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From an Epic Award winning author comes a sprawling tale of brass buttons, ray guns, and two-fisted adventure!
In an alternate empire filled with mechanical men, women scientists, and fantastic contraptions powered by steam, a high ranking officer in the Victoriana Defense League betrays his country when he steals an airship and awakens an alien weapon that will soon hatch into a walking factory of death.
Commander Jeremiah Willstone and her team must race through time in a desperate bid to stop the traitor's plan to use the alien weapon to overthrow the world's social order. With time running out, Jeremiah may have to sacrifice everything she is to save everyone she loves.
"Addictive, sassy, sexy, funny, intense, brilliant." -Bitten By Books, on
Frost Moon
Epic Award winner Anthony Francis writes the Dakota Frost, Skindancer series and the Jeremiah Willstone series while working on robots for "the Search Engine Which Starts with a 'G'."
Coming Soon!
1. The
Mystery in the Crystal Hangar
Maddox Cove, Newfoundland
2:21am November 4, 1908
THE
VAST CRYSTAL HANGAR of the Newfoundland Airship Conservatory glittered in the distance like a bar of faery gold. Mist
cloaked it like a shroud, and around it, the abandoned buildings of Sir John
Jeffries’ Airship City lay scattered over
the valleys of Maddox’s Cove like skulls, their windows gouged black as
eye sockets and their roofs fissured and trepanned by a quarter century of disuse—but the glass walls of the hangar still glittered,
and its interior glowed with warm gas light.
"Abandoned in the 1880s,
my arse,” Lieutenant Patrick Harbinger said, flat on his stomach on the chilly
edge of the ridge, spying through the trees the mammoth hangar and
reconstructed mansion over a kilometer distant. "That base is active. Looks
like the Commander was right.”
"When
is she not, sir?” asked the youngest of Patrick’s Rangers, a Maori recruit who blew into
her shivering free hand as she peered with her farlenses. "But is our
missing airship at port? Yon crystal hangar’s big enough for the
Zeppelin-Rogers 101, but my lenses aren’t penetrating.”
"Nor mine,” Patrick said, flicking the polarizer of his spectracle
down, the powerful lens cutting through distance and vapor alike, revealing in
crystal detail the smooth, sloped walls of the glass hangar and the spiky scaffolding holding together the aging Queen Anne
Revival mansion attached to it— but inside those windows was nothing but
fog. "Too much condensation—”
Blue light flared within the glass hangar, near
the end pointing away from them. Patrick adjusted his spectracles, catching a quick glimpse of
flickering lightning behind fogged panes, a lightshow which soon curdled into
a lump of darkness lurking at the far end of the hangar.
"They’re... testing the weapon,” Patrick muttered.
"Sir?” the Maori asked. "Ah! Yon darkness near the far end, could be
the ZR-101’s nose.”
"I see that too,” said one of Patrick’s older
Rangers, a seasoned Egyptian peering through custom farlenses crafted by her personal artisans.
She grimaced, pocketing her farlenses, her hands trembling in the cold. "I’ll
wager they had to wedge the ZR-101 end to end to get it to fit—”
"Enough of those warm-weather gloves,” chided their Canadian Ranger,
as his Egyptian counterpart slipped her hands into her pockets. The Canadian
wore a light Expeditionary tailcoat that made Patrick shiver just looking at
it. "You’ll never harden your hands by hiding them—”
"Be that as it may,” Patrick said, adjusting his spectracles towards
the foreground, "keep your hands warm and your weapons ready, however you have
to. Unless air support comes through, or the Commander finds the sea approach,
it looks like we’re in for a pitched battle by land.”
For, beyond the brutal cold—which, Patrick freely admitted, neither
his African heritage nor his college years spent in the warmer latitudes of the
Confederacy had prepared him for—their foes had done everything in their power
to make this historic building a hard target.
With his spectracles, he inspected the fortification ringed round thecomplex: a quick-hedge, a vicious
latticework of tumbled brasslite spikes designed to repel Foreigners.
Behind it, dark forms patrolled, taller and thinner than any man or woman...
and shining with glints of copper.
