series 01 04 Abattoir in the Aether

by L. Joseph Shosty

  “I think the bone is broken,” she hissed.

  “How unfortunate,” Le Boeuf said. “Unfortunate for you, at any rate.” Nathanial whirled back on Le Boeuf, anger flushing his cheeks. Le Boeuf favoured him with a self-satisfied smirk. “Yes, I’m sure you planned to make some haste in leaving this place,” he said. “Now it shall be a little more difficult than that. A real pity. I know you’d hoped to leave me here to die, and I am terribly sorry to disappoint you.”

  “You monster!” Nathanial cried. “Why shoot her? Can’t you see she’s been through enough?”

  “Yes.” Le Boeuf drew out the word as he appraised Annabelle’s appearance. “Not nearly as much as I’d wanted her to suffer, however. Dolan was supposed to push her out an airlock, you see, but apparently he had a change of heart. Speaking of Mister Dolan, Miss Somerset, if you had bothered to hide the poor blackguard’s body, I might never have known what you were about. But there I was, off to get a replacement rotor for an experiment I’ve been conducting―oh, you both know about my little aether machine by now, don’t you? Yes, I’m sure Dolan told you all about it, Miss Somerset. He did love to talk, that one. Which is why I knew to rush straight over, but it looks like I’ve arrived a moment too late.”

  “Peregrine’s headed into the abyss,” Nathanial said. “There’s nothing you can do it about it, now.”

  “Nor do I plan to. At least, not any more than I have already done.” Le Boeuf placed a hand on a nearby console, stroking it lovingly. “You’ve destroyed this place, true. I always knew Henry would never do such a thing. For all his terrible faults, he has a respect for what science has wrought. You, you’re a young pup, Stone. You don’t yet understand what can truly be accomplished, and so you senselessly throw away such a wonderful creation without a second thought.”

  “I’ve thought enough of this place to last two lifetimes, and I know what you’re going to do with Torquilstone, Le Boeuf,” Nathanial replied. “I would as soon sacrifice my own life than see you unleash this terror upon the world.”

  “Oh,” Le Boeuf said with a surprised laugh. “How charmingly noble of you, Stone, but no, I don’t think we’ll require a blood sacrifice from you today. Your friends in the galley will be sufficient.” Nathanial recoiled, suddenly startled, and Le Boeuf smiled a shark’s smile. “I designed this place, as you know, and what a curious feature, to install locks on the doors which can only be accessed from the outside. I can see by your face you understand. I’ve locked them inside the galley, and I’ve thrown away the key, as it were. You’ll never rescue them, Stone. Your rash gesture has cost the lives of nearly two hundred men, and I want you to live. I want you to have a long, healthy life full of magical days and nights that you can’t enjoy for having murdered so many innocent people.”

  “Where is the key?” Nathanial cried.

  “I told you already. I threw it away, and I’ll never tell where. Now, you could be the hero and run about this station, eyes wild and blood pumping through your veins, looking for the key, but even if you find it, you’ll never escape this station alive. Neither will those poor souls who are now offering their hearts to God for the safe passage of those who have been lost these past few days. Or, you could do what you were planning to do in the first place, which is leave Peregrine Station. Your flyer, Miss Somerset, won’t survive an emergency flight from here, but one of the cutters should suffice. It should take you all the way to Mars, if that’s what you like, or anywhere else. I like to think you’ll return to Earth out of some misguided desire to inform the Queen and Her people of what has transpired here. I almost wish I could be there with you, when you see the ‘gratitude’ on the faces of the people you are claiming to have saved. They will crush you, Stone, crush you for being a hero. The Crown doesn’t like heroes. They like power. And money. And grudging renown. There’s no room for heroes, not where politics are concerned. Heroes are villains to them, and I have ensured that your name will be synonymous with villainy. It won’t matter where you run in the end, for they will spare no expense to have you. You’ll rot for years before they stretch you.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Annabelle asked. “Just kill us and be done with it.”

