Steam City Pirates: Pat O'Malley Steampunk Mysteries

by Jim Musgrave

  Michael was over ten feet tall, and his powerful shoulders were made of steel, bolted together with arms and legs that were covered in flesh-colored tin. The mechanical angel also had a halo above his long white hair made of wool, and it was firmly affixed to the back of his head. I could also see the copper steam exhaust pipe protruding from the head. Like the steam-powered Pharaoh, Michael also wore a white toga and had a long sheathe containing his battle instrument. Instead of a straight sword, this steam man had a curved sabre. I knew that the Polish Cavalry hussars used such weapons for in-close combat. I wondered why Doctor Adler had chosen such a weapon when it was obvious that the attack mode of these steam men would be powerful and straight-on.

  After Doctor Adler had been introduced, the Master of Ceremonies raised his megaphone once more. “And now, from the mysterious society of inventors that gives us so many modern devices and conveniences, please welcome the great leader of the World Scientific Advancement Society for Progress, Grand Inquisitor Abraham Toky Manette!”

  Manette marched his eight-foot frame down the center of the arena. His red eyes glowed confidently, and he wore the battle dress of the ancient Pharaohs. Upon his head was a blue helmet of steel covered with gold discs around its perimeter. His toga was brief, and his legs were muscular and bronze. He nodded to his second, Bat Carry, and then he climbed up the rope hanging on the side of the steam man. The mechanical Pharaoh invented by Seth Mergenthaler had a straight sword inside the leather sheathe fastened with a red belt around his white toga. The duplicate blue helmet with gold discs was also placed on the mechanical steamer’s pate, with the steam engine’s exhaust coming from the top of the helmet.

  “Gentlemen! Start your engines!” the Master of Ceremonies shouted through the megaphone. The battle had begun. Both Becky Charming and Bat Carry withdrew from the confines of the cage to sit in the first row of seats to watch the melee.

  I knew that both Doctor Adler and Abraham Manette had something up their proverbial sleeves, and I was anxious to learn what would ensue. The steam engines were both powerful and loud, and the steam rose into the air above the arena like clouds of doom as the two steam men began to move slowly toward each other.

  I could see what extra device Manette had provided, as soon as he took out his sword from its sheathe. A metal door opened in the side of the Pharaoh and out popped a large black mace with spikes encircling its surface like porcupine quills. It was hanging from a long copper chain which the mechanical man took into his left hand. With the gigantic straight sword pointing forward at his opponent, and the malicious mace dangling at his side, the Pharaoh’s engine revved to full power. It was at this moment that Manette chose to utilize the steam-powered voice system that Seth had created. The sound of the charge reverberated around the arena:

  “Steam power for all society!” were the words of the Pharaoh’s war cry.

  The power engine thrust the legs of the Pharaoh into immediate action, and they pounded upon the sawdust like an elephant’s legs. Low to the ground, the crouching demon raced toward the waiting archangel, Michael, who had yet to move. Instead, Doctor Adler chose to rev his engine in place, the clouds of steam puffing out his halo and the grinding gears of Michael’s right arm moving down to grasp the hilt of the sabre and pull it out of its leather sheathe. Michael held his sabre close to his chest and waited for the attacking Pharaoh.

  A cry went up from the crowd as the Pharaoh sped toward its quarry. The straight sword, weighing at least a thousand pounds, was pointed straight at Michael’s heart! The sharp steel blade was heading for the kill when, at the last moment, the legs of the angel grew! Up, up, into the air rose the legs of Doctor Adler’s Michael until his halo was almost to the top of the wire cage.

  Without the ability to stop suddenly, the charging steam Pharaoh ran between the legs of Michael and the sword crashed into the wire cage, breaking off the sharp tip. We could hear a roar come from Manette through his sound device, “Arghhhh!” he yelled in frustrated anger. Manette pulled his steam man from the entanglement with the cage and circled around to aim the mighty Pharaoh at Michael once more. He brought up the mace ball of steel spines by its chain and began to spin it around and around above the Pharaoh’s steaming head.

