At this distance the three could not actually see the slithering abomination, but they all saw the tell-tale shimmer it left in its wake. Like a heat mirage, the very air around the Deity or any of its accursed lesser forms rippled as the beast imposed its own warped reality onto the world of man. The horror’s presence was also announced by the giant, fully enclosed and armored steam wagon near the derailed train, and the fact that all of the Royal Guard gave the shimmering spot next to the wreckage a wide berth. While the thing was worshipped like a god, none dared to get too close to it or its spawn unless first beckoned forth.
“They brought it in to investigate the killing of one of its kin” Vonner said. He then added with a notable treble of fear in his voice, “I’ve heard it said that the Enemy can see backwards in time, to witness events as they happened.”
“You tell us such things now?” Raghubir.
“Well it’s only a rumor,” Vonner said sheepishly.
“It does not matter” Langham said. “Would either of you have done things differently last night?”
The others shook their heads.
“This only tells us what we already know; there’s no going back. It is do or die.”
Vonner hmphed and said, “Do and die, more likely.” He then added a wry chuckle to let the others know that he was joking. Or at least, that he hoped he was joking.
A few miles outside of Taunton, where the three would disembark from their steam carriage to board a train heading to London, they saw the Taunton Detainment Camp. Or as everyone really knew it to be, but few dared to accurately name it as such, the Taunton Death Camp. It was an affront to all things living and natural, a blemish of barbed wire and walking monstrosities, both those crafted by man out of metal, and those formed out of twisted flesh by The Deity. It was where Her Majesty’s army traded in their bloody red uniforms for black garb. A bit of honesty in a world of lies that reflected they were no longer proud soldiers with honor, but simply men of death. They were undertakers whose charges still had pulses, if only for a little while.
In the center of the camp, past the gates, the hissing and clanking automatons, the towers with their incinerators and steam-spun auto-guns, the creeping, twisted nightmares birthed from alien matter to act as guard dogs, and all the roughhewn shacks used to temporarily house England’s undesirables, was one of the damnable god’s temples.
It was a long, foreboding structure of gray stone adorned with grotesque bas-reliefs and utterly alien gargoyles of The Deity’s kith and kin from beyond the stars. There were no windows and only two large, vault-like doors at the building’s front. From time to time the Deity would come to the Taunton camp’s temple by way of its own incomprehensible form of conveyance. It was well known that the thing could slither between time and space, simply appearing wherever and whenever it desired.
It came to such places because every two weeks or so the Deity could spawn a smaller, weaker copy of itself. While just shadows of their progenitor, each spawn was a capable and powerful horror in their own right. These facets were then shipped to all parts of the Empire, as they themselves lacked the ability to instantly travel like The Deity. Once there they were made Regent Lords of the lands safely under the boot of Britain. But the spawning of the facets required lots of raw materials to accomplish.
As The Deity was not of Earth, it had required existing organic matter to create a body for itself, and so it required more to create copies of itself. This meant that the poor, sick, old, foreign, criminal, or just the unwanted men, women, and even children of the Empire were sent to the camps to provide the raw organic material the Deity needed to create new abominations.
There were eight such camps spread all throughout the Empire. The Deity would visit each camp infrequently so that more raw materials could be gathered for when next it returned. Further, the camps it traveled to appeared to be chosen at random, in an attempt to keep the alien god’s location a secret to any enemy of the Empire. However, there was one place and one time The Deity was guaranteed to be, and that was at its wedding in London in two days.
Got you, you son of a bitch. Langham thought and smiled with grim determination. Then another thought came to him as they drove past the death camp, one that turned his grin into a frown. Lizzy, did you end up here? Taunton was the first camp to open and where the Enemy first spawned a facet of itself. Did I set you on a path to becoming part of that damnable thing?
Langham’s dark musings were interrupted when Raghubir announced that the train station was in sight.
