Heart of the Colossus_A Steampunk Space Opera Adventure

by Nicole Grotepas

  Her heart raced. She questioned her own judgment about going after Elan all alone. Why had that seemed like a good idea?

  And then she heard it—the sound of footfalls behind her, matching her own pace.

  If Holly looked behind herself, would she see a perpetrator? Or merely someone heading back to their berth?

  Was she a mad-woman, imagining danger around every bend? Seeing malevolence in shadows and specters in darkened corners?

  She slowed for a minute, listening hard, calming her breathing, testing. The footfalls did not slow, they drew closer. Holly dropped into a sprint.

  And so did her pursuer.

  She passed her personal compartment, dodged around a female Druiviin heading toward her, who exclaimed in irritation. As Holly passed some compartments, she tested the doors to see if they were locked. Each one she tried was locked. She wouldn’t go in one anyway—chances would be her pursuer would get inside it, whatever it took.

  She burst through the car doors and into the next one—tearing down the narrow corridor, her breath coming in ragged, panicked bursts. This was not her imagination. This was real.

  Out of that train car, onto the gangway. She chanced a look behind herself and saw through the window in the door, a man in a black suit. She couldn’t make out if he had a tattoo, but he was clearly after her. If she kept running, eventually she’d run out of train. Holly climbed the ladder onto the roof of the car that she’d just exited. The wind whipped through her hair and she nearly toppled backwards.

  She crawled along the curved roof of the train car, moving over the narrow windows and vents and gripping the raised edges of the ventilation openings to keep her balance. Night scenes sped past her. Their course had already taken them out of the city. The night was bright. Light from Ixion cast an eerie glow on a portion of the horizon, but the giant planet wasn’t visible. Other moons draped the night in grays and yellows. As Holly moved across the roof, their course took the train into a mountain range. It was blanketed in dense evergreens. A river ran along the gorge through which the tracks traveled. Soon they were passing a lake. The moons glittered off the waters.

  Holly was halfway across the train car when she heard a noise behind her that wasn’t part of the creaking and clanking of the train, that rose above the rush of wind across her ears. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw the man rising over the edge of the compartment.

  She cussed and turned back, hurrying to get away. Something whizzed by her ear—she looked up and caught the moonlight glinting off a blade as it clattered onto the top of the train car, loosing its momentum quickly against the wind.

  A knife! That meant it was likely Shadow Coalition. No one else used knives regularly. But did it mean she was momentarily safe from being shot at?

  The thought of being hit by aether bullets urged her along. The going was slow as she avoided putting her knee through a vent or skylight.

  “Why am I doing this?” She asked herself aloud. “Come on, Holly, come on.”

  A crackling sound passed her ears. It was an aether projectile.

  She looked back at the moron shooting at her. “Really? You want to play it that way?”

  She pulled the Equalizer out of her waistband. With one hand holding white knuckle-tight against a skylight, she angled her body sideways, aimed, and shot back at him. He fumbled and dodged to the side. The violet pulse of energy missed him. She shot again.

  “Is this fun?” She yelled back at him.

  He didn’t answer. She squeezed the trigger again. He dodged again. She briefly considered firing rapidly, but realized her goal wasn’t to watch his face burn in a blast from her gun. She wanted him to stop. She wanted to warn him off.

  Her arm wavered, the gun was heavy and she was tense all over from the strain of the situation and the adrenaline of the danger. She couldn’t hesitate. If he got another chance to shoot at her, he could kill her. He began to rise, like he was going to stand.

  “Fuck,” she said, standing up herself. The wind beat against her back as she faced off with the SC thug. And she knew then, that only one of them was going to make it out of the situation alive.

  EIGHTEEN

  HOLLY didn’t want to be in the middle of a gun fight on the roof off a speeding train—but there were no other options at the moment.

  Though she’d realized that she had to kill or be killed, she still searched for another option. Ways to warn off the thug, a method to get him disarmed, or just off her trail.

  But there was only one trail on the roof of a train car, just as there weren’t many options down below in the train cars.

  She’d hoped to reach the gangway again and move back into the compartment and lose him. She could have hidden in an empty berth.

  But since it didn’t happen in that way, she had to work with what she had at her disposal.

  Shooting at his feet seemed safest, except that if she missed, the aether projectile would take out some of the roof of the train. It was too beautiful to damage, not only that, there was nothing that said her bullets wouldn’t go through the roof and hit a bystander.

  These thoughts rushed through her mind in a matter of seconds. She decided and aimed even as the thug pointed his gun at her. He swayed as the train leaned into a curve. Holly squeezed the trigger before he could shoot her. She knew that her aim was off. But it worked the way she’d been hoping and he wasn’t able to get a shot off on her. She shot again rapidly, but he’d also fired on her. She ducked, hitting the roof of the train car hard, gouging her knee hard against the corner of a skylight.

  When she looked up, he no longer standing thirty feet away from her.

