“Let's keep our noses down,” Jacob whispered. “We need to get through here to the Coal Quarter.”
They strolled through the Gold Quarter, which had many guards and many patrols, but few batted an eyelid at them, for eyes were still fixed on the skies, where a growing number of Treasury balloons were rising.
As they walked, Jacob pointed to the two-way radio strapped to Soasa's belt. “How come we don't use them more often?” he whispered, tipping his hat and smiling at a passing patrol. “They would have been handy in the raid on the Hope factory.”
“They're a last resort.”
“Why?”
“Because all radio frequencies are monitored by the Regime. As soon as we use these, we alert them to our location, and to our plans.”
“Ah.”
“So, yeah, if you hear a voice come through here,” Soasa said, tapping the radio, “it might as well be the voice of the Iron Emperor himself.”
* * *
They entered the Coal Quarter, which required no announcement. Whatever sign posts there might have been were buried in piles of dirt, and whatever people there were to ask for directions were covered in soot and dust. This was the darkest and dreariest part of the city, the worker's quarter, where the dilapidated buildings huddled together as if for warmth. It was the part that produced the vast majority of the smog that gave the city its most appropriate name.
As soon as they entered the area, they saw the workers toil, and the beggars beg. The latter would have begged in the richer parts of the city, but they quickly learned that the poor give more to the poor than the rich ever do, and they would be hunted from the Treasury Quarter, and maybe even handed in to the Regime to work in the Hope factories, until they could no longer earn their wage of life.
“Why are there so many people on the streets?” Whistler asked.
“There aren't enough houses.”
“But there are,” the boy objected. “We passed by several boarded up.”
“Those were boarded up for a reason.”
“Hope-houses,” Soasa said. “People get high there.”
Whistler looked anxiously at Jacob. “Why?” he asked. “Why make it worse?”
“Sometimes when things are bad,” Jacob said, “it seems like they can't get any worse. People are always looking for some kind of relief, no matter how small, no matter how temporary.”
“They don't have anything to fight for,” Soasa said.
“But they do,” Whistler protested. “They've got their lives.”
“Sometimes that isn't enough,” Jacob said.
They continued through the coal-covered streets, clinging together like the soot clung to the windows. Here and there pale eyes looked out, many eyes from many people huddled together in overcrowded dwellings. The chimneys spewed their toxic waste, the furnaces fired night and day, and the workers hustled to and fro, their clothes and faces blackened by the work.
The beggars reached their scrawny arms up, using whatever strength they had to beg for more. Some lay still, sleeping or dead. Few among them spoke, and so they were easier to ignore. Jacob usually avoided this section of the city. They could not afford the amulets, and Jacob could not afford to offer them his pity, for fear that he would feel compelled to do something to help them, yet knowing that there was little he could do.
“Demons!” a man cried, holding up his prayer beads, from which dangled the solar emblem of his god. Few worshipped that deity before the Harvest, and fewer still since. Science had once crushed that religion, but now the new worship of the Iron Emperor crushed it further still.
“They walk among us!” the madman cried. He fawned at Jacob's coat, as if searching for a demon inside the fabric. Jacob reefed it from him and hurried on, but the man followed, calling after him, even, it seemed, calling out his name.
“Don't run, Jacob!” the beggar said. “Don't run from me.”
Jacob stopped, as he might have done when he was a child. There was something in that voice, something familiar. He turned to look at the veiled figure, the religious fanatic who seemed to have nothing but his new-found god.
“Who are you?” Jacob asked.
The man pulled down his shawl.
“Father,” Jacob cried.
14 – FINDING FAMILIES
The shock silenced Jacob outwardly, but it created a dozen roaring voices in his mind, the voice of an angry child, of an ignored child, of a child who had to work when others could play. Everything he had locked away came flooding back to him.
“Son!” the man shouted, holding up both his wrinkled hands and reaching forth to touch Jacob's face.
But Jacob recoiled. “Get away from me.”
“But son—”
“But nothing. Just … just leave me be.”
“Isn't that what I've done? You don't come here. I know you don't. I don't go to the streets you frequent. I let you run your business, and I don't ask for a penny, though I might say that I deserve more than one.”
Jacob could not believe his ears. “You deserve money from me?” he asked, drawing forth, letting his anger slip through his gritted teeth.
Soasa grabbed him and tried to pull him back. “We don't have time for this,” she said. “We have a mission.”
Jacob's father held up his prayer beads to Soasa's face. “I have a mission too!” he bellowed. “And everyone must hear it, that we might be cleansed of sin, the sin that brought upon us this ruin.”
“No,” Jacob said. “You brought your own ruin upon yourself, but that wasn't enough for you. You had to share it with your family. You ran up the debt, and we had to pay for it.”
“I didn't mean to,” his father said, with tears in his eyes.
Soasa rolled her own. “For God's sake, Jacob, let's resolve this another time.”
Yet Jacob would not listen.
“Fine,” Soasa said. “I'll do this without you.”
She turned and marched off before Whistler could stop her. Whistler remained, urging Jacob to follow Soasa.
