Swords & Steam Short Stories

by S. T. Joshi

  A cross wind tugged at the flyer and she fought for control, before lining up against the gusts and flying into them, quickly gaining another hundred feet.

  One of the simulations she’d done to get her wings was in the Wright Flyer; a craft that only flew on mankind’s maiden flight because of a stiff headwind. She wondered if Ama had managed to learn that particular lesson in The Daedalus’s predecessors.

  She was closer now to the full fury of the EM storm, closer than she’d been since crashing through it in the fatally wounded Accra. The threads twisted and snaked, too dense and active to predict. She spied better conditions ahead, except, when she got there, they weren’t better, if anything they were worse. Looping the flyer back she flew once again over a now distant plateau and, beyond it, the skeletal bulk of the great spaceship diminished to that of decaying bug, being slowly stripped bare, the long scar of its impact revealing its death throes.

  Frustrated, she circled again, and again, maintaining height as she sought for an opening, watching as the water level in the boiler sank below the first mark.

  “After the second mark,” Clintock had warned, “you’d better be through and climbing, or you won’t get high enough to transmit.”

  Each time she started an approach the tendrils of purple, the threads of electromagnetic flux, seemed to close the gap, to feel their way towards her delicate craft and its precious cargo.

  It was if they were reaching for her.

  For a moment, she forgot to breath.

  It was exactly like they were reaching for her.

  What if it could sense the electronic payload hidden beneath the heavy metal shielding? Was it sniffing it out, like some tasty morsel?

  Or …or maybe it wasn’t the transmitter. Maybe it was her?

  Maybe it had been her, all along.

  She’d known she was special; the only one able to see the violent storms that raged above, somehow tuned to a spectrum that no-one else could perceive. But what if that meant the electromagnetic flux could, in return, see her?

  She should land; abort the mission, let Ama take the craft up. Or land and try again without the electronic payload. To scientifically check what the purple threads were attracted to.

  But there was a reason all their eggs were in one basket. It wasn’t just the transmitter that was irreplaceable, the scant few robust or simply lucky components that had survived the lightening storm of their descent and the Accra’s impact. The Daedalus was no less precious, the labour of many months, of years.

  To risk a landing without first completing her mission, would be to risk failure.

  She swore to the shining ones, to the Hindu Deities her mother had told her about, to Vayu, the Lord of the winds, to Surya, the God of the sky. Gods she didn’t believe in, except as characters in bedtime stories. Even that had been enough to single her out in the devoutly Christian Missionary school she’d first attended.

  Whether it was her or the electronic box where her feet should be, this mission was doomed.

  And yet …if it was her that the tendrils were seeking out, then might that be what had also doomed the Accra? Uncomfortable though that thought was, might the Niamey be safe as a result? After all, those early autonomous surveys had shown nothing more than the usual aurora caused by solar winds, the welcoming signs of a protecting magnetic field. Nothing like what had torn through the Accra.

  Be rational, she told herself. Think it through. How do I test this theory?

  Not by landing, that was for sure.

  Perhaps by letting the storm claim its prize?

  The Daedalus needed no electronics to function, nor did she. The transmitter was the only thing at risk, and precious though that was, knowing the truth was more important.

  Steeling herself, she eased back the controls, flying straight up into the waiting clouds.

  Purple enveloped her and pain exploded across every nerve ending, even ones she knew she no longer had. It was that sensation: needles stabbed into knees and legs and feet, that prevented her from jerking the controls into a rapid and most probably unrecoverable descent; the awareness that somehow this wasn’t real.

  It didn’t stop it hurting like hell.

  Slowly, it eased, leaving a raw, tingling sensation, her nerves strumming. Blue lightning danced along the edges of the solar-sail wings, sparks crackled over the blackened belly of the boiler.

  “Neha,” a voice whispered.

