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

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  The Baron pushed him away.

  “Madman!”

  “The angels of Hell sing to me.” Spittle drooled from Martin’s mouth as he spoke. “Their infernal chorus! Here! Here!” He slammed his finger repeatedly against his temple. “The angels that dwell in the shadow of the Sun, and the ghosts I sent here.”

  “Totally mad,” the Baron said, shaking his head. “He is of no use to us. None at all.”

  “What the blazes do we do now?” Hand asked.

  Without warning, Baron Bellaseus slammed his fist into Hand’s startled face. The Martian went down like a pike-axed Lowlander. He was up almost as soon as he hit the deck, but the Baron was already gone, fled down the maze of corridors.

  Probably lit out for his aethership, Hand thought with disgust.

  “Welcome to Hell!” Martin screeched. “The angels of Hell and the restless ghosts have risen in wrath! The Mills are falling! The Pillars of the Worlds are collapsing. The Breath of Life will flow!”

  “Come ‘ere, you,” Hand growled, grabbing for Martin’s collar. “You may be balmy, but you’re…”

  Martin slipped Hand’s grasp like a slimy canal eel.

  “Oh no you don’t you little…”

  For the second time, Sergeant Hand slammed to the floor and was this time slower getting to his feet. He groaned and made sure his head was still attached to his shoulders. Despite Martin’s slight build, his madness filled him strength enough to strangle a gorilla, and a will to act that could have moved an immoveable object. Hand leaned a moment against the jamb to recover and glanced at the body of the huge Mesopotamian.

  “Looks like I came out of it a sight better than you, mate,” he quipped. He rubbed his head. “Lucky me.”

  He headed back to the control room.

  * * *

  Lady Cynthia made her way through one deserted corridor after another. She would have thought the station totally unmanned but for a rising hubbub of confused voices. When the facility shook again, the voices were joined by cries and screams of alarm.

  A man suddenly rounded a corner, skidding to a halt when he saw Lady Cynthia and her weapon in his face.

  “Get out of my way!” he ordered. He tried to get around, but stopped when the barrel of her gun made contact with his nose. “Let me go, please, the whole facility is on the verge of destruction.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Laplace, I’m just a worker here, no one of any importance,” he explained, his words gushing. “Please I have to find a way off the station.”

  “Where are Captain Folkestone and Sergeant Hand?”

  His face twisted in puzzlement.

  “Human and Martian,” she said. “Both British.”

  “I don’t have time for…”

  “Where are they?” she repeated, jamming her weapon forward with considerable force, bloodying his nose. “I don’t have time for you to dither.”

  “In the control room,” he gasped.

  “Take me there,” she ordered.

  “If we stay, we’ll die!”

  “Don’t take me there and you’ll die now.” She motioned for him to turn about. “Lead on, McDuff.”

  “The name is…”

  A metal-gloved hand in his back sent him stumbling forward.

  * * *

  “Where’s the man who was going to save us?” Folkestone asked. “And the Baron.”

  “Stark barking mad, and trying to escape with his hide intact, in that order,” Hand replied, ticking off on his fingers. He looked around at the scattered bodies, at Swift gazing over the plain. “Last men standing?”

  Folkestone nodded. “After you left, Khallimar made a last ditch effort to rally the faithful, but as you can see it did not work.”

  “Don’t see that Lord Khallimar bloke,” Hand said.

  “No, he escaped.”

  “They surged at us,” Swift said, not turning from the vista. “And the others formed a human shield.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here too,” Hand said. The building quaked and canted. “Quickly!”

  “Not till we shut this place down.”

  “Captain, those creatures seem intent on doing that for us.”

  “The Professor’s right, sir,” Hand agreed. “This place is already falling apart.”

  “Yes, but fast enough? We’ve got to destroy this base’s ability to manifest the energy bolts before the end of the cycle is reached,” Folkestone explained. “We can’t depend upon those creatures, or whatever they are.”

  “They call themselves the Drassa,” said a voice from the door. “And what they are, is aroused to a wrath that even Achilles would have found intimidating. They will not leave this building intact and will not rest till all the Mills are toppled.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been busy, Lady Cynthia.”

