Emperor's Edge Republic (73 page)

Every ten or twenty meters, they had to stop, drill down to a root, and electrocute the surrounding swath of plants before they could travel forward again. So far it was working, but recent reports—they were more expletives than reports—from Mahliki said the vines were snaking in and trying to break off the dagger. If they lost that, Sespian didn’t think they had anything else on board that would cut through to the roots. At least the rhizome structure was working in their favor and blasting one root with electricity sent deadly energy through to the neighboring ones. He began to have faith that the Starcrests’ plan to electrocute the original root mass in the harbor might work, especially if they delivered a larger charge. The equipment stacked high in the sleeping cabin was presumably for that.

“I pulled in a sample from the last root we zapped,” Mahliki called. “It doesn’t have the symbols and structure of that original one I cut. These later generations are less sophisticated.”

“Let’s hope the same tactic works on the original generation,” Starcrest said. “At present speed, we should reach the harbor in twenty minutes.”

Maldynado shuffled up behind Sespian’s seat. “Sounds promising. Maybe we won’t need to suit up.”

“You wouldn’t mind if you came along and ended up simply being decorative?” Sespian asked.

“Nah, I specialize in being decorative. It’s hard not to when you’re this handsome.”

Starcrest glanced at him, but didn’t say anything.

Maldynado chewed on his lip. Sespian wondered if he would ever figure out that saying such things tended to make people take him less seriously. If he truly wanted a career working for Starcrest, he ought to forego the dandy act, at least around the president.

“It’s a bit of a curse, I’ll admit,” Maldynado added. “People don’t think you have a brain or any thoughts in your head. But that can be advantageous at times. Those same people will say things around you that they wouldn’t around a keen-eyed military intelligence officer.”

“Maldynado?” Starcrest said.

“Yes, My Lord?”

“Are you truly lobbying for a job while we’re in the middle of all this?”

A call came up from the engineer. “We’re running low on oxygen, My Lord. We better go up for a few minutes before heading into the harbor.”

“Understood,” Starcrest responded.

“Not lobbying exactly,” Maldynado said. “Just... trying to fill the air with something besides tension.”

Sespian’s ears popped as they rose toward the surface. Faint light drifted down from above. Dawn must have come while they had been plodding along the lake bottom. They plopped up, and rivulets of water ran down the viewport.

A slender tendril drifted into view from the side, a green one, not one of the many charred ones that were clogging the water.

“Is the dagger back in?” Starcrest asked.

“Yes,” Mahliki said.

“Let me know when we can descend again,” Starcrest called back to the engine room.

“Yes, My Lord President.”

“I don’t like giving it time to think,” Starcrest said. “Now that I’m convinced it does so.”

“I agree.” Sespian watched that tendril veer in close, not close enough to touch the hull and get shocked, but close, as if it were some enemy periscope, sent to survey them.

“Me too,” Maldynado said.

“Ready, My Lord,” the engineer called.

Starcrest took them down again, back into darkness pierced only by the running lamp. The ground that had been cleared of plants a moment before was covered with green now. Not tall new stalks that had grown up, but some sort of carpet formed from existing plants sending vines in from the sides.

“Uh,” Maldynado said.

“Landing on it,” Starcrest said.

Mahliki jogged up and leaned on the back of his chair. “How thick is that? I wonder if they’re trying to protect their roots the same way they smothered us earlier—sacrificing the top layer.”

The submarine settled on the bottom again, the lakebed pillowed by those cushions of vines. The blue energy crackled outside of the hull, and charred bits of plant flesh floated away, but the greenery didn’t move away from the craft.

“It looks like it,” Starcrest said. “I’ll take us up again. In lying down, these have cleared a path for us. The ones in the harbor are our priority.”

“Won’t we have to deal with the same thing there?” Sespian asked. “If we can even get there?”

“Yes, but we have more weapons to deploy, weapons the plant hasn’t seen yet.”

Nobody pointed out that the vines didn’t have eyes.

The submarine rose to the surface again, pushing through stalks that remained upright. For the moment, they were parting to avoid being singed. Maybe they felt they had won a victory by denying the sub access to the roots and they needn’t sacrifice as much up here. Maybe they just hadn’t collectively figured out what the sub was up to yet. Maybe Sespian needed to stop thinking about this plant like it was a human enemy. Or... maybe not. It had certainly proven itself crafty.

