Jake turned back toward the mine to find Renate walking toward him. Andreas was maneuvering the biggest of the Alekanovo stones into place. “It took a little debate,” Renate said, with a smile that suggested ‘argument’ would be more accurate, “but Andreas and I think we’ve determined the most powerful positioning of the Russian stones.”
“The more you can prepare now, the faster we can act once Rick and the others come out,” Jake said. “Anything you can do in advance, do it. We can’t count on having time to do more than react when the explosions start.”
Renate nodded. “I figured as much. We’re planning to have all the wardings set so all we have to do is activate them. At least,” she added, “that’s the plan. And you know what they say.”
“Nothing ever goes as planned,” Jake said. “I know. But let’s hope that just this once, it doesn’t apply to us.”
Jake was restless, and the burden of being the point man for the night’s activities weighed heavy on him. This is for you, Father, he thought. He might not have been able to get the kind of evidence necessary to convict Veles or Thwaites in a court of law for Thomas Desmet’s murder, but he could make it expensive for them, and warn them off troubling Brand and Desmet’s people in the future. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. But it would have to do.
The earpiece gave a shrill squeal that nearly deafened him. “What’s going on down there?” Nicki asked. “Have the men come out of the mine yet?”
“Not yet,” Jake replied. “See anything from up there?”
In the distance, Jake heard gunfire, both small arms and the rat-a-tat-tat of Gatling guns.
“There’s a firefight going on, behind a building,” Nicki replied. “We’re high enough I can’t see which side is winning. Looks like it’s getting out of hand at the gates. People are waving burning torches around and firing rifles. Better stay clear.”
“Got my hands full where I am,” Jake said. “Have you spotted any ‘company’?”
“Non,” Nicki replied. “And my friend continues to read the telegrams. They’re very interesting tonight.” That meant Cady was code-breaking the encrypted messages from the Department, and between Veles and Thwaites. They had already agreed that since their transmissions between the ground and the airship might be intercepted, no names would be used.
“Anything?” Jake asked.
“Nothing we can’t handle.” There was a commotion that drowned out a few words. “Gotta go.” The transmission clicked off.
Now we wait for Rick and the others to get back so we can seal up the Night Hag and her gessyan friends—for good, he thought.
“WE’VE GOT TO get the rest of those men out before we lure the gessyan back in.” Rick adjusted the straps on the combined gas mask and night-vision goggles that Adam Farber had created. He glanced at the others—Kovach, Father Matija, and the Logonje priests—and decided that they all looked like creatures from a nightmare with their faces covered by the gear.
The real nightmares lay ahead of them, in the depths of Vesta Nine.
“Jacob and Hans are down below,” Kovach said. “The deepest two levels are being mined by werkmen or clockwork zombies. That’s where the tourmaquartz is—and likely there are natural shafts going even deeper, to where the gessyan were before they got loose. We’re not going that far. The level above those has been using slave labor. Jacob and Hans are going to need some help freeing the slaves from their manacles and sending them back up in the elevators. That’s where Rick and I come in.”
“And what would you have us do?” Matija asked. Matija and his fellow priests were dressed in long black cassocks, covered by black leather baldrics with a variety of pockets and scabbards for cavalry sabers.
Kovach met the priest’s gaze. “Hold back the dark, Father. Those things are down there, and they may decide they want fresh meat.”
Kovach and Rick each carried one of Farber’s new force guns. Their night vision goggles would help them move through the darkness, and they came prepared with several of Adam’s electric torches and miners’ lamps, just to be on the safe side. Rick was armed with a revolver and a knife, as well as the Maxwell box and the remote trigger Adam had rigged just for this operation. Kovach had a shotgun and a revolver, as well as a rifle slung over his shoulder. Rick was certain that Kovach had other, concealed weapons on him, as well as the sack of explosives he carried with disconcerting nonchalance. He caught a glint of silver at the neckline of Kovach’s shirt, and knew that he’d been sure to wear his saint’s medal this night.
“Time’s a-wasting. Let’s get moving,” Rick said.
