Lightspeed Issue 33

by Tad Williams

  “Something’s down there,” Harry said. She stood braced across the doorway, Marlowe peering over her shoulder, into the darkness.

  Movement finally drew her attention, telling her exactly where to look.

  There were several of them, segmented, undulating bodies slithering along the walls in defiance of gravity. Spikes on their bellies dug into the wallpaper. Bits of powdered plaster rained down as the spikes drove into the wall, a constant spattering of dust, a destructive trail marking their passage.

  Each mechanical creature was only a foot long. In themselves, they did not seem dangerous—no more deadly than a child’s clockwork toy. Each was powered by a glowing green pod nestled on its back, the size and shape of an egg. The devices provided power for the machines, but could also be triggered, igniting raw, explosive Aetherian power. A single one could destroy the building, if needed. A dozen of the beasties crawled up the walls of the stairwell.

  But the primary mission of these machines seemed rather more direct: They had claws and spikes protruding from their bodies, and many of them were covered with blood. So this was what the capsule had contained, and where the true attack lay.

  The bombardment was merely a distraction. The automatons would ensure that no one escaped.

  “That’s different,” Marlowe said.

  “No,” Harry said, because she’d seen this before, at least in drawings. “The design looks like one of the secondary mechanisms from the Surrey crash—part of a grappling system. It wasn’t developed because most of the research went toward the power source and aerial systems.”

  He stared at her. “You’ve seen the Surrey Archives? No one sees the Surrey Archives, not without permission of the highest echelons of the Academy or royal dispensation—ah, just so.”

  She blushed. “Which begs the question of how the Germans saw it, as they must have. George has to know this,” she said. “Command must know. We have a spy at the highest levels.”

  “All the more imperative we leave. It’ll have to be down the outside, then.” With a great deal of purpose, he marched to Captain Smith, who had organized his men into a line but had no target to point them toward. “Captain, we’ve been invaded. Machines are coming up the stairs.”

  “Machines?”

  “Siege engines if you like. Aetherian, mechanical, difficult to stop. I must get her highness to safety. You can safeguard our retreat?”

  “Yes—of course. Godspeed to you.” The new mission seemed to bestow a solid resolve in him. He shouted commands, and the soldiers shifted into two staggered rows at the doorway leading to the stairs. The ambassador hadn’t reappeared. None of the embassy staff who’d remained inside the building had escaped up the stairs. There was a woman’s scream, probably one of the housemaids.

  Harry froze. “We can stay and help. Give me a gun, I can help.”

  Marlowe hesitated. The soldiers preparing to hold the stairs were doomed. With only ray-powered rifles and a few Aetherian grenades, they couldn’t hold back the swarm of machines. The building was a loss. “Your highness, think of the promise you made your brother. We must go.”

  “I—I’m not comfortable with those men dying so that I have a chance—only a chance, mind you—of escape.”

  He gave her a look that might have been pity, or perhaps exasperation. “Good men have died for your family for hundreds of years; you question it now?”

  “My family,” she said bitterly. “I am the very least of my family.”

  A sudden, crooked smile dawned on his wind-burned face. “Your brother was quite adamant. He must not agree with you.”

  “My brother’s a bit mad, you know. Don’t tell anyone.”

  Marlowe had already gone off to find a rope. Fortunately, he found a long mooring cable lying near the tower’s scaffold. He hauled coils of it out, checked for snags, found the end. Then, he secured the cable to the base of the tower with a smart nautical knot, ran it out, and threw the end over the edge of the roof.

  The gunfire sounding in the stairwell grew fierce. The clicking and buzzing of the enemy mechanisms grew louder.

  A familiar whine and descending crash sent them falling flat, arms over heads, praying. The foundations shook and debris rained, but since she was still breathing, Harry had to assume she’d survived. Except that every one of those non-exploding impacts meant more of the creatures would soon be upon them.

  Marlowe was reaching for her. His hair had turned gray with dust. “You can climb, I hope? I didn’t think to ask.” His eyes took on a look of concentration, as if he was considering what he would do with her if she said no.

