Shanghai Steam

by Calvin D. Jim

  He recognized this one as well — Zhu Li, the chief coolie in the aft engine room’s Black Gang. Coolidge always had trouble guessing the age of the locals, but Zhu was older than most of the locals on board. That alone gave Coolidge pause; his sifu had been in his seventies, and Coolidge had never seen him beaten, not ever.

  Dragon stressed fluidity of form and motion, a concept called “riding the wind” which meant following your opponent’s movements rather than trying to anticipate them. The emphasis was on turning upper or lower torso without changing stance and on avoiding the opponent’s attacks, using sinuous, reptilian movements while breathing to channel qi.

  His opponent, he saw, was fighting Crane style, a form that also used evasion as a tactic, but which stressed frequent hops and jumps to change stance.

  And in that moment, Coolidge knew that he had the clear advantage.

  He didn’t think it through consciously. He simply reacted — riding the wind. He didn’t watch Zhu’s eyes, which could be deceptive, but kept his gaze loosely focused on the triangle at the bottom of Zhu’s throat, allowing him to see any movement of the man’s body almost before it happened.

  Zhu hopped, a sudden and elegant shift of stance … but the narrowness of the keel hindered him, constrained his movement as the attack unfolded into a crane’s beak — thumb and forefinger tightly pressed together, arm hooked, hand darting forward toward Coolidge’s eye. Coolidge shifted back, avoiding the strike by dropping into pu tui shi, the low-leg stretching stance, blocking the crane-strike with the up-sweep of his right hand.

  Maybe the advantage wasn’t there after all. Stand-off. Both Crane and Dragon preferred to evade, waiting for the opponent to strike and in so doing opening himself to a single, crippling counter-strike.

  “Give it up, Zhu,” Coolidge said, shouting to make himself heard above the thunder of the engines to left and right. “Your ancestors can’t help you here!” It was a deliberate goad. The surname Zhu suggested descent from the Ming emperors, a fact which Zhu used to his advantage when bullying his coolie work force.

  “Gwailo!” Zhu snapped back, a nasty epithet literally meaning “ghost man,” but usually translated as “foreign devil.” He hopped forward, changing stance…

  …and Coolidge struck, coming up from below, brushing Zhu’s kick aside with his right hand, while striking hard at his groin with his left. Zhu fell against the rope handrail, grabbing at it to keep from falling. Coolidge moved up behind him, sweeping Zhu’s feet out from underneath him and levering him to the keel’s deck.

  And then British soldiers were there, coming up from behind with a clatter of boots and rifles. “We got the bloody wog now, Sar’nt,” one said. “Nicely done!”

  “Damn it, why didn’t you shoot?”

  “‘Cuz you was in the way, Sar’nt!”

  It was the work of a moment to slash the lashings of the presumed bomb and tip the crate over the side.

  Twelve hours later, the Victoria Regina reached Peiping.

  The newspapers had been calling it the Boxer Rebellion, a revolt by peasant farmers against both foreigners and the Qing government … though rumors continued to insist that the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi herself was behind the uprising. Fifty-five days before, a motley collection of foreign diplomats, Christian missionaries, businessmen, and soldiers from seven different countries had been trapped inside the capital’s legation compound by thousands of Boxers. It was said that the attack had been precipitated by a German minister’s inexplicable execution of a captured Chinese boy. World opinion, however, was solidly aligned against the Chinese, who were seen as mobs of fanatics and barbarians massacring foreign missionaries and their families and burning the homes of native Christians.

  Whatever the rights and wrongs of the uprising, an international force had been dispatched from Tianjin seventy-five miles away, but progress had been slow. The British turreted land cruiser Behemoth, it later was learned, had been disabled by a Boxer infernal device exploded against its tracks, and the relief column had stalled.

  And so Victoria Regina arrived above the capital just after dawn, circling low over the legation compound as the crowd penned inside waved and cheered. Boxer hordes swarmed through the streets beyond the compound walls, a last, surging push to break past the ragged line of defenders before the airship could engage.…

  Coolidge watched from the forward gondola’s viewing gallery as the airship’s Maxim guns were turned on the mobs. Most of the Boxers were armed with swords or guan dao spears with long, curving tips; the few antiquated rifles among them had no effect on the looming, sun-illuminated splendor of the massive airship above.