Thanks to the knockers and the alarms, miners and guards had already cleared out, making it easy for Rick and the others to enter at ground level. Even through the masks, the air smelled of coal dust, sweat, lamp oil, and damp dirt. Kovach led the way to one of the cage elevators that took men deep into the shaft. Rick did not let himself think about the almost bottomless drop into the darkness as he and the others shuffled into the square metal cage.
“On the way back up, we can pack the elevator like they do for the shifts,” Kovach said. “Each of these cages can hold at least thirty men—more if they’re skinny. You can move practically a whole shift with one load—we hope.”
The clank of chains and the rumble of gears made Rick’s stomach clench. We’re hanging over a drop that goes most of the way to China, with monsters at the bottom. No reason to be nervous.
An oil lamp burned on each level of the mine, and Rick counted them as they made their descent. Most miners wore a lamp attached to their hats, and even that was risky due to bad air, what miners called ‘firedamp’. The explosions that occurred when an open lamp flame hit a pocket of firedamp had killed hundreds of miners. Even worse was the blackdamp, poisonous air that seeped up from the depths of the Earth. What with bad air, tunnel collapses and frequent accidents, mining was already dangerous without having to worry about immortal, bloodthirsty monsters lurking in the dark.
“Almost there.” Kovach’s voice seemed loud in the darkness. With all but the slaves and werkmen gone, the shaft was eerily quiet. Beyond the single lamp on each level, tunnels stretched into impenetrable darkness. The priests had begun to quietly chant, and Rick found himself envying Kovach the protective medal he wore.
The air was stuffy and breathing seemed more difficult. The deeper they went, the more every one of Rick’s instincts screamed for him to run while he still had the chance. What does it feel like for someone who actually has magic, like Matija? he wondered.
The clanking slowed and they reached the final landing. The elevator hung suspended over the abyss, and a six-inch gap separated them from the tunnel. Rick resolutely did not look down as they disembarked. He tried to stretch, only to nearly hit his head on the rough ceiling.
“There’s a reason a lot of miners are short,” Kovach said with a chuckle.
Deep below them, the sounds of steel on rock carried up through the elevator shaft, a constant clink and thump as clockwork creatures worked in conditions untenable for the human slaves. Near the elevator, Rick spotted two metal boxes the size of lunch pails. One of them was locked, but the other’s lid was open, revealing handfuls of opaque greenish crystals. Rick and Kovach exchanged a glance, before filling their satchels and pockets with as many of the crystals as they could.
Down the long, dark tunnel, a dim yellow light bobbed closer. Kovach raised his shotgun, while Rick reached for his revolver. Matija and the priests each drew a golden relic from inside their cassocks, ready for the worst.
“Glad you’re here.” Jacob emerged from the darkness. “Hans and I have most of the slaves out of their shackles, but they’re a sorry lot. We can save their lives, but I fear they’ll be fit for nowhere except Dix Mountain.”
Rick and the others followed Jacob down the tunnel. The darkness seemed to have physical weight, pressing in on them from all sides. Rock enclosed them like the walls of a tomb, and the warm, fetid air stank of unwashed bodies a
nd urine. Rick had never been claustrophobic, but now he had to consciously fight the urge to flee in panic.
Jacob led them into a chamber off the tunnel. The ceiling was low enough that Rick had to duck. The enormous weight being held up by the support pillars—all those levels above them—did not bear dwelling on, not if he wanted to stay sane. The dim glow of oil lanterns and miner’s lamps dispelled enough of the gloom that they could push their nightvision goggles up on their foreheads.
Rick could make out the shadowy forms of pale, half-starved wretches in the dim light. Hollow-cheeked, painfully thin, filthy and unshaven, the enslaved miners stared at Rick and the others with deadened gazes, as if the concept of rescue had long ago been abandoned. On the nearest slaves, Rick could see dark ulcers on their ankles where manacles had kept them at their job.
“Rick and Kovach—start getting them into the elevator,” Jacob said. “Hans and I will free the last of them. Father Matija—I’d be obliged if you and your companions would make sure we don’t get surprised by things that go bump in the night.”
