Ganymede tcc-4

by Cherie Priest

  “I’ll give it a shot.”

  “I have every faith…,” he said, abandoning his position to Early as soon as the other man was able to take it. “Josephine? Ruthie?” he called as he approached them, ducking low and swinging himself through the portal-shaped doorway that separated the main control deck from the side bay where the charges were kept and readied.

  “Cly, give us a minute — we’ll be fine,” Jo said with caution and control in her voice, not yet realizing that he was already there, in the room with her. She was bent over Ruthie, who was moaning unhappily on the ground, holding on to her head. “Andan! Get back to your seat! She knocked her head, that’s all. She’s not hurt bad, and she’ll be up again shortly.”

  “Thank you … for your worry, Captain,” Ruthie told him, giving him a look that dared him to come and assist her. But Cly was the sort to take a dare, so he went to her other side — the one Josephine didn’t occupy — and slipped an arm underneath her to lift her up.

  “Andan, don’t!” Josephine was firm now, commanding. “Let her be!”

  He ignored her. “Ruthie, you all right? What happened?”

  “No, don’t—,” she begged. “I’ve torn my dress. It caught on the charge launch door.…”

  Too late. He used his long arms and considerable strength to sweep her gently onto her feet and place her in a seated position on the edge of the chute.

  At this point, he realized that she was right — her dress was torn.

  The outer skirt was ripped away like an apron pulled off a doll, leaving only light cotton undergarments between her and the world. She did not quite swoon, though she was clearly in some pain from a lump rising on her forehead; nonetheless, she struggled to collect the torn fabric and cover herself.

  But in the instant between Ruthie being covered and uncovered, the undergarments had been her only shield, and they had not covered nearly enough. And in that brief occasion, many things occurred to Cly at once, chief among them being precisely why Ruthie Doniker, popular whore, had such a fierce desire to keep herself covered — there inside the Ganymede, where at least half her companions were unaware of a secret that surely couldn’t have been much of a secret.

  It blindsided Cly all the same.

  Astonished, he turned to Josephine as if seeking some explanation — but all he found was the barrel of a gun pointed at his face.

  Over the barrel he saw Josephine’s eyes, and they were harder and colder than an iceberg. Quietly she told him. “Do not say a word.”

  “But…”

  “That’s a word, Andan.”

  He whispered, lest he alert anyone in the other room. “You’re not going to shoot me, Josie.”

  “I might.”

  “For … for…?” He bobbed his chin toward Ruthie, who would’ve rendered him dead on the spot if looks could do such things.

  “For Ruthie, yes. And for the Garden Court, where she is adored by a good number of people, all of whom would prefer to have their privacy protected. I guarantee that privacy, Andan. And I won’t let anyone ruin it.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me, Josie,” he said again, still so softly that no one could’ve heard it over the rumble of the engines and the clatter of debris still raining slowly down upon the hull from the burning crafts above them and, increasingly, behind them.

  “You’re right.” She lowered the gun and uncocked it. “Because you’re probably not the type to go running off at the mouth about things that are no business of yours. Unless something’s changed since we last knew each other well.”

  Slowly he said, “No, no. That hasn’t changed.” He looked away from his old lover and down at Ruthie again, who was still glaring at him. But somewhere under her glare he saw the source of her anger, and it wasn’t an impinged-upon sense of propriety.

  It was fear.

  Still speaking in increments, every word that emerged cloaked in quiet, and confusion, he said, “But she’s … she’s not … she’s not a she.”

  Josephine brought the gun up again. Maybe not to shoot. Maybe to make a point. She lifted it and aimed it at Cly as if holding it gave her some power she otherwise lacked — and maybe it did. “She is one of my ladies, Andan. And if I ever hear you say a word to the contrary, even implying anything to the contrary, I swear to God, you will regret it to the end of your days.”

  Then she turned the gun away from his face and stuck it back under her skirt, in the leg holster he’d all but forgotten she sometimes wore.

