Dieselpunk: An Anthology (18 page)

I wish for a cigar as I clomp down the docks towards the pile of
Estrella’
s cargo, carpeting, and furniture. The sun is cresting through the easterly trees and an early sunbeam lights upon me. Don stirs, happy for the heat, and I set him down in the sun on the dock as I dig a bent cigar from the pile of my mangled ex-cargo. I light the bent cigar and start to load what salvageable bits I can find in the pile back into
Estrella
. With my cargo gone and passenger finding new transportation, there is no need to fly up to Roanoketown. The fat wad of cash in my pocket tells me the casinos of Habana or the beaches of the Bahamas might be a more fitting destination for the moment.

The next hours pass by in a haze of lifting, strapping, bolting, and thoroughly inspecting
Estrella
for damage those gorillas might have done to her. By ten she’s ready for flight, if not for passengers. Don contently lies in the shadow of the stacked shattered crates, stuffed from the pile of mangled mangoes the Huesiano gorillas left behind. I plan to leave it all behind for them to clean up. A quick bribe to the harbor boss and security chief, and I’m refueled and cleared for flight.

Don lies in the co-pilot’s seat beside me as I prime and crank
Estrella’
s engines. They cough to life in turn, purring nicely as I taxi down the channel. Nudging
Estrella’s
throttles forward and pulling her yoke gently back, she lifts up into the clear morning sky and I leave Cayo Hueso behind, feeling an invisible weight lift off of my shoulders. Whistling the melody to a happy Dominguiano folk tune, I push thoughts of Virginian revolutionaries and Inquisitors aside and steer into the rising sun, once again free among the clouds, subject only to the winds over my wings.

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Dex Puncher, American Hero, vs. the Deadly Dreadnought: a Bloody Dogs Tale

By Nick Keller

Just north of the Somme River, France, 1916

The moaning had come from over there…somewhere. Just another body smashed in with the mounds of others, all twisted and still, stinking and gruesome. But this body was alive…somewhere. After all, dead men don’t groan.

Dex perked up like a bloodhound on the chase, eyes sharp, nose sniffing for life.

There it was again. The moaning.

“
Hulp muh . .
.”

He scurried over, silent as a jackal, his muddy boots taking him over and through the dead.

There. Movement. A hand slowly protruded skyward from the bodies as if reaching for God. He went to it hefting the dead out of his way, watching them tumble off the living. Dex got down and inspected the man.

Living
— that was the wrong word.

The man’s eyes were reflections of a horror that would never leave, murals on the wall of his face painted in reds and blacks — disemboweled bodies, friends caught helplessly inside the throes of a German machine gun, waves upon waves of bullets tearing people into pulp.

“I’m here, pal,” Dex whispered.

“Thunder…thuh-thunder…fruh-from the earth.”

Dex looked up, shooting his gaze back and forth across the field. “Where are the German emplacements?”

The man only gawked up at the sky, those eyes dancing without rhythm. Split lips. The blood of a dozen men dried like mud. “N-no placements. N-no bunker. It was thunder,” he muttered. “Thunder from the earth.”

Dex grimaced. It was the gibberish of insanity. He gave a “
Pssst
!” to his men, each of whom glanced towards him, programmed by command. He waved them over, then looked back at his dying, new comrade and leaned in. “Where are the Germans, friend?”

The man shook his head. “No, not Germans. Mah…machines. Machines!”

A slow look of understanding crossed Dex’s face, then it turned to a bloodless horror. This wasn’t insanity. This man had seen something gruesome — and Dex knew it. He stood up throwing his gaze far beyond the battlefield, far beyond any would-be German emplacements, and off towards the horizons. He looked out there fearful, full of dread, as if a ghost were haunting him.

Machines. Thunder from the earth…

Viktor von Slitt stared into his brother’s face. It was a stoic image — his brother framed from the chest up revealing the darkened collar of his German officer’s trench coat, the svelte-brimmed hat pulled tight across a handsome brow, eyes leering sternly forward, a collection of medals on his chest reflecting his undying fealty towards the Kaiser and the
Vaterland
.

Undying
. Viktor von Slitt grunted bitterly. No, the man — his brother — was gone, a true loss to the country, a hole punched through Viktor’s heart. But one without closure. The younger von Slitt’s body had never been found, lost among the mountains of the dead, somewhere, like so many others.

