CHAPTER 8
Sirus
He could feel them drowning. Over two hundred Spoiled were on the Losing Proposition and most of them survived the explosion that ignited her magazine and tore her in two. So Sirus was given a fulsome education in the experience of convulsive gasping as salt water invaded throat and lungs. Even amongst the Spoiled panic would take over at the end, subjugated human instincts reborn at the instant of death. The resultant blossom of terror and desperation should have been repugnant, something to slam his mental shields against. Instead he drank it all in. Fear, he had come to understand, was a precious commodity. He could use this. Constant exposure to a life of horrors was creating an ever-thicker callus around his soul, eroding his capacity to feel anything. When his own reserves of fear were depleted now he could summon the memories of the dead to guard his mind. This he did now as he sent a silent pulse of thanks into the fading minds of the Spoiled as they slipped into the depths.
The Losing Proposition had been the fastest and least damaged ship in their small fleet, her original name of the Negotiator scraped from her hull and replaced by something more to Catheline’s liking. It transpired that the Blood-blessed woman had a flair for the ironic. Sirus’s command ship, a heavy frigate once dubbed the IPV Position of Strength, was now the Imminent Demise, a name that seemed increasingly appropriate as the huge Protectorate battleship loomed ever larger in the bridge window.
“Hard to starboard!” he commanded aloud to the Spoiled at the helm, simultaneously sending a thought-command to the engine room: Reverse starboard paddle.
The Imminent Demise veered away as the battleship came on, paddles turning the sea to foam on either side of her hull. Despite the damage that had wrecked much of her upper works, the fire of the battleship’s forward batteries continued unabated. Sirus had ordered the guns seized by the Spoiled the Reds had deposited on the ship but resistance from the Protectorate crew had been ferocious. Consequently, all but a handful from an assault force of over fifty had been killed. They had succeeded in dispatching over twice their number in the savage fighting that raged throughout the ship, but a vessel this size had plenty of crewmen in reserve. Sirus felt sure that one of his squads, all veterans of the Barrier Isles campaign, would have succeeded in silencing the guns if they hadn’t encountered the Lethridge woman.
Sirus’s mind had been fully occupied with marshalling his fleet against the battleship and her fearsomely accurate guns, but the rush of recognition experienced by the Spoiled boarding party had cut through the competing morass of image and sensation. Lizanne Lethridge’s face had been plucked from the memory of one of the few Exceptional Initiatives agents captured at Feros and seared into the mind of every Spoiled by Catheline herself. The image had been accompanied by an implacable instruction: Kill this woman on sight.
They had certainly tried, Sirus taking charge of the squad and orchestrating an assault that should have left Miss Lethridge a bullet-riddled corpse. The notion of summoning a burst of fear to mask his mind and allow her to escape fluttered through his head, but he resisted it. Recognition of this woman had spread throughout the fleet and across the many miles to Feros; Catheline would know.
In the event, no subterfuge was necessary. Sirus had faced many formidable people in battle before, wickedly skilled Island warriors, the Shaman King and grizzled Protectorate veterans during his warship-seizing operations. But watching this woman as she leapt and shot, utilising her powers with an economy and ferocity that was truly frightening, he knew he was looking upon the most dangerous individual he was ever likely to meet.
He had come close, however, his sole remaining Spoiled might actually have done the deed if Lethridge’s companion hadn’t intervened. The woman’s face disappeared into instant blackness as the bullet tore through the Spoiled’s brain and Sirus felt a painful howl of frustration filling his mind. The connection to his fellow Spoiled was lost as the howl continued, accompanied by a lacerating fury as Catheline gave full vent to her feelings.
Sink that fucking ship, Admiral, her mind boomed in his head. Whatever the cost. I want that bitch dead!
He had organised his ships into a broad semicircle, the two more lightly armed sloops at either end and heavily armed frigates in the centre. The whole affair would have been over fairly quickly if a sufficient number of Blues had been with them, but it transpired the aquatic drakes were unable to keep pace with steam-powered ships for more than a few hours at a time. Consequently, their accompanying force of two dozen Blues were nowhere in sight when the Protectorate fleet hove into view, obliging Sirus to fight the battle with the forces on hand.
He ordered the two sloops to use their superior speed to dart close to the battleship, loose off a rapid salvo then withdraw so as to divide the enemy’s fire whilst the frigates’ barrage did most of the damage. All the while the Reds conducted harassing dives on the battleship, sweeping her decks with fire. It had been an effective if costly tactic so far, most of the Reds had fallen to the battleship’s deadly repeating guns and a sloop and a frigate had been destroyed thanks to sheer weight of gunnery. But it was working. The big ship could only take so much more, despite her captain’s impressive manoeuvring and the desperate courage of her crew. All they had to do was draw back a mile or so and let her exhaust her reserves of product before closing in for the kill. But with Catheline’s command the time for tactical niceties was over.