"Sir, I must confess I’m uncomfortable, and not from the damn near polar chill,” the Maori said, tightening the belt
on her heavy-weather Expeditionary tailcoat. "Yon building there. It
stands—we stand—on foreign soil—”
"Oi!” snapped their Canadian, flipping back his
own fargoggles. "Watch your language, there are humans
inside those walls. Nearest inhuman territory I know of is Iceland,
a thousand kilometers northeast, so if this is a Foreign shore either I or our
navigators are far off the mark—”
"I’m sure the Ranger meant sovereign, not Foreign,” Patrick
said calmly, "but point taken: the walls of our world have been breached, and
if we don’t stand together, we’ll all fall separately. No human being is a
Foreigner, even if they fly a different flag—”
"But they do fly a different flag, sir—and I’ll wager there
was a time the Newfoundland Airship Conservatory raised it with pride every
day,” the Maori pressed. "With respect, sir, couldn’t assaulting a military
airship hangar of a sovereign power be considered an act of war?”
"Couldn’t receiving a stolen military airship of a sovereign
power also be considered an act of war?” the Canadian snapped back.
"The Liberated Territories of Victoriana can’t just afford to let its best
airship fall into the hands of Newfoundland—”
"Especially not for free, since we planned to sell it to them,”
Patrick said, giving back a wry nod to his man’s surprised glance. "If their
airships engage one of our airships, even a stolen one, it’s an international
incident. But if we retrieve it”—and
he let his voice go all stuffy and Peerage—"simply a self-policing
action, Mister Ambassador, shall we sweep it under this rug?”
His men and women laughed, and Patrick smiled
tightly. Both his Canadian and his
Maori were right: global diplomacy must have been much easier when it
had been called foreign policy—and when the word Foreigner still meant human.
The Canadian shook his head. "Still, I can’t
shake the feeling it’s dangerous, having our most important airship routes, the
backbone of the empire, controlled by another power—”
"The point of the Liberated Territories is that
we are not an empire,” Patrick said, redirecting the
conversation. "We incorporate only territories that want to join—Ranger! Hang back, we’re already too far forward.”
"Sorry, sir,” the Maori said; she’d stepped
slightly up the ridge, and from behind the cover of a tree was scoping out the valley, even as she
drew her blaster and checked its gas canister. "But if we’re in for a land
assault, I recommend that we try the approach near yon—”
But whatever strategic point of advantage the Maori Ranger had spied,
she never got to mention, for rising over the ridge, moving smoothly with silent metal strides, loomed a tall,
bulbous-headed form with glowing eyes—and crackling electric tongs at
the end of its long copper arm.
"Bollocks!” the Maori cried, stumbling back, swinging her blaster up
as the metal man bore down on her. "Mechanicals! Mechanicals—”
But the Mechanical was faster, two crackling fingers lancing out with
a stunning jolt to her heart. The Maori flew backwards, blaster spinning out
of her hand as Harbinger unslung his blunderblast and discharged a round of
aetheric lightning square on the machine’s chest.
Staggered, the spindly copper man fell to its knees, green crackling
foxfire rippling over it, arms waving blindly as the aetheric discharge
scrambled its Analogue vision tubes. But
unlike a human, who could be felled to unconsciousness with a single
shot, a Mechanical had a clockwork controller to fall back on—and as the first
metal soldier struggled to rise, a second one stomped up the path, electric
tongs crackling—and the transmitter on its helmet flickering to life.
"Don’t let it send the alarm!” the Egyptian said, blasting their new
foe’s antenna.
"Capital shot,” Patrick said, sharply but quietly, unloading another aetheric
discharge from his blunderblast’s bell into the flailing Mechanical’s chest,
even as a third clockwork soldier crested the ridge. "But keep your voice down!
Does us no good to stop the alarm if you are the alarm—”
The three Rangers left standing fell back as the metal monsters advanced.
Thermionic weapons performed admirably against living humans, physical structures, even wood—but against these
well-shielded, well-grounded copper soldiers, the aetheric blasts were
barely a hindrance.
Only the strict rules governing these devices saved the humans from a
swift death.
