Ganymede (44 page)

“Understood. But who do the
boats
belong to? That’s what we need to know, so we don’t go off shooting any of our own kind.”

Houjin paused, still frowning, still staring into the visor like it was a crystal ball that might be able to tell him more than his mortal eyes would allow. “Two are definitely Texian. I see the Lone Star painted on the side. I’m pretty sure the third one is, too, but I can’t say about the fourth. It’s too far out. We’ll have to get closer.”

“We’ll start with the ones we know for sure. What’s the position of the nearest Texian ship?”

“Dead ahead, sir. Maybe a hundred yards. There’s an antiaircraft mount on the deck, and it’s kicking up a storm.”

He didn’t need to add the last part. Everyone could hear it, the too-near
rat-a-tat-tat
of the guns shooting and recoiling against the surface. As they drew closer, they could feel it, too—the shuddering of the waves as the water was bucking against the bottom of the Texian boat. Even below the waterline as they were, the motion of the other craft made the bay feel like a bathtub full of children learning to swim.

“Josephine and … uh … Ruthie?” Cly called into the charge bay. “How are you two doing in there?”

Ruthie came to the curved doorway. The bump on her head was darkening from the red of fresh injury to the blue of impending bruise, but she looked otherwise unharmed. Her dress was pinned back into position, and though it hung oddly, it covered everything important.

She announced, “First two charges are ready to fire. We can light the fuse and shoot them whenever you tell us to do it.” She disappeared back inside.

“Deaderick? You know how to aim and guide these things?”

“I think so. I’ve never done it myself, but I know what the motions look like. The controls are there at Troost’s console.”

“Shit,” said Kirby Troost. “Maybe you’d better take my chair.”

“Fine with me,” Deaderick said. He took Troost’s spot and lowered the seat to accommodate his height.

Troost declared, “I’ll head over there and help those ladies, whether they want me or not.”

“Wait,” Cly told him. Then he asked Deaderick, “That topside gun—is it anything special?”

“Naw. It’s just a pod fitted with the same thing you’ve got on an airship. Repeating fire, bandolier bullets on a threaded stream. Troost can probably work it, no problem—but let’s leave that for later. The ball turret has to rise up to fire.”

“Not much range when you shoot it underwater, I guess.”

“Yeah, the bullets aren’t so keen when they’re swamped.”

“All right, then—Troost, do whatever you like. But keep your ears open. We’ll need you in a bit.”

“Aye, aye,” he said with a small salute, ducking back into the charge bay and immediately getting an earful from Josephine, who did not feel that she or Ruthie required any help.

“Troost makes new friends easy as pie, everywhere he goes,” Cly murmured. “He has such a God-given knack for getting on with people.”

Huey piped up. “If you could call it that.”

“I can hear you, you know,” the engineer said from the bay.

“Yeah, I know. Early, how are you doing with those weapons adjustments?”

“Doing all right. I think I’ve got it—but I’ll know better once we get one fired off. We may have to waste one for the sake of calibrating the equipment.”

“Then we’ll waste it at their underside.” The captain pointed out the window and up to the surface—where a broad, low boat bottom was rising into view. “Is that it, Huey?”

“Yes, that’s it. Right in front of us, sir.”

The patrol ship didn’t sit too heavy in the water, a fact that worried Cly. How could the charges shoot up so sharply? But he figured out from listening to Deaderick mutter under his breath that the charge bays were manipulated by having their angles changed through a series of dials and buttons on the left side of the console.

The captain thought to himself,
It’s just as well Troost isn’t left-handed. We might’ve blasted apart the canal by now.
But he did not say it, and he did not interrupt Deaderick’s reverie as he talked himself through the calculations.

Finally Early said, “I think I’ve got it.”

“You
think
you’ve got it?” cried Troost from the charge bay.

“That’s the best you’ll get from me right now. The weapons systems are the most untested, because they don’t have to work in order to keep the crew from drowning, or suffocating. So you’ll have to bear with me.”

Before anyone else could pipe up from the other room, Cly said, “Take your time. We’ve got a minute or two.”

“No more than that,” Houjin said nervously. “We’ll have to circulate the air again soon, won’t we? Especially since we’ve got more people on board now than we did before?”

“We’re all right for now, and we can pull off toward the marshes if we have to. Early?”

“I’ve got it—as far as I’m likely to get it, based on book-learning and guessing. The charges should be calibrated toward that big-bottomed boat right in front of us. If you and Fang can hold us in position, then the ladies—and Troost—can light the fuse and fire on your command. And then … then we’ll see what happens.”

“Cross your fingers, everybody. Josephine, Ruthie, Troost—one of you, do it now!”

“Fuse alight!” cried Josephine. A door slammed, and in a count of three or four seconds,
Ganymede
rocked as the first of her charges went zipping out into the bay, a mighty bullet fired underwater.

Everyone could see it, following a slight delay as the angle of water refracted and lied. They watched it violently deploy, appearing to wibble in its flight from
Ganymede
to the undercarriage of the ship that awaited it. But mostly it went true—propelled by the charge and driven to cut a weird, wavering tunnel through the dense, dark bay.

It did not quite miss. It grazed the bow of the Texian ship, knocking it so hard that it threw stray Texians into the water. They splashed down through the surface tension and struggled to get back to the air, kicking and flailing, learning to swim on the fly—or only just remembering the skill of it, having been surprised to find it was required of them.

Then the charge, which had come to rest inside the fractured bow … exploded.

The whole boat shuddered, and then the front third jerked away from the back. It started to sink in a pair of ragged pieces. Some fragments tried to float and failed; others were light enough to rise once they’d been cast free. Doors, flooring planks, shutters, and boxes bobbed below and then shot to the top again as their natural buoyancy overrode the unwelcome plunge.

