by E. C. Jarvis
“Where is Larissa?” he asked. The question came out as more of a bark than he intended, but he’d been stuck down in the gun deck for two days. Though they’d fed him and been generally not-violent towards him, he was sure the guards viewed him more as a prisoner than a guest. He was tired of waiting and not having answers and not being spoken to.
“She is resting in the Captain’s cabin. I will speak with her today before we arrive in the Capital. I wanted to speak with you first.” Elena lay her hands on the rail at the stern and glanced at him.
He couldn’t place the look on her face. Concern? Affection? Madness? For all he knew, she might just be suffering from a bout of stomach pain. “Yes…Your Highness…Princess?”
“Stop that,” she said with a grin. “I’m not your Princess. It’s a title I never enjoyed anyway. Eptoran protocol demands it, of course, but you aren’t Eptoran.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a…” He stuttered and waved his hand at her awkwardly.
“Because it took you long enough to get used to talking to me when the only obstacle was the fact that I’m a woman. I thought if you knew I was royalty as well, you’d melt into a stuttering idiot.” She grasped his hand that still twitched in her direction. “It seems I was right.”
Cid grunted in response.
“And our situation was perilous. You must realise that.”
“Hmm.”
“I didn’t lie about other things, Cid. I don’t kiss men for no good reason. As a matter of fact, I rarely kiss men.” She stepped closer and pushed up on her tiptoes to plant a gentle, warm kiss on his lips.
He froze. His mind raced with thoughts of engines and power system designs, and he wondered if he could rebuild the Professor’s Machine from scratch just from memory. After the split second it took to process a myriad of ridiculous thoughts, he stopped thinking and focussed on the kiss. It was warm and soft and much more pleasant than he remembered. His hand slipped around her waist—quite by accident—and she smiled within the kiss, ending it a moment later.
“Hmm,” he grunted again, the sound reverberating at the back of his throat. He wondered if there was some law preventing him from ravishing an Eptoran Princess on the deck of their warship. Most likely.
“Indeed,” she said with a smile.
A cool breeze trickled across the back of his neck, making him shiver. As he looked around, he noticed several burly Eptoran soldiers nearby, doing their best not to look at the pair of them, but their faces were etched with disapproving scowls.
“They will not harm you.” Elena waved at their guards.
“Why not?”
“Because I have given them orders not to.”
“And why is that, I mean, besides your extraordinary proclivity for me?”
“My…extraordinary what?” Elena beamed up at him.
“Perhaps that’s not the correct choice of words.” Cid scratched his beardy chin as Elena snorted with laughter.
“If you’re wondering why I’m dragging you along with us instead of merely deporting you, it is because of that.” She stretched her arm out toward the pirate airship. “You created a ship capable of flying without the aid of either lighter-than-air gas or coal for the furnace to power the rotors.”
“I didn’t make it do that.” Cid instantly regretted the volume with which he’d given the admission.
“When I was aboard the ship, it could not do that. Who else out in the middle of the desert could have done such a thing?”
“I pulled the engine from the flying aeroplane contraption. It’s someone else’s design.”
“Yes, I know the man who designed the plane. At least, I did know him before he was brutally murdered and his only working model stolen.”
A silence descended over the deck. Elena stroked her fingernails up Cid’s arm, eliciting a shiver in response. His eyes travelled down to her chest and his mind processed a myriad of inappropriate thoughts as he stared at the gentle curves of her breasts.
“Have you never been with a woman before, Cid?”
“It has been a very long time.” He forced his gaze to meet hers.
“Perhaps not too much longer.” She pulled him forwards and they headed below deck towards the Captain’s cabin.
CHAPTER NINE
The whirring turbines intensified. Holt had wedged himself between two intersecting pieces of pipe, but the strong wind inside the room was stealing his breath away and he felt his body being sucked back into the pipe.
