by Kin Law
When Rosa Marija actually thought about it, later, Nessie Drake hadn’t wished the crew of the ‘Berry harm. It was simply the pirate way. Nessie knew the Manchu Marauder was a capable Captain. Rosa had chosen to crew with Clemens, not Drake.
Though Nessie had an understanding about it, it was difficult for her to say aloud, and so this was the way she had chosen.
She had offered Albion a choice clothed in a betrayal: stay and help, or abandon Nessie for a reason anybody would understand.
Nessie had even volunteered the information about Captain Sam without asking for anything in return: something Rosa had never seen any pirate do, let alone one of Countess Drake’s influence.
For the moment, though, Rosa was bloody pissed. Here she was, worried sick about Nessie, and she had thought of everything. Nessie was lucky Rosa was too busy to take the piss out of her.
“Right, I want to keep La Maere over us as long as possible. Let’s take off,” Albion was saying over Rosa’s shoulder now. Rosa nodded emphatically, and nudged the lever nearby.
The bulbous form of the ‘Berry lifted off the blasted wasteland of the Romanian mining town. In the darkness, it was nearly invisible, a darker shadow hidden between the concrete cliffs- exactly what her Captain wanted.
She nearly didn’t make it. Almost as soon as the keel cleared the neatly ordered streets, the first cannons tore their way through the canvas envelopes of La Maere. It was almost beautiful. Iron shot punched holes where starlight filtered through in columns of brilliance. A second later the illusion was broken by the shock and clouds of debris. The cannon was just as destructive after punching through the ship above, pulverizing gothic decks as easily as the wrecked buildings below.
“What the blazes are we doing?” Hargreaves yelled, appearing from the hatch.
“I think I screwed up,” Albion noted. “La Maere can’t shield us, and under her, we can’t see where the Lovelorn is.”
“Out from under!” Rosa agreed, pushing the Berry towards the edge at full steam.
Rumbling architecture fell to the left and right, and a cannonball managed to wing the starboard lateral mast, but the edge came like a slow-moving horizon.
For a second, everybody held on to the fixtures, white-knuckled, expecting a lump of iron to come tearing out of the sky and crush their little ship into ‘Berry jam.
Then they were out from under it, and could see the Lovelorn hanging over them like a curse. She was coffin-shaped, lined with cannons like rivets. Even at the odd angle, to the Lovelorn’s lower bow and port, they could make out layers of redundant armor and the central core of pressed helium decks.
Rosa took the Berry to a height roughly equal to the Lovelorn, at a safe distance.
“Nessie’s fighting back,” she said, half her face covered by a long-range scope. The tube ran through the ship, bouncing mirrors and lenses off multiple viewing points, all controlled by Rosa with a panel at her elbow.
Nobody needed scopes to know Nessie Drake was returning fire. The daka-daka of gatling guns was unmistakable, even so far away, and the flashes of muzzle fire rivaled the Romanian night sky. There were lighter arms seated in most of the outer buildings, and larger caliber on La Maere herself. But Nessie Drake’s ship was mostly ribbing and envelope, while Ada Lovelace commanded a flying mausoleum.
“Nessie will never reach. Ada’s keeping the ship out of range. Her cannon benefit from high ground,” Albion said.
“What are we waiting for?” Rosa Marija asked breathlessly.
For a moment, it seemed as if Albion Clemens, Manchu Marauder, was not going to help Nessie Drake, Gothic Pirate Princess.
He even had his goggles down, on the pretext of examining a console. Elric Blair appeared in the moment of silence, as if a witness to the betrayal. His fingers trembled over his familiar notebook.
Finally, Clemens threw his hands into the air.
“Fine!” Albion cried.
“You came this close,” Rosa retorted. Hargreaves went one better, planting a chaste kiss on the Captain’s cheek while nobody was looking.
Five minutes later, and the Huckleberry was in predictably deep shit.
“Four anchors cut!”
“We’re maxing out the pressure on all three port capacitors!”
“The gerbils! The gerbils are out of their cage! Oh dear God!”
