1889: Journey To The Moon (The Far Journey Chronicles) (8 page)

Custer’s freight wagons dropped their end gates, which formed a ramp to the ground, and Two Hats was close enough to hear the steam hiss when a two-wheeled Excelsior TerraCycle complete with a sidecar affixed with some sort of harpoon rode down the ramp. Another followed as two others emerged from the second freighter. The four TerraCycles accelerated in tight arcs to speed past the freighters and engage the robots.

The Drum and Bugle Corps struck up the Garryowen to spur on the troops, with many of them yelling, “Huzzah!” One of the horsemen galloped toward the giant robot and threw his loop at an outstretched metal arm. He caught it, dallied the rope around his saddle horn and promptly flew through the air along with his horse as the mechanical thing
jerked
the rope to send rider and mount skidding across the ground for twenty feet.

Billy ran forward and used his Colt to slap the soldier across the temple as he tried to rise. The bluecoat staggered rubber-legged for three steps and fell face down.

Ekka slashed the lariat in two with her knife as Billy snatched the downed horse’s reins and said, “Up, boy, up!” The horse rose with Billy in the saddle. He whirled and charged into the melee.

It was close work with the ropes, and Billy knew his pistol was little use now. He pulled the kinzhal and galloped toward a rope stretched taut between rider and robot, the two enemies matched evenly in a tug-of-war. Billy swung the blade and the lariat parted as easily as thread. He glanced with respect at the blade and rode towards others, slicing ropes one after the other as he raced the mount in a side-to-side gait among the melee of cavalrymen, dodging like an escaping jackrabbit.

Robots continued to fall and attempt to rise, but the cavalrymen were good and rode in circles to entangle the metal arms and legs like spiders throwing sticky filaments around prey. Ekka ran from one to another, slicing ropes left and right with a knife in each hand. She didn’t see one rider coming behind her, his saber raised. Billy saw it and yelled, “NO!” The saber descended.

Billy made the fastest draw of his life. He fired at the same instant there was a thunderous
Boom
from the parapet above the gates. The cavalryman fell to the side and then immediately flew backward off his horse to hit ten feet behind the gelding. The saber clattered harmlessly to the earth beside Ekka, who was unhurt. Billy looked above the gates and saw Denys reloading the .500 Nitro Express, looking for more targets.

The giant robot swept enormous arms back and forth like a scythe, scattering horses and soldiers like bowling pins. The TerraCycles circled like sharks, staying out of reach of the giant.

Custer yelled, “Freighters! Now!” He led his men in a charge toward the open gate and the looming shape beyond that was the great prize: The
Arcadia.

The Studebaker Freight Wagons with the attached plows shot ahead of Custer, with one aiming for the fast-closing gates and the other intent on breaching the compound wall thirty yards from the entrance. Two Hats grasped the end of the first Freighter as it sped by and it jerked him off his feet, but he held on and pulled up higher to a better position. He peeked inside the wagon and saw boxes and barrels. Two Hats could not read, but he had learned what the inscriptions meant years ago while watching men build railroads across the plains. The boxes read:
NOBEL’S DYNAMITE,
and the barrels read:
PETROL GEL
. A dozen smaller boxes labeled
Blasting Caps
rode on the dynamite boxes. Two Hats leaned his head beyond the wagon’s side and saw they were seconds from colliding with the gates. He jumped and hit the ground rolling, losing his short lance, but coming to his feet as Custer and his men rode by. The General looked down at him wide-eyed. Two Hats leaped and grabbed a fistful of yellow locks.

Custer yelled, “My hair! My hair!”

Two Hats pulled himself on the horse’s rump, right behind the General. He drew his knife with his right hand while twisting the hair in his left.

George Custer was no pilgrim. He flipped his saber and caught the blade midway between hilt and point and jabbed under his arm at Two Hats. The first stab tore a long, red gash along the Lakota’s ribs and the second, as fast as a snake strike, went deep into the outside of Two Hats’ thigh.

