Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection

by Michael Coorlim

  "Sadly not. They don't appear to be Luddites, though I'm sure the blaggards cannot help but cheer at the city's predicament. There's no tie to the local criminal element that I've been able to discern, and the multinational trading cartels suffer as much from this as anyone else. I'm afraid we're as stumped as Scotland Yard on this one." As usual Bartleby stood precariously at the height of men's fashion, his sack coat, waistcoat, and trousers coordinated to look tasteful without going all the way to fey. His stiff collar was adorned with a narrow four-in-hand necktie, a soft felt Homburg fedora resting in his lap. His moustache was waxed and casually curled.

  "The Kaiser perhaps? Or one of England's other enemies? The Royal Armada Sky-dock was the first facility targeted, was it not?"

  "All diplomats have uniformly denied involvement." Alton shook his head. "And James says that the firepower they're employing is well beyond even Prussia's technological prowess. Some form of galvanic cannons, he wagers."

  Aldora wrinkled her nose at the mention of her fiancé's partner. "Speaking of Mr. Wainwright, why has he chosen not to grace us with his presence for tea?"

  "Back at our home, down in his laboratory." Alton chuckled. "Working, as is his wont. I can attempt to summon him forth should you miss his wit so keenly."

  "Heavens no, I'd hate to interrupt his important work."

  "That's where we're at. We don't know who's targeting shipments into the city, and aside from some rumours of a drunk in Calais who claims to have been crew aboard one of the airships, mums been the word."

  "Have you looked into that rumour?" Aldora sipped her tea.

  Alton paled. Further, that is. "Oh, heavens no. Trust me, I'm all for it, but even though the airships seem to be set on targeting shipping rather than passenger lines, there isn't a captain within the city willing to risk passage across the channel. Not for all the coin I could offer, neither by sea nor by air."

  "As dire as the situation is?"

  "As dire. Parliament's too afraid of getting all the Lords together in one location to come about a plan of action, and the Queen, God bless her, has been ushered off into one of her bunkers. Nobody else has the power to mandate anything."

  "They'll have to."

  "Eventually, yes. The gentry will not stand the pinch of rationing for long, but things have a ways to go before they get to that point."

  "People drop dead from starvation in the streets, Alton!" An octave's change in pitch was as close as Aldora got to raising her voice. "How much more dire do things need to become?"

  "The poor, but the poor are always starving, are they not?"

  She gave him a frosty glare. "Don't you start playing devil's advocate with me, Alton Bartleby. I'll not stand for it."

  "Sorry, darling, force of habit."

  Aldora glared at her fiancé, stirring her tea. After a tense moment her face softened and she continued in a sotto voice. "That's what they're actually saying, isn't it? The Lords? And they're not saying it to get a rise, they're saying it as if they believe it."

  Bartleby sighed, regarding his cup, and did not respond. The pair sat still in the silence amongst the luxury of the Fiske family parlour.

  Eventually Aldora took a sip of her tea. "Mother's been agitating about our nuptials again."

  "Oh, splendid," Alton put his cup aside and ran a hand through his hair.

  "She enquired just before you arrived, as she left to visit grandfather's grave. Such familial duties always make her somewhat maudlin."

  "What did you tell her?"

  "I told her I was deferring to your judgement on the matter."

  "Thank you ever so much for that."

  "You're quite welcome. But to be serious, Alton, we cannot put the matter off indefinitely. People will talk."

  Alton sighed and picked up his cup again, stirring it idly. "Yes, well. We've got a goodly amount of time before we need to cross that bridge. Let the gossips wag premature."

  "You underestimate the power of the Season's mutterings. And how easily it gets bored."

  "Ah." Alton held up a finger. "But I am well aware of how easily distracted Society can be. Let them twitter on about Bartleby the Bachelor."

  "I will not have you make me Aldora the Spinster, Mr. Bartleby."

  Bartleby looked hurt. "Aldora! I would never put your good name at risk."

  "No, you know too well the value of a Fiske to your social portfolio."

  "Aldora!"

