Captain Albion Clemens and The Future that Never Was: A Steampunk Novel! (Lands Beyond Book 1)

by Kin Law

  “Captain Sam? I’m sorry I kicked you off your own ship.”

  But the Captain was no longer there.

  Albion pushed himself up on something, anything, which turned out to be his old, dented cutlass. It was more of a prop than anything else- the blade was good for cutting lines on ships, and scaring deckhands. Albion hadn’t thought of it as a weapon, more as a tool… maybe it still was.

  With a mighty roar that ended up more of a wheezing gasp, Albion summoned up the last of his strength. Just as the pattern of Mordemere’s suit reappeared in the anteroom, Albion charged the French doors, tall, floor-to-ceiling pieces of art that likely cost more than Albion could steal in a month.

  His cutlass handle made a convenient focal point, shattering the glass. Then Albion was outside, in very thin air, sliding down the slanted spire of the Nidhogg by the seat of his trousers. His buckles caught and sparked yellow, spinning him round and round as he struggled to find some purchase on the slick spire.

  “Albion!”

  Albion barely heard the voice, like the sweetest auditory illusion. Yet, he reacted, driving his cutlass deep into the side of the ship. The metal scrabbled and slipped, then the point caught in some crevice and stuck.

  It flexed, terrifyingly, and then Albion found himself hanging over slate clouds, clutching his sword in both hands, boots braced against the swiftly tilting airship. He hoped and prayed to whatever patron saint of pirates or sage of uppity rogues the damn sword wouldn’t crack into a million pieces.

  “Oh my God! Captain Clemens!” Vanessa Hargreaves’ voice came from close by, then the more familiar one he had first heard, Rosa Marija’s. Two sooty heads emerged from a window far above him. They retracted, and after a minute, they reappeared, now just above him. He had been sliding just over some stairwell at the side of the spire his friends just happened to be climbing.

  “Come on then!”

  “Blair, put Cezette down and help us!”

  They manhandled the injured, dangling Captain into a window, where his dynamic entry nearly tumbled them all right down the stair. Then they were all together, all four of them again, staring into each other’s eyes in shock and relief.

  “Alby?” Rosa appeared in Albion’s vision. He blinked blankly at her, and looked down, where her bustle was torn in a very suggestive place. She jiggled obligingly, like she usually did. He looked back up into her eyes. She developed an expression of wanton abandonment, like she usually did.

  Only this time, Albion reached out, grabbed her by the waist, and kissed her deeply, drinking of her sweet mocha like a man in the midst of caffeine withdrawal.

  “You smell rank,” he commented, coming up for air. “Where have you been?”

  “Shut up, gorgeous,” she said, and stifled the pirate’s airway once more.

  17: Leviathan

  As it turned out, Rosa Marija didn’t have long to enjoy her newfound triumph. The Nidhogg was still breaking up around them, venting steam in unlikely places, developing seams where there was only impenetrable bulkhead before. The team dashed headlong down the stairs, heedless of bustles in disarray and blood smeared in streaks on the bannisters.

  Hargreaves had hastily tied up Albion’s shoulder, once Rosa extracted the shrapnel embedded there. One of them would not have been enough. It took both Hargreaves’ field medicine training and Rosa’s stock of paralytics to halt the bleed.

  Meanwhile, it seemed like Cezette Louissaint was feeling a hundred percent better. Rosa could not help but notice her recovery coincided with the vast explosion they heard, just before Albion had come flying in out of the blue. Cezette put her head together with Blair, inspecting Moore’s schematics of this strange airship. By the time Rosa and Vanessa bound up Albion, they had a plan.

  “We head to ze cargo hold, here,” Cezette explained, pointing excitedly. Her accents became more pronounced with her excitement. Rosa and Albion looked at each other pointedly.

  “Oh no,” Hargreaves interjected. “You’re not getting another pirate. She’s coming with me after this, we’ll sort her out at the Yard.”

  “Aww!” The pirates groaned as one.

  “You two are sickening,” Elric Blair said, smiling.

  The hold was at the bottom of the ship, and easy to find. It was one of the reasons they decided on the plan.

