Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

Hanning and Ti'ive looked at each other in shock. So used to flying above the carnage. So used to drifting high above the fog of war, dispassionate angels of destruction, directing the New Pattern Army and smashing any force foolish enough to break the Jackelians' peace. Now the two sailors suddenly found themselves as much subject to the vagaries of war as any confused redcoat, stumbling through the thick clouds of rifle and cannon smoke that settled over every battlefield.

Ti'ive yelled in shock as the eyeless face pushed itself up again the outside of the dome, tapping a curious, clawed finger against the glass.

'It's got a sail-rider's rig on its back,' shouted Hanning, not so panicked he didn't forget to draw his pistol from where it lay tucked into his belt.

Homing in on the sound of the two sailors, the beast drew its talons teasingly across the glass, leaving scratch marks on the crystal surface, then it threw itself back and disappeared into the crimson mist.

'It was whispering,' said Ti'ive.

'What?'

The craynarbian looked at his comrade. 'Didn't you hear it, Mister Hanning? It was whispering something in a language I didn't recognize and it was clicking, clicking like a blood bat. By jingo, they see by the sound of their throats – no wonder they prefer to fight inside this deadly red pea-souper of theirs. They must hunt by the screams and whimpers of their victims.'

Hanning shook his head – no, he hadn't heard the monster's whispers. The craynarbians were long diverged from the race of man through millennia of jungle survival, the hairs on the back of their skulls giving them a sixth sense lacking in their soft-skinned cousins. But Hanning heard the yells and shots from somewhere on the other side of the Revenge clearly enough, the distant echo of pistol fire reverberating through their wooden corridors. Hanning pulled a crystal charge out of his belt and broke open his bell-barrelled gun, pushing the shell into the breech.

He had solved the mystery of what had happened to the missing airships of the merchant marine. But after today – bar a few clerks of supply manning the inkwells of Admiralty House – there wasn't going to be anyone left in the Royal Aerostatical Navy to warn.

Coppertracks exited the long, low building of the camp's infirmary and indicated the door he had left open for Molly, Oliver and Purity to enter. 'The poisoning my patient is suffering has declined to residual levels. There is no danger of infection now if you talk to him.'

Hardarms had been dragged out of the smoking silver shell he had crashed in, and while the steamman warrior had accomplished his main charge – bringing Lord Starhome safely to the cannon project in Halfshire – the price of his success was the gradual failure of his proud metal body. For most of the time he had been unconscious – only Coppertracks' efforts had kept him alive even this long.

'And the steamman knight asked for me by name?' said Purity.

'He did,' admitted Coppertracks.

'But how did he-?'

'King Steam will have told him,' said Oliver. 'And that canny old steamer is so close to the Steamo Loas, he might as well be a spirit himself.'

'I thought King Steam was young,' said Purity. 'Barely out of his childhood.'

Oliver shrugged. 'The body, perhaps. His mind is the latest incarnation of a monarch older than the mountain behind us.'

'Soul,' corrected Coppertracks. 'King Steam's mind is unique to his latest body; it is his soul that is passed down through the generations.'

They entered the infirmary and were guided by Coppertracks to the room where Hardarms had been isolated. There was a smell of rubber in the room; wet, rotting and foul. One of Coppertracks' drones lay deactivate in the corner – sacrificed by Coppertracks to care for the dying pilot. The dead mu-body was speckled with flaking brown where the rust of the radiation sickness had eaten away at its shiny shell. Hardarms was – if it were possible – in an even worse state, his entire body a quilt of raw brown-and-red metal, the hardened armour of the steamman knight eroded by the final advances of the gravity warp poisoning.

A faint light pulsed behind the knight's vision plate as he noticed the three newcomers ushered in by Coppertracks. 'The male softbody I recognize from my sharing of cables with King Steam. Oliver Brooks of the race of man, halfling child of an Observer. The older female must be Molly Templar, which makes the younger… Purity Drake.'

'You know me, then?' said Purity.

'My sovereign knows well the part of you that is awakening with the land,' said Hardarms. 'As he knows your two companions here, from our last time of troubles.'

'Well, this latest time of troubles we're suffering seems to be going from bad to worse,' said Oliver. 'Has Coppertracks told you of our news sheets' reports of the rout of the RAN and the New Pattern Army inside Quatershift?'

Perhaps it was a side effect of his radiation poisoning, but Hardarms seemed hardly disturbed by Oliver's information. 'Of course, Oliver softbody. When I saw the destruction of the steammen army it was obvious that no force of the race of man could match our adversary. Not if every nation in the world poured its resources into a single regiment and marched against the Army of Shadows as one.'

'Did the king speak of me?' said Molly. 'Did he speak of the fate of the Hexmachina?'

'The god-machine is a cousin of the people of the metal,' said Hardarms. 'King Steam knows the Hexmachina has been locked in stasis, sealed away in the deep bowels of the world by our foe.'

'And he's not worried by that?' Molly had to restrain herself from shouting. 'I threw the Wildcaotyl back beyond the walls of the world with the Hexmachina's power. You can't count on me to save you all this time…'

'You are a knight without a steed,' said Hardarms. 'A duellist without a sabre. His majesty asked me to tell you he understands how frustrating that must be for you.' Hardarms stretched out and took Molly's hand, pressing something into her palm out of sight of the others. Molly looked down. It was a gold ring, etched with lines so thin she could barely see the complex patterns that had been engraved on it.

'For Lord Starhome,' whispered Hardarms as Molly bent down to catch the whisper from the knight's voicebox. 'You will know how to use it when the time comes.'

'Your sympathy is all very well,' said Molly, hiding the ring away in her pocket, 'but your army has been exterminated too, and Jackals now lies defended only by militia with pitchforks, fencibles who fire two training shots a year and a couple of RAN cadets in training ships.'

'And I wish that were not so,' said Hardarms. 'Just as I wish that a tool for slaying gods had proved more effective against a mortal foe. But wishing will not make it so. Wishing will not bring either of our nations victory in this fight.' Hardarms leant over to retrieve his satchel from a table next to his bed, removing a sheaf of papers. 'And I also wish I had better news to bring to you than this…'

Molly took the papers being proffered. She winced as she felt the steamman's pain swelling up inside him. How could he bear it? Every sensor along the length of his body was flaring in agony. Molly forced her gaze down onto the papers and saw images of a large sphere that seemed to be made of rust-coloured iron, accompanied by commentary pencilled in by the hands of the king's councillors.

'The images are from the new observatory in Mechancia,' said Hardarms. 'Real-box pictures enlarged from our largest telescope.'

Coppertracks trundled over to handle the pictures, scanning them with his vision plate in fascination. 'I have never seen the like of this before.'

'Oh, but you have,' said Hardarms. 'Every time you glance up at the sky and curse our baleful new moon swinging in orbit around the Earth.'