by Thomas Webb
Dublin stepped around the mechanical soldiers and examined the rapidly cooling corpse of his protégé. “Shame,” the Irishman said, looking down at what remained of Paladin. “The lad had true potential.” Dublin shook his head. “A damned shame.” He shrugged and walked over to stand next to McCormick.
Scarlet looked around in disbelief. How could things have gone so wrong so fast?
No, she said to herself.
Action had always been her mantra. When attacked, attack. When ambushed, assault through. It was time to take back control, even if it was the last thing she ever did.
Scarlet went for the backup pistol hidden under her skirts.
Copperhead stayed her hand. “No,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion, the single word an eerie echo of what she’d just told herself. “We can't win this."
Scarlet took a second look at the situation, this time with the analytical eye of a practiced tactician. She and her minder were surrounded, encircled by clockwerks with rifles and bayonets at the ready. As if that wasn’t enough, there was Dublin, who, traitor or not, was a trained DSI assassin. Even if they were somehow able to get past Dublin and the clockwerks, who knew what else waited for them outside in the hallway? Paladin, the only other person inside the building they could trust, lay dead at their feet. Scarlet saw that her minder was right. They couldn’t win this. Not now.
Copperhead looked her in the eye and spoke, his tone gentle. “What’s the one thing a DSI agent needs that can’t be taught?”
Tears, hot and full of anger, threatened to burst from Scarlet’s eyes. It was all she could do to hold them back. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“Come now,” Copperhead said, low enough so that only she could hear. “What’s the one thing? I’ve repeated it to you often enough.”
“Patience,” she managed to say, proud of herself for allowing not a single tear to fall.
Copperhead nodded, satisfied. The coup was over before it had even begun, thanks to Dublin’s treachery. Scarlet buried her head in Copperhead’s shoulder, comforted by the smell of shaving lather and pipe tobacco.
McCormick shuffled from behind his desk. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you, Copperhead. You may be good in the field, my friend, maybe even the best. I’ll allow you that. But you knew I was always your better within these halls. Always able to see an angle, always able to think three, four, even five steps ahead. Foresight was the one skill you lacked, but I excelled at. Yet you tried me anyway.” The Vice Chairman took his time, shifting his bulk to within an inch of Copperhead. He looked up at Scarlet’s minder. An evil grin split his face. “Perhaps if you write out a full confession owning up to your crimes — all your crimes — then I’ll forgive you.”
Copperhead glared down at the Vice Chairman, his eyes like twin daggers. Then, he smiled back at McCormick, just before delivering a gob of spit full into the Vice Chairman’s face.
McCormick’s thick head and neck turned a raging beet red. He pulled a linen handkerchief from his amply-sized coat, reached up, and wiped the spittle from his mouth and cheeks. “Clamp him in irons,” he hissed.
One of the clockwerks produced a set of iron cuffs and locked them around Copperhead’s wrists.
McCormick turned to Dublin. “I want sanctions issued on the other two co-conspirators immediately.”
Dublin nodded. "We’ll take care of Mockingbird and Athena, sir, but what about the boy?"
"The Bookkeeper?” McCormick waved the idea away. “He’s of no value. Barely out of Indoctrination as I understand it. They didn’t trust him enough to involve him in this little attempt, so I think it’s safe to leave the boy where he is. Besides, I have plans for him, and we have someone watching over his shoulder to make sure he steps right where we need him to.” McCormick turned and looked Copperhead in the eye. “But as for the others? You’ll see every last one of them die, Copperhead. And afterwards… it’s the hangman’s dance for you.”
Scarlet’s mind raced. There had to be a way out of this. There was always a way out.
Dublin walked up to her. He produced a needle from his coat pocket. “We haven’t forgotten about you, girly.”
Scarlet moved into a fighting position, but clockwerks to either side pinned her arms, holding her in place with their vise-like grip.
McCormick eyed Scarlet, examining her from head to toe. His eyes lingered at her bosom, her hips. McCormick licked his lips. Scarlet snarled at him like a caged animal just waiting for the opportunity to rend its captor to shreds.
