Power Under Pressure (The Society of Steam)

by Andrew P. Mayer

  As the electric arcs touched the wires, they came to life, wriggling and dancing like charmed snakes. Le Voyageur watched wide-eyed as the wires lashed themselves around the copper rivets. “As you can see, my rebirth has given me new abilities.”

  Eschaton’s skin was shimmering now, and he turned toward Tom. “What do you think of that, my mechanical friend? Perhaps I have now surpassed even your amazing powers!”

  Lifting the device above his head, Eschaton released a large bolt of electricity that leapt out from the tip and crackled through the air. The living lightning, looking for a place to go, reached out to touch the rocket’s frame. Once it contacted the metal it arced down its sides, sending out a shower of sparks.

  Le Voyageur felt a stab of panic in his heart. The ship was loaded with fuel and almost ready for flight. If it were to ignite now, in this enclosed space, it would be catastrophic.

  His fear was so great that for an instant the Frenchman thought he had felt the earth trembling beneath his feet. He held his breath, bracing for his inevitable destruction.

  The old man relaxed as the last of the lingering energy dissipated. He would, if everything went to plan, be taking his final journey soon, but he wanted to savor every moment he could between now and then. “Please, my wowd, be cawefuw. Ze wocket, she is vowetiwe.”

  Eschaton turned to him, a strange look on his face. “I think, Jean-Jean, that you can call me King from now on.”

  The old man took an involuntary step backward. “What?”

  “I had some time to think inside of the chamber, and I’ve decided that the time has come for me to take on a new title—one that better defines my role in the new world.” Once again he raised up his spear and let the power arc out from him. The bolts spread out in all directions, although they seemed to be conspicuously avoiding the rocket. “I am King Omega now!”

  Then the earth rumbled again. It was far more intense this time.

  Across the room there was a thundering snap as a long crack appeared in the stone walls. “Sacwe Dieu!” the Frenchman cried out. There wasn’t much that made him afraid, but one of the reasons that he enjoyed being able to so quickly travel across the surface of the Earth was so that he could stay out of its clutches. “Is this youw doing, Eschaton?” The last thing he wanted was to find himself entombed.

  “No. Nor do I think it is another of Darby’s ghoulish plans from beyond the grave,” the silver-skinned giant replied.

  The rumbling slowed and dust rained down from the ceiling. The motes of earth sizzled slightly as they fell onto Eschaton’s skin.

  The Frenchman settled himself in a chair. His heart was racing in his chest. “Zen what is it?”

  Eschaton scowled, then spat on the ground. “It’s them.”

  “Who?”

  “Those god-damned heroes!” he shouted. “Who else would arrive just in time to spoil my ultimate moment of rebirth and triumph?” Eschaton placed his spear back onto the rack and walked over to one of the dynamo control panels near the wall.

  “It’s what they do! It’s what they always do!” he continued. He approached a tall cabinet constructed to restrict and channel the flow of electricity. “That girl, her father, even Darby—reaching out from the grave!” Arcs of electricity leapt out from Eschaton’s skin toward the panel. The rows of incandescent lights that had been strung along the wall just behind it began to glow brightly.

  “What awe you doing, my wowd?”

  “King!” Eschaton roared. “I’m King Omega now!” Something inside the cabinet shifted as if there was some kind of beast trapped inside. Then the front panel buckled, spilling out the wires and gears that lived in it. They leapt toward Eschaton as if magnetized.

  “This isn’t their world anymore, it’s mine! They just don’t realize it yet.” The disgorged elements were wrapping themselves around him, sending out laddering arcs as they covered his skin.

  “Jean-Jean, prepare the rocket.” The spidering arcs of lightning grew brighter, and le Voyageur realized that Eschaton was actually using the electricity to cut the steel from the machinery around him. The freed metal seemed to almost float onto the silver giant’s body.

