Ganymede tcc-4

by Cherie Priest

  Kirby took another swig. “All right, then. I won’t.”

  And back into the sky they went, into the currents and clouds that would take them the rest of the way south, the rest of the way to the Gulf.

  Seven

  The blower was a flat-bottom boat that sat high on top of the water, like a very small barge. Barely big enough to hold all three passengers without dipping below the rippling waterline, the craft shuddered until everyone sat very still. Behind them, a large diesel-powered fan loomed like a tombstone.

  No one said anything until Josephine stated the obvious. “We’ll need something bigger to bring Deaderick out, won’t we?”

  Ruthie shivered and drew her jacket closer around her shoulders, but said, “To be sure, but we can find something bigger on the island, non?”

  “Sure,” Gifford agreed. “We’ll find something.”

  “Something that still floats, or still flies,” Josephine muttered. “They can’t have grounded or sunk everything.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I think you’re right,” he said. But something in his voice said he was afraid they were all wrong, and this wasn’t going to work at all. His small electric torch sputtered, and he turned it off, leaving them all in absolute darkness except for the moon overhead, halfway full and surrounded by a fogged-white halo.

  Suddenly the crickets and frogs seemed very loud, and the buzzing drone of a million night bugs hummed against the background splashes of tiny wet things moving in and out of the water, up and down the currents, around the tree-tall blades of jutting grass.

  “Does this thing have any lights of its own?” Josephine wanted to know.

  Gifford Crooks leaned across her knees, saying, “Excuse me, ma’am — and yes, she does. Good ones, even.”

  “Better than your flambeau?”

  “Much better. This is a rum-runner, you know.” He lifted a panel and threw a small switch.

  With the faint click and a fizz of electricity, a wash of low, gold light blossomed at the front of the boat.

  At the fan’s base, a rip cord dangled from a flywheel. He gave it a yank and the engine sputtered; a second fierce tug and it grumbled to life. The fluttering gargle was terrifyingly loud, and the rushing suck of the blades made their hair billow backwards. Gifford Crooks adjusted the throttle, lowering the speed and dampening the drone until it was a low, throaty putter.

  “Hang on, ladies. It’s going to get bumpy. And damp. Sorry.”

  Slowly the boat turned as he drew on the steering lever, its caged fan churning the air and the water, too, so low in the marsh did the blower sit. The spray blew into the air, and a mist of swamp water and algae settled into their hair, onto their shoulders, and across their laps.

  Little craft like the blowers were built to navigate the difficult terrain between land and water — the wet, deep places clogged with vegetation and animal life, thick with mud and unpredictable depths. They were made to skim the surface, to flatten the tall, palm-width grasses and slide across them, powered by the enormous fan — and aided by a pair of wheel spokes mounted on either side. The spokes were lifted up like a gate around the passengers, until and unless the boat became stuck. If the fan became tangled or the passage was too thick with grass or muck, the spokes could be dropped, and the band moving the blades could be rehung to move them instead. It was a jerky, difficult, last-ditch way to get the craft through the sopping middle-lands, but it almost always worked.

  Never quietly. Never smoothly. Never without soaking the occupants.

  They puttered through the marsh in silence, for speaking would’ve required louder voices and added more noise to the night than the diesel engine’s drone. Gifford Crooks navigated by some manner he didn’t feel compelled to share; he looked up at the sky from time to time, so Josephine assumed he went by the stars like the sailors, or perhaps his sense of dead reckoning was better than the average landlubber’s.

  As the evening ticked by, the moon rolled higher.

  And all the while, as Gifford manned the steering lever and peered intently at the flush of light before the craft, Josephine and Ruthie huddled close together, thanking their lucky stars that the night wasn’t any colder, and their destination wasn’t any farther. The whipping slaps of saw grass whispered awful things against the craft’s hull, and the loud sliding splashes off to either side warned of large animals with rows of sharp teeth and beady, slitted eyes.

  Texian soldiers or Confederate spies were not the worst things in the marshes, a fact that the travelers knew, but tried to ignore.

