THE SUBMERSIBLE, dark grey and wicked-looking, cut through the waves toward the shoreline. The single glowing yellow window on the raised pilot house, the only substantial part of the vessel rising above the wave-washed curved upper hull, seemed a sinister and alien Polyphemian eye staring directly at Annabelle. To her right, six ragged and bearded men appeared on the crest of the stony hill, cast panicked looks at the approaching vessel, and then leaped and tumbled down the hill toward Annabelle and the others clustered by the entrance to the tunnel.
The vessel grounded near the bank, its nose rising slightly up and out of the water to reveal its prow as a long, flat slab extending toward the shore, a sort of built-in gangway. A hatch clanged open behind the pilot house and then Annabelle’s view was obstructed by the running ragged men, now shouting in panic in an unmistakably Slavic tongue.
Annabelle held the large lit torch in her left hand and several smaller unlit ones in her right. Now she lit the small ones and held them out to the men running toward her. “Here, take these and turn right in the tunnel,” she ordered.
Of course they could not understand her words, but her gestures could leave no doubt as to her intentions. Staples and Henry stood aside to let them pass and the Russian prisoner babbled something to them and pointed down the tunnel. The first two took the smaller torches and the third made to take the large one from her.
“No! We need that to light the others!” she cried out and pulled the torch back with both hands.
“Here now!” Seaman Henry shouted and grabbed the fellow’s shoulder. The other three Russians fell upon him, striking him and pushing him away from her.
Annabelle’s assailant pushed her back hard and as she had no balance or traction with only one real leg, his blow carried her back against the cavern wall and her head struck rock with sufficient force to leave her senseless.
She found herself seated on the ground, back against the stone wall, with no recollection of having fallen. The torch was gone but the melee still swirled around Seaman Henry. The Selenites held back, unsure what was happening or what to do, and George’s original Russian prisoner recoiled as well, his expression stricken. As Annabelle watched, a Russian stooped and picked up a fist-sized stone with a sharp point on one end and then sprang at Henry and lifted the stone above his head to brain the seaman. Before he could bring it down a shot rang out and the man stumbled away, the rock flying from his hand. For a moment the fight stopped and all eyes turned to Annabelle.
She herself was nearly as surprised as they to see the smoking derringer in her hand. George Bedford had slipped it to her on board Sovereign before their departure and she had carried it in her jacket pocket since, in case of emergency. Now, as she sat there still dazed from the blow to her head, the weapon seemed almost to have come to her hand and fired as if by its own volition. The wounded Russian, blood streaming from the side of his head, groaned and collapsed to the ground.
A Russian was the first to recover his senses. He tore the revolver from Henry’s grasp, cocked it, and turned it on Annabelle with a face twisted with fury, desperation, and loss all at once. Annabelle turned her head and closed her eyes, but heard and felt the swift passage of a body close by and then the scream of the Russian. She turned back to look and saw him lifted off the ground, revolver dropped and legs twitching, K’chuk’s mandibles locked solidly around his neck, blood coursing from the lethal wound and sheeting down his body. As if on command the other two Selenites fell on the two remaining Russians who cried out in terror and ran away from the tunnel. The original Russian prisoner ducked into the tunnel and disappeared, following his comrades.
The fight stopped as suddenly as it began, however, when Annabelle heard a strange buzzing snap and one of the fleeing Russians literally jumped in the air, arms and legs working in an uncontrollable muscular spasm, and then fell lifeless to the ground. Another snap and a Selenite fell.
“It’s the Drobates! Some kind of rifles!” Seaman Henry called and took cover behind the stack of fallen dripstones, first recovering his dropped revolver from the ground.
“Friend Annabelle into tunnel, quickly!” K’chuk said.
“Capital idea,” another voice added and she looked up to see Phillips slide to a halt beside her. “I’ll help her. You chaps hold them off.” As Henry began firing his revolver, Phillips grabbed her arms and half lifted, half dragged her down the ramp into the tunnel, and this simple movement brought on waves of dizziness and nausea.
“No,” she managed, although as she slipped into unconsciousness she could not say what it was she wanted instead of this.