The dead body draped over the walkway slowly crept along with the force of the suction. The only thing stopping it was the fact that the dead man’s legs were hooked around the metal mesh. The trail of blood from his throat flew along the air at an eerie angle before mixing in with the water being drawn in. Holt could hear it travelling through the pipes at his back. The water had turned to a whirlpool of liquid, impossible to swim through. He considered the beams above, then instantly discounted them. Trying to make it up high would involve being exposed to the force, and as the speed grew and grew, he knew exposure would mean death.
He considered the gun and knife in his hands, wondering if they might jam the turbine. He turned sideways and lobbed the knife hard. It disappeared out of sight and gave a clattering noise as it hit the turbine, to no effect. The dead body finally broke free from the walkway and followed after the knife, flying through the air before being dragged into the spiralling water. Seconds later, the entire body of liquid became dotted with chunks of flesh and tainted with blood.
Holt leaned his head against the pipe and squeezed his eyes shut. The prospect of dying in the desert a day ago seemed like a far less tragic way to end life than the thought of getting chopped to pieces inside a turbine. He glanced down at the gun in his hand and for the briefest moments considered sticking it in his mouth and pulling the trigger. Instead, his gaze travelled to the outer dome of tinted glass windows.
Breathing became a difficult task. The wind force dragging him back into the pipe made his body ache. With one final act of defiance, he used both hands to raise the gun, aimed at a panel on the opposite end, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet missed the target, curving off to the panel beside it, the trajectory affected by the wind pull. The panel cracked but did not shatter instantly as he’d hoped. Through gritted teeth, he aimed again and pulled the trigger over and over. The shots flew off, hitting different panels and lodging more cracks in the reinforced glass. The first crack travelled along the panel, splintering in different directions like a fork of lightning. The other cracks followed, splitting off and merging into one another. Holt slid his back down the pipe into a crouch, unsure if he would survive should the entire dome split and come cascading in, though a wry smile emerged on his lips at the thought of destroying the structure as his last act.
The first panel gave way, shattering inwards, the pieces flying through the air straight into the turbine, which screeched in protest. A second and third panel burst open, followed by the entire glass dome fragmenting into a million tiny shards. Holt buried his face in his knees and wrapped his arms around his head. The cacophony of noise from the glass smashing into the turbines and the subsequent failure of the metal blades pierced the air around him to the point where he could hear nothing but a high-pitched squeal.
Eventually, he lifted his head when the draw from the turbines dissipated, though his hearing did not return immediately. His arms were covered in cuts and scrapes where small chunks of glass had embedded into his skin. Only one or two glass panels remained in place. The sunlight poured into the structure, the remaining beams casting stark shadows across the pool of water, which was significantly lower than before, the surface gradually returning to a calm state.
Holt reached for the gun, his hands shaking violently. There was only one bullet left in the chamber. He spent some time allowing the ringing in his ears to subside as he scanned the desert and poked his head around the side of his defensive pipe position, waiting for someone to sho
w up and check if he was dead or not.
When a significant amount of time had passed, he chanced a look back towards the turbines. The large metal structures were twisted beyond use, and one had shifted off its casing completely, leaving it dangling at a precarious angle. Water gushed from the pipe behind it, flowing back into the lake and slowly raising the water level.
A noise came from behind the pipe; the large metal doors—now pointless in their position—were being unlocked. He raised the gun and pointed it directly at the door. As it opened, he saw only one person—the woman. She had tears in her eyes as she stared up at the destroyed turbines and took in the utter destruction. Her white lab coat was covered in splatters of blood. She took a few steps forward, tentatively searching around before planting her hand on a nearby pipe for support.
Holt rose to his feet and emerged from behind the pipe, still pointing the weapon at her, though he used both hands to keep his grip steady.
“Where are the men?” he asked in a low tone.
The woman jumped and stepped back against the pipe. She started to panic, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she gulped for air. “You…” she yelled.
“Keep your voice down or I’ll silence you permanently. Where are the men?”
