Word of Honour (4 page)

'Exactly. Height, width and breadth are our standard
dimensions. The Law of Dimensionality states that any
spell that deals with a physical object must include these
aspects, to cover its physical presence.'

'Fairly obvious.'

'And that's where most people stop. But if the Law
of Dimensionality is inverted, then it points the way to
create spells that can
manipulate
the dimensions of
objects. It's very tricky stuff, but it's possible to reduce
objects to a state of having no dimensions.'

Captain Stephens stared at the racks. 'No dimensions?'

'I think the batteries have become . . . points.' Aubrey
groped for an explanation. 'Imagine turning a cube until
all you can see is one side – a square. In effect, you've
turned a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional
object. The same thing happens if you turn a square
around so you can only see one edge. A line. Two dimensions
become one. These batteries have been turned,
and turned again and again until three dimensions have
become none.'

'If you say so.' Captain Stephens pushed back his cap
and scratched his head. 'Really, I don't care if the batteries
have become merry-go-rounds, as long as you can
restore them.'

Aubrey thought hard. It shouldn't be difficult. The
spell-caster had been arrogant, assuming that the cleverness
of the magic would baffle anyone left on the
submersible. In Aubrey's favour, he had the natural
tendency of objects to return to their true form, reverting
to their original state if given half a chance.

'Not wanting to rush you,' Captain Stephens said, 'but
I'd say we only have a few hours air left.'

Aubrey's palms were sweating. He ran them along the
sides of his trousers. As a possible fate, suffocating in a tin
eggshell at the bottom of the sea was not high on his list
of favourites.

Danaanian. The ancient Danaans were great ones for
their geometry, so using their language to manipulate
dimensions should work well. A few simple terms,
delimiting the strictures placed on length, height and
breadth, and that should do the trick. Simple – and not
too taxing.

He hoped.

'Stand back,' he said to the others.

Aubrey took up a position halfway along the bank of
racks. He spread his arms in a vague gesture towards his
own dimensionality. He steadied himself, concentrating
hard on what he was about to attempt. He felt the usual
mixture of apprehension, doubt, exhilaration and excitement
before finally resolving his will on the task. A deep
breath, then he chanted the spell.

Each term came easily and he was pleased as each led
to the next with surety. It was over in less than a minute
and he added a neat final term as his signature.

Nothing happened. Aubrey cocked his head and
frowned. He leaned closer to the empty racks.

And he was blown off his feet.

Even as he sailed through the air he felt a mixture of
triumph and exasperation.
Air
, he thought.
I should have
remembered all the air that would get displaced when the
batteries reformed.

Then he struck the bulkhead.

H
ALF AN HOUR LATER, WHEN THE KLAXON WENT OFF
again in the wardroom, Aubrey slumped at the
thought of another emergency. He rubbed the back of his
neck and hoped that his headache would pass before
his brain turned into blancmange.

It wasn't just his head, either. The magical exertion of
the dimensionality spell had drained him more than he'd
hoped. With resignation, he realised he had the painful
internal sensation of disjuncture that meant his soul and
body were not entirely united.

'What's the best way to turn that off?' he asked Rokeby-Taylor, who was stretched out on the floor of the wardroom
next to where George was fascinated by
The Boiler
Pressure Tolerances and Valve Assembly Maintenance Manual
.

Rokeby-Taylor, looking a little worse for wear, opened
one eye. 'It's up to the captain, I'm afraid. Some of them
do it just to keep the crew on their toes, I'm told.'

Aubrey looked at George, ready to hear what his
friend thought, then looked again. It wasn't obvious, but
he saw that while George was doing his best to appear
calm and relaxed, his feet were tapping nervously – and
he had a tell-tale sheen of sweat on his forehead.

George glanced up from his book and caught Aubrey's
gaze. He shrugged. 'I'm a country boy,' he said, making
a commendable stab at levity. 'Wobbling along at the
bottom of the sea isn't my bag, old man.'

'You preferred it when we were mired on the seabed?'

'Dry land is what I'd prefer, with a nice tree to sit
under.'

Sir Darius turned from the doorway, where he was
once again trying to read the surging chaos of hurrying
sailors. 'You look unwell, Aubrey. Surely you're not
seasick.'

Sir Darius had been a champion open ocean yachtsman.
He had the failing of most of those who loved the
sea – he couldn't understand how someone could be
upset by it.

