“Terror comes later. When an uncertain fate becomes certain.”
They were her father’s words. Maybe she would get a chance to find out how true they were.
“Not yet,” she whispered.
For the moment, she could fight and deny certainty. Air still flowed into her helmet, granting her life—and options. As far as she could tell, her hose was still attached to the ship—though she had to crane her neck to see it, and it disappeared from sight amongst the thick stalks.
“Hope the plant doesn’t figure out that’s important to me.” Mahliki imagined one of the vines wrapping around her hose, tightening until it cut off her air. “No, it’s not that smart.” Though she had to grant that it had an animal-like intelligence. She wondered if there was a brain or something that functioned as a botanical equivalent. If so, where could she find a sample of it?
“Later. Time to plot a daring escape. Or at least an effective one.” Mahliki wriggled her free hand under the flap of her bag and prodded around. Vial, vial, test tube, no. Scalpel? Probably too small to be effective. Pliers? Maybe, but again, she feared they would prove useless on such a large plant. A spade? Enh. She patted a jar in the bottom. Oh, that was her snail slime, a lubricant she made that had been inspired by the little gastropods. Usually she used it to lubricate her articulating tools, but maybe...
Mahliki tugged it out at the same time as the vine around her waist tightened. She almost dropped the jar.
“Maybe it’s not going to eat me, it’s just going to squeeze me to death.”
With her other arm still pinned, opening the jar was a challenge. She forgot about her faceplate momentarily and clunked the lid against the glass in an attempt to use her teeth. Her mother wouldn’t have approved anyway. She always said tools were far superior to teeth for purposes unrelated to digestion. When Mahliki finally pried the lid free, it slipped from her hand, spiraling down into the dark depths.
“Hope this works,” she muttered and did her best to grease the vines—and herself. Canvas wasn’t the slickest material, but whatever sealant they put on the outside of the suit helped. She slathered gobs of the slime on every part of her body she could reach, armpits and helmet included—more because she could reach them than out of a certainty that they would be tactically important against the plant.
Once she had used up all the snail slime in the jar, she stuffed it back into her pouch and prepared herself to make a big shove, one that would involve sucking everything in and pushing off the stalk as best as she could. The plant, alas, had not been kind enough to provide a launch platform for her.
Before she made her attempt, something caught her attention. The vines wrapped around her body had started to ooze fine dark blue droplets from their pores. Some sort of reaction to the slime? A sign of irritation? Or—she managed to feel unease and enlightenment at the same time—maybe this was some sort of enzyme to aid digestion.
“Interesting, but you are not digesting me, you sprites-cursed son of a three-legged goat.” Despite her determined words, she didn’t push off right away. She dug in her bag again and pulled out a vial so she could scrape some of the viscous droplets inside. “It would be a shame to waste this opportunity.”
Once she had secured her latest sample, Mahliki took a deep breath... then exhaled every molecule of air. At the same time, she pushed with her legs and shoved down with her free arm. To her relief, it worked. Sort of. She moved an inch or two, before the vines readjusted their grip farther down.
“So we do it again...”
By pushing and straining—not to mention copious thrashing—Mahliki inched higher and higher. Once she got her other arm free, she thought freedom was a certainty. But shadows stirred at the edge of her vision. Other vines veering toward her.
She redoubled her efforts, twisting toward the massive stalk at her back and grabbing it with both hands. She pulled herself up it as if it were a rope dangling into a pit full of crocodiles. One of the vines she had escaped snaked up, trying to reestablish its grip at the same time as a new one darted toward her helmet. Mahliki kicked the first away, having no delusions that such an attack would thwart it for long, at the same time as she continued climbing. Wishing she hadn’t dropped her diving knife, she batted at the new intruder with a fist. The blow did nothing to stop it. It snaked past her arm and tried to wrap itself around her helmet.
Mahliki whipped her head to the side. Fortunately the slime worked well on the smooth brass. The vine slipped away, and she practically ran up the stalk, the sunlight bouncing on the surface of the water so close she could almost—
A jerk at the back of her head yanked on her neck. She gasped in pain, but not so loudly that she missed the clunk-snap reverberating in her helmet. Her air hose—it had been torn off. A vision of water streaming into her helmet and drowning her flashed before her eyes, but she kept climbing. If she could reach the surface...
Then what? She would still have to swim across this cursed forest of plants if she were to escape. They would keep grabbing her and simply pull her down again, this time without an air supply...
No. They would try, but they wouldn’t get her. She was slick. She was—
Her head breached the surface. Despite her pessimistic thoughts, she roared with triumph—and immediately spun in a circle, searching for the ship or for the closest beach.
The warship loomed much closer than she had expected. They had come into the forest, looking for her. She didn’t know whether to thank them or call them idiots—what if the whole cursed ship became trapped?—but she swam toward them. Vines and stalks created an obstacle course, but she was inspired to greater effort by the men at the railing, pointing and waving at her. Twenty-five meters away. If she could get through these plants without being grabbed again...
