How do we fight them?
‘There is a way. Head for the weapons the nomads left outside the congress.’
Charlotte swam though the panicked nomads packed inside the expanded camp of the Clan Raldama. Thousands of seanore warriors had been waiting to hear the results of the tribal elders’ deliberations. Now they had been reduced into an undisciplined mass desperately seeking the commands of their chiefs, most of whom were tightly mixed with the ranks of their rivals and neighbours. Behind Charlotte, the darkships had rammed the line of spherical nets holding the nomads’ schools of fish, kelp-rope lattices bursting apart as waves of silvery fish burned in the interlopers’ dark energies, floating dead towards the surface. When the teardrop-shaped darkships passed over the encampment, their shape seemed to change, flattening, taking on a manta ray configuration. They had jettisoned something in their wake, an inky mist spreading though the ocean, heavier than the sea water and sinking towards the dozens of domes raised on the seabed. Hitting the interlocking plates of the structures, a devil-dust crackling fizzed over Charlotte’s helmet speakers, a fierce popping. Collapsing as if they were decaying flesh, the chambers began to crumble inwards, unlucky nomads who had not yet evacuated eaten away wherever the black mist touched them. A froth of disintegrating bone and flesh bubbled out along every point of contact with the wicked wave of pollution that had been unleashed.
‘The chasm-demon’s breath,’ whispered Elizica as Charlotte hesitated. She had been swimming straight for that evil substance. ‘I would sleep away another age if it meant not waking to see that filthy weapon afresh.’
A strange blurring in the water beyond her visor caught Charlotte’s eye. It was the Purity Queen, the catamaran-hulled submarine had fired up the stealth plates along her hull and they were vibrating like the polyps on a reef’s Dead Man’s Fingers. Her bow was slanting down, rising on an explosion of air from her ballast tanks, a beast rearing in the water to challenge the two newcomers. She was positioning herself for a perfect firing solution against the two darkships.
The commodore must be back on board.
‘They’ll go gentle with the u-boat,’ said Elizica. ‘They’ve tracked the submarine and will sense the sceptre is within her decks.’
Four torpedoes powered away from the Purity Queen ’s forward firing tubes, a pair sent streaming from each bow towards the darkships. Neither of the enemy vessels altered course, rather, their bows flowed out into needle- like lances, quick flashes of burning light — but black light, like the negative on a daguerreotype plate — pulses hitting each of the propelling torpedoes and sending them spinning towards the seabed. Inert lumps of slagged steel with their chemical warheads burnt into a cloud of yellow particles chasing the torpedoes’ wake down.
The two darkships passed either side of the Purity Queen, lances forming along the side of their waxy skin as the pair released an underwater broadside at the u-boat. As they struck, Charlotte’s sight vanished with the explosion of light across her retina. The fireworks departed and her vision returned. Charlotte saw the Purity Queen ’s hull had been left with dozens of steaming, melted holes, the new crevices in her hull leaking air as though it were blood. The u-boat’s proud conning tower had been singled out and left a ruin of melted metal, her forward and aft hydroplanes sheared off. In that single pass, the once proud vessel, ex of the Jackelian fleet sea arm, had been left a filleted wreck. One of her two propellers was still active and she nosed down towards the seabed, crashing into the kelp forest and ploughing it up. Then her stern rose, keeping the Purity Queen vertical for a second, a strange metal tower implanted on the seabed, before she tipped forward under the propulsion of her remaining screw. The remains of the submarine’s mangled conning tower impaled the vegetation and there she lay, stretched out on her belly, rivulets of oxygen streaming upwards from multiple hull ruptures.
Go gentle with her, my left foot!
‘For the chasm-seed, that was a light touch. Quick, girl-child, that way! Swim for those rotor-spears.’
Circling the Purity Queen’ s upended hull in vulture loops, the darkships had lost interest in the seanore, stunned into a near-rout by the appearance of these deadly auguries of destruction in their waters.
‘They are scanning the wreck for the sceptre, for the crystal in its orb,’ warned Elizica.