  It looked as though this would be the end of Michael the Archangel, as his long legs had no protection from the swinging mace. In effect, Manette could slowly hack at the tall angelic steam man’s legs like he was chopping down a Sequoia redwood. The audience groaned as the angel was their favorite, and the Pharaoh raced toward Michael, who was moving toward his oppressor with sudden vigor. What was Doctor Adler up to now? Could this be his miracle device?

  As the steam Pharaoh began to hack at the legs of the standing Michael, the archangel reached above with his empty hand to gather up his white hair in a ball and clench it tightly within his metal fist. Then, with a thrusting downward push, Michael the steam angel shoved the ball of wool deep into the Pharaoh’s steam exhaust pipe. At first, the mighty machine attempted to reach up and into the Pharaoh’s exhaust to pull it out, but the wool had been shoved too far down for the metal fingers to grip it.

  Soon, because of the overheating inside the Pharaoh, there were shouts coming from within the giant machine; and then, when the steam man finally stopped moving and stood frozen in the center of the arena, Manette came sliding down the rope. Steam clouds were still gushing from the blue helmet on top of the Nemes. Manette had shut down the engine to prevent it from exploding and harming some innocent bystanders in the audience.

  Doctor Adler’s Michael slowly lowered its torso, shrinking the legs, so it was back to its twenty-foot height. The rabbi also turned off the engine, and Becky came back inside the cage, walked over to the wooden ladder and carried it over to the victorious archangel. After placing it against the side of Michael’s toga, Becky stepped away and watched Doctor Adler climb down the ladder to the roar and applause of the gathered dignitaries in the audience.

  The Master of Ceremonies came back into the cage with a gold plaque in his hands. As he was handing it to Doctor Adler, I saw a small boy in the audience pointing at Michael the machine. When I looked over to see what the boy had seen, I remembered Doctor Franklin Biggs-Pemberton and his prisoners. This was the plan we had developed. After winning the combat, Franklin and his cohorts from the fictitious Network of the multiverses were supposed to climb out of the “Trojan Michael” and take out Manette, Jane the Grabber and John Allen.

  Instead, the six midgets climbed down the ladder, one at a time, and when they collected around the Master of Ceremonies, the gentleman looked at them all with arched eyebrows. I could see his mouth moving, but I could not hear what he said, and yet I imagined he was wondering about the legality of this strange development in the competition. What occurred next caused a collective gasp to emanate from the audience. Little Franklin Biggs-Pemberton reached up and tore the megaphone from the Master of Ceremonies’ grasp and brought it up to his thin lips.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen. As the leaders of New York City, I am certain you are aware of the impact of this one man on your lives. Mister Manette calls himself your ‘master,’ and this is what cannot go on. I am from your future, and he is a mechanical imposter sent by totalitarians from other worlds who want to own you! My name is Doctor Franklin Biggs-Pemberton, and I am here to stop this invasion from going any further. Without my having to give you a lengthy explanation, let me just say that I am here to set you free from this stranglehold of monotechnology and eventual slavery!”

  After completing this announcement, all five of the other little men started running toward the cage’s exit. They passed through the arena’s cage door, ran out of the tent and into the amusement park. Manette and Bat Carry, however, were starting to move toward the mechanical Pharaoh.

  “Halt!” screamed Biggs-Pemberton. “I am certain you believed you had seen the last of me after you changed me into Tom Thumb. Au contraire, Inquisitors. As you can now see, I was not a human inventor
from London, England. I am from the Earth’s moon in the year 2344. My job as a master genetic engineer and scientist was to keep the universes safe from beings such as Manette. However, when the Network decided to attempt to send you back to 1861 in New York City, I decided I wanted to come along also. My talent as a geneticist is renowned throughout this galaxy, and I thought I could take a gamble and bring all of my prisoners along with me on our little time travel adventure.”

  I knew this was what I had believed happened to Biggs-Pemberton because of what the Network officers had told me when I visited them. The prisoners were from galaxies and planets where life was quite different than the life we have on Earth. I was waiting for the final truth from Biggs-Pemberton’s mouth.

