Crawling the Limber Holes

Whether the brass bypass valve beneath boiler frame six was still intact or already eaten into porous green foam remained an open wager, and Halldor had less than two hours before the garrison marched. Crawling flat on his belly through an eighteen-inch limber hole with forty tons of iron boiler masonry pressing down from above left no room for hesitation. He dragged the heavy pneumatic rivet hammer forward by its steel snout, his right knuckles aching under their stiff wraps of tallow-soaked linen. Behind him in the black gap between inner floorplates and the outer bottom, Kolskegg’s breath whistled thin and dry through the tin valves of a canvas charcoal rebreather.

"Keep the air line off the angle irons," Halldor grunted into the damp wool of his muzzle. His words came out muffled, swallowed at once by the dead chill of the bilge. "If a jagged rivet burr slices that vulcanized rubber, we lose ninety pounds of pressure, and I will not crack that nest with a cold chisel."

"Hose is clear, Master Halldor," Kolskegg whispered back. The boy’s voice shook against the snout of his canister, but his boots kept a steady scrape against the floor frames. "Dragging the secondary steam bypass behind my heels. Six paces back."

The limber holes—oval cutouts punched through the transverse floor ribs to let drainage water find the keel pumps—measured barely twenty inches wide and eighteen inches high. To move, Halldor had to exhale, slide one shoulder through the cold steel collar, shove the forty-pound pneumatic tool ahead, and pull his hips across the bottom flange. Every rivet head along the seam scraped against the heavy waxed canvas of his jacket. Two inches of foul, greasy water coated the plating, slick with bunker coal dust and a viscous, yellowish scum that smelled of curdled suet.

Ahead in the dark, where the carbide lamp hooked to his left wrist cast a sickly yellow beam, the iron frames showed jagged patches of flaking rust. Not normal marine scale, but the crumbly, eaten texture of iron digested from the inside out. Along the bilge angle, a thick ridge of grey calcified crust clung to the joint, glistening wetly in the lamp draft.

"Brandsk would file a lodge grievance over this crawl," Halldor muttered, shifting his hips through the fifth rib cutout. "Charging the Riveters' Guild fourpence an hour for caulking contaminated by our boots."

"Let him file it with Comptroller Thorkell," Kolskegg managed, his canister rattling as he squeezed his ribs through the iron collar behind. "See if imperial bayonets respect trade union arbitration."

Halldor did not laugh, but the tight knot in his chest loosened a fraction. "He'd demand a copper bonus to grease the bayonets."

Three feet past the fifth frame, the bilge water ceased rippling. It sat thick as warm lard. The smell changed through the rebreather’s charcoal filter, cutting past the burnt coal tang with a sharp, vinegar prickle that stung Halldor’s watering eyes.

The carbide beam touched frame six.

The cross-flooding bypass valve was buried. A bulbous mass of ribbed grey chitin, swollen to the thickness of a beer keg, sat clamped directly over the manganese-bronze valve chest. It pulsed with a sluggish, wet rhythm. From its fluted rim, four whip-like feeder tendrils trailed into the muck, each studded with white, needle-sharp calcified hooks. Where the creature’s base gripped the valve body, a steady drizzle of emerald droplets hissed against the iron floorplate, foaming into bitter white vapor.

The creature felt the iron vibrate beneath Halldor’s elbows.

The bulb contracted. Two barbed tendrils whipped upward out of the grease, snapping blindly against the low roof of the crawlspace. One barb struck the iron plate six inches from Halldor’s visor with the sharp crack of a pistol shot, scoring a bright gouge in the red-lead primer. The second tendril lashed low, catching the rolled canvas sleeve of Kolskegg’s shoulder and tearing a four-inch strip of heavy fabric away like rotten cheesecloth.

Kolskegg choked back a cry, scrambling backward until his iron heel struck the bulkhead frame. "Master—it’s on the valve stem! It’s rooting into the packing gland!"

There was no clearance to swing an eight-pound sledge. A man could not draw his elbows back far enough to drive a wedge with a hammer. If Halldor struck the organism with a crowbar, the barbed arms would wrap his neck before he could recover his guard.

Halldor locked his knees against the fifth floor rib, dragging the long iron barrel of the pneumatic rivet set forward until the hardened cupped die rested three inches from the creature’s central shell seam. The tool was an unyielding lump of forged steel, built to hammer one-inch structural rivets into boiler drums at twelve hundred strokes a minute under ninety pounds of yard steam-air.

He did not squeeze the trigger wide. Full throttle in this confined hollow would skip the hardened die off the curved shell and punch straight through the dreadnought’s outer bottom plating, blowing an open sea breach into the drydock foundation.

Instead, Halldor worked his gloved left hand under the creature’s writhing skirt, seeking the lateral hinge where the twin halves of its calcified shell met above the bronze valve wheel. His fingers sank into slippery, warm gristle. Acidic slime bit through his canvas mitten, searing the skin of his knuckles beneath the tallow wraps, but he did not pull away. His calloused thumb found the recessed ridge where chitin met joint.

He wedged the cupped mouth of the rivet gun directly into the crevice.

Halldor feathered the brass throttle lever with two fingers.

The pneumatic gun roared inside the eighteen-inch void. The concussive hammering hit like an explosion, deafening even through canvas hoods, rattling Halldor’s teeth against his jaw. Twelve hundred steel strokes a minute slammed into the creature’s hinge. The hardened tool bit deep, shuddering with savage recoil against Halldor’s chest. Under the rapid percussion, the grey carapace did not simply crack; it pulverized, spiderwebbing into chalky splinters as the internal muscle tore loose from the vibration.

A spray of hot, bitter fluid erupted across Halldor’s visor, hissing violently against the hot steel barrel of the hammer. The creature convulsed, its barbed tendrils thrashing against the floorplates in wild spasms before curling inward like scorched spider legs.

Halldor cut the air. The sudden silence in the narrow crawlspace was absolute, save for the ragged whistle of their rebreathers and the steady drip of dissolved tissue falling into the bilge water.

"Bring the steam coupling," Halldor ordered, his voice raw.

Kolskegg dragged the heavy braided bronze hose forward, shoving the threaded end between Halldor’s boots. His hands shook, but he kept the brass threads clean of the acidic muck.

Halldor did not waste seconds scraping away the dead slime. Working blind beneath the shattered carapace, his tallow-wrapped fingers swept over the valve stem. The bronze wheel had taken severe pitting, but the coarse square threads of the emergency injection nipple were still sharp. He guided the heavy brass union nut onto the pipe, turning it by hand until the threads bit clean. Taking the short dog-wrench from his belt, he hauled the nut around four hard quarter-turns, locking the bypass hose into the warship's cross-flooding line with a metallic ring.

The lime-steam feed was dogged tight. The route to flood the lower keelson with superheated chemical vapor was open.

"Line secured," Halldor said, wiping the acid-spattered glass of his visor on his sleeve. "Back out. Keep your heels clear of the trailing air hose."

Kolskegg began squirming backward through the limber hole, his boots finding purchase against the transverse frames. Halldor gathered the slack of the pneumatic line, preparing to reverse his crawl through the suffocating iron gap.

Then the iron hull beneath their bellies groaned.

It began as a dull, harmonic shudder, then rose into a piercing, metallic screech that tore through the ship's keelson from the granite pump station above. High-pitched and violent, the sound carried the distinct agony of three-inch foundation bolts shearing under immense lateral torque. Overhead, the heavy floorplates vibrated so violently that flakes of dried red-lead rained down into the bilge water. The primary culvert turbine had torn itself off its bedplates.