“Why did you keep pretending?” Jacob asked his father.
“I had to.”
“Why? To save face? That's all you saved.”
“I couldn't admit that I was penniless, that I didn't have enough to feed my family, that I wasn't the man I told everyone I was.”
“But it was all a lie.”
“I know it was a lie, son! I know! Every night I came home, every night I claimed I had another busy day at the factory, I knew that I had gambled, and I knew that the money I gave your mother for food, for the shoes you wore, was borrowed money, borrowed by the bankers, by those men who'd break your knees if you didn't pay it back. And sometimes I got lucky in the races, and I was able to pay them back. But mostly I just ended up with bigger debts.”
“Debts we had to pay.”
“It was either that or it was my life.”
“It was my life, father,” Jacob said. “It was mother's life. That's the interest you paid.”
“You can't blame me forever.”
“Maybe not, but I can blame you now.”
“What can I do to make it up? I don't have any money.”
“I don't want money,” Jacob said, and he could not help but notice Whistler's fervent gaze. “I thought I did, but I don't. I want my childhood back. I want to be able to go to sleep at night and not have the image of all those toys I could not play with burned into my mind. I want to be able to think of those years before the Harvest and want to return to them, instead of thinking that maybe things are better under the iron rule of the Regime.”
“Better with the demons?” his father cried. “They're everywhere, Jacob. Don't trust anyone! Don't even trust me!”
“I don't.”
His father did not seem to notice. He was too caught up in his speech.
“They could be anyone,” he continued, pointing a finger at Whistler. “He could be one of them!”
“He's not,” Jacob barked, as Whistler looked to his feet.
“But they walk among us, son. They've gotten under our skin!”
His father ran his prayer beads all over his body, as if fighting off some demon infestation.
“You know what, father, just go,” Jacob said.
“But I've nowhere to go.”
Jacob shook his head. “I don't care. I'm not your keeper. Hell, when I was a kid, you clearly weren't mine.”
“The Lord forgives me, son. Will you not forgive me too?”
“I'm no god. It's not that easy for me.”
Jacob began to walk away, but his father followed.
“The Lord looks out for me now. He can look out for you too!”
Jacob walked faster, and Whistler struggled to keep up. Jacob's father struggled more, and in time he could no longer match his son's fervent pace. When Jacob could no longer see his father waving his hands madly in the background, he stopped and sighed.
“Where's Soasa?” he asked.
“She went off,” Whistler told him. “She's going to find the smog guns alone.”
“Damn,” Jacob said. “She doesn't know this city.”
“She'll get lost,” Whistler said.
Jacob thought that too, but he also thought that she might find the barrel of a different gun.
15 – THE BANKER MOB
Jacob raced after Soasa, changing direction when Whistler called out that she went a different way. He expected to find her in custody, or find her bruised and battered body, or never find her at all. But there she was, running around the streets, drawing little attention.
“Where have you been?” Jacob asked.
“Where've I been?” she said with incredulity. “I've already rigged two of the smog cannons, with no help from you. This isn't exactly the best time to have a family reunion.”
“It's not a reunion.”
“Whatever,” she said, taking out a new stick of dynamite. “It's time we introduce my family to the neighbourhood.”
They found their way to the largest cannon, perched on the roof of the city's old museum, which now was furnished with artificial artefacts depicting the eternal and glorious reign of the Iron Emperor, as if he had always lived there, as if the invasion had never happened, as if the memories of so many people were of little consequence at all.
They entered the building, which was largely empty. It was only ever crowded in the mornings, when the tour guides gave their revisions of Altadas' history to the city's young. The lies fell equal on human and demon ears.
“We need to evacuate this site,” Jacob told the nearby guards, who saluted and began clearing out the room.
When the place was empty, they headed up to the roof, where they found more guards who were less willing to abandon their posts. A few well-aimed bullets fixed that problem.
“If we can get this out,” Soasa said, patting the smog gun, “it should clear most of the sky.”
“Apart from the fumes created naturally here.”
“Apart from that,” Soasa said.
She swiftly unloaded her explosive cargo, and strapped several sticks of dynamite to the barrel of the smog gun. They could have simply turned it off, but Rommond wanted a more permanent solution. Dynamite was pretty permanent.
“Right, that'll do it. This is going to be a big blast, so we need to get far away.”
They rolled out the fuse and laid it down the stairs, around the corner, and into the dirt paths below, where Soasa connected it with the fuses leading to the two other guns she had previously rigged. Soasa and Jacob held the tube on either end and walked backwards as they extended the rope to its farthest length, while Whistler immediately ducked for cover.
“Here goes nothing,” Soasa said.
She placed the fuse down and reached for her pocket.
“Stand up slowly,” a firm voice called out from behind them.
Soasa glanced at Jacob, and he could tell from the look that she was just a fraction of a second away from readying the charge. She began to slowly reach for the fuse, but two bullets whisked by her hand.
“Stand up slowly,” the voice said again, “or we'll put some bullets in your legs, and then you'll have an excuse not to stand.”