Matija nodded, and said something in his native tongue before he and the other priests spread out, two of them lining up watchfully on either side of the elevator, focused on the pit below, and the others moving toward the tunnel to stand sentry against the blackness that seemed to stretch on to infinity.
“Come on folks, time to go,” Kovach said as he and Rick moved toward the ragged miners. The men shuffled slowly towards the elevator as though too weary to comprehend freedom. Rick saw the same anger in Kovach’s eyes that he felt himself: at Thwaites, at Veles, and at the mine bosses who must have known and kept their silence.
“Move all the way to the back,” Rick urged, trying not to retch at the smell of the slaves. “It’ll be tight, but we want to get everyone in one run.” The miners stumbled their way toward the elevator, and Rick cajoled them inside as Kovach kept the line moving.
The elevator cage had three levels. When they had ridden down, they had done so in the top-most tier. When that section was so full that Rick could not fit in another of the emaciated men, Jacob closed and latched the door, then worked the lift controls to bring the second section to the level of the tunnel floor.
Loading the first group had gone without a hitch, though much slower than Rick would have liked. But as the first of the new group shambled toward the elevator, the man in front stumbled, falling across the gap between the tunnel floor and the cage just as the car suddenly lurched up.
Rick dove to catch the miner, and found himself badly off balance. He grabbed the man’s bony wrist, crying out as he started to pitch forward. The miner hung half-in and half-out of the elevator, held only by Rick’s grip on his wrist. Rick had one foot on the tunnel floor, one on the elevator’s steel platform, and a death grip on the wire cage, tight enough to draw blood.
For a moment, Rick stared straight down into the abyss. The rocks that had been jarred loose by the miner’s tumble fell in silence, so far down he would not hear them hit bottom. The terrified miner scrabbled to climb into the elevator, making the whole contraption swing farther away from solid ground. The man’s frantic movements strained Rick’s grasp on his wrist, and made the wire cut deeper into his other hand as he struggled to keep them from falling to their deaths.
If the fall doesn’t kill us, the gessyan will eat us, he thought, fighting down a surge of panic.
“Gotcha!” Kovach said as he grabbed Rick by the coat and pulled him back to safety. The dangling slave lurched into the elevator, and Rick let go of the cage, looking ruefully at his damaged hand.
“Wrap that up,” Kovach said, producing a linen bandage from one of his pockets. “Make sure you clean it when we get out of here. You don’t want to get lockjaw.” Rick wrapped his hand, trying to ignore the pain.
“They smell blood.” Father Matija paused in his chant. “Better hurry. They’re coming.” Rick did not need to ask who the priest meant.
“The rest of you! Get moving!” Kovach ordered the vacant-eyed miners, who resumed their shuffle toward the elevator. Jacob and Hans herded the slaves from the back, weapons at the ready in case any surprises emerged from the tunnels.
As the last of the wretched miners crouched and scuttled their way into the elevator, there was room for just one more passenger. Jacob climbed inside. Hans grabbed a hold of the outside with his metal hands to ride along. “I’ll take them up to the surface and make sure they get clear,” Jacob said. “Then I’ll come back down to get you. Be ready—I don’t think it’s healthy to stick around down here,” he added, nodding down the dark shaft toward where the gessyan and the mad doctors’ creations ruled the shadows.
The elevator began to clank its way to the top. Rick could not tear his gaze away from the empty stares of the enslaved miners. Do they realize we came to set them free? he wondered. Or are they too far gone to know what’s going on?
Rick unpacked a metal box and a coiled rope of twisted steel from his pack. He flipped a switch and Adam’s Maxwell box hummed to life. It was bigger than its predecessor, and had been altered by Adam to allow for a remote trigger, linked to a small winding gadget that would crank up the power to the highest level. With luck, that would call the gessyan that had escaped back to the mines and imprison them along with the spirits that had not fled the deep places. Rick and the others would be well clear by the time that happened. He secured the box to the steel rope through a metal loop, then drove a stake into the rock near the ledge and eased the Maxwell box down into the abyss. He let out the last of the rope, then straightened, still staring into the pit.
Kovach jostled his arm. “Come on, let’s set those charges.”
