Almost imperceptibly, as the tube rotated, the tiny rattle would vibrate. Making a particular frequency of sound. The bastards!
I dashed out of the cabin onto the deck. “Grab him! Don’t let him get away!” I yelled, but by the time anyone knew what I was talking about, that snake Phillips has already disappeared into the throng of people on the road.
Liza, hefting an oil-stained wrench, climbed back onto the ship, having been the first to take off after him. Panting, she leaned on the foremast, and wiped her eyes with one heavy-gloved hand.
“Wha’s all tha’ about, Cap’n? He nick your purse or some?” she asked. I gritted my teeth, handed her the box. She looked at it for a few seconds. “A resonant cavity transmitter!” she exclaimed.
Dale looked puzzled. “What’s―“
“I’s a sort of phonograph with no wires! I read about ‘em in th’periodical, th’s new lis’nin’ an’ transmittin’ device tha’can broadcast inf’rmation something fierce, an’ with no steam or electricity to boot!”
“Which means―“ Dale began again.
“Which means, we need to get moving. Antimony's Eye has a copy of our map, and they intend to beat us there. If they are interested, it must be something big, something important. We need to move before they do, or we will lose this chance. Everyone on board in ten minutes or you get left behind! Dale, set us a course for Wrightworth’s workshop!”
In less than half an hour, everyone was on board, and we were already cast off, the boilers refilled and the coal reserves replenished. The crew, while not perhaps the singular best at anything, made a well-oiled machine when they worked together. I stood at the helm, looking over the land that stretched out beneath us, while Dale and his instruments clicked and scratched at maps and plates on a large table behind me. Liza tended to the engines, making sure nothing overheated or broke, and Victoria stayed with the other essential crew, performing what needed performing. Even Spark, the cabin boy, bustled in the kitchen, helping our cook, Martha, prepare for the evening meal. We were making good time.
The further west we travelled, the more the land thinned out. Busy cityscape faded into countryside, the oppressive black of the coal fires’ smoke gradually becoming less and less apparent. The rolling plains, covered in farmland and dotted here and there with a homestead or a village, faded from verdant, lush green to golden amber to dull grey and brown as our ship got closer to the inhospitable frozen wastes.
A little more than two hundred years ago, something like half the known world suddenly experienced a violent winter, with snows savagely falling for months, burying entire cities, countries, and landmasses under a heavy prison of ice. To stay would have been tantamount to suicide, so with only so little as they could fit on ships, anyone who had anything picked a direction and sailed. Now, as the ice recedes, more and more of what is essentially a veritable king’s vault of lost progress is becoming available to those with the pluck to take it.
And it seemed we were not the only ones with the pluck for this workshop. From the main mast fighting top, a voice called down.
“Captain, we have visitors!” called the watchman. “Five steam vessels, in no particular formation, no markings or indications to my eyes except the foremost,” he said, focusing through his spyglass. “Looks like a silver eye painted on the figurehead?”
“Antimony's Eyes! Ladies and gentlemen, we’re in a hurry and cannot entertain guests today. Full steam ahead!” I yelled into the communication pipes. The Nephele was a quick vessel. We could outrun them easily if we kept up at this pace, but if we could lose them over the horizon, then they would not be able to follow us and would have to navigate themselves. If we could just beat them to the workshop…!
We pushed ahead. The wind grew colder, the air thinner. There were signs of life, here and there, but they were signs of a life that had long since been extinguished by the ice. A house with a barn, still partially buried. A stream of frigid water cutting a swath through the middle of what used to be a plowed field. A low, flat building that may have housed workers, the roof collapsed and the walls crumbling from the weight of the snow. I pulled up my collar, wrapped the fur scarf tighter around my throat.
The whole crew had gone to bundle up, and even Victoria, who normally dressed elegantly and with a sense of style that made even the rich hoydens jealous, traded her long dress for a stout pair of wool-lined trousers and a high-collared canvas and fur jacket. The only one who wasn’t dressed for the cold was Liza, still elbow-deep in grease and heat under decks. My breath came out in white puffs that lingered and then dissipated.
In the navigator’s cabin (he had specifically requested a room of his own to navigate), Dale was busy plotting lines and calculating on his slide rule. On the table, a large, hand-drawn map was pocked and marked with curves and shaded zones and all manner of marks, the meanings of half of which I had no idea about. Hither and thither skittered dozens of his tiny automata, marking here and there on the map.
“Captain, I have the course plotted. There’s just one problem…” he said, and indicated a shaded area. “We’ve gone now further than has been mapped since the freeze. This area, where the workshop is, seems to be directly in the middle of… well, of that,” he said, and pointed out the window. I let my eyes follow his gesture, and strained to see a large mountain, white with snow but blue in places where the top layer had begun to melt. “That’s not a mountain, or at least not one made of earth. It is not on any of the pre-freeze maps, so it makes me think that it is solid ice.”
