Ha!Ha!Ha!

by Steve Beaulieu

  Uriah figured Delilah had some kind of timer in her heart, which shut off her access to the power supply once the twenty-four hours were up. This made her ultimately dependent on Atomico. Like everyone else who lived in his mountain.

  More and more people fell in around the couple, an ever-growing crowd headed to the aerodrome to either participate in or help launch the upcoming raid.

  They exited the mouth of the tunnel and stepped into the sunlight of the aerodrome. A half-mile of mountaintop flattened by a steam-powered dragon of a digging machine. (Designed by Professor Atomico, of course.)

  Dozens of people scurried about, tending four airships moored to steel anchors. The soldiers boarding the first three massive craft wore traditional uniforms, their waistcoats still the brilliant scarlet color of Atomico’s old allegiance, back when he was known as Professor David Henstridge, a subject of the English king. Since adopting the moniker of Professor Atomico, he had added a black eagle across the backs of the King’s scarlet tunics.

  Atomico himself stood on an elevated dais, watching over the pre-raid work. With his long black overcoat and muttonchops shot through with gray, the old Brit looked like the proprietor of a Dickens orphanage. He saw Delilah and waved her up. She always stood with him to see the troops off.

  Delilah squeezed Uriah’s hand and started to leave. “Good luck, Uriah. I’ll see you soon.”

  On impulse, Uriah held onto her hand. “Wait.”

  “What is it?” She cocked her head to one side, as she always did when processing something new.

  Uriah couldn’t speak. Raised to maim and slaughter, capture and destroy, he felt something delicate here, something he feared his words would shatter. Instead, he reached out and touched her smooth cheek. Warm, which meant she’d been awake for a while. He hoped she’d still be awake when he returned. If he returned.

  “Tell me. Please,” Delilah said.

  “I... don’t know, I guess. Just—“ He gave her a fleeting kiss on the cheek and scampered away like an embarrassed little boy. He thought he saw a slight smile on Atomico’s hawkish face, but a steam wagon carrying the seven other soldiers in Uriah’s unit chuffed past, blocking his view.

  Wearing oddly shaded uniforms like his, his compatriots all jeered when Uriah broke into a full sprint, trying to catch the transport wagon. The driver heard the jeers and opened his throttle all the way. The wagon rumbled past shocked onlookers, careening toward the far end of the aerodrome field.

  From the back running board, Herod and Jezebel, brother and sister, didn’t reach out to help. Instead, they saluted with their middle fingers. The siblings resented the special status the Professor gave Uriah, and let him know it at every turn.

  Digging deep, Uriah sprinted faster. His fingers stretched for the back rail of the shiny wagon. The others groaned in disappointment when he hauled himself onto the running board. Uriah smiled in Herod’s stupid face. He had the same round baby-fat cheeks as his sister, but her mustache was a bit thicker.

  “Ahoy, Jezebel. Oops, sorry Herod, I mistook you for your sister,” Uriah said.

  “Piss off, Uriah,” Herod said.

  Uriah felt a jab of pain in his kidney as Jezebel punched him from behind. He faced her and smiled. Then he shoved her off the wagon. She tumbled to a stop at the bottom of their airship’s loading ramp, her hair full of grass and dirt.

  The wagon braked and everyone stepped down, all the boys chuckling at Jez.

  She came at Uriah in a rage. “You bastard! I’ll rip yer farkin’ balls off!”

  Jezebel stopped short when Uriah rested a hand on his war hammer. He had long ago stopped trying to be cordial with them, and Atomico ignored his complaints about the nasty infighting and jealousy. As long as he got what he needed from them, the Professor apparently didn’t care if they cut each other’s throats during their downtime.

  “Attention!”

  Uriah and his fellow soldiers froze in place. Years of speaking across a training quad had given Sifu Li’s voice a timber of command like no other. The Chinese combat instructor looked like a mighty oak tree had somehow been dehydrated and condensed into a wiry little man.

  Sifu Li strode in among them, the simple black cotton of his pants and shirt looking out of place among their special uniforms. His bare feet accepted grass and rock alike with indifference and the passive look on his face never changed.

