Unobtainium 1: Kate on a Hot Tin Roof

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Gantheim?’

  ‘A physicist. He was placed in some diabolical machine in a hut behind the laboratory building and–’

  ‘It appears that he died of a heart attack,’ Antonia said softly. ‘We thought him alive at first since his body was still moving…’

  Charles gritted his teeth. ‘The machine applied electrical current to certain… sensitive areas of the body which likely maintained some illusion of life even after his heart gave out. Drafenberg invented it, but Edel seemed infatuated with its use. You were to be its next victim were I to fail to satisfy their requirements.’

  ‘I… see.’

  ‘Given our new circumstances, I feel that I can do so, however. The manner of proof will not be satisfactory, but the Count will discover that allowing a physicist access to a fully stocked laboratory and workshop while threatening his friends is not a wise choice.’

  Antonia smiled. ‘Please, Charles, explain your plan.’

  ~~~

  Getting into the laboratory building was not as complex a matter as Charles had expected. They simply let Kate loose on the two guards standing outside the door. One died almost instantly as a knife was driven into his throat while the second was stunned with a blow to the head and then strangled. The efficiency and viciousness with which she dispatched the men was a little alarming, but Charles could not fault the results.

  ‘They gave me some of your equipment,’ Moorbridge said as they made their way down the main corridor. ‘I was supposed to analyse a sword to determine whether it had any special properties.’

  ‘My sword?’ Kate asked. ‘Curved blade?’

  ‘That was it.’

  ‘That will be most useful.’ The sight of a woman dressed in nought but a fur loincloth speaking delicate English after murdering two men was also a little disconcerting, but they had no time to find her more appropriate clothing. Moorbridge was trying not to look too long at either of the women, in fact. He seemed rather more abashed by their state of disarray than Charles was.

  ‘Very well,’ Charles said. ‘I shall go with Mrs Wooster to get the vapour dispersers. Kate, you can reacquire our equipment with Mister Moorbridge.’

  Looking a little reluctant, Moorbridge led Kate to his lab, unlocked the door and handed the keys on to Charles. The room looked like a cross between a metalwork laboratory and a clock factory. Copper and brass rods and gears littered every available space except for an area to the rear which had a forge-like arrangement of cinder blocks in which charcoal still glowed a dull red.

  ‘Here,’ Moorbridge said, opening a cupboard.

  Grinning brightly, Kate took out her sword and looped its cord through her ‘belt’ before checking the remainder of the objects. David Wooster’s ornate rifle was there along with a few shells for it. She hooked it over her shoulder though it would likely be of little use. Charles’s Webley was also there and she took that. It was loaded, but she could see no more ammunition. Well, they had the rifles the guards were carrying if they needed firearms, and if they needed firearms they would be in more trouble than something a few bullets might fix.

  She did not see her pills anywhere, but then they would likely not have given those to Moorbridge. And there were no clothes, likely for the same reason.

  ‘All right, that’s everything of immediate use. We should meet with Sharles and Antonia.’

  Moorbridge looped the strap of a toolkit satchel over his shoulder and gave a nod, doing his absolute best to keep his eyes on Kate’s face. She had to stop herself grinning. ‘Sir, as I am sure you have been informed, I was created by my father, Alfred Cooper, and kept for his experimentation for five years.’

  ‘I was aware, yes.’

  ‘In all that time, the only thing I wore was a collar, and occasionally further restraints. I have grown accustomed to wearing clothes and would not wish to appear dressed thusly on a street in Mayfair, but I am not uncomfortable with this mode of apparel. Indeed, I am partially covered, which is more than I once was. If I can survive the indignity, you can assuredly survive looking at me, given the urgency of our circumstances.’

  The mechanic managed a weak smile. ‘I am… unused to such displays of the female form.’

  ‘As is Sharles, but he copes. If it helps, I believe he tries to conduct himself in the detached manner he employs when performing his science. Perhaps you could think of me simply as a complex machine which is assisting you through this trial.’

  ‘Madam, I assure you that the day I manage to create a machine which matches you in the slightest way, I shall have achieved perfection in my art. However, I shall attempt to affect a more detached demeanour to save my own blushes if nothing else.’

  They found Charles and Antonia walking down the corridor carrying five copper canisters between them. Each of the tins was about ten inches in length and six across, and had a small winder on the side and a vaguely domed top with five holes drilled into it. They looked heavy and Antonia was carrying three to Charles’s two.

  ‘I am, apparently, stronger than I was,’ Antonia said, smiling rather proudly.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll be able to make use of this then,’ Kate replied, patting the barrels on her rifle.

  ‘I’m glad that survived. How many shells do we have?’

  ‘Uh… six, but if we need to use one we will be in difficulty.’

  ‘True. Be a dear and put the ammunition in my pockets. I’ll take the gun off you when we have distributed Charles’s devices.’

  ‘What time is it?’ Kate asked.

  Moorbridge retrieved a pocket watch from his waistcoat and flipped it open. ‘Almost three-fifteen.’

  ‘The guards change at four. We must be ready in thirty minutes if we are to avoid them seeing their fallen comrades.’

  ‘Then we should make haste,’ Charles said. He held up one of his canisters. ‘This one must be placed in the mouth of the mine and set to trigger first. I allowed for some variance in the timers. I believe some thirty minutes should be sufficient to make our escape. We will detonate the final explosion at four-thirty.’

  ‘What does the fifth canister do?’ Moorbridge asked.

  ‘It provides us with the distraction required. It should be most effective.’

