Authors: Kin Law
Grim though she was, the possibility was too real to ignore. None of them wore any Clanker armor. Thick coats were good against the frigid Russian spring, but useless against bullets.
The four waited until they were sure the soldiers on the other street seemed to be more relaxed, then continued past. Captain Clemens insisted on climbing a tall residential block at the first opportunity. Now they knew what they were looking for, they could see the obvious placement of the cannons: six of them, spaced out in increments. From this formation, the Inspector was able to deduce a strategy.
“They are protecting the Kremlin,” declared Hargreaves. She showed them how the formation was laid as a perimeter defense. “If we are to infiltrate the
Nidhogg
, we ought to be headed there as well.”
“That’s six dollars from Auntie,” Clemens muttered. “And forty rupees from Prissy Jack.”
Aboard the Balaenopteron-class carrier
Vasillisa,
Tsar Nikolai was beginning to have doubts.
“Damned foreigners,” Nikolai could be seen mumbling between mouthfuls of caviar and vodka.
The
Vasillisa
carried a full complement, thirty corsairs, with a rotation of ten more on patrol.
Hovering over the Kremlin, the flagship overlooked a line of Howitzers along the fortress wall, each one modified and capable of launching jacketed ammunition at high velocity to reach the tallest dirigibles. Every fifth round was a tracer, both for visual confirmation and to ignite anything flammable penetrated in the delicate dirigible workings. They were a gift from the Swiss Guard.
In addition, there were six functional copies of the Tsar cannon spread out in a rough perimeter. Then there were the other nations’ ships to contend with, spaced broadsides to the dark mass of precipitation hanging over the southeast of the city.
Still, Nikolai could not shake the feeling of impending doom. Maybe it was because the cloud would not move, would not simply begin the attack. What was it waiting for? Nikolai had heard reports of Clanker troops in the German attack, the one on the Brandenburg gate. If this Valima Mordemere had such fearsome troops at his disposal, where were they? It should have been easy to send them in to destroy the cannons on the ground.
Karelin had planned the defense against such armored troops. They would use the corsairs and rain steamthrowers over the evacuated city, thus eating through the soft meaty parts of the Clankers. So where were they?
“Karelin. Hand me those oculars,” Nikolai commanded. His general obeyed, delivering the viewing lenses across a bridge filigreed within an inch of its life.
It was one of three battle bridges aboard the
Vasillisa
, this one slung midship, along the keel to better overlook the world below. It clashed magnificently with the slate grey of the outer hull.
“Your Excellency,” Karelin said as he handed the ornate instrument over. “It is the fourth time you have checked the deployment. It remains unchanged.”
“Karelin, I am aware of the fact. I wish to ascertain the enemy’s movements.”
General Pyotr Karelin was not a foolish man, and he did not deem it necessary to point out the enemy was wreathed in a cloud of manufactured cover.
“If you are concerned, Your Excellency, may I suggest a preemptive-“
“We have gone over this for the last time, Karelin. I will not risk the Motherland’s airships.”
“You fear the other nations will not follow in our attack, thus shifting the balance of power between us,” Karelin summed up succinctly. He had heard the argument time and again, but he knew, from polished boot heels to sharply pressed cap, there was no victory in defense. It was only a matter of choosing one’s moment.
“Mother Russia possesses four Balaenopterons. We are far behind when compared to Britain’s Knights of the Round,” Nikolai snarled. He was Tsar- it was his prerogative to snarl. “If we are to lose even one, and Queen Victoria III recalls her other three from the colonies, we would be completely at her mercy. Compared to the young, modern Britania, Russia is a big, fat old
babushka
.”
“I do not like this. The Cossacks are liable to join the Ottomans against us any day. We should not speak of our allies in such a way, Your Excellency,” Karelin cautioned.
“The Tatar have always been a pirate people,” the Tsar replied. “They amount to no large threat…
bozhe moi
, what’s this?”
Karelin stepped up to a scope set into the bridge’s ceiling.
“Something is falling from the cloud, Your Excellency.”
“Enemy troops?”
“They are individuals… looks like dropping in on wires, Your Excellency. I will have a platoon intercept. If they are scouts, we will engage and capture them.”
“Good, good. Karelin, you are a most capable general,” Nikolai replied. He returned to the Captain’s seat in the center of the bridge. He felt relieved; after all, Karelin had things well in hand.
“The soldiers are moving,” Hargreaves noted with some trepidation. It w
as no large-scale preparation. Instead, the soldiers seemed to be breaking up into groups, half to man the cannon, half again standing guard, the rest marching toward the southeast.
From their perch on one of the square avant-garde roofs, the four from the
Berry
looked on as the troops appeared to be mounting some kind of offense. The street they were on intersected not too far ahead, and the troops seemed to be holding at the corner.
“There’s something coming,” Albion said.
“Can you see it with your glass?” asked Blair.
“No, but the other cannon platoons are moving as if something is,” Rosa Marija answered him.
She had the pocket glass, but that did not stop Albion from peering into the middle distance, where a series of popping noises indicated the firing of arms. Suddenly, there was a horrendous boom, and a thin line of smoke wormed its way over the roofs.
“They’re targeting the cannon,” Rosa noted simply.
“But they’re not Cankers. Clankers arrive in force, in squads,” Hargreaves said. “Kobolds, you think? But I thought Mordemere holds those in reserve, against dirigibles.”
“The men inside the Kobolds are Clankers too. If Mordemere isn’t using the Clankers, the Kobolds would be out of commission,” said Blair, ever observant of the details.
