"This second vessel," Aldora asked. "The Stirner?"
"Stirner? Non. It was La Justice. Why?"
"No reason," Aldora said. "You were saying about cannons?"
"Yes, Max's idea. He was always petitioning a greater use of force, and more of the men were listening. Jacques and I were opposed, of course -- greater weapons only means greater temptation to use them -- but the men outvoted us. Max made a deal with some American inventor for some sort of lightning cannons. It was shortly after that that he led the mutiny. It was a quick battle... he threw Captain Jacques over the railing one night after dinner, and had those of us loyal to him put to the sword."
"How did you survive?" Fowler asked.
"I was wounded, see?" The ex-pirate lifted his shirt, showing a pattern of healing scarlet wounds on his chest. "Gruesome, non? Max was an excellent swordsman. He'd pierced me seven times before I'd so much as cleared my scabbard."
Aldora peered closely at the pattern, biting her lip, her face going a little grey. "The Sette-Punti Stella."
"Quoi?"
"I've seen that pattern before," Aldora said, her voice a whisper. "The 'Seven-Point Star.' I've seen that manoeuvre performed."
"It was painful, let me tell you."
"It's a secret technique of the Castgnaga school." Aldora stood.
"Whatever it was, when he had struck me so, I dropped my cutlass and fell to my knees in shock. They threw me over the side, and only the cold salt water revived me. It was my great fortune that a fishing boat found me before I drowned."
"It wasn't shock. The Seven-Point Star targets the nerve clusters of the major muscle groups and induces paralysis. There are only six men alive today who can perform it." She paused. "Five men. Thank you for your tale, Milos. I'll set you up for the week wherever you'd like to stay."
"Merci. This place is as good as any."
***
Out on the street Aldora turned and handed a parcel to the Captain. "I need you to return with this to London."
"What, you're not heading back with me?"
"No. I'm off to New Jersey, and then New York."
"I don't like the idea of leaving you to your own devices, Miss Fiske." Fowler took the parcel reluctantly.
"Believe me, this is a matter of utmost importance, Captain. I need you to go to my home -- what's left of it -- and retrieve a package for me from the hope chest in the closet of my sleeping quarters. A bundle of envelopes tied with a blue string. Can you do this for me?"
"Yeah."
"This parcel contains the address in New York that I will need the bundle shipped to, as well as sufficient postage and with the pay you've been promised."
"As you like it, Miss Fiske. Be careful."
"What I need is expedience. I cannot afford careful."
***
"You are one of the most revolting men I have ever met." The words left Aldora's mouth almost conversationally, as if she were discussing the weather.
"I've no doubt that a woman of your charms has known a great many men," Thomas Edison said with a sneer. "But I am afraid that those charms won't avail you here. I'm a happily married man, Miss Fiske--"
"You're an appalling bore."
"--and an honest businessman. Many clients come to me seeking innovation, and these clients appreciate the discretion I provide them with."
Aldora sat across the large Mahogany desk from Edison. Papers littered the desk, some of which were patent applications, others financial documents and ledgers. Thomas Alva Edison himself was in excellent shape for a person of sixty years. His wealth and success had not made a soft man of him.
"These men are pirates of the worst sort, Mr. Edison. They've killed a great many merchant airmen and members of the Royal Armada."
"It's none of my concern what my innovations are used for, I simply care that they work." Edison opened a box on his desk and removed a cigar.
"That's a monstrous indifference!"
He pulled a cigar clip from his pocket. "That's capitalism, Miss Fiske. American ingenuity knows no bounds."
"Not the bounds of decency, that's for certain."
Snip! went the clip, and Edison stuck the cigar in his mouth. "Your bleeding-heart humanism smacks of Communist sympathies, Miss Fiske. Such is the speech of Unionisers and anarchists."
"And you sold powerful galvanic weapons to pirates!"
"Capitalist pirates!" Edison lit his cigar, taking a puff, and blowing a ring of smoke into the air.