“Dead. Everyone is dead. You’ve destroyed everything,” she sobbed.
“Show me. Move.” Holt stepped forward and jabbed his gun into the side of her neck, nudging her towards the doorway. She followed instruction, giving him an icy glare from the corner of her eye.
They followed a corridor leading towards the back of the turbines, then entered another room filled with pipes and tanks stretching up to the ceiling. One end had ripped away entirely, the tanks and pipes collapsed in what looked like a cascade failure. Beneath one smashed tank, he spotted a pair of feet sticking out and a pool of blood leaching across the floor.
“There,” she pointed to the pair of feet, “and there and there.” She pointed to various spots around the room, various body pieces or scraps of clothing—all that remained.
Holt was torn between feeling glad he didn’t have to face off a bunch of mercenaries with nothing more than a single bullet and a couple of knives, and feeling oddly gratified by having managed to destroy every last one of his current opponents with a ludicrous act of destruction.
As the woman’s expression darkened, he realised he was smirking and made the effort to regain a less morbid mask. “Take me to the exit and the vehicles. While we walk, we can have a…conversation,” he said. He jabbed the gun into the back of her neck once more and kept a tight hold of her arm, holding her close to his body as they walked. “What is this place?”
“It’s an experimental pumping station. We’ve taken advantage of the natural oasis spring. The water is drawn out and filtered, then distributed to the towns and villages nearby.” Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke. She was offering up more information than he’d actually asked for, putting him at ease. He wasn’t overly comfortable with the notion of pummelling women into submission.
“Why is it filtered?”
“Because it comes from an underground spring, a spring that leads all the way from the Montagn Le Sinsi…the Blue—”
“Blue Mountains,” Holt said, understanding the implications of water laced with Anthonium traces and somewhat regretting drinking so much of it unfiltered, not to mention swimming through it.
“You’ve come from there,” she said as they turned down yet another corridor in the maze-like structure.
“That was a statement, not a question.”
“Good observation, though it was a little redundant. You were expected.”
“Hmm,” was all he offered in response.
“It’s impressive for someone to walk so far through the desert. You must be very determined.”
“That’s one word for it. How did you know the water needed to be filtered?”
“Through analysing the deaths of many people who drank the water for so long. Once we realised the source and the fact that the water had run through the vein of Anthonium, we knew why it was so deadly. Sadly, it took many years before we perfected the ability to filter out the poisons caused by the element. It took even longer to build this.” She patted a nearby piece of pipework as they passed by with all the affection of a mother patting her child’s head.
“Impressive.” Despite the word, Holt managed to make it sound flat and uninspired. He sighed inwardly at his lack of ability to convey any sort of emotion through the monotone of his voice—at least to anyone other than Larissa.
“You Daltonians think us backward in terms of engineering. We like to let you keep thinking that. It gives us an advantage,” she continued, breaking his thoughts.
“A structure like this doesn’t come cheap.” He paused as they passed a room dotted with tables and chairs and a collection of half-eaten food on plates. He’d obviously interrupted the workers’ lunchtime. He steered his captive into the room and grabbed at handfuls of food, unceremoniously stuffing them into his pockets and collecting bottles of water.
“Indeed it does not. It was privately financed,” she said as they came out, and she pushed open a set of doors leading out to the desert. There he found the large contraption he’d seen Covelle using to travel across the desert from the volcano. It was empty.
“The man who came here…”
“Solomon Covelle,” she said. “He funded this structure and the research into it.”
“Why would he do that?”
“How would I know?”
“Where did he go?”
“How would I know?” Her face flashed with a look of terror—an obvious tell to her lie.
He contemplated pressing her for the information, wondering if he could put aside his distaste at the idea of beating it out of her. “How is he traveling?” he asked, knowing she couldn’t deny the knowledge of that.
