A Midsummer Night's Steampunk

by Scott E. Tarbet

  “What are you doing back here, Bottom?” pressed Churchill. “The Friends said the Enforcers had you under guard with Queen Lakshmi at the dirigible!”

  “Let us hear, sweet Bottom!” said Quince. The others came running from their various places around the workshop.

  “Aye, sir. That I was, sir. But the Friends, they said all but one of the Enforcers had been pulled from the Air Terminus and was off to the warehouse district. They thought the two of us was besotted and nothing to worry about, if you takes my meaning, sir. The Queen, she said as how I ought to take care of that guard and make haste to help you all prepare for the Enforcers’ attack.”

  “A single guard? An uncharacteristic lapse in command by Malieux,” noted Churchill.

  “Wouldn’t have happened if I had been there,” said Shaka.

  “And you took care of the guard, Bottom? How?” asked Churchill.

  “Spit wad, sir!” He held up his length of steel pipe and the bag of wooden balls Snout had carved for him earlier. “Only cost me the one shot, and that ball bounced back almost to my feet, it did.” He patted his lumpy bag. “A little bloody, and some hair stuck to it, but still right usable. Don’t suppose that sentry will wake up for a good long while.” He smiled mischievously. “Then I slipped down the tracks to the embankment, and Captain Bertie brought me up the river a bit.”

  Churchill slapped Bottom’s broad back. “Jolly good to have you back with us, lad! The new weapon wouldn’t be nearly so effective without you.”

  “Aye, sir. Glad to be back, sir . . . and sir, one more thing Queen Lakshmi bid me be sure to tell you, sir . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, sir, that I am now a Friend, sir. My own self. That I can understand the Friends like Snug can Cobweb. I have seen the Light, if you takes my meaning, sir.”

  Churchill regarded the mech with eyebrows raised. “Indeed! That should come in quite handy, as I have sent Snug and Cobweb away with the ladies. Have you a Friend with you that can take messages for us?”

  “Aye, sir. Peaseblossom’s come along just for that purpose, sir. She’s in a right nasty mood with these Enforcers, sir. And don’t get her started on bats. Wouldn’t want to be a bat around her, just now.”

  Slowly, Winston became aware that above Bottom’s head, hovering motionless halfway to the high ceiling of the warehouse, hung a large dragonfly in the iridescent colors of Lakshmi’s livery.

  Winston inclined his head to her. “So glad to have you with us, Miss Peaseblossom.”

  Peaseblossom rocked her wings in greeting, and darted out a window high overhead to survey the street.

  “Bottom, we expect the attack nearly any minute. Best take your place straightaway,” Winston instructed. Bottom hurried off with Quince.

  As Churchill turned back to his duties, there was a loud rap at the street entrance to the shop. Everyone froze, until Robin Starveling slid open a small viewing port, exchanged a few words with someone outside, and hurried across the room to Churchill. His face was ashen. “Doctor Malieux hisself, sir. Saw him face to face, I did, first time since my refit. Demands to speak with you.”

  Winston patted Starveling’s shoulder. “Don’t fret, Robin. When this is over, Malieux will trouble you no more.”

  “Aye, sir,” muttered Robin wryly, “either he’ll be gone, or he and his master, the Kaiser, will rule the world and we’ll all be the goners, sir. Either way, nothing to worry about.”

  Winston gave him a merry smile, pulled his own uniform blouse taut, and smoothed his hair. “Just so. Everyone take cover out of sight,” he instructed. “Alex, would you accompany me, please?”

  “I?” asked Alex. “Suddenly you trust me?”

  “Listen,” said Winston. “It is plain to me that you are no Scottish clerk. I don’t know why you were masquerading as Alexander MacIntyre, and this is not the time to sort out the truth from your fancies and lies. But for now, I need you at my side. Whatever you do, though, do not tell this man anything about yourself. Do not give him any information whatsoever. Let him believe whatsoever he will without correction.” Winston turned and strode to the door, Alex at his side.

  The Musketeers hurried to their hidden positions. Quince sat hunched over something cradled in his hands.