CHARLES RAN past the two lines of chained Russians, now again stumbling and tripping over each other in panic at the appearance of the submersible. He bounded up the rocky hill by the cove and as he crested the mound he saw the Drobates swarming off the deck of the submersible, the ones in the van firing their electric rifles toward the entrance to their escape tunnel. A pistol shot rang out and he saw one of the Drobates pitch into the water from the submersible’s deck, and for a moment electricity arced from the water toward the vessel and shore, and steam exploded upward from where the soldier’s weapon fell into the river, but it passed in a moment and the Drobates continued to jump to shore.
“Sorry, Paddy,” Charles said as he lowered the corpse of his shipmate to the ground. Then he fell prone on the hilltop, finding cover behind a fair-sized stone, and began firing into the crowd of Drobates below. In a moment Gunner Gibbs, having left the injured Marine on the lower slope, joined him.
The Drobates below reacted with alarm at the sudden fire from their flank, but then fired up at the two sailors. Electric bolts splashed the forward slopes and Charles felt occasional tingles transmitted either through the faint iron content of the stones or perhaps their dampness. One bolt passed close over his head and the static electricity from it made his hair stand on end and the revolver shocked his hand so that he almost dropped it in pain.
His sixth cartridge fired, Charles slid back down below the lip of the hill to reload. No sooner had he broke open the revolver and ejected the spent casings than Gibbs let out a blood-curdling screech and twitched, then fell limp against the rocks, his hair burning. With no fire from the crest Charles knew the Drobates would race to the top and, once they had a firm hold on it, all the Marines and escapees behind him would be caught between two fires.
He raced to stuff cartridges in the revolver’s cylinder, his hands trembling, but before he could close the pistol he looked up and saw a Drobate climb to the crest, raise his electric rifle at him, and then tumble backwards as a pistol fired from behind Charles.
He turned and saw the slender rating who had been among the escapees, the man Charles didn’t recognise but whom Lieutenant Bedford had called Stevenson. No time to thank him now. He snapped the revolver shut and cocked it just as a second Drobate’s face appeared above the crest. He put a bullet between the fellow’s eyes and sent him pitching back. Charles scrabbled forward a foot or two and brought his head up for a quick look over the crest and brought it back just as fast, an electric rifle bolt again narrowly missing him and again raising the hair on his head.
“Two of them moving around the river side of the hill,” he shouted to Stevenson, “trying to flank us!”
“I’ll take them,” a different voice answered and Charles saw Lieutenant Bedford nearly up the hill and now moving to the right.
The pistol fire ended in the low ground by the cove—Henry must be dead or he was reloading. If the second was true, the Drobates would rush him. Charles rose up just enough to see the submersible, raised his pistol over his head, and sent two pistol shots down in the general direction of the enemy on the beach. That might keep their heads down; it was the best he could do for Henry right now.
More pistol shots from his right. That would be the lieutenant. Then three Drobates came over the crest at once, in a concerted dash. Charles fired and then rolled to the side as one of them aimed at him. Stevenson’s pistol barked as well and as Charles finished his roll he fired again, and again, and then his hammer fell on an empty chamber. He had the revolver broken open and the empty shell casings tinkled against the rocks before it registered on him that all three Drobates were down. He glanced to the right and saw Lieutenant Bedford still up; he looked to the left and saw Stevenson up as well. Six more rounds in the cylinder, snap it shut, full cock. He looked at his left hand and realised he’d burned it grabbing the barrel of his pistol to break it open. Odd. He hadn’t felt it at the time, and even now it didn’t really hurt; he just knew it was burned.
“They’re running!” Bedford shouted, his voice hoarse. “Finish the bastards!” He stood up and fired over the hill until his own revolver was empty, and then Charles stood up and fired into the much-diminished crowd of Drobates leaping back down the hill toward their vessel.
Charles stooped for a moment and pulled the unused blasting charges from the pockets of O’Hara’s jacket and then crossed the crest and began leaping down from rock to rock.
BEDFORD RELOADED his own revolver, or at least shoved his last three cartridges in. To his left Chief Charles scampered down the hillside toward the submersible, where half a dozen Drobates struggled in the shallow water trying to board and escape. Several of them were wounded, Bedford saw, and all had left their electric rifles on the bank. No threat there. He turned his eyes to the entrance of the tunnel and saw only a silent heap of bodies, human and Selenite and at least one Drobate all jumbled together, but no movement.
