Shadows Against the Empire (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 1)

by Ralph Vaughan

  “Tuppence for your thoughts,” Lady Cynthia said quietly.

  He shook his head. “Just idle fancies.”

  “Care to share?”

  He gazed across the table. How lovely she looked in garb other women would despise, competent and brave. The eyepatch, which would have on another woman betoken weakness evinced a strength of character and spirit that he found lacking in most men. It was unfortunate there was between them such a social gulf, for if there ever came a point in his life when he slowed down long enough to take a mate for all time, he would rather it be the kind of woman who would get into an experimental aethership and fling herself across space in a quixotic quest to save the Empire. He lowered his gaze.

  “Just stray thoughts and dreams, nothing to…”

  “Captain Folkestone! Lady Cynthia!” Hand shouted.

  They leaped from the table and joined Hand and Krios just in time to hear a babble of frantic voices streaming over the aether-waves. Elements of the Royal Navy and the Martian Defence Force seemed to be at the losing end of a pitched battle with a solitary craft, a manta-shaped aethership armed with weapons the attackers could neither understand nor adequately describe.

  His brow furrowed with frustrated anger, Folkestone placed a hand on Krios’ shoulder. “The coordinates Sergeant Hand gave you…with all possible speed!”

  The Greek pilot nodded grimly, manipulated the controls with a dexterity the eye could not follow, and the Agamemnon, which had been hurtling toward Mars at breakneck velocity, now leaped away like a sleek hunting hound having caught a fresh scent.

  “Sir, do you think the City of the Maze is really in Tharsis?” Hand asked. “Or that Daraph-Kor is really bound for there? If I were you and you asked me to believe in some spice-addled vision, I don’t think I would…”

  “Well, you are not me, are you, Sergeant?” Folkestone asked with mock severity.

  “No, sir.”

  “And I cannot think of any other person in the Solar System I can trust more than you,” he added. “Spice-addled or not.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Hand murmured, his voice barely audible, as he averted his gaze.

  By the time the reddish disc of Mars began to swell in their vision, they came across the remnants of Daraph-Kor’s flight from Earth, two aetherships shattered, fragmented and adrift, one of them an armed British merchantman of East India Space, the other a French privateer with an Imperial marque. Both ships were open to space, surrounded by a cloud of death.

  “Poor Tars and Frogs,” Hand muttered. “Brave lads all.”

  Krios slowed just long enough to ascertain there were no signs of life, then resumed the mad rush toward that ancient region of Mars which they hope would be Daraph-Kor’s ultimate goal.

  The aether-communicator told them of a battle at the fringe of Mars, a battle lost by a half-dozen British and Martian aetherships, as well as a duo of patrol fliers that had soared into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, the crews donning goggles and breathing-masks, to aid their aether-spanning mates. None was successful, but while the aetherships remained in orbit, incapacitated and rescuing survivors, the patrol fliers returned to Mars as fiery debris.

  And the manta-ship had vanished.

  Those aboard the Agamemnon would like to have believed the enemy aethership destroyed, as some in Syrtis Major speculated, but they knew better. There were dozens of ways for an aethership to evade detection once within a planetary atmosphere, and a canny rogue like Black Ray could be trusted to know them all.

  Upon breaking into the atmosphere, the Agamemnon bucked and pitched, swayed and swirled. The grace and precision that marked an aethership in the spaces between worlds all but vanished in the gaseous soup of a planet, even one as tenuous as Mars’.

  As the ship shuddered, fighting its way to the lower reaches, Sergeant Hand gripped the back of the throne-inspired command chair. Though his knuckles were bloodless and he seemed at times ready to snap the metal asunder, he said not a word.

  And no one mentioned that he looked a little…green.

  “Should we call for reinforcements?” Lady Cynthia asked.

  Krios, recalling the dread sight of the shattered ships, looked to Folkestone hopefully.

  “If Daraph-Kor and Black Ray are headed for Tharsis, as we suspect, we do not want them to intercept our messages and expect us,” Folkestone replied. “If they are bound for somewhere else on Mars…well, it is best that we not detract from the efforts of others to find them. For good or ill, whatever happens, this is ours to win or fail.” He looked at each in turn, even Krios. “Are we in agreement?”