  A shape loomed out of the bruised clouds before her. A head sculpted from delicate purple strands. Her head, complete with a livid scar. She twisted the control stick, felt the flyer shudder under her harsh treatment. The head evaporated, only to reform on her new setting, the eyes blinking open, a thin smile on its – her – lips.

  “You return,” it said.

  Neha shook her head. This wasn’t happening. Was she hallucinating? How high up was she; what was the oxygen level?

  A faint descending whine caught her attention – the boiler! Whether she was seeing things or not, the air was thinner here and the flames that gave rise to steam were dying out. She pushed the lever that regulated the air flow wide open.

  “Such wonder!” the head spoke, though the lips didn’t move and there was no way she should have heard it over the rush of air, the clanking of the steam engine, “To find another sentience, someone from so very far away …And in such an unusual form; intelligent life contained within the substrate of an organic body. Truly the Universe is a marvellous place! We reached out to you, but then you were gone.

  “We thought you lost, Neha,” the apparition added, the smile fading, an air of sadness in the impossible voice, “lost when you fell so swiftly from the sky. Why did you fall?”

  Behind the goggles, Neha’s eyes filled with tears.

  “You – your emanations. They clashed with our instruments, our controls.”

  “Ahh …sorrow! We …did not know.”

  Then, as an afterthought: “There were others with you?”

  “Yes,” Neha sobbed. “Yes. There were. There are. I do not think they can sense you, though. And …there are more coming.”

  “That is good. Companionship is good. Now we look for them, we can sense them, they do not burn as brightly as you. We are glad. We are many; we feared you were alone.”

  “No, I’m not alone.” She almost laughed; at that moment, the blood of the Accra on her hands, she felt as alone as she’d ever been. “But, please, when they come, don’t reach out to them?”

  “As you wish. But now, we sense your craft is failing. Your time among us is short. Hurry down safely, Neha. Find a way to return to us, when you can?”

  * * *

  The undercarriage was too rigid and too fragile, weight saved at the expense of strength. She’d tried as best she could to line up her approach with the prepared dirt runway, the thin strip cleared of bush and loose stone, but at the last a gust slewed her sideways. Had she had legs, they would have been crushed as the lightweight craft stumbled and rolled, as the thin frame crumpled up against the heavy boiler in front.

  Ama got there first; the rest were with her seconds later, cutting Neha loose, dragging her clear, though the flames of the furnace had long since died out and the cloud of steam that rose up from the pipes of the superheater quickly dissipated. She’d been running on empty for a while.

  Clintock pointed at the metal shield still around the transmitter, the shield that would have had to be shed to send the signal. “You …you failed?” he asked, his voice tremulous and trailing off.

  “Not quite,” she smiled. She could still feel a tingle at her fingertips. “The Niamey will be safe.”

  “How can you know that?” Abeni asked.

  “Long story,” she looked back at the twisted flyer, one wing torn in two. “Sorry about The Daedalus.”

  Clintock shrugged. “I’ve seen worse landings
.”

  And then Ama wrapped her arms around her, hugging her tight, until Clintock coughed in embarrassment.

  Neha looked up at the young pilot in surprise, a question on her lips, a question that was answered as it was stifled by Ama’s kiss.

  No, she wasn’t alone.

  The heavens roared in amusement and delight and Ama’s eyes lit up in wonder as sparks danced from Neha’s hands to hers. “Do you hear laughter?” she asked, in astonishment.

  Neha smiled and nodded.

  Never alone.

  Never again.

  Skulls in the Stars

  Robert E. Howard

  He told how murders walk the earth

  Beneath the curse of Cain,

  With crimson clouds before their eyes

  And flames about their brain:

  For blood has left upon their souls

  Its everlasting stain.

  Hood

  Chapter I

  There are two roads to Torkertown. One, the shorter and more direct route, leads across a barren upland moor, and the other, which is much longer, winds its tortuous way in and out among the hummocks and quagmires of the swamps, skirting the low hills to the east. It was a dangerous and tedious trail; so Solomon Kane halted in amazement when a breathless youth from the village he had just left overtook him and implored him for God’s sake to take the swamp road.