Reports were coming in from all over the ship, of the toll taken by the chaos of dirigible combat. Elric Blair was in the engine room, helping Cid Tanner hold the thrust assembly together by the skin of their teeth. Vanessa Hargreaves had joined Cockney Alex at the anchor launchers. Rosa was at helm, while Prissy Jack and Auntie were running back and forth along the ship’s corridors with vices, patching the leaks bursting all along her pipes. Albion was hollering into the tubes, coordinating the efforts like a man playing a frenzied can-can on a church organ.
The ‘Berry had flown in as close as she dared, darting back and forth behind the Lovelorn’s concentration of fire. Most of La Maere was aflame at this point, with a large portion of her guns out of commission.
Ada Lovelace was closing in for the kill when the Berry’s anchors sank their teeth into the Lovelorn’s complex layers of armor like fishhooks.
Then there was only one thing to do: pull, and hope the Lovelorn’s guns weren’t mobile enough to swivel round quickly.
That was when the Berry started to complain, throwing temper tantrums all over her decks. At least, it was how Rosa chose to see her, like a daughter justifiably complaining of the strain they were putting on her.
“We can’t do this forever!” Rosa screamed into the speaking tubes. She started when Albion burst back into the tilting bridge. He clung for his life as the ship pitched abruptly towards the opposite side.
“The grappling arms, Rosa!” Albion cried. “We still have enough pressure in the starboard capacitors!”
Running along both sides of the Berry, taking up one full deck in the midsection of the ship was contained Cid Tanner’s greatest design: two fully articulated, steam-powered metal arms. From the bridge of the ‘Berry, her helmswoman could see the edges of them running along the bulkhead as they pushed out of the surface of the ship.
Further, when a person was seated before the steering column and wheel, she was furnished with a scope and two glove-like, ratcheting controls.
Connected through a network of mirrors, connecting gears and wire, this person could then control the arms as if they were her own, each of three fingers bending enough to handle the grasping of enemy vessels, or waving a finger at the local air patrols. In this case, Albion intended to pry the infuriated Ada Lovelace from her intended target.
“Detach the anchors- now!”
With a shuddering thud, the Berry snapped free from the Lovelorn, throwing both ships into a wild spin. The Berry was smaller, and this worked to her advantage: she stopped spinning sooner.
Albion jumped into the control seat for the grappling arms. A thundering pop announced the deployment of the grapple arms.
“Full steam ahead, Captain?” Rosa asked.
“Ahead full!” Alby agreed enthusiastically.
With an all-shattering crash, the Berry launched into the soft underbelly of the Lovelorn.
She did it arms out, like a portly pugilist, swinging her weighted arms in wide arcs. An aeronaut on the Lovelorn would not be blamed if he assumed the tiny shape of the Berry intended fully to punch through the other side.
Nessie Drake managed to escape as the Huckleberry was tearing apart the Lovelorn’s layers of armor, using the heavy plates to smash cannon barrels left and right. There were far too many of them, of course, to fully disable the ship, and there wasn’t much steam left in the Huckleberry’s various capacitors. But the Berry could be nasty, especially with Albion Clemens behind lefty and righty, and she managed to distract Ada Lovelace enough for both Nessie and Clemens to haul out.
By the time they found the opportunity to escape, with full steam in the Lovelorn’s blind
spot, Nessie had sailed away in a small launch. The dark arch of her escape trailed due east, toward a sun still below the horizon, but holding the promise of light.
“I hope that vampire bitch burns,” Rosa Marija cursed warmly, before turning over the helm to Prissy Jack and going below decks to her quarters.
8: Berlin
The Clankers arrived even before the cloud did, marching in to surround the Brandenburg Gate. Squads of hooded men with heavy footsteps spread out in loose lines on either side of the old city gate, enclosing the vast promenade and much of the arboreal decorations. It was as if their employer had given up any pretext of hiding, and no longer cared who connected his elite troops with their master.