  “What’s that you’ve got there, Peter?” Bottom whispered.

  “Don’t concern y’self, Nick.”

  With a quick grab, Bottom snatched the small book from his friend’s hand, only to hand it back, abashed. “Sorry, Peter.”

  “It were me mum’s,” Quince muttered. “All that’s left. Testament and Book of Common Prayer.”

  “Say one for me, mate.”

  Over the two friends’ heads, Peaseblossom hovered vigilantly.

  ToC

  Half a league, half a league,

  Half a league onward,

  All in the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred.

  “Forward, the Light Brigade!

  Charge for the guns!” he said:

  Into the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred.

  —The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The Charge of the Musketeers

  Churchill took a deep breath, set a poker face, and slid open the viewing port set into the workshop door. Oberon Malieux stood on the other side, alone in the alley, a white silk kerchief in his hand. “Ah, Lieutenant Churchill,” he said. “At last. I would have a chat with you, young sir, under a flag of truce.”

  Winston stepped back and unbolted the door, swinging it open far enough to reveal himself and Alex at his side, but allowing no inspection of the interior of the shop.

  “Doctor Malieux.” Winston gave a tiny nod. “I regret our lack of hospitality here, this evening. I would invite you in, but I have nothing to offer you.”

  Malieux smiled wryly. “The military courtesies must be observed, what? Please do not concern yourself. There is nothing I require.”

  “Very well, then. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

  “Let me come right to the point, Churchill. You have something I want, and I have something you want. I propose a fair trade.”

  “Let me guess,” said Winston. “I have Miss Pauline Spiegel, whom you have been seeking since early yesterday. You would have me hand her over to you.”

  Malieux smiled indulgently. “I will have Miss Spiegel and the information in her possession, with or without your cooperation. What I will allow you to have, if you cooperate with me and hand her over peacefully, is your life—and the lives of those with you. There is no need for you and this little band of clerks and industrial drudges to come to harm.”

  “Ah,” said Winston, nodding. “You would have me trade Miss Spiegel’s safety for my own. You offer an opportunity for appeasement.”

  “Exactly so,” replied Malieux. “There is no need for you to die, when I will gain my goals in any case.”

  “I’ve never had much patience for appeasers, Doctor. An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. I politely reject your kind offer to surrender Miss Spiegel to you.”

  “I must warn you, Lieutenant, that this building is completely surrounded, including on the water side. There is no chance for escape.”

  Churchill feigned mild surprise. “The water side?”

  “Indeed. I have boatloads of men standing off your dock, even as we speak.”

  “It seems my men and I may be vastly outnumbered.”

  “Indeed you are. I urge you to take the prudent course and cease your resistance. Give me the girl.”

  “Again, I must politely decline.”

  Malieux turned to Alex. “You’re a bit the worse for wear since I last saw you, Mr. MacIntyre. You seem like a reasonable young fellow. I don’t suppose Queen Victoria has many complete dolts in her household. I hope you are not the exception. Are you willing to sacrifice your life on this fool’s errand?”

&nbs
p; Alex pondered a moment, and then answered simply, “Yes.”

  Malieux was taken aback only momentarily, then raised his voice and addressed the hidden Musketeers. “You mechs, you who owe your lives and livings to the refits and improvements I gave you—come out now, and no harm will come to you. You will be given the latest modern improvements, and be included in the ranks of my loyal Enforcers. Otherwise, you will surely die.” He stood, staring into Churchill’s eyes.

  Churchill stared back, a slight smile curling the corners of his mouth, and waited for a response from the Musketeers. There was no sound. “Is there anything else you would like to say? Anyone else you would like to address? Miss Spiegel herself, perhaps? Maybe you would like to try to convince her to sacrifice her life by handing herself over to you for torture?”

  Malieux raised his voice so that he could be heard clearly throughout the workshop. “I promise you that I will not raise a hand to Miss Spiegel if she will give me the information I need.”

  “But then, you’re not the sort of man who does his own dirty work, are you?” asked Alex, in a conversational tone.

