A Mosaic of Stars: Short Stories From Other Worlds (14 page)

I almost wept as the ground shook, and I waited for a shell to rip me to pieces.

A metal foot hit the mud beside me. The shaking wasn’t artillery, it was Mech Seventeen. Scratched and dented, his smokestack twisted and the top of his head buckled in, he charged towards our trench, a rifle in each hand.

Whether it was courage or shock that overcame my fear, I do not know. I dragged myself from the mud and charged with him, yelling at my men to join us.

Again bullets ricocheted off Seventeen, and again the enemy gave fearful cries at the sight of him. But this time they were not in their own positions, pushed to a desperate last stand. This time they ran, and my men ran in after them, laughing in relief as they slid into the sweet embrace of their own familiar hell.

Seventeen stood on the edge of the trench, looking around for more targets. Behind us, I heard the first roars of rebel artillery. Thirty feet to my left the ground exploded in a shower of mud and shrapnel.

“Get down there, soldier.” I shoved Seventeen as hard as I could, and he fell forward, sliding down the bank. The men cheered for him.

I leapt in after and crouched in a corner, hoping to survive another barrage.

Seventeen looked at me, and I imagined I saw him smile.

The Brass Samurai

That autumn I dug harder than I ever had before. There were more Oni in the hills than at any time in my life, their cackling echoing through the night. I did not have my father’s skill at the forge, but I was strong for a woman. I could dig pits outside the village and fill them with his iron spikes, trying to trap some of the monsters as they came out of the hills.

It was that or let them devour the harvest. Demons or no demons, I did not intend to starve.

Frustration seized me as my shovel clanged on something solid in the mud. Rocks meant harder digging and heavier lifting.

But this clang was different, and as I brushed away the dirt I realised why. Instead of a rock I had found a brass tube, which was in turn connected to a barrel like torso, topped off with the helmet of a samurai. We were used to finding fragments of such things, remnants of steam warriors fallen in the War of Clouds, but this was the first time I had found one whole.

My father beamed when he saw what I had. He knew automata from his days in the city, before he met my mother.

“Now we are safe,” he announced as he stoked his forge. “I will make him live again.”

Leaves were falling in their thousands by the time father beat the dents from the samurai and made his boiler burn once more. He was magnificent, tall and proud despite his scratches and scars. Seeing him, I almost felt hope.

But soon would come the Screaming Wind, and the Oni would be upon us. When I saw how feeble our defences were, and heard their cackling chorus in the night, I wept with fear.

Half the village watched as the last green leaf curled up in the orchard. A gust of wind caught it, jerked it once, twice, three times, and snatched it from the branch.

With a vast screeching, the Oni came. Hundreds of them, their eyes blazing and their teeth flashing, horns protruding from their bulbous heads. They leapt and danced their way out of the hills, heading for our village.

As the first of them reached the fields, the samurai emerged. His armour was tarnished, his helmet dulled with age, but his blade had a fresh edge thanks to my father. Steam poured from his back as he strode out to face the Oni.

We pitiful humans retreated safely behind our walls. The Oni could only enter buildings that held no food, and we had taken care to keep our homes clear. We would not die now, even if the samurai failed. Instead we would wait for our empty bellies to devour us.

Fail he might, for all the strength and skill of his blows. He cut down a dozen Oni in turn, darkening the soil with black blood. But then two of them latched onto his arm, while three more grabbed him around the waist. He disappeared beneath a heap of monsters.

That magnificent steam man had shown more courage than any of us. Now he would die, and soon we would too.

I grabbed my shovel and made for the door.

“Katsume!” my father exclaimed. “What madness is this?”

I did not answer, but rushed out into the fields. Screaming from the top of my lungs, I charged into the mass of Oni, caving in the face of one with my shovel blade, knocking two more aside as they stood in my way. I leapt at those on the samurai, battering them away from his arm, freeing his blade to do its deadly work.

Back to back we stood, the brass samurai and I, fighting off the frenzied beasts. Soon my arms were more weary than they had ever been from digging, my palms rubbed raw. But still I fought on, the steam that poured out behind me a reminder of the strength one person could have.

At last the throng dwindled. Only a score of Oni remained. Exhausted, I lifted my weapon to face them.

Lifted it too high. An Oni came in under my defences and sank its teeth into my arm. There was a crunch, a flash of agonising pain, and where my hand had been blood poured from the stump.

I slumped to my knees, cold and faint. The samurai turned to stand over me, slicing my attacker in half, fending off the Oni that gazed at me with hungry eyes. I could already hear others battering at his back.

As my mind spun and the world went black, I heard footsteps and shouts.

I looked down at the body of the brass samurai. His head was a mangled mess, his torso stooped protectively over where I had been. He had saved me, becoming my armour as the villagers chased down the last Oni.

My father wept over the stump of my wrist, but I did not. Instead I looked down at the brass samurai’s hand, still clutching his sword. He had given us the inner steel to fight. Perhaps he could give me something more.

A Railway to the Moon

It is not my way to accept a commission simply for the money, but for the amount Lady Tottering offered I was willing to make an exception. The madness that made her commission a railway to the Moon would surely pass once she realised its impossibility, and I could return to work on regular locomotives, a second town house paid for.

“It is absurd,” her Ladyship said when we first met, her eyes fixed on the night sky. “That man Fogg can travel to lands far beyond our view, yet none of us tries to reach what is right before our eyes.”

