Ganymede

Fifteen

The remainder of the trip down the canal occurred without incident. According to Houjin, both Rucker Little and Wallace Mumler were gaining ground. Neither man had been injured or otherwise dispatched when the dirigible fell from the sky — whether Texian or pirate, no one knew — and though their escorts had fallen behind, they’d signaled that they’d catch up.

Cly had fallen utterly quiet upon retaking his seat from a grateful Deaderick Early, who was finding the navigation more than he knew how to accomplish, except in a theoretical way.

The women in the charge bay resumed their work. The clanks and heavy thuds of crates and shells echoed from time to time, punctuated intermittently by swearing in French and English. Troost temporarily left his post to lend a hand, but he was told that no extra hands were needed, so he resumed his seat and kept watch on the coordinates.

Everyone listened, and everyone heard how much louder the atmosphere outside was steadily becoming. Occasional artillery booms escalated to near-constant racket and there were regular hearty bangs of airship pieces raining down from the sky. Some of them splashed and sank, drifting back and forth and downward in front of the big window; some clattered against the hull, none of them hitting very hard.

Not yet. Not while several feet of water still separated that hull from the open air above.

Houjin whistled at something only he could see, sounding impressed and antsy. “It’s a good thing we’re swimming at night,” he mused. “All those ships up there, wow. During the day, someone would be bound to see us.”

“How many ships, Huey?” Troost asked.

“Hard to say, exactly.”

“Guess,” Cly urged him.

“Guessing?” The boy chewed on his lower lip and concentrated, spinning the visor scope this way and that, adjusting its cranks for a better range of vision. “At least four big Texas ships. The real big kind, like warships up in the sky. They’re armored up good, and that’s a relief. Anything that big carries enough hydrogen to blow a bay sky-high.”

The captain said, “That’s a start. Four big Texas ships, at least. What else do you see?”

“Pirates. Lots of them. I see two Chinese fliers, and maybe a third. A couple of French ships, it looks like — maybe more than that. A few Spanish ships, or things that started out Spanish. And is that … is that…?”

“Is it what, kid?” Troost asked crossly.

“Indian ships. Three of them — two Comanche, if I read the flags right.”

“I’ll be damned,” Cly said.

Deaderick laughed, utterly unsurprised. “The Comanche beef with Texas is as fair as anybody else’s.”

“I just don’t know too many Indian pirates, that’s all,” he replied. “But I’m glad to see them. Huey, what else is up there?”

“A couple of Union cruisers, I think.” He made small, pensive noises while he adjusted the scope. “And on top of all that, maybe six or seven others I can’t place. They could be from anywhere, but they’re pretty clearly ours. Unfortunately, most of the ones in the water are, too.”

“How many are down?”

“Can’t tell, sir. But there’s fire on the water, and burning trash floating between here and there. A lot of it. I’d guess half a dozen ships still floating, and more that have sunk already. Can’t guess about those, since I can’t see them from up here.”

Cly nodded, even though Huey wasn’t looking at him. “That’s a good point. We’ll need to keep our eyes open for debris right in front of us. Won’t do anyone any good if we crash against it all the way down here. I’m not even sure how we’d get out if we got stuck,” he said. The last sentence died in his mouth, and he swallowed away the bad taste it left behind. “Deaderick, do those forward lights get any brighter?”

“Not so far as I know. And if they did, they’d only mark us for the big ships to aim at.”

“Damn. You’re right, but damn.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, Huey?”

“We’re almost out of the canal. Maybe ten or twenty yards, that’s all.”

“Thank you, Huey. Everybody hang tight. I don’t know how hard the current in the bay runs, but the canal’s kept us sheltered. The starting jolt may throw us off our feet. Won’t be as bad as the river, but it’ll be a change, all the same. Ladies?” he called out. “You hear that?”

“We heard you!” Josephine snapped back. “And we’re ready.”

“Good. Because here we go — here comes the bay.”

The bay didn’t take them in a surge of rushing water, not like the river had done. It was more of a lower, cooler pull. The sudden openness and size of it gave everyone within the Ganymede the peculiar sense of stepping off a cliff while underwater, only to float instead of falling.

“I didn’t think…” Early said.

