“Since the Chief Engineer is returning ahead of the others,” the Captain continued, “have him lay on level-one inspections of aether, impulse, and atmospheric power systems. Be ready to depart in…” He glanced at Lady Cynthia.
“No more than seven hours, Captain Wax,” she supplied. “I have business to conduct before we can set out.”
“Six hours,” Captain Wax told his First Officer, knowing that Neumann would probably reduce the deadline by another hour when notifying the crew. “By the way, I want system tests run on the repulsor banks before we depart.”
The First Officer frowned. “Aye, sir, but tests were run before we left Syrtis Major, and we shan’t need them before we again make planetfall.”
“Not much chance of a real planetfall out here,” Wax agreed, “but see to it anyway. If there are any problems you can’t handle, I’ll be with the Port Master, then at Poseidon’s Cave.”
“Aye, sir.”
Captain Wax and Lady Cynthia exited the bridge. Mark tripped as he shot up from his station, recovered, then followed after, trying to keep his distance. As the trio left the bridge, Neumann sighed and shook his head. Ours is not to question why…
“Ever been to Ceres before, Lady Cynthia?” Wax asked.
“First time in the Belt at all, Captain,” she replied.
“We’ll need our suits when we leave the Princess, but we’ll be able to doff them once past the airlock of the administration office,” he said. “Also, gravity can be tricky out here in the service area, so you’ll have to watch your step.”
“I have been in open space before,” she reminded him. “No gravity at all there.”
“True,” he admitted. “A total lack of gravitational pull makes you feel unfettered, but a trace of it makes you clumsy. Once inside, you’ll have the advantage of force generators, but out here…well, watch your step, M’Lady. I would hate to make any awkward explanations to the Lord Admiral.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Captain,” she assured him, smiling.
They quickly donned spacesuits, then exited the aethership’s airlock after pumps removed the air back into the tanks. The craft was tethered to a wide metal ledge alongside other aethercraft. Cables snaked into the hulls so they could use the station’s stores of electricity, oil and water rather than depleting their own.
Lady Cynthia quickly discovered the truth of the merchant captain’s warning. She lifted her foot with more strength than needed, then compensated by putting it down with too much force. Making judgment even more difficult, most of the gravitational pull came at something of a tangent from the surface of nearby Ceres.
“I see what you mean, Captain,” she acknowledged as Wax took her arm and helped steady her. “I think I shall be fine now, thank you.”
“Have a care you don’t tumble off the platform, Mr Mark,” Wax said as the young Midshipman recovered from his own stumble. “It would be inappropriate for Lady Cynthia to chase after you, I’m too old, and your shipmates would never let you live it down if the Port Authority tug had to pluck you from the infinite.”
“No, sir…I mean, yes, sir,” Mark stammered. Even through the tinted faceplate of his helmet, they could see the glowing redness of his face. “I’ll be very careful, Captain.”
They approached the airlock. A brass plate proclaimed: PORT CERES, OPERATIONS, SHIP REGISTRATION MANDATORY. A larger plaque beneath issued instructions for airlock operation in English, German, French, Russian, Chinese, Martian, Japanese and Polish. Though clumsily gloved, Wax deftly punched his registration and berth on the Babbage keyboard next to the door.
After a moment, the heavy metal lock swung open like the door of a bank vault. The only indication of the mechanism at work was a brief puff of steam, which immediately crystallized, but even that was silent in the vacuum of space. They stepped over the metal ledge into which the lock fitted. Once inside, Wax pulled down a brass handle. The door closed.
The silence was replaced by a thin, barely audible whisper penetrating their helmets, which steadily rose to a roar. Oxygen being pumped in, not only causing noise, but providing a medium for its transmission. Once the roar ceased, another metal hatch swung open. They stepped through and began unbolting their helmets, doffing their excursion suits.
“Welcome to Port Ceres, Captain Wax and Lady Cynthia,” said a young Indian in brilliant red and blue livery. He ignored both the Midshipman and his scowl. “If you will be so good to stow your suits in lockers Alpha-37, 38 and 39. I will then assist you in any way I can.”
