“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.”