It certainly looked like it. Through the winds and ice-dust that swirled around the ship, a barely visible mountain of ice on top of the very location to which we planned to go.
I started to say something to him, but I was cut short by the ship suddenly and violently rocking backwards, throwing me off balance and sending his navigation automata scattering all over the floor. The little clockworks clattered and tumbled, and Dale scrambled to gather them back up before anyone stepped on one. (Liza had accidentally treaded on one before, and we did not hear the end of it for weeks. “Oh, they are so delicate, oh, they take so much time to build, how could you,” the whole lot. A real dramatic sort, Dale.)
The ship righted, but the winds had seemed to intensify tenfold suddenly. The whole vessel shook and shivered in the unexpectedly savage winds.
“Dale! What in the Lady’s name is going on?”
Dale struggled to his feet, letting his automata back onto the table. “A windstorm?”
The alarm sounded on the deck. As I watched, the sails were withdrawn into the masts, and the crew began to hurry inside cabins and passages. Victoria stumbled inside, and slumped into one of the chairs. “Captain,” she began. “There’s a standing wind tunnel there.”
When a cold wave and a warm wave intersect, she explained, the warm particles rise up and the cold ones fall lower. However, due to the extreme difference in temperatures, the rate at which this movement happens is greatly accelerated. This can create what is essentially a horizontal tornado that remains for as long as there is a temperature difference that great.
“…and I am frankly ashamed, captain, that nobody put together that this would happen,” she said, herself included. The ship shuddered again under a gale force wind. This would certainly explain why there were no maps for this far back in the freeze―they said cartography missions simply never returned, but there was no information as to why not. They were swept into the winds and killed.
“I hate to bring this up again,” said the voice of the lookout, coming through one of the sound pipes, “but it seems our guests insist on being granted hospitality! Three nautical miles by my reckoning, and gaining! Captain, it looks like there is a cannon of some sort on their deck now!”
A second sound pipe, the one from the engineering station, sounded. Liza’s voice was hurried. “Beggin’ yer pardon, Cap’n, but stayin’ afloat just here is pushin’ the coal fires a mite harder than they ought…”
A wall o
f deadly currents ahead, an unwelcoming barrel of a weapon behind, and a boiler being overworked to maintain static buoyancy. I had to make a decision. I shut my eyes for a moment, and visualized.
Stay here, boiler explodes, buoyancy is lost. Get pulled into the windstorm with no navigation. Ship is torn apart, all inside die. Turn back, run into the angry Antimony's Eyes, who seem to want more than just a friendly cuppa. Their weapon vaporizes half the hull, engines destroyed, crash to the earth, all inside likely die. Try to navigate the storm currents, avoiding lightning and torrents of freezing wind until far enough into the cold that the storm lets us out. High probability of ship being tossed like a jeweler’s tumbler, but less hard matter with which to collide. Ship may be hit by lightning, catch fire, and sink. However, likelihood of everyone dying less than other options.
I slid my hand into my pocket, pulled out my pair of goggles. “Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Let’s get ready for an adventure!” I shouted into the main sound pipe. “Navigators, slide rules out! Doctors, get your ointments ready! Engineers, grease up those wrenches! Batten down the hatches, boys and girls, because we’re heading into storm territory!”
A moment of silence followed as I pulled the lenses over my eyes, tightened my coat. Then, from the sounding board, a cheer resounded. That’s my crew, I thought, and threw open the door. Everyone had their jobs, and mine, the captain’s, was at the helm. There I would go.
The wind ripped tiny razors of ice through the air, biting and stinging into my face and hands as I struggled to get to the wheel. The deck was covered in a thin layer of ice, and the wind was enough to carry away a child. Still, I forced through the elements, my hands finally wrapping around the sturdy wooden wheel that controlled the rudder of the Nephele. I hooked my elbow through its spokes, and pulled on a pair of gloves with strong cord attached at the wrist. These were usually for sleeping at the helm, but now, as I tied the cords to the frosted wood, they might just keep me from being swept off the deck entirely.
“Do your job and do it well, Strallahan, and nary a man can stand to your brightness.” A memory of something someone had told me once crept into my head. I grinned, set my brow against the wind, and hauled my good ship into the gale force storm currents.
Lightning flashed and the winds roared, and many times I feared I would lose the rudder completely, but eventually, after what seemed to have been a century of pulling this way and that, pushing forward and hanging back, avoiding the fierceness of one current only to be swept into another, the Nephele finally, finally came out of the storm. The air was suddenly calm, clear, as though the storm had taken up all the stray particles of anything at all.
I sighed, unlashed my gloves, and collapsed onto the seat nearby. That was exhausting. Victoria and the rest of the crew drew out of their safe-places, venturing out to see where we were now. Even Liza came up to the deck, and gulped in the fresh, crisp air she so sorely would have been lacking down in the bowels of the ship.
The lookout, having climbed up the fighting top, gazed behind us, into the wall of currents and ice-mist. He called down from his perch, “I think we’ve lost them, captain! I can’t see any sign of them!”
