Steven Harper - The Havoc Machine

Six soldiers yanked the first six prisoners up to the gallows and pushed their heads into the nooses. Three of them accepted their fate with hopeless resignation. Two-a man and a woman-struggled and spat, but to no avail. One victim was a child, a girl, and she was weeping. Outrage made Thad’s brass hand shake around the wine goblet. He cast about for something to do, something to say, but nothing came. Parkarov watched with glittering eyes at the corner of the gallows, and it occurred to Thad that he had a clear shot at the general’s head from the grandstand. The tsar had all but said he believed in Parkarov’s guilt. A shot would almost certainly disperse the crowd and end the executions, at least for the day, and without Parkarov to advocate for them, the tsar might let the matter drop entirely, especially with beautiful Sofiya around to talk him out of it. Thad himself…

Thad swallowed. He would almost certainly not survive. Even if the tsar spoke up quickly, it was highly doubtful the soldiers in front of the grandstand would act out of anything but reflex.

The little girl’s head went into the noose and the soldier tightened it around her neck. Thad’s throat thickened, and he glanced at Sofiya. The moment he did, he knew she was aware of what he intended. She shook her head minutely, and he gave a small grimace. He couldn’t let more children die. Sofiya shook her head again, pleading. Her eyes were bright.

Thad casually reached beneath his jacket, as if scratching. General Parkarov’s attention was on the hanging. He held up his arm to give the signal for the drop. The black automaton at the trapdoor lever waited. The crowd fell silent. Thad grasped the cool metal and wood of his pistol, his eyes on Parkarov’s head. He drew.

And then the spiders came. Dozens of them, hundreds of them. They spilled over the roof of the grandstand and swarmed in from the streets and skittered over the buildings across from the Field of Mars. They were all exactly the same: six inches across, counting the legs, with boxy bodies and four-lensed eyes.

They all had ten legs.

“Havoc!” Thad gasped. “Impossible!”

“Shto?” gasped the tsar at the same time.

The crowd and the court shouted and screamed as the little machines crawled over them. General Parkarov spun and dropped his arm, but it wasn’t the proper signal, so the black automaton didn’t move. The automaton band played its happy marching song.

“Mr. Havoc?” Sofiya said. “But you killed him!”

Maddie bobbed madly on Sofiya’s shoulder with little squeaking noises, as if excited. A flock of the spiders swarmed over the black automaton at its lever. Even over the band music, there was a rending of metal. The black automaton crumpled like a ball of foil. Startled, Thad lost sight of the automaton beneath the spiders’ flashing claws. In seconds, the spiders cleared away, leaving behind a pile of more spiders exactly like the originals. Except they were black. They wobbled about uncertainly, then gained their legs and joined the others, which were swarming over the automaton band. The music wrenched into a squawking end as both musicians and instruments disappeared. Thad stared, his hand still on his pistol. He didn’t know what to do.

“My heavens!” Sofiya cried.

Several people from the crowd broke through the ragged regiment of soldiers and made for the gallows. Some of the soldiers made halfhearted attempts to stop them, but spiders skittered over them and devoured their rifles, replacing them with more spiders. General Parkarov drew his own pistol, but two spiders skittered up his arm and ate it, producing a third spider. Parkarov dropped the spiders and leaped off the gallows. Thad lost sight of him. The braver members of the crowd cut the binding ropes and nooses, setting the people free. A number of the spiders, meanwhile, were already eating the mechanical cages. The doors fell open, freeing the prisoners, who joined the chaotic, screaming crowd. The little girl was snatched up by a woman who hugged her tight and then vanished into the press of people. Thad had time for a flicker of gladness.

The court was squealing in fear and trying to flee the grandstand, but the women’s skirts and the men’s tight, impractical clothes hampered them, and their human servants had fled. Spiders were devouring the little automatons. Two spiders crawled up Thad’s legs, intent on Dante. He felt their claws pricking through his trousers. Thad snatched the spiders off and flung them away, but more were bent on taking their places. It was impossible! Havoc could not have survived that explosion. But the evidence was here-ten-legged spiders that were smaller versions of the one Thad had seen in Havoc’s laboratory in Lithuania.

One of the spiders got past Thad and reached his shoulder. Dante bit it in half and spat it away. “Applesauce! Doom!”

The tsar recovered. Without a word to either Thad or Sofiya, he vaulted over the front of the grandstand and landed six feet below on the Field of Mars, whereupon he sprinted for the barrack. Three more havoc spiders crawled up Thad’s legs. Only a few steps away, the tsar nearly ran straight into General Parkarov.

Time slowed. Thad grabbed havoc spiders and threw them down. They tore his clothes as they came away. Parkarov drew a knife. The tsar saw it. His eyes met Parkarov’s. Alexander’s expression was calm, almost serene. He knew he was going to die. Thad tried to grab his pistol again, but the spiders had delayed him. Parkarov’s arm came forward.

A red bolt of energy cracked past his shoulder. It struck Parkarov full in the temple. His head vanished in a small explosion of heat and red light. Parkarov’s body stiffened, then dropped to the ground, trailing smoke from the neck. Both Thad and the tsar turned. Sofiya brandished her little energy pistol.

“Nice shot,” Thad said.

“The tsar agrees with you,” Sofiya replied. A havoc spider skittered up the back of her dress, but Maddie attacked it, and it dropped away. “We shouldn’t stay here. These spiders are attacking everything mechanical, and we’re carrying machinery.” She stomped on one even as she spoke.

The court had nearly emptied the grandstand by now, and they added a dash of color to the throng outside the grandstand. The spiders were busy dismantling everything mechanical they could get their claws on-soldier weapons, automatons, lampposts, engines on automated carriages. They devoured machines like locusts in a wheat field. They didn’t seem to be hurting actual people, though a number of them had been trampled, possibly even killed, in the panic that was still ongoing. The crowd to flee, but there was nowhere to flee to.

“How is this happening?” Thad said. “Havoc couldn’t have lived. Did his machine survive and somehow come along on-”

“The circus!” Sofiya finished. “It somehow got on the train in Vilnius, and now it’s eating mechanicals to make copies of itself here. But why?”

“Griffin!” Thad said grimly. “He arranged this from the start. It’s why he wanted me to hire the circus for him.”

Sofiya met his horrified eyes as the same awful thought crossed both their minds. “Nikolai!”

They shoved their way through the crowd. Sofiya became a snarling tiger, all but throwing people aside and bolting ahead. Thad found himself following her, though he also shoved aside people with a strength he didn’t know he possessed. They finally cleared the crowd and sprinted for the circus.

“Kalvis, too,” Sofiya said as they ran. “Oh God.”

“Death!” screeched Dante, clinging madly to Thad’s coat. “Doom!”

Thad tightened his jaw and ran . Every muscle in his body bunched. His nerves hummed like cello strings. Every step brought him closer, but every step also seemed so damned slow. They reached the outer boundary of tents. The circus was also in disarray. The havoc spiders were climbing over everything, hunting for machinery. Performers and roustabouts fought back. A group of them had already formed up around the locomotive to beat them away, and Dodd and Nathan were fighting off another flock farther back at the Black Tent. Mama Berloni crushed one with a frying pan. Piotr the strongman picked them up and yanked their legs off. Dodd smashed others with a sledgehammer, but still they came. Thad and Sofiya ignored all this and ran past them to the wagons. Thad’s heart was in his mouth. The wagons were blurry, and he was running through the streets of Warsaw again, searching for David. But it wasn’t David. David was dead. He was going after Nikolai.