Lands Beyond Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by Kin S. Law

  Pain! Oh, accursed pain. Pain screamed through his body like it had when he was a boy undergoing his father’s treatments. Part of him, the alchemist part, was stunned; an aeon reaction that drew moisture from the air, and forced it at an enemy. Most impressive.

  Hallow lashed out with one of the wands at Grimaldi’s disposal to crush the bluff the pirate stood on. He imagined it would be like one of San Francisco’s famed earthquakes on that cliff now, the earth losing its cohesion, dumping them into the sea.

  “Now, where were we?” said Hallow, his voice rumbling out from the Grimaldi’s seat of power. “Ah, yes. Mr. Anderson. So there’s the potential of the automata. Shall we see what the train’s cannons will do? I have a hankering to do in some pirate scum.”

  Down below, Albion gawped at the enormous white shape coming to crush them out of existence, and he dropped the round he had been trying to load into the Red Special.

  “Clemens! Buck up!”

  Hargreaves pushed him over the edge of the bluff, near a decorative gazebo perched on the edge of the grounds. The grass of the cabaret ran right over the edge of the rocks, with hardly a barrier to keep one from falling over the edge. Now Hargreaves did it on purpose, and just in time too. The ground roiled, like an upset table with them on it, and the gazebo tumbled away into the ocean. It didn’t make a sound as it disappeared into the waves.

  Albion fumbled, feeling for the next round from his coat pocket even as the world came all topsy-turvy. At the last moment before they hit the rocks below, he locked the whammy bar, slotting the round into the chamber. Mere feet from the ground he pulled the trigger.

  The resulting blast of wind blew everything away, rocks, dust, and the hearty lap of the Pacific tides. It also buoyed them up, just enough that he and Hargreaves slowed to a painful tumble in the stones instead of dashed to death upon them.

  Albion opened his mouth to scream, but all that came was a wind-blown gargle. The Red Special was a glowing brand in his hands, kicking like a prize stallion. If he let go, he was sure they would be crushed by aeon forces run wild. These chord rounds had been Cid’s halfway measure, a blend of rare aeon dust and ground up bric-a-brac. Even Cid hadn’t been sure what firing one would do.

  It suddenly tasted very salty in Albion’s open mouth. Overhead, boomed a sudden thunder, and they gaped as a glowing line seared through the fog. Something was being burned to cinders on the road overhead.

  “No!”

  Vanessa Hargreaves’ voice was an alarum in the murk. Albion came out of a red daze, his eyes open wide. There was a round in his left hand. His right hand was aimed up at the white shape overhead, like a spirit looming in the dark. The Red Special shook in his hand. Hagreaves must have feared he had been about to load it and fire, heedless of the innocents that would be caught in the ensuing blast.

  Hargreaves came stumbling on a cascade of pebbles and shoved him into an alcove in the cliff, seconds before a thunder wave rolled through the night. A clod of dirt came down almost on top of the spot where Albion had been standing. They hid in a slight overhang while the rain of sharp rocks died down. Thunder came once or twice more, but eventually the assault ceased. After a minute a distant whistle sounded, followed by the rattling of a train’s engine. There fell a deep, oceanic quiet.

  Across the frothing sea, there was only soft opaqueness. The fog was impenetrable, and what light came from the burning mansion was fading fast. They looked up at the sheer bluffs, a blank craggy wall marked by the high water.

  The barnacles stopped an inch over Albion’s head. By either pirate or Briton reckoning, it could only be an hour or so before the tide came in and drowned them both. The fog made it impossible to be sure, and its sable depths threatened to give one bad dreams. They might as well have been at the edge of the world.

  “A rock and a—”

  “Don’t you say it, wanker,” interrupted Hargreaves.

  The relief flooding through him when Albion found a foothold and began to climb felt a bit like the first pint after a long day. It was an elation only surpassed by the dread of slipping twenty minutes later. Hargreaves slid two feet down the sheer cliff face, only stopped from smashing on the rocks by the improvised tether of the belt from her duster. Recently reclaimed from a pile of destitute refuse, the straining material was barely strong enough to hold her. She made a Hail Mary grab for a wet handhold and just barely caught it.

