Asunder (War Between Worlds Book 1)

by John Mierau

  The pirate in the second ship paid them no mind, and made himself busy destroying the ships.

  An awkward landing between boats set Marcus sideways, and in that moment he could see the walking machine reach an impossibly long leg reared out of the water and perched in the rock wall. It trembled there, slowed, and awkwardly mounted to rock wall. A human at the wheel, with no experience. Marcus spared the creature a snort of derision before turning back to fleeing for his life.

  The first moments of panic began to lift. This wasn’t one of the monsters that had come to kill them all, just a human being trying to take what it wanted, like so many before him.

  Just a man.

  Marcus watched the tripod lash out against the masts of a ship with its tentacles to steady itself. It took a moments to right itself, then waded even further into the harbor to smash through the deck of a ship three slips down from Pegasus.

  His lungs burned to make the oxygen he needed, but his brain worked the same as always, divorced from the devastation falling around him. The pirates weren’t taking now: they were destroying. Why? Marcus wondered. Pirates were all about the quick in and out, just staying long enough to pillage. What was their game?

  Not thirty feet from the high rock wall, Marcus jerked his body back and wrapped an elbow around the mainsail of a yacht. He managed to spin himself around rather than fall into the water beyond, where the still-smoking wreckage of two ships were slowly sinking below the surface.

  The boat bobbed with the weight of Hobe, tumbling forward towards the edge.

  Marcus reached for him, but came up short. Hobe screamed, windmilling his arms to stop himself. The engineer ended up on the gunwale, on his tiptoes, teetering and windmilling his arms. Marcus winced, sure his friend was bound for the drink, when the boat bobbed again with the force of Lieutenant Burns’ leap across the boat.

  Hobe’s body tipped past the point of no return, and began to pick up speed. The Lieutenant stretched his hands out just then, and managed to close one fist around Hobe’s suspenders. With the Lieutenant as a lifeline, Hobe’s reeling arms sent him careening back onto the sunken deck of the small sailboat. Marcus’s wincing eyes closed all the way, just before the two men collided in a heap.

  “Bugger!” Burns shouted, and Hobe groaned. “Dashedly sorry, sir,” he wheezed a moment later, striving seriously for the title of gentleman as well as officer, it seemed to Marcus.

  Marcus grinned at the expense of the clean-speaking sailor, even as energy beams flew his head, setting fire to the main sail.

  “God frecate!” wailed Hobe. “What the hell now!”

  He heard screaming. Boats burning. He knew the toll the pirates were exacting. He felt it in his bones and his blood was up.

  He had to reach that cannon!

  Marcus stomped a leg down in anger - ever the bad habit in a sailor - and stumbled on a wet patch on the deck of the sailboat. He reached his hand out for the mainsail, and grabbed a handful of rope to steady himself.

  With a grin, he stared up the burning mainsail, then over to Hobe. “Give me your knife!”

  Hobe looked stricken. “I left it on Pegasus! It’s in the tool chest!”

  There was a ‘snick’ of metal against metal from behind him. “Will this do?”

  Marcus turned to see Burns’ officer’s sword in his hand and smiled.

  A few knots later, Marcus was ready. He held the rope out for Burns to slice, and his sword made good, parting the rope with one pass.

  With the rope in hand, Marcus climbed back the way he’d come, over one boat, then to the boat after that: a bigger sailboat, one that sat higher in the water. He climbed atop its cabin, took a deep breath.. And made a running leap back towards the rock wall.

  He swung high in the air, and when his gut told him to he let go the rope with a roar.

  The rock wall came toward him. He landed just short, and gasped as he was dunked into the Atlantic. And a good thing too, he decided, as his feet stumbled on the rocks beneath the surface, where surely he’d have wrecked himself on the dry rocks above. He landed waist-deep in harbor, but holding fast to the wall.

  He scrabbled up the rocks, and tossed the rope back towards the sailboat, and half-hopped, half-ran towards the harbor opening.

  In the reflected orange of dying ships, he could make out the turret station. There was a man there, leaning against the wood and metal shield erected in front of the captured alien weaponry.

