Clockwork Chaos (11 page)

He and Mary heaved the partially dismantled sections into several wooden crates. He hammered them shut, then called his men in.

“Whatever the cost, we must protect this machine. So we must retreat with it until it is safe to return. Hauptfeldwebel Stern?”

A young officer snapped his heels. “
Alles ist gut, Generalleutnant.
” He gestured at the crates and the men carried them out. At their appearance, the gunfire intensified, but the French were unable to break through the German’s defenses. Only an occasional stray bullet threatened them.

Mary followed the Hauptfeldwebel out into shadow. A great, long shape hovered above them, obscuring the sky. Heavy horse-drawn wagons had pulled the airship from the lakefront; it loomed over the camp. The crates, attached by hooks to ropes, slowly rose into the air toward the airship’s cabin. Ferdinand locked the bunker behind them and then ushered Mary to a rope ladder that dangled from the great ship.

“Quickly,” he said. “It is not safe here.”

Bullets kicked up bits of asphalt, not a dozen feet away. Mary grabbed a rung and began to climb.

“You’ve gone to great lengths, your Excellency, for a free peek up me dress. It would have cost less just to hire me.”

The Graf’s laugh washed away in a chatter of gunfire. He started climbing behind her, and Hauptfeldwebel Stern followed. The rope swung and twisted dizzyingly. The soldier holding the ladder stable fell suddenly, clutching his chest. The ladder, tangled in the man’s arms, jerked to Mary’s left, and she lost her footing for a terrifying moment. Two other soldiers ran out into the line of fire to disentangle the wounded man and steady the ladder. Mary climbed faster.

Hands grabbed her from above and hauled her into the cabin. Graf Zeppelin was not far behind. He pulled himself over the edge and stood, then stumbled and collapsed, his legs giving out under him.

Blood merely spotted his chest, but ran freely from his back. He clutched Mary close.

“Go to Lüderitz. It will be safe there. Tell Wolfgang, go to Lüderitz.”

By the time Hauptfeldwebel Wolfgang Stern pulled himself onto the flightdeck, the airship had lifted up and away from the firefight, and Generalleutnant Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin was dead.

It was a long journey to
Deutsch-Südwestafrika
. They crossed mountains and seas and deserts with dunes so great they may as well have been mountains, stopping only once, in Togoland, to refuel. Mary sat back in the cabin with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and refused to look out the windows. Every time she tried, all she could see was Ferdinand’s body falling, spinning loose-limbed as it rushed toward the hard ground.

She couldn’t look at Stern either, without remembering the cold stone of his face as he searched his commander’s body before rolling him out the open cabin door with his boot. But she had little choice there. The Hauptfeldwebel demanded her assistance as he tried to assemble the machine according to the notes in the book he’d stripped from the Graf’s body.

And it almost worked.

Mary shook her head. “It’s not right. I kept telling Graf Zeppelin, but he wouldn’t listen to me. Those brushes don’t go there.”

“What do you know? You’re just a girl.”

“That’s what
he
said, but I
am
a girl, and one with a lot of hair. I know brushes.”

Still, it would have worked had Mary not stolen a couple small bits. The Hauptfeldwebel ranted about them, pointed them out in Zeppelin’s sketches. Mary shrugged.

“Maybe they’re still in the bunker. We were sort of in a hurry, you know.”

The sun was bright and the wind brisk on the day the pilot announced that Lüderitz was in view. At the Hauptfeldwebel’s command, the airship swung out away from land to approach the harbor from the sea.

The sun beat down, hotter than summer, as they descended. Mary pushed aside visions of falling bodies and risked looking out the observation windows. She could make out individual buildings in the ramshackle colonial town, and tiny specks that she took to be people. Two ships were moored in the harbor. Quite a few more were further out at sea, sailing toward the harbor. The pilot expressed concern, and the other two crewmen hurried to look.

“Can you see who they are?” Stern asked, coming up behind them.

One of them raised a looking glass. “French!” he said. “And Mongol also!”

“Good,” said the Hauptfeldwebel. He raised his pistol and pressed it to the back of the crewman’s head.

