Lifemaker: A Steampunk Dystopian Fantasy (The Great Iron War, Book 2)

by Dean F. Wilson

  “Do you want to know why coils mean so much to me, huh?”

  “I’d like to hear your excuse, sure.”

  “It’s not an excuse, Taberah.”

  “I’m listening.” She poured a fresh cup of tea, but Jacob did not touch it. She sipped at hers, staring at him over the rim of the cup as he recounted his past.

  “I don’t want the same fate as my father,” Jacob said. “When I was a child, he was a giant of a man. He could command legions with his eyes, armies with his voice, could ask a god to bow down to him, and they would. Or so it seemed to me. He had everything, and I felt like I had everything because of him.

  “But you know what they say about rose-tinted lenses. I didn’t grow up. I didn’t have time for that. I had the harsh realities of adulthood hoisted upon me overnight. By the time I found out that my father had no money at all, that he was living on loans, it was too late. He was locked up in a workhouse, and for a week I begged every god I could think of to let me see him again. And maybe they answered, because do you know what this messed up world did? They sent me to the workhouse too, along with my mother. Maybe that’s what you’d call a family business, because we worked day and night to pay off his pennies. Nothing, it seemed, could pay off the pounds, not even when my mother collapsed and died of exhaustion. In time even my father could no longer lift the bricks or lay the tracks. Do you know that Iron Wall? We built the foundations for that, back before the demons came.

  “It took me eight years to work off my father’s debt, and by that time he wasn’t just broke, he was broken. By then I wasn’t even doing it for him, because I saw that everything he’d done for the first seven years of my life, everything I thought he had done for me and my mother, was a lie. I was fifteen when they let us out, and we had nowhere to go, and I was damned if I was going to work to pay my father’s way again! Hell, I guess I was damned either way. I don’t know where he went at the time, but I found him years later, when the Regime came into power. He was homeless, and he was hopeless, and when he first told me about the demons I thought it was the ramblings of a madman. Hell, sometimes I still do. To think that he was such a giant to me before, and then he was nothing—it crushed whatever was left of my heart.

  “Those were the days when I learned the value of money. The only other kids I knew then were the other unlucky sods who were blamed for their parents’ crimes. We never played. We worked. What got me most some days was when we toiled to make toys for other children to play with. Sometimes I tried to get an extra few seconds with one before the conveyor belt moved on, just an extra moment to hold that little wooden horse or toy soldier, so I could better imagine playing with it when I went to sleep. I didn’t realise that we were also soldiers, fighting a war of wealth—only that those of us crushed beneath the boots of the rich worked to make them newer, heavier boots.

  “So maybe now I can only see the thorns. But unlike the roses, I felt those thorns. I know that they’re really out there. And that was all before the Harvest. So, you know, I don’t hate the Regime like some other people do, like the Treasury probably does, because life for me before the Harvest wasn’t any better. Hell, those people in the Treasury used to run the place back then. It was them who made the workhouse rules.

  “And maybe something awakens in me when I see the dull glint of an iron coil, but that was something that has been sleeping ever since those days: hope. The demons might have their drug, and maybe this is mine, but I’ve already seen what happens when I don’t take it. I’ve already had the bad trips. And maybe it’s foolish of me to save up for a rainy day in a world of desert sand, but I’ve lived, and worked, through enough rainy days to feel the need to save up for an umbrella.”

  Taberah drank her tea slowly through this account, hiding her reaction behind her cup. Perhaps she did not want to show him any sympathy, and he did not want it, but he knew that something stirred in her, that as he almost relived those past hurts, she had to feel just a little of his pain. When he was finished, she was silent for a time, as if she was documenting his tale in the diary of her mind.

  “The past is a dangerous thing,” she said when the silence grew too deep. “How can you fight for the future when you’re still fighting the past?”

  “Maybe I don’t want to fight for the future,” he replied.

  “Maybe you don’t have a choice.”