No time for that, must focus on the mission, Jeffery Langham told himself. Everything has got to be perfect or else all of the world will soon be a death camp.
***
Two days later and Sir Jeffery Langham walked up the steps of Westminster Abbey and in all his life he had never been more afraid. Dressed in his best, he reached into his coat to produce his invitation to the wedding and prepared to show it to the young captain of the guard who was checking them against the guest list. Only then would he know if the devil spawn that had been inspecting the train wreckage days earlier could truly see back in time and witness him and his allies in action.
The young man took Langham’s invitation without a word and ran his eyes over the list on his clipboard. The fact that the lad was only in his mid-twenties and already a captain spoke to the high turnover, or as he heard it, mortality rate, of Her Majesty’s Royal Guard. Just what happened to all those faithful soldiers? Langham thought as the young man handed him back his invitation and grunted, ‘Thank you, sir.’
Stepping into the Abbey, Langham was literally awestruck by its size and beauty. He had never been inside the massive edifice before, and he only wished his first time doing so was under better circumstances. He had been a young officer himself in India when Queen Victoria had been coroneted here and so had missed the whole affair. He had attended the Queen’s first wedding, her only real wedding in Langham’s mind, but that had taken place at St. James’s Palace.
At least she had the good sense not to sully the memory of that righteous union with this grotesque travesty, he thought as he stared up at the high vaulted ceiling. He looked to be studying the amazing architecture but in truth he was looking for the second floor over the south aisle. There, far in the back, was a corner of the open aisle way that was roped off. It wasn’t one the of places reserved for the truly important people, for they would all be up front, close to Queen Victoria and the abomination she was to wed. No, Vonner had said he had a man inside the Abbey who would keep that area clear under the guise that it was too weak to hold multiple people and needed repair. It looked like the doctor’s friend had not disappointed. Now Langham only hoped that the unknown accomplice had also hidden the case with the rifle in it up there as well.
Langham made his way up the stairs and then surreptitiously passed the warning ropes into the back corner of the cordoned off second floor. After a few minutes of searching, he found the rifle in its case where Vonner told him it would be and set to assembling it. The weapon of their salvation was divided in four parts. Two pieces went together to form the actual rifle. A third was Doctor Vonner’s amazingly accurate clockwork scope. The last was equally astonishing and would give the rifle the kick it needed to get the job done; a small boiler and burner, each about the size of a man’s fist, that attached to the side of the rifle. That contraption is what turned the normal military rifle into, what Vonner had described as “a shoulder-fired cannon.”
From his jacket, Langham produced a silver flask and poured clear water from it into the boiler. He then struck a match to light the tiny burner and then checked his watch. It was less than fifteen minutes until the start of the ceremony and the boiler need at least ten minutes to build up optimal pressure. That was cutting things close, and Langham hoped that his two friends were doing better than he was.
He set the rifle down to give it time to heat up. He took the single bullet out of the gun’s case and palmed it. There was only one
shot, because he would only get one. Once the pressure was released by the rifle’s firing, it would take another ten minutes to build back up. By then they would be either victorious or dead.
Or perhaps Vonner was right, and we’ll be both, he thought.
Ten minutes later, Langham checked the rifle’s tiny pressure gauge and saw that it was full. There was no safety release valve on the boiler as such a thing might draw unwanted attention to the weapon before it was ready to fire. That meant the rifle was now essentially a high-pressured bomb that Langham would have to bring close to his face to shoot. He turned down the heat in the burner, but not all the way off, less something unexpected held up the proceedings and the gun start to lose pressure.
A few moments later and he heard the organ begin to play. He chanced a peek over the railing at the action below and saw Queen Victoria slowly walking down the aisle, the incredibly long train of her wedding dress trailing behind her.
So she was to arrive first, he thought. She would have to stand and wait so that the Enemy could make the grand entrance.
“Oh how you have fallen, my Queen” Langham whispered as he rested a hand on the nearby steaming rifle.