  “I could take no real amusement from something so short and sudden. No, you’ve hurt me deeper than you can know, and I will see you suffer for it. I’m surprised they didn’t warn you about me. Once I’ve taken notice of a young soul, I don’t give it up so easily. I like to stretch pain out over decades, and you’ll never escape me. You might try to match wits against me, but you’ll fail. I am the greatest mind this world has ever seen, and I will show you all what a true union of intellect and will can accomplish. You will think you’ve gone to sleep in Hell and dreamed of Hell, only to wake up in Hell, and with a greater Hell to go to when you die.”

  The derringer’s report muffled the last word. Le Boeuf, wide-eyed with shock, fumbled a hand to his abdomen where the bullet had made a small, red hole. Nathanial shot him again―this time four inches to the right―just to be sure. The pistol dropped from Le Boeuf’s numb fingers and clattered to the floor. Already, his knees were starting to buckle.

  “You seem to be confused,” Nathanial said. “You’ve told me what I need to know, and I don’t care to hear you pontificate about your vastly superior intellect. What I want to hear is you grovel in pain as I pass you by. You’ve doomed the people on this station. You’ve killed my friends. You can die with them.”

  Nathanial retrieved the pistol from where it lay. Le Boeuf half-heartedly reached a hand out. His lips were moving, but he made no sound other than a stuttering “t” under his breath. Nathanial slapped the hand away and shoved Le Boeuf with all of his might, sending the man hurtling onto the floor, where his head thudded off the deck.

  “We have to go,” Nathanial said. “We won’t have much time.”

  “We’ll have even less than that,” Annabelle said, voice agitated with pain. “I don’t believe I can walk.”

  Nathanial inspected the gunshot wound. Annabelle was correct; the leg was broken. He looked about for something to use as a splint, but there was nothing.

  “If we could return to where Dolan held me, there were crates. We could use the wood,” she said.

  “We can go to the quartermaster. Everything we need will be there.”

  “You should go. It will be faster.”

  Nathanial shook his head. “No, I won’t leave you here with him.”

  “Give me the pistol. I can take care of myself.”

  Reluctantly, Nathanial agreed and gave over the weapon. He turned and sprinted away. All the way, he kept his ears trained, expecting at some point, to hear the muffled crack of gunfire.

  2.

  At the quartermaster, he found a tapestry commemorating the coronation of King Edward I, from which he cut several strips, and two pieces of wood which were about half the length of Annabelle’s leg. He knew nothing of battlefield medicine, but he knew that the location of the wound was a difficult one, one that required they immobilise most of her leg since the wound was located so close to the knee.

  Nathanial returned to Sunward Observation to much the same scene as he had left, much to his relief. Le Boeuf still lay crumpled on the floor, moaning but unmoving, and Annabelle, having suffered so much in the past two weeks, had done nothing irrational. Good. He did not want something like Le Boeuf’s death on her conscience. Let that be his burden, like this station. Like the people who were even now remembering the men who had fallen recently, unknowing that soon they, too, would die.

  The hot fury that came before tears burned his eyes as he fashioned the splint about her leg. Stopping the bleeding would come when they were safely aboard the cutter and out of harm’s way. He hoped Annabelle would live that long, but he could not help matters at all if she did not. He had to get them out of here. Better to push all other concerns aside and do what had to be done first. There would be time enough later to deal with such thoughts.

  Annabelle looke
d weak. He lifted her into his arms, and while she was not quite dead weight, she hanged limply. The satchel went on top, across her abdomen, and like that, he carried her to the lifts and downward into Hell.

  It took him a while to orient himself. Hell was difficult to navigate when one was unburdened, but with Annabelle in his arms, and the heat and steam immediately beginning their work on him, he wondered if he would manage it. Within twenty feet he already began to feel the fatigue starting to take hold. By fifty feet, he was breathing hard, and his arms were starting to ache. He had to stop twice, set her on the floor, and massage the muscles in his arms. He was a scientist after all, not a labourer, and as small as she might be, Annabelle was solidly built, perhaps as much as ten stone.

  “Throw me over your shoulder,” Annabelle said. “It’ll take the burden off your arms. You can use your legs, then. It’s easier.”

  Nathanial protested. “I won’t handle you in such a way, Annabelle, not like some sack of feed.”