  The silence returned for a moment, and then suddenly the submarine began to sink, forcing Jacob and Taberah to clutch their seats. Their hearts sank with it, but fear beat a new rhythm into them, which quickened in pace as their vessel began to plummet at even greater speeds.

  “What’s going on?” Jacob asked. He hoped he was not still intoxicated. Yet it was perhaps a better thing if he was in the horrors of drink and not the horrors of where they plunging.

  Taberah did not answer. She got up quickly and left the room, racing up to the command centre. Jacob called after her, but she was gone. He hurried back to his own quarters, which felt like they were falling away from him.

  Everyone and everything was falling. Falling into the abyss.

  13 – ATTACK IN THE ABYSS

  “We’re sinking fast!” Alson cried. “I can’t control it.”

  “How are we sinking?” Rommond asked. “Do we have a leak?” He nodded to one of his lieutenants, who hurried down to the lower levels to consult with Boulder, the submarine’s chief mechanic, about possible damage to the hull.

  “Someone’s filled one of the ballast tanks,” Alson said.

  “What do you mean someone?”

  “They don’t just go off of their own accord, Rommond!”

  “Well, blow the ballast,” he ordered.

  “I can’t. None of the tanks appear to be connected with an air cannister any more.”

  Rommond turned to Tradam. “Get down there and see what’s up.” He grabbed the lieutenant by the shoulder before he could go. “And bring a gun.”

  * * *

  The Lifemaker sank as if it were made of lead. There was no time, nor truly any viable way, to jettison anything, and even if every possession on board the submarine was discarded, the weight of the water in the ballast tanks alone would keep it buried at the bottom of the sea.

  And it was to the bottom that the vessel now plunged, into the waters that were blacker than any black on land, into a gloom that was more consuming than the deepest night. Were the crew not focused on their frenzied work to stop the steep descent, they might have glanced out one of the many round windows, and they might have thought that they were looking into the black iris of an evil creature—and they might have been right.

  As the vessel fell, the pressure rose. The hull began to creak as if held inside the crushing fist of a giant, or the chomping maw of a giant fish. The most senior officers were unperturbed by the groaning of the metal, for they knew that the hull was thick and could withstand the terrible pressures of the deep, but the confidence of many others was shaken when bolts burst out of their holdings, striking walls, breaking the glass of gaslights, and even hitting members of the crew with a most violent force.

  The fall was so fast that Tradam found it difficult to get down to the ballast tank. He tried to walk, but instead he stumbled. He tried to run, but instead he fell. For every step forward, he was thrown back, or hurled against the hull, or cast against another crewman.

  And then the submarine struck the ocean’s floor, and if Tradam had not already been on the ground, he would have been knocked from his feet. He clambered up, and he raced to the back of the ship and burst through the huge metal door into a room full of cannisters and tanks.

  It was very dark, so much so that he could barely make out the curved shapes around him. He reached up for an oil lamp, but his hand found nothing. Then he heard a faint footstep, and his hand found his gun.

  * * *

  Rommond rattled off orders over the intercom, primarily to Boulder, who was on route to the bow of the submarine, where the other ballast tanks were housed.
A heave and a pant was the only response he got, but to Rommond it was confirmation enough.

  “I can’t do anything to get us back up, Rommond,” Alson said.

  “Tradam, come in,” Rommond called over the intercom, but there was no response, not even a heave or a pant. The general turned to Alson. “Hold the fort.”

  “The fort is sinking into the moat,” she said as he left the room.

  * * *

  Jacob sat on the floor of his quarters, gathering up the coils that had spilled from the upturned chest. Every so often the submarine tilted a little more, and the chest slid out of arm’s reach. On one occasion it almost slid out the door, as if it were trying to leave the ship. There were a lot of coils to put back in their box—one of the few problems of wealth.

  “When I was younger,” Whistler said, as he stood by the door with his arms folded, “I had less toys in my toy box.”

