Robur said, “Its only function is to tear my enemies asunder. Imagine the useful panic.”
Both of the mechanical scorpion’s claws extended, body bending forward to strike at Nemo. The thing charged, its tail stabbing. Nemo dove from the stinger, leaping over a table, grabbing a long section of tubing, and swinging at the scorpion, in man-to-machine combat.
Metal claws came down, smashing a table, creature parts flying. Nemo rolled from the floor, swinging again, pounding the claws with wide, battle-ax slashes. Metal split, and wires tore. Electric sparks erupted. The tail swung around, whipping Nemo into a wall, punching him with its barb.
Claws snapped open, and moved with ferocious speed and force, catching Nemo’s leg. He pulled it free, steel edges slicing deep, blood running in rivulets. Nemo twisted, got to his feet, brought the pole down again, between the metal claws, snapping it in two.
It was all of a single motion: Nemo jammed the bar into the scorpion claws, breaking their hinges, then batted the eyes of the thing with the other piece of the bar, dodging its tail, its massive body slamming him before he jumped onto its back.
Nemo straddled the thing, legs around its black-metal spine, the tail curling back to strike again, all pistons and servos whirring, as if the thing had a top speed gear.
Nemo kept pounding into the eyes with all his strength, shattering the lenses and breaking the skull plate. The whale oil for the mechanics poured out as a bloody torrent; the machine’s tail, claws, and legs thrashed independently of each other in a mechanized spasm, tossing Nemo, claws and tail ripping the manta ray to pieces. Smashing the glass panels and reducing the assembly line to scrap, all in moments.
Nemo moved up behind the thing, and using scrap steel for a fulcrum, he pushed the scorpion over and through the open trapdoor, sending it spinning through the midnight clouds and crashing into the ocean, just missing the British warship.
What was left of the scorpion exploded on impact with the water, becoming instant shrapnel hitting the ship’s hull, and scrambling the crew to their battle stations.
Robur, standing in the middle of the wreckage, grabbed a Sea Spider’s acid pouch, scattered across the room like broken eggs, their liquid eating the floor and walls. In near hysterics, Robur hurled a full pouch, just missing Nemo. Acid splayed across a piece of counter, melting it, the toxic smoke invading Nemo’s eyes, sending him to the floor in blinded pain.
* * *
Grant and Sara moved down the corridor, taking each step with caution, Grant with the Lieutenant’s pistol. They didn’t speak, just kept moving for the landing pod, then stopped. A Guard stood at a bend, and so far there had been no alarms, no notice of them.
Grant had made sure of that. He and Sara had hidden the lieutenant’s body without making a detectible sound. Except Sara’s dress was heavy-streaked with blood, and all that needed to happen was one person to spy them. They moved up on the guard, with Sara raising the ring, but Grant pulled her hand down, stopping her.
For Grant, Sara’s loyalty was proven, and he didn’t want to put her through the ordeal again, even in combat.
Grant moved behind the guard, knocking him down with the butt of the pistol. Grant picked up his rifle, and then he and Sara ran low, staying tight to the walls, making their way to the landing port.
They held by the gateway, Guards and personnel walking the port, and securing the air vehicles for the night against gusts of wind and the jags of lightning.
Grant said, “Can you really handle that thing?”
“Sir, we would be a target in the dirigible, a low-flying one in this wind.”
“Don’t worry about the dirigible, I mean the flying submarine. You got it to run?”
Sara said, “I think so.”
“Do better than that. Obviously, there’s no way to invade or seize this place, so it’s got to be turned to ashes. Yes?”
Sara nodded her acceptance.
“That vehicle’s your escape. I’ll cut loose the dirigible, it has grenades and bombs on board. I’ll drop them, try to steer the hell out of here. If you can, get to the ships below, or the Nautilus.”
“Mr. President,” Sara gave her voice a lift, “would you call this a suicide mission?”
“I sure as hell would.”