"It’s deciding to run,” the Canadian said,
pointing at the fallen Mechanical, struggling to rise, intact head
rotating left and right in a calibration motion, even as its two compatriots,
their antennae destroyed, corralled the humans with outstretched, sparkling
tongs. "I’ve got a shot—gaah!”
But leaning in to destroy the antenna had put him too close to the
second Mechanical, which lanced out and nailed him on his gun arm with the
electric tongs. He spun aside with a sharp cry, gun flying as he went tumbling—and
the standing Mechanicals lunged for their prey.
The fallen Mechanical rose—then was suddenly pulled off balance by a
sharp jerk on its metal collar from a pale hand. A slim figure in a grey heat
cloak effortlessly guided the stumbling Mechanical into a sapling—then, when
the metal man reached back for its foe, the figure slid the pole of a tonfa
club beneath its upraised shoulder blades, pinning it to the tree. While the
machine struggled vainly, one pale hand snapped its antenna off—and the other
pulled back the hood of the cloak to reveal the golden curls and night-vision
goggles of Commander Jeremiah Willstone.
"Care for an assist, gentlemen and gentlewomen?”
Jeremiah asked, stabbing the antenna into one Mechanical’s neck, then ducking as the other
Mechanical whirled in the direction of her voice. Jeremiah darted fluidly
aside, blinding it with a fold of her heat cloak and driving the Mechanical’s
lunging tongs into the ribs of its fellow—the short she’d created in its neck
frying both its central motor and vision tubes in twin clouds of black oil and
sparks. "Looks like you could use it—”
"Much obliged, Commander,” Patrick said, tipping his bowler, with a
slightly embarrassed air. "Sorry we’re past your recommended perimeter, ma’am,
but there was too much brush on that ridge to scan the site. We’re lucky you
like to run a final recce—”
"I’m lucky you’re scouting our assault,” Jeremiah said,
locking the joint of the remaining Mechanical’s arm, leading it blind and
stumbling around her in a forced whirl until its head smashed into a tree.
Harbinger’s team was fifty meters past her cordon, but she could
immediately see why. "I can always count on you to find the best vantage
point, and that’s how I found you—”
"Thank you, ma’am,” Patrick said, ramming the butt of his
blunderblast into the spinal joint of the Mechanical, which flopped out,
deactivated. "But a land assault may be dicey, the Conservatory appears to be
quite well guarded—do you need help, ma’am?”
"Thanks, but I believe I have it,” Jeremiah said, flashing Patrick a
quick grin as she carefully slipped behind the pinioned Mechanical, still
flailing against the sapling. Before it could break free, she reached beneath
its head, felt, pressed, then popped its head off with a smooth motion. As the
Mechanical sagged, she flipped its head over and lifted her goggles, inspecting
the spinal socket joint. "Haven’t seen this make since Academy...
whittled in 1882! Near as old
as I am—”
"Older, surely,” Harbinger said.
"Flatterer,” Jeremiah said, giving him a wink. She peered past the
joint into the casing. "Still, quite well maintained, a brand new
dynamo—and, I note with relief, still fully compliant with the Mechanical
Protocols. Our foes remain civil. Capital.”
"Thank heaven for small favors,” Patrick said, sighting up the path.
"Looks like the end of reinforcements. Civilized or no, they’re husbanding
their funds well—three well-kept sentries are a far better defense than one
brand new one, shined and ready for its outnumbering.”
"My thoughts exactly,” Jeremiah said, stepping towards the Canadian, who’d fallen on his arse by a tree. She knelt to
check his pulse, just as Patrick knelt by the Maori to do the same, and
she gave Patrick a warm smile. "Such a pleasure to be working with you again,
Lieutenant.”
"You as well, Commander,” Patrick replied.
"I wish I could say the same, ma’am; can’t feel anything but pins and
needles,” the Canadian said, cradling his injured arm gingerly with his opposite
hand. "Sorry, ma’am, you always did recommend Rangers cultivate skill
with their non-dominant hands—”
"Simply a precaution; ambidexterity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,”
Jeremiah said, touching his throat. He winced, and her fingers tingled; he’d absorbed
far more aetheric charge than at first she’d thought—but she hated to see her
soldiers blame themselves for their injuries. "No need to bruise yourself,
Ranger; the enemy will do that for you.”
