by Kin S. Law
“Are you bloody thick? Run!” I screamed.
I was the first to react, but the pirates were quick on the uptake. They were well on their feet before the first thuds of the thing’s great flat feet crushed the masonry below to gravel. As I rounded a large, utilitarian concrete pillar, the thing’s massive hand closed around the support, crumbling it like a crisp, fresh biscuit.
“What the hell—?” Rosa called behind her, her voice becoming lost in the snap of gun shots.
Clemens had fired his Victoria at the abomination. From the little flashes of copper shattering into sparking bits off the monster’s dense, riveted chest plate, I guessed he had loaded copper jackets. Good; at least he was using proper munitions! But the bullets only left tiny scorch marks. The monster actually turned to regard us. I felt like a blundering copper in a penny dreadful, tickling a runaway gorilla. A trio of needle-like throwing knives blunted themselves against the monster’s armor, spinning away in stars. Rosa had thrown in, as well.
“Damn tough is what it is!” Clemens yelled, barely dodging an arm bulging with metal muscles as it careered into the side of a parked sedan engine. The gilt French chrome buckled like tinfoil beneath the force of each thick sausage finger.
“Captain!” I yelled.
I pulled my .22 Tranter and started pelting the abomination with rimfire cartridges. Gunsmoke filled the air. The clink of spent ammunition cut the din of the abomination pulling itself free of the engine. It bought Clemens time to reload, but I did not expect his copper jackets to do much good. I had intended him to pull out the Red Special once more. Perhaps he still felt conflicted over the first bullet? “Don’t you start, it will come after you instead!” Clemens yelled at me instead, firing once more. The stupid man!
Even under duress, I admired his grouping. A cluster of five shots dimpled around the knee joint, with the sixth in the breach. The bullets did not seem to faze the abomination. Even the dents were shallow, as if the armor were meteorite iron. But that last bullet caught in the breach, tripping up something inside. The creature lurched, pausing as the bullet was ground to dust. Taking that chance, we ran pell-mell away from it. I turned to give Clemens a look of admiration, but his face was such a misleading mask of panic that I do believe a bit of wee might have come out. To be honest, I felt much the same.
As we ran, the street started to explode seemingly at random. But I soon realized one of the Balaenopterons was firing upon this most heinous of Mordemere’s creations. Now a shell came winging in, with the odd whistling noise of something moving very fast. It detonated off the abomination’s torso, flooring it and gouging a ten-meter groove into the street.
It was barely five seconds before a metal hand came digging its way up from the shattered pavement. At that moment, I realized there was no stopping this monster.
“Captain, you must deliver one of Moore’s crystals into The Nidhogg’s Core. Steal aboard however you can. I will lure this abomination away from you!”
With a practiced kick, I propelled a bottle of spirits, likely dropped by a Russian soldier, into the abomination’s face. One well-placed shot later and the thing’s front became a horrid blossom of blue and orange flames.
“Not arguing. Going! Sneaking!” Clemens hollered, and ran.
Rosa
“There’s another cannon down,” I pointed out as we rounded a corner and came upon the wreckage of another six-meter iron barrel, lying halfway in the Moscow River.
Blair and Albion took point, and I followed closely behind. As we ran, I took stock of the knives at my sides. They had proven useless against the metal gargantuan behind us. Now, would they see me and Albion through to the end? The comforting weight of my cameo pressed against my breast. It was the only thing I had from a past I did not know. Now I hoped they would help us with Albion’s past, if Captain Sam should appear.
The sky was a slate gray, not much lighter than the blot of Mordemere’s cloud now fearsomely close. The color outlined the gargantuan shape, square panels, and slits of cannon ports of a Balaenopteron in the sky. Lightning rods, telegraph towers, and other oddments studded the keel and top deck, making it seem to bristle with steamcraft. Puffs of pressurized steam issued from it as the cannon fire left it with hard “whump” noises.
