“That’s why this room, this place,” Sara said.
“You’re safe here, dear.”
“That’s a comforting word.”
She regarded the ring. “You’ve never given me jewelry before, but this isn’t that kind of gift, is it, Father?”
Grant said, “Belonged to one of our own, already dead in this fight. I can allow one minute for your consideration.”
“Of what?”
Duncan pressed the stud, freeing a needle the size of a bee’s stinger from the ring’s side. He said, “The base, filled with a derivative of black widow’s venom.”
Duncan’s words hung over Sara’s puzzled expression, then he quietly added, “Dear, if Nemo gets out of hand, protect yourself first, always, but you’re to use this ring, then find your way off the Nautilus.”
“You know that submarine as well as he does,” Grant said. “I’m wagering you can captain it, if need be.”
“I can’t imagine—”
The stinger automatically retracted before Sara got out: “But I’ve never killed anyone—”
Duncan said, “No, not kill. It will render him—unable.”
“Does that mean paralyzed? How can you ask me?”
“I know full well what I’m asking,” Grant said, realizing that Sara’s eyes and his daughter’s were identically green. “And there’s damn little I hate more, but the operation’s now a combat mission, and you’ve been trained, and prepared.”
Sara shook her head, as if to clear away everything she’d just heard. “Yes, only to get the Nautilus back to sea—which has been a privilege.”
Grant said, “Nemo could be in league with the saboteurs behind this insanity, dragging us right into the fire. Don’t ever lose sight of what he is.”
“But I’m not a soldier! Nowhere near!”
Grant said, “But you’ll be our eyes and ears at sea, and you might have to take action. Might.”
Duncan took her hand, “Dear, we’ll always be with you, that’s why the tele-photo, but if you’re not up to the rest, it’s all right.”
Sara said, “The tele-device was to observe and report!”
Grant sliced: “Forget our families’ friendship. You’re an appointed special operative for the United States of America, and your Commander in Chief is putting forth an assignment. And yes, you’ll be in harm’s way.”
“Daughter, I believe completely the Captain will stay his course; this—stopping him—won’t be necessary.”
Sara took her father’s words. “But we have to prepare for the worst…”
Grant relit his cigar. “The minute’s done. What say you, girl?”
She looked to her father’s wet eyes, then to the map’s markings of all sinkings and latest enemy warship positions. “I understand what’s at stake. It’s bloody enormous. I just never thought I’d be the one with the burden.”
“A hellish thing for sure,” Grant said, “but it won’t be yours alone.”
Sara kept her eyes downward, but opened her shaking hand in agreement. Her father carefully placed Sigel’s ring in her palm, and she closed her fingers around it.
* * *
Sara pushed the wall section from behind, stepping out of the passageway, into a red velvet corridor leading to the “discreet exit” from the House of Refined Delights. She ignored the pungent mix of opium smoke, lilac, and whore-whispers coming from side parlors, but kept her thoughts in the hidden fortress below, with her father, President Grant, and the gold weighing down her saddlebag.
The opium stung her eyes.
Once outside, the cool night hit her full-on, as a Mandarin boy handed Sara the reins to her horse. She secured her saddlebag, brought the stallion around, then rode fast out the alleyway toward the Richmond piers.
A second rider waited by an empty coach until he saw the last snap of Sara’s cape, as she galloped away. He checked the pistol on his fast-draw rig, swung onto a tall Paint, and followed.
20
SWORD OF THE OCEAN
She saw the gun first. Blue steel, hidden by the folds of a duster, the weapon close to Maston’s hand as he strode across the livery, sporting an odd, non-smile.
Sara kept her back to Maston, finished bedding down her horse. “Here to take the gold back, as ordered?”
“Just ensuring its security, and yours.”
She treated the stallion to Virginia apples, patting it gently as it ate, before bringing the draping camouflage down over the stall. All the while, her every instinct was warning her about Maston, standing just three feet away, hand not moving from the gun. Sara’s nerves were on the raw, and she didn’t need his presence.
Finally, she said, “You’ve used the ‘security’ excuse before. I’m not buying.”
