Jeremiah Willstone and the Clockwork Time Machine

by Anthony Francis

  “Oh, Blood of the Queen,” Jeremiah said. “Birmingham, don’t—”

  But Lord Birmingham could not hear her, and the Prince Edward fired. A collimated bolt of lightning slammed into the hangar and crackled out through its metal frame, blowing out its Faraday grille and sending shards and girders raining down towards Jeremiah and Patrick below.

  “Change of plan!” Patrick said, tipping the table up and accidentally knocking the lever of the autocart to neutral. They ducked underneath as glass shattered all around them, but it was the slowing autocart that saved their lives as a massive girder hit the tracks just before them.

  The cart struck the beam and pitched forwards, flipping the table and the two of them onto the tracks. On its back, the table slid forwards a few meters more before sliding off the rail and tumbling Patrick and Jeremiah out onto the field of fallen glass fragments.

  “Ow,” Jeremiah said, bloodied and bruised. Patrick got to his feet, then began limping as red blood started flowing down his thigh. But she saw the footmen loading the caged egg into the machine, saw Lord Christopherson not thirty meters away, and they staggered on.

  This time the gun battle was short and halfhearted. Only three footmen were left; the rest had fled, or were out, or had boarded the machine with the great brass egg. Lord Christopherson called out to the remainder sharply, and even as Jeremiah picked one of them off, the other two ducked through the open hatch. Christopherson touched his hat to them without tipping it, then ducked inside, slamming the hatch shut just as they peppered it with aetheric blasts.

  “Bugger!” Jeremiah said, coming to a tottering stop as the gangplank retracted; moments later Patrick put his hand on her shoulder, and she wasn’t sure which of them needed to lean on the other more. The gangplank folded completely over the hatch, smoothly joining with the curve of the hull; moments later a heavy gong echoed, the thermionic engines of the machine started, and she cursed. “I guessed it was some sort of rolling vehicle, but . . . engines big enough for an airship? A wholly enclosed hull? Gangplanks? Hatches? Landing springs? What is this thing?”

  “You don’t think,” Patrick said, as the rings and gears on the outside of the vast sphere began to turn, “you don’t think he’s learned the secret of heavier than air flight?”

  “Impossible. You’ll never get anything larger than a man aloft without gas,” Jeremiah said, looking up. “Trust me, I know—I spent years on the fool’s errand of becoming a Falconer, and they drilled all that bloody flight math into us until my ears bled.”

  As she expected, the Prince Edward was discharging a full assault platoon from its nacelles: Dragoons, armed and armored head to toe, abseiling down from the drop bays on twanging black wires; and Falconers, with lighter bodies and weapons, leaping out of the drop bays and rocketing down on wings of wood and brass, blasters crackling with aetheric fire.

  Seeing the Falconers flit down tore Jeremiah’s heart with longing; seeing them bank and twist through the girders tore at Jeremiah’s gut with remembered nausea. She looked away, watching Dragoons slam to the earth and stomp towards them; then Jeremiah looked back, just as Sergeant Natasha Faulkner-Jain sailed right up to them, popped off her wingpack just as its charge canister dissipated, and then slid a pump blaster out of an over-the shoulder holster.

  “Bet you’re glad to see us, Commander,” Natasha said, swaggering up and cocking her blaster. “We’ll take it from here—”

  “You’ll take nothing from us, Sergeant,” Jeremiah snapped, too bruised and battered to be properly diplomatic. “Do we look glad?”

  “Of all the ungrateful—”

  “Ungrateful?” Patrick barked, picking up her anger. “We were not even thirty meters behind Lord Christopherson when Birmingham cocked it all up—”

  Natasha blanched, then scowled. “Just because you failed to—” she began, then stopped as Patrick pointed at the girder that had tipped the autocart, then at his bloody leg. “Well. The Falconry apologizes for the friendly fire,” she said, “but we have them now. There’s no way out on air or foot, and they’re certainly going nowhere in that clockwork—”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Jeremiah said.

  The ground shook as the machine’s engines crackled: four mammoth glass-housed dynamos jutting out in all directions, each large enough for an airship, together putting out a tooth-rattling, harmonic whine that drowned out the Prince Edward overhead. As the engines revved further, the rings around the device began to whistle as they spun.

