Steampunk'd

by Jean Rabe

“Ray!” I scream, trying to disentangle myself from the bracken.

  He fires two shots, killing one of the beasts, and then they’re on him, biting and clawing, buffeting him with their wings. They back him toward the edge of the cliff . . . and over!

  Ivanova laughs.

  “You bitch!” I cry. I rip my hunting knife from the holster on my right calf and sprint across the plateau toward the Russian.

  She turns, drawing a Luger from the holster at her waist. Before she can bring it to bear, though, I’m on her. I thrust for her gut, but she blocks the blow with her pistol.

  I twist my wrist, wrenching the gun from her hand. It skids across the ground and over the edge of the tepui. But even unarmed, Ivanova’s no pushover. She grabs the wrist of my knife hand before I can recover and, with her other fist, aims a haymaker at my jaw.

  I intercept the blow with my free hand, and now we’re grappling together, face to face, our hands knotted in a battle of strength and willpower.

  “Too bad it has to end like this, Katya,” she says, fixing her steely eyes on mine. I feel her psychic power boring into my brain, trying to loosen my grip, but I resist.

  “It’s not over . . . yet!” I drop to one knee and twist, sending her over my shoulder in a text-book judo throw.

  Ivanova skids across the ground and crashes into an upright boulder, but she scrambles to her feet before I can spring on her.

  “Give up!” I command. The advantage is mine, now. I have my knife, and I’ve steeled myself against her mind tricks. She’s still unarmed, and her goons’ submachine guns lie five meters away. Before she can reach them, I will gut her. If she doesn’t give up, I’ll do it with pleasure—for my cousin, and O’Brien, and the dead Neanderthals, and all the other victims she’s left in her wake.

  Yet, somehow, Ivanova keeps smiling. “You’ve forgotten about my friends,” she says.

  I wheel as the ranodon flock reappears over the edge of the cliff. “Get her,” Ivanova commands with a sneer.

  I am totally screwed. The pterosaurs are between me and Ivanova; they will intercept a thrown blade or tear me to pieces before I can reach her. My knife will be sparse protection against the flock, and I can’t reach the discarded Thompsons in time, either. I brace myself, staring death in the face—not for the first time, but for what I feel certain will be the last. The ranodons swarm toward me as Ivanova laughs.

  I lock eyes with my reptilian adversaries, inwardly vowing to go down fighting. Then, suddenly, they break off, backing wings and veering away from me. In moments, they’ve parted around me as though I were Moses amid the Red Sea—all but one.

  Mother Ranodon keeps coming, claws extended, jaws wide, yellowish saliva dripping from her crooked teeth. I duck, slashing with my knife. Her jaws snap shut inches from my face, and my blade deflects her talons as they rake for my guts. She twists, seizes my backpack, and lifts me into the air.

  I cut the straps and fall two meters to the ground, landing lightly on my feet. She drops the pack and banks, coming in for another attack. Then, unexpectedly, I’m surrounded by feathery, bat-like wings once more, as the rest of the flock returns.

  The mother ranodon turns away as the fledglings, each only half her size, interpose their bodies between me and the adult’s flashing jaws. For a moment, a chaos of talons and teeth swirls all around me. Then the mother arcs away, up into the sky, as the fledgling ranodons settle around my feet, chirping and looking at me expectantly.

  It takes me a moment to figure out what’s happened. Then I smile. “Sorry, Lina,” I call to the Russian, “but it looks like family ties are stronger than your psychic powers. I was there when these chicks hatched—and I guess they’re bonded to me for life. Am I lucky, or what?”

  “Not lucky enough,” the Russian says, and I realize that while I’ve been fighting, she’s recovered one of the submachine guns. She swings it in my direction, but before she can pull the trigger, my flock takes to the air once more.

  In an instant, they’re on her, all beating wings, snapping jaws, and raking talons. Ivanova screams as the gun is slashed from her hands. She tries to run for her crippled helioship—now resting atop the plateau—but the flock surrounds her like seagulls on garbage. She stumbles, flails wildly, and, topples over the edge of the escarpment.