  "I tease, of course--" She offered back a wan smile, pulling the spoon from her tea. Alton's spoon leapt, seemingly of its own accord, from his cup, splattering droplets of tea across the service, to cling to hers with a metallic 'ting'. "Oh my word!"

  Alton stared at the crossed spoons. "Aldora! Is this the good silver?"

  "No, just the plated nickel--"

  Alton was moving in an instant, grabbing Aldora by the elbow and dragging her away. His explosive rise knocked the service aside, bowl of sugar and teapot falling to splash and scatter across the parlour's carpeting.

  "Alton, what--"

  "Run!" Bartleby pulled his fiancée towards the parlour's tall picture windows. He covered his face as he leapt through the glass, shattering its pane, and Aldora instinctively turned away from the shards flying past her face. She didn't resist his urgency, knowing full well that when Bartleby was spurred to sudden action that he had good reason. For all the man's faults, she trusted him, and trusted his judgement.

  They hit the lawn and rolled just as the parlour seemed to explode behind them. The concussive shock pushed them forth, knocking them from the lawn to the drive leading up to the house. Aldora tucked into herself as she landed and rolled back to her feet, skirts falling about her legs into place without flaw, blouse unmarred by the lawn's earth, a ringing in her ears the only sound she could distinguish, the smell of fire in her nostrils. Bartleby's jacket had been torn by the jagged broken glass, the knees of his trousers muddied, hat missing from his head. He cast about briefly for it and moaned, finding it crushed.

  Her hearing gradually returned, and Aldora pushed an errant curl back into her coif, returning to a state of perfect impeccable grace. "Alton, what--"

  "Something James said to me." Bartleby fiddled with his hat, pushing the dents back out of its felt. "He kept going on about the science of galvanics, and mentioned that the cannons would interfere with the navigational equipment in targeted vessels. Such navigation is magnetic in nature, so when the spoons clung to one another--"

  "You knew that a galvanic cannon had targeted the parlour." Aldora's gaze moved from the smoking crater that had been her family's home's parlour to the sky, where a sleek black shape drifted away through the clouds. "Well done, Alton, you've saved both of our lives."

  "As you've saved mine often enough in the past."

  The pair watched the burning wreckage of Aldora's home in silence. A fire brigade bell began to ring in the distance, and before long a bucket-line started to form.

  "This presents an ugly wrinkle to the blockaders, should they have decided to strike at us directly."

  "Strike at me, directly," Aldora said. "Other than the Royal Armada Sky-port, my home is the sole structure they've targeted."

  "Perhaps they were targeting me? I have been investigating the matter."

  "No. If you were their focus they'd have waited until you and your partner were together before attacking."

  "That's hardly comforting."

  "It was hardly meant to be." Aldora fell silent, wondering why these airshipmen had decided to target her, wondering at what the connection could possibly be.

  ***

  Jack Fowler dreamed.

  In his dream he was still transporting goods across the American heartland from the East coast to the West, still an airship pilot with a major shipping firm. He still lived in Boston, was still married to his childhood sweetheart, and still had a girlfriend in Los Angeles. In his dream, his brother was still alive, and Jack was sober more often than not. This was a welcome dream, a familiar dr
eam, and lately he'd been sleeping as much as possible in order to dwell within it.

  An outside influence gradually penetrated his dream-state. His name, repeated endlessly, calling to him from beyond the edges of his perception. It was accompanied by a persistent jabbing.

  "Whu?" he gasped, sitting up with a snort, blinking at the strange woman in his room.

  "Captain Fowler, I presume?" The woman had gone to great lengths to dress down to better suit the environs of east Soho, assembling a carefully working-class ensemble. Her shirtwaist's blouse was high collared and cut like a man's, her hat was wide-brimmed but unadorned by the feathers and ribbons that ladies of society favoured, and her hair was gathered into a simple knot atop her head. Despite this camouflage, Fowler could tell that she was a gentlewoman of breeding. Common clothes could not disguise the tone in the woman's voice, the surety of her posture, or the imperious confidence in her gaze. She held the parasol she'd been poking him with.

