Strike the Hand of Ares
Will couldn’t resist a chance to strike the robotic hand that controlled the fate of his people, even if it meant death.
The ship came simply, without fanfare, like they all did. Will Vidant watched the light ebb over the ocean. He could still distinguish the steel bow of the ship through the storm clouds. The sun shrank below the horizon, purple glints reflected off the barrels of turrets as they turned toward the Passage of Manchu. Daring and unwise.
He couldn’t see the Hand of Ares but he felt it inside, looming close, settling in his stomach with uneasiness.
The crew was doomed.
He leaned against the doorway of his seaside hut; a wedge of liquid from the glass in his hand picked up the last embers of purple light. He held his breath, hoping to kill the approaching moment and postpone the inevitable. Ships were frequent these days because of the war. The Passage of Manchu was the only way to supply food to the cities in the North. Will needed no explanation for the increased ocean traffic.
He swallowed the remnants of the glass and went inside. He had no desire to see the carnage about to unfold.
No matter how many drills they ran, the chief engineer, Ragna Dorner, worked with a diffused anxiety that had only one explanation.
The management.
The class ten military battleship was her favorite model and this particular ship, the Atlas, had a better chance than most against the Hand of Ares. That was because Ragna had a say in customizing it exclusively for this fight.
Before the red tape and politics got in her way.
When the Captain announced their arrival, her anxiety turned acute. She pulled her shoulders back in practiced self-discipline. Pushed a stray hair back up into an elastic band. She had to stop thinking, it led her to imagine the worst.
They would succeed where all others failed.
She believed it.
She had to.
She thought back to her rejected plans and all the people who got in her way. The anxiety always came to her when she thought of them.
The management.
She sacrificed everything to save lives and for it, they rejected the only thing she had faith in. Her skill.
So she rejected them—the management—for the imbeciles and cowards they were.
The crew, on the other hand, respected her but didn’t know her.
She preferred it that way.
The swells against the ship tossed her staff into overhead pipes and the railings that lined the engine room planks.
The ship fell to the whim of the waves, some insidious force goading them into battle.
The gauges went wild, steam shot from overheated lines and Ragna shouted orders as she turned the massive shut-off valve. The steam hissed into oblivion but not before heat blistered her fingers.
The sting made her curse just as young crewman Shaw raced up to her.
“We are taking on water,” he yelled over the groan of the ship’s engine.
She warned them that such a massive battleship ran the risk of scuttling in the deep waters around the Hand of Ares. Keep it out of enemy clutches—she heard the management saying—never mind the lives lost.
No time to think about that now.
“Pumps are working at full capacity but we need power for the backups.”
Ragna pounded her fist on a malfunctioning gauge and the needle dropped to the red zone.
“They are in the fight of their lives up there. We need all power to the weapons systems. Counter flood to compensate until I can give you more.”
Shaw nodded, his unwavering trust in her caused a pang of guilt. She’d never been able to trust like that.
The young crewman turned on his heel and raced back down the plank.
Then, he was gone.
The hull was gone.
Rain pelted her face and sparks erupted where the ship split in half.
She latched onto the pipes to keep from slipping down into murky, white capped waves. Her eyes blurred. She wiped the water from them with the back of her hand.
Craned her neck upward and saw it against the churning storm.
The Hand of Ares.
Fingers of the robotic limb squeezed around the other half of the battleship and lifted it into the sky. It seemed to move at half-speed in its immensity, igniting lightning in the clouds with thunderous cracks.
Crewmen jumped from the deck, plummeting to their death into rough seas rather than face the titan.
Ragna turned away, eyes burning with disappointment and rage. She didn’t let them in but she cared about them. Shaw had a young wife back home. Many of them had families. It gutted her to watch the synthetic fist crush the ship and toss it away. A flick of its wrist sent the fifty-thousand-ton carcass miles across the ocean like a bothersome insect.
Looking up at it was like looking into the mouth of a black hole. The hand was only an empty shell, doing the bidding of some unseen master, its heart hidden beneath layers of fog and the blast of monsoonal rain.
For a suspended instant, the clouds parted beneath the hand and she saw the Passage of Manchu. The life giving straight between high cliffs was swallowed in darkness almost as soon as it appeared.
The hand came down. Gravity gave way beneath her. She clung to the engine pipes in vain as the world dropped into the fathoms. The air was displaced by the rush of cold salt water. One giant hand crushed the ship into the sea.
