Amidst Dark Satanic Mills (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 2)

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Amidst Dark Satanic Mills (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 2) Page 22

by Ralph E. Vaughan


  “Yes, Sergeant Hand is overly uncritical of my daughter, a trait Cynthia often uses to snare him, and you by extension, into one scheme after another,” the Admiral said. “He fails to see what a nuisance she is, occasionally a damned nuisance.”

  Folkestone made no verbal reply, but the struggle between his emotions was evident upon his face.

  “It’s all right to agree with a superior officer.”

  “Yes, sir,” Folkestone agreed, though he did not specify to what he was agreeing. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’d better fetch Hand and let him know he’s been granted leave.”

  “Quite right.” As Folkestone turned away, the Admiral asked: “Any news yet on those two blaggards, Zimmer and Tanaka?”

  Folkestone glanced back. “No, sir. Everyone is looking, but no one is finding. But it’s only a matter of time.”

  “If they are still here.”

  Folkestone nodded, but in his heart he knew the two assassins were still ensconced somewhere within the warrens of Syrtis Major, waiting for the proper moment to finish what they had failed to do at Phylus-Zant’s place. Yes, he thought, it would be good for him and Hand to secretly depart Mars for a few days, even if it meant leaping into the fire.

  * * *

  Eck moved cautiously, quietly along the darkened passageway, glancing into compartments she passed. Though most had curtains drawn, the gentle rocking motion of the train briefly created gaps, though which the interiors could be glimpsed. Anyone observing her would not have noticed anything untoward in her actions.

  She had not expected to find Slaughter or the Poulpe girl in any of the first class carriages, but she checked them anyway. Having underestimated her opponent twice now, she was wary of doing so again. Though the attack on the café was not a plan of her making, but one forced upon her by the impetuousness and lack of foresight by Baron Bellaseus, she still had to assume responsibility for its failure. The only advantage of the blatant attack was that the Sûreté would automatically dismiss it as yet another skirmish between the anarchists and the powers of authority. Even the death of Inspector Roget would be lost in the greater battle between the forces ripping France apart. Besides, from what she knew of the man, there would be little mourning and no questions.

  The destruction of the airship—now, that was something that rankled her, struck at the heart of her self-confidence and the pride of workmanship she took in her work. That mistake was entirely on her, and though she could easily justify her actions, to the Baron if not herself, it remained a blot that would not be rinsed away till the English policeman and the traitor’s daughter lay dead.

  There had been no chance to kill them at the terminal, and there was no way she could board the airship, either as a passenger or a stowaway. They had to be prevented from reaching London, even though the documents might not have been destroyed. An infernal device had seemed the only way to accomplish her mission. And it would have worked, if only the stupid English policeman had been as stupid as English policeman are supposed to be.

  Eck paused in the shadows, not much more than a shadow herself in her black leather clothes. She was letting herself become distracted by her failure to eliminate the targets carrying the stolen information. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms until she almost drew blood.

  Pain, the most instructive of tools, brought her out of the past, caused her to focus on the moment.

  “Puis-je vous aider, mademoiselle?" the guard asked softly, as to not awaken any slumbering travelers. “May I help you, Miss?”

  Eck turned, her lips curving into an engaging smile, just as she had often practiced in the mirror. Even before the Baron took her into his care and tutelage, Eck had been a keen observer of the creatures around her, able to closely imitate all the emotions which she ever failed to manifest in herself, just as predatory insects often mimic their prey to draw within striking distance.

  “Non merci, monsieur, je suis à la recherche pour les amis qui sont montés à bord avant moi,” she replied, adopting just the proper tone for a young girl traveling alone, soft and a little breathless, as if she found the strange man speaking to her slightly alarming. “I will find them on my own. Thank you for your concern, monsieur.”

