Douglas Child - The Wheel of Darkness

Constance clutched the bookshelves, rooted by fear, as Pendergast lay on the living room floor, against the wall, deathly still, haloed in mist. The ship continued to tilt, things crashing around her, the roar of water outside rising as the ship heeled. More than once she had tried to stretch out a hand to him, but she had been unable to keep hold, with the violent slanting of the cabin and the crash of books and objects around her.

Now, as she watched, the bizarre and fearful thing that had covered Pendergast like swamp vapor began to shift and break apart. Hope that had left her heart during the brief, dreadful vigil now suddenly returned: Pendergast had won. The tulpa was vanquished.

But then, with a new thrill of horror, she saw that the tulpa was not dispersing—it was instead sinking

into

Pendergast’s body.

Suddenly, his clothes began to twitch and writhe, as if countless cockroaches were skittering about beneath them. His limbs convulsed, his frame animated as by a foreign presence. His facial muscles spasmed and vellicated. His eyes opened briefly, staring out at nothing, and in that brief silvery window she saw depths of terror and despair as deep as the universe itself.

A foreign presence . . .

Suddenly, Constance was conflicted no longer. She knew what she had to do.

She stood up, forced her way across the room and up the bizarrely slanting staircase, and passed into Pendergast’s bedroom. Ignoring the heeling of the ship, she searched through one drawer after another until her hand closed over his Les Baer .45. She pulled out the weapon, drew back the slide to ensure there was a round in the chamber, then clicked off the safety.

She knew how Pendergast would want to live—and how he would want to die. If she couldn’t help him in any other way, at least she could help him with this.

Weapon in hand, she exited the bedroom and—taking tight hold of the railing—descended the slanting stairs to the living room.

74

LESEUR STARED AT the plated red bow of the Grenfell as the Canadian ship desperately backed its screws, trying to swing itself out of the way of the Britannia even as the great ocean liner yawed into it at flank speed.

The deck of the aux bridge shook as the podded propulsion systems strained under the extreme maneuver forced upon them. LeSeur didn’t even need to glance at the instruments to know it was over: he could extrapolate the trajectories of the two ships merely by staring out the bridge windows. He knew they were each on a course that would bring them together in the worst possible way. Even though the Grenfell ’s headway had fallen off three or four knots while it tried to maneuver, the Britannia was still driving forward at full power with its two fixed screws while the aft pods, rotated ninety degrees, delivered a sideways thrust that was swinging its stern around like a baseball bat toward the Grenfell .

“

My God, my God, my God

. . .” LeSeur heard the chief engineer repeating to himself, a continuous sotto voce prayer, as he stared out the window.

The aux bridge shuddered, tilting at an even crazier angle. The deck warning systems had lit up as the lowest decks shipped water. LeSeur heard a chorus of fresh sounds: the screeching and tearing of plated steel, the machine-gun popping of rivets, the deep groaning of the ship’s immense steel frame.

“My God,”

whispered the engineer again.

A deep boom sounded from below, followed by a violent shimmy, as if the hull of the ship had been rung like a massive bell. The violence of it threw LeSeur to the floor; and as he rose to his knees a second boom rocked the aux bridge, slamming him sideways into the corner of the navigation table and gashing his forehead. A framed photograph of the Britannia ’s launching, with Queen Elizabeth presiding, popped free of its screw mounts and cartwheeled along the floor, shedding pieces of glass, skidding to a halt in front of LeSeur’s face. With a sense of unreality, he stared at the queen’s serene, smiling visage, one white-gloved hand raised to the adoring crowd, and then for a moment he felt a horrible wash of failure— his failure. He had failed his queen, his country, everything he stood for and believed in. He had allowed the ship to be taken over by a monster. It was his fault.

He grabbed the edge of the table and pulled himself up, feeling a rivulet of warm blood running down into his eye. With a savage sweep of his hand he wiped it away and tried to recover his senses.

He immediately realized that something significant had just happened to the ship. The deck was righting itself at increasing speed, and the Britannia surged forward, no longer yawing but now moving straight ahead. Fresh alarms sounded.

“What on earth—?” LeSeur said. “Halsey, what’s happening?” Halsey had scrambled to his feet, and he stared at the engine panel, his face blanked out with horror.

But LeSeur didn’t need Halsey to explain. He suddenly understood what had happened: the Britannia had torn off both of its aft rotating pods—essentially, its rudder. The Grenfell was now almost dead ahead, a few dozen seconds from impact. The Britannia had stopped swinging into her and was now driving toward her in a straight line.

LeSeur grabbed for the radio.

“Grenfell!”

he cried. “Stop backing and straighten out! We’ve lost steerage!”

The call was unnecessary; LeSeur could already see a massive boiling of water around Grenfell ’s stern as her captain understood implicitly what he had to do. The Grenfell trimmed itself parallel to the Britannia just as the two ships closed in on each other.

There was a rush of sound as the Grenfell ’s bows passed the Britannia ’s, the ships so close LeSeur could hear the roaring of water, compressed into a wind tunnel formed by the narrow space between the two hulls. There was a loud series of bangs and screeches of metal as the port bridge wing of the Grenfell made contact with a lower deck of the Britannia, trailing vast geysers of sparks—and then, quite suddenly, it was over. The two ships had passed.

A ragged cheer rose up over the alarms on the auxiliary bridge, and LeSeur could make out a corresponding cheer coming over the VHF from the

Grenfell

.

The chief engineer looked over at him, his face bathed in sweat. “Mr. LeSeur, we lost both aft pods, just tore them right off—”

“I know,” LeSeur replied. “And the hull’s breached.” He felt a swell of triumph. “Mr. Halsey, let the aft bilge spaces and compartments six and five flood

.

Seal the bilge bulkheads amidships.”

But Halsey did nothing but stand there.

“Do it!”

LeSeur barked.

“I can’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

Halsey held out his hands. “Not possible. The bulkheads seal automatically.” He pointed at an emergency panel.

“Then

unseal

them! Get a team down there to open the hatches manually!”

“Can’t,” repeated Halsey helplessly. “Not when they’re flooded. There’s no override.”

“God

damn

this automation! What’s the status on the other two pods?”

“Operational. Each delivering full power to the screws. But our speed is down to twenty knots.”

“And with the aft pods gone, she’ll be steering with engine power now.” LeSeur glanced over at the officer of the watch. “ETA Carrion Rocks?”

“At this speed and heading, thirty-five minutes, sir.”

LeSeur stared out the bridge windows at the forecastle of the Britannia , still pounding relentlessly through the seas. Even at twenty knots they were screwed. What were their options? None that he could see.