The Admiral Read online

  The Admiral

  Fantasies of New Europa, Volume 2

  by

  Morgan Karpiel

  Also from Morgan Karpiel:

  The Inventor

  The Aviator

  The Burn

  Coming Soon From Morgan Karpiel

  The Champion

  Cover art: Adam Soroczynsi

  The Admiral

  Copyright ©2010 Morgan Karpiel. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part (beyond that copying permitted by U.S. Copyright Law, Section 107, "fair use" in teaching or research. Section 108, certain library copying permitted by U.S. Copyright Law, Section 107, "fair use" in teaching or research. Section 108, certain library copying, or in published media by reviewers in limited excerpt), without written permission from the publisher.

  Published by Tahoe Scientific LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-9829360-1-6

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  As ever, I would like to thank the two most supportive people I have ever known, Edward and Jeanne Smith. I would also like to thank my editor, Anna May, for her humor, her friendship and her fine attention to detail. To my family and those friends who have been in my corner through good writing days and bad, brilliant ideas and truly horrible ones, words can never express how wonderful life is, because you’re in the world.

  The Admiral

  Destiny

  Smoke curled around his fingers, fed from a lengthening skin of ash at the tip of his cigarette. It hovered in the still air of the control deck, thickening the sulfur glow of emergency lighting.

  Catch me, Papa! I’m so quick. Catch me…

  Tristan could see her through the leaves of the lilac bushes in the yard, a hint of shining black curls behind the blooms, an uncertain step that left one branch sagging. He could hear the hushed whisper of her breathing as she waited for him, anticipating discovery at any moment, poised to escape in a dash of ebony ringlets and laughter.

  Catch me, Papa!

  He cut his gaze to the clock on the helm. Two minutes.

  The panel of copper gauges around him reiterated the same warning, all needles in the red. He waited, knowing that he was probably waiting for nothing, but prepared to wait nonetheless.

  The eerie clink and wash of seawater around the hull filled the dead void of engine noise, the darkness through the giant orb windows absolute. One of the helmsmen was praying, a kid with sunken eyes and pale skin. His voice was shallow, his words trembling and misspoken.

  “Enough.” Tristan cut the prayer short, silencing the kid before his panic could spread to others. “Stop your pleading. God may forgive you, but I won’t.”

  “Yes, Admiral.” The kid looked away, rubbing his forehead with shaking fingers. He was afraid to die. Natural, for someone his age, someone too young to realize what greater harm there could be in living.

  Catch me, Papa!

  One minute.

  He drew his fingers to his lips and pulled another slow breath from his cigarette, his gaze sliding to the cold black water outside the orb windows. It seemed to swallow the slow tick of the clock, a shadowy host preparing to welcome an old friend.

  He held the smoke in his lungs, allowing it to sting.

  You’re always gone, Tristan. So many wars to fight, and so many oceans to fight them on. What if something happens to you, when you’re out there? What if something happens to us?

  A long groan issued from the metal hull, popping and clicking as it worked its way up the bracing. The floor shuddered, and then rolled into a free tilt as the submersible listed starboard. Tristan felt the pressure sway in his stomach, the air compressed and ringing. Pencils and chart rulers slid from the tables, clattering onto the floor.

  He strained against his seat. “Stabilizers.”

  “Unresponsive.”

  A pipe in the corridor burst, releasing a cold spray of water.

  Catch me, Papa!

  “We’re losing her, Admiral.”

  The emergency lights blacked out.

  He shook his head. “Headlamps.”

  A few streams cut the darkness, highlighting dead panels and cold gray instrumentation.

  “Admiral?”

  Out of time.

  “Secure the hatches,” he ordered. “Lock us down.”

  Papa!

  A buzz vibrated through the metal, followed by a rich and heavy thrum. The air churned with pulsing, mechanical breath. Tristan looked toward the circle of windows, watching the external lights glow to life, fanning outward to highlight dark rock and specks of shining zooplankton.

  The screws were turning. The engine had been restored.

  A voice crackled through the intercom. “The fix is temporary, Admiral. We need to surface immediately to make repairs.”

  He took a moment to adjust to the jarring turn of circumstances, the still living Tristan Satorin, once Admiral of His Majesty’s North Fleet, now the senior officer in command of a private submersible venture that had sunk like a stone with all hands on board.

  Only to be saved.

  Temporarily.

  “Stations,” he said coolly, watching the control panels light up with green buttons and dials. “Helm, right the damn boat, if you please.”

  “Aye sir.”

  The tilt in the floor eased, the control room bathed with light and power, its instruments and gauges shining, the hiss of steam and chug of engines reverberating through riveted plate and steel walkways. Men ducked past each other, familiar with the narrow contours and odd spaces, sliding down ladders, their hands quick on dogging wheels and push levers.

  The flooding in the corridor tapered off as an engineer’s mate closed the valves then beat the metal with a wrench. The beast found its balance, nosing up in the dark water and maintaining an even float.

  “Prepare to surface.”