  For a moment, the flock follows her down, only to rise above the cliff top en masse a moment later. I expect to see shreds of Russian flesh dangling from their jaws, but no gore stains their toothy beaks. Apparently, Ivanova has fallen to her death in one piece.

  I go to the edge to make sure, while the young ranodons flutter to rest around my feet once more. What I see enrages me.

  Two figures rise from the verdant abyss. Ivanova, her fine uniform shredded and bloody, clings to the talons of the mother ranodon. The adult pterosaur—still under Ivanova’s power—carries the Russian east, back toward civilization.

  I grab up a discarded Thompson and fire at them, trying to keep Ivanova from escaping with her prize.

  “Don’t bother,” says a deep voice from behind me. “They’re already out of range.”

  I spin, my heart pounding in my chest. “Ray!” I cry.

  My cousin and Zoe are standing near the far edge of the plateau. Armstrong looks like hell; he’s bleeding from numerous wounds and his clothes have been torn to shreds—but he’s alive.

  I have never been so glad to see anyone in my life. I sprint across the top of the plateau and throw my arms around him.

  “Ouch! Take it easy!” he says. “You want to finish the job those crazy birds started?” He and Zoe eye the flock of juveniles warily; the ranodons edge toward us, walking like bats on their wing joints and hind legs.

  “Don’t worry about them,” I say. “They’re with me.”

  “B-but . . . how?” Zoe asks, keeping her pistol trained on the flock.

  “They must have bonded with me when they hatched,” I explain. “When Ivanova forced them to attack me, their primal instincts kicked in and they turned on her instead. All except the mother.”

  “Too bad,” Armstrong says wearily. “Looks like the Russian got her prize after all.”

  “For all the good it will do her,” I reply. “Even with ranodons, it takes two to reproduce.”

  Zoe frowns. “With Russian technology, I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  “Speaking of which, do you think you can get this airship going again?” Armstrong asks, looking at the grounded vessel.

  “Absolutely,” Zoe says.

  Armstrong nods approvingly. “Good. With the Louisa out of action, we’re going to need some way to get back home. I just hope O’Brien didn’t go down with the ship.”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s okay,” Zoe says. “I used a mirror to flash some Morse code toward the wreckage while I was resting, and I got a couple of flashes back. He’s pretty upset, though.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “Then he’s as lucky as you are, cousin.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it,” Armstrong replies. “Zoe saved my bacon.”

  “After I saw that Neanderthal go off the escarpment, I got some anti-fall netting out of my pack and reeled it across the cliff face, just in case. I know you didn’t want any of them killed if we could help it.”

  “So her natural reverence for all life saved my worthless hide as well,” Armstrong puts in. Zoe blushes. A low moan comes from nearby.

  “Hey, one of these guys is alive!” Armstrong says, moving over to one of the two Neanderthal bodies lying on the cliff top.

  “Which one?”

  “Three guesses,” he replies.

  “Nachtu,” I say. But it seems like good news anyway. “What about the other?”

  Zoe checks his pulse and shakes her head. “Sorry.”

  I sigh, sad at the loss. Even though they’re on the wrong side, there are too few Neanderthals left in the world. “Well, maybe once Nachtu has recovered, we can break Ivanova’s hold on him.”

  “How do you plan on doing that?�
�� Armstrong asks.

  “We’ll figure something out,” I reply. “In the meantime, I’ll go down and check on O’Brien. You can patch the ape-man up while Zoe works on the helioship.”

  “Then what?” Zoe asks.

  “We find a hospital for those who need it,” I say.

  “Good luck on that, out here!” Armstrong quips. “I think I’d rather tend myself.”

  “You may have to,” I reply, “because we have one last thing to do before we go home.”

  Armstrong looks puzzled. “What’s that?”

  “We need to help our ranodon flock complete their migration,” I say. “After all, they’re family.”

