by Kin Law
He cut the bridge in half.
It was only when he landed in the midst of the crumbled pylons and mangled steel, did he discover the card pricking him in the hand. The others were probably only ever meant as decoys.
Of course- there was ever only one perfect, unavoidable cut in the world, and it had been stalking him ever since the heavenly buildings of the Vatican. He did not need to see the grinning face to know the edges were coated in poison; his peripheral vision was already white with its effects.
The card buried in his hand was called The Death.
11.4: Van Houten
Jimmy Van Houten thought it was mighty stupid of a man to try and sneak up on a sniper’s nest without any sort of weapon.
The seventy-caliber tank buster lay at his feet leaking a sooty residue. Its explosive cartridges and steam propellant were spent, the portable engine supplying both discarded nearby. Van Houten was now holding his faithful elephant gun, trusting to its cast-bronze stopping power to finish the mission.
The first phase had been accomplished. He had sealed off the rest of the Kremlin, given them the downed Vasillisa to worry about with its precious purple cargo. It had been easy to tap the Swiss Guard’s telegraph line, he recalled. The very presence of the leaders of Europe made their concerted plan a cacophony. With the Vasillisa downed, it would be child’s play to throw the rest of the Balaenopterons into discord. Even now he could see the dark blot of Mordemere reaching out with white-hot fingers, grasping at the bloated shapes attempting to surround it. One of the Balaenopterons, a Briton ship from the livery, seemed to be trawling the battlefield, rescuing crew from the downed ships.
“Aghh…” Van Houten groaned. His meat body and his steam one hadn’t yet adapted to each other.
Pain wracked his nerves periodically. His target dropped from between his sights for half a moment, enough for him to see the brown drover’s coat and floppy Stetson disappear behind a vodka kiosk.
“Damn,” Van Houten said softly. Already, his sniper’s mind was recalculating, predicting the possible avenues of evasion, calculating for wind direction, magnitude, for frost seizing up the lubrication in his rifle. Would his target emerge from the gap between the kiosk and the red cabriolet? The red cab and the overturned truck?
The second phase, of securing Red Square for Mordemere to procure, was not quite so vital as the first, but Van Houten was well aware of the precarious position he was in.
Mordemere had saved his life, but behind the gray mutton chops and impeccable suit, there lived whims beyond Van Houten’s ability to comprehend.
Van Houten touched the place where his skin ended and a dense carapace began, under the layers of cloak and Clanker suit. Perhaps the inscrutable alchemist needed just one military man in his employ; Zahavi had been blue dead when they removed his suit, back aboard the Nidhogg.
Then there had been the great big hunk of metal tossed after him on the drop down here, like a copper-jacketed grizzly bear. Maybe the ringmaster required clowns to whip the beasts. Perhaps Valima Mordemere simply wanted to perform an experiment, and Van Houten was the most suitable guinea pig.
This was taking too long.
Van Houten squeezed off a shot, turning a mirror off the red cabriolet into a glittering cloud of debris. He expected the man with the Stetson to reappear; instead, a short man with ginger-tipped black hair emerged from a tipped-over lorry on the other side of the square. He was wearing a duster that could not have concealed a rifle.
“All right!” The man announced. “Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed!”
What was this? Two idiots from one nest? Van Houten took careful aim. He had to complete the mission. The mangled bodies lying at the foot of this very perch stood testament to his resolve.
That was when the filigree railings near his elbow suddenly burst into iron splinters. The shrapnel had bloomed- low-range ammunition. The Stetson was right under Van Houten!
“Damnation!” Van Houten cursed, and pulled back from the edge of the window. Tears in his cloak showed where sharp iron stuck in the Clanker suit.
His elephant gun shuddered from the vibrations in the air- there were shots thudding into the ceiling, and the rails, and the open French doors on either side of him. Only his mask protected against the rain of glass on his face.
His gun was too large to turn in tight quarters. He abandoned it, pulling two belt-fed repeaters from his hips. The square weapons were short, stubby, and easy to aim in wide, sweeping arcs.