  ~~~

  Urgent knocking roused von Auttenberg from his slumber and he pulled himself upright in his bed. ‘Come!’

  A lieutenant whose name the Count could not immediately bring to mind burst in looking flustered. As he did so, he saw Nachtigall sitting up beside von Auttenberg, the sheets falling away from her breasts as she reached for a cigarette. The lieutenant looked sharply up at the ceiling.

  ‘What is it, Lieutenant?!’

  ‘There is smoke pouring out of the mine, sir. The two female prisoners, Barstow-Hall, and Moorbridge are missing. There are several men dead…’

  ‘Get men to the mine, as many as possible, but I want the prisoners found. Do you understand? Find them!’

  The door slammed behind the poor messenger as he bolted off to comply with his orders. ‘Do you wish him made an example of?’ Nachtigall asked, her tone bland.

  ‘If they are not recaptured you will have him, Maria. Put on your clothes, it is time to go to work.’

  ‘They have run to the mine? That seems… short-sighted.’

  ‘Quite. We will take the hunt elsewhere.’

  ~~~

  ‘The smoke device seems to be working,’ Moorbridge commented as they hid just inside the perimeter fence and watched guards running for the rear of the compound.

  ‘Of course,’ Antonia replied, ‘Charles built it. I believe we should make a break for it.’

  ‘In a second,’ Kate said. ‘The guards at the gate remain in place. I will deal with them.’ She unsheathed her sword and slipped out of cover, moving quickly through the dim light.

  There was moon enough for her to see quite clearly, but she doubted the same was true of the guards. Still, she needed to be quiet about this and she padded silently around to the nearest
man, keeping low and then rising in a sweeping spring which drove her sword tip in through the right side of his abdomen and out through his left shoulder. His companion heard the sound of metal cutting bone and turned, seeing little but a dark shadow before Kate turned and ran her blade through his throat. His eyes widened, his body shook and twitched on the end of Kate’s sword, and then she pulled it free and he fell.

  The others were with her a second later, apparently having anticipated her swift dispatch of the guards. ‘We should move,’ Antonia said. ‘The smoke has fooled the soldiers, but I am not so sure about the Count and his lieutenant.’ As if in answer, there was the whistle of a bullet passing her head followed by the sound of the shot. ‘The woman! Go! I’ll deal with this and catch up.’

  ‘Move!’ Kate hissed, almost pushing the two men towards the gate.

  ‘But,’ Moorbridge began, ‘we are the men–’

  ‘Trust me, Moorbridge,’ Charles told him as he picked up the pace, ‘our female companions are far the more capable under these circumstances.’

  Antonia dropped to one knee and calmly snapped open her rifle as another shot whistled past, this time at chest height. A single round went into the right barrel and the breech was closed, and then she raised the weapon to her shoulder, taking aim. The darkness was throwing Nachtigall’s aim off; bullets sailed past Antonia in the night, each one marking her position. Antonia counted five and then there was the pause as the woman firing had to stop to reload. Kate saw the rifle swinging back up to her opponent’s shoulder, but she fired first.

  Then the huntress turned, rising to her feet and starting off after the others. A hundred yards behind her, her chest a shattered ruin, the woman known as Nachtigall fell to the dirt.

