Soft laughter rippled, breaking the tension.
“We’ll try our best to sort out the monkeys from the organ grinders, but anyone who even seems to know what is going on is coming with us to London,” Drummond said. “For that, we will depend heavily upon Captain Folkestone and Sergeant Hand. They are well informed about what’s really going on and know the Scotland Yard chap on sight. You are treat any orders that come from them as if they came from me. Are we clear on that?”
The young fellows in their black SAS uniforms nodded, but they looked rather doubtfully at Hand.
“Don’t let Sergeant Hand’s stature fool you none, laddies,” Drummond said with a sly smile. “Get into a right rammy with that Martian Jock and he’ll hand you your head and your arse on a platter. Aye, he can even take me. Any doubts, get it out now.”
The SAS commandos looked at Sergeant Hand.
Hand smiled genially, as if he had not a thing in the world to prove to anyone.
Despite all their training in specialised fighting techniques and advanced tactics, each man knew he was no match in a tussle with Drummond, armed or not. Anyone who could best Commander Drummond, human or Martian, was someone to consider. They had enemies enough without seeking them among their own number.
“Well, then, that’s settled,” Drummond announced. “Let us go over what we’re gonna do, squad by squad, once we get to this here House of Wands.”
The plan was to come in high over Constantinople, far above the usual airship lanes. Once directly above the House of Wands, the pilot would use the repulsors along the spine of the Nemesis and the de-charged ionized gases within the hull’s balloonetts to force the airship down like a lift with a severed cable. Exactly one hundred feet above the target, the pilot would abruptly halt all downward motion by re-charging aerostatic gases in the balloonetts, cutting the dorsal repulsors and engaging the foreside banks, and ducting the steam turbine exhausts downward. An instant before the airship braked, all personnel would rappel from the ready bay beneath the cabin. Once down, everyone had sixty seconds to get out of the airship’s way before it settled to a station-keeping position upon the roof.
“Are there any questions?” Drummond asked. He looked at the serious and too-young faces of the soldiers and nodded. “Very good! Lieutenant Burke.”
“Sir!”
“Captain Folkestone will accompany your squad.”
“Yes, sir.” Burke looked at Folkestone, who, like the SAS commandos, was garbed in a matte-black uniform. “Glad to have you aboard, sir.”
“Lieutenant Wedlake,” Drummond said.
“Sir!”
“Sergeant Hand is assigned to your squad.”
“Yes, sir.” There was no trace of disrespect in Wedlake’s tone, but neither was there any sign of enthusiasm as he looked in the Martian’s direction.
“I’ll try not to let anyone trip over me in the dark, sir,” Hand said with a wan smile.
Wedlake looked from Hand to Drummond, but received no enlightenment. He raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips and nodded. Not possessing a sense of humour himself, Wedlake was never quite sure whether any odd comment was a jest or not. In this case, however, he decided it had better be a witticism, so he uttered a sound he called laughter, though no one else did.
“Lieutenant Nevins, your squad is to remain with the ship, providing security once the pilot reaches station-keeping position,” Drummond told the remaining squad leader. “From your position on the roof, you will also assist the forces already in place, as needed.”
“Yes, sir,” Nevins acknowledged, but it was clear the young Welshman was not keen on missing the action of the raid and rescue mission. “Do we anticipate any air traffic?”
“According to Station T operatives, these people have two airships and a small aether-flier at the Kanaris Yards, but only left a skeleton crew, which has already been neutralised.” Then a sly smile stole over Drummond. “There is, of course, a possibility our activities will be detected by the Turkish authorities. If the Grand Aerial Navy of the Sublime Port is mobilised against us, we will no doubt find out about it about an hour after we leave.”
A polite titter of amusement passed through the assembly, except for Wedlake, of course.
