The Diamond Conspiracy: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel (38 page)

Something rushed past the Lander, circled around him, and then came another hard impact, this time from the left. Indicators around him flipped to scarlet; gauges were showing one system after another failing. It would all be over soon.

As his last act of defiance, Wellington fired the heat ray. Something exploded. Whether it was the Lander or a Mark III, Wellington could not be certain as he felt the world teeter around him . . .

Darkness.

It was so quiet.

Sadly, the silence didn’t last for long.

“Wellington?!”

The breath he took tasted so good, at first. He was just thrilled he could breathe. The breath, however, must have been too sudden as his throat felt tight, and the second felt less pleasurable, more painful. He was struggling now against a
hacking cough, one that racked his entire body. The third breath was when he tasted the smoke, an acrid, unpleasant taste that reminded him of the destruction he had just wrought on the Thames, and that he had just left abruptly only a few heartbeats ago.

“How did I do?” he wheezed as he looked up into Eliza’s blue eyes.

“You took down two of the Mark IIIs,” Sophia said, removing the interface from his arms. “Well done.” It was hard to tell how seriously the compliment was given.

“That still leaves one,” Eliza said, her eyes following the last Mark III.

“Aim for the wings,” Sophia stated. “Not a suggestion. I remember how vulnerable they are compared to the body.”

Eliza walked out to the middle of the rooftop as the Mark III screamed through the air, coming around for what looked like another strafing run on the East End. The pilot must have seen her as the craft banked harder and set a trajectory that put her right in its path.

She shouldered the rifle, switched to electric, and waited for the moment. The moment they both knew from America. The moment when the Mark III’s death ray made that preliminary flash just before firing.

The blast from Eliza’s weapon cut through the craft’s right wing, sending the Mark III spinning wildly out of control. Over the Thames, the craft exploded.

“Cheers,” she said to Sophia.

His eyes burned and he was having trouble focusing, but breathing was coming easier now. “How are we faring on the ground?” he asked, his arm over Sophia as she lifted him to his feet.

“Remains to be seen,” Eliza said, dismantling the ocular and neural headset. “One thing’s for certain—the Queen is most definitely not amused.”

In Which an Achilles’ Heel Is Exploited

“N
O! THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANTED!”
roared the Queen over the Jubilee’s loudspeakers. Bruce had heard some women angry in his day, but they all paled in comparison to Ol’ Queen Vic.
“KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!!!”

Doctor Sound had counted on this moment. Why the Fat Man actually wanted Her Majesty to go completely off her nut escaped him. Maybe it was to show her true intention for these poor sods in the East End, and that was fine; but there was a flaw in this plan of the director’s: when monarchs lose their minds, people wind up dead.

These clods in the grey uniforms, the Grey Ghosts, weren’t going to make his job any easier. Unlike those steel monsters that were appearing above the buildings, these flesh-and-blood soldiers were brandishing Gatlings powered by small boilers and fed munitions from gears strapped to their backs, and they looked like the kind of blokes that could take care of themselves in a fistfight. Hauling around the gear as they were, they would have to be brawlers of some sort; but nothing that Bruce couldn’t handle.

That was before the Queen lost her mind.

Normally, Bruce was not the one for noticing the details;
but somewhere between Eliza’s shot—and how she shot
an attendant
when the Queen was sticking out like a bloody sore thumb, he could not understand—and the Queen’s tantrum, something odd happened. The Maestro’s soldiers stopped where they were, right on the spot. They all started screaming, and . . .
growing
. That was when he noticed just underneath the right arm of their arm cannons a vial of green goo, its contents appearing to be pumped into the soldiers. He watched as a small group of the Grey Ghosts got pumped with this serum—
probably the serum that Italian bint’s been on about for the past month
—but two of the soldiers started bleeding out of their ears, eyes, and noses. They dropped like stones, a bloody froth dripping out of their mouths as their mates began popping buttons on their shirts.

Once their transformation ended, these soldiers with bulging muscles and crazed stares released the safeties on their Gatlings and started cutting down men, women, and children as if they were ready for harvest and their weapons the threshers. Usually Bruce could handle the plots and crimes of madmen, but the lack of discrimination or consideration struck the Australian deeply. These Grey Ghosts didn’t care if it was soldier, street urchin, or visiting dignitary that got in the way of their rounds. Their orders were simple: if it was moving in the East End, kill it. This was a slaughter masquerading as a great purge for the betterment of the Empire. Hopefully, Books’ standoff with those Mark II contraptions—which, much to Bruce’s chagrin, had been a spectacular battle—had revealed that to the masses, and would spur an uprising against the Crown.

Now it was up to the Ministry to help that resistance along.

