by Kin S. Law
“And the crystal shards?” Rosa asked.
“Take the Mickey out of the big reveal, why don’t you?” Tanner griped, as was his wont.
He crossed to Jonah Moore’s inert body. Carefully, with some kind of multiple-use tool in his overalls, he separated the metallic mesh from the India rubber seal connecting it to Moore’s flesh. Inside coiled the heartspring like an immensely complicated snail. After a moment of fumbling with the delicate instruments, Cid’s deft fingers extracted a cone of devilishly entangled cogs, cams, and tensile springs. He chucked this aside, leaving a space in the abdomen. Cid consulted the schematic once more. He sketched roughly with the charcoal from the writing desk, marking little notes on the body’s analogue to ribs. Then Cid ruffled his beard, and thumped Moore’s chest once, hard. Moore’s eyelids fluttered.
“The fuck, man?”
“Have you no respect for the dead?”
“Give it a moment, whippersnappers,” Cid grumbled.
Deep in Moore’s chest, a whirring sound began. Something slid out into the strangely empty abdominal cavity. It looked like a little round ball of shiny metal, dripping with clear goop. Cid turned a screwdriver into the side, and it suddenly sprung open, spitting something out as it did. Everyone took cover, except for Cid.
“Would you look at that? Bloody brilliant, this Mordemere is,” Cid gaped, awestruck.
I and everyone else managed to emerge from behind desks and under bunks.
Floating just above the open ball, overflowing with a thick viscous liquid, were three tiny gems like purest sapphires. I could not stop staring at them. They hung just above the goo, in perfect synchronization with each other like they were set there by a jeweler. Each one was a long diamond shape, and the color of twilight.
“They’re gorgeous,” Rosa emitted.
Suddenly, the gems spun in midair, orienting on Rosa.
“Careful. They’re aeon, which means they react to emotions,” Cid reminded. “I’m surprised they’re not reacting more, with The ’Berry’s pipes so close. Best let me have them; I’ll stabilize them for you to use.”
Cid Tanner collected them into the ball again, using a cloth from the bunk to wrap it in. Albion gave him a long, meaningful look. Cid gave the barest nod, and then he was gone, leaving everyone else in the room with the hollowed-out Jonah Moore.
“Here we consign the esteemed Jonah Moore to the flame. May he find peace in the skies,” I finished reciting from the entrance to the boiler room. It was a captain’s duty, and I read the funeral rites religiously as set forth by Captains Alan, Neil, and Adams. The Book of the Sky was a contradictory document, but it was one no airman flew without. Some things were beyond belief, beyond question.
Cockney Alex and Elric Blair grabbed the handles of the metal cot as respectfully as they could, and slid Moore’s covered body into the enormous maw. Moore’s pallbearers backed away, the grate was closed, and Cid turned up the furnace, spreading Moore’s ashes across Eastern Europe. We did not worry about any of the strange components Mordemere had placed into Moore’s body. Cid had carefully removed them beforehand, and they sat hidden somewhere in his crowded, well-organized engine room.
“Now is as good a time as any,” I said to the gathered crew aboard. “Please, any of you who would like to have a say in this, join me on the bridge.”
As it turned out, everyone had a say, and they trooped through the guts of The ’Berry like a particularly good chili.
“All right, all right. Let’s not all jabber at once. Let me have it,” I said, once they were comfortably seated all about the bridge. The ’Berry hadn’t been built for so many pilots, so the menfolk leaned on the bulkheads. “Auntie, you’re the senior member of Captain Sam’s old crew. You first.”
“I ain’t a spring chicken, but the s-word could have you eating stale grits for a month, young man,” Auntie answered in her patented Jersey color.
Almost everyone was in favor of going. Captain Samuel’s old crew wanted to help him, out of loyalty, or a sense of missing out on the action. I wasn’t quite sure how to take this sudden display of affection. For one, they had known the captain longer than me. For another…
“I am against it,” Inspector Hargreaves spoke up, in the middle of one of Cid’s recollections. This one was about how he and Captain Sam had evaded the Imperial Canton, whilst smuggling half a ton of dragonwell out of their military controlled ports.
