Steamy Cogs

by Jessica Ripley

  “Hope you don’t get seasick,” he said, feeling the boat’s motion before adding, “Hope I don’t get seasick…”

  They felt the crew come back before they heard them. Their footsteps were almost right above their heads before they came down the stairs. Both Carleigh and Thorne barley dared to breathe as they listened to the crew haul in the next round of crates.

  “That’s all of ’em,” a man said before knocking on the engine room. Whoever was inside responded by activating the steam engine. The noise was loud enough to give Carleigh and Thorne a comfortable level to breathe without worrying about being heard.

  Through a crack between the crates, Carleigh could see the crew, watching as they went back up the stairs.

  “They’re gone,” she whispered. “Now to just wait.”

  “We could die, you know,” Thorne said. “I hope you’re prepared for that possibility.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Is it worth it to you? To give your life?”

  “If my family is in danger, if people I care about are in danger and I can help them by stopping the danger, then it’s extremely worth it to me. And you?”

  He nodded. “I signed up to be a PO to protect people, to ensure the survival of Lighton. I’m ready to do what’s needed.”

  6

  The boat stopped. They held still, waiting for the crew to come back and start taking the boxes away. They’d assumed that the same number of crew that worked on loading would also unload, but they were caught off guard and exposed when one-by-one each crate was removed with no pause between. The crew had instead worked as a line, passing the crates from one to the other, through the cargo area and up the stairs. Carleigh and Thorn were exposed.

  Before they could think of doing anything they were both hauled out of their hiding spot.

  “What do we have here?” One courier growled.

  “Stowaways!” Another shouted.

  “Let’s take them to the boss!” A female voice giggled.

  She exchanged a look with Thorne. They thought they were stowaways. As long as they weren’t thought of as spies, they could buy some time. She used her one free arm to reach up to her hat, and with one smooth move, she pressed the release button.

  Sweetums launched off her hat, right into a crew member’s face. The little clockwork-bot was no match for the four crew members though, even with two of them occupied holding back Carleigh and Thorne. They pulled Sweetums off of the man’s face.

  “Nice try,” one of the men said. “But it looks like your weapon wasn’t as powerful as you needed it to be.” He threw it to the ground, and lifted his foot, preparing to step on Sweetums, but the little bot ran straight out of the cargo area, up the stairs and out of sight.

  The crew members exchanged a look. “Ah, forget it,” the one, who seemed to be their leader, said. “We saw what it could do. It’s no match for what boss has going on up there.”

  Carleigh and Thorne were hauled out of the boat and into a dark underground waterway entrance. The crates of ore were piled along the wall, leading up to a large metal door.

  “Let’s go.” The girl holding Carleigh’s arm said, guiding her through the doorway and up a set of dark stars with walls on each side. The ceiling was low enough that Thorne had to duck down to not hit it.

  “Look what we have here boss,” one of the henchmen shouted when the door at the top opened. The sunlight momentarily blinded them, their eyes having been adjusted to the dark.

  When they could see again, they realized they were in the middle of the desert, or so it seemed. Carleigh saw that the door they came out of was built into a large wall that seemed to encircle an area as though they were outside a fort.

  Not far away from them was a tall metal stand, and on the top platform stood a figure with wild hair, clad in goggles and a lab coat. His attention was given to the figures below him, several yards away from Carleigh and Thorne and the crew that brought them up.

  Carleigh looked out in front of her to the figures and realized that an army stretched out in front of her toward the outlined Lightton in the distance. And that army…it was purple.

  It was a large, purple, clockwork army.

  The crew pulled Carleigh and Thorne closer to the stand. The one shouted again, “Hey there, boss, sir? We found these two in the boat.”

  The man with the crazy hair spun around to face their direction. After a moment, he lifted his goggles to reveal a face that Carleigh knew well.

  “Professor Octavian?” Carleigh asked. “What are you doing?”

  “Carleigh, my dear. It’s great to see you. Have you come to see me launch my army? It will be so nice to have someone of your skills join my team. You see what those other nitwits did with those micro bots we sent your way. They weren’t very good. Someone like you on my team though, that would be incredible.”

  “What do you mean on your team?” Carleigh asked, shading her eyes from the sun so she could look up at him.

  “My team. The one that is going to rule Lightton,” he answered simply.

  “Excuse me?” Thorne asked, yanking his arm away from his captor and stepping toward the stand. “No one rules Lightton. It’s run by a mayor and a city council.”

  Octavian shook his head. “After the mayor beat me in the last election, I knew that I’d never be chosen by the fools in this town to run it, even though I deserve it more than she does. So, if I can’t get it through your silly election process, then I’ll take it by force. And you’re just in time for the show. After this first wave, I’ll have the nitwits take Carleigh back to the lab and you can all get working on the ore that just came in. See if you can spruce up the model for wave two!” He laughed in delight, and put his goggles back on before he turned back out to face the army.

  “You’ve gone mad,” Carleigh stated. “Why would you even want to run the town?” Her heart raced, thinking of how bad this would be for everyone. Professor Octavian had been left alone, mostly, to run his experiments and do whatever he wanted to in his desert fortress, but he wasn’t the kind of person who you would want making decisions for others. He simply didn’t think of anyone except himself and his experiments.