In the narrow space of beach between the sea and the smooth rocks of the reef, Will found the peace that eluded him in the aftermath of his dishonorable discharge. Every morning he took off his shoes and let the white sands bubble between his toes as he inhaled the fresh breezes.
On mornings after a battle, debris washed ashore and disturbed his paradise. The debris betrayed his island and worse, reminded him of the past. He grudgingly went about the task of cleaning it up—throwing out the rubbish and collecting intact canned food or useful pieces of wood and steel. Once he found a whole sonar array that took two days to haul back to his cabin.
Today’s take was unimpressive. A few dented pots and pans, a soaked mattress with springs exposed, and a water-logged handgun.
Will picked up the firearm and scoffed. Poor souls never had a chance against the wrath of the mysterious sea titan.
He followed a trail of pieces of mangled metal along the shore. Found more lodged between rocks. Collected them in the pile to throw away later.
Death, pain, and fear never scared him, not like shame and dishonor had. When he found pieces of bodies, he gathered them up like he did pieces of hull, except with the reverence deserved to brave sailors who died.
Always pieces of bodies.
Never a whole one.
At the edge of the sand, beyond the turquoise lagoon, he saw a whole one, face down, arms tucked beneath it and legs pointed toward the ocean.
Will dropped the armful of junk and approached with a kind of disbelieving swagger. It was the first person he had seen in years. The morbidity of that was not lost on him.
Sunlight sculpted the sheen off the wet uniform and revealed white flesh beneath the torn fabric. The heel of a foot and the curve of a calf muscle to delicate and graceful to be anything but female.
He knelt beside her, recognized the violence of what the body had been through, and quashed the rumble in his gut before he turned her over.
A sweep of blond hair fell below her shoulder, gritty with sand. Stupid of him to be disappointed that she wasn’t pretty. She was dead, after all.
Her face was strong, the solid planes of it came together with a boldness that seemed to defy the world. Her mouth might have been sensual but her sun-cracked lips were covered with sand and parted obstinately.
Something tickled his fingers. Warm and damp.
Holy crap.
He reached for her neck.
Found a pulse.
She was still alive.
A swirl of adrenaline and panic blurred the next few minutes, sending reality slightly out of focus as Will scooped her up and hurried back to his cabin.
He kept looking down at her languid body, worried she would die before he had a chance to try and save her. He didn’t realize until the cabin came into view that she was probably five foot nine and heavy as hell.
His muscles ached by the time he reached the front porch. He dropped her on the wood planks with more of a tumble than he meant to.
He leaned over, stretched his back, and then shook out the tightness in his biceps.
“Lady, you’re lucky I work out.”
Felt odd to speak to someone.
He brought her inside and laid her, gently this time, on the single cot in the two-room cabin. Retrieved his first aid kit and did what he could for her injuries. She looked bruised and battered but, unless she had something internal, he found nothing life threatening.
Tried to radio for help.
The war made communications spotty.
Gave up on that and got her to take a few sips of water.
Then, he waited.
Forgot about his debris pile on the beach and the handgun tucked away in his pocket.
Her arrival triggered his suppressed impulses. The need to correct an error.
He couldn’t stop his brain from circling over all the problems he left behind. It had been a long time since he demanded anything of himself.
After a couple of hours watching the lazy sunset and acclimating to the new visitor, his mind finally settled.
He thought it had.
The night was restless. Told himself it was because he had to sleep outdoors but knew otherwise. What the dawn would bring was anyone’s guess.
Will just cleared the last debris from the shore when he saw her silhouette against the mist engulfed cape.
Four days it took to break her delirium and fever. He hadn’t expected her to come at him upright.
She was as strong as she looked.
When she stood before him, he noticed her eyes first. They were the same color as the deep ocean, pale and veiled. Made her face prettier than when he first saw her.
A woman in her mid-thirties, maybe, but she had that sort of ageless face that looks the same at twenty as fifty. Her posture had a rigid, defiant apprehension in contrast to her trim waistline and elegant curves.
“You must be stubborn as hell to still be alive after that.” He tilted his head toward the everlasting storm at sea.
Her lips parted. He decided her mouth was appealing.
“Anyone else?”
He tossed the last piece of metal in the rusted wheelbarrow.