  And when the blower would muck across a particularly pungent patch of moldering black water that smelled like death, they all thought of alligators and how those terrible brutes preferred their meals drowned, sodden, and half rotted to pieces.

  In time, the travel numbed them with its treachery. When every shadow could mean discovery and every splash might indicate the approach of a creature so big, it could tip the boat … even terror became mundane. As the hour came for the engine to be cut and the oars to be deployed along with the spokes, it was a relief for everyone on board.

  This was different, at least. In a struggle against the algae-thick water by hand, and they had some agency over their own progress and survival.

  Now, as the growling mumble of the engine was choked off into quiet, they would move themselves the rest of the way. This small measure of control should not have satisfied any of them so much as it did, but Josephine gladly grabbed one paddle and Gifford Crooks took the other.

  “Ruthie, you may have to crank the spokes if we get stuck. Can you do that?”

  “Oui, madame, and if you are tired, you can trade places with me. Moi aussi, I can paddle.”

  “I know you can, dear. And I might take you up on that, but not quite yet.”

  So the churning gargle of the motor was replaced by the soft slip, strike, and dip of the long, flat paddles, moving in an arc on either side of the craft, drawing it farther and deeper south and west. Josephine didn’t realize at first that she was holding her breath between strokes, but when she did, she used those quiet seconds to listen for any signs of humanity.

  Within an hour, she was rewarded by the murmur of big engines rumbling in the distance, and as they came closer still, the engine noise was augmented by chattering shouts projected by amplifying cones. And, with gut-churning intermittence, the background drone was punctuated by explosions — fireballs from hydrogen tanks meeting stray weapon fire, burnishing the horizon’s edge with bubbles of warm, yellow glow that flared, ballooned, and collapsed.

  Josephine heard Texian accents, and the shifting gears of enormous ships, and the humming overhead purr of dirigibles. When she looked up, she could see them, mostly painted brown — some displaying the large lone star from the Republic’s flag. A few searchlights were poking down, their diffuse beams casting tubes of light that turned vague in the low-lying fog over the marsh grasses; but those lights were far away.

  Gifford Crooks cut the forward lights and pulled his oar into his lap. Josephine did the same, and Ruthie tried not to fidget. She wrestled with her gloves regardless and finally asked in a tired, hoarse whisper, “What do we do now? Where do we go? How do we move past them?”

  “We’ll have to take the long way around, and come at the big island from the west bank. It’s another mile of paddling, but it’s our only chance. Look at them up there — scanning the south and eastern shores, looking for folks who are running off, or trying to sneak out. They won’t be watching for folks coming in.”

  “Why aren’t they watching the west banks?” Josephine asked.

  A large spray of antiaircraft fire blew through the sky, its tracer bullets drawing a seared yellow line from the island to the clouds. The fire winged the edge of a dirigible, which made a halfhearted attempt to fire back before its thrusters flared and it scooted out of artillery range.

  Gifford replied, “West side’s better fortified. That’s where the Spanish fort is. It’s mostly rubble, if you
’re just looking at it during the daytime. But the bunkers are solid, and the pirates — or merchants, or whoever — use it for storage. There’s gunpowder and ammunition in the fort. It could fend off a siege for days.”

  Josephine squinted at the dirigibles, and over at the small warships that had successfully squeezed past the bottleneck at Grande Terre and Grande Isle. None of them were the huge battleships that Texas often kept out in the Gulf proper. Only the lighter, faster models had made it without wrecking against the sea bottom or knocking into any of the scores of small islands and promontories that clogged the entirety of the bay.

  She said, “They aren’t trying very hard.”

  “What?” Gifford asked.

  “They aren’t trying very hard — to take the west side, I mean. I guess they aren’t as dumb as they look. These little ships, they might be able to gang up and take the place, but it’d cost them more than it’d gain them. And the airships—” She gestured at the sky. “—if the bay boys have antiaircraft, those big hydrogen beasts are nothing but enormous targets. None of them look armored. But it’s hard to tell from here.”