"So you condone piracy? I'm surprised, even for you that's a new low."
"I condone the Capitalism. Tell me, Miss Fiske, how do you suppose that the other houses of Europe will respond when they see that one ship armed with Edison Electro-Cannons held the entire British Sky-Armada at bay? I'll be swamped in orders. Drowning in money."
"You're disgusting."
"There's a war coming," Edison was suddenly serious, sitting forward in his desk. "A great war. War like this Earth has never seen. The alliances of old in Europe permit nothing less, Miss Fiske."
"And you intend to profit from it."
"I intend to survive it. America isn't bound by Europe's tangled skein, Miss Fiske. When Europe burns, America will emerge as the greatest nation, untouched by war, an industrial giant to usher in a new era of prosperity and enlightenment."
"Then why do you supply nations with these horrible weapons?"
"Because the more devastated Europe is, the stronger America will be. Galvanic rifles. Resurrected troops. Ironclad airships. Clockwork steam-tanks." Each syllable came out of Edison's mouth a staccato burst. "After the horrors of war, all of Europe will clamour for sane American dominion, and inventors and engineers will lead the way."
"I was wrong," Aldora said bitterly. "You're not a bore. You're a monster."
Edison sat back, blinking, and seemed to recover his composure. "You'll have to forgive me, Miss Fiske. I had no intention to upset you so. For your own good I'm afraid I must cut this interview short."
"Please," Aldora said, leaning forward. "Tell me the name of the man you dealt with. Tell me what he looked like!"
The door to Edison's office opened behind her. A pair of his assistants, large and broad-shouldered men with cruel smiles and scarred hands, stepped inside.
"Good day, Miss Fiske."
***
Back in her West Orange hotel room Aldora sat and unwrapped the package that Captain Fowler had sent to her from London. Letter after letter, written in the same elegant hand, on the same Parisian stationary, all telling her the same thing. Screaming it so loudly that she couldn't ignore the signs. Her hands trembled as she carefully slid each missive back into its envelope, and she felt faint as she carefully placed them atop her room's desk.
"Grayson," she said in a small, almost childlike voice. "Oh, why, Grayson?"
Her hand drifted almost instinctively to the locket around her neck.
***
Dark figures moved through the West Orange Farragut Hotel corridors, men with hats pulled low and coat pockets bulging with nefarious intent. If any of the guests or staff saw their silent passage they kept quiet, knowing the man they worked for, and knowing that discretion was the better part of valour. Neither man tarried in their dark task, proceeding swiftly and full of menace up to the hotel's second floor, down to the end of the corridor to the spacious suite occupied by the lone travelling Englishwoman, their shadows contrasting with the yellow patterns of the hall's wallpaper.
Gloved hands used delicate tools to spring the hotel's lock, and the well-maintained door's hinges remained silent as the pair crept inside. Dangerous tools both blunt and sharp were pulled from jacket pockets, and the murderous men descended on the still form beneath silk sheets.
A ripping blade found not soft yielding flesh to part, but rather goose-down-stuffed pillows, and a length of pipe cracked not skull but flexible mattress.
"The hotel management shall be quite displeased," Aldora spoke from the darkness, turning on a lamp to reveal her
self in a chair across from the bed, pistol levelled at her would-be murders. "You've made a dreadful mess of their sheets."
The man with the knife growled and took a half-step towards the woman, only to be halted by his partner.
"A dead-shot, this one," he warned.
"She's just a girl," his partner said. "I doubt she could hit either of us."
"Care to wager your life, sir?" Aldora asked.
"I don't," the man with the pipe said. "Look at the way she holds the piece."
"So?"
"Thumb on the hammer, ready to slip. She'd drop us both before we even heard the report."
His partner was silent.
"Go." Aldora gestured towards the door with her free hand, the pistol level on her intruders. "Tell Mr. Edison that I've gotten what I've come for, but that our business is not yet settled. Understand?"