“So right now,” Bruce muttered to Brandon, hefting the weight of the long bag in his hands, “the fate of the East End is restin’ on who we get these to, and whether or not those little contraptions from Axelrod and Blackwell work?”

Brandon looked at the simple control device in his hand and at a bag similar to Bruce’s slung over his own shoulder. One button, it seemed, carried the lives of the innocent, the destitute, and the visiting dignitaries from all parts of the Empire. “Looks like it.”

His eyes turned back to the shotgun in his own hands.
“Dear Lord,” he prayed, motioning for Brandon to remove his hat and hold it over his heart, “please—of all the days for us to do so—keep us on the straight and narrow, and keep the cock-up’s at bay.”

“A-men. Eloquent as always Bruce,” Brandon said, replacing his hat. “Shall we give this a go?”

Bruce gave a curt nod, watching a full unit of mutated Grey Ghosts running down the street. “When this is all done, Mr. Hill, the first round is on me.”

Brandon gave a tiny laugh. “Really? You really are trying to get back in my good graces.” He gave Bruce a playful punch in the arm. “Good hunting.”

Bruce went left towards the charging soldiers while Brandon ducked out to the right. He had only gone a few steps before he pulled out the small box with its single button and pushed it. Science always worked for him when it was kept simple. The button underneath his thumb gave a hard, sharp
click
as he pressed it. Bruce always knew the shlockworks in R&D straddled that razor’s edge between genius and utter crackpot, but what he saw unfold on New Park Street could only be described in one word: elegant.

On being briefed by the assassin del Morte, R&D designed and implemented in the field an invention inspired by Books and Braun’s recent mission in the States. They called these rocks they created
cobblefaux
. At a glance they would have appeared as replacement cobblestones for any that had been damaged or worn out from wear; but the clankertons had created powerful magnets, designed specifically for these Grey Ghost blokes and the packs they bore. The cobblefaux flared blue for a moment before flying free from the street and attaching themselves to various soldiers. The
CLANG
from the cobblefaux striking the Grey Ghosts was followed by a loud crackle of electricity, causing many of the Ghosts to tremble and jerk uncontrollably before dropping to the ground.

Now that the Maestro’s men were thinned out considerably, it was Bruce’s turn.

A beautiful thing about the boilers granting the Grey Ghosts superior firepower against his conventional rifle could also turn on them, provided you knew the right place to shoot. Bruce, it so happened, knew exactly where that was. Wherever
Bruce aimed and fired his rifle, the target at the other end would either explode in a super-heated cloud of vapour or send the soldier careening into a number of fellow Grey Ghosts. He continued down New Park Street, firing and then spinning back behind cover. It was impossible to tell whether or not this second phase of the plan was working. There were so damn many of them, and on this side of the Thames they numbered thirty. Not that Bruce wasn’t enjoying himself. Things had most assuredly improved since Rockhamption. Hopefully, Good Lord willing, he would have to make good that wager with Brandon and pick up the first round at the George.

He slapped in his third clip and spun out of his hiding place to fire, but three Gatlings roared in protest to the agent’s sharpened skills. Bruce ducked back behind cover and looked to one side. Dead end. Across the street, a sturdy looking pub.

Thank you, Lord,
Bruce prayed silently.

Two shots managed to leave his rifle before a hell storm of bullets dogged his every step. Bruce ploughed his way into the dim house . . .

. . . and saw himself staring at his past.

“You mad, boy?” the gruff man shouted. “Get down!”

Bloody. Hell. “Sergeant Burgess?”

The burly man looked him over from head to toe. “We know each other, mate?”

It was hard to believe this man, practically pissing in his pants from fear, ever intimidated him. Then again, fresh from the riding crop of Cassandra Shillingworth, the sergeant had a high bar to clear now.

Bruce looked around the pub to find himself surrounded by countrymen, all of them hiding behind tables. “What the hell is all this about?”

“Pommy bastards disarmed all the colonial forces once we arrived,” Burgess barked. “Not just us, but all the visiting colonials!”

“That’s right,” one of the soldiers offered. “Boys from India and Egypt lost their swords too.”

It made perfect sense. When the Ghosts started to fire on citizens of the Empire without provocation, it would stand to reason that some British subjects—possibly those commanding regiments of armed soldiers—would take a stand.

Bruce placed his rifle to one side and removed the long bag from across his back. “You’re representing Australia, boys. Time to show these Poms how we do things in the Southern Hemisphere.”

The Australians gathered around the table where Bruce ripped the bag open. Rifles and pistols of all makes and models scattered across the long table. Some soldiers immediately reached out and took up a weapon striking their fancy.

