Shadows Against the Empire (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 1) Read online

Twisting and flailing, Folkestone crashed onto the raised platform at the feet of the Speaker of the Dark. Instantly he was back on his feet – damned if he was going to let anyone see him seem to grovel before this wog. He tried to rush the masked figure, but was pinioned by two of the bulkiest Nagas he had ever seen.

  The masked priest gazed at Folkestone impassively. Now that he was closer he saw the medallion about the creature’s neck was etched with markings that seemed vaguely Martian. He was familiar with most of the scripts, but these glyphs were more like those seen on the oldest monuments of Mars. Obviously there had once existed a connection between Mars and Venus in antiquity, a relationship rekindled once more.

  Folkestone snapped his head around to the assembled Nagas and shouted: “You are in violation of Her Majesty’s Peace and are hereby ordered to disperse immediately.”

  The Nagas hissed angrily at his words, but fell silent at a subtle gesture from the priest. As the priest moved slowly toward him, Folkestone felt tremors travel through his two captors. A thin smile played about his lips. The servitors were terrified, and fear was always something that could be used to one’s advantage.

  “Your words have no power here, human,” the priest said. He spoke with a very thick accent, but there was something about his tone that made Folkestone uneasy. “Soon, your kind will be swept from the face of Venus, your blood drunk by the faithful.”

  The Nagas hissed and rasped their approval.

  “You are the Speaker of the Dark?” Folkestone asked, his voice utterly calm and level. If his hands had been free he might have casually lighted a cigarette and blown smoke at the garish mask. “So pleased to meet you, old chap. That was quite a bally good ju-ju trick you pulled with the clouds. Should you ever get to Earth, you might knock the nobbies on their heels at the Palladium, don’t you know.”

  The Speaker of the Dark backhanded Folkestone, splitting his lip and drawing blood.

  “Very unsporting that,” Folkestone observed. “But what can you expect from an upjumped wog johnnie in a music hall dressing gown with a pineapple over his head?”

  Folkestone did not need to see the face behind the mask to know how much anger his words had ignited. The movements were not obvious to the revenants but Folkestone certainly saw the twitch of the shoulders, the shake of the hands. Even the disc upon his chest seemed to vibrate.

  “Too long the British have raped and pillaged Venus and its children!” the Speaker proclaimed to the rapt Nagas. “They have enslaved the children of our world’s swamps and jungles. They force us speak in the outlander tongue I use now to condemn this warm-blooded monster, this British mammal! Tonight this man will die and we will feast on his blood as we did when the Dark Gods held sway.”

  At the mention of the Dark Gods, Folkestone involuntarily started, but no one noticed. They were much too busy cringing and hissing. The only ones who did not join in were the stalwart Nagas who held him in an unbreakable grasp, no doubt fearing for their lives if they let the human devil loose in their midst.

  The last lingering doubt about a connection between the incidents on Mars and the unrest on Venus was swept away. Two worlds, but one goal – unseat the British Empire to prepare for the return of the Dark Gods.

  He sincerely hoped Hand was by now well on his way back to the plantation with this information. He would stall as long as he could, but he was under no illusion that he would survive this night. He had been too lucky for too many years.

  “From this place we will spread across the face of Venus, bringing death and destruction,” the Speaker continued. “Rivers of blood will flow and the Black Cities of the Elder Times will return, and a new order will arise from the ruins of the empire of steam and steel. The time of man is ending. Once again we will worship the Dark Gods, as we did with Venus was young. Blood will be our avatar and our life. Blood will be…”

  “That’s all rather gloomy talk, don’t you think?” Folkestone shouted, breaking the Speaker’s patter.

  The Speaker glared with flashing eyes. There was something very odd about those eyes, Folkestone thought, peering deep.

  He looked to the Nagas. “Now, listen, chaps, you know that we’ve done all we can to help you people, brought medicines to cure your sick, taught you how to feed yourselves when times are lean, given you a system of trade that’s brought you all a level of prosperity undreamed of by your ancestors.”

