Before long—and much sooner than Cly had expected—a loud series of taps on Ganymede’s top announced that the time had come to begin angling for the shore, for the hidden dock at Fort Jackson.
“Make for the north bank,” Mumler said, and he called out some directional specifics.
“I’m on it,” Cly told him. “Fang?”
Fang nodded.
“All right. Here we go. Let’s see how well this thing steers when we’re not quite running with the current, eh?”
As it turned out, Ganymede steered with no great ease—but she responded sufficiently to allow Cly to bring the craft up against the dock with a lot of swearing, a few faltering attempts, and finally, success that broke only one pier piling and splintered a second one. The whole crew considered it a victory that no one had died and no one onshore had been knocked into the river.
As the men outside tethered the vehicle into position, everyone within exhaled deep breaths and stood. An all-clear sounded above, and Houjin scrambled up the ladder to open the hatch. “Hi!” he announced.
“Hi!” responded Rucker Little. “Everyone all right down there?”
“Everybody’s fine,” Deaderick said in a voice just louder than the one he usually used for speaking. This was not the time to shout.
“How’d it go?” Rucker asked, leaning his head inside past Houjin to take a look around.
Kirby Troost said, “It went. And I’ve got to go, too, just for a minute. Pardon me,” he added, leaving his seat and heading up the ladder. Houjin hopped out of the way, and Rucker retreated to let the engineer exit.
The sounds of retching barely penetrated Ganymede’s hull. The gags and heaves were followed by splashes, and no one complained, because Troost throwing up in the river was better than Troost throwing up while they were all trapped inside a sealed compartment with him.
Deaderick went to the ladder and said up the hatch, “While we’re stopped, we’ll deploy the hose and circulate the air.”
“Damn right we will,” Cly mumbled. “Fang, get on that, will you?”
Fang stepped to the panel console and released a latch to drop the hose. When a lever was cranked, the hose was pushed through a channel in the hull until it breached the surface.
“I see it,” Rucker Little announced. “We’ll get it and stick it up firm. Start the generator, and we’ll let it run.”
“How long will it take?” Cly asked.
“Not long,” Deaderick vowed. “We can process everything inside in about two or three minutes, if everything’s up to full power.”
“Andan?” asked a new voice.
“Josie, that you?”
“It’s me, yes.” Her face appeared in the open hatch hole. “There you are. Is everything running all right? Everyone … everyone doing all right? Other than Troost, I mean. I saw him already.”
“Everyone’s fine. Everything’s fine. What about you, up there?”
“Things have gotten messy out at Barataria, but I think it’ll be good for us. Texas will be distracted, and maybe the Confederacy, too.”
“Barataria?” he seized on the word, without yet mentioning that they’d agreed to cut toward the canals in order to dodge the Confederate forts. He also did not mention that the canals would take them close to the bay, and close to any messiness that might be going on.
“You heard me,” she said. Then she ordered, “Make way.”
“What?”
“Get out of my way, Andan. I’m coming down, and I won’t have you looking up while I’m doing it.”
He almost mumbled something to the effect of, Nothing I ain’t seen before, but he came to his senses before anything escaped his mouth. Instead he got out of the way as commanded, and stood aside while she descended into the cabin.
“My goodness. Rather warm in here, isn’t it?”
“Rather,” he agreed, even though he hadn’t noticed until she’d pointed it out. “What are you doing in here, huh?”
“Riding along. I’m no good to the men up top; they have enough polers and boatmen. I’ll only attract attention that no one wants, so I’m riding down here with you fellows.”
“What I mean is why are you riding along at all? I don’t get it, Josie. Why don’t you stay home where it’s warm and dry and … safe?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Practically answered your own question, there, didn’t you?” Then she sighed, and said, “I’ve worked entirely too hard these last few months, planning and plotting, and buying every favor I can scare up to get this damn thing out to the admiral. I’m not going to sit someplace warm and dry and safe while the last of the work gets done. I intend to hand this craft over myself, and shake the admiral’s hand when I do so. This was my operation, Andan. Mine. And I’ll see it through to the finish.”
