Nemo Rising

by C. Courtney Joyner

  “And, not for the first time,” Fulmer said, his body tensed, but making no sudden moves or letting his voice pitch. “You got one chance to use that Shafra, mate. Then I’ll gut you with it.”

  Tim’s hand was on the knife when the web wrapped around his neck, drawing in tight, a monofilament line garroting him. He choked out, sprawling to the floor, as acid sprayed him from above: searing his skin, peeling it from muscle, then bone, leaving a skull, with bits of dissolving cords in the throat, and burning hair curling.

  The spider thing’s mechanical legs were squat on a stack of rifle crates, its four-feet-across, blue steel body perched over Tim’s corpse; a gargoyle high on a cathedral wall.

  Red didn’t move. Couldn’t move. The nightmare crawled in front of him, jagged metal spurs on its eight piston-legs digging deep into the wooden crate, holding its position.

  Its vaguely human head reminded Red of the shrunken one he’d seen in Ecuador, even as it rotated on a corkscrewed neck, tracking the enemies in front of it. An eyeball-lens centered the metal “face,” jaws splitting just below it, opening sideways and revealing small, brass nozzles for the acid spray and webbing.

  Fulmer dared a step, the thing reacted; internal gear works turning. He grabbed the Shafra knife. It leapt for him. He stabbed at its metal body, the legs churning wildly, spurs slicing, before he powered the knife’s tip through a flexible piece under the spider’s opening jaws.

  The blade cut tubing and the thing misted acid, burning Fulmer’s neck before he hurled it aside and charged the rifle stacks.

  Smashing the lid of a case, splitting wood with his elbow, he ripped through oilcloth and grabbed a Remington repeater. An ammunition box collapsed with a single kick. Bullets were loaded in moments, the weapon cocked.

  Fulmer sensed something behind him, whipped around. Two spiders, on top of a stack, blackened shapes against the cargo hold’s lamplight, tilted forward on their pneumatics, jaws separating sideways and dripping corrosive liquid.

  He shot both. Rapid fire.

  One blew apart, the other spun into the air, a tin can off a fence post, coming down, the webbing springing from its mandibles as a membrane, before becoming strong cords. He shot again, the slug blue-sparking along the thing’s side, but smashing a rear leg, then dove out of the way of the spreading web, firing the last slug that ripped the spider in half.

  Gear works, congealed webbing, and shattered eye lenses splayed across the floor as Fulmer grabbed another box of ammo and cut around the stack of rifles to the center of the hold.

  He kept the repeater at his shoulder as he had when coming down on the Paiute attackers of the Carson River Station, shooting from horseback at full gallop. His arms were crooked perfectly, absorbing the kick, as he fired with the rifle’s lever action, the gun a part of him. But he wasn’t aiming at men. These were odd machines, and the constant flame from the barrel was dragon’s breath erupting, killing one mechanical after another, bullet-punching them into junk.

  Rifle empty, Fulmer rolled out of the way as a crewman plunged into the hold from the top deck, screaming, a spider neck-clamped around him, soaking his face with acid. The corpse slammed the floor, the flesh bubbling into nothing.

  Fulmer’s voice was a raging howl, beyond words, clubbing the thing with the gun’s stock, splitting metal hide and knocking it off the dead man. He reloaded the magazine, swung the rifle around, cocking the lever, but pulled up as the spider’s webbing whipped Red’s head and throat.

  Red clawed at the fibers, the thing propelling itself to the back of his skull, spurs instantly digging into muscle, its leg-pistons locking onto his shoulders.

  Fulmer leveled the Remington, blew two spiders on the floor apart, even as he dove for Red. But there was no shot to take, unless it was to kill his friend.

  Red’s cries for help were paralyzed by the spider’s grip, and tears ran from his bloody eyes even as he reached out, taking Fulmer’s hand, pulling him in.

  Fulmer brought down all his strength on the spider, pounding, breaking off a steel leg, stabbing it, over and over, with the jagged end. He struck gears. Electricity sparked as the remaining legs started jerking without direction, the internals gnashing.

  Fulmer clamped a grip around the thing and pulled as Red slumped over, unconscious.