He walked forward, into the hail of bullets, and stepped off the edge of the balcony, crunching the street below into rubble with his landing.
His new legs handled the shock well, hissing a cloud of expelled vapor through cylindrical coolant sinks at his waist.
The Stetson wasn’t there- worse, the man with the ginger tips was running full-tilt towards Van Houten, zigzagging across Red Square.
“Cheese it,” he told himself. The situation was rapidly turning into one he did not understand- these weren’t the Russian or any official government’s agents. Their movements were too awkward, too unpredictable. Van Houten had served in the American West, not the European East, but he knew military and these weren’t. Privateers? Merchants of death, like himself? Nothing seemed to fit. It did not change his course of action, but the quiet part of his mind pondered on these questions. It occurred to him maybe he had survived this long because of it.
Wham.
A bullet caught him full in the chest, then three more, one in the forehead. They dug divots into the chest plate and ricocheted into a portrait of an old babushka lying abandoned in the gutter by a hastily evacuated street artist.
Van Houten turned and sprayed a vodka kiosk with his repeaters, feeling the boxy weapons thrum on smooth, lubricated axels. Bullets tore into the kiosk like termites into a house, filling it with holes and shredded newsprint until the little painted shed collapsed on itself- five seconds. The remains caught with periwinkle blue flames; there must have been something with a little kick in stock.
The repeaters in his hands were wreathed in steam. Were his fingers still human, the flesh would have melted into sludge even through the Clanker greaves. There were some advantages to working with an alchemic genius for an employer.
The Stetson wasn’t in the kiosk anymore. Van Houten thought he saw the willow wisps of coat tails on fire, but in a moment his chest plate was ringing with shots once more- this time tiny, like sleigh bells, not uncommon in this frozen shithole. Van Houten often thought this way. He didn’t have any beef with foreigners, but when a man only ever got to sightsee through a sideways rain of bullets, he tended to profane a lot.
“Really? A fucking derringer?” Van Houten asked of the ginger-tip firing at him from the cover of an overturned passenger engine. Garbage Ruskie engineering, Van Houten thought. Just on principle, Van Houten gave the broad side of it a good hosing, pitting the cheap Zebra 40 until it looked more like a spotted Giraffe.
“All right, all right, I’m coming out!” The ginger-tip announced. He stood up, throwing aside a tiny derringer as he did.
“What are you, a moron? I’m going to kill you.”
“The sword was never my strong point. I’m more the pen type.” The bookish looking retard actually thought Van Houten would talk with him.
The mercenary leveled one repeater, thumbing the setting to single shot. He would put one in the heart, and another in the brain, quick and easy. He would be merciful.
“Wait, wait! Your other mark is getting away,” the ginger said.
“You think I’m green?” Van Houten said. “I’m going to turn around, and your friend will put one in my face while you put one in my back. News for you, the Clanker suit doesn’t penetrate easy.”
“I was about to say, you could use me as a hostage. Make it easier for you to find my friend.”
Van Houten actually had to give this a think- it was a good tactic, even though his enemy had thought of it. Ordinarily, he would never risk it, but at the mo
ment, he was clothed in a layer of impenetrable armor and half his guts were made of metal. His crotch itched something fierce, but if he tried to scratch all he would find was depression and a pair of purely cosmetic bearings.
In other words, he was feeling a little reckless and pissed off.
Van Houten motioned the lunatic over and kicked his knees out from under him. A couple of gestures later and he had the man’s wrists together over his head, hot muzzles threatening at every turn.
“You’re not a soldier, are you?” His prisoner asked, after the first minute of kneeling there with a gun pointed at his scalp. “Soldiers aren’t creative. They listen to orders. A soldier would have shot me on the spot.”
Close up, the ginger stopped an inch from the roots. Van Houten was not without compassion- he was not fighting a soldier, but a civilian, much like the German he had kicked back in Berlin. Besides, the fewer rounds Van Houten fired, the less his employer’s acquisition would be damaged.
