There was the Kingmaker in all its terrifying glory. Her target.
How on earth did one board the ugly thing?
Maggie’s boots made no sound on the vibrating deck as she circled it, every cell in her body alert for that one man in a vital position who could ruin everything. Ah, here it was. Far above her head she could see a door in the side of the gun fortress, accessible if one used the giant wheels with their circulating treads as a ladder, and from there, stepped from one protruding bolt in its body to another. It looked as if these bolts had been constructed for just this purpose, so there was no need for extra detail such as stairs on the exterior that might slow it down.
“Halt!” came a second disembodied voice that definitely did not proceed from a speaking trumpet.
Maggie’s heart leaped practically into her mouth and she froze halfway up the black iron side of the Kingmaker like a fly on a wall.
“Before I shoot, identify yourself.” The accent was Texican.
Slowly, Maggie turned her head upward, to see a man on a catwalk holding an aural detonator rifle similar to the ones she had seen aboard Lady Lucy. The bell-shaped barrels of aural weapons fired sound waves to incapacitate their targets, and were used on enclosed vessels such as airships, where the incursion of a bullet would be fatal to ship and crew.
And now it was trained on her—a much bigger one than she’d ever seen.
“I—I am Gloria Meriwether-Astor,” she said, her mouth dry. “I am seeing the Kingmaker for myself, after Captain Martin gave me a tour of the Fury earlier today.”
“And why aren’t you under escort?”
Maggie rested both feet on the bolt and turned to face her interlocutor in as casual a manner as she could, adding a touch of huffy irritation for good measure. “Because I find it tiresome, being told what to do and observe. I gave my escort the slip when he was called forward for the final briefing. Kindly point that weapon elsewhere, sir.”
“Come down from there, miss, before you fall. No one but its pilot and crew are permitted aboard the Kingmaker. I will return you to your father at once.”
If she got down, how was she to disarm a man twice her size? If she made a break for the door in the fortress above her head, how would she evade the sound wave?
Frozen between two impossibilities, Maggie could not move.
And then she felt a popping sensation in her ears, and the guard collapsed to the catwalk, his arm twitching where it dangled in the air. The detonator fell from his hand, clanging upon the deck below.
Serge Lavande emerged from behind a stack of crates and despite herself, Maggie tensed, feeling more exposed than she ever had in her life—including that dreadful evening on the roof of Colliford Castle. Whose side was he on, at this moment of crisis? Where did his loyalties lie?
“Mademoiselle Polgarth,” he said, and grinned.
Maggie’s breath went out of her and her knees turned to rubber. But she was forty feet in the air, so she could not allow herself the luxury of collapsing with relief.
“Merci, monsieur,” she said.
“I see that we are now compatriots,” he said. “I do not expect to survive, but I should like to be sure that you will.”
“I do not expect to survive either, monsieur.”
“What do you plan to do? My aunt was urgent, but not specific.”
“Fire the Kingmaker’s cannon and breach the hull. Once the water pressure equalizes in this chamber, the mechanism will lower the ramp, and the Kingmaker will roll out to join the hulks of the Armada below.”
“And we?”
“I expect I will go down with it, monsieur, but if you can see your way to saving yourself, then you ought to.”
“Au contraire, mademoiselle. Democracy will lose too formidable an ally if we do not continue to work together.” He smiled and saluted her with his detonator. “I am determined that you shall survive.”
Nimbly, he collected the fallen detonator below the catwalk, and when she realized he planned to join her in the gun fortress, she climbed up and opened the door, heaving herself through it and scrambling to her feet. He followed her in and when he stood, he bowed over her hand.
“At your service, mademoiselle. I understand we are cousins by marriage.”
“I am honored to make your acquaintance properly, sir. Do you know how to fire this thing?”
“Sadly, no, but it should be fairly straightforward. Let us investigate—and quickly.”
Maggie took in the rudimentary controls at a glance. They were not helpfully labeled, but it stood to reason that anything not obviously meant for igniting the boilers, steering, and locomotion must be for armaments.
“No, not that one,” she said hastily, as Serge’s hand hovered over a lever that, when thrust forward, might send the Kingmaker rolling even without benefit of steam propulsion. “These ones here appear to control the cannon, you see? They are on a separate panel, just below this viewing window.”
It took a couple of tries, but she succeeded in making the cannon swing from side to side and nod up and down. So successful was she, in fact, that the massive barrel collided with a lateral catwalk and tore it from the ceiling with a screech of rending iron.
“Oh, dear.”
“I should hasten my explorations, Mademoiselle. Of a certainty, someone will come to investigate.”
And then she remembered something. On the roof of Colliford Castle, Lizzie’s father had installed a giant telescope that was in reality a cannon, meant to shoot the royal princes’ airship out of the sky. She and Lizzie had both sat in its cockpit after Maggie had recovered somewhat from his attempt on her life, and Lizzie had shown her how it worked. What if that cannon had also been made by the Meriwether-Astor Munitions Works? What if their cannon design was consistent across all the weapons they made?
And there it was.
Maggie pulled the lever directly below the barrel controls, and in the bowels of the fortress, gears and cogs began to turn. She pulled the lever beside the first, and with a clank, a missile of some kind fell into its slot and was ingested by the mechanism. A lamp came on.
