The rise of the Iron Moon j-3

by Stephen Hunt

  'So it once was,' snorted Keyspierre, the nostrils of his large nose flaring. 'I can see how well our cannon is polishing up. A pity we did not have a few of these formidable devices completed during the Two-Year War. Who knows which way the winds of fate would have blown if we had been able to shell the House of Guardians when they were debating the continuance of their war against us.'

  'An interesting question, for sure,' said the commodore.

  Keyspierre nodded, before starting to walk away. 'Quite. But we speak of the past, when it is the future both our countries needs to look to now. Please do pass my compliments on to the noble workers helping complete this most ingenious feat of gunnery.'

  'They must have a different set of history books across the border,' bridled Duncan as the man left their earshot. 'I was sure it was the laddies in Quatershift who invaded us during the Two-Year War.'

  'As I recall, most of their books were fed into the fires on the boilers of the shifties' steam-driven execution machines during the purges.' Commodore Black looked at the figure of the departing institute official. 'Ah, well. All friends together now, eh?'

  Radford and Sykes lengthened the run of the nets alongside their shallow-draught fishing keel. It was usually such easy work this far from the estuary, where their competition was few and far between. The Gambleflowers splintered into a dozen channels around the marshland of Monymusk before reforming into a single course that snaked all the way out to the coast. The marsh was usually thick with insects and the river crabs, and the fish and birds that fed on them. But something was scaring the fish off today, with the result that the pair's nets had been empty each time they hauled them back on board.

  Sykes cast an eye at the lonely fish still flopping about the catching crate on their foredeck. 'It'd be nice to have some friends for Mister Trout here. Some companions, so that we'll have something more to show for the day's labours than an ear-wigging from Damson Sykes when I get back home.'

  'Never seen anything like it,' said Radford, pulling his leather hat down tight against the chill marsh air. 'Empty, today.' He nodded to the east where the river cut through Middlesteel. 'You expect bad waters down by Old Reeky; but then when the capital's mills have got a stink on, the fish all head up to us. Look at the bugs flitting over the water. Got to be something wants to bite on them today.'

  The lines holding their net seemed to judder at his complaints and both men began to haul the net in. 'That's more like it.'

  Sykes winced. 'Is we stuck? This is heavy, Circle it is.'

  The pair of fishermen heaved at the lines until the pulley began to run again and the net lifted up. They swung the catch over and down onto their foredeck.

  It landed with a heavy slap and Sykes advanced on it, scaling knife in hand. 'What's this, then?'

  Radford sucked his breath in as the wash of water dragged blackened cloth away from the sodden mass under the net and revealed the pale white stretch of a human hand against their boat's boards. 'It's a floater!'

  Sykes bent down to loosen the net from around the body. 'Poor unlucky bugger. Ain't seen one of these for years, not since I worked the six-penny boat in Old Reeky.'

  Radford watched his friend uncover the corpse. 'Must have come down with the morning tide from the sea. Wonder if this is the fellow that's been putting off our fish?'

  Sykes tapped the flat of his knife thoughtfully against his bushy beard. 'Now then, I think we knows him. Last week. Don't you remember? He came down to the docks, wanting to know if there were any inns with spare rooms left in Sheergate. One of the carriage folk wanting to travel on to Spumehead for passage out to the colonies.'

  'I think you may be right,' said Radford. 'He was a flush jack with his pocket book. Bit too full of himself for my taste.'

  'Have to be a dreadful severe sinking right off the coast for him to roll in this far with the tide, mind.'

  'Could be so,' said Radford. 'Steamers have been running full to Concorzia for weeks, putting out dangerously low on their waterlines from what I been told.'

  Radford was bending over to help Sykes clear the corpse entangled in their net when their little boat jolted to port, a pitter-patter rain of thuds pushing their hull back into the marshy reeds of the bank. Trying to keep their balance, both men dropped the tangled netting and swayed to the other side of the boat.

  Down the river, thousands of bodies drifted face down with the tidal waters, as if a forest of humanity had been felled and loggers were moving the harvest downstream. Blackened, burnt clothing; men, women, children, all dead. Sykes reached down into the water and pulled out a sodden blue sailor's cap floating by to inspect its name badge. The Jackelian Navy Ship Excellent, one of the huge ironclads that had been guarding the harbour entrance at Spumehead. It appeared there would be no sudden influx of new colonists arriving in Concorzia after all.