Grant saw the landing port as he’d once seen a guerrilla outpost in Ohio: small, with a closed perimeter, troops inside, and more possible, riding in from all sides. The landing port was the same to him, and the moves had to be the same to take it: quick, and sure, with eyes in the back of your head to ensure the surprise. He had only a few men with him that foggy Ohio morning; now it was Sara, and that was just fine, because her courage was real, and he knew it. Grant won in Ohio, and he was going to win this.
Grant had been chewing on an unlit cigar, and chomped down on it. His leg was numb, the pain from his back pounding him as he moved close to the windscreens, stabbing a Guard in the neck with the ring, bringing him to the ground with a hand over his mouth. Sara moved for her objective.
The Terror opened with a touch of Sara’s finger, as if it were reading her. Grant watched her get in, praying the doors would close before the first bullet’s strike.
The shot skimmed wild off the door, a searing ricochet. The door shut as Grant brought up his rifle and began shooting, laying down cover on all four corners of the pad. Instant confusion, and time for Sara to get away.
The Terror lurched forward.
All rifles opened up. The bullets scraped and bounced off the Terror, the engine powering up and the treads spinning fast, throwing up pieces of the landing pad as it moved. The guards kept shooting as the vehicle roared from one side of the pad, skidded around, and roared for the other, always faster.
The shooting didn’t stop. Grant stayed his position, picking off two Guards in the tower, letting them fall directly in front of the Terror, one bouncing off the hood, the other, fodder for its treads.
It gained more speed, racing for the edge of the pad, tearing through the chains and windscreens, then careening over the side. Free-falling, nose first, its weight turning it over on itself. The wind screamed.
Its wings engaged, folding out and locking into place, the side motors now on, balancing the Terror to pull it out of its nosedive. The plummeting, gray monstrosity suddenly had grace of flight, turning on its side to gain altitude, then sweeping toward the city, and away into the night sky, the last guards still firing.
Grant watched from the gondola view port, having slipped in during the gunfight. Alarm bells and sirens were sounding, shrill and loud, while Grant was on the floor of his office in the sky, finally lighting his cigar and feeling a twinge of pride before wiping the blood from his hands.
* * *
Nemo had found water to splash his eyes, even as blood masked them. It was a moment of cooling from the acid smoke, before Robur charged with the blade. Nemo, not able to see beyond a curtain of blurry red, turned on instinct, blocking Robur, smashing kneecaps, felt them split under his foot before dropping back to the floor. Waiting, with hands outstretched, searching blindly for a weapon. Feeling gears scattered on the floor. Nemo picked up two between his fingers and stayed down as he heard Robur stand. Take a struggled step.
He kept his eyes shut tight, clamped, as if that would ease the burning pain. It didn’t, but he focused beyond it. Heard what he needed to hear, then let the gears fly from his hand, oil slick and spinning. Finding their target in Robur’s throat.
Robur screamed, his words blood-choked as he pulled the gears from his flesh: “You won’t defeat me the way you defeat everyone else! We’re the same goddamned man! Killing me is your suicide!”
Robur’s scream couldn’t hide the sound of his arm, raising the blade and coming down with it. Nemo rolled, countering with a piece of jagged steel. The blades collided, bounced off, vibrating, and collided again. Nemo was up, moving, sensing Robur’s moves. His blade sliced into his arm, but the jagged steel opened Robur’s chest. Robur advanced, and Nemo met
every slash, listening, then moving. Ignoring pain. Chopping at the air with the jagged steel, Nemo kept up the fierce blows to force Robur back, with Robur struggling to fight, trying to stop his own bleeding, and Nemo not retreating.
Robur lunged, fighting on pure rage. Tackling Nemo around the waist, and carrying them both to the edge of the trapdoor with their momentum. Nemo could feel the night wind powering up from below, feel the height, and kneed Robur in the chest, knocking him back, but he held on, pulling them both through the floor and Nemo grabbing. It was just a small piece of iron, keeping the trap open, now stopping them from falling.
The wind beat Robur as he dangled, miles above the water, fighting, his fingers tearing into Nemo’s clothes. He cried out, trying to climb up Nemo’s side, to get his hands around a piece of his City. To hold on, to anything.