  ~~~

  ‘Stop!’ Kate snapped and the two men halted on the track. ‘There’s something–’

  The something stepped out of the undergrowth, lumbering slowly but with purpose. Easily six inches taller than Kate, he was human, more or less, though his face was a twisted, grey parody of a human’s face and his body was a grotesque mass of muscle.

  ‘What is that?’ Charles said, stepping back from the man.

  ‘They call him Franz,’ Moorbridge said. ‘One of Drafenberg’s earliest experiments with the necromensch formula.’

  ‘He’s mine,’ Kate said. ‘Get to the airship and get it going. I’ll be there with Antonia soon.’

  ‘The largest of them!’ Moorbridge called out as he took as wide a path as he could around Franz.

  The huge man seemed happy with the arrangement, doing nothing to stop the two men. Instead, he managed a lopsided grin as he swung a huge gun from across his back. It still had a bipod attached to it and the belt feed was a little twisted, but Kate imagined that it would not be good for her if he actually got a shot off. She took three steps closer as he straightened the ammunition and swung her sword as he raised the gun to fire. He blinked as the gun dropped away from his unfeeling hand and Kate yanked the blade free of the bone it had half-severed.

  Roaring, he swung at her head with one, meaty fist, hitting nothing but air. She slid around his arm and drove her blade into his chest. He staggered back and she paused, regaining her centre and lifting her sword up above her head, the tip pointed towards Franz’s face.

  ‘I do not wish to continue hurting you,’ she said. ‘Step aside.’

  Either he did not understand her, or he was just too stupid to realise that he had lost. He charged at her, his good arm rising to strike. Kate moved at the same time, her blade swinging, an arc of silver in the moonlight. Franz’s head lifted from his shoulders, hitting the ground just after his body.

  ‘I see you found someone to play with too,’ Antonia said as she ran up.

  ‘It seemed rather like killing an animal,’ Kate replied. ‘He was too stupid to realise he was done for.’

