Kuro felt no surprise to be woken at three o'clock in the morning to the clamour of alarms and whistles.
He dressed quickly, wound the gears in his arm, and bound his long black hair with a rawhide cord, recalling the days in Japan when he’d shaved the top of his head, in the chonmage style befitting a Samurai. Beverly met him in the hallway. She somehow looked even lovelier to him in her half-awake state, bedecked in long cotton nightclothes, tousled hair clinging to her scalp. He was tired enough to consider telling her, but neither said a word.
They instead went silently to the basement cellblock, where Roderick Scharnusser stood listening to a visibly quaking guard’s report. The doors all appeared intact and locked, save for two. These both hung ajar on their hinges, severe scorch marks around where the bolts had been. Two other guards lay inert on the floor near each of these.
The lone conscious guard held up a pair of goggles with shattered lenses for his employer to see, his hands trembling. Kuro recognised them as Campbell’s. “We did search him, but the goggles—there were two lenses in each frame. The cufflinks were keys, and they unlocked the frames.” Kuro’s eyes darted to the goggles, and protruding from the curve of each frame were Campbell’s fine gold cufflinks. “Hidden inside each of the compartments must have been some explosive compound.”
Absent his usual air of menace, Roderick smiled gently through the entire report, nodding encouragement to the young soldier. He said, “I understand that our two prisoners have escaped through a gap in the incomplete wall?”
“I think s-so, sir.”
At the word, “think”, Roderick Scharnusser’s face switched from kindness to fury. He grabbed the guard by the throat. The young man’s eyes rolled, a sickening sound in his throat as his body shook with convulsions, and that was when Kuro caught a glimpse of the Tesla-gloves under Scharnusser’s coat sleeves.
The guard fell from his grip, slumped to the floor, the only sound in the hallway was the crackle of the deadly gauntlets. His face was still twisted in a rictus of anger, Scharnusser looked up and pointed directly at Kuro. Sparks of blue leapt from his insulated finger. “You,” he snapped. “You were with me when he put those blasted goggles on in my study. You should have seen the threat. So now you will lead a team to fetch me Campbell and the Amboy child. Dead, alive, slightly unwell—it don’t matter. You make this right.” His hand lowered, but his cold gaze never left Kuro. “This is family business, so take my cousin with you. And you better make sure you don’t kill the boy unless Zachary Amboy is there to see it. You all hear me?”
No one spoke. No one moved.
“Get to your goddamn shadow zeppelins,” he barked. “NOW!”
Their small airships were prepping for flight at the compound’s modest landing field when they arrived. A light snow-drizzle deepened the November morning chill. The other henchmen went straight to the two-seater cockpits of their craft. Kuro spotted Beverly by the airfield’s hydrogen pump, watching his approach across the gravel. He’d taken the time to return to his room and put on his Samurai armour before meeting her. The weight of its metal plates felt right, along with the leather scent of its bonds and padding. She smiled appreciatively, looking him up and down, and whacked him across the arm with her cold steamsword; steel ringing off of brass.
“You’d better ignite your weapon,” he said.
“Not near the hydrogen-filled balloon, thanks,” she said. Her smile was radiant in the gaslight glow.
“Do we have a plan?”
“Not exactly. How about—” Her eyes suddenly grew wide, and she flung herself upon him, burying her face against his breastplate, speaking with exaggerated, breathless desperation. “Oh, Mista Campbell, sir. My cousin and that awful Chinaman are keeping me prisoner back there. Please take me with you, oh please!”
Her hair smelled of lavender. He could feel his face growing hot. “Do you think he’s that much a fool?”
“All men are. Present company excepted, of course.” She smiled, pulled her knit cap onto her head. “Now let’s go out there and find us our worthy opponent.”
A signal flare ascended into the early morning sky, and the dozen mini-zeppelins created a chorus of turbines and propellers, rising into the black-purple pre-dawn sky.
The rapturous scent of lavender lingered in Kuro’s memory. They flew west in a loose formation, watching the terrain below for movement. The silence inside their own craft was deepened by the winds and light snowfall.
“There. There’s a boat crossing English Bay.” He saw the lights of the vessel when she pointed. A flag of dense white smoke flew from above its sole smokestack. His brow knotted. “What are those things sticking out of its sides?”
