Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection

by Michael Coorlim

  ***

  We returned to the scene of the murder, half-cleaned by the Chief's earlier efforts, now abandoned due to the potential, city-destroying catastrophe that hung over our heads.

  "Dewit?" I called.

  "He's buggered off," Bartleby said.

  "Can't blame the man," I said. "Given our circumstance."

  Bartleby began giving everything a good looking-over, stopping at what remained of the congealing blood on the riveted steel flooring and calling me over.

  "Look here, James. This boot print. Judging by the depth of the impression I'd say that this was made while the blood was still fresh. See your shoe mark here? Same general depth. This print was made near the time you first found the body. Did First Officer Dewit step here when he came to collect you?"

  "No, he called to me from the hall hatch and I approached him."

  "Then this must be the murderer's print. Any innocent party would have sounded the alarm, and no one did. And look! Here, the traction implied. Your shoe print skids through the blood, but there's very little smearing here. This was a rubber-soled boot. The pattern matches that of the crew's uniform boots."

  "So the killer must be a crewman. Didn't you say that Second Engineer Henderson was well-liked, Bartleby?"

  Bartleby made his way over to the hatch leading to the engines. "Yes. Yes. The killer, surprised by Henderson, tries to explain away what he's doing in the engine room. Henderson – stand there, James, you're Henderson – sees the stabilizer and isn't having it. He knows what will happen if it isn't returned, so there's no way for our killer to talk his way out of this. They tussle – grab my wrists, like you're trying to wrest something delicate from me – and come to the tool locker."

  "Hard to unlock the locker while engaged in scrum," I said.

  "The killer must have opened it previously, to acqure a tool of some sort to wrest free the Stabilizer."

  "You don't need anything. It snaps out easily," I told him. "There's a trick to it, though, and the setting did bear tool marks."

  "The thief didn't know how to snap it out, and that maps with him not knowing what would happen when it was removed. So he takes some sort of lever – a screwdriver probably."

  I opened the locker and looked through the hand tools. "This one's seen some roughness. No blood on it either."

  "I'd have noticed that lack of blood when I was looking earlier. The killer must have returned recently to replace it."

  I froze, knees bent, hands splayed out. "Bartleby, did you feel that?"

  "What?"

  "That lurch?"

  "What lurch?"

  "There was a lurch. The ship's weight shifted."

  "Oh God, are we flipping over?"

  "No. Not yet. We're tilting, but there won't be any dramatic slips until it's almost the end. No, this feels like the ship has dropped a load of ballast."

  ***

  Captain Nussbaum turned from the ship's intercom. "Herr Miller reports that all ballast tanks remain at their correct levels. I felt the shift, too, though, and I have my men performing a full sweep."

  "Won't that alert the passengers and crew?" Mr. Herbert asked.

  "Some will have felt the lurch, Herr Herbert. If your saboteur is still trying to sink us, we should consider evacuation."

  "Not quite yet. How is your investigation progressing, Mr. Bartleby?"

  "Well," Bartleby said. "We've narrowed the field considerably. We think it may be one of your crew, Captain, acting as cat's paw."

  "Nein." Nussbaum shook his head. "I know my men, and cannot believe that any are capable of mass murder on such a scale."

  "He won't know the implications of what he's done," I said. "Our investigation indicates that he's ignorant of the nature of the stabilizer – he's likely either been asked to steal or sabotage it by a third party, or hopes to sell it to one of Mr. Herbert's competitors."

  "I still find it difficult to believe–" Nussbaum was interrupted by a whistle from the ship's communication tube. "Nussbaum here."

  "Captain." Miller's nervous voice came through the ship's tube system. "We may have found something. The laundry room's been emptied."

  "Emptied?"

  "Completely. Not a scrap or skivvy left."

  "Come along," Bartleby turned to me. "Let's have a look."

  ***

  Bartleby stooped in the middle of the laundry-room's tiled floor, peering under the great industrial washing machines. Powered by the engine's generated steam using its run-off to wash with, their great spinning turbines were capable of accommodating the entire ship's complement of uniforms in a single load.

  "See anything?" I asked.