“Didn’t think what?” Troost asked.

“That there’d be any current in the bay. I only expected the tide.” The captain was glad for the peaceable nature of it, since nothing else about the situation was half so quiet. He said, “Houjin, me and Fang are going to bring this thing down low. Keep your scope close to the surface; don’t let it ride too high. We don’t want to get ourselves spotted right out of the canal.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Now, tell me what you can see about the boats in the bay. Any of them belong to our side, or do they all belong to Texas and the Rebs?”

The boy frowned hard into the scope, adjusting it to comply with the captain’s command. “I see four, but there might be more. I can’t see all the way around the bay, or past the fort at the island.”

“That’s fine,” Cly told him. “Just tell me what you see, and we’ll worry about what you can’t see later on.”

“Mumler and Little are still up there. They’re taking turns sticking with us — falling back and taking cover where they can, along the edges where the grass is high. There’s a lot of firepower up there, sir.”

“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!”

Indeed, the new fuse caught and lit and burned, and Josephine called out, “Fire in the charge bay!”

“Deaderick?” Cly asked, wondering about the angles and direction, but Early had already corrected for the boat’s continued trajectory, and he announced, “All set, sir!”

The charge fired, and a third big bullet went billowing toward the boat, almost too close, almost so close that Cly had second thoughts. He turned to Fang, who shrugged — then he turned to Deaderick and asked, “Are we too—?”

But before he had time to finish the question, the charge connected and blew into a thousand shards, propelled by gunpowder and fire. It shattered and split, right in the middle, and the boat began to sink — this one faster than the first.

A huge — and hugely heavy — gun slid downward. The shell had come up right underneath it, and now the gun was falling, its weight pulling the craft apart. The antiaircraft piece had been bolted to the deck, and it took a slab of this same deck with it as it tumbled down through the serene, thick water. Pieces of wood shattered, and splintered planking came raining down through the swamp, then up again as it left the weight of the gun and its fixings.

Everything that could float, did. Everything that could not, drifted to the bottom.

Josephine came running out again, with Ruthie on her heels. “Did we hit it? Did we take it?”

“We took it!” Houjin shouted. “It’s gone down! I can’t see it anymore!”

“Look around that visor, kid!” Cly pointed at the window.

Houjin peeled his face away from the scope, revealing a red groove around his eyes and down his cheeks, where he’d pressed himself so hard against the seam that it’d left an imprint.

“There it is!” he all but shrieked.

“Yeah, kid. There it is…,” the captain said with a bit of wonder taking the edge off his voice. “How many more?”

“Um?…” Houjin crushed his face back against the visor. “Four more. I can see four. We should be down to two, but the other two — and they’re all Texian — must have come from around the island. They’re coming out to help. They’re not shooting at the airships anymore, so that’s something, isn’t it?”

“It sure is. Now, where’s the nearest boat?”

“About sixty … maybe eighty yards north-northeast. Turn us, and I’ll tell you when we’re lined up with them.”

“Where are Mumler and Little?”

“I don’t see them, sir. Wait — one of them is right behind us, and he says … he says … he’s telling us to head deeper, to the north.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know!” the boy said, exasperated. “Maybe we’re running into shallow territory. Can you see the bottom?”

“Not well,” Cly admitted.

“Not at all,” Deaderick amended.

“Fine. Follow the lead of … whichever one of them it is. You can’t tell?”

“It’s dark, sir. They’re keeping low. People are shooting — everyone up there, everyone is shooting.”

The captain grunted and said, “Good thing for us we’re down here. I hope those fellows stay out of trouble.”

Deaderick turned around and said, “Houjin — do you see the other one? Anywhere? Did he get shot out, or is he just holding back?”

“I can’t tell, sir. It’s too dark. It’s just too damn dark.”

At that moment, a shudder shook Ganymede, and its lower portion dragged. Cly and Deaderick leaned forward, and Houjin clutched at the scope to keep from falling — and from the other room came the rustle and tumble of knees and elbows clattering and rolling.

“What was that?” Houjin asked frantically. “What’s going on? I didn’t see anything!”

Deaderick took a stab at an answer. “Sandbar? Are we stuck? Captain — are we still—?”

