Captain Nemo_ The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius - Kevin J Anderson [176]
“We must attack any target we find, any bully of the seas. By doing so, we save every person that battleship would have killed and prevent the destruction those cannons would have caused. The only victims are the warmongers themselves, not the innocents . . . like our families were.” The other men looked away, cowed and ashamed. “Today -- now -- we remove one more weapon from the hands of the world’s navies.”
Seeing the blaze in their captain’s eyes, the men went back to their stations. The air stank of nervous sweat. Nemo stood motionless at the bridge and waited, gathering his nerve. Finally, speaking for himself as well as the crew, he said, “Men who make a living by waging war do not deserve our mercy. Remember Rurapente. Remember what happened to your wives and children.”
He pushed away images of Caroline and his happy times with her, the five weeks in a balloon over Africa, their precious intimate moments aboard the ship on the way back to France. No, those memories would not keep him strong. “Remember.”
In his mind, Nemo saw it all again: the flames, the screams, the scars . . . the warlords fighting each other. The Light Brigade led into slaughter in the Crimea. The villains like Caliph Robur and the ruthless slavers in Africa. The pirates who had sunk the Coralie and slain Captain Grant --
Nemo gave the order for the Nautilus to submerge. He had never tested his beloved vessel in such a terrible manner, but he knew the integrity of his design. He knew what the Nautilus had been created to do.
He closed his dark eyes for just a moment and summoned an image of beautiful Auda and little Jules. He tried to find peace, tried to find a purpose. But he could no longer think of them without envisioning the charred bones in the ruins of Rurapente. He thought of Auda murdered, of young Jules pulled beneath the dark water, trying to suck in a breath of air as their ship sank --
“Full ahead,” he said. “Ramming speed.”
The engines growled, and the propellers turned. The Nautilus leaped forward like a hungry shark, spewing a wake just below the surface. Yellow eyes from the forward lamps burned the seas ahead of them.
“Brace yourselves, mates,” Cyrus Harding said, cool and collected, an engineer to the last.
The dark shadow of the British warship’s hull loomed closer and closer. The Nautilus streaked toward it, picking up speed. The armored metal saw-ridge on its bow was sharp, ready to eviscerate.
With a hideous, resounding crunch, the sub-marine boat crashed into the underbelly of the battleship. The impact sent a deafening clang through the hull of the Nautilus, and the shock hurled the crew to their knees.
The relentless engines continued to roar. The sub-marine boat sawed like a battlefield surgeon’s blade amputating a diseased limb. The hull of the British warship tore open, a mortal wound that shattered its keel and burst the bulkheads.
“Full stop!” Nemo called and turned to watch, sickened at what he had done and yet refusing to regret his actions.
The gutted warship seemed unable to grasp what had just happened. An explosion sent a muffled boom through the water, probably from a ruptured powder storehouse ignited by stray sparks.
At a safe distance, Nemo gave the order to surface again. Several silent, awestruck crewmen climbed up through the hatch to stand on the outer hull of the undersea vessel, where they observed the death throes of the warship. At least they were far enough away that they could not hear the cries of pain and pleas for rescue from the doomed British crew. . . .
Then, with a morbid fascination, Nemo submerged the sub-marine boat and cruised beneath the wrecked hull. The shattered warship continued its slow and ironically graceful plunge toward the bottom.
Outside the windows of the salon, he could see burned and broken hull timbers, tangled rigging, and bodies . . . many bodies of