The Incorruptibles (Book One, Frankenstein Vigilante): Frankenstein Vigilante: The Steampunk Series (Frankenstein Vigilante. The Steampunk Series.)

by Peter Lawrence

  En route to the Senate buildings in Mason’s customized hackney, a lightweight two-seater with a laminated wood frame, fabric body and an engine from a written-off cop kart, Shelley Mary began to ask herself the questions she should have thought of when Bass first proposed the assignment. Since Jerry was right there with her, she posed the questions to him.

  “Jerry, this could be the biggest story of the decade. A dynamista attack on our government. Why would Bass put me up for it?” But Jerry simply laughed. “No – I know that,” she continued, “but what I mean is, why just me? Shouldn’t he have the entire staff, anyone who can even spell their own name, out here?”

  “My guess it’s bullshit. He wanted to get into your knickers and even after you slammed the drawer on his cobblers he couldn’t admit that’s all there was to it.”

  “Actually, I didn’t give him time to admit it. When I left his office he was still screaming and drooling.”

  There was a long pause as Jerry overtook a line of jitneys, barely regaining his own side of the highway in the face on an oncoming camion lourd whose steam-horn seemed powerful enough to blast the light speedster clear off the road.

  “Maybe it’s just vanity or wishful thinking on my part,” Shelley Mary continued, hoping there was no tremor in her voice. Did he always drive like this? “But I think it’s a real tip.”

  “Then here’s a question - never mind his hacks, why didn’t he tell the cops?”

  “The cops,” she laughed, “what good would they be? This is a dynamista bombing, not some tramp bothering a Topper outside Rrods and Phortnum.”

  “That’s not the point,” Jerry replied. “Imagine the shit that would come down on him if the tip’s genuine and the bombing happens – and he hadn’t reported it.” True enough, Shelley Mary thought. So maybe this was all just bullshit. “So shall we just call it a day?” she asked the silvographer.

  “Fuck no!” he replied, “you dragged me out here. There’s bound to be some kind of story involved. We might as well poke around.”

  But as they poked around, nothing seemed out of place. Within the security fencing, and having passed through some desultory checks, was a straggling cross-section of the almost extinct middle class who retained a strange respect for the symbols of government even as that government raped them.

  “Look,” Jerry said quietly. “No! Don't make it obvious. Your two o’clock.”

  Shelley Mary stopped, as if to search for something she might have dropped, then glanced in the direction Jerry had indicated. Nothing much. Just a group of four large men dressed similarly – smart but casual.

  “Your five-thirty.” Again, Shelley Mary turned as subtly as she could, and saw a similar group, but five men this time. Now that they had been pointed out, she saw more and more of these groups. Twos, threes, fours and the one of five. Civilian but uniformed nonetheless.

  “Who are they?” she asked Jerry.

  “Cops,” he replied. “Or Silencio wide boys. Who can tell the difference, these days?” Fuck! she thought, and I’m supposed to be the journalist.

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” Jerry said. It was as if he had read her mind. First Cerval and Evangeline and now Jerry. Am I that easy to read? “I’ve been in this game a very long time,” he continued. “You’ll get there.”

  Now that they’d spotted the barely concealed enforcers, Shelley Mary felt the latent danger in the air. She began to turn phrases over in her mind. It was a day like any other. Smoke citizens polishing up on their civics lessons as they toured the Senate compound in the afternoon sun. A day like any other but for the…

  “Shit!” she said.

  “What?”

  “I know that face! At least I think I do.” The face grew nearer. Flat, square and horribly, freshly, scarred around the mouth. The body that owned the face had a firm grip on a skinny young man in a long overcoat, too heavy and too hot for the weather. The face seemed to feel her eyes and looked directly at her. No visible sign of recognition but he and his skinny companion instantly turned to head in a different direction. Were it not for the skinny man’s surprise at the face’s directing hand, the movement might have passed as natural.

  Fuck! thought the face. That bitch.

  He hadn’t recognized her immediately. The last time he saw her, she’d damn nearly ridden him down on her Arielectro. If it weren’t for this mission – this mission to which he owed his life – he’d fix her right now.

