Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

‘Quiet, please. We’ve picked up the sonar signature of Advocacy war craft ahead of the convoy. When we attempted to alter course to bypass them, other elements of the gill-neck fleet rose to the surface to our bow and stern, blocking our safe passage.’

Sounds of panic started to rise among the merchant crewmen.

‘They mean to extract their toll,’ noted Boxiron. It sounded as if the brute was relishing the chance for battle.

‘Send us back to our ship,’ someone shouted. The cry was picked up and began to echo out among the milling merchants and trader officers.

‘We are manoeuvring too fast to drop our launches,’ called the lieutenant. ‘You’ll need to stay confined to the wardroom until we’ve outrun the gill-necks.’

Angry shouts came from the guests, demands to slow down and sail them back to the vessels where their responsibilities lay. Used to unquestioning command on their own ships, hard men who could command coarse sailors, this wasn’t, Dick considered, the kind of crowd you wanted to turn ugly on you.

Dick watched the sailors who had been acting as stewards and hosts vanishing purposefully into the bowels of the ship, called to their battle stations. Not sprinting, but hardly slouching either. Well trained. Cogs in a machine that’s been greased by practice. ‘We need to get back to the boat bay.’

‘I concur,’ said Daunt, his gaze flitting between the angry faces of the convoy’s shipmasters. ‘It’s only a matter of time before someone on the bridge thinks to assign a company of marines to ensure the safety of their guests — not to mention our compliance.’

Sadly groaned and extradited himself from the comfort of a chair where he had sunk. ‘I’m not one to shy away from a little aggro, Mister Tull, but does it have to kick off at sea?’

‘I won’t let you die,’ said Dick, pushing his informant towards the door they had used to enter the mess hall. ‘I still need you to testify for me, don’t I?’

‘My word won’t count for much, says I.’

‘It’ll count for a lot less if I let Walsingham’s assassins toss your corpse in an alley back home.’ And it’s not as if I’ve got that many friends left alive, is it?

Boxiron closed the door behind them. The four of them were standing in the open on a deck gantry, the ship’s aft lanterns running behind them. Dick stared out between the flagship’s churning wheels. Nothing. How could you hope to spot anything out there? Just dark crashing waves, the night sky’s canopy only set apart from the sea by stars. No sign of the gill-necks. No sign of a war brewing.

‘They haven’t tried to stop a convoy before, have they?’ Sadly asked.

‘Harried only,’ said Boxiron. ‘I believe this counts as an escalation in tensions.’

It’s never made easy. Not for me. But it was more than that. Something about tonight felt wrong, and it wasn’t only the ex-parson’s odd reaction to the vice-admiral. The gill-neck force just happened to have chosen the precise time to corral the convoy when the masters of the convoy were off their bridges and on the flagship. Even at the best of times, moving a convoy was more akin to a drover driving his flock to market. With the captains gathered here, it wasn’t so much a convoy, as a seaborne shooting gallery. And as used as Dick was to bad luck, this felt too much like it was straying from coincidence into the realm he specialized in. Treason.

‘The escort ships are pulling out of line and forming up as an independent flotilla,’ announced the sailor on the Purity Queen ’s sonar station, two greasy hands clasped to his earphones with his eyes shut, as if he could picture in his mind the ironclads taking position.

‘A grand disposition for cutting through the gill-necks’ ranks,’ said the commodore. ‘But it leaves our line of civilian tubs as ripe for picking as plums on a warm summer’s day. They’re not going to be happy out there.’

Charlotte knew how the merchant vessels’ crews felt. Waking up groggy and disoriented and with bizarre memories of a pursuit by monsters was bad enough. But waking up to find herself pressed into the crew of this strange submersible craft; its roguish company with their insular manners and sailor’s slang — an alien tongue of binnacle lists, drift counts and parbuckling — a miniature kingdom of cramped corridors and cabins and unfamiliar equipment. And everywhere Charlotte wandered the same odour of burnt oil and uniforms sweated by near-tropical heat while running submerged. She might still have King Jude’s sceptre, but the price she was paying for its possession was growing higher by the day. Sometimes, it was hard to tell where reality started and her delirium-haunted dreams had halted.

Charlotte piped up. ‘What about our people on the flagship?’

Our people. Well, the steamman had saved her life, so she supposed she owed him, not to mention the eccentric ex-churchman who seemed determined to warn her of supernatural threats to her life. Feeling gratitude to people wasn’t something Charlotte was used to, or a situation she felt at ease with. Especially because she wouldn’t complain if the commodore decided to turn his u-boat around and head right back for the solid land of home. I’d take my chances in the rookeries and disappear into the underworld. There was only so far the reach of a bunch of evil royalists and crooked secret police could extend, wasn’t there?

‘The Zealous is turning to meet the enemy vessels,’ said the commodore. ‘They’re moving at a rate of knots now, too fast to lower their launches safely. Jethro and that sly old bugger Dick Tull will be confined on board, though not willingly, I’ll wager, if Boxiron slips his gears.’ He scratched his beard thoughtfully. ‘Fire up our fish-scales outside — let’s see if the money I paid that brainy wretch in the naval yards is any more useful than a scraping of barnacles growing on my new hull. Prepare to bring us around, helm.’

‘Stealth plating receiving charge,’ reported the crewman. There was the slightest of vibrations from outside the hull, as if a tiny mosquito had come awake and was doing circuits of their cramped control room. ‘Acoustic profile is approaching optimum.’

The commodore checked a bank of machinery that looked more recently installed than most of the rusting, heavily greased equipment on board. ‘As slippery as an eel and hopefully as hard to seize too, to the phones of every boat in the water. Down-plane two degrees, helm, slip us out of the convoy and turn us around. Run us into the wake of The Zealous.’

‘We’re taking pings,’ sounded the phones man. ‘No back-echo. We’re displacing all incoming noise!’

‘One number short on the convoy’s list, then.’ said the commodore, his voice satisfied. ‘We’ve got two hours or so before we have to rest the stealth plates, or the mortal things will burn themselves out. After The Zealous, now. If I know Jethro and the rest of our friends, they’ll be pushing off the warship before long. We’ll pick them up and let Vice-admiral Cockburn and the gill-necks dance the sea waltz together while we set a course for the heart of the Advocacy.’

‘Fish in the water!’ warned the sailor on the phones station. ‘Multiple launches running hot. Depth charge spreads descending too.’

His words were borne out by a distant reverberation, the Purity Queen’s hull quivering at the faraway detonations.

‘Who fired first?’ the commodore demanded.

‘Simultaneous exchange of fire, skipper,’ said the sailor. ‘Damned if both fleets didn’t open up on each other at the same time!’

‘Bloody fools. This is meant to be a convoy, not a wicked sea duel. Cockburn’s orders should have been to avoid trouble, not provoke it.’