The shot rang, deafening in the enclosed space. The window shattered and the crewman fell forward, flipping over the railing and out. Mary screamed. Stern fired two more shots, and the second crewman stumbled, still clawing at his holster as he clutched his chest. Stern aimed his pistol at the pilot as he kicked the dying crewman to the deck, and then rolled him with his boot under the railing and out.

“Shut up,” he told Mary, and then to the pilot. “Take us to meet the fleet.”

“I will not.” The pilot lunged for a control panel.

Stern fired twice, and the pilot grunted in pain, and then Mary tackled Stern from behind. She slid her knife between his ribs, seeking something vital. There was a hissing of gas, and two more shots, and then flames.

Mary hesitates, staring up at the balloon above her. “You know, last time I got in anything that flies, things didn’t go so well.”

Carrigan laughs. “I don’t know. Since you crash-landed that flying behemoth of yours right in front of us, we’ve been hounded halfway ‘round the world by Frenchmen and Mongols and Brits, matched wits with convicts on Devil’s Island and battled sea monsters in the Sargasso Sea. More adventure than any man deserves, and quite a bit that Mrs. Carrigan will thoroughly disapprove of when she comes to learn of it.” He waves his arm at the encircling armadas. “This is but a temporary inconvenience.”

“No regrets at all?”

“Only that we haven’t got the time now to make Mrs. Carrigan even more jealous.”

Mary shakes her head. “If that’s your biggest worry, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s around us.”

“Don’t you worry, lass. The old girl may look like a dated has-been, but she’s got a few surprises left in her. Now off with you.”

Carrigan slaps her on the buttocks as she turns to climb into the balloon’s gondola; Yaqub catches her under the arms and lifts her in. On the deck, sailors work the two ropes that tether them to the
Light Brigade
, playing them out like fishing line until the balloon hovers a hundred feet above the surface of the sea.

“Right,” Mary says. “We don’t know how much time we have before things go bad. Let’s get to work.”

The deck lurched suddenly under her feet, knocking her to the floor. Flames flared across the ceiling of the cabin, and the windows burst outward. The ship plummeted toward the sea, tipping precipitously.

The Influence Machine slid across the deck.

Hauptfeldwebel Stern cursed and flung himself in front of it, then screamed as the machine crushed him against the sharp glass jutting from the window frame. Lodged in the window, the Hauptfeldwebel’s body prevented the machine from slipping out and into the depths.

What came after was and remains confusion. Flames, and water, and thick, viscous oil from the engines, and hands, strong hands that pulled at her.

“Let go of it, lass,” one of the men said. She’s not sure now who it was. Maybe it was Mr. Gibson.

“No!” Mary realized that she was holding onto the machine, arms wrapped around the frame, keeping it from sinking. “No, we have to save it!”

It was Yaqub—she knows the color of his skin now, deep and rich as coffee, unique on the
Light Brigade
—who grasped the machine and pulled it to the side of the skiff. Three men heaved it up out of the roiling waters and onto the little boat. Mr. Gibson—it
was
Mr. Gibson—dragged her in and dropped her, coughing and spitting, on the deck. The men rowed quickly to get out from under the flaming and collapsing gas bag.

“What in God’s name
is
that thing?”

Mary wasn’t sure whether they meant the airship or the Influence Machine, but at that point she didn’t care. She sat up and felt inside her blouse. Yes, she still had the stolen parts.

“Get us somewhere dry, luv, and I’ll show you.”

The Influence Machine is complicated. It took years to build; it took a brilliant scientist nearly a month to piece together. And Mary is just a girl.

But she knows this thing, this monstrous wonder. She has lived with it, killed for it, lost friends and lovers to it. She’s put it together and taken it apart. She has held every piece of this thing in her hands, watched them fitted together, and she doesn’t need Graf Zeppelin’s little book—fallen from the flaming airship into the waters off Southwest Africa—to tell her how it works. She imagines the ink running like blood from the charred pages into the currents, around the Cape and beyond, circling the world forever. She has put it together before, and she has sat in the Devil’s seat, electricity playing over her head, with the world subject to her every whim.

She looks down at the
Light Brigade
, at the sailors scurrying across the deck like frightened ants, at the flash of Tom’s red coat flapping in the wind. Each one her willing slave, ever since she demonstrated the machine to them, back in Lüderitz harbor. Each one ready to die for her. Loyalty such as the Queen never imagined.

