Leviathan Rising Part 10

"Come on then, man? Let's hear it," Major Horsley boomed encouragingly.

"See that bal.u.s.trade over there?" Ulysses said, pointing at the sidelong ladder-like structure of the balcony opposite that had been half broken off by a falling crystal light-fitting "I reckon that if we could pull that free and slide it over we'd have something long enough and strong enough to let everyone clamber across."

Appalled faces looked back at him from among the party, none more so than Miss Whilomena Birkin's.

"One at a time mind," he added.

"And how exactly are you going to achieve this dramatic feat?" Carcharodon enquired pointedly.

"Well, if it were up to me, I would dive down there," he said pointing at the ever-rising waters beneath them, "shin up that pole," his finger now followed the broken support column of one of the downed chandeliers, "up to there and then it would only be a short scramble to the balcony. I'd need a hand of course."

"Very well, that's agreed then," Carcharodon declared, needlessly taking charge of the situation once somebody else had worked out what had to be done. "Any volunteers?"

"I'll go," came one bold voice amidst the embarra.s.sed silence of the majority.

"No, John, you can't!" Constance declared, horrified.

"My darling, I must," Schafer said, taking her hands in his again. "For your sake. For our sake, for the sake of everyone here."

"But, John," she struggled, unchecked tears running down her cheeks.

"I'll be alright. I was House swimming champion back in my school days. Top diving board and everything. I haven't told you that before, have I?"

"Jolly good show, what?" the Major said happily, clapping his hands together loudly in satisfaction. "Knew you wouldn't let us down, old boy," he said, nudging Ulysses in the ribs. "Jackets off then, lads, eh?"

"Jackets off indeed, Major," Ulysses agreed, arching a sarcastic eyebrow.

"May I be of service, sir?" Nimrod asked, taking a step forward.

"You just be ready to help at this end, Nimrod, old chap," his employer said with a wry smile. "Keep this lot in check and all that."

"Very good, sir."

"So, young Schafer," Ulysses said, approaching the edge of the precipice. "Ready to show this lot what you're made of?"

"After you, Quicksilver," he said, rolling up his shirt sleeves, ready for action, receiving one last pa.s.sionate kiss on the lips from his betrothed before handing her his jacket and pushing her gently back towards her anxious aunt.

"Right you are then. Here goes nothing."

Feet together, Ulysses straightened, arms outstretched above his head, pointing at the dark gla.s.s ceiling as if in an att.i.tude of prayer. For a moment he stood there, poised ready to dive. Then, with one graceful bound, he launched himself off the edge and head first into the turgid waters below.

The speed and directness of his dive meant he pa.s.sed straight through the broiling surface fires and into the dousing embrace of the water beneath - a brief rush of heat following by the shock of bone-numbing cold. He heard the m.u.f.fled splash and rush of bubbles of another body entering the water after him. Glancing back he saw John Schafer kicking his way towards him, lit by the orange flames dancing on the surge above their heads.

Together, they made their way towards the great bulk of the half-submerged chandelier, feeling the dragging limbs of drowned men and women b.u.mping against them as they swam. Ulysses tried to ignore the bobbing corpses, tried to convince himself that he wasn't swimming through their watery grave.

And then they were hauling themselves beyond the reach of the rising water again, clambering up the gla.s.s-crystal boulder that was the chandelier, careful where they put their hands amidst the broken body of the shattered gla.s.s ornament. Only a few slight cuts later, with one another's support, they were negotiating the pole and scrambling the last few feet up to the balcony, opposite the spot from where they had taken the plunge only moments before.

Cheers and shouts of encouragement rang in their ears, audible over the crackle of shorting electrical cables and the bubbling and seething water, given voice by their fellow survivors.

"Now to work," Ulysses said, slicking back his wet hair with a hand and clearing his eyes of water, as Schafer wrung as much of the water as he could from his sodden clothes, before they set to work freeing the broken bal.u.s.trade.

With the woodwork liberated from its splintered mountings, taking the weight between them, supporting it at one end, the two men pushed the ladder-like structure across the void until it sc.r.a.ped against the other side of the atrium s.p.a.ce. Eager hands pulled it up and secured it there with whatever they could find to hand. It was just long enough, Ulysses noted.

