The existence of the Frankenstein Estate was not a secret, of course, but it was so remote and inaccessible that it might as well have been a distant country; and, because Shelley Mary had not revealed Cerval’s real identity – at least not to Smokies at large – Paulina could not know that the estate and the Incorruptibles were inextricably connected. But it was simple enough to deduce from the fact that Alaina had admitted she couldn’t communicate with Cerval because she had no karriers, that Cerval’s base must be a considerable distance from the centre of The Smoke.
“Is he on the outskirts?” she asked. “Of The Smoke?”
“Much further,” Alaina admitted uneasily.
“You have to fly there?”
Alaina hesitated, but eventually said in small voice: “Yes.”
Now Paulina’s circle came to the rescue once more, for Josephine D. Bader was an inner member, one well-known to Paulina. With Alaina, she sought out that slight and wiry pilot. Perhaps, thought Paulina, she might in her travels have seen some clue as to where Cerval and the Incorruptibles might be found.
Josephine D. Bader was a tougher subject than Alaina to interview. Like everyone else who harboured seditious views, she was careful about what she said and to whom. She had never met Alaina and did not know even know her name; but she had, in the end, to acknowledge that only someone known to the Incorruptibles could know as much as Alaina did. But she also knew that the devastating crackdown in the Marshes would inevitably be followed by more violence. More deaths. Joesphine did not want that on her conscience and eventually told Paulina that she could take her to Cerval. Deliver her personally.
“But I’m working with Cerval’s smallest PAV. I can only take you.” Paulina had a moment of suspicion. What guarantee was there that the tiny pilot would take her to Cerval rather than deliver her to the Commission, the Silencios or Rolf-Adolf Thriel?
In the end, the urgency of the situation and the fear for their own futures – added to Alaina’s desperate plea for their help to free Ricardo – over-rode the risks. At the last moment, however, Paulina Ellamova changed the plan.
“She’ll go,” she said to Josephine, indicating Alaina. Alaina gave her a sharp look. Like all Cerval’s recruits, she was tough and independent and did not appreciate the command that “she’ll go” implied. Paulina picked up on the look and continued smoothly. “You’re an Incorruptible. I’m not. He might suspect me, and every moment lost is dangerous, for your brother and for Dalton. Besides,” she smiled, “you’re tiny. The lighter the load the faster the flight, right?’
“Right,” said Josephine and, jerking her head at Alaina, “let’s go.”
“What will you do?” Alaina asked Paulina.
“I’ll think of something.”
Josephine steered Alaina away, hustling her quickly towards the aerodock. Alaina turned back once, to see Paulina moving away fast. She was soon out of sight.
oOo
26
FOREWARNED, THE AERODOCK’S LAUNCH COMMANDER had Josephine’s tiny P.A.V. hooked up to the steam RTP winder when Josephine and Alaina arrived. Alaina took one look at the dart-like, flimsy machine – so light that it seemed the winder would overturn it despite the anchor lines and chocks – and turned to Josephine, suddenly pale.
“I can’t fly in that!” she whispered. Josephine gave her an unfathomable look, which Alaina interpreted as a touch scornful. “I mean,” she continued, “I’ve never been up before. I… I… I’ve seen The Devil, of course, but that’s gigantic compared to this thing.”
“Size doesn’t count,” said Josephine dryly. “If you’ve got a message for Cerval, this is your only shot.” Alaina approached the little P.A.V. and reached out to touch its flimsy fabric skin, as she would gentle a wild animal. Josephine continued: “Or do you expect me to deliver for you?”
“No. No. I should be the one.”
“Then let’s do it.” Josephine lifted the canopy and indicated the padded passenger seat. “Strap in.” She nodded to the ground crew commander. “Ready?”
“Nearly there,” said the commander, checking the RTP tension and slowing the winder right down so that the P.A.V.’s paddle-prop was barely turning.
