A Midsummer Night's Steampunk

by Scott E. Tarbet

  “There now, Miss,” clucked Starveling, “don’t take on so. Right miserable it is to be young and in love when things ain’t smooth. Feelings run strong. The young masters will cool down soon enough. Lieutenant Churchill, he’s a levelheaded young bloke. He won’t hurt your boy.”

  “I’m not afraid of that. I don’t know much about fencing, but it looks to me as if Alex is holding his own. They don’t look like they’re out for blood, just bragging rights. And they’ve already gone past the first anger. They’ll calm down very soon, I’m sure. I’m just so ashamed of my hateful outburst against poor Clemmie. And now she is out in the darkness all alone.”

  “Too true, Miss. It’s a very large warehouse, what with all the Royal Navy ships’ stores and whatnot. It runs nearly half a mile.”

  “Won’t you please help me find her, then, so I can apologize?”

  Snug spoke up. “Miss Spiegel, Lieutenant Churchill has been very plain with us, if you don’t mind my saying. We are to protect you at all costs. It’s you what that monster Malieux and his miserable minions is after, not the rest of us. We need to keep you well guarded.”

  “Thank you for that, Snug. I very much appreciate all you have done, and what you are doing to protect us all. But I do need to find Clemmie.”

  “Going about the warehouse calling for her will lead Malieux’s men straight to you, Miss. We have to think they’ll be nosing about here soon enough, if they’re not already. Pardon me saying.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Miss Cobweb says the Friends will find Miss Clemmie and lead you to her.”

  “The Friends!” Pauline brightened. “Of course!”

  ~*~*~*~*~

  “We have them, Doctor,” reported Shaka.

  “Excellent! They’re in hand?”

  “Not yet, sir, but very soon. They’re holed up a short distance away, near the river. A pair of searchers just reported late night activity in a workshop that ought to be shut down for the Jubilee. Very near where we captured Bottom. The searchers peeked in at a window and saw the Spiegel girl with several other mechs from The Oil Can. One of the Enforcers stayed on guard, and the other reported back for help.”

  “Very good. Get over there immediately. I’ll be close behind you with a detachment, as soon as I can call in Jack and the Enforcers with him.”

  “Doctor, once again I urge caution utilizing Jack in these circumstances. The man is a monster. We should not be loosing him on human beings.”

  “Just do as you are told.”

  “But . . .”

  Malieux’s patience snapped, his retort angry. “My orders are clear. You will do as you are told. You are nothing more than a pile of tungsten carbide parts that I created! Don’t presume any power of thought, you ignorant savage!”

  “Doctor, our aims are noble, but the end does not justify such extreme means.”

  Malieux’s fingertip prodded Shaka’s massive metallic chest. “You presume to lecture me? You are a dogsbody. A manservant. Very shortly, I will be master of the greatest army of foot soldiers the world has ever seen!”

  “An army built to serve the Kaiser, Doctor.”

  “An army that will answer to me! And I will determine whom, how, and where the army will fight. Now be gone and do as you were commanded, before I reduce you to spare parts! Whatever you do, you ungrateful cretin, keep that girl in sight!”

  ~*~*~*~*~

  The steel staircase rang with Alexander’s running footsteps. Winston was close behind, refusing to allow his opponent the time to stop on a landing and prepare a downward attack. This far into the warehouse, less and less light penetrated from the lamps of the workshop. As the men climbed higher and higher, the darkness had grown nearly complete.

  Finally, after losing count of the flights they had climbed, Alex made the running turn to go up the next flight, and found that there was none. The stairway ended in a maze of catwalks that extended beneath the roof of the sprawling warehouse. Running headlong into a handrail where he had expected another flight of stairs, his momentum momentarily broken, Winston was on him in a heartbeat.

  Alex swung his cutlass defensively, intending to drive his opponent back down a step, then turned and ran another twenty paces before spinning to face his opponent, to make his stand on level ground.

  He could dimly make out the catwalk ahead of him, but could not see as far as the landing. Of Winston, there was no sight or sound.