  Just sixteen years before, a fellow American colonial, Hiram Maxim, had first demonstrated the deadly weapon that now bore his name, and since then it had become the symbol of Imperial colonial might. As Hilaire Belloc had so eloquently put it in “The Modern Traveller”:

  Whatever happens, we have got

  The Maxim gun, and they have not.

  Twelve of the weapons firing down through ports in the forward gondola’s sides effected a spectacular slaughter, and sent the bloodied survivors streaming back through the city’s narrow streets in utter disarray.

  The newspapers called it a stupendous victory, a military triumph on the order of Waterloo … or of New York.

  Afterward had come the retribution. Looters ravaged the countryside in so-called punitive raids, killing, raping, burning, and stealing in an orgy of vindictive fury. In addition, China would pay almost a billion liang of silver over the next thirty-nine years. Church property would be restored or paid for, and the Qing Dynasty would become the governing arm for foreign powers throughout the Middle Kingdom, especially for the British Empire, which sought to extend its holdings in Hong Kong deep into the ancient country’s interior.

  China lay broken and bleeding before the foreign thunderbolt.

  And where, Coolidge wondered, was the honor?

  Within the tradition of Chinese literature there was the figure of the wu xia or “martial hero,” the heroic warrior-knight who fought injustice, sought to remove oppressors, fought to right wrongs, helped the oppressed … a kind of Chinese Robin Hood who adhered to the code of Xia.

  Imagine, his old sifu once had told him, if the ancient Buddhist and Hindu writings were correct … that just as every life was a multitude of lives, played out over and over as the soul matured and advanced, the universe, too, was but one of an infinity of universes, cycles upon cycles of them. In such a multitude of realities, everything and anything would be possible.

  Imagine, Sifu Hsu had said, universes where the British Imperium never existed … where the American Rebellion had succeeded or the Raj in India had collapsed, worlds where the fictional Sherlock Homes was real, or the real-life Boxers were fiction. All of those possibilities not only could exist but must exist somewhere within the multiverse, all of those, and so many, many more.

  And why, his sifu had continued, would this universe of universes continue to play out the dramas of life again and again? Coolidge himself, Sifu Hsu had pointed out with that characteristic twinkle in his eye, might have played countless different roles across those infinities of worlds — farmer, banker, lawyer, politician, soldier, pauper, lord … and why?

  Might it be to allow him, his soul, to learn how to live, no matter what the external circumstances of that life?

  In life, as in gong fu lung ch’uan, the student had to learn to ride the wind.…

  And perhaps a part of that was to learn how to live as a wu xia, with honor, giving justice, helping the downtrodden, in a universe that seemed not to care about such insubstantial niceties.

  Coolie. Monkey-lover. A soldier of the Empire gone native.…

  John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. — born on July 4th, 1872 in the tiny village of Plymouth Notch in the Republic of Vermont, a lowly sergeant in the British Imperial Airship Service who happened to believe that the Chinese were people, were humans deserving of respect — drew hims
elf up to his full five-foot ten.

  Perhaps, just perhaps, in this universe a wu xia could make a difference.…

  * * * * *

  William H. Keith is author of over 100 books, including three New York Times bestsellers. His pseudonyms include H. Jay Riker (military fiction) and Ian Douglas (military SF). This is his first foray into the Steampunk genre. A former Navy hospital corpsman, he lives in the mountains of western PA.

  Mistress of the Pearl Dragon

  Shen Braun

  Topper had just watched the bloody dragon eat three bloody Chinamen, so he had no patience for beggars. He stalked through the dirt streets of the godforsaken Chinese village, well-practiced at avoiding the silently pleading wretches and townsfolk both. All he wanted was to get back to his ship, tap into a keg, and calculate how much the bloody Mistress was going to cost him this time, but a persistent sod blocked his way.

  “Englishman,” the beggar said. “Stop and I will pay you for your time.” He jingled his sleeve. Topper knew that sound well enough, but it was the perfect English from the Chinese mouth that stopped him.