First to brave the perilous crossing was Mr Wates, who scrambled across in no time, the balcony-bridge flexing dramatically beneath him as he did so, although it still held. Once across he helped Ulysses and Schafer maintain a strong hold on their end of the makeshift crossing.

Bathed in electrical spark-flash and the ruddy glow of the emergency lighting, the rest of the party took it in turns to make their way across, cautiously, one at a time.

Captain Connor 'Mac' McCormack watched through intensely narrowed eyes as those men and women in his charge braved the perilous crossing of the flooding atrium, observing each one with the same intensity, determined that not one of them would be lost to the deep or the disaster continuing to unfold around them, giving direction where necessary as well as maintaining an order to their evacuation so that all might make it in the end.

So it came as no little annoyance to him when what had at first been simply an anxious tapping on his arm became an insistent tugging on his sleeve. "What is it Miss Birkin?" he almost snapped, turning on her, his calm demeanour evaporating in the face of her relentless persistence.

The old woman looked terrible. He understood the stress that all of the VIPs were under. This was, after all, not what they had expected on a round-the-world cruise aboard the most advanced sub-liner to ever cross the Seven Seas. But he was under no little strain himself. However, ever since they had gathered in the dining room together, Miss Birkin's despairing disposition had worsened considerably more than that of the other pa.s.sengers.

"I need to have a private word with you, Captain."

"Miss Birkin, can't it wait? In case you hadn't noticed, this is hardly the time or the place."

''But it has to be now, Captain." The ageing spinster was becoming more and more agitated, still tugging at his sleeve. "You have to listen to what I have to tell you."

"Miss Birkin, please. Let us get everyone across and then you can have my ear."

"It won't wait a moment longer!"

"What won't, Miss Birkin?" McCormack suddenly found himself raising his voice more than he had intended. Others still waiting on the nearside of the gulf were turning to see what all the fuss was about.

"Because I believe the murderer is still with us!"

McCormack was abruptly aware of the uncomfortable silence that had fallen around them.

"And what makes you think that?" he said in a sudden, sharp whisper, seizing her arm tightly in his hand.

"Because I saw him!"

"That's quite enough, Miss Birkin. I would be grateful if you kept your voice down. You've got your private word."

Lady Denning was next to cross and, as ever, she proved to be a stoical, no nonsense old bird. Ulysses respected her for that. But he was also curious as to what was happening on the other side of the gulf, the dull scratching at the base of his skull testament to the fact that there was something awry. Miss Birkin appeared to be in quite some state of agitation before it was even her turn to cross the wobbling bridge and, before he knew it, Captain McCormack was ushering her away into the shadows back the way they had just come.

Whatever the problem had been, McCormack seemed to have been able to resolve it just as quickly as only a minute or too later he returned with Miss Birkin firmly in hand. And it might have been his imagination but, as Ulysses helped Professor Crichton up from his crawl across the chasm, he thought he felt that unmistakable sense of someone's eyes on him, and looked up to see the captain watching him.

There were moments of doubt, panic and sheer vertiginous terror that required a great deal of patient encouragement and time, along with no small number of stopped breaths and missed heartbeats. Miss Birkin seemed particularly uncomfortable about crossing - he would liked to have believed that that was what all the fuss had been about - but somehow the old coot made it safely to the other side.

The most awkward crossing was that involving Jonah Carcharodon. Left almost 'til last, he was ever-so-carefully manhandled across by Captain McCormack himself and the purser, whilst the sprightly lithe and limber Thor Haugland made sure the magnate's chair made it over too.

And then there was only Dexter Sylvester left to cross, the ambitious young businessman insisting that the shipping magnate cross safely before him. Such a feat as traversing the void should have been no trouble for a gentleman of his obvious athleticism and his enthusiasm for the more adventurous pastimes, such as rock-climbing and abseiling. And it wouldn't have been, had it not been for the last chandelier.

As the immense hydrostatic pressures continued to work on the compromised structure of the liner, nerve-jangling metallic groaning and heaving sounds echoing throughout the vessel, something gave. The only warning any of them had that anything was wrong was when the erratic lighting failed. Ulysses, with his curiously heightened sixth sense was the only one to even look up and register a reaction to that one small fact, and so was granted a grandstand view.

