The technicians manning the portable banks of instruments and controls that had been installed on the mill's floor flinched and ducked out of the way, several turning to stare in open-mouthed shock at their commander's rage.
He was a terrible sight in his rage, more massive than any mere human, the height of a man half-again, bristling with brass and copper augmentation. His entire left side shone under the gas lanterns hung from the wall, its brass casing reflecting the light all the way from fingertips, up his arm to his shoulder, to his finely shaped jaw. The flesh half of his face was twisted into a furious grimace, the cold metal half as implacable as ever. His metallic chest was bare, his shoulders covered by a dark velvet officer's cape that hung to mid-calf.
He stepped towards what looked like an octagonal brass cage and ripped the door off of its hinges. His yet-living hand pulled the hapless technician inside out of its installed seat and held him aloft.
"What do you mean you've lost contact?" His voice was a grotesque mockery, barely recognisable as human.
The technician struggled in his grip, feet kicking helplessly at the air while he struggled to speak. "All units beyond our immediate broadcast range have ceased reporting!"
Sarsosa let loose a mechanical growl and threw the man to the ground. He turned stiffly and reached into the cage, drawing forth segmented cable. He lifted his cape out of the way, pulled the cable around to his back, and jammed it into a socket between his brass shoulder-blades. His head slumped, and his eyes grew unfocused.
The technician stood, dusting off his simple black military jacket. Like the others working in the mill, he wore the uniform that the Commander demanded without comment.
Sarsosa's jaw drooped open. "I cannot connect to any of the cogsmen beyond the mill grounds."
"I told you, sir, there's no signal!"
His living eye focused on the man. "How can this be? How can she have taken care of all of my soldiers at once?"
One of the other technicians spoke. "Sir, if she disabled the main relay station--"
Sarsosa straightened and yanked the cable out of his back with a crackle.
The technician nearest him stepped forth. "Sir, you'll damage the contact heads--"
A swipe from his brass hand sent the man sprawling. "Of course. She'll be coming here next. How many of our reserves can we activate?"
"Potentially?" The technician stood, wiping blood from his lip. "All of them. Without needing the relay the delay should be insignificant enough, though the signal won't be enough to leave the mill grounds."
"That's all we need," Sarsosa said, turning back to his console. "She will come to us."
"Sir!" The soldier guarding the mill door turned his head. "She's already here!"
"Where?" Sarsosa demanded, spinning to face him, the velvet cape he wore billowing behind him.
The soldier backed away, raising his rifle above his head, into the mill. Each step revealed another inch of sharpened steel levered at his throat, a long rapier held by the hand of Aldora Fiske. Constable fuller followed behind her, rifle in hand.
"Fiske." The fleshy-half of Jago's mouth bared its teeth.
"Sarsosa," Aldora said, eyes flickering briefly towards him. "You've changed. The last time I saw you, you were bleeding to death with a spear in your eye."
Jago's flesh hand traced the brass casing around the crystal that functioned as an eye. "I've got a replacement. Do you like it?"
"It's very pretty," Aldora said. "I think I'll make a brooch out of it. However did you survive?"
Jago laughed, a rough mechanical sound. "Let us just say that it pays to have a wide variety of friends."
"What friends might these be?" Constable Fuller asked.
"Sir," the technician beside Sarsosa whispered. "Should I activate the remaining cogsmen?"
"No." He didn't take his eye away from Aldora. "No, I shall quite relish demolishing Miss Fiske with my own hands."
"You sound confident," Constable fuller said, bringing the rifle up to his shoulder, staring down its barrel at the machine-man.
"I beat you the last time we met," Aldora added.
"You were lucky, and back then I was a mere man." He unfastened his cloak with one hand, passing it to the man beside him. "Behold the new flesh."
A powerful leap sent Jago Sarsosa across the length of the mill, smashing through support beam and machinery alike.
***
Aldora threw herself aside as he smashed through the mill's doorway, rolling as she hit the ground, coming up again in a crouch. John was knocked aside, rifle spinning from his grasp.