Charlotte was close to the centre of a clearing in the kelp forest. Corpses caught in the current floated past above rotor-spears and shock-spears piled against each other in cones of weaponry, the nomad mob jostling as they snatched wildly at the arms laid aside during their grand congress.
‘Take the Eye of Fate off your chest,’ ordered Elizica. ‘Press it against the warheads of the rotor-spears.’
Charlotte did as she was bid, spotting Vane amid the mob of scrambling nomads, trying to restore order among the warriors. ‘Vane, have them stand aside, I need to get to these weapons.’
‘Back, clansmen!’ Vane threw punches at the clawing warriors, holding the line against the panicked mass. ‘Do you have a plan, surface dweller?’
Charlotte rubbed the Eye of Fate against each first rotor-spear, a green light radiating from the amulet briefly rendering the weapon’s mechanism transparent. ‘You know how it is, Vane, a bit of that old-time prophecy juice.’
I hope this is good.
Elizica’s voice slipped through her mind. ‘I’m burning out the rotor-spears’ detonation triggers so there will be nothing for the darkships’ perimeter sonics to detonate early when they pass through their shields.’
I’m no engineer, but if you do that, just how in the Circle’s name are they going to explode when they hit?
‘Contact force,’ said Elizica. ‘They’ll need to be thrown from no further than twenty feet for them to have enough velocity to detonate.’
That sounds like suicide.
‘Let’s compromise and call it the act of a champion, girl-child. When I was your age I’d already jumped a bull and strangled a lion unconscious in an arena’s sands.’
You reached my age? Charlotte finished with the last of the cluster of rotor-spears, looping the Eye of Fate around her chest again. Picking up the nearest rotor-spear, she passed it to Vane. ‘These will do the job now, if there are seanore here courageous enough to swim close enough to the enemy to stand in a darkship’s shadow.’
Vane examined the rotor-spear, running a finger along its warhead as if he expected it to tingle now. ‘I fear shadows less than I fear your enchantments. I hope your witchery will be enough.’
Charlotte located the two darkships, their black mass hovering above the wrecked Jackelian u-boat. Weapon horns had formed along their bows, smaller this time, focused cutting beams slicing out and opening up the broken vessel’s hull. Someone was swimming towards the submarine from the camp — a solitary figure. Maeva? What did the old woman think she was doing over there? The third member of the Clan Raldama’s council hadn’t been spotted yet. The two interlopers were still too busy carving up their prize in their search for King Jude’s Sceptre. My sceptre, you bastards.
‘It’ll be enough.’ The nomads were hanging back uncertainly, Vane and his warriors, Korda too, the rival nomad chief’s skull covered by a silver war mask he had yet to push forward to cover his face. ‘You might need to find your balls first.’ Charlotte tugged one of the rotor-spears out of the seabed and pushed off for the wreck of the submarine.
Just tell me that the commodore is still alive inside there?
‘He may be.’ Elizica’s words slid through her head.
I’m not doing this for you or your dammed prophecy. I owe Jared my life and that sceptre is mine. I stole it… I get to sell it.
‘Yes, you get to sell it.’
Seanore were overtaking her now, the nomads shamed into action, their powerful webbed feet powering them ahead of her. Soon enough Charlotte was only swimming alongside wetbacks like her, the clans’ human members weighed down with rebreathers and diving suits. There were more warriors by her side than the numbers of rotor-spears she had altered — many were rushing towards their deaths with weapons that would prove useless against the intruders. Some of the nomads were already releasing rotor-spears, engine bulges propelling the spears forward in a flurry of bubbles, seanore war cries echoing inside Charlotte’s helmet as disembodied as Elizica’s voice. ‘Too far away.’
I don’t think that discipline is their strong point.
A flurry of warheads detonated before they had even reached the darkships’ ebony surface, others bouncing uselessly off the hulls, their velocity too spent to explode on impact.
I hope they don’t notice the duds bouncing off their ships.
