The Mediterranean was a black mirror.
The Osiris cut through the water like a knife. She was ugly for a ship—no soaring masts, no white canvas. Just a sleek, black hull and a squat iron funnel amidships.
Smoke poured from the funnel. Not the white puff of a friendly steamer, but thick, oily coal smoke that clung to the water.
Charles stood on the bridge. He gripped the railing. His knuckles were white.
His stomach rolled with the swell. He hated the sea. It was chaotic. Unpredictable. You couldn't audit a wave.
"Pressure holding at 80 PSI," the engineer shouted from the hatch.
"Push it to 90," Charles ordered. His voice was thin but steady.
"She'll blow a gasket, sir!"
"The probability of a boiler explosion is 12%," Charles said. "The probability of being caught by the British is 100% if we don't increase speed."
He pointed into the fog.
"They are out there."
Jean Chouan, the pirate-turned-minister, stood beside him. He held a brass telescope.
"He's right," Chouan growled. "I can smell them. Lime and tar."
Chouan lowered the glass.
"Hard to starboard!" he roared at the helmsman.
BOOM.
A geyser of water erupted ten yards from the bow. The sound of the cannon shot rolled over them a second later.
"They found the range," Chouan cursed.
Out of the mist, a shape materialized.
A British frigate. The HMS Cerberus. A predator of wood and canvas, her gun ports open like hungry mouths.
"Full steam!" Charles yelled down the tube. "Bypass the safety valve!"
The deck vibrated. The engine below groaned—a metallic scream of stressed iron. The Osiris surged forward.
Another shot whistled overhead. It smashed into the railing, sending splinters flying.
A jagged piece of wood sliced Charles's cheek. He didn't flinch. He wiped the blood away and checked his pocket watch.
"Velocity increasing," he noted. "We are outrunning their traverse speed."
The Osiris was faster. The steam engine, experimental and dangerous, was doing its job. The gap widened. The British frigate faded back into the fog.
"We lost them," Chouan said, exhaling.
"No," Charles said. He looked at the chart. "That was the beater. Where is the net?"
CRASH.
The answer came from the port side.
A second ship slammed into them.
It hadn't fired a shot. It had been drifting, lights out, disguised as a merchant hulk. It rammed the Osiris amidships, locking the two hulls together with grappling hooks.
"Boarders!" Ney shouted from the lower deck.
Redcoats swarmed over the rail. British Marines. Bayonets fixed.
"Repel them!" Ney roared.
He drew his heavy cavalry saber. He charged.
It was a massacre. The French crew were sailors and engineers, not soldiers. The British were professionals.
A Marine lunged at Charles. He was huge, his face twisted in a snarl.
"Got you, little whelp!"
Charles didn't run. He didn't scream.
He reached into his coat.
He pulled out the prototype revolver.
He leveled it.
BANG.
The Marine took a ball in the chest. He staggered.
Usually, a pistol was one shot. Then you threw it.
The Marine grinned through blood. "Empty, boy."
He raised his bayonet.
BANG.
The second shot hit him in the throat.
The grin vanished. He gurgled and fell backward.
Charles thumbed the hammer back.
Click. BANG.
A second Marine, coming up the stairs, dropped with a hole in his forehead.
The British froze. They had never seen a weapon fire like that. Three shots in three seconds. It was magic.
"Clear the deck!" Ney bellowed, rallying his men.
Emboldened by the "magic pistol," the French crew counter-attacked. Ney fought like a demon, hacking through muskets and limbs. Chouan used a boarding axe with brutal efficiency.
Within minutes, the British were pushed back onto their own ship.
"Cut the grapples!" Chouan ordered.
The axes fell. The ropes snapped.
The Osiris broke free, drifting away from the ambush.
"Damage report!" Charles called out. He holstered the smoking gun. His hand was shaking, just a little.
"Hull is dented but intact," the engineer reported. "But we took some cargo from them."
"Cargo?"
Ney was dragging a crate across the deck. It had fallen from the British ship during the collision.
"It's heavy," Ney grunted. "Gold?"
"Open it," Charles said.
Ney pried the lid off with his saber.
The crew gathered around. They expected bullion. Coins. Maybe weapons.
Ney peered inside. He recoiled.
"God's blood."
Inside the crate, packed in sawdust, were bodies.
Small bodies. Wrapped in linen bandages.
"Cats?" Chouan asked. "Dead cats?"
There were hundreds of them. Mummified felines. Their faces preserved in rictus grins.
Jean-François Champollion pushed through the crowd. The linguist looked pale.
He picked one up. It was light, brittle.
"Not just cats," Champollion whispered. "Look at the resin."
He scraped a bit of the black substance coating the mummy. It glowed faintly in the moonlight.
"Bitumen," Champollion said. "Mixed with... dust."
"The Green Fire?" Charles asked.
"Yes," Champollion said. "The British aren't looting artifacts for museums. They are harvesting fuel."
He looked at the crate.
"Organic matter saturated in radioactive resin. These aren't mummies, Charles. They are batteries."
Charles stared at the dead cat.
"Batteries for what?"
"For the Engine," Champollion said. "The machine needs a biological starter. They are bringing thousands of them to Alexandria."
A crack of thunder shook the sky.
But there were no clouds.
Charles looked up.
The sky above them was turning green. Not the aurora borealis. A sick, bruised green.
Lightning arched across the heavens. It didn't strike down. It struck across, like a web.
The waves around the ship turned black. Oily. The foam hissed as it hit the hull.
"The compass!" the helmsman shouted. "It's spinning!"
Charles looked at the binnacle. The needle was doing cartwheels.
"Magnetic anomaly," Charles muttered.
"It's not weather," Chouan said quietly. He looked at the sea with the fear of a sailor who knows when the ocean has changed its rules.
"What is it?" Ney asked.
"It's the destination," Charles said.
He looked at the mummified cat in Champollion's hand. The glow was getting brighter, pulsing in time with the lightning.
"We are close," Charles said.
He walked to the bow.
The fog was lifting.
Ahead of them, the sea ended. Or it seemed to.
A line of darkness stretched across the horizon. A dead zone where the waves stopped moving.
"We aren't sailing to Egypt anymore," Charles whispered.
He touched the revolver in his pocket.
"We are sailing into the grave."
"Full steam," he ordered. "If we stop now, the anomaly eats us."
The Osiris charged into the black water.
And the world went silent.