As a series of replies came pouring in through a matching mechanism, Yax found himself trying to decipher the code. Such a rudimentary encryption system would be easy to break once he heard enough verbal orders given and encoded messages sent. Though he had no ulterior motive, he could not ignore puzzles, riddles, and other conundrums. He had always been too curious for his own good. Perhaps it was why he ended up in trouble so often. But then, he liked trouble.

  The Gar-class vessel closed on the enemy with increasing speed. For Yax, the chase seemed slow, almost dreamlike as it played out before him. The dwarves hustled about on the bridge as the object of their pursuit loomed larger in the viewport.

  “Get me a firing solution on our target,” Captain Ingvar ordered the crew.

  “Aye, sir!” came from several duty stations as they coordinated the attack.

  Streams of bubbles rose from the tapered bow of the dwarven submarine. Yax felt the deck shift beneath his feet as the boat changed its orientation. The helmsman angled its nose down on a direct course for the larger, living ship.

  As the sub closed to strike, the elf weighed the moral ramifications of attacking a creature enslaved to the same beings that held the Deep Dwarves in bondage. Maybe they could free it too. Who knew? Perhaps the Free Dwarves saw it that way already. Maybe they offered it the only freedom any of them would ever enjoy: death. If push came to shove, he would deal it a clean death, if possible, but he preferred to focus his ire on slavers like the Thrones and their goblin minions, the nasty, amphibious Kappa.

  Yax didn’t realize Dagny remained at his side until he felt her slender fingers brush his longer clawed ones. As he returned the gesture, her pulse quickened. Fear or anxiety drove her reaction, but he didn’t know if it was fear of the enemy or the gentle caress of his touch. Perhaps it was the former coupled with the latter. Stressful situations tended to bond people quickly in his experience, likely the reason the elf had met most of his friends and lovers on battlefields or in the midst of disasters.

  The sounding officer called, “Soundar indicates weapons range in 10…”

  “…9…8…” The first officer continued the count.

  As Swari counted down, Captain Ingvar said, “Open hatches on forward tubes 1 and 2. Prepare to fire on the commander’s orders.”

  The bulbous-nosed gunnery chief replied, “Aye, sir. Fish armed and ready.”

  Dagny squeezed Yax’s hand as the count dwindled to 3, 2, and then 1.

  “Fire!” Swari barked.

  I’ll be damned, the elf thought as the two silvery projectiles streaked from the nose of the submarine. After clearing the vessel, the weapons deployed rear fins to stabilize their trajectory. As they did so, the wondrous devices bubbled violently.

  Just as Yax came to conclude they’d suffered a malfunction of some sort, a frothy stream of bubbles shot forth from the aft section of each projectile and sent them jetting toward the enemy vessel at incredible speeds. The avid alchemist pressed his nose to the glass to observe the chemical reaction creating the propellant. A devilish, delightful engine of war, he mused, mystified by the tubular devices.

  The gunnery chief reported, “Fish are in the water. And hot!”

  “What do these fish do exactly?” Yax asked Dagny as she seemed to be the sole dwarf on the bridge not occupied at the moment.

  She whispered, “Depends on the payload. From what I recall, they have two sections. The aft carries something that mixes with the water to make the torpedo move faster and farther than the pneumatic tubes can propel it. The nose is modular; each one has a specialized payload sealed behind glass. The fish glass is capable of withstanding pressure but not impact, unlike the safety glass used here.” Dagny tapped the window.

  Yax’s attention returned to the portal in time to see the dwarven “fish” in action. He sighed as the first met with anticlimax. It undershot the Leviathan and disappeared into the murky darkness beyond the gargantuan beast of burden.

  But the second fish failed to disappoint. The torpedo struck the creature’s rear flank at the point where its tail tapered from the main body. Squinting, he watched the glass shatter, followed by several bursts of electricity arcing in all directions from the center of impact.

