Captain Albion Clemens and The Future that Never Was: A Steampunk Novel! (Lands Beyond Book 1)

by Kin Law

  Seeming to crown the place off, Mordemere’s atelier could plainly be seen crouched like a toad over Leyland: a wizard’s fortress. It was low, but imposing for its complexity and sprawling utility.

  Piping grew out of vast slabs of metal and sprouted into the various organs of the city, while catwalks connected the workshop with the distant docks as vital arteries in the body of Leyland.

  Elric Blair chuckled to himself. It wasn’t a bad description, actually. Even he knew of Valima Mordemere’s vast empire of steamworkings, from the carriages puffing along London’s streets to the very guts of Her Majesty’s Knights of the Round, working night and day to keep her defenders in the air. Mordemere designed and manufactured wonders, much like a coal-fired Wizard from the tales of Baum.

  It seemed fitting his city was made not of emerald, but of streaked soot.

  “As to why we’re not on the Berry, there you will find an answer,” Clemens was saying rather resentfully. Obediently, Blair took a cue and peered out into a middle distance, where two mounds of metal were slowly approaching like a brace of tin men. Only, instead of charming woodcutters, these three-story tall, bipedal monstrosities looked like they were capable of processing entire forests into pulp.

  The one on the right brandished three-foot long chrome claws, while the one on the left possessed a massive cannon strapped to its back, hanging over its slumped iron head like a crucifix. A tangled web of thick India rubber and copper mesh connected the cannon to some elaborate, steaming mass of machinery.

  No doubt Albion Clemens was imagining the damage such a weapon might do to his precious ship, for as they passed under the watchful eyes of the drivers, he cursed under his breath.

  For yes, the monstrosities were no creatures wrenched out of myth, but were cut with eye-slits across their plate bellies for people to see through.

  “Kobolds,” Clemens muttered. “Blasted slag heaps. Because of them, no pirate has the edge on Mordemere’s logistics. His secrets are his alone.”

  “A businessman has a right to safeguard his professional secrets,” protested Hargreaves.

  “He’s just jealous he doesn’t have one,” Miss Marija supplied, fairly needlessly.

  Apparently the Kobolds had been instructed to leave the road alone, for Clemens and company passed without incident. There was no time to relax, however, for soon a brace of hooded, cloaked figures approached their bumbling little Fjord. Clemens stopped, rolling down a window.

  “What’s your business?”

  A rasping voice drifted out from beneath the black hood. The face was obscured by the Fjord’s B-pillar. Strange, Blair thought, by the height and the gait, he would have placed a young man underneath.

  “My Fjord needs a few parts. Thought one of your traders might have an old-style fuel rotator assembly, and a couple new caps,” Clemens spoke loudly, so the others gathered by the roadside could hear. Blair could see one more hooded figure, and a uniformed constable nearby. When none of them spoke, Clemens fluttered the throttle in neutral, and the old pressure vessels in the carriage’s bonnet gave an ungodly screech.

  “Carry on,” the inquisition yielded, and Captain Clemens drove past. They continued on into the heart of Leyland, where clustered pipelines grew thick and heavily machined aqueducts chased the roads. The Fjord passed over one such structure, a massive series of arches vaulted over a cavernous mine shaft, lined with workshops, shacks and lean-tos, fully a mile across.

  “I wasn’t aware Her Majesty allowed the establishment of private police states within the confines of the homeland,” Blair growled a mighty rhetoric once they were firmly out of earshot. Up until this point they had been on unfamiliar pirate ground. Here, Blair finally had a handle on things. Suddenly his nausea wasn’t quite so bad.

  “It is common knowledge,” informed Hargreaves stiffly. The words had to badger their way past an uncomfortable squirm. “Alchemists like Valima Mordemere have a special permit with the Ministry of the Interior. There are thirty-seven special administrative districts where development of the country’s steamworks resources are encouraged to their utmost. The Queen initially championed the development of geartowns like Leyland.” What she did not say was Her Majesty’s discrete withdrawal of her support. The Inspector knew without a doubt the Queen’s presence here, if discovered, warranted a political incident.