Sarsosa rose to his feet as the structure of the mill shook, shuddered, and slowly collapsed behind him.
"Your men!" Aldora said. "You've destroyed your work, clumsy fool!"
"I can hire more men." Jago advanced on her. "I can build more machines."
Her blade darted forth towards his good eye. He slapped it aside with his brass hand, bringing his knee up when she countered with a low strike. The edge of her blade tore through his trousers and skittered along the brass leg beneath.
"Did you think that my choosing this village as my testing ground was accidental?" he asked, kicking a length of iron pipe towards her that she barely managed to deflect. "They did. Fools. Did not even bat an eye when I suggested your father's facilities as my first conquest."
"Who?" Aldora asked, lashing out again. Her blade cut a thin red line across Sarsosa's forehead.
The man didn't even flinch. "Those who would deem themselves Jago Sarsosa's masters. Their time will come."
He made a sudden, quick grab for her blade, but she managed to pull it from his grasp. "You're even more mad than the last time we fought."
"What you call madness I call enlightenment." Sarsosa caught her across the face with an open-handed slap, the force of which sent her reeling. "You taught me the weakness of human flesh. The frailty of bone."
John stood, having recovered his rifle. "Die, monster!"
He fired off a round at Sarsosa, but the deadly projectile merely ricocheted off of his chest-piece.
"You are still here?" Jago said. Confident strides took him to the constable as the man worked feverishly to chamber another round into the breech of his rifle.
He'd half-raised it to fire again when the Spanish half-man swatted it out of his grip. Cold brass hands grabbed the constable by his uniform front, and powerful hydralic arms flexed as Sarsosa hurled the man overhead into the debris.
He raised a clenched fist and paused to regard it as he turned to where Aldora had risen "Survival of the fittest. Remember, we spoke of it? Metal is so much more fit than flesh and bone."
"So you're giving up on your humanity?" She watched him warily.
"This way is better." The blood from his wound was dripping over his good eye, but it didn't seem to impair him. "You will come to understand. Well, not you. But the rest of the world."
"And if they refuse you?" Aldora lunged forward, the blade of her rapier slipping between the joints in Sarsosa's hip socket. She gave it a strong jerk, but the sword was trapped.
His brass hand shot out and snagged her wrist, shoving her away with tremendous force, sending her stumbling away backwards onto her seat. "They won't be given the choice."
Sarsosa took a half-step towards her then paused, looking down at his rear leg and the blade sticking out of it. He brought his brass fist down upon it with tremendous force, snapping it in half, then continued his advance.
A sharp pain shot up Aldora's leg as she struggled to rise, and she looked down to discover that a long metal bolt had pierced her calf when she fell. She grimaced and tried to grab a hold of it, but the blood-slicked iron slipped from her grasp.
Jago stopped and regarded her with what might have been pity. "You disappoint me, Fiske. You were so much more formidable when last we fought. What happened to you?"
She grit her teeth, again trying to pull the bolt from her leg.
Sarsosa stepped towards her
Jago's head swivelled and he turned, trying to find the source of the voice. "Is that your fiancée? Has he come to save you?"
"It's Mister Alton Bartleby to you, sir." The voice, clear and resonant, sounded like it was coming from close by.
"Wait here," Jago said, turning from Aldora. "I shall return with your Bartleby's head and we shall all have a chat."
"Don't bother yourself," Bartleby's voice said. "I can hear you just fine. Go easy on the girl; she's had a rough year."
"Yes." Sarsosa turned in place, slowly, as if scanning for him. "Her life must be very difficult, I am sure."
"Tremendously so. Why, just in the past year she's had to kill her brother."
"I was surprised when I heard. I did not think her capable of such a ruthless act."
"It was an act of mercy!" Aldora spat. "He was sick, the way you are. A mad dog."
Sarsosa chuckled. "And you would put me down out of kindness? It seems to me that you suffer more-so than I."
