Steemjammer: The Deeper Truth

by John Eubank

  “No worries. The old ball’s across the street in the Museum. Twenty minutes, top, and we’ll figure a way to reset and let you continue. No real harm done, right?”

  ***

  “Lucky scoundrels!” Clyve muttered with disgust as he watched the Green Dragon pull away from the gate.

  “Indeed,” the captain of the Skyshadow agreed.

  “That’s the Steemjammer way. Whenever they’re saved by fortune, they call it ‘goot steem’ and take credit for it.”

  “Despicable, sir, isn’t it?”

  Taking a moment to scan the area, Clyve saw a swarm of Rasmussen vehicles rounding the stadium and returning to the New Amsterdam street network. They accelerated, belching smoke and heading right for Skyshadow, which they correctly guessed marked their target’s location. Satisfied, he snapped the telescope shut.

  “It’s a matter of time,” he said. “Our locomobiles are faster. Captain, keep Skyshadow directly over that green ball carrier.”

  “Sir, we could try lowering men on ropes and dropping onto it.”

  “Too risky. Besides, I have a little surprise waiting for them. Have your crew drop red signal flares, now.”

  Chapter 13

  HOT PURSUIT

  “Donell,” Giselle called, “there’s a zeppelin flying over us!”

  “A zippin’ what?” he said.

  “An airship,” Will said. “It’s dropping flares.”

  “Flares?”

  “Red ones.”

  They’d opened the hatches to let in cool, fresh air, but it did little to relieve the heat from the blazing hot Incendium in the firebox.

  “Get down,” Donell said. “Don’t let ‘em see ye. Stay ready. They could be up tah anythin’!”

  After getting out of the Steemball park, they’d made good progress down a wide avenue. There was still some traffic caused by fans coming in to see the tournament, but the Green Dragon’s direction of travel was wide open. Cobee scanned behind them with a periscope.

  “Here they come!” he shouted.

  Will opened a rear-facing view port to see a pair of fast, black Rasmussen locomobiles about a thousand yards back, slowly gaining. Three more took screeching turns onto the street behind them and joined the pursuit.

  “Any weapons?” Will asked.

  “The tail,” Jack said, “has got a heavy weight on the tip and can be slung back and forth.”

  “How?”

  Cobee pulled out a fold-down metal seat and sat at some rear-facing controls. “I’ll try to figure it out.”

  “They’re so fast!” Giselle said as she swung a periscope. “They aren’t Steemball traps, so they can’t really hurt us, can they?”

  “Lass,” Donell sighed, “we’ll soon find out.”

  ***

  The Rasmussen locomobiles were built to look like any other vehicle at first glance, but on the inside they hid many secrets. Key areas were armored with expensive, hard but light-weight plates of rare metal alloys. They also had internal weapon systems that required the simple opening of hatches to deploy.

  “By the Provider,” exclaimed Rodney, a loyal Rasmussen agent and the driver of the lead locomobile, “how are they making that tub roll so fast?”

  “There’s the signal,” a crewman said, pointing up.

  Above them, Skyshadow could be seen dropping red flares.

  “More steam,” Rodney ordered.

  “We’re already at the boiler’s upper limit,” another crewman said.

  The driver was about to order him to jam the safety valves shut and give him steam anyway, when he saw a white vapor cloud gushing from the Green Dragon ahead.

  “It’s venting!” he said. “Just what we needed.”

  The ball carrier’s boiler had become overpressured and forced a safety valve to open, letting off excess steam. This caused an immediate loss of power to the engine, and it slowed down significantly.

  “Ready main weapon,” Rodney ordered as they closed in fast.

  While his men worked on that, he thought about how risky this was. The red flares had dropped, giving them permission, but he’d also been told to capture the Steemjammer children alive.

  If they were killed, he figured he was dead, too. But if he let them escape, he faced the same outcome. The dragon-shaped contraption had to be stopped, he knew, before they figured out a way to increase speed.

  “I want a crippling shot,” Rodney shouted. “We don’t want to hit any of the crew.”

  His men signaled the weapon was armed and aimed.

