Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

'The last time I believed that I ended up with an extra soul floating inside my head.' But Molly let the bandit woman press a finger against her forehead.

'I have it. A great chamber looking out onto the heavens – and, well take me for a fancy piece, we really are inside an iron moon!' The look of wonder on the Bandit of the Marsh's face turned to surprise as she looked down at the steel tip of a sabre rising up out of her stomach.

'Oh!'

Keyspierre pushed the bandit's murdered body off his sword and flashed the new pair of fangs hanging out of his mouth. 'I thought it must be you when I heard the sirens go off. You Jackelians are so predictable.'

Commodore Black pulled Molly back and raised the sabre his daughter had given to him. 'They haven't changed you so much, shiftie. You were a filthy beast before and your dirty friends have only formalized things with your wicked new set of teeth.'

'The masters trust only the hunger, as they should. I was coming down here to retrieve the little author's slops so I could toss them as gravy into your cage. Then I was going to discover what a doltish fat Jackelian sailor tastes like.'

Commodore Black danced back as their sabres met. 'You'll be finding it a lot like biting on cold steel, you shiftie scum.'

'Please, my people!' shouted Coppertracks from the sidelines as the commodore met the full force of Keyspierre's swinging sword. There was little subtlety in this duel. It was murder being done here. The commodore's hatred of the secret policeman matched with the Army of Shadows' hunger for human veins to rip into. Steel cracking as they smashed at each other, each trying to find a weakness in the other's guard.

'Go,' spat the commodore through gritted teeth as he turned a sabre thrust. 'I'll take this filthy wheatman down. Get to the ship and stop the blessed bomb being pushed through into King Steam's palace.'

Molly and Coppertracks tried to slip past, but the ballet of steel between Commodore Black and Keyspierre was impeding the only exit to the laboratory. Keyspierre hissed in derision at them. They were stuck fast.

'Always choosing the side of the underdog,' laughed Keyspierre. 'How typically Jackelian. The Army of Shadows will take your land however you choose to die, and it will be my people feasting on your descendants.'

Molly cast around desperately. There had to be something, some weapon she could use. The duelling pair blocked her way to the scholar's pistol, but there… the dissection slab. She slipped behind the console, trying to work its arms.

'The feast at the revolution's table is coming to an end,' called the commodore over the noise of the sirens, stamping down and turning aside another thrust. But for all his bravado the old u-boat man was weakening. Keyspierre was younger, faster and had all the strength of the hunger, not to mention the training of expert duellists in the Quatershiftian secret police behind him.

'We shall see.'

'You'll find out what those sirens are sounding for, and it's not for us. It'll be the House of Ferniethian that brings your revolution to an end,' wheezed the commodore, falling back. 'My house. My daughter.'

One of the dissection array's arms lashed out to the end of its reach as Molly struggled with its controls. Not far enough to touch Keyspierre, but the rotating head of blades sliced into Lord Rooksby's cage door. With an eagle-like cry, the twisted Lord Commercial pushed free of the cage and snapped open his wings, gliding forward into Keyspierre, sending both of them sprawling across the laboratory floor.

Commodore Black was on top of them, trying to work out who was who in the struggle as they all rolled across the floor, the clawed fingers of the birdman matched against Keyspierre's fangs.

'You're so proud of your hunger, you dirty wheatman, let me feed it for you!' shouted the commodore as he thrust his sabre down into the shiftie's mouth, sliding the sword out and then slashing back and forth across the body.

Molly grabbed the u-boat man as he cut down furiously at the corpse. 'Jared! He's dead.'

Sense returned slowly to the commodore's eyes.

Molly looked to the open door of the laboratory. 'They're going to kill everyone in the Steammen Free State, Jared.'

Lord Rooksby pulled at his metal collar and made a croaking noise like a parrot, trying to form the words inside his mangled throat.

Molly listened intently to what Lord Rooksby was trying to say.

'Show. Ship. Way.'

'Thank you, Rooksby softbody,' said Coppertracks.

It had taken the loss of Rooksby's humanity for him to find it.

A twirling axe impaled the last slat defending the gantry and Purity ran out to stand underneath the dark rotating monster at the heart of the satellite. Half the Bandits of the Marsh had fallen fighting through waves of slats spilling out of the iron moon's halls, barracks and breeding chambers to get her this far. Those remaining began barricading the corridor leading to the vast chamber. It would not take long for the slat legions to arrive in their thousands to protect their most precious piece of plundered Kal technology.

Purity stepped over a master's body, the giant woman's perfect eyes staring lifelessly across at the white-hot barrel of the pistol that had fallen from her hand.

Jackaby Mention was behind Purity, wiping the blood from a knife onto his trousers. Jackaby looked up at the immense monster twisting in the hollow heart of the iron moon, using a broken set of brass goggles taken from one of the dead masters to stare at its malfeasance. A stillborn star, crushed beyond collapse and folding time with its corpse. A horror.

'That is it, my queen?'

'Yes,' said Purity. 'It's creating a window of time, punched through existence back into the past. The rift the Army of Shadows crawled out of.'

'I understand,' said Jackaby. 'Destroy this and we seal the Army of Shadows in the past.'

'It's not quite as easy as destroying it,' said Purity. 'The maths-blade showed me that. It's a dead star. Anything we throw at this thing will only feed it, make it stronger. Energy, matter, it will consume everything.'

Jackaby lowered his goggles. 'Then how?'

Purity stamped on the gantry running like a hoop around the rotating beast. 'There is a field of distorted time being created by this monster. We need to create another one in close opposition to it. One that will destabilize the first. The tides created by the two fields interacting with each other will rip apart the iron moon and allow the torn skin of time to heal itself.'

There were shouts coming out of the narrow corridor leading into the core of the moon, the thump of slat weapons and the cry of men and women dying to protect the entrance.

'I believe I know what you will ask next.'

'Know that I do not ask it lightly,' said Purity.

'I have never run that fast,' said Jackaby.

'The wind envies your heels, Jackaby Mention. Whisk me up a storm inside here, stir up the metre of time itself with your bare feet.'

'There is a reason my body freezes when I run,' said Jackaby. 'It is how I stay alive at such speeds. But for this I will need to run far beyond the cold, the cramps, run straight into the fire.'

'Fire behind us and fire in front,' said Purity.

'And ever was it thus.' Jackaby lowered himself into a sprinter's starting position, and then shouted at the other bandits protecting the gantry. 'Roll all the bodies off the path. I will need a clear run.'

'Thank you, Jackaby.'

'No,' said the bandit. 'Thank you, my queen. It has been my honour to serve you a second time.'

Purity spilled one of her dead fighters off the walkway, taking the corpse's trident first. 'How much time will you need?'

Jackaby stared up at the dark rotating singularity. 'About five million years' worth.'