  There was no dissention, only grim acceptance.

  “Into the mouth of death and madness we go,” Hand said, but then the Martian grinned widely. “Well, nothing new about that!”

  Chapter 19

  Once free of the treacherous upper airs, the Greek aethership switched to repulsors and atmospheric controls. With the boilers engaged, the Agamemnon regained something of the grace and speed lost when it first made the transition from aether to planetary flight.

  Under Krios’ deft control and Hand’s expert guidance, the craft swept in from the north, travelling low and swerving amongst the smouldering volcanoes that dotted the lofty plateau. Reaching the precipitous limit of the escarpment, they plummeted without any loss of speed toward the rolling erg below. They passed between the towering spires of Arsia Mons and Tharsis Montes, travelling along the nape of the ground. As the distant smear of the Noctis Plain hove into view, they entered a region of the Tharsis Erg that took their breaths away.

  It was one thing, they discovered, to hear a dream described, but quite another to have it unfold before their eyes. Along the rising peaks and volcanoes, the waterline of the long vanished seas of Mars was easily discernable, and curving pillars of stone soared like gigantic ribs against the burning blue of the Martian sky, just as they had in a spice-induced fever-dream.

  Hand pointed toward a massive pile of rocks ahead, which to an unimaginative eye might seem nothing more than a haphazard tumble of blocks created by vagaries of time and tectonics, but all of them, especially Hand himself, saw much more – traces of domes and spires, courtyards and squares, crumbling stone quays jutting into seas of dust. It was infested by scrub-weed and gnarled trees grew from splits in the stones.

  “Approach slowly,” Folkestone cautioned. “Keep low.”

  “Look, Robert,” Lady Cynthia said, pointing.

  A thin trickle of smoke rose from the midst of the last citadel of the Elder Race, for all knew now that this long-neglected jumble was no mere geologic formation, but a forgotten ruin of most extreme antiquity.

  “Put us down over there,” Folkestone told Krios, “as close to that line of stones as you can.”

  The Greek pilot set the Agamemnon down as instructed, landing so gently as to barely raise a wisp of dust.

  “Arm yourselves,” Folkestone said. “I doubt our landing was observed, but we must proceed with the utmost caution. Be wary.”

  Krios powered down the repulsors, cut the engines and eased the boilers down to standby levels. He reached under the console, pulled out a gun-belt and started to buckle it on.

  “We need you to stay with the ship, Krios,” Folkestone said.

  The Greek looked as he had been slapped across the face. He had no intention of remaining behind while the others – and one of them a lovely woman – ventured into the heart of darkness, not he, scion of bronze-clad warriors.

  “We thank you for your help so far, and for the assistance you will no doubt provide once more,” Folkestone said, countering the Greek youth’s protestations. “Can your proximity detector track us while we are in the ruins?”

  Krios frowned in confusion. “It is not designed to do so, but, yes, I believe I can do that…not with extreme accuracy, but…”

  “I am counting that you will do a more than adequate job of it, for you are our backup plan,” Folkestone explained. “If Daraph-Kor is here, the
odds are very much against us.” He glanced at the others, then looked back to Krios. “In fact, it is quite likely we shall fail to stop him, the three of us going after him with nothing more powerful than conventional weapons and good intentions. We shall, of course, do our best to defeat him, but should it appear that things have gone ill for us it will fall to you to level these ruins and ensure he does not escape.”

  “But…” Krios started to protest, but he fell silent, realising the hardest task had been allotted to him. “You may count on me, Captain Folkestone. Good hunting! To you all!”

  As the three Britons emerged from the aethership into the shadow of antiquity, Krios turned his attention to the Agamemnon’s proximity detector, working feverishly to calibrate it to the level of sensitivity necessary to track the trio. After a few moments spent in the machinery, he emerged, grinning, noting the presence of three vague specks upon the monitor. Then his grin vanished. On the glazed crystal he saw a fourth speck, quite a distance from the other three. With no means of communicating with the others, short of leaving his assigned post, Krios could do nothing but watch the specks on his scope.

