Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

'You didn't even want me to go on this voyage,' said Molly. 'And now I've lumbered you and the others with the expedition too.'

Commodore Black looked at the image of their home receding on one of Lord Starhome's screens, a small blue sphere against a field of velvet night. Blue save for the northern pole, where a red infection seemed to be spreading out, smoky coils of crimson clouds obscuring the cancer eating away at their world. And above it all the ugly red coin of the iron moon. 'Ah, poor Purity. I should have stayed to protect her. Coppertracks was right, and I am an old fool for not having settled matters honestly.'

Molly was puzzled. 'What did Coppertracks say?'

'It doesn't matter now,' said the commodore. 'My mortal wicked stars have given me the fate that I deserve, and that's to be cast off on this perilous journey, into the heart of the enemy's dark territory. As if facing their monstrous slat soldiers on the good soil of my home wasn't burden enough. Now I must be thrust deep into a nest thick with their kind, where the Army of Shadows' writ has run as law for an age. Even my bones will know no rest when they are lying bleached on their red deserts, so far from the Kingdom of Jackals and all that I hold dear. But I'll accept the fate of a fool, if only the fickle lady of chance goes kind on our friends back home.'

'We'll save them, Jared,' said Molly, 'we'll save them all. Oliver will look after Purity until we get back, and we'll find a way of smashing the Army of Shadows. Kyorin said the answer lies on his home and that is where we must go.'

'So it seems,' said the commodore. 'I shall stay here then and watch our home as it gets smaller, dwindles to a glint of light in the sky, and put my trust in a strange blue man fleeing the storm that now rages in Jackals. And put my faith in you, lass, who once saw us survive the undercity and the dark legions of Tzlayloc and his demon revolutionaries.'

Molly left the commodore to his brooding. She was just a woman now, without the might of the Hexmachina to call upon. Lord Rooksby was right. A mere author of celestial fiction. How in the name of the Circle was she going to bring them back alive from this one? She felt as if she was spitting against a tornado. Picking her way down one of the ship's new corridors, Molly went aft to find where Coppertracks had disappeared to with Duncan Connor. The canny steamman was up to something, but her instincts told her she would be better off not drawing attention to that fact in front of Lord Rooksby and the two shifties.

Lord Starhome's voice followed her as she walked down the craft's passage. 'How you softbodies achieve anything is beyond me. So fractious. Always arguing.'

'We'll work it out between us,' said Molly.

'While you are about your painfully slow cognitive processes, do you have any idea where you wish to be deposited on Kaliban?'

'The face,' said Molly. There was nowhere else. 'Take us to the carving of a face. There will be a city nearby – the last city on Kaliban.'

'Oh, my sensors can resolve plenty of cities on the surface,' said Lord Starhome. 'Mausoleums, mainly, they have the appearance of having been dead and empty for centuries. You organics certainly don't know how to clean up your mess after you, do you?'

'But there is a city near the face, with living people? Kyorin's race and their masters.'

'Yes, yes,' said the half-steamman craft. 'Locating it is quite easy. I just have to follow the glow of dirty isotopes and the filthy concentration of pollutants.'

'Take us there,' said Molly. 'That's where this fight will be settled.'

'Fight?' The sneer was audible in Lord Starhome's voice. 'Like two drunkards brawling over a half-empty bottle of jinn. You should stay on board me, little ground hugger. I could show you such sights: rainbows glistening off the water particles of the Wormwood Nebula, the seventy sun system of Leo A, all the wonders of the cosmos.'

Molly twisted the control ring on her finger. At times, the tracery of circuits on its golden surface burned fit to scald her skin. It was taking more and more of the ring's failing power just to keep the ship in check. 'Stay on course for Kaliban.'

'Of course,' muttered the craft. 'Of course. So futile. The races of your home will be murdering each other long after you and I have died, and that's an immensely long and full life for me. It's just a good thing you people breed like bacteria in a bog down there. Always more bodies to throw into the fray if you wait a generation or two.'

'Kaliban,' ordered Molly. 'Just take us there.'

She could hear Duncan Connor talking to Coppertracks up ahead, and rounding the corridor, she found the two of them in among the boxes of supplies that had been half-packed when Molly had stolen the craft. Along with something else stowed at the aft of the hold. It appeared to be a looking-glass, circular and as tall as she was, but there was something strange about its surface – a quicksilver movement, flexing like water, distorting what it mirrored. And the circular looking-glass was mounted on top of a sphere held up by six iron legs that might have been borrowed from a metal spider. Coppertracks was fiddling with the sphere, adjusting something, but the whole thing looked wrong, out of place. The senses that once allowed Molly to pilot the Hexmachina, the weirdness in her blood, called out to her that here was something that should not exist in their world.

'What are you doing with that? It's a machine, isn't it? So dense, so many parts packed in at such a small level…'

'The others aren't behind you, lassie?' asked Duncan.

'They're off sulking,' said Molly. 'Or in Rooksby's case, probably busy detailing written charges against me seeing as he's parliament's chosen head of our little excursion.'

'That insidious mammal,' said Coppertracks. 'A life in politics would at least have spared the Royal Society his divisive presence, even if it would have done little to advance the principles of Kirkhillian democracy.' The steamman closed the panel on the sphere, passing a small set of tools to the single mu-body that had been on board at launch. 'Your affinity for matters mechanical serves you well, Molly softbody. What you see here is our second gift from King Steam, almost as precious to my people as Lord Starhome himself.'

'It's like this, isn't it?' said Molly, indicating the hull of the void-faring craft. 'It's not truly of the people of the metal.'

Coppertracks' crystal skull dome flared in concurrence. 'One of the advantages of cycling his soul through the great pattern on the path towards eternity is that King Steam has picked up many a strange curio down the ages. Do your symbiote senses tell you what this is?'

Molly held her hand out in front of the circular looking-glass. 'It – it is a door. But how can that be, and where does it lead?'

'Imagine you held the very stuff of existence and sliced it in two,' said Coppertracks. 'Two halves of a membrane that stays connected no matter how far apart you then separate the two parts.'

Molly reached out and touched the surface of the looking-glass. It felt cold, wet, like water and oil mixed. But when she pushed on the surface, nothing happened, it was a solid. 'A doorway. Then this machine has a twin, two looking-glasses connected.'

'Its twin resides in the deep halls of Mechancia,' said Coppertracks. 'Within King Steam's palace. The sphere sitting beneath the mirror contains a grain of contra-matter that can open the doorway, though not for more than a minute – so great is the tension between the two membranes. The energy needed to equalize each brane-field quickly destabilizes the mirror and destroys it beyond use. We may travel through it only once.'

'This is how King Steam intended for us to get home,' said Molly.