Once Queen Victoria was in place, a large open area next to her began to shimmer. The Deity that had no business in a house of God was coming to The Abbey.
Many in the packed crowd oohed and ahhed as a translucent form started to solidify. For most, this would be their first and only time to see the thing they now worshipped so completely. As the pulsating, gelatinous horror began to take shape, whispers and gasps began to be heard in the church and the people began to move back in unison from the arriving abomination. No one in the crowd would scream in horror, even though many wanted to. None would turn to run, even as their minds begged them to do so. None would even dare to look away, for they all new the price of such disrespect towards the true lord and master of the Empire on which the sun never set.
Then in one insane instant, The Deity was among them. A twisted snake-like mass of rubbery gray flesh, its lumbering, blue-veined form lay covered in ebony tentacles and black, globe-shaped eyes. The eyes blinked as one as it surveyed the crowd. It hissed ammonia and a vertical gash formed in its middle, split open to let a cascade of slime drool out. The maw was filled with jagged white teeth, a purple tongue lolling in the blackness behind it. Acting as its mouth, it had no need to speak.
I AM HERE.
Those three words buzzed into everyone’s head at the same time and stung their minds as surly as if they had been hornets.
One of the Deity’s ebony tentacles snaked out, reaching for Queen Victoria, who took it in her hands and pressed the slimy appendage to her bosom. She looked at the lumpy monstrosity at her side, her watering eyes locking onto one of the beast’s obsidian orbs, and she blushed like a young girl.
I’ve heard that the Enemy has the power to cloud people’s minds, Langham thought as he picked up the steam rifle. It can appear as whomever or whatever it wishes. Is that why the Queen looks at the hideous creature so wantonly? If this is the case, why does the horror not appear glorious and beatific to everyone at all times? If it’s playing at being her dead husband Albert, or God, why not look the part? Does it like the revulsion it sews in others? Can it affect the mind of only one person at a time? Or dear God, could the Queen actually see the revolting mass of tumorous flesh as it truly is and yet still desire the unholy thing?
It doesn’t matter, he chided himself, focus on the task at hand. Find your target, soldier.
Langham brought the rifle up to his shoulder. The heat from the boiler was intense and his face immediately broke out in sweat and he looked through the clicking, ticking scope.
As the horror sloshed closer to the Queen, the shimmer of its unnaturalness blurred her image. One moment there was a single Victoria, the next close to half a dozen. Shooting at such a chaotic mess would have been impossible, if not for Doctor’s Vonner’s amazing scope. The clever little man had studied the thing’s facets for months and devised a tube of several lenses of various thicknesses, all slowly rotating, some clockwise, others counter clockwise. This feat of technical wizardry afforded Langham a clear image of his target; the Queen’s royal head.
The other problem that had to be overcome was the reality warping field itself. Four months ago a brave Prussian man somehow figured out where The Deity was going to be and stepped out of a crowd to shoot it with a newly designed automatic sidearm. Over thirty rounds were fired, but each and every bullet veered off course when they got close to the horror. The would be assassin then met a gruesome end when the alien thing literally turned the man inside out with a glance from one of its many baleful eyes.
That bloody day was the reason for the tiny, boiling steam engine mounted to the side of the rifle. Vonner theorized that with enough velocity a bullet could make it through the Enemy’s shimmering wall of unreality and stay on course.
I hope you’re right, doctor, Langham thought as he touched his finger to the weapon’s trigger.
Suddenly a gunshot rang out in the church, but it had not come from his rifle.
Langham pulled his eye from the scope and looked over the edge of the railing to see Raghubir cutting a bloody swath through the guests below. Something must have gone wrong. The brave Sikh warrior was meant to get as close to the Enemy as possible before triggering his explosive vest. Instead he was slowly making his way towards the Queen and her beloved abomination with his curved Kirpan knife in one hand and a .450 Adams revolver in the other. He was still forty yards away, too far for the bomb that he wore to do any good.
