Nemo Rising

by C. Courtney Joyner

  Other pirates yelled and whistled, each brandishing a broad knife, pistol, or breech-loading rifle. Dangling on the lifeboat’s sides, crammed together from stern to bow, they started a low chant: laughter, becoming thumping words in Turkish that Fulmer didn’t understand. But that excited Scarf, so he stretched the blade higher.

  It was the moment Fulmer was to be overwhelmed. Chanting. Stomping. The blade, showing against the moon, about to guillotine. Voices louder, and surrounding him. All eyes and open mouths. He was supposed to break, but how would that happen without feeling fear?

  Thumping louder: “Ölüm en iyisi! Ölüm en iyisi!”

  Fulmer’s mind was somewhere else, watching the water around the lifeboat beading: grease on a hot skillet. The energy coming from just below. Something rising. By fathoms, then feet.

  Scarf’s rage screamed over the chants, the machete coming down as a massive, rolling wave jolted the lifeboat, its curl tossing the bow into the air, bodies thrown from sides and stern. Shouts in a dozen tongues.

  A cannon blast of water hitting the lifeboat. Sudden and powerful. Water churning, as something from the deep raced to the surface, off the bow. Fathoms, then, feet closer.

  The ocean boiling with its friction.

  The rescue orb exploded through the surface, catapulted into the air by its own force, shedding waves from its sides like showers of fire, then coming down again. A meteor crash landing on the ocean, cutting furrows of water.

  Fulmer threw his head back, laughing without a sound, and around him, all color and movement from his delirium. His mind swimming. Hallucinations. Had to be.

  The huge polished-steel orb, spinning wild, swamping the lifeboat, then bobbing over its own wake before rolling onto a calm stretch of ocean, and stopping, as solid as new cobblestones.

  Feet away, pirates beat against the waves, choking their way back to the boat, panicking to its side, screaming for help. Grabbing hold. Scarf yelled an order. No moves to anyone in the water, but keeping weapons on the large steel ball, floating, its top and bottom rotating fast, stirring water energy around it.

  Fulmer, hands still lashed, watched, doubled over on the burlap sack, his eyes clouding again, but trying to believe what he was seeing: a seam splitting through the orb’s middle, revealing an invisible door the way a scalpel slices flesh. Skin folding, and the opening suddenly there.

  Fulmer grinned at the thought of whatever emerged from the ship’s door and onto a metal gangplank that was cranking from the orb, ending just short of the lifeboat’s bow, a few inches above the water with a hooked chain dangling its end.

  The orb’s mechanical sounds stopped, leaving only the lapping water and rising north winds.

  Scarf used his machete as a pointer, calling out in a familiar way, “Hey! Are you the Ocean Monster? Canavar okyanuslarin? That’s what I think you are! Can you show it?”

  Nemo stepped through the opening, shark’s skull at his shoulder, fittings on the laser set to full power, the red glowing. He didn’t let the weapon drift as he spoke, looking at the guns pointed at him, the fog thickening around the men in the lifeboat aiming them.

  “Evet,” Nemo said, acknowledging Scarf’s Turkish. “For you, I’m the Monster of the Ocean.”

  “Who else would build something like that?” Scarf said. “I didn’t know you were a real thing, but who else would build it?”

  “Your prisoner, he’s coming with me. That boat is yours.”

  “All of this, for that sack?” Scarf jabbed Fulmer with the machete’s rounded side. “But he hasn’t told me the good of what he knows.”

  Fulmer coughed salt, let his eyes wander; watching it play out. Nemo nodded in Scarf’s direction, and said, “I don’t think he could tell you his father’s name.”

  Scarf laughed. “Yah, if he knew it!” He switched hands with the machete, but kept it next to Fulmer’s head. The Berber stood by with a battle hammer in his fist.

  Nemo said, “Are these the leavings?”

  He was steady in the orb’s entrance, watching a deadeye pirate vulture-perch on the lifeboat’s stern, keeping a Chinese Matchlock Musket leveled, throwing knives bound to his leg.

  Scarf, always smiling: “What is this you’re saying?”

  “That I’ve seen a thousand pirates, from a hundred countries.” Nemo eyed four more around Dead Eyes, all with revolvers of different makes, and war axes. “The Chinese rifle, how many of those did you find floating? Three of your men have German Army pistols as sidearms, one of the others is Spanish.”