  Malieux nodded. “Bon mot, young man. I see that you perceive things as they are. There are men of drudgery, like your lieutenant here with his weapons, drills, and supply requisitions, and you with your pen and ink and ledgers and correspondence. And there are men of thought and consideration who direct the efforts of lesser men—the clerks and the foot soldiers—men such as myself. The generals and the rulers of the world don’t sully their hands taking out the trash.” He and Alex both stared down at Alex’s hands and clothing, still caked with the dust of the coal bin.

  “Doctor, since we fully understand each other and clearly can reach no accommodation, I suggest this interview is at an end,” said Winston. “I bid you good evening, sir.” And he closed the door in the doctor’s face and shot the bolt.

  “I am afraid we have a very formidable enemy there,” noted Alex, as they walked away.

  “Good!” replied Winston. “It is good to be the enemy of such a man. Be glad when you have richly deserved enemies. It means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

  Alex smiled, turned, and took Winston’s hand in a firm grip. “I meant what I said, Churchill. I’m ready to lay down my life tonight.”

  Winston grasped the hand of his new friend, his grin wide. “I, too, am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”

  ~*~*~*~*~

  The manhole cover scraped heavily across the concrete warehouse floor, exposing a yawning black opening. From it wafted the stench of sewage and the faraway sound of running water that echoed through the subterranean vault. Snug and the girls had used large packing crates to surround and camouflage the opening. No one would stumble upon it accidentally.

  “Well, there’s that, Misses,” said Snug, fitting a steel pry bar back into its place in his leg. He beckoned Pauline and Clementine forward. “Down you go.”

  Side by side, the girls peered down into the black void and looked back up at each other, eyebrows raised.

  “Before we go down there, Clemmie, please accept my apologies for the horrid things I said. And for attacking you. I didn’t mean any of it. It’s been a long time since any of us has slept or eaten, and I’m frightened half out of my wits. Please forgive me for lashing out at you.”

  Clemmie responded with a warm embrace. “We’re sisters, and have been since the first days at university. Sisters fight sometimes, even over stupid things. Like boys. Let’s not fight.” Then she sat down and swung her legs over the edge into the blackness.

  The depth of the water at the bottom of the ladder caught her by surprise, as did the smell. There was the sound of running water, but it seemed to come from a long way away. Where she stood, the water came up to her knees, and seemed more unmoving sewage than a running stream. Pauline soon stood beside her. She peered around in the darkness, taking in the ancient vaulted brick tunnel, dark with moss and dripping with moisture.

  “I thought Winston said this was a river,” Clemmie said. “This is a sewer!”

  “It is a river. The Tyburn. There are several underground rivers than run beneath London. Over the centuries, they’ve built the sewers to drain into them. This one actually runs underneath Buckingham Palace and down to the Thames.”

  “Oh, isn’t it comforting,” Clemmie replied, “to think that it’s the queen’s business that’s pouring into my boots? Isn’t it funny how royal dung smells exactly the same as commoners’?”

  Snug stood above them on the ladder, head and shoulders above the floor level, his mechanical legs and arm locking him in place. Cobweb flew from her perch on his shoulder, out over the warehouse, and returned.

  “No attack yet,” he reported to the girls below, “though I imagine we’d hear it start, sure enough.”

  As he spoke, an earsplitting crash ripped the air. Everyone ducked reflexively.

  “Explosives! They’re using explosives!” Immediately, there came the distinctive pop of small arms fire. Clemmie groaned. “Somehow it didn’t occur to me that they would come in shooting. We have to get back up there!”

  She tried to climb the ladder, but Snug blocked the way and would not move. “No, Miss. I have me orders.”

  “Please, Snug! I have to get back there to help!”

  “You can’t be no help, Miss. The lieutenant, he knows what he’s about.” With a mighty heave, he pulled the heavy cast iron manhole cover into place above their heads.

  So they waited, the two young ladies, the middle-aged mechanized man, and the micro-mechanical cricket, knee deep in sewage in the pitch dark, as the battle raged overhead.