  Around them, mechanicals swarmed through portholes, dropped from upper decks, descending on webbing like marionette strings, their acid spray dissolving wooden crates to mush.

  Their aim was deliberate, the nozzled spray eating weapons and ammo down to the brass, then spattering against the hot glass of the lamps hanging above the rifles. Whale oil burst from the lamp globes, the flames spiraling to the sloppy mix of dissolving wood and black powder ammunition.

  Fulmer struggled to free Red from the mechanical, but the thing’s legs were closing into themselves, springs tightening. Rifle-smashing one last time, he finally stopped the gears, then shouldered Red under his arms and charged for the crew ladder.

  Smoke strangled the air, but Fulmer kept the Remington firing, picking off spiders attacking four at a time from shadowed corners. He reached the ladder, emptied a last round through mechanized jaws and out the back of a metal skull, took hold of the railing, and began his way up, balancing Red on his back.

  Feet away, the weapon crates stacked in this hold of Her Majesty’s Ship Mariner browned with the flames. Then, were engulfed.

  * * *

  A slop of fetid water and brined sludge poured over Jess as he worked to fit the oxygen net on the Nautilus’ air generator. He wiped his face, spit out what he could as Nemo bent down to where he was lying under a crisscross of pipes and machine works.

  Nemo handed him a long-bladed knife with a splayed end. “Corners first.”

  Jess took the blade. An inch from his nose were large panels made of a pinkish, almost translucent substance, veined ridges lacing it.

  Jess slotted the corners. “This is flimsier than a whore’s wedding dress; it ain’t gonna hold no water!”

  “That’s not the purpose. Water collects on the surface as fish gills, when it washes back to the ocean, bits of air are trapped in the ridges, then pumped into the ship.”

  “So this turtle, she’s actually got lungs and such?”

  Nemo said, “If you’ve done your job correctly.”

  Jess side-crawled from under the pipes. “Guess we’ll find out when we’re under them waves, snakin’ along the ocean bottom.”

  Jess brought the knife quickly to his chest, razored side out, his eyes fixed beyond Nemo into the lower-deck passageway, where the Maori Whalers hefted a riveted steel case, large enough to trap two men.

  Their tattooed faces were demonic in the dim light, and they stopped in their tracks as they heard Jess say, “Captain, you brought some truly shitty trouble onto your ship.”

  Nemo’s hands were instant motion, snatching back the blade, air-slicing a barrier between Jess and the Whalers. Even with his injury, he manipulated the knife with defensive artistry, causing the Whalers to lean off, their lips pulled back over file-sharpened teeth. Jess spit.

  “We’ll need harpooners for our quarry,” Nemo said, “and these two can do the work of ten.”

  Jess took a large iron wrench, held it as a battle-ax. “But what about me, expecting a throat-cuttin’?”

  “Any killing,” Nemo chose, “executions, will be by my sanction only, according to the laws of the Nautilus.”

  “Oh, there’s fancy comfort, that won’t mean a damn when I’m cornered at the engine room.”

  Nemo angled the knife, and his words, at the Whalers: “Personal issues have no bearing on your duty, and if there is conflict, the punishment I mete out will be severe.”

  “Them two understanding all that blather?”

  Nemo brought the knife down, a sharp blur, slicing open a pocket on a Whaler’s coat, then grabbing a 9mm revolver from it. He asked, “Matau?”

  The Whalers shrugged, bobbed their heads in agreement, before conti
nuing down the passage, holding the massive case aloft.

  “Cap, you know what a Nuckelavee is?”

  “Of course,” Nemo said. “The Scottish monster, from the moors.”

  “It don’t matter if it’s in Scotland or Egypt or on the moon, the worst of the worst, all slapped together and sewn up in a bag of flesh. That’s them two.”

  “And yourself?”

  “Innocent as a newborn babe compared to them. I don’t have to talk their talk to know they’re up to no good,” Jess said. “I’ll club one of ’em to jelly if I have to, and take my chance with the other.”

  * * *

  A northerly current took the HMS Mariner’s lifeboat away from the sinking wreckage and last explosive blasts. Fulmer watched the strip of flames on the horizon fade to nothing, all color gone, before collapsing in the stern with his rifle and the boat’s canteen.