  Scarf said, “You talk like these are guns of yours.”

  “Despise something, you get to know it well. I’ll wager all are from the ships sunk in the Atlantic these last months. How many have you raided?”

  “Unlike you, monster,” Scarf said, “we didn’t put a single ship on the bottom. But, you’re efsane,” he searched for it, “the legend.”

  “You picked over the bones, you’ve had your fill, and this man can serve no purpose for you. Don’t be foolish.”

  “Foolish? My men, they could eat your liver for breakfast. But why? And what purpose the half-dead one serves to you? Or her.”

  Fulmer kept his head bowed, but cocked it at Scarf’s words, glancing over to see Sara standing at the orb’s split-open entrance, on the metal gangplank behind Nemo, the chilled fog wrapping them both.

  Scarf said, “It’s just the two of you, and us?”

  Waves had picked up with the wind, the orb and lifeboat moving with the ocean’s roll, almost colliding. The gangplank dipped under the chop that crashed against Nemo, the ocean pulling back and hitting him again in the chest. But he stood defiant. Ignoring the waves and assessing his target, the one with the machete and yellow headscarf.

  For Nemo, this small piece of ocean wasn’t just cold, black water between their crafts, the fog bringing more chill. This bit of ocean was a hidden corner of every prison he’d ever been in, every yard where he’d fought. And Scarf was the one you had to challenge, and put down.

  He saw only that, even with Scarf offering, “We have a mission, too. We have to dive. Your crazy ball, seems like it’s perfect for us, so we’ll buy it from you. And the gun. The girl, we won’t even try. She’s yours. Onu boğazından vurdu, sonra onu ateş açın.”

  This last was said warmly, like an invitation, Scarf sure that they wouldn’t completely understand.

  Sara stayed close to Nemo, said quietly, “If you didn’t get it all, the one with the knives is going to kill me first.”

  Nemo tightened his hold on the shark spine. “I wasn’t sure about their priorities.”

  “You never put down that crazy gun? Okay, it’s all yours. Everything,” Scarf said, pulling Fulmer’s still-lagging head back, his eyes closing again. “And this. You can have this mess, and we part. As friends.”

  Scarf eased toward the bow, out of the sight line of his men, saying, “We’re sea dogs, yes? Have to try these things, but you win. Just like these ships that are going down. Talk to sailors, they say it’s monsters. Even some of my own men. But I’ve heard it before. That’s what they always called you, Nemo, yes? In my village, your underwater boat was a dragon. I don’t know what they’ll call the silver ball!”

  All the while Scarf spoke, the others moved around the boat, taking their strategic positions. “You’re not the one sinking these ships, are you?”

  Nemo said, “Not this time.”

  “How many times did they tried to hang you, and you still alive? Good to know, if I ever get caught because some ölü piç wags a tongue.”

  The laser sliced, from Nemo to its target in the pirate with the knives. Two burns: one heating the blade, to toss it aside, the other through his eye. Cooking in the socket, sending him over the stern in agony.

  On the gangplank, Nemo swung the rifle around, hitting Dead Eye’s rifle, exploding the gunpowder in its pan, the hammer and works blowing back into his face, dropping him, blood jetting through fingers.

  Through the fog-gray
, pirates threw knives and hurled battle-axes. Sara batted a knife away with a medical kit, the other blades skidded off the orb’s polished steel. Nemo fired, burning a hand, and jaw, to exposed bone.

  Others dropped behind the lifeboat’s bench, unloading revolvers. Wild slugs and ricochets. Sara ducked into the orb, Nemo dove to the gangplank, firing through the top of the waves rolling into him, cutting the water before cutting chests and throats. The shooters now firing into each other in blind pain.

  Nemo burned the blood and flesh of Scarf’s men, as easily as Scarf’s machete decapitated. Screaming into the waves, or bleeding across the boat, holding themselves, as if they could repack their pouring insides, before collapsing into freezing water, eyes open and surprised.

  Fulmer stayed bowed over, happily. Hands lashed, bearded face to the lifeboat hull, his mind was relieving him of the chaos, separating him, as weapons fire traced the air and blood sprayed his face. He didn’t know whose, or see the man fall, but there was no panic. No reaction. He fixed on the warped lumber of the hull, edging forward, away from the Berber. Carefully.

