Steamy Cogs

by Jessica Ripley

  After Faith swapped James’ Freddie face for his own and they changed out of their evening dress, they lay in bed, waiting for after midnight. Brice, thankfully, kept regular hours, James said. He never worked through the night, believing sleep was vital to his genius.

  Faith put her ear to James’ chest. Instead of a heartbeat, she could hear the faint whirr of gears. His chest didn’t rise and fall with breath. But he was alive. James put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “Try to sleep a little,” he said. But she couldn’t and didn’t. For hours, they stayed like that. In a way, Faith felt like it was more intimate than anything they’d done up to that point. She’d never expected this, to feel like this about anyone. She wouldn’t have risked her life for any of the men she’d slept with, but the moment James had asked for her help, she would have done anything to spare him.

  They heard clocks throughout the house strike midnight. Everything was silent. Outside, the breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees. An owl hooted faintly. Faith sat up and stretched. She kissed James. Not a brief kiss like she’d give him if he were leaving for the day, but a deep, searching kiss that should have led to more, but couldn’t. “I’ll send the signal,” she said.

  With a candle and a card, Faith went to the balcony and signaled to E that it was time. She blew the candle out. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could make out the dim shapes of furniture in their room.

  James took her hand. They made their way to the library, pausing at every creak, every shuffle. No one else was around. The door in the library was locked. But Faith was prepared for that. She lifted her skirt and from a pouch on her garter, she took out a small lock-picking kit.

  James kissed her cheek. “You’re wonderful,” he whispered in her ear, so low it was more like a breath in her ear. She grinned in answer and went to work.

  The door opened to a long staircase. It was darker than any other part of the house as there were no windows. James, with his better night vision, led the way. The steps wound down and down until they got to another door. This one was not locked. James paused with his hand on the knob. “Ready?” He breathed.

  “Always,” Faith whispered back.

  They stepped into a large, well-lit workspace. The huge steam-powered computer took up much of the space. Two men were shoveling coal into a vast boiler. The room was hot and noisy. Rows of automatons stood, not moving. They only watched as James and Faith walked into the room.

  “He’s programmed them not to move until he’s told them,” James said. “We should be safe. He doesn’t expect anyone here.”

  James went over to the control panel. He took out the cards he had made and began entering his program. Faith scanned the room. She took her gun from her garter and held it out, ready. Brice had to have some sort of protection built in. This was too easy.

  Then she saw it, high up in the corner of the room, near the ceiling a light blinking. It had to be some kind of alert. She heard metal against stone and turned towards the sound. Headed toward them were automatons, but not ones as sophisticated as James or the ones he’d helped work on. These were simple, almost like tin soldiers brought to life. She fired into their heads, where James had said their power source was. They crumpled to the ground. But she could hear heavy footsteps from other directions.

  “James!” She yelled. “Hurry! He’s been alerted!”

  “Hold them off! I’ve got three cards left before I can activate the wireless signal.”

  Faith loaded her gun. Even these tin soldiers were too easy. But then again, Brice probably hadn’t planned on someone having bullets designed just for this situation.

  “I’m pulling the switch now!” James yelled.

  Faith shot several more tin soldiers. “Hurry! I’m almost out of bullets!”

  More human automatons opened their eyes. They were bewildered. James ran to them and tried to explain, but many of them simply panicked, running about. A few dashed out the door and up the stairs. Shots rang out and Faith heard bodies topple down the stairs.

  Brice emerged, gun in hand. Well, he had special bullets too it seems.

  “Oh, James,” Brice said. He shook his head as if James were a dog he’d caught eating garbage. “After all I’ve done for you.”

  “Done?” James said. “You stole my life!”

  “I saved it! The war was a waste. You were right about that. This way is better. You’re immortal now. They can never hurt you again. I can make sure there will never be another war again.”

  “When? After you’re done slaughtering those who’d stop you?” James moved towards Brice. Brice pointed his gun at the centre of James’ body.