  The catch was, the air was becoming thinner and thinner, and the light increasingly brilliant, folding in and around them in shades of Caribbean clear and Atlantic navy. The ship was still rising, despite the major malfunctions shuddering all about them.

  “What the blazes is going on?” Elric Blair wheezed. He was still carrying Cezette, who was pointing emphatically at the next turn.

  “The Leviathan’s been summoned- I don’t think it can be gotten rid of so easily!” Albion hollered. Every part of the Nidhogg was jittering randomly, lines full of steam whipping around like fazed serpents. All the aeon in the ship was reacting to the presence of the Leviathan, joining themselves to its cerulean glory.

  “How do you know? What’s happened to Mordemere?” the Inspector seized on the opportunity to interrogate. Rosa figured she had been holding it in since Albion appeared.

  “Just keep going! Mordemere isn’t going to be a problem,” Albion reassured them. He was clutching his cutlass, still.

  They made it down to the bottom, in spite of rivets clattering loose all around them. At the last unceremoniously kicked-down door, they found a vast room of naked steel beams hanging over a howling wind, and below that, empty space.

  As they watched, a section of flooring juddered loose from the supports, sliding down, down, flipping over and over into the clouds.

  “Now what?”

  “Ze Morse lantern!” Cezette squealed. “We use eet now!”

  “That’s right!” said Hargreaves. “We can signal the Gwain with it!”

  “The Gwain?” Cezette inquired bemusedly. Her head tilted just like a cat’s- it was really quite cute, Rosa thought, before she did a double take. The Gwain? So, the lion and the unicorn would make an entrance after all. Hargreaves just shrugged, and saluted. Albion scratched his head, before motioning for her to continue.

  Hargreaves fumbled at her belt for a moment, to Albion’s delight, at least until Rosa whacked him over the noggin. Hargreaves produced the Morse lantern, only to groan- glass spilled out of the gadget in a shower of disappointment.

  “Luckily,” Elric Blair mentioned, as everyone was staring at the Inspector’s hands, “Morse was a brilliant inventor. The codes can be communicated by sound, as well.”

  “We’re a mile up in the bleeding sky! No chuffing way-” Hargreaves protested.

  “There’s a way,” Albion said. “I have a feeling…But I’m going to need everybody’s help.”

  Arturo C. Adler hung about on the bridge of the Gwain, looking on the diminutive, bearded form of Captain Leeds with some apprehension. It didn’t show on his face, but the scope of the situation was well beyond his abilities. An amateur detective simply didn’t go about solving national crises, no matter how in vogue his cravat happened to be. It simply wasn’t done!

  Maybe he had felt some slight relief when he lost track of the Inspector, as she left that bucket of an air ship. What was it called, The Raspberry? The Snozzberry? No matter.

  It gave him just the tinge of guilt, what he’d done to sneak on the Gwain. Really it was merely a matter of acquiring a uniform and taking the place of the scope officer on the bridge, with the aid of a sleeping dart, of course.

  He had been all too surprised to find, as the Gwain lifted off again to pursue the Nidhogg, the regal figure he had oft thought to meet, Queen Victoria III, there on the bridge as if she was a permanent fixture. She was sipping at what smelled like Earl Grey, with a selection of country cheddars.

  Arturo bemoaned his outfit.

  “Captain, are we in range?” The Queen asked of Captain Leeds. The magnificently mustachioed Englishman gave his monocle a stroke, and his teacup a toke before a
nswering.

  “Yes Your Majesty. The Gwain is prepared for ramming speed, but I must protest, with your august personage aboard, I am unwilling to undertake such a risky strategy.”

  Arturo tensed. The shield and maiden figurehead was no figurehead at all, but a slug of dense alloy rooted into the ship’s chassis. At full speed, not even their mark’s fearsome weapons would slow ten feet of British-made ramming steel. Who knew what other destruction would rain on the rest of the ship?

  “We must capture this traitor at all costs,” Queen Victoria declared. “Call me foolish, but I would share in the fate of my subjects in this endeavor. This dreadful ordeal must stop.”

  A masterful move, Arturo thought. With the Ottomans approaching, the Queen needed all the support she could get. If the navy chose this incident to declare loyal to her, added to the recovery of Westminster, she would have all the favors she would need in the coming conflict. Her presence was bold, befitting the youngest Queen in the history of the British Isles.