  She cussed, her first thought being that he’d somehow run past her and was behind her. She stood back up, keeping her weight off the hurt knee and looked over her shoulder. He wasn’t behind her either. She looked back where he’d been and heard a scream. It was more precarious to walk along the rooftop standing up, but it was faster as well. She stepped carefully around the skylights and vents and went to where he’d been and peeked over the side. Not there. She checked the other side. He hung on with one hand gripping the raised bevel of a window.

  “Help me!” he cried.

  A pang of fear and pity jolted through her. She dropped to her stomach and reached over, anchoring herself on the raised edge of a skylight.

  This person had tried to kill her. But she couldn’t walk away and leave him to die.

  Holly stretched farther and grabbed him by the wrist.

  “Climb up!” she called.

  The look of panic on his face was replaced with a malicious grin. He swung his other arm up. It still held the aether gun. Holly stared down the barrel. The aether sparked and ignited inside deep inside the barrel. In the dark of night it was clear as a burst of sunlight. She bit her lip. Her life flashed before her eyes . . .

  And she let go.

  The Shadow Coalition thug shrieked as he fell, his body bouncing against the rocks below in the river gorge. The wind ripped the sound away. The silence that followed echoed with a hollow permanence. Holly gasped, trembling everywhere.

  She wasn’t dead, somehow, miraculously, but she wasn’t out of danger’s way. She had to make it back down into the train car.

  The trip across the roof of the train compartment went faster on her feet. With no one on her heels it was easier to focus on keeping her balance. She kept a low center of gravity as she went, retracing her steps rather than heading into the wind. The ladder down onto the gangway was cold against her hands. She was numb. Couldn’t think about what just happened. About how her compassion had almost gotten her killed. Just get into your berth. Lock the door. Don’t come out till you’re in Elan’s town.

  “And Holly?” she said aloud to herself, to overcome the chilling quiet as she opened the door into the compartment. “Trust no one.”

  NINETEEN

  HOLLY stepped out onto the train platform in the small northern town of Rochers Deshiketes. Autumn came ea
rlier in the northern reaches and the morning breeze quivering across her body carried a chill. She inhaled deeply and walked toward the exit. Dawn sunlight glinted off Eau Verte, the nearby lake. As she strode to the street outside the station she watched the fishing vessels sailing across the lake. Their sails were an assortment of brilliant colors—orange, green, yellow, and purple.

  Holly made her way through the streets of the small village to the wharf, found a peddler selling drinks and ordered a coffee. She took a chair at one of the outdoor tables, sipped her drink, and watched the sun rise above the mountains that surrounded the lake and shielded the village from the frigid storms that raged at the pole beyond the chain of towering cliffs.

  The night before, she’d spent the rest of the train ride locked in her berth, not sleeping, waiting anxiously for someone to appear and pound on her cabin door until the window shattered. Though it seemed unlikely that would happen, the situation on the roof of the train cars had unnerved her so much that she knew for a fact that she was never safe. The danger of she’d found herself in, caused her to question her judgment. Should she have brought Odeon? Or Charly?

  Normally that would be Holly’s first thought: bring a friend. Traveling alone was risky and now she knew just how perilous it was. If it had been her to fall to her death off the train, no one would ever know. Her friends would look for her and perhaps never find her, because she’d turned off her comm unit to protect her location.

  God, what am I doing? She asked herself. These decisions, though there was something necessary about them, were also idiotic.

  And yet now, sitting near the lake with the autumnal breeze skipping across its surface and the tranquillity of the setting soaking into her, she began to shed some of her tension. Her crew was far behind her. The rescue mission, a distant concern for the moment. She closed her eyes and sipped her coffee as the sun rose behind her and warmed her through.

  Holly only had a vague idea of where to find Elan. The information Darius had given her was that he lived in the town of Rochers Deshiketes. She could walk up to this house, or she could take this moment to regroup and make sure she was doing the right thing. It was possible that she was making a terrible choice and that she should simply turn around and catch the first train back to the City of Jade Spires.

  What would she even say to him? No, she knew what she’d say. She had always known.

  Around the lake and up the mountains coniferous trees grew. Their foliage was green—some were small, flat needles, others purple and feathery. Holly didn’t know which worlds they originated from, but she knew that they were ideal for the snows that came in winter. Her gaze followed the mix of trees up to the jagged peaks where nothing grew. Soon snows would blanket those craggy features.

  When her gaze came back to the wharf, a Druiviin man stood twenty feet from her, a line full of glistening lake fish dangling from his hands, forgotten. His silvery hair was pulled back into a bun on the crown of his head. What she could see of it suggested that it was longer than it had ever been. He wore a traditional crossed top, tied on the side, with elbow-length, wide sleeves, and shorts that went to his knees. His complexion was darker from being out in the sun on the lake. His eyes were a brilliant, pale lavender, and were currently narrowed and staring at Holly as though in disbelief.

  He’d stopped in his tracks when he saw her, and now he moved toward her, his head bowed, his stride purposeful.

  “Holly,” he breathed when he reached her. “Is it really you?”

  She couldn’t find her voice. It stalled somewhere inside her. She cleared her throat. “Yes,” she croaked. That’s it? Yes? She felt her cheeks redden in embarrassment. She’d figured he’d be on the the lake for the whole day.

