Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

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.’

‘We can’t get them off?’

‘Not with a starfish wrapped around The Zealous, lass. Those iron beasts are troop carriers — nautical siege engines. That vessel will be swarming with boarding parties. If there’s one crumb of comfort for our friends, it’s that the gill-necks must be looking to take prisoners and prizes. Hostages to bargain with, and a prize vessel to embarrass Parliament into negotiating.’

He surrendered the periscope for Charlotte to gaze out for a moment onto the carnage. It was as if an octopus had clambered over the dark silhouette of The Zealous, two vessels locked in a death struggle which the Jackelians had already lost. With The Zealous’s propulsion wheels stilled, fires were left burning across her decks, lights in her portholes flickering. Sailors who had fallen off or abandoned the flagship were visible as small as bugs under her beam, struggling in the water.

‘Phones,’ said the commodore. ‘Any sign that the gill-necks are aware that we’re here?’

‘No pings being received, skipper,’ answered the sailor. ‘They’re too busy chasing the rest of the convoy off.’

‘They’ve still got eyes, though,’ said the commodore half to himself. ‘We are taking a mortal risk, sitting here. We just need a single gill-neck swimming close enough to lay their peepers on the Purity Queen.’

Charlotte sighed. What had she been thinking? That they would just sail up to The Zealous while Jethro Daunt and the steamman tossed themselves off the deck and landed in front of the u-boat? This was the reality of war in the periscope’s sweep… confusion and murder and darkness and men drowning in the water or burning in the oily debris set afire, two vessels locked together while marines tried to hunt down the opposition. A world shrunk no larger than a corridor down a gun sight and the comrade minding their rear from ambush.