Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (22 page)

"It's going to be close!" Captain Fowler shouted over the ever-increasing whine of the galvanic weapons.

There was a bright flash as the Ionic Shield, now scarcely larger than the
Persephone's
hull, came into contact with the electrically-charged surface of the
Stirner
, a bright shock-wave that seemed to travel the length of the other ship's hull. The smaller vessel crashed into the hull of the larger, piercing it like a dagger to the heart.

***

"You've certainly kept me waiting long enough, though I cannot imagine that pirates are known for their promptness."

The handful of men that had been dispatched to see to the crash-site glanced at one another uneasily. They were hard men, anarchists and killers and rogues who would back-stab their best mates for the most trivial of reasons, carrying well-used rifles and sharpened cutlasses, but they seemed unprepared for the sight of Aldora sitting atop the crate in the cargo hold, legs demurely crossed, folded parasol in her lap, dressed in impeccable London fashion, hair perfectly coiffed, examining the disposition of her makeup in a hand mirror among the smoke and flames from the
Persephone's
wreckage.

"Where's the rest of your crew?" one of the pirates demanded, brandishing his cutlass.

"You will take me to your Captain now."

"What we'll do is run you through and toss you out the hole your junk-heap made in our hull!" One of the others sneered, stepping forward. "After having our way with you, perhaps!"

Aldora was on her feet in a flash, body extended in a perfect lunge, parasol extended so that its razor-tip brushed the pirate's throat. "What you shall do is escort me to your captain, or I shall be compelled to hurt you quite badly. I am offering you parley. I suggest you take it."

He stared down at the edge near his throat. "You'd never take all of us. Our riflemen would have you before you'd taken two of us down."

"Perhaps," Aldora said, stance rigid, parasol unwavering, her tone's ice being eclipsed by the fire in her eyes. "But you'll be there first to escort me into hell."

He glanced down at her parasol's tip once more, its edge catching the firelight.

***

"Aldora?" the Pirate Captain seemed shocked to see her. He was dressed casually, sloppily, in an uncared-for French military airship-captain's jacket. It didn't quite fit him, the man he'd taken it from being slightly broader of shoulder and thicker of waist than the tall and athletic captain. It seemed his sole concession to his station, worn over continental-style working-man's trousers and an unlaced poet-shirt. "I thought I blew you up?"

"Grayson." The pirates had taken her parasol, which she surrendered only after extracting their word that they would take her to their leader, and the assurance that she could kill them just as easily with her bare hands.

He boggled at her a moment longer, then laughed and ran a hand through the unruly hair atop his head. "I should have known! It takes a Fiske to counter a Fiske. Fantastic."

Aldora's tone and expression remained carefully neutral. "What I find fantastic is that you still consider yourself worthy of the name, dear brother."

Grayson Fiske scowled, turning away from his sister to gaze out through the London fog. "I do not consider the name worthy in the slightest. Just another wealthy family feeding from the blood and sweat of the working class. The Fiske name is as worthless as any other; I've cast it aside and taken a new one."

"Stirner."

"My favoured philosopher." Grayson cracked a smile. "You remember from my letters. Maxwell Stirner's egoism has become the guiding light in my life."

"I remember your arrogance and anticipated that you'd name your flagship after yourself."

Grayson's smile twitched and faded. "We never used to bicker so."

"You didn't used to kill people. And piracy?"

"Propaganda of the Deed," Grayson said. "What the
Stirner
does is send a message, Aldora."

"The only message I see is a criminal one."

"And?" Grayson asked. "Criminality is as valid a lifestyle as that of the upper classes, perhaps less exploitive, and certainly less deceptive about it."

"My brother, the petty thug."

"There's nothing petty about it, dear sister. Our piracy is a personal and violent rejection of an intolerable society. More-so, it's an example to the oppressed. They needn't follow the rules set by their social betters to entrench their own position."

"My brother, the economic terrorist."

Grayson half-turned towards his sister. "I don't think I care for your tone."

Aldora's tone remained lightly mocking. "I don't think I care for your hypocrisy. You claim you desire to encourage the working man to rise up and cast off his shackles? Who do you think your blockade is hurting more? The wealthy bankers might need to ration the sugar for their tea, but the poor are starving. Do you imagine that they'll thank you before they fall dead in the streets? Do you suppose the last words on their lips will be praise for their selfless pirate benefactor?"

"Sacrifices must be made," Grayson said, crossing the room to glare at his sister. "And the poor are used to suffering, to dying, while the well-off cannot abide the loss of their luxuries. Do you imagine that this rationing is equitable? Of course not. The poor must ever be content with the scraps from the table of the elite. When the situation grows intolerable enough -- and it shall -- the proletariat will rise and cast the upper class from their pedestals to crash and shatter on the cobblestones of Downing Street."

"I don't think you've thought your cunning plan all the way through."

"You see a flaw?"

"Only the part where you're utterly delusional."

Grayson's face flushed. "I'd hoped that you'd at least understand, Aldora, after our years of correspondence. You seemed sympathetic."

"Yes, well, I am afraid that it is difficult to convey a proper tone of condescending patronising over an epistolary medium."

Her brother turned violently from her, hand lighting to the hilt of the rapier he wore at his hip. "Where are the rest of your crew?"

"Dead in the crash, I should imagine. Fortunate enough to be spared your ridiculous schoolboy philosophy."

Grayson turned abruptly towards the men he had standing by. "Take her to the brig, and join those looking for her compatriots."

