It felt right, so Robert leaned into her lean and found her mouth. Time stopped. So did everything but sensation—
Someone cleared their throat. Twice. Robert broke contact, though he didn’t rush it, holding her gaze when there was enough space for looking. “For luck.”
“For luck.” She smiled.
Robert gave the signal to move out. He and Em broke cover first. The motley crew would follow in twenty-second intervals, assuming no traps snapped shut before they followed. At that point they’d scatter.
The trip to the airship felt like it took longer this time, though his peeps assured him nothing had changed. Exposed as they were, all his senses felt heightened. The charged air smelt worse, the ground felt coarser, even the air they moved through felt thicker and more hostile. The lightning flashes had calmed down some, thank goodness, making it possible for him to wear the goggles in night vision mode. He did slow visual sweeps for any heat signatures, found hints of several of them at the edges of the buildings. At least four, possibly more.
“Some bogies at our eight, twelve, two and four o’clock,” he muttered. Em gave a slight nod, her pace not changing, though she must have felt the same urge he did to reach that gondola. What would they find inside? They’d left the two zombies secured with duct tape, but if they’d been freed? They’d have the high ground. “I’ll go in first this time.”
He reached the gondola. The stool was where they’d left it, on its side. Too dark to tell how disturbed the ground was, though it seemed the same. He straightened it, climbed up, trying to stay in zombie mode, and looked over the side, all of him “at ready.”
Several tense seconds—and some fast heartbeats—later and nothing slammed into him. It was almost anticlimactic to climb in and drop soundlessly onto the decking. It felt too easy, but there’d be plenty of hard to get past if they managed to get airborne. A quick scan showed two prone figures, though they could be playing possum. Another long pause, the only sound breaking the silence was Emily’s quiet clamber onto the stool. He helped her aboard, careful to keep his body between her and the prone zombies. Without consultation, they separated and approached the two men at angles, so the men couldn’t surprise them both. Robert eased in and checked the duct tape. It seemed the same. A quick check with the flashlight. Both appeared to still be unconscious.
“Get the engine ready to start on my signal.” Robert found a position that let him watch the two men and the direction the bogies would have to come. If they started to move—he shook it off.
You can only control what you control.
The motley crew was in motion, their progress painfully slow.
A tremor shook them and the prison shrank about half the distance to the airship.
The motley crew might have sped up a bit. They reached the gondola, started working on the ropes. One by one, coils snaked over the side. Robert moved into position to assist the Belle aboard. Colonial guy was behind her.
“Watch those two,” Robert ordered softly. Did he detect movement from the bogeys? They hadn’t moved, but he thought they’d shifted, perhaps preparing to move. Green boosted Purple, then Biker, aboard. Purple headed for the prow, while they helped Green board. Definite movement from the bogies. “We got incoming.”
As planned they spread out around the gondola, sticks at ready.
“Fire it up!”
The engine coughed once. It coughed again. Fired, shuddered and then roared to life. The decking rumbled and shook like it had a bad cold. The sound could cover an automaton approach. And a marching band.
The pace of the bogies didn’t increase. Maybe they had one speed. Maybe someone wasn’t worried yet. Robert counted twelve of them at varying distances. They’d reach the gondola in staggered waves. He took a position that let him cover their duct taped passengers and a section of the gondola.
Overhead the envelope began to perk up, but it was still a ways from lift off.
Both lightning and a tremor were followed by the horizon halving the distance to their airship once again. It was an odd sort of three-way race, a very shambling race.
The bogeys were halfway to their position when Robert saw three, massive heat signatures break cover from the tenements. The motley crew couldn’t hear them, couldn’t see them coming. They weren’t fast, but neither was the airship. He frowned. Granted, he’d only caught got a brief look, but those at the museum had seemed to move better than these. They seemed to be larger than ones in the museum, too. These bad boys were huge. The lumbering giants would be able to reach the gondola if it didn’t rise fast enough.