“On a more serious note, Nevins, all prisoners taken will be transferred to your custody,” Drummond said, looking around to make sure everyone understood the procedure. “They are all to be treated as extremely dangerous, no matter what they say, what they do, or how they look. Adequate restraints on all, and all possessions confiscated. They are not to speak to each other or within each other’s hearing. Any documents found are to be seized. Clear?”
It was, perfectly.
“Commander Drummond, may I add a comment to what you have said?” Folkestone asked.
Drummond nodded. “Of course, Captain.”
“The individuals we are going against are deeply involved in dream-spice trafficking and addiction,” Folkestone said.
“Blimey!” one of the younger soldiers exclaimed softly.
“Hawkins, your attention please,” Drummond murmured.
Lieutenant Wedlake, his squad leader, frowned.
“Yes, sir,” Hawkins said. “Sorry, sir.”
“Whatever you do, do not let yourself come into contact with any dream-spice,” Folkestone continued. “It is very addictive, very toxic, and is very fast-acting and potent, even in quite small amounts.” He paused. “You know all the horror stories you’ve heard about it rotting your mind and making your head explode? Well, it’s really a lot worse than that.”
“All right then,” Drummond said. “Forewarned is forearmed so don’t get caught with your britches down. One other thing, men, though I do not hold it actually needs to be said, except we have two assets not normally with us. Stealth is our watchword, so silence those who would raise hue against us. Clear?”
The soldiers of the highly trained and closely knit SAS unit indicated their understanding, as did the soldiers who had been accepted as their own.
“Sir,” said the communications officer. “We are receiving aether-facsimiles from Station T regarding our adversaries, as well an update on the target structure.”
Folkestone and Hand joined Drummond at the console while the squadron leaders continued to brief and instruct their men. As they arrived, a final sheet of thermal-sensitive paper was exiting a slot. Drummond picked up the stack.
“I would hate to try to hide anything from these intelligence blokes,” Drummond said. He passed the top three sheets, a detailed building plan, to the two men. “No one has yet penetrated the House of Wands, and they already have Slaughter’s location pinpointed as closely as we are ever going to get it.”
As he looked through the remaining papers, his frown deepened.
“And they’ve given us quite a rogues gallery to boot,” the Commander remarked. “Here, give me those building schematics, I want the men thoroughly familiarised with these well before we near Constantinople.” He handed over the other sheets. “Look close at these and let me know if you find any long-lost friends.”
Each paper contained a portrait, drawn with pen and ink, all showing the work of an artist’s keen eye, sketched with great skill and depth of detail.
“These are as good as photographs, but…”
“Yes, but with an added advantage,” Folkestone explained. “An agent with a Blair is going to attract attention, no matter how small they make the lens and the camera housing. But with an artist, just a quick glance, able to draw it all later from memory…”
“Sir, look at this one!” Hand exclaimed.
“But, that is…”
“Yes, sir,” Hand agreed. “It’s Daraph-Kor, that lowlander merchant who disappeared from Syrtis Major and somehow made it possible for Thoza-Joran to nearly kill us.”
“And now he is in Constantinople,” Folkestone mused. “In the House of Wands, at the heart of the conspiracy, maybe directing agents like a spider sitting in the centre of his
web.”
“I did not recognise anyone else, sir,” Hand said as he finished. “You think Daraph-Kor is the leader of this whole thing?”
“When we first encountered Thoza-Joran, his ravings made no more sense than did his ability to tap into the energies of that other dimension,” Folkestone mused.
“Like a blooming electric eel, he was,” Hand muttered as he touched the centre of his chest with pained memory.
“Remember the rumours we heard about Thoza-Joran in the Syrtis Major underworld,” Folkestone continued. “References to Daraph-Kor made me think of his role as something along the lines of a recruiter, the boss of an anarchist cell.”
“It made sense at the time, sir,” Hand pointed out.
“Things have changed greatly since we were first dispatched to Old Cydonia to investigate the destruction of the Victorious,” the Captain said. “At least, they have for me.”
“And for me as well, sir,” Hand murmured. He considered all he had seen and done, all he had gained and, especially, lost in what was really too short a season. “Me too.”