From the elevator shaft, they heard the sound of a clanking chain. “That’s awfully fast for Jacob to be on his way back down,” Rick said.
A metal arm clamped onto the rock and red eyes in a brass skull rose into sight, as a werkman hauled himself over the lip of the pit.
“We’ve got trouble!” Kovach shouted, leveling his force weapon and blowing a hole in the mechanical man’s head. The automaton staggered before regaining its balance and continuing the attack. Another werkman had appeared at the edge of the shaft, eyes glowing.
Father Matija hefted a large rock and hurled it at the nearest werkman. The heavy stone put a deep dent into the werkman’s chest. A second priest pitched a fist-sized rock like a baseball, hard enough he could have qualified for a spot on one of the teams at Exposition Park. The rock slammed into the werkman’s head with enough force to give a living man a concussion. The damaged metal man continued forward, gears protesting and eyes flickering.
“We’ll hold them!” Kovach shouted. “Go plant the charges!”
Rick shouldered the equipment and headed into the large chamber where the slave workers had been mining. The smell was overpowering and Rick kicked angrily at the discarded shackles that lay all across the floor. He sized up the area. Tourmaquartz wasn’t mined on this level, but the raw ore was brought up from where werkmen and the clockwork zombies mined it in the depths below, for the slaves to process before sending it for shipment.
On one side of the room was a mine car filled with tourmaquartz ore, brought up from the levels below for processing by the slaves. Picks and pickaxes were strewn across the floor. It did not escape Rick’s notice that the effort required to turn a mine car full of large rocks into a lunch pail of slivers and marble-sized pieces would have been enormous.
Rick dug into his satchel for the bundles of dynamite fortified by Adam Farber with Sprengel explosives. He placed them all around the mine car and whistled under his breath as he set the detonator.
“When this blows, they’re going to hear the explosion for miles,” he muttered. “Probably rattle dishes all the way out in Homestead.”
A noise in the tunnel behind the mine car made Rick freeze. Shuffling footsteps, headed his way. Cursing under his breath, Rick backed away from the tunnel. He had almost made it to the far side of the chamber when
three clockwork zombies burst from the darkness, moving fast.
“Oh, shit.” Shooting the clockwork zombies was out, not with the tourmaquartz and the explosives so close. Rick grabbed a pickax with his right hand, and snatched up a pair of manacles from the floor with his injured left hand.
“You looking for me?” he said, though he doubted the mechanized corpses could understand him. Taunting them made him feel a little braver, though his palms were clammy and his body tingled with adrenaline.
One of the zombies came at him from the right, while the other two circled around. Rick swung the pickax at the nearest creature, sinking the point into its back. Ribs tore loose as he jerked the ax free, and foul-smelling ichor oozed from the gaping wound. The zombie struggled forward, slowed but on its feet.
The second clockwork creature attacked from the left. Rick gripped one end of the manacle and swung the chain, lashing out at the zombie. He bit back a cry as the chain bit into his makeshift bandage, straining the cut in his palm. The chain and manacles slashed down through the dead man’s face, smashing its nose and ripping lose a flap of mottled skin.
For a moment, the second zombie was blinded by the ichor gushing into its mechanical eyes. The last creature, in the middle of the three, made its move, rushing Rick with its arms outstretched, hands twisted into claws.
Rick brought the ax down with his full strength, snapping through the zombie’s forearms like tinder. He winged the ichor-stained manacle at the zombie on his right, snaring one of its wrists with the chain. With a jerk, he pulled the creature off its feet and brought the pickax down through the clockwork zombie’s head.
Strong hands grabbed his shoulders from behind. Rick twisted, glad his coat allowed for some wiggle room. He freed his knife with his left hand, and drove it back through his coat, into the belly of the creature, then wheeled, bringing the pickax down through the zombie’s hunched shoulders into its chest.
Two down, one to go, and some volatile explosives ready to go boom. Rick grabbed another set of shackles from the floor, swung them round and round overhead and let them fly like a bolas. The chains wheeled through the air, slamming into the last zombie’s head and wrapping around with such force that one of the metal cuffs sank through the rotting flesh and lodged in the creature’s forehead.
Iron and Blood Page 39