The dead weight of crystal-gla.s.s and metal dropped like a boulder out of the crimson darkness, collided squarely with the bal.u.s.trade spanning the s.p.a.ce - Sylvester still only half way across - and smashed through it. The splintered bal.u.s.trade tumbled after the chandelier into the gloom, now just so much matchwood, as the huge light fitting plunged into the roiling inferno beneath.

Of the man from Umbridge Industries there was no sign. Ulysses didn't even see him go. One minute he was there on the bridge, the next there was nothing but the immense bulk of the darkened chandelier, and then... nothing at all.

The shock and horror of realisation took a while to sink in amongst the party, some not realising what had happened at all until they witnessed the horrified reactions of their fellows, so concerned were they with their own intense personal struggles for survival.

So it was that, accompanied by stupefied silences, child-like sobbing and angry denials of what had happened, Ulysses Quicksilver and Captain McCormack eventually managed to herd the party - already minus one - to the lift doors on the other side of the Grand Atrium, their target all along.

Ulysses was about to push the b.u.t.ton to call the first of the two lifts when he paused.

"What is it, sir?" Nimrod asked, at his shoulder once more.

"Look," Ulysses said, pointing at the row of still glowing lights above the elevator doors that showed the progress of the lift through the ship. The lights were blinking on and off, one after another. "It's already on its way."

With a delicate chiming the progress of the lights stopped and a moment later, with the grating of opening mechanisms, the lift doors opened. Ulysses stood and stared in dumbfounded amazement.

"Please accept my humblest apologies," Harry Cheng said, bowing deferentially. 'We would have been here sooner, but matters rather overtook us somewhat.'

The hulking Mr Sin stood at his side but, at a hissed command in Chinese from Cheng, the brute shuffled back to make room for more.

"Please, ladies and gentlemen, join us."

Without needing any further invitation, the VIPs began to pile into the lift. Ulysses hung back with those who would have to use the second elevator, rendered speechless by the miraculous arrival of his rival.

"Going up?" Cheng asked the Captain.

"No, Mr Cheng. Down, to the sub-dock."

"Ah, I see. Very well," he said, his hand at the deck selector panel. "Down it is."

With a slightly different chiming timbre, the second lift joined them. With a grinding clanking the doors eased open.

A torrent of seawater flooded out, washing across the carpeted floor of the balcony level and soaking the feet of everyone standing there.

"Ah," said Ulysses, finding his voice at last, "perhaps down isn't the best idea after all."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

The Deep "Quick! Into the lift!"

"Everybody move!"

At Captain McCormack's urgent command and Ulysses' cajoling, the party of survivors piled into Cheng's lift. As the Neptune's officers herded the anxious and the uncertain between the doors, Ulysses dared a glance back at the flooded atrium. Something must have given or blown somewhere - part of the hull, a compromised bulkhead, a porthole, who-knew-what? - the result being that the s.p.a.ce below was filling more rapidly, the chandeliers vanishing beneath the surge of white water and bobbing bodies. The water, still finding an outlet through the second open lift, poured off the edge of the balcony, cascading down to meet that which was surging upwards from the drowned atrium below.

There was only one way out of this and that was up.

As the last of the VIP party crowded into the bra.s.s and gla.s.s box of polished mirrors, Ulysses' eyes fell on the smart plaque that stated no more than a maximum of ten persons should use this lift at any one time. As the purser hammered a b.u.t.ton on the deck selector panel and the doors grated shut behind him - the last one in - Ulysses closed his eyes and held his breath, offering up a quick prayer to whatever saint it was that watched over the workings of elevators, that the carriage would be able to take the strain.

There was a rising hum and a series of systematic clanking sounds, then a terrible split-second sensation of dropping, which made all those trapped within the small box gasp in unison. But then the lift carriage began to rise.

Gears grinding, it felt to Ulysses that the elevator was making heavy weather of the journey. He thought he could hear the bubbling rush of water somewhere below them and wondered which was rising faster, the lift or the level of the seawater flooding the elevator shaft. He was trying hard to ignore the hot-wire stabbings of prescience in his skull; he did not need any unearthly sixth sense to tell him that they were in constant mortal danger for the foreseeable future.