  The guard, easily thrice her age, was coaxed into an avuncular smile by her innocence and vulnerability. She should not travel alone, and he thought it unwise she was separated from her friends. He experienced a desire to help her, and yet he hesitated to act upon that impulse. He could not explain his reluctance toward gallantry, but he found himself no more able to touch her arm that he could force himself to take a serpent in hand. In the end, his smile waned, he tipped his cap, muttered “Bonne chance pour trouver vos amis, Mademoiselle," and hurried off to continue his duties. It was only after he passed into the next carriage he recalled he had not punched her ticket. He shuddered and continued on.

  As soon as the old guard turned away, Eck’s smile evaporated and she watched his progress with ball-bearing eyes. While she did not understand the nature of most emotions that guided the lives of others, she could still manipulate them to her advantage.

  She did not find her quarries in any of the first class carriages, and she doubted they would be in the third class carriages with their open seating and hard benches. But second class…yes, that was more like it, she thought—compartments crowded with families and commercial travelers, just the right place to lose oneself.

  Before entering the older and less opulent carriages that made up the bulk of the train, she loitered about the W.C. She had had no time to change her clothing. While her leather kit was outré enough to pass for chic among the moneyed classes, where eccentricity was often a gauge of wealth, they would not do among the stodgy middle class, with their dull sensibilities and mundane mores. She needed to move amongst them, unnoticed and unremarkable, and not in a form her targets would be expecting, if they were watching for her at all.

  Eck lingered a minute or two, then a woman appeared. A quick glance told her it was not the Poulpe girl. To the woman, Eck was just a denizen of the first class coaches staring at the dark landscape rushing by, worth no more than a curious glance. As the door of the W.C. was opened, Eck struck a blow to the back of the woman’s neck, dragged her inside and closed the door.

  In less than a minute, Eck emerged from the W.C., garbed in the plain traveling dress of the other woman, her own clothes folded inside. She jiggered the lock so the door seemed apparently fastened from within, then resumed her hunt.

  The disguise would last no more than twenty minutes, a half-hour at the most, before someone missed the woman’s presence and checked on her, eventually overcoming a banal sense of propriety to break down the jammed door and find the hapless victim within. But Eck was certain she would not need half than time to complete her mission, to rectify the mistake she had made, to regain the Baron’s confidence and approval.

  She pulled the brim of the woman’s straw hat down a bit in front as she passed the crowded compartments. No one was paying any attention to her, but after two missteps, she did not want to make another, not when this was perhaps her last chance to regain the approval of Baron Bellaseus. Checking the compartments here went quicker than it had in first class because all the compartments were well lit and uncurtained, the passengers not having paid nearly enough for either privacy or any real degree of comfort.

  Eck was halfway through the second carriage when she spied Slaughter and Marie. They were in a compartment with six other people, two of whom were obvious commercial travelers, cases tucked securely between their legs and the seats while they smoked cigars furiously and read newspapers; the other four were dark-complexioned, a family, with parents who were too young for their old eyes and children who chafed at remaining still, probably under threat of corporeal distress. Eck passed them by.

  She entered the space between carriages. The old guard she had seen previously emerged from the carriage beyond. He looked at her a moment before recognizing her
as the young lady he had seen in first class, then hesitated a moment before speaking.

  It was, for him, a moment too long, and whatever words he had planned to say were never given voice. Swift as a cobra, she struck his throat with the edge of her hand, crushing his windpipe. She opened the door, propelled the guard into the rushing darkness, and pulled the door closed. The door to the carriage opened and a man moved toward the W.C., entering without so much as a glance in Eck’s direction, his sensibilities making her as invisible to him as he wanted to be to her. Eck looked at her wrist chronometer, nodded, and started back the way she had come.

  There were many ways she could dispose of them, but she had to be careful, be subtle. A grenade tossed into the compartment would do the job, as would spraying it with the machine-pistol tucked into the bodice beneath her traveling cloak, but three attacks by anarchists in a single night would raise doubts, cause questions. She knew at least a dozen ways to wreck the train, accidents being one of her specialties, but doing so would not absolutely guarantee their deaths, and would bring too much scrutiny. No, this called for two bullets, and two only, applied at the proper time, when the train plunged into the Channel Tunnel, and using the Chief Inspector’s own nature against him.

