The Apocalypse Ocean (20 page)

The
Saguenay
had circled the harbor’s inner circle three times when the battle stopped. The flashes of light, tracers, and explosions all died out. The misty air faded into a general glow of town lights as they ghosted over the tops of buildings.

Nashara looked at one of Thinkerer’s men, who just shrugged.

A few minutes later they could see landing craft surging toward the docks. Thousands of League soldiers streaming out onto the waterfront.

“Time to climb,” Nashara said. “Most of their communications will be down, but guns and RPGs work just fine in the dead zone.”

She gave orders for the crew to drop the large ice blocks fastened via nets to the side of the
Saguenay
that had been added to the lines. The complex assortment of helium-filled balloons and lines holding onto the mostly inert spaceship jerked and bobbled as they rose higher.

Chemical maneuvering rockets thumped further down the hull, and the
Saguenay
swung forward in its cat’s cradle, then rocked and swung under the balloons as it drifted along in the direction Nashara pointed them.

Tiago swallowed a hint of motion sickness.

“Thinkerer’s ice ships must have been overrun,” Nashara said to Matty. “If the Doaq’s hidey-hole is somewhere in town this could get complicated.”

“Flares!” one of the men shouted.

Nashara turned to the screen he pointed at. Five brilliant flares floated over the mountainside. She leaned forward and tapped a spot. “They were fired from along the east side, near that cut.”

Tiago knew exactly where she meant. “That’s Fire Valley,” he said. “That’s where the rain comes from. No one goes there.”

“A good place to hide,” Nashara said, and tapped controls. The rockets fired, only this time it wasn’t the previous gentle taps and some coasting. They slammed through the air, dragging the balloons that carried them with them.

They bounced as turbulence shook the entire structure.

“Strap in,” Matty ordered. “It’ll get worse.”

The
Saguenay
climbed up along the mountainside and into the heart of the rain, clawing its way toward the flares as Tiago strapped himself to a padded area of the wall. Crude restraints, Nashara had told him, but they’d be better than nothing.

Tiago looked at the video panels, trying to piece it all together. Up ahead, the flares guttered out. Extinguished by exploding as they hit the flammable cloud. Below was a valley, the sides gray and green with forest, but clear in the middle.

There was movement in the forest, and three trees exploded in a surprisingly violent fireball. Some sort of running battle raged down there.

Was it Pepper, or the Thinkerer?

Or the Doaq …

“Incoming!” Nashara shouted. “Stations!”

A yellow ball streaked through the air. Thinkerer’s crewmen had been stationed near airlocks and bungee strapped into fast hand-made cradles with fifty-caliber guns mounted to the floor.

Up through the open corridors, the hacking, deep chatter of the guns echoed. Tracers lit out on the cockpit screens. But more floating spheres popped free of the ground. It was just vomiting them out. They exploded and dropped to the ground as gunfire ripped through them, but enough flitted past to rip into the balloons overhead. Guy wires snapped and twanged, and the spaceship lurched into an odd angle.

Nashara had strapped herself to the control panels with cords and straps bolted to the floor. She continued jerking the spaceship around. “We might have to clear the area, wait until Pepper and Thinkerer reduce this and we can figure out where the wormhole is.”

Another yellow, mechanical cloud rose to meet them as Nashara thrust them up higher. But it kept closing.

There was no escaping. The fifty-caliber guns went all out, but the yellow spheres exploded all around the space ship anyway. One of the screens showed balloon material fluttering uselessly overhead, burst and ripped apart.

They pinwheeled and spun around.

At one point, the
Saguenay
sat, stern pointed straight down and thrusters slamming hard enough to keep them balanced on a tail of fire as Nashara basically held them steady without any lift from the balloons. Like an old-school rocket.

But the thrusters were just for thrust and adjustment, not main engines, and the fuel petered out before she could kick them out to safety somewhere. And kicking on the main engines would destroy the valley. Including Pepper.

“Matty, we’re going to set down in the valley,” Nashara shouted over the explosions, guns, and thrusters. “We’ll drag the fucker up to the hole if we have to, I guess. We’re going for the stream bed.”

Tiago screamed as they plunged back toward the valley. They skimmed over trees belching exploding bubbles that slapped them about as they wobbled down toward a river of dirt.