  Once they reached the cyclopean stones, Folkestone and the others understood what had escaped others for decades, not to mention the Martians themselves, who had long considered Tharsis a numinous region without precisely knowing why. This was indeed a lost city, and the vague indentations in the walls were not just the etchings of wind and sand but the last remnants of the strange and intricate artwork of the Elder Race, the first true rulers of Mars.

  Lady Cynthia dropped to one knee as they traversed a dim passage leading inward. She retrieved something half buried.

  “What is it?” Folkestone asked.

  “A flask.” She handed it to Folkestone after examining it.

  “Insignia of the German Exploration Society.” He handed the battered and scuffed silver flask to Hand.

  Hand glanced at the seal, twisted off the cap and sniffed at the contents, twisting his face into an ugly grimace. “Schnapps! Peppermint bloody schnapps! Figures!”

  Still, it was a remnant of the ill-fated Schliemann Expedition and should find its way to an heir, if he and the others managed to survive. He slipped it into his back pocket.

  “Watch out for monsters then,” Lady Cynthia murmured.

  “In addition to Daraph-Kor,” Folkestone added.

  The passage turned and twisted, split and intersected, but they kept as their goal the thin feather of smoke rising from the heart of the ruins. Except for the whisper of the wind through the rocks and their own muffled tread through aeons of dust and sand there was no sound, nothing at all to betray the presence of any other living being. Finally, they entered an enclosed courtyard, in the centre of which was a manta-shaped aethership, canted to one side because of a snapped landing strut; the ship was the source of the smoke, but other than the strut and some superficial scorching there did not seem to be any serious danger.

  Folkestone motioned for Hand, armed with a steam-repeater, to flank the ship from the right, Lady Cynthia from the left. They fanned out, keeping to cover behind shattered blocks of stone as much as possible. Once they were in position, Folkestone approached the manta-ship, body low and his weapon at the ready.

  Keeping an eye on the surrounding rooftops and the bare-limbed trees that rose like skeletal guardians, Folkestone watched for any sign of movement. The cargo ramp at the rear was down and the side hatch was open, where acrid smoke rose.

  Hand and Lady Cynthia joined Folkestone at the aethership, but continued to watch for signs of their quarry.

  “Blimey!” Hand muttered as he gazed at the charred body and burnt-out interior of the ship. “Poor bugger.”

  “Do you think Black Ray came to his senses about Daraph-Kor?” Lady Cynthia asked. “Or simply outlive his usefulness?”

  “As with most aspects of this affair, we will likely never know,” Folkestone replied. “Even if we run Daraph-Kor to ground and spoil whatever plans he may have in the offing, I think we will forever have far more speculation and guesswork than solid facts.”

  “Around here,” Hand called softly from the cargo ramp. “It looks like something was dragged away from the ship. Pretty heavy from the depth of the rut.”

  The track led away from the aethership belonging to the late Black Ray and toward the shrouded darkness of the blocky ruins, a veritable labyrinth of passages.

  “We should…” Hand started to say.

  The air crackled, but before either Hand or Lady Cynthia could do anything they found themselves bore to the ground under Folkestone’s weight. Just prior to them hitting the ground, a hot writhing sheet of flame passed through where they had stood.

  Instantly, they fired their weapons in the direction from which the attack had come, each shooting so close together that none of them could rightly say who had fired first. The hastily aimed defence only shattered stones, but a vague figure dove for the safety of the ruins and scurried into darkness.

  The trail was easy to follow in the soft dirt, and off they went in cautious pursuit, down into the unknown depths of the City of the Maze. Once the dirt gave way to polished stone floors, they followed Daraph-Kor by the sounds he could not help but make.

  After a few minutes, they entered a chamber where three tunnels branched, each leading away into darkness, none giving any sign as into which Daraph-Kor had fled.

  “We have to split up,” Lady Cynthia observed.

  Hand shook his head. “Don’t like it. Not one little bit.”

  “Neither do I,” Folkestone agreed, “but Lady Cynthia is correct. We dare not let him escape in this maze or from this city, and the only hope we have now of preventing that is to find him as quickly as possible, by splitting up. We must find him before he opens that Black Mirror.”