“What was it Ishmael said. I alone.”
Her hand fisted at her side and then lost its strength.
“What is that thing? Why is it even there? Where did it come from?”
The explosion of rage shouldn’t have amused him. The grin on his lips probably came off as insensitive but he forgot what a scorned woman looked like.
He hid it by rearranging loose debris in the barrel.
“I see it take out a half dozen ships every month. You are the first survivor.”
“Is that supposed to comfort me?”
Anger poured off her like heat from the sun-scorched sand.
“Name’s Will. You got a name?”
“Ragna,” she sighed, turned toward the ocean, “Dorner. So, how do we get off this island?”
“I live here, Ragna Dorner, but as soon as I can establish radio contact, I can get them to send out a boat for you.”
“Idiot. Don’t you know?”
He blinked, lifted his head with irritation. Did she just call him an idiot?
“Radio blackout for zone 85. They have to liberate the passage. No coms until it is done.”
Will knocked into her shoulder on purpose as he passed her. He pushed the wheelbarrow out of the sand and started for the garbage dump, wondering if he should throw himself in when he got there to escape her.
“Looks like you’re stuck here.” And me with you, he thought.
“You should head back. Get some rest.” Sure, he wanted to get rid of her but she also looked drained. So much exertion wasn’t good so soon.
She shook her head.
“I want to get the lay of the land.”
The road to his makeshift garbage dump took them by the smaller bay on the opposite side of the island, something he might have avoided had annoyance not clouded his judgment.
Even during the day, the jungle was alive with a thousand voices, heat not enough to send birds, rodents, and snakes into quiet hibernation. Only the big cats avoided the swelter. One less threat to avoid.
The golden pendant of the sun cast its light through the clenched fists of branches, penetrating in an odd mix of brilliance and shadow. Made Will’s island feel like another planet, some exotic refuged now sullied by an intruder.
He dropped the wheelbarrow and re-oriented himself. He made the trek almost every week but the trampled path through the underbrush was hard to distinguish between overgrown trees and vines.
Once he found the path, it was like a conveyer belt carried him across the bay. It transferred him through the jungle on autopilot so he didn’t have to look at the ship docked beyond the limestone cove.
But the lady, this Ragna Dorner, she looked.
The hull of Will’s ship was a cool, intimate black that attracted white-hot gleams from the sun.
The decorative fluting that lined each side of the ship didn’t impede the arrow dynamics of its design. Etchings of famous Greek battle scenes on the bow had been worn away by the sea and wind. The cockpit was exposed, like an open wound, and the entrails of engine parts and wires were strung along the starboard side, the painful evidence of his wrath.
When Ragna Dorner stopped and folded her arms, he felt the dim touch of unease.
“You’re Will Vidant. The Navy’s famous racing pilot.”
He picked up the pace, wheelbarrow jarring his joints as it bounced over stones and stumps. The speed didn’t shake his new shadow. She trailed behind him like an eager puppy, asking all kinds of exasperating questions he’d stopped asking himself years ago.
“What are you doing out here? Why aren’t you helping the war effort? What happened to you? You were so popular and then you just vanished.”
He pushed the wheelbarrow upright and pieces of debris crashed down into the graveyard. The noise shut her up but his reprieve was brief.
When he turned around, he met her exotic eyes and knew that unless he answered at least one question she’d never stop probing.
“You think I want to be here? They forced me out.”
He left her motionless on the bank of the pit. Sent up a prayer on the way back to the cabin that the radio blackout would end soon.
For the next three days, she all but vanished. So did some of his things.
A pen and two pencils. A notepad. Ocean and tide maps.
An apprehension sank into his gut like a rock.
She was up to something.
The only time he saw her was mealtime.
Miraculous how she managed to show up just when the food was ready. Her uncanny superpower. She ate what he prepared, never with a thank you or the offer to assist.
When they ate, he felt her eyes on him. The scrutiny soured his mood.
“Why do you do that?”
He didn’t like looking at her. She regained some color in her face and the cuts and bruises had healed. Made her prettier than he wanted her to be. It was hard not to look at her. He stabbed at the catch of the day steaming up from his plate.
“Do what?”
“Pray over your food. You think there is some God up there listening?”
She didn’t outright scoff but he could hear it in her tone.
“Just a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?” He faced her with open contempt.