Whistler was the first to stand up and turn around.
“At least there's one brain between the three of you.”
Jacob followed suit, and he saw a line of men standing across the street, some of them pointing guns, others holding iron bars and wooden bats. A mere glance showed who they were: Treasury bankers, for they wore the finest black suits with tails, and the one in the centre wore a small top hat, rimmed with gold. Each of them had a golden handkerchief in their top coat pocket, and the golden chain of a pocket watch hung from their trouser pockets—a watch to tell them when to collect a debt.
Soasa eventually turned around, but she would not hold up her hands.
“You're Rommond's lot, aren't you?” the banker asked, patting the bat against his hand. They knew well that he would not be so gentle when he was patting them on the kneecaps.
“Never heard of him,” Jacob replied.
“Really?” the banker said. “By your accent, you're a Blackout boy. You telling me you never saw a poster of the Hawk?”
“I'm not much of a bird-watcher.”
The banker turned to his comrades with a grin. “I'm going to enjoy breaking him.”
“What do you want?” Jacob asked. “We're just passing through.”
The banker laughed, and pointed up to the smog-choked sky. “Like that airship up there is just 'passing through'?”
“No idea. I'm more of a walking kind of guy.”
“Well, soldier, if you help us bring in Rommond, we'll make sure you can still walk in the morning. You see, he has a debt to pay, and it's a big one.”
Jacob shrugged. “As I said, never heard of him.”
“If that uniform of yours was real,” the banker said, “you'd have a pretty good idea who Rommond is.”
“I just do as I'm told,” Jacob replied. “Never been told to remember a name.”
The banker looked to his comrades with irritation. “Well, I'm telling you what to do now, and I'm telling you to end this pretence.”
Jacob shrugged again. “There's nothing to end.” Then he had a thought: Maybe there is. Our lives.
There was a sudden crackle on Soasa's two-way radio. The voice was muffled, but it was unmistakable: it was Rommond. “Come in, Soasa,” the general said. They had delayed too long. He had obviously grown impatient, or worried.
“Kind of busy at the moment,” Soasa said through gritted teeth into the radio. Whistler seized the radio from her and cried “Help!” into it, before a banker shot it from his hand.
The main banker smiled as if he had just received a new deposit. “You lot don't exactly value your ability to walk, now, do you?”
“All this talk of broken legs,” Soasa said. “I need a smoke.”
She took a box of matches from her pocket. The guns pointed in her direction.
“Don't you think there's enough smog in this city?” the banker asked.
“Maybe this will help clear the air.”
She struck the match, and held it up.
“Drop it,” the banker ordered.
Soasa smiled. “Sure.”
She dropped the match, and it sparked the fuse. It wound its way like a snake through the dirt, a little speck of fire consuming every thread of the rope, until it could consume something even bigger.
Soasa held up her arms, joining Jacob and Whistler.
The banker took out his own pistol, and pointed it at Soasa. But before he could shoot, the fuse reached the dynamite planted around the smog cannon behind Soasa, resulting in a monumental explosion that threw her, Jacob, and Whistler forward, and the bankers backwards.
When the dust cleared, and the ringing was no longer heard in their ears, Jacob stumbled up and pulled Soasa and Whistler from the rubble. Even as he did so, he saw many of the bankers stirring from the dirt as
well.
Jacob glanced around. He knew that if they ran, they would likely be gunned down. He reached for his gun, but it was no longer holstered on his belt. He saw it half-buried several metres away. He knew he would never reach it, for the banker mob was already rising, and their guns were well within reach.
The trio raised their hands again. Their mission was successful, but not without cost. The Treasury would either beat them or bargain with them, or likely both. The smiles on the bankers were wide, like the openings of gigantic purses.
The dust cleared upon the ground, and the smog cleared in the sky. Jacob could not help but look up and see the glittering fleet of balloons gathering around the Skyshaker. But there was something else, something smaller that was falling from the sky.
“What the hell is that?” Soasa cried.
Jacob hoped it was not a bomb.
He strained his eyes until he realised that it was the Hopebreaker with a huge parachute, descending from the heavens like an iron angel. He could hear the growing rumble of the engines and the clang of the turret as it swivelled into place.
Backup, he thought.
16 – THE HAWK HAS LANDED
The Hopebreaker struck the ground, sending up a plume of dust like a mushroom cloud. Rommond rocked inside it, clutching the steering sticks with his hands, and the seat with his legs. He revved the engines and felt the tracks grip the land outside.
“The Hawk has landed,” he spoke into his two-way radio.
“Scorpion received,” Taberah replied, her voice clipped. Even at this close a distance, the radio frequencies were weak. The Regime had learned to jam them very early on, and if they could not jam them, they could disrupt them, and if they could not disrupt them, they could monitor them. Rommond knew that somewhere in the Iron Emperor's fortress in Ironhold, the city of Blackout was lighting up blue on a map—a map that was to date almost completely red.
Skyshaker: A Steampunk Dystopian Adventure (The Great Iron War, Book 3) Page 8