  "Blood." Bartleby stood. "Traces of it on the rim of the machine. Henderson's, no doubt, dripped from the killer or his uniform. This proves it – the killer is a crewman."

  "What did he do with the rest of the clothing? And why?"

  "Our killer probably doesn't know how to do a proper wash, which points to an officer as the culprit. Perhaps the blood stained all the uniforms in his load. He discovered this, wheeled the load out in a laundry trolley and dumped the lot overboard, disposing of enough to obfuscate his identity, I'd wager. That was the shift we felt. Wet laundry as ballast."

  "Why does an inability to do the wash indicate an officer?"

  "Trust me, James. I was an officer once. We're rather quite helpless." He almost stumbled as he crept to the hatch. "I say, James, we'd better hurry. The tilt is getting quite noticeable."

  "It's been that way. You've just been wrapped up in your investigation. Missing the obvious. Am I that way when I'm in my workshop?"

  "Oh no, James. You're far worse."

  ***

  As we navigated our way through the increasingly askew corridors an alarm klaxon began to wail.

  "They've decided to evacuate?" I asked.

  "There would have been an announcement," Bartleby said. "Oh, there's the Chief."

  Chief Miller was weaving almost drunkenly down the corridor, rivet gun in one hand and a wild look in his eyes. As he neared us I could see that his uniform had been torn and his nose bloodied.

  "Mr. Bartleby! Mr. Wainwright!" he called, "Mutiny has broken out."

  "Mutiny?" Bartleby asked.

  Miller spat. "It seems that the passengers aren't quite as senseless and docile as Captain Nussbaum had hoped, and a delegation – lead by Ives and his pet Pinkerton – showed up at his cabin demanding answers."

  "What did he tell them?" I asked.

  "Oh, you know Germans. He dismissed them entirely and ordered them back to their cabins. Americans being Americans you can hazard a guess as to how well that went over."

  "Oh dear."

  "They're storming the vehicle bay, trying to take the aeroboat. That's where the captain and loyal crew have made their stand."

  Bartleby gave me a long look and a sigh. "Very well. No avoiding it now, is there? I'll get my cane. James, go grab a spanner."

  "I have a spanner." I always had a spanner.

  ***

  Captain Nussbaum was in sorry shape when we arrived, leaning heavily against the ship's boat, blood pooling in his boots, but still maintaining a tight grip on his sabre. It was one of the few actual weapons allowed aboard the Rio Grande, likely a relic from the Captain's days in the German Air Corps, and I had no doubt that the man would sooner die than surrender it. Dewit had in his hand a long knife strapped to the handle of a broom, and the Chief still had the pneumatic rivet gun.

  The other crewmembers loyal to the Captain had a variety of makeshift weapons – spears made from snapped off broom-handles, belts held like whips or truncheons, lengths of chain. As Bartleby went to see to the captain I stood with the loyal airmen, spanner in hand, eagerly anticipating the brawl to come.

  I am not, by nature, a brutal man, but neither do I shirk from necessary violence. What I take from such physical contests is the same primal purity I find in the engineering development process. The application of force. The breaking of
resistance barriers. The stripping away of deceit and social context and all the complications that come with more subtle human interactions. It isn't the bloodshed that I love, it's the physics.

  "The Schwein are regrouping," the Captain was telling Bartleby as Dewit bandaged the gash in his side. His accent grew thicker as his blood grew thinner. "Ives and der Pinkerton are heading the mob. Ve cannot resist another assault – Ives and der Pinkerton must be brought low, and der others will lose heart."

  "What of Mr. Herbert?"

  "Zat coward," Nussbaum spit a reddish globule onto the floor. "He hides mit his family in der cabin. He and his coward son."

  I could hear the sound of the rabble mutineers approaching. "Ready, lads."

  The loyal airmen were watching me, perhaps unnerved by my anticipatory grin, firming their grips on their weapons. We fanned out through the spacious bay, making a semicircle before the hatch leading back into the Rio Grande proper. We were all that stood between them and the aeroboat.

  Bartleby stood by the captain, cane held loosely in his hands.

