by Kin Law
“No, but the other cannon platoons are moving as if something is,” Rosa Marija answered him.
She had the pocket glass, but that did not stop Albion from peering into the middle distance, where a series of popping noises indicated the firing of arms. Suddenly, there was a horrendous boom, and a thin line of smoke wormed its way over the roofs.
“They’re targeting the cannon,” Rosa noted simply.
“But they’re not Cankers. Clankers arrive in force, in squads,” Hargreaves said. “Kobolds, you think? But I thought Mordemere holds those in reserve, against dirigibles.”
“The men inside the Kobolds are Clankers too. If Mordemere isn’t using the Clankers, the Kobolds would be out of commission,” said Blair, ever observant of the details.
The Russian soldiers were now shooting at something around the corner. Everyone could see them using the building for cover. What was odd was the way the long rifles seemed to align in a triangle, as if they were shooting at a single target… but what could give a platoon of soldiers trouble enough all by itself?
“Captain!”
“What?” Hargreaves cried, whirling around at the sound of Albion’s voice- but Albion was gone, his buccaneer coat flapping some ten yards away along the rooftops. He was vaulting them at the dividers, cutlass clinking, hand at his hip holster- but why should Albion have his gun out?
“Oh god,” Hargreaves breathed with her sudden realization. “Captain Sam!”
As a body, the four of them looked at each other and began to run after the loping, streaking form of Albion.
“He can’t mean to intercept the soldiers! They outnumber us two to one!” Blair hollered, maybe in the vain hope Albion would hear.
“You don’t even know if that’s the Captain! He’s likely pinned down already!” Rosa delivered in a piercing screech.
Albion launched himself across to the corner rooftop, and jumped off.
Only when the rest of them arrived did they see his coat fluttering down the side like a tussled fall leaf. Albion was using a drainage pipe and his gloves to shimmy down the side of a charming tea shop.
“Shit, that’s not the Victoria,” Rosa Marija said. Albion’s hand glimmered the color of blood. He intended to use the Red Special against the soldiers.
“Stop! Clemens, you don’t know what it will do!” Hargreaves yelled from the rooftop, not caring if the soldiers below heard. Fortunately, or not, the building opposite chose this moment to explode outward, showering the soldiers below with fine brick dust The edge of the cloud swallowed Albion, obscuring what happened below. For a moment, everyone was blind.
Then, with a deafening sound Hargreaves would later describe as a C sharp, and the odor of overheated arclighting, the mists parted in a blue glow- one of Jonah Moore’s bullets, firing from the Red Special.
Dead center in Karelin’s scope, the number two Tsar cannon suddenly came into view over the roofs of the Moscow streets. There was no sound, and because the Vasillisa held no contact with the ground, there were no tremors to be felt.
There was only the instant of the cannon rearing up like an inured bear, and then the vast ring of mortar dust as it broke through the surface of the city, disappearing through some weakened root cellar or vault. Karelin thought he saw some kind of blue flash some twenty seconds before, but it was too far removed from the cannon to be related and there was too much debris to be sure, even from so high up.
“Ah…”
“What, what is it?” Tsar Nikolai asserted anxiously.
“Nothing, sir,” Karelin reacted even as he signaled his yeoman to contact the number two platoon via Morse lantern. There was a short series of white blinks in his scope- the Vasillisa’s lantern crew signaling from an armored bubble near the lens. There was no twinkling reply. “It appears Mordemere’s forces have arrived.”
“Where? Show me!”
Nikolai was using the oculars to peer at the various clouds of dust rising from the city below. Karelin counted three such clouds, simultaneously rising. A fourth arose some ways north. Four cannons down, two to go.
“I believe they are attacking our cannon emplacements,” Karelin supplied reluctantly.
“Well what are you waiting for? Retaliate!”
“We are, Your Excellency. The enemy appears to be small in number, likely an elite squad. We risk injuring our troops if we use the Vasillisa’s artillery-”
“So?”
Karelin turned from his scope to look on his Tsar.
Nikolai hadn’t even removed the bi-oculars from his face, and was still scanning the cityscape of Moscow with a deep frown creasing his brow.
