Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

Commodore Black stumbled towards Maeva, clutching a red weal of blood on his shoulder. Shot-drunk and trembling, he landed on his hands and knees by the nomad woman’s side. ‘Don’t move, lass.’

‘I’ve found a way to punish you after all, Jared,’ she grimaced.

‘Save your strength now,’ the commodore pleaded. ‘We’ll patch you up. Just be quiet and let me look at you again.’

‘And how do I look?’ Maeva coughed.

‘Fine, lass. Just like when we first met.’

‘You always were a honeyed-tongued pirate.’

‘Privateer, Maeva. Never a pirate.’

A grey-haired woman emerged from the darkship portal Charlotte had opened, more sailors at her side. Alighting on the dock, the woman smoothly kicked the commodore off all fours and onto his back. ‘There you are brother, lying on your fat arse. That’s the way you like to spend your wars. Before you run away, at least, leaving the rest of us to die.’

‘Mercy,’ coughed the commodore, raising an arm. ‘Parlay.’

‘One privateer to another? I think we’re a little beyond that, don’t you?’ Gemma bent down and reached through the netting binding Charlotte, a blade in her hand. Slicing open Charlotte’s diving suit, the woman reached through and ripped the amulet painfully from Charlotte’s neck. ‘No more stage tricks from you, Mistress Shades. Our mutual friend Mister Walsingham is looking forward to renewing your acquaintance. It seems you owe him a sceptre and he’s not very pleased with all the hoops you’re making him jump through to retrieve it.’

Charlotte tried to speak, but the burning agony was as bad as plunging her fist into a stoked fireplace.

‘The capacitors on the net are very sensitive,’ smiled Gemma Dark. ‘I’d keep your witticisms to yourself, thief girl, until you’re safely locked up in the feeding pens. You did want to visit my allies’ seed-city, no? It’s a long dive down. I’m here to save you the trouble of stealing a darkship. Always happy to give any friend of my brother the scenic journey.’

Maeva groaned on the floor, her fingers reaching weakly for her fallen shock-spear, but Gemma Dark’s foot swept the nomad’s weapon a couple of inches beyond her dying grasp. ‘No, I don’t think you’re coming along for the ride. You’d bleed all over my darkship’s cabin, and while our allies do so appreciate human blood, I’d rather not have to mop it up for them.’ Gemma Dark knelt down alongside Maeva. ‘Your filthy nomad vermin outside Lishtiken didn’t last very long, I’m afraid. The city wasn’t as unprepared for your arrival as it appeared. Time for you to join your friends.’ The commodore’s sister produced a pistol and shot Maeva through the heart, her body shuddering on the floor. Charlotte jounced in shock at the cold-blooded slaughter, the commodore’s moan coming out as half a sob.

‘That’s as much mercy as I have for your kind, sea-wanderer. Same as your seanore friends showed any royalist unlucky enough to be captured crossing your hunting grounds.’ She pushed the commodore away from the nomad’s corpse with her boot, clicking her fingers for the mob of sailors to come and secure him with manacles. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not getting off so easily, brother. We’ll have a proper family reunion, you and I, appropriately unhurried. The sea-bishops have a machine that allows them to drain a mind as if it’s a swamp, but where’s the sport in that? I’ll handle your interrogation the way all traitors to the cause should be treated… your fat arse, an iron bar, and your dear little sister for company.’

‘You didn’t have to kill Maeva,’ whispered the commodore. ‘You didn’t have to.’

‘Oh, I think we should start as we mean to go on, don’t you?’

Charlotte lay on the deck, the sailors deactivating the shock net only to manacle her arms and bundle her up inside the darkship. At least she was free of the vicious shocks pursuing her every roll and twitch. ‘You can’t trust the sea-bishops! Those monsters don’t have allies, they have herds. You’re not their partners. To them, you’re only their supper — delayed.’

‘Trust has always been a pliable notion, thief girl,’ said Gemma, boarding the craft and stuffing Charlotte’s amulet inside her jacket pocket. ‘And when it comes to the hunt, better a flea on the hound, than a flea on the hare, hmm?’

After the shock of the net, Charlotte could hardly stand, and the sailors rolled her into the back of the darkship’s cabin, a featureless dark tunnel leading up to the cockpit. The surface was slightly sticky and wet, as if they were being held in the belly of a beast. She turned over as she slid across the floor, landing next to Commodore Black. With her hands and the old u-boat man’s securely bound, Charlotte noticed the sailors were passing their rifles to one of their number, a young pock-faced man who then exited the darkship with a pile of rifles in his arms.

‘Is that the limit of the alliance you have struck, honey?’ Charlotte called to Gemma. ‘The sea-bishops won’t even let you in their city with ranged weapons?’

Gemma patted the sabre resting by her side. ‘Hold your filthy mouth, thief girl, lest you lose it. I still have this, and its edge is sharp enough for your wagging tongue. My allies don’t need your prattle during interrogation. They can rip your thoughts out with their queer machines.’ She turned back to the cockpit and then ignored her prisoners.

Jared Black shook his head sadly. ‘Sorry lass. This is it for our schemes. Why did Maeva choose to follow me? She always knew what follows at my heels. I’m an old fool whose life has drained away into the sea, but a young doe like you deserves better.’

Charlotte watched the controls at the front of the darkship twisting around the pilot, carnivorous black ivy wrapping itself around a victim. ‘We all deserve better, Jared.’

‘Aye, but this is all the wicked world has for us.’

Corporal Cloake pulled back the viewing slit on the feeding pen’s heavy iron door. The sea-bishop glanced inside, noting the figure stretched out across the floor. The rest of the cattle were herding fearfully to the rear of the chamber, while the nanomechnical creature that had until recently been head of the State Protection Board was shaking near the corpse as if a disease was inflicting it.

‘I have lost my bet,’ said the sea-bishop wearing Sadly’s body. He was standing behind Corporal Cloake along with the pair of guards standing sentry on the feeding pens. ‘It seems as if the Tull animal chose to suicide.’

Cloake nodded towards the guards. ‘You two, drag it to the rubbish pile.’ He opened the feeding pen door, the stench of cattle defecation flooding out, added to by the foul reek of Dick Tull’s corpse.

‘By the dark between the worlds, what a malodour,’ grunted one of the guards, hesitating before stepping through the door.

Corporal Cloake entered the pen. As he set foot inside, he stepped into a pile of decaying feed used to fatten the cattle. Cursing, Cloake brushed his foot off against the pen’s sides. What was the point of feeding these dumb things if they wouldn’t eat? Well, they still needed to consume plenty of water. He would have to remember to order the herd master to add a hunger stimulant to their liquids. Then the cattle would be as fast at the feed as the filthy rodents scattering across the floor before him.

Cloake bent down, checking the corpse’s cold, pasty skinned neck for a pulse, before feeling for a heartbeat. Nothing. The animal had been sweating before it died, its jacket drenched in its own disgusting sweat. By Tull’s side was the cane to detect the brethren of the Mass, the pommel carving’s eyes dead, power source drained and partially disassembled to reach the suicide pill. ‘Powdered root in the suicide pill, similar to those issued by the State Protection Board. The fever stopped its heart. It’s the poison you can smell on its skin.’