  “I am aware of these so-called geartowns,” Blair scoffed. “And your official propaganda doesn’t really butter my toast, if you get my meaning. I know what they are: city sized arms laboratories in response to the Ottoman threat. Are you telling me you did not see the bulge off the man’s back? Those are assault rifles, ma’am, or two and three make four. Is this merry England or the untamed Americas? Expect to see many insurgents in the heath?”

  “I’m surprised, Elric,” Clemens spoke up before the venom could erupt boiling from Hargreaves. “Didn’t you see the weight of his tread?”

  “About fifty pounds heavier than he should, bucko,” Rosa Marija agreed, as if she were waiting for just this line of conversation. “Or three and a half stone to you. His footsteps left a hole clear through to Imperial China.”

  “What are we talking about?” protested Blair, annoyed his tirade had been interrupted.

  Nobody had complained, but the air had also gradually become thick and burned-tasting, compounding his foul mood.

  “Care to weigh in, Inspector?” Clemens whisked backward, not looking away from the paved road. He was clearly enjoying this far too much.

  “If I’m not mistaken, those would be Mordemere’s famous Clankers,” Hargreaves supplied, quite keen on the subject of peacekeeping. All three of his companions made Elric Blair extremely nervous; he was the only one worth naught in a fight. He had of course heard of Clankers, but he lacked the sense of danger to tell when one was close, no matter how keen his writer’s eyes were.

  “Wankers, if you enjoy the nomenclature,” chuckled Clemens.

  “And my gorgeous enjoys his nomenclature,” Rosa Marija chimed in.

  “You two remind me of a certain criminal clown couple from the pictures,” Blair whinged. “I wasn’t aware there were so many. Where does Mordemere get his Clankers?”

  “Killers, mostly,” Hargreaves explained. Blair thought everyone in the Fjord was getting far too comfortable with each other; everybody seemed adept at cutting off each other’s annoying habits. Maybe it was the air piracy, seeming to pull people together through a mutual desire to commit debauchery and not fall out of the sky.

  “Disenfranchised marines, exiles and special operatives lured by high wages and the swagger of pulling a trigger,” Rosa Marija answered.

  “Some of them are pirates who’ve run out of places to run. Their wanted posters hold up bars in every way station.”

  Rosa Marija flipped round in her seat, put two hands together, flat, until they were separated by a book cover’s distance. It looked like she was peering out through the slats of a fence.

  “We found a piece of their greaves, for sale, once, at the Straight Hook. Cid wouldn’t stop pestering us for the funds. Really weird stuff, the Clanker armor, It’s a lightweight sandwich of flexible hexagons. Looked like pencil lead, but didn’t make a mark. We shot it, of course, tried setting it on fire, set a steamthrower on it-“

  “Steamthrower?”

  “High-pressure, high-heat vitriol spray.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Anyway,” Rosa Marija went on, “none of it made a mark on the armor itself, but the goods it was supposed to protect tended to be vulnerable to large-caliber firearms. We had to peel bloody bits off it before Cid finally confiscated his toy from us.”

  “Clankers wear heavy chrome gauntlets and greaves,” Clemens said gravely. “They’re pushed around with pressure pistons fueled by a tank on their backs. Not to mention, those hoods and masks don’t let you see the man inside. Who knows if there’s a black belt or a garotte commando behind there?”

  Suddenly everything in the Fjord went a li
ttle quiet. Blair knew everyone was pondering the same dilemma.

  Though they knew little about the Laputian Leviathan, if Mordemere was the one behind the theft of Europe’s landmarks, at the least it made Inspector Hargreaves his enemy. Captain Samuel was definitely involved in this somehow, which made Albion Clemens inextricable from the situation. Maybe Elric Blair, small-time scribbler for a no-name counterculture press, had no place in a fight between armored mercenaries with rifles and steam-throwing pirates.

  Albion pulled the rickety Fjord up to a stop before the remains of a charming village church.

  Its stately square tower had long ago been converted to a convenient telegraph center, sprouting wires and large Morse lamps for signaling to the distant airship docks. Rusty wire grating covered up places where ornate stained glass once depicted biblical mysteries. No vegetation grew at all.