  “I can,” she said, and demonstrated, sitting at the edge of the roof, adjusting her gloves and arranging her skirts, and taking hold of the line. Neither leading nor trailing was safer, and this would save him from having to decide which was the more dangerous of two untenable positions. She was already over the side before he could argue.

  He grit his teeth and waited until she was well over before starting down himself. At the edge of the roof he kept watch, above and all around, for bombs or airships or any new terror. She couldn’t think about that, only about getting down. Then, they could worry about what came next.

  It wasn’t easy, though she’d be the last to complain. Her trim boots braced well enough against the wall, and hanging on to the rope she was able to walk down the building, letting the cable play out, ignoring the strain in her shoulders. But her hands kept slipping, despite the gloves she wore. They were smooth kid gloves, soft and brown, not at all made for heavy work. This would ruin them; she could feel them stretching, close to tearing from the hard use. Small price, truly.

  She looked down to see how much farther she had to climb. And was, on reflection, not surprised to see more of the snake-machines crawling up the outside. This was it, then. All their routes cut off. She stopped her progress and had enough presence of mind to call up to Marlowe before he ended up on top of her.

  “Lieutenant, look down!”

  They hung there, mid-building, too far down to climb back up … directly in the path of six of the undulating metallic creatures.

  For a moment, Harry gave up. Just for a moment, her eyes stinging with smoke, breathing in soot and grit suspended in the air, ears ringing with the sound of firing rifles, she did not think she had the strength to hold onto the line. George was safe. The realm, too, would be—eventually—and there was nothing she could do about it one way or another. Those worm-like monsters, carapaces gleaming, spiked legs punching holes in the brick wall, didn’t seem inclined to turn away for her. They would crawl over her, punch her full of bloody holes, and she would fall.

  No. She did not want to fall.

  “Marlowe, give me your gun.” She wrapped one arm around the rope, braced her shoulder, and reached up with her free hand.

  He hung on the rope, rooted against the wall. “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was afraid or not. He might have merely been hiding it very well. He had to know they were trapped, but would he refuse to hand her the weapon on principle? For a moment, she thought he might. She could hear the gears and drive belts of the mechanisms below her turning, crunching.

  He took his pistol from his holster, slid down the line a few feet until he was almost on top of her, and reached down to give it to her.

  It wasn’t an old-style ballistic pistol, but a powered weapon, emitting a deadly, focused Aetherian beam. No recoil to speak of, but it required a steady aim to be most effective.

  Harry’s aim was sure. She straightened her arm, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly as she fired. One bolt, two, three, four …

  Each green bolt of energy struck, sparked, and suffused a segmented carapace in a crackling shell of lightning. The first one froze, its mechanism stiffening, spikes retracting into its body, and it fell, peeling back from the wall and toppling.

  “Excellent,” Marlowe sighed. “Now, climb. Hurry.”

  M
ore of the machines were arriving, shuffling on the pavement, reaching the wall, spiking into the brick and beginning their ascent. Harry slid down the rope as quickly as she could, her boots skidding, firing as she went. Unable to keep her aim steady while she moved, she missed several times, snarling at herself every time she did. Marlowe never commented; he urged her on calmly, kept her moving.

  The charge on the energy pistol faded, the shots firing more weakly until they sputtered, and the pistol failed entirely. But by then they’d reached the ground.

  A line of the monsters was still traveling toward them, gears and drive belts whining, steps cracking along the pavement. “Come on,” he said, and they ran. Harry held her skirt and kept up with him, gratified that he didn’t seem to slow his pace on her account. Their first objective was simply away, and they turned north, away from the river and into the maze of streets in the tenth arrondissement.

  After they ran for a spell, Marlowe slowed. They’d left the smoke and sulfur stink of the bombing area. This neighborhood was almost peaceful, though all the storefronts were shut up and not a soul was out on what should have been a busy afternoon. Finally, in a quiet square with a park and overhanging trees, they stopped to catch their breaths.

