Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

Salvos from the guards’ rifles grew erratic, their fire redirected. The sight of dozens of angry tiger crabs lumbering up the beach and heading for them enough to turn any gill-neck’s thoughts to self-preservation.

Sadly limped behind Daunt’s trail, his cane now being used as a mere support, the boot of his good foot lashing out to overturn a snapping juvenile version of the monsters rising out of the sea behind them. ‘That’s what I love about this job, always something new.’

Daunt reached Boxiron, the steamman on his knees surrounded by a pile of dead gill-necks, any challengers either dead or retreating to cover in the tree line. The steamman was nearly sliced in two, half his chest blown away by the guards’ heavy weaponry, exposed pipes ruptured and fountaining hydraulic liquid over his broken human-milled machinery. With only one arm left, he was flailing about, trying to stab the ground with his remaining machete. Daunt didn’t know if there was purpose to the movements, or if the pain of his wounds had overwhelmed the steamman. Thank the Circle, his precious steamman skull looks undamaged. At least, no more dented than normal.

Boxiron’s words fell out distorted from his shattered voicebox. ‘I am finished here. Finished here.’

‘Help me!’ Daunt begged Sadly, the rat-faced agent moving in to support Boxiron’s gashed open side where his right arm had been sheered off. Daunt took the weight of the semi-functioning steamman under the remaining shoulder, jagged rents in his friend’s clavicle plate cutting through the cloth of Daunt’s shoulder as he attempted to spur the steamman forward.

‘You’ve got your strength back, old friend,’ said Daunt, rubbing the area above the steamman’s rotating calculation drum where the power limiter had been welded. Please, just enough strength to see us to the boat.

Boxiron’s legs wheezed steam from his joints as he blundered forward, his knee gimbals buckling as they headed for the remaining rescue boat. Daunt could see the lick of energy from the sailors’ capacitors as they held back the roused tiger crabs crawling ashore.

‘What gear — am — I — in?’ Boxiron’s voicebox fluttered weakly.

Daunt glanced behind him. The gearbox on his spine wasn’t even there anymore, a wreck of holed iron in its place, crystal boards sparking in anger underneath. ‘You’re in top gear, old steamer.’

‘’Ware the left,’ warned Sadly.

Daunt’s spare hand twisted the trident around and he triggered a burst of energy at the tiger crabs pincering towards them. The creatures stopped twenty feet away as the blast crackled around their carapaces, waving their claws towards him in an almost human gesture of defiance. Daunt grunted and hauled his friend forward. Moving with the steamman was like trying to walk with a house’s weight in bricks stuffed inside a rucksack. If Boxiron’s failing power gave out on them now, nothing short of a crane was going to get the old steamer to the rescue boat.

Just up this dune and across the sands to the water. We can do that. His tattered boots dug into the dunes, sand spilling into his shoes. So heavy. Just a little further. Daunt considered dumping the weight of the capacitor pack, but abandoned the idea as he saw the ring of tiger crabs closing in on the beached rescue craft.

‘Clever perishers,’ hissed Sadly, sweating as he dug his way up the slope with his cane. He was glancing behind them. The tiger crabs had formed into a line to attack the gill-necks in the tree line, an almost orderly queue, which meant the guards’ heavy guns could only be bought to bear on the lead creature. ‘Always had a taste for lobsters, says I. Never realized they were so bleeding smart, Mister Daunt.’

‘Lobsters are a different genus from tiger crabs,’ said Daunt. ‘The nephropidae family. I’ll wager you never served them in your ordinary.’

‘Too many pennies for the great unwashed,’ said Sadly as they reached the top of the dune.

There was a strange fizzing noise from within Boxiron’s exposed chest, as if some chemistry was at work, an acidic green cloud merging from the torn rents, burnt rubber and a toast-like stench. Before the fleeting tendrils of smoke evaporated they seemed to coalesce into images of steamman faces, angular and proud and angry, the sea breeze catching the mist and rubbing them out as they formed.

‘The Steamo Loa,’ hissed Boxiron. ‘Have I — earned a — warrior’s end?’

Were the ancestral spirits of his people here to help or hinder? Here to claim a noble spirit and drag him into the deep layers of code in their Hall of Ancestors?

Daunt lurched forward, swatting the smoke with the tip of his trident. ‘Away with you! You’re not even proper gods. Just fireflies pestering his corpse. Your kind never helped him in life, only I did. All these years, you never came to help him.’

Tiger crabs scuttled away from the circle blockading the boat, advancing towards the exhausted Jackelians and their wounded comrade. Daunt lashed out with bolts of energy, driving them unwillingly off, reluctant to back down now. ‘I deny you!’ shouted Daunt. ‘And so does Boxiron.’

The tiger crabs could almost taste their revenge against these interlopers who had dared make a battleground of their ancient hatching ground, but the lick of the power electric was a pain that even their toughened carapaces proved no defence against. Daunt and Sadly pushed through the gap in their ranks, the ex-parson’s trident swinging left and right, with the capacitor pack whining in complaint to be run down so rapidly, fire flung to either side

At last, in front of the rescue boat, the three of them collapsed exhausted. Sailors in simple striped shirts and black canvas breeches leapt out to their aid as Sadly ordered the steamman to be hauled on board.

Boxiron’s silver skull rested in the sand as the sailors found their purchase below his wrecked body. ‘Always — my friend.’

‘Preserve your strength,’ urged Daunt.

Half the sailors waded into the water to refloat the rescue boat, electrical fire from the remaining crewmen licking port and starboard, the noise of the reversing screws blended in with an unholy snapping emanating from Boxiron’s exposed innards.

Charlotte looked in horror as a party of the Purity Queen ’s surviving crewmen emerged disoriented from the u-boat’s wreckage. They were crawling out of an airlock in her keel; once designed to drop submariners onto the seabed from the vessel above, but now part of the upended craft’s topside. They emerged straight into the approaching darkship’s field of view, the cutting beam from its bow spine slicing out and separating the crewmen’s legs from their torsos. Maeva still had her back against the wrecked u-boat’s hull, lying on flattened kelp fronds, a bed for her and the unconscious commodore nestled between her legs.

‘Go, girl,’ Maeva urged Charlotte. ‘Swim away. You’ve no rotor-spears left and firing a shock-spear against that darkship would be like tossing seashells against a shark.’

‘My bloody sceptre is still inside the Purity Queen, I’m not going anywhere.’

‘A royalist antique won’t be any good to a corpse. There’s no glory in dying for it here.’

Damn the glory, it’s the money I want.

It was growing hard to focus on Maeva’s words, waves of pain from the nearing proximity of the enemy vessel burrowing into her skull. Charlotte wasn’t the only one feeling it. Maeva’s teeth were gritted tight behind her diving helmet’s visor.

Charlotte knelt to feel the commodore’s suit for tears. ‘How is he? Can you get him out of here?’

‘He’s sleeping and I think I’ll join him. I’m too tired to run, too tired to want to live in a world where darkships have returned. Not like you. The prophecy rests with you. You’re young enough to live through this. Go, leave us.’