‘Whatever’s in those spine heads, it won’t damage the crown,’ said Amelia, clutching onto her seat, ‘you can be sure of that.’
‘Poison, then,’ speculated Bull. ‘Dirt-gas, or their version of it.’ He dropped the bathysphere, using the manoeuvrability of their vessel to push down towards the ruins. ‘I don’t want to find out the hard way.’
More shots came past, well wide, disappearing into the crater beneath.
‘Kill the lights.’ Bull’s hands closed the illumination reservoir to the gas spots. ‘Let’s see how good their sonar is.’
‘Better than ours.’ Amelia peered out of the rear porthole. ‘We don’t have any!’
Beyond the glass she could see luminescent strips along the side of the submersible following them, a blood marker from whatever underwater creature the Daggish had used to create its seed ship design. Their craft were slow to turn due to their size, but that bulk meant they were carrying a lot more air than their small bathysphere. The two expedition survivors were down to half an hour’s charge; even if they escaped into the Shedarkshe, the chase downriver was going to be over before it started.
‘They’re piloting those two boats like they’ve broken into the grog rations,’ sneered Bull. ‘It’s small wonder their vessels have been ending up in the graveyard down here. They’ve got a dead hand on the stick.’
‘Head for the river,’ called Amelia, as a spine head from the second pursuer flashed past, ‘or there’ll be two corpses in this boat.’
Schools of tiny fish scattered as their bathysphere powered through the water, chased by the whale-like outlines of the Daggish submersibles turning after them with an organic grace, like fish themselves.
‘We’re nearly there,’ said Bull. ‘We’re in the river currents now and-’
He yelled in alarm. A wall of anti-u-boat netting had been laid ahead, stretched across the wide entrance to the river. Bull turned the sphere, the expansion engines whining as loudly as Amelia had ever heard them. Missing the metal gauze by less than a foot, they turned away from the rigid mesh, running along the crater wall with the pull of the current buffeting them.
‘Dead hand on the stick!’ Amelia cursed the slaver. ‘They weren’t trying to catch us, just corral us in here.’
‘I didn’t see those nets on the way in,’ said Bull. ‘What’s that jigger Tree-head Joe done that for? You’d think that he didn’t trust us.’
‘You were brigged on the way in, you lackwit.’ Amelia looked through the rear porthole. The two Daggish craft were turning after them — they had only been slowing to avoid being caught in the nets. ‘And they’ve absorbed enough feral craynarbians into the hive to know the tales of a u-boat making slaving calls along the river villages.’
Bull laughed, twisting the bathysphere around to face their pursuers.
‘What are you doing?’
Bull slammed the pilot stick forward. ‘Attacking!’
Amelia ran for the exo-claws at the back, pushing her arms into the control gloves. She’d had plenty of practice sifting through the debris on the lake bed. She dialled them up to maximum strength, the clockwork amplification feeding the claws with so much energy that they shook every couple of seconds as if they were possessed with palsy. Good enough. Taken aback by the attack of this minnow, the modified seed ships tried to pull to port, but they had slowed too much to avoid colliding with the anti-sub netting. The bathysphere’s shadow passed over the nearest of the craft and Amelia lashed down with both her claws at the illuminated compound eye-shaped conning dome on the hull. Bull’s words came back to her.
The second seed ship had turned enough to bring her aft tubes to bear, two spine heads powering forward faster than they had any right to, a trail of bubbles in their wake. Bull dived their craft down, but the second of the spines glanced off the bathysphere’s screws, smashing open the engine assembly. Pressurized expansion engine gas hissed out into the waters of the lake, spinning them around. Bull twisted the pilot stick and slammed his fist into the control panel but nothing he could do was making any difference to their gyrations.
‘I’m going to blow the tanks,’ shouted Bull. ‘Grab hold of something and make for a hard rise.’
