"Looks like a mold-maker for those disks. There are a bunch of the same blank waxy ones here, and it looks like it will still cast. You should put that disk from the brain inside, and we'll try to play it when it's dried and hardened." He motioned to the phonograph table on the top of the device. "Maybe we can see what the old man was up to."
There was a dial on the device indicating stages of progress inside. If it was anything to go by, we'd have some time to wait before it was finished. If we were gone before it was done, so be it, but that nagging curiosity of mine was acting up...
The automatons on the walls waited patiently for instructions. We gathered by small experimentation that they operated on a call from the green lever, and returned to their place on the red lever. One pull calls one machine, and from that point they operated on actions programmed via punch cards. We did not have the punch cards, of course, but it also meant that they were very likely not a threat.
The natural gas container, Liza deemed, was filled from a natural source upon which the workshop had been built. She guessed that the source was rather deep underground, and that the workshop had at least a shaft down to that source to get it up into the main building. If she was correct, then we'd have plenty of light and heat in here if we wanted it.
Deeper into the bowels of the workshop we were to go. Who knew what sort of impressive technology we could get from further in!
One of the doors from the main table room opened into a long, spiraling ramp downward. As the door swung open, a draft colder than the one we were already standing in wafted over my feet, and I unconsciously shivered. "Well, ladies and gentlemen, down and down we go," I said, and stepped through the door.
Not a second later, the same rumbling we all heard and felt upstairs began again. This time it felt stronger, or at least closer, and the brick walls around us in the spiral passage shook, dust falling from them. It seemed to be coming from deep below. Maybe this was just a side effect of having drilled down so deep to get to the fuel source, I thought. Still, this tremor felt longer, deeper. Like a great child dragging a wagon across a cobbled street.
"We haven't really talked about it yet, because I am sure the others expect you to have some master plan, but I feel like it needs to be addressed," said Victoria, drawing close to me as we walked down the ramp. "The matter of escaping both from the ice and from the Antimony Eyes. Considering the Nephele is just as buried in the ice as their ship, really. So tell me, captain," she said. "What is your master plan?"
I shrugged. "We'll just execute Plan A."
Victoria's sigh was so deep I could have felt it from four years in the future. "I expected as much."
"When has Plan A ever failed us?"
"Plan A has never failed because Plan A is not a plan."
I grinned. "Precisely why it's so good."
The further down we went, the colder it became. We had descended maybe ten meters down when the ramp ended in two great swinging doors, several meters tall and made of riveted metal. Across them was a huge wooden locking bar, and the stone floor was marred and pocked like many projects had been dragged in and out of this place. Dale and I hefted the bar out of its holder, and I seized the large door handles and pulled.
The doors swung open nearly silently, brushing the cold stone ground just slightly, following the marks in the stone that denoted where it had swung just like this so many times before. I stepped inside while Liza threw the gas switch, lighting what must have been a hundred gas lamps in the room. They cast a bright light over the room, and it took my eyes a second to adjust.
I could not believe my eyes.
The room was completely covered in a thin layer of ice. Instruments, floors, tables, all of it encased in a thin blue film. In the center of the room, which seemed to have been hewed from the very living rock we were standing in, a device with two large antenna-like objects sticking out of it seemed to be the thing from which the ice emanated. It was enormous, a device almost as big as the entire Nephele, with what seemed to be an operator's station protruding from the front side.
The side of the thing was attached by dozens of thick hoses to a boiler and a generator, and the other side had panels and dials and latches covering its surface from top to bottom. On the operator's station, a swivel chair turned between three panels of buttons and readouts, and there was a small ladder that allowed one to reach it.
Around this device, however, were the things that took my breath away. Eight large crystalline mounds surrounded it, six of which held, frozen inside, huge, black, charred humanoid figures at least ten feet tall and half as broad. The most unsettling factor, however...
Two of the giant ice crystals were broken, and there was no sign of a creature inside them. There were marks in the stone floor that looked almost like they had been melted into the very rock, vaguely suggestive of claw marks, that led from both broken shards to the nearby stone wall. At that wall, there was a hole, a sort of tunnel that had been carved--
No, carved wasn't quite right. I took a few hesitant steps closer, my breath clouding and dispersing in the frigid air. I touched the rock, and found it was smooth, like glass, where the tunnel began. The gas lamps threw their light onto the surface, and it gleamed like it had been polished. This tunnel had been melted into the wall.
"Melted..." I mumbled, and turned my eyes back to the hulking, dark masses encased in the ice behind me.
"Liza, figure out what this machine is. Victoria, Martha, scour this room for things we can take. Luke, you and Dale find any other switches in this room, without tripping them. I cannot stress that last bit enough. We need to get out of this place, and soon. It gives me the creeps."
