CHIEF CHARLES cursed under his breath as the Drobate overseers struck a Selenite prisoner with enough force to knock it to its knees. Beside him K’chuk shifted restlessly but Charles put a steadying hand on his forelimb.
“Easy now. Won’t do them any good us getting killed or captured.”
“Yes, friend Charles. Knowing not make watching easy.”
No it didn’t. This was the second time they had lain in the rocks and watched the work party brought out. Was that two days? With no cycle of day and night it was hard to gauge the passage of time. Miss Somerset and Doctor Staples each had pocket watches but both had stopped working after the swim in the river. They’d lain up at the island for the better part of a day as well, gathering food and strengthening the raft. They’d even built a lean-to shelter to block the damp wind which blew down the underground passage. That was odd; Charles couldn’t remember feeling much wind anywhere else on Luna, but a persistent breeze followed the course of the river.
It was only a few hours after they’d left the island that they’d run a long but not particularly difficult rapids and the river had emptied into an enormous cavern, far bigger than the one holding Otterbein Base. The far side of the cavern was simply the glowing fungus of the roof extended right down to the water, so the cavern clearly stretched beyond the horizon—which was quite a bit closer here than on Earth, of course, so no telling how big the place was. One thing was immediately clear: they’d found the city.
Charles had looked back and seen three other distinct inlets into the cavern in addition to the one they had emerged from, all of them to the left of theirs. One of the inlets had no sign of white water, so it was undoubtedly the deep navigation channel the submersibles followed. The party had hiked down the right bank of the river originally, and so whenever the river forked, as it did numerous times, Charles always took the right branch. He’d done it to avoid getting lost in an underground maze, but the choice had saved their lives. The city sprawled along the right bank no more than a mile ahead. Charles had used the long steering sweep to skull the raft toward the shore and when they were close enough O’Hara and Gibbs had slid into the water and helped pull it toward the bank. They’d nestled in a small cove sheltered from direct observation from the city by a substantial rocky hill.
They’d camped. They’d explored the area around the cove. They’d inventoried their weapons and assets. They’d scouted the approaches to the city, found ways to sneak close in the towering rock walls of the cavern above the docks without being observed. They’d watched the work parties, including their people, emerge from the gate by the harbour and toil for hours rebuilding the wall. They’d gathered food and other items they would need for their escape, and Miss Somerset had been wonderfully useful in organizing all of that. They had every aspect of the operation figured out except for the most important part: how were they to overcome the guards and free the prisoners, overlooked by big gun mounts at the gate, and do it with only three sailors, three Selenites, and three Enfield revolvers? Charles had examined the problem from every angle he could think of, but he had begun to fear it was beyond his abilities. His old man wouldn’t like that much, but his old man wasn’t here trying to figure this out.
A small rock hit beside Charles and K’chuk and the coxswain turned in alarm, his revolver at the read. Instead of danger, Charles saw Leading Machinist O’Hara standing on the riverbank waving to attract his attention and pointing out into the river. Charles looked and saw another raft just emerge from the closest river outlet, the one they had come through themselves. This was a larger raft, better built, and with a more seaworthy look to it, about as wide as theirs but twice as long, with the logs all running bow-to-stern and with a tapered bow reinforced with additional cross-logs. Eight red-coated men occupied the raft, two standing and waving but six of them seated and manning long oars along with a man in muddy green. One blue-uniformed man, clearly a naval officer, stood at the rear of the raft at the long steering sweep.
Charles felt a wave of exquisite relief wash over him as he realized that in a few minutes he would no longer be in command.
GEORGE BEDFORD felt his heart race when he saw Annabelle on the shore of the small cove with the other survivors. Only three men and two Selenites stood beside her—where was the rest of the party? Then Bedford saw another man and a Selenite making their way back from the broken high ground nearer the city and one emerging from the shadows of the cavern wall near the cove. Perhaps the others were nearby as well.
The six Marines at the oars pulled the raft closer to the shore. Annabelle stood there, right hand braced on Ordinary Seaman Fenn’s cane, and she simply looked at Bedford, her expression impossible to read. At length she lifted her left hand in greeting. He let go of the steering sweep with his right hand and lifted his cap to her, but that felt too stiff and formal so he waved it back and forth and smiled. She lowered her hand and wiped her cheeks.
