Steampunk International

by Ian Whates

  She squeezed through the hole. She advanced from one shell crater to another. Her fingers were raw. The moon shone with wan light. No one could see more than a couple of yards ahead.

  Suddenly, the sky turned green. She lay flat on the nearest crater. She heard the artillery deliver their payload. Then, a salvo from the other side. More shots were exchanged. She felt a shock reverberate through her bones. One mortar shell landed nearby. It left a buzz in her ears. The green flare fell down and everything returned to darkness and silence.

  Ana didn’t waste any time. When she found another row of wire, she knew she was close. She did her best to separate the two halves, but her fingers were not able to complete the job. She tried to pass through but the jacket got stuck. Another flare went up, the green light again spreading over no-man’s land. She ripped the fabric and got rid of her jacket, running the last yards in a crouch. One shot. She jumped into the trench, landing in the middle of a group of soldiers.

  “Don’t shoot! I’m on your side!” Ana yelled.

  They pointed their weapons at her and looked to each other.

  “It’s a girl!” shouted one.

  The soldiers searched her, removed the knife and then locked her in a bunker.

  “Please tell Major Gomes da Silva from 4th Mechanised that the Desert Spider is back” she said before they closed the door.

  When Ana read the content of the cyphered letter on her father’s desk, there was only one thing to do. She reported them in the nearest police station.

  The Major came at noon. When they opened the door, she was asleep.

  “Here you are...” he said, sounding amazed but pleased.

  Ana tried to get up, but fell back to the floor. She took out the papers.

  “I knew you could do it!” he said, taking the documents. “You’re in a bad shape. We have to get you to the hospital.”

  Major Gomes da Silva shouted a few commands and two soldiers appeared with a stretcher. As they were carrying her away, he smiled broadly and said, “Welcome home!”

  Heart of Stone

  Diana Pinguicha

  Translated by Mário de Seabra Coelho

  Alirvi tinkered with the controls embedded in titanium, the screen on her mechanical forearm shifting from static to camera feed. As she adjusted the imaging device hanging by an aetherian tether over the streets, the black-and-white image it captured reproduced on her arm. Gifts from her Mechanist allies, received after she survived the destruction of her mentor’s lab – an act she’d come to avenge.

  Thinking of how pissed the Evolutionists would be once they found their precious Sidallite gone, it was hard not to smile; Ali couldn’t wait to witness their much-anticipated fall from grace.

  “The guard patrols are changing shift soon,” she said upon examining the image. “Barron, take point.”

  The soldier stepped from the shadows, goggles reflecting the lights of both the stars above and the firefly lamps below. He took the hook gun from the bag on his back and dropped into a prone position on the roof to take aim. “Ready on your mark.”

  Their team was to infiltrate the Church of Evolutionism, where the mineral they needed was secured behind thick steel walls and under heavy guard. They had studied the layout for days, devising their plan. Now, they stood at the cusp of its execution. The smoking chimneys had been their only way in, presenting one very smoldering challenge: the fires from the coal-burning process raging in their depths.

  But Ali hadn’t been Dr. Forel’s student for no reason. She fingered the canisters on her belt, liquid nitrogen bombs she’d crafted last night. Throw a couple down the chimney and the ever-burning fires would die down. As for getting down… “Gravity reversers?”

  Behind her, the noise of tightening screws. “Charged and ready,” Gail confirmed, patting the spherical heads with affection. Ali took one, hooked it to her belt. The Reverser was more familiar to Ali than the palm of her own hand – well, the palm of her right hand; her left was new, mechanical, and she hadn’t got around to studying it thoroughly yet.

  Eyes flitting to the screen on her arm, Ali resumed spying on the guards, already restless for the end of their shift. When their replacements arrived, the black-clad men huddled together to exchange reports. She summoned the imaging device and it flew to her hand, a bird made of a hard metal shell covered with disguising feathers. It chirruped when it landed on her arm, and although the bird was supposedly a machine, Ali couldn’t help feeling affection as she scratched the top of its tiny head. The mechanical animal rewarded her with a nuzzle before it bent in on itself, turning into a cube which she stowed in her bag. She could almost swear she felt happiness emanating from the pocket she’d lodged her imaging device in, a kinship she rarely felt towards people.