There were four large protrusions on its port and starboard gunwales, two astern and two near the prow. They looked almost like squat barrels, striped with bolted-on iron bands and cables.
“Could that be the gunboat that Campbell warned us about?” Kuro asked. “If we fly too low, they’ll just shoot our zeppelins out of the sky.”
“I love the way you say ‘zeppelin,’” she said. “They’re still close enough to shore. We’ll get the other blimps to land with us at the water’s edge. That lake’s half-frozen already; with this cold, we can show Amboy that he’s not the only one with mechanical tricks.” She motioned for Kuro to take the stick for a moment as she sent out on her heliograph landing orders. The snowy eastern lakeshore didn’t offer much room, but the mini-zeppelins all managed to stake down without trouble.
“Get the hoses into the water! Work those pumps!” she shouted from the cockpit, their henchmen scrambling to obey. With the autumn dawn sleeping in late, they were forced to plan their assault by lantern-light. Stepping out of the zeppelin, the narrow belt of shoreline sand was packed and hard beneath his boots.
Hoses plugged into ports on the mini-zeppelin balloons, leading to waist-high brass and iron welded boxes, which fed cannon-sized tubes that the men were dipping into the water. The lackeys toiled in pairs at the see-saw pumps protruding from the boxes sides, causing embedded needles and gauges to flutter wildly. “The hydrogen converters are experimental Usher technology, a pet project of my uncle’s that Roderick carried on after he died. Half-science, half-sorcery. A chemical reaction inside those cauldrons converts the hydrogen to a hyper-freezing agent, which gets pumped out of those hoses there,” She explained to Kuro.”It was intended for the moat we dug around the monastery, but it should cover this small lake too. At least long enough for our purposes.”
Sure enough, even as she spoke, the calm lake surface began to crystallise. Kuro watched with amazement as a sheen of ice began to freeze around the submerged tubes along the shore. The henchmen looked up at her excitedly from their contraptions. “Not yet!” she shouted back. “Keep pumping! Get the ice firm enough to support your fat arses!” The taut zeppelin chambers began to deflate as the hydrogen drained into the converter boxes, into the solidifying lake.
Beverly picked up a few stones of varying weight, threw them and watched them skid across the ice surface. None broke through.
“The boat has stopped moving!” shouted a henchman. “It’s stuck in the ice!”
Her smile was triumphant, vapour escaped her lips with a relieved exhale. “The low air temperature should help keep the ice in place, yes?” she said, raising her eyebrows to add the question mark. Kuro shrugged. She and he both looked over his heavy suit of armour. “Well, for most of us, at least.” Beverly shouted back to her crew, “OK, that’s enough, lay off the pumps! Charge the gunboat before they get free! Recapture that boy!”
Scharnusser’s henchmen powered up what Kuro recognised as Edison-Wesson rifles, rapidly spinning the cranks bored into their stocks. Three dozen men stormed from the beach onto the lake surface, yet most of them skid, slid, and fell on their arses as soon as their boots hit the ice.
“And this is what happens,” Beverly sighed again, “when you don’t prepare properly.” She turned to Kuro. “The Gatling is in our
cargo hold. I’ll aim, you feed the bullets.”
“With deepest respect and apologies, I cannot help you with this weapon.”
Beverly straightened as if she were just slapped in the face. Kuro did not care for her posture or expression. “What?”
“A true Samurai does not use guns, in any form. It would be a dishonour I could not bear.”
He’d seen fury before in her face, but had never seen it directed at him; it was unsettling. She stepped up to him, her nose nearly touching his. “Damn your honour, we have a duty to our boss, to my murdered uncle.”
He felt the heat of her rage, felt Hideo’s disappointment in contrast. “I apologise, Miss Beverly. Perhaps one of the men can—”
“Let’s get something straight, Chinaman—” and coming from Beverly, the insult cut him to the quick. “—you serve me, and I don’t take kindly to problems with my tools in the field. Are you a problem, or a solution?”
Kuro forced back the bitter bile building in his throat. “I thought you understood my way, Bev—”
“Just go get onto Zachary Amboy’s boat,” she snapped. “If the father is on-board, then your duty is to kill the son before his eyes.”
Kuro felt his own jaw set now with anger, the give of Hideo’s neck beneath his blade tingling in his brass hand. “I will find the Amboy child and deliver the Australian back to Master Roderick, as ordered.”
