Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology (15 page)

Then she saw it—off to the north, a smear of red, prominent against the green. Possibly it was nothing. But if she landed on the vegetation, her chance of surviving was zero. Whatever lay in that rusty patch could be no worse. She turned Nomad toward it. It was a good way off, and she hoped the flyer would make it.

Not one patch, she saw as she got closer, but a cluster of half a dozen or so. And the flyer wasn’t going to make the distance, even to the closest of them. She’d come down at least a hundred yards short.

Nomad bumped and shuddered as her tyres skimmed across the vines and creepers. Then the wheels touched down fully, and the aircraft rolled on, over the vegetation, and came to a halt twenty yards inside an area of ruddy ground.

Valerie’s nerves were strung tight as she surveyed the fractured, rocky terrain. Dry, brown strands crossed the surface, and Valerie was surprised to realise that they were dead creepers. Something in this area had killed the plants. And, just possibly, given her a chance of surviving beyond a few minutes. She would have to move fast, though.

She unstrapped herself from the pilot’s seat—and froze when, in the corner of her vision, something moved. There, where the red ground gave way to the venomous vegetation, half a dozen crab-lizards scuttled from side to side, their claws waving in the air in frustration. Two of them came forward, onto the bare rock, but retreated back onto the greenery, hissing. Whatever had killed the vegetation, the animal life didn’t like, either.

The flyer lurched, and she grabbed the panel for support as, outside, rocks shifted, throwing up red dust. A quake. Another, smaller tremor shook the craft, then all was still.

Valerie’s heart thumped in her ears. She laboured to even her breathing and calm herself. She drove herself into motion and dashed back to the engine room.

Valerie pulled the inspection and maintenance panels from the casing and used a gaslight to see inside. The ground under the flyer quivered at intervals, making it shudder and creak.

It took half an hour to diagnose the engine failure. A crank pin had loosened, then sheared, causing one crank to rotate unevenly. Meanwhile, the broken pin fragment had blocked a coolant duct, and that had caused the overheating.

She needed to know if her situation had gotten any worse and took a minute to dash back to the control room and look out. More crab-lizards had come and were trying to cross the rocky ground to get to the flyer. They’d been joined by two behemoths. As she watched, petrified, one of the big beasts took two paces toward her. She screamed, stepping back involuntarily. With a roar, it spun round and ran back to the green growth. She forced herself to breathe again.

A flicker of motion caught her eye. The compass dial on the panel had gone crazy. It spun clockwise, then stopped. It flicked back and forth a few times, then spun anticlockwise.

Seismic activity. Magnetic disturbances. City suspensors vibrated and generated fluctuating magnetic fields. The suspensors on Syberia had been free of plant life. Magnetism and vibration. Could that be the key? Could it be that simple?

Something was keeping the plants and animals away. Whatever it was could end at any second. She hurried back to the engine and carried on working.

Valerie worked steadily for six hours, her nerves taut, half expecting a behemoth—or something worse—to tear its way in through the hull at any instant. She continually fought the urge to return to the control room to watch what was happening outside.

Dismantling the engine piece by piece, she was finally able to dismount the damaged crank. There was no spare in the maintenance supplies. She’d have to remove that crank and plug the open piston’s steam valves. The engine would be running on two cylinders instead of three, and she’d be lucky to maintain half speed—and to reach City Twenty-seven before the eighty-day deadline. But at least she’d be off the ground.

Valerie replaced the last of the covers and dashed back to the control room, wiping the oil from her hands on a rag as she ran. The sun was a warm, orange ball on the horizon. Behemoths, crab-lizards, ten-foot fire weevils, and hundreds of other creatures clambered over each other at the border between the green life and the barren red, trying to get closer to the flyer. And each time one of them moved onto bare ground, it would turn, screeching, and fight its way back.

Whatever kept the fauna off the rocks seemed to cause unbearable pain. Valerie felt nothing. Possibly only the native life was affected, or perhaps the ship’s hull was protecting her. Her scientific curiosity was piqued, but her survival instinct was telling her to get away from this place.

Nomad lurched again as another small quake hit, but it felt different from the tremors that had been coming every few seconds since she’d landed. Those had felt, in some indefinable way, as if they were coming up from a place deep underground. This last one felt closer, as if a monstrous mallet had smashed into the surface next to the flyer.

