Shadows Against the Empire (Folkestone & Hand Interplanetary Steampunk Adventures Book 1) Page 3

  “Are you suggesting I cheated you, sir?” Bowie bristled.

  Folkestone glanced up and grinned. “Not at all, Mr Bowie; I am suggesting that you underestimated Mars…and Martians.”

  Bowie raised his eyebrows in disgust, but Folkestone had already dismissed from his mind the man from Texas. He left his counters in charge of Pip and departed the table. By the time he had gathered his hat and cloak and joined Sergeant Hand, his winnings were waiting. He discreetly passed a portion to the clubman, then inserted the remainder into his pocketbook.

  “The table was kind, sir?” Hand murmured.

  “Kindness is a gullible Texan,” Folkestone answered. “What has happened?”

  * * *

  Night was deep upon the ruins of Old Cydonia when Captain Folkestone and Sergeant Hand departed the steam-flier. Just in case the HMS Victorious had been brought down by a rocket or some ballistic device, they avoided a direct approach to the ruins and kept low to the terrain. It had been less than four hours since news of the fiery loss of the patrol steamer had been flashed from New Cydonia by aether-wireless to the Admiralty in Syrtis Major.

  “I do not see any signs of life,” Folkestone said softly.

  He passed the field-glasses to Hand.

  “No, sir, but not surprising since it’s Old Cydonia,” Hand explained, slowly scanning the dark towers, domes, streets and pyramids. “Decent Martians tend to avoid Old Cydonia.”

  “More so than the other elder places?”

  “Yes, sir, it has a bloody history.” He paused. “Even by Martian standards.”

  The two men were prone upon a hillock just above the ruined city.

  “I suppose that had something to do with the two of us being asked to investigate, on the sly,” Folkestone ventured.

  “Very likely, sir,” Hand confirmed. “Having large number of troops tramping through Old Cydonia, especially humans – beg pardon, sir – is not the sort of thing that would do the prestige of the Red Prince any good; and not even the Red Prince could order his own men here, not even by daylight.”

  Folkestone cast a quick glance at the sergeant.

  “Don’t worry about me, sir,” Hand assured him.

  “No worry at all, Sergeant Hand,” Folkestone said, returning his gave to the dim-lit streets. “Her Majesty’s Martian Rifles could not ask for a better representative.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Hello, that’s something, isn’t it?” He passed the field glasses to the Martian. “Between the pyramids along that road off the main.”

  Sergeant Hand peered through the darkness, watching for movement. A shape moved from behind one of the five-sided pyramids, quickly passed behind another, then reappeared. It was a Martian, he saw, its thin form marking it as being of one of the lowland tribes. Hand made a small sound of disgust. Leave it to a lowlander to violate the sanctity of a place like this for no good reason, and if there was some foul reason for the destruction of the patrol craft, it made sense that a lowlander would be behind it.

  “Appears alone, sir.”

  “You take the left.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hand started out, making sure his steam-repeater rifle was secure in its scabbard across his back, but readying his Webley revolver.

  “And be careful, Sergeant,” Folkestone cautioned as he withdrew his own weapon and started out. “I don’t want to take you to the artificer.”

  Hand grunted softly.

  Folkestone took the opposite track as his sergeant. Both men knew the other reason Lord Admiral Barrington-Welles had ordered only the two of them to investigate the tragedy of the destroyed vessel and the accompanying enigmatic display reported by the baffled and frightened inhabitants in the modern trade city across the canal. They could be relied upon to keep their mouths shut.

  Though, Folkestone reflected, only on Mars would something old as Bethlehem be termed as “modern,” and only Martians (and maybe Americans) would call a canalside village a city. But Mars was what it was, and those who forgot or underestimated this strange and savage usually ended up on the next aethership out…or dead.