“Don’t let it bother you, lad.” Wax murmured softly to Mark as they put their spacesuits away. “You’ll have to grow more brass before that one can see you.”
“What, that monkey?” Mark muttered. “Barely noticed him.”
Wax raised his bushy white eyebrows.
“Sir,” Midshipman Mark added.
“Which way to the Port Master’s office?” Wax asked.
“I shall conduct you there, Captain, after I conduct Lady…”
“Just point me in the right direction, I don’t have time to wait on some cheeky beggar,” Wax snapped.
“Mr Nyles’ office is on Ceres,” Lady Cynthia interjected, “so all I need are directions to the lift.”
Crestfallen, but trying not to look that way, the port functionary pointed left and gave directions. As the trio walked away, Lewis Mark glanced back and smiled.
“This is where we part ways, M’Lady,” Wax said at a juncture of corridors. “I shall meet you at Poseidon’s Cave after I finish with the Port Master. If the man I told you about is still on Ceres, that is where he’ll be found.”
“I’ll see you later, Captain.”
“And you, Mr Mark, behave yourself, and remember to keep your lips buttoned.,”
“I will, Captain,” Mark promised.
“Have a good time, but keep your wits about you,” Wax said. “Most lads never make it to the Belt, so take a good look around, but don’t get gulled or cut. Port Ceres may not be as lawless as the rest of the Belt, but it can be plenty rough, like a bad Saturday night in the East End.”
“Can’t be any worse than Brooklyn after a Grays game, sir,” Mark asserted. “I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can, Mr Mark.”
“Grays?” Lady Cynthia asked.
“The Brooklyn Grays,” the young Midshipman explained. “A baseball team back home, ma’am. The only one worth rooting for.”
“American game, stick and ball, but nothing like cricket,” Wax said. “You get young Mr Mark started on the subject of baseball at your own peril, or so we’ve discovered”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Lady Cynthia laughed. “Come along, Mr Mark; we’ll ride the lift down together.”
Midshipman Lewis Mark gulped. “Yes, ma’am.”
There were no force plates in the floor of the lift, and there were warnings in several languages about tripping hazards when exiting the lift. Mark scowled at the sign, having already had more than his share of missteps. The journey to the surface of Ceres was smooth and uneventful, its descent powered by the asteroid’s own nearly negligible gravity.
Although Mark had steeled himself for stepping out of the lift, the sudden return of normal gravity, about three-quarters of Earth standard, caught him off guard, nearly sending him to the deck. He was envious of Lady Cynthia’s grace, and glad she was looking the other way, or seemed to be, when he nearly had his mishap.
The corridors were lined with shops and services of various kinds, thronged with people of many nationalities and species. Despite the expanse, this was only a small portion of the station, the trade that catered to passersby, transients and tourists en route to somewhere else. Most of the shops were duty free, and more than a few had back rooms where tourists were separated from even more of their money, legally or not.
“Take care of yourself, Mr Mark,” she said, looking about for a sign indicating where she could find the office of Stanton Nyles. “I shall likely s
ee you aboard the Princess in a few hours.”
Mark looked about nervously. “Should I stay with you, ma’am? I mean for protection. It looks rough here.”
Lady Cynthia laughed, but not unkindly, touched by both the young man’s concern and naivety. She was sure he had more to fear from the villains and ne’er-do-wells of Port Ceres than had she.
“Thank you, Mr Mark,” she said. “But I shall be fine.”
She moved off, toward a pair of constables keeping watch over the milling masses. Mark watched her leave, feeling a sense of disappointment which he did not quite understand, then sighed, and went off to complete his own errands.
“Yes, ma’am?” one of the constables asked at her approach, tipping his helmet courteously. “How may we help you?”
“I am Lady Cynthia Barrington-Welles,” she replied. “I am to see Station Manager Stanton Nyles. How do I reach his office?”