  Now, Harry wished she could abandon the corset. She had to think about drawing breath into her lungs, expanding them as much as she could, which wasn’t much at all. But there was nothing to be done, and as long as she didn’t panic she wouldn’t suffer. Her one concession to the situation was unbuttoning the collar of her gown, giving her a little more freedom to breathe.

  She handed Marlowe his pistol, grip first. “Lieutenant, your weapon. The charge is empty. I’m sorry.”

  Grinning, he replaced it in its holster. “Nonsense. You’re a very good shot.”

  “My father felt that shooting was in fact an appropriate activity for a princess. We shot grouse at Sandringham.”

  “I dare say he was right.”

  “Well, lieutenant. What’s next?”

  “We get out of Paris. Refugees are making their way to Calais. We travel with them and rejoin the fleet.” Deftly, he unpinned rank and unit insignia from his uniform, the chest badge and collar tabs, shoving them in a pocket. They did rather draw attention to him.

  If there were a way to disguise her upper class garments, she would have done so. She would have to hope her current state of dishevelment would distract onlookers.

  Marlowe said, “You must not fall into German hands. With his highness out of reach, you’d be an attractive prize to them, if they knew you were here.”

  An attractive prize—her lot in life. She must have given an audible sigh, because Marlow smiled wryly.

  “A bit of old-fashioned medieval hostage taking,” she said. “It’s almost refreshing.”

  “Let’s be off, Highness.”

  Forget the titles, call me Harry, she almost told him. Propriety stopped her. He was just a soldier, and too much familiarity wouldn’t do. “To Gare du Nord, then?”

  They resumed their flight.

  Still, bombs fell. Harry might even have been growing used to the thunder, the shaking underfoot, except that every now and then one of the heavier impacts sounded, one of the jarring crashes not accompanied by an explosion. These made her shrink into herself and look over her shoulder for more of the monsters, which she knew must eventually appear.

  She glimpsed it down the verdant enclosure of a garden as they hurried by. She might have thought it a stray cat or dog, except for the way the light glinted off its shell of a body. She hesitated a moment to stare, and the thing, incredibly, stopped to stare back, even without eyes. Some kind of apparatus told it she was there, and that she was a target.

  “Lieutenant!” she hissed, and they backed away as the creature pressed toward them.

  This one had the shape of a spider rather than a centipede. The power source and drive train balanced on eight segmented legs, pulleys and gears working to move them in sequence so that the creature moved easily over cobblestones and stairs alike, as well as contracting and contorting to pull itself through the bars of the garden’s wrought-iron fence after only a moment of scrabbling. An impressive bit of engineering, really.

  Much less impressive on this side of the fence, however.

  “Have you any other weapons?” Harry asked him, as the lieutenant put himself between her and imminent attack.

  “We traveled light to gain speed,” he said, drawing a utility knife from a belt sheath. He might be able to defeat the creature with only a knife, but it would be messy.

  She looked around for any makeshift weapons she might use, sticks or rocks or even broken glass. A row of flowerpots, full of soil and geraniums, sat in a window box at a nearby shop front.

  Meanwhile, Marlowe and the mechanical spider approached each other like boxers in a ring. The aeronaut took a wide stance, his arms out, and the spider skittered back and forth on wooden-tipped appendages, as if taking the measure of his opponent. The metallic legs had blades protruding at each joint, and a row of spikes projecting from its belly. It would only have to leap at Marlowe to injure him. Which it did, of course, bending all eight limbs on wheezing gears, gathering itself, and springing.

  Marlowe shifted out of the creature’s path and shoved away from it, shredding the sleeve of his uniform, but no blood appeared. The metal thing rolled, threw off a few green sparks, and untangled itself to climb back to its feet. Harry threw a flowerpot at it. Marlowe flinched as it sailed past.

  As she’d hoped, the pot struck its middle and knocked the thing over. The clay pot broke into several pieces, covering the thing in geranium. Even better, soil sprayed over it and mucked up the gears and pulleys, which groaned and hissed as they worked over the grit, trying to pull the body upright.