"Still,” he grimaced, "my active participation in this mission may be
at an end.”
"Your pulse is regular; you’re in no immediate danger,” Jeremiah
said, gently feeling his arm: it was limp, and she could see he’d picked up
post-blast shivers. "Buck up, Ranger, you’re alive and conscious, and you’ll
live to fight another day! Can you get to your feet and help carry our compatriot
back to the landing turtle? Yes? Capital. Let’s move.”
The Egyptian and Canadian lifted their unconscious Maori counterpart
and slung her arms over their shoulders as Jeremiah and Patrick pulled the
Mechanicals off the path and out of sight; thank God the trees had shaded the snow enough so a quick brushing could hide
their scuffle. Then Jeremiah had the wounded lead the way back while she
and Patrick guarded their retreat.
"The Baron’s using our full playbook,” she muttered, drawing one of herKathodenstrahls. "Quick-hedges, gates reinforced with brasslite tubing,
walls reinforced with spun-mesh barbwire—and at an historic building, so we
can’t blast it without getting Newfoundland’s boot up our arse!”
"We need to move quickly,” Patrick said. "They may have been testing
the weapon.”
"If it’s a weapon,” she said. "Stirred them up like an
anthill, it did. Still, I do not, do not, do not like even the ideaof a Foreign weapon falling into the hands of a traitor with an airship—much
less one sitting in the hangar of a well-armed and suspiciously tolerant
sovereign power that’s the closest strike point to our capitol this side of the
Atlantic! We need to move in.”
"Assault crabs are out,” Patrick said, "given that thorough perimeter
of caltrop hedges.”
"Monitored by an equally thorough perimeter of roving Mechanicals,
within and without.”
"So no direct assault,” he said. "Hang on, how do you know
what’s inside their perimeter?”
Jeremiah smiled over her shoulder at him. "Now, that would be
telling,” she said; truth be told, eluding the eyes of that perimeter had taxed
even her abilities. But, as usual, moving with speed had paid off.
"Fortunately, I found the actual entrance to the smugglers’ tunnels.”
"Capital,” Patrick said. "It is a pleasure to be working with
you again, Commander.”
At a steep, exposed ridge, Jeremiah held her hand up, listening carefully;
then darted forward to a covering position while Harbinger helped the wounded
quickly cross the gap. For a moment, she could again see the Conservatory,
that glowing mountain behind its spiky hedge.
The enemy was there. Her enemy was there: the Baron—the
man who’d taught her mistrust. The man who’d sabotaged her dreams. The man
who’d nearly got her drummed out of Academy. The man who’d gambled Iceland on
one of his mad schemes—and lost it to Foreigners!
Now the madman was trying again! And so close! She hissed, then
turned away, drawing calming breaths to compose herself before rejoining her
troops. Grudges were a weakness, anger was a short route to error, and revenge
was most decidedly unprofessional.
hˆf
But bringing this blackguard to heel
would feel so good.
2. The
Last Boat out of Iceland
JEREMIAH’S EXPEDITIONARIES regained, without further
incident, thelanding zone, that cozy tree-shaded bay they’d first mistaken for the smugglers’
cove. As they skulked in, two sleek, masked figures rose from the water without
a sound, and even Jeremiah was impressed at how cunningly the Frogman and
Frogwoman’s patterned black rubber armor blended with the rocks and surf.
Another Frogman rose from the waters like a merman not two meters
from her, raising his trident in challenge, and she pumped her fist twice, two
fingers raised in the sign for safe return. He pumped his fist as well, passing
the signal on—and twin lights glowed beneath the waves.
As if pressed by the light, the water surged forward, heaving in a
glistening swell more urgent than the surf, bursting into glittering pearls
and white foam as the craggy metal head of the landing turtle broke the
surface, gleaming water sluicing unending off the armored cages of its blazing
arc headlights, its mouth falling open with a splash, disgorging a Frogman in a
cloud of steam.
"Found me a good approach, have you, ma’am?” asked Subcommander
Stacey Herbert-Draper, lifting a side of the turtle’s vulcanized rubber pressure
membrane while Jeremiah lifted the other so her Rangers could help their
wounded in. "Or have you better news?”