  “Shoot!” he cried.

  FOOM!

  The vehicle shuddered as a steemcannon built into the front let loose a torrent of compressed vapor, launching a heavy, razor-pointed steel dart. It went streaking through the air and ripped into the Green Dragon, easily punching through its armor.

  The leader winced. It looked like the dart had entered the crew compartment. Vapor hissed out the back of the contraption, and he wondered if any of his targets had been killed. Soon, he thought, he’d find out if he was a hero or a corpse.

  ***

  “Shut that valve,” Donell shouted. “There!”

  The dart had penetrated the crew compartment but had lost a lot of energy going through the armor. After nicking a pipe, it mercifully had come to a stop a couple of inches from Will’s head. Reacting to Donell’s words and pushing the fear from his mind, he turned a valve, and the hot hissing steam stopped shooting out of the nicked pipe.

  “Donell?” said Giselle, looking scared.

  “Not tah worry, lass!” Donell assured her. “That line’s double piped.”

  “They’re almost on us!”

  “Safety valve’s shut,” Jack shouted as he eyed a panel of instruments.

  “Steam dome’s gaining pressure,” Kate added, “but we lost a lot of speed there.”

  “We need more steam before we can go back up tah speed,” Donell barked. “Hold ‘em off!”

  “How?” Giselle shouted.

  “I’m on it!” Cobee cried.

  Furiously jerking levers at his control station, the Green Dragon’s tail whipped back and forth, and the heavy weight pounded a Rasmussen locomobile on its fender. The blow caused no real harm, but it crushed metal against the front right tire, causing it to shred and fall apart. That locomobile slowed and fell back quickly as the Green Dragon slowly gathered speed.

  “One down!” Kate shouted.

  “That was easy,” Cobee said.

  “Watch it,” Donell warned. “We aren’t out o’ the woods yet!”

  “Pressure’s going back up,” Will warned, “to where the safety valve released. Is there any way to stop it?”

  “We could jam it shut,” Jack suggested.

  “And get ourselves blown up?” Cobee retorted, horrified.

  “I used too much Incendium,” Donell admitted, twisting the steering controls and pulling them through a hard turn.

  Knowing what to do, Will waited for the Green Dragon to come out of the curve, and he put on heavy gloves and a face mask. When he opened the fire box door, the heat was almost unbearable, even with the protective gear. Reaching in with tongs, he fished out an Incendium ingot.

  Kate had realized what he was up to and opened the box the ingots had come in. Going as fast as he dared, Will dropped the fiery ingot onto the piece of Moderacium. Instantly its fierce glow subsided, and it quickly cooled.

  “Gauge holding steady,” Jack said as Will fished out a second ingot. “Speed increasing.”

  “Watch out!” Giselle screamed.

  Through her periscope, she saw another Rasmussen locomobile closing in, this one with an array of spinning saw blades and jabbing devices meant to hack things apart.

  “Take that!” Cobee growled, jamming the levers forward.

  The Green Dragon’s tail slammed down, right into the roof of the locomobile. It badly dented the armored top, and then Cobee found that he couldn’t retract it. It was stuck. As the locomobile slowed down, it became
a drag on the ball carrier, causing it to groan and grind from the strain.

  “Do something!” Giselle cried.

  “I can’t get it loose!” Cobee said, jerking the levers as hard as he could and trying not to panic.

  “Hold on tight!” Donell shouted and twisted the steering controls sharply.

  ***

  The Green Dragon whipped into a hard left turn, tires squealing and smoking. At the rear, the locomobile didn’t match the unexpected turn in time and was tugged off-course by the strong, metal-alloyed tail that managed to remain stuck.

  Lurching out of control, the locomobile went over the curb. Pedestrians dove out of the way, and the Rasmussen vehicle slammed into the corner of a solid, brick-fronted bank building. The front end caved in, and the boiler cracked, spraying a geyser of steam into the sky. The Green Dragon’s tail tore off, allowing the ball carrier to rush back up to speed.

  In the main Rasmussen locomobile, Rodney callously ignored the crash, demanding more speed. Because they’d used some boiler steam to fire the first dart, they’d slowed a bit, but now they were catching up.

