I hate how smug he sounds. He’s been waiting to pull exactly this trick: disable us, then take us without a fight. The fact that I anticipated the scenario doesn’t make it any better. I was hoping to have a few more seconds for evasive maneuvers. Now I have to pray for Plan C to work.

“Come on, Nautilus,” I murmur. “Engine room, how is Plan C?”

“Little busy down here, Captain!” Nelinha says. “I managed to hit the kill switch before impact. Reactor is down, but hopefully our circuits aren’t fried. If we can just—Aha!”

The engines hum. The bridge lights flicker back to life. LOCUS spheres reform over the control consoles.

“Yes, querida!” Nelinha laughs. “We have auxiliary power! Eat coal, Aronnax!”

The bridge crew whoops and hollers. Plan C is for coal. Our Victorian backup generator won’t give us nearly as much power as cold fusion, but it’s better than nothing.

“Da Silva,” I say, “you are one brilliant Cephalopod!”

“Well, I’m a Cephalopod, so brilliant is redundant, but thanks, Captain. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we have coal to shovel!”

In the background, Robbie Barr sneezes. “I’m the one shoveling, and I think I’m allergic!”

Gem’s hands fly across his controls. “Captain, Aronnax is stationary, still one klick dead ahead. But I have secondary contact—a small submersible. Boarding party, probably. Five hundred meters and closing.”

“As expected,” I say. “Let’s send them a message. Make ready torpedo one.”

“Torpedo one ready.”

“Target the Aronnax amidships. Fire!”

Our hull shudders as the antique missile speeds into the deep.

“Helm, hard to port, ahead full!” I grip my armrests as the ship tilts. “Dive, make depth thirty meters!”

The Nautilus seems to execute my commands before Lee-Ann and Halimah even touch their controls. We plunge and veer toward Lincoln Base, keeping the enemy skiff between us and the Aronnax. On Gem’s LOCUS, our torpedo explodes off the Aronnax’s port side in a beautiful purple starburst.

“They weren’t expecting that!” Virgil says. “I’m getting enemy chatter on the comm.”

He puts it on loudspeaker: Dev shouting orders, six or seven other voices replying all at once. I hear enough to understand that Dev is on the skiff, demanding status reports from the Aronnax’s bridge. Then someone on their end cuts the transmission.

I allow myself a grim smile. Dev got overconfident. He figured he would just putter over on his skiff and take command of our dead ship. Now he’s caught between the Aronnax and us, and we’re very much alive.

I love their confusion, but I know it won’t last.

“Make ready torpedo two.”

“That’s our last one,” Gem reminds me.

“Yes, but they don’t know that. Helm, thirty degrees port, full ahead. Keep that skiff between us and the Aronnax.”

“Trying, Captain,” Halimah says. “They’re taking evasive action.”

“The skiff is within cannon range,” Gem offers.

“No.” As much as I hate my brother right now, I don’t relish the idea of possibly cooking him alive in a tin can. “Stay focused on the Aronnax. If we can target their propulsion—”