  As Folkestone drew closer to the lone figure in the forbidding ruins it seemed he heard a toneless arhythmical chanting, tuneless, droning. And there was something else as well, as if there was a voice actually answering from out the dead city where blood once flowed like rivers seeking long-dried seas. The answering sound, if indeed that was what it was, did not have the tonal qualities of a voice, neither human nor Martian, but there was a sort of malevolent intelligence behind it all the same.

  He saw his sergeant approaching from the other side, swift and furtive in the uncertain light of the hurtling moons.

  “Attention, you are surrounded by forces of the British government!” Folkestone shouted when they were close to the figure seated upon a mycological platform amidst the strange five-sided pyramids. “Stay where you are! Do not move!”

  The Martian’s turned swiftly toward Folkestone, and was filled with such fury as the soldier had never before seen in any living creature.

  Sergeant Hand also shouted a warning, this time in the Martian tongue, but the being paid no attention to him, so intently did he fix his vicious visage on Captain Folkestone.

  Whatever words the Martian sergeant uttered were lost in the primal scream of rage that issued from their quarry’s mouth.

  And that bestial howl was totally overpowered by an explosive volcanic growl that seemed to rise up from the very foundations of old Cydonia.

  Simultaneously crackling azure bolts of energy leapt from the hands of the seated figure, streaming toward both Captain Folkestone and Sergeant Hand.

  Folkestone threw himself to the ground, but not so quickly as to totally avoid getting singed by the phenomenal pyrotechnic display. He felt his crimson jacket smouldering, smelt the charring of the fabric, and hoped that Sergeant Hand was at least as quick moving.

  It was clear now that the wild reports of the witnesses in New Cydonia that had been relayed by aether-wireless to the Admiralty in Syrtis Major had not been so wild after all. What was not clear was how anyone, man or Martian, could issue such powerful discharges of energy without benefit of instrumentality: a Tesla sphere could hurl thunderbolts like King Zeus himself, but a machine like that was storeys tall, was powered by rumbling steam engines, and could be dragged laboriously from place to place with only the most powerful of steam-tractors.

  Folkestone chanced a look from his hiding place but was immediately forced back.

  In that instant, he saw the Martian standing upon the platform, tall and thin and garbed in rage as if it were a mantle.

  Folkestone fired his revolver twice, but the Martian was unaffected.

  Firing as he did, without a good aim, it was likely he simply missed, but it was also possible, Folkestone reflected, that the bullets had simply melted in flight, reduced to slag by the leaping bolts of energy.

  “Cease your actions immediately!” Folkestone ordered. “By order of the British Admiralty, in the name of Her Majesty the Queen!”

  The only reaction from the Martian was to redouble his efforts to kill Folkestone.

  Folkestone emptied his weapon without effect, then reloaded.

  He had neither seen nor heard his companion since the start of the attack, and he was worried that the little Martian had not survived the initial assault.

  Folkestone cursed the Admiralty for sending only the two of them to investigate the destruction of HMS Victorious. In seeking not to offend the sensibilities of the Red Prince and the majority of Martians, the Lord Admiral may have sealed their fates. On the other hand, Folkestone thought as he crawled under cover, he doubted that a squad armed with percussion weapons or aether oscillators could have withstood this preternatural assault by a lone Martian seemingly in control of – or controlled by – powers beyond human ken.

  The electric bolts were now breaking behind him, throwing up stone fragments and dust from where he used to be.

  By l
aw, by the games of courteous gentlemen, Folkestone should have shouted another order to surrender, should not have been crawling through the ruins like a slinking jackal, but, then, rules were often for dead men, and Folkestone had a great aversion to dying; when it came to skirmishes and battles, to alarums and excursions, to struggle and flight, Folkestone preferred to fight like he played cards – for blood and supremacy.

  He had come round ninety degrees canalward of where he had been when he had first called for the Martian’s surrender.

  He could see now that the energy bolts did not emanate from the Martian’s hands as they had first seemed. Instead, the power seemed to stream up from the very ground, as if he were somehow drawing power from the very heart of the red planet, rippling up the sides of the platform and passing through his form as if he were but a copper wire carrying aether force, or a conduit transferring motive power from an aerial craft’s boiler to its screws. The Martian obviously had no occult power of his own organism but could conduct it as a prism gathers and concentrates light.