  “You will not speak to the Faithful!” the priest screamed.

  One of the guards tried to clamp a hand over Folkestone’s mouth, but the officer bit down hard as he could.

  Tastes a bit like chicken, Folkestone thought.

  He elbowed the injured guard and sent him tumbling down the steps. With one arm free, he sent a granite-fisted roundhouse into the other guard’s snarling face, which propelled him over the far edge of the raised platform into a churning crowd of Nagas.

  Amidst the cacophony of hissing, snarling and snapping sounds, Folkestone heard a sharp crackling noise and whirled in its direction. The Speaker of the Dark was about a dozen feet from him, hands raised, fingers spread and extended, with shimmers of coruscating blue fire forming around them and already starting to extend toward him.

  He felt not heat, as he expected, but a searing coldness more frigid than the lightless depths of space. Even as he tensed his muscles for a desperate spring at the Speaker, Folkestone knew he was too late, that the glacial fire would rip through his mortal flesh.

  Folkestone smiled as he leaped into the oncoming bolts.

  Abruptly, the Speaker of the Dark reeled back, arms thrown wide, energy bolts shooting askew, then vanishing altogether. The Mars-shaped disc on his chest all but exploded.

  Folkestone felt a burning sensation at his right ear but forgot about it entirely as he crashed into the priest, upsetting one of the braziers.

  The crack of a rifle shot caught up with its bullet.

  The oil-soaked wood from the overturned brazier scattered across he platform and flew against the sides of the temple. Flames immediately soared into the clotted night. A dark stain spread across the Speaker’s chest, and though Folkestone could not tell the exact colour under the flickering fires, he could easily see it was not the pale ichor that coursed through a Naga’s veins, nor the scarlet blood of Mars. He grabbed the injured priest by the robes and dragged him away from the raging conflagration.

  He heard more shots fired, and was vaguely aware that the few Nagas remaining were keeping their distance.

  “Captain Folkestone!”

  “Over here, Sergeant!”

  Folkestone peered down at the mask painted in the colours so emblematic of the desert wastelands of Mars, sere colours that would never have appeared in a work by Venusian hands.

  “Are you all right, sir?” Sergeant Hand enquired as he arrived, keeping his attention on the Nagas lest they decide to charge to avenge their Speaker. They seemed more fearful now than enraged, but he was taking no chances.

  “Looks like I’ll live,” Folkestone replied. “Keep this up, Sergeant, and people might start calling you a hero.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Hand said sourly, “I don’t think I could live with myself if they did.”

  “Well, let’s see who we have here,” Folkestone said, edging his fingers under the rim of the mask and pulling.

  It came away easily.

  “Blimey!” the Martian breathed.

  “Indeed, Sergeant,” Folkestone agreed.

  The face was human. Folkestone now understood the reason for the robes, the gloves, the mask. The Nagas would accept a master raised from their own kind by the Dark Gods, but not a human inciting them to revolt against other humans.

  Sergeant Hand lowered his weapon as the last of the Nagas crept away into the night.

  “I think we’ll can report the uprising over,” Folkestone said. “Normally, I would not bet tuppence of being able to read a Naga’s face, but those last chaps to slink away. You could see despair in every movement. Almost makes one feel s
orry for them.”

  “No, sir,” Hand replied, still wary. “Don’t think so.”

  The Speaker drew in a ragged breath and his eyes fluttered open. A darkness swirled in their pale depths, dissipating even as they watched.

  “You have gained nothing by this,” the man said.

  “I think we can say we’ve stopped you,” Folkestone said. “You won’t be turning any more of the Nagas against the plantation owners. Without you poisoning their minds, they’ll either return to work, or go back to their villages for their own reasons.”

  “I am but one servant working for the return of the Dark Gods,” the man murmured, his voice now so low they had to bend near to hear him. “Daraph-Kor has many at his command…we are legion…We are…”

  “He’s dead,” Folkestone announced.