"You got it, Captain," said Luke, making a salute. He and Dale nodded to each other, and began to walk slowly and carefully around the perimeter of the room. Liza was already part of the way up the ladder to the control module, and Martha and Liza followed behind the two trap-scouts, inspecting tools on the walls and the like. I turned and looked by the door through which we came, my eyes alighting on the small shelf crammed full of files.
The first one I grabbed was labelled "Results log." I flipped open to the middle of the binding, and was presented with pages and pages of notes, all labeled and dated meticulously, in that same flowing handwriting from the diary we'd found.
"Test 63, April 17, 253rd year of the Crown. The device can receive ample power from four of the creatures. Any less, and the primary control coils will not build enough charge to affect more than a ten foot radius. Primary steam boiler to be reinforced, to allow for higher pressure.
"Test 64, April 18, 253rd year of the Crown. The creatures seem irritable. Must see to having control bands tightened. They are a resource at best and an agent of destruction of the highest degree at worst. Perhaps best to begin looking for new energy source. Machine can affect approximately three miles radius, exponentially growing with each attached creature."
Pages and pages of this material filled the book, all mentioning the "creatures" as if they were some kind of tool or slave, never as if they were terribly dangerous. No elaboration on what they were, of course. That would likely be in a previously-written book or set of notes. I looked again at the creatures frozen solid in the ice, and wondered just how they "powered" this machine.
I flipped to the back of the notebook, and was about to begin reading the last one, when Liza waved me over. "It's connected to a phenomenally large boiler system, with a turbine tha'generates an electric charge something fierce, funnels it intae a huge magnetic field. I donnae what it does, but it's extraordinarily powerful, and nae mistake..."
"Generates a magnetic field, huh... Can you make it work?"
"If ye give me some steam, I wager I can make 'er run a bit, but the boiler's down below this trapdoor. I cannot see a fuel source for it."
I tapped my knuckles on one of the imprisoned creatures. The dull crack sound echoed once. "I think you were looking at it. According to these notes, these creatures powered the boil
er somehow."
"Th'creatures? They'd have tae generate some mighty heat by themselves to power a system the likes o'this one."
I looked again at the tunnel burned through the rock beside me. "Maybe that's just what they do." I shivered and pulled my collar tighter to me as Liza continued to intake the workings of the machine.
Victoria and Martha had found the room itself was relatively bare, save a table of tools on casters that had been toppled and never cleaned up. There wasn't really anything there to take. They began to come back toward the door.
"Wait, don't go through there yet! We haven't--" Luke started. Liza tried to stop herself, but her body had already committed to taking that next step, and she half-crumpled onto the stone floor, dropping her bag of recently-swiped tools.
The bag sprawled open, and a large metal cylinder with notches on one end rolled out of its mouth. I could only watch as it rolled, achingly slowly, over the smooth floor, coming to rest at the edge of a circle on the floor, which had at one point been painted around in yellow but whose paint had long since been worn down to just a memory of its former colour. In the center of that panel, barely readable from the wear and the angle of the gaslights, was painted the word "Boiler." The cylinder rolled on top of the circle, and I could nearly see the time it took for the weight of the tool to depress the panel.
I was getting real sick of hearing clicking sounds whenever someone moved. This house was beginning to wear on my nerves, and not just because it was full of creepy dolls and giant frozen corpses.
The floor lit up, as hundreds of tiny wires embedded in the stone began to carry current. Below the floor, I heard the boiler try to light, and the gas caught. Around the device, eight glowing circles appeared on the floor. Each one of them was under a frozen figure, and the lines on the floor all sprang from those circles and wound tightly into the center of the room.
Directly underneath the device Liza was tinkering with.
Liza shot up from her position under an open panel, brushing the sudden blast of frost off her face. "Wha'did ye do?!" she yelled, and tried to assess the device. "It looks like th'device is tryin' tae draw energy from th'things!" She was probably right-- in the rubble of one broken pillar, I could see a heavy set of chains and some kind of connectors illuminated by the light from the circuits on the floor.
The boiler downstairs tried to build pressure. It seemed to have both a connection to the gas main and to these circles on the floor (I assumed the gas would start the fire, but then the more efficient giant monsters would take over from there?). I swore.
"Everyone, move! Back to the door, we seal this thing up and we get out of here NOW!" I turned, grabbed Liza by the shoulder of her jacket, and pulled her to her feet. I had a really bad feeling about this, a suspicion I didn't want to have proven correct if we stuck around much longer.
All too late, though, we began to scramble for the door. Little did we know what the boiler had done on its ignition. For you see, this room had been sealed up for a very long time, with a constant temperature maintained by the stone that made the cavern itself. When we had gone inside, we had added just a tiny bit of body heat to the frigid air. To most environments, that would not even be registered, but to the creatures imprisoned in the ice, it was enough to awaken them. When we began fiddling with the things in the room, we spread that tiny bit of heat around, and that was enough to focus their minds.