  Folkestone wanted to take the Martian alive, and he would do so if humanly possible.

  But, one way or another, he would take him down, alive or dead.

  He aimed his weapon carefully, exposing as little of himself as possible.

  He fired, then fired again.

  The first bullet passed through the Martian’s left calf; the second shattered his kneecap.

  Any other man would have fallen, would have toppled to the ground, but not this foe who could summon and direct planetary lightning. Instead, he whirled about, extended his right arm and sent a searing bolt coursing for Folkestone.

  Almost too late did Folkestone dive for cover.

  The carven stone behind which he had concealed himself burst explosively.

  He was blinded by the flaring light.

  His jacket flamed.

  But he was alive.

  As he was flung back, stunned but conscious, he heard, or thought he heard, three shots in swift succession.

  He saw the Martian swing toward Hand’s position as he was flung back by the force of the rifle shots. A final flaring burst of energy shot outward as he was lifted and thrown off the platform, falling to the ground. Even before he thudded into a crumpled heap, joints twisted in directions not even the Martians could manage, it was of a certainty that he was dead.

  Folkestone struggled against the blackness.

  Only moments, mere seconds, had passed, he knew, but it could have been an eternity as he fought his way back to full consciousness.

  He opened his eyes.

  He was being pulled along.

  “Sergeant Hand?” he murmured weakly.

  “Right here, sir,” the Martian non-com answered. “Had me worried, you did, sir.”

  “The man in the ruins…how…”

  “He’s dead right enough, sir,” Sergeant Hand reported. “He was so bloody enraged by you telling him you were British that he didn’t pay me no mind after giving me a good pop. Knocked me for a fair loop, it did, Captain, but not so much it kept me down.”

  “We have to go back and…”

  “Already got his corpse in the flier, sir,” Hand assured him. “After seeing what he did, I knew all the science lads would be wanting to take a peek inside, so after I made sure you weren’t dying, I popped him in the cold cargo. According to papers I found, his name was Thoza-Joran.”

  “I’ve heard that name before.”

  “Aye, sir, been in trouble often, here and about, wanted for attacks with infernal devices against the British in Syrtis Major, though he hasn’t been shy about spreading around the mayhem,” Hand explained. “Murderer and agent provocateur…he won’t be doing none of that anymore. His death will close lots of cases with the other powers, not that we’ll get any thanks for it.”

  Folkestone sat up, tried to stand, woozed a little, then sat down on a carved stone.

  “Thank you, Sergeant, good work!” He glanced at his friend slyly. “If this gets out, the Admiralty brass will want to give you a medal for sure.”

  Hand snorted. “I’ll deny it all, sir, anything you claim in your delirium. Don’t make me call you a liar!”

  Folkestone laughed. “Have it your own way, Hand.”

  His vision now clear and his muscles recovered fully from the galvanizing effect of the energy bolts, Folkestone stood, though shakily, and looked at the sergeant.

  “Crikey, Sergeant Hand!”

  Sergeant Felix Hand looked down at his chest where the bolt from Thoza-Joran had struck him full. Flesh showed through the burnt-away cloth, and from the rent in his flesh dangled partially melted gears and springs, the mangled mess of his clockwork heart.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks, sir,” Sergeant Hand lied.

  “Our first stop is going to be the regimental artificer!”

  “Perhaps that would be for the best, sir,” Hand admitted as he fell into Folkestone’s grasp.

  Chapter 3

  Down below the busy streets of Syrtis Major, down in the dark and steamy tunnels and chambers that comprised the ancient underworld of Mars’ largest city, Captain Robert Folkestone and Sergeant Felix Hand moved furtively through shadows. Out of uniform and less than well-scrubbed, they attracted no more attention than other traders or any of the wandering peoples of the Inner Planets who wished to go about unnoticed by the British and Martian authorities.

