The Iron Duke (41 page)

All was still quiet as he made his way to the foredeck—but that would soon change. Drawing his revolver, he shot the zombies in their cages. Only one had escaped, but that didn’t mean there was only one zombie left. Their bite took time to kill a bugger, but not all of the crew would have nanoagents. And as soon as a bugger died, he’d turn into one. A zombie tearing a man’s neck out had a way of hurrying that death along.

The gunfire brought more noise. Garbled hisses. Running feet. Five or six of them, all below decks. So they’d chased the crew down there, but probably weren’t clever enough to know the way back up.

He returned amidships and stood over the ladder leading below. “Lantern?”

Scarsdale had already taken one from the posts and sparked the lighter. Rhys didn’t bother with the ladder. He dropped through the hatch, landing heavily on the next deck. Nothing came at him from the dim passageways or from behind the launch. The captain’s cabin lay aft. Scarsdale followed him with the lantern, but he didn’t need it for the cabin. Sunlight streamed through the gallery windows.

The navy had kept his desk and his table. Everything else was new—and a mess. Christ. Hunt was a pig. Clothes piled on the trunks, wet and torn papers strewn across the deck. He’d burn the fucking bed before he took Mina on it.

He called out, listened for any human response. Nothing. He turned back toward the passageway.

Wood splintered behind him. He pivoted, machete ready, and caught a glimpse of Hunt, wild-eyed and naked, wielding a pistol. Scarsdale’s blunderbuss boomed. Hunt’s chest caved in. He staggered and dropped.

“Hiding in the goddamn privy.” Scarsdale shook his head and reloaded. “I wish I’d killed him in there.”

If Scarsdale hadn’t, diseased nanoagents would have. Rhys eyed the scratches on the man’s face, the chunks of flesh missing from his arm. “Had he already turned?”

Hunt’s eyes popped open. He lurched up to sitting. Rhys leapt out of Scarsdale’s way. The bounder fired again, took off the top of the bastard’s skull.

Ears ringing, Rhys watched Hunt drop back to the deck. “We run into any more, you shoot it in the head the
first
time.”

Scarsdale grinned. “But now, I killed him twice.”

Probably still not as many times as Hunt deserved. They cleared the rest of the deck, moved farther below. On the tables off the galley, that morning’s breakfast still filled the tin plates.

“They left in a hurry. I’ve never seen a sailor run from a table without taking the bread to eat on the way.” Scarsdale checked the mugs. “Or throwing back the last of his grog. And I say, with all of this shooting, your inspector is probably mad with worry by now.”

His
inspector. “Quickly, then.”

 

 

Later, Rhys would make up a better story than Scarsdale
standing over a ladder and banging a pair of pots together, with Rhys shooting the zombies as soon as they appeared on the deck below. He’d say that a few chased him along dark passageways, that a few more jumped out of storerooms. But in truth, the day he ran scared on the
Terror
was the day he’d hand her over to Dorchester and the Admiralty. Both the crew trapped in the hold and the
Terror
herself deserved a better captain than one that cowered in a privy—or one that cowered anywhere else on the ship.

The decks clear, he and Scarsdale made their way below. The crew had blocked access to the cargo hold from the inside. Pounding on the door, Rhys raised his voice and ordered them open. They did, and his gaze met shocked faces, a disbelieving crew—and a look deeper into the hold confirmed that most of them had survived.

The cheers began, one hundred and twenty men stomping their feet. In colder waters, that would risk bringing a megalodon or a kraken, but he allowed them this. He looked the crew over, counting eight boys that might have been Mina’s brother.

Rhys barked over the noise. “Andrew Wentworth! Are you present?”

There.
As silence fell over the crew, a white-haired, gangly boy froze in place. Eyes wide, he called out, “Aye, captain.”

“You will join me on the quarterdeck, Mr. Wentworth.”

Brows rose. Heads turned. Pink to his ears, Wentworth said, “Yes, sir.”

With a sharp nod, Rhys cast his gaze over the others. “I want every able-bodied man on deck, and the
Terror
cleaned up and ready to sail within an hour. Those zombies that were crew will be prepared for burial. The others—including Hunt—I want tossed over the side before I climb above decks. Warrant officers and mates, you’d best be ready to report on status and crew in the wardroom in half an hour.” He wanted to know what the hell had happened on this ship—and to
Josephine
. “Haul to.”

Men began filing out of the hold. Some navy, some new. Rhys recognized more than a few of them from his crew.

He stopped one. The engine master had been with him during the mutiny, though he’d been a ship’s blacksmith, then. Almost twenty years on the
Terror
, and he had the leathered skin and steel prosthetic arm to show for it.

“Still with her, Mr. Smiegel? How’s her engine?”

The old man straightened shoulders that were all but permanently stooped from ducking beneath low decks. “She still has the finest engine that’s never fired, captain.”

“You’ve taken care of her.”

“That we have, and she’s taken good care of us in return.” His eyes gleamed with emotion. “And we knew you’d come for us, sir. Even those navy boys knew it.”

Rhys had to grin at that. Still his ship, even in the eyes of a naval crew. And as soon as they returned to London, she’d be his by law again, too. No chance in hell was the Royal Navy going to keep her.

Smiegel hesitated. Recognizing that the man was reluctant to speak out of turn, Rhys nodded for him to say his piece.

“If you’ve come aboard, then you must have . . . Has the kraken gone, sir?”

“Kraken?” The echo came from behind him. Scarsdale stared at the old man, his face pale. Rhys could feel the blood draining from his own, his gut tightening with dread. “Not in these waters.”

No, not in these waters. Not that Rhys had ever seen. And the sea around the
Terror
had been clear. But something had brought that airship down . . . and could have been hidden under it, using the balloon for shade.
God.

He turned and sprinted for the ladders.