The raft grounded and Booth and Moore jumped into the shallow water and pulled the nose of the raft up, helped by the three naval ratings on shore. The Marines shipped their oars and scampered ashore and Bedford followed them.
“Pull the raft well up onto the shore, men, and secure the stores,” Bedford ordered and then walked to Annabelle. “Miss Somerset, I cannot express the extent of my satisfaction at finding you alive and looking so well.”
She smiled ruefully and pulled the fingers of her free hand through her tangled hair. “You are a gallant liar, George Bedford.”
Bedford took her left hand in both of his. “No, Annabelle. Upon my honour, I have never seen a better sight than the one before me now.”
Their eyes met and she smiled, colour coming to her cheeks. Someone cleared his throat behind him. Bedford turned to face Charles, with Booth and Moore behind him, all of them smiling.
“I am also pleased to see you so cheerful Chief Charles,” George said. “Where is Captain Folkard and the rest of the party?” At that the happy expression slipped away from the petty officer’s face and he came to attention.
“Sir! Beg to report, Captain Folkard and four other members of the party taken prisoner, sir!”
“Damn! The Russians have them, eh?”
“No, sir, Drobates got ’em, holding them in that city just down river.”
“Drobates? Who the devil are the Drobates?”
ANNABELLE WAITED while Charles, K’chuk and Doctor Staples related the adventures of the last few days, including the ambush of Folkard and the others by the Drobates, and then their voyage down the river to this cove. George’s eyes wandered during the explanation, apparently to take in the surrounding terrain, the camp, the health of the others in the party, but they kept coming back to Annabelle, which gave her a wonderful feeling of warmth. Soon enough, though, it was time to address the pressing problem facing them.
“They bring the work party out every six or seven hours and work them at least that long,” Charles explained. “I’d say a score of humans and half again as many more Selenites, with a half-dozen armed guards. There’s no cover of night to use to sneak up on them and our revolvers don’t have much range, so we—well, I was proper stumped there, sir.”
“That’s quite a large number of Selenites and men,” George answered, his brow furrowed in thought. “What were you going to do if you could get them free? Surely you would need more than this one raft with which to escape.”
“Oh, yes, sir, but the rafts are no good from here. The river would take them right past the city and under its guns, and even if we ran the batteries, there’s those submersibles to worry about. And we don’t know where the river ends up anyway. No, sir, beggin’ your pardon, but the river’s out. K’chuk found our escape route he did, whilst scouting around the camp for food. Go ahead, K’chuk, tell Lieutenant Bedford.”
“Found entrance in cavern wall to iron ribbon tunnel, friend Bedford. Iron ribbon tunnel goes back in direction of my home.”
“Iron ribbon?” George asked.
“I’ve seen it, sir,” Charles put in. “Like a rail tunnel, only there’s just the one big rail in the centre, instead of two.”
“Show me,” George ordered and the entire group trooped over to a section of the cavern wall.
A number of dripstones had at one time fallen and formed a rubble pile here which K’chuk and his two helpers had cleared to one side. The entrance proper was recessed into the cavern wall and down a short ramp.
George went down and stuck his head into the dark opening. “Too small for a public entrance so this must have been a maintenance access portal. It’s dark in here, no glowing moss. How are we to find our way?”
“Miss Somerset worked that out, sir,” Charles answered as Bedford re-emerged.
“Mister Charles would have thought of it soon, I am certain,” Annabelle said as she walked toward the collection of escape supplies, “but he was occupied with our security arrangements and scouting the enemy, as I am sure you understand.”
“Of course,” George said, falling in beside her. “Have you gathered some of the glowing moss to use? I thought its juices too powerfully corrosive.”
“Too much so for use to try to collect, given what tools we had to work with,” Annabelle agreed. “Besides, the moss grows too high in this cavern to reach easily and none of us are expert climbers. So we made these instead.” She gestured to the large stack of carefully made torches, each one a stout branch from a mushroom tree—as she now thought of them—with the ends wrapped in dried moss of the non-dangerous variety and secured by several lengths of vine. “We had no dry matches after our river journey, but we have nearly a hundred rounds of pistol ammunition. When the time came we would empty two or three cartridges of their powder onto this large torch, ignite it by firing a pistol directly into it, and then use this one to light the others.”