  “You think that is what he dragged away from the ship?” Lady Cynthia asked.

  Folkestone nodded. “Daraph-Kor was unsuccessful using his dream-spice minions to open the way for the Dark Gods. Perhaps he did not come here to start over along that same path, as we were led to believe, but to find another way.”

  “Because the Elder Race rose from here to defeat them?” Hand said. “But the last stand of the Dark Gods was far to the south in Misr.”

  “But, as you said,” Folkestone pointed out, “it all started here. He might hope to find something here to reverse the process.”

  “Surprised he did not start here first,” Hand said.

  “Really, Sergeant,” Folkestone taunted lightly. “Gods must have their servitors, mustn’t they?” He looked toward the passages uneasily. “You take the left, Lady Cynthia, and I will take centre; Hand, right.”

  Once inside the tunnel, which declined only infinitesimally as it penetrated deeper into the ancient city, Folkestone discovered the darkness was not absolute. The roots of trees overhead had burrowed into hewn stone, following weaknesses in the rock, widening fissures until they split, allowing not only dim light but rainwater and melting snow to trickle in season after innumerable season, fungi and mould clustering thickly. There was no sign of his quarry, but the gloom was not uninhabited – Martian insects and vermiforms went about their small blind lives, unaware they now crawled and slithered where once the god-like masters of primal Mars once ruled an empire of trade, technology and magic.

  The passage curved at odd angles. He approached each one warily. Suddenly the clatter of falling stones sounded ahead and he quickened his pace as much as he dared in the gloom. He came upon an area where part of the roof had tumbled down. Thin shafts of watery light shot through a tangle of thick roots.

  He dropped to one knee and examined a fresh wetness on the stones. In the half-light it still gleamed scarlet, and from it rose the faint scent of sulphur. Folkestone smiled as he realised what it was. The body of Daraph-Kor might harbour the consciousness of a Dark God capable of lashing out with energies beyond ken, but it could still bleed, and if it could bleed, it could die.

  Weapon r
eady, he eased around the pile, squeezing through the tight space left after the collapse.

  Halfway into the murkiness beyond, he felt the hair at the nape of his neck stiffen, smelled the tinge of ozone. He set his booted feet against a stone, straightened his knees and flung himself forward. He fired his weapon blindly down the passage as a sizzling bolt of energy crackled above him. Pain shot through his shoulder. His hand tried to spasm, but he forced himself to clutch the weapon and fired off another shot. Sparks erupted from where the projectile glanced against the passageway. In the shimmering glare he saw the lean form of Daraph-Kor, but by the time he aimed and again fired, the Martian had fled.

  Folkestone struggled to his feet, swayed as waves of pain washed over him, then ran after Daraph-Kor. He smelled charred fabric. His agony lessened as he moved, but he now fought against a creeping sense of cold. He tried to keep his mind focussed on the fugitive before him. He heard distant footfalls pounding behind him, Sergeant Hand and Lady Cynthia trying to catch up, but he could not afford to wait, no more than he could afford to give in to the shock accompanying his injury.

  Dimly, he realised Daraph-Kor was moving along much too swiftly. What had he done with the Black Mirror?

  He tripped and went sprawling, but retained his weapon. At first he thought he had fallen into some trap left by the Martian, but he glanced back and saw the alabaster stare of a human skull picked clean by scavengers. It was, he realised, another casualty of the Schliemann Expedition.

  I’ll have to give the poor blighter a decent burial, he thought as he struggled on, assuming I do not end up like him.

  The pain was returning, which meant the shock was wearing off, a good thing, but it also slowed his progress and sapped his strength, which was very bad. He switched his weapon to his other hand, trading accuracy for speed.

  The walls of the passage dropped away and he found himself in a grotto of lapis lazuli, carnelian and heavily tarnished electrum, encompassed by stone walls adorned with carvings of cyclopean molluscs, carnivorous polyps and shark-like fishes with fanged tentacles grasping bat-winged cetaceans. The lighting in the subterranean grotto shimmered but came from no obvious source.