Amelia cursed the slaver. He should have held his nerve and left her to tear open the anti-submarine netting with their waldos. Now their fallback plan was to break surface and swim for it. To a shore where every organism they blundered into for a hundred miles would be controlled by the hive. As their ballast tanks emptied at high velocity, they found a new direction, corkscrewing upwards, erupting out of the lake in a spout of water before smashing back down to the surface. They had stopped their demented pirouette now, the bathysphere’s engine fuel bleeding out into the air. Amelia caught a glimpse of the armada of seed ships on the surface waiting for them, her view blocked by the remaining Daggish submersible breaking the surface beside the bathysphere. Bull spun the wheel on the top hatch lock, pulling himself out, Amelia close behind, still clutching her precious crown. An iris door on the Daggish u-boat’s conning dome was cycling open. It was searing outside, a wall of bright heat after their confinement in the cool, deep waters of the lake.
‘Soldiers coming,’ Bull called.
‘That’s the least of our problems,’ Amelia replied, steadying herself on one of the sphere’s gas lamps as the wake of a passing seed ship struck them. She stretched out to dive for the water, but the heat blast from the seed ship’s forward guns knocked her back. Not directed at them, but towards the Daggish submersible, a visor on the boat’s flame cannon twisting up as a stream of flame licked down the u-boat’s hull. Incinerated drones were flung back towards the open iris, the submersible bucking in agony at the scorch marks blistering down its hull. Curving around the submersible, the patrol craft bore down on them. Amelia gripped tighter as the wash from the seed ship tidal-waved towards them.
Had civil war broken out among the hive? Some fundamental disagreement over what to do with the crown? Then Amelia saw a sight that she never thought she’d see on a Daggish patrol boat — a steamman, a four-armed steamman on the deck no less. Ironflanks! His seed ship cut through the lake waters, interposing itself between the bathysphere and the enemy submersible, the flame squirt on the prow whistling as compressed incendiary fire licked out along the length of the Daggish u-boat. Whatever prohibition stopped members of the hive from attacking one another had been broken by the prize vessel, and the seed ship was wreaking havoc in the confusion. Overjoyed at seeing Amelia still alive, Ironflanks spun in a frenzied tribal dance on the prow.
Bull spotted his uncle standing behind Veryann at the rear of the cabin as the seed ship drew up alongside the bathysphere ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’
‘Who’s piloting that boat, old steamer?’ Amelia tossed across the bathysphere’s guide rope so both craft could moor together.
‘Billy Snow,’ Ironflanks called back, his eyes extending telescope-like towards the Daggish armada on the centre of the lake, the enemy seed ships making full speed towards them.
Veryann leapt across the gap before the two craft tied up, landing on the bathysphere’s hull. Bull stepped back, expecting an assault as payment for his marooning of her, but she ignored both Amelia and the slaver, instead diving inside the craft. None of the other expedition members looked as if they had been expecting the Catosian woman to plunge inside Amelia’s bathysphere, but Commodore Black had other fish to fry.
‘Bull,’ roared the commodore, hauling the bathysphere in to thud against the seed ship’s bony hull. ‘Bull, you treacherous stain on the House of Dark, where’s my
Bull thumbed at the hive’s approaching fleet. ‘Talk to her new owners, old man.’ He slapped the top of the bathysphere. ‘You can have this diving ball back for your troubles.’
Ironflanks and T’ricola had to restrain the commodore from trying to leap across at the news. Amelia jumped the gap, landing on the aft of the Daggish prize vessel. ‘They’ve laid anti-submarine nets across the mouth of the Shedarkshe. We’re going to need to break them to get out of here.’ She glanced across at the Daggish fleet. ‘Sweet Circle, how many ships have they got? And how did you know-’
‘Billy softbody said you would be here,’ answered Ironflanks. ‘He told us he felt your presence.’
Amelia looked at the steamman as if he had lost his mind — if he had ever fully possessed it to begin with. Bull crossed the gap between the bathysphere and the patrol boat, making sure he stayed out of reach of the commodore. ‘And I feel the presence of half the Daggish Empire coming down on us.’
Two explosive cracks from the bathysphere made Amelia flinch. It wasn’t incoming fire from the Daggish.
