by Eoin Colfer
“This is quite an operation,” said Witmeyer, thinking that just maybe this was the team to join. Queen Victoria might have manpower on her side, but just one of those mortars could easily destroy an entire barracks, and a man with a single AK-47 plus unlimited bullets could mow down foot soldiers until his barrel overheated.
The working soldiers barely looked up as the boat passed, and Witmeyer saw that many of them were considerably younger than Rosenbaum.
The colonel has been recruiting.
It made sense. It didn’t matter how many guns you had if there were no soldiers to fire them. Firepower only worked with a certain amount of manpower.
A pity the colonel didn’t wait around until battle drones were invented, thought Witmeyer. He could have single-handedly won the holy war.
It was obvious to her now that if she and Clover had traveled back in time bearing arms, then so too had Colonel Box and his men. There were no divine weapons specifications handed down from on high. Box and Co. were simply time travelers. The Blessed Colonel was not so much blessed as lucky.
Witmeyer wondered how this bombshell would affect her partner, and the cruel streak in her looked forward to witnessing Clover’s reaction.
She is going to freak the hell out, she thought, not without satisfaction. All this time she has believed her precious colonel to be a god who walks among us, and it turns out that he is no more special than the rest of us.
Except Charles Smart. He’d been special, and Vallicose had shot him.
Rosenbaum threw a rope to a brother soldier, and they tied it to a dock post. With a jerk of his rifle, he urged his passengers onto the steel jetty. Vallicose refused to relinquish Farley, so she strode along the walkway bearing the Blessed Hangman in her arms.
“I can walk,” said Farley irritably. “Put me down.”
Vallicose didn’t hear; perhaps she was beyond hearing. The Thundercat seemed to have achieved a semi-trancelike state. Her legs moved and her heart pounded, but her mind was consumed by rapture.
I am here, she thought in disbelief. In the Catacombs, during the time of preparation, on my way to meet the Blessed Colonel.
How could any of this be happening were she not chosen? Her devotion had willed this event into being. Box had watched her, and this was her reward.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, a small voice squeaked that maybe the Blessed Colonel had all these futuristic weapons because he was from the future, but the zealot in Clover Vallicose had no difficulty ignoring this little voice of reason.
Heads were turning now. These two particular Thundercats attracted enough attention walking through Thundercat headquarters in their own time, but here in Victorian London, under the full blaze of electric light, most of the recently hired soldiers would honestly have been less surprised to see a couple of crigs, the mythical crab-pig hybrid monster that, according to legend, roamed the sewer network. Even the men who had time-hopped from the 1980s had never seen specimens quite like these. Vallicose and Witmeyer were both over six feet tall, and each was striking in her own way. Vallicose’s skin was porcelain pale, and her green eyes were large and fringed by red eyelashes so long they almost curled back on themselves. Witmeyer was darker, with twin slashes of high cheekbones and a deep cleft in her chin. Her hair fell in dark sheaves around her shoulders and rippled as she walked. Add to these details the fact that both women had been fed steroids and various growth hormones from birth, and you had two beautiful women who could not fit through a doorway without both ducking and turning sideways.
“Look at this, me bully boys,” said one soldier, a native of this century. “I don’t know whether to kiss ’em or shoot ’em.”
Vallicose, who was usually quick to take offense, floated past in a holy cloud, so Witmeyer was forced to deliver the punitive head butt.
“You think about it for a while,” she told the unconscious kiss ’em/shoot ’em soldier. A chorus of caws and claps rose about them like circling crows as Witmeyer’s summary punishment was met with approval.
Rosenbaum ignored the mini-fracas and kept walking through the first of many arches, some of which had been bolstered with iron scaffolding, as they were already losing integrity due to the vibrations of the machinery below. The strange bunch passed through several large windowless rooms with clusters of soldiers either running drills or laboring over stripped-down war machines. The weapons were curious in that they resembled twenty-first-century equipment, but on closer inspection it became clear that the tooling was a little less refined. They were manufacturing weapons here based on futuristic prototypes.
One room contained a smelter that poured white-hot molten metal from a giant gourd into various molds while smoke was sucked up the funnel of a blackened chimney. The men working the gourd with long-handled gaffs were stripped to the waist, skin blasted black by the enormous heat. Witmeyer found it impossible to look at them and not think of demons in the fires of hell.
This is enough underworld imagery for one day, she told herself. First the River Styx, and now this.
The heat warmed their backs as they skirted the smelter, proceeding to a long narrow hallway with a row of smaller arches leading to a single steel door. Vallicose knew these arches well, as she had lingered in this corridor on her visits to the Camden Catacombs. The Corridor of Power was the name the guides would give to it; Clover had often pressed her cheek to the brick arches and imagined she felt a thrum from the residual Boxite power that had been absorbed into the stonework.
On the other side of that door, thought Vallicose, and she unconsciously tightened her grip on Farley.
“Put me down, damn you!” said Farley. “You are crushing me.”
Vallicose blinked the world into focus. “Oh, apologies, Major Farley. I am a little overwhelmed.”
Farley climbed down from her arms. “I will not appear before my commanding officer like a babe in arms.”