“Not stuck, no,” he said, and shoved harder on the propulsion levers, and on the depth setters. “But caught. That’s what our friend up top was trying to tell us. Shit, all right. Hang on — and Huey, drop the scope back down, just for now. I’ve got to raise us to keep us going. We’re snagged on the sand, and if we don’t get some lift, we’ll have a hell of a time pulling ourselves loose.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Everyone good in the charge bay?” Deaderick shouted the question.

“All good over here!” Josephine replied. “Just get us moving again!”

“We never stopped,” Cly swore, but he worked the levers with the passion of someone who was terrified he might be wrong.

Finally, with a lurch and a thrust, Ganymede came free and rose with a bound, breaking the surface — much to the captain’s discomfort. The waterline sloshed at the top of the window, briefly revealing the fire in the sky above, and a flash of red and gold, flickering tracer bullets, and small explosions as ammunition collided with armor.

“Huey, get your scope back up!” the captain ordered.

“Yes, sir!” the boy answered, and turned the crank to raise it again, even as he smushed his face against the visor and tried to look through it, though there was nothing yet to see. “Got it, sir. Hold us steady, sir — the water keeps washing over, and I can’t … All right, it’s good. I can see again.”

“Great. Now tell me this — did the two nearest boats see us, when we breached just now?”

He hesitated. “They’re coming our way, or it might be they’re coming toward the sunk-down boats.”

“But either way, they’re headed for us?”

“Looks like it.”

“To blazes with the lot of them, then. Troost!” Cly yelled. “Get in here! Deaderick, can you show him around the top ball turret and get him situated?”

“If he makes it fast!”

“Fast is our only speed right now. We don’t have time for anything else,” he noted, swinging the chair around and seeing Troost come tearing through the rounded charge bay door.

“Right here, Captain. Early, set me up and I’ll start shooting. We’ll hit ’em from above and below, both.”

The captain said, “Good man,” and then flashed Fang a worried look. Those Texian ships … he could see the underside of one approaching, and before he had time to ask where the rest of them were, Houjin cleared it up for them.

“Captain, I see three Texas boats, all incoming. The fourth has headed back around the far side of the island. It looks like one of them doesn’t have an antiaircraft gun and it’s moving a lot faster. It’ll be on us before the others.”

“Ladies, get us another charge loaded and ready!”

It wouldn’t be shootable until Deaderick returned, because God knew nobody else on board had the faintest idea how to calibrate the weaponry, but better to have it ready for firing than add to the delay of setup. In the back of the craft, Cly could hear footsteps and scrambling, and then the squeal of metal being drawn down a track unwillingly — followed by a ratcheting sound that meant something was either going up or coming down, with gritty, forced precision.

Muffled conversation occurred, and then, without warning, a spray of bullets bucked from the top of Ganymede’s hull, giving the whole vehicle an excuse to shake — and nearly giving the occupants their death of fright, even though everyone knew it was coming. The suddenness of it, and the volume of it … and then the quivering of the compartment … it was too much, too fast. Bullets strafed across the water and clomped against hulls or battered guns and sank through the torsos and limbs of men on deck.

All these things hit the water, and some of them sank. Some of them floated.

Deaderick hustled back into the main cabin, and into the engineer’s seat. “He’s got it,” he announced, and immediately began to configure the charge bays for firing. “What’s our next target — what’s … what’s closest? Which one?” he amended, realizing that there were now two more boats within their immediate view. Never mind the darkness; the small suns of burning hydrogen, rockets, and artillery fire gave the sky a peculiar glow that offset the bottoms of the Texian boats, making them easier to see from down below.

Cly didn’t care which one went down first, and he almost said so. Then he changed his mind. “Huey, which one doesn’t have the antiaircraft?”

“The one to the left. To the south, I mean. The one that was moving fastest.”

“I didn’t see which one was fastest,” the captain confessed. “Got distracted. Left craft, Early. Ready, aim, and tell the ladies when to fire.”

He fixed a switch and called, “Fire!”

