Clockwork Secrets

by Dru Pagliassotti

  He crossed his hands over his chest, grabbing the harness.

  “One— two— three.”

  Taya pushed them off, spreading her arms.

  * * *

  The Great Engine’s colossal ondium gears and pistons, carriages and cams, rods and recording drums floated in the center of the hollowed-out chamber in the heart of Ondinium Mountain. The vast stone cavern was ringed with metal catwalks that spanned the chasm at regular intervals, providing access to the Engine. Clouds of steam and oil droplets moved like rainstorms on currents of warmer and cooler air. Here and there broad banks of carbon-filament incandescent lighting illuminated the chamber and reflected off the Engine’s ondium components, but in other places, the chamber remained dim and shadowed.

  Taya descended through the Engine’s chamber as quickly and steeply as she dared, cognizant of the irregular sounds of gunfire below. At one point she passed two Ondinium women, one half-carrying the other, who were limping along a catwalk. They gave her startled looks, then waved frantically as they registered her wings. She tilted in acknowledgement but didn’t call out.

  “What’s wrong?” Cristof whispered.

  “Nothing. Halfway there.”

  “My back is killing me.”

  “Sorry.”

  The sound of shots and shouts made her slow down as she dropped closer to the bottom of the chamber. As the haze cleared, she got her first good view of the Engine Room floor.

  The bottom of the far-reaching chamber was as wide as several villages tucked together, most of it divided into roofless, cubicle-partitioned offices. From her vantage point, Taya could see into all of the cubicles, noting desks and filing cabinets, bookshelves and toolcases— and a handful of Alzanan soldiers and Ondinium engineers who were dodging from office to office in a deadly game of hide-and-seek.

  Directly beneath the Great Engine stood another bank of steam engines and water tanks and a complicated array of bins and conveyer belts that carried fuel and water across the complex. Thick metal struts rose from the floor, bolted to the ondium framework that formed the bottom casing for the Great Engine and moored it inside the mountain. The struts had climbing rungs on them, and elsewhere beneath the engine ondium-runged floating ladders waited to be dragged wherever they were needed. Two Alzanan soldiers lay in a crumped heap near one of the support struts.

  Taya located an ondium girder on the housing that looked wide and sturdy enough to support two people.

  “Get ready to land,” she warned. Cristof grabbed his harness and uncurled his legs with a grimace. She swept over the strut and backbeat as he planted his feet on the girder and grabbed a crossbar to steady himself.

  “Here.” He reached out with his free hand and caught the keel of her armature, pulling her down to him. Taya waited until her feet touched the girder before locking her wings and releasing her arms. He unhooked his harness from the armature.

  “Thanks,” she said. She sat on the girder as he slid on his glasses and unslung his rifle. “Can you see the soldiers down there?”

  “Yes.” He edged around to another girder to get a better angle. Taya watched, worried that one of the Alzanans would spot him and shoot. However, the soldiers and engineers were focused on each other— none of them even glanced at the gigantic engine that floated over their heads.

  “I only see three Alzanans left,” Cristof reported, kneeling and shouldering the rifle.

  “Watch the recoil!”

  “Right….” He dropped flat and squirmed up to the girder’s edge. With a hard swallow, he pushed his glasses higher and leaned over to take aim.

  Two quick shots jarred him backward. One of the Alzanans fell and everyone — Alzanan and Ondinium — looked up, searching for the shooter. Taya shrank back, glad that her wings were still painted black.

  “Isobel? Is that you?” someone shouted.

  Her husband crawled to the edge, pointing his rifle over again.

  “Victor Kiernan?” he shouted.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Cristof fired again and Taya bit her lip as another Alzanan fell.

  Firing from above is like dropping bombs from above, she decided. It doesn’t feel fair.

  “The last Alzanan is two offices to your left, Victor,” he shouted in reply.

  “Not quite,” a calm voice replied. Taya gasped and looked up. Fosca Mazzoletti knelt on top of a slowly rotating gear above them, her military pistol aimed at Cristof.

  “Cris, move!”

  A bullet pinged off the metal girder as her husband threw himself to one side, his legs sliding off the edge. He grabbed the girder, stopping his fall as his rifle dangled from its strap on one arm.