“At least I’m not some pathetic loser hiding here when I should be fighting.”
The fork clanked on the plate when he dropped it. The sound startled her. Achieved his goal to force her attention.
“Oh really, because from where I sit you look even more pathetic than I am. It’s obvious you’ve lost your faith and your way. At least I never lost that.”
That made her pause— a moment of astonishment at someone pegging her weakness— and he felt proud for being its cause.
“Screw you.” The bite of anger abandoned her tone and left behind a chilling authority. She left the cabin, her food untouched.
Will sighed and finished eating in silence. It wasn’t the blessed silence that he pined for. The apprehension turned to guilt and tainted the taste he usually savored.
A pleasant whistle of wind rustled pages of the open notebook across the room. Will sat up straight.
The notebook that went missing.
He tried to deny the sense of eagerness he felt—a secret hope and excitement calling from the pages. It pulled him up and over to the table.
There were rough sketches of shapeless things, badly written equations that went beyond his understanding. A few more sharp strokes brought the fuzzy into focus and made unimportant doodles worthwhile.
He had to admire the naked purpose and ingenuity before him. Impelled him to go outside and find her with the notebook in hand.
She stood on the beach, clothes wrinkled and barefoot, the light from the gray sky highlighting the heaviness in her stance.
He looked passed her straight into the storm on the horizon that concealed the lurking enemy.
“Is it true your ship once cut through a thirty-foot swell?”
He looked down at their feet, toes exposed, both sunk in the sand, and found an awkward intimacy in the moment.
“That was a lifetime ago.”
She glanced at the notebook in his hand.
“I’ve been wondering…” she tucked her bottom lip between her teeth, “maybe the strategy to fight the Hand of Ares has been all wrong. Maybe what we need is a small, stealth ship.”
Will scoffed.
“Not mine. You saw it. Rotted by neglect.”
“It’s not a total loss.”
“And, what, you some kind of engineer?”
A faint smile of pain and amusement curved her lips and he knew he stepped into a trap.
“I was Chief Engineer on the Atlas.”
He followed the swell of clouds around the cape, the haze so thick he couldn’t find the sky beneath them.
“It’s too late.”
“You might be content to sit on your ass while people are dying—our people—but I’m not. This is our chance to do something bigger than ourselves. To prove that we are not losers.”
She touched his arm, the action at once both a plea and a tribute.
“You think we can prove that?”
Her simple nod made him forget every problem, every doubt, and every person he had left behind. The endless possibilities seemed obscured from his view just like the cape now engulfed in fog.
“If I agree then you owe me something big.”
“Name it.”
He waited. She turned to face him; concentration narrowed on him as if he stood a great distance away.
“Chief Engineer of the Atlas? I may be out but I still recognize clout. You have it. If we survive then you agree to testify at my appeal.”
“If we survive, I won’t have to. You’ll be a hero.”
The easy swiftness of the answer jolted him out of the trance he’d been in for years.
“That’s my offer, take it or leave it.”
Her hand lifted. He squeezed it in his larger one, reluctant to let go because then the work would begin.
The flood from the halogen spotlights allowed them to work at night. Beyond the bay, the jungle and sea shrank into shadow, broken by traces of fire from the everlasting lightning storm in the distance. A constant reminder of the fate that awaited them.
Ragna dangled over the edge of the ship on the suspended scaffold, wire cutters between her teeth, wielder in one and the other holding in place a sheet of metal. There was a smudge of grease across her cheek that framed her eyes. Eyes that narrowed as she looked away from her work to the bold lettering—Understand—on the steel plated bow of his ship. She dropped the wire cutters and glanced up.
“Why that?”
“It’s a rhetorical question,” Will said, “from my court martial. They said, ‘your duty is to follow orders even when that conflicts with your oath of allegiance to truth. Understand?’”
She was now the only person in the world who knew his story. Amazing how fast he gave up being an island and allowed himself to trust someone again.
His nerves went raw but he felt a sense of calm in her manner, a wisdom that was strange and new and in opposition to her usually warring spirit.
“Management,” she shook her head, “they always get in the way. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was to cover up their involvement in provoking the war. War means money.”
He stood at the rail and looked at the dark shore that rose and fell against the storm, each swell an ominous song.
“There’s something rotten at the top,” he said.