Robert knew the moment Emily reached him. Her scent preceded her by a second or two, before nasty triumphed again. She gripped a hammer, probably pulled from a pocket and sported a determined expression. He pulled off the goggles and handed them to her, indicating where she needed to point them.
She looked, her chin moving in a wide sweep of the field of coming battle, stopped, then moved on, stopped again, then again.
“Those are bigger than the one we saw when we arrived.”
“Yeah.” Robert couldn’t think of what else to add.
“Huge. Almost Godzilla huge. Proportions are a bit off, though. They’ll be clumsy, not too coordinated.” She pulled the goggles down. Just in time, it turned out, as lightning kicked on again, like someone had flipped a switch, briefly exposing the field of battle.
“Automatons!” The panicked shout trumped the engine noise.
“Hold your positions,” Robert shouted. If they bolted now, none of them had a chance.
“We’ve tried to take them! Twenty swarmed one of the small ones and they were all captured or killed!” Green looked wild-eyed in the flashes that cut the darkness.
Purple hadn’t left his position. Instead he stared up at the slowly expanding envelope, as if willing it to get big enough.
Emily stood up. “You don’t take on an automaton like that. For heaven’s sake, that’s Steampunk 101! You have to use your head, not brawn—”
Robert felt his gut twitch at the same moment hers must have. She looked at him. He looked at her, and then they both looked at the horizon. They wouldn’t even have to move to it. It was coming to them. If they timed it right…
“I’ll control the lift.” She thrust the goggles at him and disappeared back inside the engine room.
“We have a plan,” Robert shouted. “Stay calm and hold off the human assault!” He sounded so confident he almost convinced himself. Hey, only everything had to go perfect for it to work.
* * * *
Smith stared down at the hellish piece of New York, the ground giving the occasional shake, lightning making brief appearances in sky that still clung to night.
It was a lie.
It was the one immutable truth of this hell:
The master would do anything, say anything, to get what he wanted.
And when he’d got it? He tossed you aside. To the master, all of them were useful specimens until they weren’t useful anymore. Then they became his entertainment. That was the other immutable truth of this place.
The master liked watching people die.
They were
people
, not specimens, but none were allowed to say it. Perhaps the master used the word to distance himself from them, from what he really was: a filthy little murderer.
His mind knew that the Olivia he’d seen in the cage wasn’t
his
Olivia, she couldn’t be because the master lied and he felt it to his core, but his heart still felt tight from the horror of seeing her like that, trapped like an animal, her bright gaze deadened by the master’s mind control device.
He forced himself to push the image aside. He couldn’t help her, at least not until the master said he could. Could he do it? Could he, without being forced, do what the master bid? It was hard to do, hard to obey with the control device in his head. Not that he believed that master would remove the device. He never willingly gave up an advantage. But if he turned it off or down? What could he do with the advantage? He knew more than he’d known when he’d first been “collected.” And what advantage did the master hope to gain by offering him the illusion of freedom and a woman? There had to be something the master thought he’d get, because he could make Smith do what he wanted without the pretense—
Smith stiffened.
Unless he couldn’t.
The failed missions? Did the master believe, or fear that Smith was slipping free of his control? Why else offer what he usually took? The master never gave gifts, unless it was one of pain and suffering, of taking away—was that what this was? A feint? A test? If he said yes, would the master use Olivia to taunt and torment him more? Because if he took her, the master would know how Smith felt. Right now he only suspected. Knowing gave him more power.
And if he said no, he’d kill her for sure. He’d delete her and make him watch. But if he said yes, if he accepted the poisoned chalice, that moment would come anyway. He’d never had Olivia. He repeated this to shore up his resolve.
You can’t have what isn’t freely given.
The question wasn’t should he or shouldn’t he take the offer and maybe, just maybe have the girl for the time allotted, but which answer would tell him the most about the master’s intent? Which choice would tell him what he needed to know? And which answer would frustrate the master the most?
