The Rise of the Iron Moon

by Stephen Hunt

  One of the dissection array’s arms lashed out to the end of its reach as Molly struggled with its controls. Not far enough to touch Keyspierre, but the rotating head of blades sliced into Lord Rooksby’s cage door. With an eagle-like cry, the twisted Lord Commercial pushed free of the cage and snapped open his wings, gliding forward into Keyspierre, sending both of them sprawling across the laboratory floor.

  Commodore Black was on top of them, trying to work out who was who in the struggle as they all rolled across the floor, the clawed fingers of the birdman matched against Keyspierre’s fangs.

  ‘You’re so proud of your hunger, you dirty wheatman, let me feed it for you!’ shouted the commodore as he thrust his sabre down into the shiftie’s mouth, sliding the sword out and then slashing back and forth across the body.

  Molly grabbed the u-boat man as he cut down furiously at the corpse. ‘Jared! He’s dead.’

  Sense returned slowly to the commodore’s eyes.

  Molly looked to the open door of the laboratory. ‘They’re going to kill everyone in the Steammen Free State, Jared.’

  Lord Rooksby pulled at his metal collar and made a croaking noise like a parrot, trying to form the words inside his mangled throat.

  Molly listened intently to what Lord Rooksby was trying to say.

  ‘Show. Ship. Way.’

  ‘Thank you, Rooksby softbody,’ said Coppertracks.

  It had taken the loss of Rooksby’s humanity for him to find it.

  A twirling axe impaled the last slat defending the gantry and Purity ran out to stand underneath the dark rotating monster at the heart of the satellite. Half the Bandits of the Marsh had fallen fighting through waves of slats spilling out of the iron moon’s halls, barracks and breeding chambers to get her this far. Those remaining began barricading the corridor leading to the vast chamber. It would not take long for the slat legions to arrive in their thousands to protect their most precious piece of plundered Kal technology.

  Purity stepped over a master’s body, the giant woman’s perfect eyes staring lifelessly across at the white-hot barrel of the pistol that had fallen from her hand.

  Jackaby Mention was behind Purity, wiping the blood from a knife onto his trousers. Jackaby looked up at the immense monster twisting in the hollow heart of the iron moon, using a broken set of brass goggles taken from one of the dead masters to stare at its malfeasance. A stillborn star, crushed beyond collapse and folding time with its corpse. A horror.

  ‘That is it, my queen?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Purity. ‘It’s creating a window of time, punched through existence back into the past. The rift the Army of Shadows crawled out of.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Jackaby. ‘Destroy this and we seal the Army of Shadows in the past.’

  ‘It’s not quite as easy as destroying it,’ said Purity. ‘The maths-blade showed me that. It’s a dead star. Anything we throw at this thing will only feed it, make it stronger. Energy, matter, it will consume everything.’

  Jackaby lowered his goggles. ‘Then how?’

  Purity stamped on the gantry running like a hoop around the rotating beast. ‘There is a field of distorted time being created by this monster. We need to create another one in close opposition to it. One that will destabilize the first. The tides created by the two fields interacting with each other will rip apart the iron moon and allow the torn skin of time to heal itself.’

  There were shouts coming out of the narrow corridor leading into the core of the moon, the thump of slat weapons and the cry of men and women dying to protect the entrance.

  ‘I believe I know what you will ask next.’

  ‘Know that I do not ask it lightly,’ said Purity.

  ‘I have never run that fast,’ said Jackaby.

  ‘The wind envies your heels, Jackaby Mention. Whisk me up a storm inside here, stir up the metre of time itself with your bare feet.’

  ‘There is a reason my body freezes when I run,’ said Jackaby. ‘It is how I stay alive at such speeds. But for this I will need to run far beyond the cold, the cramps, run straight into the fire.’

  ‘Fire behind us and fire in front,’ said Purity.

  ‘And ever was it thus.’ Jackaby lowered himself into a sprinter’s starting position, and then shouted at the other bandits protecting the gantry. ‘Roll all the bodies off the path. I will need a clear run.’

  ‘Thank you, Jackaby.’

