Sebastian snapped to attention and saluted. “I will hold that Garage or die trying, Sir!”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. What are you waiting for, man? Move!”
***
One eye on her fuel gauge, Cap pressed the friction switch on her Steno-Matic device. After a moment spent warming the wax that dictated its actions, the device let out a delicate chime to indicate it was ready. As Cap began to speak, the device spat out a thin strip of paper, coiling into a tiny metal bin she had placed to catch any notes she might have of her aerial adventure.
“Note to self; have David review plans for improved Engines on landing. Current fuel stores should be usable with the new design. New design is required to power new Mechanical Device, which will be Terrestrial rather than Aerial. Supplies to be gathered follow:”
As she spoke, she sketched. Before her eyes a vision took shape: a vision of death and retribution given physical form. Dissatisfaction gnawing at her, she briefly considered the size of the new Mechanical Men being produced in the Massachusetts foundries. Letting her honed intuition guide hands equally adept, she sketched out a human figure for scale. Satisfaction washed through her, and she continued to dictate as she drew.
“Iron; sixty tons. Pitchblende; eighty tons unrefined or forty tons yellowcake. White Silica; one ton.”
Another frown. Her muse of wild inspiration had spoken to her yet again. A diagram appeared on the canvas wing fragment before her, and she traced over it. Charges, forces, and stabilizing factors were penciled in. In her mind’s eye she saw the finished product, and she mused with unholy glee on David’s fate. “Aluminum, five tons; rubber, one ton; gelatin, one ton powdered.”
Another glance to the side showed her fuel was running low; five minutes or so remained before it ran dry. At least ten seconds would be required for the final boost, so she needed to cut things short. Her pen raced across the canvas sheeting, sketching parts and forms, gears and cogs, lenses and mirrors and tanks.
The gauge was nearing empty. The sketches were still rough, unfinished, but it was time. She folded the fabric over and over, tucking it into itself as she went. David was too clever by half; he would fill in the blanks she left, turn her rough sketched plans into blueprints. Once he had that, he would be unable to stop himself; he would turn those blueprints into reality.
The gauge hit the ‘Empty’ mark, leaving just the fuel in the lines. She exhaled, shoving the coarse, thick fabric down between her breasts and bodice. Before she could think twice about it, she grabbed the emergency cutoff with her other hand and pulled the rip cord. She began to plummet.
***
The moment Sebastian towed Leigh into the Garage he ceased to exist for her, as did every other fleshy being in the bay. Rank upon rank of Mechanical Men stood, sat, or lay silently in various states of disrepair. Here two ranks of Edisons in varying stages of damage. There a brace of Teslas, their characteristic electric slings characteristically nonfunctional. In the back, a large mass of outdated Colts. She could scarcely believe her eyes, but there was even a solid formation of near functional Franklins, their furnaces dark.
The only good news was a huge stack of boxes arrayed along one wall. Stamped on the side of each was the Colt-Gatling logo, the number 0.75 stamped beneath it. Guns and ammunition she had in abundance, but the good news was mixed. Not all of the Mechanical Men in the Garage had hands that would hold a Colt-Gatling, and of those that did, not all had two functioning hands. The few mechanics in the Garage had already stopped working on the Men and moved to the nest across the courtyard from the Garage. There they had taken up positions behind swivel mounted Colt-Gatling Mechanical guns.
Leigh listened to her own heels clicking an echoing cadence as she walked briskly through the formation, rank by rank. She reached the back rank, stationed more than halfway from the rear of the enormous Garage, in less than a minute. For a moment, she wondered at the placement of the Men; they were really too close together to work on properly, and despite a shadowed patch on the back wall, most of the rest of the Garage seemed well lit.
She froze, eyes widening in horror, as the shadow moved like a man shifting his weight. It was huge; at least the height of a Command Mechanical, and it appeared to be squatting on its haunches like some savage warrior. Black as night, leaning against a wall stained by generations of soot, she couldn’t see many details. A massive shield adorned the left arm. A gargantuan spear, taller than any tree she’d ever seen, stood braced by one hand and the floor. Something, maybe a quiver for the spear, maybe a smokestack, poked over one shoulder.