  “As our master is a genius, so is the man who leads our enemies—Erlichman. He has designed weapons of destruction and placed them in the hands of highly trained men and women, just as Professor Atomico has done with us,” Sifu Li said.

  He stopped in front of Uriah but spoke to everyone. “What will make the difference then? Only the warrior whose spirit is pure and whose mind is clear will succeed. Do not go forth with anything other than combat on your mind or you will not survive.”

  Sifu Li snapped a back-fist strike—Uriah’s arm flicked up like a rattlesnake and blocked the blow. Sifu Li locked eyes with him, then nodded and walked away.

  The mood thoroughly dampened, Uriah and his squad boarded the smallest airship in Atomico’s armada, the Black Mariah. A shark to the three whales moored next to her, she was designed to insert Uriah and his fellow specialists into tightly guarded areas. And this mission would be her greatest test.

  The Colonial Union was still knee-deep in financial shit from their twenty-year War of Independence, but they were recovering fast. And when they did, they’d take a long, hard look at “Sovereign Colorado.” The Union had airships and cannons, too. Lots of them.

  But if Uriah’s team retrieved what they were after tonight, not even the victorious Colonial Union would be able to stand in Atomico’s way.

  The steady chug of the Black Mariah’s steam engines mixed with the thrum of the bigger ships. They lifted off together and Professor Atomico’s fighting force headed out, looking for blood. Well, not quite. Blood would be a by-product of what they were really looking for.

  From his window, Uriah saw Delilah and Atomico on the dais. He knew in his heart the Professor made her only to control him, but he still couldn’t take his eyes off her. She waved, and his hand rose in response.

  Do not go forth with anything other than combat on your mind, or you will not survive.

  Uriah crushed his feelings down and sat in a sling seat against the bulkhead. He closed his eyes, inhaled the smell of oil from his rifle, and waited to jump.

  • • •

  As he always did before a battle, Professor Atomico calculated his likely losses. He watched his little armada climb into the clouds and figured this one would cost him at least one airship and thirty-percent of his troops.

  His sharp mind pictured the battle as if it were flickering on a kinetoscope right before his eyes. Most likely, Dauntless would go down early, since her task was to maneuver close and blow down the front walls of Erlichman’s fort. It did upset Atomico to lose Dauntless, seeing as how she held his best crew of gunners. Stafford, his batman from Britain, manned the most important gun himself. His gun was not aimed at the front of the fort, but at a crucial target to aid the insertion of Uriah’s team.

  Emotional responses were not Atomico’s forte, having had them soundly beaten out of him as a boy at Oakham. Still, Stafford had been with him for better than forty years, since they were both youngsters serving at His Majesty’s pleasure. He would be missed.

  When Uriah brought back his prize and Atomico ruled this upstart country, he would name his largest county after Stafford. He roused himself from his thoughts and found Delilah staring at him, waiting patiently. Her silver-bell voice said, “Have you finished your calculations?”

  Ah, how had he created her? Even his ego couldn’t claim he created a machine that knew him so well. She had grown into... her own woman.

  “I have,” he said.

  “How many will come back?”

  “How many do you care about?”

  She cocked her head, processing what passed for her thoughts.


  The thump of the massive airship engines had long since faded, so Professor Atomico heard the scuffling shoes skid to a stop below his dais. He heard the breathless man waiting to be acknowledged, but he didn’t look down. His people knew better than to interrupt him when he was having a conversation. He waited for Delilah to arrive at her conclusion.

  “I suppose I care about all of them. They are people and I should care for them.”

  “Should you?” Atomico arched an eyebrow at her. “It’s not as if they’ve ever done anything for you. And there is nothing wrong with admitting what you really want to know. Whether or not Uriah is likely to come back.”

  Oddly, she laughed. She was truly the only person around here who surprised him.

  “Have I said something amusing?” he said.

  “I suppose you did. Something made me laugh. How do you know me so well, Father?” Delilah said.

