Steampunk Voyages

by Irene Radford

  Before we’d had a chance to toast and eat a breakfast of purloined bread and eggs, the faint outline of the newly repaired White Swan appeared to the west. We met my ship on the northern shore of the island and were aloft again before the locals had finished feeding their chickens.

  “When is the next Wolf Meeting?” I asked Forbes the moment my bare feet hit the deck.

  “Tomorrow evening. What’s the plan, Captain?” He followed me to my cabin.

  I pulled breeches, shirt, and waistcoat, from my trunk as I spoke. “Call the crew together on the gun deck. All of them. We need consensus before we proceed.”

  He left me to change out of the hideous calico gown. When I strode purposefully—and decently clothed—onto the open space lined with cannon and the butt ends of the three dragons, twenty-five men and women waited. The five engine crew, with their grease-stained overalls and faces, and with tools poking out of every pocket, shifted their feet uneasily. They knew engines, not the politics of piracy.

  The twelve gunners didn’t care about politics either, as long as they got to shoot something.

  Forbes and the other two dragon pilots had the bright-eyed expressions of children on Christmas morning. They wanted to fly. So did I. But I was the captain. I couldn’t afford to indulge in the soaring freedom only a dragon could offer a human. I had a different job, a more dangerous one.

  I told them what I had seen and what it meant.

  “Automata!” Jimmy spat.

  They muttered among themselves in anger, fear, and dismay.

  I caught and held the gaze of each one of them in turn. Every one of them nodded in response, the fire of a just cause lighting their eyes.

  “Sir George needs more ships, sea and air, to make good on his deal to send wheat to Russia. He’ll confiscate every independent vessel he can find, including the White Swan. He’ll make slaves of the valley farmers and destroy us. If we fight him and lose, he’ll murder us and them, one and all. He’s got metalmen to do the work. Metalmen who have no will.” I let that statement echo against the bulkheads. “How many of you did I rescue from Chinese or Turkish slavers? How many of you send money to buy the freedom of your loved ones?”

  “How many of you are tired of pirating and want to buy land in the valley?” Jimmy asked quietly.

  I reared my head up. Unspoken questions passed between us. Few pirates lived long enough to retire. Few men with dreams of farms chose the pirate way of life.

  But my crew?

  I wanted the best for them. We were family, after all. Many of us had been together for twenty years or more. I’d taken Jimmy on as a cabin boy when he was only ten—after rescuing him from slavery. He’d almost lost his entire family to privations imposed upon them by Chinese masters. We had all helped him rescue that family. I’d never asked him what he wanted when he grew up.

  I guess now I knew.

  “Are you willing to fight for your dreams, Jimmy?”

  He nodded.

  “And the rest of you? You have dreams, too. You know in your hearts that men like Sir George kill dreams. For you and for the settlers. I say we take a stand here. We stop men like Sir George from taking our dreams. Are all of you with me?”

  “Aye, Captain!” Jimmy said.

  “Aye aye, Captain!” Forbes echoed.

  “Aye aye, Captain!” the crew joined in.

  I loosed our undulating battle cry. They picked it up and shouted it with rousing determination until the hull vibrated in rhythm with our song.

  I turned and exited decisively, my boot heels catching and echoing our chant.

  I waited until dusk masked the near-silent descent of the White Swan.

  A fine night for pirating, with a half moon to guide us and no rain to impede us.

  An ISSLP cruiser landed across the river only half an hour after us. They came furtively from the west with muffled engines. I would not have known they had come if I hadn’t been looking for them with enhanced magnifiers over my goggles. They shipped a dozen men (automata was my guess, considering what I’d seen in the shed two nights ago) by canoe to the town boat landing.

  Only twelve. Twelve additional votes against formation of a local government independent of the Company. Did Doc Newell have enough supporters to carry his vote over the newcomers?

  The men of French Prairie wound their way by ones and twos from their homes through the streets of the town. At each intersection, their numbers increased. Many of the additions walked jerkily, without grace, like sailors too long at sea suddenly dumped on land—or automata that had not yet learned a smooth gait.

