Authors: Arthur Slade
He thought of Octavia. Found himself wishing, oddly, that he hadn’t argued about Shakespeare with her. And then he had a second thought: I should have shown her my face.
“Ballasts are empty.” Colette’s voice drifted above Modo.
“A leak in the crow’s nest! It’s leaking here!” Modo said.
“Calm down!” Captain Monturiol commanded. “How bad is it?”
“Uh … uh, a few gallons a minute, I’d guess.”
“Inform us if it worsens.” Another mass was approaching. “Obstacle dead ahead,” Modo shouted. “It … I think it’s the bottom of the canyon!”
“Brace for impact, then,” Captain Monturiol said. “I’m going to switch the center of gravity.”
There was a loud thunk; the submarine ship straightened as though all its weight had shifted aft. It flipped further so that its nose angled upward. Modo thought a miracle had occurred until he realized the ship was continuing to plunge at the same speed.
A moment later he felt the impact.
T
wo hours had passed since the prisoners had escaped. Miss Hakkandottir strode along the upper deck. Already she had punished the Guild soldier responsible for guarding them by throwing him in the hold with the remaining Icarians. They could tear him to pieces. Her security lieutenant had also suffered her wrath, but he had sustained little more than a broken arm. All of the soldiers received a tincture that made them more obedient, but it dulled their minds. Automatons, she thought. She missed the days when she was a pirate with real men under her control.
The conclusion was obvious. The enemy had another submarine ship. Likely a smaller one that they had used to rescue the prisoners and reclaim the
Ictíneo
. Clever little water rats!
She had marveled at the
Ictíneo
, had walked through the
empty hallways, touched the thick hull. She sensed a mind behind it that equaled the imagination of the Guild Master.
Her men had not been able to break down the door to the engine room. That was where the real secrets lay. But the Guild Master would have rewarded her greatly for bringing this technology home. And now it was gone.
“A light! A light!” the lookout bellowed from the crow’s nest. The call was passed along, and Miss Hakkandottir herself saw a brightness below the ocean as though a comet were speeding through the depths.
“Prepare the balloon guns!” she shouted.
Then, suddenly, the comet was diving down, down, until it disappeared into darkness. The speed of the submarine ship was beyond belief.
She was confident that Monturiol was not fleeing. The captain wouldn’t abandon her underground city or her comrades still in the hold. She would strike but it would be useless; the hull of the
Wyvern
could withstand any blow. Would Monturiol risk the lives of the Icarians on board? Hakkandottir couldn’t decide. Then she laughed. It was a game of cat and fish. She liked this sort of game.
M
odo felt his chest, but nothing seemed to be broken. The straps had bruised him in several places. He stared at the pressure gauge. They were nine hundred yards below the sea, right near the edge of collapse depth. Would it happen all at once? Or would the ship slowly crumple in on itself?
The
Ictíneo
had settled at an angle, leaving Modo looking up toward the water’s surface. It might as well be a million miles away, he thought. “Turn out the hydrogen light,” the captain commanded through the speaking tube.
Modo found the switch and flicked it, and the outside world went black. He saw that the spout of water into the ship had slowed—perhaps something had shifted in the crash.
The door clanked open and Cerdà entered, glancing at the crack. “That is a manageable leak,” he said. “Not good
news, though. It means the forward ballast tank is more damaged than I thought. Come with me to the ballast station.”
Modo unstrapped himself and followed Cerdà down the stairs, to a narrow hallway. The angle of the
Ictíneo
was awkward and the metal floor was slippery. He was glad that there were several handholds along the wall. “There are four forward ballast tanks,” Cerdà explained. “I am certain that two of them were damaged and flooded after we struck that ridge—that is why we descended so quickly. We need to empty them and achieve positive buoyancy—we must go up!” He sounded almost jolly. “The
Ictíneo
will rise again, my comrade. And we will rise with her.”
“I wish I’d seen the ridge sooner!”
“You reacted as well as any
Ictíneo
navigator. Our luck did not hold, that is all. There is no blame. Ah, here we are.” They opened another door and stepped into the same room they had entered when they’d sneaked aboard the
Ictíneo
.