  Both men were so intent on watching the horrific migration of death following the tide towards the capital, that they failed to notice that the swelling mist rising behind their backs was tinged with veins of crimson, an ominous reflection of the blood-filled waters of the Gambleflowers. In fact, it took Radford and Sykes minutes to hear the hollow bony clicking deadened by the fog. And by the time they saw the hulking black silhouettes of a legion of slats cutting through the cover, it was too late for either of them.

  Two new burnt, torn-up bodies joined the black tide and bloody waters heading down towards Middlesteel.

  Molly could see that the camp commander, Colonel Buller, was getting irritated – possibly due to the pressure he was under to deliver a successful test firing this afternoon – especially considering almost everyone involved in the project was thronging around the spiral-shaped cannon as if a festival day had been declared – whether their schedules of work said they should be labouring right now, and whether they were invited or not. Everyone was desperate to see whether the great contraption – this bastard fusion of Jackelian engineering and Timlar Preston's Quatershiftian genius – was going to live up to their hopes or blow apart in an explosion that might put a volcano to shame.

  The colonel leant over the wall of the firing station, a platform built on stilts like a tree house with a panoramic view of the organized chaos below. 'Sergeant, clear those work-shy layabouts away from the firing rings – filling the reservoirs is dangerous enough work as it is, without being jostled by malingerers.'

  Soldiers from the Jackelian Corps of Engineers pushed back the navvies that were getting in the way of the careful work of filling the glass-lined fuel reservoirs. Molly approved of the commander's caution. When it came to dealing with the volatile explosive liquids needed to drive their engine of gunnery, human error would be enough to scupper the whole project.

  'He's in a snappy mood, today,' said Purity.

  'I'm afraid we won't get too many chances to do this,' said Molly. 'Timlar Preston has calculated that the force of any more than four firings will wreck the cannon's barrel beyond use. Two test firings to calibrate, one live, and one left in reserve: that's all the chances we'll have.'

  Molly should have resented Purity, but try as she might, she couldn't. The young escaped royalist had been filled with the power of the land, just as Molly's own connection with the power she had taken for granted had been snapped. She had been as young and eager as Purity, once. But this was the way of all things. Youth faded. Cynicism deepened. When Molly looked in her mirror to brush out her red coils of hair she saw lines on her forehead that she found hard to recognize sometimes.

  'Well, manners don't cost anything,' said Purity.

  Yes, she saw more than a little of who she had once been in the young Purity Drake. 'I hope you've been busy building up a stock of rubber lining for the cannon, young damson. Because after today's test firing it'll all need to be re-laid for the next attempt.'

  Purity wrinkled her nose in disgust. 'I go to sleep in my bunk and all I can smell is blessed rubberized sheeting.'

  Molly smiled. 'You've been spending too much time with
the commodore.'

  A uniformed engineer came into the firing station and saluted Colonel Buller. 'We have the blank shells on the loading turntable, sir. I've finished testing them, and I can report they match Lord Starhome's dimensions and weight exactly: we are now ready to fill the first shell with sand to approximate the flight crew.'

  'Fill it with sand equal to ten people's weight, captain,' said the colonel, pointing to a turntable mounted above the spiral-shaped cannon where Lord Starhome and a series of blank shells rested in metal cradles.

  'Ten!' Molly started. 'I wasn't planning to take passengers-'

  'Apart from me,' interrupted Purity.

  Colonel Buller looked surprised then vexed. 'I thought Lord Rooksby had told you…'

  'Told me what?' Molly demanded.

  'You are not to be allowed into the craft on the day of the launch. The party to Kaliban is to be headed by Rooksby. Parliament felt that you were too close to this project and your motives may have been tainted by your association with one of the foe's natives.'

  'Tainted! Molly shouted. 'This is my cannon, and the native you're so concerned about gave his life to make sure it was constructed.'