On the other side of the river the walls of the Kremlin stood as a cliff of red brick. Had they built a fortress tougher than the tons of steam-age airship hanging over it? What would happen if one fell on the other?
“Come on, there’s a bridge to the right,” Albion said.
Our remaining band of of pirates began a madcap dash toward an arch of steel flying over the placid water. The street ran right over it and into Red Square further north.
“Look! In the middle of the bridge,” Blair’s voice cut our progress short.
The figure standing in the middle of the steel span had the demeanor of someone who meant to be seen. He stood barring the way to anyone attempting to cross the river.
That was some cheek. Here the Russians were, firing on an enemy far away, when one of Mordemere’s soldiers stood patiently waiting not fifty yards from the prow of their flagship. There was no doubt he was Mordemere’s. The arrogant alchemist had plastered his mark over the man’s gear, the same one that had been sprayed on the hulking abomination. His initials were splayed across everything, as if they were trinkets at the port shop.
Surrounded by the unique blending of western fashion and near-east prominence that was Moscow, the figure was blatantly and startlingly Oriental. Yet, this strange person bore little of Albion about him. He wore wide trousers and robe embroidered with flame patterns, but that was the extent of his flamboyance. Strange wooden shoes adorned his feet–blocky, unlike Dutch footwear, elevating him two inches. His face was obscured behind a fearsome red grimace, a lacquered mask, tied with a thong. That was when I saw the handle of a sword tucked into the figure’s belt.
“Go,” I said. I stepped forward, a sheaf of thin knives like a fistful of glittering leaves in my hand. “You don’t want it said you brought a gun to a knife fight.”
“Fuck chivalry,” was Albion’s reply.
He raised Victoria and sent a bullet hurtling down the bridge.
Faster than the eye could follow, the figure suddenly had his sword out of the sheath. With a shock, I saw the blade had been broken about a third of its length from the guard. What I did not see was the instant the bullet shattered in a shower of sparks. Like sleight of hand, a magician’s trick.
“Go!” I repeated, and this time they went, skirting the strange swordsman by as wide a berth as they could.
The strange figure made no move to stop the two men from passing. I remained, standing very still before the masked man. Suddenly a lightning bolt cleaved the sky, lancing through the gray and striking a blazing streak across the Balaenopteron hovering over the Kremlin. The armor buckled and crackled, filling the air with a scent like of pennies on the tongue. Amazingly, the armor held, merely pitching the ship backwards. When I looked up, I discovered the darkness of The Nidhogg hovered nearly on top of the two of us on the bridge. A thunder of every airship in the sky firing at once into Mordemore’s cloud boomed overhead.
Mordemere’s soldier stood waiting, unmoving from his spot on the bridge. Whatever had driven him to working for this madman ripping his way across Europe, I couldn’t say. But the man I loved needed something past that bridge. So I would have to face this masked man, here and now.
“Let’s dance, gorgeous,” I said, and pitched myself into the first waltz.
Albion
The first Balaenopteron fell from the sky with a tragic suddenness, as if an island that had been charted for a hundred years was now sinking back into the sea. I half expected the slate sky to open up and swallow the ship.
A second Balaenopteron appeared from behind the first, this one emblazoned with the familiar lion and unicorn of the United Kingdom. It fired anchors into the first ship, pulling them taut to steady the tipping decks. A ra
mp extended across the breach and figures began crossing from the first ship into the second.
“They’ve abandoned her,” I said, slack-jawed. I pushed my goggles up to take in the scene. Victoria’s grip sat ready in my hand.
“It means Valima Mordemere will be upon us soon. We must find our way into the Kremlin!” Blair reminded me. As if I needed reminding. I knew I had to be on the surface of the place Mordemere intended to take. Otherwise, there wasn’t a hope of meeting Captain Sam.
Suddenly something exploded on the first massive Balaenopteron, but no bolt of lightning arched through the sky. It had been the other side, the one not facing the dread Nidhogg that had exploded in a spray of gasses and violently hurled debris.