Ragna climbed up the rope ladder, shoulder blades rolling like a jungle cat on the prowl. He didn’t hear her steps as she crossed the deck. Lesser men might have moved out of her way. He stood firm, fingers spread apart across the cool metal of the railing.
“You must have burned your pension on this ship,” she said, her body bent as she dropped into the exposed engine cabin. “Where were you planning to go?”
He could only see her from the waist up, her bottom half hidden beneath the deck, her hand gesturing to be filled. He placed a wrench in her palm and she bent even lower.
“I never have any definite target. It’s for getting away, not going anywhere.”
She paused and the internal war she was fighting returned to her expression.
“Lazy and selfish.”
Will stepped to the edge of the open hatch, intending to start a verbal fight but Ragna pounded on the ignition. The boat choked to life and should have given Will a sense of triumph.
Sparks flashed, small at first.
A little burst of light near one of the connection wires.
Then a string of broken flickers struggled for connection. Fire teased the air, edging toward a violent eruption.
Will reached down and pulled Ragna away from the engine. Her body protested against his movements as he hauled her away.
The blast tore her from his arms. An invisible force threw them both from the deck.
Will splashed into the cool high tide of the bay. He watched Ragna soar over the starboard side and hit the sand seconds before he went under.
He swam up, legs pumping until he broke back through the surface. Smoke stung his nose and eyes, plumes pouring from the hatch, hints of flames making lonely streaks against the dark sky.
The crackle of fire disrupted the midnight peace as Will cut through the dark water on his way back to shore. There was no motion in the black shapes of trees around him, only that of ripples and then his body splashing onto the sand.
He went to Ragna with effortless speed, the way he remembered from his Navy days. She was upright, pants half singed and fist trembling around the wrench still in her hand.
A slew of curse words was followed by an impassioned tantrum, in which the wrench was hurled against the side of the ship. Metal clanged and sank beneath glassy waves.
That was his favorite wrench.
“Two months of work, gone!” She wiped something from her cheek. Could have been sand, grease, or tears.
She turned on him, hands making fists again.
“You didn’t tell me there was a problem with the electrical too!”
She played the game well but there was an unexpected variation in her tone that gave her away. Will doled out words with deliberate slowness, forced a soothing balm into them to temper the dying fire on the ship.
“I’m sorry.”
It seemed all the words necessary to crush her. She dropped to her knees, sand mounding around her. On the rim of her bottom lash, the last embers of fire highlighted unshed tears.
Not for the ship.
Not for this ship, anyway.
He knelt beside her. No longer were they watching a fire destroy their hard work.
It was a memorial now.
“I’m sorry about the Atlas,” he said. There was no expression or movement in her body except for a single tear that escaped down her cheek.
“We can’t fail.”
Her shoulders dropped in some bleak relief. She had needed to let this out for weeks and it stirred something in him.
He had to mean his next words or else he didn’t dare say them. He had too much respect for her skill to lie to her. The idea of succeeding was a rough pill to swallow. It would mean returning to everything he left behind.
A moment of shame stopped him and then relented enough for him to touch her cheek.
Softer than he imagined.
“We won’t.”
Morning came with a unique blend of salt and flora and the suffocating emptiness of tranquility.
The ship was finished.
A masterpiece.
Ragna’s masterpiece and yet not completely hers.
Ragna sat across from Will, looking down at breakfast, jam-smeared toast and juice—the final meal before they left the island.
The tips of his short hair were frosted by days and days of working under the tropical sun and his tanned brow was steeped in determination. He looked up from under it, his gaze roaming slowly over the lines of her face, down her neck and to her t-shirt then to her eyes.
It was a piercing glance that seemed to see straight through her mind and her apparel.
He wasn’t an idiot. In fact, instead of rejecting her ideas, he listened, suggested, made them even better. An unfamiliar feeling of anticipation shallowed her breathing. She’d never known someone like him before.
Until that moment she never knew that instead of management, what she needed was a partner.
He bowed his head.
“Could you—?” the rest caught in her throat. Her world stood still, not a leaf rustled around them while the storm from the deep sea soaked up all color from the sky.
She didn’t have to finish.
He knew.
He prayed for their success. Pissed her off because it made her feel better and she promised herself long ago not to trust in such foolish things.
Still, the moment seemed natural given the new and peculiar reality she found herself a part of.