  "Yeah." Even dressed down her elegance made him acutely aware of the shabby rough-and-tumble nature of his own clothes, denim trousers and a leather jacket over a shirt that hadn't been washed within memory. They fit the disarray of the room he was renting above the pub, empty whiskey bottles strewn about like forgotten failures.

  "Captain Fowler, I have been led to believe that you have an airship available for charter."

  Before answering he cast about for one of the bottles scattered about his floor -- it was never auspicious to conduct business on an empty stomach. The woman nudged it out of his reach with her toe, and he gazed at it, forlorn. "Yeah."

  "I am Miss Fiske, and I would like to charter your services, Captain Fowler."

  Fowler leaned over, trying to reach the bottle, which remained just out of his grasp. He whimpered as his fingertips just managed to drag across its surface, Miss Fiske watching him like some interesting new species of insect.

  Miss Fiske raised her voice. "Captain Fowler, I said I'd like to hire you."

  "I heard you." Jack gave up and rolled over onto his back, knocking empty glass bottles to scatter across the floor. "Where did you want to go?"

  "I need transport to Calais."

  "Calais?" he pulled a cigarette out of his breast pocket and stuck it between his lips. "Across the channel? You know there's a blockade on, right?"

  Aldora fixed her gaze on the man. "You were not my first choice in captains, Captain Fowler. None of the others I approached were willing to take the risk."

  He chuckled; the possibility of death was far from a deterrent. "Yeah, I'll give it a go." He sat up and coughed sharply, then spat into a bucket. Aldora remained stone-faced. "Won't be cheap, though."

  "Money is no object."

  "My three favourite words."

  "That's four words."

  "Good thing you're not hiring me as a tutor, then?" Fowler stood and stretched, giving a loud, drawn-out yawn. "I can be ready to depart this afternoon."

  "Will that be enough time to sober up?"

  He gave the woman a wry grin. "Now why on earth would I want to do that, Miss Fiske? Blockade running isn't a sober business."

  "I don't find that amusing, Captain Fowler. I insist we wait until dark, at the very least. I don't want to be spotted leaving."

  "Fine." Fowler rolled his eyes. "Be at the Soho airfield an hour before dawn. Bring the money and whatever luggage you'll need. Will you be requiring return passage?"

  "Perhaps." Aldora folded her arms. "It depends on how quickly we find what we're looking for."

  "Oh? And what might you be looking for in Calais?"

  "Answers, Captain. Answers."

  ***

  They departed the next day, before the financial centres of the city woke, when the first shift of working men were starting their toils. The steam and smoke from these factories blended with the morning fog to create a cover that the pair hoped would conceal them from the dangerous warships lurking in the skies above. Fowler had greeted Aldora with his lopsided smile and aggressive bravado, but even his voice faded as they edged out over the water. He'd doused the ship's running lights, and his small private airship, the Persephone, slid through the ominous early morning with only the pale grey morning light to guide her.

  A dark shape loomed out of the mists above them, crossing broadside. Ominous green lights shown from the portholes in its hull, and dim figures could be seen observing the Persephone. Electrical arcs crackled the length of the lightning cannons mounted to the ship's fore.

  "Stirner," Aldora read the ship's name off of its hull. "Why does that sound familiar?"

  Fowler slowly turned the ship's wheel to angle away from the ship crossing their path. "Sounds German. Suppose they belong to the Kaiser?"

  "Supported by him at best," Aldora shuddered. "If the man wanted to start a war he'd just start it." But that wasn't it. Stirner. It was a man's name, she knew that much, but she wasn't able to associate it with any face. Not directly, at any rate.

  The Stirner drifted back off into the industrial fog, letting the Persephone continue on across the channel.

  ***

  The Vieil Métis was a typical dockside Calais tavern. While lacking the desperation of the East End pubs in London, it never-the-less attracted many of the same calibre of rough and dangerous men, sailors all, on leave while waiting for their vessels to take them to London, or northeast to the Danish fish markets, or south to the warmer French ports. The disruption of shipping across the Channel had been terrible for the city and not much better for its taverns; those who tried to make the voyage had died, and few wanted to wait in port for the situation to resolve itself.