Josephine walked around the aircraft, checking the fabric and the control surfaces, conducting her formal pre-flight checks. Then, as the commander turned to her launch crew and prepared to terminate the winding process, she climbed into the cockpit and pulled the safety straps tight. The steam winder’s powerful pistons halted and the commander’s voice boomed its command:
“Disengage and prepare to pull.” The winder claws disengaged and the crew manoeuvred the P.A.V. into launch position. Through the windshield and over Josephine Bader’s shoulder, Alaina saw the aerodock swing right to left, until she was gazing down the long tar-and-gravel runway.
“Chocks away!” the commander barked, and Alaina felt the P.A.V. quiver as she freed the oversize bouncy wheels. Now all that held the craft in place was the ground crew. The moment the commander gave them the word, they’d release their hold and the craft would accelerate, lift off and soar away over the city.
Everyone was so focussed on the critical procedure that they did not look up into the thick skies above The Smoke, where a tiny silver glint intermittently penetrated the filthy gloom.
The ground crew commander stepped to one side, looking directly at Josephine, ensuring that they were in full eye contact. She raised her hands high above her shoulders and waited. Josephine ran rapidly ran through the take-off procedures in her head and then signalled that she was set to go. Slowly, the commander lowered her hands and then aligned herself with the runway so that she was pointed in exactly the same direction as the P.A.V., her perspective exactly what Josephine would see through the windshield if her eyes were not fixed on the commander.
The commander knelt, a slow, steady movement, her arms at her sides. Then, never losing the rhythm of her actions, a calm and predictable rhythm, she thrust both hands forward, pointing down the runway. At that instant, Josephine began to heave back on prop-paddle release.
A beat later, the ground crew should have released the aircraft.
Instead, a squad of black cop karts burst onto the scene, cops bristling with Ximans.
“Down on the fucking ground!” came the screamed order, but the crew was so attuned to the launch commander that it hesitated to obey.
“Get out of my fucking aerodock!” she bellowed at the intruders – but they simply opened up, taking out two of the crew immediately. The commander yelled at Josephine:
“Go! Go! Go!” and sprang to the P.A.V.’s tail. Josephine heaved the paddle-release lever right back and the big paddle began to turn, just as the commander grabbed the lightweight aircraft’s tail and stabilised it.
“On the fucking ground!” screamed the intruders but they in turn were so fixed on their target that they didn’t see what the commander could: a handful of albino pit ponies, plaited leather reins and ReForTin saddles, pink-tinted blinkers shielding their eyes from the unaccustomed light. On each, a silent, determined woman armed with a stubby ReForTin crossbow. Led, of course, by Paulina Ellamova.
On her order the crossbows fired, their short polished metal bolts flashing through the air, each one bringing down a Ximan gunner.
The intervention allowed the commander to hold the aircraft back while the paddle-prop built its momentum. The moment she felt the power surging, she released the little PAV but one dying Ximan gunner, writhing on the ground, crossbow bolt protruding from his throat, tried to riddle the PAV and hit the commander instead. She fell to the ground, shredded flesh and blood.
Josephine knew that she didn’t have optimum airspeed but understood that if she didn’t get the PAV off the ground right now, it might never fly. She hauled back on the hi-lo and felt the lightweight craft lift off.
Thank Dufus we’re both tiny! she thought to herself even as a slug holed the fabric, passing just above her legs.
Alaina screamed as a secon
d slug tore a furrow through the flesh of her upper arm. “I’m all right, I’m all right!” Alaina shouted, staunching the blood with her other hand, twisted around to see that Paulina’s cavalry had prevailed, and that Paulina herself was holding her crossbow high in the air, a farewell salute to the steeply climbing little PAV.
The Smoke dropped away as the ascent continued.
But seconds later, another set of Ximans opened up – their lethal chattering far too close to be ground-based, their slugs punching more holes in Josephine Bader’s flimsy P.A.V. But before they hit anything vital Josephine pulled back on the hi-lo once more. and the little aircraft almost stood on its tail, paddle-prop beating the air.
A large, ungainly P.A.V. passed beneath them. Josephine had not seen it before (and she thought she knew every P.A.V. in The Smoke). Tri-paddle-propped, it was piloted from an open cockpit located right aft, just in front of the twin-ruddered tailplane while, up front, there were two more open cockpits now manned by Ximan gunners who were straining to twist and direct their fire up at her fragile craft.