  “You don’t think,” Natasha said, “it could be a heavier than air vehicle—”

  A vast groan shook the whole hangar, rattling them all almost to their knees. Aetheric fire coursed out around the machine, rippling into heat waves suffused with a strange blue glow. Within the cerulean miasma the machine began to turn slowly. Jeremiah cocked her head. The machine’s visual perspective was all wrong: parts that should have receded loomed closer, and parts that should have been looming drew farther away, making it look like it was turning both to the left and to the right, clockwise and counterclockwise all at once.

  “Counterclockwise,” Jeremiah murmured. The eerie blue glow leaking out of that shimmering distortion was creating a powerful reminding: a rich smell, of beer and bratwurst, of green grass and fireworks, of Berlin in Germany . . . and that last picnic with Einstein.

  “My God,” she said, integrating all the facts at once. “No wonder they all seemed to come from nowhere after that first blue flash. No wonder they were wearing morning dress in the middle of the night! It’s not a vehicle for traveling through space, but through time!”

  Patrick and Natasha turned to stare at Jeremiah, then back at the machine. Immediately Jeremiah could see she was right: rippling in the miasma around its surface were images of their reflections, not just of now, but of moments ago and moments yet to come. There was the last gun battle with the footmen, Natasha shouting orders to her men and women, the chase and the assault by the Prince Edward, and then all of them raising their weapons and opening fire.

  “That . . . that hasn’t happened yet,” Patrick said.

  “Blood of the Queen,” Jeremiah said, still stunned that she was right.

  Suddenly Natasha broke the tension. “Damn it, it’s still a machine,” she said, raising her weapon, just as she had moments ago in the rippling images before them. “If we break it, we can stop it! Dragoons, Falconers, fire, fire—”

  “We’re too late,” Jeremiah said, even as their blasts rained down. “It’s going.”

  ———

  And with a bright flare of light, the machine disappeared.

  7.

  Most Completely Ballcocked

  FAR ABOVE THE cobbled streets of Boston, within the glass-walled globe of the Eyrie gleaming atop the Beacon of Beacon Hill, with the Prince Edward moored behind them, a great brass-and-silver airshark, Jeremiah and her Expeditionaries stood at attention . . . before a verbal flamethrower.

  “You had the Fifth Baron Abinger so close you brought back his lapel pins yet failed to capture him?” roared the broadcast image of Dame Alice’s transatlantic ghost through the broad disc of the briefing dome’s spectroscope. “I should have your hides!”

  “I offer no excuses,” Jeremiah called out, dismissing with a sweep of her hand the senior staff of the Expedition arrayed around her: battered giant Lord Birmingham, portly behemoth master Commodore Philips, raven-haired Chartographer Ní Donnchadda—and the precognitive Twins, called to account for their predictions, but too young for Dame Alice’s authoritarian abuse. The young Chinese seers cowered at the edge of the dais, holding hands, mirror images except for gender, trembling within their elaborate dresses. But Jeremiah’s gesture paused the verbal assault, and the beam of Dame Alice’s ruby torch sparkled against the camera as she focused her attention entirely on Jeremiah. Mouth dry, Jeremiah said: “I take full responsibi
lity for this disaster.”

  And a disaster it had been. Before the glaring face in that dial, Jeremiah stood ramrod straight—but inside, she flinched, soul-sick: she’d spent years climbing to the top of the Eyrie, but her first outing as a Senior Expeditionary Commander had been a failure.

  Of course, Jeremiah knew things were going sour almost from the moment they missed their landing zone, but it wasn’t until her Expeditionaries were safely gathered under the glass dome of the Eyrie to lick their wounds that she had realized what a rout the mission had been.

  Meticulously planned. Lavishly resourced. Carefully negotiated. Swiftly executed. And a failure, a complete failure: they had caught neither Lord Christopherson, nor his stolen airship, nor his contraband egg, nor even wind of his actual plan.

  All they had to show for it was the demolished Conservatory, the outrage of its Preservation Committee, a diplomatic incident with Newfoundland, a stain on the Victoriana Defense League’s reputation—and two lapel pins, which had almost cost Jeremiah her hands.