“Of course, sir. Forgive me. Should I fix…?” She pointed at Farley’s left shoulder. “It’s hanging a bit low. The sooner it is back in its rightful place, the better.”
Farley glared at his shoulder angrily, as though it had betrayed him by allowing itself to become dislocated by his fall into the music stands.
“We have a doctor and two medics here. I hardly think—”
While he was talking, Witmeyer stepped up behind Farley and grasped him by the shoulders. Before he could protest, she squeezed him as though he were an accordion, reattaching the shoulder joint.
“That’s a little thing we do,” she explained. “Clover distracts, and I perform the field surgery. I amputated a leg with a hatchet once that way.”
Fixing Farley’s dislocated shoulder actually cheered her up a little, as it was reminiscent of her glory days sweeping through the villages of northern France. Farley was not cheered even a jot. His knees quivered, and he howled in shock and pain.
“What are you doing, Sister?” Vallicose shouted in dismay.
“I thought we were doing a number. You distract, I heal. That’s what we always do.”
“This is the Hangman!” said Clover. “It is not our place to distract the Hangman.”
Witmeyer scowled, which on her face was a terrible expression indeed, and upon seeing it most right-minded people would beat a retreat and hide behind a thick concrete wall, but never Vallicose.
“Forget the war-face, Sister Witmeyer. We are in uncharted waters here. We are on hallowed ground. The old ways are dead.”
More’s the pity, thought Witmeyer. I preferred it when the Blessed Colonel and the Hangman were symbols of a history we twisted to suit our own purposes.
A confrontation between the Thundercats became inevitable at that moment, and perhaps it would have taken place right then and there had not the steel door been pushed open with such force that it clanged against the wall, sending brick-dust clouds floating from the frame. T
he door swung three quarters closed, humming like a tuning fork, and shielding the opening from Vallicose’s and Witmeyer’s view.
“What is that infernal noise?” asked a man’s voice. “How many times have I asked for dying men to be kept out of earshot?”
Farley gripped his shoulder tightly to contain the agony. “Sorry, Colonel. We have newcomers here; they don’t know the rules.”
“Newcomers at my door?” said the colonel, not sounding pleased to hear it. “There are rules for newcomers, but there are rules about newcomers too, Major.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but this is different. Extraordinary, in fact. I felt confident that you would wish to interview these two personally.”
“Did you indeed?” said the colonel. “And why would that be?”
“They are from the future, Colonel. The new future. The changed future.”
This news was greeted with a quick intake of breath and a long pause before the door swung open completely, revealing the man whom Farley had referred to as Colonel.
Vallicose genuflected, bowing her head and placing her left hand on the Boxite logo stitched into her greatcoat.
“Hail Colonel Box,” she said, launching into the Colonel’s Prayer. “Blessed be Clayton. He who labored long in the darkness so that we all may see the Light. Look down on us and forgive us our human frailty. Deliver us from the godless and the sinner. You are our shepherd, our daily inspiration, and our road to Heaven. Hail Colonel Box. Amen.”
Witmeyer did not genuflect or bow her head. She wanted to get a good look at this man, who had neglected to mention in the gospel that his weapons cache came from the future and that he was not in fact a god.
So while Box stood enthralled by Vallicose’s recitation, Witmeyer studied the colonel from top to toe and committed every detail to memory.
Colonel Clayton Box was a tall man. Six-four or six-five, maybe, with a slick wedge of golden hair that sat atop his crown like a gold brick. The sides of his head were shaved, which should please Vallicose. He looked pretty much like his portraits, but there was an intensity in his features that no paintbrush or camera could ever capture. His eyes seemed uncommonly round and dark, a deep blue with shards of white running through them like lightning bolts. Those eyes stared at Vallicose without blinking, no matter how long Witmeyer watched, making her think that the colonel must be somehow coordinating his blink pattern with hers. Impossible, of course. It was true that the man’s face was familiar from a million billboards and banners—familiar, but not identical. Witmeyer thought that the party artists had been a little generous when commissioned to capture the colonel’s likeness. The strong points were well drawn, but the colonel’s weaker features had all been given a little boost. The jaw, for example, was slung low and jutted forward, which gave Box the look of an orangutan, and the lips were narrow like the slit flaps of a fish’s gut, and they moved while Vallicose was talking, as though the colonel was casting a spell on her. Box’s skin was slick and pasty from too many years underground, and his mustache, while medium impressive, certainly did not live up to expectations. Especially when one considered that the number-one nursery rhyme taught in New Albion nurseries was “The Colonel’s Mustache,” which went:
The colonel’s mustache
The colonel’s mustache
As thick as a brush
And grown in a flash
You may travel the world
Spend a fortune in cash
But you won’t see the like
Of the colonel’s mustache.
Every child in the Empire knew that rhyme, written by poet laureate Edderick Bulsara, who had also penned such masterpieces as “The Colonel’s Flat Cap” and “The Colonel’s Pet Cat,” which were all as different as chalk and something very like chalk.
If Witmeyer was painfully honest with herself, she had to admit that, what with all the steroids in her regimen, sometimes her own mustache was the like of the colonel’s.