For Clanker Captain James Van Houten, it could mean only one thing: his boss was convinced no soul on Earth could stop their inevitable conquest. The thought put him perversely in mind of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk.’ Here they were, technological giants with their steam crafts and their heavy artillery, and what they were doing was stealing riches from the little people below. It wasn’t quite this way, of course. The real giant was safe high up on his cloud city. The only ones doing the looting were other little people.
Van Houten was immeasurably glad he was on the winning side.
“Get on over there, sausage-eater. You stay on that side of the street, there,” he barked in his harsh frontiersman’s English. Van Houten preferred to think of his native tongue as ‘American.’ It saved him being confused for a person with manners. In turn, it made his job a lot easier.
He kicked the last of the stragglers over the invisible line, drawn by his commanding officer to an exact perimeter on a map in Van Houten’s pocket. It wasn’t hard- Van Houten commanded four skilled operatives.
There was Georges, a British commando ready with a razor-sharp garotte and soft, sprung heels. His suit was specially silenced, snake-quick.
Schmidt and Schwartz flanked either side of Van Houten, each a two-meter tall simian carrying a combination ammunition and gas canister on his back for the massive, triple-barreled repeating rifles at their hips.
Lastly, Jameson took point, as she was wont to do. Beneath a formless robe lay belts full of grenades, pipe bombs and other incendiaries clinking against her armor. Each Clanker was well armored by their employer.
The straggler was desperately clawing at his shin now. It was a sensation Van Houten could feel with difficulty through the dense armor plate.
“Please! Who are you? Where are you from? What right have you to do this?”
“Oh, you speak English, do you? Stop, you’re butchering it,” Van Houten patronized, delivering another kick. This time he let loose a little of his suit’s pneumatics, sending his target rolling head over heels back across the perimeter. The Clanker raised his weapon, a long, black elephant gun. Civilians scattered. The perimeter stayed secure.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Jameson said, coming up to him. The Clanker masks made her look like the others. Each of them had faces of giant arachnids, with flat, segmented visors for eyes and mandibles made of complex breathing filters. He could only tell it was her was from the height, what little figure he could see in the legs and the quatrefoil she had painted on one greave.
“What is?” Van Houten asked, shouldering his massive gun across one shoulder. The others spread out in a loose formation. So long as they held their ground, their job was complete. They weren’t overly trained soldiers, they were mercenaries, and when the job was done, not much hierarchy remained.
“Peace. See the statue up there?” Jameson replied.
From the squad’s vantage point, the top of the Brandenburg Gate was clearly visible. Their reinforcements were arriving atop it. Van Houten recalled dimly the mission briefing, given by the Clanker commander Zahavi. The four horses and the chariot were called the Quadriga, and the goddess atop it either Victoria or Eirene, depending: Victory, or Peace. Those stupid krauts had known the two were the same, at least.
“Yes,” Van Houten said simply. He consulted a timer, built into a slot in his greave: four hours until operation. The Berlin polizei would more than likely arrive before then. There would be a blood bath, of this Van Houten was sure.
“Napoleon once used this promenade as his parade route,” Jameson was saying. She mimed the famous conqueror, stiffly marching in place. To Van Houten’s perspective, the small Irish mercenary was now punching and kicking at the Gate’s ancient Doric columns with her huge steam-age fists. “It was his way of entering into possession of the city, by penetrating her at her proudest point.”
“Last night was last night. Leave it alone,” Van Houten said. “And don’t move as much. You make me nervous.” He fingered the machinery clipped to his back, the fine pistons and cylinders that provided all the Clankers with inhuman strength. It made him nervous, much more so than Jameson’s bandying.
Twenty minutes in, and the first wave of Berlin’s resistance arrived simultaneously at all the perimeter points.
It was silly, really. There was nothing to gain by sending ground troops. What little Van Houten knew of his employer’s invasion had all the signs of being tactically boring. Nothing could touch the man, afloat on his magic cloud.
Thus, sending in the Clankers was an invitation, a public relations stunt. His employer wanted to show the Germans to feel hopeless and small.
