Alien Devices: Tesla joins crew to prevent alien zombie apocalypse (The Secret War Book 2) (22 page)

The
Wind Dancer
glided around in a tight arc, causing
another bolt of man-made lightening to crackle to the side in a miss. Will
watched as the bigger enemy swung into sight. It was only a few miles behind
them now, and he fancied that he could see movement through the widows of the
enemy bridge across the distance. No doubt they were surprised at the shark
turning to snap at the whale, he thought wryly.  Suddenly a sun-bright bar of
light speared from the cannon over Will's head towards the other ship.

Blinking away the dazzle that affected his eyes even through
the darkened goggles, Will looked on in amazement as a flower of flame
blossomed from where the spear of light had touched the larger ship. The flower
grew and expanded into a bright ball as the other ship exploded. Beside him,
Rogers loosed an almost-reverent blasphemy at the destruction spread before
them. The light tubes overhead flickered and died as the deep thrum of the
Dancer's engines stopped dead.

“Well!” Will said into the stunned silence on the bridge. The
flaming debris started to fall from the sky.  “I guess you could say that was 'more
than sufficient'.” 

Chapter 21

A
bigail looked with dull eyes around her
cabin.
Nothing made sense. They had just buried her father on a hill that
over-looked the terrible place where the alien artifact had been buried. She
had thought it a fitting resting place for him. He was near the discovery that
he had sought his whole life, a discovery that had also killed him.

Chang had tried to explain that when the thing in the pillar
had been damaged it must have severed it's 'connection' with her father,
resulting in his death. To Abigail, it sounded like mystical clap-trap, but she
had no better explanation. There had been no external signs of injury. As
father had been christened Church of England, any kind of autopsy was out of
the question, as far as she was concerned. It was overly sentimental of her
perhaps, but she felt entitled to sentiment over the needs of science for
once.      

 The hill under which the artifact was buried was now much
smaller. Tesla theorized that the Invader vessel, and most of the hill over it,
had disintegrated when the engines had been destroyed. Still, his
plague-ray-detector showed that they dare not come closer than where they were.
It was certain that nothing remained of the vessel and its living nightmares.

Will had decreed that as they long as they had power and the
engines restored, they could take the time to honor her father before getting
underway to Calcutta. The patchy repairs would hold for now, but they would
require constant monitoring. The last day had been a frantic blur of re-wiring
and patch-repair work for her. The worst of it, for Abigail, had been mediating
between Tesla and Devi.

Tesla had to be restrained from making 'improvements' to
everything, and Devi had to be restrained from killing Tesla with her bare
hands for 'meddling'. Abigail was in awe of Devi's incredibly sharp invective,
though it seemed to have no effect on Tesla whatsoever.    

She began to get out of her dress, fingers moving mechanically.
The entire crew had turned out for the burial service dressed in their gaudy
best. She felt she could do no less. Tesla had spoken nice words, as had Will.
Saira had recited another of her beautiful poems when it had started to rain.
It was only later that Abigail realized that there had been no rain. Her face
had become wet because she was crying.

Laying the dress on the cot, a wave of anger washed over her.
The Invaders had stolen him away from her, like cowardly thieves with their
poisoned ways.  The man she had embraced in that alien hell had not been her Father;
Father had already been dead before she got to the alien site.

She would refuse to remember him as ‘that man’, as that cold
and superior mad man. He had never been that to her. She would remember instead
the gentle man who had helped her dismantle her first Tesla engine. The man who
had held her through her night terrors, who had encouraged her to be her own
person first and the devil take Society. A good man. A good man taken by evil
monsters. How many other good men had been taken in the same way? How many more
would be?  Were there more monsters loose in the world?

The pain in her hands made her realize her fists were so
clenched that her own nails were cutting into her palms. She was still standing
in the middle of the cabin in her undergarments. She did not know how long she
had been doing so. Looking down at the cot, she saw that on one side was her
dress, on the other the clothes she had worn shipboard. Her electric pistol was
atop her ship clothes. It seemed like a revelation to her, seeing them side by
side.

She could return to England and resume her duties there. Tesla
would surely see to that if she asked him. Mrs. McDougall, their housekeeper of
many years, would have to be informed of father's fate, a task Abigail did not
look forward to. 

Abby had already decided that the discovery of power generation
belonged with someone like Tesla, someone who could truly see it used for all
mankind. The goals of father’s scholar cabal seemed rather petty now. There was
little to recommend Cambridge to her, but she could return there.