“The pressure will make it difficult to empty the ballasts—the sea pushes in, we must push her out. The motors will have to be started manually.” Cerdà led Modo to a wall covered with gauges, switches, and a large crank. “The question is, will they engage? And if they do, can they force the water out? It depends on where the breach is.” Cerdà flicked a switch near the panel and lights came on. All of the needles on the gauges were at zero. “Again our luck is bad—the batteries are dead. We must crank the motor.” He struggled with the crank without success.
“Please let me try,” Modo said. He wedged his feet into a corner, balancing himself so that he could grab the crank
with both hands. It wouldn’t budge. He gritted his teeth, pulled harder. At last it began to screech and turn and the dials jumped along with it.
“Ah, good, good, Modo!”
The turning gradually became easier and the pump motor awakened. “The faster you go, the more you help the motors,” Cerdà said.
Modo heard a scraping sound and it felt as though his arms would fall off, but he kept working.
“That should push the water out of the tanks. There is a safety system which Delfina—Captain Monturiol—added for emergencies.” Cerdà pulled another lever. A thunk echoed in the chamber and several of the gauges shot to the center. “Success!”
The
Ictíneo
shifted as though nodding in agreement.
“We are rising off the floor. Assuming the propeller is not damaged, we will be able to ascend. Let’s return to the others.”
They joined Captain Monturiol and Colette on the bridge. Both women were clutching handholds to keep from sliding away from their stations. Cerdà explained the situation to the captain. “Your backup system worked perfectly,” he added.
“You designed it,” Monturiol said. “We shall fill the aft ballasts to keep us pointing toward the surface. Please do so now, Miss Brunet.”
Colette pulled a lever and the ship slowly vibrated and shifted again; they were at a forty-five-degree angle from the ocean floor. The captain peered through her periscope. “We have left the seabed. Engage the propeller.”
The
Ictíneo
shook with the force of the propeller and began to move forward.
“Return to your stations,” Monturiol said. “Strap yourselves in. We will be making our ascent as fast as possible. We need a massive amount of momentum to penetrate the
Wyvern’s
steel hull. The trick will be to find them.”
Modo glanced over at Colette, who turned to look at him. Her hair was out of place, and there was determination in her eyes. And excitement, Modo realized. She’s loving this! “Keep your eyes peeled, Modo,” she said. “You’re the bravest of us all.”
“You’re brave, too,” he replied. He climbed up the sloping hallway to the crow’s nest, swallowing a lump of fear as he closed the door and strapped himself into the chair. Thankfully, the leak wasn’t any worse. The higher they climbed, the lower the pressure would be on the hull.
“Leave the light off, Modo,” Monturiol said through the speaking tube. “We travel blindly for a few more minutes.”
He stared out the portholes above him, into darkness blacker than the night sky.
M
odo looked from the pressure gauge to the blackness beyond the glass. He couldn’t see more than a few inches out the viewports of the
Ictíneo
. According to the needle on the pressure gauge, they were slowly rising, the angle of the ship growing sharper and sharper, until Modo felt as though they were traveling straight up. The
Ictíneo
shook violently. The buoyancy was pulling her toward the surface, and the screw propeller was at full speed. How many knots? He had never traveled this fast before!
Monturiol’s voice sounded clearly through the speaking tube: “Modo, in a moment I will command you to turn on the hydrogen light. It will illuminate a wide area. If my guess is right, the
Wyvern
will be circling above where they last spotted us. You will guide us toward the hull. Aim for the center aft of the ship so that we disrupt its engines as
much as possible. Icaria’s mace will do the rest. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Please, Navigator, turn on the light now.”
He reached up and pushed the switch. The light burst into life, filling the ocean as fish darted out of the ship’s way.
“I don’t see anything,” he said at first. Then he spotted a large hull, glittering with bronze rivets. “I have sighted the
Wyvern
, Captain. She’s at a forty-five-degree angle to starboard.”
“Good! Keep calling out, Navigator.”
“Thirty-five degrees,” he said after a few moments. “Twenty-five degrees.”
The hull was growing larger and only now did
Ictíneo’s
actual speed come home to him.
“Fifteen degrees.”
At this rate they would plow right through the ship!
