Beneath Ceaseless Skies #143, Special Double-Issue for BCS Science-Fantasy Month 2 Read online

  “A dozen gaping holes in my abdomen notwithstanding,” Plio said.

  “It’s not like that!” Desperation rang in the boy’s voice. He was apt to try something stupid at any moment. “I’ve seen your Instrumentality, Caul. I know what it’s like, all cogs and ratchets and steel, while the lot of you bow down to a queen who’s little more than an old woman’s brain floating about in a pickle jar.”

  “And I’ve got torsion springs where my heart used to be. Deal with it.”

  Just then the perimeter alarms began to clang.

  “Ah,” Plio said. “And when you thought our time together couldn’t be any more special.”

  The arsenal’s observation scopes terminated in lenses that provided magnification in each of the cardinal directions. The indistinct blurs of six vehicles had crossed his property line, paralleling the road that led down the valley to Myddleham-on-Tyne.

  “Blast. Hit the ansible beacon, Plio. Get reinforcements here as fast as you can.”

  “Any possibility they’re ours?”

  “Johanna would’ve contacted us. It seems that we’ve been followed after all.”

  “We just want to be left alone!” Foley cried. “We don’t want to hurt anyone!”

  “Prove it, then. Show me the girl, Hollis. Show me Kavita Patel.”

  His face fell. “That was an accident.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “It was! None of this shit would have happened had she not gone snooping behind Linus’s back.”

  “Still not good enough!”

  “She was here! Linus chased her away, just as he said. But she came back.”

  “Romulus, there’s not time,” Plio said. I waved him off and let Foley continue.

  “The ansible propagator is hidden under a thicket at the edge of Linus’s property. I rigged the access on the chance we were overrun by troops from Albion. Your girl came back and set it off when she forced her way inside. Thaumic grenade. Ravaged every nerve in her body.”

  I didn’t say a word.

  “She was still alive when I found her,” he continued. “She kept whispering ‘cold’. I could barely make it out.”

  “Hibernal refrigeration. She wanted to be frozen.”

  Foley shook his head. “She’d been alone too long. All I could do was sit with her, listen whilst she talked of stars and wildflowers. Someone named Nadia. She was so brave, sir. So brave.”

  His words tore through my gut. “Of course she was brave, you sad bastard. She was Corps.”

  Plio interrupted again. “Romulus, you’ve got to look at this now.”

  Four of the six vehicles had pulled away from the road and were tracing a wide arc that would encircle Linus’s farm. And now a seventh—a trio of them, all airborne—was approaching steadily from the dirigible mooring field.

  I drew the Persuader and dilated its variable bore to maximum. “Any chance we can clear out in time?”

  “None.”

  “Then we do this the hard way.” I swept my gun before the rebels’ cache of weapons. “It’s not as if we’ll run out of ammunition anytime soon.”

  “No!” said Foley. “You can’t do this!”

  The boy made his move, flying headlong into a rack of Infrasound Dissonators. Plio stabbed his shackle control. I realized what was happening, too late.

  “Plio, don’t!”

  Foley hit a Dissonator with his bound wrists as power surged through the restraints. Electrick recoil disabled the weapon’s safety hermetics. The Dissonator fired—awful, painful sound that drilled straight to the auditory nerves. The dead-switch in my implants triggered and my hearing shut down to zero.

  Lenses and glass panels shattered. Foley held tight to the weapon despite the pain. If its infrasonic-beam hit any of his munitions crates, we’d vaporize in a fiery instant.

  I dove forward, spun through the cascading wall of noise and kicked the gun from Foley’s hands. Plio hit him from below. The Dissonator shut off and clattered to the floor.

  Silence.

  Foley lay in a moaning heap, blood trickling from his ears. I wiped away a face-full of perspiration and cycled my hearing back up to normal.

  “I’m going to get the gyrodyne, brother. We may need it soon enough.”

  Plio nodded. “No heroics, Romulus. You’re hurt.”

  “So are you.”

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  Fire Time

  I leapt through the cellar air-lock and into the barn in long mechanized bounds, out the foldbox transition and into sunlight. The fresh Gamhanid air was glorious, but I had no time to enjoy it.