Annabelle!
He ran and leaped down the hill, took a hard spill toward the bottom which twisted his left ankle and scraped his right knee, not to mention split his right trouser leg open from thigh to shin, but he leaped back to his feet and raced to the entrance.
Seaman Henry, Doctor Staples, several Russian prisoners, and all three Selenites, including K’chuk, were dead. K’chuk’s torso lay sideways across the opening and it bore the marks of repeated strikes from those electric rifles, blackened and burned patches of skin with spiderweb shatter lines in the carapace surrounding them. There was no sign of Annabelle, however.
Behind him he heard a muffled explosion, turned, and saw a cloud of black smoke emerge from the open hatch of the submersible. Chief Charles stood on the deck, lit another explosive charge’s fuse with a match, and dropped it through the open hatch. He then turned and leaped from the body-strewn deck onto the shore. Another explosion echoed from the submersible, rocking it in the water, and blew out the window in the pilot house. Bedford turned back to the abattoir by the tunnel entrance.
“Annabelle! For God’s sake where are you!”
“It’s all right,” an unfamiliar male voice called out from the inky interior of the tunnel, “I’m safe.”
“Where is Miss Somerset?”
“Oh, she’s down here as well. Took a hit on the head but she should be all right,” the man answered.
In the dim light by the doorway a tall dark-haired man offered Bedford his hand. Bedford saw the tangle of Annabelle’s skirt and petticoat on the tunnel floor behind him.
“I’m Doctor Howard Phillips, the resident entomologist at…”
Bedford pushed him aside and knelt by Annabelle.
“Oh, I say!” Phillips said in irritation.
“Annabelle, my dear, can you hear me?”
Her eyes fluttered open. “George? Is that you? Oh, thank heavens you’re alive!” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, and he enfolded her in his own arms. “K’chuk!” she exclaimed and pushed away from him. “He is in danger! The Drobates…” she stopped speaking as she saw the expression on Bedford’s face.
“I am truly sorry, Annabelle. He died protecting you, sheltering you against their electric weapons with his own body.” Her face creased in grief and tears appeared in her eyes. Bedford took her by the shoulders. “Others died as well, and more will join them unless I see to the withdrawal. A horde of Drobates have issued from the city and snap at the heels of our rearguard.”
“Nathanial?”
“Alive when last I saw him.” He stood up and turned to the man. “Phillips is it? I’ll thank you to get Miss Somerset as far up the tunnel as you can manage in the dark. I’ll see about getting some torches in here.” From outside the sound of rifle fire, which sounded muffled and distant before, grew suddenly sharper and louder in volume. The rearguard must have topped the stony hill. “For God’s sake, hurry! They are nearly upon us!”
STAGGERING UNDER the weight of the wounded Gibbs, Stevenson passed by Bedford. “Good job, Stevenson,” Bedford said. “Take him up the tunnel and join the others.” Bedford heard Folkard shouting commands in Russian as the head of the column of chained prisoners stumbled and slid down into the tunnel. “Keep them moving, Captain!” Bedford called past them and he pointed the Russians up the tunnel. The man in the lead hesitated at the thought of entering the lightless subterranean bowels of the world, but the sound of rapid rifle fire from behind him made up his mind and he led the column shuffling forward. Bedford made his way out past the last man in the chain before the first man of the second group completely jammed the doorway. K’chuk’s body had been pulled aside, he noticed. Once out in the light, Bedford hastily shook Folkard’s hand.
“Very good to see you well, sir,” he said. “What are your orders?”
“If I am well it is all thanks to you, Bedford. This is still your show; carry on. We’ll sort out command later, if God grants us a later. Now see to your rearguard; they are hard pressed.” Folkard pulled the bodies of Henry and Staples over and gave an order in Russian, and the two men at the end of the line picked them up.
Professor Nathanial Stone reached Bedford and they shook hands. A somewhat reduced flock of Selenites followed him, badly straggling down the glacis of the hill and clearly on their last legs. Bedford had no idea how they would manage to get all of the Selenites into the tunnel in the time left.
“You follow Folkard’s Russkies in,” Bedford said. “The Selenites will follow you, God willing, and we’ll follow them. Here, take these with you.” He scooped up an armful of unlit torches and thrust them into Nathanial’s arms.
