eSteampunk Vol. 01 No. 02 Read online

  “Even the police? But they must be stopped! British citizens have been robbed!”

  “British? Monsieur Caldwell’s list shows that the proprietors of the burgled compartments were Prussian.”

  “That means nothing! Even my queen’s lineage is steeped in German blood.”

  She sighed. “You fail to see the patterns at work here, Monsieur Booth.”

  I could not parry her argument, for I rarely see the patterns Miss Holmes sees. She can find clues in a dropped matchstick or a scent in a room.

  “Despite what I said to Monsieur Caldwell,” she said, “my first objective is not to apprehend Monsieur Lefèvre, the box owner, but to observe him. I predict we shall find an inventor whose motives go beyond mere burglary.”

  Paris lacks the underground trains of London, so we hired a steam carriage to take us to Mr. Lefèvre’s address. Miss Holmes insisted we stop a block away.

  “This is the District of Machines,” she said, pointing out the tall smokestacks of steam engines towering around us. The air vibrated with the clank and rumble of machinery. Ash drifted down from the sky. So many powered conveyances traveled the streets that I doubted anyone would have noticed the simple one we left awaiting our return.

  Mr. Lefèvre’s home was more than a house. It was a small factory. What it manufactured was a mystery, though, for the high windows were shuttered, their louvers tilted upward to let in light but not prying eyes. Along the walls grew flowering shrubs as tall as my head. An infestation of hummingbirds darted from flower to flower.

  Miss Holmes pushed through the shrubbery to the wall and opened her handbag. From within she drew out a thin brass telescoping rod, which she extended to its full length, and a small convex mirror she attached to the rod. The window was still too high up the wall. She stooped to unbutton her calfskin shoes, then turned to me.

  “Would you be so good as to...?”

  I cupped my hands as if helping her to mount a horse.

  Not satisfied with that height, she clambered onto my shoulders. Her skirts draped my head so I could see nothing in front of me.

  “This is most improper!” I whispered.

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “What do you see in your mirror?”

  “The factory is building automatons.”

  “For more bank-burgling?”

  “No. These are steam-powered giants twice the height of the men working on them. Each rides on three lorry wheels and has articulating steel arms operated by gears and pulleys. They are painted in the tri-colors of the French republic.”

  Light as she was, her stockinged feet upon my shoulders were becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

  After a few minutes, Miss Holmes climbed down and put her shoes back on. She hummed thoughtfully.

  “These Napoleons are building an army!” I whispered.

  “Scarcely an army,” she said calmly. “I counted twelve. And each steam engine must be stoked with coal, each set of Babbage cards prepared for an operation. One does not wage large scale war thusly.”

  “Each operation in a campaign?”

  “Order of questions is important, Monsieur Booth. When comes before what. I observed that all twelve of the machines were in an identical, completed state. The workers were no longer assembling, but rather polishing. A white-bearded gentleman at the front of the factory sat punching holes in Babbage cards. Preparations are nearly complete.”

  “Complete for what?”

  “Next comes where, Monsieur Booth.” She pushed aside the shrubbery to point to the street. “As we approached the factory, I observed twelve identical steam lorries parked alongside. Do you see what is painted on the sides?”

  The lorries were marked Frères Lefèvre, Expositions de Son et Lumière. It took me a moment to translate. “So they are mere carnival entertainers?”

  Miss Holmes sighed deeply. “These are members of les fils de Napoléon, who have burgled the Bank of England.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Then who are they entertaining? Of course! Who is the next question. And Queen Victoria arrives at the Palace of Versailles tomorrow for a celebration in her honor.”

  Miss Holmes nodded.

  “Then we must notify the embassy at once!”

  “Neither you nor I have the reputation of my esteemed father, Monsieur Booth. And we have no proof.”

  “But the banker...”

  “Wishes no publicity.”

  I thought for a bit, arriving at no solution. “What’s to be done?”

  “We must be at the Palace of Versailles tomorrow.”

  * * *

  “We could still warn them,” I grumbled. We stood with the crowd, all clothed in their finest apparel and awaiting the queen’s steam carriage.