  “There are only five who made it back with me. I shrank all five thousand of my prisoners, hoping they would survive, but, alas, your atmosphere was too different. I had to reduce them to the size of bacteria, and they did not survive. Luckily, however, I do have five fellows who are now spreading out to do their respective duties. In some cases, I had to genetically adjust my cohorts the way you, Manette, had to adjust Madame Hester Jane Haskins and Mister John Allen to fit your objectives. We now have one prisoner for each of you! Shall I introduce them to you?” Biggs-Pemberton asked.

  “Are you insane? There is no way you can stop my Society. You are an imposter. You were a civil servant hired to clean up the trash of other universes. How can you believe you will be victorious over my collection of genius and power?” Again, Manette moved to climb back into his steam-powered Pharaoh. I knew that this time he was going to use the violent weaponry with which his machine was well equipped.

  I watched in abject horror as Biggs-Pemberton’s body began melting before my eyes! Was he finally giving in to the power of Abraham Toky Manette and his organization? No, the puddle of protoplasm that formed in the sawdust of the arena began to form again and take on another shape—a much larger shape. The skin of this being was green, scaly and lizard-like, and he was bipedal, rising up on his muscular haunches. The top of his torso was humanoid, however, and his long fingers were almost a foot in length with dagger-like nails on the ends of them. The face of this monster was scaly all around the back of the head, but the face was that of the midget Biggs-Pemberton. On this lizard-man’s back were barbed protrusions all along the spine. The midget man I had known for many months was now a ten-foot tall mutant reptile!

  There was a commotion at the entrance to the tent. Ten of Tammany Hall’s Metropolitan policemen were running into the arena brandishing shotguns. They wore the blue, neatly pressed uniforms of the lazy elite’s coppers, and they were yelling curses at the green monster as they ran up to the cage pointing their guns at Biggs-Pemberton’s mutant body.

  The lizard-man Franklin turned his back to them, pointing his spikes outward. Ten of the spikes along his spine began bubbling at the base near the green skin, and then they burst forth a slimy, yellow liquid that shot across the arena and through the cage in ten different streams, and each of the ten streams landed directly upon each of the ten policemen. The yellow slime oozed down over the bodies of the policemen, and immediately the men began to sizzle, smoke and, finally, erupt into flame. They ran screaming along the front of the metal cage, hitting against it, bouncing off it, and falling against citizens in the audience. They shot wildly into the air with their shotguns as they clutched with their hands in agony at their burning faces.

  Biggs-Pemberton turned to face the audience with the megaphone once again up to his mouth. This time, his voice could be heard throughout the arena and probably out into the park.

  “If any more yokels wander in here, they will receive the same greeting. I would like to introduce you to my friends, who are presently finding their way to their duty stations outside this play land arena. First, we have Svebo Murr’n. Mister Murr’n is a unique kind of alien from the planet Sistertian in the Vartusion Galaxy of the Midor Universe. His duty is to hunt a certain ethnic group. On his planet, I suppose you would call him a fanatic and rabble rouser. He wanted to eject all foreign aliens from Sistertian soil, and his method was very unique. You see, he is a singassasin or ‘shriek.’ His color is pale olive, and he is willowy and tall. Shrieks can emit powerful sonic waves capable of shattering stone and bursting organs. True, they are xenophobic, and he has adapted well to planet Earth. Right now, his job is to track down a certain Jewish mazikeen named Seth Mergenthaler and shriek the lad’s stomach until it bursts.” The male members of the audience groaned, and women screamed. Biggs-Pemberton turned his megaphone and spoke even louder out into the gallery.

  “Next, we have Ooor Cefallusca. Ooor is one of the five-armed octopi assassins from the planet Wastom in the Hastermo Galaxy of the Reestly Universe. Right now, Ooor is out in the ocean off of Coney Island. Knives are wielded by this one the way the circus performers wield them. His job is to squeeze through any crevice that is larger than his eye, which is ten inches in diameter. Doctor Adler, the rabbi, is Ooor’s contract. As soon as my prisoner gets his replenishment from the salt water in the ocean, he will come ashore to complete his mission.”