She strapped in, took a deep breath, and pushed the lever, heart pounding. The engine started, and she let out a shuddering, nervous laugh with the relief. She engaged the propellers, and the flyer rolled, slowly at first, gradually picking up speed. At the fringes of the red terrain, the animals were frantic, racing along the edge parallel to the flyer, trying to keep up. She pulled the wheel back, and the nose lifted, then the rear wheels. She was airborne and safe.

As she turned Nomad back on course for City Twenty-seven, she glanced down at her landing place—and almost lost control with shock. Next to the rusty patch—no more than fifty feet from where she’d been grounded—was a colossus. Eight legged, two hundred feet tall, its head not much more than a mouth filled with teeth and surrounded by tentacles like steel hawsers.

She shuddered. How long had it been there? How close had it come to whipping one of those tentacles around the flyer and dragging it in?

Her hands shook, then her teeth started chattering. Delayed shock, she knew, averted by the urgency and focus of work, until now. Now that she was away and relatively safe, the stress was making itself felt.

With trembling fingers, she reset the clockworks for a half-speed passage to City Twenty-seven. Then she went to the supply closet, dusted off the brandy bottle, and pulled out the cork with her fingernails.

City Twenty-seven hung in the air thirty miles ahead. Smoke from the stacks fouled the air around it. Streams of untreated effluent poured from a thousand sewers, defiling the surface below. The city floated in a miasma of its own filth. Valerie knew she was seeing the city anew, with the eyes of a Free Citizen. The sight disgusted her.

She picked up the transmitter and sent a signal to Danforth. Then she adjusted its wavelength to one she knew well. She hesitated, uncertain, her fingers hovering over the switch—then committed herself. Cy was the closest thing she had to a friend. She had to warn him.

She guided the flyer to the maintenance dock in Sector Ten, as Danforth had instructed her. She knew that dock. It was all but unused, its optics disabled—more evidence that Danforth was up to no good, wanting to keep his activities away from prying eyes.

The radio crackled, then Cy’s voice came through. “Val, listen. You have to get away, right now. Don’t wait for me.”

“Why not? What’s happening?”

“I’ve been listening in on the prohibited wavelengths. The cops were listening when you called me, and they’re probably hearing this, too. They know you went over to the Rogues. And they know I talked to you.

“You were right. The things you told me . . . they don’t want anyone to know. They’re on their way to the dock now, with orders to bag us both. Go, while you still can.”

“I can’t. Not yet. There’s something I have to do.”

Danforth was waiting on the dock platform when Valerie opened the hatch and stepped out, wearing the heavy shielded suit.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

She had no intention of opening the suit. She spoke through its loudspeaker. “Old habits. I’ve been flying for more than a month with a hold full of protonium. The stuff’s shielded, but I feel safer in this.”

“As you like. They let you take the protonium without any trouble?”

Valerie took a deep breath, and looked into Danforth’s eyes. “No trouble. They didn’t care. They’re just as I expected. Dirty people, living in dirty cities. We’d be better off without them.”

Danforth cocked an eyebrow. Valerie’s breath caught in her throat. Did he know the truth, after all? Was he trying to trick her? “They’ll soon learn the folly of making things so easy for us. Now that we have the protonium, it’s time to move ahead with the next step.”

An ominous feeling settled like a stone in Valerie’s stomach, mixed with sense of anticipation. “What are you talking about?”

“I haven’t been completely truthful with you. The city is in no danger. We require the device for quite a different purpose. You will help us reassemble it, and instruct my associates in handling it safely until it’s time to prime it for detonation. My people will transport it to City Twenty-two.

“Ten days from now, that city will cross paths with the Rogue City they call Magnolia, and at that time the device will be overloaded. The explosion will destroy City Twenty-two instantly.

“I and my people on the other cities will place the blame firmly on Magnolia, and demand action from the government. We’ll whip the people into a frenzy over it, and the government will be forced to declare all-out war on the Rogues. We have superior weapons and trained armies. The Rogues will be obliterated, and the only cost to us will have been the loss of one small city.”

“And the people on it. Our people.”

“A small price to pay to eradicate the Rogue menace.”

Valerie looked around the dock. “I’m not comfortable talking about this here. Let’s go aboard.” Without waiting for his assent, she turned toward the flyer.

Cy’s voice sounded in the headphones inside her helmet. “The police are almost at the dock, Val. Get out of there, quick!”

The headphones clicked as Cy cut the connection. She led the way into the cargo hold. The particle detector lay quiet on a shelf by the door. “No optics in here. Nobody to hear or see us.”