Staggering like drunken sailors, the four of them navigated by Boxiron’s supposedly infallible sense of direction, clambering down steep ladders with ridiculously thin treads, as if the naval architects had deliberately been trying to create injuries from falling. At times, Dick thought he recognized some of the corridors from their escorted journey up from the boat bay. Mostly, he was navigating a narrow-passaged purgatory of unfamiliar shifting iron walls, slippery floors and intermittently hissing gaslights. They blundered through the strong smell of sea water, machine oil and the acrid tinge of smoke and gun cordite. If there was any consolation, it was that Sadly appeared to be sharing Dick’s tribulations in magnified misery, the green-tinged informant’s mouth intermittently opening to make gurgling noises as if he was going to vomit. His cane tapped out when their illumination failed, knocking at the sides of the corridor, grunting as he hauled his weight along on his clubfoot. Jethro Daunt, by contrast, seemed serenely untroubled by the confusion and carnage they were passing. Unbothered by the sound of running boots, shouts, the distant firecracker rattle of weapons fire, sweaty faces of red-coated marines looming up like devils in the half-light as they came pushing past towards the fray. There was, though, a quizzical look on the ex-parson’s face. As if he didn’t quite understand why they should be here, on The Zealous, at this time. As if their involvement was a puzzle with a definitive answer that could be teased out. What they found instead was a corridor full of gill-necks below. On the opposite side of a two-storey chamber, long-barrelled rifles were raised against a handful of marines, fire spurting from slots in the weapons’ muzzles as they exchanged fire with the crew. Snout- shaped silver war masks hid the soldiers’ faces, while their elongated skulls bobbed with a cone of frilled-ridges capped by a fin-like slash of bone. Roughly of human height, the heavily muscled scales of the attackers’ wet skin shone in the half-light — not much of it on show beneath carapace-like chestplates. Armour that might have been ripped off crabs, shell plates covering metallic mesh that shimmered with oil rainbows in the flickering lamplight. Used to being able to cut rapidly through the deep waters of the ocean, the underwater warriors moved with sinuous speed in the unnaturally thin environment of the air. The gill-necks betrayed their origins as a branch of mankind’s evolutionary tree… vestigial surface lungs that could allow them to exist briefly out of the water fluttering weakly below their chests, a reverse rebreather mask connected into their masks to allow them to suck at the precious sea water they craved. The Advocacy soldiers’ weapons gave off snake-hisses as they fired, the outnumbered human sailors facing them answering back with the oak splintering crackle of their sea pattern rifles. With the initial volley depleted, each side charged at each other, bayonet stabbing against bayonet, although the gill-necks’ blades were more like crystal-edged spears running underneath the long length of their weapons’ barrels.
So, this is what we’re bleeding fighting? We’re no match for their strength.
‘They’re blocking the way to the boat bay,’ roared Boxiron. ‘I fight in five!’
Behind Boxiron, Daunt gripped the rusting gear lever of the hulking steamman and dragged it slowly through its network of grooves until it came to a rest in the slot where someone had scrawled ‘murderous’ on the plate. Tilting a piercing spear of steam towards the ceiling, Boxiron vaulted the rail and hurled himself down towards the floor of the circular chamber and the two sides locked in a melee. A cry echoed up from his voicebox as he plummeted, a metallic steamman landslide. ‘Top gear!’
He fights in five.
Coming hard and fast, the gill-necks threw themselves onto Boxiron, the crystal blades of their weapons bouncing off his hull plates, scraping and scratching his already dented surface. Two iron fists lashed back, cracking carapace armour, bones and flesh, sending broken bodies flying into bulkheads. No more sidestepping his true nature, attempting to temper his clumsy malfunctioning body. No more trying to dampen down his servos so that he didn’t inadvertently crack floors, dent walls, snap the toe bones of those standing too close to him. This is what Boxiron was for. Damage. Indiscriminate. Clanking. Raw. Damage. His legs lashed, his arms flailed, his head butted. Steam was spent and blood was shed.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Dick, Jethro and Sadly slipped down the spiral stair gantry to the chamber’s floor level, circling to the side of the fight, the few human sailors left alive demoted to the battle’s periphery. For its centre, its core, was now the throb of a boiler heart, Boxiron a wild hurricane of metal whipping through the disordered ranks of the enemy’s warriors.