She had no sooner had the thought than her suit caught. No, that was her bag. She dunked her head below again, trying to see—yes, a cursed tendril had wrapped around the strap. She tore into the bag, almost dumping the contents in her haste, and dug out the first tool she found. The pliers. She attacked the tendril in a frenzy of stabs, then grabbed it and twisted, trying to tear it away from the strap. This tendril wasn’t as thick and strong as the vines, so it worked, but not before a new vine snaked around her leg. The plant was determined to keep her from escaping, and she had started to feel light-headed.
The air. She was out. The seal must have remained intact, for no water was flowing in, but she was sucking on the last of her oxygen. She had to escape and get the helmet off, or she would asphyxiate on the surface of the water.
Mahliki yanked her leg, and once again the snail slime saved her. A grip that would have otherwise held fell away. She turned around to sprint the last meters to the boat.
She almost crashed into the huge black hull, for it had sneaked up on her. Before she could do more than lift her head, hands descended from above, grabbing her arms... and slipping free. Erg, the slime. She looked up, hoping for a ladder or hook she could grasp, but someone caught her by the scruff of her suit. She was pulled out of the water and hauled onto the deck. She scrambled several meters—to make sure she was a long ways from those vines should they try for her again—before collapsing and rolling onto her back.
Having something hard and dry under her had never felt so good... not to mention the sun blasting through the water droplets on her faceplate. Those black dots probably didn’t have anything to do with the sun. Air. Right. With shaking hands, she fumbled at the clasps of her helmet. Thankfully, someone knelt beside her and helped her get it off.
Mahliki had never inhaled so quickly in her life. She was lucky she didn’t suck her tongue down her throat.
With all of her energy spent, and then some, she flopped back to the deck. Sespian leaned in, peering into her eyes. “Are you all right?”
She meant to say yes, but it came out as a raspy wheeze.
Sespian rested a hand on the top of her head. “Relax. Your job is done. The captain will figure out how to
get the ship out of here.”
In other words, they were trapped in the plant forest? Great. As much as she appreciated his solicitude, she wouldn’t have minded a few more minutes of lying on the deck and breathing refreshing air before being alerted to their continuing danger.
A couple of other concerned faces leaned in, Maldynado and Basilard, both with their helmets removed, though they still wore their diving suits.
“Did you know your armpits are slippery?” Maldynado asked.
“Yes.” Mahliki pushed herself into a sitting position. “Piece of advice for dealing with these plants. Don’t go in without sufficient lubricant.”
Maldynado’s eyebrows waggled. “I never go anywhere without sufficient lubricant.”
Basilard signed, He keeps it in his purse.
“It’s not a purse.”
Mahliki would have liked to show off the specimens she had collected, but a throaty thrum reverberated through the deck. “It sounds like we’re taxing the engines.”
“Yup,” Maldynado said. “And we’re not moving much.”
“We’re going to have to figure out a way to cut the vines free.” Sespian waved toward the railings where marines were swinging machetes.
Stalks rose all around the ship, vines and leaves swaying in the breeze. The deck remained open and clear, but green tendrils had latched onto the railing. Mahliki had a feeling the belly of the vessel had far more vines attached to it.
“Unfortunately, I used all the snail slime,” she murmured.
A squad of marines jogged past carrying barrels of black powder and boxes of blasting sticks.
“This is about to get interesting,” Maldynado said.
“Or dangerous,” Sespian said.
Basilard nodded solemnly.
“I better find the captain and see if there’s a way I can help.” Mahliki stood up. “I assume this trouble we’re in is because of me.” The ship had been anchored farther out, beyond the plant forest. It never would have ventured this close if not for her.
Sespian fell in at her side as she headed for the stairs. She supposed it wasn’t the proper time to be pleased that he was sticking close—and she hadn’t forgotten that he had defended her when his comrades teased her, either. All sorts of progress there. Something she would contemplate in full when she had the luxury to do so.
“Neither the captain nor any of his officers wanted to explain to your father that we’d lost you,” Sespian said.
“But they’re going to be fine explaining that they lost the ship?”
“That was deemed a better option.”
They reached the navigation deck, but paused when someone called out. “Ship coming! The tug Boar Tusk.”
“What?” Mahliki asked. “What’s another ship doing coming in here? Can’t they see we’re mired?”
Sespian leaned over the railing and pointed. They were high enough up to see over the tops of the plant stalks. “Look, that’s your father’s sub on its deck. That must be the vessel Amaranthe and Sicarius went out in this morning. Maybe they’re going to toss a line and add their engine power to ours.”
“They better not get close to do it.” Mahliki tried to gauge the distance to the edge of the forest. Forty meters? Fifty?
Sespian strode toward the navigation cabin. Nobody noticed when he and Mahliki entered. The captain stood inside, a lean, wiry man who jittered in place as he stood to one side, staring out the window at the approaching tug. He gripped a cider or tea mug in his hand, less because he was relaxed enough to drink, Mahliki guessed from his white-knuckled grip, and more out of habit.
“Get on the horn,” the captain barked. “Warn them away.”
A private spoke normally into a mouthpiece by a map-filled console in the corner, and his amplified voice shot out of a brass horn outside. “Do not approach, Boar Tusk. The plant is attacking. Efforts are ongoing to free this ship.”