  “A little closer,” he told his men, “and this time aim lower. I want that rear axle split!”

  ***

  “Donell, do something!” Jack cried as he saw the remaining locomobiles closing in through a viewport.

  “Och!” he shouted and began weaving back and forth.

  The massive ball carrier wasn’t made for evasive maneuvers, and the pursuit had no trouble keeping up and setting up their next shot.

  “This is odd,” Giselle said, looking through the periscope. “A referee’s trap is back there.”

  Will peered out a rear viewport and saw that a black and white striped steemtrap had joined the pursuit. “You think the Raz stole it?”

  “They’re going to shoot another dart!”

  Donell screeched around a corner, buying them more time. Looking back, Will and Giselle realized the locomobile was in range and about to shoot, but the striped referee trap, steaming at an insane speed, came up right alongside it.

  “Take that, Raz scum!” a familiar voice cried.

  Poking out of the top hatches were Frog and Sully. The wind stretched Sully’s normally puffy hair into long strings behind his head. At least it stayed out of his eyes as he helped Frog aim what looked like a bronze water cannon.

  “Now!” Frog shouted.

  A stream of thick, white paint shot out, covering the windshield of the lead Rasmussen locomobile.

  “Do it!” Sully screamed.

  Down in the driver’s compartment, Rachel, who relished being able to finally drive a steemtrap, jerked the steering wheel hard. They smashed into the side of the locomobile, knocking it off course.

  FOOM! The dart shot but missed the Green Dragon, streaking along the street and plunging into a tree trunk. Blinded from the heavy paint on the windshield and weaving from the collision, Rodney felt an ominous bump as they left the road, hopping a curb and slamming hard into the side of a stone-faced hotel.

  ***

  “Now we got ‘em!” Donell roared.

  He tapped the brakes, causing the remaining Raz locomobile to shoot alongside the Green Dragon.

  “A FIN!” he bellowed and jerked the controls.

  The large ball carrier rammed the locomobile off the road, through a hedge, and sailing off a steep bank. For a moment the crew braced with horror, and the vehicle slammed into a large tulip garden. In a spray of dirt and vegetation, the locomobile spun and skidded. Two wheels came off, and it mercifully came to a stop before hitting some old ladies who’d been collecting flowers.

  ***

  Will, Giselle, Jack and Kate stuck their heads out of hatches and whooped with joy at their friends, who grinned and shouted back.

  “Do you realize,” Cobee shouted at the top of his lungs, “that you’ve stolen a referee’s trap? You’ll be banned from Steemball for life!”

  “At least we didn’t steal from the Green Guard!” Sully countered. They could barely hear him over the rushing air. “You’ll be banned for all eternity!”

  They laughed, giddy from the recent triumph.

  “Guys!” shouted Giselle, who looked back.

  “Guise?” Cobee said.

  “I hate to end the fun, but look.”

  Behind them, five more Rasmussen locomobiles appeared, pouring on steam and rapidly closing the distance. The Green Dragon had lost a lot of velocity in the recent maneuvers and struggled to return to top speed.

  “It gets worse,” Kate cried, pointing ahead.

  Up the street, a steam-powered wooden drawbridge was lifting over a narrow canal to let a tugboat through.

  “Drawbridge!” Will shouted at Donell.

  “Oh?” Donell said, arching an eyebrow and pressing his face to his view port. “Tha’s a wee bit serious.”

  “A ‘wee bit?’” Cobee said with disbelief.

  “I’d be holdin’ on tah somethin’,” Donell admitted. “And tell those kids not tah follow!”

  “Get out of here!” Will shouted at Frog and Sully. “You can’t do any more!”

  Nodding, Rachel took a hard right and rolled to safety. As Will and the others held on for dear life, Donell screamed in Scottish Gaelic as he tried to locate a surge valve.

  “Golf!” Cobee shouted.

  “Golf?” Donell yelled. “Are ye mad?”

  Cobee pointed. “The one marked ‘GOLF!’ It means surge in Dutch!”