  She clung there, letting the damp cover her. Meanwhile, Albion was trying to separate the rush of the waves from the pounding of adrenaline in his head. Six minutes later he came tumbling past her in a slide of loosened rocks. The belt broke then, snapping at the cheap buckle. This time Albion clung to some deceptively sturdy scrub brush. It held fast.

  After that it was a matter of slowly crawling sideways to find handholds, before they reached a gentler slope and collapsed on some loamy cliff grass. Compared to the hard rocks, it was a feather mattress.

  “Isn’t there…one of those…blasted bullets…that can make this…easy?” gasped Hargreaves. They lay prone on the ground, spent.

  “Why…yes…I’ll just…pop it in here…and we’ll be…on our way,” answered Albion, tossing the empty Red Special over. It hit her in the solar plexus, eliciting a grunt. The point of a gun was to cause pain, after all. Maybe it was the thick, wet air, but Albion wondered if she felt a certain affinity. Guns were tools only to punish, to contain. Never to save, and speaking with Hargreaves, she was of the opinion she had done little saving, which was why she became a police officer to begin with. Then there was the name always at her lips when she thought nobody could hear: Maple Cross.

  Climbing the cliff took them the rest of the night. By the time they emerged onto the road above, the tide was well and truly up, the fog banished, and Jean Hallow’s monstrosity had gone. The rank smell of smoke and seared flesh hung in the air, and a sunrise just began peeking over the horizon in a smattering or oranges and purples.

  “Did…did anyone?” Hargreaves gasped.

  The pair looked for survivors, but found only dark smears and charred powder. An open bottle of champagne rolled slowly down an incline, drawing a wet line across the gravel.

  “Hargreaves! Help me!”

  Albion’s deep-throated cry shook her out of a stunned torpor. Not far away there was a man trapped under a charred pine trunk that must have been blasted off the landscape. The man was still conscious. The pair grasped him firmly under the arms and pulled, extracting only a tortured scream.

  “Aughh, no, no, stop! There’s no way,” the man cried. It was as much vitality as could be got; the man’s eyes were unfocused, and his lips dry. The mahogany skin under the grime was slowly going gray.

  “There’s a bleed,” said Hargreaves. “Something under the tree must be torn. If we move him he’ll die.” She stood in the middle of the road, where the scars were showing by the morning’s light. The ground was pockmarked and cratered, the dirt underneath fleshy, brown loam.

  “Listen, we’re going to get help, we’re going to find something to tie off your leg,” Albion said. The pirate had his hands at the place where the deadfall held down the man’s waist. He was tying off the trapped leg.

  “Albion, by the time we—”

  “You’re going to be just fine!” And Albion grinned his big daft grin, the one that scrunched up his eyes. The man under the tree laughed, a soundless, weak laugh, and then he was gone.

  “I told you so,” started Hargreaves, but she choked when she saw the tears rolling down Albion’s smiling face.

  Station 16

  Fog of War

  Like most conflicts, there was no official sign for the battle to begin. Rosa Marija had never served in any army, but she had a feeling traditional forces had hierarchy for this very purpose. The value of officers was to be idle enough to realize when the first volley arrived. To announce the charge, loose the dogs.

  Certainly the ships of the Incognito might have used a chain of command that day, a hierarchy bette
r suited to lead the drunken Powder Monkey or the Viscountess Valentina. Even Gunsmoke was only able to rally by his brilliant use of a cat-o-nine-tails, the screams broadcast over ether crystals singing at the head of every ship.

  Gunsmoke could hardly be blamed. A minor band led by the plains pirate Sam Walker had had a mutiny during the night. They’d lost three ships to the entrepreneurial crew and the remaining ship flew Walker’s head high on their mainmast as a standard. Apparently the late captain’s wife Felicia Walker had caught him abed with one of the Viscountess’s girls and had started the mutiny, earning her the nickname “The Nutcracker.” Mutiny and insubordination were common enough when dealing with pirates, but that one was set to go down as swashbuckler lore.

  Rosa knew it was not in the nature of pirates to coordinate. In fact only the vague threat of the Incognito’s power kept them together now. It had been the Incognito man Ortega’s promise to find Albion with their vast, shadowed connections that brought Rosa to the front line. In exchange she would assist MAD and Vanessa Hargreaves. The fact Hargreaves was her friend did not seem to factor into Ortega’s calculations.