Maldynado whistled as they sailed farther, the stalks rising up from the lake bottom now stretching twenty feet into the sky and blotting out the promise of dawn. “Those things are almost as big as my—” he glanced at Mahliki, “—backyard trees.”

She wrinkled her nose at him.

“Aren’t you living in a flat?” Sespian asked, knowing full well that
trees
hadn’t been what Maldynado had intended to mention.

“Yes, but as a boy on my parents’ estate, we had lots of trees,” Maldynado said. “Many well-endowed.”

Trees actually
were
what came to Sespian’s mind when looking at the towering forest. Before the stalks had been as thick as arms and legs. Some of these were broader than hundred-year-old cedars. Sespian would hate to have to try and cut one away from him with nothing but a knife, however sharp the edge.

“We’re almost to the harbor,” Starcrest said. “Another thirty, forty meters, and we’ll dive again. We may not need the suits.”

“That’ll be a shame,” Maldynado said.

Though Sespian didn’t comment, he couldn’t help but feel relieved as well.

“The sooner and more effectively we get this done, the better,” Mahliki said. “Mother will be worrying about us.”

“Yes, I should send a message,” Rias said. “As soon as—”

“Look out,” came a cry from engineering. “To the port. It’s falling!”

Nothing was visible through the navigation viewport, but Rias pushed on the main lever. The submarine surged forward. Something slapped the surface of the water behind them, the sound almost deafening, as if a mountain had fallen. Or a towering tree.

Water sprayed, and a huge wave swept the
Explorer
into the air. The deck lurched, and Sespian was almost thrown from his seat. He caught himself on the control panel. Someone else—Maldynado?—was less lucky, tumbling to the deck behind him.

The submarine landed with a jolt and massive green stalks filled the viewport. The vessel crashed into the side of one. Like a tree, it didn’t yield at all. Though streaks of blue lightning bit into anything that touched the hull, that didn’t keep the craft from ricocheting around, slamming into two more unyielding stalks, before settling back down.

“Remarkable,” Mahliki said. “I knew the vines were flexible, but I wouldn’t have guessed these huge trunks could change physical properties so quickly. To go from a tree-like structure to a flaccid...” She must have noticed Maldynado gaping at her from the deck, for she cleared her throat and said, “Never mind. That’s not important now.”

Starcrest’s hands were flying across the controls. “Any damage, Major?” he called back to the engineer.

“Nothing showing up yet, My Lord.”

“What happens when one lands
on
us?” Maldynado asked.

Another trunk went limp, this time directly in front of them. Rias veered the craft to the left, but the stalks in that direction didn’t yield as the earlier ones had. The submarine might as well have crashed into dock pilings.

“Brace yourselves,” Starcrest ordered.

Sespian still had a death grip on the control panel. It didn’t help much when the massive stalk struck with the force of a falling redwood. He was thrown upward, even as the submarine plunged downward. He flung an arm up to protect his head from hitting the ceiling. When gravity caught up, pitching him in the other direction, he missed the chair. His butt struck the control panel, then he tumbled into Maldynado. Mahliki had fallen to the deck as well. She sat crumpled against the bulkhead, rubbing the back of her head.

“Who’s driving up there?” the engineer cried, the “My Lord President” address forgotten.

“I’m taking us down again,” Starcrest said. “We’ll be safer down there. From that attack anyway.”

“Comforting,” Maldynado grumbled.

“Judging by the rapidity with which we descended and the water displaced, I judge them about half the density of a typical hardwood tree.” Rias left his chair to help Mahliki up—apparently this random information was for her. Sespian certainly wasn’t in the mood to find it interesting.

“Yes,” Mahliki said, “when I examined the cell makeup of the stalks, they reminded me more of cane than wood.”

“I hope that means it didn’t do as much damage as it could have,” Maldynado said.

“This craft was designed to be sturdy,” Starcrest said. “To weather storms and enemy attacks if necessary.”

“What about irate giant plants?”

“That was, alas, not anticipated by the designer.”