  For a brief moment, Samwell McFee felt Mueller’s grip on his arm relax and he thought about running. An instant later, the opportunity had passed and Samwell knew that before he’d taken a step Mueller would have eviscerated him with the boning knife beneath his jacket.

  Samwell was hot and terrified, both conditions caused by the sweating dynamite strapped to his bony frame and the overcoat that hid it. He had tried desperately to escape from this mission, but Bonnot Falwell seemed to know exactly what he was thinking and had made certain that Samwell was never alone. Then Dalton Trager Rhineheart had got word to him. Just go through with the plan. We’ll be there. We’ll save you. Samwell doubted that he would have believed that coming from anyone else in The Smoke, but with Dalton? Maybe, just maybe.

  In any event, this horribly disfigured Silencio thug had been beside him night and day ever since he had returned to the Bonnot’s dynamista temple after meeting with Dalton, so he really only had two choices: immediate death by sharp blade or later death by massive explosion. He sensibly concluded that the longer he stayed alive, the longer he might stay alive.

  As he and Mueller approached one of the arched main entrances to the Senate galleries, he was sure they’d be stopped by Security; that the dynamite would be discovered and that he might go home via several years in jail. But the security guards exchanged quick, knowing glances with Mueller and they were through, unfrisked.

  Shelley Mary and Jerry, hanging back, saw a tall and imposing figure hurry forward, followed by several nervous characters who did not look comfortable in their new clothes.

  “Isn’t that…”

  “Dalton Rhineheart,” Jerry finished the thought for her. “There’s something going on here. C’mon!” They pushed forward, flashed their press passes at security and hurried into the building.

  They were just in time to see Dalton and his colleagues overtake Mueller, grab him and yell to Samwell: “Get to the East Gate! Now!” Samwell turned and took off exactly as Jerry Mason stepped up and fired the silvographa’s magnesium flash. The brilliant light froze the action – and froze the actors into momentary inaction.

  Mueller recovered first, stepped up to Jerry and slashed his neck wide open. Before Shelley Mary could even comprehend that image, Mueller drew a Wills-Tucker seven-shot revolver and fired at Samwell, who had begun to run. The first two shots missed and Samwell was almost around a corner and safe – but the third hit Samwell squarely in the back. It blasted him off his feet and he fell, now beyond that safe corner and out of Shelley Mary’s line of sight.

  The third bullet also triggered the dynamite strapped to his body.

  Shelley Mary had dropped to Jerry’s dying side – nothing she could do to help him – when the blast hit, slightly deflected by the corridor’s layout. Even so, had she been standing, it would have knocked her flat. As it was, she was sprayed with blood and tissue, deafened by the sound, disorientated by the massive shockwave. The explosion, a kind of rolling thunder, one stick of dynamite setting off another, also flattened both Mueller and Dalton Rhineheart. Rhineheart recovered first and Shelley Mary saw him kick the Silencio thug in the temple, his steel-toed boot smashing Mueller’s skull. As if that weren’t enough, Rhineheart then stomped on his neck and Shelley Mary heard – or felt, for she was too deaf to hear – the fatal crushing of cartilage, the destruction of Mueller’s windpipe.

  Dalton turned to her, grabbed her arm and issued a command which barely penetrated her ringing ears. As he dragged her away, she had the presence of mind to grab Jerry’s silvographa,
surprised at its solidity and heft. Propelled by Dalton, she pushed against the incoming tide of security and the suited men she and Jerry had noticed. When one of them stopped Dalton and another stepped up to her, she swung the heavy device at his head, scored a direct hit. To Shelley’s surprise, the man went down like sawn pine. He lay unmoving, his eyes open.

  While she was trying to comprehend the fact that she’d killed a man, Dalton grabbed her and, in the chaos, they made their escape.

  Only now, as her ears began to clear, did she hear the screams, the sirens, the shouts and the wails.

  oOo

  15

  ONE EVENING, THREE WEEKS INTO HIS RECOVERY PROGRAMME, Thorsten dropped the barbell and straightened up sharply – almost lost his balance, for he was still not entirely used to life with only one arm, and his more severely wounded leg would never be as strong as its pair. To Cerval’s intense surprise and pleasure, the giant grinned, stepped up to him, wrapped his one massive arm around his friend and lifted him high off the ground.

