Chapter 46 - The Iron Siphon
The sound of the valve breaking free was like a rifle shot.
A screech of torn brass tore through the pulpit, and then the wheel began to spin with terrifying velocity, nearly ripping our arms from their sockets as the high-pressure water inside the conduits reversed direction.
*Fsssshhhh-BOOM.*
Across the drydock basin, two massive overflow culverts, long choked with silt and calcified gravel, burst open with volcanic force. A wall of white-water frothing with black coal dust erupted into the secondary chambers—the forgotten flood vaults that ran beneath Wall Street and the old Dutch canals.
The red mercury in the central manometer hesitated, trembled, and dropped two inches.
"The siphon is taking!" Marcus shouted, wiping salt spray from his forehead. "The water’s diverting away from the main foundations! But the ship’s buoyancy sensor hasn't reset! The guns are still primed to fire!"
"Because the weight in the upper vault is still missing!" I said, looking up toward the cavern roof.
Through the ceiling, through three layers of stone and the sub-basements, I could hear the muffled thuds of heavy impacts. It was dull, rhythmic, desperate.
Above us, in the sunken wreckage of the Rosetta's primary dining room, Richard and his hired crew were finally moving. Faced with the immediate prospect of the earth opening to swallow them whole, they were hauling the gold bars out of the tilted armored truck and hurling them back down the gaping hoist-hole into the Sub-Level 7 vault.
Every time a bar struck the hydraulic floorplate seventy feet above, the red needle on the terminal beside me twitched.
*One ton.*
*Two tons.*
*Five tons.*
The needle crept out of the red margin, sinking back toward equilibrium.
The *Retribution*'s forward turret shuddered. The shrieking of its iron track slowed, hesitated, and then, with a heavy clank that shook the water around its hull, the gun barrels dipped downward, aiming into the empty sludge of the slipway. The firing pins had disengaged.
Marcus let out a long, ragged breath, his back sliding down against the bronze console until he was sitting on the wet stone floor. "Tell me you knew that was going to work."
"My grandfather spent forty years calculating the balance of this cellar," I said, my chest heaving, my hands shaking as the adrenaline began to clear from my blood. "He knew that greed was the only predictable human emotion. He knew that the only thing that would make Eleanor and Richard return what they stole was the certainty of their own immediate deaths."
I walked to the edge of the pulpit, looking down at the magnificent, terrible machine of war floating in the black basin. The water was level now, calm as black glass, lapping against the green slime of the dock walls.
The phonograph cylinder had reached its end. The needle clicked softly in the run-out groove: *shhhk... shhhk... shhhk.*
Then, a new sound cut through the silence of the cavern.
It was not a horn, and it was not a machine.
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It was the distinct, crisp sound of footsteps descending the iron spiral staircase behind us. Slow. Deliberate. The heavy heel-strikes of handmade English leather shoes.
***