  ~*~*~*~*~

  The attack began as Enforcer sappers blew in the large warehouse cargo door. Forewarned by Peaseblossom, none of the Musketeers were caught in the open. The first Enforcers through the door after the explosion, expecting to meet little resistance, were caught by a well-timed volley from the Musketeers. A half-dozen Enforcers dropped immediately and never made it past the door.

  The next wave of Enforcers, driven through the ragged opening by the shouted curses of their officers, found themselves facing a narrowing funnel of heavy machinery, boiler plate, and piles of stone ballast. The only way forward was down the funnel, a carefully constructed enfilade killing ground that stretched across the workshop.

  The Musketeers’ covering fire was disciplined and accurate, and they were well sheltered from the returning barrage. The carnage among the Enforcers was rapid and disheartening, and the survivors beat a hasty retreat back out into the alley and around the corner, out of the light and out of sight.

  For a brief time, there was quiet at the shop door, broken at last by the clatter of steel wheels in the cobblestoned alley. Suddenly came the dreaded, tearing roar of a Maxim machine gun. The gun rolled ahead, pushed by crawling Enforcers, arcing a deadly hail of lead from side to side, shredding barricades and driving the Musketeers from their positions along the walls of the defilade. The Enforcers gave a cheer when they saw the Musketeers pull back.

  But then, a blast of steam brought the Enforcers’ progress to a halt. What had appeared merely part of the barricade, an unthreatening steel boiler tank, began to advance toward them, belching steam and smoke.

  The Musketeers had bolted the tank to the top of a steam-powered port tractor. Slowly, with great grinding of gears and clanking of treads, Churchill’s invention surged forward. The Musketeers sheltered behind it, firing as they came. Atop the monstrosity rode Winston, shielded by the boiler plate and firing his own Maxim gun until its barrels glowed red. His shouted orders directed Starveling, who drove the tractor.

  From a wide slit in the front of the tank thrust Bottom’s long steel blowgun. Wooden balls and steel shot flew from it with deadly accuracy, propelled explosively by Bottom’s high-pressure bellows. Shot after shot tore away parts both mechanical and human. Churchill’s Maxim wreaked havoc, and the walk
ing Musketeer infantrymen left the cowering Enforcers no place to hide. On and on came the tractor. Enforcers fell one after another, and those who could stand or crawl abandoned their guns and scrambled backwards out the door. The rout was complete.

  From the river side of the shop came a muffled blast and a splintering crash. Just inside the door from the dock stood Alex, peeking around the casement with the plunger of an explosives detonator in his hand.

  “How many?” called Winston.

  “Twelve! All the Enforcers from both boats! I blew the pilings just as the last of them climbed onto the dock, just as you said. Every single one of them went straight to the bottom of the Thames.”

  Bottom called up to Churchill from inside the tank. “Peaseblossom says they have a mortar, sir, setting up down the street to begin firing on the shop!”

  “How many men do they have left?”

  “Still four times as many as we do, sir.”

  Churchill jumped from the top of the tank, gathered the Musketeers, and quickly counted heads. All present. “Any wounded?”

  All reported minor wounds.

  Snout cleared his throat. “Didn’t want to bother you with it, sir.” His mechanical arm pulled away a wadded rag from the human side of his chest. A bullet hole the size of a shilling spurted blood. Flute jumped forward with a medical kit, but before he reached his stricken friend, Snout’s eyes rolled back and his head lolled to the side, leaving him unconscious but upright on his mechanical legs.

  “Starveling,” said Winston, “can you pull him on the brick cart?”

  “Aye, sir. If Flute will guide me.”

  “Guide you?”

  “Aye, sir. It seems the explosion at the door rattled my head some. My eyesight was bad before, sir, as you know, but now I can hardly see at all. And it’s getting worse. Eyesight is almost gone.”

  “Flute must guide you, then. Do your best, and keep me informed. Right then, lads, time to execute the withdrawal. Down the length of the warehouse, out, and follow the route to the rally point, just as we planned.