  The water roiled around the site as if something alive swam there. And it did. Or they did rather. A host of angry electric eels clung onto the tail and flank of the beast. They flashed brilliantly in the dark waters of the Abyss; their light illuminated the violent but disoriented reaction of the Leviathan to the ambush. It thrashed its tail back and forth and gnashed its toothy maw. The compartments on its back wavered but remained secure.

  “Big mother’s stunned but not out, sir,” the gunnery chief said, citing the obvious.

  Captain Ingvar asked, “What’re our options with Tubes 3 and 4?”

  “Standard loadout. One fire. One acid.”

  “I don’t want to resort to scorched cavern tactics yet. Reload 1 and 2.”

  “If we don’t get her quick, she’ll go deep on us. Then we’ll lose her in the black.”

  “Noted, Chief Logmyr,” the captain responded. “Just follow my orders. And, Lieutenant Stig, prepare to dive. We’ll be firing from the angles and dangles.”

  Logmyr turned back to the gunnery station and tapped on the keys of a device similar to the one used to relay messages throughout the boat. Yax wondered if it was connected to the ordinance bay. If so, what was the response time?

  Stig sounded a bell attached to a thick wire. Then he shifted a lever that caused the entire floor to shudder beneath them. Commander Swari called out relative depth measurements that made no sense to elven ears. While the sub dove after the fleeing enemy, a series of groans and pings echoed as the pressure changed outside the hull.

  As the Leviathan paddled away from the enraged electric eels, a series of globular clusters trailed behind it. For a moment, Yax wondered if the fighting fish had scared the crap out of the creature in something other than a figurative fashion. But he was wrong. It couldn’t be easy. Fate wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “Captain, they’ve launched countermeasures,” Logmyr said.

  Ingvar spewed a series of commands, “Chief, order your gunners to fire at will. Alert Barracudas to prepare for intruders. Helm, increase down bubble by 15 degrees.”

  In the dimness of the bridge lighting, Yax’s glowing eyes widened as he came to the horrific realization they might be up a figurative fecal waterway without a propulsion device. As the countermeasures drifted toward the dwarven submarine, they started to pulse with light. The spiraling spheroids changed colors in an almost hypnotic fashion, flashing from red to blue to purple. Closing on the sub’s position, the bioluminescent blobs unfurled a series of long, spiny tentacles. The star-shaped beings rushed toward them then, the gleaming whites of their giant eyes visible at this distance.

  They’re not Ophanim, Yax thought, but the octopods looked deadly. And cunning, he realized as the countermeasures coordinated to deploy an inky screen between the sub and its intended target. The Leviathan disappeared from view, obscured by the impenetrable cloud as well as the soft, fat body of a fighting cephalopod.

  The vicious, carnivorous creature landed on the observation window and stuck. Its sharp, curved beak pecked at the looking glass The impressive material resisted the assault. But for how long? Yax thought. The distinct thump thump of the dwarven air cannons alerted him and the bridge crew that other octopuses had landed on the hull of the craft. What was the standard procedure for this sort of action? the elf wondered. Always a fan of puns, he felt out of his depth.

  Judging by the pressure she exerted on his hand, Dagny felt out of her depth too. He grinned through the pain of her surprising strength and stared down the raging octopod as it tried in vain to crack the observation window. Imitating the creature, Yax put his face to the glass and clacked his teeth together. The beast’s toothy tongue shot out, thudded against the window, and flopped around trying to rip the flesh from his face.

  Yax took a hard step back, and the octopus quivered with apparent laughter. So you got a sense of humor, huh? Too bad you don’t realize one thing: I’m not retreating, I’m preparing, he thought. As he chanted in his native tongue, his free hand burned.

  The war-mage laid his open palm on the bare metal around the viewport. His hand glowed red hot and then white as it transferred an intense amount of heat through the hull into its intended targets, the tentacles securing the beast to the boat. Though the Aethyr-fueled weave did no damage to the transfer medium, it provoked an instant reaction. The octopus relinquished its grip and jetted away from the sub. As the creature disappeared into its own blossoming cloud of ink, one accusing tentacle trailed after it, pointed at Yax.