  More blood, and a wave, soaked him. He moved again.

  The Berber grabbed Fulmer’s collar with one hand, the battle hammer raised in the other. In a single motion, Fulmer brought his entire body backward, rolling onto his shoulders and kicking the Berber in the chest with all his might. Slamming him with both legs.

  Berber was thrown, grabbed a knife from Dead Eye’s sheath, and charged, leaping the length of the lifeboat for Fulmer. A red beam of light slit both his eyes. They drained. He dropped. Fulmer wrapped his knees around Berber’s neck, squeezed together to choke his cries, then twisted. Breaking his neck.

  Fulmer imagined that he was smiling, rolling to his side, relaxing his legs, letting the Berber go slack between them. No threat now, just dead weight. An anchor. His mind at drifting-ease during all of it, Fulmer’s heart hadn’t even raced. The strength was something outside of himself.

  He stood, hurling himself into Scarf, knocking him over the side of the boat, the hull keeling into him, cracking bones. Puncturing his temple. Red bled across the yellow as Scarf choked on the swells, filling his lungs with brine before pulling him under. Fulmer stumbled forward, still trying to see through the fog, see who was coming next for him.

  Sara stepped, wincing, over Berber, steadied herself against a coiled rope soaking with blood and cut Fulmer’s wrists free. She took his hand, leading him to the gangplank where Nemo was standing with the laser, the beam lacing straight into the sky then breaking apart against the highest clouds, scattering as red stars.

  “Up to the heavens or across a man’s throat,” Nemo said, not looking at the lifeboat battlefield. “Their choice, and always this result. Now, we’ll see if your survivor has any worth. I doubt it.”

  Sara said, “These dead thought so,” as Fulmer snatched up the burlap sack, tucked it under his arms. He tried to say something to Nemo but his throat wouldn’t allow it.

  “Pirates, trailing the wrecks to scavenge, killing anyone who hadn’t drowned. And this scalawag is the only living witness,” Nemo said.

  “Is this man known to you?” Sara got her question out just as Fulmer was knocked by a gust of wind, tumbling over a pirate body, and her catching him. He squeezed her hand in thanks.

  “He reads familiar,” Nemo said, “but the one in yellow could us give us more accurate information.”

  “He’s dead. You followed your own plan, through the caves, away from the Navy, or my father, using your weapons. It worked, Captain. This man will help the mission.”

  Nemo’s eyes were set on Fulmer. “We’ll see.”

  Fulmer was on the bow of the lifeboat, steadying himself against Sara, the boat dipping as she shouldered him to the orb’s steel gangplank to make the crossing between the two crafts. The wind picked up, the waves getting steeper.

  Nemo said, “You have an idealized idea of what this is all about, Miss Duncan. Even who the enemy might be. That’s dangerous.”

  Sara said, “More than this? I’m sprayed with blood, too. Bleeding. This was a battle, Captain. Thank God, you won.”

  Fulmer was now on the gangplank, the burlap tied to his belt loop. Rain started. Broken glass in the harsh wind. Nemo stayed the orb’s entrance, watching this man, then finally extending the laser rifle for him to take hold of the stock. Using the shark’s skull to steady himself, and pull closer.

  He took a step, hand reaching.

  A curling wave splayed across the steel plank, with Scarf’s hands ripping out of the water from below, grabbing Fulmer’s legs, jerking him down, head slamming on metal. Jet of blood, before pulling him off the gangplank into the ocean. Another wave crashed. Larger, fed by the rain, twisting the gangplank, with Sara holding on. Calling out over the storm.

  Beneath, violent darkness.

  Churning water whipped Fulmer from side to side, like a shark shaking life from its prey, as he tried to swim against waves, inside the storm waves. And behind him, Scarf’s hands wrapped around his throat, holding and choking him from behind as they both sank from the surface, the storm ripping the surface. Rain punching.

  Both men sank deeper as they fought. Twisting, with Scarf wrenching Fulmer back, hands tighter around his throat, cutting the last of his air.

  Prying Fulmer’s mouth open to strangle him with ocean, the last of Fulmer’s strength, gone.

