Dawn of Steam: Gods of the Sun (6 page)

January 25th, 1816

New Orleans

29º57'N 090º04'W

Dear Sir,

I will be leaving this to go out with the communications going overseas before our endeavor, along with a rough copy of those notes I have made in the past day regarding the treachery of Col. York and his men. I do not know if your opponent is attached to this terrible conspiracy, or if he is unaware of what sort of desperate men he has employed. If
we are able to take York or his men prisoner, we shall endeavor to find out for certain. Without their admission and testimony, we certainly have no proof against such a noted gentleman as Lord Montague, but I felt you should certainly be aware and have him watched closely.

Likewise, I must again en
treat you to ensure that the colonists are sent reinforcements as soon as possible. Without York, the Americans still have advantage of position, but will lack for numbers and leadership in unfamiliar fortresses. York seemed certain that there would be no English forces arriving so soon as to interfere with his plans. I implore you to help ensure this is not so, and to give the colonists the support they need soon.

While we would like very much to continue in your service, I am
certain you understand that stopping a traitor is of the highest concern, and we may need to delay further exploration in order to bring York to trial. Should we perish, please see that we are avenged and York served as a traitor to the homeland and a murderer.

Yours,

Gregory Conan Watts

From the journals of Gregory Conan Watts,

January 25th or 26th, 1816

New Orleans

29º57'N 090º04'W

We find ourselves between a rock and a hard place now with the near disaster our rescue effort turned into. It started well enough, with Miss Bowe managing to make it away from the dirigible and Miss Coltrane, Miss Penn, and Matthew arriving safely. Eddy managed to recruit a significant number of Virginians, for it seems those men are thick as thieves with one another. It is small wonder now with such loyalty that Washington had so much success in fighting our troops to a standstill before the invention and arrival of the first dirigibles. Though the gathering could not have gone unnoticed, by then, we needed armed men more than we needed absolute surprise, so long as York got no report of precisely what we were about.

We took our positions as Miss Bowe landed upon the rooftops after dropping from Mitchell's flying machine, which followed closely after.
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As she lowered herself down from the roof, there was so terrible a screech that we could hear it even approaching from across the street. Apparently the women had a cat with them, and while they had not been aware of the intrusion, it raised quite the stir, according to Miss Wright's account. They both armed themselves, and the building was once again abuzz with activity. Wasting no more time, Miss Bowe gave up on stealth and kicked through the window and entered the room. Two shots followed, then quite a lot of screaming and screeching.

The cat, a large white monstrosity of a feline, came bolting out the broken window and found purchase for its claws, climbing to the roof, where it caught the attention of the ornithopter. It went racing away, closely pursued by the flying machine, and we would see no more of either for some time.

Other than the screaming, we had no news of Miss Bowe, and with the place warned, unless we provided distraction, she would soon be outnumbered for certain. Eddy shot down one of their sentries, and with that I led the charge toward the building while Eddy sought a better post with which to prevent them from holding the roof or any other position of higher ground from which they might be able to pick us off.

In the most technical of senses, I have led men before this, but that was simply as the closest to a gentleman present while a small group followed established orders. Here, someone had to be in command. Miss Bowe is no part of any command structure, and Eddy is best served pursuing his reputation as a ghost. At any rate, the Virginians seemed enthused to follow me.

We quickly took the lower floor and set men in defensible positions about the place so we could not be easily overwhelmed from the outside. It turned out to be a fortuitous decision, for there were two attempts by mercenaries not yet returned to their base of operations, but they found themselves thoroughly trapped between our sentries inside and Eddy's position outside. Though a couple of men were wounded in our charge, we had not yet lost any significant momentum until we reached the stairways. The first men to try to ascend came tumbling down again, shot by York's gunmen holding the post.

After a few moments of indecision, Matthew's efforts gave me an idea. I set men to guard the stairwell, preventing York's sentries from descending, and sent others outside to gather crates and other means of climbing, ordering them to try and stack them in front of any darkened windows where we might manage to reach the upper floors without opposition. While we lost one man and had a few injuries, we also found a few unguarded windows and began getting people to the upper floors via the stacks of crates. Once we found points of entry, I ordered the men to hold those rooms at all costs.

Eventually, I reached the window Miss Bowe had entered through. She had rescued Miss Wright from the two women and pair of mercenaries who'd been attending her. She'd also captured York's poisoner. The mercenaries were dead, but the other woman had escaped, with Sam choosing to help secure the room instead of pursuing. They'd locked themselves inside and shoved a dresser in front of the door, which strained under pounding from the other side.

A few moments after Miss Bowe and Miss Wright had caught me up on the situation, the door exploded inward, and the dresser crashed away from the doorway. Where a number of York's mercenaries had failed to force their way in, the bald and massive Irishman had managed with only a couple of kicks to the door.

York's mercenaries flooded into the room, to be quickly engaged by the men with me, as more worked their way up an unsteady stacking of crates and wriggled in through the broken window. The Irishman fired his shot into a man near me, then was engaged in close quarters by Miss Bowe. Her assault with the knives forced him back into the hallway, where, undaunted, she proceeded after him, his retreat forcing some of his men aside. Normally, fighting at too close of quarters would have seemed to be to the large man's advantage, but Miss Bowe's skill and speed kept him moving backwards without being able to get in a good attack edgewise. She pressed her attack constantly, because so long as she stayed in close quarters, the mercenaries seemed too afraid they might hit him to risk firing. One even attempted to help hand-to-hand, but she cut him down before he could get hold of her.