  She again consulted her chronometer. The gaping entrance of the Tunnel was less than five minutes away.

  Eck waited until the plunge was imminent before passing the compartment again. Where she had previously glanced furtively at the occupants within, she now gazed openly, knowing she would be recognized by the man from Scotland Yard, knowing that he would leap from his chair in quick pursuit, knowing that he would reach the doorway just as the train shot steeply into the depths. She slid her hand beneath her cloak and grasped the butt of her pistol.

  The plan had been to pause, attract Slaughter’s attention, then rush pass. But the pause became a sudden stop when she saw only Marie Poulpe staring at her. The seat across from her was vacant.

  Eck swept the edge of the cloak back and pulled the pistol, aiming through the window.

  “Hold it right there, you!” Slaughter shouted from the other end of the corridor. “Drop that weapon!”

  Eck looked the way she had been traveling, saw Slaughter with the barrel of his revolver trained on her. She fired her weapon at Marie, the compartment window shattering amid screams and cries of alarm. Out the corner of her eye, she saw her failure.

  Bitter rage flooded her throat as the next bullet impacted the now-vacant chair. Marie was on the floor of the compartment. Eck swung toward Slaughter, but he had already fired. His bullet struck her shoulder as she raised her pistol. The pain was excruciating, but she forced her muscles to pull the trigger.

  The train dropped into the void of the Channel Tunnel. Eck fell forward as she fired.

  Slaughter fell back, slamming into the carriage wall, and the bullet smashed into it a half-second later.

  Fighting against the pull of gravity, trying to move against the sudden acceleration, Slaughter lunged forward, aiming down the length of the corridor. The assassin was gone. Never taking his gaze from the passageway, he stood and ran forward.

  “Marie, are you all right?” he called, not looking in.

  “I am fine, Ethan.” She stumbled out of the compartment and into his arms. “Are you…” Her voice dissolved into a choked sob. “It was she…the woman from the café.”

  Slaughter nodded. Acutely aware of Marie’s nearness, feeling her warmth, her panting breaths, he disengaged himself from her and kneeled down. Blood pooled on the floor, but not enough. He pulled her with him, toward the forward carriages, away from the frantic cacophony and the stinging acrid smoke.

  He would explain the situation to the guard, at least as much as he could share. There would, of course, be an intense and thorough search, but he already knew the assassin would not be found, even if she was still on the train, which he doubted.

  They made their way forward and sent a coded message over the aether, the only sure means of communication through hundreds of feet of steel, stone and water. When they emerged from the depths, they would be in England. From Dover they would proceed to London, protected by the might of the Empire.

  “And then we will be safe?” Marie asked, pressed into the crook of his arm.

  “I hope so,” he replied, though without a sense of confidence.

  * * *

  Sergeant Felix Hand knew he was being followed, had known before entering the Barge and Bell Tavern on Blue Carbuncle Canal in southern Syrtis Major. He had led his stalkers to this shadowed region because he knew it well, better than did they, he wagered.

  There was no other part of Syrtis Major where the tides of culture, Martian and British, clashed so violently, fusing as when two mighty streams froth into a single channel to form an even stronger river, possessing qualities of both, yet unique unto itself. No matter how long the two thugs had been on Mars, there was no way they could be more at home in this dangerous sector than was Hand, who had immersed himself in its dark and violent ways after fleeing the Highlands.

  The air of the tavern was thick with noxious smokes, swirls of blue and yellow, of white and gray, products of a dozen worlds and moons, not all of them legal on Mars. The atmosphere was also choked with grunts and grumbles, shouts and whispers; with plots and plans and challenges and boasts, shot through with the cries of woodwinds and strings, the rhythmic banging of drums small and large, tinkling bells and songs of space and faraway worlds. It was a secure haven, both for those who lived desperate lives on the edge of the law and for those who sought solitude in a crowd.