  Still pondering a hundred different questions raised by the contents of Ruthie Doniker’s undergarments, Cly stood there stupidly, gazing back and forth between them. Finally he mustered the gumption to ask, “So … people. Men, I mean. They know?”

  “Of course they know!” Josephine whispered. “And if you think she’s the only woman in the world with a secret like hers, you’re an idiot. But not every man, everywhere knows. It’s not the kind of thing everyone understands.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t. But I don’t believe you’re the kind of man to go on a holy rampage about it, either. You’ve always lived and let live, Andan, and I hope that’s still the case. I’d hate to have to shoot you in order to shut you up.”

  “No one has to shoot me. I’m shocked silent, anyhow.”

  “Good,” she told him. “And you damn well better stay that way. Nothing you’ve just now learned, seen, or figured out means a damn thing to what we’re trying to do here. Now, get back to your seat and get this ship back up in the water. Who’d you leave in charge?”

  “Your brother.”

  “Go relieve him. We’ll sort out this ammunition over here, like I said we would.”

  “Sure,” he said. Then, with one more look at Ruthie, he asked, “Are you … are you going to be all right?”

  “All I need is a safety pin or two, et c’est tout,” Ruthie said through her teeth.

  “Josie, do you have one?”

  “Of course I do. Get back out there,” Josephine said in her normal speaking voice, not wanting to draw any further attention. Surely the men in the other room were wondering by now, why it had gone so quiet in the charge bays.

  “All right, then, I will.”

  Fifteen

  The remainder of the trip down the canal occurred without incident. According to Houjin, both Rucker Little and Wallace Mumler were gaining ground. Neither man had been injured or otherwise dispatched when the dirigible fell from the sky — whether Texian or pirate, no one knew — and though their escorts had fallen behind, they’d signaled that they’d catch up.

  Cly had fallen utterly quiet upon retaking his seat from a grateful Deaderick Early, who was finding the navigation more than he knew how to accomplish, except in a theoretical way.

  The women in the charge bay resumed their work. The clanks and heavy thuds of crates and shells echoed from time to time, punctuated intermittently by swearing in French and English. Troost temporarily left his post to lend a hand, but he was told that no extra hands were needed, so he resumed his seat and kept watch on the coordinates.

  Everyone listened, and everyone heard how much louder the atmosphere outside was steadily becoming. Occasional artillery booms escalated to near-constant racket and there were regular hearty bangs of airship pieces raining down from the sky. Some of them splashed and sank, drifting back and forth and downward in front of the big window; some clattered against the hull, none of them hitting very hard.

  Not yet. Not while several feet of water still separated that hull from the open air above.

  Houjin whistled at something only he could see, sounding impressed and antsy. “It’s a good thing we’re swimming at night,” he mused. “All those ships up there, wow. During the day, someone would be bound to see us.”

  “How many ships, Huey?” Troost asked.

  “Hard to say, exactly.”

  “Guess,” Cly urged him.

  “Guessing?” The boy chewed on his lower lip and conc
entrated, spinning the visor scope this way and that, adjusting its cranks for a better range of vision. “At least four big Texas ships. The real big kind, like warships up in the sky. They’re armored up good, and that’s a relief. Anything that big carries enough hydrogen to blow a bay sky-high.”

  The captain said, “That’s a start. Four big Texas ships, at least. What else do you see?”

  “Pirates. Lots of them. I see two Chinese fliers, and maybe a third. A couple of French ships, it looks like — maybe more than that. A few Spanish ships, or things that started out Spanish. And is that … is that…?”

  “Is it what, kid?” Troost asked crossly.

  “Indian ships. Three of them — two Comanche, if I read the flags right.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Cly said.

  Deaderick laughed, utterly unsurprised. “The Comanche beef with Texas is as fair as anybody else’s.”

  “I just don’t know too many Indian pirates, that’s all,” he replied. “But I’m glad to see them. Huey, what else is up there?”