George looked at the torches and nodded thoughtfully. “As it happens, we have matches with us, but this is a clever and resourceful expedient. Very well, if you could get the prisoners here, you would light these torches…”
“Only a few of them, George,” Annabelle interrupted. “We do not know how long the tunnel stretches, so most of the torches we planned to keep in reserve, lighting them one after another as the others burn out.”
“Yes, quite a sensible precaution,” George agreed and looked at her with admiration so frank she felt colour again come to her cheeks. “So you equip a few with torches, take the rest as a reserve, and make your way up the tunnel toward Otterbein Base. What about pursuit?”
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” Chief Charles spoke up. “K’chuk and I was working on that. His folk see better in the darkness and he found a place about twenty yards up the tunnel where the roof’s buckled. We cut those shoring timbers over there and planned to use them to hold up the ceiling while we worked at loosening the slabs up above. That way the rearguard could pull the props out and drop the tunnel roof behind us.”
George nodded thoughtfully. “We may have a more reliable means of bringing that ceiling down. We brought a dozen three-inch field gun rounds with us, courtesy of the Tsar. No fuses for the warheads, I’m afraid, but the shell casings are full of propellant bags. Stuff the powder from five or six of those rounds up into the cracks and gaps in that ceiling and I’ll wager it will come down handsomely. We’ll need to rig a fuse, of course, but that shouldn’t be an insurmountable problem. It appears all that remains is to actually secure the release of the prisoners. Colour Sergeant Moore.”
“Sir!”
“Break out the rations. These people look as if they could do with a meal other than mushrooms and it’s time we ate as well. No telling when we’ll have another opportunity. So first a quick meal of biscuit and bully and then, Chief Charles, you and I will have a look at that city.”
NATHANIAL HEFTED the large granite boulder and for a moment considered throwing it at the Drobate overseer. That was merely a fantasy, of course. The Drobates were sufficiently agile to dodge a thrown rock, he estimated, and were watchful enough he’d be dead from one of those electric rifles before the boulder hit ground. Still, thinking about it gave him a dark pleasure with which he was unfamiliar.
“Not such big rocks, Stone,” Professor Phillips said. “The Selenites cannot lift them up onto the breach.”
Nathanial dropped the boulder and picked up a smaller one.
The humans gathered the rocks and deposited them at the base of the wall, if you could call it that. The Selenites could reach higher and place the stones in the gaps, although the men were actually stronger, a result of having grown up on a world with much stronger gravity. All that was true but Nathanial nevertheless felt a flush of resentment. Folkard worked wordlessly carrying stones, all but oblivious to his surroundings, had acted thus for the last two days and Phillips had stepped in to assume leadership, but by what right? He had mentioned it quietly to Stevenson the night before but his friend had only shrugged.
“Someone has to lead us,” he had said. “The Captain no longer can, and me? I am a follower. Professor Phillips is a leader.”
“And what am I?”
“That is for you to say, not I.”
The prison was cold and damp, and the Drobates provided no blankets, so the prisoners huddled next to each other for warmth when they slept. Nathanial and Stevenson did so as well each night—for he thought of it thus as the Drobates extinguished the electric light during their sleep period—but this time Phillips had joined them.
“The Captain sleeps fitfully, troubled by dreams,” he had explained as he dropped to the floor on the other side of Stevenson and made himself comfortable. “I’ll curl up with you two. We British have to stick together.” Sleep had not come easily to Nathanial after that, and fatigue may have contributed to his cross mood this work period. The next stone he picked up he considered throwing as well, but not at a Drobate guard.
Stevenson stumbled with the stone he carried and fell to his knees, trembling with weakness. Nathanial dashed to his side and helped him to his feet.
“Are you unwell?” he asked, suddenly frightened for his friend’s safety. If the Drobates thought him incapable of further work Nathanial shuddered to contemplate what they might do.
“My strength fails me. I fear I am not up to continuing. Perhaps with another day of rest and more food…”
Phillips joined them. “Still a bit weak are you, Stevenson? Here,” said Phillips, reaching in his pockets, “I have about my person a small quantity of the stimulant ephedra, which the Chinese call ma huang. I obtained it from Eastern sources before my departure to Luna. Its effects are somewhat ephemeral but it should provide the necessary boost of energy so that you can continue working.”
“May I ask why you carry this with you?” asked Nathanial.