  A right royal rout, on her head, and Jeremiah squirmed beneath the unearthly gaze of the woman who would hold her to account: Dame Alice Pleasance Hargreaves-Liddel, Grand Knight Defender of the Liberated Territories of Victoriana and First Lady of the Foreign Affairs Command. The transatlantic spectroscope greatly amplified the voice and stature of the willowy little crisp of a woman into near three meters of flaming terror in a wheelchair, glowering down at them with the red beam of a ruby cascade torch lancing out from where she was missing an eye. Over the other shoulder, the twin spheres of a centrifugal governor whirled, controlling the discharge of the rare earth canister which powered the relentless metronome beat of her heart. You couldn’t look at her and not know what she’d lost for the cause.

  But Dame Alice was not the only soldier who’d lost something—nor was she the only member of the Peerage willing to weigh in. By all accounts, Lord Charles William Birmingham, the second Baron Kaapstad, was a brilliant general, distinguished by his service in Africa helping the Boers and Zulus repel a Foreign Incursion of flying composite monsters that snipped parts out of their human victims like leafcutter ants. The man stood tall despite his mechanical arm, augmented knees, and ticking mechanical heart—and had the standing to go toe to toe with Dame Alice.

  “Disaster is too strong,” Lord Birmingham said, stomping up beside Jeremiah, straightening his white Falconry jacket with his good hand—and puffing up so his artificial heart clicked a little. “Yes, we lost both the Baron and his stolen airship, our nominal prizes. But Commander Willstone gathered valuable intelligence despite encountering far more resistance than expected. In fact, had she made contact mere minutes later, the blackguard might have escaped without a trace—”

  “An extraordinary achievement, I admit,” Dame Alice said. “To be frank, I’m surprised this expedition accomplished any of its objectives. Once Newfoundland held up our air support, I fully expected the Baron to escape—and the fact that you got close enough to make contact personally, Commander, is a testament to your already legendary abilities as a soldier.”

  “I—” Jeremiah began, then nodded. “Thank you, ma’am—”

  “What it is not,” Dame Alice said, roaring back to life, “is a testament to your judgment as a commander, judgment which I now strongly question! Never mind you risking yourself—this entire mission was a sequence of gambles! You’re lucky the Baron didn’t have his stolen airship on site—had it been on patrol with its Hertzian cloak engaged, it could have felled your entire ground assault force upon your first botched landing! Failing that, and assuming Newfoundland hadn’t shown their arses, how would you have caught him, with only one older-model airshark at your disposal? It shocks my conscience that you took responsibility for a mission with no chance of success!”

  Jeremiah blinked. Even with her safely contained on the Old Side of the Atlantic by the duties of the Peerage, Dame Alice’s wrath had been known to make grown women weep and strong men fall to their knees. But what really stung wasn’t Dame Alice’s skills with a verbal whip, but the knowledge the battle-scarred warrior never raised her voice without a good reason—and a mission most completely ballcocked was reason enough. But it wasn’t Jeremiah’s fault—or was it?

  “But, ma’am,” Jeremiah began, her voice unpleasantly petulant even her own ears, “recall, you rejected my request for a larger force—”

  “Questioned your request,” Dame Alice corrected, “questioned it on the grounds that my peers in the North Atlantic Command felt we should leave ready forces well distributed in case your bet went bad. I was frankly surprised you didn’t fight harder for a larger force, if you believed you had the right target. Clearly, you were right. I was frankly dumbfounded you thought you could accomplish it with what we gave you, but I had faith in your abilities. Clearly, I was wrong.”

  Jeremiah’s mouth opened slightly, then, again, she nodded.

  “You are a Senior Expeditionary Commander,” Dame Alice said. “We expect you to seize responsibility for your mission and provision it for its maximum success—or to balk if you believe your mission is predestined for failure! You are required to overcome challenges—even from your own chain of command! You must stick to your guns, Commander! It does the Liberated Territories no good if our commanders wave the white flag while still in the briefing room!”

  At the words white flag a quiet shockwave rippled out from the spectroscope dial, silencing everyone in the room, until the only sound in the dome was the chilly whistle of the wind against the glass. Even Dame Alice’s mouth fell open as she realized precisely what she’d said.