The Russian soldiers were now shooting at something around the corner. Everyone could see them using the building for cover. What was odd was the way the long rifles seemed to align in a triangle, as if they were shooting at a single target… but what could give a platoon of soldiers trouble enough all by itself?
“Captain
!”
“What?” Hargreaves cried, whirling around at the sound of Albion’s voice- but Albion was gone, his buccaneer coat flapping some ten yards away along the rooftops. He was vaulting them at the dividers, cutlass clinking, hand at his hip holster- but why should Albion have his gun out?
“Oh god,” Hargreaves breathed with her sudden realization. “Captain Sam!”
As a body, the four of them looked at each other and began to run after the loping, streaking form of Albion.
“He can’t mean to intercept the soldiers! They outnumber us two to one!” Blair hollered, maybe in the vain hope Albion would hear.
“You don’t even know if that’s the Captain! He’s likely pinned down already!” Rosa delivered in a piercing screech.
Albion launched himself across to the corner rooftop, and jumped off.
Only when the rest of them arrived did they see his coat fluttering down the side like a tussled fall leaf. Albion was using a drainage pipe and his gloves
to shimmy down the side of a charming tea shop.
“Shit, that’s not the Victoria,” Rosa Marija said. Albion’s hand glimmered the color of blood. He intended to use the Red Special against the soldiers.
“Stop! Clemens, you don’t know what it will do!” Hargreaves yelled from the rooftop, not caring if the soldiers below heard. Fortunately, or not, the building opposite chose this moment to explode outward, showering the soldiers below with fine brick dust The edge of the cloud swallowed Albion, obscuring what happened below. For a moment, everyone was blind.
Then, with a deafening sound Hargreaves would later describe as a C sharp, and the odor of overheated arclighting, the mists parted in a blue glow- one of Jonah Moore’s bullets, firing from the Red Special.
Dead center in Karelin’s scope, the number two Tsar cannon suddenly came into view over the roofs of the Moscow streets. There was no sound, and because the
Vasillisa
held no contact with the ground, there were no tremors to be felt.
There was only the instant of the cannon rearing up like an inured bear, and then the vast ring of mortar dust as it broke through the surface of the city, disappearing through some weakened root cellar or vault. Karelin thought he saw some kind of blue flash some twenty seconds before, but it was too far removed from the cannon to be related and there was too much debris to be sure, even from so high up.
“Ah…”
“What, what is it?” Tsar Nikolai asserted anxiously.
“Nothing, sir,” Karelin reacted even as he signaled his yeoman to contact the number two platoon via Morse lantern. There was a short series of white blinks in his scope- the
Vasillisa’s
lantern crew signaling from an armored bubble near the lens. There was no twinkling reply. “It appears Mordemere’s forces have arrived.”
“Where? Show me!”
Nikolai was using the oculars to peer at the various clouds of dust rising from the city below. Karelin counted three such clouds, simultaneously rising. A fourth arose some ways north. Four cannons down, two to go.
“I believe they are attacking our cannon emplacements,” Karelin supplied reluctantly.
“Well what are you waiting for? Retaliate!”
“We are, Your Excellency. The enemy appears to be small in number, likely an elite squad. We risk injuring our troops if we use the
Vasillisa’s
artillery-”
“So?”
Karelin turned from his scope to look on his Tsar.
Nikolai hadn’t even removed the bi-oculars from his face, and was still scanning the cityscape of Moscow with a deep frown creasing his brow.
“Of course. Right away, Your Excellency.”
Dust cleared in heavy-moving clots, like the bricks they had come from. With a crunchy, frost mired thud, Hargreaves’ boots made contact with the ground beside Blair and Rosa Marija. It had been a nerve-wracking slide down the pipe. Peculiar, how one could sail hundreds of feet in the air one day and be afraid of a two-story fall the next.
“There he is,” Rosa Marija said, pointing to a crumpled heap at the side of a curled lamppost.
When she took a step towards Albion, there came a sudden rumbling all up and down the street, and the smell of hot machine oil.
“The cannon!” Hargreaves yelled. “Get down!”
Everyone plastered themselves to Albion, running and tripping and tumbling as it suited them. Not far away, the massive, ancient six-meter cannon was being tipped up and up, as if it were aiming at Mordemere’s evil cloud. Then, with a metallic clang, the thing tipped all the way up and over, trailing shattered gearing and cinder blocks. It reminded Hargreaves of a poorly planned dive into water, belly-flopping in the midst of an elaborate somersault. The maneuver was complete with entry, for the tons and tons of metal sank right through the street on the way down, crumbling the masonry. A tidal wave of sound and grit washed over them. Cracks streaked up and down the street, all the way to Hargreaves’ boots.
“Would y’all get off my derry-air?” Albion’s voice came muffled from the bottom of their impromptu pile-up. He sounded downright Southern when he was in pain, Hargreaves observed. Then they were all on their feet, looking into the carnage.
None of the soldiers had escaped the initial blast of the Red Special. Neither had Albion emerged unharmed. From Hargreaves’ standpoint, it seemed some mass of bright blue material had emerged from the tip of Albion’s weapon, many times the size of Albion himself. It held still for a fraction of a second, and arched into the mass of soldiers gathered behind their shattered cover, a striking blue serpent.
There was an immediate explosion, forks of lightning everywhere. All the soldiers were laid facedown on the ground, fate uncertain. Albion himself had been thrown violently backward into a poor abused lamppost.
In the ensuing dust cloud, the little rooftop band was forced to wait it out while the street cleared. Hargreaves saw a hulking, shadowed figure cross under the dust, headed towards the cannon.