Sebastian’s voice cut through her shock, “Abrams! I said, ‘can you fix them?’”
Reluctantly, she tore her eyes away from the giant in the back of the room. Facing Sebastian, her fear dissolved as the work began to absorb her once more. “How far do you need to take them?”
When she spoke, the sound of shifting metal echoed through the length of the Garage. Her lizard brain driving her, she began walking toward the exit, to where the least physically damaged Men had been collected. Sebastian stood there, a half dozen mechanics arrayed behind him. They weren’t alike as peas in a pod, but between the shapeless grey coveralls and the buzzed hair preferred by military mechanics, the only way she could tell them apart were the nametags on their breast pockets.
Sebastian considered a moment. When he spoke, his voice had returned to calm, effected ennui. “Not far. A few hundred feet. I suspect they’ll need to shoot and survive being shot at for a while.”
Hearing her goal set before her, knowing the impossibility of it, her doubt began to fall away. There was a windmill before her, and like the Hidalgo Don Quixote, she would charge it. She heard the arrogance in her own voice, but couldn’t bring herself to care. “I will need full fuel for one hundred fifty. Leave the mechanics here, I will need assistants.”
Sebastian’s reply was just as quick, just as cocksure. “I already checked with the lads here. We have three tanks of petrol for the liquid-fueled Men and one scuttle of stove coal. Nothing else.”
Thoughts bounced through her mind like light through crystal. Her words were plucked from the shining center of the crystal, and she knew the truth of them as they left her lips.
“Take three men with you, leave me the rest. Have one man bring as much furniture as he can carry. Another to gather all the lamp oil he can find, a third to bring as many candles as he can carry. The candles are in the kitchen pantry, the lamp oil is stored beneath the main stair.”
Sebastian’s voice rang out, his tone turning her detached instructions into a command. “Smythe, Buttons, and Davidson. You heard her, now Move!”
“You bring me as much of my father’s brandy as you can. It’s stored in the cellar beneath the kitchen pantry; the lock will open to you if it can see your lieutenant’s bar.”
“What? I must stay at my post!”
Frustration skittered across Leigh’s working trance like water on a grill. “You’re not abandoning your post; you’re running for critical supplies that only you can acquire. Go quickly, I hear Prussian guns.”
Sebastian opened his mouth to protest once more, but in the distance he, too, heard the distinctive chatter-chatter-chatter of the machine pistols of the Prussian Mechanicals. He nodded briefly and ran, words drifting back behind him.
“If I don’t return, tell them I died doing my duty!”
Leigh was already lost in her work. Her fingers flew, disconnecting panels, detaching locks, and carefully prodding the wax and copper brain of the first Mechanical she chose. Her world narrowed to the Men, everything else was a tool or an obstacle.
“Rogers, Coal!”
Rogers’ reply was colored with indignation. “It will take too long to stoke the boiler!”
The bullet from her service pistol ricocheted from the ground near the unfortunate mechanic, flying off into the distance. She felt no anger, but she would not tolerate a broken tool.
“Coal!”
“On the way, Ma’am!”
As her fingers flew across a second Mechanical, she began snapping out orders to the remaining two technicians.
“Patterson, remove the water from that one’s boiler. Gardner, carry this one to the bunker, bolt it behind a Colt-Gatling, and get it stoked.”
“It’s got no legs. I’m doing it, I’m doing it!” Gardner grunted as he lifted the torso of the heavy mechanical half off the ground and began dragging it toward the bunker.
“It won’t be moving, just firing. Patterson, while you’re waiting for the boiler to heat, start loading the Mechanical guns. As you finish loading each one, weld it to one of the Mechanicals I’ve flagged green. Weld them in place, they won’t be coming off.”
“How do I…” Patterson cut off, eyes darting between the half-dozen splashes of green paint. Leigh registered his hesitation, looked up from strapping a low power crystal device to her goggles. Patterson froze as six mechanicals twitched in unison toward him.