***

An airship's engine was a complicated thing of gears, steam, and steel. Cogs spun, pistons pistoned, and sprockets... did whatever sprockets did. Fowler wasn't too sure exactly what a sprocket even was, but he wasn't an engineer. The maintenance he performed on the
Persephone
was limited to checking the oil every so often and tapping at the gauges if they went into their red-zones, whatever that meant. Probably explosions. He paid a mechanic to look the thing over once or twice a year whenever it started making more horrible noises than he could tolerate and they presumably fixed it.

All that was moot, of course. The
Persephone
was lost. It was a financial loss more than anything; his ship had undergone enough repairs and retrofits since he'd expatriated that he doubted there was a single original rivet left in the heap. Still, a ship was more than its hull and gasbags, it was the intent and memories it held.

No great loss then. If he were lucky, the Home Office would be grateful enough to give him a handsome reward. Or perhaps Ford, Daimler, or Wolseley or one of the other major airship manufacturers would be willing to sponsor a state of the art vessel to the captain that had saved London.

Fowler pondered these thoughts as he stared into the
Stirner's
engines. Somewhere, that English woman was confronting the ship's captain. His role in the plan was to somehow disrupt the ship's operation to cause enough of a distraction so that she could... do something. He wasn't exactly clear on that part, but Miss Fiske seemed confident, and that was enough for Fowler. An airship was a complicated machine, and it took a certain technical hand to make any significant changes.

Musing on his inevitable reward, Fowler picked up a length of pipe and started smashing it into the
Stirner's
exposed engines, the sound of iron on brass and steel echoing throughout the cramped engine room.

***

The
Stirner
suddenly lurched as one of the engines cut out, and Aldora was tossed into one of the quartet of pirates that was escorting her. The man grabbed her by the elbow to steady her, then his cutlass was in his gut, and she was pulling it free to eviscerate the man on her left. She'd killed three of her guards before the fourth even realised that she'd slipped the rope that had bound her wrists, and he fell back against the wall in fear and surprise.

"It looks like you'll have to go to hell without me," Aldora said, almost apologetically.

***

If Grayson Fiske was surprised when his sister re-entered his stateroom he did not deign to show it. "It's come to this, has it?"

"It needn't end this way, my dear brother. Surrender yourself to me, and I'll see you get the care you deserve."

"More favouritism?" He sneered and pulled a case of rapiers from the wall. "A commoner's care would be the gallows, and yet the high-born Fiske gets rehabilitation."

"The inequality of a sister for her elder brother. Her only brother." She cast the cutlass she'd taken from the slain pirate to the side, catching one of the rapiers as he tossed it to her. "I have a certain pull with the Home Office. You don't have to die!"

"We all have to die, dear Aldora. Some of us sooner than others."

Aldora looked down at the rapier in her hand, and when she raised her head the anguish she felt showed clearly on her face. "Please, Grayson. I implore you--"

"I implore you!" He stepped across the room towards her. "Join me, Aldora. Give up the ways of the cultural elite. You think to save me? I offer you the same courtesy. Our family tree was watered with the blood of the common man, and you see nothing wrong with growing fat from the fruits of their labours? I have committed a small evil, but what is it compared to the injustice of the class divide?"

"I am not responsible for the vagrancies of class and culture." The tip of Aldora's rapier slowly raised from the floor as she spoke. "I am not responsible for the injustices of the modern world or those of the past. I am not responsible for the theoretic millions toiling to enrich the few. I am responsible for my family, for my blood, for my brother. My dear, sweet brother, ill of mind, sick of spirit, blind or uncaring to the suffering he causes."

She stood in a rigid
en guard
stance, blade held horizontal. She flicked the tip towards him. "Come, my brother, and feel the healing caress of my blade. Let me rid you of the privileged blood you so despise."

A half-scowl was the only telegraph of Grayson's assault as he stuck out with a quick lunge towards her heart. She pivoted to the side, letting his blade pass by, then brought her rapier against his to knock it aside. He struck at her again and again in a controlled fury, while she calmly deflected each of his strikes. At the end of his flurry she let herself fall back, catching herself on her free hand, extending her blade out in a
passata-soto
towards his midsection. He swept the tip of her attack aside, but was caught off guard by the boot heel that kicked his legs out from under him.

Aldora used her braced palm to push herself back up to her feet, using the forward momentum she'd earned to extend herself in a lunge towards her brother. He deflected with his rapier's hand-guard, riposting against the side of her head with its pommel. She recoiled, momentarily stunned, and he pressed the attack with a vicious tip slash meant to take out an eye. She twisted back, rolling over the stateroom's table, but felt the hot pain as the edge of Grayson's rapier sliced through her cheek. A second attack pierced her shoulder, and a red rose bloomed as her blood seeped into her blouse's fabric.

"When we last fought," Grayson said, driving the tip of his rapier towards her throat, "I bested you handily."

"When we last fought," Aldora responded, effortlessly battering his attack aside and pulling the stiletto from her hair, "I was eleven."

The dagger's sharp point found no resistance as she plunged it into his breast, puncturing one of his lungs. He stared down at its pearled hilt as he sat back into one of the stateroom's chairs, so heavily that it fell over backwards. Aldora stood over him, face passive, as he made no effort to get up.

"You killed me," he said. "Mother will be upset."

"I shouldn't think so," Aldora said quietly, watching her brother die. "She gave up on you long before I did."

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

***

"The crew has escaped in one of the ship's boats," Fowler said. "We should take the other one."

It had been easy enough for Fowler to find the bridge, and by the time he had there were no sign of the tears Aldora had shed for her brother. She stood, arms folded, gazing into the fog. "The other ship will be by presently."