Ganymede (41 page)

While the men behind her unhitched the air hose and sent it chattering on the reel up through the water and into the open air, she climbed the ladder in order to take her foul mood outside, rather than risk being accused of being difficult, or in the way. The first man to broach either of those ideas would find himself missing teeth.

She wrenched the hatch’s wheel, and her ears popped when the seal did. She poked her head out and immediately spotted Rucker Little, who had scrambled over to
Ganymede
first. He stood knee-deep in the water, hanging off the rotted and disused pier while preparing to knock upon the hull to get the attention of those inside.

“Everything still good in there?”

“Sure,” she said. “They’re running the air tubes up now, and starting the generator.”

Behind her, something loud but far away cracked—and a warm yellow light bloomed in the distance. When she turned to get a better look, the glow of the far-off explosion revealed a small fleet of airships above the bay.

Even from this far away, Josephine could see that it was a motley, unofficial crew of ne’er-do-wells and pirates who occupied much of the sky. Their ships were not the uniform, predictable shapes of the Texian air brigades. The pirate craft were hodge-podged pieces of foreign ships and augmented weaponry. They were black and red, and trimmed with silver paints or flying their respective flags—not national flags, for there was no such thing among men who worked outside the law.

They flew the flags of the defiant.

They lifted their colors emblazoned with skeletons, skulls, and old-fashioned sabers, and they moved not in tidy ranks and rows, or with military discipline. They swarmed like hornets instead, menacing and independent of one another—yet everyone knew who was an ally, and who was a target.

Antiaircraft missiles blazed up from around the big island in the bay. They rose in a smattering of rockets that streaked from land to clouds, crashing and exploding against anything they hit. One illicit ship took a direct blow to its underside and began to spin—slowly at first, and then faster as it toppled out of the sky, exploding into a vivid white nova long before it hit the ground. The fire from its demise set several flags ablaze, Texian and pirate alike, and forced the ships that were fighting too close to withdraw, and regroup, and reconsider.

Josephine didn’t realize that her mouth had been hanging open as she watched, and she didn’t notice that she’d forgotten Rucker was behind her, until he spoke. “They’re losing, Josephine. Barataria’s just one more piece of Louisiana that Texas will hold.”

“How do you know that?” she asked without taking her eyes off the sky.

“The air pirates can only fly, and Texas has men on the air, on the ground, and in the water, too.”

“In the water?”

He told her, “They’ve taken patrol boats and moved them around the blocking islands at the mouth of the bay. Their other boats were too big to make it through. But those patrols—they’re small and sturdy enough to hold the antiaircraft guns. Texas can shoot from a dozen places at once, in every direction. Airships can’t compete with that. They move too slowly, in quarters as close as that airspace.”

Finally she faced him. “You’re telling me all this like you think we should do something about it.”

Rucker didn’t answer. He only watched over her shoulder as the bay caught fire in fits and starts, and was extinguished, and was fired upon once more. “I don’t think Texas deserves the bay any more than it deserves any other part of New Orleans. And the pirates … they saved your brother, took him into the fort when they could’ve left him out to die.”

“We can’t risk the detour.”

“I didn’t say we could.”

“But you’re thinking about it,” she accused.

“Sure, I’m thinking about it. And if you think those men piloting this crazy craft haven’t thought about it, then you’re so focused on your goal that you can’t see what’s going on around you. They’re pirates, too, Josephine. And before you curse them and their breed, just remember:
you’re
the one who picked them.”

“We’re going on to the Gulf from here. Down the river, while Texas and the Rebs are distracted by the bay.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that, if I were you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

From below, Cly called, “Josephine? You can see it up there, can’t you? The rockets’ red glare? We can hear it, down here.”

She could, yes. And it stunned her, both the beauty and the violence of it. She had no great love for the bay or the pirates, but they were better than the Texians, weren’t they? At least, they’d never occupied her Quarter, or closed down the streets she walked upon, or forced her to pay the taxes that kept them squatting on her city like a juicy, venomous toad.

“Rucker?” Cly saw the man’s face in the hatch opening.

“Captain?”

“We can help them, can’t we?”

“In this thing?” Rucker cleared his throat and spit over the side, into the river. “You could knock down the patrol boats one-two-three. Fish in a barrel, and they’d never see you coming. They’d never know what hit ’em.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Cly said, to Josephine more than to Rucker.

He already knew what the man up top was thinking. He could hear it in the tone of Little’s voice, in the odd longing to see an old enemy routed—if not from the whole of the delta, then maybe from just this one small place. Maybe this one bay, this one island, which no one deserved to hold or keep, except the men who’d made it what it was.

From within, behind Cly, Josephine heard her brother—that traitorous devil. “Josephine, we could knock around the bay and cut past it to the south, right out into the Gulf. It’s a shortcut, really.”

Josephine growled and clenched her hands around the ladder’s rungs, then gave up and dropped herself down inside to face the two men who now were directly allied against her. A brother and an old lover—aligned in opposition to the woman who’d made this whole venture possible. If only they understood the depths of their treachery.…

Then again, the looks on their faces said they understood just fine, and were willing to risk it.

Cly had made her angry once or twice before, and he thought he remembered how best to engage her. “Once the air finishes circulating, we’ll have time to hit the bay and run reconnaissance around the island. We’ll take down the patrol boats, and—”

“How did you know about the patrols?” she demanded, looking back and forth between the two men.

Kirby Troost, behind her and seated, and still looking none too healthy … cleared his throat. He told her, “Ma’am, I know some people, that’s all. They told me it was coming, and what to expect. The pirates have been working on it for the last couple of days, sorting out the details. It wasn’t so hard to learn.”