Whooop, whoop, whoop! Paddle-props beat the air as the PAVs began a lethal dance.
Josephine knew that if she spent too much time twisting and turning, looping and rolling, she would quickly run out of RTP power; the big bands would unwind prematurely and she would not be able to complete the glide to Cerval’s estate. She assumed that the police tri-motor crew had no such concerns about range, and would simply turn back to The Smoke once they had destroyed Josephine’s PAV or if their bands ran down.
She made a quick decision, a compromise. She would head out over the impenetrable jungles and mountains between The Smoke and the estate, with minimal twists and turns – just enough to avoid being gunned down – in the hope that the tri-motor’s crew, not wanting to crash in Mancit or Manu territory, would chicken out and return home.
Not a bad plan but one that immediately went wrong when she straightened out. The Ximans found her range almost immediately and shot great chunks out of the tailplane. Josephine swore and wrenched the little aircraft into a tight loop, the tri-motor overshooting.
High above, a black speck against the sun, a creature even more at home in the air than either of the P.A.V.s, was struck by a barrage of intuition as the supernormal connection between Alaina and Brutus the karrier kicked in. However intelligent and however loyal, Brutus was only a bird. Bird-brained. A few days ago, he had been distracted by a female karrier he had never encountered before. They had spent delicious hours soaring, roosting and mating but, eventually, Brutus’ training had kicked in and he was now en route to The Smoke, to seek out the woman who had been his keeper and mistress since he was a chick. In this moment, he felt her terror. He could not know it wasn’t so much a fear for her own life as for her critical mission.
Brutus, who had been riding a particularly delightful thermal, drew his wings in, streamlined, and swooped down towards the two human-made flying machines that were desperately jockeying for supremacy. To Brutus, the P.A.V.s were like two birds, one a raptor and one its potential victim and, even without recognizing Josephine’s unique P.A.V., he knew which was the victim and what he had to do to save Alaina’s life.
He spread his wings wide to gain several hundred feet of altitude then, focussing on the tri-motor, he tucked his wings close to his side and aimed directly for the big P.A.V. As he dived, he rivalled the speed of a peregrine falcon – and, to date, there was nothing faster in the air.
Alaina intuited exactly what was happening, even though she couldn’t see clearly. She twisted around to keep the action in view and cried out: “Brutus! No!” But if the karrier sensed her plea, he ignored it and pressed home his attack.
At the last moment, one of the Ximan gunners saw this diving bird, which weighed as much as a large dog, aiming directly at the P.A.V. He screamed and swung his Ximan around, loosed off a burst which, at first, was way off target. But as Brutus closed, sheer desperation drove the gunner to aim straighter and, just before Brutus smashed into the pilot’s cockpit, the slugs shredded the powerful karrier.
Too late!
The massive carcass slammed through the windshield. Blood, flesh, guts, shit and feathers filled the cockpit. Brutus’ dead body decapitated the pilot, and buried itself in the central motor’s power unit. The impact snapped one of the RTP bands and, as it retracted violently to its anchor point, it took out several of the main fuselage bulkheads. At the same time, the nose dropped and the aircraft went into a steep dive, which put an ever-increasing strain on the wings, a compressive force the weakened fuselage couldn’t tolerate. The wings folded and the aircraft went into a death dive.
Alaina buried her face in her hands and wept for the brave bird she’d known all its life; but Josephine concentrated on her flight plan, straightened the P.A.V.’s direction, and, hoping the vehicle would hold together for the next few hours, aimed for the estate.
The tri-motor crashed into the jungle, disintegrating as it passed through the treetop canopy and on towards the ground, its wreckage finally trapped by branches three or four ahms from the surface. Its mangled, bloodied crew were impaled and suspended like Dufus tree ornaments.
Within moments, the area was filled with eager Mancits. They had seen the aerial combat and, the moment they knew one of the P.A.V.s was going to crash to earth, had hurried to the crash site. Who knew what treasures might result?