  “Wow!” Dagny exclaimed, squeezing the elf’s free hand for emphasis. “That was amazing. Makes me wonder what other tricks you have up your sleeve.”

  “Tons. Let’s hope it doesn’t take all of them to keep us alive.”

  Captain Ingvar injected, “Looks like you’ve made a new friend.”

  Yax released the yeoman’s hand. He wondered if the captain had meant Dagny or the octopus. The elf studied the commanding officer, but Ingvar possessed an unreadable face and monotone voice that would make any gambler or grifter envious.

  “We 6D’s have a few tricks of our own,” the captain added. “Chief Logmyr, unleash the lightning rays. Helm, maintain course and speed. We need to punch through that ink bloom before we lose track of the target. Jodyn, keep an ear to the Soundar. We can’t risk a collision with the walls of that trench or the arse end of that Leviathan either.”

  The crewmembers on the bridge answered in the affirmative and set to work.

  Lieutenant Jodyn strained to interpret the series of pings collected from the array of hydrophones mounted on the exterior of the hull and emitted by the boat’s Soundar device. None of the bridge officers talked above a whisper. But staccato gunfire from the air cannons didn’t make the sounding officer’s job any easier.

  The submarine dove through the opaque cloud in pursuit of its quarry. But visibility through the observation window remained zero. Yax peered through the glass in search of any sign of the enemy vessel. As usual, his insatiable curiosity gnawed at him.

  The elf asked Dagny, “What did he mean by 6D’s? And what’re lightning rays?”

  The yeoman whispered, “That’s us. We’re the Deep Diving Death Defying Dwarves of the Deep.” She pointed and added, “As far as the LRs, here they come now. They’ll take care of those nasty suckers on the hull.”

  “Did you make a pun?”

  Dags winked up at him and said, “I owed you one.”

  Bursts of light danced in the swirling cloud. They swept over the bow of the boat, bathing its black skin in an eerie blue pall. As they approached the bridge, the dwarven sub’s own countermeasures moved in a tight formation. Flat, flowing fins that reminded Yax of wings blended with the fat body and spine-tipped tail of the aptly named lightning rays. Electricity arched between a pair of horned structures protruding from their heads. The formation split as they reached the conning tower and darted past the window.

  A few moments later, the sounding officer banged his fist on his console and said, “I’ll be damned if I can pinpoint its depth and direction. I can’t discern anything over the countermeasures and the harpoon guns.”

  “Mind if I have a go at it?” Yax asked.

  Jodyn responded, “And what makes you think you’ll have better luck than me?”

  The elf’s waggling ears served as his response. The bridge crew chuckled. The captain nodded, and the sounding officer passed the brass, leather, and felt ear cones.

  Yax fitted them into place, slowed his breathing, and focused his senses. He had no clear idea how to use the dwarven device and suffered from no delusion that he’d do any better job with it than a trained professional. But he needed the prop, the distraction every good magician required to fool his audience. And employing the necromantic arts around dwarves necessitated it, for it was the most potent weapon employed by the slavers of the Underworld. They would not understand nor forgive unsanctioned uses of it, despite the circumstances.

  IV. Counterattack

  Before Yax’Kaqix became one of the Choj’Ahaw, the storied wand-bearing lords of war, he spent his youth as an initiate among the priesthood of Kümatz, the Cosmic Dragon, Master of Time and Space, Creation and Destruction. And one did not reach the level attained by this noble son of Xocne without learning the four faces of Kümatz. Now he used that esoteric knowledge in a way his monastic masters might not approve. Of course, neither would the dwarves. They had a dim view on consorting with the dead.

  Chewing on the fungal sacrament required for the weave to take effect, he chanted in the high holy dialect reserved for the masters of time themselves who sat atop golden pyramids overlooking city centers deep in the jungles of the South Isles. Whether the self-proclaimed 6D’s realized it or not, the sea trench around them was a community teeming with life. And every binary system had its opposing forces. Light cannot exist without the dark, as life is juxtaposed by death. So Yax reached out through the subterranean sea and felt for a lingering presence aware of its surroundings.

