“Where the fuck did they get that?” Eric pleaded. Vonlal shoved the tillerman aside, went hard to port. Eric felt radiant heat from the burning slick, brushing against the ship’s side. Under thirty-four percent atmospheric oxygen, even the Argo’s wet timbers ignited.
A second trireme came rushing in, a man at the bow raised another siphon and expelled a flame. This one caught the Argo over the bow, igniting a crewman’s clothing. He jumped from the railing before anyone could react.
“Fire!” Selva shouted. “We’re on fire!”
“Axes, all of you!” Vonlal barked. “Cut it loose!” More crewmen came running with axes and poles, chopping loose burning wood before pitching it over the side.
“We have to go to starboard!” Temerin shouted. “Our hull’s ablaze, we’ve got to put it out!”
“That’ll bring us in range of their boarders!”
“Just do it!”
Vonlal put the tiller over, the ship leveled out and swung through the eye of the wind, sails fluttering as they lost lift. They were turning towards the Arztillan ships now, Black Legionnaires with curved swords stood on the decks to meet them. One swung out on a rope, Sir Wotoc rushed up with a wooden pole and knocked him back.
“More!” Selva ran back and pushed the tiller. The two ships collided with a thunderous bang, men at the gunwales trading blows before Vonlal recovered and swung back to port.
Shouting came from the Arztillan trireme, Eric looked back and saw some of its broken oars, and parts of its hull, now being licked by expanding flames. Another burst of Greek fire lashed out from a different galley, and painted the Argo’s side. She was doomed.
“We’ll have to abandon ship!” Temerin shouted. “Get things in the water, anything that can be used for flotation! The boats, too!”
A good third of the deck was aflame, including the entire bow. Embers blew sideways in the wind; the mainsail went up in seconds.
“Careful! Watch it!” The burning crossbeam came crashing down, knocking one boat into the sea and covering the other in embers. “Time to get off this ship!” Temerin grabbed Rachel’s wrist and led her to the railing, where a rope still connected the boat to the ship, then tossed her down into it.
“You, too!” Selva repeated the process with Issel. Then fire burst through the deck, hammocks below lighting up like kindling. Several crewmen leaped overboard to extinguish themselves, Eric retreated with the rest atop the stern.
“Go!” Temerin shouted down to Rachel and Issel. Another crewman, a grizzled oldtimer, had swum over to clutch the boat, they helped him aboard. The line still attached them to the Argo’s blazing hull, a little line of flames now licking down it.
Sir Wotoc pressed an axe into Remdel’s hands. “Take this! Free them!” He lifted him off his feet and hurled him into the sea.
Further behind, the Arztillan trireme they’d hit was a burning hulk; men visible swimming in the sea. A second ship had been ignited through fratricide, then a third which drew too close.
“I don’t believe it!” Wotoc grinned. “Their whole fleet’s going up!”
Greek fire made a dangerous weapon in Meridian’s atmosphere—to the wielder as well. All it took was one line of burning rope falling to a deck, or a distracted skipper steering into a fiery slick, and a ship’s fate was sealed. Half the fleet was on fire, the rest hung back, reluctant to approach as survivors swam over.
The fire reached Argo’s stern, its mast becoming a blazing pole which dropped embers. One touched Eric’s cheek and seared it in pain.
“Time to go,” Selva said.
Eric picked up a crate of crossbow bolts, mounted the railing, and jumped into the sea. Cold water filled his nostrils, he sputtered and surfaced, swimming over to clutch his crate. Timbers cracked and popped as the Argo burned, the bow beginning to sink. He looked around, most of the crew was in evidence holding onto barrels, crates, and unburned wreckage. No sign of the ship’s boat. Had they made it away, just out of sight? Or was Rachel dead? He’d known there would be danger, but in his heart he hadn’t believed they could actually die. Their starman technology would save them! Fat chance of that now, Eric had left his backpack below decks, and replicators controlled the orbits.
The Argo, a funeral pyre to any crewmen unfortunate enough to have died aboard, tilted until its stern was near ninety degrees, flames bursting out to light the timbers now lifted from the water, and slipped beneath the sea.
Minutes passed, broken only by the splashing of arms and the crackling of burning debris over the Argo’s resting place.
Then, something splashed and a crewman screamed. Eric spun around, seawater soaking him to the bone. There had been a man on those boards. Now—a large shape below displaced water as it moved, and a single triangular fin sliced through the waves.
“Shark!” he shouted. More waves came as it turned, began to circle.
“What is it?” Cobb asked, holding on to a section of charred railing. “A Great White?”
“Bigger,” Selva replied. “Megalodon.”