Or she could hunt down the other monsters and kill them. Stop
them before they robbed another person of their loved ones. The implications of
the changes to her father's body and how they resembled what was observable in
both Petrov and that dead man in Hong Kong were not lost on her. There were
more of them. She was sure of it. How to find them was the question. She
reached for her pistol.

No one seeing her face tried to stop her on her way to the
Captains day cabin. When she tried to open the door, she found it blocked by
Rogers standing on the other side.

“Lady Hadley,” the first officer greeted her in some confusion
when he saw who was trying to barge in.

“Let her in, Lawrence,” Abigail heard Will's voice say. She
strode into the room, and stopped before the desk where Will sat.

“I want to go after them,” she said without preamble.

“Lawrence, give us a moment will you,” Will said. When the
first office had left, will had pulled out a bottle and a pair of glasses,
setting them on the table.

“Sit down,” He said to her.

Abigail stayed where she was.

“I do not believe you heard me!” Abigail said. Her voice sounded
harsh and raw, even to herself. “I do not want a drink.  I want to go after
them. Will you help me or not?”

“Sit. Down!” he said implacably, Will met her gaze while
pouring from the bottle of amber spirits.

Something in his voice or gaze seemed to take all the tension
from Abigail's bones. She slumped into the chair across from him. Numbly she
took the glass that he held out to her. 

“To Lord Robert Hadley. “Will raised his own glass in salute.
Her eyes were watering again; she blinked back tears. She followed his example
and drained the glass in one go. She coughed as the liquor burned its way down.

Will took the glass from her and filled both glasses again.
Setting her glass before her, he spoke.

“You feel like there is a great big empty spot in your chest,”
Will said to her. “You feel like the rest of you is on fire, and you want to
hunt down the dirty worms what are kin to the thing that took your father away
from you in such a filthy manner. You want to destroy them utterly. Grind them
into whatever bloody mash they turn into, and then do it all over again.”

“Yes!” Abigail snatched up the glass and drained it again. She
sat the glass down forcefully on the desk. Will filled it again.

“And you want me and the Dancer to help you,” Will said,
looking at her over his own glass.

“Yes!” Abigail cried. “Doubtless you have also discerned that
there must be some connection between what happened to my father and your own
enemy Petrov.”

“No.”

“What?” Abigail paused with her own glass in hand.

“I said no.” The dark skinned Captain took another sip from his
own glass. “I will not help you destroy yourself.” He looked at her with dark
eyes.

“I know that you are not thinking at present, even though it
feels like you are,” Will continued. “I know something of what you are feeling,
believe me. You are feeling that tearing after whoever they are will fill that
hollow again. That destroying them will help somehow. It will not.” He drained
his glass. “I have learned that it doesn’t fix the feeling.” 

“What you want help with is revenge.” He said bluntly. “Revenge
will not help you nor anyone else. If I say yes now, all it will do is get you
killed if we are lucky. It will kill this ship and all of us if we are not. I walked
that path at one point, what it did was cause me not to pay attention and more
people died because of it.”

“I agree with what you said about the similarities between
Petrov and your Da. I think you might even be right about what it means, but
both Petrov and your father are dead.” He toyed with the glass on the table in
front of him. “What you do not understand is that what you are talking about
might take years to do, and you will not do it from within the ivy-covered
halls of that University of yours.

Revenge is not enough, not for this job. You have to want to
save the world, Lady Hadley. Even if that means that you do not get to see the
bastards die by your own hand.

I am not saying that you should not feel what you feel. I am
sayin' that if that's all you got, you're going to lose. You’ll take a lot of
other people with you.  I want you to go and think about that, Abigail, and
then we will talk again. Because I surely do not need a half-cocked amateur on
my hands. I’ve got enough to deal with.”

Abigail felt all the blood drain from her face. Controlling her
shaking she sat the glass carefully on the table. She spoke as if some
clockwork mechanism was in her throat instead of her own voice.

“Well, Captain Hunting Owl, thank you for your opinion, as well
as the drink. I believe that I may have misjudged you after all. I certainly
shall not take up any more of your precious time.” With that she flung herself
out of the chair and out of the room.

Abigail blindly moved down the corridors of the ship. Somehow
she wound up in front of the door to Saira's cabin. She didn't even know if the
woman was there, but she found her hand rising to knock, almost of its own
accord.

