Captain Nemo_ The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius - Kevin J Anderson [147]
One of the guards drew his scimitar and snarled, but Nemo stopped him with a commanding look. He replied in clear Turkish, “Remain here if you like.”
Robur’s forced construction schedule had been too hectic. Additional support girders and hull reinforcements he had suggested on his original design had not been added. Forced by their tight deadline, Nemo had chosen to omit backup systems. Now they would pay for the oversight.
If they did not abandon the vessel now, they would plunge too deep into the channel for anyone to escape. His crew would never manage to swim to the surface before they drowned.
Nemo reached up to open the primary hatch, and a thunderous waterfall of brine poured down upon his head. Oddly, he now remembered the bladder helmet he had used as a teenager on the river Loire -- even that crude invention would have given him a few more breaths of air on his way up. But they had left Conseil’s undersea helmets and diving suits in Rurapente. Robur had insisted they’d have no need for undersea exploration on this test voyage.
Nemo grabbed Cyrus Harding and his two engineers and forced them to climb through the water pounding from the hatch. The ship continued to plunge deeper and deeper. He looked at Robur’s panicked guards, pitied them for a moment -- and chose to let hell take the allies of the man who had stolen their lives from them. His heart felt utterly cold as he left them to die.
With powerful strokes, he swam into the deep water, surging toward the bright surface that seemed miles above. The pressure squeezed his skull and chest, but he stroked and kicked. In a dizzy, sickening instant he recalled when he had tried to rescue his father trapped beneath the Loire in the sinking hulk of the Cynthia. He saw the shadowy forms of his crewmen overhead, rising with the flow of bubbles toward daylight. His need to get away grew more urgent.
Below, a cyclone of escaping air accompanied the plunge of the sub-marine.
Nemo swam until his arms ached and his lungs wanted to explode. He burst to the surface, heaving huge lungfuls of air. His men were beside him, panting, bedraggled, and exhausted. They looked at each other in dismay. Five of the caliph’s guards also surfaced, while the sinking craft claimed the other two lives.
Sick at the disaster, seeing all their work wasted -- and dreading the consequences Caliph Robur was sure to impose -- Nemo and his weary men swam toward the distant shore.
vi
Caliph Robur began his bloody punishments before the full year was up.
Strident horns blew across the compound, summoning the dejected engineers from where they had begun work on a second vessel based on Nemo’s modified design. The caliph’s guards marched out, their shaved heads glistening in the Turkish sun, their loose white garments looking too clean.
The captive engineers knew something terrible lay in store for them, though they had done their best under impossible circumstances. Robur’s own foolish impatience had been the root cause of the disaster.
Standing at the docks with industrial smoke hanging like a pall over the cove, Nemo stepped to the front of his team in an attempt to reassure them. During the Crimean War, Robur had coolly selected each man because of his individual expertise. Each one was valuable to this project, vital to the completion of the undersea vessel. But Nemo feared the warlord’s rage would provoke him to unwise actions. . . .
The night after the first sub-marine craft had sunk, two-year-old Jules had played innocently on the carpets in their home, laughing. He was a good-natured boy, whose vivid imagination made a toy out of any scrap of material. Auda played a stringed musical instrument and sang to Nemo, trying to soothe his despair.
“I have word from the Sultan’s court at Ankara, my husband,” she said in a low voice. “Caliph Robur finds himself in a terrible situation.