  Professor Atomico pushed a stray lock of jet-black hair back from her face. Real, grown in long ponytails by Chinese women solely to be cut and hand-punched into Delilah’s head.

  “Well, I did create you, after all.”

  A gentle clearing of a throat from below told him something was drastically wrong. Otherwise, the sweating young man wearing a red laboratory smock would wait in silence for hours if necessary.

  “What’s wrong?” Atomico said.

  The young man looked embarrassed and frightened at the same time. “We, uh, we lost a walking machine. It was a torpedo man, sir. It was armed in preparations for tomorrow’s test. There were casualties.”

  One hazard of creating walking machines designed to carry out autonomous missions was they sometimes “thought” too damn much. Occasionally, the circuitry blocking off their internal power source while in storage would fail and one would wake up and stroll out of the storage area. On the rarest occasions, one made it out of the mountain.

  Atomico sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. The young man paled. That personal tic often preceded a man facing a firing squad. Or worse.

  “Where?”

  “The machine made it all the way to the trading post in the pass. Sir, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, I mean, please don’t...”

  “Damn it, man, I’ve no time for your pleading. Tell me what happened,” Atomico said.

  “The trading post was leveled—along with thirty feet of forest in a circle around it.”

  The effect on Atomico surprised everyone. He let out a whoop and waltzed Delilah around the dais. He bowed and kissed her hand. “My dear, I shall see you this evening.”

  He hurried off the dais and grabbed the young lab assistant by the sleeve. “Put together a team of wagons and goods. I want a new trading post built immediately to keep the people in the area supplied.”

  “Sir?”

  “People with full bellies ask fewer questions. If anyone does ask, tell them raiders from the Warrior Brotherhood attacked the trading post with cannons.”

  As they hurried away from the aerodrome, Atomico heard Delilah’s musical voice.

  “Father?” she said.

  He turned, annoyed his whirling mind had to be taken away from the implications of the blast radius of his new weapon. “Yes, yes? What is it, girl?”

  “You didn’t answer the question you said I really wanted to ask.”

  Tripping over images of bombs, guns, and the layout of his new empire, Atomico went back over their conversation.

  “Oh, about the odds of Uriah’s survival? I shouldn’t worry, old girl; if one thing in this world is true, it is that Uriah will always come back for you.”

  • • •

  Turbulence rocked the Black Mariah and Uriah’s stomach flip-flopped. Luckily, he’d only eaten toast with honey and some almonds to keep his energy up. Darkness had overtaken them in the hour since they left, but his squad stood out in the glow from the instrument panels. He gave them the once-over to gauge their readiness.

  Jezebel and Herod had obviously eaten light meals as well. Even though they both looked green, neither had thrown up.

  Nelson stood at a window, gulping cold air and dry-retching, having long ago emptied his stomach. Twitchy to begin with, Nelson hated to fly and would shake for hours afterward.

  George and Edward gazed out a window together, picking out constellations above. George, tall and thin. Edward, short and stocky. They were inseparable, always together. There were some in the mountain fortress who shunned George and Edward for their sexuality, but Uriah didn’t give a damn who they slept with; they were two of the best soldiers he’d ever known, preferring to work together with Professor Atomico’s marvelous repeating shotguns.

  Tennyson snored in his seat as usual, and Horatio stood near the front windows, his sniper rifle hanging off one shoulder.

  Uriah felt the deck tilt as the formation of airships dropped to their assault altitude.

  “Gear check. Let’s get ready,” Uriah said.

  Everyone set about prepping jump packs for war. Using the silk apparatus called “The Atomico Flying Wing,” they would jump at low altitude and glide onto the top of Erlichman’s massive hideaway. Designed on a Difference Engine called Maschine Gehirn, the fort was a three-story wonder of stone, wood, and iron. Masterful spying, subtle threats, and not-so-subtle torture had bought Atomico’s killers a rough layout of the fort’s interior. They hoped.

  Uriah strapped his rifle across his chest and stood at the jump door. He looked ahead in the darkness, hearing only the whump-whump-whump of the Black Mariah’s engines...