  Miss Holmes, dressed in the colors of the republic, shook her head. “I believe les fils de Napoléon have France’s honor at heart. They have no quarrel with our ally Victoria. Indeed, if they accepted daughters as well as sons, I might have been lured into their ranks. No, there is something else afoot here.”

  I feared that Miss Holmes’ French sympathies blinded her to the danger to my queen. Mr. Lefèvre’s lorries had stopped in the open square, the Place d’Armes, unloading his automatons. With the machines’ painted French uniforms, the crowd believed they were entertainment for the queen. Each held a French flag rippling in the breeze, but they stood motionless as Mr. Lefèvre’s men fired their boilers. Then on Babbage-programmed cue they began wheeling along the avenue as onlookers clapped. The automatons paused every hundred feet to spin in a circle as they waved their flags. The spectacle seemed harmless enough, but I watched them suspiciously.

  However, Miss Holmes was looking neither at the automatons nor in the direction of the royal carriage. She watched a side street. I followed her gaze to see three steam cars blocking the passage like a cork in a Champagne bottle. All three had their boilers fired, gray smoke puffing from exhaust stacks.

  Abruptly, with a shriek of steam, the car in the middle rose on hydraulic pipes attached to the cars on either side. The bonnets of all three vehicles slid to shield the glass windscreens and the drivers within. This new arrangement revealed that the center car had a naval cannon mounted in front.

  “A trick!” I cried. “The automatons were only a diversion!”

  The cars on either side of the cannon surged forward under full steam. The center car, now twenty feet in the air, tilted its cannon downward. The crowd screamed, men and women running to get out of the way. As the weapon on wheels reached the main avenue, it turned, accelerating toward the queen’s carriage.

  But in the avenue before it, I saw men by the twelve automatons pull a lever on the back of each. Babbage cards spilled onto the cobblestones.

  “As I surmised, they prepared a second program,” explained Miss Holmes.

  Indeed, the brightly painted automatons now dropped their flags and stretched arms to link together. They rolled not toward the queen, but toward the cannon tower on wheels.

  The racing steam cars at the weapon’s base slammed into the barrier of automatons. With a roar of exploding boilers, the automatons fell like dominos. But their arms were still locked together, and the steam cars jerked to a halt in the wreckage. The center car atop the hydraulic pipes swayed like a drunken puppet, then toppled forward, crashing cannon-first onto the cobblestones.

  For a moment there was only the hiss of steam from twisted machinery. Then scattered shouts grew into cheers from the crowd.

  French gendarmes surrounded the wreck, rifles trained on the three smashed steam cars. Slowly the doors opened and soldiers emerged from within, hands in the air. They wore uniforms of the German Empire.

  “The Kaiser’s men!” I said.

  Miss Holmes nodded. “They meant to strike fear into the hear
t of our alliance.”

  “And the burgled compartments at the bank were Prussian.”

  “Oui,” said Miss Holmes. “So Monsieur Caldwell need not expect the owners to return to the bank.”

  “And the inventor?”

  “I expect he will soon be painting medals on a new batch of automatons.”

  Orphans of the

  Celestial Sea

  Episode One

  Mark Fenger

  Chapter 1

  The Mist shimmered and shone like hungry moonlight as it left the forest and crossed into late-afternoon sunlight. It crept up the hillside like a living thing, long tendrils reaching ahead of the seething mass, dragging it toward the town of Milton.

  Tom Cain watched, lost in fascination. He had seen Mist before but not like this one. Mist generally avoided sunlight and rarely had the strength to pull itself uphill so fast.

  His reverie was broken by the second bell. The code was the same in every port-of-call he had visited, single ring for Mist spotted, second for approaching town. He turned and headed at a leisurely pace for the nearest tower. The locals had mostly scattered to the protective havens, but Tom had seen enough Mists in his travels to know he could outrun the danger if he had to.

  So long as they didn’t ring the third bell.

  “Hey, boy! Headin’ for a tower already? What are yeh, a sissy townie?” Airman Oleg appeared between a row of ramshackle wood and tin buildings on the outskirts of Milton, followed by his friend Giles. Tom noted they were both walking just as fast as him toward the tower.

