The Voyage of the Iron Dragon

by Robert Kroese

  “Caius, if you would?” Galen said. Caius nodded and stepped toward the door. Gripping a recessed handle on the side nearest them, he pulled the heavy door open, leaving it perpendicular to the floor. Steps led down into darkness.

  Galen took one of the lamps from the wall and went to the opening. “Careful, there are no rails,” he said, and started down the steps.

  Theodora, her eyes wide, turned to look at Theo.

  “It’s all right, love,” Theo said. “I’ll go first. Caius, are you coming?”

  Caius shook his head. “Best if I wait here,” he said. Theo decided not to ask for clarification of this point.

  “Come on then,” Galen said from somewhere down below. He held the lamp up to illuminate the steps. Theo held out his hand to Theodora. She took it, and he led her down the creaky wooden steps into the room below.

  The sub-cellar was much smaller, only about ten feet on a side. It was sparsely furnished, with a single wooden chair, a small bookshelf with a few tattered volumes lying on it, and an old stained rug covering most of the floor. In one corner was a bucket with a board over it. A slight odor of mildew was all but overwhelmed by the small of feces and urine.

  Huddled in a corner, mostly covered by a ragged wool blanket, was a very tall, very thin man. He was nearly still, but the slight motion of labored breathing indicated that he was alive. Only his left shoulder and part of the back of his head and neck were visible; the yellowish glow of the lamp gave his skin an unnatural hue.

  “Good God,” Theo said. His mind reeled with the possibilities. Was this some unlucky heretic Christopher was trying to save? A captured spy who had been working for Christopher’s political enemies? Perhaps Pope Christopher was not as naïve as they’d imagined him to be. Fear gripped Theo as the thought occurred to him that the imprisoned man might be one of Theodora’s agents. She did like them tall and thin, although this man was pushing the boundaries even for her. It was difficult to tell from the way he was crouched in the corner, but he had to be close to seven feet. “Do you know this man?” he asked Theodora, guardedly.

  Theodora shot him a puzzled look. Galen drew closer to the man and pulled back the blanket. The huddled figure, weak and emaciated, swatted weakly at him. Theo gasped, realizing something his mind had first failed to grasp. He’d been so eager to fit the prisoner into some predefined category—rebel, spy, heretic—that he’d missed one very obvious fact: the prisoner wasn’t human at all.

  “Christ Jesus in heaven,” Theodora said. “What is it?”

  “A demon from the pit of hell,” Galen said. “The rumors were true.”

  The thing stared at Theodora, blinking its dull yellow eyes against the glare of the lamp. Its alien features were impossible to read.

  “Did you ask Christopher about it?” Theo asked.

  Galen nodded. “He wouldn’t say anything. We can interrogate him at the prison, of course, but I got the impression he didn’t know much. Says he inherited it from Boniface.” Boniface VII had been Christopher’s predecessor and mentor.

  “How did you even find it?”

  “We were looking for evidence, like you said. One of the men found a little ivory statue of Diana in one of the rooms upstairs, but I wasn’t sure it would be enough, so I sent Tellus down here.”

  “How many of your men know?” Theodora asked.

  “Only Tellus and I have seen it. I told Caius and he said not to let anyone else come down here until he’d fetched you.”

  “Good,” said Theodora. “No one else is to know.”

  “Understood,” Galen replied.

  “We need to get him out of here,” Theodora said. “Caius, get my carriage. There must be a room in the Vatican where we can keep it.”

  “Keep it?” Theo asked uncertainly. “You know I respect your instincts, love, but it’s going to take all our political capital just to keep Sergio on the throne. Perhaps it would be best just to leave the demon? Or put it out of its misery? Assuming it can be killed.”

  The thing stirred at this.

  “You understand,” Theodora said.

  The thing continued to stare blankly at her. After a moment, it nodded.

  “What are you?” she asked.

  The thing did not reply.

  Theodora sighed. “We have removed your captor from his position of authority, but we are in a precarious position, politically,” she said. “It will take some effort to keep you alive. Do you understand?”

  The thing nodded again.

  “Then tell me why we shouldn’t kill you.”