  The first specter he contacted turned out to be one of the octopuses deployed to waylay the submarine. Angry and confused by its incorporeal state, the harpooned beast’s point-of-view proved to be of little use to him. He brushed the spiritual essences of myriad lower life forms with poor eyesight or no eyes at all. They were little help.

  Searching further still, Yax found something promising, something howling in the Abyss. The angry ghost wailed, calling out to anyone who’d listen, that it had been murdered, drained of its very essence. Bracing for the emotional impact, the elf stared out of the eyes of a dead man, or dwarf rather. Through the translucent walls of a container, the murder victim watched his killer with malevolent but impotent intent.

  The Many-Eyed One hovered a few feet above the floor of the alien chamber. Its mottled gray exterior resembled rough stone rather than skin or scale. It possessed neither arms nor legs, giving it the appearance of a massive rocky brain. A number of short tentacle-like structures radiated from the body of the spherical being. Each one tipped with a single baleful eye. The Throne’s individual eyestalks wiggled and squirmed, each of its own accord.

  Yax could not see it from his perspective, but he knew from experience that the creature featured another eye, a massive central orb located above its toothy maw. Nor did the elf wait to gaze into it. He had a feeling he’d be seeing it soon enough.

  “Got ‘em,” Yax managed as he broke contact with the murdered dwarf.

  “Where?” Captain Ingvar inquired with more passion than usual.

  “In a steep dive off the port bow,” the elf replied, relinquishing his seat. As he rejoined Dagny at the observation window, he pointed and said, “You’ll find them there.”

  The captain ordered the helmsman to change course, and the whole boat pitched downward. Yax listened to the cacophony of groans, creaks, and squeaks with growing trepidation as pressure increased outside the sub. But the dwarves seemed unfazed by it.

  The inky cloud dissipated with the boat’s rapid descent. As it did, the Leviathan came into view. It swam in mighty strokes using its giant flippers. A wonder of the Abyss, it had been enslaved by the true terrors of the Deep, like so many others. Yax would see the beast freed, and the murdered dwarf he’d used avenged, if possible.

  “There she is!” the helmsman cried, “Right where the elf said she’d be.”

  “Orders, Captain?” Commander Swari inquired.

  “Helm, set intercept course and speed. Commander, coordinate with Logmyr to get me a firing solution on target as soon as we’re within range. We can’t afford to miss this time. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Affirmative, sir,” the executive officer answered. Swari lowered the periscope viewer and peered into its depths. “Flood tubes 1 & 2. Prepare to fire on my orders.”

  The dwarven submarine dove into the lightless waters of the Abyss in pursuit of the Leviathan. The marvelous machine’s propellers churned at full power as its burning H.E.A.R.T. raged inside its spherical prison. All the while, the Aethyr reactor spewed slow death to those within the boat’s hull.

  “Leviathan within range, Commander,” Logmyr noted.

  “Hold.”

  “I’ve got a—“

  “Hold damn you!”

  The beast of burden blotted out the Abyssal Sea as its bulk filled the observation window. For a moment, Yax wondered if Swari had decided on a collision course instead of an intercept. But the cold, calculating countenance of the commander allayed his fears.

  Finally, Swari ordered, “Gunner, fire one! Fire two!”

  The glass-tipped torpedoes streaked away from the nose of the Gar-class sub. Spewing a jet of superheated propellant, the silvery fish crossed the distance in mere seconds. They exploded upon contact and unleashed their vicious electric eel payload. The torpedo that hit the right rear flipper of the Leviathan halted its dive. The beast arrested its downward momentum as it came under attack.

  For once, the humorless commander smiled. Returning the periscope to its resting position, Swari said, “Helm, level the planes. That’s zero bubble. Match speed and keep us on top of that big bastard. I want us as close to its back as fleas on a spider rider’s ass.”

  Ingvar commented, “Now that’s what I call damn fine shooting, Commander.” With a satisfied grunt, the captain added, “Contact the Barracudas and tell them to prepare for rescue operations. Let’s hope this one’s as cut-and-dry as our standard cut-and-run operation.”