McCormick laughed. “Just to show you that I’m a fair man, Copperhead, I’ll let your delicious protégé live.”
Copperhead looked at Scarlet with a gaze that broke her heart. There was guilt there. Guilt and pain. She knew how his mind worked. To his thinking, he was responsible for everything that had happened.
McCormick held up a single, sausage-like finger. “But,” he began, ”as every agent knows, there are for worse fates than a quick, simple death.” He smiled again, a cruel glint in his eye. “That’s right, Nathaniel. She won’t be sanctioned, but she’ll probably wish she had been. Now, isn’t that merciful of me?”
Scarlet’s hands formed into fists clenched tight, her nails drawing blood. So those were her choices. Die right here in a futile attempt to finish this, or most likely die by the hand of some Strategic Intelligence torture specialist. She opened her mouth, fully intent on delivering a diatribe foul enough to make a Union sailor blush, when McCormick spoke, cutting her off.
“Take her away,” he ordered.
“No!” Scarlet screamed.
“What about Copperhead?” Dublin asked.
“I have plans for him as well.”
It was the last she heard as the two clockwerks dragged her, fighting, from the room. From there, she guessed her next stop would be the holding cells, and then the Healer knew what would happen.
It was useless to fight clockwerks, her arms clamped to her sides as they were. Instead, she relaxed and focused on her breathing. When she’d calmed herself, Scarlet remembered the route to the holding cells took them right back the way they’d come this morning, past the sentinel clockwerks in the hallway.
And right past Copperhead’s contingency plan.
Once initiated, her minder’s plan was good for only one shot. If she used it, her minder wouldn’t be able to. Scarlet bit her lip, pushed back the tears that had somehow suddenly brimmed in her eyes. She eliminated the emotion and tried to think rationally. There was no guarantee they would even bring Copperhead this way, and if she didn’t use the opportunity escape now, there would be no one left to warn the others that McCormick had discovered them or to help Copperhead escape for that matter.
The hallway was just around the next bend. She took a deep breath and made up her mind.
“I don’t suppose we could discuss this?” she asked her mechanical captors.
Of course neither responded. The auditory horns embedded in their iron skulls allowed them to “hear” only in a manner of speaking. They could follow direction from the human voice, but clockwerks themselves did not possess the power of speech. They did only what their programmed punchcards told them to do. And that was precisely what would make her escape possible.
The clockwerks to either side of her clasped her arms in their iron grips, marching her straight toward the waiting hands of some of DSI’s most skilled purveyors of pain. They reached the beginning of the hallway where Strategic Intelligence clockwerks stood alongside the walls like suits of medieval armor.
“Fine,” Scarlet said to her clockwerk escorts. “If you two aren’t up to talking this over, I guess we’ll just have to do it the hard way. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
When they were halfway down the hall, Scarlet voiced the command.
“Omega!” she shouted.
At the sound of the code word, the special punchcards Copperhead had arranged to be installed in the sentinels kicked in. The statue-like clockwerks shifted to life, bringing t
heir rifles to bear. They immediately began firing on one another.
The first volley of shots blasted the head from Scarlet’s rightmost mechanical captor. Scarlet wasted no time grabbing the disabled machine's weapon, dropping and delivering a sweeping kick to the knee joint of the clockwerk on her left. The iron man fell, taking her right along with it. Scarlet shouldered her commandeered weapon with her free hand and dumped a quarter of the magazine into the clockwerk’s ice-blue optical circuits. It released its grip and fell backward, ceasing to function. Scarlet scrambled and low-crawled with a vengeance, keeping her head below the unleashed hell of multiple clockwerks firing on one another from less than six feet apart. Rounds, jagged pieces of iron, plaster, and wood chips flew. No way a full-on gunfight wouldn’t get someone’s attention. It would only be minutes before the whole place came running.
Damnation, Scarlet! She swore at herself as she frantically crawled beneath the onslaught. Think!