  'That is as may be, damson, but the guardians on the committee overseeing this project are firmly of the opinion that the expedition to Kaliban will have far more chance of success if it is appropriately composed of a selection of scientists, ambassadors and soldiers. I think upon reflection you will agree that professionals are better suited to survive the hardships of the journey, as well as scouting the weaknesses of the enemy while finding and negotiating with potential allies. Certainly better suited than writers of penny dreadfuls and-' he indicated Purity, '-shoeless seamstress friends of the author.'

  Molly's face was turning crimson with anger. 'This is outrageous.'

  'No, Damson Templar, it is expediency. If the tales from our army's survivors are to be given credence, we are currently facing complete military disaster. Your vision contributed to the marshalling of resources necessary to complete the cannon, and parliament now judges your contribution honourably discharged. We cannot possibly stake our nation's survival on the fate of a single celestial fiction author.'

  'Parliament now judges,' spat Molly. 'I know who's been pouring poison in the right ears. Oh yes, Lord Rooksby has changed his tune since the RAN was defeated, that dirty snake of a scheming jigger. When I arrived here, he was swearing blind that the Army of Shadows had marched over the polar ice from the other side of the world, not come from Kaliban. He said this cannon was a joke and now he wants to bloody command it?'

  'This is madness,' protested Purity. 'You can't do this to us. Molly was touched by Kyorin, she knows things that are vital to-'

  'Young lady, half my comrades have been touched – touched by the Army of Shadows and lying dead in the killing fields across the border in Quatershift. I rather think that the House of Guardians is very well-decided in this matter.'

  'We shall see!' Molly stalked off. 'We shall see how well they've bloody decided.'

  Molly ran down the ramp from the firing station, ignoring the sound of Purity still attempting to argue the colonel around, brushing past a gaggle of scientists coming up the ramp. Oliver was in the crowds below, pushing through the spectators from the forest's mills and manufactories and smelting works. He could see how angry she looked.

  'What is it?'

  'You're the Circle-damned key, why don't you ask your friend Purity up there.'

  'Molly – what?'

  But she was through the crowd of navvies and heading towards the turntable where Lord Starhome and the test shells waited, the half-steamman craft's bright hull in stark contrast to the grey iron of the testing shells modelled on his pattern. The turntable was designed so that each shell could be rotated to face the injection-run down to the breech of the spiral-shaped weapon. An operator in the cab of a crane was exchanging shouts with the muzzle loaders as Molly shoved past the soldiers, climbing up the ladder to the turntable.

  Lord Starhome was still in the breech-facing position, while a gang of engineers focused their attention on one of the blank shells next to him, preparing to drop heavy sandbags inside a hatch in the shell's side. Weight enough to match the gang of pirates who had stolen the voyage to Kaliban away from under her nose.

  There was a door-sized hole in Lord Starhome's hull, the living metal flowing around the edges while Commodore Black passed equipment through to Duncan Connor. 'Have you come to help us, lass?'

  Molly climbed across the turntable, ducking under the nose of one of the reserve shells. 'Help you…?'

  'Coppertracks is inside, he is going to use the keen eyes of his shiny celestial boat to track how high we shall shoot today.'

  'I am not his boat,' said Lord Starhome, tetchily. 'I have agreed to cooperate in this endeavour out of my steadily stretched good graces, that and the increasingly slim hope that this primitive explosive slingshot you have constructed will be able to restore me to my natural environment.'

  'Let's not keep you waiting any longer, then, my lord,' snapped Molly, slipping the control ring Hardarms had given her over her finger and pressing it against Lord Starhome's cold, slippery hull. 'Recognize operator function.'

  'If I must,' sighed Lord Starhome.

  'Lass,' said Commodore Black as Molly swung through the opening. 'What are you about?'

  Molly glanced back outside the ship for a second, alerted by shouting. Redcoats were moving through the crowds below, burly-looking provosts; she knew exactly who they were coming to arrest.

  'I'm going to save the kingdom, Jared. Every thick-witted guardian in parliament, every useless civil servant working in Greenhall, and every treacherous thinker in the Royal Society.' Molly turned to Duncan Connor and Coppertracks. 'Get off.'

  'Molly softbody, my monitoring apparatus has been fitted into Lord Starhome, I cannot simply-'

  But Molly manoeuvred around the supplies stacked in the back of the ship, slipping into the cockpit at the front. 'Seal the bridge off.'