  Then again, if the Gwain was destroyed…

  Before them, the naked bulk of Mordemere’s ship hung exposed in the air, like a giant kraken with empty arms.

  Arturo was focused on any pattern of lights. He had tasked himself the rescue of the Inspector, and with his talents, a message would not escape him. He just hoped the Gwain did not begin the attack while Hargreaves was still aboard. Perhaps he was staring too long. Occasional shadowed shapes drifted across his vision, silhouettes of small, rather nasty dirigibles. Poppycock- the assembled navies of the world would never allow such an invasion of their theater.

  If necessary, he would report some strange sound in the vicinity of the target, to delay the attack. Perhaps metal fatigue?

  As it turned out, his stratagem was not far off the mark.

  “What’s this?” Arturo murmured. He was no true scope officer, but he knew Morse when he heard it. Knowing it was one of the tools of his trade.

  Now there it was, clear as day: the sound of staccato clanking, like metal striking. It was strange, even with the instruments at the Gwain’s disposal, there was a cacophony of arc energy and steel grinding over there.

  The bridge shouldn’t have been able to hear a thing, yet there it was: the steady tap of long and short bursts, indicating some intelligence.

  Arturo translated the message, before straightening up once more. He maneuvered one of the intricate dials nearby, sending a tightly guarded beam of Morse light toward the belly section of the Percival nearby. He marveled this was the only assistance the remarkable Hargreaves required of him. However much they enjoyed sniping at each other, he had always been awed by her daring. Yet he did not envy what she would have to do, not one bit.

  The Queen looked to him momentarily, shocking the detective with her powers of perception. She knew. Arturo gave the smallest of nods, mouthing ‘Your Majesty.’

  “Commence the attack!” the Queen ordered.

  Aboard the Nidhogg, the crew of the Berry was having qualms about the plan.

  “What about Cezette? She might crack a knee cap or something!”

  “It’s all about relative velocities. The Gwain will be moving at the same speed as we are. It will catch us, then slow down.”

  “And if they didn’t get the message?”

  Hargreaves was still holding the bullet, which she used to tap against one of the main structural supports of the Nidhogg. According to Moore’s schematics, the steel beam ran right through the Core, and up the whole spire. She had been skeptical, and still was, but she was the only one who had any real practice with a Morse lantern.

  “You have to concentrate!” Rosa yelled. “Unless you mean it, the aeons won’t respond!”

  “I don’t believe this!” Hargreaves wanted to say, but she knew that was the point. If she didn’t, this wouldn’t work. The aeon impurities in Albion’s bullet, retrieved from the Victoria, wouldn’t resonate if Hargreaves didn’t feel the genuine need to be saved. For the fiercely independent Inspector, it was comparable to career suicide.

  “Right!” Hargreaves declared. “One more time!”

  “No time, I’m afraid,” Elric Blair hollered from the porthole nearby. The hold was falling apart around them, but he had located the safest spot for them to stand. He had even set Cezette against one of the pillars. “The ship won’t hold much longer.”

  “Any sign of the Berry?” Albion got an emphatic shake of the head as an answer.

  “Prissy Jack had better take care of her,” Rosa griped. “If I die, and she gets a scratch on her, I’ll kill him.”

  Blair bent down and tied Cezette to his back. There always seemed to be cord somewhere on dirigibles.

  There hadn’t been much wind when they arrived, but now more bulkheads were gone from the bottom of the ship, and the hurricane was beginning to bleed into their calm eye. The light was blinding now, too bright to look into directly. It was all around them, scintillating off the edges of everything. The Leviathan seemed to build solid hallways and mezzanines, soaring towers and vast galleries. Hargreaves wondered if a person could get lost in the heavens simply by ascending those illusory stairs.

  “Ready?” Albion asked, looking at his pocket watch. He had somehow acquired a utilitarian leather jacket. It made him look a bit more mature. The Inspector regretted not having been more of the barmaid with him.

  “No,” Hargreaves answered truthfully. No, she wasn’t, not at all ready.

  “Too late. It’s time!”

