Jackelian 4 - Secrets of the Fire Sea by Stephen Hunt

Author:Stephen Hunt [Hunt, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, steampunk
ISBN: 9780007289660
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Published: 2011-05-14T21:13:56+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘I’ve never seen the like,’ said the commodore to Nandi as they emerged from the conning tower. He waved the punch card containing the Joshua Egg in the air as if he was still trying to clear the smoking ruin the card had left of his transaction engine’s navigation drums. ‘This blessed egg is jinxed, right enough. Raising a switching storm in the dark valves of those guild dogs, then roasting the transaction engine on my precious boat. It’ll take my crew weeks to repair this mess, and Jagonese tugs guiding us out or no, I won’t be sailing the Fire Sea blind without my navigation drums. We’re as good as beached here until the navigation room is fixed.’

‘It’s a coincidence,’ said Nandi. ‘I know that u-boat men are superstitious, but you can’t believe a few lines of code are cursed.’

‘I believe it, lass. This whole wicked isle is cursed. Jackelians find nothing but bad luck here, and look at the Jagonese. They were as good as us, once, and now see what they’ve become. Pale-faced lickspittles tending their infernal turbines and hiding in their mortal caves. Milksops raised on bamboo soup where once they would have swigged beer and eaten beef as proudly as any Jackelian.’

‘Just a coincidence,’ said Nandi again, trying to make herself believe it.

The commodore crossed the gantry over to the dock. ‘No, lass. This dark isle is a vampire land. It’s sucked the vigour out of a whole nation. Why do you think the Fire Sea surrounds it? There’s not one good island sitting in this whole damned sea and I’ve visited a few of them. Old Lord Tridentscale is the master of the oceans and he knew what he was doing when he sealed the black cliffs of Jago off behind the shifting magma. Yes, I’ll be right glad to swap the dark vaults of this place for the queer wooden towers and oak minarets of Pericur.’

Nandi started. Of course, the other end of the commodore’s voyage. Pericur.

‘That’s it!’ said Nandi. ‘I know how to run the Joshua Egg.’

‘Don’t be asking me to solve the numbers of its formula by hand,’ whined the u-boat man. ‘Not that my genius isn’t up to the task, mind, but I can feel it in my bones – anyone who attempts to solve that dark code will go mad. Don’t ask old Blacky to end up in an asylum for this lunatic chase you’re on.’

‘I’ll prove it to you,’ said Nandi. ‘That what we have here is only a complex code without a single supernatural expression in its formula; and I’ll do it with the help of Ambassador Ortin. Your cargo, Jared, transaction-engine parts bound for Pericur – and the ambassador took a good few crates of them for installation in his embassy.’

‘Ah, lass,’ said the commodore, ‘if that fur-skinned fellow has a need for processing power that’s not satisfied by the monstrous thinking machines of the guild, it is only because he doesn’t trust the Jagonese with what he’s handling.

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