  “Halloo!” Marcus called out.

  Nothing moved at the station.

  Marcus hurried closer, sure something was amiss. In a few more steps, he understood: he felt no hum from the weapon. It wasn’t armed! He reached out for the coat of the soldier leaning against the wall and tugged him around. The man tumbled down like cordwood, exposing the rich red spray of arterial blood on the wall behind him.

  Marcus cursed and turned back to the weapon. It was a larger weapon, twice the size of the cannon on the Pegasus. He slammed his fist down on the human-hot-wired ignition plate.

  Nothing happened.

  There was no hum from the weapon, no charge building inside, as he swivelled the barrel to face the harbor it had been positioned to defend.

  Not so many screams now. Little was moving now, either, save for the sky-ship and billows of smoke from its victims.

  And Pegasus, sinking slowly below the water; the tripod that killed her wandering landwards, lashing out to shatter bodies wherever its two fine tentacles landed.

  “No!” He screamed, and slammed his fist into the barrel of the inert weapon again and again.

  He shook his head to focus, and slammed the ignition plate down again. Nothing. His shaking fingers reached below the plate, found the copper wiring leading to beneath the barrel -- and pulled the wires clean away.

  The two wires were cut clean through.

  The poor soldier could have been something else, but not the wires.

  It was sabotage.

  Marcus fell to his knees, biting on the wire to clear the insulation and spitting the foul wadding out. He found the other end and chewed the copper wire clean as well, then wound them together. He chewed through the second wire, and then roared as a shock ripped through him.

  He licked his burnt, trembling fingers, growling low in his throat as he worked up the will to grab them again, gritting his teeth and twisting the ends together as knives stabbed into the backs of his hands, and up his arms, before he let go, bellowing his pain. He was rewarded with the hum of the guns coming to life.

  He staggered back to the human-engineered turret and grasped the handles. The larger weapon would take even longer to charge than his present to Pegasus had.

  He looked again for Pegasus. It was gone, buried under a burning oil slick. Through that thick black cloud, the sky-ship emerged.

  Marcus stared at the thing, coming at him and growling like a swarm of angry bees. He knew when he’d turned the gun on, gauges on the sky ship and the tripod had glowed and screamed to warn their pilots.

  Now they came for him.

  His spine and the back of his neck shivered, as power blossomed inside the alien weapon.

  The sky-ship banked back towards him. It began to fire wild. Marcus guessed its pilot hoped to land a lucky shot before Marcus would get his turn. He did not rush. He was methodical and practiced as he lined up his shot. He could well imagine the target painted around his head, but he held his fire.

  Shoot too soon, and fire a weak shot. Wait too long, and it wouldn’t matter how much of a wallop you delivered: you were dead already.

  Marcus judged the power capacity in the weapon by the sensation crawling up his spine. His fingers trembled against the triggers. His eyes watched the force-wall blurred skin of the sky-ship race closer. Only when he was sure enough charge had been generated did he squeeze the twin triggers, loosing a slicing beam into the center of the ship.

  The glow of sky-ship’s weapon turrets disappeared. The hum of its engines disappeared. The cabin lights
went dark, and the ship lost altitude, and began to tumble. It broke apart when it hit the surface, and pieces of garishly colored alien metals tore free. Marcus and the cannon were unscathed, but for the wind of a piece of wreckage passing harmlessly just feet above.

  Ulllaaa!

  “I almost forgot,” Marcus muttered with insane calm, and stared through the targeting assembly as he turned the weapon towards the wall. A cascade of genuine terror finally shattered his calm when the tripod itself out of the harbor. All three legs bent over the rock wall, and it scuttled towards Marcus, and the cannon.

  He was saved only by the inexperience of the pirate helming the walker. Shot after shot flew wide. Rocks exploded on impact. The ground shook. One shot glanced off the alloy targeting array, leaving Marcus blinking, but unharmed.

  Water geysered into the air. Most of the energy beams lashed the base of the rock wall, but the impacts whipped closer and closer. Stone chips flung past Marcus, slashed his forehead, bit into his ear...

  Ulllaaa!

  Halifax. Samantha. Robert.