  Even Gunsmoke Gilly found it difficult to climb out of his bed once the first cannon fire reached his ears. That was part of the problem. It wasn’t immediately clear if the Incognito were under attack at all. With the fog gone, the pirates had hidden themselves amongst the traders from the gray divide, shutting their anchor launchers and cannon behind the false livery of Ubique, of Albatross and Ursine. Gunsmoke ran the flags of the Prince of Nigeria. It was common practice, running false colors, and more than one pirate doubled as legitimate traders depending on what latitude they sailed. Needles in the haystack.

  But either their attacker had other means of telling pirate from trader, or they didn’t care which was which. When the first reports sounded across the bay, the crows nests lifted their goggles and peered across the dawn-lit harbor to see the first schooner explode in a gout of flame, quickly consuming a plains crawler dirigible that had been taking on cargo nearby. Shreds of the last remaining fog ballooned out from the fire and dispersed. The congregated airships, at the docks for grog and women, scattered as if before a strong wind, and it was finally clear they were indeed under attack.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Well pork my momma, look at that fireball go!”

  “Goddammit Leeroy!”

  “Blast! Was it one of ours?”

  The chatter over the ether was confusing, but the general consensus was it had occurred in the northern end of the bay, and their one small casualty was a no-worth schooner that had only ventured there for the whorehouses. Once lookouts had their scopes pointed in the right direction, it wasn’t hard to make out the gleaming snake circling the high hills, the huge wheels of the engine pulling the guns, and the thunder of cannons fired from a rail-mounted platform.

  “What in seven hells!” Gunsmoke’s voice came over the din. “Fight back! Wesson! Shelby! Cormorant! Bear on that train and fire on my command! ”

  Once the order was given, Gunsmoke’s own ships fired a volley upon the hill, raising up huge clods of dirt. His Remington led a phalanx of corsairs that laid on a barrage from all over the bay with far-reaching guns. Seeing their success, a few opportunists turned their heavy keels in the air, and then the pirates were all firing upon the glimmer of silver on the hillside.

  “Idiots! You’ll give away which of you are Incognito!” hissed Rosa as she watched from the ’Berry’s deck.

  Before the dust settled, half of the pirate ships suddenly erupted into flames, blown out of the air. A dozen ships fell before some sensible commanders halted the assault, turning the ships bow-forward toward the enemy that had flanked them. One corsair, her captain perhaps frightened by the scale of the conflict, turned to flee and was immediately blasted to pieces. She wasn’t simply destroyed—she was spread across the sky by something moving incredibly fast, ripping her bow out through her stern and dragging a purple cloud of foulness behind it. Something crackled within that cloud and the gas burst into flames, sick purple-black flames that continued to burn as they hit the water.

  From the South, the Tenessee Jack rode high on the hill.

  Train cars full of ammunition trailed behind her. There were ten times the crates as there were men to load them, scurrying back and forth in the scopes with heavy Gatling guns and wing clipper guns on wagons. Mercenaries, hired by Hallow, no doubt.

  “There’s no escape,” said Gunsmoke. “All ships, all hands, prepare to engage the enemy!”

  Gas escaped in clouds of blue as Gatlings tore into the sides of the pirates. Some of the older ships still flew with gas envelopes and balloons. Deflated, the sinking hulks rammed into each other, their hulls careening into the bay. New fires shimmered into being, raining down upon the few who survived. The Tennessee Jack’s gun spat its gas, which pooled on the surface of the water, igniting into a foul, smoking slick. Men fell through the smoke and were devoured by the tide of flames, a blighted shadow floating across the bay. Later, survivors would tell of the tiny clockworks in the purple clouds, the clicking whirligigs that were released by the rail gun’s rounds and sparked as they turned in the air, igniting the purple gas.

  It took Rosa two minutes from the time she saw the cannon flares to tell what was happening. Fire haunted the air and smoke tasted bitter in her mouth. She ran from toggle to toggle in the bridge, until the other ships dropped away and the ’Berry fell back with choked hiccups of her forward vents. She saw a golden arch of Gatling bullets dip in a deadly column, a finger of death to tear the ship apart. Then followed a varicolored flash, and the heavy thunk of towing anchors latching to the ’Berry’s hard points, dragging her away from the gunfire.