Too much time had passed since the last round of gunfire. Several minutes, at least.

Her fingers clenched on the rifle, Mina stared down though the
Terror
’s web of crisscrossing lines and timbers, willing Rhys to return. The ship’s upper deck remained empty. All was quiet, until a deep rolling rumble sounded, as if hundreds of horses trotted across a wooden bridge.

What was that? She looked at the aviators, saw their puzzled expressions. Frowning, Yasmeen left the quarterdeck, approaching the rail.

Mina glanced back down, then to
Josephine
when movement under the deflated balloon caught her eye. Beside her, an aviator called out, “Captain!”

Yasmeen joined them, bracing her forearms against the gunwale and looking over. Between the
Terror
and the airship wreckage, a dark shadow was gliding deep beneath the water. A
big
dark shadow. The captain’s face stilled, her lips parting. Horror, Mina recognized.

“Captain?” she said, her heart pounding.

“It should be too warm,” Yasmeen murmured. “It must have been carried up on the cold current that runs northward along the coast, maybe hit a storm . . .” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen one so far north.”

Oh, blue heavens.
The giant armored sea creatures the Horde had created were well known to inhabit the colder waters: the megalodon sharks in the north and south, and the kraken in the south. But not so close to the equator.

The shadow became a shape, a bulbous head and thick tentacles, a monstrous iron-plated cephalopod. The two arms trailing behind were longer than the
Terror
.

“No,” Mina whispered. But denial wouldn’t make it true.

“They just need to keep quiet and sail out of here,” Yasmeen said. She looked along the rail. “Mr. Pessinger, please fire up the engines and the generator.”

For the rail cannon, Mina realized. “Can we lower the platform?”

Yasmeen nodded to the floating wreckage. “That’s probably what they did. With their engines firing.”

As
Lady Corsair
’s engines would need to be in order for the generators to power the rail gun. And the noise would have attracted the kraken . . . which had destroyed the skyrunner.

Astounded, Mina stared at
Josephine
’s balloon. How could a kraken pluck it out of the sky? “They have that great of a reach?”

“It’s long, no doubt. But if it wraps those tentacles around a cargo platform, it can drag the whole ship down.”

With a shudder,
Lady Corsair
’s engines started up, huffing and bellowing. The generator whined. Below, a plated form surfaced and dove beneath the
Terror
. Too quick.

“Mr. Pessinger, do you have a shot?”

“No, sir. Not without hitting the
Terror
.”

“Fuck.” Yasmeen breathed the curse before shouting, “Mr. Pegg, Ms. Washbourne, mount that rapid-fire gun! Pepper the water over there. See if we can’t draw it away. The rest of you, haul out the harpoons!”

She was shaking her head, even as she called the orders. Catching Mina’s gaze, she said, “Kraken aren’t zombies, investigating every new noise. They fixate.”

Noise from below had them both looking over again. Men were running onto the
Terror
’s deck. Rhys was with them, sprinting to the side and looking over. He turned. Mina couldn’t hear the shouts over the airship’s engines, but knew he was yelling orders.

“They’ll man the axes,” Yasmeen said, her pointing finger tracing the path of several men racing toward the weapon stations. She nodded to the men climbing into the rigging. “They’ll drop the canvas.”

And sail away.
Josephine
’s tether line had already been cut from the
Terror
’s stern. Everyone was in motion, except . . . Mina’s heart leapt. A pale-haired boy stood on the quarterdeck with an axe in hand—Andrew.

The
Terror
’s bow lurched to the side. Thick tentacles curled up around the front of the ship, just beneath the jutting bowsprit and the figurehead lifting her face to the sky. Armed with axes, men rushed to the foredeck, crowding into the point of the bow. The tentacles were too low for them to strike.

Sick with fear, Mina couldn’t look away. “Can they kill it?”

“Not with that armor. Not unless they’re lucky and get a shot at the eye. They just hope to hurt it enough that it’ll let go.”

“Can we make that shot?”

“It’s impossible at this angle, or anywhere more than ten or twenty feet over the surface. And even if the kraken floated into open water, the rail cannon’s penetration into the water isn’t deep. The best chance is using one of the harpoons.” She gestured to the men lined up along
Lady Corsair
’s side, each holding a speargun. “They’ll be watching for that chance.”

Mina looked at her rifle. Yasmeen pointed to the quarterdeck.

“You’ll find a harpoon in my weapon chest.”

Even at her fastest, she couldn’t run quickly enough. Mina returned to the rail, speargun ready—and with nothing to shoot. The tentacles crawled up the
Terror
’s sides, as if an enormous, monstrous hand was taking hold of the ship from below.

Yasmeen was right. They had absolutely no angle. They wouldn’t from any direction, not from this height. And so they waited—for the best, or the worst. And the worst would be dropping ropes and saving who they could.

Or drop a rope now. She turned to Yasmeen. “Why not lower a man on a rope beside the
Terror
? He’d have a shot.”

“I don’t pay my men enough to commit suicide.”

“Then me,” Mina said. “If the kraken takes hold of the rope, you can cut it. It won’t drag you down.”

“I’m not interested in suicide, either, and Trahaearn would kill me.” She flicked a glance at Mina’s harpoon. “Try to take a shot with that, if you must do something. But you’re not heading down.”

And Yasmeen would physically prevent her, if necessary. Mina remembered Newberry, and the six aviators who’d taken him down. Just three of them could handle Mina . . . unless she didn’t give them the chance.

With determination washing away fear, Mina took her place on the rail, near the ropes Rhys and Scarsdale had used to descend to the
Terror
. They were coiled up again, but the ends were still secured to the steel anchoring loops embedded in
Lady Corsair
’s decks. Directly below lay the blue strip of water between the
Terror
’s side and the skyrunner’s balloon.