Leigh’s voice sounded detached even to her own ears. Not that she cared. Another tool was not working as it ought to. “Can you weld?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
One potential problem resolved, Leigh moved to the next possible problem. “Can you load?”
“Yes Ma’am. Just about to ask what color green, Ma’am. This is me in motion, Ma’am.” Leigh spared a moment to wonder why Patterson seemed so frightened, then dismissed it from her mind as he sprinted to the gun and ammo boxes and began loading.
As long as her tools were functioning, Leigh didn’t care what else they did or did not do. Her hands were moving of their own accord, taking actions to set things to rights before she consciously became aware anything was wrong. In the distance, the sounds of gunfire grew louder. Her eyes were lost to the pattern of lights flickering across her goggles. She’d worked up the code during her final practical exam. She could never quite explain it to anyone when she wasn’t working. When she was working, she didn’t care.
“Red marks: empty boiler and start firebox with minimal coal. Yellow marks: add fuel mixture and crank ignition. The water cooling on our line Brownings is leaking. The MG08s on the Bertha are cycling oddly. They might be a new design. Or they’re going to break soon because someone tinkered with them.”
Patterson’s response caught her off guard. “What fuel mixture, Ma’am?”
Leigh looked up, concentration wavering. Something was interfering with her supplies. That had to stop. The sound of gunfire was close outside the great doors of the Garage. Without stopping to think, she stood and strode toward the doors. She found the selector on her goggles with her left hand; her pistol in her right. In front of her eyes, projected on the inside of her goggles, dozens of yellow crosshairs tried to follow a single red one sliding across the floor in front of her. She raised her pistol and looked out the door.
***
Sebastian hammered the last of the fireplace pokers into the frame of the antechamber door. The enemy had gotten into the manor. Sebastian and his men retreated barely a room ahead of them, loaded down with supplies. He swore under his breath; if the Abrams girl couldn’t get those Mechanical Men working, this was all for naught.
He started to open the door into the courtyard. A flare of light had him slamming the door shut and leaping back from it as it began to smolder. A brief glimpse out of a vision slit showed him two Men standing by the servant’s entrance. One bore the uncompromising, stark lines of a Prussian Blitzman, the other the unmistakably beautiful form of a daVinci. Both had noticed him and were moving toward his door, the Blitzman hosing the wall with naphtha as it came.
A moment later, the personnel door set into the great Garage doors opened, and Leigh stepped out into the open. She was carrying the simple targeting pistol issued to Engineers. It was suitable for scaring pickpockets and killing chickens. It wouldn’t stop a human soldier, let alone a Mechanical Man.
Sebastian cursed as the two Men heard her and began turning. Before they could complete the turn, she fired. The doors around her exploded with bursts of fire that punched straight through the thin metal of the great doors. The flamethrower tank came apart, and the Blitzman itself went down, hammered under the impact of more than a hundred Mechanical guns.
The daVinci raised its own gun in reply. Leigh didn’t duck for cover, or even seem to take the daVinci’s actions into account at all. She squeezed off round after round into its beautifully crafted torso. The Men behind her mimicked her every action, and each shot was echoed by a burst from the guns of the motley army of Mechanicals until the gorgeous machine fell, hammered to scrap by a horizontal waterfall of lead.
Sebastian led his few mechanics in a pell-mell dash across the courtyard, dodging around the burning streams of naphtha from the demolished Blitzman. Under one arm he carried a large keg of brandy. With the other he supported one end of an improvised stretcher. The mechanics who had been sent for lamp oil and candles had rigged it to carry more of the light but bulky items. Somewhere behind him, over the sound of the other two mechanics dragging a tapestry filled with furniture, he heard the sound of the barricaded door being demolished by heavy machine gun fire.
On the side of the courtyard facing away from the house, Sebastian saw the rear of the machine gun bunker. Three mechanicals were visible through the ragged opening where the daVinci had ripped the door off. Two were firing at targets in the distance, slowing their advance. The last was traversing its gun back and forth, but no bullets were firing. There was no telling why it wasn’t firing; the remains of the only human in the bunker were splashed across the courtyard behind the bunker where the daVinci had dragged him under the door. The bastard things tended to be vicious when they could.