"Damn right we're not done." The knife-wielder growled, but allowed his partner to pull him back through the doorway.
***
"You're looking well, Nikola."
They both knew that it was a lie, but the inventor smiled anyway. "And you remain as radiant as ever we meet, Aldora. If I'd known you were coming by, I'd have cleaned up for you."
Aldora glanced around the brick interior of the Wardenclyffe Tower's facility building. The entire building was constructed in the style of the Italian Renaissance, and the laboratory area contained all manner of electromechanical devices, few of which she could identify. To Aldora's untrained eye, everything was bulbs and tubes, wires and cables. Through a great window in the back she could see the wood-framed tower itself, almost two-hundred feet tall, with a steel hemisphere cupola at the top.
Nikola Tesla followed her gaze. "Do you like it? Overly phallic, I know, but in a way it could not be anything else. The shaft sinks another hundred meters into the earth."
"Good heavens, why?"
A strange sort of mania flashed briefly though the inventor's face. "To give it such a grip on this earth that the whole of the globe might quiver."
"Nikola," Aldora said softly. She had told him of her visit, both by telegram before leaving France, and again before leaving New Jersey, but he'd been honestly surprised to see her appear at the entrance to his machine shop.
"If I get the funding I need," he continued, turning back to his mass of wires and tubes, "it will be the core of my World Wireless System. Imagine. A world linked through free and abundant energy. There would be no more struggle. No more conflict. No more need for war."
"Edison says that the world will fall into a great war within the next decade."
"Edison!" Nikola spat and raised his fists. "What does he know? He is a reprehensible man. An uneducated man with contempt for book-learning and no interests other than business. Science is just another investment, patents just a revenue stream. What I could have done with his resources..."
Aldora placed a hand on the man's shoulder. "It's been too long, Nikola."
He turned, clutching at her hand like a drowning man. Hers was one of the few touches he had learnt to abide. "It has been how long?"
"A decade, almost."
"A decade?" He turned back to his workbench. "I hear that you're engaged now. Is he a good man?"
"Good enough," Aldora said. "One who will give me the freedoms I require to live the life that I desire."
"Good," Tesla said. "A decade. I suppose I am an old man to you now?"
"You have the energy of a man half your age."
"Energy. Yes. Hm."
He seemed to drift off again, thinking thoughts that Aldora could not begin to fathom. She waited patiently for his attention to return.
"Edison, you said. You have spoken to him?"
"Yes. Of necessity."
A hurt look crossed Nikola's face. "And you did not come to me?"
"Oh Nikola," Aldora said. "No. Edison sold some sort of galvanic cannons to some criminals that are using them to terrorise London, but he wouldn't tell me anything about them."
"London?" Nikola said. "That won't do. London will be important."
"Important?"
Nikola turned and erased a chalkboard alongside his instrument panel. "How long can you stay?"
The question seemed to surprise Aldora. "A few days, I suppose?"
"Three days. I will need three."
"I can stay three."
"Prvoklasan!" he exclaimed.
***
Over the next three days Nikola Tesla built a strange looking generator for Aldora Fiske. It looked like all the rest of his electromechanical apparatus did -- wires and tubes -- but this device seemed even more slap-dash jury-rigged than the rest of it.
"What does it... erm..." she asked, examining the breadbox-sized device.
"I call it an Ionic Shield," Tesla said. "It will protect you from Edison's galvanic weapons. Or any other electricity-based armament, I suppose."
"Marvellous!"
"It will de-ionise the emissions of the Galvanic Cannons and render their issue inert. This is only a prototype, though. I am afraid it will burn out rather quickly, but it should be enough to get an airship close enough to board the pirate vessel."
"How does it work?" Aldora asked.
"Simply mount it to one of your airship's hard-points. It will function reactively. It's functioning now, in fact, aligning the ions of the surrounding air. Don't worry; normal static electricity will not burn the device out, nor will normal operation of an airship."
