He closed the door behind him. Through the port window he spied the emperor’s launch scudding across the harbour towards the ship’s boarding ladder. There was no time to spare. He scanned the engine gauges and controls. Boiler pressure, good. Water level, good. Engine oil. Fuel oil. Feed cocks. Decomp. Hydraulics. Pressure valves. Primer shunts. Everything was in order. A separate bank under the forward window contained an array of meteorological and navigational instruments – barometers, chronographs, compasses and the like – but he ignored those for now. Likewise the comspool. He had to hope the engine room crew had been lax enough to keep the main whale-oil feed line open, or he’d be running on reserve.
He primed the engine and opened the oil feed cocks, then pumped the decompression lever until the gauge levelled. Then he pressed down firmly on the first of the three copper shunts.
Far below he heard the engine grumble into life.
‘Let’s see what you can do,’ he muttered.
Granger opened half the air shunts, spun the wheel hard to starboard and twisted open the main-line feed-through cock. Steam hissed behind the control panel. Hydraulic power valves snapped open. The great ship gave a slight tremble and then began to slide forward.
A hail of rifle shots burst through the port window, showering Granger with shards of glass. He grinned maniacally and then pumped the main-line primer and opened the rest of the air shunts. The bridge juddered heavily in response.
The ship began to pick up speed.
Granger watched the bow of the Haurstaf man-o’-war slide by as he took the Excelsior out into the harbour. Ahead, he could now see the gates of the Glot Madera heave into view. A fishing boat and two canal ferries made sudden course changes to move out of his way.
From the control deck came a steady clacking sound, as the ship’s comspool began disgorging a message it had printed onto a thin strip of paper. Evidently there were crewmen aboard somewhere. They would probably be down in the engine room, which meant they might not yet be aware that the emperor was not aboard. Granger tore the tape loose and read it.
ER – NO/REC – ORDERS/TO – OPEN MAINFEED – AI
Awaiting instructions. The ER glyph meant the message had indeed come from the engine room. Granger clicked open the pressure cap, turned the destination-wheel round to its ER setting, and then dialled and punched in a reply using five of the seventy-three commands available on the command wheel.
BR – CONFIRM – REQ/OPEN MAINFEED – EJH/DANGER – REQ/ALL HASTE
He depressed the release valve and heard a series of phuts as his reply disappeared into the ship’s warren of steam messaging pipes. A comspool in the engine room would begin typing it out almost at once. The Excelsior meanwhile was now building up speed as she passed through the gates of the Glot Madera. The great Ethugran Administration Buildings loomed to port and starboard. Granger locked down the wheel and hurried over the port window.
Unable to match the yacht’s pace, the emperor’s launch had turned around and was heading back to the dockside. Hu himself was now standing on the smaller boat’s deck, shouting and waving his hands up at his crewmen and soldiers on dry land. As Granger watched, the emperor’s men began to commandeer vessels all along the quayside. They were coming after him.
The comspool on the control deck began its rhythmic clacking again. The briny smell of octopus ink came from its innards as tiny metal elements rattled away behind the printing wheel. It sounded out of sorts. Granger checked the device’s oil reservoir, and then adjusted the steam inlet valve and feeder gearing. The tape began to spool out more smoothly.
ER – CONFIRM – REQ/VERIFY – FLAG/YELLOW – AI
He cursed. Someone in the ER crew wanted a verification code, and Granger didn’t know the correct response. There were nine flag glyphs around the command wheel he could choose from. But which one? If he lucked upon the correct response, the engine room crew would open the main fuel feed line. If not, they’d shut down the engines immediately, thereby foiling his escape. Granger peered ahead along the Glot Madera. The deep-water channel ran straight for a thousand yards or so, before curving gently to the south-west. The Excelsior would reach the corner in two or three minutes. An eight-to-one chance of choosing the correct coded reply? It wasn’t good enough. He couldn’t allow the crew to stop him here. He dialled in a different response.
BR – NO CONFIRM/TAPE FOUL – REQ/REPEAT LAST MESSAGE
With the wheel still locked in place and the Excelsior firmly fixed on her current heading, Granger picked up the last of his powder cartridges and left the bridge. He had minutes to reach the engine room and then get back to the wheel. And less time yet to murder the crew.
The deadship struck them on the starboard side with enough force to send Maskelyne staggering sideways. He lost his grip on the wheel. A terrible metal groaning reverberated through the Mistress’s bulkheads as the ironclad’s reinforced prow crushed a deep trench in the dredging ship’s hull. The Mistress lurched sickeningly, her deck cranes tilting closer to the roiling red-brown waters as the crew hung on for their lives. The bathysphere clanked against its mountings, then broke free and smashed against the port bulwark.
Ianthe cried out in alarm.
The grinding and moaning of stressed metals continued for a tortuously long time, before finally subsiding. Maskelyne gazed down at the wreckage in disbelief and horror. The bow of the Unmer ship remained embedded in one side of his own vessel. That heavy iron prow had crumpled the Mistress’s hull like paper. Had it holed them? He couldn’t see how it could possibly not have holed them.
He flung open the wheelhouse door and called down. ‘Mellor! Have someone fetch my family. Round up everyone but the repair teams. I want them top deck, now. And I want a time-frame here.’
‘Aye, Captain.’ The first officer relayed Maskelyne’s orders to several crewmen, who took off at a run.
‘Are we going to sink?’ Ianthe asked.
‘Very likely,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘Come with me.’ Without looking back to see if she was following, he climbed down the wheelhouse ladder and hurried along the deck to the point of impact.
Most of the crew from the lower decks had already appeared, and their gem lanterns moved about in the gloom around Maskelyne as they began to assemble into ranks. Someone was taking a head count, calling out names. The deadship’s figurehead leaned over the starboard bulwark amidst a mess of twisted metal, and it seemed to Maskelyne that that maiden’s grimace evinced a hint of cruel satisfaction. He could smell burned iron, rust and ash, and the bitter salts of the ocean, but something else…
Fuel oil. The dredger’s whale-oil tanks had been ruptured.
Maskelyne leaned over the side and peered down at his stricken hull. The ship’s skin had been crumpled almost to the waterline and ruptured in at least four places. Clear fluid was seeping from the fore rents, leaving the surrounding brine with a nacreous sheen.
Mellor arrived at his side. ‘We’re pumping out all the ballast tanks,’ he said. ‘Those that haven’t been damaged, anyway. Two midships pumps were shorn from their outlets, and we can’t get to the fore ones. Abernathy will try to keep us afloat a while longer, but he’s not confident. Secondary repair crew can’t get access to the engine room. Flooding sounds like it’s above the hatches.’
‘What about the men already in there?’ Maskelyne asked.
‘Not a sound from them, Captain.’
‘Cut down through the crew quarters.’
‘That’ll shorten the time we have, sir.’