  “Oh.”

  Donell twisted open a valve marked “GOLF” while making a silent prayer. Steam flooded into the pistons, and the Green Dragon shot forward.

  ***

  Sitting in a little white shack with nice, big windows and neat little flower boxes filled with pansies, the elderly drawbridge operator’s eyes opened wide as a hulking Green Dragon came right at him, impossibly fast. Then, to his astonishment, he spotted a swarm of locomobiles coming up behind it, going even faster.

  He jerked a chain, causing a loud steam whistle on his roof go WHEEEET! He kept jerking it, WHEE-WHEE-WHEEET! But the vehicles only came on faster.

  The Green Dragon roared up the close side of the lifting drawbridge and sailed over the gap, landing with a loud thud and tremendous rattle on the other side.

  The far bridge bent, wobbled, and almost broke. Had the Green Dragon been going any slower, its weight surely would have snapped it off, but it cleared the damaged drawbridge section quickly and made it to the street beyond, unharmed.

  Because the large ball carrier had blocked their view, the drivers of the pursuing Raz locomobiles had no idea what was coming until it was too late. They screamed with panic and tried to save themselves.

  The first locomobile raced up the front side of the drawbridge, which now arched higher, and sailed through the air. It easily cleared the canal and landed on the damaged section, which broke off. The locomobile slid off it and plunged into the muddy canal with a mighty splash.

  The next driver also went flying off the drawbridge, very high, and landed in the water just past the first vehicle. The third driver tried braking but was rammed by the fourth and went plunging into the canal. The final locomobiles managed to stop in time.

  The drivers and crewmen got out, glaring as the Green Dragon sped away on the other side. Above it, Skyshadow pursued, and they wondered with grave fear what their punishment would be for failure.

  ***

  In the Green Dragon, Will and the others were too stunned this time to celebrate. Still holding on tightly, they looked at each other with disbelief, and one by one they realized they were still holding their breaths. Gasping, laughing, they felt happy to be alive.

  “That was close,” Donell admitted. “Far too close!”

  “Hurry,” Will said worriedly. “They know we’re staying at Cobee’s house. We need to get to Angelica and Tante Klazee.”

  “Och, right ye are! Already on it.”

  ***

  They didn’t know, but not far behind the
m a virtual armada of Rasmussen vehicles, some heavily armed and armored, was swarming across New Amsterdam in locomobiles and steemwagons. In the sky, two additional airships had added their presence to the city skyscape and were scouring the streets below. The Raz knew Tante Klazee’s address, and in moments the first units would be arriving there.

  ***

  Sitting in the upstairs bathroom in Tante Klazee’s house, Angelica sighed with frustration. The steam clocks had already gone off at nine o’clock, and now it had to be almost nine-thirty. There’d been no sign of a verltgaat opening. Even worse, she worried about her brother and cousins.

  Going to the top of the steps, she called down, “Are they here?”

  “Not yet, kint,” Klazee answered. “Anything up there?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  Lowering her head, she went back into the bathroom and sat down on a stool. Noticing the old tub, she smiled as she remembered startling Tante Klazee in the bathtub when they’d first come through from Old Earth.

  She almost didn’t notice when a dim, pale glow appeared near the far wall. At first it was white but began sparkling with colors that swirled and seemed to be trying to assume a form. Twisting her head, she gasped.

  “Tante Klazee!” Angelica cried. “It’s opening!”

  Chapter 14

  OFF AND ON

  Moments earlier in Beverkenhaas, Marteenus S. Skelthorpe had been nervously studying the verltgaat control panel. Eleven years earlier he’d written coordinates in indelible ink on a piece of parchment, and he’d kept it with him ever since. Going over the figures, he tried to determine if they would work on this device. If not, he’d have to fire up the boiler and run new figures on the Variable Engine, something he did not look forward to.

  Also, his delicate ears had detected a faint but bothersome clicking sound. It seemed to come from the ancient, scratched control panel, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knew it was significant. Unable to reason what it might be and nagged by his uncertainty, he went over to the large, computer-like Variable Engine to see if he could make sense of it.