It hit her, just as the alarms began to sound. She cleared the deadly section of hallway and stood up running, skidding to a stop and bringing the rifle up to clear the corner ahead of her. If memory served, her exfil was midway down the next hall. Judging by the frantic approaching shouts she heard, she had only seconds to get to it.
Scarlet slung the rifle, cursing her skirts as she lifted them and sprinted down the hall. She slid to a stop in front of the small door and slid it open. She gripped the rifle, turned, and thrust herself backward into the dumbwaiter, her boots clearing the edge and the door falling down just as the shouts reached her ears. Soon, the clamor of alarm passed. She was sitting, cramped, in total darkness.
The first iron strand went with a sound like the plucking of a piano string.
Damnation.
The dumbwaiters were designed to support messages, food trays, and the like - not rogue agents fleeing for their lives after unsuccessful coup attempts.
The second iron strand followed quickly, and the rest went in rapid succession. A final snap and Scarlet was free and falling, plummeting through the darkness.
The dumbwaiter met the cellar floor with a resounding crash, the miniature lift thankfully taking the brunt of the damage from the fall. Scarlet took a second to ensure all her parts were where she remembered them to be before she burst out of the wreckage, coughing, and ran smack into two surprised members of the kitchen staff.
At the sight of the dust- and plaster-covered girl and her rifle, they dropped their baskets of potatoes and onions, hands flying in the air.
“I was never here,” Scarlet said as she raced past them, knowing the terrified kitchen workers would report every detail.
Scarlet, gathered skirts in one hand and repeating rifle in the other, took the stairs two at a time up to the building’s stone kitchen. The sounds of the alarms greeted her, growing louder the farther up the stairs she went. The kitchen was abandoned this time of day. It was right after breakfast service but before the cooks were set to prepare for lunch. Residual warmth emanated from the hearth as she dashed past. While she ran, the roots of an escape plan formed and began to take shape.
The property Strategic Intelligence headquarters occupied had once been a private estate. The land and its buildings had been donated to the city of Washington by Sophia Livingstone, the last surviving member of a very wealthy family. Sophia, a true patriot, had died without an heir, so she’d gifted the prime Washington real estate to her country. The main DSI headquarters consisted of large brick building, old even when Strategic Intelligence had been established, that had once served as the expansive manse the Livingstones called their home. The property sat on ten acres, all of it surrounded by high stone fencing topped with iron and secured via mechanical, human, and canine patrols. In the event of an emergency, the entire headquarters compound was locked down tight. There would be no getting through the main gate, which was the sole point of exit and entry.
No, she needed a new away out, and if her luck held, she knew just where she could get it.
The building’s attached stone kitchen faced northwest, not thirty yards from the entrance to a long, low building - the mechanist’s shop, where Scarlet’s desperate, cobbled-together plan now led her.
Scarlet sprinted those thirty yards, barely missing a roving patrol rushing toward the main structure. All attention now was focused on the place from which she’d made her escape, not the outlying buildings. She entered the mechanist shop, breathless and ragged, rifle at the ready.
“Ms. Scarlet?” she heard someone say.
He sat amidst a pile of gears and parts, a tiny wrench in one hand, thick goggles perched atop his nose, mouth agape in surprise.
Scarlet lowered her rifle. She’d seen him before. Had spoken to him even on numerous occasions, but she’d always been too busy or too preoccupied with her and Copperhead’s latest mission to even bother getting his name, an error she now sorely regretted. The Department maintained him and several others in order to keep the clockwerks and brutes in good running order. He’d always seemed a decent enough fellow, but she didn’t know where his loyalties were. She had to tread carefully.
She smiled. “Good morning.” Better to start slow and see how it played out.
“Ms. Scarlet… is all this,” he indicated the alarms, the shouting, “for you?”
Scarlet looked at him. Middle aged, sagging jowls, hair thinning. Eyes kind and intelligent but cautious. She thought she recalled he had a family. Would he give her up? Only one way to find out.
“I’m afraid it is,” she said.