  “I feel great!” He said. “I’m a new man, Cervie!” And then, acknowledging his friend’s astonishment. “No pain! Nothing!” Whether his recovery was due to intensive exercise, mind over matter or simple will power, it wasn’t clear. Nor did it matter. The point was, Thorsten Lavarack was back. Now he banged his head – a blow that would have caved in anyone else’s skull. “You’re a genius!” he said. “Now, let’s see what you’ve got.”

  What Cerval had was the steam-powered prosthetic arm.

  The team constructing Thor’s Hammer, as it inevitably became known, was led by D’Arcy Lord Pitts, Donald Nathan’s father. The old man might concede metallurgy to his son, but he remained the most exquisite smith, a man whose huge, scarred hands could repair, rebuild or replace even a timepiece’s finest components.

  Despite the team’s skills, there were many times the Pitts and their helpers wished that Doctor Efrain, the genius who had designed the unit, was at the estate to help and advise.

  However complex its workings, and its drawings, the prosthetic’s functional layout was simple: an arm articulated exactly like a human arm; designed to be strapped to shoulder and back; operated by a control panel manipulated by Thorsten’s healthy hand; high-pressure steam generated in a small boiler slung between Thorsten’s shoulder blades drove the miniature turbines and pumps which pressurized the plant-oil-filled hydraulic lines and pistons.

  That power-plant had been more problematic than the arm or the interchangeable ‘hands’ which ranged from a fearsome club hammer, through the traditional split hook to a fully articulated claw. Pitts was working on a circular saw attachment. To be effective, the arm required instant power, which was not a characteristic of any steam-driven device unless that power were stored in a pressurised system, an accumulator.

  Donald Nathan’s alien alloy had given the manufacturing team a huge advantage. An accumulator/boiler/steam generation system constructed of iron or bronze, and capable of withstanding the massive pressures Efrain had specified, would be so heavy that even a man as big and powerful as Thorsten would find it hard to move with any degree of agility. The alien alloy brought lightness and relative compactness; and it could withstand the necessary pressure. But how to release that pressure – and keep it under control? That was another problem to be solved, and one that could only be proofed under operational conditions.

  The massive arm sat on a workbench, each handmade rivet, nut and bolt burnished; cylinders, pistons, ball joints, couplings, hoses and flash-boiler turned to the finest tolerances. Wisps of steam escaped from pressure relief valves and, wreathing ‘Thor’s Hammer,’ gave it an other-worldly appearance. It hissed quietly, not the gentle sound of a kettle but an altogether more purposeful note. It seemed alive, with a will of its own.

  Donald Nathan and his father attached the prosthetic to Thorsten’s back and shoulder, watched anxiously by Cerval and Thor’s father, Gori Laverack. Only Thorsten seemed relaxed.

  The infernal contraption steamed gently as the final straps were fastened.

  Thorsten turned this way and that, accustoming himself to the prosthetic arm’s weight and bulk. He walked the length of the room twice; and only one who knew him very well would see that one side of his body was substantially weaker than the other and that movement in the damaged leg was brutally painful. Cerval wondered whether Thor’s father had been right and that they should have amputated. Thor would have awakened to the loss. Accepted it. How much more devastating to believe that the cutting and sawing was over and then return to surgery.

  Thor faced him with a smile.

  “Stand back, Cervie!” And Cerval did step back a pace or two, beyond the reach of the alloy arm, just in case, in this test run, Thorsten did not have full control. The others in the room stepped back, too.

  With his uninjured arm, Thorsten reached for the prosthetic’s control panel, which hung around his neck. In the centre of the panel was a universally jointed lever which could move in all directions, an all-ways controller that was Efrain’s latest pride and joy.

  “Extend,” Thor muttered to himself, flipped a switch and turned a dial.

  Pressurized steam hissed and the arm extended slowly.

  “Retract.” Another switch and another dial and the arm folded itself back into a neutral position.

  “We need to combine those two controls,” said Cerval. “Otherwise you’ll just be too slow.”

  “Though I was only on low power. You know that?”