“Ah, Lady Cynthia,” murmured the other constable. “We were informed you would be arriving today.”
“Oh?”
“Your father is…”
“…is not here,” Lady Cynthia said haughtily. “Now, tell me how to find Mr Nyles.”
“But we were told…” the second constable tried to explain.
“Do you have a hearing problem, young man?” Lady Cynthia demanded. “Tell me where his office is. Chop-chop!”
“Mr Nyles is located five levels down,” the first constable said quickly. “There is a lift over there.” He pointed.
“Tell the operator what level you want, then go to the Administrative Hub,” added the second. “You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you,” she said, not smiling, and headed for the lift.
“A woman with a eyepatch,” the first constable muttered. “Wouldn’t be surprised if someone hadn’t taken a punch at her.”
“We were supposed to conduct her there.”
The first constable shook his head. “Sweet looking outside, but wormwood within.”
The second man glanced about nervously.
“Don’t worry, mate, nobody heard.”
But Lady Cynthia had, and she smiled. If scratching the lady awakened a dragon, people would be cautious. She could be in and out of Nyles’ office without revealing the mission upon which her father, and Section 6, had dispatched her. A minor bureaucrat in a relatively unimportant outpost of the Empire, Nyles would naturally be curious about the purpose of her jaunt, but she hoped his interest was for toadyism, not intelligence.
She proceeded to the Administrative Hub. As she entered, a secretary straightened up from an inter-office voce-box. He had wide eyes and flared nostrils. He stared at her eyepatch. He fumbled with and nearly dropped a pressurized fountain pen. He had, she surmised, just relayed the constables’ accounts to his superior.
“Yes, ma’am, how may I…” he started to ask.
“You can announce me to your superior,” she replied archly, glaring at him with one frosty eye. “He can explain why he thinks it appropriate to ‘summon’ me to his office.”
“Yes, Lady Cynthia, but there is some confusion about…”
“Young man, are you Stanton Nyles?” she interrupted.
He looked puzzled. “No, but…
“Then why am I talking to you?”
“I, uh…”
“Tell Mr Nyles I will see him, now, else I shall be on my way.”
He fumbled with the communicator.
“Don’t dawdle, young man,” she snapped. “Chop-chop!”
He swiftly punched a code into the voce-box, murmured softly into the transmitter, then pushed away from his desk and sprang from his chair. He gestured toward a door, which was already opening. A thin balding man was coming out.
“You!” she said, pointing at the secretary, stopping him in his tracks even as she cut off Nyles’ greeting. “Sherry and biscuits.” Ignoring the young man’s stammered response, she turned to Ceres’ administrator. “In your office, Mr Nyles. You have questions to answer, and I’d rather not embarrass you before your inferior.”
Flustered, Nyles turned on his heels and fled to his office, Lady Cynthia in close pursuit. An acidic glance back stirred the secretary into a flurry of motion. She smiled and closed the door behind her.
* * *
“To London?” Marie Poulpe gasped. “To England? I cannot!”
“You must, Marie,” DCI Slaughter insisted. “It’s not safe for you in Paris now, perhaps not anywhere in France.”
“But I have done nothing to anyone,” she protested. “I wanted only to find the murderer of my father.”
“And now his murderers have found you, or, rather, us.”
The café and the Pigalle sector was far behind them. There was no sign of pursuit, but still they kept to narrow back streets.
“But the police will be after the assassin at the café,” she said. Surely he will not…”
“She,” Slaughter corrected.
“Pardon?”
“It was a woman,” he explained. “The person who murdered Forgeron and almost killed us was a woman. She also murdered Inspector Roget of the Sûreté.”
"Mon Dieu!" she gasped.
“If it had not been for his intervention, she would surely have cut us down with that machine pistol,” he said. “I have never seen a weapon of its like.” He sighed. “Roget must have been trailing us, probably hoping for a lead to MEDUSA. He was a good man and deserved much better than he got.”
