Free Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3) by Richard Ellis Preston Jr. Page B

thought. You’ll get the first blow . But I shall deliver the last .
    And when the first blow came, it came in a lightning flash of silver.
     

XI
    THE GUARDIANS
    Something slashed through the middle of the group, whipping back and forth in silver whirls of knife-edged fins. There was more than one. It was some kind of fish, or eel, some kind of razorfish. Buckle spun around. He heard muffled shouts, people screaming into their helmets. Blood billowed into the water, nearly black but showing red in its thinner surges.
    “Kill it!” Buckle shouted into his helmet. The razorfish darted, too quick for the wallowing swipe of his harpoon. Don’t swing—jab. One of the divers crumpled forward, both gloved hands clutching at their inner thigh as blood erupted out of the diving suit in volcanic bursts.
    Sabrina. It was Sabrina. Horror slapped Buckle. In the next instant he realized it wasn’t her but a Dart crewperson—Sabrina was beside him, stabbing at the razorfish with her spear—the wounded unfortunate was José, who was about the same size.
    The two razorfish, perhaps six feet long apiece, zipped in and out of the circle, lashing their bodies back and forth like whips. Someone lost their spear and it drifted to the rocky bottom.
    Rachel’s weapon discharged, firing a weighted net that blossomed and caught one of the razorfish, thoroughly wrapping it up, and the creature sank, thrashing the rocks in the middle of the circle, quickly shredding the ropes dragging it down. Rachel surged forward with as much speed as the water allowed, planted her boot on the razorfish and plunged a long knife into its skull. The razorfish jerked and fell limp, its tail wobbling in the current.
    The second razorfish vanished. Buckle spun around, aiming his harpoon into the empty sea in front of him. The razorfish were only the opening salvo, he knew, a way to disorganize the defense, and now the brutes would come and finish them off.
    The brutes came.
    Looming out of the darkness, the nightmares came.
    They came with light, brilliant light, shining in three tight, bouncing pairs.
    Buckle blinked hard at the blinding, turquoise-edged illumination. What he could see made his guts tighten. A half-dozen razorfish slithered at the fore. Behind them heaved octopus-like beasties, pink flesh engines with lavender eyes glaring over rafts of black suckered tentacles pulling their huge bodies across the bottom.
    The paired columns of light beamed down from the crowns of the octopi, pouring forth from the large eyes of the gagools. The gagools were awful creatures, manlike in form but scaled along the length of the body and equipped with skull crests that gave their heads a rabid, hippocampus-like appearance. Long gill rows, a darker blue-green color than the rest of their bodies, lined their necks. They jabbered in high-pitched shrieks, fangs bared, waving their arms above their rubbery octopus perches.
    Buckle lifted his harpoon and took aim at the dark sliver of skin between the eyes of the lead gagool, but the creature saw him and ducked behind his octopus mount.
    The octopi launched the first assault. Charging the circle on three sides, the cephalopods lashed with their orange-purple tentacles, the razorfish darting in beneath them in blurs of silver barbs. Buckle, Felix and Sabrina thrust their harpoons forward, forcing the razorfish aside and slashing the octopi’s squirming arms that jerked back in trails of purple blood.
    At the edges of his peripheral vision Buckle saw the other two Guardian octopi and their gagools swing around on each flank, aiming to overwhelm the small knot of divers by encirclement. There was nothing he could do for that. His hands were full with the lashing, lithe tentacles of the octopus in his face, a gagool peering over its neck, the light from its eyes blinding him. Buckle ducked and staggered backwards to prevent being enveloped by the tentacle mass. Felix and Sabrina retreated alongside him, but to fall back much