When Josephine looked to Cly for an explanation, he shrugged. “I don’t know how Troost does it. He just
does
. He always knows first, like he’s got a set of taps between his ears. But he’s never wrong, and he hasn’t swindled me yet, so I follow his lead when he says he knows something. That’s not the point, Josie. The point is, we can take the canal and save ourselves a few miles to the Gulf. And while we’re at it, we can help keep one small parcel of Louisiana free of Texas rule. That’s something, isn’t it?”

She was on the verge of arguing, perhaps violently, when Deaderick chimed in. “More importantly, it’ll give us a chance to test the weapons systems,” he said quickly, understanding that Cly’s cajoling would not work, and that perhaps the captain had never known her as well as he’d thought. “We didn’t have the space or the privacy to fire off charges in Pontchartrain, and we didn’t have anything to shoot at except the alligators, anyway. The admiral wants a full write-up of
Ganymede
’s capabilities, don’t he? How are you going to give him that full report, when you don’t even know if she can shoot worth a damn?”

She paused, uncertain of how to grant the point, yet still insist that it shouldn’t delay them. “But the weapons systems have never been called into question. It’s just the … the propulsion and steering, and the air circulation we’ve been asked to prove.”

Her brother shook his head. “The Union doesn’t need an underwater cruiser, Josie. It needs a war machine. And unless you can vouch for this bucket’s ability to blow things out of the water, you’re only handing over a curiosity. If we can show up at the
Valiant
with firsthand accounts of how well it thwarted Texas from the water, then you’ll have something to lift their eyebrows.”

“I fail to see how
merely
delivering a working, war-ready submarine can fail to lift eyebrows!”

“But you don’t want to just lift them, do you?” Cly asked. “You want to shock the hell out of them, and inspire them to make more of these things. You’re asking the North to make an investment, to speculate—and they may not believe it if we don’t have the chance to prove it.”

Josephine paused, closed her eyes, and thought hard. Finally, she said, “I don’t like this.”

“No one’s asking you to like it,” Cly told her. “We’re only asking you to ride along with us and keep score.”

“You’re not asking my permission, either.”

It was Cly’s turn to hesitate. “If Deaderick and you, and all these other fellows up top … if everyone said no, then I wouldn’t force the matter. But these men see it just as clear as I do. I don’t give a damn if this thing lifts any Union eyebrows or not; I just want to head over to that bay and blow up some Texian boats.”

He did not add that “forcing the matter” was hardly the point, given that he wasn’t certain he could pilot the thing without help from up above—at least until they reached the Gulf, where he could break the surface to navigate by good old-fashioned reckoning and the stars. Of course, he might have been able to strong-arm Deaderick and Mumler, especially with Fang and Troost behind him. But he’d seen the look in Deaderick’s eyes as the hatch opened and the sounds of battle from the bay pinged and echoed down into the
Ganymede
’s belly. Cly knew that look. It was the look of a man who hears a fight and wants to join it. After all, the pirates had helped the guerrillas when Texas attacked; and after Deaderick’s injury, they’d taken him down to the fort and hidden him, and summoned the drunken doctor. It hadn’t been world-class service, but the rogues and rebels of Lafitte’s last command had done as right by Deaderick as they’d been able.

So it might’ve been just that simple; Cly didn’t know, and he didn’t ask. All he cared about was having an ally against Josephine, who could be harder to move than an old stone church.

Josephine’s hands were closing into fists and releasing again, in time with her breathing. She was hovering between agreeing and disagreeing—knowing she was outnumbered and could be overpowered. She would’ve fought Cly alone, absolutely. She would’ve fought her brother alone, without a second thought. She might even have taken on the pair of them if she were truly confident that she was correct.

But it wasn’t just them.

It was them, and Wallace Mumler—who’d been suspiciously silent this whole time; and Rucker Little up above, who’d broached the subject first; and here came Ruthie Doniker, all but leaping down the hatch in a swishing, rustling tornado of skirts and hairpins and fury.

In her way, Ruthie was the final straw.

Breathless, she came to Josephine and said, “Ma’am, you should see it outside!”

“I
did
see it, Ruthie.”

“The rockets, the antiaircraft! Texas wants to wipe the bay off the maps! Wash it into the ocean!”

“I’ve seen it, Ruthie.”

“Well?” The younger woman stood, nearly panting with rage, excitement, and something else. Anticipation? “Are you going to let them? When you have these men, and this machine, right here? So close, you could practically shoot them from where we’re docked? You’re going to let Texas keep the bay?”

Josephine opened her hands and used them to smooth the pockets on her skirts. She sighed and said, “It sounds like you’ve made up your mind, too. You’ve already decided how you want to see this go.”

As if she’d only now noticed Josephine’s ambivalence, Ruthie’s jaw dropped. In French this time, she asked, “And you
haven’t
? You would let the pirates burn, though they saved your brother, when you could help? My God, what would Lafitte say?”

“From his grave? Not much,” Josephine replied. Then, in English, to everyone present, “So the decision has been made. There’s nothing I can say to change anyone’s mind, is there? I want to get to the Gulf. You want to rescue the pirates.”

Deaderick said, “No, we want to rescue the
bay,
if we can.”

“We’ll still need someone up top. Someone to help us squeeze past the islands at the mouth of the bay, when it’s time to leave it,” Mumler told them. “We can’t have the whole caravan accompanying us, not into the middle of a battle. But two or three of the small motored boats … Houjin, you said those were keeping up the best, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right, sir.” Houjin nodded vigorously. “But they’ll be wide open. Exposed. They might get shot.”

Mumler shifted his shoulders and said, “Any one of us might get shot at any time. Rick, if you stay down here with these folks, I’ll join Rucker or Chester up topside. We can take the two lightest of the diesel motors and guide you around. Ruthie? Can you take my place here? Between me and Rick, we’ve showed you the ropes enough so you can fire and reload all the charges.”