Dick scooped up a rifle from one of the fallen soldiers, pulling off the corpse’s pack of shells. By his side, Sadly triggered his sleeve gun, the small single-shot pistol thudding into his open hand.
‘I told you not to bring that peashooter. We’re meant to be u-boat traders.’
‘Sailors shoot each other, don’t they, Mister Tull?’
‘Against those gill-necks, you’re more likely to annoy them.’
There was a corridor ahead of their chamber, the passage that led down to the boat bays — now filled with gill-neck warriors falling back under the fury of Boxiron’s onslaught. Bodies lay littered in the steamman’s wake, some broken and as still as death, others writhing in agony on the floor. Dick added to it, the butt of his rifle cracking down into the skull of one of the warriors trying to pull himself back onto his feet. There was a satisfying crack as the gill-neck slumped back down.
‘That was hardly sporting,’ protested Daunt.
Said the man who’s unleashed a metal demon onto the enemy. ‘What, you think there’s rules for this, amateur?’
‘He was trying to surrender.’
‘He was going to take a bite out of your leg!’
The force of the impact had dislodged the gill-neck’s silver mask, revealing humanoid features that were proudly defined by a burnished lightly scaled skin. Fierce and proud, even beaten unconscious. Its teeth were sharp and white, though, Dick had got that much right. They were famous for their bites weren’t they? At least, so the colourful stories of the penny-dreadfuls would have it — the Kingdom’s drowning mariners murdered by the savages of the sea before being dragged down to drown in their submerged palaces.
Dick felt the breeze ahead. They were close to the boat bay at the bottom of the vessel. He could almost taste his freedom. Dozens of runabouts and launches suspended on crane lines waiting to be lowered down to the choppy surface of the sea below. One of the little beauties had his name on it, waiting to take him back to the Purity Queen.
‘Coronation Market rules, Mister Tull?’ said Sadly.
Coronation Market. Middlesteel’s worst slum district. Guaranteed to leave its streets with a knife in your back and a bad disease between your legs. ‘They’re the only rules that count.’
As they pushed out into the open space of the boat bay, the party was assailed by gill-necks on either side of the boarding gantries, strong, muscled arms holding drum-headed weapons. The enemy soldiers opened up and weighted nets spun out from the strange guns, slapping into the steamman from both directions. Boxiron began to pull the netting off, tearing at it even before its lead-weighted ends had finished wrapping around him, but as he clawed at the material, Dick noticed the netting was still connected to the weapons by dangling cables. Cables that jolted as the charge they were carrying struck Boxiron, the steamman making a very organic sounding yelp as the mesh glimmered with the devastating force of the power electric. A deafening crash echoed around the boat bay as Boxiron tumbled onto the deck, his netting dancing with sparks.
Dick hardly had a moment to take in the sight of the felled steamman twitching on the floor before he was smashed in the back. Slammed to the floor just in time to see the bare webbed feet of a fresh boarding party of gill-neck fighters pistol-whipping Sadly and Daunt down to the deck with a flurry of blows. The rifle was kicked out of Dick’s hand and sent spinning over the edge of the boat bay into the waiting sea. Vanishing, along with any hope of an escape back to the u-boat.
A swift kick in his side turned Dick over. He was greeted by the sight of a dozen gill-neck weapons pointing at him, blades under their barrels balanced inches away from his bruised face.
‘Trespassing surface dweller vermin,’ hissed the sibilant voice of the nearest warrior, the frill of gills in his neck vibrating as he talked. ‘Let us see how long you have left.’
‘Left before what?’ coughed Dick.
‘Before your death, surface dweller. Before that.’
‘She’s dead in the water,’ said the commodore, banging the side of the periscope in frustration. ‘Damn their evil starfish, they have The Zealous. Wrapped like a kitten in yarn.’
‘Jethro and Boxiron?’ asked Charlotte.
‘No boats have launched,’ says the commodore. ‘Ah, the poor unlucky fools. The best we can hope for is that our friends are still on the ship and not among the poor wretches treading water underneath The Zealous.’