“What if…”
Folkestone paused as he considered something that had been in the back of his mind since accepting the reality of the Dark Gods over the more conventional but much more acceptable ideas of anarchists or criminal masterminds.
“What if the Dark Gods have always tried to regain admittance to our world, but needed a…vessel, for lack of a better word? A living container to hold the consciousness of one of the Dark Gods in this world till the portal could be fully opened..”
“Daraph-Kor?”
Folkestone nodded. “A dreamy sort, obsessed with the past and the elder stories of your people, enthralled with mythic kings and heroes, gods and devils. To reach out, the Dark Gods needed just such a man, his mind connected only tenuously to the present.”
“It would be a lowlander,” Hand sneered, but his words lacked any venom. “Highland Martians are made of sterner stuff, have to fight too hard for what we have to spend time wallowing in the past. Lowland Martians are soft because they have too much of what makes life easy for them – abundant oxygen, fertile soil, the canal system left to them by the Ancients, temperate weather. It all adds up to a life where too many have too much time to do nothing but find ways to get themselves into trouble.”
Folkestone smiled thinly as he considered all the times a certain highlander Martian of his acquaintance had managed to get himself into all sorts of trouble.
“But it would still have to be a rara avis, else it would have happened long before this, and more often,” Folkestone pointed out.
“It may have,” Hand suggested.
“Oh?”
“Well, you know, sir, I was never much one for the old tales used to scare the nippers, even when I was one,” Hand explained. “In amongst the bogey-stories and blood-dreams there were these yarns that would crop up now and then, not told to us young ones, you understand, but whispered by travellers from the villages, of quiet lads suddenly going all queer and getting what they called oily looks in their eyes. Touched, they were said to be, by spirits, talking about times long past, saying forbidden words in voices not their own, and trying to kill people.” Despite his disbelief, Hand felt a cold shudder course through him at the long-suppressed memories. “Most vanished into the wastes and perished.”
“And the others?” Folkestone asked, though he already knew the answer.
Hand nodded. “Stoned to death, mostly.”
“You know, until fairly recently, bedlamites were thought to be possessed by demons from Hell,” Folkestone said. “The Church still conducts exorcisms.”
“Yes, sir, I suppose they all could just be crazy,” Sergeant Hand agreed. “But it does make you think, don’t it?”
Folkestone gazed at the sketch.
“What about Daraph-Kor himself?” Hand asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The consciousness that was Daraph-Kor, what has become of him?” Hand asked. “If you are right about the Dark Gods being able to take over his body, bend it to their will, where is the man who was Daraph-Kor? Is he still in there somewhere? Can he still be saved, or is he lost forever?”
Folkestone shook his head. “I wish I knew, Sergeant. If we take him alive with the others…” He shrugged. “Maybe alienists will be able to do something to him…for him… Consider it though, Felix, his mind trapped in there with the Dark Gods of your ancient stories.” He sighed. “Maybe it would be better if his light is just put out entirely…kinder, you know.”
Their consideration of the fate of Daraph-Kor, one-time admirer of a romanticised Martian antiquity, was ended by a call to arms by Commander Drummond. They were but thirty minutes out from Constantinople and already climbing swiftly.
Swiftly and silently, the men entered the ready bay beneath the main cabins, assembling around their leaders for arming and any final instructions. Their weapons of stealth included throwing knives, garrottes, weighted bolas, pneumatic needle-guns, and pistol-sized crossbows; sharpshooters were armed with night-sighted steam-repeaters, and all carried conventional side arms for when the need for silence ended.
“What kind of a weapon is that, Sergeant Hand?” Wedlake asked. “I’ve never seen a blade like that.”
Hand sighted down more than two feet of curved, polished and wickedly sharp steel. Just above the ornately carved hilt there jutted two flaring, swept-back bat-like wings. Hand balanced the weapon easily on the edge of his palm.
