Breaching the Skin

The salt water in Slipway Four was three inches higher than it had been at four bells, rising with the cold sludge of the inner basin. Fumitaka pulled the canvas grease-wrap off his eight-pound prybar, teeth clicking against the bitter tang of pine pitch. He needed to peel nine feet of boiled tallow and hemp gasket off the starboard deadwood before Captain Satoru's searchlights swung back across the keel blocks. If the sea water seeped past the copper plates and flooded the hollow lodestone housings, the acoustic circuit would deaden into cold slag before the midnight tide.

Genzo was wading waist-deep near the bilge keel, holding one of the long box wrenches out of the brine with both hands. "The provosts on the upper gallery have torches," Genzo whispered, his voice rattling in the hollow timber vault. "If they catch our bubbles coming up through the staging slats, they won't even bother with irons. They'll drop lead sinkers on us. My mother always said a man shot in sea-mud gets his soul eaten by blind crabs."

"Your mother never caulked an oak garboard," Fumitaka said without looking up. He checked the oilskin pouch tied against his ribs—eighty-four silver bits and two requisition tokens pressing hard against his breastbone. "Keep your head down behind the third shoring timber. Saki, hold the back-wrench against the deadwood pintle. If the shank turns when I strike, the thread strips and we lose the lever."

Saki nodded once. Her coat was soaked through to the wool lining, but she jammed the forged box spanner over the square iron nut beneath the hull without a sound.

Fumitaka drew a long breath of oil-slick air and pushed himself backward into the dark water.

The cold hit his chest like a dropped oak spar, knocking the heat from his lungs. Beneath the surface, the frigate’s underbody loomed as a vast, black ceiling supported by rows of square granite keel blocks. Murky green light filtered through the spacing of the slipway grating twelve feet above, casting pale ribs of shadow across the copper plating.

Fumitaka kicked down to the fourth deadwood seam. The four-inch copper plates were pinned flush against white oak, their joints sealed with thick, black tallow to protect the magnetized lodestone chambers from the caustic brine until the moment of acoustic ignition.

He jammed the beveled tip of the prybar under the copper flange. His boots found traction against the slimy granite floor of the basin. With a steady thrust of his shoulders, he leaned his weight into the bar.

The oak deadwood groaned underwater, a dull vibration that traveled through his forearms and into his jaw. The tallow seal tore with the heavy, sucking rip of wet hide. A plume of greasy gray paste billowed into the current, followed by a pale stream of trapped air bubbles rising toward the keel blocks. Seawater rushed into the exposed cavity, drowning the primary lodestone sleeve. The subtle acoustic hum that had resonated through the hull instantly dropped half an octave, dull and sluggish.

One seam stripped. Eleven housings left.

Fumitaka slid his grip down the tool's iron shaft to tackle the fifth plate when a shadow cut across the murky green light above him.

A figure descended through the water between two staging baulks, swimming with rapid, practiced kicks. It was not a provost marine in heavy wool and leather. The man wore the indigo grease-stained tunic of Daigo's shipyard riggers—the same silent observer Fumitaka had spotted on the upper crane walkway. In his right hand, the rigger held an iron-bladed marlinspike.

The rigger kicked hard against a keel block, driving himself straight at Fumitaka's chest.

Fumitaka twisted his torso to the left, but the water dragged at his limbs. The steel marlinspike glanced across his ribs, tearing through his canvas smock and biting into the leather of the oilskin pouch beneath. The coins inside deflected the iron point, but the impact knocked the remaining air from Fumitaka's throat in a silver cluster of bubbles.

The man grabbed Fumitaka's collar, hauling him tight against the copper plating while raising the spike for a second thrust. His eyes were wide behind the salt blur, his mouth locked in a silent snarl of fanatic fury.

Fumitaka did not try to wrench himself free. His lungs burned, demanding air, but he kept his left hand locked around the rigger's wrist, steering the marlinspike away from his neck. With his right hand, he brought the iron prybar around in a short, blunt arc beneath the waterline.

The forged iron tip struck the man's collarbone with a muffled, heavy thud.

The rigger's mouth opened in an involuntary underwater gasp, losing his breath to the murk. His grip on Fumitaka’s smock slipped. Before the man could recover his footing against the slippery oak, Fumitaka hooked the crook of his prybar behind the rigger’s knee and shoved forward with the heel of his boot against the man’s chest.

Leverage did what brute strength could not. The rigger tumbled backward into the narrow trench between two granite blocks, his head striking the edge of an iron-banded timber prop. The marlinspike drifted out of his limp fingers, tumbling slowly into the black silt at the bottom of the basin.

Fumitaka kicked upward, his lungs screaming for oxygen.

He broke the surface in the narrow pocket of air between the frigate's curved bilge and the slipway wall, gasping for breath through burning nostrils. He hooked one elbow over a staging stringer, coughing up mouthfuls of bitter salt.

Above the slipway, a loud shout split the cavernous stone hall.

"Movement in the fourth keelway!" an officer barked from the high gantry. "Lanterns down! Bring the carbines!"

The harsh white flare of a provost magnesium torch ignited across the upper scaffolding. A heartbeat later, three sharp cracks echoed through the drydock. Lead balls smashed into the timber framing directly above Fumitaka's head, spraying sharp oak splinters across his face and neck. Another ball hissed through the surface of the water two feet to his right, dragging a trail of white vapor before lodging deep in a granite block.

"Fumitaka!" Genzo's terrified voice came from behind the shoring baulk. "They're shooting through the staging! Saki, get your head under the deadwood!"

"Stay down!" Fumitaka rasped, wiping blood and gray silt from his brow.

More boots thudded across the high iron walkways. Captain Satoru’s clipped voice carried over the sloshing tide: "Clear the lower staging. Form a firing line along the starboard walkway and sweep the waterline. If anyone comes up for air, shoot them through the neck."

Fumitaka looked across the narrow water channel. Saki was crouched low behind an oak prop, her small frame pressed flat against the timber, holding her spanner firmly against her chest. Genzo was shivering so hard his teeth sounded like dice in a cup, but he had dragged the heavy copper mallet behind the shoring beam to keep it from floating away.

Fumitaka pressed his hand against his side. The torn smock was soaked in red, but the silver bits inside the pouch had stopped the spike from piercing his lung. His muscles throbbed with cold exhaustion, but beneath his feet, the frigate’s copper skin was already drinking seawater through the stripped seam, throwing the entire kinetic array out of balance.

The provost patrol barge was locked against the drainage culvert. Satoru’s riflemen held the high catwalks with loaded carbines. There was no swimming out, and surfacing meant an iron ball through the skull.

Fumitaka took his caulking hammer from his belt and tested the balance in his palm. The only space left in Slipway Four that the provost marksmen could not reach with their guns was the flooded hollow directly beneath the frigate’s keel.

"Genzo," Fumitaka said in a low, measured voice that barely carried over the lapping water. "Take Saki under the port bilge shelf. Wedge yourselves behind the third stone riser where the iron plates deflect the drop."

"Master," Genzo whispered, staring at the hammer in Fumitaka's hand. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going back under the deadwood," Fumitaka said. He set his jaw against the freezing brine, gripping the cold steel shaft. "They want an acoustic weapon at midnight. I'm going to give them one that breaks the ship in two."