* * * *
If it hadn’t been so serious, Emily might have found the slow motion race between the shambling zombies and the expanding envelope of the airship funny. Even with possible zombification in the mix, Emily felt the urge to grin at being in an actual steampunk type adventure. She was aware it was whacky to get a kick out of it all, even as a thrill of fear shot down her spine and back up again. On the other hand, whacky was a better reaction, in her opinion, than the shrieks emerging from the not-Belle between whacks at zombie heads. At least the position of the lift control, right by the door, let her see most of the field of battle.
The airship achieved modest lift at the same time the first wave of zombies reached it. They grabbed at the sides of gondola, perhaps hoping to hold it down until the automatons got there. If the motley crew hadn’t been very motivated, it might have worked, or if all the zombies had arrived at the same time.
Emily let more hot air into the envelope to counter their move, while the visible motleys pounded zombie heads and arms. She felt a pang that she wasn’t pounding, too. That was new. The thrill of ninja kicking zombie ass. Her task was less cool, but important. She needed to create enough lift to raise the gondola with all of them aboard, but not so much it popped through the top of their prison, assuming the top had the same “walls” as the sides.
In the shadowy depths of the engine room the Abrams’ ball pulsed as steam built inside the boiler. Something about the Abram’s ball made the steam steamier because the envelope filled faster than it should for a normal steam engine set-up. It was very steampunkish, and similar to the set-up in Uncle E’s bug, though with a twist, like a Rubik’s Cube from outer space. Emily would have liked to strip it down and figure it out. A pity the zombie and automaton hordes seemed determined to play spoiler, though that’s what zombie’s and automatons did, so she couldn’t be bitter about it.
The motley crew and Robert whacked at hands and heads from the first wave, as the second wave shambled forward with no sign the vigorous defense troubled them. Zombies fell back as red automaton eyes grew ever closer in the black night, their ponderous, metal bodies visible for eerie seconds when the lightning lit them up. Errant air currents caught the ship now that it wasn’t roped down, the gondola whacking a couple of zombies, but also bringing them closer to the automatons, then swinging them toward the horizon.
Emily hoped the moves meant that Purple-not-people-eater was gaining control. Beneath her feet, the deck creaked from the movement of the steering rudder cable and the shudder of the propeller. Based on observed movement, it seemed to indicate he’d overestimated his flying ability just a bit. The horizon edged unnervingly close to her three o’clock, then steadied. She felt the ship settle, felt a sense of purpose settle over them all as they laid their automaton trap. The timing had to be perfect. If even one of those bad boys hooked an over-sized hand on the edge of the gondola, not even the Abram’s ball could keep them airborne.
The airship shifted uneasily as the horizon ate some more of the prison—and took a chunk out near the stern, that also put a hole in the side of the engine room, just short of the engine itself. Creepy how quiet it was when the anomaly ate stuff. The wood ought to crunch a little, if only for effect. Good thing it didn’t get the rudder or the engine, or they’d be hosed. It did widen her view though in a way she could have done without. Now she could see the red glow of three sets of automaton eyes. Stuff like this was more fun reading about than living.
Robert pointed up, even as he whacked at an obdurate zombie. She released more air into the envelope, felt the ship wobble up a few feet. It wasn’t a precise art, which was a pity because they could have used precise.
The automatons were coming in at their twelve, three and six o’clock, their approach designed to bring them to the airship at the same time, from three sides, and trapping them against the horizon. It might have worked had the airship been stationary, but precise wasn’t an option for the automatons either. Emily didn’t know if it was a flaw in their design or the earthquakes that put the wobble in their plodding approach.
Robert signaled for more lift. She gave him some more, managed it slower this time, though the ship still jerked some. It seemed like the Purple-not-people-eater was getting the hang of it, but it might be wishful thinking. Most of their plan involved a lot of wishing and trying not to think too much. The motley crew wasn’t hitting at the zombies anymore, which implied they’d achieved enough height to eliminate that threat—a flash of lightning gave her a glimpse out what used to be the side of her engine room. They were about automaton shoulder height, maybe a bit lower.
And one of them was closer than she thought they were. They must have shifted closer to it during one of the jerks.