  “The swamp road!” Kane stared at the boy. He was a tall, gaunt man, Solomon Kane, his darkly pallid face and deep brooding eyes made more sombre by the drab Puritanical garb he affected.

  “Yes, sir, ’tis far safer,” the youngster answered to his surprised exclamation.

  “Then the moor road must be haunted by Satan himself, for your townsmen warned me against traversing the other.”

  “Because of the quagmires, sir, that you might not see in the dark. You had better return to the village and continue your journey in the morning, sir.”

  “Taking the swamp road?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kane shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

  “The moon rises almost as soon as twilight dies. By its light I can reach Torkertown in a few hours, across the moor.”

  “Sir, you had better not. No one ever goes that way. There are no houses at all upon the moor, while in the swamp there is the house of old Ezra who lives there all alone since his maniac cousin, Gideon, wandered off and died in the swamp and was never found – and old Ezra though a miser would not refuse you lodging should you decide to stop until morning. Since you must go, you had better go the swamp road.”

  Kane eyed the boy piercingly. The lad squirmed and shuffled his feet.

  “Since this moor road is so dour to wayfarers,” said the Puritan, “why did not the villagers tell me the whole tale, instead of vague mouthings?”

  “Men like not to talk of it, sir. We hoped that you would take the swamp road after the men advised you to, but when we watched and saw that you turned not at the forks, they sent me to run after you and beg you to reconsider.”

  “Name of the Devil!” exclaimed Kane sharply, the unaccustomed oath showing his irritation; “the swamp road and the moor road – what is it that threatens me and why should I go miles out of my way and risk the bogs and mires?”

  “Sir,” said the boy, dropping his voice and drawing closer, “we be simple villagers who like not to talk of such things lest foul fortune befall us, but the moor road is a way accurst and hath not been traversed by any of the countryside for a year or more. It is death to walk those moors by night, as hath been found by some score of unfortunates. Some foul horror haunts the way and claims men for his victims.”

  “So? And what is this thing like?”

  “No man knows. None has ever seen, it and lived, but late-farers have heard terrible laughter far out on the fen and men have heard the horrid shrieks of its victims. Sir, in God’s name return to the village, there pass the night, and tomorrow take the swamp trail to Torkertown.”

  Far back in Kane’s gloomy eyes a scintillant light had begun to glimmer, like a witch’s torch glinting under fathoms of cold grey ice. His blood quickened. Adventure! The lure of life-risk and drama! Not that Kane recognized his sensations as such. He sincerely considered that he voiced his real feelings when he said: “These things be deeds of some power of evil. The lords of darkness have laid a curse upon the country. A strong man is needed to combat Satan and his might. Therefore I go, who have defied him many a time.”

  “Sir,” the boy began, then closed his mouth as he saw the futility of argument. He only added, “The corpses of the victims are bruised and torn, sir.”

  He stood there at the crossroads, sighing regretfully as he watched the tall, rangy figure swinging up the road that led toward the moors.

  The sun was setting as Kane came over the brow of the low hill which debouched into the upland fen. Huge and blood-red it sank down behind the sullen horizon of the moors, seeming to touch the rank grass with fire; so for a moment the watcher seemed to be gazing out across a sea of blood. Then the dark shadows came gliding from the east, the western blaze faded, and Solomon Kane struck out, boldly in the gathering darkness.

  The road was dim from disuse but was clearly defined. Kane went swiftly but warily, sword and pistols at hand. Stars blinked out and night winds whispered among the grass like weeping spectres. The moon began to rise, lean and haggard, like a skull among the stars.

  Then suddenly Kane stopped short. From somewhere in front of him sounded a strange and eery echo – or something like an echo. Again, this time louder. Kane started forward again. Were his senses deceiving him? No!