“I thought it might prove useful and so it has,” said Phillips shortly, drawing a frown from Nathanial. Phillips carefully tore the end off of a folded triangle of paper and handed it to Stevenson. “Just knock this right back. It would be better with something to wash the powder down, but choke it down as best as you can.”
Stevenson did as instructed and made a face but managed to get it down.
“One of the guards is coming’” Phillips said. “Stone, go about your business and I’ll engage the guard, give Stevenson a chance to catch his breath.”
Nathanial did as we was told, feeling useless and stupid and somehow put upon. What is wrong with me? he asked himself and shook his head angrily. He should be grateful for the assistance rendered his friend, assistance which—if it worked—could very well save Stevenson’s life. Instead he felt this simmering, petty resentment which gave him no pleasure, no satisfaction. It made him feel small—because it was small.
Was it simply that he wanted Stevenson to think of Nathanial as his sole saviour, to be his hero? If so, what a selfish, foolish wish that was! And on what basis could he claim it? Had he failed to lead this group because Phillips had usurped his position? Of course not. He never led, did he? Annabelle had led them on Venus and he had followed. He had followed on Mercury too, and if he’d had half the brains he fancied he’d have done so on Peregrine Station as well, instead of joining the others in pooh-poohing Annabelle’s suspicions. God, how differently things might have turned out had he but the sense to listen to her! All those lives lost and Annabelle left a cripple, and never a word of reproach from her lips, never so much as a hint.
“Stop wool-gathering, Stone. The guards are watching you,” Phillips whispered from his side and Nathanial turned with a start, remembered the rock in his hands. He saw Stevenson handing his own boulder to a Selenite by the wall, clearly feeling stronger.
“Yes, of course. Sorry. And…thank you for helping Stevenson. Bringing that powder was quite clever. Unconventional, of course, but it may have saved his life.”
“It may save all our lives by the time we’re free of these villains,” Phillips answered and patted him on the shoulder in a comradely fashion.
BEDFORD WOULDN’T have minded having Stone with him now. The young scientist might have had an idea what those two large weapons were in the gun towers to either side of the gate. The longer Bedford stared at them the less certain he was of their function, but they certainly looked like no field gun or rapid fire weapon he had ever seen. They clearly had range, however, or there would be no point in giving them that much elevation above the surrounding landscape. No gunner worth his salt ever gives a gun more field of fire than it can itself cover, given a choice. Otherwise you just give longer-ranged guns the ability to sit back out of range and shell your gun position with impunity. These guns could probably sweep the entire approaches from the hill shielding the cove to the city itself, well over a thousand yards. Bedford and his men could deal with six guards and free the prisoners, but that wouldn’t be enough. They had to silence those guns or they would never make it back to the cove.
They had worked their way forward through small ravines and dips in the ground, past clumps of mushroom trees and stunted scrub, to this vantage place, as close to the walls as they could move unobserved. The Marines had stained the white canvas covers of their cork helmets with lunar mud and turned them backwards so the metal badges would not catch and reflect the light. They’d rubbed mud on their pipe-clayed white webbing and red tunics as well, and several days of climbing through caverns and splashing through low pockets of water had given them a good head start in any case. They all blended in as well as possible with the grey-brown lunar landscape, but still could not move further without risking detection and thus losing the element of surprise. Fortunately the work party laboured on a stretch of wall closer to this jump-off position than the gate itself, perhaps a hundred yards. They could close half that distance in seconds and then open fire.
“What do you think, Jones? Can you keep the gunners away from those weapons while we make our dash?” Bedford asked.
Beside him the Welshman squinted at the towers and frowned. “I could do tha’; bit awkward, mind. Don’t know if I’ll hit anyone, but I’ll bounce enough bullets around that they’ll keep their heads down, I will. Unless they’re bloody fools! But then that’ll be their problem, won’t it?”
Bedford smiled. “Ready then, lads? Remember, quietly until they see us, then cut them down and no hesitation. Let’s go!”
FOLKARD ENJOYED the mindless routine of carrying rocks to the wall. It freed his minds for other things, although of late his mind had been preoccupied with the soft humming in his head, both soothing and frustrating at the same time, which drove most of his other thoughts away. This, he had thought earlier, must be what opium addiction is like. If so, he now understood its appeal. The pleasurable caress of the Heart, for he knew now that is what this must be (it was the same feeling he remembered from his last mission to Luna), seemed stronger when he faced up-river. It felt better to walk that way, and worst to walk the other way, back toward the wall—not painful, but emotionally distressing, as if he disappointed the Heart when he did so. He hoped the Heart understood this was not his choice, but of course it must; the Heart understood everything, surely. That thought gave him a moment’s peace.