I will harm no child, Kuro pledged silently.
Neither moved for a long moment further, each sculpting the cold frustration between them. Beverly finally broke eye contact and singled out the nearest of Scharnusser’s henchmen. “You two! Come help me with the Gatling gun.”
The treacherous ice surface threatened to upturn him countless times, but Kuro managed to hold his balance and cover a sizable distance across the lake. The morning sun had finally begun to stir, adding grey and hue to the shadows, but still withholding its warmth. Soon, the boat was close enough for him to read the name, Sheila, stencilled across the rear hull, just above where the icy crust had frozen to its iron and timber.
A half-hearted volley traded between the Usher lackeys on the ice and a trio of shipboard riflemen at the stern railing. Two henchmen lay prone, bleeding on the ice, but the exchange was otherwise mostly ineffectual.
Fortunately for Kuro and the Usher men, the boat’s bow and its large primary cannon were safely frozen forward, away from the advance on foot across the water. Kuro could see a flurry of activity on-board, with clusters of men working near the four round barrel-like protuberances spaced around the hull. A thick flag of white smoke billowed skyward from the lone stack. A shot caromed off of his brass forearm, sparking away to chew a hole in the ice at his feet. He felt nothing from the hit, but still startled and fell, sliding forward. He heard Beverly shout his name from the beach. Once he’d slid to a halt, he looked back to see her running across the icy lake top for him, leaving the two henchmen behind to finish assembling the Gatling on its stand. He waved to show he was unhurt, but still she pressed forward.
Kuro was momentarily overcome with humility, watching her display of selfless concern. “No, Beverly,” he murmured, far too softly for her to hear.
A great staccato of machinery came to life from the Sheila. Kuro looked back to see compartments unlocking and sliding open in the four round barrels on the gunwales. Long, jointed limbs of wood and iron unfolded from within, touched down roughly on the ice coat that had ensnared the craft. Kuro then realised what the protruding barrels truly were: shoulders for legs that Amboy had appended onto his gunboat. The crew could be seen working intently; the boat’s four limbs began to stamp with alarming strength upon the frozen lake. He spotted young Percy Amboy, their former captive, among the three crewmen working the rear portside leg from the safety of the deck.
First one, then another, then another of the Sheila’s legs broke through, scattering massive, misshapen plates of ice across the black water around it.
“Shit.” He’d heard the word countless times from the labourers at the Scharnusser camp. Common as the word was, it seemed appropriate here. In less than a minute, the gunship had sprouted four limbs, transforming to a great, walking beast. Its squat stance reminded him slightly of the komodo dragons his former lord had kept as pets in his homeland. The Japanese man watched wide-eyed as the massive, mecha-creature struggled to rise out of the water.
The Gatling gun awoke from the shore, its circle of barrels spinning, adding its red-hot fire to the discourse. The intensity of its attack was a stark contrast to the riflemen’s scattered exchange. Sheila’s crew hunched low to avoid the lead storm. Kuro watched a heavyset man moved faster than his girth should have allowed to shield Amboy’s junior, watched him cut down in front of the child.
More Ushers fell from return fire, even as a few managed to scramble from the ice up onto the deck. Kuro pressed on, drawing nearer to the boat, watching now as the integrity of the ground at his feet began to compromise and crack. He was aware of Beverly rushing behind him, catching up. Young Amboy pried his horrified stare from the bloodstained corpse of his saviour, locked eyes momentarily with Kuro.
The boat was using its limbs and internal steering to affect a slow revolution, turning around, cracking the ice that had held it. The ice squeaked and fell apart beneath his feet; jagged fissures spread outward from the Sheila’s heavy footfalls on and through the surface. Five feet of water rippled now between the nearest rim of ice and the corner of hull behind the rear port leg. Kuro drew his wakazashi short sword in his left hand, hit the last piece of solid footing, and leapt from the edge of the world, hitting the gunship’s hull, landing in the numbing embrace of the cold water. His short sword blade stuck and held true in the wood between the slats of the ship’s iron plating. Two short meters up, a rifleman stuck his head out over the rail, grinned down at the Samurai. That common word came again to Kuro’s lips.