Drones swarmed the thrusters and explosions ripped through the aft hull. Without thrust or balloons,
Saguenay
plunged into the side of the valley, plowing through trees with explosions and throwing up a cloud of rock, rubble, and dirt that obscured anything on the screens.

The world spun. The ship was rolling, shoving Tiago against the wall.

Then it all stopped. They came to a rest upside down.

Dust filled the air, and sparks drifted through air. “Thrusters down. But the core nose unit survived,” Nashara told them. “We can still kill wormholes with it if the generator holds up.”

Tiago hung in his restraints, enjoying the solid feeling, even if he was upside down.

Nashara appeared out of the gloom and hit the button near his chest. The straps all cut loose and he dropped, smacking his face into the ceiling. He stood, unsteadily, with blood dripping from his nose. 

She ripped Matty Mallette free of his restraints and carefully laid him down on the ceiling. “Matty?”

He nodded unsteadily. “Just a hit to the head. Too dizzy, it’ll pass.”

“I need you here in the cockpit. In case we need the
Saguenay
’s nose to kill a wormhole,” Nashara said as she pulled him back into the gloom and showed him the physical controls that controlled the League ship. Switches, levers, buttons, all of which would spin up whatever hid in the long needle of the
Saguenay
that could rip a wormhole apart.

Tiago stood up, wiping his nose on a sleeve as she walked back his way to leave the cockpit. “Hey!” he protested.

She stopped and handed him a very large pistol. “It’s got kick. Don’t fucking shoot Kay with it, or any of Thinkerer’s men. Use the bullets on whatever’s going to be coming inside. Pick a corridor, use the bulkhead for protection. Good luck, kid. Listen to Matty.”

“That’s it?” Tiago asked, looking down at the freakishly large gun. It felt like he was holding onto a cannon. He was going to have to hold it in two hands. She was leaving him here?

She misunderstood his bewilderment. “I don’t have any other spare pistols to give you.” She frowned and pulled a knife free of a sheath in her ankle. “Here, this might help, though.”

He stood there, knife in one hand, overly heavy pistol in the other. “I meant: you’re just leaving me?”

“Whatever attacked us is going to continue. I’m leaving the airlocks open so the fifty cals can continue shooting. The men on them are bungeed in. They should be okay, even upside down, for the next ten minutes or so. But we might well be outgunned and outmanned. I need to scout the situation out while you hold still. So find a spot and defend this cockpit.”

She left.

The two other men in the cockpit dropped out of the restraints, cursing as they hit the ceiling and tried to orient themselves.

Matty staggered over. “Go see if the men in the airlocks need any help,” he said. “If any of them are dead, or wounded, shut the airlock and come let me know. Okay?”

Tiago nodded, eyes wide. “Yes sir,” he said, and ran off.

At the first two airlocks the upside-down gunners waved him away. They were okay. The third had untied himself and gotten facing the right way. But his gun was upside down, and he was fumbling with how best to grip the handles and trigger. Tiago saw something moving behind the man through the open airlock. He dropped the knife and raised the pistol with both hands.

It was Pepper, walking through the forest of burned and broken trees. His trench coat was tattered, frayed, and he walked through the burning mist with no other protection. Blood streaked his forearms. His dreadlocks slapped his shoulders.

Tiago raised a hand hello, and as he did so, a shadow moved. With deliberate grace, the form stepped into the light, sliding over the gravel and dust from Pepper’s side.

“Watch out!” Tiago shouted, but even before the first word came out, Pepper spun, the tails of his coat spreading, two guns suddenly in his hands firing.

The Doaq’s mouth dropped open, snapping at the shots and eating the bullets.

“Shoot it!” Tiago shouted at the gunner. “Now!”

The man jerked into action. The sound of the gun right next to Tiago stunned him. A bone-jarring, jerking chatter echoing in the tight metal airlock. Bullets stitched along the ground toward the Doaq, which snapped its face toward the incoming onslaught.

It opened wide and ran toward them.

Tiago started swearing and fumbled with the pistol. He got the safety clicked off, held it up, and started pulling the trigger, adding to the stream of bullets headed at the Doaq.

They didn’t seem to disturb it.