  Hand was safe, at least for the moment. Anyone who entered could be dealt with quickly, either waking up battered in some dim alley, or waking up not at all, dropped into the canal beneath via any one of a half-dozen trapdoors.

  The tavern’s rear was hard against the water, so his stalkers would be in front, waiting till he emerged, drunk and an easy target. It would have been easy to evade them, then return with a security squad at his back. Folkestone would have called him six kinds of a fool for not running to the Admiralty or the Court. Hand smiled as he finished his pint of bitters. No doubt the Captain was right. And he was likely even more a fool for venturing out alone when he knew Zimmer and Tanaka might still in the city. But Hand had never shied from foolhardiness.

  He considered another pint, then shook his head. He was only delaying the inevitable. Besides, he told himself, he hadn’t really set out for a pint of bitters, had he? He had a bottle of segir back at the barracks, and any of the lads would have been more than willing to interrupt their dicing and cards for a pub crawl. His excursion into the dangerous underside of the city had nothing to do with drinking or escaping claustrophobic barracks.

  No, he reflected with a sigh. The purpose of going out was to go out, to draw those bastard Earthers into the open.

  It was Hand’s nature to attack fate, not wait. Folkestone might have gone along with his plan, but the point was to make himself a target, not the Captain. Separated by class and race, they were yet the best of friends. He was fond of his Cockney mates in the 63rd, and humans in general, but Captain Folkestone and Lady Cynthia evoked feelings that surprised even him. Lowlanders would not believe him capable of such soft emotions, and his former fellows in the Highlands would have mocked them, but he kept those emotions locked in the inviolable vault of his soul.

  He stood and wended his way through the seething mass of scoundrels, drunks and space tramps, people after his own heart. He nodded at the barkeep, a fellow Highlander, then disappeared into a back room. He turned down the gaslight, then opened a trap in the floor, climbed down and closed it after him.

  In the darkness beneath him black water slurped and gurgled, an old channel connecting the Blue Carbuncle Canal with a smaller commercial canal running between some manufactories. When the jetty was extended a couple of centuries earlier, the channel had been built over and eventually forgotten. For the Barge and Bell, it was a convenient way to br
ing in commodities better left unseen by revenue agents of the Court of the Red Prince. Though Hand had never betrayed his Highland brother, the existence of the covert canal was an open secret, tolerated as long as its occasional value to the law was greater than its problem as a source of villainy.

  Hand crept quietly along the narrow catwalk, listening intently. He neared the concealed entrance out on the dock. A board creaked above his head and he halted.

  “We should go in and take care of the Schweinehund,” a thickly accented voice whispered. “One shot across the room and…” The speaker made a short rude noise. “…it is done.”

  Hand pulled a revolver from his pocket.

  “No, Zimmer, that would be imprudent,” said the other voice. “Too much commotion, too many witnesses. Better to capture the Martian, report what he knows to Lord Khallimar.”

  Hand aimed through the boards at the space occupied by the more cultured and precise voice.

  “You mean the Baron,” Zimmer corrected. “This mission is run by the Baron, and it is to the Baron that we report. You would do well to remember that, Tanaka.”

  Hand lowly swung the barrel toward the Germanic speaker.

  “And you would do well to remember, Zimmer,” Tanaka said, a low tone of menace in his voice, “that we serve something higher than any one man.”

  The barrel drifted back.

  “You are a fool, Tanaka.”

  Then back the other way.

  “Shut up, Zimmer, and watch for the Martian to leave,” Tanaka instructed. “Likely he will be drunk, so we will have no problem in taking him prisoner. All Martians are notorious drunkards.”

  The aim of the weapon drifted lazily back to Tanaka.

  "Zum Teufel mit Ihnen!” Zimmer snapped harshly. “I will do as I see fit, not what is ordered by a hirnlose Mondkalb.”

  “You will obey my orders, Chūton orokamono!” Tanaka said, so angry with his partner that he slipped into his native tongue.

 

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