  ‘Men can be like that. We had best catch up to ours. Who knows what kind of trouble they will have got into without us?’

  ~~~

  ‘Why are we taking the largest?’ Charles asked as they climbed the steps up to the gondola of what he could only describe as an airborne battleship. It was actually clad in metal which looked a lot like adamantium, which suggested a large mass. It was sculpted into a shape not unlike some sort of large, predatory fish, and the tail was enlarged with some form of venting which Charles did not recognise.

  ‘I had a hand in its design,’ Moorbridge replied. ‘It has a greater degree of automation than is typical, and the navigational computer is second to none for its size. We will be a trifle undermanned, but we should be able to operate it better than the smaller ones, and it is fast and durable. Since we do not know exactly how big your explosion will be, I determined that being far away, in an armoured vessel, might be advisable.’

  ‘Sound thinking. I must say I’m surprised that the ladies have not caught us up.’

  ‘Miss Felix had Franz to deal with.’

  ‘Not a great inconvenience.’

  ‘And we ran all the way, as my aching lungs will attest.’

  ‘Kate has remarkable speed on foot. However, she may have waited for Antonia… Ah, there they are, sauntering along as though they had no cares in the world.’

  Which was actually untrue; they were walking, but at as fast a pace as possible, and checking behind them as they went. No one seemed to be following, but there was still the possibility.

  ‘That is what we are leaving in?!’ Antonia exclaimed, looking up at the vast bulk of the air-dreadnought.

  ‘Well, if you have to steal an airship, you might as well make it a huge, armoured one… with enormous guns.’

  ‘I suppose so. I hope it has rooms with curtains. When it gets light, I’m going to need somewhere dark to hide.’

  ‘And I will likely need somewhere to lie down soon.’

  ‘Are you injured?’

  ‘I haven’t had my pills since we crashed. Don’t tell Charles. He’ll worry and there’s nothing we can do. If we can find a reactor… Well, there’s no helping it otherwise.’

  ‘I… shall not mention for now, but you will not be able to keep it secret for long.’

  ‘I know. When we’re safely out of here and on our way, I can afford to be weak.’ She took the steps of the walkway two at a time as though she wished to emphasise the point.

  The cockpit had four flight positions, two of them equipped with wheels. Another, equipped with a lot of gauges, was presumably something to do with monitoring the engines. Kate was entirely unsure what the last one was. Moorbridge was working at the engineering console while Charles had assumed one of the pilot seats.

  ‘Engines are at power,’ Moorbridge said. ‘Jettisoning the cables… and the docking locks are free.’

  Charles pulled back on a lever beside his chair and the ship began to rise away from the ground. ‘She’s a little sluggish.’

  ‘She masses around a thousand tons, sir. Wait until you feel the main engines power up.’ Moorbridge glanced at Antonia and Kate. ‘When he does bring them up to power, you may wish to be holding onto something.’

  ‘That will not be necessary, Mister Moorbridge.’ The voice came from the rear of the cockpit and everyone except Charles turned to look. Charles knew who it was and he was concerned with flying the ship. ‘You will return us to the ground, Doctor Barstow-Hall,’ von Auttenberg said.

  ‘I will not. In approximately seven minutes, your entire complex will have an average temperature of two thousand degrees with several atmospheres of pressure. There is insufficient time to switch the devices off. You can shoot me if you wish, but going back is suicide.’

  Von Auttenberg looked down at the Luger in his hand. The conflict on his face was obvious, but short-lived. He looked up again. Kate could see the decision being made and her body tensed as she prepared to spring, to put herself between the German and Charles. The explosion was loud in the confines of the cockpit.

  ‘Antonia!’ Kate screamed as the blonde doubled over, staggering ba
ck a foot or so.

  Charles slammed one of the sticks at his seat forward hard and the entire ship lurched forward. Von Auttenberg staggered back through the door to the rear compartments. His wrist hit the doorframe on the way through and the gun fell from his hand. Kate, still on her feet, was after him before the others could figure out what was happening.

  ‘Antonia?!’ Charles half yelled.

  ‘I appear to be all right,’ Antonia said, straightening up and beginning to unbutton her shirt. ‘I mean… I’ve been shot in the stomach, but there is no pain.’ She pulled open her shirt and Moorbridge made a strangling noise and looked away though whether that was from the sight of bare breasts or the hole just above and to the right of her navel was an open question. ‘It went through, and it’s not even bleeding. I assume this is Drafenberg’s work. What happened to von Auttenberg?’

  ‘Miss Felix went after him,’ Moorbridge replied.

  ‘I’d better go after her.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Charles snapped. ‘We don’t know how that wound will affect you and Kate is quite capable of taking care of herself.’

  Antonia opened her mouth to speak and then thought better of what she was about to say. ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ~~~

  Von Auttenberg was moving quickly and Kate did not know the layout of the ship, but she could smell him. His wrist had been cut on the metal doorframe and the scent of blood was clear to her as she tracked him through to a flight of stairs leading up into the huge space above the gondola which appeared to house both the central gas bags and what appeared to be blocks of bunkrooms for the crew. In passing, she wondered whether there were multiple blocks and so she would have the opportunity of some time with Antonia before…

  The Count stepped around a machine of some sort, a sabre in one hand, and went straight in for the attack. Kate missed the parry, but she flipped backwards, clearing the swing and stepped away from him.

  ‘You are very nimble, Fräulein,’ Von Auttenberg said, humour in his voice now. ‘I would congratulate Cooper, but he will be dead in a few minutes. How does that make you feel?’

  ‘Ambivalent,’ she replied and he raised an eyebrow. He was moving as he spoke, circling around her in an attempt to flank her, or at least catch her off-guard when he delivered his next attack. She centred herself and answered his unasked query. ‘He is my father. He tortured me, experimented upon me, but he remains the man who sired me, even if Sharles has been more of a father to me than he ever was. His death brings me no pleasure, and yet I will shed no tears for him.’