“Who is there?” came Saira's voice through the door.

Leaning close to the door, Abigail said in a hushed voice, “It
is Abigail,” she said. “I'm sorry to bother you. I can return later.”

“Abigail? No wait one moment!” Before Abigail could turn away,
the door opened and Abigail faced Tesla.

“Tesla,” she stammered. Looking around him she saw Saira
sitting on her bunk, clearly naked but with some cloth over her loins. Abigail
blushed a deep red.

“I am so, so sorry. I can return later.” She turned around as
quickly as she could when Tesla's voice came over her back.

“By no means, Lady Hadley,” He said firmly. “I can easily
return at another time. Please do come in.” She turned back, taking in that the
august savant was fully clothed with mustache in full twitch with humor. She
opened her mouth to make some other excuse, when Saira's voice chopped through
the air.

“Will you both stop standing there like proper British twits,
letting in the cold air, and git in here? I swear you English are all mad,” the
Arms Master said with a sigh. The two of them entered the cabin sheepishly.

“Fakir,” Saira ordered. “Close the door. I am thinking that
Lady Abigail needs all her friends about her now, yes?”

“I don't know,” she said dejectedly. Abigail made a hopeless
gesture with her hands.

“Arms Master Brighton was kind enough to allow me to question
her about her magic,” Tesla said to Abigail. “I fear that I must correct you
Arms Master, I am Serbian, not English.”

“That is like saying to the monkey that you are a collie and
not a bulldog,” Saira replied. “Sit back in the chair, fakir.” Tesla lowered
himself into the wicker chair across from the bunk.  She patted the end of the
bunk with her hand. “Come Abigail, sit here. How are you doing?” The dark
skinned woman was sitting tailor style at the far end of the bunk. She looked
at Abigail with softness to her expression.

As Abigail settled on the edge of the bunk, she saw Saira lift
the two long needles that lay in her lap, to take up where she had left off
with her knitting.

“You, you are knitting,” Abigail stammered, blankly.

“Yes,” Saira agreed. “I find that it is calming to the soul,
and keeps the hands supple. What of it?” She looked up at Abigail. “Oh,” she
giggled while the needles moved. “You actually thought that the fakir and I
were in puja?” She giggled even louder. “Fakir, she thought we were making the
beast with two backs!”

“Arms Master, please! There is no need to be vulgar.” Tesla
protested uncomfortably. “It is difficult enough with you sitting there,
unclothed. Let us please observe some decorum at least.”

“I am told that I have none,” Saira replied. “I believe that I
already mentioned that if you wish to talk to me here, you must endure how I
choose to dress, or not, in my own cabin.” She looked at Abigail. “But come,
Abigail,” she said. “I can see that you are troubled.”

Abigail found herself blurting out everything. About her
conclusions about the evil, her resolve, and her conversation with Will. By the
end of it she was feeling almost as angry as when she'd left his day-cabin.
Both of them listened until she stopped.  In the pause that followed, Saira
spoke without looking up from her knitting.

“He is right, you know,” the Arms Master remarked.

“Yes, most certainly,” agreed Tesla.

“What!” Abigail exclaimed.

“If you will allow me, Arms Master?” Tesla cleared his throat.

“Go right ahead, Fakir,” Saira said. “I shall listen to your
wisdom also.” The needles continued to click.

“Lady Hadley,” Tesla began, “I have not had the privilege to
know you for long, but it is my observation that you are brave, determined, and
most of all, intelligent.” He held up a hand. “I say this only as background to
what I believe the Captain was attempting to say.” He paused running a hand
over his mustache.

“I believe that you are aware of my own small accomplishments
on the world stage,” Tesla continued. “I say small, because they are
objectively just that. I have always wished to see mankind rise above his
current place squabbling in the mud. I had hoped that my inventions would see
man raised up in brotherhood to the heights he should occupy. Instead I have
seen many of them turned to death and destruction, and I have learned that
mankind is sadly far from what I know is possible for him.” He waved off
whatever Abigail was about to say.

“Oh, I grant you that the Invasion in its dark brutality
changed many things. Some in ways I believe move us a little closer to a lofty
goal.” Tesla's eyes took on a faraway look. “The night I saw my first invention
so clearly I could touch it, was the night that my brother died.” He looked at
them with a sad smile.