A stroke of mist lingered on the horizon while they readied the Understand for departure, breaks in between clouds opening wider as the sun burned away the fog.
Will pulled a tarp across the iron box in the narrow walkway that led to the helm. He stood back, arms folded, watching the chest as if it might explode, mischief in his lopsided grin.
“I still can’t believe you built that.”
She rolled up the sleeves of her gray cotton, then reached down with bare arms to do a final inspection of the engine.
“We built it.”
She had not known many men very well and never expected to be liked by any of them. The swell of pride in Will’s eyes made her feel smart, gorgeous, and unstoppable. Made her want them to succeed and more than that. It gave her something to live for. To believe in.
“We might die and no one will ever know what we tried to do here.”
“We’ll know,” he said.
The ship cut through the open sea with a swift resolution that gave her a feeling of flying, wind whipping her hair and salt droplets pelleting her face. She looked at Will’s solid body, moving against the steering wheel, intelligent eyes searching for swells that would hinder their momentum.
It took some time for the elation to wear away but when it did the journey toward the Hand of Ares became a kind of torture.
She gripped the railing, the muscles in her wrist pulled tight. No one deserved the torture that Ares caused. Her sister and brother-in-law lived in the North, maybe weary with starvation because of the monster in the ocean.
The waves deepened and the ship dipped down in a free fall as the breaks rose toward the nightmarish sky.
“Time to go covert,” Will yelled over the howling winds.
Ragna moved into the helm of the ship and watched as Will ignited the shields. Slats of black titanium enclosed the ship with arrow dynamic precision. She bumped into his shoulder as he took the ship directly through one of the waves.
Even more fun than she suspected it would be.
He was grinning too but when they exited the wave on the other side a crack of lightning sobered them. Its flash revealed the mammoth robotic hand in the sky—looming above them—motionless against the rain and wind.
“It hasn’t detected us yet,” Ragna said, “I told you it would work.”
She tossed the tarp from the iron box in the hallway.
“Not yet. I can get closer.”
She couldn’t help thinking that cockiness was what got him kicked out of the Navy.
“We only get one chance at this,” he said, glancing at her, “trust me.”
Not an easy ask. But she wanted to.
She nodded and he revved the engine.
The Hand of Ares thundered to life. She had seen it before, a mass of artificial evil coming down toward her. Her lungs constricted—a reflex—remembering how it felt to be buried beneath the waves without oxygen.
Will maneuvered the ship and steel fingers missed them by inches. The impact sent the ship rolling over the waves. Ragna braced herself but the ship turned them upside down and then back up, bruising them into consoles and rattling debris.
Flat on her back, looking up out the helm window she saw a break in the fog. Forty feet in the air, she glimpsed a massive metal plated head, eyes alive with red light before it was swallowed back into the storm.
The scream of damaged metal was followed by a steady shudder from far below her, where the ship fought against the forces of nature and machine.
“Hold on,” Will said and she felt the ship dive.
Pressure from the depths made her dizzy, pushing against her ears and lungs.
“I didn’t design a submarine,” she warned him.
Will ignored her and kept the bow of the ship in a nose dive, cutting through smooth, clear water until a large dark mass appeared. Her craftsmanship held, provided them with a slender pocket of air inside the helm. Bolts in the metal shot out under pressure, allowing narrow jets of water to pour in.
The shadows in the deep ocean split in two. Lights dotted the strange structures about fifty feet in the distance and gradually Ragna realized what they were.
Two mechanical legs. Massive supports for the gigantic robot.
Will cranked the wheel and the ship groaned as its trajectory turned upward. Ragna was ankle deep in water, toes frozen and equilibrium in a spin.
“I had no idea just how insane you were,” she said. He grinned and winked, then the ship moved, upward, toward the torso of the machine called Ares.
Ragna dropped to her knees and the splash sent cold salt water into her face. She pushed the lid from the iron box and heard a roar that vibrated the ship.
“It knows what we are trying to do,” Will yelled over his shoulder.
Ragna flipped the switch on the E.M.P. device. Its electric blue coils hummed to life.
“Any time now!”
There was a fear and urgency in his voice.
Ragna glanced up and saw why.
The Hand of Ares plummeted beneath the waves and cut straight at them. Cracks in the ship’s hull ruptured and water beat down on her in a stream that made her lose balance. She clung to the iron box, righted herself and activated the electromagnetic pulse.