“Five degrees. We’re now in line.”
“Thank you, Modo. I have her in my sights,” Captain Monturiol said. The
Ictíneo
picked up speed as it approached the surface. What am I doing here? Modo wondered. I’m at the front end of an exploding spear. He stared at the massive metal ram that had skewered so many ships without even bending. But how would it penetrate something with such a thick hull? The bottom of the
Wyvern
filled his vision.
The sailors and soldiers above them could probably see the light coming from below their ship, but there would
be no time for them to escape. Nothing could stop the impact now.
“May I say,” Captain Monturiol announced through the speaking tube, “that it has been a pleasure working alongside all of you. What you do today for Icaria shall always be remembered.”
She was saying goodbye. Modo shut the valve to the speaking tube as the
Ictíneo
struck the
Wyvern
.
M
iss Hakkandottir felt an ache in the palm of her metal hand. She chuckled. How many years had it been since Mr. Socrates had sliced off her real hand with a cutlass? Fifteen? Sixteen? He’d been called Alan Reeve then. None of these fancy code names.
No matter how much time passed, the ghost of her old hand still had feeling. Cold. Itchiness. Pain. And, sometimes, it even felt the future. It had ached in Egypt a few years earlier, so she had stepped out of her tent, only to have a cannon shell destroy the tent a moment later. Dr. Hyde would laugh and say it was illogical to connect the two events. The hand had ached many other times for no reason at all.
She acted on this ache now, though, walking from her cabin onto the deck. The sky was dark around her, stars glistening, a hunter’s moon glaring in the sky. It was well after
midnight. They had spotted the
Ictíneo
over an hour ago and lost her to the depths. Now the
Wyvern
circled. Guild engineers were in cutters next to the warship, scanning for signs of the enemy.
Something was amiss. She looked down at Hecuba, one of her hounds, and whispered, “Find Griff. If he is anywhere on this ship, find him!” Grace, the other hound, waited. She had been sent to search the ship earlier and had failed; perhaps Hecuba had a better nose. Where was that boy?
A shout went up. Miss Hakkandottir leaned over the railing to see an engineer on the deck of a cutter, waving a warning. A moment later, Klaxons sounded and soldiers ran out of their bunks, rifles in hand.
“What is it?” she yelled. The engineer staggered back, shouting, but his words were lost. The other engineers were already scrambling up the ropes to the
Wyvern
.
Then Miss Hakkandottir saw a light coming at them from deep below, like a comet. “Engines, full speed ahead!” she shouted toward the helm, though she knew it was too late. The
Wyvern
rose momentarily as if a giant hand were pushing up from under the hull. Miss Hakkandottir was tossed into the air, then fell against the deck, bracing her fall with her metal hand.
“Fool!” she hissed at herself. “You didn’t dream of this!” She was confident of the warship taking any blow from the side, but had not expected them to risk their very lives and their submarine ship by attacking directly from below.
She ran in to the helm, knocking officers out of her way. All the speaking tubes whistled and she flipped one open. “Hakkandottir here. Report.”
“The engine room is flooded, Admiral. We—we were unable to seal the compartment.”
“Then seal the next one. Now!”
“Sir, the damage, it’s …” He was breathing heavily. The sound of water splashing echoed up the tube. “ … massive. I’m afraid the water … We …” She heard gurgling.
“I need to know how many compartments are flooded!” she shouted at the officers in the helm.
No one answered. The speaking tubes fell silent. She pointed at a lieutenant. “Go down there. Now! Report!”
He saluted and ran from the room. The ship rocked violently again and a sonic scream lifted all the lids on the speaking tubes. An explosion! The engine?
“The rest of you had better dream up a plan to rescue this ship.”
“We will, sir,” Commodore Truro said.
The
Wyvern
suddenly shifted and gave a metallic moan. Miss Hakkandottir recognized the sound. They had been struck to the core. She grabbed the balloon pilot. “Prepare the
Etna
. If any unauthorized person attempts to board her, shoot them.” She pushed the pilot out the door, then pointed at the surgeon and the commodore. “You two go with him.” They ran after the pilot. “The rest of you keep this ship afloat as long as you can.”