by Kin S. Law
“Our guns only warm his backside,” complained Cid.
“A backside ready for a spanking,” said Rosa. “Gunsmoke’s ships can’t turn worth a damn, but I can drop Cassis right on top of Hallow’s head. Then he’ll get a face full of stiletto!” She turned to Cezette with a guilty look, but the young woman at the wheel was resolute, her fine heels planted in the deck.
“A mere pinprick. A length of alloy ground to a point. My work is only as good as the material I am given! If only Alphonse could fly!” cried Cid. “Then we might hope to pierce that dreadful armor.”
“I can pilot Alphonse,” said Cezette, but her voice was a note away from breaking. “I’ve done it before. I…I want to talk to Jean. There must be some mistake.”
“Then who will fly the ’Berry?” asked Rosa. She took the girl’s hand, jittery and still youthfully slender. “No, there is no way. I am sorry, Cezette. I was caught up in the moment. There’s no need for you to see him again. We’re more good to the people in the water.”
Elric Blair came in trailing a band of ragged, wet survivors. Rosa snorted, but with the Gear on deck still filling with pressure like a clock needing winding, she could only pace, and help distribute some hard ship’s biscuits and tea.
Eventually Rosa boarded Cassis once more, and in a while Auntie appeared, with a heavy milking jug and a basket of bread.
Cezette looked out on the deck, where Rosa flashed past, firing her cables like a croupier dealing cards. Rosa flung them in rapid succession, stuck fast in the ships above. Then she swooped through the falling wrecks, scooping people up or tossing them toward the ’Berry, never once unsheathing the stiletto at Cassis’ side. Rosa was right, of course, the work here was as important as fighting with cannons and swords.
Maman might have done it with a cooler head, perhaps with a better bedside manner. But the thought only raised Maman before Cezette like a ghost. No. It would not do to dig her a grave before seeing the body. Cezette had to believe Vanessa Hargreaves was out there. She had already lost her first maman. She would not lose a mother twice.
Cezette banked the ship now, taking her low to avoid the Grimaldi’s attention, trailing their lines in case a straggler was overlooked in the water. One of the Powder Monkey’s galleons with its heavy catapults exploded into a meteor shower of pieces, beautiful despite the fragmented lives it burned through. She flew toward it, aiming close to where it would drop. It wasn’t just wood and engine components, no matter how badly Cezette wished it. There was life aboard, people who had parents, or were parents, someone who maybe liked the same books, had the same dreams, who were perhaps putting their lives back together just like she was.
For now, Cezette Louissaint could only pick up the pieces.
Vera Jasper’s life was falling apart.
She stood behind the bar, watching the Grimaldi come in above the fat gray hogs to land at its place of honor at one end of the boxcar. Streamers and balloons had been hung over the open roof and side wall. The car had been separated from the rest of the train and deposited high over the city, near the limits, for the best view of the demonstration. Vera herself wore a sari over her usual flexible performer’s suit, and she sparkled with real jewels and glitter on her exposed skin.
Beneath the counter, a bottle of red vermouth stood open, the sickly sweet smell mixing with the harsh herbal smell of the gin. Vera had never enjoyed negronis. They tasted vile and made her think of stuffy country clubs.
The air had a crackling quality to it, as if Vera could feel the wheels in Jean’s head turning, machinations of its own device threading dreadful punch cards. She looked at the fires and the swarms raging through the city, at the people fleeing. What genius could possibly justify all this? Vera did not know.
She desperately wanted a reprieve, but she knew outside the box car the hills were full of party guests. She’d passed a cluster of trees earlier and heard someone say in a raspy, broken voice, “You look like something I’d want to eat.” Vera had kept walking. The tents their workers had set up were full of guests at their games: roulettes with people pinned to the wheels, whips snapping, pins clicking, the sound of arc power striking between points. Screaming. Grunting.
Worst of all were the faces of the guests in the darkness. Most displayed profound ennui, but a few showed wanton lust, if the entertainment was novel. Their sounds and smells ran together in her head, creating an unwanted image of their diversions. Like keraunography- lightning scoring the silhouette of terrible things behind the veil. There was something wrong with Jean’s guests. They had a kind of madness that seemed to grow as the party went on.