“Why?” Rosa asked. “It is in your interests to see this madman stopped. Mordemere did sell arms to the Ottomans.”
“Yes, of course,” Hargreaves acknowledged. “But we could turn towards finding Captain Samuel, instead of diving right into danger like idiots.”
“And retrieve the guidance crystal for Queen and Country in the process,” I pointed out.
“I make no claims to the contrary,” Hargreaves answered. Her lips were pressed into a line. “But I also believe it to be in the best interest of this crew. Reports of The Nidhogg show an incredible amount of firepower. Anything less than the Knights of the Round would stand little chance.”
“We’re not Balaenopteron-class, but that fact might give us an advantage,” Cid cut in. “The specs show The Nidhogg prepared for a large-scale assault, and not a small raiding party. We could land on one of the captured landmarks, say, Westminster, and infiltrate through the supporting gantries.”
“It would be good to see Big Ben again,” Hargreaves admitted. “But my feelings do not factor in here. Please do not appeal to them again.”
“Good old Yard training,” I said now, turning everyone in my direction. “Listen, Hargreaves, we’re pirates. Feeling is most of who we are. We do what we think is right.”
“Be that as it may—”
“Besides,” I spoke over her. I waited a moment, until the Inspector gave a little nod of assent. “Besides, it won’t stop Mordemere’s ship or return Westminster. It might take too long to capture Captain Sam. He’s hidden from me for long enough. Here we know where he’s going to be. Mordemere is going to catch him sooner or later. Now, if I were the captain, I wouldn’t be happy sitting around, waiting for the gator to bite off my legs. No, I would go on the offensive. I’d bet you anything the captain will be on The Nidhogg somewhere, waiting for his chance to get rid of Mordemere once and for all.”
“The best chance is to wait on the last landmark, and ride it aboard when Mordemere steals it,” Blair said.
“So that is what we should do. We take the crystal shards and as much hardware as we can bring, and ride the landmark aboard. The ’Berry can keep close, as backup and our escape plan. So long as we don’t fire at The Nidhogg, she should escape notice,” I finished. I looked toward the Inspector. “That sound like a plan to you?”
Inspector Vanessa Hargreaves had a mixture of feelings on her face, primarily frustration. In the end, she gave a little harrumph, and nodded.
“Of course, you are welcome to steal the guidance crystal,” I added. “If you’re pirate enough.”
23
The Spy Who Loved Laudanum
Hargreaves
The ’Berry hid out over the Khoroshevkiy raion—or district—just below the Baba Yaga, one of the Kremlin’s Balaenopteron-class airships. Moscow spread out underneath her, a gray carpet interspersed with sudden Parisian architecture. Bright onions poked out of it in places, the domes of cathedrals in all colors like boiled sweets. I had found a cold, windy observation deck at the stern of The ’Berry, and now I clutched my new fuzzy hat tight over my blonde hair.
“Oh, Hargreaves,” I said to myself. “What have you gotten yourself into?”
By keeping The ’Berry in my shadow I knew Captain Clemens was hoping to stay out of sight as long as possible, to both the gathered navies and Mordemere himself. But as an Inspector for Scotland Yard, and a reluctant secret-keeper for the Queen of the Pax Brittania, hiding struck me as a touch cowardly. It was a feeling I had been having for quite a while, since I struck the bargain with Albion Clemens.
At present, the amateur detective was stationed as a telegraph officer in Her Majesty’s private service. It would have been easy to arrange even without Her Majesty’s assistance. Arturo was a master of disguise, though I would never admit it to his face. He had been feeding me orders secretly from the Queen herself. In return, I had been giving regular missives to keep Her Majesty abreast of the situation. I had been loathe to introduce Her Majesty to Arturo, and could just imagine him slipping clandestine suggestions to the Queen at tea time.