"Nikola," Aldora said. "Do you mean to tell me you've developed an anti-lighting field?"
"Oh," he said. "I suppose I have. Perhaps I will patent it, and get rich like that kopile Edison."
She leaned forward and gave the inventor a peck on the cheek. "Thank you, Nikola."
He turned and grabbed her hands again. "Be careful, Aldora."
"I will."
"And do not wait another decade to come see me again!"
"I won't! Perhaps I'll invite you to the wedding."
"Pfah," Nikola grinned.
***
"Why am I doing this again?" Fowler asked, glancing back over his shoulder as he worked to attach the Ionic Shield to Persephone's bow. The old barn that the American pilot stored his airship in was littered with spare machine parts and tools largely kept in bins and buckets.
"Money," Aldora said.
"Lots of money," Fowler clarified.
"And the gratitude of London and the United Kingdom," Aldora added.
"Will that gratitude also be monetary?"
"I cannot speak for the Home Office," Aldora said, "but I cannot imagine that being the man who saved London would not result in excellent business contacts."
"Business contacts." Fowler mulled. "I like that. Sounds respectable."
"Oh, it is," Aldora assured.
"Fine. Let's get on with it, then." Fowler stepped down from his stepladder and carelessly tossed his wrench into one of the buckets.
"Is that the American 'Can-Do' attitude I've heard so much about?"
"No," Fowler said, wiping his greasy hands off on a kerchief. "But if you're curious about it and we can push our departure back a bit I can give you a demonstration."
He stepped in close to Aldora, wry grin on his face, his earthy graphite scent filling her nostrils. His proximity was a physical thing, registering on her skin despite the inches between them. Aldora's bemused expression didn't falter. "Alas, Mr. Fowler, I'm spoken for, and we cannot afford even a few minutes' delay."
He turned back towards his airship with a barked laugh. "Well enough, Miss Fiske. Let's get on with this suicide mission of yours."
***
Luck held with the Persephone, and the sleek form of the Stirner was swiftly discovered in the fogs above London. The larger airship ignored the smaller vessel until it became clear that the Persephone had plotted an intercept course. The fog was lit with an incandescent glow as the pirate's Galvanic Cannon charged, small auras flickering around its generators, a high-pitched whine audible ev
en aboard the smaller vessel.
"Let's hope that your mad scientist's shields work," Fowler said, jaw set.
"I have the utmost faith in Mr. Tesla's work," Aldora said.
Fully charged, the Galvanic Cannons crackled and fired bright white arcs of electric death towards the smaller vessel. It seemed to split as it reached the sphere of invisible ionised air around the Persephone, fracturing and cascading to form a jagged net over the border of the shield's protection. It glowed bright white for an instant, almost blinding those within, and the cabin rocked with a slight concussive force, but when it faded Fowler's vessel appeared unharmed.
"It worked!" Fowler said. "Bully for your Tesla."
"We're not aboard yet."
There was a pause aboard the Persephone, and the Stirner began charging its Cannons again.
"Brace for impact," Fowler warned.
The lightning cannons fired again. This time the arcs came closer to the Persephone before they split, and the jagged electric net they dissipated to was markedly smaller, almost touching the Persephone's hull. The concussive force that struck the ship was more powerful, sending Fowler sprawling, and slamming Aldora against the hull. The ozone smell of the Ionic Shield had grown more noticeable, and small wisps of smoke began to issue from its innards.
"It'll not protect us from a third hit," Aldora warned.
"All ahead." Fowler pushed the Persephone's throttle to full, and the ship lunged forward.
"Captain Fowler?"
"No time to look for a bay and come in for a soft landing." The Captain stared directly at the Stirner, his jaw clenched, eyes narrowed. "Brace for impact!"
Aldora wrapped her arm around a length of hanging chain and set her hip against the railing. The Stirner's Cannons began to charge a third time, and through the cabin's forward windows small arcs of electricity could be seen playing over the surface of the ship.
Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection Page 15
