Jim fought hard to see them through safely while trying to find some escape from this underwater prison. If they’d come on more than one or two sailors at a time they could have been overwhelmed. Beryl couldn’t have helped fight without risking Tepic and it was obvious that Jim was becoming exhausted. He couldn’t have had a decent meal in weeks.
The blood had long dried on Beryl’s paws and Tepic where he was holding him and his wound. The cat had clawed through a sailors tunic to make a quick tourniquet for the tail, but very little color had returned to the usually bright foxes face yet.
Every encounter they had slowed them down, and the clockwork was following the trail of bodies and the sound of fighting. He came into view and stalked after them, ever walking, his face expressionless save for the broken eye that revealed the metal inside.
They fled until they reached a center hallway on the last level of the submarine. The floor was raised slightly and the sides of the walls to any side were curved, and there were three sailors guarding the way armed with swords. Jim sighed as they rushed forward and in his exhaustion took out the gun and shot one of the men. That made the approaching men slow down as they realized what was about to happen and Jim used the last two bullets on them as well.
Beryl’s ears raised again after the sound of the shots stopped ringing, but didn’t say anything as he followed Jim to find what the dead men had been guarding, before more help arrived.
Jim and Beryl felt their spirits rise as they found a room full of air and pressure tanks, and even eight escape pod bays and a drop pool with a diving bells. Jim led the way forward and gestured to one of the round pods. “Get in.”
Beryl nodded and loaded Tepic into the vessel carefully, and then turned back to see Jim hadn’t started to climb after them. “You’re not coming?”
“It doesnae matter to him if we escape today,” Jim replied quietly. “They will attack us again.”
“You’re going to try to finish this,” Beryl said, fully understanding that Jim meant to somehow take out the man or the submarine by staying behind.
“Not gonna try ta talk me out of it are ya?” Jim asked almost rhetorically.
“No.” Beryl reached for the hatch. They’d come because the clockwork had threatened to return Tepic one piece at a time starting with an ear. What Jim choose to do with their life was not their concern. “I’m going to wish you good luck.”
Beryl shut the doorway and they used the wheel to seal the door. They didn’t see any sign of a vent or an oxygen port, but there had been hydrogen tanks on the side. They were rocked, and the ship rolled out of the first opening which closed behind them after a delay. A short time after it was shut the outer door opened and they were launched out of the ship. Moments later there was the sound of something outside the pod beggining to inflate.
***
The clockwork went into the room alone, though he was being followed by several men who held back at a gesture from him.
Jim didn’t look up from his work on the farthest escape pod door and waited till the clockwork had started into the room to speak up, loudly. “Ya never ran.” The clockworks broken face betrayed nothing, nor did his movements change. “Ya coulda caught us a hundred times. But ya never ran. Not even when we were just two or three yards from yer grasp.”
“I thought maybe ya couldnae run because yer legs werenae made to withstand the strain.” Jim said, glad that he had almost finished his work and was just waiting for the clockwork to get closer. “But that didnae make sense. Yer a sturdy thing with the strength to pick up men that weigh over 16 stone and yer legs didn’t buckle holding Mudfoot there.”
“So I began thinkin’ about that human brain.” Jim could tell that the men behind the clockwork were listening intently, so he began to talk louder. “Ya were made ta be sturdy and dense, strong enough ta take a bullet and keep movin’, keep killin’. But ya cannae risk running ‘cause if ya did yer brain would get tossed and batted around, cause I doubt that they could fit the proper suspension to deal with the weight of yer own body running. Sure walking, or even a sudden tackle there might be enough cushion from a flesh bag like us, but your own metal body moving that fast? Ya’d risk bruisin’ yer own brain!
“So I know ya willnae be able to outrun this!” Jim wasn’t sure if he was on the right track at all, but the clockwork had increased his pace now. He reached for the escape pod lever and pulled. There was the same short delay as before when he’d sent the cat and the fox out and the pod began to move down it. He quickly climbed inside and started to seal the hatch of his now provisioned escape.
The clockwork didn’t move any faster, if the man got away now he could still get him again later. The pods would both be easy to track down, but that was when the clockwork saw that the door Jim had been working on had been sabotaged. It wasn’t going to close when the outer door opened.
The doorway opened and Jim could feel through the pod the thousands of pounds of pressurized water striking the pod. It sent his pod flinging back into the room which lurched as the submarine began to drag and sink deeper. The clockwork was thrown to its knees as the room it was in began to flood quickly. It got to its hands and knees and looked for the exit. The men were already sealing him in.
***
Tepic woke up groggily, with little memory of what had happened earlier, but after Beryl showed him his tail in their paws it came flooding back to them. The cat had never seen the fox so distraught.
It took some time to comfort the depressed fox while not mentioning what had happened down there, but the fox wanted to know where Jim and Billy had gone. Beryl decided that Tepic didn’t need to hear worse news, at least not yet, so the cat didn’t tell them what had happened to Mudfoot. Instead they turned towards the ocean and looked down, “Neither of them wanted to leave without finishing the job.”
That made Tepic a little happy, and hopeful as he went back to sleep while they waited for a rescue party they hoped would be coming.
Oh, dear. Poor red-shirted Scotty. We hardly knew ye.
The urchins found us, but Tepic refused to return to New Babbage in his state…
The ship rendevoused at Phillip Johnson’s current base of operations and began to raise the vessel out of the water for repair. “I should have never made a prison ship out of a bunch of scientists and engineers! Should have hired a dozen extra metalmen, that’s what I should have done! But then I’d have three or four dead confirmed dead heroes instead of just one! Damnit! Who am I going to gloat to now!”
They entered the dryed out room and found the body of the Hero Hunter unmoving. Seemed that the water pressure had destroyed the glass jar holding the brain in his chest cavity.
They also found a jetisoned escape pod with a living but exhuasted man still trapped inside wearing diving gear and surrounded by oxygen tanks. Phillip couldn’t contain a grin as his men opened the escape hatch, “So you thought you could get away that easily, Doohan!”