Ganymede (The Clockwork Century 3)

Mumler shifted his shoulders and said, “Any one of us might get shot at any time. Rick, if you stay down here with these folks, I’ll join Rucker or Chester up topside. We can take the two lightest of the diesel motors and guide you around. Ruthie? Can you take my place here? Between me and Rick, we’ve showed you the ropes enough so you can fire and reload all the charges. ”

“Oui, my dear. I will stay. ”

Kirby Troost sniffed. “Used to be, folks considered it bad luck to have a lady on board a boat. ”

“To hell with what used to be,” Ruthie spit. “Josephine and I will ride with you, and I will show you what luck we’ll turn out to be, you hear me?”

“Everybody stop fighting, all right?” Cly demanded. “How’s that air circulation going?”

Houjin responded. “Ready to retract and seal up. We can go again as soon as we spool the hose back inside. ”

Cly took a deep breath. “You heard the kid. Rucker, you hear me up there?”

“Sure do, Captain. ”

“Mumler’s coming up. He’ll explain the situation. ”

“Are we headed for the bay or the Gulf?”

“Both,” Cly told him, and turned to reclaim the captain’s seat without looking at Josephine. “We’re going to do both. ”

Rucker said, “All right, then. Listen, if for some reason you lose us: Once you get to the bay, head due south and you’ll hit the bottleneck between Grande Terre and Grande Isle. We’ll catch up to you there if we lose you in the fray—or if we have to run for cover. ”

“Got it. ”

“I don’t like this,” Josephine murmured.

Ruthie took her arm. In French, she said, “Like it, don’t like it. This is the right thing, madame. We will be in the Gulf within an hour or two, but first, we will save this one piece of New Orleans. We will save it, and the men who saved your brother. He owes them a debt, and so he wishes to lend them aid. And you owe them a debt, because you love Deaderick. ”

“And what of you, then, darling?” Josephine asked, allowing herself to be led back to the spot where she’d waited out the trip so far, beneath the great windows and holding on to a seam that served as a handrail. “What do you owe them, that you’re so eager to rush into trouble?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose it is. ”

“Nothing may ever come of it,” she said sadly. “I am not his kind, but that makes my debt to the pirates no less true. ”

Cly was giving orders, and the men were buckling down where they could, and settling in where they couldn’t. Deaderick came to sit beside his sister, at least for this beginning part—the moments when the air hose was retracted and the craft was sealed, when the propulsion screws churned to life and the craft shoved itself into the canal. Those first seconds had been the worst so far, and they were bad again this time, too—worse, perhaps, due to a brief and violent clip against a sunken stone piling that marked the old entrance to the canal.

Ganymede scraped against it and squeaked around it, pivoting and righting itself. Cly followed the frantic taps from Rucker and Wally above, though the men had not been able to warn the captain in time to let him avoid the obstacle altogether.

“It’s mostly sunken,” Cly griped. “They ought to clean out this damn canal once in a while. ”

“Left over from some other construction project, I’m sure,” Deaderick observed, his voice only slightly shaky. The impact and the unexpected turn had unnerved him as much as anyone, and the truth was that no one knew for certain how much damage Ganymede could take before springing a leak or becoming stuck.

“We’ll have to be more careful on the way down this ridiculous creek, won’t we, Houjin?”

“I couldn’t see whatever we hit, captain!”

“I know you couldn’t, and I’m not accusing you of messing up. I’m just saying, keep your eyes open. Let us know what you’re spying up on the banks. Help me keep us moving in a straight line. ”

“This canal … I don’t even know if it’s wide enough to take us,” Josephine breathed.

“It’s wide enough, all right,” her brother said. “It’ll take us, but it’s like Cly said. Got to be careful. ”

Everyone fell silent as the captain and first mate navigated the dark, warm waters of the narrow canal; and in the midst of this silence, when all the conversation had dried up out of anxiousness or concentration, all the other small sounds were amplified. The pinging of sticks, rocks, and the shoving feet of canal creatures sounded like stomping soldiers. The twist and squeak of the mirrorscope under Houjin’s direction seemed to scream, and the pops of levers at Cly’s feet were as hearty as gunshots in the confined space, with its rounded walls and nervous passengers.

The water wasn’t so rough, there in the sheltered space between the two man-made walls that kept the waters moving but kept them contained as well. The ride was smoother going—and the darkness beyond the windows was even more complete, now that the shadows of the canal conspired with the late-night sky to shroud the whole scene in terrible blindness.