Sirus ordered his three remaining ships into a tight formation and launched them head-on at the battleship. The other sloop went down first, striking out in the lead only to be caught by a mixture of heavy and light armament when she drew within four hundred yards of the enemy. Both her paddles were wrecked within minutes and her boiler exploded as she foundered. The Losing Proposition went next, felled by a lucky plunging shot to the magazine, which left the Imminent Demise to face the dying monster alone.
“Midships,” Sirus ordered as the frigate’s bow swung north. He sent a command to the engine room to set both paddles into forward motion but a glance through the side-window told him it wouldn’t be enough.
The battleship loomed over the smaller vessel as the two ships closed, the repeating guns on the Protectorate ship raking the Imminent Demise from stern to bow. Sirus dived to the deck as cannon shells and bullets tore the bridge apart, showering him with shattered glass and timber. He felt the ship heave to port and looked up to see the helmsman lying near by. A cannon shell appeared to have punched clean through the Spoiled and he lay gazing at the smoke rising from the hole in his chest, yellow eyes curious rather than afraid.
Sirus tore his gaze from the sight and scrambled upright, lurching towards the wheel in the vain hope he might correct the ship’s course whilst she could still make headway. He was propelled off his feet before he could reach it, the entire ship wracked by a mighty shudder as the battleship rammed into her port beam at full speed. Ironwork screamed in protest as the huge ship’s prow tore into the guts of the Imminent Demise, steam exploding up through the sundered deck as her boiler burst. For a moment it seemed as if the battleship would slice the frigate clean in two but then her velocity suddenly diminished, Sirus assumed due to her blood-burners finally exhausting their fuel.
He had been thrown clear of the wrecked bridge and found himself clinging to the starboard railing. The sea seemed to be heaving around him and he realised the two ships were now locked together in a mad dance. The frigate’s starboard paddle was still turning and the battleship had brought her auxiliary engines on-line, forcing the two vessels into an erratic pirouette as neither had sufficient power to break free of the other. However, a quick scan of the minds of his remaining crew told Sirus the Imminent Demise would soon live up to its name. The impact had torn a gaping rent in the port hull plating and several tons of water had already deluged the hold and the ballast tanks. She would go under in minutes.
Sink it! Catheline’s voice in his head, shrill and undeniable in its compulsion. Kill her!
Sirus found a pair of Spoiled crewmen attempting to shore up the hull and sent them to the magazine instead. He also found a drowning Spoiled trapped beneath an iron beam in engineering. The man had been an armourer on a Protectorate vessel before his capture and it was an easy matter to pluck the required knowledge from his head before the rising waters claimed his final breath. Sirus instantly shared the knowledge with the two Spoiled in the magazine. They completed the task with the kind of efficiency only the Spoiled could display, pushing the detonators into the sacks of propellant and rigging the fuses in a scant few minutes.
Sirus clambered back onto the listing deck of his short-lived command, gazing up at the prow of the battleship above. The Profitable Venture, he read from the iron-lettered plate behind the great ship’s anchor mounting. Not today, it seems. A bullet ricocheted off the bulkhead a few feet away as a Protectorate marksman tried his luck. Sirus ignored it, instead focusing his gaze on the tallest figure he could see amongst the riflemen assembled along the battleship’s rail. Whether the man was the captain, or even an officer, he couldn’t tell, but Sirus straightened and offered a perfect salute nevertheless. It seemed only polite.
He never knew if the man returned the salute for at that moment Catheline’s thoughts pushed their way into his. Very noble, I’m sure, Admiral. But we still have need of you. Time for a swim.
This command was no more resistible than the others and Sirus turned and sprinted for the starboard rail without pause, chased all the way by Protectorate rifle fire. He leapt over the rail and dived into the sea, plunging deep and staying below the surface as he swam away. The magazine blew when he had covered perhaps twenty yards. The blast wave would probably have killed a non-Spoiled, forcing the remaining air from his lungs and propelling him to the surface, his back arched like a bow.
Air flooded his lungs as he reared up out of the water, floundering for a brief time before his instinctive panic receded. He let the fear linger as he bobbed on the surface, gazing at the final moments of the two warships. The explosion had torn the Imminent Demise free of her ugly embrace with the larger vessel and she foundered quickly, Sirus once again sharing the final agonies of a drowning crew.