Custer immediately twisted at the waist to attack from the other side and struck with the saber hilt at the Lakota’s head. Two Hats rolled with the blow or it would have caved in his temple. He released Custer’s hair and jumped sideways from the horse, landing on Billy as he raced to pass the General. Indian, gunman, and horse fell in a hard tangle of legs, arms and flailing hooves.

Billy scrambled away, dodging one hoof that almost took off his head, and looked for the crazy Indian dressed like someone living in the city. He saw the Indian chase after the General, who chased after the speeding Freighters. Billy calmed the horse enough to get it upright, then he remounted and gave chase to all of them.

The TerraCycles, as if on command, fired their harpoons at the giant robot. Nets opened in flight like the petals of gigantic flowers and wrapped the robot in a tangle of flexible metallic cables and ropes. The robot’s arms were pinned to its sides and the mechanical legs struggled to keep the robot upright. The TerraCycle engines blew hissing clouds of steam as they worked to topple the giant.

Ekka was almost to one of the cycles when the Freighter rammed the gates, tearing the twenty-foot tall barriers off their hinges and into splinters the size of small trees. The second Freighter hit the wall, and the impact shook the earth. The wall shuddered and collapsed inward, with the parapet falling on top of the wagon as it disappeared into the compound. Ekka abandoned the TerraCycle and ran through the gate.

Custer and his men poured into the compound through the two breaches. Merkam and Tesla stared out of the
Arcadia
’s large cargo hatch at the scene. “We are lost!” Tesla said.

[ 13 ]

Abigail watched in fear through the window beside the entrance hatch. She searched for Billy amid the dust and clamor, and spotted him outside the gates, riding his mount so fluidly it was as if he and the horse were one.
Like a centaur
, she thought. Billy attacked one of the TerraCycles and caused the driver to swerve, which loosened his lead ropes to one of the nets holding the giant robot.

Immediately, the robot jerked to free itself and gained a bit of slack in the ties that bound it. The TerraCycle wobbled on its two wheels and the driver worked to gain equilibrium, but Billy read his intentions. He jumped his gelding over the driver and thrust the kinzhal downward so hard he made a
“
Pah!
”
sound.

The blade went hilt-deep in the hollow of the man’s throat. He collapsed in a limp pile and the TerraCycle wobbled another thirty feet before falling on its side.

The giant pulled the net and ropes towards it to bring the TerraCycle closer. The three drivers worked hard to pull the giant backwards, away from the downed cycle. Billy started toward another one when he heard the deep
Boom
of Jay-Patten’s Nitro Express.

A TerraCycle exploded in a cloud of hissing, white-hot vapor and mini-geysers of boiling water. The driver screamed as the super-heated water engulfed his body. The giant worked to free itself, gaining significantly on his bindings.

Denys reloaded again, for he fired both barrels each time. His shoulder was an aching, fiery coal, but he was in the throes of battle and the adrenaline minimized the pain—for now. He
snicked
the double closed and sighted on another TerraCycle when he felt the parapet shudder under his feet. He looked into the compound and saw one of the Freighters pushing against the
Arcadia
’s landing legs so that the ship leaned far over. Denys had a brief image in his mind of the Tower of Pisa, then he re-focused on the compound yard. The second Freighter, the one that crashed the wall, was backing up to disengage from the rubble. It stopped and turned toward the
Arcadia
. Denys heard Custer yelling, “Onward! Onward! Bring the
Arcadia
to ground!”

[ 14 ]

The first Freighter shoved the
Arcadia
’s landing legs with such force they bent, then partially collapsed. The big ship passed its center of gravity and toppled as slowly and majestically as a redwood, to crash hard on the compound grounds, throwing up a roiling cloud of dust visible even in the dark.

“Now, men!” Custer shouted, “Her hatches are at ground level! Board her!”

