Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences
Page 71
*****
Bruce Campbell sat a distance from her weeping embrace, not counting the time. The Sheila was gone from the lake now, although the trail it had trampled through the woodland beyond the shore was clearly visible. When the lady turned to him, he knew she was ready. Bruce gently extracted the Samurai’s body from her arms, hoisting the armour-clad man across his shoulders to carry him to the shore. Beverly followed silently after him, weeping abated, her face now a tear-streaked mask of regret.
He laid Kuro inside one of the few mini-zeppelins still able to fly. Bruce drove Beverly’s steamsword into the ground before offering her the passenger’s seat.
“We’re not leavin’ him out here,” Bruce assured her. “We do need to reach my mate on board Sheila. Are we clear?”
“Crystal,” Beverly muttered.
The mini-zeppelin’s engine’s spun up, and the three of them were airborne, following the trail left by the walking boat.
His fingers splayed around the pilot’s stick as ahead of them, clouds of dark some mushroomed in the distance. Bruce glanced over at Beverly who was staring out of her own window, her eyes empty, aloof. He saw in the armrest between them a small wireless and connected its leads, bringing a current to the small device. He tapped in the first word of his recognition code, tapped in the second…
“Klaatu…Barada…bugger me,” Bruce grumbled. “What is that last bloody word?”
Again, he tapped in the first word of his recognition code, tapped in the second…
…and he took his best guess at the final word in the sequence.
Their mini-zeppelin glided over where the Scharnusser Fortress had once been. In its place now was a smouldering ruin of bricks, timber, and ash. Sheila stood triumphantly nearby, as a predator stands over its prey. Even after they landed without incident, Beverly barely seemed moved by the destruction of her home. Early evening chill had settled in, dragging the temperature down to below freezing; but she remained standing vigil outside the mini-zeppelin, staring at the Samurai through the window.
Bruce spotted Brandon Hill in the cockpit of an exo-goliath, in spite of the cold, piloting it through slow, awkward dance steps to the delight of some ship’s crewmen on the ground.
“Good Lord, Campbell,” Brandon scolded, climbing out of the machine, “when will you learn that bloody recognition code properly? Nicto! The last word in the sequence is Nicto!”
“The important thing, Hill, is that you recognised enough of it not to shoot me out of the sky.” He motioned at the destruction around him. “So this is how you keep an eye on barking mad Zachary? Where is the yank, anyway?”
“Captain Amboy and his son are safely aboard Sheila, inside the main cabin. I wouldn’t go in there at the moment, though. He’s in a bit of a state. All of this demolition was seemingly for naught, other than the fall of an Usher house,” Brandon said, producing his favourite smoking pipe. “Roderick Scharnusser managed to escape. Probably a private shadow zeppelin. You think Amboy was a madman before? You should have seen him when he found Roddy’s taunting escape note. But my word, Bruce. You should have seen that Gatling cannon take down the fortress walls. It was incredible.”
Hill stuck his pipe into his mouth, looked over Beverly, then shot Bruce a non-verbal question. Her eyes remained downcast, unseeing. Campbell only shook his head in response.
“We’ll bring Scharnusser to justice, mate, of that I’m sure. But it’s probably best that he escaped Zachary Amboy’s clutches here.” Campbell noted the snow starting to fall. Beverly still remained stock still outside their mini-zeppelin. He walked over to her, removed his overcoat, and laid it across Beverly’s shoulders. She looked up at them both, noticing them as if for the first time, and nodded slowly, her eyes glassed with fresh tears. “There’s been enough death today.”
Hill lit his own pipe, tingeing the air around them with the sweet scent of his tobacco. “So,” he said, giving his posh Gourd Calabash a few puffs, “we settle things here, then back to London?”
“Not yet. We got to get the boilers topped off on this bird here.”
“Wait just a—” Brandon spluttered, motioning to the remnants of the monastery around them. “You’re going to make me deal with all this alone?”
“You’ll be fine, mate,” Bruce said, slapping Brandon’s chest with the back of his hand. “Go on—would I ever put a fellow Ministry Agent in danger?”
Brandon huffed, placed his pipe back in his mouth, and after a few agitated puffs, disappeared into the settling mayhem, calling out directions, attempting to direct Amboy’s crew to some semblance of order.
Bruce watched the airship crews tending to his mini-zeppelin before returning to Beverly. “Got an errand to run, don’t we?” he asked.
She nodded, her reply tight and strained. “Satsuma.”