  “Your opinion doesn’t matter. But you can look at it this way, now that you’re here, you can work for me and I’ll keep your family safe. That’s a good deal, isn’t it?”

  Carleigh knew that wouldn’t happen. Her brother wouldn’t let someone like Octavian take over Lightton, and he sure wouldn’t let someone keep his sister hostage. “How exactly are you going to attack the city? Just send these in to destroy?”

  “Yup!” He said, holding up a hand that was holding a remote. “I just press this button to activate them, and they’ll charge off to the city, attacking anyone who resists.”

  “You’re not going to send these into Lightton,” Carleigh said. “If you do, you’ll have no people to rule over. They’re all going to resist, because you haven’t told them they have options!”

  “I’ll get new people,” he growled, “if these ones don’t figure out how to surrender.”

  Thorne lunged, making a grab for a gun holstered on the hip of one of the crew members. Before Carleigh could say or do anything, a blast rang out and a cloud of smoke blew up when someone fell.

  It started to clear, and Carleigh saw that Octavian was holding a gun, and Thorne was on the ground.

  “No!” She screamed.

  “Oh don’t be so dramatic,” Octavian said. “He’s just a PO, not anyone important.”

  “He was important to me.”

  “Then you better hope anyone else you think special decides to work with me, and not against me.”

  Carleigh felt her stomach drop. She wouldn’t let anyone she cared about get hurt if she could help it. She remembered her conversation with Thorne, about making sure that their mission here was worth it. She wouldn’t let his life be in vain. Instead of rushing at him, like Thorne had, she allowed the crew to chain her to the watchto
wer, and she watched as Octavian shouted out some last-minute orders to his crew members.

  “I figure we’ll lose a lot today, but that’s why I have the rest of the ore. My guys in the workshop are smelting it down as we speak, getting ready to make me backups,” he shouted down to her, without bothering to look at her.

  Smelting it down…the thought gave Carleigh an idea. She hadn’t had much to bring with her, but she had brought a small tool that she knew she could use as a smelter in a pinch. She looked around and saw that no one was paying any attention to her, as they were focused on their tasks from Octavian. Carleigh reached into her bag and brought out the little device and placed it on the metal chain. It was small enough and soundless, so it didn’t draw any attention.

  She begged the little device to go faster, but it was no use. She heard Octavian shout down to ask his crew if they were ready and she heard their affirmative reply. While holding the smelter to the chains, Carleigh looked up in horror and watched Octavian make a big show about pushing the big red button on his remote.

  Then all around her, cogs and gears started turning. There was the sound of creaking, and then the pounding of metal feet on the ground as the army instantaneously started marching forward, to Lightton.

  The acrid smell of the smelting chain filled her nose, but no one heard the clink of the chains dropping off over the sound of the bots marching. She instantly pulled away from the chain and scaled up the ladder part of the tower. Octavian didn’t see her come up behind him, and he didn’t see when she pulled back her whole heavy messenger bag and swung it around with all of the muscles in her arms and shoulders. It made contact with his head and he went down like a sack of potatoes.

  Carleigh grabbed the remote from his limp hand and hit the red button again. For a moment, nothing happened, but then she heard the cogs of the army slowing down, slower and slower until they all stilled.

  That brought the attention of Octavian’s crew. They looked up to the tower, and upon seeing her, started to head in her direction. It was only the sound of something large in the distance that halted them. An airship, getting larger and larger as it soared towards the fort.

  “Wheeler,” Carleigh murmured, glad her distraction bot had made the right decision to fetch help. The airship opened fire on the army, chasing the crew members away from the fort, and away from the firestorm.

  Carleigh hurried down the tower, wanting to make sure she could get out into the open to stay safe from the firefight, and to meet the ship when it landed. When she got to the bottom of the tower she stopped to look at Thorne’s body, laying where he had been shot down. She didn’t want to leave him behind. She knelt beside him.

  “I’m so sorry, friend,” she said, placing her hand on top of his. She thought for a moment that she saw his eyes flutter, but she shook her head. She was just imagining things.

  But Thorne did move. When Carleigh went to take her hand back, he caught it with his own. His eyes opened, and his other hand moved to the place where he’d been shot in the chest.

  “Thorne?” Carleigh asked, not believing what was happening.

  Thorne slowly sat up and looked around him, “What is going on? Who’s shooting at us?” He turned his head, and locked eyes with Carleigh. “Well aren’t you the best sight a guy could see after getting shot?”

  Carleigh had never felt so happy to see someone wake up in her entire life. Without worrying about the shots reigning down around her, she threw her arms around him and pressed her lips to his.

  “You’re alive!” She gasped when they finally pulled apart.

  “Of course I am, I’m a PO, I wear a protection vest.” He pulled away his shirt to show it to her. “It absorbs the shock meant to kill. Instead of death you just get stunned.”

  She kissed him again, harder this time, and then pulled back and gave him a soft punch in his shoulder. “Don’t scare me like that again, okay?”

