Stephen Hunt - Secrets of the Fire Sea

Hannah attempted to help the commodore, who was using his spear gun as a lever to try to force open one of the grilles, but the barnacle-encrusted bars had been as good as welded shut by the rust and wear of age. Her suit's interior was beginning to burn her now, the layers of insulation starting to be overwhelmed by the searing heat of the boils. Hannah felt a twinge of panic. How long before they were spotted and hauled back to the fleet's brig? Her toes inside her fins felt as if they had been jabbed into a fire grate. If they swam to the surface, could the pair of them scale the towering black cliffs of Jago – in full view of the enemy fleet, with the surface crowded by Pericurian soldiers waiting to engage the enemy? This escape was looking more and more like madness, the commodore's warnings deadly prophetic. Hannah was still struggling with the drain cover when a stream of brown dust and coral debris rained down on her helmet. She looked up. The siphon on the side of the devilfish's head had opened up above them, figures in the bright orange rubbers of modified scald suits arrowing out of the opening. It was a maintenance tunnel hatch and it was disgorging Jago's defenders – tug service divers, the merchant marine and harbour repair crews, come to ensure the underwater gateway stayed sealed to the invader's fleet!

The commodore pulled her back just as the lance of a spear gun bubbled past, entering the sewage grille they had been trying to force open. That shot had come from above. Of course! She and the commodore were wearing Pericurian suits. A choice of outfit that looked as though it was going to get them both killed. A couple of divers from the ragtag army raised in Jago's defence were zeroing in on Hannah and the commodore, breaking off from the main force swimming towards the sappers attempting to clear the harbour entrance. Wicked barbed lances were exchanged between the Pericurian invaders and Jagonese, seemingly slow in the water, but powering fast enough to skewer a handful of the defenders – explosions of red mist under the sea where the spears found their mark.

Another barbed bolt cut through the water, this time only an inch from Hannah's chest. Then the two divers from the city were upon them, the commodore releasing his spear gun's single round into the two attackers. The diver the commodore shot was carried back by the spear's impact, clutching the metal barb that had impaled his gut. Hannah desperately tapped her helmet, trying to indicate that her eyes were those of the race of man, not ursine. But the surviving attacker was beyond noticing, closing in on the commodore with a dagger drawn from his leg sheath. Jared Black had his own Pericurian diver's blade drawn and the two figures twisted and turned in the water as they grappled and fought for purchase.

Hannah kicked over to the two figures thrashing in slow motion. She pulled on the handle of her knife, freeing it from her leg sheath in time to slash at the back of the Jagonese diver's seashell-shaped helmet, cutting a wedge out of the air hose connecting his helmet to its tank. As the lion's share of the defender's air supply began to ladder upwards, the commodore pushed their attacker away and allowed the figure to swim desperately up towards the surface. Hannah was watching the weight belt their attacker had just detached sink towards her when she felt something as powerful as a whale slam into her shoulder, sending her corkscrewing back through the water.

Hannah just caught a glimpse of the rotating propeller on the back of a Pericurian torpedo ploughing forward to slam into the cliff, before the first shockwaves of the explosion reached her and blew her into a bottomless chasm of darkness.

'He ain't firing,' shouted the convict, his voice lost behind the barricade, lost against the hymn-like howling of the Pericurian soldiers, their fierce war songs given counterpoint by the crash of turret rifles against the brass tanks of compressed gas that powered their weapons.

'I cannot!' said Jethro, squatting sadly against his unfired rifle as though it was a crutch. 'I cannot take a life in this way. Every death is my own.'

'It will be your bloody own, alright,' said the convict, sighting down his rifle. 'The wet-snouts are coming forward a second time.'

'Bayonets!' yelled someone behind them. 'Get your cutlery fixed.'

'It is not his way,' said Boxiron, watching the tide of fur, fang and claw storming down the street at them. The attackers were firing wildly, pitons smashing through the barricade and hurling the kneeling ranks of those freed from the prison off their feet with each impact.

'He ain't firing,' repeated the convict, as if this was the only thing that mattered, his bravado fleeing now the defenders had made contact with the terrifying ranks of their massive enemy. The convict might have been a steamman himself, stuck in a loop with fear.

'You seem more in control,' Jethro said to his steamman friend, sounding surprised. 'Before we voyaged here you would have slipped into a fury by now.'

Boxiron stood up, his right arm turning the massive hammer slowly in preparation. 'This is my way. This is what I am for, but I will require your help.'

'He ain't firing,' protested the convict by their side, fumbling for another charge to slip into his smoking breech.

'Don't worry,' said Boxiron, laying his left hand upon the convict's shoulder. 'I am to claim his share.' He looked down at Jethro. 'It is time.'

'He ain't firing,' the convict coughed at the huge ursine who had smashed through the barricade and pushed a bayonet through his ribs. Howling with victory, the giant invader shot the man once, the impact of the piton throwing the corpse off her blooded blade and clearing her turret rifle.

Jethro heard the clack of the Pericurian's turret rifle drum as its barrel swept around towards the steamman and the ursine fed a fresh piton into her breech. 'Forgive me,' Jethro whispered as he seized the lever on the back of Boxiron's spine and shoved it up to five. Top gear. Boxiron jolted straight as if he had been struck by lightning, rotating the hammer in an uppercut that lifted the ursine off her feet and sent her sailing into the bow window of a deserted shop. Too panicked to reload their rifles now that they were thrusting and cutting at the enemy through the crumbling barricade, a handful of the Jagonese convicts turned and ran, yelling in fear, the first to flee collapsing as one of the police militiamen shot him in the back with a pistol.

'Coward!' yelled Boxiron, striking forward to sink the flat of his hammer into the policeman's gut. 'This is how you lead!' He stepped over the groaning officer's body and vaulted the collapsing barrier, his massive weight clanking into the middle of the Pericurian assault, clearing a circle of broken bones with his warhammer. Shocked ursine stumbled back as this huge iron brute landed in their midst and lashed out at them. 'Take only those that I leave!'

Jethro looked at his hand in horror as the Jagonese defenders vaulted the blockade and threw themselves down at the stalled, hesitating assault. The hand that had just turned the clock back on everything he had accomplished since rescuing his friend from the influence of the criminal flash mobs in the slums of the Jackelian capital. Jethro pushed through the barricade, just behind the melee, the only evidence of his steamman friend the brief flash of a hammerhead among the screams and shouts. The convicts pressed forward taking Boxiron at his word and impaling the wounded soldiers trying to crawl away along the ground.

'Please,' Jethro begged them. 'Take them prisoner. Enough, they are wounded.'

'Savages. Filthy, treacherous wet-snouts. Savage. Savage. Savage.'

The convicts pushed the ex-parson away as he tried to restrain them. Jethro Daunt stumbled to his knees. 'This is wrong. Wrong.'