  He had eased Red onto the boat’s middle seat, tucking his jacket under his head for a pillow. Red tried to say thanks, but Fulmer stopped him, not being able to watch the hanging skin left by the acid jostle and flap when he tried to speak. Fulmer prayed for Red’s sleep, since there was no medical kit, no place for grog or a yellow-filled pipe; anything to cut the pain. Just sleep.

  The acid sea spider that had done it to him was in the burlap sack, soaked with the blood of the crew, and tied off with Fulmer’s belt. He tucked it under the bow, keeping the Remington cradled with him in the stern, so if there was any movement in the bag, a spasm or dribbling of acid, he could shoot it to pieces.

  Fulmer was used to the ocean; it was his work, just like riding for the Pony Express. But he hated being lost, that frustration of not recognizing where you’ve been, or where you’re headed. On the desert, trying to find his way back to an old wagon pass buried in a sandstorm, or on the water.

  Except there’s nothing as lost as drifting in the ocean on a starless night. That’s where Fulmer and Red were, bleeding, and tonight, blind. Because the sky and water had become one, without a horizon; just blank nothing that surrounded them, and went on forever.

  The cries for help that had him jump to his feet with the Remington weren’t cries at all. But whistles, coming from a good ways out, but splitting apart, and dying as an echo over the miles of water, making it impossible to determine their original direction.

  The whistles got louder, then steadied, and were followed by: “Hey, jackasses!”

  Fulmer called out, “Easy on, we’re here! Can you get to us?”

  He heard something splashing in the waves, hands paddling closer. Chopping cold water through the dark. Someone coming in, but still couldn’t see. Fulmer slapped at the water with an oar’s blade, leaning over the side of the boat, reaching out as far as he could, toward the sound of more paddling and more swearing. Finally, the roof came into view, burned tin and wood, a piece of the Mariner’s side cabin, with a voice behind it. “Jesus, boy, were you gonna let me swim home?”

  Fulmer held the oar as a Cook from the Mariner swam around the edge of the wreckage, held on, and pulled himself into the lifeboat.

  “You two didn’t waste any time gettin’ this for yourselves!”

  Fulmer said, “We were loading people in, when a blast tossed us from the ship. Crashed in the water, lost all the supplies.”

  Cook said, “You got water? Real water?”

  “The canteen. Who else is alive?”

  Cook bent to where Red was lying, looked away from his face, found the canteen, and drank. He took too long of a sip, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Who the hell knows, and I could care less. When those little monsters came at us, every man for himself, right?”

  Fulmer looked to Red, who had rolled over, and opened one eye, and said, “He saved me.”

  Cook reeled. “Jesus, I thought you were finding a place to dump the body! But I know you picked up some beauties before the whole thing went to shit.”

  Fulmer regarded Cook, glancing over at the Remington. “What are you talking about?”

  “Diamonds. Cut diamonds, everywhere. Blues mostly. Scattered all over the hold, you just had to pick ’em up.”

  Red said, “From where? What is this?”

  “That brought him back to life,” Cook said. “You were so busy shooting them little windup what-have-yous, you didn’t see no priceless shit they left behind? From their bellies, little cut diamonds. And you didn’t help yourself?”

  Fulmer grabbed back the canteen, checked the water. “I guess I was too busy.”

  “You got it comin’ out of your ears, boy.” Cook nodded toward the sack jammed under the bow point. “What you got there, Christmas dinner?”

  Fulmer said, “I’m the survivor of a sinking, and I’ve been through this mill before. Lots of questions, and more doubt. That bag’ll answer for me.”

  Cook was standing by the bow, the sea and the night just a field of deeper blacks behind him; if either man had stepped another foot away, they would have been impossible to see. Cook angled himself toward Red, who was still lying on his side but watching. One burned eye, and in incredible pain.

  Cook said, “You still got that tattoo of the Nautilus on your arm. You’re cattle, branded by Captain Nemo.”

  “I think I just saved your life, didn’t I?”

  “That was a chivalrous thing to do. That cowboy code, Pony Express? But you still didn’t like paying your poker debts, that was the rumor around ship.”

  Fulmer said, “Again, I pulled you out of the water.”