  Taya surged to her feet and jumped. Her fingers closed on a narrow support strut overhead, and she pulled herself up, grateful for her ondium armature. The tips of her wings scraped against the teeth of a rotating megawheel as she vaulted from the strut to a fixed axis a few feet below the Alzanan aristocrat.

  Fosca Mazzoletti swung the pistol around.

  “You….” she hissed, her finger tightening on the trigger.

  Taya leaped for the gear. A bullet seared across the back of her shoulder as her hands closed around one of the giant teeth. She grit her teeth and looked up. Fosca stood over her, the barrel of her pistol pointed directly at Taya’s face.

  “Your lictors told me that you and your husband killed my brother,” she said, her beautiful face twisted into a sneer. “I found them surprisingly ill-equipped to handle torture.”

  “Bitch!” Taya pulled herself up, grabbing a handful of Fosca Mazzoletti’s skirts in one fist, and yanked down as hard as she could.

  The gun went off, its bullet ricocheting uselessly off a camshaft as Fosca screamed and tumbled off the edge of the gear. The thick skirt ripped and another burst of pain shot up Taya’s grazed shoulder. She opened her hand and let herself drop back against the axis, clutching her injured shoulder. Her fingers dug under her armature’s struts and came back bloody.

  Below her, Fosca Mazzoletti had grabbed a camshaft and was struggling to maintain her grip as the ondium rod slowly rotated.

  “Taya, are you all right?” Cristof had dragged himself back on top of the girder and was aiming his rifle at the Alzanan woman.

  “I’m fine,” she shouted back, not entirely truthfully. “Don’t shoot her!”

  “I’m aiming for her leg.”

  “She’ll fall— let me get her!”

  “Fosca Mazzoletti— if you try anything while Taya is saving you, I’m going to shoot your damned head off!” he roared. The Alzanan aristocrat didn’t pay any attention to him, busy keeping her grip on the rotating camshaft.

  “Cris— I have to drop straight down.” Taya looked over her shoulder past her wing, gauging the maneuver.

  “I’ll cover you.” He dropped to his stomach, his rifle aimed at the Alzanan.

  Taya jumped, her thick boots landing on the irregularly shaped cams, and wobbled a moment before catching her balance. Her shoulder burned as she leaned down and wrapped her hands around Fosca’s wrists.

  “Let go!” Taya ordered.

  “No!” The woman shifted her grip again, her face white. “No— you’ll let me fall!”

  Taya took an awkward step to avoid one of the cam’s lobes. Her grazed shoulder didn’t appreciate her doubled-over position. She tightened her grip.

  “I won’t let you fall. I promised Colonel Agosti I’d hand you over for questioning,” she said, flatly.

  “You’ll never—” Fosca Mazzoletti shrieked as her wrists were jerked out of Taya’s grasp. Taya staggered, nearly losing her balance. The Alzanan’s torn skirt had been caught between a cam and a valve head. Fosca dangled head-down beneath the giant ondium mechanism, her skirt slowly dragging her upward to the rotating cam. She screamed.

  Taya grabbed her short ut
ility knife with one hand and jumped off the cam, stopping her fall by clutching her enemy’s skirt. As the Alzanan woman wailed and squirmed, Taya began sawing at the fabric.

  “No, stop, let go!” Fosca panicked, her eyes fixed on the floor fifty feet below.

  “Stop kicking!” Taya snapped as a foot hit her in the back of the head. The skirt’s fabric was too thick; she was running out of time. Counting on the fabric to hold her weight, she swung herself around, head-down like the aristocrat, and wrapped her legs around the woman’s stomach.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to save you for your trial,” Taya grated, wincing as she slid her arms into her wings. She locked her ankles. “Unbutton your skirt.”

  “What?”

  “Take off your skirt or you’ll be dragged into the machine! I’ve got you!”

  Fosca hung motionless a long moment, her heart pounding so hard that Taya could feel it against her knees. Then, with a sound that was half-curse, half-sob, the aristocrat tore at her waistband. The skirt slid off and both women dropped. Fosca Mazzoletti screamed again, terrified.