  “Blame your mother then,” Jacob replied. “Or ask Rommond for some of his.”

  Whistler knelt down and helped Jacob gather up the coils. He threw one or two at Jacob, who huffed in response.

  “What’s this?” Whistler asked, picking up a slightly brighter coil, which had a somewhat different design. He could not quite make out what it depicted, but it was clear that it was not the Iron Emperor.

  “A lucky coil, perhaps,” Jacob postulated. He stopped smiling when he saw Whistler’s worried face. “What is it?”

  Whistler pointed to the window, and his hand trembled. “There’s something out there.”

  * * *

  In the black abyss, there were creatures that even demons feared. No one knew what they looked like, not even themselves, for they were blind, and though many were scavengers, seizing and consuming any stray bits of food that had sunk down from the higher levels, there were predators too, just waiting for larger prey.

  As the inhabitants of the Lifemaker dusted themselves off from their descent, and as the crew worked to get it back afloat, a great sea serpent, ten times the length of the submarine, slithered through the silt, feeling its way towards whatever had caused such a tremendous shudder on the ocean bed.

  The abyss was awake, and its entire population was stirring, some to flee, some to investigate, but many, all too many, to feed. Fishes with fangs came. Bulbous bloated creatures came. Shelled monsters with massive jaws came. Things that defied description came. Every form or shape that stalked the nightmares of a child lurked there in the deep, and they all descended on the Lifemaker, no eyes to see, but many mouths to taste.

  * * *

  Jacob stood up slowly and turned towards the window. He felt his heart pumping like a piston, his lungs like little ballast tanks of their own. Every tiny movement was magnified, every sound amplified. The sweat dripped from his hands, forming another sea upon the floor.

  Perhaps it was because of the overwhelming darkness outside, which seemed darker even than when his submersible light went out, or perhaps it was due to the look on Whistler’s face, where the boy’s features seemed to flee into every recess, hide behind every ridge—but Jacob knew that something evil, something hungry, was outside.

  “Don’t move,” he whispered to Whistler. He did not think that the creature might be blind, and that he would have been better off saying: Don’t make a sound—or saying nothing at all.

  Something pressed against the window, nudging the submarine. Its hide was almost as dark as the waters around it, but its scales glistened from the light inside the room. Jacob badly wanted to douse the oil lamp, to hide inside a different darkness, but he had a feeling that any change inside the room, any step, any dimming of a light, any sound, might be like a beacon to the beast outside.

  “Jacob,” Whistler whispered, stammering the syllables of his name. Jacob turned slowly to him, and he saw the boy trembling so much that he might as well be moving back and forth across the room. The terror in his eyes was as though it were his nightmare that pressed against the hull. The unknown, Jacob thought. It was his own nightmare too.

  Then, with a suddenness that seized them both, two large yellow eyes opened at the window, followed by a monstrous set of ten-inch long pointed teeth, hundreds in number. They gleamed in the light that emanated from the room, and they stabbed and slashed at the window. Though it was made of the strongest glass, so strong that it could take the increasing pressure of the ocean’s greatest depths, it strained beneath the assault, and when it was not strained, it was scraped, and when it was not scraped, it cracked.

  Jacob and Whistler fled as if fear itself had manifested outside. They tripped and tumbled, but they did not care, so long as they fell forwards and away from that horrid creature that tried to feed upon the glass. They ran down the corridor, and they heard shouts and screams from many of the other cabins, and dozens more people raced out from their rooms, leaving wide the doors, from which could be seen many more of the yellow-eyed, many-toothed monsters, trying to get inside.

  More people joined the throng, and no one really knew where they were running to. If there were any crewmen trying to get through to the lower chambers, or trying to get to the battlements, they would have been swept up in the stampede. Some of the soldiers fled voluntarily, for though they were used to fighting demons, they had not seen anything as demonic as the creatures outside.

