Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

'The best we can,' said Oliver. He lifted his coat and patted the two pistols that had appeared by his side. Molly shivered. The guns hadn't been there when they'd entered the First Guardian's office.

'I used to think I owned these,' said Oliver. 'But now I know that it's the other way around. And we both belong to the kingdom; the pistols' reports just an echo of the lion's roar. I know exactly what I'm doing here. I'm here to protect Purity Drake. I'm the key to keeping her alive.'

'What does that make me?' asked Molly. 'Some lonely old spinster who desperately wants to live out the plot of her last novel while the world is razed to the ground around her?'

They had reached one of the entrances to the House of Guardians, the two redcoats on duty there stamping their boots as Molly and Oliver walked past. Outside, mounted cavalry waited behind the sharp black railings of parliament. A crowd of Broken Circle cultists knelt beyond in Parliament Square, humming a meditation that sounded more like a mass moan of pain. Their numbers were swelling every day, now; more and more of the population convinced that the end of the world was nigh. That the Circle was finally breaking. Maybe the cultists were right. On Molly and Oliver's side of the railings brightly clothed hussars cantered up and down nervously. No looting yet. No riots yet, just that damn rhythmic keening.

Molly raised a hand to shield her eyes against the sunlight. There it was, just to the left of the sun. Ashby's Comet. A baleful red eye behind a thin skein of clouds. 'I hate the sight of that thing.'

'If your friend Coppertracks is right, we had better get used to it,' said Oliver. 'The comet's become another moon now.'

'A cursed ugly one,' said Molly. She looked out at the crowd. It was almost obscene. They looked as if they were praying. The Circlist faith was degrading into superstition and myths of the end-time. How much longer until they started raising false idols to save them from the Army of Shadows and the dark auguries in the sky? How much longer until the Jackelians started believing in gods again? Molly ran up to the railings. 'The new moon's just a piece of loose bloody rock! Caught revolving around us by the attraction of our world's mass. I can show you Coppertracks' formulae to explain everything you see up in the sky.'

The moaning of the cultists just grew louder.

'Get off your knees, you're Jackelians, you're-'

A hussar kicked his stallion in front of her. 'Don't go disturbing them, now, there's a good damson. They're jittery enough this afternoon.'

'They're a disgrace,' said Molly. 'What do they think they're doing? How can you allow them to do that outside parliament's gates?'

'It's hard enough to keep our lads from deserting and joining them at the moment,' said the hussar. 'If trouble breaks out in the capital now, it'll take more than the flats of our sabres to turn them aside. Go home, damson, and make sure you have a stout lock on your door, that's my advice.'

'Come on,' said Oliver, tugging Molly's sleeve. 'We'll go down to the river and hail the sixpenny boat.'

Passing under the shadow of Brute Julius the pair arrived before the low iron profile of an iron gunboat moored alongside the House of Guardians' embankment, its disc-shaped cannon turrets turned towards the opposite side of the river.

Oliver nodded towards the armed sailors on deck across from them as he waved for a riverboat to stop. 'Ready for war?'

'Yes,' said Molly. 'Ready for war. Again.'

Commodore Black touched Oliver's sleeve and pointed to the dark silhouettes emerging onto the shale of the Quatershiftian beach, men and women clambering over large boulders as they left the silent pine forest behind them and headed for the line of dinghies. The commodore pulled a rag off his lantern to show the figures the way through the night. There were about twenty people coming out of the tree line. Burly red-coated marines from the Fleet Sea Arm were holding the craft down in the surf behind Oliver and the commodore, rifles shouldered, waiting for the advancing refugees to board the dinghies. The foreign scientists were exactly where the shifties had promised they would be gathered, with the Army of Shadows currently showing little sign of intervening in the Kingdom of Jackals' attempt to spirit away some of Quatershift's best brains for its gunnery project.

They were a ragged gathering, these refugee scientists, led by a silver-haired man staring thankfully towards Oliver and the commodore with an odd-looking face that managed to be senatorial, proud and ugly at the same time. A lithe-legged beauty accompanied the Quatershiftian man, at least half his years, looking stunning despite her standard revolutionary citizen's garb.

'I am Paul-Loup Keyspierre,' said the shiftie. 'Head of the Institut des Luminaires of the People's Commonshare of Quatershift. As requested by the First Committee, I and my daughter, Jeanne, have been scouring the country for every engineer and scientist who worked on the old cannon project with Timlar Preston during the Two-Year War.'

'There's not many of you here,' said Oliver. 'I was told by Timlar Preston to expect maybe forty or fifty people.'

'You have those who are still breathing, compatriot,' retorted Jeanne, her short dark hair ruffled by the fierce wind off the sea. 'In case you have failed to notice, our country is dealing with a full-scale invasion. There may be others on the antique staff list we were given who are still alive, but if they are, they have been completely lost in the confusion of the fighting.'

Paul-Loup Keyspierre gently motioned his daughter to silence. 'Our new compatriots from the west haven't seen how bad things are here now, they cannot be expected to understand the nature of the enemy and the difficulties we have faced finding as many cannon workers as we have.'

'We'll take the time to deepen our understanding as soon as we've got your eggheads safely back to our blessed u-boat,' said Commodore Black. He waved to the Jackelian marines and they pushed the crowded dinghies out into the surf and began to row back towards the low black hull of the submersible. 'There may not be much moonlight tonight, but I don't want to leave parliament's tub sitting on the surface any longer than I have to.'

Paul-Loup Keyspierre glanced around. 'This is an old smuggler's beach, yes? It is good that it is out of the way, but the lack of moonlight won't help you, compatriot u-boatman. The Army of Shadows hunt and fight at night as well as they do during the day.'

'This landing may have seen a little smuggling in and out of it,' admitted the commodore. 'The odd barrel of brandy lifted from your fine nation by plucky fellows, although admittedly somewhat in contravention of parliament's wishes and the laws of your revolution. But we'll leave the fighting to the brigades of your people's army if we can. They're trained for it and I doubt if they need the help of old Blacky when it comes to battling the Army of Shadows.'

Oliver unfurled a map while the commodore lifted his lantern over the crinkled surface, revealing a province of northern Quatershift printed on the paper. 'We didn't just choose this beach because it's out of the way. Timlar Preston buried the components of his prototype cannon inside a worked-out mine five miles inland of here; he salted the parts away when it looked like the Two-Year War was swinging our country's way, when the RAN was raining fire-fins down around your mills and weapons factories.'

'I told you something was not right here,' said Jeanne to her father. She pointed back to the tree line and a handful of Quatershiftian soldiers appeared leading a train of pack mules. 'The animals weren't requested at the rendezvous point because these so-called allies of ours have suddenly forsworn roast beef for mule meat.'