The opening created by this charge opened a way for the rest of us, and despite inferior numbers, greater organization and opportunity won the moment. We made our way over the first wave of men in front of us and fought into the hallway.

From there it was an odd sort of chaos. The Irishman had torn up some section of the railing near the stairway and dropped his empty musket in favor of the makeshift club. Miss Bowe was weaving and dodging under and just beyond its swipes, darting in to score minor wounds, but unable to get close enough fast enough to make any mark that showed on the big man. All around them, the fighting raged with occasional shots, but no one dared fire upon either of the combatants weaving among us, lest they hit their own. A few
times, someone tried to engage one or the other, to be stabbed by a knife, or knocked away with the club, though she held slight advantage here, as her knives found only mercenaries, while his wide swings did not discriminate.

Meanwhile, around the margins, we battled the mercenaries, odd as it looked and felt to occasionally see those men among them that York had dressed in red coats for aiding him in taking the forts. Meanwhile, Miss Wright and two men were set to securing the poisoner. At last, a large enough group to count for something took a second one of the rooms and emerged into the hallway, trapping the mercenaries, who had become quite concentrated trying to repel us, in a crossfire. The match in our midst finished with Miss Bowe ducking a swing of the club before landing a telling swipe to one of the tree-trunk-thick legs. She used this injury's effect on his balance to kick his legs from under him, sending him over the banister and onto the floor on the level below. Miss Bowe backed into our ranks, and with nothing like cover, the mercenaries retreated all into a single room, or surrendered.

We found York within, along with more of the men in red coats and a woman near the window. He had the obviously drugged Sir James on his feet, supported by two other men, with the stern looking woman near the window. York himself held a pistol to Sir James's head and demanded we stop. Eddy arrived soon after with news of more prisoners and that the inn was entirely secured, but this did not deter York in the least. Seemingly trapped in a standoff, I ordered the men to keep their guns on him, but to not fire until Sir James was safe.

York demanded that we release the poisoner, a Miss Rebecca Larkin of Oxfordshire, and that they be given free passage from the place. We were resolute, and I reminded him that he had only one chip remaining to him, and if he lost it, not only was his ambition lost, but he would be arrested not simply as a kidnapper, but a murderer in cold blood as well. It seemed to particularly get his attention and ire when I challenged whatever honor he had remaining as a man, that sending mercenaries after men was one thing, but to kill in cold blood would make him the worst kind of villain.

He gave some small signal to the woman near the window, and at once she broke the window out and fired once. York informed us we had not seen his entire hand yet, and only a moment later, there was such a terrible roar that some of the men behind me retreated in confusion. Eddy and I placed it at once: the trackless engine we had seen in the American plains.

Apparently it had been placed in some storage place nearby, perhaps taken apart and reassembled within so it might be secreted away. That is only guessing now, but the truth then was that it was outside and bearing down upon the inn. It crashed into the inn with such force that it shook upon its foundations and took out a good portion of the wall. York and his men backed away, destroying what remained of the window and wall about it, and leaped out onto their metal beast, taking Sir James with them. More of his troops arrived with this reinforcement, and a new firefight started at once, but this time with our men at great disadvantage with fear and confusion.

Somehow in all of this, the Irishman also escaped us, fighting his way through smaller men and fleeing soldiers until he reached that infernal engine. They disappeared through a hatch just as our own match for it had arrived. With no more chance for stealth and our airship arriving overhead, Sir James's monster deployed, leaping down from on high into the New Orleans streets, greatly aiding the morale of our troops.

It fired once upon the trackless engine as it sought to free itself from the side of the building, but though the shell impacted it hard, it was not enough to put a stop to it. Had it been Sir James piloting, perhaps it might have been better able to put up a fight, but the engine successfully freed itself and turned about, opening fire with guns of its own as it charged at Miss Coltrane in the suit. The two exchanged fire until the inevitable collision, with the trackless engine knocking the Coltrane battle suit aside and through the front of a pastry shop.

Through some sort of amplification device, York informed us of our options. Specifically, he stated that with their retreat back to the city, they had left the bases in Florida and just to our west with inexperienced officers in charge and severely undermanned, promising them reinforcement would arrive before the Spanish came. We could pursue them and seek to effect a rescue of Sir James, or we could prevent the war effort from collapsing and leaving New Orleans vulnerable.

The engine then started again, picking up speed and momentum as it went, with the battle suit still struggling to find its feet amidst the wreckage of the shop. We pursued them, but were not able to reach their mooring station in time to prevent them from launching their dirigible. Meanwhile, the soldiers aiding us had heard what was now at stake. York had gone to so much trouble in order to preserve Sir James's life, but had not yet gained what he wanted to out of him. We therefore remain fairly certain that they will not kill him, but we are just as certain that Sir James is more important to him than his poisoner, who remains our prisoner.

We have arranged an emergency meeting with the leaders of the town and the highest ranking of the troops within the city to determine what to do. This writing has helped in some part to settle my nerves before this event, for it seems, with Eddy needing to act mostly independent and Sir James gone, the people of New Orleans are now looking to me for leadership. Having led one partial disaster, I can only now pray that my second venture into the officer's role should be more successful.

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The incident involving an opinionated, protective sheep dog, a prototype ornithopter, and an electrically-charged explosion in the lab of Dr. Mitchell has never been fully explained or investigated. Somehow, not long after Miss Bowe brought 'Bubsy' out into the world, news of the matter got out to one of the late Mrs. Mitchell’s young friends, the former Miss Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who infamously fictionalized the event. -C B-W