Merkam and Tesla fell hard in the crash, but both men rose quickly to face the coming onslaught of blue coats. As the first half-dozen men closed on the hatchway, Merkam tightened his hands into fists, ready to flail away at the armed soldiers. That is when a tall, slender figure with dark, flowing hair fell on the blue coats from behind like the Furies of Greek legend. Bodies fell like string-cut puppets. Ekka shouted, “Jude! Nikola! Start the Transmogrifier! We must lift into the air or we are doomed!”

Abigail and Jack struggled to their feet after the
Arcadia
crashed. Jack growled, “Those bastards broke my bottle!” He grabbed a two-foot long wrench with his mechanical arm and jumped out of the entry hatch to wield the tool like Thor’s Hammer. The
clunk
and
thok
of the wrench striking heads and torsos was loud to her, even though Abigail was inside the ship. She didn’t watch her husband but searched the grounds for any sign of Billy Gostman.

She caught sight of Ekka leaping into the cargo hatch as Merkam and Tesla departed for the engine compartment. Ekka stood there, tall and fierce and beautiful, denying entry like a tigress guarding her cubs at the den’s entrance.

Then Custer rode into the light, saber ready for battle. Abby thought he might be Ekka’s equal—handsome, brave, fearless even, and focused on his mission. He rode at the head of ten mounted cavalry officers, all armed with sabers. Ekka and Custer focused on each other to the exclusion of everyone else.

Custer said to Ekka, “You are too beautiful a woman to die for the wrong cause.”

“I’m not the one who will die.”

Custer had the hint of a sad smile cross his mouth, then he saluted her with his saber, “So be it.” He jabbed the spurs to his horse’s flanks and the gelding leaped forward.

Abigail saw another horse leap over rubble to bar the General’s way. Her heart swelled and her breath caught, “Billy!” She said.

Jack Ross heard Abby from outside the
Arcadia
and turned to follow her gaze. “Billy? No,” he said. He looked from his wife to Billy, and a tear slid from his eye, trailing down the shiny metal cheek of the mask covering half of his destroyed face.

At that same instant a figure in an odd stovepipe hat emerged from the shadows behind the officers and attacked them with a wooden staff, laying waste to those around him like they were children rather than seasoned men of war. Custer turned his head as the man reached him and said, “You!”

Two Hats punched the end of his staff at Custer’s face and felt the satisfying power of the blow all the way to his shoulder. George flew off his horse like someone pole-axed.

[ 15 ]

Denys watched the giant robot shrug off the last nets and chase down the remaining TerraCycles, throwing them in long arcs far into the darkness, much like a discus thrower he had seen perform in the 1888 Olympics. Thin, high-pitched screams faded into the night as the vehicles sailed into invisibility. The giant then picked up as many felled robots as it could hold in its arms and led the others able to walk through the broken gates into the compound.

Denys searched for other targets and saw the Freighters maneuvering for attack positions. He raised the .500 Nitro Express and aimed at the one nearest Merkam House. His finger steadily added pressure a quarter-ounce at a time. He felt the trigger break cleanly, felt the sledgehammer impact on his shoulder as the bullets ignited, and knew the rounds went true.

Then the world exploded.

[ 16 ]

The blasting caps caught both rounds of the .500 Nitro and detonated instantly, creating a chain reaction that ignited the other blasting caps in the wagon and the dynamite underneath them. The dynamite exploded with such fury Custer’s Freighter vaporized, and the Petrol Gel, used as a much more effective heating element than coal for the steam engines, ignited and splattered through the air to stick in a burning, dripping mass on whatever it touched, be it man, animal, or wood.

Merkam House instantly became a cauldron of hellfire The flaming Petrol Gel launched by the blast sailed over the compound wall to ignite hundreds of fires on buildings, liveries, and houses in the town. In less than two minutes, a third of Colorado Springs burned as bright as torches.

Fire engines clanged their bells, people screamed and cried, and the town burned with a hellish fury. Most eyes turned malevolent glares towards the area of Merkam House.

The giant robot pushed the felled robots into the cargo hatch and stooped to enter with them. The other robots walked into the hatchway as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Ekka shouted orders and they moved faster, but no more concerned.