'No, just feeling the after-effects of my head and a
metal wall coming together.'

Sir Darius snorted. 'I think your heroics with the
batteries deserve a little more than being ignored down
here. Do you feel up to visiting the control room?'

Aubrey waved at the klaxon. 'Instead of being trapped
with that? Lead away.'

It was rather like freestyle wrestling in close confines
as they struggled through the narrow passageways.
Shoulders, hips and elbows were essential tools as the
sailors hurried from one station to another. Aubrey
made sure he moved in George's wake – it made the
going much easier. Rokeby-Taylor, grumbling, brought
up the rear.

The control room was full of dials, levers and brass.
As with the rest of the submersible, it was a model of
compactness. Everything was smaller than usual – chairs,
doorways, working space. Hooded lights made the place
dim, and while the smell of hot oil was not as pronounced
here, further away from the engine rooms, it still
touched everything. Aubrey knew his clothes would
stink of it.

Captain Stephens was bent nearly double. His face
was pressed to an eyepiece attached to a cylinder that
extended up through the conning tower. He straightened,
scowling, then he saw his visitors. 'Prime Minister.
I'm sorry, but we have another emergency on our hands.'

Sir Darius nodded. 'Can we help?'

Aubrey's stomach tightened at the thought of doing
more magic. He had a painful lump in his throat. From
dismal experience, he knew it was one of the early
symptoms of his body and soul separating. Rest should
stop the deterioration, but it seemed as if rest might be
hard to achieve in the immediate future.

'No,' Captain Stephens said. 'Purely naval, this matter,
even if it's dashed puzzling.'

Aubrey wandered over to the eyepiece and recognised
it as a periscope. He remembered the toy George and he
had constructed from mirrors, long ago. It had been
George's father who'd showed them how to put it
together, and Aubrey recalled his patience as the two
young boys fumbled with glue and cardboard.

'One of our merchant ships is being attacked,' Captain
Stephens continued.

Sir Darius stiffened. 'Attacked? By whom?'

Stephens pushed back his cap and rubbed his brow.
'That's the problem. It's some sort of light cruiser, but it's
not flying a flag.'

Not flying an identifying flag? Aubrey couldn't believe
it. Such a thing went against every international law.
'What can we do?'

'What we must,' Sir Darius said. 'Captain, can you
disable the attacking ship?'

'We're armed, sir. We can do it.'

Rokeby-Taylor regained some of his earlier enthusiasm
at this prospect. 'Excellent! We can use the new torpedo
guidance system.'

Captain Stephens touched his jaw. 'Very well. Let's give
it a go.'

He returned to the periscope then snapped out the
orders to surface. The klaxon stopped and Aubrey
wanted to cheer. He felt the angle of the deck beneath
his feet change once more as the bow pointed upward
and he wondered if mountain goats mightn't make
good submersiblers, accustomed as they were to angled
footing.

'Surfacing, sir!' came the cry.

'Steady as she goes,' Captain Stephens said, peering
through the periscope. 'We have them stern-on. They'll
have to surrender.'

'Are they still firing on the freighter?' Aubrey asked.

Stephens didn't answer immediately. 'Looks like it. The
old tub is on fire,' he said eventually. 'Bad show.'

'Do they see us?' Sir Darius said.

Suddenly, the submersible lurched and the whole
vessel rang like a giant gong. Aubrey managed to cling
to a brass conduit, which vibrated painfully under his
fingers. Rokeby-Taylor staggered backward and collided
hard with a large vertical pipe. He let out a grunt of pain
but George managed to grab an overhead stanchion and
he held himself up as easily as a passenger on an omnibus.

From the rest of the
Electra
, shouts and breaking glass
competed with the whine of the engines. The klaxon
started again and it drove sharp spikes of pain into
Aubrey's skull. He thought it sounded positively delighted
at the opportunity to torment him again.

'Apparently they do see us,' Captain Stephens said
dryly. 'Luckily, they haven't found our range yet.'

A gigantic thump sounded, then a deafening hammering
on the deck over their heads. Aubrey guessed that a
near miss had thrown water into the air, deluging the
submersible. For a ship that was supposed to be surrendering,
he decided that the cruiser was doing quite well.

'For'rd torpedo room ready,' Captain Stephens barked.

His order was repeated by a nervous midshipman into
a speaking tube; he listened, then turned to his captain.

'Ready, sir.'

'Fire.'