  This was not what I was expecting. I had believed there would be no survivors from the time travel, but this was probably because I was so eager to believe what the Network officers told me. I was also very fearful of time travel, and this may have contributed to my expectations. But this was not the end of his list of alien assassins.

  “Becky Charming deserves a special kind of assassin. I was able to genetically modify this one on my own. I had some time, so I was able to give this human parasitic cyborg from Jupiter’s moon an ability to pierce skulls and inhale the brain matter within. Miss Charming is quite proud of her gray matter, so I believe this would be quite a proper end for her. My Zoftnist uses a diamond beak that works with her distended stomach and diaphragm that I engineered from a giant anteater which can suck in 200 pounds per square inch. The Zoftnist is one of my favorite prisoners because I helped to create her.”

  People in the audience were attempting to leave, but Biggs-Pemberton turned his spiny reptilian back to them and they scurried back to their seats and sat still like good little Catholic school children. There was one more assassin, if I was not mistaken, and that left Biggs-Pemberton for me.

  “My last prisoner comes from the planet Billtsfer, in the Lerston Galaxy and the Estorial Universe. On his planet, he was one of the hunter races of humanoid beings that resemble your human species so closely that most people cannot tell the difference. They hunt the humans on the planet for sport. The Tosswik are silicone based life forms as opposed to your carbon. Tosswik has told me he relishes the idea of plunging his tongue knife into the stomach of such a great behemoth as Walter McKenzie. Did I mention that I have adjusted the Tosswik’s species so that they can also gorge themselves on carbon based human intestines?”

  I could not take this any longer. I ran up to the cage and shook it.

  “And you are the one for me, correct? But where is your dedication to the cause? I thought you were going after the Society because of the way they treated you? Don’t you need to put a stop to their monotechnology?”

  Biggs-Pemberton’s face twisted into a leering grin. “O’Malley? Of course I shall get you! But first, I want you to prove that you can earn your chance to fight me. I am telepathic, as you know. My assassins will not go into action until I give them the word. Today, it shall be Doctor Adler here who will be knifed by my Ooor. Tomorrow, the little mazikeen will fall, followed by your charming whore the day after, and then the fat gang leader. You shall be last, O’Malley, and just before I have placed you under the sod, I will unleash my final surprise upon the dear Society of social misfits. Manette, your day is coming! I dare say, this should be an exciting few days for New York and for all of you!”

  “You can’t mean this, Franklin! You are outnumbered, and we will stop you,” I shouted, shaking the cage until it rattled. “Stay away from my friends!”

  I watched a
s Biggs-Pemberton slithered back to Michael the steam man angel, and climbed up into its interior. He crawled back down the ladder holding a small bottle with a red liquid inside. He drank it, the drips trickling down his chin and onto his green scales. And then, in about fifteen seconds, Doctor Franklin Biggs-Pemberton began to shrink before my very eyes.

  I knew what he had done. He had reduced his form to that of a bacterium. He was now too small for the human eye to see, and he was sneaking away like a virus on a populous island.

  I also understood that I had to play his game, so I turned around and ran toward the exit. I had to stop the octopus assassin before he came out of the ocean to throw a knife into Doctor Adler’s victorious and fine heart!

  Chapter 13: An Experience Wherein New York and Environs Become a City of Assassins

  The First Day

  As I ran outside into the sunshine, I could see that the crowds in the amusement park were milling about and conferring. They all realized that something untoward had happened inside the tent arena, and I could hear them shout at me as I ran by to get down to the beach. What could Biggs-Pemberton have in mind with this display of grandiosity? Did he really believe he could win over the hearts and minds of New Yorkers by sending out assassins to execute our group?

  Granted, we were not members of the city’s elite, as I noticed that he had not singled out Missus Bessie Mergenthaler for his death squad, but he had certainly placed Seth in his sights as an assassination victim. The fact that this mad man from the future was carrying out his plan in four days meant he had confidence that each of his remaining prisoners could do the job. As for the Society, Grand Inquisitor Manette and his Steam City Pirates, Biggs-Pemberton had saved their demise for the final day of the assassination festivities. As it was, I had to take it all one day at a time and hope for the best.