  Putting the fantasy of a machine with feelings out of her mind, she turned to Barron. “Now,” Ali said.

  From their vantage point atop the bell tower, the Mechanist Sergent shot the hook at one of the chimneys. He pulled the taut line and, at his nod, Ali hooked her wheel. Her wrist on the leather handle, she jumped off the roof and slid quickly along the cable. The impact of her legs on the metal chimney reverberated through her body, and when she grabbed onto the edge, her flesh spared the heat thanks to the thermal-isolating bath her leather clothes had been subjected to. She used her metal hand to hold on, and tossed two nitrogen bombs with the other.

  The canisters clanked on their way down, followed by a hiss and a cloud of steam. The metal cooled, and Ali raised herself up to sit on the edge, signalling Gail and Barron to follow.

  Lowering her goggles and putting on her breather, she looked down at the funnelling depths of the chimney, the vapour and darkness making it impossible to see the bottom. Taking a deep breath, Ali palmed the Gravity Reverser at her belt, and let herself fall.

  One second.

  Her stomach dropped out from under her.

  Two.

  Her shoulder bumped against the chimney.

  Three.

  Her feet scraped the wall.

  Four.

  Hands at her side, she righted herself.

  Five.

  The ground rose to meet her. Ali pressed the button on the reverser, the device coming to life in her hand. A force seemed to reach out from above, grabbing Ali before the fall claimed her life. Her insides flipped, her limbs jerked, but…

  Looking down, she saw her feet hovering just above the ground. A hum played in her ears as the Gravity Reverser at her belt vibrated and wheezed, like a dying animal giving its last keen.

  Ali dropped the rest of the way, feet sliding on the frozen coals as she went deeper into the now icy furnace. From the satchel at her side, she produced a vial filled with a fluorescent yellow liquid, so bright it was as though the sun shone from within, strapping its cord around her neck to cast away the darkness.

  Gail and Barron joined her not long after, their liquid lights at their breast, and the other woman walked towards the door, portable blowtorch in hand. Sparks flew as the mechanic worked on the door, and both Ali and Barron used the time to look over the Vault’s map.

  “The Sidallite is five floors below ground,” Barron noted, his voice distorted under the breather’s influence. With his finger, he drew a line between where they stood, at basement level, and the mineral coffers. “Once Gail’s through, we’ll have little time before the Church send in a team to fix the furnace. As soon as they see the ice, they’ll realise we’ve infiltrated them.”

  “We’ll take the vents as planned. Here,” Ali said, tapping the point in the map. “It’ll take me a minute or so to open them, though, so we’ll have to move fast.”

  Although Barron’s goggles hid his eyes, she could feel them on her. “I hope you’re as good as Forel claims.”

  She gave him a sideways glance. There wasn’t a patrol she couldn’t evade, nor room she couldn’t get into. She had stolen the map Barron now bent over; she’d been the one to steal shift schedules, and the plans for Evolutionist weap
ons that had given the Mechanists a fighting chance against the dominating faction of their Technocracy; she’d been the one to tell them about the Sidallite, and how it was all they needed to end the mad Evolutionist rule.

  “A bit late to question my capabilities, Sergent,” she spat.

  However, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t a little bit nervous, or that she did not doubt herself. After all, her first foray into robbery had ended when Dr. Forel caught her red-handed; the only reason Ali hadn’t been left to rot in the Guarda’s jail was because the old man had seen promise in her quick fingers and quicker wit.

  Ali remembered it as clearly as if someone had captured the moment in rollfilm and played it behind her closed eyelids. The dirty streets of the city she called home, cobblestone roads, and the far-away noise of refineries and power plants a distant bustle; how the smell of oil had plagued her, and the sight of sparks seemed to follow her dreams; how her stomach growled when Dr. Forel walked past, the hem of his brown Mechanic uniform dragging along the mud. With his hunched shoulders and downcast eyes, Dr. Forel had looked to be an easy target, and no one had been more surprised than Ali when he’d caught her hand just as she relieved him of his money.