All lights on the console of the Understand flickered and went out. The ship was dead in the water—floating aimlessly, waiting for the hand to crush it.
The ship quivered as the air pocket lifted them toward the surface, hull scraping against mechanical claws that suddenly lost control. She saw the internal lights along its wrist streaking by and then vanishing just like on the ship’s console.
The water was up to her knees and she stumbled through it back to Will at the helm. It took an instant for Will to pull himself upright. He steered the ship without power, their diminishing air pocket seemed for a terrifying moment like it wouldn’t be enough to carry them out of the depths.
There was no time to speak or congratulate once the ship broke above the ocean. They floated on a rough sea, at the base of the forty-foot machine, Ragna cranking on the manual lift to raise the turret. Will stumbled across the deck with an eighty-pound cannonball in his arms.
He aimed the ancient sea weapon upward and Ragna lit the fuse.
The unnatural thunder overhead didn’t distract them from loading the next cannon, and the next, and the next.
Pieces of metal were blasted away from the giant with each explosive impact.
Will finally stopped and Ragna followed his gaze toward the sky. The storm cleared and a million tons of steel and mortar swayed in the wind. Gaping hole in its torso, one limb shot off, Ares tipped sideways. She heard Will curse.
They buried themselves inside the helm and braced for the inevitable fall of the titan. The swell from the impacting masses dropped the ship so low Ragna felt her stomach lurching with it.
There was no time to think, plan, or form words but she knew if they survived this they had won. Her body was thrown to the rhythm of crashing waves, with salt stinging her eyes and objects of all sizes slamming into her without mercy.
Will held onto her. His stubborn refusal to submit to disaster and his drive to fight surprised her and made her cling to him.
Flashes of stars blinded her—flooded her senses and then everything was swept up into a peaceful delirium.
She floated there, semi-conscious of the stillness and silence until something tickled her fingertips.
She blinked. A flood of dim light came into focus.
How much time had passed? An hour? A day?
There was the tickle again. She looked down her arm. Found Will’s fingers coaxing hers. She shot upright, head spinning.
“Take it easy. There’s no hurry. Ares has fallen.”
A surge of joy and despair caught in her throat. For those she lost and those they might have saved.
“Come look at this.”
Will led her by the hand out of the remains of the Understand and into a cave filled with air so ancient she tasted memory and bone in it.
Will stopped at the half-mangled talon detached from the robot that sank into the sea. Inside the twisted titanium of its palm, she recognized a symbol.
“That’s…”
Will nodded.
Suddenly her theory about a high-level cover-up found its supporting evidence.
The management.
She knew it.
“But that’s not what I wanted to show you.”
With her curiosity peaked she followed him through a maze of stalagmites until they reached an open cavern.
Light found them from small holes in the cave above them. Her body instinctively relaxed when she stood in its rays. The sun from the outside meant they weren’t trapped.
“This is the Passage of Manchu, isn’t it?”
Will nodded and when he moved, she saw a glow, not from the sun but deep from within the cavern.
The unnatural brightness pulled her in. Will positioned her at the edge of a cliff so she could see a panoramic view of what awaited them below.
All of it bursting with dazzling brilliance.
She gasped.
Nothing could have prepared her for the spectacle. Against the backdrop of stalagmites, she beheld a shrine of breathtaking wealth. Golden coffers and urns were piled to the heavens. Mounds of precious metal and gemstones ornamented the nooks between brimming chests of coins and diamonds.
Some element in one of the metals gave off a strange radiance that lit up the entire underground.
“Ares wasn’t just guarding the passage,” Will said.
A grin started at the corner of her lips and within seconds they were laughing and hugging.
Hand in hand they moved beyond the cavern and down a trail that led to a beached lifeboat at the edge of a small cove. All she could think about was how that gold was going to help the war effort. How her sister might be saved with the passage open.
“We’ve fixed worse,” he said, pointing at the boat.
She rolled up her sleeves.
“Including each other.” She hadn’t meant to say that but she was overwrought by joy and success.
He smiled at her.
“At the end of the storm I always believed there was a blue sky,” he said.
“And a pot of gold?”
He looked at her, a pearl of acquired wisdom in his gaze.
“Something better. Now I can say to them, ‘your impossible goliaths are not enough to crush the hopes of two determined people. Understand.’”