  Tom grinned back. Oleg was always ribbing the junior crew. “Just takin’ a stroll, Airman. Curiously, we seem to be headed in the same direction.”

  Oleg and Giles matched Tom’s stride. They were easily the two biggest crewmen on the merchant airship Myrmidon. Tom matched them in height, but he appeared reedlike next to their broad frames. Oleg was big and hard while Giles ran too fat around the middle.

  “See that, Giles? He shows proper respect. How come you never address me as ‘sir’ or ‘Airman’?”

  Giles snorted. “Cuz yer a pompous ass, and you still owe me twenty guilder.”

  “Right, right. I does owe you, doesn’t I?” Oleg laughed. “Well, you keep remindin’ me. I’ll keep on ignorin’ you, and the world goes round, right laddie-buck?” He gave Tom a sharp jab in the shoulder.

  Tom grunted noncommittally, and the three merchant marines continued to play brave, each pretending to walk more slowly than the others.

  The distant sound of maniacal laughter stopped them cold. They listened intently to the wind for a minute.

  “T’weren’t nothin’,” said Giles, but his voice crept up an octave, betraying his nerves.

  Oleg nodded. “Yeah, they’d ring a third bell if it was Draggers.”

  Ding. Ding. Ding. On cue, the third bell sounded.

  “Shouldn’ta spoke Oleg… you knows it’s bad luck,” muttered Giles.

  The three hastened their pace, each trying to get ahead of the others while appearing nonchalant.

  They rounded the corner to the tower Tom had spotted, and he saw the legs were ringed with red and white stripes. “Kid’s tower.”

  Oleg grunted and hastened his pace. “If you be suggesting we find someplace else, you’re on your own!”

  Tom shrugged. “I’m allowed up there, still eighteen for a few more weeks.”

  “I’ve heard tell of lads your age bein’ infected by Mist.”

  Tom ran the last few steps to the rope ladder. “Yeah,” he said as he swung on and climbed like a monkey, “rarely, but the law’s the law.”

  Oleg and Giles paused for a moment, obviously contemplating their punishment if caught. Another staccato howl of laughter cut through the air like a bullet. Oleg was up the first five rungs in a bound, and Giles wasn’t far behind.

  Fifty feet up, Tom hauled himself through the hatch and rolled onto the floor of the tower, a crude, roofless room about ten feet on a side, with walls up to his ribcage. Three teenage girls were already up there, two of them huddled together in a corner and the third held a revolver and had a look on her face like she wished he was a Dragger, just so she could kill something.

  Oleg and Giles weren’t far behind. “Draggers, onna ladder!” panted Giles.

  Tom glanced through the hatch and saw a half-dozen of them climbing. In spite of dirty faces, matted hair, and torn clothing, they still looked human. Human enough to pass at any rate, if they could talk or for that matter interact with other people in any way that didn’t involve homicidal rage.

  Tom whipped his rigging knife out and sliced through the first rope. The Draggers below scrambled upwards, laughing as they came, their faces locked in delirious grins. In an instant the second rope was cut as well, and the ladder fell away. The Draggers landed in a heap. Two of them lay where they had fallen while the others crawled or hobbled away, broken limbs simply ignored as they left in search of easier prey.

  “Quick thinkin’ lad.” Oleg nodded at Tom.

  Tom shrugged and put his knife away.

  Giles leered over Tom’s shoulder. “Look Oleg, buncha girls up here.”

  Oleg turned to the three young women. He advanced on them menacingly. “You lot are going to tattle on us, ain’t you? Rat us out for bein’ in a kids tower?”

  The two in the corner shook their heads, but the one with the revolver backed off a step toward the others and raised her weapon on Oleg. “Leave me be, and I’ll let you alone too.”

  Oleg advanced on her. “Yeah? Then what’s a little ‘un like yerself doin’ with a gun pointed at my chest? You gonna use it or not?”

  Tom grabbed Oleg by the arm. “Hey, they’re just girls. Leave ‘em be.”