  She recalled the panic, throat-numbing and heart-throbbing. She’d expected him to deliver her to the Guarda, where they’d chop off her offending hand. Luckily for her, Dr. Forel wasn’t fond of the authorities, and had taken her to his workshop instead.

  “I could take you to the authorities,” he’d said. “But I’m in need of an apprentice with clever fingers.”

  It hadn’t been a difficult choice. Despite the illegal nature of her job, Ali hadn’t regretted it since. Forel often remarked that she learned things faster than previous apprentices, and he willingly fed Ali’s aptitude for knowledge, frequently and in great quantity. Soon, the sight of machinery, the scent of oil and the heat of steam, had become her natural environment.

  An environment the Church threatened with their insistence that humanity needed to use only what the Earth provided. As the dominating faction, they’d all but stamped the Mechanists out of the University, but had allowed the weaker group to remain active. As much as the Church despised machines, they still had need of them.

  Back then, Dr. Forel had been developing limb replacements to help those who’d lost arms or legs to Mecha factories or hungry Evo creatures; but his ambitions grew to impossible heights. He’d begun speaking of creating a fully-sentient automaton using both natural and artificial materials. They’d been close to finishing the first prototype. All that stood between them and a breakthrough in science had been the Sidallite.

  A conductive mineral like no other, Sidallite was a Church creation, obtained through a complex mutation process combining carbon and aether. Desperate, Dr. Forel had gone to the last Evolutionist he considered a friend, asking for a small sample to power the prototype.

  But the Church viewed his newest pursuit as the utmost sacrilege. Machines weren’t meant to think by themselves, and so, that very night, they’d sent a team to blow up Dr. Forel’s lab along with the scientist himself.

  Ali would’ve been blown up too, had it not been for her mentor. She remembered that, too, with incredible clarity: the scent of gunpowder hitting her nose, along with Forel’s despaired scream to jump. How she’d fallen towards the river below, away from the deafening blast that sent glass, steel, and stone flying out above her. A flash of brightness and the impact on frigid water rattling her bones. The current, carrying her away in a furious embrace, remnants of Doctor Forel’s laboratory peppering the river behind her.

  Survival instinct tore through the haze and the pain. Ali struggled to get her limbs moving, to focus her cloudy sight. She kicked against the current, took in mouthfuls of water in her attempt to swim towards the rocks near the bank. She dreamed of sparks and oil, and woke up the next day in a Mechanist safehouse, Gail putting the final touches on Ali’s new arm, saying they’d found her half-dead on the riverbank, her left forearm mangled beyond recognition by explosion and rocks.

  Ali did not mourn the partial loss of a limb. It made no sense to do so, not when she had a metal one that was much better in almost every way. Not when her chest lay empty, the absence of the man who’d taught her all she knew a hole no other person could fill.

  Ali looked down at the smooth titanium surface with tenderness. If she, Barron, and Gail succeeded, the Church would no longer control the world.

  Barron grunted, and Ali had the feeling he meant to continue voicing his doubts, but the sound of Gail’s blowtorch ceased, and the thick metal door slid open with a protracted creak. Silence stretched between them, then shattered when a deafening siren rang in every corner of the room.

  “Malfunction on Boiler Three! Malfunction on Boiler Three!” someone announced through the speakers. “All personnel, please proceed to the nearest safe room.”

  Ali dashed to the nearest vent, hand falling to the loop on her belt where her custom screwdriver hung. She pressed the tool against the screws, and with a push of the button at the top, the metal end began to rotate, powered by the charged aether-stone within.

  Thirty seconds later and all the screws were in her pocket; she dove into the tunnel with Barron behind her, Gail bringing up the rear. The metal walls echoed when the mechanic slapped the vent back into place, their home-cooked adhesive paste hissing upon touching the metal, sealing it together.

