards the surface. When the teardrop-shaped darkships passed over the encampment, their shape seemed to change, flattening, taking on a manta ray configuration. They had jettisoned something in their wake, an inky mist spreading though the ocean, heavier than the sea water and sinking towards the dozens of domes raised on the seabed. Hitting the interlocking plates of the structures, a devil-dust crackling fizzed over Charlotte’s helmet speakers, a fierce popping. Collapsing as if they were decaying flesh, the chambers began to crumble inwards, unlucky nomads who had not yet evacuated eaten away wherever the black mist touched them. A froth of disintegrating bone and flesh bubbled out along every point of contact with the wicked wave of pollution that had been unleashed.
‘The chasm-demon’s breath,’ whispered Elizica as Charlotte hesitated. She had been swimming straight for that evil substance. ‘I would sleep away another age if it meant not waking to see that filthy weapon afresh.’
A strange blurring in the water beyond her visor caught Charlotte’s eye. It was the Purity Queen, the catamaran-hulled submarine had fired up the stealth plates along her hull and they were vibrating like the polyps on a reef’s Dead Man’s Fingers. Her bow was slanting down, rising on an explosion of air from her ballast tanks, a beast rearing in the water to challenge the two newcomers. She was positioning herself for a perfect firing solution against the two darkships.
The commodore must be back on board.
‘They’ll go gentle with the u-boat,’ said Elizica. ‘They’ve tracked the submarine and will sense the sceptre is within her decks.’
Four torpedoes powered away from the Purity Queen’s forward firing tubes, a pair sent streaming from each bow towards the darkships. Neither of the enemy vessels altered course, rather, their bows flowed out into n
eedle-like lances, quick flashes of burning light – but black light, like the negative on a daguerreotype plate – pulses hitting each of the propelling torpedoes and sending them spinning towards the seabed. Inert lumps of slagged steel with their chemical warheads burnt into a cloud of yellow particles chasing the torpedoes’ wake down.
The two darkships passed either side of the Purity Queen, lances forming along the side of their waxy skin as the pair released an underwater broadside at the u-boat. As they struck, Charlotte’s sight vanished with the explosion of light across her retina. The fireworks departed and her vision returned. Charlotte saw the Purity Queen’s hull had been left with dozens of steaming, melted holes, the new crevices in her hull leaking air as though it were blood. The u-boat’s proud conning tower had been singled out and left a ruin of melted metal, her forward and aft hydroplanes sheared off. In that single pass, the once proud vessel, ex of the Jackelian fleet sea arm, had been left a filleted wreck. One of her two propellers was still active and she nosed down towards the seabed, crashing into the kelp forest and ploughing it up. Then her stern rose, keeping the Purity Queen vertical for a second, a strange metal tower implanted on the seabed, before she tipped forward under the propulsion of her remaining screw. The remains of the submarine’s mangled conning tower impaled the vegetation and there she lay, stretched out on her belly, rivulets of oxygen streaming upwards from multiple hull ruptures.
Go gentle with her, my left foot!
‘For the chasm-seed, that was a light touch. Quick, girl-child, that way! Swim for those rotor-spears.’
Circling the Purity Queen’s upended hull in vulture loops, the darkships had lost interest in the seanore, stunned into a near-rout by the appearance of these deadly auguries of destruction in their waters.
‘They are scanning the wreck for the sceptre, for the crystal in its orb,’ warned Elizica.
Charlotte was close to the centre of a clearing in the kelp forest. Corpses caught in the current floated past above rotor-spears and shock-spears piled against each other in cones of weaponry, the nomad mob jostling as they snatched wildly at the arms laid aside during their grand congress.
‘Take the Eye of Fate off your chest,’ ordered Elizica. ‘Press it against the warheads of the rotor-spears.’
Charlotte did as she was bid, spotting Vane amid the mob of scrambling nomads, trying to restore order among the warriors. ‘Vane, have them stand aside, I need to get to these weapons.’
‘Back, clansmen!’ Vane threw punches at the clawing warriors, holding the line against the panicked mass. ‘Do you have a plan, surface dweller?’
Charlotte rubbed the Eye of Fate against each first rotor-spear, a green light radiating from the amulet briefly rendering the weapon’s mechanism transparent. ‘You know how it is, Vane, a bit of that old-time prophecy juice.’
I hope this is good.
Elizica’s voice slipped through her mind. ‘I’m burning out the rotor-spears’ detonation triggers so there will be nothing for the darkships’ perimeter sonics to detonate early when they pass through their shields.’
I’m no engineer, but if you do that, just how in the Circle’s name are they going to explode when they hit?
‘Contact force,’ said Elizica. ‘They’ll need to be thrown from no further than twenty feet for them to have enough velocity to detonate.’
That sounds like suicide.
‘Let’s compromise and call it the act of a champion, girl-child. When I was your age I’d already jumped a bull and strangled a lion unconscious in an arena’s sands.’
You reached my age? Charlotte finished with the last of the cluster of rotor-spears, looping the Eye of Fate around her chest again. Picking up the nearest rotor-spear, she passed it to Vane. ‘These will do the job now, if there are seanore here courageous enough to swim close enough to the enemy to stand in a darkship’s shadow.’
Vane examined the rotor-spear, running a finger along its warhead as if he expected it to tingle now. ‘I fear shadows less than I fear your enchantments. I hope your witchery will be enough.’