ARMED
She looked to her right, where Serge stood beside her. Though he did not touch her, she could feel his agitation and see his body trembling. Here was the definition of courage—being terrified, and yet doing what must be done.
“Ready?”
“Marguerite, let me tell you what will happen. Once the hull is breached, water will rush in at the same speed as air rushes out. But for the first few moments, the sea will be held back by the greater air pressure within. We have just those few moments to descend from here and enclose ourselves in one of the chaloupes, where we will be as protected as possible from the madness that will be unleashed.”
Here was a revelation. “You mean we might survive?”
“I do not hold out much hope, but if there is a chance, we must grasp it, yes? For the war will not be over with the destruction of one machine, and we will be needed to fight another day.”
She held out a hand. “I shall follow you. We are in this together, come what may.”
He took it, his own ice-cold. “Then I leave the honor of firing this monster to you.”
28
The explosion rendered Maggie deaf.
Before her terrified eyes, the missile tore through the iron hull of the Fury and shot out into the dark depths, leaving a ragged hole the size of a small cottage in its wake.
Serge’s mouth opened in a shout, but through the ringing silence in her head, she could not hear it—or her own screams, though the pain in her throat told her she was indeed screaming. He grabbed her hand and they flung themselves out the fortress’s door, falling, scraping, bouncing from bolt to bolt until they landed on all fours on the enormous treads. Lights of alarm flashed over their heads, and Maggie felt the vibrations change under her feet. Hesitate. Increase, as though the Fury herself had realized what had happened and succumbed to sudden panic.
And then the
water leaped through the aperture and into the Kingmaker’s nest with the force of a geyser out of control. It spewed the length of the holding bay, soaking the two of them with cold seawater in moments.
Serge yanked on her hand and they sloshed across the floor as fast as the rapidly rising water would allow.
“Halt!” came a shout from above that broke with terror. “Halt!”
Without a word, Serge turned, aimed, and fired the detonator he still held at the men on the catwalk above. He tossed Maggie the second one that had been looped over his shoulder, and she got in a volley, too, before the men in the rear realized that if they did not alert the rest of the crew, the entire ship would be lost.
But Maggie knew in her bones it was already too late for that. The men fled through an iron door and slammed it shut behind them. The clang was dull, as though heard underwater, but her hearing seemed to be recovering from the blow it had taken.
The water was up to her knees now, freezing her feet in her boots, dragging at her skirts, slowing her down.
“Come!” Serge shouted. “In here!”
He pulled a lever on the hull of the lead chaloupe, the one that possessed an engine, and she ran to the stern and released the coupling to the train of inert vessels behind it. When she ran back, he had boosted himself up and through the hatch, and reached down to pull her inside. Kicking, pushing on bits of the hull, she hung onto both his hands as he landed her like a great gasping fish.
Within moments, he had the hatch closed and locked, and glanced up at the glass dome over their heads as if imploring it to hold for the next few minutes.
“Now what?” Maggie said breathlessly.
“I will ignite the chaloupe’s engine so as to be ready when the landing ramp opens. And then we wait—and hope. If you are on good terms with the Almighty, Marguerite, you might offer a prayer on our behalf.”
Since that was the only thing she could do besides glue herself to the glass and watch the water rise, she did.
In a far shorter time than she ever would have believed possible, the sea invaded the chamber to the point that the water toyed with the chaloupe, attempting to lift it from the deck. Its level rose more—and yet more—and they were submerged, their view now tinged with green, and blurred with the swirling of the angry current trapped in the landing bay with nowhere else to go. Crates and barrels seemed to attack them from every side as they were swirled and flung willy-nilly in the maelstrom.
And then the sound of metal screeching on metal reverberated through the walls. A horn sounded—or perhaps that was just the agony of the Fury, realizing at last the truth of her awful situation.
The deck tipped out from under them.
The massive chains mooring the Kingmaker to the floor snapped as the war machine rolled forward, the whipping motion of their release slowed by the enormous volume of water that now engulfed it.
Slowly, mindlessly obeying the demands of physics, the deck continued to lower, all the contents of the landing bay—Kingmaker, chaloupes, landaus, crates, pallets, and machinery, all sliding down the ramp in one huge roiling mass.
The sea’s triumph was complete now as it filled the entire bay and began its assault on the rest of the navire. Maggie was deafened for a second time from the cacophony of objects striking the hull of the chaloupe—so deafened that she could hardly hear Serge’s shout.
“We have lost our rudder!” he cried, working the navigation wheel like a madman as they fell slowly into the depths. “That wretched crate of rifles struck us and has bent it—she will not obey the helm!”
When Maggie turned toward the stern with the thought that she might be able to repair it with something, she looked up through the glass.
All the blood seemed to leave her head from sheer horror.
She grabbed Serge’s arm and swung him around to look. For the Kingmaker’s enormous weight meant that it was the last thing to be disgorged from the Fury’s sagging jaw. Their chaloupe had gone out with the crates and equipment, propelled by the little engine, and with the precipitous angle of the Fury, which now pointed at the seabed, the Kingmaker was literally falling—slowly, ponderously—on top of them.