  “James, don’t make me shoot you. You were like a son to me. My firstborn! Without you, none of this would be possible. But I won’t be stopped.”

  James kept moving. Brice cocked the gun. Faith pulled the trigger on her own gun, but nothing happened. She stuck it into her belt and pulled out her knife instead. Brice hadn’t noticed her. She threw the knife, hard, striking him in the back of the thigh. Brice fell to the ground with a scream.

  James snatched the gun from Brice’s hand.

  Just then, E and his men clattered through the door.

  “James, put the gun down,” E said. “We need to take Dr. Brice alive.”

  James shook his head. He held Brice down with a foot across the doctor’s neck and he had the gun aimed at the doctor’s head.

  E approached and held a gun against James’ head, just where his spine met his skull. “James. Put the gun down or I will shoot. The bullet will go through your brain and you’ll be dead.”

  “I can’t,” James said.

  Faith loaded her gun. She came up behind E and held her gun to his head. “You shoot James and so help me, I’ll do the same to you,” she said.

  “Faith, Brice holds the key to all of this. We need him alive,” E said. He was calm. Faith knew it wasn’t the first time his life had been threatened. But she also knew E didn’t believe she’d pull the trigger. But if James were killed, she would.

  “So you can build your own army?” James said. “No. You can’t use men like that. It’s still slaughter. It’s still suffering.”

  “James, I swear to you that won’t happen if I can help it,” E said. But James shook his head. His arm shook. Brice moaned. Faith restrained the urge to kick him.

  “Well, isn’t this quite the turn up?” Freddie came through the door.

  Freddie surveyed the scene, hands in his pockets, as if he were watching a cricket game and not the break-up of a war factory. “Granville, dear, put the gun down. James won’t shoot Brice. Because James is a smart lad. And he knows that we’ll turn Brice to some profit, helping the wounded. Right, James? Granville?”

  Faith giggled. She felt a bit hysterical. Granville. E’s actual name always sounded odd to her. Freddie rarely said it in front of anyone else.

  “You too, Fido. Guns down all. There you go. Good boys. And girl.” Freddie knelt beside Brice and produced a pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket. “Well, Dr. Brice, you’re under arrest. Treason and all that.”

  Faith went to James. He flung his arms about her and held her so tightly she could barely breathe. He couldn’t make tears, but he wept all the same. After a few moments, after Freddie handed Dr. Brice over to one of E’s men, James lifted his head from Faith’s shoulder.

  “What happens now?” He asked E.

  “Well, we’re taking all the automatons into custody. Not arrest. But we need to discover who Brice took. And then,” E paused. Faith could have kicked him for that pause. Her happiness was in the balance and he was enjoying a moment. “They’ll be offered—choices. Deactivation. Return home. We’ll offer them care and maintenance for as long as they want. Or new identities.”

  “What about the law?” James asked.

  “Well, that.” E smiled. “Brice broke that law. Many times. But the way I see it, and the way I got my superiors to see it, is that none of you chose this. You
deserve to decide what happens next.”

  “What do you want to do?” Freddie asked.

  James looked at Faith. She held her breath. James looked at E. “Give me a new identity.”

  Faith kissed James. Freddie clapped. “Well done, Fido. I’d rather hoped you’d take advantage of the situation.”

  “Give me a new identity too,” she said.

  5

  Faith held the bouquet to her face to hide her tears. As the steamer pulled away, she could still see Freddie’s bright red scarf waving above the heads of the crowds. James put his arm around her shoulders. “You’re allowed to cry,” he said.

  “I’m happy. Really, I am. And I know I’ll love it in Canada, but I’ll miss home.”

  James kissed her cheek. “Me too.”

  She looked up at him. He had another face, a new one that she’d made for him. She’d given him the lines he’d earned and the shadow of a beard just below the surface of his skin. He looked even more himself than before and she loved him more than she thought possible.