The more agile Mancits, first to the crash, scrambled into the branches and ripped the bodies free, hacking at them and dropping the meat to their friends below. Enough food here for a massive feast, and plenty of leftovers to sustain the village for at least a week. Hunting had been poor recently and the hungrier Mancits tore chunks of raw flesh from the bodies, chewing delightedly, grunting their appreciation. Then one of the bodies groaned and the Mancits went into paroxysms of joy. They had no means to preserve meat and here was a live human! One that could be kept alive and fattened! And, while alive, an arm here or a leg there could be carved up for snacks!
Carrying their bounty and dragging the shattered, agonized crew member behind them, the Mancit war party headed to their settlement, singing (in their own sing-song language) one of their strange tribal chants:
“Mancits, mancits, always play to win!
Mancits, mancits, we never give in.
I'm Mancit till I die
I'm Mancit till I die
I know I am, I'm sure I am
I'm Mancit till I die!”
Encountering no further opposition, Josephine D. Bader flew the PAV arrow-straight to Cerval’s estate to deliver its life and death message.
oOo
27
A WEEK LATER, CERVAL AND HIS INCORRUPTIBLES held their war conference with Paulina Ellamova in the basement ruins of what remained of Derby & Thoms. The Commission’s thugs, Silencios and cops, had blown up the old department store building once they’d murdered Florenza and captured Dalton. Cerval and Paulina reckoned that they’d done with the Marshes for the moment, and particularly with Derby & Thoms, so this was as safe a site as any.
Cerval brought with him Evangeline, Alaina and Thorsten. The latter’s new steam prosthetic was undoubtedly phenomenally powerful, but its control systems were still unreliable. There was no sign of Doctor Pedro Robledo Efrain, apparently the only person who could trouble-shoot the device.
With his bullet-proof, battering ram head, his steam-driven prosthetic and his largely restored abnormal strength, Thorsten had become the ultimate warrior – but one whose devastating effect might be as dangerous to himself and his own allies as to his enemies.
The Pitts’s, father and son, had also come to The Smoke, as had Thor’s father, Gori, and several other of Cerval’s more formidable retainers. The limiting factor had been the available P.A.V.s’ payloads. The Devil could take a number of passengers, but Josephine D. Bader’s pencil-like craft could carry only her and Alaina. Which left a couple of older and not so well-maintained aircraft to transport the balance of his fo
rce. But luck was with them. They had all arrived without mishap, and landed in the Marshes, on a long-forgotten sports field which Paulina’s volunteers had cleared.
When she’d arrived at the estate a week earlier to see Cerval, Alaina pressed the urgency of the situation, that The Smoke was in lockdown, the Commission, the Silencios and the cops having reacted to the manifesto with iron fists. Had they understood that the forces behind it were wildly fragmented, they could have more or less ignored it, and the threat to the smooth-running of the city-state would soon have faded. As it was, the predictable authoritarian knee-jerk overreaction ensured that a number of aggrieved Smoke citizens moved beyond grumbling and actively sought out people of similar views. No one opposing the Commission was sure what to do and everyone remained fearful of the Silencios, but there were demonstrations, and in some of the poorer suburbs, riots. Cerval and the Incorruptibles all agreed that it was a giant step from rumbling discontent to revolution but they were encouraged. If they could free Ricardo, Dalton and Shelley-Mary, perhaps they could move to the next step.
Now they were all in The Smoke, plotting. In addition to Cerval’s small but formidable force, Paulina had proposed three platoons. The first comprised hardcore Chavaliers who were unquestioningly loyal to Dalton and determined to free him or find him dead. They were led, nominally, by a compelling transgender mercenary known only as O.M. Just seventeen, h/she apparently selected her gender-of-the-moment by whim and was currently female.
She possessed a shockingly fearsome temper which was barely reined in by her sharp intellect. She had a soft spot for Dalton and was enraged by his capture, but remained calm enough to work with Paulina to hand-pick Chavaliers for the mission.
The Incorruptibles (Book One, Frankenstein Vigilante): Frankenstein Vigilante: The Steampunk Series (Frankenstein Vigilante. The Steampunk Series.) Page 19