  The process didn’t take long, and when he was done Eschaton had covered himself completely with an armor constructed of plates of steel, with thick wire woven underneath. The man’s head was fully exposed, but sitting on his back was a dynamo unlike the Frenchman had ever seen, constructed from brass and large glass isolators that poked out of him like the spines of a porcupine. “What have you done?” he asked.

  Eschaton laughed. “With this metal flesh, I can now do what the mechanical man does: rebuild machinery with the power of my mind alone! I can turn my vision into reality with nothing more than a thought, and I can think of things his mechanical mind could never dream of!”

  The Frenchman felt doubt stabbing deeply across his chest. It had always seemed so practical to be playing with the smoke, working to transform men into gods. But now that one of them stood before him, it was terrifying to behold.

  “We need to launch it now, before these fools can do any more to stop me.”

  “Yes, my wowd.”

  Lightning arced around him, trapping him for an instant in a cage of energy. “King Omega now, my friend,” he said with a serious tone. “Remember that.”

  “Yes, my King.” It had been less than a century since France had taken down its monarchy in a bloody revolt. And even if the terror that followed had occurred shortly before his birth, it had only been a decade since the last Napoleon had finally been deposed. The last thing he wanted to leave as his legacy was another king. Especially one that had the true powers of a god.

  But he had come too far to turn back now. Jean-Jean grabbed a lever near the rocket and pulled it down. The platform that the craft sat on gave out a groan, and then began to slide across the floor. The metal craft shook slightly as it gained speed, but didn’t appear to be in danger of toppling.

  Eschaton said, “I won’t need your heart for long, metal man. Soon I will build my own!”

  He stumbled across the room and reached into the machine where they had kept the Omega Element. The metal sarcophagus had originally been created by Darby—a device used to create fortified smoke. They had rebuilt it, turning it to their own ends as a source of the smoke that they needed to fill their rocket.

  Eschaton thrust his hand deep into the device, and the metal seemed to shimmer and glow. Le Voyageur could hear the delicate machinery inside being shattered. Whatever power he had used to build the armor was obviously at work here. Pieces clattered to the floor, joining the cacophony of technology that was already covering him.

  Finally Eschaton let out a large grumble and held his hand up triumphantly so that the old man could see the key he held.

  The Frenchman stared, eyes wide. “What awe you doing, Escha . . . Omega?”

  Eschaton gazed at the small chunk of shimmering metal as if he had never seen it before. It seemed to be reacting with his flesh. His fingers, where he touched the metal, were turning black. “First, I must apologize, Jean-Jean. I know this isn’t what you expected or wanted, but if my plan is going to come to fruition, we must wait a little while longer before we can share the world equally amongst the purified.”

  “Zose sound wike the wowds of a tywant, not the man who towd me he wanted to change ze wowld.”

  Eschaton nodded. “I know it must seem that way to you now, my friend, but I’ve learned a great deal in the last few days. I promise you that the world we dreamed of will still come to pass, but to get there we must go much further than we had originally imagined.” The silver-gray man stuck out his tongue. The appendage was gray and shining, like some kind of dangerous tentacle.

  As he gingerly laid the key on it, Eschaton’s tongue turned black. Eschaton rolled it back into his mouth, seemingly unconcerned by the danger of ingesting such a strange object.

  For a moment le Voyageur felt like crying. They had called him a madman all his
life, but nothing he had ever done compared to the idiocy that he was seeing now. “What have you done?”

  “Taken a desperate measure for a desperate time,” Eschaton said with a smile, and swallowed the metal object with an audible gulp.

  “You see, Jean-Jean,” he began, and then the smile disappeared from his face.

  “My wowd?” The Frenchman saw a series of fine black lines beginning to crawl up Eschaton’s silver skin.

  “I’ll be fine, just give me a moment to, ungh,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ll be fine,” he repeated, but le Voyageur wasn’t so sure.

