She slipped her hand into her skirt pocket and touched the solid weight of her reticule, easily enough money to buy passage to London by train. From there she could make for Paris.
Would he guess where she was headed?
Would he come after her?
Her fingertips brushed over the front of her pocket watch, the ornate design so familiar to her after all these years. She withdrew it from her pocket and checked the time.
Three hours until the last train left the station at Milford Haven. Three hours to slip away and leave Chroniker City behind for good, but not yet. She couldn’t bring herself to leave, not without . . . not without some sort of goodbye. She owed him that much, didn’t she?
“What if we went ahead without him?” suggested Rupert, startling her out of her thoughts. “He knows where we’ll be. He can find us there when he’s finished.”
“But how?” she asked, putting her pocket watch away. “Without Braith, we don’t have the military clearance to get into the hangars. They’ll never let us through.”
Rupert shrugged, a sly grin on his face. “Then we’ll just sneak in.”
“And if we’re caught? You know I’m under a lot of restrictions, even here.”
“Then we won’t get caught.” He hopped down from the loading dock and extended his hand. “Trust me. I know a way in.”
Petra fought back a smile, knowing she couldn’t deny that mischievous look in his eye. Sneaking into the hangars without Braith wasn’t exactly what they had planned, but she only had three hours to spend with Rupert before she had to leave—possibly for good, if things didn’t turn out the way she wanted—and she intended to make the most of what little time she had left.
Besides, Rupert was right. Braith would know where to find them.
“All right, then, Mr. Larson,” she said, elegantly taking his hand with a grin to match his own. “Lead the way.”
They left the loading dock behind, weaving around docked ships and huddles of crewmen, making their way to the north side of the airfield.
The military hangars stood on the other side of a barbed fence and a barred iron gate, but they skirted past the heavily guarded entry, heading toward a hangar on the civilian side of the airfield. Rupert pulled her behind the building and led her to the fence on the opposite side, hidden from sight.
Rupert pried a section of fence away from the nearest post and opened a gap through to the other side. “After you, milady.”
Petra slipped through, and Rupert quickly followed. Footsteps echoed off the hangars’ corrugated tin walls as they snuck through the compound, pausing at the occasional chatter from nearby soldiers. Once, a military lorry rumbled down an access road toward the gate, and Petra and Rupert shrank into the shadows of the nearest building until the sound of its boiler engine faded.
Finally, they reached the largest hangar in the complex, each bay door at least forty feet wide. Rupert opened a smaller side door, letting Petra in first. For a brief moment, she had an impression of vivid red, but then Rupert came in and shut the door behind him, plunging the hangar into darkness.
“Just a moment,” he whispered, his voice bodiless in the dark hangar. Petra heard him shuffle away, and a minute later, a tiny flame flared into the bright orange glow of a lantern, steadily growing brighter. Rupert held it aloft, illuminating the base of the nearest structure.
A ship.
Petra gaped at it, the immense hull painted a deep scarlet, built of wood, with brass ornamentation at its prow. She could see nothing beyond that, the rest of the ship lost in the darkness of the massive hangar. It was the size of a frigate, the hull at least fifty feet broad and five or six decks tall, sitting on wooden frames to keep from tipping.
Rupert grabbed her hand. “Come on. Let me show you the inside.”
Petra followed wordlessly, gaping as they passed another two ships, identical to the first. Then Rupert turned between two of the enormous hulls, and they stopped at a rope ladder not far from the front of the ship.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “Follow close.”
The climb took a few minutes. Petra worked up a sweat under her thick layers of clothing by the time she reached the top and climbed over the railing onto the deck. Rupert’s lantern cast long shadows, illuminating distant structures, the shapes floating eerily in the darkness. The deflated dirigible balloon hung overhead, held up by a thick rope net.
Petra wandered across the deck, her footsteps echoing loudly in the silence of the dark hangar. Rupert followed, the flickering lantern revealing the indistinct structures as she approached. Light glinted off the nearest object. Weapons.
“This is a warship,” she said quietly, touching the nearest one.
Rupert nodded. “It was meant to be a cargo ship. But with the anti-imperialist threat, the Guild decided to repurpose the design for war. Add a few guns, a couple of bomb bays, and what was once a cargo ship is now a warship.” He gestured toward the collection of weapons with a grim frown. “Construction started last month. Four ships have been completed, and the Royal Forces have commissioned another dozen.”
A chill spread down her spine. “But what are they for? Defense? Patrol?”
“Deployment. They’re meant to deliver soldiers to the battlefield and provide backup artillery if needed. Here . . .” he said, gesturing toward the rear of the ship with his lantern. “I’ll show you.” He led her through a door and down a flight of stairs to a narrow hallway.
Signs lined the doors here—AUXILIARY, BRIDGE, CAPTAIN, OFFICER ON DECK—but Rupert passed them by, turning down another staircase, heading deeper into the ship.
