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The tiny lights that lit the front windows like a weak little smile did virtually nothing to show the way. They showed only sediment and trash, wagon wheels and the bones of dead things tossed into the canal and forgotten. Some of the bones were large, and Cly thought maybe they’d once belonged to horses. But some of the carcasses looked more like fish—with spiny, needly ribs and flattened skulls that jutted out from the canal bed like tombstones.
“Like tombstones. ” The words slipped out of his mouth.
“Those bones?” Kirby asked. “They do look it, don’t they? It feels like swimming through a graveyard. What the hell once had a head like that, anyway?”
Deaderick answered, “Catfish. They grow as long as they eat, and they eat until they die. Sometimes they get bigger than you’d believe. ”
Cly breathed, “Jesus,” and steered them up a few feet more, so that the bottom was not quite so near, but they were still below the surface.
Houjin adjusted the height of the scope and called out directions whenever they were appropriate. “You’re veering left, sir. ” Or sometimes, “You’re veering right, too close to the sides. Keep us in the middle. ”
“I’m working on it,” the captain said. He might’ve said more, except that they all heard a wide, muffled pop that made them look up out of pure habit, despite the fact that none of them could see a thing except for the dull gray rivets that ran along the ceiling.
Ruthie’s eyes blazed out the front windows, though she could only see a reflection of herself, and of the rest of the cabin area with its dull gold lights. “We must be getting close,” she whispered.
“Sounds like it,” Deaderick agreed, taking her hand and squeezing it.
She squeezed back. “I should get to the charges, to the side bays. ”
“Ruthie. ” Josephine climbed to her feet and extended a hand to her friend. “I’ll come with you. Teach me whatever I don’t know, and can’t figure out. ”
“Yes, ma’am. This way. The charges must be prepared before we can fire them. I can show you how to load them. ”
Deaderick also rose, saying, “I can man the top guns, if we have to launch them. ”
Houjin frowned around the side of the scope’s visor. “We have top guns?”
“There’s a mount behind your scope and to the left. You enter it from the room at the rear, just aft of the ballasting tanks. But we don’t want to get too trigger-happy with them, not until we’re up close and personal. Or until they’ve already seen us anyway, and there’s no more use in keeping a low profile. ”
“All right. Troost, once we get out into the bay, you might be better served to help the women hoist the charges. ”
“Josephine’s
bigger than I am, sir. I doubt I can lift too much more than she can. ”
“But they’ll need to reload quickly—and a pair of extra hands will be helpful, given how heavy those damn things are. ” Cly knew from his afternoon of training at Pontchartrain, because he’d helped load them onto the Ganymede in preparation for moving it out of the lake.
Before the craft had been sealed up and dropped onto the platforms that carried it to New Sarpy, the bayou boys had packed Ganymede chock-full of every bit of ammunition that had ever been created for it. Mostly it used a modified charge stuffed inside a bullet-shaped casing about the size of a picnic basket. These casings were slotted into a chute, their powders packed and fuses lit, their back ends sealed off with a hammering slam from the chute door … and then they were closed into an exterior compartment and fired straight out of the submarine’s lower right hull. If all went as planned, one of two things would happen: either the charge would explode upon connecting with its target, or it would lodge within the target and explode shortly thereafter.
“Sir, how do we know these charges are any good?” Troost asked. “How long have they been sitting around? And will the damn things explode underwater?”
“I don’t know. ”
Deaderick filled him in. “We didn’t test many of them. They’re too valuable to waste. ”
Cly said, “I bet the Union won’t feel like we’re wasting them, if we’re using them to shoot down Texians. ”
“I daresay they’ll consider it ammunition well spent,” Deaderick said. “Assuming it works. ”
“Let’s go ahead and assume the best for now. If what we’ve got won’t burn or blow, we can reconsider our high-and-mighty plans to rush in and save the day,” the captain informed them.
Another blast occurred somewhere overhead, out of the water, up in the sky. This one was particularly loud, and so bright it made Houjin cry out and yank his eyes away from the scope.
“Sir!” he said. “Take us a lower, and do it now!”
“You want me to swamp your scope?”
“Now!”