  Jacob pulled Whistler to the side just as the mob grew so large and so loud that it almost announced itself as the greatest meal available to whatever could reach its jaws inside. Whistler narrowly avoided being trampled, for the courage of many men and women gave way to the primal lust for life. Bravery was trampled by terror, and with it went anyone who was too short, or too slow, or not strong enough, or not violent enough. Panic pierced the minds of almost everyone present, and logic was pummelled into the floor, and human decency was discarded like bait for the frightful fishes that flocked towards the submarine.

  Whistler clung to Jacob, and Jacob shielded him from the storm of boots and fists, even as he shielded himself inside a doorway. The mania of his comrades helped quell his fear of monsters, and made him fear instead those same companions. The thunderous throng passed, and Jacob pulled Whistler along with him as he tried to find a way down to the lower levels.

  As they ran, and as the mob’s rumble faded away, they began to hear again the bashing against the windows, and the straining, cracking glass. The sounds mingled with Jacob’s thoughts and gave birth to a new fear inside his heart: that if the glass broke, they would be dead long before the creatures could get close to them. No one, not even the demons of the Regime, could survive at the immense pressures of the abyss, and even if they could, they would likely drown before they set eyes upon the gaping maws of the denizens of the deep.

  Down they went, echoing the descent of their vessel, into the very bowels of the ship, to save themselves from entering the bowels of something else. Jacob could feel Whistler’s hand quiver in his own, and perhaps Whistler felt the reverse. The boy was such a frail thing, and yet Jacob dragged him along, and even when he tried to let go of Whistler’s hand, Whistler held on tight.

  They climbed down a ladder into a dark room. Jacob did not know where they were going, but this was a comforting darkness, where no yellow eyes or white fangs lit up. They stopped to catch their breath, and found that there were many breaths to catch. They heard so many sounds above, scrapes and clangs, bangs and roars. It was as if Rommond had declared war, and everyone was fighting on their own side.

  Yet no matter how much the people behaved like beasts, the real assault came from the creatures outside.

  Something bashed against the submarine with such a tremendous force that the vessel rocked violently from side to side, throwing people back and forth. Jacob and Whistler were not ready for the first of these, and they earned bruises as their medals, but the second time the creature shook the ship, they clung to pipes that rattled in their holdings, as if they themselves feared the larger beast that came to feast upon them all. When the vessel swung from side to side
, Jacob and Whistler earned strained muscles, and then they earned an ever so brief respite, for the assailant came time and time again, and their grips grew weaker with each tumble.

  Then Jacob perked his ears and heard what sounded like the firing of torpedoes from the stern. About time, he thought, though he dared not think of the trouble those crewmen had with arming those weapons, nor of those panicked people who had abandoned their posts. He looked at Whistler and forced a reassuring smile.

  “We’re fighting back,” he said. He wished he could fight as well.

  * * *

  Taberah and Alakovi led the counter-assault, loading and firing torpedoes as if there was an unlimited supply. There was not.

  Neither of the women had any love for the other, but they both had hate in abundance for their assailant, and though they could not see it, they knew it in their hearts that it was just one massive and mighty creature that lunged itself against the submarine.

  Alakovi hauled up the massive torpedo shells and loaded them into the torpedo bays, and Taberah fired them as soon as the hatch banged shut. Other soldiers and volunteers from both the Resistance and the Order loaded other torpedoes, though never as quickly as this female pair.

  Though they could not see, and they feared to turn on the many bright lights of the submarine, in case they might attract more foul beasts, they heard the cries of the gargantuan creature as missiles struck its hulking form. At times the explosions forced the monster to retreat, but other times they made it attack with greater ferocity.

  They knew it was big, and they knew it was angry. What they did not know was that now it was wrapping its serpentine form around the entire hull—and preparing to squeeze.

  * * *

  The submarine stopped rocking, and Jacob let go of the pipes. Whistler was reluctant to let go of his, but he was even more reluctant to be left behind as Jacob climbed back up the ladder to their deck.