The Nautilus Sanction (TimeWars 5)

“And there’s no way to tell who they are?”

“Could you tell who we were, Ned?” said Lucas. “We’re just people. Who’d suspect the truth? Who’d believe it? Even after all you’d seen, you didn’t want to believe it. It sounds crazy.”

Land stood up and leaned on the railing of the veranda, staring out to the sea, glinting in the moonlight. “Part of me keeps waiting to wake up and find all this is a dream,” he said. “This beats any tall tale I ever heard. If I ever told anyone about this, I’d be put in a madhouse for sure. From now on, I don’t think I will be so quick to not believe things. If someone tells me he saw a sea monster breathing fire, until I know better, I will think that there just may be a sea monster that breathes fire!” He looked down, then quickly leaned out over the railing and glanced from side to side. “Look here! There are no guards! Quick, now’s our chance!”

He vaulted the railing.

“Ned!” shouted Lucas.

“Hell,” said Finn, jumping to his feet. “We’d better catch him before he gets in trouble.”

They jumped down to the ground, rolled, came up running and caught Land after a hard sprint of about seventy-five yards. Finn grabbed the harpooner and spun him around.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he said.

Land looked at him as if he had lost his senses. “What do you mean? This is our chance to get away!”

“And go where?” said Andre.

Land looked blank for a moment, then he snapped his fingers. “There are some of Drakov’s crew about,” he said. “A lot of them will be drunk. We can take them and steal those things they use for traveling through time! We’ll find one, knock him senseless, then-”

“Ned, your heart’s in the right place, but you haven’t thought it through,” said Lucas. “Besides, you really don’t understand how it all works.”

“But you said-”

“It wouldn’t be much trouble to knock a couple of Drakov’s crew out and take their warp discs,” Lucas said. “You’re right as far as that goes. But we can’t get back aboard the submarine without knowing where it is. Even if we could, Drakov still has a crew aboard it and they looked pretty capable to me.”

“Couldn’t you go back to your own time and return with more of your people?” Land said. “You could take Drakov and his entire crew-”

“Again, not a bad idea,” said Lucas, “but nothing short of an armed assault would take Drakov here on Barataria. Lafitte and his people would side with Drakov and fight the invasion. We can’t touch Lafitte. The British will be moving on New Orleans before too long and without Lafitte and his men, General Jackson will lose the battle and history will be changed. Drakov’s already interfered with history to a dangerous, perhaps even irreversible extent. You see, we’re the ones concerned with preserving history. Drakov doesn’t care. He has the advantage because of that and he knows it. There’s no way to attack him here and at the same time guarantee that no one on Lafitte’s side will be killed.”

“But if you were to bring back ships,” said Land, “like Drakov’s ships travel through time, so could yours! You could-”

“We could, but it wouldn’t do much good,” said Finn. “Those ships would still have to find the Nautilus. The sub marine is well-armed and difficult to detect. At first sign of pursuit, it could escape to another time. Remember that the Nautilus, the Valkyrie, Drakov and all his men can travel through time independently. They can all escape to his secret base and without knowing where it is or in which time period, there’s no way we could follow.”

“Is there nothing we can do?” said Land. “If we can’t act and if we have no weapons, then we’re helpless!”

“Maybe not, Ned,” Lucas said. “But we need to know more before we can act. When we began this, we thought it was just a matter of destroying the submarine, which is difficult enough. We need to know the full extent of Drakov’s power. We need to know his plans. He knows we can’t afford to try anything until we know where his base is. And when he takes us there, his guard will be up. But he may be overconfident. The thing to do now is find Martingale and make him tell us what is going on.”

“How do you know you can trust him?” Land said.

“I don’t,” said Lucas. “I’m still worried about that graft patch he gave me. If it was a listening device, we’ll know soon enough. I’ve got a lot of questions for Mr. Barry Martingale. If this is all part of a ruse by Drakov, I want to know before we reach his base.”

They continued down the path, through the village, toward the boats. In the distance, they could still hear the sounds of revelry on the beach by Lafitte’s house, but now the chirping of the crickets by the sides of the path was louder. As they neared the boats, still louder sounds reached them. Gunshots and men shouting. The sounds not of festivity, but of fighting.

“Come on!” said Lucas, breaking into a run.

The docks were the scene of a pitched battle. Terrified blacks ran past them, others cowered in the boats, still others lay dead among white bodies on the dock. Out on the water, several boats rowing out to the Valkyrie were being attacked by about ten pirogues, and the sounds of the blacks screaming and the shots fired back and forth carried across the bay. On the dock, Martingale was in the thick of it. He had emptied both his pistols and was flailing away with his sword, keeping a small group of men at bay. He was holding one in front of him, as a shield, his arm clamped tightly around the man’s throat. The man he held was

dead, shot several times by his own compatriots in an effort to shoot Martingale, who kept swinging the body around, trying to interpose it between himself and his attackers, able to do so only because he was on a narrow section of dock that would not allow him to be surrounded. Even so, he had been shot. They could see him bleeding from a crease in his scalp and there was blood on his exposed shoulder. It would be all over for him in another moment.

One of his attackers had gone into the water and swam out to the end of the dock, climbing up on it so he could get behind Martingale. Andre pulled out her knife and let fly. The blade whizzed past Martingale’s left ear, missing him by inches, and embedded itself to the hilt in the swimmer’s chest. He cried out and fell back into the water. Ned and Finn drew their swords and ran forward to help Martingale. As Andre charged the men who were attempting to shoot him down, Lucas threw his own dagger, wounding one of them in the shoulder. Then Andre was on them and Lucas followed on her heels, turning the tide of the fight.

The odds had evened out now. Land knocked one man into the water, charging him as he reloaded. Finn disarmed one man, ran another through with his sword and, seeing reinforcements arrive, Martingale dropped the corpse he had been using as a shield and joined them on the offensive. He fought in a style the pirates had never encountered before, saber-fencing combined with martial arts. They were no match for trained commandos and, now that they no longer outnumbered their intended victim, they took flight.

Martingale took a deep breath as he watched them running off down the beach into the darkness. “Thanks,” he said. “I thought I’d bought it for sure.”

“See you’ve used a katana at one time,” said Finn, remarking on his style with the sword. “What happened?”