  “Understood, ma’am,” Jeremiah said crisply. Had the flinch hit her face? Hopefully not, but Dame Alice’s words still felt like a slap. “I shall take that to heart—”

  “Take it to heart?” Lord Birmingham, aghast. He turned to Dame Alice and raised a mechanical finger—and his voice came out like a growl. “Ma’am, that was completely—”

  “Out of line,” Dame Alice said. After that first tremor of her lip, she had composed herself; but had a quaver crept into her voice? No, it was just the automatic operation of her breathing apparatus. “Of course. Quite right. That was not meant to be, ah, personal, Commander—”

  “I find no fault in your analysis,” Jeremiah said, a notch quicker than she’d intended. Dame Alice, to her credit, had thrown up armor worthy of a medieval knight; Jeremiah, meeting that gaze human to mechanical eye, felt a growing stiffness in her spine like that metaphorical ramrod had been replaced with a real one. “And salient personal reminders certainly focus the mind.”

  “Focus the—by God!” Lord Birmingham snapped—and Dame Alice’s metal hand froze over the white rabbit in her lap. Jeremiah drew a breath as Lord Birmingham obliviously threw himself under the treads of an autobus. “We should be giving her a commendation, not—”

  “Lord Birmingham!” Dame Alice roared. “I do not know how the Allied Military Forces of the Republic of Transvaal operate, but in the Victoriana Defense League we do not commend failure. And as for you, knowing our ground troops had penetrated the very Airship Conservatory the Newfoundland authorities feared you would destroy, you fired on it—and them?”

  “I stand by my actions,” he said, taking off his monocle and polishing it. “Newfoundland’s authorities dragged their feet on granting our allegedly aligned forces clearance to enter their airspace and were suspiciously specific about avoiding damage to the Conservatory’s Crystal Hangar—”

  “Because it was a historic site,” Dame Alice growled. “A world renowned—”

  “Newfoundland is covered with historic sites. Why single that one out?” Lord Birmingham said. “Newfoundland’s Lord Bannerman in fact made it a point to deny the Conservatory had been infiltrated—then warned us off of it. That led me to suspect he was involved—a point which the Commander later corroborated personally—and d
isregarding his warnings led us directly to the Baron’s operation. Given the initial reports of stiff resistance, I preemptively fired on the hangar, hoping that the ZR-101 was cloaked within. I had no idea that Commander Willstone had penetrated so close to the heart of the affair so quickly. In retrospect, however, I should have known.”

  “Yes,” Dame Alice said, returning her gaze to Jeremiah. “You should have.”

  Jeremiah blinked as the strength of that compliment sank home: Dame Alice fully expected her to do what an entire Expedition could not. But Dame Alice’s cold gaze remained the same, and Jeremiah realized that acknowledging her skill was not the same as forgiving her failure.

  Ultimately, Jeremiah had been in charge—and had gambled that speed, rather than strength, was their greatest advantage. Perhaps she hadn’t known she could have squeezed more troops out of Dame Alice, but she’d known the Expedition had been left understaffed, and should have known to keep its forces together—using her connections to smooth the Falconry’s way into Newfoundland’s airspace, so they could mount a coordinated ground- ea-air assault.

  But in her ego, she’d let the Peerage’s impatience infect her, and had forged ahead with Patrick’s Rangers and Herbert-Draper’s Frogmen, leaving Birmingham and Natasha to fend for themselves while she charged straightaway into the jaws of danger, just like she always did. Only . . . this time her traditional gamble had not paid off, and she snatched away nothing at all—except the aforementioned lapel pins.

  “Thank you, lords and ladies,” Jeremiah said, “but surpassing expectations was clearly not enough to guarantee success. We returned with neither Lord Christopherson nor with the ZR-101. While I too stand by my actions, I also hold to my judgment and take full responsibility.”

  “Full responsibility for what, precisely?” Dame Alice asked. When Jeremiah did not respond, Dame Alice scowled, metal hand pausing, her burnt features crinkling up in a scowl. “We’ll fail again if we don’t understand the why, Commander Willstone. Why did you fail—”