They were a Bullet ship in Bullet territory, and that should offer them cursory protection from attack. She and Triple had been stationed on the nose. Whatever hit them had come from the rear. Yet there had been no cry of alarm, no sighting of any ship on the western horizon.

Before Caledonia could follow that thought too far, she was swinging around the hatchway into the bridge, Sledge hard on her heels.

“Report!” they shouted together.

Caledonia scanned the sea and found . . . nothing.

“We don’t know,” Pine was saying. “We can’t—”

Another blast rocked the ship. They pitched sharply starboard. Everyone braced against whatever was nearest.

Caledonia spun, searching again. In every direction, the sea was a clear, flat plane. There was nothing in sight, nothing that could account for the explosions dogging their hull. If it had been a minefield, they’d have hit several all at once. Not these single, separated blasts. There was something else. Something they couldn’t see. But what?

“Search the ship!” Sledge was shouting. “We’ve got a stowaway down there. Find them before they sink us!”

Five Blades raced belowdecks. But as a fourth explosion rocked the ship, Caledonia knew they’d turn up empty.

“All stop!” she cried. “I want us at a standstill!”

Eyes drifted between her and Sledge. He hesitated only a second before nodding. “Do it.”

“Harwell!” she shouted as she raced out of the bridge once more. “On my mark, I want you to hit that button again, clear?”

“Clear!” Harwell responded, his joy tinged with mounting concern.

She gripped the ladder leading to the top of the bridge tower and hauled herself up. As the engines quieted and the ship slowed, Caledonia planted herself atop the ghost funnel, eyes trained on the water off the port side. When she’d waited as long as she dared, she stomped three times on the sloped shell and called out, “Now, Harwell!”

A moment later the ship pulsed with that tantalizing burst of energy. Caledonia watched ripples course away from the hull, eyes as sharp as her instincts. And there, not a quarter mile away, a break in the otherwise seamless ripple pattern.

Any vindication she might have felt at being right was swept away in a ferocious current of alarm. The attack had come from below because there was a ship beneath the surface.

A deepship.

They were a thing of legend. A remnant of the old world that had only survived in stories and the occasional photograph or painting. As far as anyone knew, none of the tech still existed. Yet there was no other explanation. Someone had either discovered one or figured out how to construct one. And right now, it didn’t really matter which.