“It’s called a pyrang, Lieutenant Wedlake, a Martian assault knife,” Hand answered.
“Knife? It’s more like a bloody short sword.”
“The blade of this pyrang was forged from a meteor more than a thousand years ago, and has been in my family ever since,” Hand explained. “It’s seen many battles, much blood.”
“I am sure it is an excellent weapon,” Wedlake commented, “but I don’t know that I would fancy trusting my life to an antique. I can get you an official-issue SAS tactical knife.”
“Know much about Mars, sir?”
Wedlake shook his head. “No more than anyone else who has never been there before.”
“The Romans named Mars after their war-god.”
“True.”
“Odd them doing that, assuming Mars was warlike when no Roman ever walked Martian sands,” Hand mused. “We have stories about visitors long ago, but they were likely afore Egyptians ever raised their pyramids, much less Romans. And yet, I tell you, sir, the Romans were not that far wrong in calling us warlike.”
“From what little I know about the planet, you people – the Martians, I mean – are fairly peaceful chaps,” Wedlake said.
“Oh, we are…now, more or less,” Hand admitted. “Even before the Pax Britannica and the Hegemony of the Princes, warfare had become more a ritual than a vocation. But in my grandsire’s time and beyond, well…” He paused and smiled. “There is a belief among my people that a blade immersed in the blood of an enemy, acquires the prowess and battle-lust of that enemy, his soul, as it were.”
Wedlake looked at the pyrang in Hand’s grasp.
“Two…three thousand, probably more,” the Martian mused. “Thanks for the offer, sir, but I’ll stick with what’s served me very well up to now.” He grinned suddenly. “Stick with…get it, sir?”
But, of course, Wedlake did not understand the jest, as poor as it was. “As you wish, Sergeant Hand. Commander Drummond has expressed full confidence in you and Captain Folkestone, but as you have not trained with us I want you to stay back from the action as much as possible.”
Hand shrugged. “As I said, sir, I’ll try to not let anyone trip over me in the dark.”
Wedlake frowned, unsure of whether he was being mocked by the little fellow, though more than half suspecting he was. But he decided to give the chap the benefit of a doubt.
“Don’t worry about me, sir,” Hand assured him. “As the only true Martian in Her Majesty’s Martian Rifles, I’m quite u
sed to working with humans.” He grinned. “I think you people are bully!”
Wedlake wondered if he were once again being made the butt of some obscure joke. Probably, he decided, and likely not the last time. But he detected no malice, and if there was one thing in which Wedlake had confidence it was his ability to judge a man’s character. He hoped that extended to Martians as well, for there seemed something trustworthy about this cocky little chap from Mars.
“Good man!” Wedlake finally said.
All personnel except the pilot and navigator had moved into the darkness of the ready bay, unlit except for two shrouded red lamps that revealed their immediate surroundings without disrupting their night vision. Ramps were lowered port and starboard, fore and aft, and the men hooked their lines and performed their final checks.
Below them, the ancient citadel on the Golden Horn was a city of shadows, its narrow labythrine streets ill lit by sputtering gas and flickering torches. Grand public buildings like Hagia Sophia were well illuminated by arc-lamps, and the hotels and structures across the Galata Bridge in the new sections of the city were comfortable markers of civilisation, but most of Constantinople was shrouded by blackness.
As the commandos prepared for the commencement of their mission, the airship began to slow. The two men in the control cabin above stared downward through infra-red opticals and softly called increments of time and distance over a speaking tube.
“Approaching station keeping position,” murmured the pilot, his voice as soft as the darkness surrounding them. “In five…”
The cool breezes swept through the ready bay. Looking down, they saw nothing but a stygian night.
“In four…three…two…one,” the pilot counted. “We are now over the target. Engaging thrusters and repulsors. All personnel stand by for descent.”
“Ready, lads,” Commander Drummond murmured. “All our best, for Queen and Country.”
Shadows Against the Empire (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 1) Page 22