“We all have our jobs to do, miss. I’m also to check on the readiness of the submarine-ship.”
“Capable of that judgment, are you?”
“Simply report what I see.”
“Yeah, simple.” Sara shoulder-slung her saddlebag, cranked open the floor boarding. “My new ring? I have a bad feeling it’s your creation.”
“It’s in your pocket now, so I’ll assume you’re allowed to hear this.”
Maston stood aside, the walkway to the submarine pen shifting into place by his boots. “The President wanted that particular ring weaponized. No other, and he wanted it for a woman operative.”
Sara said, “Don’t call me that.”
“I volunteered my design skills, for whoever uses it.”
Sara walked the steel ramp. “Your talents, that’s why the world’s in this mess.”
Maston’s smile was for himself. “You might be thanking me one day.”
He stopped at the bottom of the ramp, the Nautilus in its repair dock, bobbing with the rising tide, bowlines straining to be cut. The submarine’s plated hull was armor-strong again, a new jagged prow in place, viewing ports glassed, and the melted conning tower reconstructed.
“Nothing else like it exists,” Sara said.
Maston stood back, taking the giant craft in. “You could also claim that about Nemo.”
Sara moved to the deck access ladder, defiantly shaking the saddlebag, the gold bars inside clinking. “So, what’s Nemo stealing? We’re giving him the gold for his ship, he can’t wait to get out on the open seas.”
“I’m not here about thievery.”
Maston lifted the pistol from the fast-rig, keeping the long barrel pointed down. “We want to be sure he remembers his orders when he’s underway. Giving Nemo a reminder of duty isn’t a bad thing, Miss. Especially for you. Operative or not, you don’t want to be trapped with a mad dog you have to put down.”
The red beam hit the center-top of Maston’s hand. A speck of light, then a muscle-deep burn. He cried out, spun with the gun up, as another, more intense beam struck: bolt of lightning, hammering him off his feet. Flesh seared, his duster on fire.
Maston’s gun blasted into the pier, wood chips flying, as he dropped and rolled, tearing himself out of the burning coat. Sara hurled it into the water as the final laser burst scorched the ceiling boards high above them.
The red light, blinding.
Sara kept her head down, but could feel the beam’s heat: the tail of a comet coming from below the waterline of the submarine dock, originating near the Nautilus’ rudder, boiling the small patch of ocean that it passed through as it was fired upward from the ocean’s sandy bottom.
The laser changed directions, hitting around the pen, burning holes through barrels, and fusing a stack of lead pipe. Sara quick-scrambled away, the beam’s size narrowing to something almost wire-thin, moving as deliberately as a surgeon’s scalpel across the wooden pilings, burning a circle into the planks around Maston.
It stopped. The flicking of a switch.
Nemo hoisted himself from the water onto the Nautilus’ stern in a single athletic move, holding an elaborate rifle, with a stock made from the bones of a sea creature; like the rest of his Nautilus, the weapon was or
ganic to Nemo, an extension of his body. He removed his breathing device, a small conch shell with flexible tubing, and said, “I would call this a success.”
Sara said, “That thing—you could have burned us alive!”
“An underwater weapon using concentrated light, with more force than any bullet, and you were in no danger. My aim is always true.”
Nemo adjusted the rifle’s firing mechanism: a prismed lens on a brass slider fitted to a barrel mounted with multiple light cells that combined as a single beam. A battery on his diving belt supplied power.
He said, “Designed to fight off overly aggressive species of Elasmobranchii—”
“Sharks,” Sara said.
“Among other predators.”
Maston held his chest, leaned away from the burned circle. “I suppose you mean me, but I didn’t need the demonstration.”
“Thank Miss Duncan. This was housed in one of the Vulcania spheres, assembled, but never fired. I had to be sure of the laser’s control, from widest to sharpest point.”
“From shotgun to Derringer.”
Nemo said, “A crude comparison, but not totally inaccurate. Except the power is far beyond your calibers.”
Then, to Sara, “You have the fuel, as agreed?”
“Yes,” Sara said, as she stood, shaken, “but I’m not sure now to hand it over. Of course, you could just take it anyway.”