Now, on the viewing deck, I took out the codex from my pocket. It was the size and shape of a snuffbox, easily disguised as one. Like a child’s clockwork puzzle, it opened to reveal a tiny crank and a switch to go from sending to receiving. Even this was a disguise, for if a particular nodule was not turned, it was only possible to receive the regular ether signals used by the British military on a regular basis. Properly tuned, it was an absolutely secure communications device.
Now, I tuned the codex properly and spoke into it, business-like, from a prearranged script in my mind. My regular missive to Arturo C. Adler included updates of my position and all the information I had discovered since the last message. I could have told Captain Clemens to keep under one of the Knights of the Round. I had of course informed the Queen of their plan to infiltrate The Nidhogg, and the Knights would take little notice of us. In fact, they would protect us. That would spoil my undercover operation and alert Captain Clemens to my deception as easily as if I told him myself. My words now would go to a private gramophone record that Arturo checked on a regular basis.
Once the report was given, I toggled the switch to receiving, careful to check that nobody was on the deck with me. The codex tapped into a gramophone record that sent Arturo’s information to me at a prearranged interval each day. It served me a sandwich of information, bracketed with Her Majesty’s orders. The filling could be anything from raw accounts to telegraph intercepts. Arturo usually gave me only what I needed. I wouldn’t miss orders even if I didn’t get every bite of sound.
This time, however, the codex coughed as soon as I hit the receive toggle. The server crackled into life through the copper mesh, and suddenly I was listening to Her Majesty speak.
“I have every confidence in our alliance’s victory…” Her Majesty was saying. Alliance? What alliance? I listened to the message play through, then again before the sandwich was completely served. It took me three repeats before my Yard-trained ears could figure out what I was listening to. As far as I could tell, it was this:
At military bases all over Russia, prime ministers, lords, and other persons of import had assembled. I imagined groups of furtive leaders in concrete bunkers studded with Howitzers, their perimeters flanked by Balaenopteron-class carriers flying all the colors of Europe. “Are we sure it’s the Kremlin?” The Tsar of Russia asked. This seemed to be the first vocalization, the start of the gramophone playback. In the background, a couple of aides chattered in Russian. He had just come from the opera, at the news of the Cataclysm’s movements. Probably dressed to the nines, from the rustling of silk. Parisian fashions? “We have news it was a British alchemist responsible for this calamity. We cannot ignore the possibility of an attempt by the Britons to invade the Motherland.”
There was a moment while technicians decoded the telegraphed wobble of missives into audible sound. I listened intently.
By military necessity, agreed upon in a joint meeting of five nations’ military, each nation’s leaders were segregated into their own protected locations. The Swiss Guard was also in attendance, receiving their messages aboard a Revenant-class airship hovering somewhere over neutral Poland. The Tsar’s aristocratic voice boomed out, nearly simultaneously, through tubes in all six of these sparking machines. It made a distinct doppelganger effect in the codex’s record playback.
“Based on the information provided by my Minister of Sciences,” Queen Victoria III’s reply thundered into the Tsar’s telegraph chamber a moment later. It was no less imposing, given my young Queen’s rather sonorous voice. “The Cataclysm’s path crosses over Moscow. My agents in the field inform me it will try to collect another major symbol of Europe. The Kremlin lies in nearly the center of Moscow, and if he follows the same modus operandi, it is an irresistible target. Valima Mordemere is a traitor to the British Empire, and will be summarily executed upon his capture. We have proof his current leverage was procured through the sale of arms to our mutual enemies.”
“Are we coordinated in the air and ground, Tsar Nikolai?” The French Premier, a repulsive man with a thick, phlegm-filled voice, came on.
He was named Des Flandres, I recalled, and he asked out of turn.
The telegraph operators had to separate his signal from Victoria III’s, a tedious process that warbled through the line. In a moment, the rest of the British Queen’s message was played, but it was only an echo of the Premier’s sentiment.
“Yes, we are prepared,” the Tsar answered. “I regret only four of the Pax Brittania’s Knights of the Round are available, but they have been incorporated into the formation with our four Balaenopteron-class. I will be aboard The Vasillisa, and will command the theater myself.” That was an obvious jibe to the Queen, yet Tsar Nikolai Koshchey was only commander in name. His general Karelin would handle the actual battle, and the general spoke up now.