“But I cannot give the following gesture with my arms full!” he protested.
“Bless me, Stone, if they are not intelligent enough to follow you the last few steps to safety now, they can die here like dumb beasts. The passage is clear. Now go!”
Bedford looked up at the hill and saw four Marines prone atop it, firing over the lip of the hill. Chief Charles staggered down the last few feet of the hill with the body of a bluejacket over each shoulder and made his way through the press of Selenites milling toward the entrance. Bedford made to take one of the bodies from him—Gunner Gibbs, he saw, although he knew him more by his bulk than his features, which were twisted and blackened, and all of his hair burnt off—but Charles would not let go.
“Couldn’t leave Paddy and Gibbs,” Charles said, and Bedford saw tears on his cheeks. “They were the last of my lot.” He was right. Of the six ratings chosen from Sovereign’s crew to accompany Folkard, only Charles remained alive.
“Yes, well done, Chief. Push on through the Selenites if you have to, but get to Captain Folkard and follow his orders. If the Marines and I are overrun it will be up to you, Stevenson and Folkard to get Miss Somerset to safety. And some fellow named Phillips, as well. You know where the ceiling charges are. Blow them when the Drobates enter the tunnel. If they enter before we do, you will know we are lost.”
“Count on me, sir. I won’t let you down.”
Bedford turned and trotted toward the hill and then bounded up it in long leaps—safer going up than down. He found Lieutenant Booth and three Marine privates there, one of whom he recognised as Jones, all four of them firing regularly at the plain beyond. Two extra rifles lay on the ground beside them. As Bedford’s head cleared the crest of the hill his heart seemed to stop for a moment.
The plain between the city and the hill held thousands of Drobates, perhaps the entire population of the city, all trotting and shuffling toward the hill and the cove beyond it. The closest of them were no more than a hundred yards away, although the crowd was much thinner in front—only the bravest or most suicidal would have run so far ahead of the rest, and the Marines had further culled their ranks with fire. None of the Drobates Bedford saw had the electric rifles the soldiers had born, and he heard none of the distinctive sizzling crack of their fire, but many of the horde brandished long knives, pickaxes, or other improvised weapons. Some came unarmed, as if to tear them apart with their bare hands, and Bedford found that the most frightening prospect of all.
“Pick up a rifle and join in, Bedford,” Booth said. “There are plenty to go around.”
NATHANIAL FELT his way along the dark tunnel wall with a shoulder, his arms encumbered with torches. Ahead of him he heard an echoing babble of voices, mostly Slavic, and the sounds of many shuffling feet. Then he bumped into someone.
“‘Ere now, have a care!”
“Chief Coxswain’s Mate Charles?” Nathanial asked. “Is that you? I have torches here. What am I to do with them?”
“Ah, Professor Stone. Glad you made it, sir. Take them further up and try to find Miss Somerset. She’ll know how to get them lit. Get well past here, sir. We have charges in the ceiling to cause a cave-in.”
Nathanial moved around the chief and again made his way forward. “Annabelle! Are you here? I have the torches. Annabelle!”
“Here, Nathanial,” he heard from up ahead.
He pressed on, repeating his cry, and then a hand closed on his and gave him such a start he nearly dropped his burden.
“Stone, it’s me, Folkard. I think Miss Somerset is just up ahead.”
Together they moved forward, Folkard groping forward with his hand to keep from running into the stumbling mob of Russian prisoners ahead of them. Within moments Folkard had herded the Russians further up the tunnel and Nathanial joined Annabelle, Stevenson, and Phillips.
“Have a care, Nathanial. There is an injured Marine here,” Stevenson said, and the direction of his voice suggested he knelt by the wounded man to shield him from being trampled by the other fugitives.
“Oh, Nathanial!” Annabelle exclaimed, “I am so happy to hear your voice. Why were you not here sooner? I was worried sick.”
“I couldn’t leave the Selenites behind. But here, I have torches and Chief Charles says you are their mistress.”
The squeaking, grunting mass of Selenites following Nathanial reached them and the leader stopped. Nathanial dropped the torch by where he judged Annabelle to be standing and then took the closer forelimb of the leading Selenite and encouraged him to walk further down the tunnel. He did so, and after repeating this with the next several, the entire pack seemed to get the idea and made their way past them in single file.