“Of course. Right away, Your Excellency.”
Dust cleared in heavy-moving clots, like the bricks they had come from. With a crunchy, frost mired thud, Hargreaves’ boots made contact with the ground beside Blair and Rosa Marija. It had been a nerve-wracking slide down the pipe. Peculiar, how one could sail hundreds of feet in the air one day and be afraid of a two-story fall the next.
“There he is,” Rosa Marija said, pointing to a crumpled heap at the side of a curled lamppost.
When she took a step towards Albion, there came a sudden rumbling all up and down the street, and the smell of hot machine oil.
“The cannon!” Hargreaves yelled. “Get down!”
Everyone plastered themselves to Albion, running and tripping and tumbling as it suited them. Not far away, the massive, ancient six-meter cannon was being tipped up and up, as if it were aiming at Mordemere’s evil cloud. Then, with a metallic clang, the thing tipped all the way up and over, trailing shattered gearing and cinder blocks. It reminded Hargreaves of a poorly planned dive into water, belly-flopping in the midst of an elaborate somersault. The maneuver was complete with entry, for the tons and tons of metal sank right through the street on the way down, crumbling the masonry. A tidal wave of sound and grit washed over them. Cracks streaked up and down the street, all the way to Hargreaves’ boots.
“Would y’all get off my derry-air?” Albion’s voice came muffled from the bottom of their impromptu pile-up. He sounded downright Southern when he was in pain, Hargreaves observed. Then they were all on their feet, looking into the carnage.
None of the soldiers had escaped the initial blast of the Red Special. Neither had Albion emerged unharmed. From Hargreaves’ standpoint, it seemed some mass of bright blue material had emerged from the tip of Albion’s weapon, many times the size of Albion himself. It held still for a fraction of a second, and arched into the mass of soldiers gathered behind their shattered cover, a striking blue serpent.
There was an immediate explosion, forks of lightning everywhere. All the soldiers were laid facedown on the ground, fate uncertain. Albion himself had been thrown violently backward into a poor abused lamppost.
In the ensuing dust cloud, the little rooftop band was forced to wait it out while the street cleared. Hargreaves saw a hulking, shadowed figure cross under the dust, headed towards the cannon.
Now it seemed the soldiers manning the cannon had been defeated, and the cannon itself violently destroyed. Hargreaves thought she knew what must come next- the hulking figure would turn, and perceive it was not alone on that little frozen street in Moscow. There were echoing booms somewhere close by- airship cannons?
“The hell was that gun?” Rosa Marija was asking Albion with a mixture of awe, fear, and maybe a little lust, also. Albion was still holding the literally smoking gun, which also seemed to be sparkling a little.
“Were you trying to kill Captain Samuel too?” Hargreaves berated freely.
“I didn’t really know what it did! Besides, we know it wasn’t him now, couldn’t be,” Albion said sheepishly.
“I don’t like secrets,” Hargreaves answered. “We’re relying too much on Jonah Moore’s bullets and information, Captain Clemens.”
“If you want to mortally wound Albion, get in line,” said Rosa, rubbing a sore knee.
“Ladies, ladies! What about Mordemere’s la
ckey over there?” Albion complained.
“Don’t try to get out of this!”
“I believe the Captain has a point,” Elric Blair interrupted, pointing.
The dust was mostly clear, and the silence now hung like thick velvet curtain. Hargreaves turned to see the last veils part over something monstrously big.
At first, the amateur adventuress in Hargreaves, weaned on a slurry of detectives’ memoirs and horror stories, thought a vicious orangutan had gotten loose from some lax Muscovite zoo. Arms hung low, brushing great rounded knuckles close to the ground. There was something absurdly male about it, as if it were a caricature of some muscular sideshow made terrifying by the joining of its head and chest in a low, primordial shape.
As the rivets and dull, matte surfaces began to appear, the Inspector snapped back from her eight-year old self. This was no animal- this was one of Mordemere’s steamwork abominations, like his Kobolds, like his Clankers.
“Are you bloody thick? Run!” Hargreaves heard herself screaming. They were well on their feet before the first thuds of the thing’s great flat feet crushed the masonry below to gravel. Hargreaves had been closest to it, and as she rounded a large, utilitarian concrete pillar she felt the vibrato of the thing’s ham hand through the air as it closed around the support, crumbling it like a crisp, stale biscuit.
