Zoe Archer - [Ether Chronicles 03] (31 page)

Suddenly, a thick rope dropped from the side of the bow.

She ran for it. Then stood gripping the hawser, looking up, and realized that she didn’t know how to climb a rope.

Think
,
damn it. You’ve seen sailors climb.

It took an agonizing amount of time to picture it, but then the images came. She grabbed the rope with both hands above her head, then pulled down on it as she gave a small jump. She wrapped the rope around her artificial leg—no easy task with her skirts tangling about her—and pressed her feet together, securing herself. Like an inchworm, she crawled up the line, raising her arms, then bringing her legs up, and repeating the process in slow, burning increments. But the railing grew closer and closer.

She pressed against the hull as Grady shot at her. Using all her strength, she gripped the rope with one hand and pulled out her ether pistol with the other, then fired back. She missed, but it was enough to push Grady away from the rail. Giving her time to climb.

Finally, she reached the railing, and hauled herself over.

And froze at the sight of Fletcher locked in battle with a monster.

F
letcher hadn’t been able to see the full effects of Mayhew’s change, not until he’d leapt up onto the deck. The lieutenant had grown larger—he was now the same height as Fletcher, and nearly as broad with muscle—but that wasn’t the extent of the transformation.

The madman was falling apart. Literally. Standing by what remained of the portside, Mayhew wasn’t wearing a shirt, revealing that patches of his skin had turned black, especially the areas around his implants and his glowing, mechanized heart. Some flesh peeled away as if burnt off. The experiment was a disaster.

“Jesus, Mayhew,” Fletcher had sworn when he’d seen this.

The lieutenant had only sneered at him. “Only part of the process. But the process doesn’t include you.” He’d taken aim with an ether pistol.

Fletcher had grabbed a jagged piece of the exploded cannon and thrown it at Mayhew’s arm. It clipped him enough to cause the shot to go wide. Before the lieutenant had time to aim again, Fletcher had launched himself at Mayhew.

The lunatic might have been breaking apart, but he was still strong as any Man O’ War. He and Fletcher had grappled their way across the broken deck, trading blows. Each strike from Mayhew sent Fletcher’s bones rattling. He’d never fought hand to hand with another Man O’ War before. Strikes that would’ve felled a normal man only made Mayhew wince and stumble. But he stayed on his feet.

Fletcher had managed to break free from the fight long enough to throw the hawser down to Kali. He didn’t want her in harm’s way, but someone had to guard his back, and it would be easier to keep watch over her on deck than on the ground.

The moment he’d flung the line over the side, Mayhew attacked. He grabbed Fletcher around the middle, forming a vise with his arms and squeezing so hard Fletcher felt a rib crack. Fletcher slammed his heel down onto Mayhew’s foot, then kicked backward into the lieutenant’s knee. Howling in pain, Mayhew loosened his grip. Fletcher pushed the lieutenant’s arms up sharply and ducked out from beneath them.

Spinning around, he threw a punch right into Mayhew’s face. The lieutenant staggered away, and Fletcher swallowed his bile when he saw a chunk of skin fly from Mayhew’s jaw where Fletcher had hit him.

Fletcher advanced, pushing Mayhew back. Kali would be on deck soon, and he wanted the lieutenant as far from her as possible.

He managed to get the lieutenant to the main deck, away from the bow, before Mayhew took a stand. They threw punches and blocked hits, both of them grunting and swearing. But flecks of Mayhew’s blackened skin kept breaking off.

“Falling apart, Mayhew,” Fletcher growled between hits. “Your body can’t take the strain. It’s Gimmel or higher for a reason.”

“The hell you know?” Mayhew lunged for him, but Fletcher sidestepped quickly and momentum carried the lieutenant forward until he sprawled on the deck.

Fletcher was on him in an instant. He pinned him to the ground, raining punches onto his face and anywhere exposed.

But when Kali finally climbed over the railing, Fletcher glanced up, making certain she was unhurt. Fury charred the edges of his vision when he saw the wounds on her face. And Grady was raising his ether pistol, pointing it at her head.

Then the world spun, and Mayhew flipped him onto his back. He gripped Fletcher’s throat with hands as strong as death. Fletcher couldn’t pry Mayhew’s fingers off of him, and all the strikes he landed with his knees had no effect.

“Won’t live long enough to murder any Man O’ Wars,” Fletcher gritted. “Your own body will destroy you first.”

Rage and anguish darkened Mayhew’s face, followed quickly by the fury of madness. He laughed riotously.