  Far out, there pealed a whisper of frightful slaughter. And again, closer this time. No human being ever laughed like that – there was no mirth in it, only hatred and horror and soul-destroying terror. Kane halted. He was not afraid, but for the second he was almost unnerved. Then, stabbing through that awesome laughter, came the sound of a scream that was undoubtedly human. Kane started forward, increasing his gait. He cursed the illusive lights and flickering shadows which veiled the moor in the rising moon and made accurate sight impossible. The laughter continued, growing louder, as did the screams. Then sounded faintly the drum of frantic human feet. Kane broke into a run. Some human was being hunted to death out there on the fen, and by what manner of horror God only knew. The sound of the flying feet halted abruptly and the screaming rose unbearably, mingled with other sounds unnameable and hideous. Evidently the man had been overtaken, and Kane, his flesh crawling, visualized some ghastly fiend of the darkness crouching on the back of its victim crouching and tearing. Then the noise of a terrible and short struggle came clearly through the abysmal silence of the night and the footfalls began again, but stumbling and uneven. The screaming continued, but with a gasping gurgle. The sweat stood cold on Kane’s forehead and body. This was heaping horror on horror in an intolerable manner. God, for a moment’s clear light! The frightful drama was being enacted within a very short distance of him, to judge by the ease with which the sounds reached him. But this hellish half-light veiled all in shifting shadows, so that the moors appeared a haze of blurred illusions, and stunted trees, and bushes seemed like giants.

  Kane shouted, striving to increase the speed of his advance. The shrieks of the unknown broke into a hideous shrill squealing; again there was the sound of a struggle, and then from the shadows of the tall grass a thing came reeling – a thing that had once been a man – a gore-covered, frightful thing that fell at Kane’s feet and writhed and grovelled and raised its terrible face to the rising moon, and gibbered and yammered, and fell down again and died in its own blood.

  The moon was up now and the light was better. Kane bent above the body, which lay stark in its unnameable mutilation, and he shuddered; a rare thing for him, who had seen the deeds of the Spanish Inquisition and the witch-finders.

 
; Some wayfarer, he supposed. Then like a hand of ice on his spine he was aware that he was not alone. He looked up, his cold eyes piercing the shadows whence the dead man had staggered. He saw nothing, but he knew – he felt – that other eyes gave back his stare, terrible eyes not of this earth. He straightened and drew a pistol, waiting. The moonlight spread like a lake of pale blood over the moor, and trees and grasses took on their proper sizes. The shadows melted, and Kane saw! At first he thought it only a shadow of mist, a wisp of moor fog that swayed in the tall grass before him. He gazed. More illusion, he thought. Then the thing began to take on shape, vague and indistinct. Two hideous eyes flamed at him – eyes which held all the stark horror which has been the heritage of man since the fearful dawn ages – eyes frightful and insane, with an insanity transcending earthly insanity. The form of the thing was misty and vague, a brain-shattering travesty on the human form, like, yet horribly unlike. The grass and bushes beyond showed clearly through it.

  Kane felt the blood pound in his temples, yet he was as cold as ice. How such an unstable being as that which wavered before him could harm a man in a physical way was more than he could understand, yet the red horror at his feet gave mute testimony that the fiend could act with terrible material effect.

  Of one thing Kane was sure; there would be no hunting of him across the dreary moors, no screaming and fleeing to be dragged down again and again. If he must die he would die in his tracks, his wounds in front.

  Now a vague and grisly mouth gaped wide and the demoniac laughter again shrieked but, soul-shaking in its nearness. And in the midst of feat threat of doom, Kane deliberately levelled his long pistol and fired. A maniacal yell of rage and mockery answered the report, and the thing came at him like a flying sheet of smoke, long shadowy arms stretched to drag him down.

  Kane, moving with the dynamic speed of a famished wolf, fired the second pistol with as little effect, snatched his long rapier from its sheath and thrust into the centre of the misty attacker. The blade sang as it passed clear through, encountering no solid resistance, and Kane felt icy fingers grip his limbs, bestial talons tear his garments and the skin beneath.