The thought-voices of the Drobates formed an annoying background murmur in his head, usually as unintelligible as actual voices heard at a distance. Suddenly his skull burst with urgent exclamations of alarm so powerful it startled him into dropping the stone he carried. Then rifles crackled behind him. He spun and saw men in greying-brown mottled clothing aiming and firing rifles toward him and he instinctively dove to the ground.
“Get down!” he shouted to the other prisoners, probably unnecessarily. “Take cover!”
An electric rifle buzzed and snapped and one of the riflemen jerked and collapsed back. More rifle shots, then they grey-brown soldiers advanced again, and there were no more answering electric rifle discharges. One of the advancing soldiers turned his grey helmet around and exposed a shining metallic badge.
“Let the bastards know who we are!” the man shouted, and the other turned their helmets around as they loped forward.
Folkard knew that voice! Those were mud-covered Royal Marine Light Infantry uniforms and that was Colour Sergeant Moore! Folkard sprang to his feet, actually rising a bit higher than he intended.
“Colour Sergeant! Over here!”
Moore trotted over and came to attention in front of him, rifle at port arms.
“Sir!”
Yes… What was he supposed to say now? Moore wanted something, orders perhaps. But what?
“Who is in command and what are your orders?”
“Sir. Lieutenant Bedford in command. Orders are: put the guards down and get the prisoners back to the escape tunnel.”
Escape tunnel? The other Marines were gathering around him as well. He had to say something.
“Um…it’s your detail, Moore. Carry on. I’ll…help get the prisoners organised.”
“Yes, sir. Begging your pardon, very good to see you again, sir. All right, you lot heard the captain, let’s get these prisoners moving.”
Nathanial, Phillips, and Stevenson already trotted toward them, faces split in huge grins, while the Russians drifted toward them, expressions a mix of hesitance, confusion, and excitement. A hundred yards out a seaman stood up and waved them on. “This way!” he shouted.
“Come on, chaps,” Folkard said to the three other British prisoners. “Let’s get these Russians and Selenites moving. We haven’t got long to cover that open ground before the Drobates swarm out of the city. Etot poot!” he shouted in Russian and waved the Slavs on.
BEDFORD AND the storming party ran across the open ground as fast as they could in the low gravity. Rather like running under water, the problem was to gain traction and speed without rising too high in the air. Marine rifles crackled behind him and to his right, and then a single rifle shot rang out and he saw a stone chip knocked from the closest gun tower half a dozen feet below the lip. Jones would have to do better than that or they would likely not make it. Already a Drobate gunner stared at the battle below and then turned to man the gun. A second shot rang out and the gunner spun around and fell from sight inside the tower. Of course; Jones had deliberately made his first shot low so he could see the bullet strike and judge his correction accordingly. Another shot and Bedford saw sparks fly from the gun, then another shot and more sparks flew from a glancing blow on the farther gun.
To his right and paralleling them Bedford saw two Drobate guards running in apparent panic along a converging course for the gate. They were unarmed, probably having thrown away their rifles to run faster. As he watched, Charles paused briefly, took aim with his revolver and shot both of them.
The four of them pounded through the open gate and skidded to a halt—slid further on the low-gravity low-friction Luna than they would have on Earth, unless they had been on ice—and looked around for the tower entrances.
“There they are!” O’Hara shouted and pulled open the door of the far tower and disappeared in.
Bedford followed him after making sure Booth and Charles had gained entrance to their tower as well. He started up the odd stairway, a spiral ramp with pronounced transverse ridges, not really stairs at all but damned useful for traction going up. O’Hara, shouting a bloodthirsty Gaelic war cry, was already well ahead and Bedford scrambled to catch up. He heard a pistol shot ahead of him, another, the sound of a scuffle, and O’Hara crying out in pain. Bedford sprinted up the next turn and found O’Hara and a Drobate lying against the outside wall of the tower, limbs entangled with each other and both nearly covered with each other’s blood. He knelt by O’Hara, but he was already gone, a long steel-bladed knife buried to the hilt in the centre of his chest, the dying thrust of the mortally wounded Drobate gunner. Bedford closed the dead sailor’s eyes and picked up his revolver in his free hand.