“Mercenary,” Van Houten replied gruffly. If his prisoner was interested, Van Houten might have mentioned his thoughts were firing faster than the cylinders on his weapons. Even a minute of waiting seemed far too long. He supposed it was a side effect of the body conversion. He might also have mentioned there really wasn’t very long to wait. Valima Mordemere’s ship was moving into position. In another few minutes it would burst through the few Balaenopterons in its way and be in place to collect its prize.
“Mercenary… but you shot down the Balaenopteron over the Kremlin,” the ginger-tip said aloud. “And you are shooting indiscriminately between Muscovite soldiers and us civilians.”
Van Houten figured the little man was babbling in an attempt to distract him, or was reduced to gibberish by fear.
“I take it Valima Mordemere intends to take Red Square, and he doesn’t want a soul to be on it when he does,” the ginger concluded.
“Very clever,” Van Houten replied. He nudged the still scalding barrel against his enemy’s hands. “But it won’t help you.”
“Sure it will,” the ginger said.
The Square was still quiet, and Van Houten was beginning to lose patience. Conversation was beginning to grow dull. He considered pulling the trigger and walking about, expending the ammunition packs riveted to his hips. Besides, his head was starting to ache, a continuing pain traveling downwards along his spine. He did not want to think of the wet red shards he had glimpsed in Mordemere’s tongs, or the shining pins to replace them.
That was when the Oriental appeared from a barricade in front of the Tsar’s city palace.
He was far enough away for Van Houten not to risk firing as yet, but even from across the Square in front of the Cathedral of Vasilly the Blessed, the Oriental cut a strange figure. Bandana, goggles cracked across the lenses, gloves raised high into the air, these details jumped out at the mercenary, but Van Houten was mostly interested in the shin-length greatcoat. There were a good many firearms one could hide in a coat of that size. Surely the ridiculous cutlass at the hip was a red herring, no challenge to Van Houten’s mighty repeaters.
“Take off your coat,” Van Houten called.
“And freeze in this weather?” The Oriental showed his cheek. Van Houten nudged his hostage once again, and the Oriental hastened to comply. A vest, starchy linen beneath, boots that could be hiding knives. Better, Van Houten thought.
“Come slowly towards me,” the mercenary demanded. He did not bother to ask the Oriental to drop his weapons. At the first sign of a draw, Van Houten would simply fire. His new arms could hold the heavy repeaters up indefinitely.
“How many of you are there?” He added towards his hostage, who maintained a stoic silence even after a vicious kick to the kidneys.
Van Houten kept an eye out for the Stetson, who had to be here in the Square somewhere.
“Did you know?” the ginger said conversationally. The Oriental was halfway, in the middle of the intersection, taking his damnably good time shuffling across.
The Kremlin was at his back, smoking behind the gate from the wreckage of the Vasillisa.
“This square was named for its incredible beauty, not for the color of the Kremlin behind me. It’s actually a linguistic faux pas, the word also means ‘beautiful.’”
Van Houten estimated there were five more steps before the Oriental stepped out into the open, close enough to be shot. The Oriental was motioning towards the bonfire of the vodka kiosk
The mercenary reflected. He must cut a strange figure, standing there in front of the carnival colors of the cathedral behind him. The tatters of his hooded cloak hid all but the large silvery repeaters at the end of his arms. They were steamed clean and shiny, like the blade of a scythe. Death before the house of god.
“The Cathedral behind you was made to resemble fire. I hear Mordemere likes his architecture. He might not want you firing on his prizes before he’s laid a hand on them.”
. The Oriental was also about a step or two farther than Van Houten would have liked.
“You got that right, buddy,” Van Houten agreed. “But that won’t keep you safe. I’ll just shoot around the statues. Now where’s the other one?” He spoke to the Oriental. “The Stetson? I could riddle you with holes right this minute. Hear that? I’m going to shoot him in the liver, a long, slow death, if you don’t come out right now!” It was a bluff. Van Houten was nowhere near that accurate at this range. His arms rattled and shook metallically.
To his surprise, the threat drew a response. The Stetson appeared, out of a ditch beside the kiosk where he must have rolled to a stop, hidden from Van Houten.