  At her command the walls of the ship flowed like quicksilver, separating her from Coppertracks, Commodore Black and Duncan Connor.

  'Please lass,' the commodore's voice sounded from behind the wall. 'You're not ready to cast off now…'

  'They've left me with no choice. They're planning to snatch the expedition from under me and give it to that blackheart Rooksby.'

  'Let him have it then,' cried the commodore. 'Let it be his wicked bones that are left strewn across the angry sands of blessed Kaliban.'

  'If we don't stop the Army of Shadows, it'll be the Kingdom of Jackals that ends up as a desert. Get off, now, all of you.'

  'Please…'

  'Can you load yourself into the cannon?' Molly asked Lord Starhome.

  'I'm held by the turntable's clamps,' said Lord Starhome. 'But I have a magnificent communications array that includes a light transmission mechanism that would serve to burn them off.'

  'Do it!'

  'An official order to launch? Your whim is my command.'

  Molly could hear banging on the other side of the wall and Coppertracks' voice pleading to no avail with the half-steamman craft, when a hiss of melting metal sounded from outside.

  'I'm the only one that understands,' said Molly. 'Kyorin showed me, not them. I have to do this.'

  'I really don't care,' announced Lord Starhome in a detached manner. 'If it means I am free again, oh by the light of my creators, yes. To be free of this place and able to chart my own course again. Nearly there. I've melted the port clamp away, time for my starboard chains to go.'

  'Jump out,' Molly yelled back towards the wall. 'Unless you're planning to come to Kaliban with me, you all need to abandon ship now.'

  'You foolish woman,' a muffled voice shouted back at her, in an arrogant tone that she recognized from far too many tedious meetings at the camp. Lord Rooksby.

  'We are days from being ready for anything but a practice firing,' called another voice in a Qua
tershiftian accent – Keyspierre. They were arguing loudly with Molly's friends in the back of the craft. She could hear the shifties' daughter shouting for cutting tools to be brought on board.

  'You're the fool, Rooksby, to think you could steal this cannon from right under my nose with parliament's blessing.'

  'You may be inside there, compatriot,' called Keyspierre through the wall, 'but the cannon firing mechanism is outside on the cannon and controlled by us. You can stay loaded in the breech until thirst and hunger bring you to your senses.'

  'Show me what is happening outside,' Molly ordered. 'Is he right?'

  Lord Starhome turned the front of his nose transparent, revealing dozens of engineers and soldiers abandoning their posts, even a couple of Coppertracks' mu-bodies, all of them running towards the turntable. 'Correct enough in the literal sense of his words. Are you ordering me to assist you in firing the cannon?'

  'You know the answer to that, ship.'

  'I shall take your answer in the affirmative, little ground hugger, and allow you to correct me if I have grasped the wrong end of the stick.'

  There was a keening protest on the other side of the bulkhead from Coppertracks' voicebox. It sounded as though the steamman had fainted.

  'He's not the only one who can spread his consciousness among drones,' said Lord Starhome, pleased with himself. 'Quite acceptable. And the drones are not even mine.'

  Outside, the mu-bodies the ship had possessed were running for the fuse station at the centre of the iron spiral. On the other side of Molly's impromptu bulkhead the banging had grown ferocious.

  'Last chance to get off,' yelled Molly, 'or-'

  She stopped as the sky above the camouflage netting grew dark, rolling scuds of an unnatural crimson storm front advancing at an accelerated pace.

  The Army of Shadows had arrived at Mount Highhorn.

  Purity sensed the wrongness in the sky even before the soldiers' shouts sounded the alarm; an instinct gifted to her by that ancient queen from Jackals' past. She was outside the firing station and heading for Lord Starhome when she looked up; a cloud of darting sail riders riding the ruby storm front in, hundreds of black triangles beginning to peel off and fill the air above – slats whistling over the tree line. Her hand fled to her belt, but she was weaponless. All the sabres and guns she had practised with were in a chest under the commodore's cot. She made to run back towards the barracks, but the sudden jostle of soldiers and navvies – either running to their stations or running out of harm's way – pushed her back.