“A shame,” Maldynado said.

Starcrest returned to his seat. “Let’s see if we can navigate through these last twenty meters underwater.”

Sespian waved for Mahliki to take the other seat. She could do more good there than he.

“Sespian, Maldynado,” Starcrest said, “get those batteries out of the cabin, please. We’ll prepare to deploy them.”

“Yes, sir,” Sespian said.

They walked back to the only cabin in the place, one usually reserved for sleeping. The bunk was buried beneath unrecognizable mechanical paraphernalia, gray metal boxes, and crates of tools and spare parts. Spare parts for what, Sespian didn’t know. He was being generous with his identification—his first thought was to consider the contents scrap metal.

“Do you know which of these things are batteries?” Maldynado asked.

“I’m going to guess these.” Sespian picked up two of the gray boxes, though he doubted he had any more engineering or mechanical know-how than Maldynado.

“I hope you’re right. I doubt the president will be happy if we throw storage chests full of his wife’s smallclothes out the hatch.”

“I doubt there was room to pack
any
one’s smallclothes with all this stuff that’s been piled in.” Sespian didn’t know whether the batteries would be deployed through some airlock at the science station or if they would have to go to the surface, open the hatch, and chuck them overboard, so he laid them next to the bulkhead in between the two spots, then went back for more.

“That’s too bad,” Maldynado said, “because we’ve already had a couple of moments where... let’s just say I wouldn’t mind having a change of smallclothes down here.”

“Maldynado...” Sespian dragged two more batteries out of the cabin. “Does your brain ever think things like... Oh, this fellow is a president or a former emperor or some other type of vaguely important person, so maybe I shouldn’t share my hygiene issues out loud with him?”

“I share with everyone. It’s part of my charm.” Maldynado raised his voice. “My Lord Prez, are we digging out
all
of these batteries? Or saving some for later? Also, the batteries are these gray things, right?”

“Yes, and yes,” Starcrest responded.

“Not that I didn’t trust you.” Maldynado slapped Sespian on the chest. “But the smallclothes thing would surely get me in more trouble than comments about my hygiene.”

“Surely.”

Something struck the side of the submarine, causing it to tilt to the side again, but the blow lacked the force of the ones from above. With the last of the twelve batteries lined up, Sespian and Maldynado returned to the navigation chamber. They had to stop in the hatchway, because Mahliki had laid a big map of the harbor and the city out on the deck. Green lines and arrows had been drawn all over it.

Starcrest was bending over the side of his chair, leaning his elbow on his knee. Sweat bathed his forehead and dampened his collar. It wasn’t warm in the submarine—if anything the chill air seemed to match that of the water outside—but maybe he was running around more than the rest of them and had to deal with the pressure of navigating the craft through all these attacks. Still, it was hard to imagine former Fleet Admiral Starcrest breaking a sweat because of a little enemy interference.

With sudden chilling clarity, Sespian realized what he was seeing. A man poisoned. They hadn’t been sure about the note, but it must have spoken the truth. Did anyone else know?

Tikaya. That hard hug and long look she had given Starcrest before leaving. Had that been more than concern over the mission? Dear ancestors, was there an antidote anywhere?

Starcrest tapped a spot in the water on the map. “That’s where we are.”

“I have no idea how you can tell our position right now,” Mahliki said, waving at the disorientating stalks of green that thrust up in all directions around them, “but I’ll trust you on it.”

“There are contour lines on the map,” Starcrest said.

“Was that an explanation?” Maldynado whispered to Sespian.

“I think so.”

“From my studies, I believe this is approximately where the initial plant sprouted.” Mahliki pointed to a spot near Dock Eighty-Three in the harbor.

Sespian hadn’t heard about these studies, but that wasn’t far from where she had taken him to draw the plant that first day. She must have been watching it from the beginning.

“Judging by the collective intelligence and a few other factors,” Mahliki said, “I believe every other plant, in the lake and coming up under the land, is connected to the original sprout.”

Sespian almost choked on the idea of classifying any part of the plant in any stage a
sprout
.

“This root ball is going to be our target, and we’ll use our strongest weapon on it, one capable of... how many volts was it, Father?” She crinkled her brow. “Was that the right term?”