  ~*~*~*~*~

  Clemmie huddled in the dark recesses beneath the stairway as the fight moved past her, then thundered above her as Alex and Winston raced upwards. Far overhead, she heard the footsteps pause, the ring of steel on steel, then one set of footsteps continued while the other did not. When all above had been silent for several moments, she stepped out from beneath the stairs and began to climb as quietly as she could manage, her jaw set in firm resolve. As she climbed, she fumed. “What has gotten into those two?” she muttered under her breath. “Has the world gone mad? They must be stopped.”

  Feeling her way upwards in the dark, she was rounding a landing when a voice whispered behind her, almost too low to be heard. “Stand very still. My blade is poised.” She froze.

  “Winston?” she whispered, and heard him exhale a long-held breath. “What happened?”

  “Clemmie! I stumbled at the top of the stairs and fell backward to the landing.”

  “Are you all right? Are you wounded?”

  “Not wounded. Just knocked the wind out of me.”

  “Let me see.” She stepped toward the dimly seen shape of the lieutenant and put out her hands to feel his face. She ran her fingers over his head, shoulders, and arms. No blood.

  He took her hands in his and raised them to his lips. “Clemmie,” he whispered, “I am so sorry to have dragged you into this. I will never forgive myself if you come to any harm.”

  “Winston, you daft ninny!” She threw her arms around him and held him tight. “Don’t you realize that I’m no dizzy schoolgirl? I know what I want, and what I want is you. Tell me you’ve gotten over your infatuation with Pauline, and all will be forgiven and forgotten.”

  “I was never infatuated with Pauline. It was my duty to pay court to her. Duty. But I don’t have to worry about that anymore. It is my sweetest pleasure to love you with all my heart.” She felt his hands find her face and caress her hair, his lips brush her cheek. “Now please, stay here and be safe. It’s time for me to end this farce.”

  He moved to break away and start up the stairs, but she held him back. “Winston, you two may never be friends, but you cannot be enemies. There is too much at stake. Promise me you will make peace with Alex. Promise me!”

  “I promise you I will try.”

  ToC

  Now’s the day, and now’s the hour;

  See the front o’ battle lower;

  See approach proud Edward’s power—

  Chains and slaverie!

  —Bannockburn, by Robert Burns

  Chapter Twenty

  Gathering Storm

  Alex backed slowly from the stairway, listening intently for any sound of his approaching foe. Every shadow hid a menacing young English aristocrat with a cutlass; every tick and creak of the huge building was a stealthy approaching footstep. Every nerve hummed like one of Tesla’s electrical wires, stretched too tightly, ready to snap at a touch.

  Abruptly, he stopped and spun around, facing down the catwalk. Was that a footstep? How could the blasted lieutenant have gotten behind him?

  “Now see here, Churchill,” he said, “let us do this honorably. Let us face each other in the light, man to man.”

  He thought he heard a low, throaty chuckle, then heavy footsteps heading away from him on the catwalk. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I promise you it won’t go unchallenged,” Alex called, and groped ahead in pursuit.

  “You are very brave,” came a whisper from the darkness. “Very brave indeed.”

  “Stand and fight, coward,” Ale
x demanded, creeping forward, cutlass waving in front of him in the darkness like a blind man’s cane. “Show me your bravery, if you have any.”

  “You ran,” whispered the voice.

  “I withdrew to a better tactical position.”

  “This is better?”

  “Of course it is, or you wouldn’t be backing away.”

  The tip of Alex’s cutlass touched something metallic. He probed upward and downward. A wall? Some large piece of machinery?

  “Yes, you are very brave.” The whisper was now very close, no further away than the wall that confronted him, but higher, as if coming from the top of the wall. “Courage is the first of human qualities,” came the whisper, “because it is the quality that guarantees all the others. I admire it greatly.”

  And Alex felt his sword wrist enclosed in a firm, unbreakable metallic grip.

  ~*~*~*~*~

  Pauline crept upward in the darkness more by sound than by sight, following close behind Snug, who was guided by Cobweb, who rode his human shoulder. Periodically, Pauline wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt and adjusted her grip on a heavy spanner she had picked up from the workshop.