  “I love you,” James said.

  “I love you, too,” Faith said. As they came out into the open water, she tossed her bouquet overboard.

  About the Author

  Bess is an emerging writer focusing on literary fiction with a gothic flavour. Her first novel, a gothic romance titled “Like This You Keep Them Alive”, will be published by Sands Press in Spring 2018.

  www.besshamilton.com

  Contessa

  Laurie Stewart

  1

  Lenora opened the door to her stateroom to peer, again, at the clock in the lobby. Ten minutes before six in the morning. Her maid, Sarah, was almost an hour late! Lenora tried to be charitable, as the girl wasn’t actually her maid, but a worker for the airship line. But still, an hour?

  Lenora McAllister was a woman on the young side of her middle years, with lustrous black hair in tight curls and stunningly high cheekbones she attributed to her Gypsy ancestors. Her blue eyes missed nothing, but added a great deal to her beauty.

  She spun at the sounds of a miniature waterfall to glare accusingly at Pepe. The small dog had, indeed, just done her business against the oak cupboards. Lenora wagged her finger at the unabashed Chihuahua. “Bad girl! You could have waited for me to put the newspaper down.”

  Lenora was about to close her door when the clatter of running footsteps drew her attention to the hall.

  Sarah arrived panting in a rush with fly-away hair, flushed cheeks and teary eyes. Her apron hung in one hand and her dress had been buttoned out of sequence, with one button off.

  Lenora sniffed, how unprofessional.

  The girl bobbed a curtsy and slipped into the stateroom, trying ineffectually to straighten her dress and hair. Lenora frowned at her, she had little time for flitterbits. Young women needed to be responsible; able to look after themselves in the world.

  A tear leaked from the girl’s eye, but she hastily wiped it away with a bit of handkerchief. Lenora sighed, it wasn’t a common thing for women to be strong and self-sufficient the way she was, though they should be. Lenora had done quite well by herself, though it galled her to admit that it was through marrying well, and not by her own efforts.

  “There, there now girl, you’re only an hour late.”

  “Forgive me, ma’am, it won’t happen again. My…my young man and I had a bit of a row this morning. But it’s over, so that won’t be a problem in future.” Sarah stood tall, her lip barely quivering and a tear suspended on her eyelashes. She looked so brave, standing in her mis-fastened dress and apron in one hand.

  Lenora’s heart melted. Why, she was just such a girl when she was young. Strong, impulsive in love, not always the best taste in men…. But no matter, she had things to be about.

  “I am afraid that I have important matters to attend to, so why don’t you tidy yourself up, then clean up Miss Pepe’s booboo by the cabinet? We’ll not speak of your tardiness again.”

  The girl nodded, bobbed up and down and ran for the washroom. Lenora sighed. She didn’t understand young women anymore. Why that girl must be eighteen. At her age I was married to my dear Esperanzo. And I was only fourteen when I left home to make my own way.

  Lenora snapped her fingers. Pepe jumped into her arms and she left the stateroom. She hurried along the oak paneled hall to a small, almost unnoticeable door marked crew. She lifted the hem of her elegant, ankle-length coral skirt, and pushed the door open to hurry down the stairs.

  She felt deliciously sneaky taking the back way to the radio room. She could have gone the long way—the approved way—along the decks and down the grand staircase. But she had been expecting an important cable that morning and it should have been slipped under her door by 3:00 a.m. What could have gone wrong? It was times like this that, as much as she loved airship travel, she hated how cut off they were from the world. They wouldn’t get a connection again until they tied up for coal and fresh produce at Quebec City. Three days from now.

  Pepe’s low growl alerted her to someone in the hall below. She froze in place, hoping that they wouldn’t be heading up the stairs. They continued along the corridor. She set Pepe down and hurried across the hall to the exit onto the lower deck.

  “Well, let’s just hope that my luck continues and my cable is waiting to be delivered.” She whispered at Pepe, who tinkled a little bit on the door.