“I’ll take as many of you with me as I can. We’ll all go to hell together.” Mayhew’s hands tightened further.

Fletcher’s sight dimmed. The sound of Mayhew’s wild laughter began to fade.

Good God
,
he’s killing me.

K
ali took a step toward Fletcher battling Mayhew, but a bullet whizzed past her. She took cover behind a slab of metal torn from the vessel’s hull by the ether cannon explosion. Peering around the edge of her shelter, she saw Grady crouched behind several metal drums, taking potshots at her.

She possessed a limited number of bullets. Three, in fact, after shooting at Grady when she’d hung on the rope. Each bullet now had to be used deliberately and with precision. If only she had Fletcher’s eyesight, she could be sure none of her shots went wild. Pushing back her goggles, she pressed her back against the metal slab. She winced when one of Grady’s bullets pierced the metal. A normal gunshot wouldn’t have the same force. She could try to wait Grady out, but he probably had far more ammunition than she did.

Get rid of his gun. That was the only solution.

Cautiously, she sneaked a look around the side of her shelter, ether pistol ready. When Grady did the same, she shot. But her aim wasn’t steady, and her fire went wide. He shot back, and she ducked. Once more, she waited, and once more, when she aimed, she’d only managed to nick the drum Grady hid behind.

One bullet left in her gun.

She breathed deep, forcing herself to calm. Told herself it didn’t matter that this was her last bullet. Quieted the sounds of Fletcher and Mayhew struggling and her impulse to help—no one was more capable a fighter than Fletcher. He’d manage without her.

She’d survived the devastation of Liverpool, the loss of a limb, the despair that had followed. She’d get through this, too.

One more time, she glanced around the edge of her cover. Grady followed suit. She aimed. Fired.

And missed.

Instead of hitting Grady in his hand, she hit his gun. It shattered in his grip. He screamed as pieces of metal flew in every direction, including into his hand and face.

She wasted no time, sprinting across the deck. Reaching Grady, hunkered on the deck and clutching his blood-covered hand, she used her artificial leg to kick him in the jaw. He sprawled backward. For a moment, he struggled to get up, and she kicked him again. Blood spattered on her skirts as his head snapped back. He collapsed completely.

Carefully, she edged closer, then checked beneath his eyelids. He was alive, but quite, quite unconscious. From her tool belt, she pulled out a spool of wire, and wound it around his wrists, binding him. She grimaced at the sight of his hand. If he ever had use of it again, it would take an expert surgeon. Or gifted engineer. Of which she was one—but she wouldn’t be the one to help this bastard.

She glanced up when she heard the sounds of a man choking. Terror ran cold down her spine when she saw Mayhew atop Fletcher. Throttling him. Fletcher had his own hands around Mayhew’s wrists, squeezing tightly as if trying to snap the bones. Somehow the lieutenant’s insanity had given him extraordinary power. Fletcher couldn’t break his hold.

Her own strength would be laughable against Mayhew. But she didn’t need strength to combat him.

She pulled a long, thin screwdriver from her tool belt and ran toward Mayhew. Focused on his task of strangling Fletcher, Mayhew didn’t turn. Didn’t try to stop her.

But he screamed when she jammed the screwdriver into his shoulder. Directly into a juncture of telumium wires that led down into his right arm.

The arm dropped and hung useless at his side. Mayhew stared at her in shocked disbelief.

“What in the bloody hell did you do?” he snarled.

“I jammed the circuits.” She rifled through her tools for another screwdriver, but suddenly she flew backward, feeling as if she’d been hit by a tetrol-powered hammer. She slid along the deck until she hit the railing. There she lay, gasping for breath, her shoulder on fire from Mayhew’s backhand strike. She tried to sit up, but her head spun and pain wracked her. All she could do was look up at the brilliant sky and pray her help had been enough to save Fletcher.

F
letcher might have been on the edge of death moments earlier, life slipping away like clouds racing across a windswept sky.

But seeing Mayhew hit Kali, watching how she was flung backward and now lay upon the deck of the ship, alive but hurt, the darkness around his vision cleared instantly. He shoved back from the edge of nothingness, fueled by incandescent rage.

One of Mayhew’s hands had fallen away from Fletcher’s throat. The lieutenant’s arm was useless. Fletcher grabbed that arm and used it to fling Mayhew off of him.

Instantly, Fletcher was on his feet. He advanced toward the lieutenant, yet even with the screwdriver still embedded in his shoulder, Mayhew leapt up.