And she can’t say that she hasn’t thought about it. Queen Mary.
Empress
Mary.

She laughs and draws Yaqub into a fierce embrace. “When I am Empress, will you still love me?”

Yaqub’s eyes wrinkle. “When you are Empress, will you even remember me?”

Mary snorts. Stupid question. She won’t be Empress. She won’t even live out the day, and neither will he. All they can hope is to save the crew of the
Light Brigade
. “Get back to work.”

“Yes, your Majesty.”

The balloon bobs at the end of its tethers while below the negotiations over the price of the world flash in semaphore across the waters of the North Atlantic. Yaqub works at modifying the engine that heats the air that lifts the balloon and runs the propeller, and Mary constructs the Influence Machine.

After that, it is just a matter of waiting.

Mary smiles. It’s a beautiful day, up in the sky and far from the hassle of ship’s chores and the stink of men and fish too long in close quarters. The breeze is pleasant and fresh, and the sweat glistens on Yaqub’s skin, slick under her hands and against her belly, and Mary knows that when she is Empress, she’ll know exactly how to reward her most loyal subjects.

It is midafternoon when the final bids come in. Captain Carrigan sends a note up the rope. Yaqub reads it out loud.

“The East India Company offers to pay the most. The British will spend less, but offer us all amnesty, and me—by that they mean him—a knighthood. The Mongols tell the truth, that the others are lying, and if we give them the machine, they will spare our lives. We’ll accept the East India Company’s offer, sail toward the British, and make a run for it when the fighting starts.”

“Tell him we’ll be ready,” Mary says.

Yaqub scribbles on the paper, clips it back to the line. The pulley spins and the paper disappears into the distance.

“Ready?” Mary smiles at Yaqub and tries to hide her nervousness. “You’ll need to strap me into this thing.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Yaqub quips.

Below them, flags wave, and ships begin to move. The
Light Brigade’s
sails unfurl and catch in the wind. The clipper turns, graceful as a dolphin, and heads toward the British fleet.

And the battle begins.

Six years earlier, Mrs. Thomas Carrigan, acting as a proxy for a group of eccentric Colonists who fancied themselves
The Children of the Revolutions
, saved the
Light Brigade
from an ignoble fate as a coal hulk. Over the course of five years, they had renovated and retrofitted the aging clipper with the most promising technologies their scientists and inventors had developed. This was her maiden voyage, the one that would prove whether a fleet of such ships might be enough to tip the scales, and the Colonies finally win their independence.

The thin, nearly frictionless coating on the outer hull let the clipper cut through the waves like a hot knife through lard, and had let them keep their lead over two fleets all the way from the coast of Africa nearly to Hatteras. A distinct advantage, but not so obvious that it couldn’t be attributed to luck and a skillful crew.

Captain Carrigan sets course directly toward the British flagship. His flagman sends the message: “Protect us.” It’s not yet time to reveal their other surprises.

To port, the French and Mongol Alliance ships move against the British, those already within range opening fire. To starboard, the East India Company’s fleet does the same.

The British respond: “Prepare to be boarded.” The
Light Brigade
signals assent. They move unhampered through the British fleet as they approach the flagship. Two ironclad frigates flank them on either side, and close. It’s not until they can see the grappling hooks that Carrigan gives the order.

A gunport opens on either side of the
Light Brigade’s
hull, and a single shot roars from each. They punch holes in the ironclads’ sides, then explode with enough force to break the ships’ backs.

“Damned things worked,” Mr. Gibson says.

“Aye, that they did. Pity we’ve only got two left.” Carrigan strokes the wheel as the engines hidden deep below deck roar to life. Turbines built into the ship’s hull spin and the ocean churns to foam. “C’mon, love, let’s see what you’ve got.”

Watching as the British flagship turns its big guns on his ship, he doesn’t notice the balloon’s tethers falling loose behind them, or the balloon’s rapid decent as it veers off to port.

It isn’t that she can feel herself in their minds. More that she can feel them in hers.

Yaqub steers the balloon, manipulating the direction of the propeller, and they swing low over the British fleet. Too far, still, for the Influence Machine to have an effect, if Yaqub had been cranking it as he had before. But he wasn’t. It’s connected to the balloon’s engine, and the twin wheels spin faster than any human could ever crank them.