  “But you are correct, Captain Folkestone,” she allowed. “They may not sate their vengeance in time to serve our purpose.”

  Laplace fled.

  “Ships are departing, Captain,” Swift said, pointing to dark shapes fleeing like angry hornets from a disturbed nest.

  “There goes the one that overflew us,” Hand said.

  “And the one I followed in,” Lady Cynthia added.

  “Hand, all controls are here, the antennae array directly above,” Folkestone said. “Explosives correctly situated should destroy the regulating machinery and Babbage Machines, and bring the antennae crashing through the place.”

  “I saw a storage area on the way in,” Lady Cynthia said. “There should be explosives there, from what the Drassa said.”

  “Lead the way, M’Lady,” Folkestone said. “Please.”

  Leaving the injured Swift to keep guard against any fanatic stragglers, they made their way to the construction storage.

  “Glad to see you, Lady Cynthia,” Hand said.

  “Is anyone else coming?” Folkestone asked.

  “I sent the planet’s coordinates, but, as you know, it is difficult to locate.” Then she frowned. “Are you not glad to see me as well, Captain Folkestone?”

  “As always,” Folkestone replied, forcing a smile. “Of course, I wish circumstances were different.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Robert,” she said softly. She and Folkestone were gathering explosives while Hand was doing the same thing some distance away. “This is so much more exciting than high tea with the Earl of Devon, don’t you think?”

  He sighed. “Sergeant Hand has very sharp ears.”

  “He’s far enough away,” she said, but lowered her voice.

  “Is he?” Folkestone murmured. “He’s a devious rogue.”

  They glanced at the Martian. To all appearances, he was diligently ripping open crates and stuffing explosives into a sack, but there was no missing the toothy grin that seemed to split his head almost in half.

  “Let’s head back,” Folkestone snapped. “This should be more than enough to do the job.”

  They returned to the control room and placed charges on struts and by equipment. Seeing from the counters that cycling the energy through the antennae would end in seven minutes, Folkestone ordered the clockwork timers to be set for five minutes.

  “Not much time,” Hand grunted.

  “Move with purpose, Sergeant,” Lady Cynthia said.

  “More ships flew out, but there have been no more for several minutes.” Swift reported. “Will we make it out?”

  “Our ship is in the docking bay,” Hand said. “I don’t think they could get in, but there’s no telling what shape the bay is in.”

  Folkestone looked to Lady Cynthia.

  “Sorry, but a bit of a mishap on the way in,” she explained. “If you lads are stuck, so am I.”

  They set the last of the charges in place and rushed out. They found plenty of bodies but none left alive. There was no way to tell what had happened in the last few minutes, as terrified MEDUSA operatives fought each other, whether for survival or for factionary schisms. The numbers mounted a
s they neared the docking bay.

  “Laplace,” Lady Cynthia murmured, looking down at the man with a neat hole in his forehead. “Had I had not forced him to lead me to you, he might have made it.”

  “Don’t waste no tears over this lot, M’Lady,” Hand advised.

  They spilled into the landing bay. Beams and supports had fallen, and more fell as the station shuddered. There were great rents in the structure, allowing the torrid, acrid atmosphere to sweep through. The oxygen level was lower than that found upon Earth’s highest peaks. The others gasped, but Hand merely smiled. Their aethership was where they had berthed it, but debris pinned it. Folkestone entered the code for the hatchway.

  “Lady Cynthia, you and Professor Swift get on board, while Hand and I clear the rubble.”

  “I’m taking that aethership, thank you very much,” said a harsh grating voice.

  A man in a MEDUSA uniform, one arm obviously broken and his clothes smeared with blood, stepped out of the shadows, weapon held out straight before him.”

  “Me mates left me, they did, but it looks like Lady Luck done gone and smiled on me,” he said.

  “This place is going to be destroyed within minutes,” Lady Cynthia said. “If we don’t leave now, well all be killed.”

  “Not me,” the man smirked. “And maybe not you neither, me pretty little dolly. Move away from the ship.”