  The tripod was almost on top of him when Marcus’s neck shivered. Something in the cannon bloomed back to life, and he mashed his fingers on the triggers.

  “Sorry, Charlie!” he whispered through gritted teeth.

  The cannon fired, and the sky glowed white.

  #

  The shot that killed the tripod, and the explosion that followed, still rang in Marcus’s ears when the trio to make their way back around the wall to shore. It didn’t take long enough, although they stopped to pull any survivors from the lost ships out of the water.

  “Too few,” Hobe muttered numbly, as he put his shoulder under a half-unconscious man’s arm and helped him walk. “Far too few.”

  Marcus and Hobe helped the wretches along as best they could. Soon rowboats with able-bodied men were on the water, collecting any other survivors where they clung to wreckage, or life preservers.

  Lieutenant Burns’ deep booming voice came in handy, directing some of the boats to souls they had spotted on their way back to land. Other than those orders, the three walked silently, guiding their shivering, sodden charges as best they could.

  Hobe disappeared ahead as soon as they were on land. Marcus knew he was doing what he did best, talking people into helping him, and wasn’t surprised when he showed up soon after with more men, nervous, frightened, but running after him with first aid kits and even a stretcher.

  Marcus helped organize the rescue party under the roof of a shipbuilder’s yard, beside the smoldering skeleton of a half-completed boat. Soon, more bodies arrived to help. Someone saw to it that towels were pressed onto Lieutenant’s and Hobe.

  “We’ve done what we can, Lieutenant.” Marcus told Burns in a moment where both their hands were free. “Now, take us to the mouse-hole. I need to talk to the Colonel.”

  Burns pursed his lips. “I’m sure the Colonel knows all, I’ve seen at least one runner light up the hill to the town-”

  “Not about the attack!” Marcus leaned in close and whispered in the lieutenant’s ear. After only a few words, Burns jerked backwards. He grabbed Hobe’s bicep and pulled him forward, motioning Marcus on.

  The world felt dream-like as Marcus ran through the boatyard toward the hill and the town proper. He knew it for the after-effect of shock. His muscles ached, and his mind did too. His Pegasus was no more. How would he make it home now?

  “Halt or be fired upon!”

  Marcus skittered to a stop and stretched his hands skyward. All three of their alien rifles had been lost in the swing to the harbor wall, but just as well, he wasn’t about to fire on three panicked youths wearing British Army uniforms and white faces. He just hoped the boys took a good look at his empty hands before filling him with lead. “Goddammit left-tenant, talk to them!”

  “Stand down,” Burns gasped, doubling at the waist. “Lieutenant Owen Burns, of the first Folkestone!”

  The youngest of the men -boys, really- a white-blond haired boy so skinny he made Hobe look fat, stepped forward. “I know you, sir,” Rifles pointed elsewhere, and Hobe let out a weak mutter of relief.

  “Why isn’t the alarm sounding?” Burns asked.

  “It is, sir,” another of the boys said. Marcus looked harder at him and noted the wooden and felt contraptions he wore. A tinny sound escaped from the boxy earmuffs—no, ether-phones. “But we’re not getting through to anyone, something’s blocking—”

  “For the love of-” Lieutenant Burns began, but quickly switched gears. “None of us left alive in the harbor have ether-sets, boy! We need to signal for help! Get up to the Harbor-master’s office and ring the blasted bell!”

  The boy turned even paler, and nodded so quickly Marcus wondered if he were having a fit, before he turned and ran.

  Burns dispatched the other boys to aid the injured gathering in the boatyards, and then led Marcus and Hobe up the hill.

  They were challenged twice more by sentries racing down from town, which had also been struck in the attack. Buildings were aflame in Folkestone, and cries of pain sounded out from the wreckage of buildings.

  Gutless pirates! Marcus thought. Before they reached the quarry road he had buried his aches and pains… unlike the poor souls in Folkestone, his were drowned not in fear of another attack, but in white rage.

  Burns was recognized by the sentries at the town’s wall fortifications, and horses were provided. Hobe made only feeble argument - the man did not ride well, and horses did not respect him - before the three were galloping further down the road towards the quarry pit, and the Mouse-hole.