"You might not have heard of her kidnapping," Bartleby said.
"Bartleby!" Aldora gasped, reeling from the shock of her fiancée's betrayal.
"Kidnapping?" Sarsosa laughed. "Oh, the trouble you get into, Miss Fiske."
"Oh yes. She fell for a man, you see. Quite the unexpected twist from a woman with such a cold heart."
Sarsosa raised his eyebrow. "Your fiancée may be holding a grudge, Miss Fiske."
"Go to hell."
"I would rather create it."
"He of course was just using her," Bartleby continued. "But she was too love-sick to see his deception for what it was. I do believe that was the first time in years she had let herself be so vulnerable."
"Wise in that," Sarsosa stood, arms folded. "It takes a strong woman to forgo emotion like a man."
"Oh, she is strong," Bartleby continued. "She defeated you, didn't she? But of course, you had just killed her lover."
"Alton, no!"
Sarsosa stopped. "I what?"
"Killed her lover. Oh, you didn't know? In Mexico."
Sarsosa looked towards Aldora with a smirk. "I am afraid you will need to be more specific. I killed many people in Mexico."
Through the pain in her leg, Aldora could barely focus. She felt herself falling, almost, descending as her fiancée exposed her wounds to her enemy. She had worked hard -- so hard -- to appear fierce, invulnerable, untouchable. Alton was one of the few she had admitted her weaknesses to. She had thought she could trust him. She thought she had his discretion. "Alton--"
"Hush." Sarsosa extended his leg, the ball of his foot rocking the bolt sticking through her calf. She screamed in agony.
"The guide," Bartleby said. "Leading the film crew."
"The one who was insolent," Sarsosa said. "Yes. That would make sense, then, why you opposed me so."
He took his foot off of the bolt and sank to one knee alongside Aldora. "Is that it? Did I kill your lost love?"
"Why are you doing this?" Rage and despair and panic and pain mixed together in her voice.
"Because you need to hear it," Bartleby said, stepping out from behind the mill's wreckage. "Because you've been hiding from it. You think you're so strong, Aldora, but all you've done is hide. You cannot banish pain by refusing to acknowledge it. You cannot fake strength by denying your pain."
Sarsosa looked from Alton to Aldora. "Even your fiancée despises you, Fiske. He understands you well enough to hate what you are."
A sob broke from Aldora then, a sound so sudden and raw that even her foe looked shocked. It was all too much, the sudden well of emotion long repressed, mourning for Grayson, for Henry, for poor betrayed Safiya. She felt hurt, she felt sorry for herself, she felt betrayed, like everyone was against her.
She could hear Sarsosa advancing. "Any admiration I once held for you is gone, Fiske. Whatever you were, the woman who defeated me is gone. Now all that remains is this pathetic mewling girl. I will end you, and remember you as the warrior you once were."
The sorrow flowing through her core quickly turned into a red molten fury. Rage at Sarsosa for killing her Henry, for endangering her family, for ruining her wedding. Rage at her brother for making her kill him. Rage at Cemal for betraying her affection. Rage at Alton for exposing her and opening this floodgate of emotions. Rage at herself for making that necessary.
There were no quips. There was no witty repartee. There was no finesse. There was nothing but a scream of fury so profound that it touched the primitive core of the parts of Sarsosa that were still human. He froze, he hesitated as he reached for her, and that was all the opening that Aldora needed.
Still screaming, she rolled to her side, pivoting at the hip as she rose back up onto her right shoulder and elbow. Her legs, locked at the ankles, swung mace-like in an arc towards Jago Sarsosa, slamming the iron bolt still in her calf into his chest with force sufficient to plunge the metal through the chinks in his brass breastbone and into where his heart should have been.
Sarsosa choked out something half-way between the grinding of gears and a helpless gurgle, brass mechanisms convulsing while his still flesh arm hung limply.