  Folkestone and Hand glanced quickly at each other. They set off from the ship, but in opposite directions. The man aimed one way, then snapped the other. Then he quivered and hit the floor.

  “Ruffian!” Professor Swift exclaimed, lowing his weapon.

  Lady Cynthia and the Professor rushed inside while Hand and Folkestone cleared away fallen metal. Once they were all inside the aethership, Folkestone flung himself into the command chair.

  “We’ve no way to activate the landing pad, sir.”

  “It looks like the mechanism is fouled,” Lady Cynthia said.

  “No time for any of that,” Folkestone said. “Strap yourselves in. Very tightly. And maybe pray.”

  Folkestone activated the repulsors beneath the ship, lifting them clear of the shuddering deck. Immediately he brought the aether engines on line, pushing them to full capacity. It was a dangerous maneuver at any time, starting from a full stop, but especially when faced with a wall of metal only yards before them.

  Professor Swift gasped.

  Sergeant Hand said a word Lady Cynthia pretended not to hear.

  Lady Cynthia, in the copilot’s seat, tightly gripped the arms, and resisted an impulse to grasp Robert Folkestone’s hand.

  Folkestone aimed for the most damaged sections and hoped for the best. In a moment that seemed like it might never end, they were beyond the confines of the besieged MEDUSA base, bound for the plain where the Mills lay tumbled but around which the nimbus of energy still gathered. He powered the tortured aether drive down to normal levels and used a combination of jets and repulsors to avoid the Mills and bring the base back into sight.

  “My God!” Professor Swift exclaimed. “There’s a man walking away from the base…with no excursion suit.”

  “Mad bugger,” Hand growled, touching the lump on the side of his head.

  The explosives detonated. Tons of metal and stone erupted. The antennae array crashed through the levels of the base. The Drassa, started moving away quickly.

  “I suggest we follow the example of the Drassa,” Lady Cynthia said. “They have senses we lack, and might better know what will happen now that the energy has nowhere to go.”

  “You have some explaining to do, I expect, M’Lady.”

  “I expect you are right, Captain,” she agreed. “As do you.”

  Folkestone swept the aethership along the hills of the twilight zone, then turned toward the night. Suddenly, ahead of them, the tiny planet’s nightland was bathed in unwonted light. In the aft crystal they saw a brilliant display of coruscating illumination and soundless lightning. It quickly faded to nothing, and darkness returned to a land that had never known anything else.

  “Well, that’s the end of MEDUSA,” Hand claimed.

  “No,” Folkestone said.

  “Not quite yet,” Lady Cynthia agreed.

  * * *

  Martin passed people desperately seeking escape. They were to him, as always, less than insects. And he crushed many of them.

  A door! He knew what he must do. Hell had triumphed, and he must seek the Lords of Hell. They would protect him from Ghosts.

  Martin put the facility to his back. It vanished from his mind, as did MEDUSA. He felt as if he had always walked this sere land, breathed this spiced air, felt the warmth of the Sun upon his face.

  He gasped when he met the Lords of Hell. Long had he spied them from a distance, had listened to them burrow through his mind. Now they were close enough to touch. He reached for them. At first, he did not recognize his own hand, blistering, smoking, flesh falling away. The other hand too, he realized, and his whole body. He tried to scream but there was no air in his charred lungs.

  The thing that had been Martin fell to the ground.

  And died.

  Wrath ebbing, the lords of Hephaestus turned from the Mills and those who had built them. They returned to the only life they ever wanted—endless philosophical discussions, the eternal Sun, and the Breath of Life.

  Chapter 15

  “It’s not the drones and workers we want, but the queens of the hive,” Folkestone said. “Or, rather, kings. This hive had two.”

  “And they were none too keen on each other,” Hand observed.

  “True, but even the bitterest enemies will cleave to each other when they have no one else to whom they can turn,” Lady Cynthia observed. “Both Lord Khallimar and Baron Bellaseus by now know what I know, that their organization is all but been destroyed on Earth and the other planets of the Solar System.”

