Hemi and Shakes found the dock boss stomping around the dock on a crude prosthetic foot, counting the crates that had come off the Prospect and checking them against a list on a greasy clipboard.
“Hmm. Mr. Howell, the manifest says 215 crates, but I only count 212.” The dock boss gestured towards the stacks of crates.
“I do not know what to tell you. Logistics is not an exact science,” said Hemi.
“No, it clearly is not. I will adjust the payment based on your delivery.” He scribbled some figures with his pencil on the clipboard for a minute and showed it to Hemi. “Does that look right?”
Hemi nodded when he saw that the amount agreed with the calculations he had previously done himself in his head. The dock boss emptied a heavy leather sack of coins onto a crate in front of them and counted out and arranged stacks. When he finished counting — with Hemi double-checking every stack — Hemi swept all the coins off the crate with one swipe of his big hand into a canvas bag he pulled from the inside pocket of his tweed jacket. Hemi thanked the dock boss gruffly. As he and Shakes walked back to the Prospect, Hemi counted out Shakes’s second deck-hand share. They agreed to leave the payment for the modifications to the Gnat for a later time when Shakes could figure the cost more precisely.
They had just stepped onto the dock when Shakes shaded his eyes and looked far up the channel. “What the fuck is going on up there?”
A black shadow had formed, pushing itself between the brown line of the wooden structures on the water and the gray sky. The shadow rapidly grew and spouted a fin, like some ancient serpent from the deep come to menace the shores corrupted with human endeavors. A thin stream of exhaust rose from it and climbed up into the still air.
“It is them,” said Hemi.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Shakes exclaimed.
“We have to get the boats off, Shakes.”
“Fuckin’ right we do.”
The two of them started running up the dock. The length of the rickety dock shook with the landing of each of Hemi’s heavy steps. Shakes jumped from the dock to the deck of the Gnat and had the bow line undone and tossed back to the dock in a few seconds.
Hemi was a few strides behind Shakes and was about to turn up the gangway when Shakes called to him. He turned to look, and Shakes was leaning over from the Gnat with both hands cupping a bundle of feathers. “Take Herschel!”
Hemi nodded as he accepted the bird into his big hands. He held Herschel in one hand as he ran up the gangway shouting to Percy on the bridge. Percy turned to look up the channel and from her height could easily see the approaching black sub. She could even see the strange, fiercely angled shape of the ram mounted on the bow sharply slicing the water.
Hemi leaned over the open cargo hatch as he came up to it on the deck and saw Gregory down in the cargo hold securing pieces of equipment that the dockworkers had moved while unloading the cargo.
“Gregory!” Hemi called down to him through the hatch. “We have to leave immediately. Come up here and throw the lines, then get the cargo hatch closed.” Hemi turned towards the sail but Gregory hailed him.
“Hemi! What about the fucking gangway?”
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Hemi looked at the rusted and dented ramp leading from the deck of the Prospect to the dock, then back to Gregory. “Just undo its securing lines. We are going to leave it here.”
Hemi turned back towards the sail, hearing a distant “fuck” rise up from the depths of the cargo hold. He was up on the bridge of the sail a few seconds later asking Percy to make sure Gregory got the deck cleared for leaving dock. A few seconds after that he was on the PA in the control room, calling Sir Piero and Bastian to meet him immediately. They both arrived from the galley moments later.
“Our pursuing sub problem has arrived once again Bastian. Get the diesels started, we are leaving. Sir Piero: if you can pilot us back to the main channel in a hurry, there will be a significant bonus for you.”
“Alright, Mister Hemi.” Sir Piero climbed the ladder up to the bridge from where his piloting would be carried out.
Bastian did not ask any questions. He turned to the motor panel and flipped the starters. A moment after that came the hiss of the high-pressure air turning the diesels over. The engines came to life, filling the Prospect with the reassuring and familiar rumble of its core power.
Sir Piero joined Percy on the bridge. Percy and Gregory established via some consultation yelled back and forth from the top of the sail to the deck that they would leave the gangway and the hawsers. It only took Gregory a few minutes to remove the securing lines from the gangway and undo the hawsers from the Prospect’s deck cleats. As soon as they were loose, Percy shouted down to Bastian and Hemi in the control room to reverse thrust and start backing them away from the dock into the turnaround bay. As the Prospect slipped away from the dock, the hawsers draped and then fell in long splashing lines into the water. The gangway scraped along the deck with a loud steel-on-steel sound, and then it followed the hawsers down the side of the Prospect’s hull and into the water.
The round dock boss and the dockworkers were standing on the platform watching this procedure, a little stupefied. When the gangway hit the water the dock boss called out to Percy and Sir Piero on the sail. “What are you doing? You can’t leave that fucking junk here!”
Percy ignored him, annoyed that she had to leave the junk. Those heavy hawsers were not cheap.
On the Gnat, Shakes returned to the sail from below deck, where he had thrown the levers that switched the power system from diesel to battery. He stood with his head out of the sail and backed his small boat at a high throttle from the dock, being careful to clear the stern of the Prospect before shifting to forward throttle.
The sub with the ram had moved quickly up the channel towards them. Defying the local convention of moving through the channels with no wake, it was cruising at an open-ocean speed, swamping small boats on both sides and sending rolling waves up over the platforms and through the lintels of the small huts on either side of the channel. The Grackle had clearly spotted the Prospect at dock and was now moving to the other side of the channel, maneuvering to angle in while maintaining its current speed and aligning to ram the Prospect while it was stuck in the turnaround bay.
With his head above the sail of the Gnat, Shakes could see what the monstrous black sub was planning. He lowered himself down to sit in the Gnat’s control seat, pulled the sail hatch closed above his head, and sealed it. He opened the valves to flood the ballast.
He began counting to himself as he pulled on a pair of well-broken leather gloves with his teeth, keeping each free hand on the controls as he did so. He lit a cigarette, sucked on it for a second, and then left it propped between his fingers as he used the same hand to give the boat some more throttle.
The Gnat picked up speed as it dove, the low sail leaving a small v of a wake that shrank away to nothing as it disappeared silently under the surface. Through the viewport of the sail, Shakes could see nothing but sludgy brown water ahead. He steered the boat on his mental time count and instinct, and a subconscious sense of the mathematics involved in the intercept course he planned.
Far faster than he had anticipated, a black wall arose before him.
With a last-second hope that he was in fact charging the Grackle, and not some random dock, he thrust the throttle lever all the way forward to its stop.
He sucked in a deep breath, and from his diaphragm put all he could into his battle cry: “Ramming speed!” He stuck the cigarette back between his lips. Staring intently out the viewport and with his mouth half-closed, he said, “I always wanted to fucking say that.”
The electric motor whined with a pitch that pierced right to the center of Shakes’ head. With its last burst of speed, the bow of the Gnat smashed into the looming black underwater wall.