  Snug’s mechanical arm was extended, its circular saw attachment ready for lethal action at any moment. His progress southwest through the sprawling warehouse had been slowed by extreme care to make every mechanical footfall as nearly soundless as possible. Their progress up a metal stairway toward the warehouse roof had nevertheless been steady and uneventful.

  They emerged onto a catwalk and turned northeast again, back the way they had come, traversing the labyrinthine warehouse floor quickly in a direct line. Their progress was now hampered only by the need for stealth.

  Abruptly, Snug stopped, and Pauline bumped into him from behind. She made as if to whisper her apologies, but felt a shushing fingertip on her lips. Her senses strained forward, reaching out for the cause of the sudden stop. Far ahead, she could barely make out the reason for Snug’s pause—a murmur of voices, one of them a low basso rumble, the other almost surely Alex’s cultured baritone. Pauline put her hand on Snug’s back and followed as he resumed his slow, silent progress.

  Within a dozen feet of the voices in the darkness, Cobweb sawed her song again, and Snug stopped cold. The murmured voices paused for a moment at the cricket song, then Alex’s voice came, calm and conversational. “Churchill, if you have light, please provide it. We have matters to discuss.”

  Cobweb sang, and suddenly, a hundred or more firefly Friends rose to dance about the space beneath the warehouse roof, bathing the catwalk in light.

  Pauline at first had trouble understanding what she was seeing. Directly ahead, atop the handrail that lined the catwalk, feet propped comfortably on the middle rail, sat Alex. Against the opposite handrail leaned the towering figure of the dreaded Shaka. Beyond the conversationalists, caught in the sudden light some dozen feet away, stood Winston, cutlass held high in both hands, poised for an all-out attack, with Clemmie at his back, a length of steel pipe in her hand, raised above her head to join the fray. Everyone but Alex and Shaka froze. Alex laughed aloud at the comic tableau.

  “What . . .” began Clemmie.

  “How . . .” began Winston.

  “Alex?” exclaimed Pauline.

  “Miss Hozier, Miss Spiegel, Lieutenant Churchill, welcome!” Alex greeted them. “I would like you to meet my new friend, Prince Shaka Dingiswayo, inyanga of the Zulu.”

  For several long moments, there was a stunned silence on the catwalk, then a babble of voices with a hundred simultaneous questions.

  “Pardon me,” interrupted Shaka, “but there is not much time. At least one squad of Enforcers is already outside the warehouse, awaiting orders for an assault. More are on their way. They believe I am scouting the attack.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” exclaimed Winston, dropping his cutlass a bit, then raising it again cautiously. “Are you not Malieux’s loyal man?”

  “Doctor Malieux saved my life. He saved the lives of many others, both in Zululand and here. He gave them life and usefulness. Saved them from a life of beggary.”

  “Aye,” muttered Snug, “but the price was high.”

  “Too high,” agreed Shaka. “Many traded death or beggary for slavery. I—I have been his slave. Doctor Malieux’s goals once were noble. But they have become twisted. I will be his slave no more.”

  Pauline stepped out from behind Snug and walked toward Shaka, holding out her hand. “What is it that has changed?”

  “You, Miss,” he said, taking her small hand carefully in his gigantic metal fingers, “and the doctor’s wife, Lakshmi. It is clear to me now that there is a better, kinder way to deal with those who have been mechanized.” He gestured at Cobweb, who chirped a greeting. “The doctor seeks slaves. Lakshmi makes Friends.”

  He dropped to one knee so that they were eye to eye. “Lakshmi refuses to give him the control he needs to satisfy the Kaiser’s demands. He seeks you, to get from you the engineering and control secrets of the automaton.”

  Pauline regarded him with a frown. “What is it he thinks I know?”

  “Malieux did not mean for your father to be killed. He is sure your father knew the secrets of how Diamond Jubal operates. But he was killed, and now you are the only link to your parents’ secrets.”

  “But why doesn’t he just try to persuade my godmother to share her knowledge?”

  “Because she hates what he is trying to do. She will not help him.