  Looking back on it, Vanessa thought it might have been a very strange sight indeed. On the ship, they had no idea the time they had been tapping out in Morse coincided precisely with Queen Victoria’s attack on the Nidhogg. Later, she got the horrific nitty-gritty from a propaganda crew working a moving-picture machine on the Percival.

  The great, long shape of the Gwain lined herself up, her screws spinning furiously. Meanwhile, the Percival and the Baba Yaga, last surviving Muscovite Balaenopteron, began bombarding the invincible Nidhogg- only this time, their shots were unhampered by protective measures and stolen landmarks. Ammunition rocketed into the tentacle arms of the gantries, ripping through them like a whale through a squid.

  The oddly geometric patterns of light beginning to form around the Nidhogg were no protection, even if they flared angrily into red shapes amidst the flaming rounds.

  Noise tore the skies, shrapnel fell in great, mountainous quantities, and melted slag was reportedly smelt all the way in Geneva.

  Then, as the flames licked the very body of the Nidhogg, the spire housing Mordemere’s chambers and the nefarious Core, the Gwain struck. At full speed, the ship bearing the name of one of the noble knights of England sallied forth, her shield blazing blue arcs as enemy weaponry turned it red-hot. The Gwain thundered into the body of the Nidhogg, tearing it asunder as a noble lance might the carapace of a fell drake.

  The Nidhogg sank- and she rose, as well, for the severed portion containing Mordemere’s study flew doggedly upward, drifting further and further up. It drew a strand of debris along, like the cut head of an insect, trailing entrails. The majority of the evil machine disintegrated on the spot, in a fantastic burst of light. It was like a turquoise starburst in the sky.

  If anybody saw the four tiny figures, one weighed down by a lump on its back, fall from the wreckage, it went unremarked amongst the crew of the Gwain.

  Even if it were possible to separate shrapnel from flesh, what were four casualties amongst the millions Mordemere might have inflicted on the world? Certainly not a soul noticed the bulbous shape flitting daringly into the rain of metal, diving like an eagle, then slowly drifting back up and out of danger. What kind of madman might attempt a rescue in midair? Like picking a feather out of a bundle of falling arrows. Some things were just too impossible, even for the worst kind of penny dreadful.

  18: Teatime

  “So that was it then? The whole story?” Queen Victoria III asked Inspector Hargreaves later, in the sunlit beauty of Her Majesty’s p
rivate tea parlor. The greenhouse windows looked down on a London just flowering in the early spring growth, matching the Queen’s verdant sundress. Hargreaves might have picked out Arturo’s idling Eleanor below, if she wished. She did not. “Whatever happened to those intrepid adventurers then? It sounds like I might like to knight this Clemens fellow.”

  Hargreaves gave an involuntary shudder, triggering peals of laughter from her Queen. No royal ‘we,’ no regalia, just two ladies taking tea in the pleasant April sunshine.

  “I am still recovering from the ordeal, Your Majesty,” the Inspector admitted. “Pray, no shocks to my system, not yet.”

  “Oh posh. It is in the tradition of our Pax Brittania to knight those of value to the country: musicians, inventors, even writers,” Victoria said offhandedly. “Now stop stalling.”

  “Cezette Louissaint is under my care, for now. There are technicians working on making ambulatory appendages based on Valima Mordemere’s steamcrafts. There’s talk of opening a new department, to deal with quite extraordinary steamcraft crime. I take it you have nothing to do with this development?” Hargreaves’ question was a tactical maneuver, to put the Queen on guard. There were aspects of the case she still did not wish to reveal, such as how the numerous air pirate dirigibles assisting the European alliance in the final battle, all of which had managed to escape before their eventual victory. She also neglected to mention former pirate Cid Tanner was building Cezette’s new legs.

  The Queen left it alone, feigning innocence.

  “And the writer?”

  “Found a venue for his work immediately. Our adventures will be serialized starting in this week’s Strand magazine. I daresay he will have plenty of material, as he will be extending his research trip indefinitely.”

  “I say. That Nessie Drake character ought to be worth a trio of stories, at least. Drake… Drake… I daresay the girl might be related to an actual Countess, somewhere along the line.”