He rose and climbed the last turn of the ramp. He emerged onto the bright light of the open-topped gun platform and saw a wounded Drobate—probably Jones’s handiwork―struggling to raise a rifle of baroque and exotic design. Bedford had no idea what its function might be and had no intention of finding out. He shot the gunner three times with his revolver. The rifle was so bizarrely attractive and at the same time sinister in appearance that Bedford holstered his own revolver and pulled the rifle free from the dead man’s hands, then slung its strap over his head and shoulder. He heard more pistol fire from the other tower and then saw Booth emerge. Bedford took off his hat and waved it over his head to Jones, the signal to cease firing. Then he set about examining the gun for the best place for his charges.
Gun indeed! It looked more like a miniature version of the aether propeller machinery on Sovereign. Whatever it was, it had precision sights, a nasty-looking business end, and the clear look of lethality about it. Bedford found several cable bundles leading to a wiring trunk set into the centre of the tower floor. He stuffed the explosive bags under the wiring and against the gun mount, took out one of the phosphorous matches he’d passed out to each of the storming party, struck it, and as the fuse flared to life he turned and dashed for the rampwell.
He half-ran and half leaped back down the circular ramp. He grabbed O’Hara’s jacket collar as he passed him and dragged his body behind him down the ramp, finding it no burden at all once he got it moving. Half way down, the tower shook from the explosion up above and a metal panel in the spine of the tower blew off with a loud clang, spewing giant sparks into the rampwell. Bedford ran through them and within moments emerged from the ground level doorway just as the other gun mount exploded.
Already the streets were filling with Drobates although he heard no shouted words of alarm. The crowd showed clear signs of panic, and its silence rendered the scene all the more surreal. A bizarre wheeled motor vehicle sped through the crowd, actually ran one of the locals over, and made speed toward the gate. Bedford leaned O’Hara’s body against the tower wall, drew his own pistol with his right hand, and raised both revolvers. As the vehicle drew close he fired both pistols until their hammers clicked on empty chambers. At least one of his bullets found its mark, as the car swerved to one side, then wildly to the other, and then tipped over and rolled repeatedly until it crashed into a building side and exploded in flames. Oddly, the building it collided with seemed none the worse for wear.
The door to the other tower swung open and Booth and Charles appeared. Both men gaped at the burning mechanical wreckage.
“Having fun, are you, Bedford?” Booth asked with a grin but then saw the bloody body of O’Hara crumpled by the doorway and his smile vanished
“We’re done here; back to the cove,” Bedford answered.
“I’ll bring along Paddy,” Chief Charles said and he lifted his shipmate’s body over his shoulder.
“HURRY, STEVENSON!” Nathanial shouted the encouragement to his friend, although they made good enough time as it was. The Russians were in a poorer state. The Drobates had left most of them chained together in two groups of six or seven men each and arranged them as two long human conveyor belts, passing stone from hand to hand. Why the British and a few Russians had had been left to work on their own was, like so much about the Drobates, unclear. As Nathanial looked back at the struggling mass of men, tripping and falling on their chains as they tried to flee, he saw Folkard suddenly appear among them. The captain gave orders in Russian in the calm and confident voice Nathanial remembered, then gave an order, and repeated it as the group fell into line and began marching in step.
Closer to the wall, however, most of the Selenites still milled about aimlessly. Nathanial stopped.
“Stevenson, you go on and stay close to Phillips.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to get those poor beasts. I’ll be along presently.”
BEDFORD FOUND Moore and his Marines spread in a skirmish line, withdrawing slowly and firing the occasional round toward the city. Bedford noticed the men leaned well forward when taking aim, fell into a half-crouch, and braced their right foot against whatever rock outcropping they could find—another necessity in the low lunar gravity to keep their rifle recoil from bowling them over.
Behind the skirmish line one Marine carried the body of another over his shoulder and Professor Stone and two naval ratings encouraged a gaggle of Selenites toward the stony hill and the cove beyond. Stone stood in the centre, spreading his arms wide and then bringing his hands in together toward his chest, and the two ratings did likewise. As he thought about it, it was a gesture Bedford remembered K’chuk using to summon workers.