But none of this mattered—not the mustache, not the pugnacious jaw or the creepy lips—when the man himself looked you in the eyes. When those deep blue orbs were turned a person’s way, that person felt like their soul had been laid bare for all to see. That person knew that somehow Colonel Clayton Box had some form of second sight that saw right through the everyday mask that everyone wore to the secret face beneath. It was terrifying, awe inspiring, and felt never-ending.
Witmeyer found this out while Box studied her for all of two seconds.
“One question,” he said in an accent that was mostly neutral, with only a slight hint of a Texas twang. “What do you think of my mustache?”
It’s a trap, screamed Witmeyer’s intuition. Whatever you do, don’t answer truthfully.
“Lovely, Colonel,” she said. “Very…luxuriant.”
Box’s eyes narrowed. “Hmmm,” he said, and then turned to Vallicose. “Same question to you. The mustache. Opinions?”
Vallicose’s entire face quivered, but she knew that it would be impossible for her to lie to the Blessed Colonel. “I like the idea of your mustache,” she said slowly.
“But?” prompted Clayton Box.
“But in reality, it seems a little sparse. It pains me to speak these words, Colonel, but I could never lie to you.”
“Hmmm,” said Box again. “I respect the truth.” He pointed at Witmeyer. “But she lied to me. I will not tolerate falsehood. Shoot her.”
This was intended as a test for the newcomers, just a little psychological needling to see how they would react, but the two Thundercats were on the move before the command’s echo faded. Both went for Rosenbaum. Witmeyer winded him with a punch to the solar plexus, then snagged his revolver from its holster. Vallicose palmed Woodrow Rosenbaum’s head to one side, grabbed a blade from his belt, and then the Thundercats were on each other, blade to neck and barrel to temple.
“We’re partners, Clove,” said Witmeyer. “We go back.”
Vallicose was teary-eyed. “I’m sorry, Lunka, but I have no choice.”
Box gave this most entertaining scenario a second, then intervened. “Wait, okay, wait. I thought there was room for only one more in my operation, but with skills like that, I guess I can use two.”
Vallicose blinked. “Do you absolve her, Colonel?”
Box frowned, bemused by this level of deference, but also liking it quite a bit.
“I absolve her. Put your weapons down, both of you.”
Vallicose obeyed instantly. Witmeyer had to think about it for a moment, then she too lowered her steel.
“If the colonel forgives you, Sister,” said Vallicose, “then I can, too.”
Witmeyer did not return the favor. She was not in a forgiving mood.
Box glanced back over his own shoulder at the plans and charts that were calling to him. He would schedule an hour to debrief these two later, but for now there were a few tactics that had to be ironed out about the Revolution.
“Put these two under guard until morning,” he told Farley. “Then get yourself patched up. I need you in top shape for tomorrow. We have a big day ahead.”
“Emergence Day,” whispered Vallicose, and she knew then why she had been sent here: to stand by the Blessed Colonel’s side as they waged holy war.
Blood will flow, she thought. The blood of sinners and unbelievers.
GROSVENOR SQUARE, MAYFAIR, LONDON, 1899
Riley and Chevron slept head to toe on a wide divan in the drawing room while the maggots feasted on Otto Malarkey’s flesh. It was possible that there were more urgent matters to attend to than their own exhaustion—in fact, it had only been a few hours since Riley had stolen a catnap in the theater. Nevertheless, their traumatized minds decided that they had absorbed enough information for one day and shut them both down until dawn. They awoke to find themselves covered in a goose-down quilt. There was a breakfast tray on one of
the terribly ostentatious coffee tables, and a slight whiff of brandy in the air, which led them to believe that Figary had something of a soft heart after all.
They passed an hour stripping the breakfast tray down to the last crumb of muffin and catching up on all that had happened since the last time they had almost expired in each other’s company. There was a lot to digest on the two sides, and both put forward a summary at the end.
Riley went first. “So what you’re telling me, Chevron Savano, is that the entire future has changed just because Farley clapped eyes on you the last time you visited our pungent metropolis. And now everything you hold dear is gone, along with several million murdered innocents, and in its place a dastardly empire of evil that wages holy war with anyone what don’t see things its way?”
Chevron swallowed a final chunk of sausage, which, as a fitness fanatic, she would normally never eat, but she had just this morning constructed a new diet rule: Anything eaten outside your own time zone does not count.
“That’s about it, kid. And what you’re telling me is that you were preparing to open your theater with a magic show featuring you as the Great Savano when a bunch of gangsters arrived to milk you dry, except one of their own turned out to be a future soldier who murdered all the rest?”
Riley nodded. “Hard to credit, ain’t it? But that ain’t the entirety of it, is it, Chevie? I recall you mentioning two dodgy yokes by the name of Moley and GooGoo?”
Chevie chased the sausage with a swallow of hot chocolate, as she had just decided that the time zone food rule also applied to drinks.
“Moley and GooGoo, also known as Clover Vallicose and Lunka Witmeyer. Two warrior women sent to kill me. They’re here now, in this time. Hopefully London will swallow them up, but I doubt it.”