A million arguments rose in Cly’s mind, but he knew better than to voice any of them. Ignoring all the obvious reasons she ought to stay where she belonged, he said, “All right, then. But you’ll have to fight Rick and Wally for a seat. Seats are few and far between on this bird. I mean, this fish.”
“I know, and I don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I always do.”
“I know,” he said almost crossly. “Just stay out of the way. And don’t forget, I’m in charge. If you’re in my ship, you follow orders.”
“I gave you this ship. Or I got you into it, at any rate.”
“But you hired me to pilot it, and if I’m the pilot, I’m in command.”
“No one’s arguing with you, dear.”
Houjin was back at the hatch, delivering a blow-by-blow of what was going on up top. “The hose is sticking out next to the scope. It’s pretty quiet, but it’s sucking down the air. Can you feel it over there?” he asked in the general direction of the vehicle’s far right end.
Wallace Mumler wasn’t standing there anymore, so he shrugged. Josephine approached it and waved her hand around the vents beside the unlatched hiding spot where the tube was unspooled. She declared, “I can feel it. It’s blowing just fine. Plenty of air’s coming in, and since the hatch is open, I can assume we don’t need to vent anything.”
Mumler told her, “No, ma’am. The level’s holding fine—and we aren’t moving up or down, so all’s well from that end. Give it another minute or two, and we’ll head back out.”
“Josie, you said something about Barataria. What’s going on over there?” he asked. He had an idea, but he wanted to hear something certain. Had it already begun? Had Hank Shanks launched an offensive so quickly—taken it from rumor to action in the span of a few hours?
“Pirates,” she confirmed his hopes. “A bunch of them, swarming like bees who’ve had a rock thrown at their hive. They’ve mounted a rally, and they’re raising hell. Maybe they can’t take back the whole bay, but they’re bound and determined to reclaim the big island.”
“Glad to hear it!” he said with more enthusiasm than he’d meant to.
“Don’t get too excited on their behalf just yet. Word out in the Quarter says they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.”
He frowned. “Really? You don’t think they can take it back?”
“I don’t have any idea. I know precious little about the bay these days, or the people who inhabit it. Besides, there’s a curfew—hadn’t you heard? The chain of gossip would run a little smoother if the goddamn Texians hadn’t been shutting down the Quarter.” As she said the part about the goddamn Texians, a strange look crossed her face. Like she was reconsidering something, or reevaluating it. But she continued, “The important thing is, it’s good news for us.”
“You think?”
“The Rebs at the forts will almost certainly head out to help Texas, so the way downriver will be clearer than it might have been otherwise. Fewer eyes watching, and even if anyone sees us, it’ll take them half of forever to recall their forces. We’ll be in the middle of the Gulf by the time they can rally any response.”
Cly turned away from her, revisiting his seat at the captain’s chair. “This is all worth knowing, but there’s been a change of plans. We’re stopping at one of the canals. We’re cutting through it down to the…” He trailed off.
Fang shot Cly a look that no one on earth but the captain could’ve read. The look was fleshed out by a smattering of signing. You’d better lie to her.
And until that moment, Cly hadn’t even realized that this had been his plan all along. It was as if he’d been deluding himself so successfully that the truth hadn’t dawned on him until he was confronted with adjusting it. But this had been the plan, hadn’t it? Ever since he’d first heard that the bay had been taken, and that his fellow unlicensed tradesmen were planning to take it back.
Fang didn’t blink, and didn’t look away.
Cly returned his attention to Josephine and said, a bit too brightly, “Anyway, plans are made to be adjusted, aren’t they? We’ll work it out as we get farther downriver. We’ll have to stop in the canal’s general vicinity to top off our air and fuel supply, anyway. From there, we’ll see how it goes.”
“Andan, I don’t like—”
He interrupted before she could go on fretting about protocol. “We’re sitting inside an advanced military machine like nothing the world has ever known. This thing is armored from top to bottom, and it’s armed to start a war, or stop one. This is just a detour. Nothing’s going to slow us down.”
She frowned and gently bit her lower lip, an old habit of hers that Cly had forgotten until he watched her do it again. It made her look younger, or maybe it only reminded him of when they both were young. “If you understood exactly what I’d risked, what I’d compromised to bring this about—”