Having explained the challenges of the endeavour, and discovered her still intent upon it, I set to work.

There was no shortage of money or manpower available to me, and yet my plans faltered at every turn.

I built a ramp miles long, incredible in its lightness and strength, to get us into the air above Surrey. Yet even this proved too heavy to sustain itself, and was repurposed for crossing the Thames estuary.

The first seven engine designs, each faster than any other in England, proved too cumbersome for the ascent. Each in turn was relegated to the London to Edinburgh run.

No matter how I refined it, I could not make fuel efficient enough for such a long journey without stops.

At last the frustration became too much.

“It is madness!” I leapt up and down on my top hat, venting like a burst valve. “How can I work at that which cannot be completed?”

Storming past the shocked navvies, I burst into the office and whipped off a short, sharp telegram.

“PROJECT IS MADNESS STOP CAN TAKE NO MORE STOP I RESIGN STOP.”

By the time Her Ladyship arrived from London, I had calmed down enough to regret my tone, though not my intent.

“We have a contract.” She glared at me as we stood on the steel walkway, looking down at the still-bustling works where my assistants were supervising the lasted experimental boiler.

“I have my pride,” I snapped.

“And what good will pride do if I sue you for breaching our agreement?” Her eyes were steely grey, arms folded across her chest. Though it was buried, I felt that she had an anger as great as my own. “I hired you because of your potential. Without it you are nothing to me. I will take back every penny I paid, and more. Your house. Your company. Your patents. I will take it all.”

The blood raced from my face, and I gripped the rail tight. I felt the horror of my situation, to have taken a job to secure a second fortune, only to lose my first.

“Please.” I gulped. “It is driving me insane. I am an engineer. I can take no joy in a project that never bears fruit.”

“That never…” Her voice softened, and she laughed. That callous sound sent a shudder up my spine. “My dear Mr Abernathy, your work here has born endless fruit.”

She took my arm and led me, bewildered, along the walkway. As she spoke she pointed at objects in the yard below.

“Your Moon-bound locomotives have halved the journey time to Scotland. Your lightened fuel has doubled their efficiency. Out estuary bridge is the talk of London.” She turned me to face her. “I am not a lunatic, Mr Abernathy. I dream of a train to the Moon, knowing it may never succeed. But the achievements that dream inspires, the steps we take toward an impossible goal, those we can take pride in. Those are the things that will last.”

I blinked, turning my gaze back toward the yard. I remembered all the things I had created here. One mad dream had spurred more inventions in that one year than in my whole illustrious career.

A smile crept up my face, and I turned to face her again.

“I have an idea,” I said, “for the most comfortable of passenger cars.”

Broken Rails

“Go left!”

The train jolted, smoke billowing into Flywheel’s face, as Georgo made a last minute swing at the junction lever.

“Gears dammit, Flywheel!” Georgo bellowed, glancing at the track they had nearly taken as it ran arrow straight through the cratered debris of the plains. “We can’t jump away from every splinted rail you see.”

“Can and will!” Flywheel screamed over the roar of the
Silver Bolt’
s engine. “We hit one at speed, this whole pile of junk goes down, and us with it!”

“We don’t win this race, we don’t get the scrap,” George replied. “Then the whole town starves.”

To their right, the
Crimson Inferno
roared along another of the tangled tracks that crossed the old warzone. For a moment it vanished behind the armoured carcass of an artillery train. When it reappeared it was a dozen feet ahead of them and gaining.

Georgo cursed as he surveyed the tracks, while Flywheel flung coal into the furnace, sweat pouring down her face. Tracks screeched by beneath their wheels, but as the trains drew toward another junction, the
Crimson Inferno
was a whole carriage length ahead.

“Here!” She flung the shovel to Georgo and grabbed a wrench. Swinging at a signalling lever, she sent them careening onto a track set to merge with their opponents. They could hold their nerve and risk a crash, or they could starve.

Across the dirt and rubble, she saw shock on the other driver’s face. Then determination took its place. Casting aside his wrench he picked up a shovel, forcing more speed from his screaming engine.

There was one more junction before the tracks merged, one last chance to chicken out and avoid catastrophe. The
Inferno
rushed straight through.

Flywheel swung at the junction switch with her wrench. The
Silver Bolt
turned onto a side track, any hope to catch up gone. Shaking her head, she watched the other train head down the straight line toward victory.

“Shit.” Georgo sank to the floor. “We’re gonna regret this.”

“Not us,” Flywheel said. “The thing about fearing splinted rails more than most folks, you get better at spotting them coming.”

With a screech of tearing metal, the straight track twisted and snapped beneath the
Crimson Inferno
. One end leapt up, twisting into the wheels and dragging the engine from the track.There was an almighty crash, then a crack like lightning and a woomph as super heated steam burst in a scalding cloud from the boiler.

“Slow down.” She took the shovel from Georgo’s hands. They both stared in shock as a figure emerged screaming from the steam, then collapsed in the dirt. “No way we can lose now.”

Tick-Tock

I can hear the clocks all around me filling the shop with the tick-tock of gears, the swish of pendulums, the chimes on the hour or the half or the quarter. One of them lies half-assembled in front of me, a collection of parts taken from the boxes that old Mistress Venables kept so meticulously labelled, laid out as she taught me.

My face flushes at the thought of her. Her hand clipping me around the back of the head. The rebukes scattered among the lessons like numbers across a clock face. The sound of her screaming at me that she would find a new apprentice, that the shop would never be mine.