  I counted and recounted the men as they gathered at the home of William Gray on the ridge above the boat landing. They shifted and moved too frequently for me or anyone else to get an accurate count. Sir George must have planned on confusion to carry the vote against the settlers.

  Time to move in and even the odds.

  Forbes and six of our best fighting men scrambled over the quarterdeck. I led Jimmy and five others—charming talkers rather than fighters—over the starboard side just aft of the gangplank portal.

  The Kinematic Galvatron vibrated with contained energy within the cradle of my arms. The steam chamber felt hot through my leather gauntlets. Not until I reached the ground did I disconnect the steam hose. I loosed the purple Yuenon crystal from the slip knot on its thong, holding it ready to slip into The Gonne. When the time was right. Not yet. Not until I had a target in my sights.

  “How many men have gathered?” I whispered to Jimmy as we trod softly across the meadow.

  “Hard to say. At least a hundred.” He peered through the night lens of his telescope. “They’re spilling out of the house into the yard. Lots of knotted fists and waving arms.” We heard the anger in their voices from half a mile distance. Jimmy bit his lip, but kept his eye trained on our target.

  “Halt!” a strange voice called into the night. It sounded odd, tinny, half-strangled.

  Cautiously we froze in place, each of us scanning a prearranged section of the ground around us.

  Silvery moonlight glinted off half a dozen rifle barrels and revealed the outlines of an equal number of men. They stood widely spaced in a semi-circle between us and the meeting.

  A whisper of sound to my left told me that Forbes and his men had circled behind our opponents. I needed them to continue on to the meeting, to identify interlopers and remove them.

  “Who are you to question me?” I shifted The Gonne to the ready.

  “You have no invitation,” one of the men said with little inflection.

  A light breeze pushed at his hat. I caught glimpses of hollow cheeks above a shaved face. The shape of the chin and the rigid spine told me that I face a John Junior replica.

  “Sorry. Didn’t know we needed permission,” I said, slipping the crystal into place and easing the muzzle of my Gonne toward him. A satisfying hum vibrated against my hands.

  “Your weapons are useless against me and my kind,” he stated. “But ours will rip your flesh from the bone.” He raised his rifle.

  I fired point blank. A narrow line of bright purple fire burst from the muzzle. I swept the weapon right and left, raking the enemy. A rifle exploded from the last man on my right. I dove to the ground and fired another round at the shooter and his closest companion. It took out both of them with one shot. Their heads lolled at weird angles.

  False Junior bent awkwardly, firing his weapon randomly. He’d caught the full brunt of the ray in his chest. Fabric flamed. Leather skin fried. The acrid scent of singed metal filled the moist night air.

  Only one shot remained. I fired where I’d seen the last three. The purple ray looked dim, less powerful. One more automaton stopped dead in its tracks. Metal joints locked in place. The other two kept coming.

  Jimmy slammed the butt of his conventional rifle into the neck joint of one. The head jerked forward and back, loosened from its support.

  Two of my crew jumped behind the final menace. It slammed a metal fist
into one man’s gut. The other crewman received a kick to the groin. Now neither of my men could rise to walk, let alone fight. The automaton ran into the darkness toward the meeting on the ridge.

  I heard the clank of its metal joints and gears.

  My breath wheezed through labouring lungs as I let loose air I’d been holding. No time to linger. Awkwardly I scrambled to my feet.

  “Now what?” Jimmy stared at the now useless Gonne in my hands.

  Four automata down. I’d seen twelve disembark. One had run to alert his fellows.

  “Give me your flask, Jimmy,” I demanded.

  “My rum? You want to drink now? Use your own.”

  I snapped my fingers in impatience. He reluctantly pulled his narrow flask from the chain at his belt. I bit off the top and spat it onto the ground.

  Jimmy whimpered and went to his knees, feeling for the chased silver cap.

  The tiny ember inside the fuel chamber flared when the rum hit it.

  Shouts of anger pierced the night.

  I tapped my foot anxiously as I added my own rum to the flame. Then I stuffed gun cotton into the chamber.