Nemo was at the access ladder. “I could, but I won’t. Apologies if the weapon frightened you, but there’s much you don’t know.”
He pressed the trigger, firing the laser a half-inch from Sara, cutting a rattlesnake slithering through the floor in half, its edge-cooked pieces rolling to her feet.
Sara blinked, handed Nemo the saddlebag.
Nemo looked inside at the ingots. “The only pure thing about our government,” he said. Then to Sara, “This will take us far. You may report to your father that you’ve completed your job, and I approve, but the bizarre assumption that you’re coming on this voyage couldn’t be more wrong.”
Sara said, “Wait—I’ve earned it, Captain.”
“Whatever you imagine you’ve earned,” Nemo gestured at the snake with the rifle barrel, “was just paid. The Nautilus is no place for a woman.”
“I understand it was. Once.”
Nemo gave Sara a cold stare. “You overstep yourself. Severely.”
Nemo fired again. Short burst. At Maston, on his feet and reaching for the pistol with his other hand. He recoiled at the ray, tumbled against a piling.
“Agent Maston, your purpose is known, and despised,” Nemo said. “The pistol stays, as you leave. I’m sure Grant will happily issue you a new one.”
Maston got to his feet. “He won’t be pleased about this, or your denial of Miss Duncan.”
Nemo said, “The President’s concern is our casting off, which occurs at dawn.”
He was at the hatchway, with the saddle-bagged gold, and tossed Sara the conch with the tubed fittings. “My breathing device. Much more efficient than yours.”
* * *
In the Nautilus, Nemo moved through the library, the shelves clean, except for a copy of Pierre Arronax’s An Encyclopedic Study of Deep-Sea Creatures and some of his water-damaged sketches.
The furniture in the salon was mismatched, the pipe organ whined, and the gilt fixtures cobbled together; the trappings were a shadow of the old Nautilus, but this craft wasn’t a swamped wreck anymore, and Nemo felt pride as he made his way down the main corridors to the belowdecks and the power station.
The small lift lowered him into the complete darkness of the now-dead station. The ship’s heart, not beating. Cold. Nemo centered the gold bars on a fuel tray, then sealed the hatch as they heated.
The large containment cells immediately glowed, building, the pure metals breaking down in the chamber, converted into fissionable materials, feeding the Nautilus’ turbines.
Soft light rolled through the chamber.
Nemo’s wounded shoulder burned again as he regarded the bullet strikes on the floor, coming into view as the light around him grew stronger. He knelt by them. Just creases and punches in the iron, left by the slugs fired by government troops that tore through his crew, killing them.
The constant reminder.
Hunched there, Nemo reached beneath the freestanding controls, fitting in a voltage regulator from his Vulcania laboratory, no larger than a Liberty half-dollar.
The ship responded. Her heart, beating.
Nemo felt the same rhythm in his chest, as if synchronized with the Nautilus. An internal growl rose from the mechanisms, then became an assured roar of regained strength as the cells came to life around him, all blinding light and power.
* * *
Miles of water, with a lifeboat drifting through it, parched under a brutal sun. Fulmer stood mid-ship, balancing himself on the seat, while gently lifting Red to the side and pouring him under the small, continuous waves. The last days had been agonizing, as Red’s muscles turned into dried paper beneath what was left of his face and arms. He tried to speak. To joke.
Fulmer watched the waves for a moment, then turned away before the body sank from sight.
He leaned back against the blood-washed seat where Red had been lying, and poured a few drops of fresh water on his tongue, closing his eyes against the bright afternoon, the absolute nothing around him.
* * *
Nemo put the laser rifle onto the special rack mounted on his cabin wall. The pressing of an emerald button opened a hidden wardrobe, his uniform hanging there, sharply pressed, “Mobilis in Mobile” gold-stitched on the breast pocket. He lay it on his bed before shaving over a portable sink.
Wiping off the lather traces, clearing steam from a mirror, Nemo’s reflection wasn’t that of a prisoner.
He moved to the large diagram of the Nautilus over his desk, rheostatted the ceiling lights, shifting from one color to another, fading the submarine plans and bringing the portrait of his wife and son into their place again.