  “You’re right,” Gifford agreed thoughtfully. “They’re mostly transport ships. One or two armored carriers, but only the light variety. Maybe that’s all they had on hand.”

  Ruthie asked, “What does that mean? I don’t understand.”

  Josephine filled her in. “It means they’re surveillance ships, not warships. And there are a lot of them. Texas didn’t bring those ships to attack Barataria. They’re looking for something, not shooting at anything. They’re looking for Ganymede.”

  “Ma’am, we don’t know that,” Gifford cautioned.

  She turned around on her hard wood seat, and only then realized that half her behind had fallen asleep, and her ribs felt bruised from all the paddling in her unforgiving undergarments. “What else could they be looking for?”

  “Pirates?” Ruthie offered.

  “They already know the pirates are here — it’s the worst-kept secret in Louisiana. But Colonel Betters and Lieutenant Cardiff had the wrong idea. They thought we were smuggling the ship out in pieces, moving it down to the Gulf with pirate help.”

  Ruthie asked, “Moving it through Barataria?”

  “It’s a secluded spot with good docks, crawling with men who will do anything for a dollar — men who have been sneaking products in and out of the city for a hundred years. Goddamn,” she swore. “Clear out the viper’s nest with the government’s blessing, and scrounge up the Ganymede while you’re at it. Even if you fail at one, with money and planning, you’ve got a good chance of succeeding at the other.”

  Crooks shook his head. “Are even the Texians that arrogant? To think they could uproot the bay in one strike?”

  Josephine returned her gaze to the gliding lights of the searching ships in the water and in the sky, and fixed it there as she said. “They’ve done it, haven’t they? Temporarily, I’d wager. But they’ve beaten down the Lafittes in the short term, that’s for damn sure.”

  “I wouldn’t write them off yet,” Gifford argued as another streak of antiaircraft fire broke the velvet blackness of the marshland midnight. “They were caught off guard, that’s all. Texas will get bored. They’ll eventually figure out Ganymede isn’t there and wander off — or the Lafittes will safely abandon the place and restore it later.”

  Josephine said, “Probably. Pirates are lone wolves, as often as not. But if you call a number of lone wolves to your aid, you wind up with quite a pack.”

  And then Gifford asked, “Do you think they’d come? For the Lafittes? For Barataria?”

  “They’ll come from all over the world,” she said softly. “This bay is the closest thing they have to a homeland — it is their nation, in a way — and I do not think they will let the insult stand. Not for long. Give them time.”

  “Deaderick doesn’t have time,” Ruthie reminded them.

  “Then we won’t wait for them. No cavalry coming but us, isn’t that right, Mr. Crooks?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said without even the faintest note of enthusiasm.

  “Then let’s get paddling, shall we?” Her next questions came close on one another’s heels, as if she might get answers she wouldn’t like if she quit asking them. “He’ll be fine there, won’t he? He was fine when you left, wasn’t he?”

  She began to stroke with the oar, and Gifford followed her lead. He answered so far as he was able. “Yes, ma’am, he was hanging in there. I don’t think—” He grunted as his oar stuck, and he pulled it out again. “—I don’t think the shots he took were so bad.”

  Ruthie sneered. “Two bullets, not so bad.”

  “There’s different kinds of being shot. Rick took his lumps, and they missed his heart. Missed his lungs, as far as we could tell. His worst trouble will be festering, if the wounds take a fever. And there’s only so much we could do about that, under circumstances like these.”

  “We’ll need a doctor. A nurse. Somebody.” Josephine paddled grimly.

  “We will find one. We will find somebody.” Ruthie patted Josephine’s shoulder, then wrapped her arms around herself as if the night were cold.

  For two hours more they paddled, coasted, and hid between the tall clusters of waving fronds and bubbling holes where alligators hid and small fish slept. Eventually they’d circled the largest island and sneaked around to the far side where the fort was hunkered low near the narrow coastline, such as it was.