“Originally, the bays were meant for cargo drops—supplies, rations, ammo—whatever the soldiers on the ground needed,” he explained. “But with tensions rising with France, the Guild and the Royal Forces decided our priority was to build a warship first, outfitted for deploying soldiers. And here was a ship ready-made. All they had to do was change the cargo—soldiers instead of supplies—and mount enough guns to provide aerial artillery. No one is equipped to combat a ship like this, not in the air. The Royal Forces could deploy soldiers almost anywhere, with little to no resistance from opposing ground forces.”
They traveled down two more flights of stairs and pushed through a set of double doors at the base of the ship’s hull. Rupert walked a few steps ahead of Petra, his lantern illuminating the wide metal walkway.
“The hold was refitted to carry a new weapon, another Guild project intended for ground combat. I’m told the . . .” He slowed to a stop and lifted his lantern, the light glinting off great hulking machinery to the side of the walkway. “That’s not right,” he said, holding his lantern toward the nearest machine. “I was told the prototype wasn’t supposed to be completed until next month. These should be months from manufacture.”
Petra followed his gaze, a ringing in her ears. Her heartbeat slowed to a crawl. “Rupert . . .” she said slowly, eyeing the sharp angles of the machine, the structure disturbingly familiar. “Give me your lantern.”
He did as she asked, and she took the lantern to the edge of the mesh walkway, her hand shaking as the light spilled over metal joints and taut cables. She shook her head and backed away a step, plunging the machine in darkness again. Her chest constricted. She couldn’t breathe.
“No . . .”
“Petra, what’s wrong?”
“These shouldn’t be here,” she whispered.
“What do you mean?”
She inhaled a trembling breath and lifted the lantern higher, illuminating the familiar domed cabin, the twin Agars on either side and the Gatling gun underneath. Four spidery legs supported the massive frame, towering over her like a great mechanical beast. This was her war machine, her quadruped, complete and armed and ready for battle.
She walked further down the walkway, shoes clanging against the m
etal as she raised her lantern to another of the deadly machines, and beyond that, another one. She walked faster, her footsteps echoing loudly through the hull as she broke into a run, stopping only when she reached the other end of the hold.
“No . . .” she panted, her blood rushing in her ears. “This can’t be.”
Rupert joined her at the end of the walkway and touched her shoulder. “Petra,” he said gently. “What’s wrong? Talk to me.”
“This is my project,” she said quietly, tears burning the corners of her eyes as she stared down the row of machines. “The war machine I designed for the Guild—the quadruped.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “This doesn’t make any sense; the prototype isn’t finished yet. We were supposed to finish next month, but—” She glanced around the cargo hold, the lantern illuminating half a dozen of the deadly machines, the rest obscured in darkness. She faced Rupert. “How many are there? How many is the ship designed to hold? Do you know?”
“Um . . .” He blinked, combing his hand through his sandy hair. “Eighty, I think.”
“Eighty?” she repeated, her voice shrill. She couldn’t breathe. Her knees gave way, and she slumped, trembling, to the floor.
“There’s another bay next to this one,” he explained, kneeling beside her. He gestured to the doors behind them. “Just through there.”
She shook her head, unwilling to believe it. This wasn’t possible. The prototype wasn’t done yet. Her engineering team was still weeks away from finishing the initial design, from finding her sabotage, and even if they completed testing and repaired the system she had put into place, it would still take months to construct this many quadrupeds, entire factories working to complete the finished machine. How could this have happened? How could so many quadrupeds already exist?
And then it struck her.
“Julian.”
She gritted her teeth, a fire flooding her veins as she realized the truth of what he had done. Lantern in hand, she climbed to her feet and went to the nearest machine. She pressed a trembling hand to the smooth metal, the plating buffed to a polished shine, and looked up into the face of this thing, this monster she created, grotesque in its actuality.
“He built an army.”
CHAPTER 13
Petra curled her hand into a fist against the cold metal, clenching her fingers until her knuckles ached. “Dammit!” She punched the domed cabin and a shock of pain jolted up her arm, the acute sting bringing her thoughts into sharp focus.
Julian must have planned this all along.
“Hold on . . .” said Rupert. “This is the machine you’ve been working on for the Guild? You’re sure?”
She drew away from the machine with a nod, her hand still throbbing with pain. “I don’t know how,” she said, looking over the familiar domed cabin and jointed legs. “But this is it, Rupert. This is my machine. Down to the bolts.”
“But you said the prototype isn’t finished yet.”
“It’s not,” she said darkly. “To already have an army of them . . . He must have bypassed protocol, advanced manufacture.”
“But how? Wouldn’t he need the Guild’s approval?”
“Not if they don’t know about it.” She had her doubts about Lyndon’s efforts to stop the war, but she at least trusted him enough not to sign off on something like this—at least not without telling her. “No, Julian did this on his own somehow, circumventing the Guild and submitting the designs directly to the manufacturers, likely sometime after the engineering team approved the . . .” She trailed off. “ . . . the original designs.”