  “Taya!” Cristof shouted.

  Taya pulled down on her wings as hard as she could, scooping air beneath the feathers, and beat hard to slow their descent. Forty feet— thirty— twenty— she veered toward the corpses below the Engine — ten — she unlocked her ankles and let Fosca Mazzoletti fall as she shot back into the air.

  Fosca’s scream stopped abruptly as she landed on the bodies of her dead countrymen. Taya swept around into a perfect running landing, locking her wings up and releasing her arms as soon as she stopped.

  “Taya Icarus!”

  She spun. Victor Kiernan grinned through his beard as he jogged up, rifle in hand. Two of his five similarly armed companions broke away to inspect Fosca Mazzoletti as Taya caught her breath.

  “Are you all right?” The programmer tucked his rifle into the crook of his arm and clasped her hand in a fierce welcome. “We thought you were dead! Was that Exalted Forlore earlier?”

  “Yes.” She retrieved her hand and hurried over to Fosca Mazzoletti’s motionless body. “Is she alive?”

  “Unconscious, and maybe she broke her wrist?” A woman in a pair of gray coveralls straightened. Unlike the rest of the group, she wore a famulate’s circle on her face instead of a dedicate’s spiral.

  “All right, good. Keep her alive but tied up— she’s incredibly important and incredibly dangerous,” Taya said, with feeling. “Did you find the bomb?”

  “The bomb?”

  “I was afraid of that.” Victor pointed up. “They were working on something up there, on the Engine’s main frame.”

  Taya craned her neck. Her husband was gingerly working his way across the girders toward her.

  “Cris!”

  “What?”

  “Victor says the bomb’s up there!”

  She didn’t catch his reply, but he dropped to all fours and began moving faster.

  “It’s called a holocaust bomb,” she told the programmer. “Cabisi-made. We don’t know exactly what it does.”

  “Holocaust… that sounds ominous.”

  “Another Cabisi weapon on the same ship caused tornadoes of fire in a half-mile radius,” she said, soberly. Gasps and whistles greeted her remark.

  “You saw it used…?” Victor asked.

  “On Safira.” Taya swallowed. “And here. I don’t know how bad the damage is, but I saw smoke over Secundus.”

  “We’d better sound an evacuation alarm,” one of the engineers suggested. Victor nodded and the man shouldered his rifle and ran off, vanishing into the maze of offices.

  “The rest of you take the prisoner and go, all right?” The famulate jumped up onto the access rungs of the strut they were standing under. “I’ll help the exalted.”

  “Maybe they didn’t have time to arm the bomb,” a dedicate said, hopefully.

  “I’ll let you know, won’t I?” The famulate climbed the rungs with the ease of long experience.

  “Antonia, could you find some wire to tie up our prisoner?” Victor asked.

  “Sure.” The dedicate who’d just spoken hurried off.

  “I’m going up, too,” Taya said, grabbing the rungs. “Victor— we ran into Isobel on top and told her to warn the city.”

  “Good.” He turned to the remaining men. “You two head to the archives and get the master cards. We’re not leaving the Engine Room without them.”

  “Got it.” They headed for the nearest set of metal stairs.

  “I’ll watch your prisoner,” Victor said, as Taya climbed. “Tell Skip to shout if she needs me. I know a few things about bombs.”

  “I don’t want to hear that!” Taya shouted back.

  Cristof and the famulate, Skip, had found what looked like a fancy standing clock bolted to the Engine’s frame. Its polished brass case was etched with images of curling flames and its ornate shell clockface had two hands, the hour hand pointing at twelve and the minute hand pointing at four.

  Taya fished out her pocketwatch and checked it.

  “The clock’s off,” she said. “It’s actually a quarter to eleven.”

  “It’s not a clock,” Cristof said, tensely. “It’s a timer.”

  “Well, they did an excellent job of securing it, didn’t they, Exalted?” Skip kept her eyes averted from Cristof’s face. “If I had a few hours, I might be able to cut through the bolts with a hacksaw, but I surely can’t do it in forty minutes.”

  Taya’s eyes fell on the hand pointing to the four and her mouth went dry.