  “Bad dog.” Lenora sighed.

  “Hello?” Lenora tapped brightly at the radio room door. After a pause, she tapped again, louder.

  “No-one is here, how odd.” She looked down at Pepe, puzzled. “Do you suppose he’s on his way to our cabin and we missed him? Or should we go in and see if he’s just distracted?”

  She took Pepe’s non-committal stare as approval to go in, and opened the door.

  “Hello?” She was surprised to hear an odd quaver in her voice, as if her primitive brain had recognized something wrong, which her civilized brain had not. She nervously decided to go back to her room to see if the cable had been delivered when Pepe exploded into a furious, barking mass and charged into the room.

  “Oh dear, that’s that decision made for me.”

  She gasped as she stepped into the room. Everything was limned in the most beautiful pink hues. Where most airships had brass on the levers and around the dials, this one had gorgeous, glowing rose-gold. She stepped deeper into the room, it was just lovely in the early morning sunlight. They should give tours, I must suggest it, she thought.

  Then her nose wrinkled. She smelled something coppery and that was just wrong. Gold doesn’t smell coppery, in her experience, only two things smelled like that.

  “Oh dear,” she whispered, as she stepped closer to a pink dusted dial and peered at it. “I do hope someone’s been polishing pennies in here.” But as she swiped her white cotton glove over the dial she knew pennies had nothing to do with it.

  Her fingers had left a smudged trail through the—yes, she must admit it—through the blood. She peered at the red liquid soaking into her gloved fingertips. It was fresh.

  “Oh my, I do hope Pepe isn’t getting into anything.” But she could hear the dog’s nails clicking rapidly in excitement against the polished wooden floor. And the sound of her yipping, trying to get Lenora to join her.

  Lenora slowly walked around the room, peering about for some sign of a crewman she could talk to—someone to tell her she was imagining things; someone to tell her she was wrong.

  Then she stepped on something firm but giving. It reminded her of that time she discovered a dead rat by stepping on it. Her eyes remained fixed on the far side of the room for a long moment as she drew a deep breath.

  She looked down at what lay beneath her expensive kid boot. It was a hand. She followed the arm back to a headless body. Well, mostly headless, she believed that the scraps hanging onto the neck and suit collar used to be his head.

  “I thought my gypsy senses were warning me away, I do wish I would be wrong once in a while.”


  Pepe rushed over, leaving tiny, bloody paw prints on the light oak. She immediately bit into the hand and tried to drag it away from Lenora’s foot.

  Though she would later deny it, Lenora screamed as loudly and shrilly as she could. She then sat on the nearest chair and rested her head on her arms, crossed over her knees to prevent the dizzy feeling from becoming a fainting spell. Unfortunately, that put the pool of blood and unidentified bits directly in her line of sight.

  When Pepe came over and put bloodied paws on her morning skirt and pushed her red smeared little face between Lenora’s hands, it was too much for her to handle. Lenora fainted dead away.

  Lenora gazed about the windowless room that Captain Lewis had moved her and Pepe to for questioning. It felt like a cell in a jailhouse, though having no experience of jails, she imagined it was much cleaner. There was nothing to look at except the small russet dog snoozing on her lap with her tiny feet still wet from a vigorous washing, her utterly ruined blouse and satin walking skirt, and the captain himself.

  The airship captain was acting every inch a captain, and not the least bit like a gentleman. He was brusque to the point of rudeness, and kept looking at her like she’d stepped in dear Pepe’s boom-boom.

  Well just you wait until I can get a word in. Then we’ll see who’s no better than they should be, you trumped up cabin boy.

  Lenora thinned her lips in disapproval, there was no need for being so unpleasant. Why the aspersions he was casting her way, as if she was in any way at fault for that poor man’s death.

  After a few more minutes, during which she listened to nothing the captain said, the Contessa noticed a pregnant pause in the conversation.