  “Good,” Hand said. “Now we can tell the powers-that-be we were right, call in the army to rout out any lingering influences, return to Port Victoria, and finally put Venus behind us.”

  Folkestone nodded absently. He rather doubted it would be as easy as his sergeant put it.

  “That was a bally good shot, Hand,” Folkestone said. “Hit this chap just at the right moment, but I would have liked to have that medallion intact.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hand replied, though a little uneasily. “Lucky.”

  The stinging sensation Folkestone had noted earlier now returned with the ebbing of his adrenaline. He touched his ear, winced and brought away blood-stained fingers.

  “Hand, you shot my earlobe!”

  “Windage,” Hand offered feebly. “Cross winds.”

  “Fortunately,” Folkestone said as he pressed a handkerchief to the wound, “I’ve never given any thought of going in for the airship pirate look so much in fashion now.”

  “No, sir,” Hand agreed eagerly. “Not at all you, sir.”

  Chapter 10

  Chief Inspector Ethan Slaughter of Scotland Yard awoke aware of three things – he was bound with ropes tied by a veteran sailor, he was no longer in London, and he was aboard an airship flying southeast. There was a fourth realization, but it was not in the nature of a deduction – his head felt as if it had been cleaved in twain by a dull axe.

  The first deduction was an easy one, given the tenacity of the knots that held him. The second deduction was based on the third, which was actually an observation – he could, from where he lay, see through a narrow glass-covered aperture. Below him were thin wisps of clouds and beyond them the shimmering surface of a large body of water. He estimated they were about three hundred feet above the sea. Through the metal plates of the deck beneath him he felt the rhythmic pulse of steam engines, which also told him he was aboard an airship and not an aethership either coming into or setting to leave the atmosphere. As to the direction of their flight, the rising sun told him all he needed to know.

  He shifted his head right and left, then rolled onto his back. He seemed to be totally alone. Judging by the barrels and boxes around him he decided his captors had chucked him into one of the cargo compartments.

  Careful not to remain silent lest someone be within hearing distance, Slaughter inched his way over to a stack of crates and sat with his back against them. His legs were tied at the ankles and knees, and his bound wrists behind him were connected by a taut line to the leg bindings. An old salt may have tied these knots, but he was obviously part slaver, well accustomed to immobilising man-freight. Merely sitting placed an almost unbearable tension on his wrists, made him want to return to a position of helplessness just to lessen the pain.

  Ignoring the agony caused by the movement, Slaughter flexed his wrists. The rope was of seven-strand hemp. No one, even a circus strongman, could ever hope to snap through dint of strength alone, and rubbing the fibres against the corner of a crate or even something with more of an edge would have entailed hours of endeavour. Slaughter had no idea how long he would be left to his own devices, but doubted it amounted to hours.

  As he worked to loosen the bonds around his wrists, he also flexed his spine, once again placed in the position of being oddly thankful for the accident that had sent him to the artificers. At the time, he had cursed his fate, but now…he shook his head at the curiosity of being thankful twice in as many days.

  Slaughter had never considered himself much of a religious man, though he had been raised for awhile in a strict Anglican home. This burgeoning era of steam and steel had done nothing to increase his confidence in a realm of angels and light, in a hope for either salvation or survival, but now, having been helped by a capricious providence, he had to wonder. Perhaps there was, after all, a force beyond human kin that worked toward a purpose both unknown and unknowable. If so, Slaughter was not sure whether he should doubt it or trust it – madman or benevolent father? Was that not always the question?

  The pain was intense when he flexed his wrists and brass-reinforced spine against the resistance of the rope, but Slaughter did not lessen his efforts. The more he writhed his wrists within their bonds, the more he was able to move them about. The strands cut into his flesh, but what was the agony of the present compared to what an unknown future might bring his way?

  Blood seeped from his wounds but it only served to slicken the ropes. He arched his spine with enough pressure to crush normal bones and did not relent; he felt as if his hands were being slowly separated from his wrists, but he clamped his lips between his teeth and fought the screams that wanted to erupt. In his mind, he saw his flesh tearing like rotted meat, his hands falling to the deck and flopping about like landed albino starfishes.