  “New to this begging thing, I see,” Topper said. He gave the fellow a sardonic once-over. Shorter than Topper but tall for a Chinaman, his tunic and trousers were black silk and his hair was pulled back into a braid that dropped nearly to his waist. He certainly didn’t match the street’s ragged chaff.

  “I am buying, not begging,” the man said. “That is your custom, yes?”

  It was, but the bald statement made Topper uncomfortable. “What do you want? I’m a busy man.” He pulled out a hip flask and took a pinch.

  “My name is Kuo Kun Tien. With your help, I will challenge the Pearl Dragon.”

  Topper choked on the whiskey. He coughed, thumping his chest. The Chinaman stood impassive. Finally Topper said, “You’re mad, mate, completely nutters. No one goes in there.”

  “You have. Twice. And both times, you have come out free and unharmed.”

  “The dragon only eats at the order of its Mistress, you see, and I have what she craves. Simple as that.”

  “Opium.” The word was flat, but Topper heard an undertone.

  Topper sampled his flask again. “If it weren’t me, it’d be someone else, mate. Way of the world.”

  For a moment Topper thought the Chinaman was going to swing at him. It’d be the last thing the fool ever did, but if he wanted to see the dragon, his end was coming anyway.

  Instead, Kuo only said, “Will you do it?”

  “You don’t need me to hold your hand if you want to get chewed up,” Topper said. He gestured toward the compound he’d just left. “The dragon takes all comers.”

  “I am not allowed inside. The Mistress of the Dragon has forbidden it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I have sworn to destroy her.”

  That wiped the smirk off Topper’s face.

  They found a place that served something harder than tea. Topper said, “No one beats the dragon, mate. I hate dealing with the Mistress, the vicious bint, but my well-wishes won’t mean much when her pet’s crunching your bones.”

  With the money the Mistress made from her opium smuggling, she could have made her village — hell, the whole province — into paradise on earth. Instead, she hoarded it all and kept her people on the brink of starvation. The only way out was to challenge the dragon. Losing meant your death, but at least your suffering was over. Topper had seen the hideous end of so many challengers; the Mistress used them as grisly intimidation to haggle over prices.

  “I will not lose,” Kuo said. He laid his right hand on the table between them. For the first time Topper noticed it was covered by a thick glove. He knew what that meant. Kuo had one of those new bronze hands — maybe his whole arm — and was keeping it as a surprise to spring on the Mistress. It might even work. Maybe.

  “That’s a grand piece,” Topper said. He peered at the limb. The thing looked completely natural. “Where’d you get it?” He knew plenty of sailors with missing parts who’d be interested. “What’s the power source? Can’t be steam. Tesla battery?”

  “Qi.”

  Topper rolled his eyes. That again. These Easterners had a lot of weird beliefs. “Fine, don’t tell me.” He took a sip from his crude ceramic mug; the wine was harsh but warming. “Let’s say your plan works. The dragon’ll be beaten, you’ll have its pearl, but the fifty or so guards the Mistress has will gut you. More importantly, they’ll gut me.”

  “No. She rules by fear that flows from the dragon. Stem that flood and her power vanishes.”

  That was true. “If I bring you inside, I want the pearl. If you get it, that is.”

  Kuo sat like a stone.

  “Why not, mate?” Topper said. “You hand it over, that’ll be one less Englishman selling opium, you can believe that. There’s no way I’m still taking ship when I could buy Buckingham Palace. We both win.”

  Kuo nodded one single jerk of his head.

  The compound where the Mistress laired was as fortified as an English castle and it dominated the village center. Its high stone walls were warm to the touch and Topper knew why: inside were engines that cooked day and night. Not only did they heat the entire compound during the cold winter nights but they were set to release a blast of super-heated steam if anyone tripped one of the pressure triggers along the wall’s top. The unfortunate thief would be boiled alive. If you didn’t have wings, the gates were the only way in.

  All the guards knew Topper by sight, and nodded at his approach. Then they recognized Kuo and went for their weapons.