“The infantry and engine corps will be stationed according to the accompanying document, which your technicians should be receiving now,” said Karelin, in a brisk clip. My Russian was not fabulously adept, but I approved of the man immediately.
Thoughts raced through my head as I listened to the war meeting. It was a delicate situation. Dirigible combat was largely a field with no precedent. More importantly, the distribution of troops from all five countries had to be roughly equal. Russia was too close to the Ottomans for Nikolai to botch this operation, politically or militarily. He had to be perceived as a fair, unbiased field commander, a title granted only because the battle was to be over his own country. Technically, with pieces of sovereign land conceivably hanging over the Kremlin, his partner nations had every right to assert themselves. If he had it his way, Moscow would handle the entire affair.
To make matters worse, the Cataclysm was no ordinary enemy.
The Queen seemed not to notice, or, more likely, ignored the jibe. Her answer was immediate and shocking. “I will also be in attendance aboard The Gwain,” Queen Victoria III said. “I have every confidence in our alliance’s victory.”
In a moment, every other nation agreed. They would all send representatives, and in the French Premier’s case, he would be coming as well.
“Pizdets!” I heard somebody curse, well in the background. Pizdets was right. The Tsar could hardly back out of this one, could he?
“Acknowledged. We welcome you to Russia,” said Karelin.
That seemed to be the end of it. The Queen’s orders were brief, simply ordering me to go ahead. Arturo read them with a slightly bored lilt to his voice. But at the end, he added in his toff’s candid manner, “And I will be attending as a scope master aboard The Gwain. Captain Leeds sends his regards. Ciao.” Then he read off a series of numbers, frequencies for a live ether channel. We would be able to speak directly once he was here.
“You twat!” I said pleasantly into the wind. Arturo was coming here, was he? Well, that would make our movements just a little easier. And I would enjoy sniping with the detective. It would be a nice thing to hear, no matter what happened.
The next day, the same day the European airships were due to converge on Moscow, I regrouped with Captain Clemens and his crew just before our operation began. The bridge was bustling with activity, b
ut everyone was quiet. Sober, perhaps, after Jonah Moore’s revelation. I looked out the window, and saw Europe’s greatest warships covering the horizon.
“That’s The Gwain, over there, the one with the maiden figurehead,” I pointed out to the pirate crew. I was obligated to. If I had pretended not to notice, they would have figured me out right away. “Mordemere doesn’t look like he’s about to give up, does he?” I continued, pointing at the ominous mass of clouds hanging over the city. My practical voice was like a spark, setting off ball lightning. We were leaving the protection of the ship overhead now, but we blended in with the eclectic mix of architecture below.
Everyone suddenly had something to say, from pointing out the imposing walls of the Kremlin below, to admiration of the impregnable Russian Balaenopterons circling the city. They were impressive, at that, certainly appearing able to take on the dark blot of The Nidhogg on the southeast part of the sky. I admired the dense, square profiles, built to last.
“Shut up, all of you. Their ships carry ear scopes. Even with all the chatter from five different navies in the sky, a keen midshipman can still catch a pirate boat,” Clemens whinged. He looked about. “All right, this is close enough. It looks like the Balaenopterons are securing the perimeter, and we’re past the military cordon on the ground. We should be able to sneak in from here,” he finished.
“Agreed,” Blair said.
“Roger,” I weighed in.
The sort of antsy tension I always got just before a mission was settling in. I remembered why I had agreed to become the Queen’s hands and legs, now. When all the detecting was done, there had never been any closure until I could kick down a couple of doors, or put a bullet in a criminal’s kneecap. I think, probably, I had grown weary of watching the impotent actors on the world stage.
“Let’s party, gorgeous!” said Rosa, shaking me out of my reverie.
“Hold on a moment there,” Cid Tanner interrupted. The old codger had suddenly appeared on the bridge, startling everyone. I was most surprised of all. Even with my training, the pirate had snuck past me? Inconceivable!