Amidst Dark Satanic Mills (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 2)

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “Thieves fall out,” Hand said. “Done to death by more than a slanderous tongue. Varmints!”

  “Shakespeare by way of Nicodemus Legend,” Professor Swift mused. “Well done, Sergeant.”

  Lady Cynthia rolled her eye.

  “But if Khallimar killed Bellaseus, as seems most probable,” Folkestone continued, “then who killed him, and with so much anger and violence?”

  Hand thought of a leather-clad girl with a brass arm and a man whose neck had been casually snapped. “We may never know.”

  “One thing we know with absolute certainty,” Lady Cynthia said, “is that MEDUSA is dead, never to rise again.”

  * * *

  Upon the sacred Plain of Eternity, beneath the eternal warmth other races called the Sun, the Drassa gathered as they had for eons. Gone for all time were the Mills erected by the Cold Ones. And the Cold Ones themselves were gone, returned to the outer vastnesses, though none could say for how long.

  Over the plain a portal opened, summoned by nothing more than the combined will of the Drassa. The Breath of Life flowed in from the Other Place. Of course, the Drassa did not actually breathe anymore than they had heard the voice of the Cold One who had come to them with thoughts of rebellion and freedom, concepts the Drassa had never before encountered but which stirred unwonted emotions within their supremely logical minds.

  We must never let the Cold Ones return…

  The Cold One showed us the path…

  They are not all the same…

  This one is most interesting…

  The Drassa brought forth the tiny spark found within the husk outside the ruins. The base itself, now unprotected, was quickly returning to the elements from which it had been raised. The Drassa would also eventually let the spark they held return to the artifice of eternity, but not immediately.

  What do you want? Is this Hell? Are you ghosts?

  Sometimes the spark asked questions, most of which either had no answers or none that could be understood by its limited thought processes. Most of the time it simply screamed soundlessly. Perhaps after a few centuries the Drassa would allow the spark to find the oblivion it craved, but not until they had wrung from it every iota of knowledge and understanding, especially how the Breath of Life could be manipulated.

  The tiny spark screamed in terror.

  Upon their little planet, so near the Solar System’s primordial furnace, the Drassa considered a universe of Cold Ones and thought about what to do next.

  Note to the Reader

  Thank you for purchasing this copy of Amidst Dark Satanic Mills. I hope you enjoyed it. Captain Robert Folkestone and Sergeant Felix Hand will return in The Demon-Haunted Moon, third in this series of interplanetary steampunk adventures.

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