“How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis…” whispered Vera. Gustave Flaubert. It felt oddly appropriate. The first time she had read it was at a lonely waystation in the Cornish rias. They were burying a circus member who had been mauled by the tigers, but he was not a Christian, and they were not allowed to use the church graveyard high on the cliff. They’d had to put him in the potter’s field. Water welled up when they dug too deep. Surely the ground was de-sanctified and foul in these guest’s hearts as well.
One of the guests approached the bar reeking of alcohol and sex. Without looking at Vera, the guest extended an empty highball glass and waited, as if service was his birthright. Vera gingerly took the glass and began to prepare his cocktail in a fresh one. Her fingers shook as she garnished the rim of the glass with the perfect rub of citron peel. Just so.
Earlier that day she’d gone to the cells in the back of the train, past the clicking, whirring contraptions that gave her nightmares. She’d taken a key to the observation deck and sprung the swordsman with the machine eye.
“Go. Go to your masters now,” she had told him. “There is nothing they can do to stop us anymore.”
The swordsman was weak, but had been hale, and he could still hobble. Vera had given him food through the tiny porthole in the deck door. She had handed him his bundle of swords.
“Soon there will be nowhere to run to,” said the swordsman as he buckled them on. There was a moment when he stood there, perfectly capable of running her through in the blink of an eye. But he only said, “Your master is mad,” before he bowed once. Then he was gone, through the train car and off through the cabaret’s tiny station.
Vera Jasper did not know why exactly she set the swordsman free, but it made her feel a little better. It was a small thing. Jean would likely throw him into the cannery after torturing him on the pretext of learning about the Incognito. Still, she wondered why she had released the swordsman. It wasn’t like her.
The pitcher of negroni was just another in a long line of things that didn’t sit right with her. Hadn’t Jean wanted to change this world? What were they doing with these bottom feeders, these parasites who thought themselves kingmakers? Weren’t Vera Jasper and Jean Hallow out to rewrite things so this pestilence wouldn’t exist? These captains of industry inhabiting the parlor, they chatted about what developments they might raise on newly vacant lots and how much they would have to pay to acquire them.
Her stomach lurched.
She remembered speaking to Jean before about these men, these benefactors who made his plans possible. Jean had scoffed then, saying, “benefactors? More like beneficiaries. They grow fat, like ticks, on the worship of their lessers. And yes, it is worship. What else would you call people who continue to revere and serve their tormentors but the faithful?” Vera had been impressed by the insight. Their guests were not sadistic demons, they were bored gods, capricious and indifferent to suffering. Lulled into unfeeling by plenty. That had assured her Jean had wanted no truck with them,
At least, she had convinced herself as much. Jean had grown distant after. Ensconced behind the Grimaldi’s implacable grinning mask, gesturing with its limbs, speaking in its voice. How was she to know if Hallow was still in there, or if he had been re-forged by this crucible? Remade in a steel womb? Vera fumed quietly. Her stomach churned
as the gentlemen around her grew more inebriated. Below her, in the city, a group of mercenaries were falling back under a wave of Hallow’s creations. Unaware that their client had set these contraptions loose without a care for their lives, they hadn’t thought to secure their flank against Hallow’s host.
A series of shocks rocked the party deck they stood upon. Jean brought up a view of the locomotive-borne rail gun on a clever lens aperture. The device swung out of the Grimaldi’s hands and displayed the views from the automata’s telescoping eyes, reflected in mirrors.
The Tennessee Jack sat perched on a high hill, firing upon Hallow’s host in bursts. The mercenaries had regrouped, contractors coordinating with the privateers, the sub-contractors and sub-sub-contractors. Turning their expensively leased toy on their former employer. Hallow gestured, and the host in the distance swarmed out of the purple gas clouds, scrabbling over the gun. They couldn’t see the blood under all the metal limbs. Then their Conqueror Worm arrived and latched its end to the rail gun, its silvery carapace opening to clamp on to the gun’s tremendous boiler cars. There was a cheer amongst the watching guests as the Tennessee Jack became part of the Worm’s writhing mechanical body.
