The Havoc Machine
Page 1
PRAISE FOR THE
CLOCKWORK EMPIRE SERIES
The Dragon Men
“[The Dragon Men] continues to demonstrate its original premise and to showcase the inventive pair who strive to save a world.”
—Library Journal
The Impossible Cube
“Action, adventure, dirigibles, and mad scientists, oh my! I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed The Doomsday Vault and looked forward to continuing the adventures of Alice and Gavin in The Impossible Cube. I wasn’t disappointed.”
—Night Owl Reviews
“The characters and their plight are so easy to become invested in, and I found myself rooting for them every step of the way. So I cannot recommend the books in the Clockwork Empire series, especially The Impossible Cube, any higher. Whether you are a fan of steampunk or not, these books promise to be an exhilarating roller-coaster ride from start to finish that you won’t want to miss!”
—A Book Obsession
“The Clockwork Empire books are changing what we know as steampunk!…An exuberant novel that takes the reader on an action-packed adventurous thrill ride.”
—Nocturne Romance Reads
“A fantastic amount of action…. If you are looking to jump into steampunk for the first time, I would recommend these books.”
—Paranormal Haven
“An exciting adventure thriller that starts off with action and never slows down.”
—Genre Go Round Reviews
The Doomsday Vault
“Inventive and fun.”
—Paranormal Haven
“Harper creates a fascinating world of devices, conspiracies, and personalities…. Filled with danger and narrow escapes, Alice and Gavin fight to survive and to find love in this steampunk coming-of-age story. Harper’s world building is well developed and offers an interesting combination of science and steam.”
—SFRevu
“You’ll have great fun exploring the Third Ward, and the author created such a rich and lavish world for his characters…. Twists and turns abound, and the author managed to lob some shockers at me that I’ll admit I didn’t see coming…. If you love your Victorian adventures filled with zombies, amazing automatons, steampunk flare, and an impeccable eye for detail, you’ll love the fascinating (and fantastical) Doomsday Vault.”
—My Bookish Ways
“The Doomsday Vault is a good way to start off a new series in a highly specialized genre. Its combination of science and fantasy and good versus evil work well…a clever and worthwhile take on the steampunk universe.”
—That’s What I’m Talking About
“A fun and thrilling fast-paced adventure full of engaging characters and plenty of surprises….I particularly enjoyed all the interesting and unexpected twists that kept popping up, just when I thought I had the story figured out.”
—SFF Chat
“The great thing about having all these awesome characters is that [they’re] all snuggled up against a really great plot, several intermingling subplots, and pretty dang great steampunk world building. And excellent writing…[The Doomsday Vault is] fun, funny, and a damn fine romp of a read. So much goodness packed into this book! Highly recommended.”
—Lurv a la Mode
“A goofy excursion in a style reminiscent of Foglios’s Girl Genius graphic series…a highly entertaining romp.”
—Locus
“Paying homage to the likes of Skybreaker, 2D Goggles, and Girl Genius, The Doomsday Vault is awesome. One of my favorite steampunk-zombie novels. Abso-freaking-lutely recommended.”
—The Book Smugglers
Books by Steven Harper
THE CLOCKWORK EMPIRE
The Doomsday Vault
The Impossible Cube
The Dragon Men
The Havoc Machine
THE
HAVOC
MACHINE
A NOVEL OF THE
CLOCKWORK EMPIRE
STEVEN HARPER
ROC
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com.
First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, May 2013
Copyright © Steven Piziks, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
ISBN: 978-1-101-60198-3
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
If your family is wonderfully strange, oddly off-center, built from mixed parts, or simply created out of thin air, this book is dedicated to you.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
The Story So Far
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Gratitude everlasting to the Untitled Writers Group (Christian, Cindy, David, Diana, Erica, Jonathan, Mary Beth, and Sarah) for reading many drafts in a great hurry. The same also to my tireless agent, Lucienne, and my sharp-eyed editor, Anne.
THE STORY SO FAR
We find ourselves rather chagrined.
Once that most amazing of volumes The Dragon Men went to press, we were quite positive there were no more stories to tell about the Clockwork Empire. Our entire staff prepared to go on holiday, content in the knowledge of a job well done. However, just as our dear secretary Mrs. Wentworth was shutting off the gas and picking up her hatbox, a package arrived that proved our assessment was…erroneous. Fallacious. False. It seems that an entirely new set of thrilling adventures was happening right under our very noses during that time when Gavin Ennock and Alice, Lady Michaels were dealing with a giant squid in the Caspian Sea. Therefore, with a breathless excitement and a certain delighted embarrassment, we bring forth The Havoc Machine.