  "I hate this." The Chief checking on the pressure in his rivet gun. A glance told me that it was at its lowest setting – likely not out of concern for the mutineers, who would only be hanged for their betrayal if they survived, but to prevent an accidental hull breech.

  There was scant warning before our foes swarmed into the bay, easily twice our numbers, lead by the Pinkerton Johnson with his cudgel. We were ready, and crew clashed against crew and passenger alike. I waded through the crowd, swinging my spanner, uplifted by the satisfactory crunch whenever it broke a wrist or fractured some ribs.

  A cook smashed me across the shin painfully with his pan, and I caught him across the cheek with my spanner, breaking his face.

  A length of chain wielded by a midshipman lashed across my brow, breaking the skin and half-blinding me. I thrust the fork of my spanner into his windpipe, dropping him into a choking huddled mass.

  As the redness dripped down across my eyes I sought not to kill, but to disable by the most efficient way possible. If they died, if they were crippled for life, if they would never father children again, it was all the same to me, their just punishment for daring to declare a mutiny, their just punishment for daring to face me in riotous battle. The laws of science and nature knew no mercy. Neither did I.

  ***

  "James! James!"

  I stopped at Bartleby's familiar voice, the mists receding from the corners of my eyes. I was covered in bruises and blood, some of which was my own. My hands in particular were painted a bright crimson up to the elbows – I had dispensed with my spanner at some point, or lost it, and had been pummelling my foes with my only the weapons I'd been born with.

  "Calm yourself, James. They've dispersed."

  I dropped the man I'd been throttling and wiped the blood from my brow. None of the loyalists would make eye contact with me save Bartleby, who'd seen it before. A deep shame filtered up from my gut... I don't like to lose control of my faculties like that. I know better. I should be better. "The Pinkerton?"

  "Killed, I'm afraid, and beyond our ability to question," Bartleby responded, handing me a ragged towel to clean myself with. "The rest lost heart when Dewit struck him down. His employer Ives wasn't with them – the First Mate is leading a search party to imprison the mutineers and find him."

  "The Captain?"

  "Alive. Injured, but alive. You – ah, you took the worst of it."

  The Captain looked up at me from the pallet he lay upon. "Get that man to sick-bay."

  ***

  I must have lost a great deal of blood, for my next remembrance is waking up some time later, bandaged and medicated. The drugs they'd given me were halfway effective – they dulled my senses, but didn't seem to moderate the painful throbbing I felt every place I'd been struck. A cloth bandage covered one of my eyes, and my left wrist was in a sling.

  "James! You're not dead. Splendid." Bartleby concealed his relief well.

  I cocked my head. "The tilt's worsened."

  "We've noticed. Listen, they tossed Johnson's room and found a bloodied kerchief and a set of ship's keys. They're fingering him for the murder, but though Ives has copped to the mutiny he maintains that he had no idea about the theft."

  "Do you believe him?"

  "Yes. I doubt he'd have instigated a mutiny if he knew what was really going on. Oh, and the RAF caught the Grande's distress beacon, and they've sent a ship to help with the evacuation."

  "Was Johnson the culprit, then?"

  Bartleby was silent, looking down at the knuckles of his hands as they gripped the footboard of my sickbed. He was quiet for a moment, before looking up at me, his jaw set grim.

  "No. It wasn't Johnson. It's all too just so, too tidy. He wouldn't have had the access an needed to get to the tools, and he wouldn't have stuck around long enough to risk a mutiny if he had the stabilizer. He wouldn't have dumped the laundry, and he wouldn't have left a bloody kerchief in his room. It most certainly wasn't Johnson." Bartleby took a sip of the glass of water at my bedside. "They haven't found the stabilizer, and while they're assuming Johnson hid it or had some confederate, the killer simply had to have been someone else."

  "Who?"

  "I don't know. An officer, likely. Dewit, or Miller or maybe even Nussbaum. Unless we catch the culprit with the stabilizer in-hand, there's no way to be sure."

  "Blast." I was disappointed and sore. Despite my best intentions I'd taken to this detective lark as a matter of sport, and didn't like the idea of losing a case. Or losing London, for that matter.