Music to my ears.
Victoria brought me a stout mug filled to the top with a heavy brown liquid. “Drink up. It will warm you a bit and settle your nerves.” It slid down my throat, filling the dry spots and spreading a tingly warmth through my limbs.
I breathed a sigh. “Damage report?”
Liza grinned. “Th'boilers're all top shape, I made sure of it,” she said, and flashed me a thumbs-up. “Th'sound pipe system is undamaged, an' near as I can tell, there's nary an internal problem.”
“The bad news,” said Dale, as he came up to the wheel, “is that the sails have been knocked out of line and got torn up a bit. We should put down for a time and see if my clockworks can't make short work of the damage.”
We, a small vessel, made it through the currents and torrents all right, in not so much time. However, the Antimony's Eyes ships were bigger, steamier vessels than the Nephele. If they made it through the torrents at all, it would be a miracle. I rested back a bit. “We're safe, I wager, so let's do that. I think after that, everyone could use a taste of solid ground again.”
We alighted in what seemed to be the center of an old town square. A large open space, paved with cracked and frozen bricks, surrounded by the remains of what seemed to once have been shop fronts, accepted the landing feet of the Nephele, and as the steam boilers released their pressure, jets of white-hot mist melted holes in the surrounding ice. I was the first to touch ground.
The town's remains were at least somewhat inviting. There were buildings that were still intact, which would provide a place to set down and build a fire to warm ourselves. I strolled over to an old pub and tried the door. Surprisingly, it opened without resistance. The hinges creaked, and as the door swung open, I caught a glint of metal down by my feet. Liza, carrying a bundle of dry wood and kindling, was about to walk in, but I stopped her.
There on the floor, just inside the threshold, a finger ring sparkled in the light. Through the center of the ring was pushed a long, delicate finger bone, which was in turn attached to the rest of an entire skeleton. I motioned for a lamp, and when Liza shone the lantern inside, the body sparkled. It seemed like nearly every bone in the whole body had been modified somehow, wrapped in thin wire or gilt with metal or hinged to another with a delicate spring. The ring on the finger was attached to a series of tiny pulleys that, on close inspection, would very well make the finger move if they were engaged.
“Fascinating...” murmured Victoria as she inspected the bones, the spark on her glasses flickering and glowing. “These modifications were done post-mortem, obviously, but not very long after, it seems. The bones were still fresh when these were added. Micro fractures spider-webbing out from the drill-points seem to have been filled with a bonding agent, so prevent spread of furth--” she said, but in the middle of the word, she cut herself off.
“Did... you... did you just see that?” she said, and indicated further into the deserted pub. “I think I saw a spark over there.” Liza moved the beam of light, and the rest of the interior became visible.
Dozens of modified skeletons littered the place. Seated at tables, or hunched onto the bar, or slumped on the floor, a full thirty at least of these things lay strewn about in various poses. The light lingered on one of them just for a second.
They are skeletons. They cannot possibly. There is no way. I reached out to touch the one illuminated by Liza's lamp, but as my fingers approached, there came a sort of chattering noise, a noise of dry clattering, of dice shaken in a cup. Of dry bone on dry bone.
The skeleton sprang to its feet, and seemed to be adjusting its balance. Liza, Victoria, and I jumped back, and my fists tightened. Liza dropped her bundle and seized one of the stouter pieces of wood in her hands.
"Oh, nae, ye don't!" she said resolutely, and before the thing had any time to react, she slammed the wood into the side of the skeleton's head.
Dry and brittle, the skull broke from the neck of the skeleton, but the rest of the body did not take much notice. In fact, it turned toward another pile of bones, and seized the leg joint of one of them. After a second, that skeleton began to shudder and shake as well, and, as if joined to the other one at the connection between hand-and-leg, the two bone-beings moved as one.
Victoria's spectacles sparked, and she concentrated for a moment. "Strallahan, they are not alive. They are being controlled by what looks like magnetism?" she said, unsure of it herself. "Like a controlled magnetic... wave? Field? I don't know..." She looked about for either a place to hide or an item to use as a weapon.
Liza, undaunted by the lack of effect of the first blow, scanned the now-growing creature for weak points, and brought the club down on a single connecting bone between one mass of the steadily-growing conglomeration and another. As the weapon crashed through, one side of it shuddered to a
halt and began to fall apart for a moment, but then the other mass rejoined into it, and it animated again.
This time, she was rightfully daunted. The bone-and-metal construct continued to grow, gathering up the other skeletons, empty metal-banded mugs, and any other small metallic item into its own bulk.
"Probably get out of here?" I said, backing up toward the door.
"Ye better!" shouted Liza, and we tore out of the building just as the creature reached a size that would not be contained by the walls. As we came out, the monster poured out after us, a torrent of organic and metallic matter that began to take a shape outside.
The Nephele Ship: The Trilogy Collection (A Steampunk Adventure) Page 2