Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

‘It’s not like the old days,’ said Sadly. ‘The Court of the Air isn’t what it used to be. You’ll see.’

When Commodore Black came onto the bridge of the submersible, Daunt noticed it was with the support of a cane and trailed by Maeva, the old u-boat man shushing the woman and protesting her attentions, accusing her of being a ‘blessed clucking hen’.

Daunt was glad to see that the commodore had healed relatively rapidly, but the sight of him back on his feet was a painful remainder that Boxiron was nowhere close to a similar recovery. Quite the opposite, in fact. Every day at sea seemed to bring a fresh challenge in keeping the steamman clinging onto life. It wasn’t the fault of the small surgical bay — it had been equipped to deal with patients from the race of man, not a failing citizen of the Steamman Free State. The logical part of Daunt’s mind knew that a single person’s life was an insignificant matter in the balance of the great game they had been caught up in. But his friend’s dwindling reserves of energy and increasingly tenuous hold on the great pattern somehow seemed far more concrete than the prospect of the sea-bishops opening up a gateway back to their infernal home.

‘So here we are again, good captain,’ Daunt greeted the commodore. ‘Wedged between that rock and a hard place. How is-?’

‘Boxiron’s a tough old bird,’ said the commodore. ‘And this boat’s surgeon is game for a challenge. He got my creaking old bones back on their feet.’ He waved Maeva away. ‘Stop fussing, lass. There’s plenty that’s lining up to kill old Blacky, but it won’t be a spot of exercise that does for me.’ He hobbled over to the chart table and traced the headings mapped out on the table. ‘What’s this — this heading can’t be right?’

Daunt peered to where the commodore’s attention lay. The ex-parson wasn’t an expert, but to his eyes the temperature gradients of the chart seemed to be running significantly hot. They were aiming for the margins of the Fire Sea. ‘You’ve navigated us through worse than that before, surely?’

‘No, lad, I haven’t. This-’ he stabbed his finger on the centre of the bearing. ‘This is the Isla Furia. No sane sailor crosses that part of the Fire Sea.’

‘The island doesn’t appear to be located far inside the magma fields?’

‘There’s no need for it to be positioned any deeper, Jethro Daunt, for a sensible skipper to avoid it. There’s an underwater vent in the region mortal fiery enough to cook out even the best u-boat’s cooling system. The Isla Furia has a volcano that’s the devil’s own cauldron; you sail past that island and you’re liable to find molten boulders as large as houses raining down on you. And should its rocks miss your hull, the terrible place spews out choking clouds of poison gas.’

‘You’ve seen this with your own eyes?’

The commodore tapped the charts. ‘From seventy miles away, that I have. As close as I ever wanted to get. We’re almost on the Isla Furia’s doorstep, so you’ll have the sight in front of your eyes soon enough.’

That he did. Daunt saw what the commodore was afraid of through the bridge’s oddly transparent portholes. They were passing over an underwater plain of superheated water, the boils that fringed the magma fields of the Fire Sea, a basalt surface littered with the wreck of vessels, craft from dozens of nations and as many centuries. Paddle steamers and clippers, galleons and fire-breakers, u-boats and liners, debris overgrown with strange organic sculptures of fire coral.

‘This wreckage grows thicker the closer you get,’ said the commodore. ‘Those poor devils are just the surface craft whose crews were overcome with gas and holed lightly enough for them drift out a-ways before sinking on the margins of the Isla Furia.’ He turned to find Sadly, the court’s agent standing behind the two horizontal pilot positions. ‘Did you lose a grip on your marbles, lad, in that terrible prison camp you were locked up in? Have you taken a bump on your noggin while escaping? You’re heading for super-heated vents — that’s the Isla Furia on the horizon!’

‘We’re not a conventional craft,’ said Sadly. ‘We’re rated for where we’re heading.’

‘And are you rated for being hit by a squall of molten depth charges as large as carts, lad? For that’s what waiting for you on this course. I know the Fire Sea. No one has penetrated as deep as old Blacky into this foul place. Turn north-north-west twenty degrees and head for the Abbadon boils. Better choppy waters than suicidal ones.’

‘I’m feeling lucky, says I.’

Daunt reached out to steady the commodore, the u-boat man shaking with incredulous anger and his remaining fever. ‘Peace, good captain. I believe the Court of the Air prefers the sort of luck it can manufacture, rather than relying on fate’s random charity.’

‘I’ve just had my precious Purity Queen filleted by a pack of black-hearted demons and now you want me to risk my neck on this exotic tub of the Court’s? Poor old Blacky, sick and in his dotage, chased out of his home by traitors and devils set on his tail by his wicked sister, hounded across the seas… and now his unlucky stars are calling for a chance to toss boiling boulders at him? It’s a happy thing I won’t be around for much longer, Jethro Daunt. A happy thing fate won’t have these miserable bones to torment!’

Daunt said nothing and waited. Up ahead, the underwater plain was littered with the graveyard of vessels, ships laying on ships, moulded together by thick fire coral, a floor of unwise mariners and submariners forming their own geological strata. Beyond the hills of coral, a curtain of steaming water from the broken vents of the seabed shimmered. So thick with fury that nothing was visible beyond its violent turmoil. Undaunted, the Court’s vessel passed over the carpet of destroyed craft, heading right for the centre of the maelstrom.

‘Tell me, Barnabas,’ the commodore moaned, ‘Tell me the name of this strange craft of yours so I know on what boat my end is to come?’

‘The Court doesn’t name its vessels,’ said Sadly. ‘We’re travelling on U-boat 414.’

The commodore flinched. ‘No, lad, no! You talk to me of your blessed luck, then you tell me you’re challenging all the forces of the sea by daring to sail on a vessel with no name?’

Sadly just smiled ‘The Purity Queen carried a name. How long did you last against that pair of darkships?’

As Jared Black moaned, Daunt gazed at the raging wall coming up at them. In his frail state, the commodore might be better sleeping his exhaustion off next to Charlotte’s cabin, or playing cards with Dick Tull and the surviving crewmen of the Purity Queen in the hold. True to Sadly’s word, the submersible hit the wall of superheated water and passed through it with none of the creaks and complaints that would have sounded from the hull of a normal Jackelian submersible. The temperature on the bridge stayed at the same comfortable level, the gentle ticking from fans inside the air-vents continuing as untroubled as if they were cruising off the green waters of the Kingdom’s coast. Seconds after they had breached the curtain, its boiling frenzy evaporated leaving them travelling down a clear corridor of sea water. The furious underwater boils walled them in port and starboard, with spherical objects half-visible through the turbulence, a chain of iron orbs tied to the sea floor by cables. Sea mines.

‘By Lord Tridentscale’s beard, what’s this?’ the commodore cursed.

‘The Court’s luck,’ said Daunt. ‘Is that not so, good agent?’

Sadly said nothing, but he didn’t need to.

Daunt pointed outside. ‘These vents aren’t natural, they’re an artificial thermal barrier. Machines under the seabed cooking the water, with mines to sink anyone that tries to push through the shield. There must be something of considerable value on the Isla Furia to warrant all of this.’