Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

'But you can't be travelling to Kaliban, lass,' said the commodore. 'These creatures might have the skill of crossing the void, but we surely don't. It's too dangerous.'

'I'll go with you,' spat Purity. 'However dangerous the journey is. If it means paying back the jiggers that killed Kyorin.'

Duncan shook his head. 'Listen to the commodore's words. Even if you're right, the battle will be here in Jackals. Whoever this Army of Shadows are and whatever land they hail from, their forces are almost at our borders. The high fleet of the RAN is preparing to sail, the regiments are mobilizing. War is upon us and it will be fought here on our doorstep.'

Molly thought of the mighty Hexmachina, trapped in the centre of the world like a fly in amber. Even the power to slay gods was not enough to deal with the invaders. 'No, I don't think we can fight them and win using airships and rifles. What Kyorin showed me in his vision was hideous. The invaders' rulers are ancient, masters of a very old science that has bent all of creation to its will, every other race fit only to serve as their slaves or their sustenance.' She pulled a blanket off her bed, covering up the slippery black muscles of the beast lying slaughtered there. 'This slat is one of the masters' own children, twisted into the perfect killing machine by their womb mages. These masters have no care for their own seed, let alone other races' lives. And there are entire armies of these things moving around in Catosia.'

'I feel the pressure of their evil, growing stronger each day,' said Oliver. 'Like a headache. To the north. Running to the east now, too, in Quatershift.'

'Can we call these slats evil?' asked Molly. 'Beasts like this are only what they were bred to be. But their masters, they've made their choice, and they've chosen our world as their new home. The knowledge of defeating them lies in their old land. Kyorin's masters have consumed it and discarded it like an old apple core, but somewhere among the ruins of Kaliban the answer to stopping the invasion is to be found. That's what he came to tell us.'

'Talking of travelling to Kaliban might make a grand tale for your new fashion in novels,' said the commodore. 'But how are you going to get there? Will you have these monsters give you a berth on one of their terrible ships of the void?'

'No,' said Molly. 'It's a one-way trip for them here. They're fired across the celestial darks in shells that ride beams of light.'

'Shells,' said Duncan, a realization dawning on him. 'Shells. Timlar Preston, that was the man our blue friend mentioned. You ken who Timlar Preston is, don't you? He's a damn shiftie scientist.'

'Cannons,' said Oliver. 'Very big ones from the Two-Year War. The war Timlar Preston nearly won for Quatershift.'

'It simply can't be done, lassie,' said Duncan. 'Trust me, I've been fired out of cannons and I've ridden up on rockets with my sail rig and anything that could lift you that far and fast would kill you. You can't travel to Kaliban shot out of a great cannon shell – the physical shock of it will pulp your wee body into jam.'

'Quite correct,' announced Coppertracks, rolling into the room, his train of mu-bodies clambering nervously around the bedroom. How long had the steamman been listening there? 'But King Steam has something that could see you there safely.'

'Now don't you be encouraging Molly in her damn fool scheme,' begged the commodore. 'Tossing messages at Kaliban with your mad tower of science is one thing. Shooting our good friends out into the wicked night is quite another. Save your travels to the moon for your novels, Molly.'

A wave of bile rose in Molly's throat and she yelped, nearly falling onto the bed on top of the cold, wicked thing lying there. Oliver caught her and steadied her back to her feet. 'I sensed something flaring inside your mind. Are you all right?'

'My mind.' Molly felt quite nauseous. She glanced angrily at Kyorin's corpse. So many voices, the cries of the dead, the memories of those that had passed into the beyond. 'I do believe this runaway slave dumped everything he had into my skull when he heard the slats at the window. Sweet Circle, it feels like a million thoughts and memories welling up inside me.'

Molly wanted to kick the slave's corpse. Kyorin had done what he believed necessary for the survival of both their races, gambling that the ancient machine life that swam through Molly's veins was powerful enough to absorb the full exchange of their intimate mental sharing.

'He wouldn't have hurt you,' Purity protested. 'It was not his way.'

Molly gritted her teeth. A little knowledge was meant to be a dangerous thing, but how about an entire fallen civilization's store of knowledge floating inside her skull? That remained to be seen. 'Remind me of that again, girl, when I'm sitting in the barrel of the cannon your friend wanted us to build.'

'How are you going to get Timlar Preston out of the wicked Court of the Air's hands?' asked the commodore. 'Ask them nicely?'

'Leave that to me,' said Oliver. 'I know an agent who isn't going to have too much of a choice about helping us.'

'Take a long spoon to sup with those devils, lad! You don't have to be doing this,' insisted the commodore.

'Yes we do,' said Molly.

But even as she said the words she knew how mad they sounded. How desperate was their last hope. All she had to do was free Timlar Preston from the Court of the Air's clutches; and having held him a prisoner for so many years, the Court must be convinced the mad genius was still a deadly threat to the kingdom. Then she had to convince the Jackelian authorities, distracted by the danger of imminent invasion, to help Preston build the mightiest cannon the race of man had ever constructed to fire her at Kaliban. When the government asked why, she would have no answer save the slim hope that a dying runaway slave's last words might bear fruit on a dead world which had already been conquered, spoiled and discarded by the enemy. And all this coming from a celebrated author of celestial fiction.

Damn. Molly would be lucky to avoid being dragged off to an asylum.

Harry Stave's boots echoed down the corridor of the Court of the Air's prison sphere. Behind him, Oliver Brooks pushed the handcart with a body on it – the passenger lying horizontal, his face hidden by a bulbous rubber mask regulating the timed release of sleeping gas.

'You could help me push the cart, Harry.'

'And how believable would that look?' asked the agent of the Court. 'Besides, it would be an inversion of the natural order of things. Some are born to push, others are born to lead.'

'Old times,' muttered Oliver.

'If only,' said Harry. 'I think I preferred the old days. In fact, right now, I preferred last year.'

'You'll be telling me next that you'd have helped me for "old times' sake",' said Oliver.

'Who knows? But on balance, I would say the blackmail helps. It always helps.'

'I might not fully understand the hollow replica of the Kingdom of Jackals you've got turning on the transaction-engine drums of your little metropolis in the clouds,' said Oliver, 'but I know the basics well enough to recognize that such a model only functions when all the variables are known. How broken is that thing right now?'

'Broken enough for me to let a scrote like you walk around the Court of the Air.'

'I thought that was what the Court wanted,' said Oliver. 'Me up here. Your people have been trying to catch me for years now.'

'Unknown variables,' sighed Harry, looking across at where his old friend's brace of pistols lay concealed within their double shoulder holster. 'And the Hood-o'the-marsh is one of the biggest of them all.'

'Your people have been trying to catch the wind with their fingers, Harry. You could toss me into one of your cells right now – you know what would happen next. One day someone in your armoury would open the vault where you'd locked away my guns and they wouldn't be there. They'd be in the hands of someone else wearing a hood and leading your agents a merry dance across the face of Jackals.'