  “Enough propriety!” Annabelle cried. “I don’t care how you handle me, Nathanial, but we can’t stop every ten feet for you to rest. We won’t make it!”

  Nathanial did as told, and though she grunted as he slung her over his shoulder, she said nothing.

  3.

  The rest of the journey to the docking bay was easier, if only slightly so. When they arrived before the cutter, and Nathanial was able to alleviate himself of Annabelle’s burden, the muscles in his left shoulder were throbbing knots, and his legs felt like flimsy cane stalks. Scooping her up in his arms, he carried her the rest of the way inside and lay her down on the cabin floor. Afterward he stoked the boilers to life, primed the aether propeller and got the cutter in condition for travel.

  Being as there were no men to open the bay doors Nathanial left the ship and found the lockers with the atmosphere suits. He pulled on one, fashioned the hose to the helmet, and pulled the ring. Air flooded the helmet, and only then did he secure it in place on his head. He would not need the entire hour of oxygen, he hoped, and so the tiny bit he lost was of little consequence.

  Properly suited, Nathanial returned to the bay. Each cutter, and there were five in all, rested in pressurised stalls. Nathanial closed the stall door, depressurised the stall, and opened the airlock into the aether. He then used the personnel airlock to enter the aether, and the handholds on the side of the station took him around into the stall, where he entered the cutter.

  Once inside the cutter he took the controls while still in his suit. He wanted to waste no time, including the few minutes it would take step out of his suit. Already it had taken considerable time to carry Annabelle the near-length of the station. In Heaven, the memorial service would soon end, and those gathered there would realise what was transpiring, at least in part. Would they count their number and realise he wasn’t there, and would they blame him, then, as they began their fall into the vortex? He did not want to think about their faces, yet the images would not leave him as he steered the cutter free of the docking bay.

  Annabelle had crawled into a chair bolted into place along the cabin wall, and secured herself to it. She watched Nathanial work. The cutter was a small ship, much smaller than Annabelle’s flyer, and as such it was a simple matter for a crew of two or even one to the operate it. Gone was the need to race back and forth between engineering and the bridge, as it could easily be accessed with just a short walk. The navigational equipment worked, as well, and Annabelle instructed him how to take his readings. Nathanial steered them in the general direction of Mars.

  “I’ll tell you, I think I need to see if we have a telescope,” Nathanial said when they were underway. “I rather think I like my method better.”

  Annabelle half-smiled, half-grimaced. “I don’t care how we proceed, so long as we get to Mars, and soon. I think I’ve had enough of the aether for a while.”

  Nathanial found a medical kit, along with a battered copy of Blackwood’s Pocket Physician, which he used to clean and dress the gunshot wound. The bleeding had slowed to an ooze. The bullet itself had ricocheted off the bone, and had come just shy of exiting the soft tissue elsewhere. It pressed the epidermis outward just behind the knee. Following the instructions in the book, Nathanial used Annabelle’s Bowie knife to slit the skin and pushed the bullet out. There was little pain in the procedure, or so she said. Nathanial was relieved to see the bullet come away in one piece. No fragments had chipped away when it collided with the leg.

  “The leg will have to be set,” he said to her. “I’m not certain I can do this, Annabelle. What little I know of medicine are the complications which can occur if something is not done properly.”

  This made Annabelle chuckle even if levity was not his intention. Given the plethora of cuts and bruises about her person, Nathanial was sure it must have hurt, but she laughed nevertheless. “I’m glad to have you as a friend, Professor Nathanial Stone,” she said, patting his cheek.

  This left Nathanial confused, and so he merely nodded. “Thank you, I suppose.” He waited a beat, and then added. “We’ll need to keep that leg splinted, no matter what. And we’ll have to wait until we’ve put a safe distance between us and, uh, Peregrine Station before I can concentrate enough to set the bone properly. If I can do so at all, mind you, which I’m not saying I can. But we’ll have to wait.”

  Annabelle was still smiling. “Whatever you think is right,” she said.