  The solitude suited Milos just perfectly. He'd told his story several times to the largely unbelieving ears of the tavern's audience, and now just wanted to be left alone with his solitude and his wine. The former he had plenty of, the latter... his coin was running thin, and he could barely afford enough drink to keep the tavern's keeper from throwing him into the streets. He was deeper in his sorrows than in his cups, and failed to notice the Englishwoman approaching until she'd sat down at his table.

  He wiped his nose on his sleeve and glanced around at the rest of the empty common room. "Plenty of seats away from my malaise, bonne dame."

  "I've not come for the plentiful seating," she said. Her associate, an American, was ordering a drink from the barman. "I've come to hear you speak."

  "Speak?" he asked, uncorking his bottle of wine and drinking a few precious drops. "What could I possibly have to say that would be of interest?"

  "Want me to persuade him for you?" Captain Fowler, joining them at the table.

  "No." The Englishwoman was dressed for the docks, dull coloured clothes, sturdy and serviceable. She spoke French without an accent, but Milos could see the English in her spine, could see the blueness of her blood in the tilt of her face. "Rumour has that you've been telling a tale I'd much like to hear."

  "It's not a tale I care to tell anymore."

  The man grabbed the bottle away from him. "Spill it, old salt."

  "Non non non!" he said, reaching for the bottle. "Don't spill it, I haven't much left, and when I am out the taverner will kick me out into the cold!"

  The Englishwoman took the bottle from her companion and placed it back in front of Milos. "There's another bottle for you if you tell me your story."

  Milos's eyes narrowed. "More than a bottle, perhaps."

  "Sir, I do hope you are not implying anything beyond the bounds of propriety."

  Milos was quick to hold up his hands. "Non, belle-fille! Do not get the wrong idea! I simply can see that what I know is somehow important to you. Surely it is worth more than the price of a bottle of cheap wine!"

  "A bottle of wine now, and if your story tells me what I need to know... then, well, I will pay your room and board in the finest of Calais's inns for a week."

  "You are too generous, bonne dame, and I pray what I tell you is worth your while."

  ***

  Milos had been
enticed into a life of piracy by his boyhood friend, Jacques. The pair enticed a number of like-minded young men into buying into an airship, and they set about preying on shipping and passenger routes throughout Western Europe. Most airships lacked any defencive weaponry, and it was a trivial matter to escape over the nearest border when they ran afoul of any nation's military. The webs of rivalry and alliance made cooperation between states over a matter of simple piracy unlikely, and the crew of the Libertine prospered greatly over the next decade.

  "Most of the time we'd put the passengers and crew ashore," he said. "Jacques knew that if we started to kill, we would only draw the full attention of the nations of the world. As long as we remained a minor menace, it was not worth the bother to hunt us down, you know? It was more fun to be gentlemen pirates than cutthroats anyway."

  "You and I have very different ideas of what the word 'gentleman' means," Aldora said, but bade Milos continue.

  One year ago they had captured a passenger liner travelling up the coast of France. The passengers were relieved of their belongings and most were set aground. "There were a few that were important enough to be ransomed off, if their families had the money." One of these men, an Englishman, declined the opportunity for ransom and instead petitioned to join the crew.

  "In the air we are a democracy," Milos said. "When at arms, then it is the captain's word that is law. But for matters such as this, the crew had to agree."

  The Englishman, who had given his name as Max ("An obvious pseudonym."), was personable enough about the crew so as to gain approval. He became fast friends with the captain, and offered much good advice regarding tactics and practises.

  "I did not trust him as easily," Milos recalled. "He had an edge to him. A hard edge. Always pushing for more, and agitating."

  "Agitating?" Fowler asked.

  "Talking like a socialist," Milos dismissed. "Going on about class, class, class. About how we working men were exploited by the nation-states and the bourgeoisie and such. To talk to pirates of such things! Those of us who had been with the Libertine from the start, we laughed him off, but some of the younger men, full of fire and the spirit of the age, they listened. But what did it matter? Jacques trusted him, and his ideas were good. Within a year we had purchased a second vessel, and Max was working on getting us better cannons."