“What the hell is it?” Rosa Marija called behind her. Her voice was lost in the snap of gun shots- Clemens had pulled his Victoria, and was firing copper jackets at the abomination. Hargreaves could tell by the sound, and the little flashes of copper shattering into sparking bits off the monster’s dense, riveted chest plate. A trio of Rosa’s needle-like throwing knives blunted themselves, spinning away in stars.
“Damn tough is what it is!” Captain Clemens yelled, barely dodging a charge bulging with metal muscles as it careered into the side of a parked sedan engine. The gilt French chrome buckled like tinfoil beneath the force of each thick sausage finger.
“Captain!” Hargreaves yelled. She pulled her .22 Tranter and started pelting the abomination with rimfire cartridges. Gun smoke filled the air. The clink of spent ammunition cut the din of the abomination pulling itself free of the engine. Clemens was reloading.
“Don’t you start, it will come after you instead!” Clemens yelled at her, firing once more. Even under duress, Hargreaves admired his grouping: a cluster of five around the elbow joint, with the sixth in the breach.
The bullets did nothing to faze the abomination. Even the dents were shallow, mere stains, as if the armor were meteorite iron.
As they ran, the street started to explode seemingly at random. Hargreaves soon realized it was one of the Balaenopterons firing upon this most heinous of Mordemere’s creations. A shell came winging in, with the odd whistling noise of something moving very fast. It detonated off the abomination’s torso, flooring it and gouging a ten-meter groove into the street. Everything smelled like mushrooms as fresh loam rained upon them.
Barely five seconds passed before a metal hand came digging its way up from the shattered pavement. At that moment, Hargreaves realized there was no stopping this monster.
“Captain, you must deliver one of Moore’s crystals into the Nidhogg’s Core. Steal aboard however you can- I will lure this abomination away from you!”
With a practiced kick, Hargreaves propelled a bottle of spirit, likely dropped by a Russian soldier, into the abomination’s face. One shot later and the thing’s front was a horrid blossom of blue and orange flames.
“Not arguing. Going! Sneaking!” Albion hollered, and ran.
“Our troops appear to be failing,” Karelin mentioned. He almost forgot to add, “Your Excellency. Should we call in the other nations for support?”
“Nyet,” Nikolai’s voice was still uncaring and cold. “We defend our own.”
“But sir, our cannon spread has been wiped out. We are defenseless against the Cataclysm. Should the enemy realize we have lost our cannons, they can advance at any time.”
“I said nyet!”
“Yes Your Excellency,” Karelin answered. He motioned to his yeoman to relay the order: keep firing into the city. The General wondered whether soon, there would any city left to fire at.
“There’s another cannon down.” Rosa pointed as they rounded a corner and came upon the wreckage of another six-meter iron barrel, lying halfway in the Moscow River. The sky was a slate gray, not much lighter than the blot of Mordemere’s cloud, now fearsomely close. The color outlined the gargantuan shape, square panels, and narrow slits of cannon ports of a Balaenopteron. Lightning rods, telegraph towers and other oddments studded the keel and top deck, making it bristle with steamcraft. It was issuing puffs of pressurized steam as the cannon fire left it with hard, hissing ‘whump’ noises.
On the other side of the river, the walls of the Kremlin stood a cliff of red brick. Rosa ruminated on whether the ancient Italian masters had built a fortress tougher than the tons and tons of steam-age airship hanging over it. What would happen if one fell on the other?
“Come on, there’s a bridge to the right,” Alby said, and their trio of pirates began a madcap dash toward an arch of steel flying over the placid water.
The street ran right over it and into Red Square further north, passing the colorful onion domes of St. Basil’s.
“Look! In the middle of the bridge,” Blair’s voice cut their progress short. Though he was the first to see, the figure standing in the middle of the steel span had the demeanor of someone who meant to be seen. Here the Russians were, firing on an enemy far away, when one of Mordemere’s soldiers stood patiently waiting not fifty yards from the prow of their flagship.