“Move! Move!” she shrieked.
“I cannot! I have no rudder!”
“Goose it—in any direction. Serge, quickly!”
But no matter what he did, the behemoth pushed all before it, their little bubble of glass and brass trapped between its horrific weight on one side and the pressure of the water on the other.
Maggie could do nothing at all but cling to Serge’s soaked wool sleeve, watching as the Kingmaker came for them both, as inexorably as death.
29
“This is completely unacceptable,” Claire snapped, hanging onto her temper by its last thread.
In the sea parlor at Seacombe House, she, Andrew, Michael Polgarth, and Lizzie faced down the formidable obstinacy of Demelza Seacombe. The woman stood in front of the fire, back ramrod straight, her gaze unyielding. Claire’s stomach was hollowed out with fear for Maggie, and she struggled against her rage at the injustice this woman and her husband had dealt to her girl for no better reason than snobbery.
And now Maggie’s and Claude’s lives were at risk because of it.
“Are you seriously telling me that you have no idea where they could have been taken?”
“We are not in the habit of following smugglers to and fro,” Mrs. Seacombe said in quelling tones, but the pallor of her skin suggested she was more affected than she was letting on. “The goods come from America via France. We cannot be responsible for the behavior of criminals in the night.”
“No, heaven forbid you should be responsible for anything,” Claire said. “You are quite willing to accept the profits of those activities, however, to support the style of living to which you have become accustomed. But that is neither here nor there. I find it very difficult to believe that you have no feeling for Claude and the peril of his situation, even if you cannot spare a drop of compassion for Maggie.”
“They will not harm Claude,” Mrs. Seacombe repeated, as stubborn as a rock and, Claire suspected, with as little imagination. Her own imagination was working at a furious rate, and it was making her positively ill. “I must believe that is true. Now, if you will excuse me, my husband lies practically at death’s door after an apoplexy, and I must return to his bedside.”
Lizzie pressed against Claire’s side. “It is my fault. I told them about the navire and the ‘second phase’ that the captain was talking about, and Grandfather collapsed.”
Claire reached the last reserves of her ability to be civil, and passed an arm about Lizzie’s waist. “It is not your fault. If a man will engage in criminal activity, it is his own fault if his conscience catches up with him.”
“Claire, we are getting nowhere here,” Andrew said in a low tone. “We must apply our minds in a different direction.” To Mrs. Seacombe, he said, “We must see a set of charts immediately. If they are crossing the Channel, they will use the shortest and least dangerous route. Perhaps we can trace some possibilities if we can see the lay of the land.”
“Not only the land,” Lizzie said. “The seabed, too.”
“An excellent point. Marine charts, Mrs. Seacombe, if you please, at once.”
If she objected to being spoken to in such peremptory tones, Mrs. Seacombe did not show it. Perhaps she knew that one more sign of reluctance to help would ignite Claire’s temper—and Claire had not missed the astonished glance she had bestowed on the lightning rifle in its holster on her back when they’d pushed their way past Nancarrow and demanded an audience.
Wordlessly, Mrs. Seacombe led them downstairs to her husband’s study. She deposited the charts on a table and swept from the room. The marine charts showed the floor of the Channel as well as the land masses they knew so well on this side at least. Andrew ran a finger from their location at Penzance to the closest landing in Cornouaille.
“There are miles of possibilities here, but a
t least it would be a place to start. Perhaps we will be fortunate and see one of the undersea dirigibles surface. From the air, it might be easier to spot them than from land, though since the sun has gone down, that is a slender hope.”
Michael Polgarth leaned over the chart and pointed to a tiny dot. “Baie des Sirenes,” he said with a sad smile. “That is where Maggie was born.”
He had told them the story in the navigation gondola on the way here, its details contradicting in nearly every particular the one that the Seacombes had told her. If Claire had had a moment for regrets, it would be that she had not taken the time to hear the story from Maggie herself. Instead, she had listened to a lie and passed it on believing it to be the truth—and what damage it had caused!
“Baie des Sirenes,” Andrew said slowly, tracing the route between that location and theirs. “In the absence of any other information, it is as good a place to start as any. Shall we take it as an omen of good fortune and set our course there?”
Claire made up her mind instantly. “Lizzie says the navire—the undersea dirigible—was called Neptune’s Maid. Neptune’s daughters were mermaids. And this translates to Bay of the Mermaids. I believe it is a sign.” She let the chart roll itself up with a snap, and scooped it off the table. “Let us lift at once.”
Athena was moored rather awkwardly in the orchard, but Claire had not had time to choose a more suitable landing place—or one that would not involve broken branches. But she was in no mood at present to care about the yield of the Seacombes’ apple trees. While Michael and Andrew attended to the ropes, Lizzie dashed down to the messenger cage, which she had visited at least twice already, looking for a missive from Maggie.
“Up ship!” Claire called, the men pulled in the ropes, and Athena fell into the night sky like a lark leaping for the heavens.
“Lady!” came a shriek from below. “It’s Maggie!”
Magnificent Devices 6: A Lady of Spirit Page 20