  “I’ll try not to make a practice out of getting shot,” he said, and then motioned in front of them, to where the bots were getting mowed down by Wheeler’s ship. “With that in mind, perhaps we should vamoose?”

  She helped him up, and he leaned on her as the two made a slow but steady run to the open desert. There, together, they watched as the ship took out first the army, and then Octavian’s fort. People hurried out of the building, carrying armloads of work with them that they wanted to save, but Carleigh knew most of Octavian’s experiments would be lost forever, which was a good thing. The world didn’t need things like that in it.

  They watched the silhouettes of Octavian’s crew heading toward Under State. Octavian himself was stuck in his tower, as the world burned below him. He would be safe there, until Thorne and Wheeler could apprehend him.

  Having taken out all it could, the ship finally landed near them. Carleigh and Thorne made their way over to the ship and when the gangway lowered her brother came out, followed by his crew. They would undoubtedly search the place for any valuables, but Thorne didn’t seem interested in stopping them.

  Wheeler gave his sister a hug. “Your little spider eyeball thing came and got me,” he said, handing Sweetums back over to her.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “Anything for my sister.”

  Thorne’s eyebrow lifted and he looked at Carleigh quizzically, but said nothing.

  “I’m going to go check the place out. You need anything here, PO?”

  Thorne shook his head. “Seems like my case is closed, so long as you can bring that guy in.” He pointed to Octavian, who was already being brought down in cuffs by Wheeler’s pirates.

  “Done, you two go make yourself comfy in the ship. We may be here awhile.”

  They made their way up, pausing just once to look behind them. “What’s our count up to today?” Thorne asked her.

  “Explosion, bomb, bug invasion, shot, and then shot at. But, we aren’t dead,” Carleigh said.

  “Well, I mean, I was almost dead,” he said.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said.

  “Tell me, Carleigh, how did that make you feel?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to think about it. I never want to feel that way again. I’d rather feel this.” She leaned over to him and brushed a lock of hair out of his face and pressed her lips to his. She felt sparks build from her stomach and fly through her veins in every direction. He reached for her, pulled her closer and kissed her back.

  “This might be more dangerous than anything in that list,” he murmured.

  “Neither of us seems to back away when things are worth it,” she responded, “and I think it’s worth it.”

  “Agreed.”

  About the Author

  Jessica writes mystery, and sweet romance that focus on people, experiences, and how two hearts meeting can change people entirely. She is currently working on two full-length novels that she hopes to publish in 2018.

  When she’s not writing she’s reading, working on websites and social media, making jewelry, hanging out with her Canadian Military husband, and playing with their two cats and two dogs. She also works as project manager and author for Eighth Ripple Press.

  www.jessicaripley.com

  Sing a Song of Freedom

  Bonnie Lynn Carroll

  1

  The sun baked down on her, stinging her skin. She had been walking for days through the desert, not remembering how she even got there or where she was trying to go. Her mouth felt sticky from the dryness, and she couldn’t muster up enough saliva to wet her aching throat. Every time she pressed her lips together they felt like sandpaper. She had to find a town soon, or the desert would claim her its victim.

  Her head pounded from the intensity of the sun; with such ferocity she thought that her brain might explode from the pressure. She stumbled, but couldn’t catch herself and sprawled on the burning sand. It scorched her bare knees and arms. Her whole body ached and she felt that it would never end. She tried to right herself, but lost the energy to
push up off the ground. The sand kept slipping under her hands as if she were on ice. Her hands just kept sliding out from under her.

  She rolled onto her back not bothering to adjust the burlap sack that clothed her body, which was now bunched up around her waist, no longer covering her loins. Staring up at the white sky, she tried to lick her lips for relief as darkness crept into her vision. The burning sensation stopped finally as the whiteness slipped away into nothing…

  Cool water dripped down her forehead in a slow trickle. It snaked down her neck, spreading its soothing chill. She thought she would never feel relief from the heat. Maybe she was dreaming.

  “No. Try not to move,” a woman’s voice whispered softly. Her voice was as refreshing as the water.

  “Where…” She didn’t recognize her own voice. It was so gravelly from dehydration, it sounded as if a foreign voice was escaping from her own lips.

  The melodic sound of water dripping chimed as the woman next to her wrung out the cloth she was bathing her with. “You’re in Brimstone. We’re the first town outside of the Great Desert. There’s not another town for miles. It was a good thing we found you when we did. I don’t think you would have lasted much longer.”

  The water from the cloth slowly cooled off her burning limbs. The hot desert sun had savagely licked her skin with its tongue of scorching razor blades, leaving her once pale skin red and raw. She could feel the bumps of blisters spreading across her shoulders and neck, like some sort of plague. Sticky, hot blood clung to her skin where some of the blisters already burst, leaving her wanting to scratch, but afraid of the pain that would ensue if she did. Racking her brain, she tried to think back to how she got to the desert in the first place. The earliest thing she could remember was…her face in the sand. She couldn’t recall much before the desert, just dark corridors and artificial lights overhead, bathing her once pale skin in white light.