They faced each other, circling. It was an agony not to go to Kali, and tend to her injuries, but Mayhew had to be dealt with. Now.

Both Fletcher and Mayhew spotted the unconscious Grady. Kali’s work. Damn, he was proud of her. Yet seeing his thug sprawled upon the deck, Mayhew’s face twisted with mad rage. He bellowed in frustration.

“Everything’s been stolen,” he shrieked. “My chance to become a Man O’ War. My path to glory. I won’t let myself be ordinary.” He spat the word. “You can’t take that from me.”

“You’re falling apart like a rusted hulk,” Fletcher countered. “You won’t even get a shot at Redmond.”

Mayhew’s wrath melted into hysterical giggles. “Contingency plans are always important. I’ve got a nice surprise in the hull of the ship. Even Grady and Robbins didn’t know.” More laughter. “There’s enough TNT to send anyone within a mile radius right to the Devil’s door. If the woman manning your ether cannon had been a better shot, she would’ve hit the TNT and ended the fight before it started. Now, I just wait until Redmond’s ship is close enough . . . then . . .” He made a sound like an explosion, and cackled again.

Fuck.
“What about the glory you craved? If you blow yourself up, there won’t even be a body left to show the world what you’ve done.”

A moment’s confusion flickered across Mayhew’s face. Clearly, he hadn’t thought his plan through. And it made him all the more enraged. “Nothing matters! Death will take us all.” He grimaced as he pulled Kali’s screwdriver from his shoulder, and brandished it like a blade. “I’m nobody’s dupe. No longer.”

“Damn right, no longer,” Fletcher snarled.

He charged, head down. Slammed into Mayhew. The screwdriver fell from Mayhew’s hand as they grappled, each fighting for a hold on the other. Fletcher kicked at the back of Mayhew’s leg, unbalancing him. With Mayhew destabilized, Fletcher shoved him until his back slammed into the enclosure surrounding the companionway. Fletcher pinned Mayhew’s left wrist to the metal wall.

Mayhew struggled to dodge Fletcher’s hail of punches. Still, the lieutenant managed to ram his head into the injured spot in Fletcher’s side. A net of red pain spread through Fletcher.

“Maybe I won’t wait for Redmond,” Mayhew sneered. “Maybe I’ll detonate the ship now, and you, me and your pretty brown friend will all die together.”

He tried to twist out of Fletcher’s grasp. But Fletcher held on. And when he grabbed onto Mayhew’s mechanized heart with his other hand, the lieutenant’s eyes widened. He thrashed and screamed, begged.

“Threatening her was your undoing,” Fletcher said, grim and calm. Then he pulled on the heart.

It didn’t break off cleanly from its port. The heart had connected with the telumium fibers implanted in Mayhew’s body, and as Fletcher tore it off, wires ripped from Mayhew’s skin, taking masses of flesh with it. Exposing muscle tissue and bone. Blood sprayed onto Fletcher, but he didn’t stop. Not until he’d ripped the mechanized heart completely free.

Mayhew’s shrieks echoed off the mountains.

The device in Fletcher’s hand dimmed, the humming within it slowing, until it finally stopped. He threw it aside like the useless scrap it was. And he waited as Mayhew choked and shivered and bled, body shuddering. Then, like the mechanical heart, Mayhew simply . . . stopped. He slumped in Fletcher’s grasp. When Fletcher released him, Mayhew slid to the deck, smearing blood on the companionway enclosure.

Fletcher gave him a kick. No movement. He checked Mayhew’s pulse. Nothing. But then no one, not even a Man O’ War, could survive having half his chest torn out.

Without sparing Mayhew another thought, Fletcher ran to Kali. She’d managed to lift herself up onto one elbow, and though she was pale, her gaze was clear, locking on to him as he neared.

He crouched beside Kali, carefully supporting her. It took all his willpower not to hold her close and tight. But she was hurt, so he had to resolve himself to gentleness. All he understood was his unruly joy at seeing her alive and holding her again.

Their voices overlapped. “Are you—” “Did he hurt—” And together, they said, “I’m all right” and “Nothing serious.”

Her gaze strayed to Mayhew’s body. She gave one shiver of disgust, but said, “Thank the gods and goddesses.”

“He’s rigged the ship with TNT,” Fletcher said. “Didn’t tell me where the detonator is.”

She cursed at his news. Then, “I can disable it. Help me up.”