  A thin haze drifted through the tunnels and chambers, carried to and fro by vague breezes, some from the world above, channelled through conduits long forgotten by generations of Martians, others from the motions of bodies skulking through the eternal twilight, of fires and lights in hidden grottoes where people of many races practised secret sins or chanted darkly to gods fair and foul.

  Folkestone looked across the square to where the Sergeant was talking animatedly with a meat seller, whose wares hung from cords on a cart. Through the acrid smokes of cooking fires and the sweet scents of smouldering opiates from secret dens he could smell the smoked meats, but any hunger it might have raised in him was tempered by the knowledge that here, in the common markets and xocolos of Syrtis Major’s underworld all that seemed savoury was neither beef nor pork, and the fish and fowl offered never knew any sea or airy vault of Earth; and though Folkestone had, during his long assignment on Mars, developed a taste for the crustaceans and insectoids of the deserts, it was not a taste he would have sated willingly in these squalid lairs, no more than he would have admitted to his less acclimated friends and acquaintances.

  He leaned back against the cool carved stone column that rose to support the unseen lithic sky and watched Hand question the Martian vendor. Folkestone sensed by the dynamics between the two men that Sergeant Hand had perhaps found out something about the enigmatic Thoza-Joran, but he stayed where he was, knowing full well that the Martian informant might shut up at the intrusion of a Terran, no matter how disreputable he might appear.

  Though it had only been a couple of days since the incident in the ruins of Old Cydonia and their frenzied flight to the artificer, Sergeant Hand seemed fully recovered. Folkestone had tried to keep the little Martian from accompanying him into the underworld, but Hand would have none of it, praising the skill of the artificer in putting his clockwork heart back into working order (though he claimed a drunken seamstress could have done a better job sewing up his chest than had the surgeon), refusing to stay a moment longer in the infirmary that required by the exasperated artificer and berated surgeon.

  A copper exchanged hands furtively and Hand made his way circuitously toward where Folkestone held up the pillars of heaven.

  “It seems Thoza-Joran was a well known character here- abouts,” Hand murmured just loud enough for Folkestone’s ears. “Quite a firebrand, always ranting and raving to whomever might listen – most just thought he was a stark barking lunatic – about the evils of the Empire, and anyone allied with them. Family killed in one of the food riots years back, it appears, and the poor bugger n
ever got over it.”

  “Bad times,” Folkestone said lowly. “But the deaths…”

  “He would not accept that the deaths came from villains,” Hand said. “He blamed the British and the Red Prince. Nothing could shake him from it. Like a starving dog with a bone, he was.”

  Folkestone shook his head. People were the same all over, no matter the planet. It was always easier to place the blame on outsiders than one’s own kind. Even now, black marketeers held a claim on the peoples’ affections, even though they themselves had caused the food shortages of the past, to their own great profit.

  “A loony babbler, he was, sir,” Hand continued. “Not only did he rail against the British, and all outworlders in general, but he spoke to people no one else could see.”

  “Delusional, Hand?”

  “Apparently, sir,” the Martian replied. “That was why most people avoided him like the purple plague, not because they thought they might get caught up with his seditious rants.”

  “He talk to the family he lost?’ Folkestone ventured. “That would not be that unusual if he could not escape his grief.”

  “No, sir, it wouldn’t,” Hand agreed, “ but it was the Dark Gods themselves that he spoke with.”

  “But…”

  “Yes, sir, no one talks seriously about them, much less to them,” Hand said. “History better left forgotten, and there isn’t a single Martian who would feel different. It’s the sort of dark bloody tales that Martian mothers send bad children to bed with to give them screaming nightmares. Mine certainly did.”

  “Hard to understand, Hand,” Folkestone admitted. “I don’t know much about the old ways, other than what a Terran can learn about something no one wants to talk about, but even I know that mentioning the Dark Gods or the Old Times is a sure way to empty a room very quickly.”

  “Precisely so, sir. And he also talked to the dead, like they was standing right next to him.”