“And now the auction begins!” cried Jean Hallow, in a booming voice she had never heard him use. Vera’s blood ran cold. “How much will you pay to own everything you’ve seen here?”
An auction. A sale.
Jean was making a sale of everything he had just shown. He had destroyed San Francisco to sell these men the Conqueror Worm and all the power of his creations.
Vera didn’t even register the high-velocity voice of the auctioneer, nor the frenzied bids that rang from every part of the party. Guests began to gather at the dais, people coming from the hillside to shout numbers at the auctioneer. In the midst of this saturnalia, Jean glided up to the bar. He wore a wry smile on his face. When Vera made no move to look at him, he frowned, then reached under the bar with his one thin arm. He drew out two glasses and a bottle of whiskey.
“This?” asked Vera. “This was your huge plan? You wanted to sell them your brainchild? What will they do with your army, destroy a few more cities, build up the flattened neighborhoods only to raze it all to the ground again? The Host of Jean Hallow, reduced to the service of usurers and cheats. Congratulations, Jean; you’ve succeeded in utterly confounding and disgusting me.”
“Every monster has one weakness,” said Jean, pouring both of them a double measure of whiskey. “No matter how thick its skin or how sharp its teeth. Even if it can stone with a gaze or poison at a touch…if it eats too much…”
“It explodes. You gave them this so they would destroy each other,” said Vera, aghast. “They’re going to put your host to conquering the world.”
“Their greed will be their downfall. These people are too drunk on gin and aeon mist to notice, but my auctioneer is making them all winners,” said Jean. He grinned. “My needle in their eyes. All of them will have my Cook engine. My host. Once a steamcraft is out there it is out for good. Eventually someone will figure out how to make it.”
“You’ve sped that up by decades,” said Vera, in shock. “They’re going to go back to their manufactories and commission millions of your clockwork monsters. You just handed all of these wealthy fucks the means of cannibalizing anything they want. Clean out a waterfront slum to build picturesque hotels. Burn down whole fields to drive up the price of corn. Destroy railroads and sell iron. Nobody would know it was these captains of industry.”
“Wreck an airship port and rebuild it bigger! Take apart a city street by street and buy it piecemeal!” said Jean. “Eventually they will go to war. My clockwork army will be too fast, too uncontrollable for traditional militaries. Once the Cook material makes it into automata they will be unable to resist the swarm. The automata will simply be part of the swarm.”
“The parasites grow fat on what’s left...only to realize their mates are doing the same thing. There will be a tipping point when they’ve burned everything, left nothing of value,” said Vera.
“Nothing to rebuild with. Nobody to sell to. Boom!” said Jean, and he blew out his cheeks like a bullfrog, before letting loose a rollicking peal of laughter. He downed the whiskey. “By the time they realize the armies will all obey my blood bond with the Cook engine, it will be too late. They will have done the work of making a clean slate, and I will finish them off. Then my army will rebuild from the ground up. From the ghosts of civilization will come a new, clean world.”
Vera was quiet for a moment. Then she poured Jean another double, and clinked her glass to his.
“Cheers, Jean. To a new, clean world.”
“Cheers to that, my Orb Weaver. Your cocoon hatches into a glorious future.”
Station 17
Priceless
With ample prejudice and a fast cutlass, it was short work for Albion to dispatch the others scampering into the park. It didn’t take long to figure out these new creatures were unmanned. Hallow had taken out the human element out, leaving a feral swarm. As they climbed through alleyways, over roofs and along walls they left a wake of punched-out footprints and crushed bystanders. The sword A Contrario had to be left impaled through an enemy’s middle, immobile, and Albion made his way by ten feet of Cid-forged steel. The blade hummed with aeon steam, wicking off the edge as a sparkling mist.