  “Will he torture her?”

  “He knows better than that. He is certain she would give up her own life. He believes her capable of doing so just by willing it.

  “So he seeks other leverage over her? Through me?”

  ”Indeed.”

  “He is greatly mistaken,” Pauline answered. “I do not know the secret of forcing the minds of other thinking beings—if such a secret even exits.”

  “Nevertheless, he believes you know more than you think you do. Or that at least you have access to the plans. He has sent all of his Enforcers to capture you. You are their target.”

  Pauline paled.

  Shaka continued. “One you met earlier, the one called Jack, whose arm mechanism you somehow tore off, wants you for other reasons. Malieux promised you to him once you have been questioned. To me, that was the last straw—handing you over to the one they call the Ripper is wrong. The doctor has lost his mind.”

  “The Ripper?” Pauline stammered. “The one I ran into . . . on the barge . . . is Jack the Ripper?”

  “One and the same, Miss.”

  “But everyone knows he died several years ago. He must have done. His attacks stopped.”

  “They stopped because he had an accident and has been at the madhouse ever since Doctor Malieux refitted him.”

  “But now Malieux has unleashed him on the world again.”

  “Yes, Miss. With you as his first target. I cannot be a part of that. I came to warn you about the Enforcer squad outside, and about the others on their way.”

  “We know about the squad of Enforcers outside,” Pauline informed him, “and are readying our defense.”

  Winston turned to her, startled. “We do? We are?”

  Pauline faced him with her hands on her hips. “While you boys were off playing at sword fight,” she said disdainfully, “the Friends brought us word that a full squad of Enforcers has arrived. Fortunately, they are spread out around the long periphery of the shop and warehouse, guarding entrances and exits. They are obviously waiting for reinforcements. The defenses of the shop end of the building are ready. The Musketeers have completed all you set them to do. But they need you to stop playing around and come back down to lead them.”

  Without a word, Winston turned on his heel and started down the catwalk the way he had come, then stopped and turned back. “Snug, do you remember the manhole in the warehouse floor?”

  “Yes, sir. Almost to the far end of the warehouse, sir. Large tunnel underneath. Tall enough to st
and up in. Sounds of water running.”

  “That’s the one—the old Tyburn River that made its way down to the Thames, but was put underground centuries ago. I want you and Miss Cobweb to take Miss Hozier and Miss Spiegel there. The four of you, get belowground. Surround the manhole with large crates so that no one can stumble onto it. Protect the ladies with your very life, do you understand me? When you hear the attack commence, pull the cover into place and wait for my word. I will fetch you personally as soon as it is safe. If the sounds of fighting die out and I don’t come—or send for you—within twenty minutes, make your way downstream to the Thames.”

  “No!” said Pauline and Clemmie almost simultaneously.

  “I don’t intend to skulk in the shadows while others do the fighting for me,” exclaimed Clemmie.

  “Pshaw,” said Pauline dismissively.

  “Listen to me, both of you,” insisted Winston. “Shaka has just made very clear what we already knew. Pauline, you are their prime—really their only—target. They don’t care about the rest of us, except to the extent that we can hinder them from getting to you. This entire attack is about capturing you, extracting information that you may or may not have—by torture, if necessary. Doesn’t it make strategic sense to doom the attack to failure before it even begins, by removing the target from the battlefield?”

  Pauline was silent for several moments, then nodded reluctantly.

  “And Clemmie,” Winston said, looking deeply into her eyes, “if you are involved in the battle, I will be able to think of absolutely nothing except your welfare. The thought of you in danger of your life would be so distracting to me that I would not be able to command. Surely you understand?”

  Clemmie, too, nodded reluctantly.

  “Very well. Please follow Snug and Cobweb to safety.”

  ~*~*~*~*~

  “Where are these lads? Where are these hearts?” exclaimed Nick Bottom as he slipped in the door from the dock.

  “Bottom? What the deuce!” said Churchill.

  “Reporting for duty, sir.”

  “Bottom! O most courageous day! O most happy hour!” Quince threw his arms around his friend.