Her lips pursed then drew into a thin line. Her chin tilted upwards in a small display of defiance. He studied her face, her olive skin, and golden brown eyes, smooth cheeks slightly flushed with red—nothing like the way Larissa used to blush. He dragged the gun tip around her neck and stuck it underneath her chin, forcing her head to move back further as he brought his face in close to hers.
“Don’t test me. I’m a very determined man, remember?”
She let out a shaky breath. “By airship. He’s going to the Capital, Eudonin,” she whispered, pointing to the horizon.
“Good.”
He left her standing at the entrance to the defunct building and clambered into the cab. The small furnace was still warm with embers. Though he needed a chance to rest and recuperate before pressing onwards, he didn’t want to risk sleeping with the woman nearby. So he stoked the boiler and brought the vehicle back to life. Before long, he was trundling through the sand at a steady pace, and the dome structure faded into the distance.
CHAPTER TEN
By the time Lieutenant Saunders returned to the port city of Aditona, his mood had darkened further still. The city emerged in the skyline, haloed by a mushroom cloud of smog. As the train chugged towards it, he couldn’t help grinding his teeth together.
“LT?” his close friend and one of his chosen colleagues, Sergeant Eddy Boswell, whispered from the seat behind.
“What is it?”
“I can hear you grinding your teeth together from back here. You gotta lighten up or you’ll be sucking your steak through a straw.” Their other comrade sitting beside Eddy, Private Simms, snorted a laugh.
“Thanks for the advice. I don’t think we’ll be having steak any time soon.”
“LT?”
“What?”
“When are we going to change out of our uniforms? I don’t think we can convincingly pass as merchant sailors like this.” Eddy pulled off his black cap and rubbed his palm on his bald head.
“We’re not going to try passing as merchant sailors,” Saunders said, then went straight back to staring out the window and grin
ding on his teeth, though this time he noticed the noise. A moment later, the smell of tobacco smoke tickled the hairs inside his nose. He rolled his eyes shut and pinched the top of his nose.
“LT?” Eddy thrust a thin cigar in his face. “Want a smoke?”
Saunders glanced behind him and saw both Eddy and Simms had lit up their cigars. “No thank you.”
“You still quit?”
“Yeah.”
“Why you quit, Sir?” Simms muttered around the cigar hanging from the corner of his lip.
“For a girl,” Eddy answered for him.
Saunders shifted uneasily in his seat, the nagging sensation at the back of his head telling him a smoke would help settle the bundle of nerves in his stomach. That didn’t help much.
“So,” Eddy chirped up again, though he lowered his voice as he plopped his cap back on. “If we’re not following the General’s orders for Eptora, what is the plan?”
“We’re still going to Eptora, we’re just not going in the way the General suggested.”
“Don’t tell me we’re going to walk up to the enemy in our uniforms and introduce ourselves?” Simms asked.
“It’s across the ocean, idiot. We’re not walking anywhere,” Eddy said.
“We’re going to visit my cousin.”
“Is this the cousin you told me about?”
“Yes.” Saunders took a deep breath, turned around fully in his seat, and lowered his voice to the two men staring at him attentively. “My cousin runs a bar in Aditona, only the bar is just for show. Behind the bar, all kinds of interesting things go on.”
“By interesting, you mean illegal?” Simms asked.
“No doubt some of the shit that goes on isn’t on the right side of the law. What we’re going to ask for is just…unusual. You have the drawing I asked you to do, Eddy?”
Eddy tapped his breast coat pocket and gave a nod.
“We’re going in a far more effective disguise. I’ll explain more when we’re somewhere private.”
The train whistle blew and the wheels screeched as they arrived in the station. The civilians in the carriage stood up to collect their hats and bags. Saunders and his men headed out. A natural parting grew in the crowd on the train and continued as they headed down onto the platform. They emerged from the busy station into an even busier street. Throngs of people headed to and fro, still dressed in thick cloaks and robes for the bite in the late winter air. The streets of the port town of Aditona were dirty with soot and mud and stone. The smell wasn’t much better.