  Giles’ arm snaked around Tom’s neck, and he felt himself lifted into the air, his breathing cut off. In spite of his struggles, the grip grew steadily tighter. Tom closed his eyes for a moment and it was as if the intervening two years had never passed. He could smell the reek of his father’s breath.

  Oleg glanced over his shoulder and grunted, then turned back to his quarry. “Now little miss. We ain’t gonna hurt you. Just hand over the gun, nice and slow.”

  She looked to Tom with concern, and in that moment, Oleg swiped a paw upwards, neatly snatching the revolver away. He slammed his other hand into her chest, sending the girl into the corner with the others, where she landed hard.

  Tom felt the arm release him and he fell to his knees, gasping for air.

  “Now,” said Oleg, “I hold alla cards. Let’s have some polite conversation like we is civilized beings.” He thrust the revolver through his belt. “I am Master Airman Oleg. My companions here are Airman Giles Whitworth and Junior Airman Thomas Cain.”

  The older of the two girls in the corner sighed and said, “Nikki Keats and my sister, Willow. We’re from town.” She indicated the Revolver Girl. “I have no idea who she is.”

  Willow, who was sitting in her sister’s lap, hugging a rather ratty-looking, quilted bear, let out a whimper and tightened her grip around Nikki’s waist. Willow looked thirteen or fourteen, and her sister a few years older. Both were rather pretty, with long, wavy, brown hair framing their pale faces. Neither of them appeared prepared for a long stay in a tower. They had only light dresses on and were already shivering as the sun began to set. Tom thought about offering his fleece-lined leather jacket, but it didn’t seem like the right time.

  Revolver Girl got to her feet and glared at the three Airmen. She was short and thin, with the angular, dark features of a Cree or Sioux. She wore beaded, deer-hide pants and jacket like many Indian men, and a gun-belt with loops full of spare ammunition, wrapped twice around to fit her slim waist. Her long hair was braided at the back. She looked to be fifteen or sixteen.

  Oleg
and Revolver Girl faced off while below them the insane laughter of the Draggers continued. In the distance they heard screams from those too slow to make the towers in time. Oleg was first to make a move. He grabbed Revolver Girl by the gunbelt and pulled her to him. She slapped him hard across the face, but Oleg held tight, pawing at her clothes.

  “What the hell!” Tom leapt forward, only to be grabbed by Giles in another choke-hold.

  Oleg uncinched the belt and whipped it from around the girl’s waist, then pushed her back into the corner. He turned and grinned at Tom. “Just wanted her spare ammo laddie. Nothin’ improper goin’ on…” he turned and leered at the girls, “yet.”

  Giles released Tom again. Tom fell to the floor and rubbed his neck.

  Oleg towered over him. “But you try any more interferin’ an’ I’ll skin you alive boyo.” He reached to Tom’s side and slipped his knife out of its sheath. “I’ll be keepin’ this too, so you don’t go getting funny ideas.” Then he picked Tom up by the front of the jacket and hurled him into the corner with the girls.

  “Listen here,” Oleg towered over the teens in the corner, “I’m in charge until the Mist has cleared. Me and Giles’ll protect you lot from Draggers an’ in return, you give us a half-day to clear off once this is all over, got it?”

  Tom stood. “I’ll miss my berth if you leave without me!”

  Giles grinned from behind Oleg. “Shoulda thougtha that before you went runnin’ yer fat mouth off.”

  Tom turned to the girls. “Does my mouth look fat to you? I always thought I had a rather shapely mouth. But Giles should know from fat, I mean just look at the guy!”

  Giles bristled. “Yeah, wanna go, tough-guy? This time I won’t let up, see how funny you is without air!”

  Oleg put a restraining hand on Giles’s chest. “Enough! Cool off mate. We’re just here a few hours ‘till the Mist is gone. Then we hightail for the Myrmidon, tell the Cap’n the authorities are gonna board, and check for illegal goods. He’ll pull up stakes and be gone inside a few minutes and any complaints about us usin’ a kids tower will be forgotten in no time. Murder is another matter. Kill him if you want, but not where I’m like to be implicated, got it?”