The smell of fear permeated the human sardine tin; fear and sweat and brine and burning. In any other situation such enforced proximity to others would not have been tolerated by those who were now forced to huddle together so closely. There was not an inch between any of them, from the Chinaman Cheng and the ma.s.sive Mr Sin, to Lady Denning or the chaperoned couple, or the billionaire owner of the ship, the current crisis having robbed him of practically any difference in status he had beyond the least of them, his own PA being forced to sit on his lap to make sure that everyone could pack into the lift.

The realisation suddenly struck Ulysses that the lift could all too easily become a ready-made coffin, should the water level rise more quickly than the struggling elevator, or should some part of the beleaguered machinery fail under duress, or should the - whatever is was - that attacked the Neptune decide to come back for another go.

But, despite the obvious risks and inherent dangers a.s.sociated with their current predicament, Quicksilver's spirit wouldn't let him be beaten by such overwhelming odds. He would keep fighting to save himself - to save these people - until the deep, or the horrors that inhabited it, forced the last breath from him as he went down kicking and screaming. Just as there had been nothing in his power that he could do to save the wretched Glenda, he would do all in his power to save those who remained. He would not let another Glenda Finch or Dexter Sylvester be taken by the dying ship, the cruel sea or the monsters that dwelt there.

The lift ground onwards as the gears of Ulysses' mind worked over the problem of how they were going to get out of this mess. The further the elevator rose up its compromised shaft, the more he found himself dwelling on the fact that the plan had been to head down to reach the sub-dock and the submersibles Ahab and Nemo, to escape the wreck of the Neptune as swiftly as possible before the sea or the drowned liner claimed them all.

The plan. It was worthless now. All that stood between them and oblivion was adaptation, improvisation, spontaneity, ingenuity, inventiveness and cold, hard animal instinct. Or, to look at it another way, the plan had to evolve or they would die.

And what of the sub-dock and its two transports? Ulysses had to believe that it was still attainable, the craft operable. To think anything else would mean the end of all hope for them.

The lift was slowing now - horribly quickly - the ratcheting gears clunking away the last few inches. For a moment the carriage heaved and there was that horrid feeling that the lift was at the apex of its ascent and was about to commence its all too rapid descent again. Then the whole thing seemed to lurch upwards. There was the rattle and clunk of clamps locking the elevator in place, the steel cables holding it up held tight in the steel teeth of the riser's locking mechanisms. The chiming of the lift arriving at its destination cut through the numb silence inside. All on board gave a collective sigh of relief.

The doors ground open once again and, without having to be invited to do so, the VIPs piled out of the carriage. Ulysses led the way, enjoying the sudden sensation of s.p.a.ce around him.

"Where are we?" asked a shaky Dr Ogilvy.

"Top deck," Ulysses read from a sign screwed to the wall next to the open lift doors. "Casino Royale, the Bistro, Shopping and the Promenade Deck."

"So where now, McCormack?" Jonah Carcharodon asked.

But the captain and his staff were already examining another pa.s.senger ship plan. Ulysses joined them, the rest of the party, left without guidance, milling about behind, taking in the wreckage and devastation apparent on this level as well, lit by the sparking lights hanging from the ceiling.

"So, Captain, any ideas?" Ulysses asked.

Captain McCormack breathed out noisily. "Well, we're here" - he indicated Level 1 on the plan in front of them - "having travelled from here" - he identified the point where they had crossed the devastated Grand Atrium - "and we need to get to here." His finger alighted on the outline of the sub-dock at the bottom of the ship.

"Indeed," Ulysses mused.

"We know that chances are that the bulkhead here" - the captain pointed out what should have been a watertight section below the level of the Grand Atrium - "is no longer intact and so from here to here" - his outstretched finger swept across the plan taking in several compartments of the sub-liner - "will be underwater."

"But that leaves the sub-dock still untouched."

"Hopefully," McCormack said guardedly.

"But how to get there."

"Precisely. If the compartment under the atrium's gone, we can't be certain which other compartments may also have been breached."

"Have you consulted with the AI again yet?" Ulysses asked, eyeing what he now understood was the comm-b.u.t.ton hidden beneath the trident logo on the panel.