  Seizing the opportunity, Marlowe rushed the thing, grabbing its limbs and cutting its belts and cables with his knife, immobilizing it so he could reach the central body of the creature, where he dug the blade into a seam and pried open an access panel, exposing the cartridge of the power source: a solid block of green glass, like jade and starlight. Pulling wires, he forced it out of his casing and set the cartridge aside. Quickly, then, he drew a pad of paper out of his breast pocket and studied the spider’s lifeless carapace—then made notes and drawings, sketching the mechanism of the legs, diagramming the inside of the chassis, dissecting the creature, in effect. Harry watched him work, fascinated.

  “What do you hope to learn?” she asked finally.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. He put the notebook away and drew out his drained pistol. This time, she thought she knew what he had planned.

  “You think you can transfer the charge?”

  “I hope so … there … yes.” He removed the cartridge from the pistol, connected a wire between them, reinserted the pistol’s cartridge, and bound the contraption together with cloth torn from his shirt. He aimed the weapon at the street and pressed the trigger. After a worrying, unhealthy-sounding whine and hiss, a green ray blasted out and left a burned streak on the cobbles. “Awkward, but it’s better than nothing.”

  A now familiar clacking, grinding, whining noise approached from several directions, around one corner and down another street. More of the spider creatures, some of the snake machines, all seemingly intent on scouring the city’s streets of living souls.

  “These things are overrunning the damned city,” Marlowe grunted, then glanced sheepishly at Harry. “Beg your pardon, highness.”

  “Oh, don’t apologize, I was about to say the same thing. Shall we?”

  They kept on, Marlowe holding the creatures off with his pistol until they escaped the worst of the swarm, and the clacking sound of the German devices faded into the distance. Before today, the war had been abstract to her, a game played with maps and markers. This, she decided, was what the end of the world must feel like.

  “Wait a moment,” he said, gesturing her to the shelter of a brick wall, a three-storey townhouse with balconies
overlooking the street. In the pause, a faint thundering sound approached. More artillery, she assumed, the cannons had come closer than ever. But no, this was rhythmic, continuous. “Marching,” she whispered.

  “But whose?” he replied.

  Best stay out of sight until they knew, so they waited, retreating into the alcove of an arched doorway.

  It was a small unit that soon came marching past—in the blue of French uniforms, so technically neither friend nor foe, but they were clearly on the move against the Germans. With them came a wagon drawn by two stout draft horses, guarded by soldiers carrying both conventional and Aetherian rifles. The wagon carried a cannon set on a steel base, with a long barrel and the brass coils and glass fittings of an Aetherian weapon, the green glow of the alien mechanism emerging from within. The procession was a strange hybrid of mechanisms; the British army had Aetherian-powered vehicles to carry its artillery, but the French used what they had on hand. The horses kept flicking ears back to the hum of the Aetherian device.

  Harry and Marlowe did not announce themselves, which seemed the only prudent course. The French were ostensibly allies, but they would happily use Harry’s safety as a bargaining chip as much as the Germans would.

  They stood very still, waiting in the alcove for the long minutes the train took to pass, and by necessity they had pressed close together. Harry could feel Marlowe’s breath on her hair, and she was very close to resting her head on his shoulder. Perhaps, if he saw it, he would attribute the flush on her cheek to the brisk air.

  Finally, silence fell; only then did they move again. Marlowe stepped carefully from the alcove without looking at her. Absently, she tucked her stray locks of hair behind her ears.

  They were able to slow their pace to a walk. Thinking aloud, she said, “Our intelligence says the Germans don’t have the numbers or equipment to hold the city. Why are they invading now?”

  “Does our intelligence say anything about those machines?”

  She didn’t answer, because no, they knew nothing at all about such machines.

  “They won’t need soldiers to hold the city, if they can use automated Aetherian guards,” Marlowe said. “I would guess a single officer can control a platoon of those and hold an entire neighborhood himself.”