  Suddenly his body snapped forward, his legs jerked violently and his arms popped back into their sockets. He was free! Warily he moved his hands from behind his back, almost afraid to look at them lest the worst of his imaginings be even partly true. But, no, his hands were still connected to his wrists, through his wrists were very much worse for wear, gouged deeply by the rope and bleeding. He ripped strips of material from his shirt, tied them in place to staunch the flow, then went to work on the knots.

  Once completely free, he rubbed his arms and legs to get his circulation back to normal, then stood shakily.

  As he suspected, he was in a cargo hold filled with crates, barrels and bags. They were all filled with products of various English cities, all above board and quite ordinary, except several crates toward the rear of the compartment labelled ‘barley.’ When he inspected the contents, it was clear the substance was not barley but Venusian dream-spice.

  Obviously, the contraband had been smuggled into one of England’s aetherports from a Venusian ship, then redirected to an airship terminal where it was being transhipped to…

  Slaughter searched until he found a shipping label.

  Constantinople, and an address.

  He scowled, then glanced through one of the narrow windows to the waters below, which he now knew could only be the Mediterranean Sea.

  Mars.

  Venus.

  London and Constantinople.

  What did it all mean?

  He made his way to the door and cautiously, silently tried the handle. It was locked. He listened, but could not determine whether anyone guarded the other side.

  He returned to the narrow windows that appeared at intervals along the outer wall, about six inches above the deck. Their purpose was obviously to admit light into the hold, but they were much too narrow for him to squeeze through. And, even if he could, then what? A steep plummet to a watery death?

  Escape was on his mind, but not at any cost.

  He was no good to anyone dead, especially himself.

  He squinted against the brightness of the later afternoon sun, blinked, then smiled as he saw a vessel some distance away, on the approach and destined to pass almost directly beneath the airship. It was a steamship and fluttering from its stern was the red, white and blue of the Union Jack. Were it not for the possibility of discovery, he would have whooped for joy.

  Quickly he ripped off a large label, grabbed
his stub of a pencil from an inside jacket pocket, thankful his captors had missed it while searching him, then quickly wrote down everything that had happened to him, everything he knew, and all that he suspected. Then he emptied gin from a large bottle.

  What a waste! he thought with dismay.

  He shook out the last drops, stuffed the report inside, and screwed the cap back into place.

  He found a shipment of colourful cottons, tore off a long swath and tied it to the neck of the bottle.

  Returning to one of the windows, he carefully gauged the passage of the ship below. At the last moment, for he did not want to alert his captors any earlier than was necessary, he drove his booted heels against the window; the glass popped neatly from the frame on the first try, but it still made a great deal of noise.

  Immediately after the noise, he heard the sound of a key frantically scraping in the lock. As the door banged open, he dropped the bottle through the glassless window, watched for a moment as it streamered downward, then stood and turned to face the figures bursting through the door.

  Slaughter raised his eyebrows slightly, but otherwise seemed impassive.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said. “It’s getting late; a cup of tea would be nice, perhaps some iced or almond biscuits as well, if you can manage.”

  Five people had entered the hold – a white man, an even whiter Venusian humanoid, a Martian, a bald Mohammedan, and a blackamoor.

  The largest, the Mohammedan in his brocaded vest and scarlet fez, rushed forward, pushing Slaughter brusquely aside and dropping to his knees at the broken-out window. He pulled his head back in and looked to the others.

  “There is a steamer passing below,” the muscular giant reported. “The dog may have thrown something down to them.”

  The white man, the blackamoor and the Venusian looked to the Martian in deference.

  “It is of no matter, Savas,” the Martian finally said. “If he did, it is unlikely they will recover it. And if they do they will not be able to make much of it.”

  “Perhaps it would be prudent for Black Ray to attack the steamer,” the white man suggested.