"Don’t break out the assault crabs just yet, Subcommander,” Jeremiah
said, containing her smile; after missing the landing zone and losing their
first sortie, it was best not to get cocky over one little victory. "I found
air vents—and traced them back to the smugglers’ dock.”
"Capital,” Herbert-Draper said, his eyes gleaming. The reserve the
seasoned Subcommander had shown her was cracking, though he clearly wasn’t
comfortable with a Willstone as a Commander yet. "My troops might still catch
these blackguards unawares. What about our missing airship?”
"We couldn’t confirm it was there,” Patrick
said. "The structure’s lit, but fogged.”
"Blast,” Herbert-Draper said, lowering the membrane. "I’ll call in
the abort—”
"You’ll do no such,” Jeremiah said, quiet but firm. "We shall strike
directly.”
"Ma’am,” Herbert-Draper said, reaching for her arm, but lowering his
voice. "We’re on the shore of one of our allies—and quite possibly, on the
shore of a diplomatic incident. Understand, I can’t authorize an assault on
Newfoundland without confirming my target!”
Jeremiah smiled tightly. Again "his” target,
"his” troops, "his” authorization, always calling her "ma’am,” never mentioning
her rank—intentionally or not, Herbert-Draper was undermining her command.
Liberation might be a century on, the VDL
might be staffed top to bottom with men and women— but the older hands, she still found resistance
that made her work... difficult.
They’d made her a Senior Expeditionary Commander for a reason— the
highest non-Peerage rank an officer could hold, by definition outranking all
other officers on a strikeforce, a post created for her grandmother, to give
that first female Commander the authority to lead a mission very like this one:
an armada quickly assembled from every service, staffed by officers of every
rank.
But staring into her soldier’s eyes, Jeremiah saw earnestness, not
contempt: proving she deserved her rank was her issue, not his. She
should be glad to have a man like Herbert-Draper serving under her, a true
character struck from the submariner’s mold: meticulous but bold, disciplined
but quirky—and even more experience fighting Foreign monsters than her.
No, she’d read his file—and wagered the real issue wasn’t her age or
gender, but his own history: a too-daring raid, in which Herbert-Draper had
scuttled a freighter infested with Foreigners not realizing humans were still
on board—a mistake which left him demoted, for as progressive as the Victoriana
Defense League was, the one thing it did not do was reward failure.
The man wasn’t trying to undermine her: he was simply gun-shy, and
needed reassurance.
"Fear not sir, this is on my head—and trust I won’t put you or your
troops at risk without ample cause and a plan for success,” Jeremiah said, giving his arm a firm squeeze, even as she gauged
the reaction of their soldiers to this conflict among commanders. Yes,
this would have to be dealt with directly: she needed her men and women focused
on believing she could lead them to success, not distracted by mutterings about
who’s running the show, or, worse, about the failures of her mother—or uncle.
"Put me on the dial, point-to-point, to the other turtles and launches.”
"Aye,” Herbert-Draper said, motioning to his aerograph operator, who
began rapping a key, sending, over the thin wires connecting their sea and
undersea forces, a Morse signal to bring their spectroscope dials online. "But onlythem, Frogman. Don’t break Hertzian silence—”
"No doubt the Baron could catch any signal we sent through the air,”
Jeremiah said, striding before the glass eye of the lens, giving her tailcoat a
sharp jerk to straighten it. "This is why I wanted our psychics on the mission,”
she muttered, "rather than holed at base—”
"Doubtful air support’s even in range yet,” Herbert-Draper grumbled.
"Fear not, Sublieutenant, Lord Birmingham will have our backs soon
enough,” Jeremiah said, though in truth she’d expected him here already. "Don’tlet on that we’re talking only to ground-and-sea, Frogman, we want our troops
thinking our force is united from the start.”
The operator nodded, then threw the shunt to CAPTURE. The dial of a
spectroscope lit up, its grainy image showing Jeremiah she was still presentable
after their first encounter. Right, here we go. She nodded, and the
aerograph operator flicked the shunt to TRANSMIT.