  Around the farmhouse to the gyrodyne parked in front. Our rebels were almost on top of me. Flivvers and heavily loaded traction engines rumbled in from five different directions, two along the road and four crashing through Linus’s fields; flocks of flying lizards and ankle-biters bolting from the brush in their wake. The airships from Myddleham touched down in the brambles beyond the fields. Three of them, the thrusters on their flanks venting gouts of white steam. A posse of armed men jumped from each of the granary bays.

  And there I stood, facing them alone.

  For all of Great Albion’s vaunted might, its forces were spread too thin across an empire too vast. Umbrans, Necroticans, Beyonders and Unbelievers, Neverlanders and Pirate Kings, the Red Queen, or the Antithesis; these and many more presented a real and ongoing danger to Her Eternal Majesty’s possessions. The promise of spoils offered by every unprotected Aspect drew them in like metal shavings to a magnet. Statistically, Umbra or any of the other powers would have continued to strike unabated unless something was done to stop them.

  The buckler fields did just that, but at substantial risk. The aetheric forces that created the fields ensconced each World in a globe of elemental energies. Governors operated along the ley lines of each Aspect and, not unlike steam-pressure building to the point of failure within a boiler, so too did the governors possess “safety valves” to keep the elemental forces in check.

  But if the safety valves were disabled, if aetheric pressure was allowed to build without limit, the buckler field would become impenetrable not only to enemy raiders and projectiles but to everything, including our own vessels. If said pressure builds to catastrophic failure, theory suggests that anything trapped inside the energy globe would be consumed in a detonation that could rival that which begat the Heavens.

  The people of Harvest Home might live, free and peacefully isolated within their own sovereign Universe. They might die. They might die horrifically, or any of the infinite variables in between.

  Nobody gambled with those kinds of odds on my watch. Even if the poxy bastards were trying to kill me.

  I fired up the Speedtwin, then cursed my stupidity for trying to operate a flying machine with only one functional hand. Gunshots erupted behind me as I caromed across the yard, rotors screaming, iron rounds tearing through the hull and rear canopy in a shower of jagged glass.

  “Hull canopy has been breached,” the vehicle said.

  “Oh, don’t start....”

  I landed in the barn, Plio slamming the doors shut behind me. Caines and Foley were stashed behind thick rolls of hay.

  I wasn’t out of the vehicle more than a moment when a dozen rounds ripped through the barn walls, their trajectories veering wildly as the transition boundary into the foldbox was crossed. Plio and I dove. Linus yelped, pulling Foley down with him.

  “Caul? Romulus Caul!” said an amplified voice outside. I knew that voice. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had belonged to Executive Chief Constable Neville Carmody, or even Archbishop Thackerley for that matter. But no.

  It was Dun Aenghus Chief Constable Marsallay Brome.

  “Lady! Lady Brome!” shouted Foley. He staggered to the door. “We’re here, ma’am! We’re here!”

  “Get down, you young fool,” said Linus. He threw himself at the boy and pulled Foley down behind an old buckboard.

  Plio drew a coil of razor wi
re from the field pack, looped it through Foley’s shackles, and locked him to the wagon.

  I moved alongside the barn doors, the Persuader in my good hand fully loaded, and pushed them open.

  “We’re rather busy at the moment, Marsie,” I called. “Why don’t you be a lamb and come back tomorrow.”

  “You’ve got spirit, Romulus,” she answered. “I like that. I imagine you’ve bested that sprout of a lad Hollis Foley by now. A lot of book-smarts but not too wise in the truths of the World.”

  “Don’t mock him, Marsallay. He’s a believer.”

  “He is a believer. An honored one at that. His sacrifice will be remembered in the Blessing of the Fields.”

  “Wonderful. I come looking for one lost Maker and end up with a pagan fertility cult instead.”

  “What?” said Foley. “What’s she saying out there?”

  “You’ve just been declared expendable, Deputy,” Plio said. “It appears that Mr. Caines isn’t the only one who’s been used.”

  “No, that’s not possible.” Foley pulled against the razor wire. “Lady! Lady Brome....”