He looked around and nodded once to himself. He met her eyes. “What you need is at the back of the shop. It’s not fully repaired, but it’ll get you out of here. Don’t know how far afterward, though.”
“It’ll be far enough,” she said. “I won’t forget this.”
“I’ll have to raise the alarm, Ms. Scarlet. I can give you three minutes.”
She smiled at him, her heart tearing at the thought of leaving Copperhead behind. “I’ll only need two.”
Scarlet ran to the back of the workshop and stopped at a dusty, cream-colored tarp. She slung her rifle, reached up, and ripped it away with a flourish.
The iron beast underneath was not lovely. Rusted plates covered its shoulders and withers. One glass eye was broken out. The leather on the saddle was cracked from dry rot in some places, ripped in others. It was the most beautiful brute she’d ever laid eyes on.
“She’s in here!”
Scarlet heard the mechanist’s shout from the front of the workshop. She leapt into the seat and tried the brute’s engine. It stalled. She swore and tried again, relieved when it fired. She walked the clockwerk horse backward and triggered its hind legs at full throttle. The brute’s metal hooves burst through the wooden workshop wall just as several members of the DSI headquarters security detachment rushed into the shop. Scarlet whipped the brute around, ducking as she spurred it through the ragged hole in the wall.
There was barely space between the rear of the mechanist shed and the fence, but she somehow squeezed through. She’d need speed for what she was attempting and space enough to attempt it. That meant riding away from cover.
Scarlet galloped around the corner of the mechanist shed into the open courtyard. She reached a good point and slowed her mount.
“Halt!”
Four more guards, three men and a woman. They moved in pairs, running at her from two different directions. Scarlet spared them a glance. Protocol said they wouldn't shoot, not unless she fled. She turned her mount and fired its engine, sending it into a full-on gallop.
Rounds snapped past as she raced, full speed, toward the iron-tipped perimeter fence. Scarlet wasn't religious. Growing up an orphan and becoming a trained assassin weren't lifestyles that lent themselves to a great deal of faith in the Healer. But she prayed for all she was worth as she flipped the brute’s switch.
The creature’s engines fired, and she was up. Time seemed to grind to a crawl as she looked down. Her astride m
ore than a ton of iron, sailing over the wall, the tips of the iron fence passing slowly beneath them.
6 Nebraska Territory - Triple J Ranch, September 1866
A rivulet of sweat ran down the bridge of Abe’s nose, leaving a trail of clean, tan skin through greasy brown face paint. They’d been watching the Nebraskan cattle baron’s ranch for two days straight, with not even a single glimpse of the villainous old bastard to show for their trouble. All their surveillance work and they’d seen nothing but a long string of visitors come and go, each one rougher and meaner-looking than the last.
Abe put his eye back to the looking glass atop his rifle. The mercenaries the baron hired were still gathered around the corral, guns in hand. Abe gauged the distance, noting that there was zero wind. He had clear shots on the lot of them if he wanted them, but they were here for the baron, not his paid muscle.
Abe ran a hand over his scalp, still half-expecting to find the long hair he’d once had. The feel of the buzz cut was alien to him as was the newfound strength of his body, the ease with which he could cover miles of rough terrain, scale a mountain, and still be able to shoot and hit targets with pinpoint accuracy.
Abe’s thoughts drifted back to how it all came to be. The Department of Strategic Intelligence Indoctrination course had been… difficult, to say the least. Of the twenty-odd recruits who’d started, sixteen washed out. He’d overheard two of the instructors discussing the class at graduation.
“Only an eighty percent attrition rate this time?” one instructor asked the other. “We must be getting soft.”
The other recruits were envious of Abe at first, after hearing he’d already been in the field, working with two of DSI’s best active agents, no less. They’d actually accused him of benefiting from favoritism. They were all completely wrong, of course, but how he’d wished they weren’t! If anything, what he’d experienced was the exact opposite of favoritism. That was how it felt, at least. To the best of his recollection, the cadre of DSI instructors, under the sadistic, watchful eye of head instructor Mr. Lynch, singled him out for extra attention precisely because he had been in the field.