The faces of Frogmen, Frogwomen, and Rangers in the hold lit up green
as Jeremiah’s image appeared on the spectroscope dial overhanging their
benches—then those same soldiers appeared before Jeremiah as the return dial
next to her camera snapped on with a little metallic ping. More dials flicked
on, dink, dink, dink, each glowing disc showing troupes of men and women
from stealth launches, sea turtles and behemoths all across the assault force.
Jeremiah smiled when the four main returns went up—but felt her eyes
widen when auxiliary dials lit up around them, five, six, seven, eyes of a spider, then more—God! A dozen troupes
stared back at her through a constellation of dials, comprising the
largest force she’d ever commanded, the full force of her new title SeniorExpeditionary Commander hitting home at last.
And this was merely a third of what she’d asked for! She’d never even
seen them all at once like this; the assault force had been assembled en route.
Still, Jeremiah kept looking straight ahead at the central camera lens, so the
men and women on the other end of the links would see her looking them straight
in the eyes—and, with some irony, she felt herself adopt the grim, determined
smile that had inspired her... when the Baron led his
ill-fated troops into Iceland.
"Expeditionaries, ho!” she cried.
"Ho!” the Expeditionaries in the hold shouted
back, and the tinny screens responded too.
"This is Commander Willstone,” Jeremiah said, smile growing wry as
she calculated the best way to blunt the bad news. "With this assault already
an hour past our op order, I’ll wager you’re wondering if you’re back at Academy,
led by trainees struggling to find their own behinds!”
Laughter rippled out over the hold, and through the dials, and
Jeremiah winked.
"Fear not, we’ve not been searching for our own arses, but for the
best way to stick it to the blackguards who stole Her Majesty’s airship,” she
said. "We’ve confirmed the enemy has infiltrated this compound, and I personally
scouted an approach that will let us take them unawares!”
Jeremiah smiled more broadly as her soldiers leaned towards their
dials, eager to hear more. She reviewed the new plan of attack, then said,
"Recall my words back in Boston: our primary aim is not to recover a stolen
airship, but capture the blackguard who stole it—and thwart his plans for its cargo.
Our psychics have warned us that it’s of primary importance to nip this in the
bud—”
On a tiny spectroscope dial, a Frogwoman raised
her hand, and Jeremiah hit its call button. Back when she was in Academy, information had
flowed from top to bottom, but after Iceland—especially after
Iceland—she wanted her soldiers speaking up. "Question, Frogwoman?”
"What are we nipping, Commander?” called the scratchy voice, voicing
a question she knew had to be on the minds of all her men and women— and the answer
to which her superiors in the Peerage were keeping a secret. "How will we know
it? What, precisely, did the Baron steal?”
"Lord Christopherson stole something so dangerous it put a boot up
the whole Peerage’s arse,” Jeremiah joked, casting a side nod at one Frogman
who offered his own take on the arses in the Peerage. "But I’d never send a
crew in blind—so before we departed, I ran a mission myself to find out! Our
target was stolen from the Arsenal of Madness, crated in a box a little more
than a meter a side—and shipped through the very smuggling network whose
tunnels we shall storm!”
Jeremiah smiled as her men and women leaned forward, ready for action.
She’d dispelled whatever fears they’d had over the first botched landing,
she’d made them forget the bickering and the soured first sortie, she’d let
their concerns be heard—and shown she’d already dealt with them.
Now was the time to seize their spirit and galvanize them to action.
"Gentlemen and gentlewomen of the Victoriana Defense League,” Jeremiah
said. "We defend the world—like no-one ever has! You’re the best trained army
in the history of humanity, fighting for the best values, and our quarry was
one of our own. But now, he’s fled to a haven for the kind of blackguards who
want to depose the Queen and restore Parliament!”
That last bit sent defiant mutters spreading
through the dials—one could always count on a threat to the Queen to stir her troops. True,
Jeremiah hadn’t quite proved that the Baron was backed by Restorationists—but
if rumor was good enough to motivate her men and women, she’d use it.
"And if that’s not enough of a kick in the teeth,” she cracked, "the
Baron got the boot for trying to use the monsters’ technology against them.