  Even from the blower, with its fan long silenced, the three occupants could see that the fort’s walls were worn down, their corners rubbed into softness by the years. It looked like nothing so much as an assortment of pale stone walls, and from so far away, those walls appeared so short, a woman could step across with a lifted skirt and a tippy toe. Their height was shortened from age, yes. They were dwarfed by the latticework of pipe docks and oversized ships drifting close, and drifting away again. But they were not as short as they seemed, and they were not so fragile that they hadn’t stood a hundred years already.

  “Not much of a fort,” Ruthie complained, having never seen it from the inside. Her words were muttered as low as a bullfrog’s hum.

  Josephine replied in kind, keeping everything muted, lest they be discovered. “There’s more to it than you’d think. Let’s go around to the fort’s southwest corner. There’s a canal going under the wall, but you can’t see it from here. For that matter, you can barely see it when you’re right on top of it.”

  “Will there be a guard? A lookout?”

  “I assume,” Josephine acknowledged. “But leave him to me.”

  A Texian search ship eclipsed the moon, the clouds, and the faint sparkles of stars shining through them. It moved slowly, like an oversized balloon, or that was the impression it gave on the ground. Untrue, of course. The big thing’s graceful sway belied a terrible speed, and it swung a brilliant yellow searchlight. Josephine, Ruthie, and Gifford could hear it all the way from down in the marsh — the sizzling pop and fizz of the electric filaments simmering against the mirrors that reflected and focused them.

  “Hurry,” Josephine gasped, leaning harder against her oar. She was exhausted. They were all exhausted. But the big white beam was sauntering nearer, sweeping and scanning, and they were pinned on most sides by the oversized grass.

  Ruthie struggled for optimism. “We’re almost there!” she whispered fiercely, spying the curved archway like a mouse hole in the fort’s southwest wall.

  “They’re going to see us,” Gifford fretted. His eyes stayed on the sky, on the too-big ship hovering just out of shooting range, combing the edges around the fort. “We can’t dodge the light. We can’t outrun it!”

  “Maybe we don’t have to.”

  “Ma’am?” Gifford asked, lifting his eyebrows at Josephine.

  “It’s not far. Another what — fifty yards? Start the engine.”

  “Ma’am!” Ruthie gasped.

  “You heard me. Start the engines. This blo
wer can outmaneuver that dirigible any day of the week. We’ll make a dash for it, cross our fingers, and slide right under the wall before anyone up there has any idea what to make of it.”

  “But, ma’am—,” Gifford began.

  Firmly, she cut him off. “Every single moment you delay costs us time. The ship will swing around momentarily, and the light will come with it. The longer it takes them to see us, the less time they have to shoot us.”

  Ruthie looked faint, but Josephine clasped a hand down on her knee. “Buck up, darling. They aren’t likely to hit us.”

  “How can you be so sure, eh?”

  “Because if we’re within striking range, so are they. Pull the cord, Mr. Crooks! Pull it now, or I’ll do it myself.”

  He reached for the cord and gave it a yank. The engine sputtered, but did not catch. He pulled again. This time it burbled to life in a cough that rose to a roar. He threw the boat into gear as the two women simultaneously lifted the spokes up out of the water and drew their oars into their laps.

  Lacking the forward momentum of a craft in motion, the little blower struggled against the saw grass, forcing past it only with difficulty at first. But as the motor drove and the diesel chugged, it pushed onward, stronger, faster, so that the grass slapped up against the sides. The women ducked down and Gifford Crooks leaned forward, one hand gripping the steering lever and the other manning the gears. He dropped them lower when the turf choked their progress, and urged them higher when the way was clearer.

  The dirigible above swooned and spun, and its light swung around to hunt them. It found them within moments, but it had a hard time keeping them.

  The blower dashed through the black-water muck, skimming the top and leaving a terrific trail of fetid spray and shredded leaves, grass, and cattails behind it. Every few moments, the light would catch up to them, hold them, and slip away again. They were moving too swiftly, in too stark a zigzag pattern, for any lamp above to track them for long.