  Another long pause followed. At last the thing rasped, in a barely audible voice, “I can help you.”

  “How?”

  “Lombards. Saracens. I know plans.” The thing erupted in a fit of coughing.

  “You weren’t much help to Christopher,” Theo observed.

  The thing shook its head. “Wouldn’t listen,” it rasped.

  “How do you know of these ‘plans’?” Theodora asked.

  “My people… see things. I saw… death of Christopher.”

  “Christopher is still alive, for now,” Theodora said.

  “And it doesn’t take a fortuneteller to foresee his imminent demise,” Theo added. Deposed Popes tended not to live very long in the current political climate.

  “Sergius the Third will last longer,” the thing rasped. “Five years.”

  Theodora glared at Galen. “It overheard you.”

  “No, my lady,” Galen said.

  “Even if it had, Galen wouldn’t have used that name,” Theo remarked. Galen nodded.

  Theodora chewed her lip. It was a good point: Sergio’s name would be Latinized to Sergius, making him the third Pope to have used that name. But Galen would have had no reason to use that name before Sergio had even been given the job. It was unlikely that Galen had even known Sergio was a candidate. There was simply no way that someone chained up in Christopher’s basement could have known the official name of the next Pope.

  “All right,” Theodora said to the creature. “You may be of some use to us. If you don’t give us any trouble, we’ll clean you up and give you slightly better accommodations. Your future treatment will depend on just how useful you turn out to be. Do you understand?”

  The thing nodded.

  “What do we call you?” Theo asked.

  “I am Gurryek sem-Chotarr,” the thing said.

  “Gurryek,” Theo said.

  The thing nodded.

  “Gurryek, are you a demon from the pit of hell?” Theodora asked.

  The thing made a choking sound. “You have said so,” it answered.

  Chapter Two

  Camp Yeager, Brora Coalfield, Scotland: June 15, 905 A.D. (22 years after the lander crash)

  Dan O’Brien stood at the crest of a low ridge overlooking the bleak Scottish landscape, looking for anything out of place. The air was cold and still, and a mass of gray clouds had hung overhead since he’d disembarked the karve earlier that morning. Stubborn clumps of grass and scrub plants clung to the rough terrain, rendering the landscape a near-uniform dull yellowish-green. The soil here was poor, but the wet climate allowed vegetation to take purchase. This was particularly true where the earth had been disturbed: the sloped sides of the three-dozen or so bowl-shaped pits scattered across the valley were already covered with weeds, making it impossible to determine which of them had been dug years earlier and which had been abandoned only a few months ago.

  The pits—called “bell pits” in mining parlance, because of their inverted bell shape—ranged from sixty to a hundred feet in diameter. The bell pits were the results of the expedition’s first attempts at extracting coal from the ground. It was a primitive but fast and effective method of coal mining, the primary drawback being that the pits were susceptible to flooding. In the damp climate of northern Scotland, that sometimes meant the pits were inaccessible for weeks at a time. The miners possessed a sump pump, powered by a coal-burning steam engine, that could be used to rem
ove water from the pits, but O’Brien frowned on its use, as it was loud and might draw attention to their operation. Ordinarily the miners were the only people for miles around, but it would only take one intrepid fisherman or wandering pilgrim to spread the word that a group of miners at Brora possessed an infernal iron machine that belched steam and smoke. Such rumors would inevitably draw the attention of the authorities at Inverness or one of the other local villages, and that would mean packing up the whole operation and moving to another coalfield, probably hundreds of miles away. The greater danger, though, was discovery of their operation by the Cho-ta’an.

  The spacemen had last encountered one of the Cho-ta’an nineteen years earlier, at Baile an Or, about twenty-five miles away from Camp Yeager. Before the alien had died, it had told them three Cho-ta’an had survived the crash of their ship on Earth. Assuming the alien had been telling the truth—and O’Brien believed its account, given the size of the escape pod they’d seen—only two Cho-ta’an remained. The spacemen and their allies had seen no sign of the aliens since the battle at Baile an Or. With any luck, the two were dead: the Cho-ta’an were hardy and long-lived, but their biology was not well-suited to conditions on Earth. Additionally, the tall, gaunt, grey-skinned Cho-ta’an had a hard time passing as humans; the one they’d killed had taken to disguising itself with a doctor’s plague costume and surrounding itself with human henchmen who were paid well enough not to ask too many questions.