  “Hit one point in a block of ice,” Folkestone mused, “and it fractures, revealing all the other weak spots to attack.”

  “As it has turned out,” Lady Cynthia said, “yes.”

  “So their options are limited.”

  “If they try to reach any of the moons and planets beyond the Asteroid Belt, where some vestige of MEDUSA might still cling, they will run a gauntlet created by the Royal Navy and the ships of every other spacefaring power,” she said.

  “But where will these two varmints run to?” Professor Swift asked. “That’s the question.”

  “Right you are, Professor,” Hand agreed. “Where’s their ace-in-the-hole, their robber’s roost?”

  Lady Cynthia looked to Folkestone, eyebrows raised. “Is the Sergeant adding American to the other vulgar tongues he knows?”

  “Both Hand and the Professor are members of the Nicodemus Legend Literary Appreciation Society,” he explained.

  “Oh.”

  “Lady Cynthia, you have a wider view of MEDUSA’s spread and the steps taken against it than we do,” Folkestone said. “Where could they go and still have some hope of shelter?”

  “When I set out from Earth to join you and Sergeant Hand, my destination was Mercury,” Lady Cynthia said. “When the Sergeant told me you two were looking for Vulcan…”

  “Hephaestus,” Swift muttered.

  “…I did not know it was a physical expedition.” She glared at the Martian. “Really, Sergeant, you really must learn to make your intentions clearer.”

  “Yes, M’Lady,” Hand responded with studied contriteness.

  “Unless you were ordered to be purposely vague,” she added.

  “Yes, M’Lady…I mean—no, M’Lady.”

  She held Hand in her withering stare a moment longer, then turned back. “However, I detected a ship moving at high velocity, no navigation signals, and not listed on any registry to which I had access. Further, the livery of the aethership matched that of a craft that departed an isolated valley in Central Europe. From the papers brought in from Paris, and information wrested from other sources, we knew
that while Lord Khallimar was the leader of MEDUSA, there was another figure in the organization even more feared, who was only identified by the letter B.”

  “B for Bellaseus,” Folkestone said.

  “Or B for Baron,” Hand added.

  “Either way,” Lady Cynthia said sharply, “there was enough of a confluence of factors to induce me to follow it at a distance. When it crossed the orbit of Mercury, I was sure it was connected to MEDUSA and its sub-commander. And, as it turned out, I was right…luckily for you.”

  “And you as well,” Folkestone pointed out. “In whose ship are we traveling?”

  “Who made allies of the Drassa?”

  “So, you think the Baron might be heading home to this valley of his,” Hand said. Like a kid caught between bickering parents, he often found himself in the role of interceder. “But what about Khallimar?”

  “Birds of a feather,” Lady Cynthia replied. “His options will be limited. He’ll know that his home in Abaj is no longer safe, nor any other property he owns, either directly or through proxy. From what you say, he and Baron Bellaseus are now at odds, but he may have no other choice but to throw in with him.”

  “And if Bellaseus shoots down his aethership, so much the better,” Hand quipped.

  Folkestone nodded. “Yes, there is that.”

  “Regardless of whether Khallimar goes there, is shot down trying, or flees somewhere else,” Lady Cynthia pointed out, “there is still a very strong likelihood it’s where we’ll find Bellaseus.”

  “What can you tell us about this valley of his?” Folkestone asked. “If we’re going in, we need to know all we can.”

  “First and foremost, it is isolated,” she said.

  “Remote?”

  “Yes, that too, but I mean it is purposely isolated from the rest of the world,” she explained. “Section 6 has known about the place for a long time, but it did not come under careful scrutiny until the emergence of the MEDUSA papers.”

  “When you say purposely isolated…” Folkestone began.

  “I mean no one enters the valley uninvited and no one leaves at all,” she continued. “The surrounding mountains are steep, almost unclimbable, filled with man-traps. The only two ways in or out are through heavily guarded narrow passes. The people there have never seen steam-powered vehicles, nor are any of the villages lit with gas. There are no modern industries of any sort. The villagers live a feudal existence, in fealty to the Lord of the valley, who dwells in a castle overlooking them.”