  ‘No,’ said the bandit. ‘Thank you, my queen. It has been my honour to serve you a second time.’

  Purity spilled one of her dead fighters off the walkway, taking the corpse’s trident first. ‘How much time will you need?’

  Jackaby stared up at the dark rotating singularity. ‘About five million years’ worth.’

  ‘I’ll buy it in the blood of our enemies.’

  ‘Sell it dear,’ one of the Bandits of the Marsh was yelling. ‘Sell it dear!’

  Purity hardly heard as she jabbed back at the snarling, hissing horde of slats breaking against the torrent of her fighters. This was violence in its rawest, dirtiest, most brutal form, curses and screams, spittle and wounds being given and received. Purity wept as she slashed and thrust her way through the melee. Here was war.

  And through this channel of carnage the emperor came striding, surrounded by his personal guard of giants, all wearing the same armour – glistening black shells with massive rippling muscles – as if they had skinned slats alive to make it. The armour gave its wearers incredible strength, adding force to the giants’ already perfect flesh. The masters tore into the front ranks of the Bandits of the Marsh, shredding their own slat soldiers to get to the intruders, to protect the dark star ripping time to sate their race’s appetites.

  Behind Purity a blur was whirling around the gantry, becoming a wall of fire underneath of the Army of Shadows’ dark rotating ball; the agonized doppler-shifted scream of Jackaby Mention a shocking drone echoing around the moon’s core.

  Here was war.

  Commodore Black knocked the side of his stolen slat pistol against the hangar door, as if that would do any good. He had discovered that the weapon took three seconds to recharge between shots the hard way, and now he was limping where a wounded slat had torn at his leg.

  ‘They’re loading the bomb inside Starsprite,’ said Coppertracks, the sharp sight of his vision plate magnifying the scene inside. ‘If the slats have activated the gate …’

  Then they only had mere seconds left to stop the slaughter of all the steammen.

  Molly looked at the crystal rotating inside her pistol barrel, the air steaming around it. The Army of Shadows’ damn heat agitation guns were intended to be handled by something of a slat’s weight; she needed both hands to lift and point hers. Oh, for a good honest Jackelian purse pistol. Still, at least she was capable of holding one. Poor Lord Rooksby, with his broken, corrupted flesh, could only attack like a beast.

  Molly pulled her heavy pistol up, looking at the force moving about their ship. ‘So many slats.’

  And so much for surprise.

  Coppertracks was powering through into the hangar, desperation and panic adding speed to his treads. Molly stepped out of cover and sent one of the slats tumbling off its feet with her first shot, counting the seconds to her next one.

  The last desperate charge of humanity and its allies had begun.

  Molly was halfway through the hangar, racing through a hail of fire-bolts with Commodore Black by her side, cursing, when a stray shaft of energy severed the stays tying a steep rise of crates to a wall. An avalanche of heavy cases came crashing down towards the four of them.

  One of the Bandits of the Marsh seized the lever to seal the door into the core of the iron moon – whether to buy more time for Jackaby Mention or to shut out the final terrible screams of his death rattle was not certain. The man needn’t have bothered. The bandit Purity had released from a stone circle had gone beyond a blur, beyond a circling wall of flame, beyond the beat of time … and as two time fields that sh
ould never have co-existed collided, the rotating monster at the moon’s core was compressed, tentacles of dead star-stuff stretching far outside the range of the magnetic guns beating it into submission. Time tore in two competing directions at once, the passage to the past punched by the Army of Shadows’ singularity storming against the time field Jackaby’s streaking form was whipping up, both bleeding together in the present – a paradox too far for the poor mangled fabric of reality – and the passage’s door was sucked off into the core, walls of relativity and matter twisted beyond endurance.

  Bandits, slats and their masters in the passage were drawn screaming into the raging maw at the moon’s core, hands and talons flailing and digging at the corridor walls, the field of war turned into a mad solitary scramble for survival in a single instant. They tried to hold on despite the terrible quaking as the iron moon’s orbit shifted. A flying body bounced off the opposite side of the passage, hitting the wall just above Purity’s head and scrabbled onto the same instrument panel she was trying not to lose her grip on. The force of the dead star dragged the figure fumbling down alongside her. It was Watt, the young cobbler’s face bleeding badly from a gash on his forehead.