  “The Papillon Nancy! Alice! My wife is out there!” came the voice of Elric Blair, hollering through the ship’s horns. The whooping came from the outside, where Alice and her crew were carrying on. Sleeker than a dolphin, the Nancy pulled the ’Berry just out of reach, accelerating her out of the space of sky that now held only death. Not out to sea, but down, near the water, where they could steer around the falling gas and wrecks that came down like pillars in the sunless lands.

  Alice was only the spear tip of a reinforcing force. A swarm of ships that included Nessie Drake’s unmistakable Morcego, which hadn’t been seen in ages and was the subject of myriad rumors. Its arched lines and brooding sails held banks upon banks of anchor launchers, which she used to gather every airship within reach and yank out of the fray.

  Prissy Jack was there too, and he had somehow transformed his flying roti restaurant into an elephant-headed shield ship: Ganapati, Remover of Obstacles, trailing a thick fog of spices and rich aromas. Behind thick armored flanks, freighters and corsairs sought refuge, and were able to escape a group at a time over the ocean and out of reach. The other shield ships followed suit, bouncing the terrible clippers off their thick shields.

  It was in the midst of the maelstrom that Cezette Louissaint appeared on the bridge. Rosa gestured wildly at a shivering lever. The girl lunged across the tilting deck, managing to get a hand on it. Her heels squealed to a halt, fast against the deck.

  “Hold, and unfurl the port sail. Yes, that’s it!”

  “Oui, madame!”

  The ether dague still blared its song of the dead and the dying, and the Huckleberry wove between all of them, dodging the plumes of seawater and the falling, burning ships. One of the Incognito ships drifted too close to land, its captain busied with the flames sinking his ship. In an instant the dirigible burst apart, ripped to shreds by the dreadful white figure that hovered close to the water.

  “Oh god, oh god!”

  “My arm! Somebody pick up my arm!”

  “The other gods! The elder gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gates of Earth! Oh…! ”

  “Don’t look at it!” Rosa screamed. “Just look at the controls!” The sight of Hallow’s Grimaldi teased at the fringes of sanity. Rosa didn’t know what it
was called, but she knew to stay away from it, even from looking at it.

  “C’est horrible!” cried Cezette, her eyes averted from the scopes.

  The Grimaldi sailed over the destruction it had wrought, turning its great limbs in a lazy spiral. Trying not to look at it, Rosa watched the train writhe, and instantly regretted it. Perhaps it was the gas, or the fog of war, but the train seemed to be animating into a sinuous shape, no mechanical creation but some sort of organic creature. Chitinous plates slipped over and under each other as it moved, the slithering of a millipede, or some other loathsome creature. Slowly it met up in the distance with its other half, and now it was a unified worm, eating its way through downtown San Francisco.

  Aboard the ’Berry, there wasn’t enough time to gape or even utter some profanity. Cid labored at a bank of switches in the engine room, squeezing every ounce of power from the ’Berry’s strained engines. In the hold, Elric Blair and Cockney Alex clambered over a dozen pipes, drawing thick straps across tarpaulin-covered loads. Just as they clipped the canvas into place, a wing clipper round tore through and the weight tipped into the strap. Fortunately it held, preventing the heavy cargo from ripping through. If it had, a dozen decks and the bottom of the ship wouldn’t have stopped its fall.

  And so it continued, no time for rest, each breath gasped desperately, harsh and dry and possibly the last. The fight went on and on, and still the Worm continued chewing its way through the Incognito, stopped only by the contrary nature of the pirates. The rogues of the sky were unwilling to gather and die in a group. Still, the Worm seemed insatiable, unstoppable.

  A sprinkling of airships broke away from the crowded spread in the bay. The ’Berry led them all, paving the way with her intact manipulator arm. Some were merchantmen and freighters glad to break free of the sudden holocaust. Others were ships of the Incognito, flying the discreet black mark of their kind. Amongst them was Viscountess Valentina, who had lost three bracera in the first barrage. Their wide hips had been built to hold audiences and bedchambers, not cannons, and they had fallen at once. Each had been full of courtesans, warrior princesses all, and spirit sisters to the Viscountess.