There was no doubt he was Mordemere’s. Surrounded by the unique blending of western fashion and near-east prominence of Moscow, the figure was blatantly and startlingly Oriental.
Yet, this strange person bore little of Albion about him. He wore wide trousers and robe embroidered with flame patterns, but that was the extent of his flamboyance. There were strange wooden shoes on his feet, blocky, unlike Dutch clogs, elevating him two inches where he stood. Lastly, his head was completely encased in a fearsome red lacquer grimace- a full-face mask, topped with a pure white hairpiece and two sharply tapering horns.
Thirdly, and most importantly, Rosa Marija saw the handle of a sword tucked reverently into the figure’s belt.
“Go,” Rosa Marija said. She was stepping forward, a sheaf of thin knives like a fistful of glittering leaves in her hand. “You don’t want it said you brought a gun to a knife fight.”
“Fuck chivalry,” was Clemens’ reply. He raised Victoria and sent a bullet hurtling down the bridge.
Faster than the eye could follow, the figure suddenly had his sword out of the sheath. With a shock, Rosa saw the blade appear, broken about a third of its length from the guard.
The bullet sheared apart in a shower of sparks. Albion glanced toward his helmswoman, his face a study in vulnerability. Rosa would have wanted it photogrammed and framed- if she had the luxury to look.
“Go!” Rosa repeated, and this time they went, skirting the strange swordsman by as wide a berth as they could. He made no move to stop the two men from passing. Rosa remained, standing very still before him.
Suddenly a lightning bolt cleaved the sky, lancing through the gray and striking a blazing streak across the Balaenopteron hovering over the Kremlin. The armor buckled and crackled, filling the air with the scent of pennies on the tongue- but it held, merely pitching the ship backwards. When Rosa Marija looked up, she discovered the darkness of the Nidhogg nearly on top of her, and the thunder of every airship in the sky firing at once into Mordemore’s cloud.
Mordemere’s soldier stood waiting, unmoving from his spot on the bridge.
“Let’s dance, gorgeous,” She said, and pitched herself into the first waltz.
“The Cataclysm is mobile, Your Excellency!” General Karelin was saying as the bridge of the Vasillisa tipped over. At least twenty degre
es, Karelin thought.
“What are we doing? Retaliate! Where are my Howitzers? My broadside cannons?“
“Our artillery is firing at will, Your Excellency, but there is nothing to shoot behind the cloud of mist. We also appear to be under attack by the ground scouts in Red Square, but the Gwain and the Dinadan are flanking the cloud, and the Percival is closing the trap. The Galahad is moving to assist us!”
Nikolai was hanging on to his Captain’s chair by his fingernails, knuckles turned very white.
With one Balaenopteron on each flank, and one in reserve, the assembled fleets had created a bear trap in the sky. Now the Percival, with an escort of French Revenants and German Wolfe were cutting off Valima Mordemere’s retreat. They were launching incendiary weapons, long streaks of orange fire, hoping the high heat would disperse the clouds, and thus reveal what lay beneath.
“Assist? Assist? We do not require assistance! Where are my other three Balaenopterons?” Nikolai screeched.
“Your Excellency! The Baba Yaga and the Firebird are pressing the attack. The Sadko is… it’s…”
“Karelin! Spit it out!”
General Karelin could not. He had never seen a Balaenopteron defeated; such things simply did not happen. It had taken the entire population of Pikalyovo, a monotown adapted for airship engineering, six months to build the hull of the Sadko. Seeing one of Mordemere’s lightning bolts worm its way through the broadside armor, inch by melted inch of crimson, running slag, was more than Karelin could bear. Now it was aflame, little spurts of gas leaking from every crevice, and the bow was brushing the pointed towers of the Orthodox churches below. He did not envy her Captain the duty of putting her down in the Moscow River.
“Your Excellency, it is sunk. The Sadko is sunk. We must away,” General Karelin said. “Our airship armor is little defense against the alchemist’s weapons.”
“Nonsense! Forward!” Nikolai pushed on, but before he could say more the Vasillisa pitched violently port.
“It is done! We must retreat, and allow the Knights of the Round to take the brunt of the attack!”