  “You and I both want what’s best for the people in our care,” Brome continued. “I recognize that in you, Romulus Caul. I wish we had met under different circumstances. I surely do. It could have been glorious.”

  I actually believed her sincerity, ironic though it was. I pushed the door open a little farther. “Yeah, let me get back to you on that.”

  “I doubt you’ll have the time, luv. Have a look at this.”

  A bar of pyromantic light ripped through the wall and incinerated everything in its path, arcing golden-white fire that blinded the eye. The heat-ray tore upward along the left side of the doors. Straw burst into flame. A second beam chewed down the right, a third lancing across the top.

  Blackened wood fell inward; I jumped out of the way as it crashed to the floor.

  “By our Mother, they’re trying to kill us...” said Foley, his voice trailing away.

  “Plio, how many are out there?”

  He studied his divining-assay, taking too long to focus his eyes. Heaven knew how much circulatory fluid he’d lost.

  “Forty-one; plus another two dozen from the granary transports, a good many of them taurgs. And Umbrans, Romulus. The Proletariat is here in body as well as spirit.”

  “Outstanding.”

  “You’re the weaponsmith. Any strategically brilliant recommendations?”

  “Shoot ‘em.”

  “Acceptable. Forget what I said about the Gaze of Doom.”

  “It’s beautiful when we think alike. Follow my lead, brother.”

  My head was ready to explode, but I passed on any more pain medicants. I twisted my annunciator and stepped through the smoldering hole where the doors had been. Flame licked at the planks, hinges dripping molten slag. I unbuckled my weapons harness and let it drop to the ground, hands open and empty.

  An armored dirigible flying a standard that proclaimed the New Earth Alliance was parked on the road in front of Linus’s cottage, some forty yards from my position. Chief Brome and eight others crouched in safety between the airship and their vehicles.

  Flanked on either side were Umbran drones in full battle regalia: plates of chitinous armor to protect their invertebrate bodies; solid hoods flaring up and back to shield their eyes and aural membranes; the tips of their branched tentacles sheathed in blackened steel. Each sat upon a sedan chair rendered from the same scabby material as were their machines and devices, but instead of transport by living porters, the chairs were mounted atop five motorized legs.

  The faceless mob from Dun Aenghus wasn’t quite so faceless now, accompanied by men and women I recognized from Kells and Ogham’s Wood. Among them was a cadre of indentured taurgs. All were armed, half of them toting the Immolator long rifles that had just been demonstrated on the barn with impressive effect. Every one was pointed at me.

  “Looks as if you’re keeping some strange bedfellows, Marsie,” I said. “The Not-So-Loyal Opposition, if you know what I mean.”

  “Think what you like, Romulus. The Proletariat of Umbra-Nine supports our independence—something that your Instrumentality does not.” Brome’s shirt sleeves were rolled up, perspiration glistening on arms that hefted a railgun even larger than Linus’s. And on the inside of her wrist, the same triple-moon tattoo I’d seen on Axel Creevy.

  “The Umbrans want every Aspect in the Deep for themselves, is more likely,” I countered. “We’ve beaten them back twice now. They’ll look for any advantage to strike again and you’ve just handed them one with tea and biscuits! Give it up, Marsie. The Corps will never let this happen.”

  “We have the right to try! Dammit, Romulus, these people look to me. Can you understand that? I speak for the Mother Herself, in all Her incarnations.”

  “All dead, Marsie, slain by the Gods of Time and Engines. Peddle your tales of woe somewhere else.”

  “Open your eyes, you wind-up fool. She’s all around us—in the cycle of the seasons, in the earth and the grain; in the air we breathe and the water we drink. She was taken from us once, when your precious Instrumentality let the fields of Albiondie, buried in rust.”

  “That will not happen again,” I said. “Not here, not on any of the other Aspects.”

  “It’s already begun! On Albion, and Worlds too many to count. You’ve choked their skies with soot from your chimneys, and corrupted their seas with poison from your mines. All to placate the Great Machines. I won’t let it spread any farther. I can’t take the chance. I won’t.”

  “And to ensure that, you’re willing to sacrifice the very people you claim to serve. Morality doesn’t enter into this at all, does it.”