The Gatling’s deadly scrawl travelled the gunwale with a thunder of sparks and noise; its trajectory passing just over Kuro’s head, sending the rifleman back to the deck. Using the wakazashi and the grip of his brass hand, Kuro began to ascend the outer hull the short distance to its deck railing. He chanced a look back, spotted Beverly on a small island of broken-away ice just behind him, her dozener pistol firing up into the Sheila.
“Go, Samurai! I’m right behind you!” she shouted. One of the embattled Ushers already on-board tossed a rope over the low sides for them, then turned and locked arms with one of the Amboy crew. Beverly leapt from her frozen plate just as it split and sank, catching the dangling rope. “Go!” she shouted, and the two of them climbed up to scale the railing at the same time.
Once on deck, chaos embraced them.
Beverly pointed to a man mostly obscured by his trenchcoat, goggles, and hat, holding the wheel steadily, positioned just behind the bulky cannon platform. Crewmen swirled around him, either fighting invaders or working to keep the ship moving. The boy they’d come for cowered wide-eyed around the man’s feet, watching the carnage on the level below.
“Amboy,” Kuro said.
“Father and son,” she replied.
The Sheila’s legs pulled the massive body upright, back out of the water, taking steps on top of the sturdy ice shelf, edging its nose toward the shore. The deck lurched with each stride, as if they were daring the frigid bay underneath to take them to its murky depths. Kuro could hear the Gatling still rattle its deadly report, but now Amboy had rotated his vessel nearly enough that his gunners were excitedly prepping their own weapons.
A number of Ushers had gained access to the deck by now, evening up the numbers against Amboy’s Spartan crew. Not far from where Kuro and Beverly had boarded, Bruce Campbell was squared off against three henchmen, clearly enjoying the crackle of Tesla knuckles on his hand. A similarly-dressed man stood next to him, not quite as tall, twirling knives dexterously in both of his hands. He kicked his nearest foe overboard and looked up to see them.
“Bruce?” the bladed war
rior said, his mouth a deep frown.
“What is it?” Campbell growled. “I’ve got three tasks to—hold on— Yah!—two tasks to dispatch here, mate. Is it urgent?”
“Possibly.”
“A pleasure to see you again, Agent Hill,” Beverly said.
The man answering to “Hill” cocked his head to one side, his eyes blank. “Have we met?”
“Oh, her. You’ve met her before, Brandon. I said the same thing. I’ll explain later. Watch out for the Chinaman.”
“Samurai are Japanese, Bruce,” Hill quipped.
Kuro liked Hill already.
The two Ministry Agents charged them. A flurry of steel and sparks ensued.
One of Agent Hill’s knives glanced off of the Samurai shoulder plate; Campbell grabbed Kuro’s right forearm with the Tesla knuckles, coursing painful voltage through his body. “I know you feel that!” the big Australian shouted, before he had to duck Beverly’s steamsword.
Kuro was vaguely aware of Captain Amboy shouting from the bow, his voice cracking as he hollered at the shore, “You want to play with cycle guns? Try a Gatling cannon!” Two of his men, with Amboy stooping to lend his own strength to theirs, worked a massive crank on the cannon apparatus.
The ensuing booms were unsettling, each cannon blast coming less than a second apart. The deck shuddered with each shot. Kuro’s attention was focused on the Tesla knuckles and spinning knives before him. It was difficult not to marvel at the gunship’s main cannon retrofitted with a cycle of barrels, which spun and fired with precise, high-speed timing. Amidst the fray and the lingering burn of the Tesla jolt, he revelled of the battle thrill in his chest.
Meanwhile, the ship continued its odd, four-legged crawl across the lake ice, getting closer to the lakeshore, while continuing to discharge eight-pounder shots. Dawn’s clouds glowed enough now to light the whole scene clearly. The Usher Gatling men fled their post, just seconds before their weapon was blown to fragments. The Sheila cannonmen then rotated the gun platform just slightly to focus their destructive fire on the staked zeppelins. Cannonballs spit from the barrels at high velocity, pelting the narrow beach. Amboy’s son jumped up and down with each hydrogen explosion, cheering as each blimp collapsed in a heap of smouldering aluminium, hemp, and wood. Violent eruptions of sand and splintered wood burst all across the shoreline. He and his father seemed oblivious to the battle raging on the deck. Usher henchmen versus Amboy crewmen, Ministry Agents versus Samurai and Scharnusser.
Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Page 26