  “Forty minutes? That’s all the time we have?”

  “Unless I can figure out how to defuse it, but…” Cristof peered behind the bomb. “Getting in there to unscrew the plate is going to be difficult. I need some very small screwdrivers and an angled mirror.”

  “We got tools below, Exalted, if you like.” Skip said. “Do you want me to go get them for you?”

  “Victor says he knows something about bombs, too,” Taya ventured. Cristof pursed his lips, then lifted an angular shoulder.

  “Send him up, then. I’m a clockwright, not a bomb expert.”

  A deafening air horn went off and they all started, then covered their ears.

  “Evacuation alert,” Skip said after it stopped, giving Taya an embarrassed smile. “It needs to be loud, right?”

  Taya nodded, her ears ringing. “How much damage do you think the bomb will do?”

  “Impossible to say without knowing more about how it works,” Cristof replied, straightening up.

  “Actually….” Skip scratched her head and looked up. “You know, Exalted, I’m thinking it ain’t the bomb that’s the real threat, begging your pardon, sir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s where they put it, ain’t it, Exalted? Right here on the corner of the mooring framework.”

  “Forgefire….” Cristof looked up.

  “What is it?” Taya demanded.

  “Ondium’s effectiveness increases by volume,” Skip said, tapping Taya’s wings. “The more counterweights you slip into a flight belt or rescue harness, the lighter you are, right?”

  “Yes….”

  Skip pointed to the titanic machine floating above them.

  “The Great Engine’s so buoyant that the mooring piles for its support framework are sunk seventy-five feet deep into solid stone at four different points to keep it from tearing them out of the ground. The Engine is secured to the framework — this framework we’re standing on here — by hundreds of support struts and cables, right? But if a bomb blew apart the framework—”

  “The whole Engine would fly straight up.” Taya’s eyes widened as she imagined a small mountain’s worth of ondium hurtling into the air.

  “Oporphyr Tower’s built right over the Engi
ne Room, ain’t it?” Skip continued, relentlessly. “The Engine’ll tear through the fortress floor like a volcano. Rubble will be thrown all across the city, and the Engine— well, I’m thinking we ain’t ever going to see it again, will we?”

  Taya stared.

  “This framework is the Engine’s only anchor point?” Cristof pressed.

  “We got maintenance rings sunk into the walls all the way up to anchor individual components for repair and replacement.” Skip grimaced. “If we turn off the Engine we can try cabling it down, but in forty minutes—”

  “How many people do you have?”

  “Evacuation alert brings all hands down to the maintenance tunnels, so we’ll know soon, won’t we?” Skip stood and swung herself over, heading down. “I’ll find you them tools, Exalted.”

  “Thank you.” Cristof sat on the framework and raked his fingers through his hair, then looked at Taya. “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?” Taya sat next to him, not knowing what else to do.

  “You’re wincing every time you move your arm.”

  “Oh. A bullet grazed me. Again.”

  “Sit still.” He shifted around her. “Yes, the leather’s been ripped. Unbutton your suit.”

  “Not the time or the place, Exalted,” she joked.

  “I should be so lucky.” He tugged her suit down. She flinched as the fabric pulled. “Sorry. You’re right; it’s a graze. Not as bad as last time. We need to clean it, though.”

  “This is all sounding very familiar.”

  He dropped a kiss on her neck and straightened her suit.

  “Could you fly up to warn Janos?”

  “I could, but I’m not going to let you get rid of me that easily.” She buttoned the neck of her suit. “How bad is it going to be?”

  “If we can’t defuse the bomb in… twenty-nine minutes, we’ll have to leave through the maintenance tunnels. I’ll leave through the maintenance tunnels.” He moved next to her and took her hand. “I want you to fly up ten minutes before then to get our friends out of the Tower.”

  “How? The ships—”

  “Take the wireferry. There’s an emergency release over the door. Taya, if the Engine tears through the Tower, it’ll be almost as bad as Glasgar. You need to get Janos and Isobel and everyone else off the peak as quickly as possible. You… you might want to just fly straight out, as far away from the Tower as you can. The farther you are from the Tower, the safer you’ll be.”