But then Nashara came sprinting in from the side and struck the Doaq. They tumbled end over end in a cloud of dust until they slammed into a rock. Pieces of pulverized rock flew into the air.

“Get to the cockpit,” Pepper shouted. “Get ready to trigger the
Saguenay
’s device.”

The Doaq ripped free, stumbling back, and Pepper started punching it in the head while dodging the snapping maw.

Tiago didn’t wait. He dropped the empty gun, picked up the knife, and sprinted for the cockpit. “It’s me, Tiago,” he shouted as he approached. Thinkerer’s men leaned around the thick door and waved him in.

The screens were back on, dimly showing scenes from outside the ship. Tiago didn’t pay attention.

 “Pepper and Nashara say we need to get ready to fire the wormhole killer,” he panted.

Matty’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”

Tiago stepped back to look at the screens. Where were …

There. Pepper and Nashara and the Doaq in a running battle. Bullets smacked the ground, leaving tiny clouds of dust. The Doaq was weaving between the two of them, trying to keep facing them both.

It was a dance. The three of them swirling around each other almost too quick to see. But it was a dance with a purpose. The two of them were herding the Doaq. Tiago could see the pattern from up here on the screens. In order to keep facing them, the Doaq had to keep leaping and twisting. That easy grace it had was gone. Now it was a frustrated gymnast in robes, trying to stop either of them from getting behind it.

Until …

Until Pepper leapt in and grabbed an arm and spun. Nashara slid in and took a leg, Pepper let go and she continued the spin, taking it further and throwing the Doaq, mouth-first, right toward the spire of the ship.

Tiago realized what Pepper wanted. The Doaq had a wormhole in its mouth!

“Turn it on!” Tiago screamed. “Turn the wormhole killer on!”

Matty started throwing switches and pressing buttons. A whine split the air ahead of them. Sparks ripped up and down the spire outside.

The Doaq flew through the air, mouth opening wide and wider. It looked like it was going to try to eat the entire forward spire of the spaceship. And if that was a wormhole in the Doaq’s mouth, maybe it was possible. Maybe it would just open wider and wider, until it swallowed the entire
Saguenay
.

But it couldn’t, it didn’t open that far. Just dropped as far as the creature’s feet.

The Doaq fetched up against the spire, mouth impaled on it. But the spire didn’t come out the back of its head. It had swallowed it whole.

“Fire it!” Tiago screamed. “Do it now. Do it!”

He heard the slap of a button and on the screen the air shimmered and rippled. Distorted pieces of reality flung free of the spire as energies that Tiago would probably never understand were unleashed.

The Doaq howled and grabbed the spire. It seemed to understand what was happening now. It struggled to shove itself backwards. An inch. Then a foot. Another foot. It was slowly pushing itself it back down the spire.

More energy rippled around, and the Doaq’s body distorted. The arms scrabbled with a panic now. The mouth opened, as if trying to swallow the destructive energies foaming around inside the darkness.

“More!” Tiago shouted.

“That’s it. It’s either going to destroy the wormhole or not now,” Matty said.

They stared as the Doaq writhed, spitted by its instrument of destruction. And then the Doaq turned inside out, spread into fragments that flew outward for a microsecond, before then being swallowed inward by the collapsing point of the failing wormhole in its mouth. The cockpit shook, knocking everyone to their feet.

The flash of light burned Tiago’s eyes, and when it cleared, the whole spire of the
Saguena
y remained outside again.

Minus the Doaq.

Everyone stared at the empty space in front of the spire.

Gunfire chatter filled the cockpit. Tiago whipped around. The two men by the entrance were on their knees, sighting down the corridor and firing at a pack of wolves sprinting down the corridor toward them.

Wolves? Tiago thought. What were wolves doing here?

One of them opened its mouth wide. Too wide. It dropped low and behind it was nothing more than light-eating darkness.

Tiago’s knees weakened. “Matty!” he shouted. “We’re under attack!”

The wolves burst through into the cockpit, skidding and skittering. Matty and the other men spun, shooting them in their sides. Two of the wolves stopped moving, explosions of steam and sparks erupting from under their shiny skins.

But the third leapt up and swallowed Matty. It happened so quickly. One moment he stood there, firing, the next, there was just the grinning wolf.