  Gratefully, Blair vaulted out of the vehicle, followed closely by a surprisingly sympathetic Hargreaves, who rubbed the journalist’s back with care close to maternal. Even with his head over a sewer, Blair could make out the thud of Clemens’ heavy boots, and the graceful stride of Rosa Marija’s heels clicking.

  “Riding from shore to shore through thin air, you can handle, but the feel of England’s roads does you in?”

  “I apologize, Inspector,” Blair managed.

  “From here, we can ask a clerk to pull up records of all the recent activity involving the search for the Leviathan,” Clemens said briskly, ignoring Blair’s plight.

  The big Oriental threw his arm around the paler-than-usual Englishman’s shoulders. “This would be a good time for you to assist me, by the way. Put those researching skills to good use.”

  This seemed a little out of character for the dashing pirate, but Blair thought a stint in a cozy reading room poring over periodicals might put his stomach more at ease. Oh, if they had some tea, as well…

  “That sounds simultaneously tiresome and tedious. Do you mind?” Rosa complained, head rested back on arms, the picture of idle apathy.

  “Fine, get a little pissed, Rosa.”

  “I believe I will go with you, Miss Marija,” Vanessa Hargreaves spoke up alarmingly. An interesting series of expressions crossed Rosa’s face, but she settled on bemused intrigue in the end.

  She motioned towards a nearby pub, and the ladies set off towards it an unusual duo.

  “Well then. There go the peacock and the crow,” Clemens said, indicating Rosa’s colorful, beribboned hips and the Inspector’s dark silhouette. “Shall we?”

  And so the gentlemen were off to the library, and the ladies to the pub.

  “We aren’t really having a pint, are we?” the Inspector mentioned as soon as they were out of earshot. In the distance, their cohorts were winding their way merrily through an ancient lich yard as if they were coming off a six-pub crawl.

  “Damn it Hargreaves, I’ve just come off a long drive in a small cabin with those two. I need something to get the smell off me,” Rosa Marija announced.

  “But yes, after a cold one I would like to poke around a bit. Up for a jaunt?”

  “It was my intention, yes,” Hargreaves agreed. “Past the public sphere, very little is known about Mordemere’s little empire up here.”

  “Alby might be a bit dense, but he can play his cards. We should be able to shake loose some information from the locals.”

  Hargreaves pulled up the collar on her long, tight coat a little further; Leyland was in Lancashire, as wet and cold as it got in Britain without being in Scotland. Amazingly, Rosa Marija was sauntering about with her shoulders bare and legs in sheer stockings under a knee-length skirt.

  Thankfully, the cold stopped at the door. If they knew anything, the Celts knew how to keep out the damp.

  Inside the pub, there was a roaring fire, big squashy armchairs and a ruddy, snow-capped barkeep.

  There was already a mid-afternoon congregation, consecrating themselves with the blood of Christ. Hargreaves realized it was a Sunday; she hadn’t been to church since she was a little girl.

  “Oy! Two!” Rosa hollered across the pub, instantly at home. They collected libations, Hargreaves reminded of a certain undercover operation, and parked close to the fire.

  Instantly, a crowd of unruly, well-watered dunderheads materialized around the attractive ladies.

  Suddenly the air was full of ‘bonny lass’ this and ‘a buss for a codger!’ that and then ‘ah was just coddlin’ the lady, yer chump!’

  “My dear Inspector, your interrogation begins,” Rosa presented to a knowing Hargreaves, and at once proceeded to charm the nearest handsome fellow. Hargreaves undid her coat, revealing a prim travelling dress that nevertheless showed off her long limbs.

  Two hours later, the ladies reconvened outside the back door of the pub, breathlessly shooing the patrons back inside with a dab hand.

  “Those… boys… are persistent,” Hargreaves managed. “Shall we compare notes?”

  “Aye,” Rosa Marija replied, adjusting her ribbons. “I believe the tall brown one, Nigel, was the grabby one. Paul might have had a handful while I wasn’t looking, but he knew what he was doing so I’m not too upset about it. Look at you, hoarding the straight and narrow types.”

  “I meant about the city, Miss Marija,” Hargreaves said with some amused ire.

  “Getting to it, Inspector,” Rosa said, straightening up. The two of them exchanged a look, and strode off purposefully- in opposite directions.