“There,” I said.
As a pirate captain I had seen firearms often enough to determine the angle of attack. It took a moment of fumbling with the pocket-glass, but soon I found the shooter. It was coming from St. Basil’s Cathedral—or the Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed, after a local saint. Famous enough for me to know about, anyway. Like I had told Blair, pirates were a worldly and surprisingly well-read lot. This cathedral had captured my attention, in particular. Nine tall towers like nothing the Slavic peoples had ever built since, shaped to emulate a blazing fire.
One of its beautiful onion domes was now emitting little glints of light. After each one, an explosion occurred overhead, in the side of the Balaenopteron. The shooter was a hooded figure, about man size, but weighed down with some improbable weapon. It looked like a rifle the size of ships’ cannon, with a great beastly barrel and a glimmering copper scope. Through my pocket glass I could actually see the belt of ammunition feeding into the chamber. Each round must have been the size of a canned ham. Odd lumps scattered in the square just before the shooter, like currants in a red jam.
I passed the glass to Blair. “On the blue tower, the one that looks like blueberry cream gelato.”
“Gelato?” Blair parroted. “A clanker…but none we’ve ever seen. They are not so strong as to be able to lift a gun of that caliber,” Blair said.
“It might be something a lot like Jonah Moore,” I said. Something not quite human any more, I thought, but it seemed disrespectful.
Even as the words left my mouth, a long tongue of flame erupted from the Balaenopteron overhead, and the shooter stopped firing.
“Go! Run!” I hollered as vast slabs of melted ship armor began to rain down from overhead.
Even the smaller pieces proved a danger, loosened and hailing a tattoo against the hard pavement. They gouged little divots from the surface of the Square, powdering the more delicate decorations outright. Blair and I dove for cover just as the main portion of the debris fell with a cantankerous uproar. It cracked and dug into the ground, warped polygons of riveted steel and iron, and hung there, like portals to some giant’s castle. Then they fell, all at once, onto the red brick of the Kremlin, sealing the gate from the fortress beyond.
“No!” I groaned, watching the destruction from beneath the cover of my buccaneer coat.
Frustration vibrated through my every fiber. How would I sneak inside now? There went my hope of seeing my adoptive father again. No! He wasn’t my father. Not anymore. Just a moment of weakness, on my part, for thinking this way.
“Captain, we must move! The shooter could see us at any time!” Blair called.
I paused. The cumulus of debris around us settled with a plunking clatter. We hadn’t made it this far without a good dollop of sense between us. Perhaps we could still pull this off somehow. The two of us scrambled to our feet, racing towards the closest cover, a downed lorry. Even as we slipped and slid behind the thin sheaf of its metal chassis, the ground shook beneath us with the force of the clanker’s giant gun.
“Did he find us?”
“No, it was too far away,” I replied. My fingers were crossed, though.
The explosion had come from the opposite direction. I started. There was no ship there!
“Maybe one of the soldiers survived,” Blair cautioned, but we both knew what was rattling around in my brain. Captain Sam, was he close? Had he made it to Red Square and not the Kremlin yet?
“I’m going out there,” I declared.
“And I will cover you,” Blair said.
I shot a searching look much like an arclamp, trying to see into the paper man’s intentions Blair was shivering, not from the cold, and his hands shook around the little peashooter he had when I first met him. At least it was in his hand. But there was something about him now that wasn’t there before. It might have been a whiff of something like knackered steam valves and good pirate rum.
“Um…Don’t die…” I managed awkwardly.
Blair smiled. “Just go. The ladies are handling the real monsters. I think I can manage a man with a gun.”
24
Cezette Louissaint Has a Peculiar Dream
Cezette Louissaint was having a very peculiar dream.
In the dream, she walked through a strange city. She could tell it was a dream, because the city looked so much like Paris. Yet, it was not. There were oddments, little things out of place.
For one thing, Cezette had never seen any other cities. There was nothing for her consciousness to create into a tangible dreamscape, no paint with which to finger into these streets and kiosks.