  The Yuenon crystal emitted a high-pitched hum as it gathered energy. More cries and the thud of fists hitting flesh drowned out the sound of my Gonne powering up.

  I bounded into the courtyard ahead of my men, landing next to short and wiry Joe Meek. A scowl marred his usually merry face. John Junior was nowhere in sight.

  All around us milling men yelled with fists raised and murder in their eyes. Everyone shouted louder to be heard above the increasing racket.

  The Gonne still whined, demanding more fuel.

  “What’s happening?” I asked Joe, hoping he heard me over the ruckus.

  His eyes widened as he spotted the Kinematric Galvatron. A low whistle erupted through the gap in his front teeth. “Babcock just called for a vote. Can’t tell the fers from the aginsts.”

  “We need laws, a government of our own. Not Sir George!” Doc Newell’s voice pierced through the cacophony.

  “Aye, the time’s come.” Joe spat into the ground.

  “Call for the divide, Joe. Call them all out here, make the ayes stand to the right and the nays to the left. Then count them each and every one. And know who you count, and that you only count the same man once,” I yelled over the growing din.

  He looked at my weapon, then gave a curt nod and stepped as close to the doorway as he could get. With a grin, he raised two fingers to his mouth and blew. The sharp whistle made more than a few men cringe. Others clapped hands to ears and turned immobile, near frozen in place, eyes staring blankly. Glass eyes. Each with a different face.

  John Junior and his twins must be the enforcers, to keep strangers like me out. They had intelligence, more sophisticated codices, I’d bet. These automata were the additional voters. Sir George must be very confident of the outcome if he needed only seven to sway the vote.

  The humans kept on arguing.

  I cleared my throat and let the shrill battle cry ripple upward. My crew picked it up and added menace to the chant.

  The crowd stilled, wary and alert. Hands strayed toward weapons. They hunched their shoulders and steadied their feet, ready to fight or flee.

  With a grin at Joe, I stepped back.

  “I call for the divide,” Joe shouted in a stentorian voice that belied his bandy frame.

  “Done!” Doc Newell agreed.

  Over one hundred men marched out of the square plank house. They lined up on either side of the yard. The ones on the right wore calico shirts and canvas pants with slouch hats. A few sported coats and waistcoats finer than their neighbours’. They all looked grim, but determined to control their destiny.

  On the left, I noted an abundance of red bonnets. Hard to say which line was longer.

  I liberated a flask—bigger than mine and Jimmy’s combined—from Joe Meek’s hip pocket and poured the contents into the Kinematic Galvatron. The whine amplified. It wound up the scale to higher and higher tones.

  Seven men on the left stiffened, jerked, and bent double. Joe looked to me for explanation. I whispered a few words to him.

  John Junior lingered behind his men, fully upright and aware, untouched by the codex-scrambling whine of my Gonne.

  “See that!” Joe chortled. “See the metalmen Sir George sent to swing the vote his way. That’s what’s going to happen if we don’t do something to get organised. We need laws and officials to keep these unnatural beasts out of our Oregon. If we do nothing, we run the risk of Sir George or others of his kind imposing their laws on us. I say we make our own laws. Laws we can live with. Laws that benefit us and not some dandy sitting in London, reaping profits from our labours.”

  Three men ripped off their red bonnets. They were middle aged, with greying hair and wizened lines about their eyes and mouths from too many years in the sun, too many winters spent trapping beaver in hostile weather.

  “I, Francis Xavier Mattieu, know Sir George to be treacherous,” the first said. “But I did not believe he would do this to the men who have served him well over the years. I change my vote.” He limped across the open yard from left to right, nay to yay.

  Two more men followed his example. I shook the hands of Étienne Lucier and Joseph Gervais as they joined the ranks of the free settlers.

  John Junior faded away into the darkness. I hoped—prayed—that Forbes and his men could stop him from reporting to Sir George.

  “Thank you, Captain Romanz,” Doc Newell whispered to me as Joe Meek walked up and down the two lines, counting and recording names. He peered cautiously into the eyes of each man, making sure none were made of glass.