  The spacemen had learned, however, not to underestimate the Cho-ta’an. Despite being marooned on an alien planet, the Cho-ta’an were determined to ensure their race’s victory in its war with humanity, and they had proved their dedication by very nearly wiping out most of the population of Europe with a bioengineered plague. Whatever the Cho-ta’an were up to now, it was best not to draw their attention—which was why O’Brien was standing on a ridge overlooking a coalfield. If he saw nothing amiss from this distance, it was safe to assume that news of their operation would not reach the ears of those who might cause trouble for them. Now in his fifty-third year, O’Brien was too old for Viking raids and other adventures, but he tried to get to Camp Yeager at least three times a year to conduct these inspections. He’d arrived on a karve from Höfn that morning. The rest of the crew—nineteen men—would remain with the ship until he sent for them.

  The pockmarked coalfield was currently devoid of miners: three years earlier, they had moved the operation underground, and the men—forty-eight of them at last count—generally remained in the mine all day. The only sign of the mining operation, besides a small pile of coal near the road at the bottom of the ridge, was a series of wooden sheds of various sizes at the far end of the little valley, just past the bell pits. The underground mine was accessible from a horizontal opening in the hillside that was hidden from O’Brien’s view by the largest shed. Straining his ears, he heard nothing but the faint sound of ocean waves crashing on the shore and the cawing of distant crows.

  Satisfied that nothing at the scene would appear out of the ordinary to the average medieval peasant who might, on the off-chance, wander by, O’Brien began making his way down the ridge to the relatively flat valley floor. The narrow, packed gravel road that snaked along the valley floor to his left would make for easier walking, but O’Brien preferred the direct route. In any case, he knew the miners were diligent about keeping the road clear; if any technologically inappropriate artifacts—a stainless steel knife blade or a burnt-out light bulb, perhaps—had been left at the scene by a careless worker, it would likely be near the pits.

  While he walked past the pits, scanning the ground for such detritus, he wondered if he was being overly cautious. As with all the remote operations of the Iron Dragon project, operating the mine required a constant awareness of the tension between efficiency and secrecy. Were it not for the need to hide their activity from the Cho-ta’an and keep the locals in the dark, they would easily be producing at least three times as much coal as they were presently. But if the Cho-ta’an found them, it was all for naught. Even a single Cho-ta’an who was sufficiently motivated would have little difficulty sabotaging a rocket launch. On the other hand, they had no idea if either of the Cho-ta’an were still alive and had little reason to think they were anywhere near Scotland if they were. Even his concerns about a random peasant wandering by were probably overblown: in all his visits to the mine, he’d only seen one person other than the miners and the oarsmen who manned the cargo ships: an itinerant priest who ministered to the fishing villages in the area occasionally stopped by the mine to proselytize. There were rarely any miners on the surface, and on the rare occasion that the priest encountered some, the miners chased him off the property with their pickaxes.

  There was certainly nothing unusual about a coalmine in Scotland. Coal had been used for heating and cooking in northern Europe for centuries, as it was an abundant and easily accessible resource. In many areas of Scotland and the British Isles, like here at the Brora coalfield, one could literally pick it up from the ground. Operations the size of Camp Yeager were unusual, particularly this far north, but not unheard of. A keen-eyed observer who spent some time in the area might raise an eyebrow at the size and number of ships that departed from the nearby harbor loaded nearly to the gunwales with coal, but the crews were coached to answer any such inquiries with vague statements about Harald Fairhair’s efforts to improve the lives of the citizens of the newly united Kingdom of Norway.