Bartleby was at her side, then, grabbing the machine-man before he could fall on top of her. She didn't look at him, couldn't meet his eyes. Without so much as a grimace she pulled the perforated meat of her calf off of the spike, now firmly embedded in her fallen foe's chest.
She slipped out of the way and Bartleby let the man drop, the blood-and-grease slicked spike driven up through Sarsosa's back by the force of his fall.
Aldora hobbled to her feet. Bartleby didn't say anything, didn't offer her his hand, didn't do anything but gaze levelly at her. He didn't apologise, didn't offer an explanation, didn't make any excuses.
They stood there for a short eternity, eyes locked, silent.
Bartleby took his hands out of his pockets.
Aldora crumpled, collapsed, fell into her fiancée as he stepped forward to support her, to cradle her, to hold her tight as the tears began to flow in earnest, and the couple didn't move from that spot until they had stopped.
***
In my own home.
You send this monster, here, in my own home, wearing the flesh of my departed son.
I am almost blind with rage as I pen this. The lack of respect you have shown me, have shown my house, by sending this creature to me. I wonder what I have done to earn your contempt in such a manner. Did I dither too long? Did you grow tired of my hemming and hawing? I must admit I had my misgivings, with your plans, with your aims, with your silly secondary-school code names, but I never thought you so foolish as to strike at me in this way, in my own home.
I simply cannot abide this lack of respect.
You have called me Sulla in these correspondences and I have humoured you, but I wonder if you even know who these men were, whose names you steal, or if they're just half-remembered words from your secondary school days. Do you know whom you have named me? Sulla marched on Rome twice, my Octovirate, when he found that his supposed allies had moved against him.
As you have clearly moved against me.
Do not contact me again. Stay far from me. Stay far from my daughter. If I even suspect that you have intentions to interfere with us, with our lives, I will bring against you resources you can barely begin to speculate upon. This is a war you cannot weather, and you know what a vengeful man I can be.
Do not make that mistake, or I will not stop until you and your families are dead.
I trust you understand.
Sulla
***
For a long time, Jago Sarsosa dwelt within a hell of unending agony. That was all that existed for him -- he could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing but a constant and almost ambient pain. It did not vary, it did not lessen. There was no way to measure the passage of time; he lacked even a sense of self to distract himself.
He dwelt within it, knowing it to be hell, for an eternity befo
re he began to get used to it. His will was strong, and what would have driven another man mad, he simply forced himself to master. As he gained dominion over it, the pain became transformed into a misty sort of euphoria. The effort made it more difficult to think, but he managed to congratulate himself.
Once the pain had almost been subdued he could think clearly enough to take stock of his situation. He still couldn't feel his arms or legs. He still couldn't move or speak.
Footsteps in the darkness. Followed by a shaft of light that resolved itself into a tall rectangle -- a doorway.
Someone had opened a doorway into the dark room where he was being kept. In its light, after his eye adjusted, he could see that he was suspended in a glass case. He still couldn't feel his body or move, but from the flatness of his vision he determined that his mechanical eye had been removed or destroyed.
He yet lived. His imperfect vision proved that. He felt the muted stirring of hope -- if he lived, then someone had recovered him. Perhaps it was his patrons. Perhaps it was the authorities. It didn't matter; to Jago his survival was proof that fate had more in store for him. He would escape, he would survive, he would bring to the world his great work of unending war. He would have shouted in triumph if he could, but his greatest efforts brought forth no movement.
A figure appeared in the doorway, shadowed in the light, and approached his glass prison. He couldn't make out the features.
"Sarsosa," there was an undercurrent of barely suppressed rage, and he recognised the voice as belonging to the father of his hated foe.
He stared at Lucian Fiske, unable to respond.
"I have kept you alive for the simple reason that I am a vengeful man. You have come to my house, threatened my family, endangered my bloodline. My house, Sarsosa. I do not know if you had the blessing of your masters, but I do not care. Our association has ended, and if they get in my way, I will destroy them."
Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection Page 36