  BOOM. It started with a single ranging shot from one of Victoria’s repeating eighteen-pounders. The impact lit up the front of Erlichman’s fortress. All three stories of the fort belched fire to answer Victoria, and the bloody night began in earnest.

  Britannia joined the fray, helping Victoria spew bloody hell into the teeth of Erlichman’s defenses as Dauntless peeled away for her broadside run.

  The Black Mariah dove and circled east of their target.

  The rumble and thump of cannon fire echoed like thunder through the mountains and the night sky lit up like sunrise. Uriah saw the round parachutes of Atomico’s main force. They fell in the firelight like red and black ashes, little sparks of light coming from their guns as they tried to live long enough to hit the ground. Atomico would spend dozens of lives tonight to maintain the appearance of the frontal attack. Maybe the life of every man in his main force.

  A sharp pinch on his ass made Uriah jump. Jez breathed garlic in his face. “Wassamatter, golden boy, you nervous?”

  “You ever wonder why Atomico named you after a whore?” Uriah said.

  Before Jez could respond, a massive gun atop Erlichman’s fort went off.

  Ka-whoom! The whirring sound of a colossal shell ripped through the sky, narrowly missing Britannia.

  “Mother of God,” Tennyson whispered. “That thing could fire a bathtub for a shell.”

  Fires from explosive shells burned everywhere now, on the fort and in the surrounding forest. Even from this distance they saw the gunners loading another deadly round into the enormous cannon. A ponderous thing to load and aim, the massive gun was at a disadvantage against the mobile airships. Uriah saw one target they’d be able to hit, though.

  Dauntless began her broadside run with Stafford’s lonely gunner nest dangling below her gondola. Uriah hated to lose the crazy old Brit. Stafford had always been good to him, the way an uncle who likes to tip a pint is good to his favorite nephew, all drunken jolly humor and manly punches in the arm.

  The display of firepower from the grand old airship Dauntless was something survivors would tell their grandchildren about. Double rows of repeating cannons installed just for this mission ripped open the front of Erlichman’s fort in a violent display of Professor Atomico’s new explosives. Men and equipment fell from the second and third floors to lay in twisted, bleeding heaps in front of the fort.

  The single report from Stafford’s gun went unnoticed by everyone during all this. E
veryone except Uriah. He saw the muzzle flash but didn’t follow the shell. The old Brit had an eye like a Kentucky rifleman. The hole in the roof would be there when Uriah’s team arrived.

  Even as the big gun on Erlichman’s fort swiveled toward Dauntless, Uriah kept his eyes on Stafford’s gunner cradle. Many a time Uriah thought he would die in a battle, and he knew how lonely it felt in those moments, wondering if anyone would know or care he was gone. In his time of sacrifice, Stafford would have a witness to say he was there, and he fought bravely.

  Stafford’s sacrifice was not long in coming. Dauntless had flown so near to the fort, the boom of Erlichman’s big gun and the flare of the gas chambers aboard Dauntless were near simultaneous.

  She fell. Simply and without ceremony, taking eighty men with her.

  Uriah watched until the burning hulk above it obliterated the tiny speck of Stafford’s cradle. Then he turned, yanked open the jump door, and fell into the night.

  For one fragile second, he hung above the popping and screaming sounds of the battle below. His gliding wing snapped open and he soared into the fight from a dark place the defenders weren’t expecting.

  Uriah flinched as something fell past him, dangerously close enough to snag his lines. A failed chute. Twisting, turning, but never screaming, Nelson fell silently into the fires raging beside Erlichman’s fort, his fear of flying ultimately vindicated.

  In the next moment, the roof was rushing up at him and Uriah heaved on his lines, flaring his glide wing. His boots slammed into the roof and he rolled, taking the force out of the impact. He detached his chute pack and went to work with his rifle. The rooftop gun crews finally realized they had company. Far too late, of course.

  As his team landed around him, Uriah’s repeating rifle spewed death across the burning rooftop. Before anyone else could even ready their weapons, eight men lay dead.