To our established readers, we offer a warm greeting and a joyful handshake at your return. If you feel quite comfortable with your memory of previous events, you are encouraged to thumb your way over to the first chapter, in which a beautiful woman makes one Thaddeus Sharpe a mysterious and intriguing offer. But if you need a refresher, or if the library in your cranial implant is still malfunctioning, you may find the following informati
on of use.
To our new readers, we offer a hearty welcome. If you have not perused the previous astonishing volumes in the Clockwork Empire (specifically The Doomsday Vault, The Impossible Cube, and The Dragon Men), fear not! This fourth volume provides the perfect entry portal. To be honest, readers hungry for adventure may skip over all the dry exposition that follows here and begin straightaway with chapter one (though we humbly point out that an even more fascinating method for acquainting oneself with the Clockwork Empire is to purchase copies of the three thrilling novels that make up the first part of the story, if one is so inclined, and we thank such readers for their kind patronage).
Finally, established readers may also note that Gavin and Alice, our protagonists from the first three books, seem to be entirely absent. We do hope that no one takes serious umbrage or fishes about for expired fruit to throw. Alice and Gavin’s story comes to a tidy, if suspenseful, close at the end of The Dragon Men, and it would hardly be fair to rake everything up again, though a tiny bit of paper clipped to the last page of this latest manuscript advises us that Alice and Gavin did not live out their final years in quiet desperation, so we may yet hear more of them. In any case, we daresay that our highly intelligent and discerning readers will find Thaddeus Sharpe and his strange companion Dante compelling in their own right. Additionally, Mr. Sharpe is quite handsome.
Perhaps that will make up for Mrs. Wentworth’s canceled holiday.
The year is 1860.
A little more than a hundred years ago, a dreadful plague swept across continents and entrenched itself on the planet. The plague causes rotting of the flesh, and also invades the host’s nervous system, creating motor dysfunction, dementia, and photosensitivity. Victims lurching through the late stages were inevitably dubbed plague zombies, and they spread the disease farther with every pitiful step. However, a handful of victims end up with neural synapses that, for a brief time, draw together instead of falling apart. Advanced mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry become simple playthings to them. But as they think and invent like mad, the virus slowly devours their brains, and they lose their grip on reality. Their attachment to mechanical inventions and their detachment from normal human emotion earned them the name clockwork geniuses or clockworkers, and the disease itself became the clockwork plague.
Different parts of the world react to clockworkers in different ways. China venerates clockworkers and grants them status nearly equal to the emperor himself. England fears them, and created a police force known as the Third Ward, which hunted clockworkers down, locked them in secret laboratories, and stashed a number of their more dangerous inventions in the Doomsday Vault. These two mighty nations—England and China—built opposing empires using fantastic inventions supplied by captive clockworkers, and only a delicate balance of power held the two empires in check.
Into the middle of all this came the Ukrainian Empire. In that thrilling adventure known as The Impossible Cube, readers learned that the clockwork plague actually originated in Ukraine in 1750, smack in the middle of a time when that country was occupied by both Poland and Russia.
It also created a number of Ukrainian clockworkers. Cossack clockworkers.
These mad geniuses swiftly created powerful engines of war that dispersed their Polish and Russian occupiers with all speed and greatly expanded the Ukrainian borders to boot. Unfortunately, these Cossack clockworkers turned out to be despots nearly as bad as the Poles and Russians, and they ruled their own people with a brass fist.
That is, until Gavin Ennock and Alice, Lady Michaels joined the circus.
Through a complicated and heart-stopping series of adventures also detailed in The Impossible Cube (a fascinating book that the editors highly recommend for all gift-giving occasions), Gavin and Alice arrived in Kiev with the Kalakos Circus of Automatons and Other Wonders. They were intending only to pass through on their way to Peking for reasons of their own, but the Gonta-Zalizniak “family” of clockworkers attempted to meddle in this couple’s affairs, and to their surprise, were thoroughly crushed for their efforts. They should have known better, of course—Alice had personally destroyed the British Empire by releasing a cure for the clockwork plague and ensuring that England would have no more clockworkers or clockwork inventions. Wiping out a few troublesome Cossacks barely gave her pause.
Unfortunately, during this process, the Gonta-Zalizniaks attacked the Kalakos Circus, and many of the performers were scattered. The dam that famously generated electricity for Kiev was also destroyed, threatening thousands of lives, and Gavin only barely managed to get everyone aboard the circus train and rush them to safety.
After that, Gavin and Alice went on their way. They were last seen heading off in their airship over the Caspian Sea, completely ignorant of the fact that the water is home to a giant squid. What happens to them is chronicled in that most breathtaking of books The Dragon Men, and we need not recount the events here.
But, as we said, we have learned there is more.
With the Cossacks recently crushed and Britain severely weakened, Russia finds herself wondering if she might once again take her place in this Great Game of clashing empires.
And the poor Kalakos Circus finds itself in dire straits.