It was far more likely, she thought, that the dragons on the roofs and the square undecorated buildings inserted between the Parisian beauty came from Maman’s books, or the fragments of schooling hanging together in Cezette’s mind. She was old enough to know the difference, though she had no words for some of the things here. Everything felt soft and cheap, like the imitation roses in Maman’s library. Everything seemed too low beneath her, as if she were astride some tall steed. Things fell to pieces when she touched them. Reality was made of sterner stuff.
Then there had been the man, the gray man, who had seemed so much like Papa. He had been tall, like Papa, and his hair had been gray. He had been nice, sometimes, and terrible other times. Cezette remembered him from the beginning of the dream.
“This is your garden, Cezette,” the Gray Man had told her. “Yours alone.”
“But there are things here,” she had protested. Her voice had sounded far away, as if it was coming back to her from a deep well. “Things I did not put here.”
“Then remove them,” the Gray Man had said. His voice was well-rounded, reasonable, and he could speak French.
“All right,” Cezette had agreed.
It did not seem too difficult. In the dream, it was all too easy to move things from her garden. She simply picked them up, and tossed them aside. Even the heaviest things seemed to fly from her fingers, impossibly high. Stranger still, she had felt the ground drop from beneath her, and suddenly reappear several seconds later. In her dreams she usually woke up when she began falling. Not only did the dream continue, there were others on this new ground, dark, sinister others. They made her dream shake and rumble until she decided to remove them too. Then they stopped.
Cezette found it odd the dream would be so long, and so varied in scenery. She even found herself having some fun, a feeling she had long forgotten. She had only ever had fun in Maman’s garden. The feeling was what made her certain she was dreaming, and this was Maman’s garden. There were pests in the garden, that was all. Until the woman appeared, Cezette had never seen someone with golden hair, except in books. Of course, in dreams, everything was possible. No matter, the woman did not belong in Maman’s garden. She would have to go, no matter how pretty her hair. A beautiful dandelion, yes, but Cezette feared if she let her stay, she would choke out Maman’s topiaries.
Except the dandelion was not so easy to move. Everything else fell apart at Cezette’s touch. The gold woman would not be touched. In a way, it made a strange sort of sense. To Cezette’s mind, there existed untouchable things. Her Paris, for example, had always stayed behind the rippled glass of her window. She had never placed a single finger on it.
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sp; But she had. When was that? The thought there were no topiaries drifted through her mind, looking for a bell to ring. It did not find one. The thought slid away, incomplete. No matter. The dandelion was not so resilient as Cezette first thought. Her littlest finger felt one the dandelion’s petals, so evasive, but so fragile to the touch. It would not be long now before the weed could be plucked.
But what was this? The dream was changing. The scenery was not the same. Was there ever a river running through Paris? Yes, of course, Cezette had read it in a book. But she had never seen it. She had never seen the banks of the river flanked by a red, red wall. She had never seen the stone slabs lining the river, so well ordered, as if death were a commonplace thing. What had her books called it? Yes, a necropolis. The word struck a chord somewhere, like an alarm.
Why would there be such a thing, in her Paris? Maman loved living things. She would not allow such a place in her garden. To think, a city of the dead in the city of lights. The word “necropolis” struck a feeling of morbidity in her she found alien and unpleasant. French could make even a field of graves sound romantic. Why was it she felt sickened and deprived instead? The streets were bleak, undecorated. The weeds looked helpless and sad. Was this really a dream? Or was it some nightmare from which she could not wake?
Cezette slowed. The dandelion started to slip from her grasp once more, and she let it. It did not matter. She looked around, at her dream, and found she could see whatever she wished. But there were no smells, no feeling of touch. There ought to have been a sound. At least the wind should have whispered on her skin, the moist sprinkle of the river should have caressed her. Cezette saw dry, brittle fingers on the snow-laden trees, but she felt warm, steamy even.