“Report, Colour Sergeant,” Bedford said as he got to Moore.
“Sir! All prisoners freed and on their way back. Captain Folkard is with the Russians. Two of the prisoners, Burroughs and McKittrick, were killed before we arrived. Also recovered Able Seaman Stevenson from the last mission.”
“Stevenson? Alive? Now that’s good news. Casualties?”
“One, sir: Corporal Johnson, dead. I see you lost a man as well.”
“Yes, O’Hara from Chief Charles’s party.”
“Don’t like losing anyone, sir, but two casualties—it could have been worse.”
“I suppose you’re right, Colour Sergeant, and it still might become so. Look out there!”
A dozen armed Drobates spilled out of the gate at the run, came to a halt and raised their rifles. Before they fired five Marine rifles barked and two of the Drobate soldiers pitched backward to the ground. The others fired and one of the Marines cried out in pain and fell. Another four rifle shots crackled and one more Drobate fell, the rest running back inside the gate for cover.
One of the Marines writhed and twitched on the ground for a moment and then began simply trembling and moaning. Another knelt by him, felt his heart, and looked up in surprise.
“He’s still alive, Colour Sergeant!”
“Those electric rifles must lose some punch at this range,” Moore said. “At seventy yards one of them killed Johnson in his tracks. Pick him up, man, and fall back as close to those Selenites as you can. With your permission, of course, sir.”
“I’ll carry that wounded man,” Bedford said. “You’ll need every rifle you’ve got firing. There’s movement along the rubble wall, as well. Booth, take command of the rearguard.”
“Right. Heighway, Jones, fire at anything moving along the wall,” Booth ordered. “Keep their heads down.” He stooped and picked up the injured Marine’s rifle
Rifles crackled again and as they did so a curious siren blared from the city. It was a dreadful sound, the sort that one might imagine a banshee to make. It wailed in the harsh manner of a particularly vicious alley cat, yet had a peculiar metallic quality to it as though two sharp pieces of steel were scraping together, a high note followed by a low note and then repeated. Bedford looked around and could tell the Marines found it unnerving as well.
“I don’t much like the sound of that, men. I’ll try to hurry Stone and the Selenites. The sooner as we’re out of here, the better. Chief Charles, come with me. Revolvers aren’t any good at this range.” Bedford put the wounded Marine over his shoulder and found him surprisingly light. In some ways the added weight made it easier to run, keeping Bedford closer to the ground and giving him more traction.
Electric rifles had Moore said? He must have learned that from the prisoners. Well, Bedford had one of them over his back and saw that one of the Marines had had the presence of mind to pick one up as well. The scientists back in London would want to have a look at one, provided they managed to get out of here alive.
“Good thinking, Stone,” Bedford called out as he and Chief Charles came abreast of the scientist, “and good to see you in one piece. Stevenson, welcome back aboard.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You up to carrying this injured man?” he asked the slender rating.
“He’s very weak, Bedford,” Stone put in. “The prisoners were…”
“Right, then. Gunner Gibbs, you take him. Chief Charles, get Gibbs, the wounded, and O’Hara’s body back to the tunnel and assume command there until I arrive. This is quite an army we have here so start them moving up the tunnel at once. Don’t want a mob scene at that doorway.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Charles answered as Gibbs took the injured Marine from Bedford and they started back at a trot.
“Stone, anything you can do to speed up your flock would be much appreciated by Mister Booth and the rearguard, I am quite certain,” Bedford said.
Stone nodded and made his arm motions quicker and more insistent, and backed up more quickly. The Selenites, many of them clearly suffering from starvation and abuse, nevertheless shuffled along faster, sensing the mounting danger either from Stone’s urgency or the ululating screech of the city’s siren.
Bedford took the opportunity to reload both his revolvers as he walked back toward the hill, which took all but three of his remaining cartridges, and when he was done he handed O’Hara’s pistol to Stevenson. “You’ll need this before we’re done here, I’ll warrant.”
“Lieutenant Bedford, look!” Chief Charles shouted from up ahead and pointed toward the river. A long, black metallic shape, like an angular humpbacked whale, slide quickly through the water and toward the cove.
“A Drobate submersible!” Stone exclaimed.
“Whatever the devil it is, it’s cutting our line of retreat,” Bedford said.