  He didn’t see Nemo diving through the waves, swimming for him, and grabbing Scarf around the middle, pulling him away. Fulmer could only feel Scarf’s fingers weaken, start to slip. The water punching from all sides. A rip current grabbing hold, taking the three men deeper, and the storm bringing up silt from the bottom as an erupting cloud, choking the water. A moving, swirling blindness.

  Scarf let go, and Fulmer turned, falling back, the water carrying him. Trying to move his arms. Or legs. His breath gone. Eyes rolling to white, even as Sara slipped herself under his shoulders, carrying him toward the surface. Pulling with all her might.

  Fulmer drifted down, his body cold, and waiting for the warmth that would precede death. Beyond him, Nemo and Scarf still struggled. Becoming two silhouettes in the currents. Drifting farther away, hidden by the storm. By the cloud.

  Through the churn and stinging salt, Fulmer could barely see Nemo push the rifle strapped on his back into Scarf’s face. Under his chin. Sara swam harder, bubbles flowing from her mouth and nose, powering to the surface.

  Fulmer looked down. His last. Into the swirl. And saw a red dagger of light, punching through the top of Scarf’s head and to the water’s surface, followed by a spreading curtain of blood.

  Fulmer choked his air as Sara broke the waves, carrying him to the chain hanging from the orb and hooking him onto it, the heavy chain taut through crashing water. Fighting the waves, and the storm, she hauled herself from the water and set the winch to pull Fulmer aboard the orb. The burlap bag still tied, safe whether he was alive or dead.

  29

  SPIDER

  The bourbon was warming, but with just the right edge of feeling, that moment of satisfaction, for Grant, that the bath would always be warmer, and the two could mix together, inside and out.

  It was all he wanted to think about at this moment, lying back in the tub, with Julia Grant on a chair by the vanity, the sheaf of telegrams and special letters in her lap, a glass of claret in her right hand.

  She flipped the pages, murmured to herself, not ready to give an opinion. Grant turned the hot tap for a moment, then cut it off, precisely, settling back.

  Julia looked up at her husband, shaking her head. “For an easy man, you can be very particular.”

  “About my pleasures, and you, and the children,” Grant said, draping his face with a wet washcloth, letting the water run through his beard and down his chest, across battle scars. He took a blind sip, a bar of soap floating past his belly.

  “The fate of the world, all bundled here in the upstairs bath. If I don’t reduce the enormity for ju
st a moment, goddamnit, I’ll break.”

  “You’ve never shirked your duty, husband. Even now.” Julia, her brown hair uncharacteristically loose, held a telegram at arm’s length, and said, “This might be the last private time we ever have.”

  “Don’t ever voice that, dear, I can’t stand to hear it,” Grant said. “You’ve read those latest?”

  “There isn’t a single message that doesn’t imply you planned all this to draw them into a war.”

  “Not-so-carefully implied.”

  Julia said, “Even with my eyes, I can read between the words,” and put aside the file. “And Norfolk’s gone.”

  “The frigates certainly are.” Grant sipped. “God knows the waterfront’s burned to hell. I’m getting more details before midnight, but I was there, so…”

  “So you already know. What about this Nemo?”

  Grant said, “He warned of sabotage; I thought it was a blind. We have no idea where he is, or who he might be challenging.”

  “To set all these countries aflame.”

  “He could tip us into war, or save us. I thought I was getting a rogue submarine, and I ended up with just a rogue.” Grant sipped quietly. “I hate like hell not knowing; how can I plan a battle?”

  Julia’s voice gently trailed with her question, “And you have to plan a battle, Ulysses? Or a new war?”

  “Goddamn, I wish I knew which, but it has to be something. A defense. An answer, for all this craziness. That was the whole point of saving Nemo, to give me some bearings. God, how many attacks have we faced in the last week? We’re still wounded from the war, and we’re going up in flames. How the hell do I stop it, or fight it?”

  Grant wiped water and sweat from his face, reached beside the tub, poured some more bourbon, and his wife said, “Thrashing like a mule in quicksand.”

  “That’s it.” Grant smiled. “My father had a way with words.” He sat up in the tub. “Did you see Gladstone’s note? I don’t know how he slipped it in.”