  Scourge of the Spoils

  Matthew P. Mayo

  Matthew P. Mayo’s novels include the Westerns Winters’ War, Wrong Town, and Hot Lead, Cold Heart. His non-fiction books include Cowboys, Mountain Men & Grizzly Bears: Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of the Wild West, and the forthcoming Bootleggers, Lobstermen & Lumber-jacks: Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of Hardscrabble New England. Matthew’s short stories have appeared in a variety of anthologies, including DAW’s Timeshares. He and his wife, photographer Jennifer Smith-Mayo, travel all over the world in search of lost treasure . . . and tasty coffee. Visit him at: www.matthewmayo.com.

  Tico squatted in riverbank mud the color of an old miner’s skin. His coarse brown hair hung from under his hat like ends of frayed rope, and the water he scooped in the bowl of his hands leaked slowly through his thick fingers. He cut his eyes upstream, then back to the girl. Finally he drank, swallowed, made the noise that men the world over make after they’ve finished a needed drink, like pressure released from a worn valve.

  “Shall we continue, then?” asked the girl from a horse behind him.

  Tico remained squatting in the mud, his suede boots darkening as the water leached upward. “No.”

  The young woman said nothing, but straightened in the saddle and gritted her teeth.

  Tico drank more, filled his canteen, and then squelched back through the mud to where his horse, Colonel Saunderston the Third, had finished drinking. Tico checked the four glass tubes that served as reservoir level indicators, one in each of the horse’s legs, the graduated numbers long since worn away. Satisfied with the water levels, he gathered the sopping reins from where they hung in the water, sluicing the excess through his fingers, then he mounted.

  The young woman forced a smile and nodded toward Colonel. “I’ve been meaning to ask—is that a special model? I don’t recall seeing any quite—”

  “Modified mount, same as that one.” He nodded toward her horse.

  Under the grime and welted ropes of brazing from years of repairs, Constance Gatterling saw something of the beast it once was. “The original creature must have been a beauty.”

  Tico stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. “Been a long time since it was a real horse.”

  “Surely you’re curious.”

  “Gets me from here to there and back.” More of the stare, then he said, “You talk too much. Let the bay drink full, then catch up with me.” He heeled Colonel into a lope.

  “Catch up? What? Hey!” Constance looked at the receding back of the stained buckskin shirt, an ancient holstered pistol bouncing on the man’s hip with each clanking gallop. “Hey, Tico! I’m paying you to get me to the West Edge, not leave me here!” But the horse decided for her and plunged into the river up to its knees, the cool grey water sizzling and becoming steam vapor where it touched the hot metal of its legs and sipping muzzle.

  “Damn you, horse, no! Tico is getting farther away with each second you waste in this disgusting runnel of stinking liquid!” The flurry of words, which would have impressed her friends back home in East City, sounded childish out here in the Spoils.

  The reins, looped in her hands, slipped free and slid into the water. She grabbed after them, bending low, the saddle leather creaking with her weight, her stirruped left boot inches from the river surface. As she reached out, her fingertips trembling, clawing at the dangling rein, she noted with despair that the frilled edge of her tailored shirt’s cuff, jutting from beneath the blue crushed velvet sleeve, was now grimed from constant wear. Still she strained a little further . . . then slipped from the saddle, a quick cry and her splash the only sounds until she rose spluttering and gasping from the rank, swirling river.

  It was the clanking, and more than that, an overriding grinding screech of steel on steel that pulled Constance from her bankside nap—her pounding heart seemed to fill her throat. The sounds, from the east, grew louder, but still she saw no sign of anything interrupting the flat, stark land.

  She had not intended to fall asleep, but figured Tico would ride back, at least for his other mount, if not for her. She’d stripped off her smelly, wet garments and arranged them on the twisted branches of the stunted trees lining the river. Perhaps Tico was only scouting ahead, and left her here because he knew this spot was relatively safe from the people of the Spoils. Constance chose to believe this, and so had waited for her hired guide’s return. After all, she reasoned, she was his employer.

  The grinding noise increased by the second. And then she noticed something else was wrong—the horse, what Tico had called “the bay,” was gone. How could that happen? Horses, even modified mounts, didn’t just vanish, did they? But it was full of water, so it could well walk off for miles, perhaps days, in any direction. She saw no tracks, even though on both sides of the river, the solid-seeming earth gave way to softer sandy soil as the land stretched away from the river. Constance held up a hand against the dimming light and stared southward, then west, toward the far bank.