Nemo held, trying to pull Robur up, while keeping his own grip. Robur’s oil- and blood-slick hands slipped from Nemo’s own. Nemo could only feel Robur falling away, into the darkness.
* * *
Sara moved her hands across the Terror’s control panel, the yellow light shifting from side to side with a turn, or intensifying with speed. She was flying the vehicle now, bringing it toward the water, searching for the Nautilus. She spotted it in the distance, the light spilling from its dome, throwing diamonds across the water around it.
She brought the Terror around, circling back, when she saw the figure. Falling. From the City in the Sky. She never saw her father’s face, or his body destroyed, but she felt it, this terrible, sudden pain.
Sara increased the airspeed, and aimed for the bank of artificial clouds.
* * *
Rongo dropped his scope, turning to Fulmer. “That flying boat, I just saw it.”
Fulmer moved to the laser rifle. “Coming from up there? Maybe we can spot it, find out where the hell the Captain is.”
Fulmer fired the laser, the beam spreading out in the clouds, outlining the front part of the city in glowing strokes of red. The beam broke apart in the clouds, and Fulmer took his finger from the trigger.
“Christ on a crutch, that’s one for the books.”
“Yes,” Rongo said. “Like the rest of this journey. Now what?”
“We prepare the torpedoes.”
Fulmer dialed the death of Nemo’s wife as the safe combination, opening the huge doors. He slid open the torpedo cache as Rongo took one-half of the largest brass case.
Fulmer said, “Most of these were empty, so Nemo could use them for underwater exploration and whatnot.”
“But not this one.”
“Not this one,” Fulmer said. “He packed this one himself, part of the Nautilus’ self-destruction. If we’re trapped, we fire one of these out, take as many enemy with us as we can, and set off another that’s built in, so no one gets hold of the Nautilus again. This one, we’re going to fire.”
Rongo said, “To destroy whatever’s up there.”
“Maybe the Captain too, but I’m pretty damn sure this is how he’d want it. A little hell comes to breakfast.”
“And the other bomb?”
Fulmer said, “Nemo’s orders first.”
* * *
Nemo hauled himself up over the lip of the open door, blindly pulling himself to the center of the room before standing. He doused his eyes again, cooling them before picking up the long jag of steel and feeling his way to the back of the assembly line and the rows of whale-oil barrels, which were all shapes and shadows to him. Dark gray and light gray, cobbled together with no meaning.
Nemo brought back the steel, the first blow rupturing the first barrel, before prying through the tops and sides of the others, letting the oil flood across the floor, soaking into the paper structure of the room.
* * *
In the gondola, Grant fit the last of the bombs into the delivery cradle and settled against his desk, still keeping down from the view ports. The gondola was dark, surrounding Grant with the boys who had died there not two days before. A thought, because it had been another battle, with another to come, but this one from the air, just as Maston had predicted.
Rifle fire tore the air.
* * *
The Terror circled the City, dipping close to the pyres and domes, the Guards firing wildly from the towers, letting the bullets bounce off the vehicle’s skin and hoping one shot would bring it down.
The shootings were bursts of flame into the air, slugs tracing the dark, trying to follow the Terror flying off and then coming back in a taunting, dangerous move.
Grant kicked open the gondola’s escape hatch, letting himself drop to the landing pad and moving behind the dirigible to the tie lines. The guards fired at the flying vehicle, moving in all directions. Grant didn’t know if Sara was that skilled, or if the thing was out of control.
But she was keeping them from him as he cut the first tether line. Gunfire ripped the ground around him, and Grant spun, using the automatic pistol on the Guard tower, and another, charging toward him with a rifle and sabre. Grant shot him twice.
“Those are the only precise shots I’m hearing.”
Grant turned to see Nemo, under the Vulcania wall, and calling out, “Robur’s no more. If they knew it, they’d stop.”
Bullets strafed as Grant made his way to the arch. More slugs tearing around him. He returned fire, then to Nemo, he said, “Did you kill him?”
Nemo said, “It’s done, that’s all that matters.”
Grant looked into Nemo’s eyes, which were solid bloodred, as if replaced with rubies. He said, “And all that he built?”