  “We’ll have to find the surface first, Admiral.” The young helmsman shouted from behind the viewer screen. “The current has got us into the cave system. The Navigation plot’s got some holes an’ we’ve got a stone ceiling above us now.”

  “Navigator?”

  “Concur. It’ll take hours to trace our way back, if not longer.”

  “Take us as high as we can go. Find me a cavern, a bubble. I don’t care what it is, or where it is, as long as we can anchor into it, or tie the boat in tight to make repairs. Is that understood?”

  A flurry of ‘ayes’ followed, the men at the helm breathing steady again, putting the fear behind them, clear-eyed survivors ready to make the most of this slender reprieve.

  Tristan rose from his seat and headed for the engine compartment. “First Officer has the deck. I’m going below.”

  “Aye, sir.” The First Officer stepped up to take his place.

  Tristan avoided the man’s eyes, focusing on the sparse light of the corridor instead. He ducked through the hatch, his hands brushing over chilled rivets and wet steel. Keeping his head down, he passed under an arching bulkhead, pausing by the open ladder. One of the submersible’s strange sphere windows appeared from the gloom of pipes and pressure valves, the murky darkness beyond the hull turning the glass to polished ebony.

  He narrowed his gaze, peering past his own reflection and into the abyss, seeing the faces of two ghosts staring back at him. What if something happens to us?

  It was forgivable, remembering their voices in the tense silence, indulging in their memories when orders became useless and the last seconds of his command were ticking away on a brass clock. It
was a final act of preparation, one that should have prompted relief when interrupted, not disappointment, not this cold nausea of regret.

  He dabbed out his cigarette, the one he’d kept to be his last, on a steel pipe. Reaching into the wool pocket of his trousers, he drew out the sleek, gold case that Lauren had given him on their third anniversary and unlatched its finely crafted lid. Frowning, he placed the half-smoked stick next to the mechanical lighter she had engraved with a line from one of her favorite poems.

  There would always be regret, even after the threat of disaster had passed and the submersible project had achieved its greatly anticipated success. The regret, like the nausea, would remain.

  After all, one could not apologize to the dead, could not expect the words, no matter how profound, to comfort a wife and child gone to God.

  He closed his eyes, trying to coax the pain back into the dark.

  What if something happens to us?

  Jia felt them in the darkness, in the swirl of blue seawater under her fingertips. They were afraid, as they should be. They had ventured too far in their fantastic machine, dared too much, their minds tainted with visions of riches, too busy imagining the lost wealth of an empire to understand the sacred laws they had broken.

  They all feared continuing now, all but one.

  “You feel him, don’t you?” The old woman appeared from one of the carved passages in the rock, materializing from the shadows with the aid of a twisted cane. She stared at Jia with soulless eyes, their large black pupils catching the faint blue light of the fishing lanterns. The Oracle.

  Jia rose to meet her, climbing out of the canoe and its heavy lacing of nets to offer a respectful bow along the dock.

  “He is suitable for you,” the Oracle said.

  “Suitable?”

  “He will give us a daughter, strong and fine.”

  Jia simply looked at her, astonished.

  “It is your time, Jia.”

  “It cannot be.”

  “You are strong and proven.”

  “In other ways. Seduction is not my gift.”

  “You have many gifts. You have grown from a plain girl into a beautiful woman, a dark eyed beauty with raven hair like your mother’s, a jewel to capture the imagination of men like him.”

  “There are many ‘jewels’ here, most far better suited.”

  “It is not their time. It is yours.”

  Jia retreated a step, confused. “My time? Because he ventured into the outer caves and become lost? Another year. I know their language. I’ll travel to one of their cities and find one, in the usual custom, the usual way.”

  “You have never been usual.”

  “A sign of strength.”

  “Sometimes.” The Oracle stared a moment longer, her face a flat and weathered stone, devoid of all compassion. “It must be now. It must be him. It is in the water, in the air. He will give us a daughter, a powerful Dini, a harbinger of change.”

  “I am no priestess.”

  “The womb of a huntress will serve just as well.”

  Jia grimaced, dropping her gaze to hide her hatred of the woman. “So this is your purpose for me, after all these years?”

  “There is no finer purpose than raising a strong daughter.”

  “For other women. Not for me.”

  The ancient monster leaned closer, her black eyes widening, amusement swimming in their depths. The jeweled beads in her hair cracked and glittered, points of light hidden in glossy silver strands. “You do not know yourself so well, do you, huntress? Once you see him with a hunter’s eyes and feel him with a hunter’s gift, you will understand. Each of us has our place in the sacred line. This is yours.”

  Jia looked down at her canoe, its carved wood stained with years of sun and salt, its weathered prow rocking on the calm waters of the cavern. Her knives glinted from under the benches, a spear tucked along the floor next to the paddle, water bags and an oiled rain skin stowed neatly in place. With this one frail boat, she had exhausted the willpower of great sharks and survived the wrath of open ocean storms. She had navigated further into the caverns than anyone else, fed a third of the village in the leanest year, and bested all challengers in fair competition. It was the life she wanted, the only place in the sacred line she understood.