“The plant is attacking,” Sespian murmured. “Words I never thought I would hear.”
“No?” Mahliki asked. “Must be this sedate latitude you Turgonians live at. I’ve encountered all sorts of inhospitable and sometimes deadly plants in the equatorial regions.”
“Is this some... magically-enhanced relative?” He waved toward the jungle.
“No. This is... a problem. A big problem that has nothing to do with the Science. Not our Science anyway. Did your friends get that root sample I threw at them?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll explain later, once we’ve all had a closer look at that.”
A response was drifting across the waters from the tug’s own horn. The vessel had crept up to the edge of the forest and stopped there. “...pull you out,” the speaker was saying. “Stand ready to receive our hooks.”
A boom sounded off to the stern. The marines with the blasting sticks.
“Better pray to Akahe they don’t sink their own ship,” Mahliki said.
The captain frowned in her direction, noticing her for the first time. Mahliki shrugged and smiled. It did nothing to soften the intensity of his face. He might not be as big and burly as so many of the marines, but he did look like he could chew that mug into dust with a few irritated snaps of his jaw.
“Is there anything we can do to help, sir?” Mahliki asked.
“No.”
“I’ve studied the plant up close now.” Very close. “Might I suggest that it has trouble gripping things that are slippery? If you have some lubricant on board, it wouldn’t hurt to grease the hull, at least those sections we can reach.”
“Something that would be next to impossible if we’re not in dry dock,” the captain said. “Unless you want to volunteer to go back in the water and handle that.”
“Uh, not at this time. But perhaps we could put your explosives team to good use and create some little grease-filled casks that could be detonated to spatter over the hull in spots.”
“Corporal,” the captain said, “how many square feet of exterior hull does the Interceptor claim?”
“Almost thirty thousand, sir.”
“That would take a lot of spatters.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mahliki shrugged. She had tried. In truth, her studies had revealed precious little about what might harm the plant or encourage it to shy away. And now that she knew where it had come from, she was even less certain about what tactics to use.
“Hooks incoming,” the private at the horn said.
“I see them. Send a team down to fasten them. Let’s hope that tug’s engine can add the power we need to snap those vines free. Lieutenant, are we still making progress?”
“We’ve slowed to... no, we’re dead in the water, sir.”
The captain glared at Mahliki. She couldn’t manage the indignation to glare back. All of this—whatever damage this ship took and whatever men might be injured or lost—was because of her. Yes, she was doing this research to help the city, but what good had she done so far? None. And besides, she would have taken these risks to do this research even if it had nothing to do with the city. How often did one get a chance to study a—
A gentle hand settled on her shoulder. Sespian’s. “Perhaps we should see what we can do to help outside.”
“A good idea,” the captain said. It wasn’t quite a growl.
Mahliki wondered what words she would be getting if her father weren’t the former Fleet Admiral Starcrest. She probably wouldn’t have gotten words at all; she would have been thrown overboard. Or would they have even risked themselves to retrieve her? Coming from the Kyatt Islands, where there wasn’t royalty or an aristocracy, it was hard to fathom the idea of one life being worth so much more than another. She wasn’t sure what to feel about the fact that hers was apparently invaluable here, even to a bunch of marines she had never met. Especially to a bunch of marines she had never met.
“So, machetes or explosives?” Sespian asked as they stepped outside. “Which shall we volunteer to help with?”
Mahliki grimaced. The ar
ea to the stern where the first explosion had occurred was impressively clear of clinging vines, but there were more than ever clutching to the railings at other points around the ship. She pointed at two familiar figures working with axes below.
“Let’s join them. I’d rather hear purse jokes than...” She left off the rest, the part about not wanting accusatory looks from all the marines who knew they were in trouble because of her.
“Probably the safest spot to be.” Sespian smiled and led the way down the stairs. “They’re good fighters. Though I am irked at them for letting you get taken in the first place.”
“That was my fault, not theirs. I, uh, got myself into a situation from which extrication was not easy.”
“I noticed.”
“They’re hard workers though and didn’t give up until I’d completely disappeared.”
When they reached the lower deck, Mahliki nodded toward Maldynado and Basilard. Sweat dripped from their faces. Given Maldynado’s flippancy, she wouldn’t have expected it, but he seemed as ready to throw himself into danger and to lift an axe as these marines. Sespian strode forward, pulling out his own axe.
“You’re a hard worker too,” she added to him.
His grunt didn’t seem to hold a lot of agreement. She would have to work on his self-deprecation. It bordered on self-disgust at times, and she couldn’t see any reason for either. She preferred a man with a small ego to a big one, but he had no reason not to feel confident and self-assured.
“That’s seventeen for me,” Maldynado proclaimed. Speaking of egos... “And what? Three for you, Bas? Maybe four if you count that baby one.”
Basilard leaned back long enough to wipe sweat from his forehead and glower at his friend. He might have signed something, but was too busy wielding the axe. He ran to the next spot along the tendril-infested railing and smashed down with the weapons.
“Good thing those are metal rails,” Sespian said as he advanced with his own axe and machete.
Mahliki still had her collection kit and was poking through the contents, looking for a suitable weapon, when a hook clunked down a few meters away, startling her.