  “A couple of Union cruisers, I think.” He made small, pensive noises while he adjusted the scope. “And on top of all that, maybe six or seven others I can’t place. They could be from anywhere, but they’re pretty clearly ours. Unfortunately, most of the ones in the water are, too.”

  “How many are down?”

  “Can’t tell, sir. But there’s fire on the water, and burning trash floating between here and there. A lot of it. I’d guess half a dozen ships still floating, and more that have sunk already. Can’t guess about those, since I can’t see them from up here.”

  Cly nodded, even though Huey wasn’t looking at him. “That’s a good point. We’ll need to keep our eyes open for debris right in front of us. Won’t do anyone any good if we crash against it all the way down here. I’m not even sure how we’d get out if we got stuck,” he said. The last sentence died in his mouth, and he swallowed away the bad taste it left behind. “Deaderick, do those forward lights get any brighter?”

  “Not so far as I know. And if they did, they’d only mark us for the big ships to aim at.”

  “Damn. You’re right, but damn.”

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, Huey?”

  “We’re almost out of the canal. Maybe ten or twenty yards, that’s all.”

  “Thank you, Huey. Everybody hang tight. I don’t know how hard the current in the bay runs, but the canal’s kept us sheltered. The starting jolt may throw us off our feet. Won’t be as bad as the river, but it’ll be a change, all the same. Ladies?” he called out. “You hear that?”

  “We heard you!” Josephine snapped back. “And we’re ready.”

  “Good. Because here we go — here comes the bay.”

  The bay didn’t take them in a surge of rushing water, not like the river had done. It was more of a lower, cooler pull. The sudden openness and size of it gave everyone within the Ganymede the peculiar sense of stepping off a cliff while underwater, only to float instead of falling.

  “I didn’t think…” Early said.

  “Didn’t think what?” Troost asked.

  “That there’d be any current in the bay. I only expected the tide.” The captain was glad for the peaceable nature of it, since nothing else about the situation was half so quiet. He said, “Houjin, me and Fang are going to bring this thing down low. Keep your scope close to the surface; don’t let it ride too high. We don’t want to get ourselves spotted right out of the canal.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Now, tell me what you can see about the boats in the bay. Any of them belong to our side, or do they all belong to Texas and the Rebs?”

  The boy frowned hard into the scope, adjusting it to comply with the captain’s command. “I see four, but there might be more. I can’t see all the way around the bay, or past the fort at the island.”

  “That’s fine,” Cly told him. “Just tell me what you see, and we’ll worry about what you can’t see later on.”

  “Mumler and Little are still up there. They’re taking turns sticking with us — falling back and taking cover where they can, along the edges where the grass is high. There’s a lot of firepower up there, sir.”

  “Understood. But who do the boats belong to? That’s what we need to know, so we don’t go off shooting any of our own kind.”

  Houjin paused, still frowning, still staring into the visor like it was a crystal ball that might be able to tell him more than his mortal eyes would allow. “Two are definitely Texian. I see the Lone Star painted on the side. I’m pretty sure the third one is, too, but I can’t say about the fourth. It’s too far out. We’ll have to get closer.”

  “We’ll start with the ones we know for sure. What’s the position of the nearest Texian ship?”

  “Dead ahead, sir. Maybe a hundred yards. There’s an antiaircraft mount on the deck, and it’s kicking up a storm.”

  He didn’t need to add the last part. Everyone could hear it, the too-near rat-a-tat-tat of the guns shooting and recoiling against the surface. As they drew closer, they could feel it, too — the shuddering of the waves as the water was bucking against the bottom of the Texian boat. Even below the waterline as they were, the motion of the other craft made the bay feel like a bathtub full of children learning to swim.

  “Josephine and … uh … Ruthie?” Cly called into the charge bay. “How are you two doing in there?”

  Ruthie came to the curved doorway. The bump on her head was darkening from the red of fresh injury to the blue of impending bruise, but she looked otherwise unharmed. Her dress was pinned back into position, and though it hung oddly, it covered everything important.