  “I will be weaker for it,” she muttered.

  “Or stronger.”

  “He is a man.”

  “That is the least of his crimes.” The old woman turned away, the clack of her cane echoing along the stone. “The union must happen before the next moon. You must do whatever is necessary to ensure it. The trespassers will not be attacked until it is done. This is my commandment.”

  The union. Jia glared at the woman’s back, watching as her outline merged with the shadows of the passage, appearing to sprout bat-like wings from the fabric of her cloak, a curling snake from the tip of her cane.

  Chamber of Light

  “They tell me you lit a cigarette and forbade a man to pray. Really, Tristan, as if your reputation wasn’t fierce enough.”

  Tristan glanced up from his desk to see the old man standing in the hatchway, his hair a wispy halo in the light from the corridor. His stout frame slumped tiredly, his hands braced on the hatch, his khakis rumpled, smeared and damp to the knees.

  “What happened to you?” Tristan asked.

  “I did my bit in the engine room, during the worst of it. Arthur Atkinson doesn’t just sit around in a crisis, you know.”

  “You’re not supposed to be in there, Professor.”

  “They needed the help, didn’t they?”

  “And what did you do to help?”

  “Well, perhaps it was more a question of morale.”

  Tristan granted him an indulgent smile. “You provided encouragement, then.”

  “And I held a bucket. About this smoking incident—”

  “A small piece of theatre.”

  “Ah.” Arthur nodded, stepping into Tristan’s cabin and tracking wet footprints across the floor. “A ruse, a distracting gesture for the benefit of the crew, not the return of old habits.”

  “No.”

  “I had to ask.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “Because this is, of course, a stressful situation, and you’ve gone through such self-destructive periods before.”

  “Years ago.”

  “And no one blames you. No one could. Perfectly understandable, given what happened, but . . .”

  Tristan watched the old man struggle for words, wondering if he would find anything that hadn’t already been said.

  “Well, I had to ask.” Arthur perused the well-appointed cabin, glancing over its collection of tight shelves and angled nooks, its walls textured with rivets and lit by a single lamp. He paused before the large orb window and stared into the murk of seawater, narrowing his eyes, as if he could make out the curving rock wall he knew was there, just beyond the glow of the external lights. “We’ve been ascending for a long time, up this shaft. Old lava tubes, I suspect. Long and deep, impressively large.”

  “We released the mini sub on a tether. There’s a surface about a hundred meters up, looks big enough for us.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “We’ll make repairs, get our bearings.”

  “Or try to. We’re lost, aren’t we?”

  Tristan knew better than to concede that, even to a friend. “The navigator’s reworking our path. He’s one of the best.”

  “I suppose that’s something.”

  “And who knows? We might just find your temple full of gold and treasure when we surface.”

  Arthur huffed, his cheeks red. “I didn’t come here for treasure. You know that.”

  “For the—”

  “The Oracle. The Temple of the Oracle.”

  “Because it sunk.”

  “It didn’t sink. Honestly, Tristan, did you read the archeological brief I provided in the mission file?”

  He did read it, something ab
out religious fanatics and disaster.

  The old man sighed, as if he’d expected as much. “You really ought to pay more attention to the history involved here. It’s very important. The Temple of the Oracle played a vital role in the ancient world. All of the great kings and emperors of the time came to this island to consult with the priestesses. They foretold the future in great detail, no rhymes or riddles, just predictions that usually proved true.”

  “How true?”

  “Well, very true, apparently. The Oracle successfully predicted the outcome of wars, imperial marriages, natural disasters, you name it. Interestingly enough, the chroniclers of the time attributed the phenomena to the island itself. The caves here release volcanic gasses through the rocks, some quite toxic. The priestesses would hold inhalation rituals to invoke their visions. It was thought, among the scholars of the day, that the island itself had a certain power, an ability to boost psychic energy.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “Well, profitable, mostly, hence the gold. But it all disappeared, of course. Some legends say it was an earthquake, yes, but we can’t be sure. It’s the mystery of what happened here. The truth would be the greatest treasure we could find.”

  “The investors might have a different view.”

  “I don’t see why. They’re the ones who hired me.”

  “The ship’s designer, the Great Inventor, hired you, because he’s fully engaged in marital bliss and a pair of freshly born twin sons and needed an academic stand-in to supervise all of us dull witted Naval officers, lest we forget what color gold is. You’re here because you’re a scholar and a dreamer, just like him.”

  “Dreamer?”

  “See these bulbous windows? A prime example of Ivory Tower seamanship. It must have seemed like a great idea, in the lab, but those of us who live on the sea prefer to sleep next to a solid wall.”

  “Now you’re being too harsh. I rather like the windows.”

  “The boat looks like it’s covered in steel scales and eyes.”

  “Perhaps, but we are looking for ruins in the rock face. It does help to have all of these eyes, in such a situation, certainly.”