A phosphorous match hissed to life and the sudden light in the stygian depths of the tunnel caused Nathanial to squint, but he saw Annabelle gesture for a torch, Phillips hand her one, and the flame catch in the moss at the end. Within seconds a space about them was illuminated, although unevenly as the torch’s flame flickered and danced. Nathanial saw the lifeless bodies of three seamen and Doctor Staples stretched out beside the wounded Marine, all guarded somewhat from being trod upon by the barrier of the four living people here—five including him.
The tunnel was wider than the crowding would suggest, but was bisected by a single tall, heavy metallic rail; Nathanial, the other fugitives, and the Selenites had all stayed on the near side, crowding this side of the passage but leaving the far side clear.
“Captain Folkard, I nearly forgot. I took these from a fallen Drobate guard. They may unlock the chains from the Russians.” He fished the heavy key ring from his pocket and gave it to Folkard.
“Quick thinking, Professor,” Folkard said. “Well done.”
“Leave them chained!” Annabelle nearly spat. “They stole the lit torches, tried to kill Seaman Henry, would have had I not shot one of them.”
Folkard pushed the keys into his pocket. “We’ll see about their chains later. For now Miss Somerset is probably right, it might be wise to leave things as they stand.”
Nathanial heard men shouting, cursing even, and the clash of steel on steel joining the occasional rifle shot. The struggle had reached the entrance to the tunnel. He looked at the revolver thrust in Stevenson’s waistband and shuddered. His hand had hardly touched a firearm since the shot from the villain Le Boeuf had destroyed Annabelle’s leg, and had not at all since assisting in the amputation. Now the thought of doing so again made his stomach cramp and his palms sweat, but he felt useless just standing here. He took a deep breath.
“Stevenson, give me your revolver. I’m going back to help Bedford and the others. I’ll take a torch as well, Annabelle.”
“It’s empty, I’m afraid,” Stevenson answered.
“The devil! Chief Charles, have you any more cartridges?” Nathanial called down the tunnel.
“Only the six in my revolver now. Try the lads’ jackets,” he shouted back.
Stevenson paused for a moment, clearly reluctant to rifle a dead man’s pockets, but he did so and then he reloaded his revolver. “I should go,” he said. “I am the member of the Navy.”
“No, I’ll go,” Folkard said.
Nathanial snatched the revolver from Stevenson’s hand. “Don’t be daft the both of you. Stevenson is too weak to be of much use in a fight and the captain must remain behind to command if Bedford should―” he said but stopped short when he saw the stricken look on Annabelle’s face. “Besides, Captain, you alone among us speak Russian. Do not worry; I have no intention of doing anything grotesquely heroic, only bang away a bit from the sidelines and help cover their retreat.”
He took the lit torch Annabelle offered, pushed past the last but two of the Selenites, swung his legs over the central rail, and made his way toward the sound of the fight and the small circle of daylight at the entrance.
NOTHING FOR Chief Charles to do but wait, and not long now. Lieutenant Bedford and the others would either break free and get back to safety or go down. A Marine came quickly back past him, one arm limp and the other pulling a more seriously wounded companion. Then the torch Professor Stone had carried and which illuminated a bit of the fight fell and went out and the flood of bodies was upon him, so much faster than he expected. He struck the match for the fuse and lit it, but then felt a terrible cold pain in his abdomen, as if his guts had turned to ice, and he staggered back against the wall. A Drobate pulled out the long knife which had impaled him and made to thrust again. Charles shot him and the Drobate fell back into another one, the entire mob lit in jerky flashes of arrested motion by the sparkling pyrotechnics of the sizzling fuse.
Charles shot another Drobate and put a hand to his abdomen, felt the blood bubbling out, and knew he was done for. Instead of frightening him, the thought left him strangely calm.
Just as well perhaps, he thought. A chief petty officer goes out with five ratings and comes back alone—no matter how good an explanation, he’d forever be a marked man in the fleet: if not a coward, then a Jonah. This way he finished clean.
A Drobate hand reached up and pulled the sputtering fuse out of the ceiling charges. No matter, he could still stop them. There’s nothing Horatio Nelson Charles can’t accomplish. He thrust the muzzle of his revolver in amongst the explosive charges overhead and pulled the trigger.