  Just as soon as the road began to dip, and bend in a circle towards the quarry pit ahead, the pile of wrecks began. To either side of the road, higher and higher of the Invader’s machines lay motionless. Sky-ships, rocket-ships, gun placements and other, stranger things lay amidst growing weeds.

  The tools of the conquerors, vanquished.

  Finally they turned a corner and beyond a stack of legs torn from walking machines, he saw it: a black mouth in the earth, dug by captured alien machines. It was the gateway to the Mouse-hole, and the Project.

  They slowed for another sentry post and another challenge. This time Burns and the others were made to dismount, before a squad of hard-faced soldiers. No children, were these men. Each had the face of experience, and each carried the unwieldy, garishly colored alien weapons with deadly familiarity and ease.

  One of the sentries came forward. He and Burns talked, while Marcus handed his horse off to a stable-boy. He heard a shout of surprise, a whinny, and then turned to find Hobe on the ground, groaning and coughing. His horse, looking very satisfied, was trotting away.

  “Fit for glue!” Hobe wheezed as he staggered to his feet and slapped the air where the horse’s rear had been. Marcus allowed himself a small grin at Hobe’s expense, but the stable-boy who appeared to collect the horse gave the engineer a hard look and patted its mane sympathetically.

  “With me!” shouted the sentry with Lieutenant Burns, who waved Marcus and Hobe to follow. They jogged together down into the dark of the cave. Marcus shivered as familiar, cool wind whistled out of the hole in the ground. When they cleared the line of sunlight on the ground, square windows of brilliance erupted on the cavern ceiling, turning the dark of the tunnel to brightest day.

  Burns gave a shout. His heels dug into the ground and he stared in awe at the machine made sunlight.

  Marcus cast a sidelong glance at Burns. Just how new to Folkestone was the Lieutenant. He slapped the man on the shoulder and smiled.

  “Let’s go, Left-tenant,” he said, mocking the English pronunciation good-naturedly. “It’s down the hole for us.”

  As Marcus jogged past, he heard Burns faintly say, in a voice tinged with awe. “Through the looking glass, more like.”

  #

  With haunting silence, massive panels of light sequentially flared into existence, from the entry to a staging area some quarter mile ahead, from which an uninter
rupted trail of lights raced down into the depths of the Mouse-hole.

  A few dozen yards ahead, amidst a controlled chaos of alien horseless carriages and smaller walking machines laden with supplied bound for the Hole, were a line of four wooden longboats, all roped to squat rectangular machines.

  A group of civilians in white coats were gathered around one of the machines in the middle of the line. They’d turned it on its side and were pointing at the hexagonal plates on the bottom. They conversed excitedly in french. There was much waving of hands and shrugging of shoulders. Marcus guessed these were some of the scientists that had relieved him to work with Dr. Grace and the others on the Project.

  One of them reached out to touch the metal housing around one of the hexagons. “I wouldn’t-” he shouted out too late.

  There was a crackle and a spark of light as the scientist was thrown through the air. He landed in a puff of dust on the ground, and his associates stared with wide eyes.

  Beside Marcus, Hobe laughed. “Let me guess, you’ve just come through? ‘Bienvenue a l’Empire, Messieurs!”

  They stared angrily back as Hobe brayed laughter. Marcus slapped his chest lightly with the back of his hand.

  “What?” Hobe asked petulantly.

  “I don’t think they like your French Canadian accent,” he said under his breath.

  Hobe snorted. “Not too much,” he agreed, but did leave off teasing the new arrivals while they helped the injured scientist to his feet.

  “With me!” the Sentry barked, and turned on his heel. Marcus and Hobe jogged to follow.

  “Quite the bee hive,” Marcus heard Burns say.

  “Yes, sir,” the sentry replied. “Food and water and all manner of kit coming down, all day and all night.”

  “Seems to be backed up more than usual,” Marcus said.

  The sentry fixed him with a look, then nodded. “Too right, sir. All the Lords and Doctors are up in Folkestone for a fancy how-do-you-do.”