“If we are to go to England,” she said. “I must stop by…”
“We haven’t time,” he told her. “This is what she wants.” He tapped the outside of his coat and felt the envelope within. “She was too late to stop Forgeron from giving it to us, failed to take it from our bodies, and killed a police officer who got in her way. I can’t believe anything will deter her from pursuing us.”
“You think the woman,” Marie said, “this assassin, is employed by MEDUSA?”
“I do.”
“Could she have killed my father?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but, at the moment, it does not matter whether she did or not.”
Marie started to protest.
“This is much larger than the murder of one man,” Slaughter pointed out. “It involves organized criminal activity on at least two planets, and who knows how many cities on Earth. This MEDUSA robs and murders at will, and for profit. What is being done with the tremendous fortune being amassed? These gangs in Paris and London are just pawns. What is the endgame?” Again, he tapped the pasteboard envelope in his coat pocket. “This might answer some of those questions, but first we have to get it back to London.”
“And live long enough to do so,” she commented.
“Yes,” he agreed grimly. “There is that, which is why we dare not stop at your flat or my hotel. If MEDUSA knows who we are, then our residences must be known as well.”
She nodded in resignation. “I suppose you are correct, Chief Inspector Slaughter.”
“Please call me Ethan,” he asked. “You never can tell when you might be overheard.” He did not add that he would rather hear his Christian name from her lips. “It would not be safe.”
“Of course, Ethan,” she murmured.
His face reddened, and he was thankful for the darkness.
“How shall we travel to England?” she asked.
“We need to go to the airship terminal,” he told her.
As they neared Paris’ bright heart, they did not venture from the side streets and alleys. By luck they encountered a steamer-cab. The old man looked dubiously at the disheveled couple who hailed him from the alley, but a fistful of francs bought a blind eye and his silence as well as the best speed his hack could give. They entered the terminal as discretely as possible. Slaughter told her to clean up in the ladies washroom while he purchased tickets.
They waited among the queuing crowds, keeping themselves to themselves, not getting too far from each other. For the sake of their imposture they even held han
ds, though neither seemed to really mind. They sought no attention, and attracted none, apparently.
Finally, it was time to embark. Because this was an outbound airship, there was no Customs inspection, just a bored purser who looked at their tickets, not them. The airship loomed from out the darkness, the night flight across the Channel.
Ten minutes later, the airship detached itself from its mast and cast off mooring lines. It rose into the night sky, swinging westward as its steam engines throbbed rhythmically and its screws beat the air. Less than five minutes into its flight, the airship burst asunder, the force of the explosion shattering windows for miles around.
The remains of the flaming airship rained down on the suburbs of Paris. There were no survivors.
* * *
“You sent her where, sir?” Captain Folkestone demanded. “Are you out of your bloody…” He quickly stopped himself, but not quickly enough to keep Sergeant Hand from kicking his ankle. “Your pardon, sir, but…well…it’s just…”
“It’s all right, Captain, I didn’t hear a thing,” Lord Admiral Sir Geoffrey Barrington-Welles assured him. “She drives me mad at times as well.”
“Why Pandora, sir?” Folkestone asked. “Hand and I could…”
“We have no idea what, if anything, is happening on Pandora or how it ties in with Poulpe’s murder or this group, this…”
“MEDUSA,” Folkestone supplied.
“Yes, well, whatever it is,” the Admiral huffed. “Ridiculous! It is like something out of those rubbish magazines I sometimes find stuffed into the cushions of my chairs. Not even half as good as the Boy’s Own, in my opinion.”
Sergeant Hand pouted sullenly, but silently.
“Quite right, sir,” Folkestone said, giving Hand a covert wink.
“Where was…oh, yes, Pandora,” the Admiral continued. “The situation calls for a gentle touch, not quite your forte. Nor can I send in a cruiser. Damn! Section 6 will make cowards of us all in time.” He chewed his moustache thoughtfully. “This time, however, I agreed with their logic. Gently, gently catchee monkey and all that.”
“But, sir, sending in Lady Cynthia…”
Amidst Dark Satanic Mills (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 2) Page 18