  Topper held up his hands. “Easy, boys, easy. This one’s a gift for the Mistress.” He grinned, all amiable. “He wants to challenge the dragon. From what I hear, she’d be happy to let him try.” He tipped the guards a wink to show them what he thought of Kuo’s chances.

  The guards laughed. They knew just what challenging the dragon involved: it was a death sentence. “We search you.”

  They were perfunctory with Topper, just part of the routine, but patted the stoic Kuo down thoroughly. Topper was worried they’d notice the metal of the Chinaman’s arm, even when swathed under layers of fabric, but they never balked. Eventually satisfied there was nothing dangerous on them — ha! fools! — the guards threw the heavy locks and opened the gate.

  They were marched to the central keep, a squat three stories of cut stone. A guard pushed open a massive bronze door and gestured: Topper and Kuo were to go in by themselves to face the Dragon’s Mistress.

  One step inside and Topper almost tripped over his own feet. It was the dragon, of course, the great Pearl Dragon. He’d seen the bloody thing a hundred times and it still scared him senseless.

  It was a serpent thicker through the middle than a tall man, and its horrible bronze-scaled length was heaped around the room in ever-writhing coils. Twin rows of gleaming spikes marched up its lean reptilian head. Golden eyes, big as cannon shot, glared out from under iron brows. It lifted its head at their entrance. Hot steam drifted from its nostrils.

  “You bring my enemy here?” the Mistress shrieked. The dragon snarled.

  Bloody hell.

  Topper swallowed. Two grim-faced guards flanked the Mistress, pistols in hand, ready to kill at her command. Servants kept her cool with fans while others hovered near to tend to her whim. Her age was impossible to know, but the Pearl Dragon’s Mistress was slender and strikingly beautiful, even in anger. Nails and lids and lips were painted blood red, and she always wore scarlet silk robes of the highest quality. She hadn’t stood from the lounging couch where she lay and hadn’t discarded the stem of her opium pipe. Maybe she wasn’t as mad as all that.

  “I did,” he said, “and you can thank me for it later.” Boldness was his best bet. “He’s unarmed, alone, and here to challenge the dragon.”

  For a moment he worried while she continued to glare, but then her sensual lips curved into a wolf’s smile. “Is this true?” she asked Kuo.

  “It is.”


  She clapped in delight, suddenly young as a child. “Come forward, then.” Turning to the dragon she purred, “Someone wishes to test you, my love.”

  The head slid forward and rose. Its jaws opened, revealing row upon row of curved, razor-sharp fangs. Topper heard the faint hiss of hidden pistons at work. Wider and wider the maw grew until there was more than enough space for any idiot to waltz right in. Slowly, the pearl was revealed.

  At the back of the dragon’s throat it hung, suspended between two naked electrical contacts. It was bigger than Topper’s fist. The gorgeous thing was amplifier and regulator both, channeling the power that drove the dragon. Without it, the machine would die.

  A solid shield of glass blocked access to the pearl. It was the same kind of stuff they’d used in the latest bathysphere; nothing less than a cannon was going to punch through. To get your hands on the pearl, you had to step inside the dragon’s terrible jaws, then snake your arm down and around the shield, with the articulation gears at the back of the throat ready to rip through your flesh. Speed was impossible. There would be no quick snatch and grab. Fail and the jaws closed. Hard.

  Kuo didn’t hesitate. He strode forward without fear.

  “Stand with me, Topper,” the Mistress said. “We shall have a fine view of his end.”

  He did as she ordered, unable to stop watching Kuo. “Crazy buggar,” he muttered.

  “I shall enjoy this,” the Mistress crooned.

  Topper barely heard her. Kuo was at the dragon. It hissed again, bathing him in a cloud of steam. Topper flinched but Kuo ignored the display and entered the jaws.

  Deadly fangs surrounded Kuo`s legs and hung around his head. He positioned himself near the glass shield in front of the pearl and lowered his head. Every eye in the room — guard, servant, Topper, Mistress — was riveted.

  Kuo struck.

  His right arm blurred forward. There was a resounding crack. Before the shards of glass could even begin to fall, Topper saw the pearl was gone. Kuo clutched it to his side.

  Chaos exploded in the room. The Mistress screamed. Her two guards raised their pistols. Servants scattered.