Armored engines arrived first, swiveling their dense steel bulk into wide swathes of cover. The infantry, or whatever the Germans called them, swarmed out behind long, rectangular shields made of thick, matte sections. Disciplined figures could be seen marching into formation through thin slits in the shields. Everything was efficient, damn efficient. Van Houten hadn’t expected Europe to be so on point. The fairy tale architecture, character of the citizens, everything was neat and stark, just like his favorite childhood stories. The only thing ambiguous seemed to be Van Houten himself- he had signed on as a soldier, but this was going to be a rout.
It was almost a shame the battle had been decided before it began. It was polizei, after all, not army. The Clankers could carry more armor, they were impervious to anything but mortar, and both Schmidt and Schwartz carried a layer of extra dense alloy on their fronts, effectively making them walking siege weapons. In a pinch, Van Houten carried flares, to signal for Kobold backup. Frankly, it would be like squashing an ant.
“Got to hand it to the Germans, they know their procedure,” Van Houten remarked, before hunkering behind the bulk of Schmidt. There was an immediate hail of gunfire; little stinging wasps zipped past not an inch from Van Houten’s nose. To his annoyance, Jameson had also hidden behind Schmidt, while Georges found a nook in Schwartz’s back.
“You all right, big man?” Van Houten thumped on the dense plate of Schmidt’s back.
“Achtung! Feuren!” Schmidt grunted, and squeezed the grip on his Howitzer.
The triple barrels immediately began their smooth staccato, bullets leaving the muzzles and burying themselves in the armor of Schmidt’s own countrymen. Schwartz did the same, a few yards away.
“Wanker is stone cold,” Jameson remarked, before lobbing her first grenade.
The Howitzers cut through the armored engines like tissue paper. Before the torrent of bullets, riot shields blew away like palm fronds before a hurricane. It was an image Van Houten recalled from his earliest boyhood; there had been no more palm trees, after he had joined his first mercenary band.
As Jameson lobbed bombs, Van Houten picked off the leaders with his elephant gun, watching their efficient thoughts scatter as strawberry jam. As far as Van Houten could tell, they had sent every riot soldier in the Berlin region. Little stars of gunfire could be seen through the trees, lighting up the buildings on all sides of the arch. It wasn’t enough. As the polizei began their retreat, he sent Georges in to mop up the crew.
“What do you want to do after this?” Georges asked as they huddled together afterward, around an impromptu bonfire. There was an hour or so before their employer was scheduled to ar
rive, but it was already dark.
“First? Take off this getup and get a shower,” Jameson answered, picking at the buckles of the Clanker suit. “Always makes me smell like boy. Don’t you fellows feel odd after wearing it?”
“No, I mean after the life, yea?” Georges insisted, purposefully not taking the hint.
“Keep working. Save up enough to stop working,” answered Van Houten.
He said it just to shut Georges up, the ass, but both Schmidt and Schwartz grunted affirmative. Something about what Jameson said struck him, though. He did feel odd removing the Clanker suit at the end of the day. His joints were stiff, and he was put off his food. Van Houten shook it from mind, washing it down with the flask at his hip.
“You don’t have to be so up front about it,” Jameson said. Looking around, she seemed to take in the beautifully gaslit Quadriga nearby, the shining promenade, the well-manicured trees lining the scene of battle.
She stood up and took off her robe, revealing the body-hugging plates of her suit. Then she started to dance, a writhing, snake-like wobble, with a lot of clicking and clanking. She undid her helmet, letting loose an unruly mop of blonde hair. The clasps of the armor were down the front, which she took time to undo, with little hisses of gas.
“No, don’t,” Van Houten said laconically. There wasn’t any point- whose turn was it tonight, Schmidt? Laying with a comrade was one of the few diversions when one was a Clanker. They had all been wearing the suit for a few months, and already the tedium had been getting to them. Working women were afraid of Clankers. Having Jameson along gave them all some entertainment while on duty- in turn, of course.
It was no use telling her they were in a combat situation, either. Everyone knew the polizei would take at least an hour to regroup, and the GSG were just arriving in zeppelins, grouped around the edges of Berlin. By the time the German forces organized a counterstrike, they would be too busy dealing with the Clankers’ employer to bother with the squadrons.