With a pounding sound and a protracted swish, the shell barreled across the bay and collided with the leftmost Texian patrol boat — which was bowled nearly over by the impact, and then came utterly apart when the charge caught, and blew, and sent fragments of the boat in a million directions at once. It sank almost immediately, without the stuttering hesitation of the first boat — and without the dignified fractures of the second. This boat was in bits before it went under, more kindling than craft.

Several corpses plunged in with it, lacerated and bleeding from thick slivers of timber or the charge itself. A stray limb went spinning by, slapping against the window and leaving a streak of gore that washed away quickly, swiped aside by the plant life of the bay and the pace of the Ganymede, which churned forward toward the remaining boat.

“Huey, does this last one have antiaircraft?”

“It looks like a support cruiser, but I don’t see any signs that it’s firing from the deck. It’s turned the wrong direction. I can’t see it clearly enough to tell for sure.”

But from their own deck equivalent, Troost was shooting like a maniac — threading the bullets into the automatic firing machine with the unmitigated joy of a man who finally has something to do. He swept the water as well as he could, for the range wasn’t as good as true antiaircraft, but he picked a line of men off the support cruiser’s deck, or so Houjin narrated above the din of the Gatling clone above.

“He’s just about blown the pilothouse clear off the cruiser!” Houjin cried. “It’s falling down. The whole roof is collapsing — he hit a support, and cut right through it. That boat won’t do anyone any good, not for a good long time! But, oh! Captain!”

“What is it, Huey?”

“The last boat, the one I lost before — I see it again. Coming up around the west side of the island, and it’s got an antiaircraft mount, and … and … they see us, sir. They see us!” He swallowed, looked around the visor, and asked, “Sir, what do we do?”

“Where are Little and Mumler?”

“Can’t locate them, sir. Wait — I see one of them, making for the south-southwest.”

Deaderick said, “He’s headed for the islands, the bottleneck. He thinks you’ve done enough damage, and he’ll meet us out there. Goddamn, I pray it’s the both of them.”

“Can’t tell, Mr. Early. I’m real sorry. But this other boat, it’s coming in — not as fast as the other one, but fast. And they’re dropping the antiaircraft, sir — it’s pivoting on the deck. They’re going to shoot us!”

Deaderick’s eyes went wide. “Can they even do that? With a gun that big?”

“They’re going to try,” Cly predicted. “Those things are heavy as hell. I don’t know if they’ll be able to brace it off the side of the boat, down at us. Do you have any idea if this thing can take a hit like that?”

“No idea at all. I’d say it’ll depend on how far away we are, and what caliber they’re shooting.”

“Tell Troost to get down from there. We’re going to drop, and I don’t want to drown him or blind him.”

Early said, “The turret is sealed. He’s in more danger of getting shot off the top than of running out of air.”

“Fine, then let him stay.”

Then Early second-guessed himself. “But if he does get blown off the hull like a wart off a frog, we won’t be able to sink again — not without taking on water.”

“Son of a bitch. You’re right. It’s not worth the risk. We’ll close it up and rely on the depth charges. Troost!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Get back down here, now!”

Whether or not Troost heard him, he couldn’t say — but the engineer didn’t reply, except with another thread of bullets. Their kick rocked Ganymede gently, but it worried the captain. “Huey, go drag him out of that turret, would you? Drop the scope for a minute and run. Early, you got coordinates on that patrol boat?”

“Setting them up. Josephine, Ruthie, line up two in a row — these guys are coming in right on top of us!”

“Oui, darling!”

“Fire when ready!” he yelled at them, and ready meant “right now,” for that’s how quickly the charge was sent slamming out of the chute and up to the Texian boat. It hit home, right at the seam under the prow, and when it exploded, the patrol boat dipped down, dragging water into the hull with every foot forward. “Fire a second one, do it now!”

They did, and this one hit beside the hole the first charge had made, effectively turning the boat into matchsticks that billowed underwater in a cloud — so fine, they looked like filthy smoke, or a blotch of dumped diesel murking through the water.

Houjin returned with Troost, who was covered in gunpowder or soot, but smiling from ear to ear. “Hey, I got to shoot something!”

“That you did,” said Cly. “You seal that thing shut?”

“Locked it down, yes, sir. Early, you’d better keep my seat.”

“I was planning on it.”