Her heart sank. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
Petra thrust the lantern into Rupert’s hand. “Hold this.”
She climbed up the access ladder of the nearest quadruped, opened the pilot’s hatch at the top of the control cabin, and slipped inside. The cramped compartment was dark, lit only by the dim glow of Rupert’s lantern through the narrow window.
“Can you bring the light in?” she called to him, tracing her fingers over the pilot controls, the smudged pencil marks she had designed all those months ago suddenly made real before her eyes.
Rupert climbed to the top of the ladder and lowered the lantern into the cabin, illuminating every bolt and screw. Petra moved across the compact compartment, running her hands over the plates in the floor.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Access panel,” she said, finding the hidden latch.
She curled her fingers around the handle and disengaged the locking mechanism, pulling the heavy panel open. The door crashed against the cabin wall, and she lowered her head through the opening, fingers gripping the metal edge as she peered through clusters of linkages and wires, the systems of gears and sensors that powered the entire machine.
Part of her hoped she would not find it, that Julian or his engineers had somehow found the sabotage and removed it, but she knew it had to be here, that it was in every single machine aboard this airship. Had he found it, she’d have been strung up as a traitor to the crown in an instant. But she was alive, which meant Julian didn’t know. Yet.
She just had to make sure, had to know.
And there . . . sitting innocently among the assembly of gears and axles—the mechanism that would shut the entire machine down once the quadruped was activated.
Damn.
She lifted herself out of the opening and stared at the wall, absently drumming her fingers against her thigh as she tried to think, leaving greasy spots on her skirt. There were eighty machines on this airship. Eighty. Four ships had been completed, with a dozen more on commission. She could only assume there were eighty quadrupeds in each one, totaling well over a thousand of the deadly war machines. A thousand soldiers.
If war began and her quadrupeds were sent into battle, every one of those soldiers would die. She could see it in her mind’s eye—marching against the French in droves, each machine wielding the firepower of a dozen men, victory certain, and then . . . the opposing gear trains would break the tension spring within the regulator, activating the system of gears and springs that would systematically jam every single system within the quadruped. They’d have nothing—no power, no weapons—only the hard shell of the quadruped’s dome to protect them from French fire.
Tears stung her eyes and she pressed her palms to her face. Julian had been so confident in his army, so convinced that nothing she did could stop him. Now she understood why. He must have planned to build the army the moment he had the approved designs. He never wanted her on the project, never wanted her involved. He just wanted a weapon, and here it was. An army of them. How could she have been so stupid?
How could she have believed she could run away from this, that she could escape Julian and turn her back on her mistakes? How could she leave now, knowing that men would die because of her?
Rupert hooked the lantern on a peg near the hatch and lowered himself into the control cabin. He crouched beside her and touched her shoulder. “Petra, what’s wrong?” he asked, his voice soft. “Talk to me.”
She glanced away with a shake of her head. How could she tell him? How could she explain? This was treason, sabotage—everything the Guild accused her of.
How could she drag him into it?
“I made a mistake,” she whispered, staring at the open access panel at her feet. “A stupid, terrible mistake. And now . . .” She inhaled a shaky breath. “They’re going to fail, Rupert—all of them.”
“What?”
“The quadrupeds . . . I—” She glanced up at Rupert. “You have to believe me . . . If I had known, if I had realized . . .”
“Petra, what are you talking about?”
“I sabotaged it, Rupert.”
“You what?”
“It wasn’t sup
posed to happen like this!” she explained. “I never meant for it to go this far. I never meant for— The prototype should have been tested first, the fault found and repaired, not . . . not replicated a thousandfold! These machines never should have been built. The quadruped project never should have been approved, not with the device still intact.”
“What device?”
She pressed her lips together. “A jamming device,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll show you.”
Leaving Rupert at the open access panel, she moved across the cramped compartment and fetched a screwdriver from the toolbox bolted to the side of the cabin, curling her fingers around the weighty handle. Then she delved back through the opening and removed the faulty axle plate from the machine’s gear systems. Twisting the last screw loose, the solid metal fell into her open palm, and she slowly withdrew from the access hatch, the device heavy in her hand. She stared at the connected gears, glimmering faintly in the yellow lantern light.
“You have to understand,” she said quietly, her voice barely above a whisper. “I thought that if I caused the prototype to fail, if it malfunctioned while in production, I could delay its approval, set the Guild back a few months, delay the war long enough to find another way to stop it altogether, but now . . .” She tightened her grip around the axle plate, the sabotaging gears cutting deep into her palm. “I only ever meant to delay the prototype, not sabotage an entire army.”
“What does it do?” he asked.
She turned it over in her hand. “Once the quadruped activates, this will trigger systematic failure throughout the quadruped’s main systems, rendering the machine inoperable within minutes.”
“Can you fix it?”
The Guild Conspiracy Page 19