Nemo said to them, “I won’t forget my vow.”
* * *
Jess pushed himself into a dark corner of the crew quarters, on top of the last bunk in a row, wrapping the garrote around his hands. He tensed, seeing a Whaler’s huge shape, moving sideways through the hatchway.
Whaler’s brass knuckles, with jagged spikes, caught an edge of light as he kicked bunks and checked under them, saying, “Haere mai i roto i iti kirera!”
Jess thought he heard “squirrel” in the language as he tightened the cord between his fists. Keeping dead-still, letting the Whaler get to the next bunk, which he’d stuffed with pillows, propped with blankets.
“Kierra?”
Whaler leaned down, spiked fist raised to crush sleeping Jess’ skull. He pounded. Into pillows, feathers erupting. Jess leapt from the corner, whipping the cord around Whaler’s thick neck from behind, pulling it taut.
Whaler clawed wild, prying Jess’ fingers, trying to snap them. Elbows, hard-jerked backward into Jess’ ribs. Bone breakers, as they both fell.
Jess landed flat, Whaler on top of him, his massive weight hard-pressing his chest into dust. Whaler jammed the knuckle-spikes into the cord, catching it, trying to shred, while Jess gasped for air but kept twisting the ends together, hearing Whaler choke. Losing his ape’s tongue.
Jess felt Whaler’s spit on his hands as he shrieked, “Kaatau!”
Kaatau, the near-twin brother, was in the hatchway with a machete. He took two lumbering steps. Stopped. His brother’s face was becoming a death mask.
Jess yanked the garrote tighter, for emphasis, when he said, “He came in here lookin’ for me, and you got that blade! Drop it, or his head comes off faster than a whiskey cork! Savvy all this?”
Kaatau watched the oxygen-starved purple crawl from the veins in his brother’s neck, across his cheeks, his eyes rolling back.
“You ain’t doin’ nothing!” Jess yelled.
A commanding voice tidal-waved through the Nau
tilus via the crew call: “This is Captain Nemo. All hands report to stations. Ready to cast off!”
Kaatau looked to Jess, and said, “I savvy that,” then dropped the machete.
Jess let it clatter before unwrapping the cord, now stained with blood from Whaler’s mouth and nose. He kicked Whaler off, the massive body bending forward, choking for any air he could.
“You going to keep tryin’ this shit?” Jess asked, wrenching the brass knuckles off Whaler’s hand, then grabbing the machete.
“E kore ahau e matau.” Kaatau smiled.
Jess fit the brass on his own fist. “So you’re gonna try for my throat again, that’s the right of it?”
Nemo’s voice: “All hands report!”
“I’ll have back, that blade,” Kaatau said, not breaking his grin.
* * *
The ocean around the lifeboat was now miles of black, broken by diamonds that splintered on the surface as the currents rolled into each other, reflecting the night sky and breaking up the dull light of the moon.
Fulmer squinted at the pieces of light, using them to find the canteen that he’d lashed beneath the paddle stanchion, out of the way so he wouldn’t be tempted to drink it all. He felt along the edge, and found the canteen, its sides sopping wet.
Fulmer yanked it free, water from the hole in its bottom soaking his hands. He drank from what filled his palm, slurping what he could.
He turned the canteen over, moved to where Red had been lying, the shreds of a bloody shirt still marking the spot. He settled there, taking his place, holding the canteen above his mouth to catch those final drops. The burlap sack, tied tight, was lying beside his feet, the mechanical thing inside still moving. Barely.
Fulmer listened. There was only the moving water, slapping the lifeboat, tilting it with a dip or small wave. The sky was clearing, clouds breaking apart, revealing more stars.
“Blessed are those who go down to the sea in ships.”
Fulmer laughed, quietly, and then louder as he turned the empty canteen over. He’d never found any meaning in those words. Just something to say over the dead, and now he had to say it over himself. He laughed again at that, letting his voice settle across the water, and vanish, before thinking another thought. Before dropping his head to the bloody pile where his friend once lay.
Nemo Rising Page 11