The captain said, “Anyone been watching a clock?” When no one answered, he said, “By my best guess, it’s been something like half an hour — and I know Early’s men said we have more than that, but like Huey said, we have more people on board this time. It’s getting warm in here, and close. I can’t be the only one who feels it.”

“You’re not,” Early assured him.

“We’ll need to pull over and crank that hose up, and do it soon.”

Houjin asked, “Why?”

“What?” the captain asked. “What do you mean, why?”

“Why do we have to pull over? Can’t we just stick the thing up above the surface and let it pull down air as we retreat?”

Deaderick Early hemmed and hawed. “It’s possible, but it’s dangerous, too. You turn that generator on and the air starts sucking … that’s fine. But if we dip, or drop — or lose the ballasting loads, or anything like that … if the generator starts drawing in water, we’re in trouble.”

Cly said, “I see why it worries you, but we’ve got two other things to worry about right now. For one, they’ve damn well seen us and they know we’re here. They don’t know what to make of it yet, but it won’t be long before someone starts dropping bombs out of an airship, trying to knock us to the bottom of the bay. So we have to get moving.”

“What’s the second thing?” Houjin asked nervously.

Cly lied. “I can’t remember the second thing. But I want you to shove that tube up over the waterline and start the generator. They’ve seen us — and that’s fine, so long as we hightail it out of here. I don’t much give a shit if they watch us leave. Even if they follow us, we’ll lose them in the Gulf, once we’ve drawn down enough air to keep us down low and safe for a while.”

The second thing Cly had not wanted to say aloud was that he was fairly sure it’d been nearer to an hour — forty-five minutes at the bare minimum. They were running lower than he wanted to say. He could feel it in the press of the breathed and rebreathed air on his skin, and in the moist warmth of every breath he drew. A glance over at Deaderick Early told him that Early suspected the same but was determined to ignore it.

As for the rest of them, Cly saw no reason to worry them. Not when they only needed motivating, not frightening. Frightened people breathe faster, harder, heavier. They burn up air even quicker, and that wouldn’t help the situation.

The boy said, “Yes, sir, I’m on it.” And he fixed the scope in a downward position, running to the air tube and its generator, deploying the one and starting the other with a pull of a crank.

“If it sucks down a little water, that won’t be the end of the world. You might get wet when you bring it back down, but for now, it’ll have to do us, all right?”

No one responded, so Andan Cly urged the propulsion screws to full power. Then, with Deaderick’s assistance, he aimed Ganymede toward the bottleneck at the bay’s southern entrance, leaving the worst of the fighting behind them. They wouldn’t know if they’d made a difference in the battle there, not for days, but Cly was glad he’d taken a chance on it.

Maybe he was on the verge of settling down and becoming a family man, or something like it; maybe he’d go retire in the Washington Territories, leisurely swatting rotters away from Fort Decatur and the business he meant to run there.

But today he was a pirate still, and for whatever good or ill, right or wrong, holy or evil thing that word had ever meant, it felt good to wear it this one last time. Even if he wore it at the bottom of the bay, fighting the Texians by stealth and hidden in watery shadows. Even if no one would ever know he was the one who’d dropped the antiaircraft guns from the patrol ships. Even if he went down in nobody’s history for this last hurrah, that was fine by him.

Pirates didn’t have their own lands, or books, or histories, after all. Not much of it. Just one small island in one dark bay, off to the west of the Mississippi River.

But it was enough, and it was worth keeping.

“Early, how far off is this bottleneck — and Huey, how’s the air holding?”

“Getting a little sputter, sir. Keep us higher if you can do it.”

“Higher it is, kid. Watch that tube, and if you can, watch from the scope. Can you go back and forth?”

“Not really, sir.”

But Troost said, “I’ll watch the scope. I want to take another look up topside, anyway.” He redeployed it, figuring out the levers, knobs, and cranks as he went along — and aiming it up above the water, and backwards. This meant he was off the stool and standing with his backside to the captain, Fang, and Deaderick.

Deaderick was the one who asked, “What are you doing, Troost?”

“I don’t care where we’re going, but I want to know where we’ve been. It’s looking like a real mess out there, if I do say so myself.”