Cly, Deaderick, and Fang watched as a man, halfway to the bottom, ripped himself free of the sinking hull and began to take himself to the surface with scissoring kicks. Whoever he was, the man was a strong swimmer and had every chance of making it, but on his way he opened his eyes and happened to see … what?
Ganymede
lurking between the bay floor and the surface? A curve of small lights, smiling in the darkness? What could he have seen, in that bleak twilight under the surface?

Maybe he’d go on to tell others what he’d spied lurking in the bay—but it would be too late to stop anything. Even if he didn’t get eaten by one of the crawling, carnivorous reptiles that occupied Barataria, and even if he made it past the saw grass, water moccasins, and the copperheads and the tangling roots that could tie his feet and draw him down … he’d never make it to a sympathetic ear in time to stop the
Ganymede
.

“Goddamn!” shouted Deaderick. “It worked! And we barely even hit them!”

“We hit them hard,” Cly insisted. He exchanged a manic grin with Fang, who flashed it right back at him. “Assuming the rest of the charges work half so well, we’ll be in good shape.”

From the doorway, Josephine fought to manage their expectations. “Half of these charges have been in boxes for years. We’ve already burned though a third of them, trying to pick out pieces that aren’t so damaged by damp and mold that they’re liable to shoot.”

Undaunted, the captain triumphantly declared, “Josie’s right, but when they work, they work like crazy! Troost, whatever you’re doing back there—”

“I’m smoking.”

“I can smell it. Put down your cigarette and start sorting out those shells. Pick the good ones, and line them up for the ladies to fire. Houjin!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Where’s the next target? Who’s closest?”

“Ninety degrees to the north, another hundred yards that way. Maybe more. Hard to tell from here, sir.”

“Deaderick, can you set a course?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Great. Fang, take us to the right, would you?”

Fang nodded.

“Ladies, load up another one. Hell, load up two or three!”

Ruthie said back, “It doesn’t work like that!” But Josephine shushed her, saying, “We’ll get them ready. Give the order, Andan, and we’ll load and lock them down.”

“Great. Here we go,” he added under his breath, and engaged the lift thruster. “Huey, work your scope. I’m taking us down a notch. Has anyone spotted you yet?”

“No, sir, I don’t think so.”

“Just the swimmer, then. I think we’re still secure.”

“You
think
we’re still secure?” cried Troost, out by the charges.

He did not clarify or reassure. “Let’s see how many of these fish we can shoot out of the barrel before they’re on to us.”

“And then what?” asked Deaderick.

“Then we kick up the top ball turret and Troost can cut loose on anybody who’s still afloat. All right, men, let’s line ’em up and knock ’em down.”

“Men?”
called Josephine from the other room.

“You know what I mean!” he shouted back. The other boat was within sight, and moving toward them. “Huey, is it just me, or is that boat coming our direction?”

“I think they’re moving toward the ship we just shot. Looking to pick up survivors, or see what happened.”

“I’d rather they didn’t get that far in their rescue efforts,” Cly declared.

Deaderick said, “Agreed. Don’t let them.”

“Can you adjust for their movement, incoming?”

“If I have to, Captain. Give me a second.… All right—bay charges set, aimed, ready to shoot.”

“Ladies, you hear that?”

“Why do I get lumped in with the ladies?” asked Troost.

Josephine shouted at him, “Why do we always get lumped in with the men?” And then over him, she loudly confirmed to the captain, “We hear you!”

“Fire!”

The bay door slammed. “Fire in the charge bay!” Ruthie announced with wicked, exuberant glee.

And a second enormous bullet blew free of
Ganymede,
propelled toward the bottom of a Texian boat that was swiftly incoming. Everyone on board knew the approaching craft was moving fast, despite the way it appeared to crawl across the bay. From their strange position near the shallow seafloor, everything on the surface appeared to creep.

The charge in its hydrodynamic shell left a billowing trail of bubbles and a roiling, curling tail of disturbed liquid in its wake. It crashed against the bottom of the boat and lodged there briefly, while the ship bumbled back and forth, shuddering and shaking in response to the hole smashed in its underside. It did its best to settle again to a stable position on the rippling water of the enclosed bay, even as it began to take on water.

Everyone waited. Josephine ran out of the charge bay.

She searched the window for the target, and spying it, she hollered, “Explode, Goddamn you! Explode!”

But nothing exploded, and given another half a minute, the shell toppled out of the hole it’d made, sinking down to the silt of the bay floor and settling there, where it did nothing more interesting than stick halfway into the muck.

Cly stood up, and Josephine turned around. Their eyes met.

He didn’t need to say it, but he did anyway—partly to Josephine’s back as she dashed back into the charge bay. “Get another one! Fire another one before they realize what’s happened! Launch another shell while we still have the advantage!”

She dived headlong into the bay and gestured to Troost and Ruthie. “The next one. Set it up! Load it!”

Troost was on it. The small man was stronger than he looked; he lifted the next shell in line and dropped it onto the track, then stepped out of the way. Ruthie was right behind him. She shoved the shell along the track and tried to slam the round door behind it, locking it into the firing chute. It stuck, and she swore at it.

Josephine pushed her out of the way and threw her weight against it, bruising her elbow badly in the process but shutting the door all the same. It smacked closed with a pop of the seals and a click of the latch. Josephine pulled the lever to spark the fuse. When it didn’t take, she yanked it again to light the thing.

“Ruthie, I need another fuse.…”

“
Oui, madame!
It is ready to go!”