“There’s genius here. If it can be saved, it should be.”
A bullet tore Nemo’s shoulder, exploding through, pounding him against his own tribute, smearing it with blood. The Terror dipped between the main towers, its air wake knocking Guards from their turrets. Falling to the ground. Trying to shoot at Grant, hauling Nemo to the dirigible.
Grant blasted the last tether line with pistol shots, slicing the cable clean, before pulling Nemo on board, the dirigible already starting to lift, tearing away its docking.
The Terror circled the City again, coming in fast as the dirigible rose. In the gondola, Grant was at the helm, with Nemo at the bomb rack. The propellers engaged, and Grant angled the balloon away from the city as more gunfire peppered the gondola’s sides and roof.
The balloon sleeve tore with the gunfire.
The Terror moved in from behind the dirigible, as if it were going to land on it.
A Guard fired a small Howitzer from the middle of the pad, directly into the balloon, exploding it. The flames were instant, and engulfing. Hellish.
On the Nautilus, Fulmer saw the bright fire, and said to Rongo, “The rain of fire. Nemo’s end of the world. Fire torpedo.”
The torpedo burst from the Nautilus, shooting straight across the dark, toward the fire high in the night sky.
The Terror bore down on the gondola, a cable dropping from underneath, its sides opening as the paper city burned, whale oil exploding. Plumes of flame and smoke, devouring the paper city. The four support towers toppled, collapsing under their own weight, loosing the balloons that were swallowed in the hot curtain.
The gasses engulfed. Hellish.
The torpedo struck, and the night was turned to bright noon for a moment before all fell from the sky as liquid flame and burning ash.
* * *
Lime focused his camera, first on the waterfront and the scarred buildings with stacks of new lumber and paint before them, the workers all standing silently, some with their hats over their hearts. He captured that image before moving his tripod, to where the other reporters and photographers had gathered for their glimpse of the Nautilus.
The crowd lined the docks and the cobblestone streets for blocks, bleeding into curious miles. Fathers carried their children on their backs, and soldiers held others behind a barricade, all trying for a look.
People were five deep along the docks, with injured sailors and soldiers
making up the first rows. Fishermen stood on their decks, but dressed in suits, all facing the Nautilus in its slip. The sides of the submarine had been draped in black bunting, with the Terror lashed to its stern deck by large chromium bands.
Sara, Fulmer, Rongo, and the crew stood by on deck with one of Nemo’s tridents as President Grant addressed the assembled group: “Most of you knew Captain Nemo from the accounts in newspapers. He was the terror of the seas, and branded an enemy of the United States. Those were all sentiments that I shared, until we entered into a truce, to hunt a common enemy. And the Nemo that I came to know was an amazing scientist and a man of high principle who did not chart the easiest course for himself.”
Lime put his tripod over his shoulder and pushed his way through, angling around everyone taller than he, to the man standing across the street, in front of the Old Confederate Post Office, the scars from Grant’s bullets still unpainted and unrepaired.
Lime said, “This is quite a tribute for a squirrely son of a gun like Nemo.”
The man said, “Don’t you want to hear the president?”
Lime said, “I’ve heard him before. And so have you. Maybe we should talk about that over a drink, maybe do a little business. Maybe.”
“Sorry, I don’t drink.”
The man adjusted his dark glasses without a word and started walking, away from the open waterfront, and still hearing the echo of Grant’s voice: “If he began this mission for the United States as a traitor, then he died a patriot. More than anything, he wanted to return to the sea, and that he did. I am here to salute the Captain, and wish him a safe voyage home.”
Grant threw a salute, and a bagpiper played, as Fulmer dropped the trident into the water, letting it drift with the tide.
Flash pans ignited like fireworks, and the crowd cheered as Grant was escorted through. He leaned heavily on his cane, and was flanked by security until he was able to climb into his coach.
Efrem, protected by armor plating designed by Duncan, looked down from the driver’s seat. “You have a special appointment, sir, and I’d like to take the horses for a run.”
Grant said, “Whatever you think best, son.”
Nemo Rising Page 30