When the boiler ignited, it was like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart for these creatures, and the crystalline structure of the machine-generated ice began to weaken just slightly from the added ambient floor heat. And all this time, the gas lamps we had lit earlier had been warming up the air in the chamber.
A great cracking sound, like a thousand panes of glass being crushed, invaded my ears, causing all six of us to stumble to a halt. My fingers were already wrapping around my knife as I turned to look, afraid of what I'd see.
Two of those ice crystals had been broken, and a hole had been burned into the stone. Large claw marks around where the ice had shattered led to that hole. As far as I was concerned, there was no way in hell I wanted to deal with this thing.
In the midst of the flying shards of sparkling ice, that creature emerged, its dark form black like the night sky, but only for a moment. I watched as the colour of its skin began to change, as though it was burning up from the inside, to a glowing charcoal-red. Its claws dripped and sizzled, steam rising up around it and trickles of cold water slithering down walls nearby. It turned its head toward us, and when it opened its mouth, I thought right then that I was to die.
One never believes in the stories of faeries, of goblins deep in the earth, of ghosts and fire-breathing giants until one sees the story taking place before his eyes. A gout of flame sprang from the creature's throat, its eyes glinting against the fire it spat. I dove, rolled out of the way, and everyone followed suit--
Except for one. Luke tried to dodge the oncoming fiery death, but luck was not on his side. His foot skidded into a tiny puddle, where the frost from the staircase had collected, and as his leg went out from under him, I had to turn away.
His scream cut through the noise of the creature's fiery breath, through the whirring of the boiler as it tried to gain enough power to turn over its turbine, through the sound of my own heartbeat thick in my ears. He crumpled into a heap, screaming and rolling about wildly, the flames licking the flesh off of his body.
The next gout of flame wasn't far behind. If we stayed, we'd be incinerated on the spot.
No time. "MOVE!" We scattered. We were armed, but not armed for this kind of thing. How could one expect to find actual monsters in an abandoned inventor's workshop?
The sharp sound of cracking ice pierced the air again, and another of the icy columns fractured, spiderwebbing all over its surface. The creature bellowed, lowered its head, and began to charge full-tilt at Victoria. She spun, moved out of the way just in time, and her rapier danced to her palm, ready to try to defend herself even if it wasn't the best of defenses. I took this opportunity to flick out my knife, the razor edge glistening in the flickery gas lamp's light. The thing had placed itself between us and the door. The only other exit was...
I darted for the tunnel in the rock. I didn't know where it led, or if it led anywhere, for that matter, but if it was created by one of these creatures, then perhaps I could lure it into the tunnel and then lose it, and we could escape. "When it follows me," I shouted as I ran, "you all get out! Don't leave Luke behind if you can manage it!"
Dale answered. "Like hell! And leave the captain behind?" He unlatched one of the pouches on his belt, and withdrew a collapsible revolver, which he snapped open and locked into position. He took aim as the beast turned, my movement catching its attention. Bang! The shot rang out, and the beast suddenly sputtered and swayed, the bullet finding its place in its huge frame. It roared again, this time with a sound that reminded me of being beaten to death.
It could bleed. That was reassuring, though it wasn't the easiest way to escape. Its claws began to glow even hotter, and I looked again at the cracked ice on now more than one of the other creatures. I had to focus.
Stay and fight, using what weapons we have on hand. Probability of injury almost certain; probability of death equally as high. The heat monster either incinerates us each with fire breath, tears us to shreds with its claws, or find other, equally creative ways of killing us. Probability of survival, pretty low. Okay. Run now. The creature follows us up the stairs into the manor proper. The manor catches fire, and burns around us. We likely still get caught and killed. Manor collapses, ice around manor melts and floods site. No bodies ever found. Okay, plan C?
Flee into tunnel. Tunnel has high probability of leading to dead end, but also high probability of leading to somewhere else. Being chased in the tunnel, get cornered, turn to fight, get killed. None of these plans are working! We have to find a way to get out of here, back to the Nephele, and out of the ice, alive and with something to
show for the work.
An idea crept into my head. These things generated extreme heat, and the Nephele was still boxed in by the crumbled ice...
I gritted my teeth. "Get close to it! It will likely not spit if we're too close! Just stay wary of the claws and do not get caught. Cause as much damage as you can manage!"
Dale was way ahead of me already, ducking toward it with his pistol in one hand, his crossbow in the other. The thing drew up, as if to slash at him with its searing claws, but he pressed forward toward it, throwing its balance off just enough to get a good shot directly into its chest. It roared, thrashed, but Dale was too nimble to be caught by the flailing. Liza joined in, sliding behind it and slamming her wrench into the side of its leg joint. Victoria hung back, understandably reluctant to try to attack with a weapon as finesse-based as hers was. Martha let her bag drop and plucked her cleaver from the leather sheath on her leg, grinning like I wasn't really expecting her to grin.
The Nephele Ship: The Trilogy Collection (A Steampunk Adventure) Page 6