Every human being who lived on Iceland could tell you that never ends well—
or would do, if they weren’t all dead!” She let that bit settle in, then said
grimly, "Believe me, I know—I was on the last boat out of Iceland with him, and
I can tell you from personal experience he never learns! So the Baron hasn’t
just impugned the reputation of the League—our reputations, I remind
you—he has a history of putting the whole world at risk. So, gentlemen and
gentlewomen, I appreciate your cooperation in bringing him to heel!”
"Ho!” shouted the array of dials, echoed by the men and women of the
turtle.
"Remember, all of humanity is in this together,” Jeremiah said, voice
ringing out. "So treat no human being like a Foreign monster. Our enemies may
be blackguards and traitors, they may be meddling in Foreign technology, but
their Mechanicals follow the Protocols, so our first assumption is that our
foes are civil—and even if they’re not, we are! Make me proud. Prevail,
Victoriana!”
"Prevail, Victoriana!”
Rangers and Frogmen and Frogwomen sprang to
action. Herbert-Draper ordered his turtles to submerge
for action, the aerograph operator coordinated with the launches,
Patrick gave her a tip of his bowler before briefing the assault force, and
Jeremiah smiled—outwardly.
But inwardly, Jeremiah found herself increasingly worried. She’d told
the men and women under her command what they needed to know to succeed: that
the Baron had been booted from the Victoriana Defense League for fighting fire
with fire—trying to turn Foreign technology back against its masters, and
failing badly—and might be trying it again.
But she couldn’t help feeling that something far more foul was afoot.
Their real target was a mere crate—a sealed crate, stolen from the
Providence Museum of the Insane, known for good reason as the Arsenal of
Madness for its cache of Foreign technology. To recover it the VDL was mounting
an epic assault, bringing to bear one airship, two leviathans, three turtles,
four launches, with an equally epic command, including Patrick, Herbert-Draper,
and, if his airship ever arrived, the renowned Lord Birmingham. All were
experienced soldiers known for fighting Foreigners, all led by her, a
Commander known for repelling more Foreign Incursions than anyone else—her
first, back when she was in Academy. In fact, this assault force didn’t look
like the military police you’d want to bring a rogue general to heel, but
instead like the dream team to counter a full-blown invasion from the stars.
Even then, it wouldn’t be enough. From the start, Jeremiah had warned
her masters in the Peerage that this large force was far too small, and now
they faced the reality: they had neither the ground forces to quickly overwhelm
the Conservatory before their quarry could take to the air, nor the air forces
to pincer the ZR-101 before it could get away. More than just her reputation as a newly minted Senior Expeditionary
Commander was at stake; the Baron was a real threat to the country, if
not indeed to the world. She’d have to apply all her skill and strategy just to
prevent the Baron’s escape, and if he was cooking up an Incursion—
Why, she’d chase him to the ends of the earth personally.
But as dangerous as the possibility was, Jeremiah was savvy enough to
realize why her masters in the Peerage had been careful not to mention the I-word.
If they had, by VDL rules they’d have been obligated to alert Queen
Columbia II, and by the North Atlantic Defense Treaty the Queen would have been
obligated to warn Newfoundland, and then... well, so much for
keeping this quiet. If a stolen airship could lead an international incident,
an allegation that a former VDL officer was calling down an invasion of Foreign
monsters on sovereign soil could lead to war.
So it was clear why the Peerage was worked up into a tizzy to catch
Lord Christopherson as quickly but quietly as possible—especially given dire
warnings from their psychics that the VDL simply must stop the arrival of a
Messenger of the Baron’s new allies, the mysterious Order of the Burning
Scarab. Not much was known about them, other than they were a highly secretive
order of highly placed persons whose obsession was studying the life cycle of
Foreigners.
Why had Lord Christopherson turned coat? Jeremiah had no idea; in
fact, in over nine years as an Expeditionary, fighting the Foreign monsters
trying to gain a beachhead on the Earth, she’d never puzzled out why humans became
so desperate that they turned to the monsters for aid.
But you needn’t have thwarted a Foreign Incursion in Academy to puzzle
this mission out.
hˆf
Their target, that unearthly thing in the crate,
wasn’t a Foreign weapon, but a Foreigner itself.