  “Where are you going?” Hargreaves demanded.

  “I was about to ask the same of you!”

  “I think we both heard it when-“

  “Nigel said there was a-“

  “But we should head-“

  “Likely as not-“

  Both ladies stopped, glaring at each other through swimming eyes. What rivalry and suspicion they had shed during their stay aboard the Berry, and the subsequent bonding during the Nessie Drake episode, was back in spades.

  There was pure frustration beneath a thin veneer of politic. Ale wafted through the pub’s windows.

  “Okay,” Rosa said first. “It doesn’t matter. You go your way, and I go mine.”

  “What is this, a picture house drama? That’s your way, the pirate way. Why can’t we share the information like responsible investigators?” Hargreaves reasoned.

  “Because we’re pirates? If Captain Sam had a shittier relationship with Cid and the others, they would be running away with Albion’s ship.”

  Hargreaves sighed.

  “All right. On three. One… two…”

  “The Cross!” both women shouted.

  “Ah. Well, that would be this way,” Hargreaves added, pointing to a nearby tourist’s sign, well worn and in need of repair.

  “Shit. I’m bloody wasted. Lead on, Inspector.”

  As the ladies got to know the locals, Elric Blair was desperately trying to stop a blatant act of vandalism, and possibly blasphemy.

  “Trust me, Captain Clemens, we will find what we want quicker if we let the clerk do his job,” Blair reasoned, taking the axe away from Albion’s loose fingers. The pair backed away from the wooden records door, a thin, fragile plank that used to be a portal between the church proper and a rectory building.

  “He’s been in there a whole hour!” Clemens complained.

  “Sometimes the filing mechanisms get stuck. Even alchemists can’t keep up with all the maintenance. Besides, we’ve asked for some very old records,” Blair advised, placing the axe back atop a special fire brigade rack, alongside a first-aid box and a bottle of laudanum some enterprising employee had squirreled away. Albion appropriated the bottle on sight.

  The two backed away from the counter, and into the chapel- a sort of waiting room, empty. No priest flitted before the simple altar.

  “I bet you five quid he’s in there holed up with another bottle. Something nicer, even, like a Scotch.”

  Elric sighed. In close contact, Captain Clemens turned out to resemble more an irrevere
nt child than a swashbuckling adventurer.

  Before Elric had to come up with another appeasement, the door in question opened. The clerk looked around, as if expecting something out of place, but finding nothing, held the door open.

  “All the material you requested is in reading room six. If you require any specific records, please pull the bell rope and I will be with you shortly,” the clerk said curtly.

  Blair and Clemens swept through the door (literally swept, as Clemens’ buccaneer coat brushed both sides of the frame. The clerk raised one eyebrow.)

  The room was further back, furnished only with hard wooden chairs and a table heavy with bound volumes and a solid black trunk, about the size of a dispatch case.

  “There’s less here than I thought,” Clemens remarked, picking up a volume and leafing through, only to turn to Blair, stumped by the rows of tiny black squares within.

  “Brilliant! Micro-fiche!” Blair exclaimed.

  “7th generation,” the clerk said proudly. “We’ve gotten the magnification down to about one to five hundred or so, at one-thousandth scale.”

  “So these volumes…the squares….” Clemens said hesitatingly. Blair clicked open the dispatch case to reveal a contraption of fine slivered metal. There was a small lever to notch into place, ready for cranking, and a drum of fine coppery fibers connected to an Edison bulb.

  “Quite correct,” the clerk filled in. “Each square contains approximately five hundred pages of material. I’ve collected volumes relating to the years Master Mordemere and the mainstream community of dirigible enthusiasts most actively searched for the Leviathan. There are records and periodicals from all across the world, as well as journals, special reports, and a few books on the subject.”

  It might have been Clemens’ imagination, but the clerk certainly seemed to be well satisfied with himself as he closed the door, leaving Albion and Elric in the room.

  “Do you think he heard us outside?” Clemens remarked, dropping the tome he held with a bang.

  “Undoubtedly,” Blair said absently, slotting one of the squares into the machine’s emission port. He cranked the lever, and an abrupt light shone from the bulb, pasting a large block of text onto the white wall before them. For the first time, Clemens noticed the room had no windows.