“Good. I like making messes,” Cly beamed.

“I ought to warn you, they’re coming up behind us. Not fast, but steady. And—” He tipped the scope so it aimed up nearly as far as it’d go. “—I think one of the big Texian warships is turning around to track us.”

“We’ll lose it in the Gulf,” Deaderick promised. “Sun won’t be up for a while yet, and they’ll never see us under the waves.”

“I expect you’re right.” Troost nodded with satisfaction. He swiveled the scope and got up into the seat that had formerly held Houjin. “Hey, good news in this direction.”

The captain asked, “How so?”

“I see both of our guys — Little and Mumler — one on each bank. Jesus Christ, they’re close together. They don’t mean for us to squeak between ’em, do they?”

“They don’t call it a bottleneck for nothing,” Deaderick said. “We’ll slow down and squeak between ’em, that’s right. They’ll pole us on through. Then we ought to see if we can grab them and pull them on board. I don’t want to leave them out there, not with Texas coming up behind us.”

Cly agreed. “Good idea. Huey — how’s the air coming?”

A big burp of water sloshed inside, soaking the boy from the waist down, but he laughed. “Gotta stop for now, but that should be plenty. It was more than a couple of minutes, wasn’t it?”

“Hey, Early,” Troost said. “I’ve got another idea for an improvement on your next model.”

“Clocks?”

“Damn right. You need some clocks in here.”

Before long, the first tap of a pole clanked down into Ganymede’s interior, and before much longer than that, they were through the bottleneck between Grande Terre and Grand Isle. With two new passengers, they struck out for the prearranged position in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Union airship carrier Valiant awaited — surrounded at a distance by curious Texians who were too smart to come any closer, but too wily to let it alone altogether.

* * *

When Ganymede reached the Valiant, Captain Cly and First Mate Fang held the ship steady as an enormous winch — designed to retrieve airships, should they fall into the ocean during landing or takeoff — craned out over the water and affixed itself to Ganymede’s hull. A series of hydraulic cinches compressed, squeezed, and, after a few false starts … established a secure grip on the huge steel watercraft.

A crank turned, and more hydraulics stabilized the affair, counteracting the tremendous weight of something being heaved from the water. A giant arm swung, and dropped the craft onto a platform that was ordinarily used to land and park airships.

But Ganymede had the same shape as an airship. And it had similar controls, so a pilot like Andan Cly could get her from Pontchartrain to the Gulf. And in the end, everything went just as Josephine had planned.

Or perhaps not just as she’d planned, but so close to her original scheme that she was prepared to take credit for it. This had worked out, hadn’t it? It’d gone as well as anyone could have hoped — better, even. She had not merely delivered the ship, but, thanks to the captain and her brother, they could provide a detailed report of the weapons system: what parts were satisfactory, which aspects could stand improvement. How the ammunition could be better designed, and how it ought to be stored. How the controls might be calibrated for surer accuracy with every shot.

Josephine did not mind admitting that none of those things would have occurred if they hadn’t made it to the bay and assisted the pirates against the Texians. So she refused to regret the delay or the spent ammunition.

With conscious, sincere effort, she declined to fret over the change in plans.

Instead, she waited until Ganymede had settled and been released from the winch’s grasping claw, and there was no more motion except for the distant, almost undetectable flutter of the Gulf moving beneath the Valiant. Then she went to the ladder and climbed it, with Ruthie right behind her, and unscrewed the portal door, opening the hatch and letting the clear night air spill down into Ganymede’s gut.

The sky outside smelled of salt and birds, and it was littered with the peaceful twinkle of stars, shrouded in part by a faint mist that might have been cloud cover, or might have been smoke drifting out to sea.

No longer could she hear the interminable din of artillery and the crashing and burning of airships or boats. Only the murmurs of curious men reached her ears, accompanied by an official-sounding bark of, “Hail Ganymede, and its occupants. This is Admiral Herman Partridge of the United States Airship Carrier Valiant. Declare yourself, and your intent. How do you reply?”

Casting a brilliant smile at Ruthie, Josephine flipped the hatch door back and emerged. She said, “I am Josephine Parella Rawling Early. And I am proud to deliver this Rebel device into your hands.”