“These may be older than what you’re used to firing out on the range, but trust me—they’ll work.” He glanced out of the pub window and saw the Grey Ghosts closing in on the pub. “How about you all give those a try right now?”

Bruce took up his rifle as his fellow Australians fortified themselves in the pub. The Grey Ghosts turned to open fire; but before a single Gatling could spin up, Australia made their presence known. When the last Ghost fell, Bruce stuck his head out of the door. He looked down either side. He could hear gunfire beginning to rise in the streets. Looked like Brandon and a few other Ministry agents had also made some new friends.

“Gotta run, boys,” Bruce said to them all. “If it’s wearing grey, shoot for the head.”

He was nearly out of the door when he heard, “Mate!”

It was Sergeant Burgess. “We never did catch your name or unit, boy.”

Bruce gave the man a proud grin. “Agent Bruce Campbell, Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences.”

Those words had never felt so good to utter, and that elation followed Bruce out in the street—back into the fray, which was not hard to find. Bearing around a corner, the Ghosts were pushing a number of British citizens down the street, their Gatlings refusing to show mercy of any kind. Bruce began picking off the lumbering monsters from behind as if they were targets in a shooting gallery. Their assault came to a halt when Ghosts noticed their soldiers either disappearing in a cloud of steam, or wildly flying off into another direction. Bruce’s aim refused to fail . . .

. . . until he ran out of ammunition.

Bruce patted his coat pocket and they were as his rifle. Empty. He had to move, and move now as the transformed
Ghosts were facing him, their Gatlings spinning faster and faster.

Then the Ghost closest to Bruce, his head exploding in a spray of blood, stumbled back. Four other soldiers also rocked and teetered on suffering the same fatal wound.

Spinning around, Bruce was now eye to eye with the formidable Beatrice Muldoon, flanked by a small team from the Department of Imperial Inconveniences. For the first time, and Bruce was a big believer in trying new things at least once, Bruce Campbell had never been more thrilled to see that signature brown, burnt orange, and amber tweed.

He was not so happy with Beatrice saving his hide.

“Hello, sw—”

“Blimey, you took your time comin’ round, didn’t ya, Bea?” he snapped. He really didn’t feel all that comfortable with her calling him “sweetie” as that was usually a prelude to her trying to kill him.

“Cheers, Bruce,” she returned, tossing him a fresh clip for his rifle. “And perhaps you should consider straight-and-to-the-point head shots instead of the melodramatic disabling of the boilers. Cut the snake at the head, and all that maybe?”

Bruce guffawed. “Now, Beatrice, you know my style better than anyone.”

That earned him a sharp, crooked eyebrow. “Before you think this is some sudden change of heart from me, let’s get something crystal clear, Campbell.” Bruce could hear more and more pops of gunfire. Maybe this harebrained scheme of Doctor Sound’s had a snowball’s chance in hell after all. “Our director was watching the Jubilee, on orders from the Queen. Once the Queen ordered the purging, he made an executive decision and deemed Her Majesty an inconvenience.” She gave a gruff laugh. “To the Empire.”

“Makes sense,” Bruce said, loading the clip into his weapon and shouldering it. “Lean left.”

Beatrice spun down to one knee, drawing a pistol and firing just as Bruce did the same.

“Now we’re even,” he stated with a smug smile.

“Bullocks!” Beatrice replied. “That was
my
bullet.”

“Do you really want to take a look at the ballistics?” Bruce brought up his rifle again, scoring a head shot on another
Gatling soldier while Beatrice felled another one a few yards further behind. “Nah,” he said, his next bullet piercing a charging Ghost’s tank to send her flying into three others. “My way is more fun.”

Beatrice rolled her eyes and drew aim on an oncoming Ghost, paused, then adjusted her shot. The unsuspecting sod spun like a top at the sudden propulsion and stopped only when slamming hard into a heavy brick façade of a boarding house.

“Fair enough, Bruce,” Beatrice chuckled. “I’ll give you that one. Got any other clever Ministry tricks you want to impart?”

Bruce looked around at where he was and smiled brightly at the sight of the Man at Arms public house. Good thing these watering holes were so frequent in this part of London Town. Man at Arms, however, was the agreed-upon spot where he would signal the Ministry as a secured checkpoint. He ducked into the seedy pub to retrieve from above the door—logic dictating that if there was to be heavy gunfire in the East End, anyone taking shelter would stay
low
—a heavy disk just larger than his palm. He held it up for Beatrice to see and handed it to her.

“Just this,” he said, firing off a wink to Beatrice as he pulled out a box of matches. “One way of letting the lads know this part of the East End is right as rain.” He gave a slight guffaw as he lit the disc’s sole fuse. “Well, right as the East End can be, at any rate.”