The Profitable Venture took longer to die. The explosion had torn away most of her prow, revealing the corridors and compartments of her innards. Smoke and flame gouted from deep within her then died as the decks flooded. Her stern reared up as the forward section became inundated, her massive rudder turning this way and that like the tail of some huge, wounded fish. The battleship emitted a last, forlorn groan as she sank, men dropping from her flanks like flies escaping a submerging corpse. Then the rudder slipped into the patch of frothing sea and she was gone.
Night seemed to fall quickly, though his sense of time slipped away as delirium took hold. As disciplined as his mind was it remained susceptible to the depredations of persistent cold, thirst and hunger. A short exploration of the surrounding water had discovered a shattered piece of life-boat. Sirus clung to it, managing to keep the upper half of himself out of the water to stave off the deadly chill. From the diminishing screams of the Protectorate sailors not far off, it seemed most of them had not been so lucky.
The temptation to let go of his fear was strong, his resolve leeching away with every passing hour. What does it matter now? he pondered, too numb to feel the pain of the all-encompassing chill. Let her see it all. The last testament of a dying man.
For some reason Katrya’s face came to him as his mental defences began to erode, threatening to reveal his scheming, his desperate desire for release from this bondage. It was Katrya who stopped him. Her face was not the one she wore when he killed her. This was her human face, the pale, frightened visage of the young woman he had sheltered with in the Morsvale sewers. Why are they doing this? she had whispered to him then as they huddled beneath a drain cover listening to the horrors unfolding in the streets above. What do they want?
He had no answer for her then, but he had one now. Because they hate us, and they want everything.
He let out a shout as consciousness returned, thrashing in the water and nearly losing his grip on the wreckage. Hold on to the fear! he commanded himself, summoning the sensations he had stolen from the drowning Spoiled. It was possible there were others in the army who had learned how to mask their thoughts in the same manner and he was determined not to allow Catheline to learn the secret. Give her nothing. Even if you die here.
So he clung to his flotsam, shivering in fear and cold as the night wore on until the first slivers of sunlight snaked through the clouded eastern sky. Finally, the last of his strength seeped away and his hands lost purchase on the wreckage. He lay back as the swell carried him off, waiting for the sea to claim him and staring up at the dimly lit clouds . . . Then blinked as a large black shape soared into view, folded its wings and dived down towards him, claws extending.
Katarias, Sirus thought as the Red plucked him from the water and beat his wings to strike out on a westward course. Before Sirus slipped into unconsciousness he entertained the notion that the drake had found him hours before but delayed his rescue, curious to see how long he would last.
His new flagship was a diminutive mail-carrier recently renamed the Fallen Stock. She had a single paddle at the stern driven by the most recent mark of steam engine. Sirus recalled from the inventory provided by Veilmist, the Island girl turned mathematical genius, that this craft was the fastest civilian vessel they possessed. It seemed he had Catheline to thank for ordering the mail-carrier to follow the ill-fated battle fleet as added insurance.
Katarias had dumped his inert form on the fore-deck before taking perch on the small ship’s bridgehouse. The drake’s weight was sufficient to buckle the ceiling and cause the ship to dip several inches. Sirus spent a day in delirious slumber belowdecks, being fed broth by his Spoiled crewmates until he returned to full consciousness. Once again he found himself marvelling at the fortitude of his remade body. An ordeal that would certainly have killed his human form was now little more than a daylong inconvenience.
Welcome back, Admiral, Catheline’s thoughts greeted him when he made his way to the bridge the following morning. May I say how gratified I am by your survival, sir. This whole enterprise would be much less entertaining without you.
You do me too much credit, miss, he replied. My orders?
Sadly, it seems your mighty efforts proved in vain. She pushed a vision into his head. It showed an eye-level view of the sea, the waves swept by gusts of thick smoke. The vision kept fading to grey before springing back into clarity, from which Sirus deduced it had been captured by an injured Spoiled near the point of exhaustion. There, Catheline said, freezing the memory and dispelling any extraneous detail to focus on a vague shape in the smoke. Spoiled eyes were capable of capturing much more detail than human vision so even through the haze it was possible to discern the shape of a life-boat. Catheline magnified the image, revealing the slim form of a woman seated at the stern of the boat.
Lizanne Lethridge, Sirus commented, stoking his fear to conceal the twinge of admiration for the woman’s resourcefulness.
Isn’t she just so appallingly aggravating? Catheline replied. The poor fellow who saw this didn’t last much longer, I’m afraid. But it seems the boat was heading west. It’s possible the sea may claim her before she finds rescue, but I doubt our luck is that good. Follow her, my dear faithful Admiral. Find out her destination then await us. We are coming. All of us.