  ‘I told you that you would have been better off staying on the u-boat,’ Purity called.

  ‘I bet they sunk it,’ Watt yelled back.

  A struggling hissing slat flew past Purity and Watt; Purity’s fingers clinging desperately onto that instrument panel on the red rusted wall.

  Sliding through the broken melee fell the emperor, his giant’s frame still enclosed by his slimy living armour. It wouldn’t buy him even an extra second in the maelstrom being worked inside the core, not now the deadly singularity his people had looted had been unseated. He was skating down the floor, his hands digging desperately into bandits and his own followers, only succeeding in loosening their holds and sending slats and men toppling towards hideous termination.

  The emperor flailed past Purity and Watt, grabbing hold of the edge of a side corridor just down from their position, trying to scramble up into it, but the draw of the singularity was too great even for the emperor’s might; the incredible pressure drawing him back down. His bellow sounded over the roar of the singularity. ‘Is this how it ends?’

  ‘Every plague burns itself out in the end,’ called Purity. She reached out to Watt’s back and tore off the wax-paper wrapped parcel hanging there. Her shoes. And she hadn’t even got to see them. She held her hand out, aiming the parcel at the emperor. ‘Given time.’

  As she opened her fingers, the parcel was torn out of her hand by the energies below, arrowing down the corridor, hitting the emperor’s hands and dislodging him. Screaming, the emperor was sent spinning away into the Kals’ creation. His people had consumed the ancient civilization of Kaliban whole; now it was the turn of their slave race’s creation to consume him. The emperor’s body buckled and bent, becoming a red brume as every molecule burst asunder and merged with the temporal rage of the singularity.

  ‘A bit of a bloody waste,’ shouted Watt. ‘I could have unstrapped my wooden leg and given it to you for that …’

  Purity shook her head. ‘No, they were the best pair of shoes I ever had.’

  ‘You got the best I ever made,’ Watt yelled back.

  Purity felt the increasing pressure of the singularity bearing down on her; sweat rolling off her and Watt’s palms and pulled into the chaos of the core. She and Watt were going to last only seconds before they joined the emperor in his death beyond time. Purity tried to ignore the screams of the fighters and the surviving Jackelians being dislodged and sucked away, the deaths of her brave fey boys and girls.

  The emperor’s last words mocked her. Is this how it ends?

  Purity and Watt exchanged glances and both lost their grip at the same time, falling into the light together.

  Becoming the light.

  Coppertracks’ voicebox gave vent to his anguish as he saw what the slats had done to Starsprite, the half-steamman craft’s innards lying spilled across her cabin. ‘Vandals! Wreckers!’

  The looking-glass gate was fused with the inner hull of the craft. No way to cut it out without risking the mirror’s destruction. Poor Starsprite, she had been defying the Army of Shadows to the end. Trying to protect her half-brother Coppertracks and the people of the metal.

  Following the steamman inside the craft, Lord Rooksby and Molly manhandled the commodore’s unconscious form into the protection of the ship’s cabin. They laid him down next to the corpses of the slats that had died defending the craft. He had taken quite a bang on the back of his head when that stray shot had severed the ties holding the supply crates. But Commodore Jared Black was a tough old bird. If any of them survived, surely it would be him.

  ‘The bomb,’ Molly shouted, indicating the masters’ explosive, a large black egg resting on the two iron rails the slats had used to carry it inside the ship. ‘Can it be defused?’

  The chattering of the slats’ sound-sight was growing loud in the hangar outside ran towards the battle. Lord Rooksby said something to Molly but she couldn’t understand his mangled words.

  Then the first quake hit, all the shell-like craft inside the hangar toppling over with an immense crash as the iron moon bounced in its orbit. A long, violent oscillation followed as the shockwave passed down the beanstalk connecting them to the world below. It only took seconds for the impact to pass through to the ground station and be reflected back up at them, followed by exploding machinery and a second quake.