A clang, a thump, then an instant's silence before a
noise like the world's largest sigh rolled through the
length of the vessel. The
Electra
shook and rolled a little.

'Torpedo away!' the midshipman reported.

Captain Stephens applied his eye to the periscope.
'We've aimed at their rudder,' he said, his voice muffled
by the nearness of his face to the eyepiece. 'Let's see how
this magical targeting device performs.'

Suddenly, it was as if the submersible had been slapped
by an angry giant. It bucked, then plunged, and Aubrey's
reflexes were tested again. He needed both hands to
steady himself as the
Electra
wallowed in seas made angry.

'What happened?' Sir Darius shouted over the klaxon.
Aubrey had grown to hate the noise. The thing crowed,
as if it was making the most of its day in the sun.

Captain Stephens lurched back to the periscope.
'We must have hit the cruiser's ammunition store. It's
gone down.'

'The freighter?'

'Damaged, sir, but still afloat.'

Sir Darius's face was grim. 'Let's see if we can rescue
any survivors from the cruiser.'

S
IR
D
ARIUS
, R
OKEBY
-T
AYLOR
, G
EORGE AND
A
UBREY STOOD
on the deck of the
Electra
with some of the submersible's
crew.

The sailors on the freighter released boats in good
form. They showed no signs of panic, even though thick
black smoke was pouring from the stern of the ship,
adding to the smoke from the remnants of the cruiser.

Aubrey looked in that direction and felt hollow at
the destruction. No-one could have lived through that
explosion. A slowly spreading oil slick was staining the
surface, disrupted by gouts of air, huge eruptions of spray
and an assortment of boxes, crates and floating objects
that bumped about in an incongruously carefree manner.

Aubrey couldn't help but be saddened by the loss of
life. How many sailors went down with the cruiser?
Surely not all of them were criminals or evildoers. They
must have had families, homes, loved ones.

With a bleak heart, he turned back to the freighter.

Six lifeboats pushed off. No-one was left on deck.

'We'll need to help them come alongside,' Sir Darius
said. 'We shouldn't leave them to battle the swell.'

The Chief Petty Officer ran to the tower and relayed
this to the control room. The diesel engines began to
roar. The
Electra
was relatively good on the surface – for
a submersible. She'd never win a speed or manoeuv-rability
contest, but the submersible doggedly ploughed
through the waves.

'Ropes and grappling hooks!' Sir Darius called. Sailors
at the conning tower signed their understanding and
disappeared.

Up close, the freighter looked more than crippled: it
looked terminal. Choking black smoke enveloped the
whole bow and loud grinding noises came from below
deck, as if a foundry were being wrecked by clumsy, if
enthusiastic, giants.

Sailors poured out of the
Electra
's tower with rope and
hooks. Aubrey and the others moved back to allow the
trained seamen to do their work.

Not standing on ceremony, deckhands pushed past and
went to the other side of the submersible. With Albionite
efficiency, they roped in the lifeboats. The merchant
sailors were hauled aboard and stood on the deck, bewildered
by the turn of events.

Aubrey stared. One of the boats was full of crates. Who
would have risked their lives to load goods into a lifeboat
at a time like this? The boat was overladen, to boot, and
wallowed dangerously close to capsizing as it was hauled
closer to the submersible.

The merchant sailors rushed to the rails with evident
concern as the last lifeboat was brought close. When the
two survivors were helped out onto the submersible
there was a ragged cheer.

It was then that Aubrey saw that the two survivors
were female. He gripped the rail, unable to believe what
he was seeing. Then he jumped up and down, hallooing
wildly.

George and Rokeby-Taylor stared at him. His father,
though, had seen what he'd seen. He stood there with a
look of profound surprise on his face.

One of the survivors was Aubrey's mother, Lady Rose
Fitzwilliam. The other was Caroline Hepworth.

T
HE WARDROOM WAS PACKED, AND THE CAPTAIN HAD
opened it up to the corridor through an ingenious
system of folding walls. Aubrey had anticipated the
crush and had done his best to sit close to Caroline.
By her actions, she had also anticipated it and had
manoeuvred herself to keep a respectable distance. The
shifting, excusing and rearranging this caused went on
for some time before Sir Darius called a halt, advising
those outside the wardroom to find any space they
could for the journey home. The last to find a place
was Rokeby-Taylor, who chattered excitedly to anyone
who'd listen about how well the
Electra
had
performed – simply ignoring the bizarre episode with
the batteries.