When Sebastian reached the far side of the courtyard, Leigh was standing, staring at the gun in her hand with a look of utter confusion on her face. Stray rounds were beginning to chip the scrollwork around what was left of the door. Sebastian didn’t have time to be gentle. He lowered his shoulder and charged through her, carrying her with him into the garage. As soon as he was inside the door, he dove to the side, falling into the shadow of the building. The first mechanic followed him, but the other pair kept running, trying to make it behind the massed ranks of Mechanicals. Sebastian winced as they were cut down from behind, heavy slugs tearing great bloody holes in the pair.
Sebastian grabbed Leigh’s pistol and ran for the door. After a single step, the cable connecting it to her pulled him up short. She was lying on the floor, curled about herself, muttering incoherently.
“Leigh! How do you control the Mechanicals?”
“Two pounds furniture, four candlesticks, one cup cooking oil tops it all for flavor. One gallon oil, one gallon brandy, ether spray into the mouth to kill the taste.”
There was nothing for it. He drew back a hand and delivered a firm slap. In the back of the Garage, something shifted; the sound of metal on stone rang out as whatever was outside began shooting at the Mechanicals in the Garage. Half repaired Mechanicals started to come apart under the fire. Others were sluggish, running low on steam or fuel. With a second slap awareness returned to Leigh’s eyes, and with it came fear. Her shriek words were proof she was coherent, but not tracking well. “Sebastian! Blitzmen and daVincis, shooting at us!”
“How did you control the Mechanicals here in the Garage?”
Hands shaking, Leigh undid one of her belts and handed it to him. Her gun and her goggles were connected to it via cable. He staggered a bit at the unexpected weight of the pack on the belt. In moments, he had it secured around his own waist and was running for the door.
“Abrams! Get the men behind the Mechanicals and keep them fueled and armed!”
He didn’t have time to listen to her reply. At long last, he was doing what he had been trained for; leading a mass of Men into desperate battle.
***
Her wings shorn clean by the earlier mishap, her Engines silent to conserve fuel, Cap fell serenely toward the waiting gro
und. Despite the wind tearing at her, she worked on the last modifications of her gear. They would have worked better had she had more time, but time was fuel, fuel she couldn’t waste. She couldn’t bank to see the mountains any longer, but she didn’t need to see them now to position herself. She could see the faint traceries of steams below, the checkerboard of vast Mechanically plowed fields rolling over the hills beside them.
When one of her hands was free for a moment, she tapped the controls for her crystal. A minute or so later, an open connection chimed in her ear.
“Capri? Is anything wrong?”
“Nothing I haven’t handled. Is the Padre there?”
David’s disappointment was veiled, but to one who had been intimate with him, still apparent in his voice. “Of course, since little Kay is still in the room. Shall I put her on?”
“The Padre, please.”
“As you wish.”
A moment later, the priest’s voice sounded through the crystal. Like most inexperienced users, he spoke too loudly, but she was familiar with the phenomenon, and compensated appropriately. A glance below her showed her she little more than two minutes until she plowed a great bloody gash in the innocent French countryside. Her modifications complete, she felt at her chest. By the dampness there, it would take a miracle to save her if the crash didn’t kill her.
Her voice was rock steady. For herself, she would have cried, but for her daughter, she had to remain strong. “Father, can you hear me?”
“Yes, my child.”
“The damage my wings have taken may become a problem when I land. If something happens to me, I want you to take Kay back to the school I attended when Gramma Jones passed.”
“Nothing will happen to you, child.”
“Father, I’m asking you for my own peace of mind. Promise me, please?”
“To ease your mind, of course I will. Should anything happen to you, I promise to see little Kay to the Sisters of Saint Francis and see her enrolled there.”
“Thank you, Father. David, is Kay still there?”
The Strange Fate of Capricious Jones Page 3