  The Gonne had stopped whining. It rested hot and heavy in my arms, ready to fire at my command. I levelled it in the direction of the metalmen, who stirred and moved upright with jerky, disrupted movements.

  Jimmy and the crew pushed them backward until they fell, useless limbs flailing. They croaked out a single word, “Nay,” the only word allowed in their codex cards.

  “You ain’t got names. You ain’t got land claims.” Joe kicked each one aside, not recording their votes.

  One by one they fought back to their feet, obeying the command in their codices. “Nay,” they said again.

  I mowed them all down with three short bursts of energy. As the purple sparkles settled and singed the weeds in the packed dirt, Doc Newell applauded. Joe followed suit, as did Mattieu, Lucier, Gervais, and forty-seven more.

  I bowed grandly to them.

  “Fifty-two for making our own government. Fifty against! The motion carries,” Joe proclaimed to one and all.

  A great cheer rang around the yard.

  “Busted my back and my heart carving a home out of the wilderness just so’s I wouldn’t have to put up with laws and taxes and govamint’s sticking their nose in my biznis,” a brawny man of middling years grumbled. “Soon’s I get a decent offer on my land, I’m leaving. Heading south, I reckon.”

  “Cain’t sell without a deed an’ a govamint to record it,” Joe said to his retreating back.

  The other men on the left side melted away, grumbling and uncertain.

  “Will you be settling here, Captain?” Newell asked. “We won’t be able to use Company bateaux anymore. So I guess we need an independent shipper to take our produce to markets.”

  I had to think about that. For about two heartbeats.

  John Junior was still out there, still able to report to Sir George, who could yet make a lot of trouble for me, especially if he knew where to find me and how to hurt friends and neighbours.

  “Not yet. The hiss of boilers, the clank of gears, and the wide open skies still call me. I need to fly where fate and the winds take me.”

  Introduction: Night Dancer

  And now a preview of Night Dancer, coming in 2015 from DAW Books, a new Steampunk novel by ghost writer Julia Verne St. John. These further adventures of Madame Magdala revolve around the coronation of Queen Victoria in June 18
38, the time many designate as the true beginning of Steampunk.

  Night Dancer

  Julia Verne St. John

  Prologue

  Burgage Manor, Southwell, Nottinghamshire, Autumn 1824

  “Miss Elize Vollans, nanny for three children in the household of Baroness Von Gutenberg…” Anna Isabella, Lady Byron and Baroness Wentworth read the last item on my letter of reference out loud.

  She didn’t need to know that I had left the Von Gutenberg household after three weeks when I’d learned what I needed to from her husband’s aetheric-powered Leyden jar experiments.

  “Your credentials are interesting, Miss Elise.” Lady Byron looked down her long nose and formed her mouth into a prim moue.

  Those references should be interesting, if not impressive. I’d created them specifically to… intrigue her. If not the whole truth, they did brush facts occasionally.

  I stood before her, tall and straight, my blonde hair braided and twisted into a stylish chignon, my dress and jacket suitably modest and as severe of cut as I could manage, though I hated the tiny pin tucks considered proper for a woman of my station. Silk would be better for my blouse, instead of the new cotton from Egypt, made cheaply by the advances in steam power to the separating gin. No governess applying for a new position would wear white Chantilly lace and pink silk roses.

  The poet’s widow had to look up, way up, from her perch on the edge of the threadbare satin sofa to engage my gaze.

  Today I needed her aware of just how formidable my raw-boned Teutonic frame could be. I stood half a head taller than many men and could lift my own weight when I had to.

  “I have never met this woman who pens this letter, Mary Godwin Dessins,” she said, not at all intimidated. She snapped the paper of my carefully constructed resume with disdain.

  “You have heard of Mme Dessins though.” I kept my gaze firmly planted on hers. Neither of us flinched. This could be an… interesting relationship.

  She nodded briskly, once. “I know her father preached free love . . . .” Lady Byron swallowed deeply at the acrid taste in her mouth. “And my deceased husband and his comrades followed his . . . philosophy.”