  Elan sat down across from her, a faint smile on his lips.

  “You’re here for me?”

  Holly blinked and looked at his feet. He wore sandals. His legs were strong and covered in a fine silvery hair. He said what he thought. During the time that they worked together, their rapport had deepened to the point that Elan didn’t hide much from her.

  “You came back to the city during my trial, but you didn’t come to see me.”

  “Yes,” he said. She looked up at him and he averted his eyes, studying the fish. “One moment.” He rose and jogged back out onto the wharf and disappeared down a side slip. Holly took the time to catch her breath, to clear her thoughts. There was so much noise in her mind about him. Thinking straight was a challenge.

  He returned with a bucketful of water and put the fish it. “I should have done that from the beginning.”

  “Are they dead?”

  “Not yet. This species has evolved to be able to process air, but only long enough to survive drought periods, when the rivers dry up. I don’t want to them to suffer needlessly. Putting them in the water will be good for them. When I get back to my house, I keep them in a small pond.”

  “Until?”

  “Until I’m ready to eat them.” He laughed softly.

  She nodded. “Which world are they from?”

  “Yaso,” he said.

  “How do they taste?” She was stalling.

  “Delicious. I’ll make you some, if you’d like.”

  “That could be nice,” she shrugged.

  His gaze fell to the bag at her feet. “Are you planning to stay a while?”

  “I haven’t decided. But I did come here to find you. I need your help.” She glanced back at the coffee shop. “But first, can I get you something to drink?”

  “Yes,” he said, bowing his head slightly, his lavender eyes never leaving her face. He told her his drink preference, and she went to order it. In Yaso culture, it was traditional for someone to show their interest by offering a drink. She’d learned that during her time with Elan. He’d given her many drinks before she realized that was what he was saying—water, coffee, kasé, wine, beer. There were moments when they laughed together at how long it took for them to figure out that was what they were saying.

  When she returned with his drink, he stood and took it from her, then he brushed both her cheeks with his lips in greeting. “We never did that,” he said. “Thank you for this.”

  He sat back down and together they were silent while he drank his kasé. The sailboats were returning to land and men and women began to fill the wharf. Most of them were human or Constie, but there were a few Druiviin as well.

  “This is more than just a social call, Holly. Do I understand that right?”

  She shifted in her chair and watched his face as she responded. “You have a life here. I envy it. I wouldn’t blame you if what I’m going to ask you to do is not something you want to do at all.”

  “Just tell me what it is, Holly,” he said.

  So she explained what it was she wanted him to do. Go with her to the Ixion base, help get the children off and onto the tanker, and then, once they were back on Kota, she needed someone to manage the children as they found their homes.

  Elan watched her and she returned his scrutiny with her own. His expression darkened at the revelation that there were children being used the way the Shadow Coalition was using them. He asked questions about how this was discovered, why the Centau were doing nothing, what Holly planned to do with the Coalition once she got the children away from them.

  Holly answered his questions as well as she could without committing to something she couldn’t promise.

  “You’re right that I don’t want to leave what I’ve established here.”

  Her hopes sank. “Is there nothing I can say to convince you?”

  “I didn’t say no, Holly.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “When must you know what my choice is?” Elan asked.

  “I have two, perhaps three days before I have to leave.”

  “Does that mean you can stay?” He asked, giving her a sly smile.

  Her stomach did somersaults. “Is there a hotel or an, I don’t know, an inn or something?”

&n
bsp; “There’s a room at my home.”

  “But no inn?”

  “There’s an inn, if that is what you prefer. You know what I prefer.”

  If that was what he preferred, why didn’t he look for her when he was in the city during her trial?

  “When do you need to know what I decide? About where I stay?”

  He smiled. “As long as it takes.”

  TWENTY

  ROCHERS Deshiketes was not a city, it was, rather a village. There were two main streets that crept up into the tree covered foothills and ended against the wall of dense forest. They strolled through the streets that had little auto traffic. Most of the residents walked or rode bicycles. Elan carried the bucket of fish and led her uphill to the second street.

  The residents lived in A-frame homes made of stone and hardwoods that were built around heating pits that contained aether. The pits gave off enough heat to keep the large, three-roomed houses warm in what Holly imagined were brutal winters. The pits were also visually interesting, giving the room a focal point. Elan’s had a deep sofa with faux furs and blankets knit from thick cords of yarn. For one person, his home was large. They walked through it to reach the yard in the back where the pond was that he’d already mentioned. Green fingers extended out of foothill forest around the edge of his yard, giving it privacy.

  There was a small footbridge over the narrow part of the pond. She watched as Elan crouched, removed the lines from the mouths of the fish, and then dumped the water as well as the fish into the pond. They scattered upon hitting the water. Holly laughed.

  “Sometimes I name them,” Elan admitted, rising.

  “And then eat them? Sounds twisted,” Holly said.

  He laughed. “No. In that case I take them back to Eau Verte and set them free. I can’t eat something I’ve bonded with.”

  “So for all you know, you’ve caught the same fish many times?”

  He gave her a look. “I think I would know. Once I’ve grown to love something, I never forget it.”