  The blackness in his skin continued to grow, and it took only a minute before the darkness had replaced the metal entirely. Eschaton had been transformed from a man of metal into a shadow, every muscle tightly contracted within the armor he had built around himself.

  There was an endless moment of quiet, and then all of Eschaton’s muscles released at once, and he simply slumped to the floor. Le Voyageur ran toward him, fearing the worst. As he came close, the black figure raised his head and let out a scream. The terrible sound was carried on a stream of black smoke.

  Recognizing the fortified smoke for what it was, the Frenchman stumbled backwards, searching desperately for his helmet. He spotted his protective hood on a table, and hobbled over to it. Forced to take a breath, he was glad to find that whatever was happening with Eschaton, the man had yet to poison the air.

  Slipping the hood over his head, he turned to see a blue glow filling the room as the dynamos on the far wall began to spin up and hum with power.

  Eschaton still lay on the floor, but the glass tubes on his back were glowing now, as large arcs from the machines leapt across the room to the back of the armor that covered his black body. The crackling sounds increased as more and more of the machines sent out their power.

  The electricity arced across the metal he wore, dancing across a costume of steel and ceramic that seemed to be bonded to his skin.

  He rose slowly to his feet, and then lifted his spear above his head. “The time has come for us to complete our plan, Jean-Jean.” Behind him, the remaining dynamos went dark, one after another, as they overloaded from the energy Eschaton drew from them. His skin slowly regained its metallic properties until he was silver once again. “It is time for us to meet our enemies head on!”

  The rocket had finished its transit, and now stood on the lift, waiting for its journey out from underground. Eschaton stood next to it on the platform. Despite his size, the machine’s frame still dwarfed him. “Yes, my wowd.”

  “I can’t hear you, my friend. Take off the helmet. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  The Frenchman was unsure, but he pulled off his mask anyway, setting it down on the table. “Yes, my King.”

  Chapter 21: Shaking the Foundations

  CHAPTER 21

  SHAKING THE FOUNDATIONS

  The carriage was dark, but not completely sealed off from daylight. If there was any doubt in Emilio’s mind about how foolish their plan actually was, it was made even stronger as the four of them rumbled over the cobblestones in their costumes.

  The last time he had seen the Hall of Paragons, Emilo had come to the building with the ridiculous hope of joining the organization, with the prototype for his spinning shield in a cloth bag. The line to enter the building had been surprisingly long, with he and the other would-be heroes all shivering in the cold of a damp April morning.

  He remembered thinking how ridiculous and outlandish the men dressed in their costumes had seemed. Emilio had promised himself that he would never be one of them—or at least never be one of them again. After all, his il Acrobato suit would have put them all to shame. It had been constructed from circus clothing, and although the basic color had been black, he had worn an orange and green tunic, with similarly colored leggings.

  In the end, the bright colors had been a bad choice for a variety of reasons, but mostly due to an inability to hide effectively while being chased across the rooftops.

  It was while waiting in that line of would-be heroes that he made a promise to himself: he would never again be a costumed hero. Instead, he would let his inventions be his costume, just as Darby had done. And he had broken that promise only a few days later when he had put on the Steamhammer outfit to battle against the Automaton after he had inhabited the body of Vincent’s mechanical creation, the Pneumatic Man. He had mostly forgotten the events of that day until now.

  And here he was, back at the Hall, wearing the costume he had sworn he would never wear—this time at Sarah’s insistence, with Nathaniel helping to strap him into the outfit, using his transparent hands with surprising confidence and familiarity.

  But rather than riding in as heroes, they were skulking in a darkened carriage like robbers. The so-called Society of Steam was, before even announcing its presence, acting like a bunch of common thieves.