  "The Metropolitan police are waiting on the ground to search everyone as they are evacuated, in case Johnson had a confederate. We'll catch the culprit." Bartleby likewise sounded ill at ease to not be the one to solve the problem.

  "Catch him? We're dead, Bartleby. That's it. They'll never evacuate the ship in time, nor clear out wherever we happen to crash in London."

  "The ship's not listing that severely. The RAF plan to evacuate us, and then nudge the Rio Grande out to sea."

  "It's not going to matter." I evaluated the ship's tilt. "Listen, the makeshift stabilizer that I crafted isn't going to hold much longer. When it goes, the ship is going to flip, capsize, and crash. We've got an hour at best, and even with the RAF's high altitude craft it'll take twice that to evacuate everyone."

  "Bloody hell."

  "Indeed." There were worse ways to die, I supposed, though I'd always assumed that it would be an accident in my lab rather than riding a massive bomb down to eradicate the capital of an empire. I wasn't much into geopolitics.

  "I'll do my best to get us away with the first set of refugees." Bartleby said. "Do keep quiet about your failure to save us with your makeshift replacement parts."

  "Blaming everyone's doom on me, as per the usual," I said.

  My partner stifled a grin. "Does come up a bit often, doesn't it?"

  "Hardly warranted this time." I smiled back. Bartleby's humor always had a tinge of the gallows to it, but his chatter told me that he held some sort of hope. For what, I couldn't imagine, but I've learned to trust the man. God save me. He had a plan, perhaps, to ensure our survival at the least, and to catch the culprit at the most. Frankly I'd be satisfied with either outcome.

  ***

  "How's the wrist?"

  "Hurts." I blamed the cramped conditions. My wrist was pinned up against the RAF aircraft's hull, and I could feel each and every vibration from its engines down to my marrow.

  "Look, James, I'm sorry. This whole thing was a cock-up from the start. If only I'd been a little quicker to suss out the truth of the matter, you'd not have been injured."

  "I don't blame you, Bartleby. All we can do is work with the facts as they're presented to us. And I admit, sometimes I overestimate my ability to dish out grievous harm to large groups of heavily armed men. Something I shall be mindful of in the future."

  He chuckled. "See that you are. I think our consulting agency ha
s a pleasant dynamic going, and I'd hate to be bothered with replacing you."

  "I appreciate the concern." I cocked my head to listen. "He's cleared the bay. Shall we see who our mysterious pilot is?"

  "We shall."

  Bartleby lifted the hatch above us, and we quietly rose from the storage chamber under the RAF airship's gondola. First Mate Dewit was at the helm, unheedful of our presence until Bartleby spoke.

  "Did you get clearance to depart, Mr. Dewit?"

  Dewit spun, purloined RAF pistol in hand, only to drop it as Bartleby's cane made contact with his wrist. Bartleby drew back into an en garde stance. "Give it up, Dewit!"

  Dewit snarled, pulling the knife from his boot. "You shouldn't have come! I didn't want to kill again!"

  "You're killing thousands," I pointed out. "When the Rio Grande crashes into the city..."

  "Who cares!" He made a wide swipe at Bartleby, who neatly deflected the blade and rapped his opponent on the knuckles. "It's just bad luck for them. Nobody cares when I'm unlucky, why should I care if a bunch of strangers I'll never meet die?"

  "Monstrous." Bartleby lashed out with his cane.

  Dewit ducked and countered with his knife, but Bartleby managed another parry.

  "What's monstrous is when a man works and works and works," Dewit snarled, spittle flying from his curled lips, "and loses his pay because of bad investments with men like Ives and Herbert! Again and again! I have a wife, and a child! I need to support them."

  "Bad investments aren't an excuse for murder." I manoeuvred around to try and get at his pistol. He kept me at bay with the knife. "Henderson was your friend."

  "I didn't know!" he half-sobbed. "Just because I don't care doesn't mean I want them to die. I didn't want to kill Henderson, but he caught me. He was going to go to the Captain, and I'd lose everything again."

  Bartleby lashed out with his cane, catching Dewit across the knuckles. The knife fell from his stinging fingers, and Bartleby pushed the advantage, pressing Dewit up against the control console.