  If the Church somehow figured out they’d come this way, at least they wouldn’t be following any time soon.

  Ali crawled forward into the smoke-filled vents, the path she’d memorised clear in her mind. A left turn in the first intersection, then straight on until the metal floor of the vents dropped into darkness. Using her hands and feet, she slowly made her way down.

  The temperature increased with each downwards shimmy, the steel at her back turning warm to the touch. On the third floor down, the vents changed into stone, growing hotter the lower they went.

  Ali’s feet met solid ground. She stuck her upper body into the lowest vent, the sound of muted conversation echoing from somewhere ahead. At first, Ali ignored it, resuming her advance, but her hands almost slid out from under her when she heard her name, a distant ghostly whisper bouncing on the stone walls of the tunnel before her. She believed she’d imagined it, but then it came, again and again.

  An intersection stood before her: on the left, the path to the Sidallite; on the right, the voices, saying Alirvi between other words she could not fully discern. Her gut roiled in unease, demanding she took a detour – just a small one, merely five minutes – to find out why her name was on the Evolutionists’ lips.

  Her mission too important to cast aside, Ali meant to take the former option – yet her name reached her ears once more and, before she could stop herself, she grabbed the ledge of the lower third floor vent and hauled herself inside.

  Barron tapped at her ankle, and, from behind him, Gail asked, “Why did we stop?”

  “No idea. Ali, get moving!” the Sergent hissed angrily.

  “I overheard something that might be important,” she said over her shoulder, taking the right path. “You two go on ahead. I’ll meet you below.”

  Whatever Gail and Barron said after that fell on deaf ears as Ali crawled along the stone, her breather the one reason she hadn’t choked on the hot air. Sweat beaded on her forehead and fell down her temples, catching on the straps of her goggles. The siren grew muffled, the voices became clearer, enough for her to make out everything they said.

  “… sound … Forel’s secret to get the Alirvi to work?” a man asked.

  What in the rust were they talking about? “It couldn’t have been the Sidallite,” another said. “We only found out how to use the aether to mutate ore years after he left us.” A weighted pause. “Could it be that he never got the Alir to work? It could’ve been a lie meant to confuse –”

  “He definitely got one to work. I saw it myself, sneaking around the Academia a couple m
onths ago. The day the blueprints disappeared. It was far from perfect, but it was alive.” A shake of the head. “Shame it blew up with Forel’s laboratory. We could’ve studied it.”

  Her throat seized, rendering Ali unable to breathe. It was somewhere around two months ago that she’d broken into the Academia to steal the original blueprints of the Vault. Had this man truly seen her? And if so, why did he believe she was some sort of thing, nothing but a construct of Dr. Forel’s?

  At the grate, Ali took off her goggles to peer through one of the square holes carved on the stone. A dim environment lay on the other side, and from this angle, she could spy the white-robed Evolutionists, standing between two rows of six cylindrical tanks, their contents…

  Ali gagged, but forced herself to remain still as she took in the aberrations floating in liquid. The view wasn’t the best, the lack of light made it hard to see, and she could only see into four of the tanks – yet it was enough for her to be sure of what they were.

  People, deformed in unfathomable ways. One, an adult man, with a beak in place of mouth and nose, arms that were feathery wings, and the feet of a bird; opposite him, an adult woman with a slumbering feline face, and giant, tiger-like paws for hands and feet; a child, no older than five, a mass of tentacles sprouting from his head; a young girl who looked to be made of stone. All of them had their eyes open, unseeing –

  Their gaze suddenly shifted to her.

  Blank, yet conscious. Unfeeling, yet desperate.

  They made us from bits and pieces, tailored to their needs.

  End us.

  So many like us died, only to be improved.

  We can’t live outside.

  Replaced.

  Free us.

  We can’t stay here, forever watching their madness.

  Please.

  Voices, distinct, yet somehow alike, spoke into Ali’s head. The four people from the tank, talking inside her head – but how?