  “Water, that’s right. You’re Pony Express, and I’m French Foreign Legion, but I was also a ship’s cook, so you have no secrets. But we both know about water, and how valuable it is when you don’t have it.”

  “More than diamonds?” Fulmer ventured.

  Cook said, “I felt that canteen, you got barely enough for two for the next days, and no way for three.”

  Red said, “We should leave you to drown?”

  “That makes more sense than sharing water with a corpse,” Cook said, making an instant move with his leg, swooping under the Remington’s stock, flipping it around, and catching it. In a single motion, it was in his hands and aimed perfectly between Fulmer’s eyes.

  “Half your water for half my diamonds.”

  Fulmer said, “That’s my friend.”

  “You’re a fool.”

  Red shoved the blade through Cook’s back, between his last ribs, and into his lungs. He heaved forward, mouth surprised, his scream a choke of blood as he lurched across the lifeboat.

  Fulmer stuck out a leg, tumbling Cook into the water, then looked back at Red, who still had the stiletto in his hand.

  Red said, “Not—dead—yet, amigo.”

  Fulmer held up the canteen, sloshed the water inside. “Drink?”

  19

  FORTRESS

  Maston pried open the baby coffin, its rotting lid splitting apart in his hands, and removed slabbed bars of gold and silver, setting them out in precise fashion before Sara. She stood by the table, an engraved map of the world under its glass top, holding her cape defiantly tight around her, not reaching for the gold set upon it.

  He pointed to one of the bar’s serial numbers. “Denver Smelting Works, which means absolute purity.”

  “Who’d you knife to get this?”

  “Not a knife.” Maston held a silver ingot. “The subjects were low-down thieves. I adapted their attitudes, confiscated this lot, and am now presenting it to you, as ordered.”

  “Did the ‘subjects’ know you had legs?”

  Maston had been passed a message, nodded, and turned away from Sara, leaving her in the center of the city-block-long room with the precious metals, surrounded by the military.

  Stifling hot, the room had been part of the Richmond Underground Slave Railroad, but was now a steel-buttressed stronghold, cramped floor to ceiling with weapon caches and all forms of field supplies.

  Grant moved to Sara from a mapping station, advisors at his elbows, guards ready. He gave whispered instruct
ions and bit off the end of a cigar before saying to her, “You reported the Nautilus as shipshape, and now you have your fuel.”

  Sara finally picked up a bar. “Yes, sir. Eight ounces could keep her underwater for a year.”

  He signed a sheaf of papers. “We don’t have that much time.” He handed them off to a faceless secretary. “Your crew?”

  “The Captain trusts prison misfits, and anyone who’s been shot.”

  Grant asked, “As much as he trusts you?”

  Sara said, “That remains to be seen.”

  “Mr. Duncan.”

  Duncan lifted the map table’s glass, placing a small tin Union Jack in the carved area indicating United States territorial waters. He rested his hands on his daughter’s shoulders.

  “Right there,” Grant said. “A British ship’s been sunk, with no known survivors. You’ll be given coordinates, the first point of Nemo’s investigations.”

  Sara’s eyes widened. She looked to Grant, who continued, “You understand what this could mean? We’re preparing our Navy to engage, and if the British attack first, it won’t matter what the Nautilus can or can’t do on its mission, it becomes a warship. My warship, you understand that as well?”

  Sara said, “Nemo would never allow it, sir.”

  “He has no say.”

  Her words tumbled fast to Grant. “I’m sure there’s some type of self-destruct mechanism, so any attempt to commandeer the Nautilus at sea would be useless.”

  “Then find and disable it. If the Nautilus is going to be a weapon again, it will be for our victory.”

  Duncan looked away from Sara, and she said, “I’ll say it straight to you, sir. Nemo’s impossibly arrogant and a martinet, but also a genius. I’ve never seen anything like what he’s built, and I know he’s figured a way that only he can determine his submarine’s use.”

  Grant said, “You talk too much like your father.”

  “The Nautilus’ discovery mission will succeed, and we will be exonerated from these attacks,” Duncan said, taking General Sigel’s Union Army ring from his vest. The melted areas had been repaired, and the ring’s base made slightly larger, with a small stud extending from its side. “But policy is to prepare for the worst-case scenario.”