From the children’s park, Albion with Hargreaves in tow fought their way through Chinatown, upending market stalls and cleaving great chunks from the winding dragon sculpture. Plaster innards, fish, and fruit showered upon the guts of the spider things. In close quarters Dragonwell had the upper hand, cutting through with ease. Hallow’s machines, varying from one to two stories tall, kept catching their sharp tips on canopies and telegraph cables. Albion seized one of them by its daddy-long legs and cast about, hammering its wretched shape against its fellows until his truncheon resembled a spider crushed by a teakettle.
There was a large body of water just down the slopes of the city, a municipal park or reservoir. When they reached it, fighting through hordes of scrabbling creatures, Albion submerged Dragonwell’s arm in it up to the elbow. With a slick gurgle, the Gear’s tanks filled, and Albion and Hargreaves flew up on a cloud of bluish vapor surging from Dragonwell’s vents.
The pair might have escaped but for a mass of the spider things linked together mandible to thorax. It reared high into the air, moving together from some malevolent agency, striking down like a giant’s hand. Dragonwell struggled to stay aloft, pushing as the horde pressed down on its form. The weight of them buckled the steel and cracked the automata’s armor, sending razor-sharp enamel chips flying.
In light of Albion and Hargreaves’ peril, Rosa Marija’s sharp scimitar could not have come at a better time.
“Get it together, baby!” she thundered, unmistakable, a voice from the heavens. Her blade fell upon the closest of the enemy, severing the pseudopod of linked creations. A pinkish razor wind hewed a forest of spidery legs from existence. Several more of the dreadful machines were cleaved into sparkling scrap before Albion began to laugh, and then to Hargreaves’ consternation, join in.
“Come and get your love!” Albion crooned at the top of his lungs. He took his cutlass and stabbed all ten feet of it through the nearest hunter-killer.
“Oh dear god, you’re a duet...” Hargreaves moaned. Another of Hallow’s brood fell, its innards staining the water. “And you’re out of key!”
Once they had attained a relatively safe height above the swarm, Rosa wound her harpoon cable round Dragonwell’s shoulder, latching Keemun Cassis there like a lover. Then she climbed across to press her face to Albion’s. Hargreaves looked away as they stayed stuck together, in midair, while the battle raged on the ground and in the air over the bay. The Ghost Train was using the Tennessee Jack on the remaining pirates, who were putting up a heroic battle.
“Come on you two,” Hargreaves griped after what seemed to her was an indecent time. “The longer we’re up
here, the more likely those things will find something to throw at us.”
Albion came up for air. “We should cut these things off at the source. Jean Hallow.”
“Clobber his stupid face!” cried Rosa with glee.
“I was thinking sabotage? Personal grudge or no, there are only two of us,” said Albion. “Two gears, or autos, whatever.” He glanced at the Cassis, all pink striping and quiet grace. “When did Cid whip this up?”
“She doesn’t have an engine,” said Rosa. “But she’s a hot tamale. Look.” She pointed, up where Albion Clemens’ Huckleberry flew high in the sky.
“Well butter my biscuits,” said Hargreaves.
“You’ve been through the South, haven’t you?” noted Rosa.
Once they landed aboard the ’Berry, the stocky, gray figure of Cid standing on the deck made Hargreaves weak in the knees. She ran up to him and clasped him to her chest. He was a little shorter than her, and complained huffily. His beard scratched at her skin like a favorite wool blanket.
“An old salt likes his sugar,” said Cid. “But this is a mite sweet for me.”
“Whoa there. I’ve a family,” said Blair, blushing, as Hargreaves turned to him. Distant thunder echoed through the hold. “I expect those are her cannons.”
“You must tell me all about her when this is all over. Tea? Crumpets?”
“You’ve met! Alice Hanson.”
“Not a fling after all. Well done.” But just then she caught a glimmer of the hulking shape on the deck. Scarcely believing her eyes, she dashed across to it.
Standing there, rather plainly and all the worse for wear, was the Alphonse she’d brought all the way from merry England. He’d been patched square with thick panels. A thick portmanteau of cow catcher and hopper siding rested like a hussar’s shield against his shoulder. It looked like a furnace grate had been recovered to rebuild his mouthpiece, and all the steel surfaces were rough, grainy without the smooth, hard enamel. But it was her own dear Alphonse, squat frog helmet and all.