  The clanking grew louder from behind her, now joined with a grinding screech as though sand were being pressed between spinning metals.

  Constance turned in time to see emerging from the sand the nose of what looked like a pre-war steam-power locomotivator drive upward from beneath the ground, churning and chewing raw earth—rocks, clods of dried, powdery dirt bigger than a man’s head collapsed into clouds of powder, boulders cracked like rifle shots.

  It dragged itself free from its earthen tunnel, a collapsing ridge of sand, its forward set of great steel mandibles gnashing the last rocks, bouncing in its maw like unpopped corn kernels in a cast-iron pan. She was surprised to see the rest of the machine was not black steel, but instead an old-time elixir wagon, wood, from the looks of it, like she’d seen pulled behind horses in pictorials in history tomes. She knew such transports still existed, but back east they long ago had been replaced with soft-tracked conveyances topped with polished chrome travel compartments.

  The grinding, squealing sounds lessened, and great jets of steam drove at the ground from between the spoked wheels, raising swirling clouds of dust. A smell like melting metal curled its way into her nose and she fought down a sneeze.

  A third of the way back, where steel met wood, a thick plank door with black strapping squawked outward and a stout little man in a long, plaid coat with once-sculpted tails, a style the likes of which Constance hadn’t seen except in books, nearly fell out, surrounded by belching clouds of smoke.

  He swung on the door, the hinges screaming for lubrication, and coughed as if soon he would be overcome. He stopped abruptly, pulled in a deep breath, and then spat a great quantity of something that splattered in the dust, before hopping down and slapping his coat sleeves. He strode forward from out of the last of the steam, and stood still, smoke rising from a dented black bowler hat.

  The little man reached up and pulled at massive goggles that came free from his face with audible pops. He lowered them to his neck, but his eyes were still covered with what looked like smaller goggles in thick brass frames. The lenses, of a dark hue, perhaps black, were surrounded with dials that looked to be for focusing. He reached up with practiced, albeit greasy, fingertips and adjusted one.

  Then he just stood there smiling, his doughy, sweatpocked face bubbling throu
gh a sparse beard, ginger eyebrows, and thick side whiskers. His coat continued to smoke, as if he himself were a source of heat.

  “Good day to you, sir.” She pointed at him. “You appear to be on fire.”

  His eyes never left her, though he slapped at himself a few times more. In a voice that rattled like gravel in a cup, he said, “It gets a bit . . . hot . . . in there.” He spat again, then slowly stepped closer. Everything about him seemed of another time, as if he’d been apart somehow from normal society and fashion. He stared at her.

  “Is there a problem?” she said, a hand still visoring her eyes.

  “Oh, no, no, ma’am. That is to say, I’m not put out in the least by your state of . . . undress, as it were.”

  Constance barked an oath she reserved for more private affairs and felt her face heat even as she turned away, groping for the stiff garments draped on the shrubs. “I’m . . . I’m so sorry to . . .”

  She pulled on her clothes fast, noting the sad, wrinkled state her expensive fashions were now in. Blue velvet, silk luxlace, and camphor cotton had perhaps not been the best choices for traveling across the Spoils. At least they were drier than she expected. She continued picking and plucking her clothes from the brittle arms of the bushes, all the while keeping her brocade satchel close by, nudging it from bush to bush as she dressed.

  “Why, sir, surely you must have a sense of decorum, propriety? Avert your eyes.”

  “I think not.”

  She heard the smile in his voice.

  “It’s been far too long since I’ve seen such an exquisite female form and I’ll not look away. No indeed, I shan’t do it.”

  She half-turned toward him as she finished buttoning her second blouse. “Then you, sir, are a rogue.”

  “Mm-hmm. Among many other things, I can assure you.”

  “Who are you?” she finally said when she had covered enough of herself to feel bold again.

  “Who am I?” The portly man spluttered, stepped aside as if to let a lady pass him on a crowded streetside, and waved an arm at his wagon. “Can you not read, my dear?”