Damned Clanker mask, he thought, I’ve got no peripherals with these.
Van Houten trained his right repeater on the Stetson. His left stayed pointed at the hostage. Predictably, the Oriental drew on the Clanker, a heavy black Colt. The Stetson was holding a similar piece on Van Houten. Mexican standoff.
“Now you just drop them fancy gats, boy,” the Stetson announced. This close, Van Houten could see the ruddy face with a magnificent mustache beneath. He was wearing an unimaginably white suit under a thick Russian fur coat. “That there Irishman got nothing on me. You kill him proper if you like, but I’ll shoot you the second you look to pull the trigger.”
To Van Houten’s surprise, the Oriental pulled another gun, a red one, on the Stetson.
“We got our beef, boy, but we’ll settle this later,” The Stetson said to the Oriental. He seemed nervous, twitching at the mustache. It took a moment for Van Houten to figure out it was the strange red gun itself, not staring down a muzzle, that frightened him.
“I ain’t your boy!” The Oriental hollered. The sudden Southern accent surprised Van Houten; you could spoon the creamed corn out of their matching drawls.
“This ain’t the time, Al!”
“When is the time?” And back to his indiscriminate accent once more. The Oriental pointed both his guns at the Stetson, their barrels shaking from fury.
Van Houten was getting the feeling he was being totally ignored.
“Fellas, please,” Van Houten said. “You know what? If you’ll look over here, you’ll notice I am essentially bulletproof.”
And he pulled the trigger.
It didn’t exactly hurt, having his arm blown off in the resulting explosion. The arm wasn’t his own flesh and blood, even though he could move it as if it were.
He wanted to curse Mordemere, at first, for an inferior firearm, but Van Houten had inspected the repeater himself.
There could have been no mistakes. It shouldn’t have exploded so dramatically, even with an ammunition jam, and the gas lines were secured. It definitely should not have showered his cloak with black ink.
He only figured it out when he noticed his hostage making a break for it, under cover fire from the Oriental. The ginger seemed unharmed, apparently anticipating the explosion.
“Oh,” said Van Houten. Bullets winged off his suit, but he had bigger problems. He couldn’t raise the other repea
ter. He couldn’t even stay standing. The steam was venting from his body through the ruptured elbow joint. He was bleeding internally from the shock, Jimmy could tell. The squishy, weak feeling was a familiar one. His vision was going, but even so he could see the smooth enamel and shining tip of a fountain pen jammed in the cogs jutting out of his ruined repeater, like an arrow tipped in centaur blood.
“A pen. Heh. That’s pretty funny.”
The last thing Jimmy Van Houten saw was the Oriental raising his red weapon, and then an endless blue, filling up his peripheral vision.
11.5 Reunion
Rosa Marija found Inspector Hargreaves first, sitting on the pavement of the steel bridge some ways down the river.
The darkness under the Nidhogg was nearly complete, but the gas lamps lining the bridge hadn’t been ignited. With the burning sky overhead, even the army’s municipal workers had been evacuated. There were very few arclights in Moscow.
Smoking, steaming wrecks were coming down all around them now, somehow not directly overhead, but terrifying nonetheless.
They were smaller ships, corsairs or junks, some no more than lifted gliders burning like flies caught in a lit wick. Ranged around them were burning points of fires burning on the enormous Balaenopterons. In the dark of evening and cataclysm, it seemed they stood on the bottom of some abyssal plain, watching the titans of the deep circle in combat overhead.
At first, she thought the Inspector had been crushed underneath the bulk of Mordemere’s monster, there in the middle of the bridge. Matte copper plates hid much of her body. Her legs were splayed out to one side.
When she got closer, Rosa could see the flames overhead glinting off Hargreaves’ golden hair. One arm hung loose at her side. She was bent over a pale form, too small to be a soldier. It lay in a mass of India rubber cables and metal mesh lines, as if Mordemere’s abomination had disgorged a morsel of unpalatable innocence. Like a monster under the bed, finding it had no taste for children, Rosa thought.
“Anubis and Isis, is that a child?” said Rosa Marija.