  As he had been put into the costume, Emilio considered how quickly he had come to inhabit so many different personalities. He certainly would never again be the Acrobat. Although there were skills that would last him the rest of his life, he was long out of practice as an aerialist. From time to time he would awaken with a sensation of twisting and falling, his hands slipping from the bars of the trapeze, falling to his death, rescued only by his return to consciousness. It was a nightmare he’d had since his childhood in the circus, and the dreams of dying had only grown when he had become il Acrobato. Ridding himself of those miserable dreams was one of the many benefits that had come with hanging up the costume, but he had done it too late to save his family, and they had never left him completely.

  The shield-wielding Flywheel, his second identity, had been born out of necessity, although when the spinning device had become his only salvation he had also been forced to become far more hands-on than he had ever been as the stealthy Acrobat. With the shield in his hand he had been forced to crash into danger instead of cartwheeling away.

  His shield had performed heroically during its short time in his hands, and although he didn’t think of himself as a coward, he still missed the protection that it had offered him. Unfortunately there hadn’t been time to construct an improved version of the device for his new identity, although if they survived this encounter he would most definitely consider it. Perhaps he would even change his name. But for now he was once again the Steamhammer.

  Certainly wearing mechanized chisels at the end of his arms was something that would have never occurred to him if it hadn’t been forced on him. But having felt what it was like to wield them, it was hard for him to deny the seductive allure of their power.

  Emilio had first taken on Vincent’s legacy to protect Sarah from the Pneumatic Colossus. But it had only been in retrospect that he had learned what it meant to take on a dead man’s persona. Even now he felt the spirit of Vincent with him under the mask he wore.

  But if it was wearing a mask that made him brave, where did the coward go while his other guise inhabited him? More troubling still, how would those experiences change the nature of Emilio Armando when his real face was revealed? His head was spinning slightly from just thinking about all the ways he had been changed by the people he had chosen to become.

  The carriage came to a halt, and a voice whispered to them loudly from outside. “We’re here, madam!” The man driving them was Jenny’s husband. Sarah had been resistant at first, but her friend had insisted that he would get them there safely and quietly. The maid hadn’t been wrong.

  The door opened, revealing a short distance from the side of the street to an alley beyond. Sarah had insisted that it would be their best avenue to sneak into the Hall unnoticed.

  The four of them filtered out, the carriage rising noticeably as Grüsser stepped out onto the street.

  Sarah had sworn that even in costume they would be able to slip into the alley unnoticed. Emilio had refused to believe it was possible, but there was no denying it now.

  The carriage pulled away as they ran
down the side of the building. Nathaniel was quiet for a moment, then slapped his hand against the solid granite wall of the Hall of Paragons. “You haven’t been inside, but this was my prison for almost a month.” Although it was impossible to fully comprehend the emotions that were flickering across the face of a transparent man, Emilio thought he could see a painful memory surfacing. “I watched Alexander Stanton die in here, and Eschaton has turned it into an abomination of everything good and decent that the Paragons once stood for.”

  Emilio found himself hearing his sister’s voice for a moment, her mocking tones questioning exactly what those “good and decent” things were that the men who had sat inside this building for all those years had done. Now it was more than likely his sister was inside those walls of her own free will—accepted when he had been turned away.

  “I’m sorry, Nathaniel,” Emilio said. He didn’t know the boy well, but he felt that he should make an effort to connect with someone who had been such an important part of Sarah’s life.

  “Don’t pity me,” he said, showing a trace of the old anger that Sarah had warned him about. “I’m not looking for it, and I don’t want it.”

  Emilio almost apologized again, this time for his previous apology, and then stopped himself. Instead he raised up the two chisels that sprung out from the arms of the suit. He had replaced the broken originals with new ones, and he had modified them slightly. One was still pointed, designed to crack and pulverize. The other had a wide flat end, like a thick shovel. He had built it to maximize the vibrations, hopefully to throw any attacking enemies off their feet—quite possibly along with himself. “Then it is time to do this.”

  “I’m worried about Sarah,” Nathaniel said. He placed the helmet over Emilio’s head with the easy confidence of someone who had rushed into battle in a costume a thousand times before.