  ‘Purity must have made it to the core of the moon,’ shouted Molly. ‘She’s striking at the great sage’s dead star and bringing down the house.’

  But the steamman had other things on his mind, his metal fingers flickering with urgency across the Army of Shadows’ weapon. ‘This bomb can’t be defused in the little time we have, Molly softbody,’ said Coppertracks, inspecting the weapon’s panel. ‘Its timer indicates a three-minute countdown. They must have armed it just as we attacked.’

  ‘Activate the looking-glass,’ ordered Molly. ‘You told me that the gate only has enough power to stay open for a few seconds; we can be through and let the iron moon take the bomb’s explosion when it goes off.’ She dragged Commodore Black’s unconscious body close to the mirrored surface. ‘Enter the code to unlock the gate, old steamer.’

  ‘Wait,’ said the steamman. He was rooting through the components scattered about the floor. ‘Starsprite’s soul board, it must be here.’

  ‘Coppertracks!’

  There was another quake, even worse than the previous two. The moon was tearing itself apart around their murdered ship. Slat weapon-fire hailed against Starsprite’s outer hull.

  ‘I have it!’ Coppertracks scooped up a black board in his iron fingers, setting his tracks to full reverse. The oily mirrored surface lit up and then faded into transparency as he tapped his activation key into the gate. The hazy outlines of a room were now visible on the other side, centaur-like steammen knights running towards the membrane. From the looks of it, the portal led directly to the steammen’s mountain stronghold, King Steam’s palace.

  Molly and Lord Rooksby passed Commodore Black’s body through to the steammen knights, the u-boat man moaning as he began to recover his senses. Coppertracks went next, great iron arms belonging to his kin appearing through the quivering membrane to help lift the venerable scientist through.

  Molly turned to Lord Rooksby, tugging at him, a handful of moulting feathers from his wing-like arm coming away in her hand. ‘Come on!’

  The birdman tapped the black sphere of the bomb. ‘Protect.’

  ‘There are womb mages back in Jackals, worldsingers, they might be able to help you—’

  Shaking his head, Lord Rooksby opened his man-beak again. ‘Protect.’

  As Molly launched herself through the looking glass, she experienced a vertigous feeling, like falling. Her last sight before passing through the membrane was of Lord Rooksby going to the door of the craft and screechi
ng defiance at the attacking slats. It wasn’t the cry of a bird. It was the roar of a lion. Molly hit a cold stone floor, scattering the feathers from Rooksby’s wing. The mirror cracked, fizzing sparks above her, its oily surfacing growing dark and hard. Their gate had sealed them off, sealed them in the mountain fastness of the steammen.

  Commodore Black was on his feet, banging at the mirror, trying to get back to the other side, but it was too late. ‘Purity!’

  ‘It’s no good, Jared softbody,’ said Coppertracks. ‘There’s a large-yield neutron bomb about to be detonated on the iron moon.’

  ‘About to be detonated?’ called one of the steammen guarding the looking-glass gate. ‘Have you not seen the moon, brother slipthinker?’ He pointed to a door opening out onto a mountain terrace. The baleful iron moon was growing smaller, the white tentacle of the dislodged beanstalk whipping behind it like the flagellum of a bacterium, explosions flowering out from underneath the rusted surface.

  ‘My girl, oh my lovely brave girl!’

  ‘The star field,’ said Coppertracks. ‘By my ancestors’ cogs, look at the heavens. The stars are returning to normal. The time field projected by the iron moon is diminishing. The moon is being sucked into the collapsing field, back towards Kaliban, back along its own original timeline.’

  ‘I told her, Aliquot Coppertracks, I told my beautiful little lass who she was, just like you said I should have done all along.’

  ‘She saved us all,’ said Molly, shocked. The sight of the crumbling moon was mesmerizing. ‘Purity, she told me that she would.’

  A halo of fierce purple light suddenly surrounded the iron moon as the weapon that would have destroyed King Steam’s realm briefly lit the heavens. Then the terrible eye winked out, the last of the stars returning to their true positions. The iron moon was gone forever.

  ‘I don’t care,’ whispered the commodore. He fell to his knees and began to cry.