Chapter One
Thaddeus Sharpe loosened his brown leather jacket and shoved his way into the low-beamed tavern. A fire glowed like a captured demon in the long ceramic stove, and the smoky air wrapped itself around him in a stifling blanket. At long tables, men in long shirts and blousy trousers clanked glasses of vodka and thumped mugs of gira, the fermented drink made from rye bread favored by Lithuanian peasants. A heavy smell of sweat mixed with the sharp tint of vodka and the earthy slop of gira. The autumn evening was already well under way, and the red-faced men shouted more than they talked. Candles stood upright on the tables in cracked saucers to provide light. Dante cocked his good eye at the room and clacked his brass beak from his perch on Thad’s shoulder. Several of the men turned to stare at Thad when he blew in. He tensed and automatically felt for the long knife in his sleeve.
“Shut the damn door!” one of them barked in what Thad assumed was Lithuanian. Thanks to his mother, Thad spoke a number of Eastern European and Baltic languages, and his father had liked to joke that once you learned three of them, the fourth came free. Thad slammed the door, and most of the men went back to their drinking. Two, however, continued to stare at him.
“Dummy, dummy, dummy,” Dante muttered in Thad’s ear. “Stare and stare, here and there.” He squawked.
“Shut it.” Thad’s jaw was set in a line and his brown eyes were hard. Dark hair curled beneath a workman’s cap and he had no beard, but there his resemblance to the men in the tavern ended. His lean build, long leather jacket, and stout boots made him stand out among plain Lithuanian homespun. The ratty brass parrot on his shoulder didn’t help. Maybe he should duck out again and look for a way in through the back.
The two men, both large and callused, got up from their long benches and strode across the sticky tavern floor before Thad could retreat. One of them loomed over Thad, his breath heavy with vodka.
“I have heard of your parrot,” he said in thick Lithuanian. “You are the man who kills clockworkers. Many, many clockworkers.”
The knife was already in Thad’s hand. “What of it?” he replied, his own accent heavy with British vowels. The blade gleamed silver in the candlelight, though neither man seemed to notice. Thad was already calculating—one slash at the throat to incapacitate the first man, shove him backward into the second man, flee into the street. Dante’s forged feathers creaked in his ear as the parrot tensed.
The man clapped Thad on the shoulder. “I will buy your first drink,” he boomed. “And my brother will buy your second. Bartender! Vodka and giras for our new friend!”
Moments later, Thaddeus found himself wedged in at one of the splintery trestle tables with a clay mug by his left hand and a shot glass at his right. A dish of salt and a loaf of dark rye
bread sat in front of him. The men at the table raised their own mugs and glasses to Thad, drained them, and wiped their mustaches with their sleeves in one smooth motion.
“So. How many clockworkers have you killed?” said the first man. His name was Arturas and his brother was Mykolas.
“I keep no count.” Thad raised his giras mug, tried a gulp, and suppressed a grimace. It was like drinking sour rye bread.
“Liar, liar, liar,” Dante croaked in his ear.
“Shut it,” Thad said, glad none of the men seemed to speak English.
“Who is this man, Arturas?” asked one of the other drinkers.
“This,” Arturas boomed in reply, “is the man who killed Erek the Terror outside Krakow and Vile Basia in the sewers of Prague. This is the man who killed countless monsters and saved a thousand lives. They say he walks the streets with a brass parrot on his shoulder and a cannon in his trousers.”
The men roared at that, and Thad, laughing but uncomfortable at the attention, raised his mug with an ironic grin.
“This man,” Mykolas added in conclusion, “is a hero.” He threw his free arm around Thad and clashed his glass against his brother’s. The other men, half-drunk, joined in, slopping giras and vodka onto the bread plate. Thad glanced about uneasily and pulled a small card from his coat pocket.
“So what does bring the mighty clockwork killer into a piss-hole like Bûsi Treèias?” Mykolas demanded.
“Hey!” said the bartender, who was arriving with more drinks.
Dante cocked his head and Thad glanced down at the card in his hand. In graceful script on one side was engraved a name in Cyrillic letters. On the back in black ink was scribbled 7.45 sharp, Bûsi Treèias. A ragged boy had handed him the card on the streets of Vilnius earlier that afternoon and fled before Thad could react. Bûsi Treèias was the name of the tavern. It meant “You’ll be third,” and it was the name that made Thad uneasy, though not so uneasy that he avoided the meeting.
The name on the card was Sofiya Ivanova Ekk, a Russian woman’s name, and Russian women did not frequent taverns in the Polish-Lithuanian Union. Neither did Polish-Lithuanian women, for that matter. He thought about asking the men at the table if they knew Sofiya Ekk, but had the feeling that they might think he was enquiring after a prostitute or, worse, someone’s sister.