  “Of course,” said Cerval, doubting that increased pressure would speed the selection from extend to retract. He watched as Thor repeated the extension then, with the arm fully extended, reached for the all-ways controller. He pushed the lever one way and the arm followed. The other way, and the arm followed. Drew it back and the arm bent at the elbow, folding back towards him until the hammer attached to its wrist rested against its alloy bicep.

  “How about a straight jab?” Thorsten smiled, Cerval thinking that if this thing was only half as powerful as Thor’s real arm had been, with that hammer fixed to its end it would be lethal. He nodded. Go ahead. Thor worked the controls and the arm extended quite slowly, a perfect replication of a boxer’s jab. He stepped forward till the fist/hammer touched the back wall of the room, a wall constructed of large stone blocks, finely chiselled and tightly mortared. He withdrew the fist/hammer to its resting position against his bicep and took a short step forward. Turning to Cerval:

  “Full power?’

  Cerval bit his lip. He was alert to the risk, but unwilling to curb his friend’s boyish enthusiasm. Thorsten grinned. “First time for everything, Cervie, and like you said, we don’t have forever.” So Cerval nodded yes.

  This time, Thorsten dialed up the pressure before he hit the controller.

  The arm shot forward, smashed into the stone wall with such force that it split its target. The recoil sent Thorsten staggering back and the flying stone chips had everyone diving for cover.

  An instant later, the entire power plant exploded. Superheated steam and fragments of hose everywhere. Involuntary shouts of surprise and confusion and one yell of pain as the steam jet hit the older Pitts, burned through his leather jacket and peeled his shoulder almost to the bone.

  Only Thorsten remained silent. He shrugged the unit off his back and let it drop behind him. “How does that saying go, Cervie?” he said. “Back to the drawing board?”

  oOo

  16

  THE THREE ARMOURED HORSES sped along the Harlesdon Marshes road, nimbly side-stepping ruts and potholes. Squat, muscular, they carried their armour as if it were barely heavier than papier maché – which it was, being made of Chavalier ReForTin. As Rhineheart’s chariot was also made of the same super-light alloy, the horses drew it along like a racing trap.

  Its lightness had its disadvantages. Despite its advanced construction, the interior of the chariot was not a comfortable place to be. Its leaf suspension was no match for the poorly maintained roads, whi
ch got worse the closer they were to Harlesdon Marshesl and the lightweight vehicle bounced violently. The interior vibrated and rattled and the only light came through two narrow slots at the front, the higher for vision, the lower for the horses’ reins.

  Dalton Trager Rhineheart wielded the reins expertly, flexing to remain upright as he navigated around the deepest of the potholes, hands steady so that the horses knew exactly what was expected of them.

  Shelley Mary was left to fend for herself, sprawled on the floor among Dalton’s weapons and body armour. Bruised and bloodied.

  Fuck! She’d killed a cop! Or a Silencio.

  Not that she’d meant to. Who knew that a good whack with a camera would do it? Mind you, Jerry always did use heavy-duty equipment. Shelley Mary felt her eyes moisten as she thought of her friend, but her mind quickly returned to her own plight. She was no longer a journalist – if she’d ever been one – but an outlaw. A marked woman. She’d be hunted down like a rabid dog, to be shot or beaten to death on sight. Perhaps she should have settled for reporting on the doings of rich nonentities and famous idiots. At least you didn’t end up caving in skulls with silvographas, or getting blown up, or being dragged off by wild-looking men driving chariots.

  Despite the self-pity and introspection, Shelley Mary did not fail to notice that Dalton’s calves filled his gaiters nicely, as did his chest his leather blouson. An image flashed across her mind, in which Dalton’s chest was pressed against hers, no blouson between, but she quickly dismissed it.

  What’s the matter with me? How come every time I’m in the shit, I think of sex?

  And where was he taking her?

  She didn’t have to wait long to find out. Metallic clangs and whining ricochets announced that the chariot was under fire. She heard incoherent, threatening cries and shouts. Dalton reached down, opened a cabinet, pulled out a handful of small metal flasks. Without reining in the horses, he flung a few out of the lower slot. The threatening cries turned to shouts of elation.