  “Truth is beyond morality. This is a good death, luv. It’s the culmination of the Great Rite. The Harvest King is sacrificed to feed His people, His seed spilled upon the fields to ensure the fertility of His Lady.”

  “You knew Axel Creevy had that heat-ray. That’s why you were at the bar. To confiscate the dratted thing before anyone else saw it.”

  “And then you fell out of the bloody sky, looking for a woman who never should have been here at all. Axel was a zealot, yes. He was also a liability.”

  “So you expiated him with a dragon?”

  “The Goddess intervenes in mysterious ways. Ours is not to question.”

  “Is your Goddess intervening now?”

  “You tell me, luv.” She leveled the railgun at my chest, the weapon’s electrick whine building in volume and pitch. “The New Earth will endure.”

  I whispered into my annunciator. “Look sharp, Plio. It’s show time.”

  “Ready.”

  “Let me give you an honest piece of advice, priestess,” I said. “Never stand next to anything that’s flammable when you’re playing with energy weapons. It can really bugger your day.”

  I triggered my ocular cannons.

  Twin beams of aetheric fury lanced from my eyes. They pierced the airship’s hydrogen bags, and the World exploded. Flame and twisted metal rocketed outward, the stench of burning flesh roiling up into the crowded sky.

  The blast threw me down, the gash in my forehead ripping open again, mad electricks screaming in my shoulder. Blue beams flashed from inside the barn, strobing a scant three feet above me in deadly parallel streams. The luminiferous rays screened my passage as I crawled one-handed back inside, momentarily blind.

  The Gaze of Doom was a single-use option. The beams that channeled raw aetheric force through my optics were so intense, they burned out their own apertures and couldn’t be manifested a second time. My variable lenses had vaporized.

  Artificial vision slowly swung back into alignment as I met Plio. He knelt in shadow between the gyrodyne and Linus’s wagon, a steaming Remington Peacemaker in each hand.

  “Nine down, fifty-four to go,” he said.

  I grabbed a mobile Edison-field projector from his field pack and activated it beneath the hole in the barn wall. A mechanized wh
oosh, and the breach was sealed by a shimmering barrier of gray-on-gray. The field was impenetrable, but it consumed power like nobody’s business. The wardstone in its core would be depleted in no more than fifteen minutes.

  Plio tossed me one of the Peacemakers. The Edison-field was opaque, but I could hear men and women shouting from every direction. All were trying to identify which charred mass had been the High Priestess Marsallay Brome.

  It was no less frantic inside. The fire lit by the heat-rays was spreading.

  “Now would be a good time to hear this plan of yours.” Plio checked the gauges on his Emancipator. “I’m starting to lose hold of my solidity. You don’t look so presentable yourself.”

  Correct on both counts. I felt like Hell, and Plio with his ruined chest looked like an awakened cadaver. I picked up another Edison projector.

  “We duplicate the buckler event,” I said, “only this time in reverse. Foley’s got Tesla-bombs in the cellar. We’ll ride out the blast behind this.” I dropped the Edison into his hands. “Its wardstone hasn’t got enough power, so you’ll have to couple the projector directly into the turbine downstairs.”

  He stared. “Tell me you’re not serious.”

  I keyed his ansible beacon to repeat our location on all military bands, tagging it with Captain Marsh’s personal command encryption. That’d get her attention.

  “Orda’s Eyes, you are serious.”

  “Kavita is dead, brother. We have to stop these lunatics before they kill again.”

  “By obliterating us all in the process?”

  “Plio, there’s no time for this! I’ll happily step aside if you’ve got a better idea. Otherwise shut up and do it.”

  “As you command, Major Caul.” The edge to his voice could have split diamonds.

  “Brother, please.”

  For an instant I saw the exotic in him glare back at me, his yellow Symb’ral eyes harsh and unreadable. Then the trusted officer and friend I knew him to be returned. He shook his head.

  “My crèche-mother told me there would be days like this.” He took the Edison and disappeared down the cellar stairs.

  I helped Linus to his feet; unlocked his shackles and tossed them aside, then picked up the Goliathon 8-gauge.