STOP HIM.
Those words were roughly forced into the heads of everyone inside the Abbey and those nearest to the Sikh obeyed at once. Langham watched as both fancy dressed guests and crimson-clad guards threw themselves at Raghubir and stepped between him and their foul lord. Langham knew that his friend was mighty, but that sheer numbers would keep him from getting any closer to the alien atrocity.
“Damn it,” Langham whispered as he returned to the rifle, determined to fulfill his end of the mission. He looked through the clockwork scope, centered the crosshairs on the still smiling face of Queen Victoria, and gently squeezed the trigger. The rifle did not BANG but instead let out a high pressured jet of steam with a loud toot reminiscent of a train whistle. It was a completely unnecessary sound, but one that had suited Doctor Vonner’s weird sense of humor. That the heavy bullet was able to rip through the shimmering air and turn the monarch’s head into an explosion of blood, bone, and gray matter was a testament to his genius.
Langham dropped the now useless weapon, stood up and ran from his secluded spot on the second floor as chaos filled Westminster Abbey. People started to scream, some fainted, others stampeded for the exits. There were three more gunshots, two Langham recognized as pistol cracks, the third was a much louder rifle shot. None of his friends had a rifle, and as he continued to run down the second floor hall shouting, “In the name of the Queen, get out of the way” to part the panicked wedding guests before him, he wondered if he had just lost his loyal friend, Raghubir
WHO DARES TAKE MY BRIDE FROM ME! The Enemy bellowed in its awful mind-speech. The power of that psychic blow was such that for a brief moment everyone in the Abbey was stunned and a moment of calm returned.
The silence was quickly shattered when Langham heard the familiar accented voice of Doctor Vonner shout, “For the good of all mankind!” Then there came a thunderous explosion, quickly followed by the return of the screams.
Langham stopped to look over the railing and below him he saw a smoking circle of mangled and twitching bodies twenty feet from the loathsome horror. Once again the thing’s curtain of shimmering energy had saved it from certain death, but not completely from harm. Langham saw the Deity shuddering and crawling away, leaving a pool of blackish ichor behind from several weeping wounds. The silver from the doctor’s explosive vest had proven effective, he had just been too far away for it to be fatal
.
Langham saw that the Enemy was slouching in his direction and that it was going to pass underneath him at any moment.
TO ME…MY GUARDS…YOUR GOD COMMANDS IT.
This time, the buzzing voice had not been so booming.
Langham climbed up and stood on the second floor railing, using a nearby column for balance. He reached a hand inside his jacket and found the ripcord that would trigger his own explosive vest, the one he had worn just in case. He looked down to see that the monstrosity’s slithering bulk was now directly below him and that one of its alien eyes was fixed upon him. He took a moment to think of his wife and his two dear friends, of the lovely lady thief Lizzy he had sent to her death, and those on the train who had died as a result of his actions. He even thought of Queen Victoria in better times, before she became a puppet for an obscenity.
Then he jumped, and once he passed through the Enemy’s shimmering curtain and was just inches from landing on the creature, he pulled his cord.
***
Epilogue
Three weeks later and the Empire was crumbling.
Upon the death of The Deity, all of its facets also perished. They simply could not exist without their progenitor. That combined with the murder of Queen Victoria meant that all of the countries once soundly in the palm of Britannia took advantage of the chaos to stage their long planned revolts. India was now in flames, Canada had seceded, Egypt was completely lost, and there was civil war in Australia. The Empire on which the sun never sets was shattered and all was lost.
Or so many thought, but not Lord Havendish. He had not escaped the sacrilegious regicidal massacre at Westminster Abbey by chance. It had been divine intervention, of that he was certain. As The Treader of Stars returned to whence it came, slowly dissolving away into hunks of rotting flesh and a pool of sludge, it spoke to him once last time as he fled the carnage.
Steampunk Cthulhu: Mythos Terror in the Age of Steam Page 25