Charlotte located the two darkships, their black mass hovering above the wrecked Jackelian u-boat. Weapon horns had formed along their bows, smaller this time, focused cutting beams slicing out and opening up the broken vessel’s hull. Someone was swimming towards the submarine from the camp – a solitary figure. Maeva? What did the old woman think she was doing over there? The third member of the Clan Raldama’s council hadn’t been spotted yet. The two interlopers were still too busy carving up their prize in their search for King Jude’s Sceptre. My sceptre, you bastards.
‘It’ll be enough.’ The nomads were hanging back uncertainly, Vane and his warriors, Korda too, the rival nomad chief’s skull covered by a silver war mask he had yet to push forward to cover his face. ‘You might need to find your balls first.’ Charlotte tugged one of the rotor-spears out of the seabed and pushed off for the wreck of the submarine.
Just tell me that the commodore is still alive inside there?
‘He may be.’ Elizica’s words slid through her head.
I’m not doing this for you or your dammed prophecy. I owe Jared my life and that sceptre is mine. I stole it … I get to sell it.
‘Yes, you get to sell it.’
Seanore were overtaking her now, the nomads shamed into action, their powerful webbed feet powering them ahead of her. Soon enough Charlotte was only swimming alongside wetbacks like her, the clans’ human members weighed down with rebreathers and diving suits. There were more warriors by her side than the numbers of rotor-spears she had altered – many were rushing towards their deaths with weapons that would prove useless against the intruders. Some of the nomads were already releasing rotor-spears, engine bulges propelling the spears forward in a flurry of bubbles, seanore war cries echoing inside Charlotte’s helmet as disembodied as Elizica’s voice. ‘Too far away.’
I don’t think that discipline is their strong point.
A flurry of warheads detonated before they had even reached the darkships’ ebony surface, others bouncing uselessly off the hulls, their velocity too spent to explode on impact.
I hope they don’t notice the duds bouncing off their ships.
‘They will release their demon’s breath again when they have recharged their tanks. This is our only chance, girl-child. Close with them, ATTACK!’
Charlotte had covered half the distance to the Purity Queen’s wreckage, the seanores nearer still, close enough for the initial acceleration of their rotor-spears to detonate on impact now. The nearest of the darkships above the dead Jackelian submarine juddered with a wave of flowering explosions, the wash of shockwaves rattling Charlotte’s helmet and throwing her back in the water. Damage had been taken along the closest darkship, although it was nothing like the destruction the two craft had visited on the Purity Queen. Black folds fluttered along the invader’s ebony surface as though in torment, oily globules vomiting out of the rips. Its hull flexed and writhed close to the impact strikes.
Charlotte had difficulty concentrating this close to the darkships, the throb of pain in her head intensifying with every foot she swam nearer. Not just the pain, their proximity was setting her nerves on edge, an almost superstitious dread tunnelling into her deepest, darkest fears. Every iota of Charlotte’s being screamed at her to flee, to swim away from these underwater terrors and keep on going. She was breathing hard, the visor of her diving helmet misting up on the inside. Her bones vibrated with panic, shaking in terror.
‘The darkships sing their own song,’ Elizica’s voice warned. ‘They seek out the frequency of fear within your heart.’
Both darkships had returned to their pear-like configuration and pulled up from the Purity Queen’s belly, the craft further away lifting and using the hull of the damaged darkship as a shield. From one of the rents near the Purity Queen’s amidships a figure emerged pulling another, both in diving suits. One of them was Maeva. The prone form; the commodore’s. But was he alive? No
sign of King Jude’s sceptre; that must still be inside the wreck.
These cursed things; these were part of the conspiracy that had set Charlotte up to steal the sceptre, before coldly attempting to slaughter her as they had murdered poor old Damson Robinson. They had hounded her from her home and were hunting her still, hungry for retribution. With a yell Charlotte cast the rotor-spear, the rush of water activating the gas charge inside the staff, its small motor accelerating the projectile towards the damaged darkship. It struck exactly where she’d aimed, the top of the craft’s bulbous bow, the intuition – supplied by the ancient spirit haunting her mind – that this was where the pilot was succoured by the foul black substance. Her shaft’s explosion was one of many. The seanore didn’t need to follow Charlotte’s example to press home their advantage against an obviously wounded party. The damaged darkship reversed erratically, its surface breaking up and threading away as if it were a lump of lard melting in the pan. Tilting forward, the surviving craft had learnt the danger of ignoring these attackers, its bow reforming into a lance. With a flash of strangely dark light, the cutting force of the craft was unleashed against the attacking seanores. To Charlotte’s right, one of the human nomads was cleaved from head to groin in a broiling second, his two halves split and simultaneously cauterized into a bloodless death, drifting apart in a frozen rictus agony. There seemed no limit of range to the weapon; when it fired, the sea boiled and everything in its path was carved into slices.
Charlotte yelled in alarm as the beam punched past her, the sound echoing in the confines of her helmet, flinging her down towards the seabed. Close enough to sear the skin beneath her diving suit. A handful of seanore were swimming in above the kelp forest, using their rotor-spears set low to carry them in before launching the weapons – literally riding the projectiles down onto their foe. The undamaged darkship pivoted, the cutting beam moving with it, ploughing through the forest – ground erupting like the fault line of an earthquake with its violence – before bursting through the raiding party.