  She announced, “First two charges are ready to fire. We can light the fuse and shoot them whenever you tell us to do it.” She disappeared back inside.

  “Deaderick? You know how to aim and guide these things?”

  “I think so. I’ve never done it myself, but I know what the motions look like. The controls are there at Troost’s console.”

  “Shit,” said Kirby Troost. “Maybe you’d better take my chair.”

  “Fine with me,” Deaderick said. He took Troost’s spot and lowered the seat to accommodate his height.

  Troost declared, “I’ll head over there and help those ladies, whether they want me or not.”

  “Wait,” Cly told him. Then he asked Deaderick, “That topside gun — is it anything special?”

  “Naw. It’s just a pod fitted with the same thing you’ve got on an airship. Repeating fire, bandolier bullets on a threaded stream. Troost can probably work it, no problem — but let’s leave that for later. The ball turret has to rise up to fire.”

  “Not much range when you shoot it underwater, I guess.”

  “Yeah, the bullets aren’t so keen when they’re swamped.”

  “All right, then — Troost, do whatever you like. But keep your ears open. We’ll need you in a bit.”

  “Aye, aye,” he said with a small salute, ducking back into the charge bay and immediately getting an earful from Josephine, who did not feel that she or Ruthie required any help.

  “Troost makes new friends easy as pie, everywhere he goes,” Cly murmured. “He has such a God-given knack for getting on with people.”

  Huey piped up. “If you could call it that.”

  “I can hear you, you know,” the engineer said from the bay.

  “Yeah, I know. Early, how are you doing with those weapons adjustments?”

  “Doing all right. I think I’ve got it — but I’ll know better once we get one fired off. We may have to waste one for the sake of calibrating the equipment.”

  “Then we’ll waste it at their underside.” The captain pointed out the window and up to the surface — where a broad, low boat bottom was rising into view. “Is that it, Huey?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Right in front of us, sir.”

  The patrol ship didn’t sit too heavy in the water, a fact that worried Cly. How could the charges shoot up so sharply?
But he figured out from listening to Deaderick mutter under his breath that the charge bays were manipulated by having their angles changed through a series of dials and buttons on the left side of the console.

  The captain thought to himself, It’s just as well Troost isn’t left-handed. We might’ve blasted apart the canal by now. But he did not say it, and he did not interrupt Deaderick’s reverie as he talked himself through the calculations.

  Finally Early said, “I think I’ve got it.”

  “You think you’ve got it?” cried Troost from the charge bay.

  “That’s the best you’ll get from me right now. The weapons systems are the most untested, because they don’t have to work in order to keep the crew from drowning, or suffocating. So you’ll have to bear with me.”

  Before anyone else could pipe up from the other room, Cly said, “Take your time. We’ve got a minute or two.”

  “No more than that,” Houjin said nervously. “We’ll have to circulate the air again soon, won’t we? Especially since we’ve got more people on board now than we did before?”

  “We’re all right for now, and we can pull off toward the marshes if we have to. Early?”

  “I’ve got it — as far as I’m likely to get it, based on book-learning and guessing. The charges should be calibrated toward that big-bottomed boat right in front of us. If you and Fang can hold us in position, then the ladies — and Troost — can light the fuse and fire on your command. And then … then we’ll see what happens.”

  “Cross your fingers, everybody. Josephine, Ruthie, Troost — one of you, do it now!”

  “Fuse alight!” cried Josephine. A door slammed, and in a count of three or four seconds, Ganymede rocked as the first of her charges went zipping out into the bay, a mighty bullet fired underwater.

  Everyone could see it, following a slight delay as the angle of water refracted and lied. They watched it violently deploy, appearing to wibble in its flight from Ganymede to the undercarriage of the ship that awaited it. But mostly it went true — propelled by the charge and driven to cut a weird, wavering tunnel through the dense, dark bay.