Stephen Hunt - The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

Nobody would miss them in his brave new world.

Robur stood up, the melted components of the steammen still white hot in the ruins of the pocket airship. The soldiers of the Catosian company escorting the mechomancer stood silently behind him, wisely holding their tongues and their judgment on this debacle.

He hadn’t needed the sailors’ garbled reports of a murderous steamman running about at large in the streets with a couple of murderous women by its side to tell him of his mission’s failure — the ruptured heart of the airship bosun spoke volumes for which of his thirteen test subjects had shrugged off his virus. Was Ironflanks’ survival due to some esoteric technique of the knights steammen, like their ability to fight with sound? Abraham Quest was not a forgiving man and word of this disaster was sure to filter back to him, imperilling Robur’s seat in the perfect new world they had planned together.

Robur looked up at the commander who stood at least a head higher than the top of his own thinning skull. ‘You have a tracker capable of following them?’

She saluted. ‘There is a worldsinger cowering in the Leviathan , a soul-sniffer. He can follow the trail of their essence like a bloodhound if we motivate him properly.’

‘Send for him.’

He was not stymied yet. This was a setback, not a complete failure. What had been imagined by the mighty mind of the great Robur could not simply be unimagined, and there were plenty more steammen he could kidnap and infect with the work of his genius. He just needed to perfect the technique. Yes, the dissection of a certain steamman scout running around outside would be the first step to a far more potent form of his virus of the metal.

Robur beckoned for his mechomancer’s tools, watching while his assistants placed his oak cases in front of him. Behind Robur, the Catosian commander looked on with professional interest as he removed a series of blades and rotating teeth belts, attaching them to a hilt with a high-tension clockwork drive. The Catosian city-states had so little experience fighting the people of the Steamman Free State. But he would show these unnaturally muscled beauties how it was done.

‘What is that?’ asked the officer, unable to contain her curiosity any longer.

‘A hull-opener,’ said Robur. ‘A steamman hull-opener.’

Three of the House of Quest’s armoured vehicles steamed backwards, their single tracks bouncing over the boulevards, the short stubby cannons on their prows at maximum elevation, tossing shells upwards. Reversing through the stream of fleeing sailors, they were followed by the tentacles of a skrayper, gel-swollen trunks of flesh lined with spines swaying and slaying as they went. But even the reins inserted above the skrayper’s sensitive ridge of optical cells could not urge the monster to squeeze any lower between the spires, so its lashlite handlers had to be content with trailing its twitching tentacles along the pavement, whipping across lines of Catosians as the soldiers emptied their rifles. A few of them were left flailing, impaled on the wiry flesh as if they were so many insects on Dr Billickin’s patent flypaper.

One of the tentacles curled out, guided by the heat-sensing flesh inside the limb and, wrapping itself around the hot barrel of a vehicle’s cannon, battered two tanks off the road before raising the vehicle — treads spinning useless in the air — into its monstrous maw filled with whale-like teeth. The skrayper fed on sunlight, but it had to get its trace minerals from somewhere. A cannon gunner attempted to climb out of a side hatch but only succeeded in falling into the gullet early, passing straight through the teeth and into the jelly-like absorption gel. The armoured carriage followed him, rotating slowly through the stomach liquids as the last of its energy expended itself through the track. A shiver ran down the skin of the skrayper. Oh, this was good. Far richer in irons than the massive schools of helium globules that drifted through the stratosphere. After this day of feeding it would be able to drift lazily through the heavens for months, just filling itself with the glorious white light.

At the end of the boulevard the Minotaur crashed through the buildings of Camlantis, one of its three massive aerospheres severed and making its own last flight into the heavens, the remaining two hull units blanketed by the bodies of as many skraypers as could latch onto the airship, squeezing the life out of this strange new entrant into their realm. It took every iota of the lashlite riders’ talents to keep the creatures focused on ripping apart the Minotaur and not flailing their tentacles at each other. This was not breeding season and without the pain the lashlites were able to cause with their riding wires, the sky would have been filled with a mass of furious, sparring skraypers.

On the ground, a line of Catosian soldiers ran towards the collapsing airship only to be driven back by the ferocity of the lashlite assault. Fifty flights of aerial warriors were circling overhead, each squadron of the flight taking a turn to peel off from the formation and fill the air above the downed aerostat with a storm of lances — whistling down to strike the hundreds of crewmen trying to climb out of the torn walls of their airship.

‘Withdraw!’ barked a Catosian centurion, recognizing the grim reality of their situation. ‘Find a spire and mark your targets from the tower windows.’

A bugler took up her command and sounded the retreat, poignant echoes of it bouncing off the shining skyline of Camlantis. They kept their line, each woman in lockstep as they fell back, sliding glass charges into their rifles and maintaining a volley of fire up at the diving lizards, closing ranks where lances thudded through their number. The enemy seemed almost fanatical about retrieving the corpses of their lifeless warriors; but unlike the lashlites, the free company fighters had no compulsions about abandoning the bloody carcasses of their fallen behind them.

Waving her pistol, the centurion fell back through an archway into an arcade of what might once have been shops. Striding out of a lifting room at the centre of the arcade came Veryann.

‘First!’

‘What is your disposition, centurion?’

‘Casualties are running at half our strength and the only aerial support left effective now is the Leviathan , but those winged jiggers have jammed her mooring lock on the spire. She’s stuck fast and running thick with lizards. Boarding parties are being repelled on every deck.’

‘And your orders?’ asked Veryann.

‘Stand and hold, First.’

Veryann reached out to steady her officer. ‘We are Catosians. That is what we do. We stand and we hold.’

‘One of the airship people told me they thought they saw you blade-to-blade with that fat u-boat skipper.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Veryann. ‘The commodore. That peacock always did like to boast about his prodigious talent at the game of tickle-my-sabre.’

‘The actuality fell short?’

‘He was proficient enough in sword-work for someone who has never drilled as free company. But I don’t think the outcome was ever in doubt.’

The centurion pointed outside the arcade, her troops taking positions around the entrance. ‘We received word from a runner a few minutes ago. Abraham Quest has asked for your presence at the tomb to command its final defence.’

‘So, it has come to that, then?’ sighed Veryann.

The officer saluted. ‘We shall hold the lashlites off to our last.’

‘Carry home victory,’ said Veryann, using the traditional Catosian farewell, ‘or carry my body home on my shield.’

The officer watched her head for the tomb. It was only after Veryann had left that the soldier realized what had been nagging at the back of her mind while they had been talking. Veryann had been clutching her left arm to her gut, as if it had been wounded. Or as if she hadn’t wanted anyone else to get a good look at it.