  She turned her eyes toward the window. “I’m going to miss Esmeralda,” she said, voice strangely soft. “Given the friendship Uncle Ernest had with my father, it felt almost like a gift from him. From Father, I mean. Losing it…well, I must say it feels a bit like I’ve lost another piece of him, Nathanial. While you’re sitting here, fussing over the nature of my injuries, all I can think of is there’s no salve or bandage in the world that’s going to patch that up.”

  Nathanial was about to reply when the ship lurched as if it had collided with a wall. Luckily, Annabelle was still strapped into her seat, but Nathanial was sent sliding across the deck to the front of the cabin. His shoulder collided painfully with the wall.

  “What is that?” Annabelle screamed.

  “It must be the aether vortex!” Nathanial shouted, reasserting his balance so the magnets in the soles of his shoes connected with the metal floor. “We must have caught the outer edge!”

  Nathanial scrambled to the aether wheel and began to steer it. From the viewport he could see the swirling black mass. They were still far away, but that did not matter. A station as large as Peregrine would hardly have felt any effect at this range, but the cutter, being so small, could be ripped apart. Nathanial whipped the wheel, and the cutter started to come about. The hull groaned and shrieked, and the bridge shook.

  “We’re coming in too fast,” Nathanial shouted over the noise. He reduced speed, but that did little to help the problem. The problem was, their turning arc was wide, and they would be far into the vortex’s outer edge before they could fully turn around.

  Something shattered nearby. Glass spilled onto the floor. Nathanial looked left and saw it was the internal pressure gauge. The aether wheel shook so hard it felt like it might break off in his hand.

  “We’re coming apart!” Annabelle cried.

  Peregrine Station began to slide into their field of vision. The angle of departure they had taken had not got them that far away from the station. Similarly, the aether vortex was so large as to capture them both in its field. The station, Nathanial could see, was mere minutes from crashing into the outer edge.

  The cutter completed its wide, arcing turn. Nathanial increased speed. Something overhead exploded, sending a shower of sparks down onto the deck floor. The bridge lights dimmed and faded away. He noticed then that the controls were not responding efficiently. Something was wrong with the steering mechanism. He increased speed further, and soon, the pummelling on the hull subsided.

  Nathanial breathed a sigh of relief.

  “We’ll skirt the edge of it, no
w,” he said. “Eventually we’ll find an end to it, and then we’ll adjust course and proceed to Mars.”

  Their new course was taking them by Peregrine Station one last time. Nathanial watched it pass. The stabilisers were working at full capacity. For a thing its size, Peregrine was travelling at an enormous speed. It hit the outer edge of the vortex, and a trickle of purplish energy coursed over its outer hull. The station otherwise showed little evidence it had collided with anything. Instead, it continued to barrel forward, toward the heart of the vortex. At this distance, little damage would be done. Within a few minutes, however, the first visible signs of its destruction would occur.

  Nathanial found something else to occupy himself. He checked the controls, cleaned the glass off the floor, and visited engineering to make certain everything was in order. The aether propeller had slight damage, but it was nothing significant.

  “We have no luck with flyers,” Annabelle joked when he told her what had happened.

  “It shouldn’t delay us much,” he replied. “I’ll examine the cutter more thoroughly when we’re clear of the vortex, but I imagine our hull is still intact, despite the sturm and drang.”

  Despite his best efforts, Nathanial could not keep away from the viewport. He found his way there again, and he stared at Peregrine Station as it retreated from view. Purplish energy coursed around it now. The station was being torn apart, millimetre by millimetre. A curious effect then. Pieces began to break away, first one here and one there, with the frequency increasing every second. The hull squashed and began to elongate, as if it were made of putty. Finally, as the true destruction began, sections liquefied and began to ooze.

  Peregrine Station was literally melting.

  “My God,” Nathanial whispered, and he looked away once more.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “For Phoebus, Cloaked in Mourning”

  1.

  Nathanial had expected an eventual explosion, but none ever came. The storage cupboard in the back contained the bulk of the space within the cutter. Lashed to the deck were enough supplies to last them a month at least, and in the corner, next to a cask of potable water, was a telescope. This he set up on the bridge to scout the vortex’s edge, which appeared to be several hundred statute miles away, if his calculations were correct.