  There was some truth to this claim: Camp Yeager had been founded as a result of a de facto charter to the Brora Coalfield granted by Harald. The settlers had come to an arrangement with Harald in the summer of 886 to provide protection for their operation in return for a yearly tribute of silver. As Iceland lacked many of the resources the Iron Dragon project would require, the spacemen occasionally sent emissaries to Harald, requesting his approval of some expansion of their operations—a copper mine in Finland, a lumber mill in Halogaland, a silver mine in the Danelaw. Most of the resources the settlement required could be found in Viking-controlled territory, and virtually every Viking jarl ruled at the pleasure of the King of Norway. Harald was more than happy to extend his blessing and protection to these endeavors, making arrangements with whichever second cousin or great nephew who held sway in the area in exchange for an increase in his yearly tribute. So while the coal never actually made it to Norway, Harald made out quite well on the deal.

  Camp Yeager, named for an early aerospace pioneer, was one of the first of these remote sites. Of the sites they’d established since Baile an Or, only Camp Grissom (the silver mine) and Camp Shepard (the copper mine) preceded it. After precious metals, people, and lumber, coal was the resource in greatest demand at Höfn.

  O’Brien picked his way across the valley floor, at times having to tread carefully between two bell pits whose sides had eroded so much that there was barely a navigable walkway between them. He frowned as he walked past the pile of coal that was awaiting shipment: there was barely enough to fill the hull of the ship that had brought him here, and three more ships would be arriving within the week. Output from the mine had slowed to an unacceptable level; the stores at Höfn were already so low that they’d begun rationing the use of some machinery.

  He passed the series of shacks and walked to the opening to the drift of the mine, which was bolstered by a metal frame called an adit. An iron gate secured by a padlock blocked access to the drift. This was probably overkill, as there was little chance of anyone other than the miners wandering into the mine, but O’Brien didn’t see the point in taking chances. He pulled a copper key from his pocket, inserted it into the keyhole and turned it. The lock clicked open and he removed it from the latch. He pulled the gate open, stepped inside, and then padlocked it again behind him.

  The drift sloped upwards for about twenty feet before leveling out and then sloping steeply downward—a configuration intended to prevent flooding from rainwater. After waiting a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dim light, O’Brien wal
ked up the slope to the level area. The drift widened here to form a roughly circular chamber about twenty feet in diameter, which had come to be called the “staging area.” Very little light penetrated to the room, but O’Brien didn’t need it. He took six well-practiced steps while dragging his fingertips along the right-hand wall, put his hand on the wooden shelf at shoulder level, and felt along its surface until he found a curved shell of cold aluminum. He picked up the helmet strapped it on.

  A press of the switch on the lamp, casting dim light down the tunnel. The battery-powered lamps, which had taken Reyes nearly a year to develop, were a concession to safety as well as efficiency: fire didn’t mix well with an environment where high concentrations of methane were possible. The safety of the miners hadn’t been Reyes’s sole concern: the mining lamp project was a test case for building portable batteries and light bulbs, which would be needed for many other purposes going forward. O’Brien made a quick survey of the staging area: the wall to his right was lined with shelves that held helmets, gloves, and various tools. A few shovels and pickaxes hung from pegs in the corner. Along the left wall were stacks of wagon wheels. At first glance, the wheels looked like ordinary spoked wooden wheels one might find anywhere in Europe. Closer inspection revealed, however, would reveal a distinct anachronism: pneumatic rubber tires.

  The thing about coal was that it was heavy. Moving a cart full of it from deep in a mine to the surface and then along a bumpy gravel road to a dock where it could be loaded into ships was not an easy task, even for the strongest mule. At first the miners had made do with contemporary technology: carts with wooden wheels wrapped in iron bands. These proved so unwieldly that the miners had begun to ship carts that were only half-full, wasting time and energy. Another solution had to be found.

  Reyes, always the engineer, suggested a railroad. Fabricating steel rails would be simple enough, but as with most of their operations, though, the limiting factor proved to be secrecy rather than technology: although primitive railways had been used to transport cargo as early as the sixth century B.C., a pair of steel rails snaking a mile overland would be decidedly out of place in tenth century Scotland. O’Brien had managed to fabricate latex rubber from dandelions at Höfn, and he set about designing a wheel with a pneumatic tire that would pass as a typical wooden wheel from a distance. Upon seeing a prototype, Reyes gave her approval.