Viktor’s one good eye misted over, the residue of a tear. He palmed it angrily as a knock sounded at his door. “Enter!” he called, and Hauptmann Heffenschlaug walked in, rigid as a board.

“Commandant, we have field reports,” the man snapped.

“Vat are dey?”

“The British First Army, sir, has been halted in their advance to the north.”

Viktor von Slitt nodded, still gleaming at his brother’s portrait. “Continue.”

“There is a development. The Somme River, sir, just to the west — the Third Army has entrenched themselves. Fighting is sporadic, but our numbers are too few in that area.”

Von Slitt grinned, flashing his silver teeth. “Then that point vill be our next testing ground. No army can stand against our new var machine.”

“No, sir. Should I plot our next course?”

“Absolutely. Vee vill crush them at the Somme.”

“Yes, Commandant!” Heffenschlaug barked. But he did not leave the room. Von Slitt turned slowly in his chair to face him revealing the albino skin of his face, the perfectly black glass eyeball. Heffenschlaug swallowed through a tight throat. It was obvious; he despised staring into his commandant, a man who had the dome of his skull replaced with a bullet-proof chromium plate that glinted in the light like an exposed crown.

“Yes, Hauptmann, is there more?” von Slitt asked coolly, like a snake.

Heffenschlaug cleared his throat. “There are reports of a prison camp, two days ago, being infiltrated from behind our lines. The guards were all killed. The prisoners…freed.”

Von Slitt scowled.

“And,” Heffenschlaug continued, “yesterday a guarded munitions station was destroyed.”

Now von Slitt began to tremble, his fists clenching.

“And only hours ago, sir, a reconnaissance patrol has gone missing.”

Von Slitt began to grumble, his face turning into something inhumanly furious.

“And also, sir . . .”

“Enough!” von Slitt bellowed hammering his desk with a fist. Though he knew the answer — it stabbed him deep — he asked, “Who is responsible?”

Heffenschlaug blinked nervously. “Sir, we believe . . .”

“Who?”

“Well, sir . . .”

“WHO?”

With eyes closed, breath held, the hauptmann muttered, “
Geister des Krieges
.”

Spirits of War.

Now a tricklet of blood made its way from beneath von Slitt’s silvery skull and down his face as he stood, fists bearing into his desk. “
Geister des Krieges
, again! I vant these dogs found! I vant their blood! I vant it poured at my feet! Do you understand, Hauptmann? I vant them destroyed, slow, full of agony! I vill hang their hides on my vall!”

Hptm. Heffenschlaug merely nodded his head, turned, and left at a full pace. Von Slitt had to calm himself. He controlled the trembling that had taken him and turned to his brother’s portrait. Taking it into a tight clutch he sneered, “I vill find you, brother. I vill. Ent ven I do, I vill have my revenge against those that did this. Yes, brother, vengeance vill be mine!”

Twin treads smashed a trail through the grey mud of St. Agnes Pierre Road — or what used to be the St. Agnes Pierre Road. What was once a winding thoroughfare that meandered lazily through the French countryside for days was now an embattled strip of slush-mud used by the armies of man as a warpath. Dex Puncher’s Holt 75 personnel tractor grunted and ambled like some new monster berthed from the subworlds of conflict. It pulled a flat-wagon behind it that carried a row of dark, squared personnel lockers holding their equipment. Dex himself sat along the steel tread covers, his feet dangling only inches over the mud as it passed below. His men were huddled across the body of the motorized beast, each man resting on an elbow or sitting back-to-back leaning their fatigued weight against that of a comrade. Dex glanced over his boys with a sense of tired pride. They were all mercenaries he’d recruited once he’d come to France. Some were British, others were Polish, two were French, some of them were from Scandinavia — but good, fearless men, all of them. Dex was from wherever he chose. For now, that was Texas. And that’s all anyone needed to know. Hal Brigham, a fellow American who’d been circumstantially trapped in France once the Kaiser invaded, drove the Holt 75. As its four cylinder engine coughed and hacked under the duress of motion, they each rocked to and fro.

“Dex,” Hal barked.

Dex looked up.

“Camp McCluster’s three kilometers up.”

“Great, Hal. What the hell’s a kilometer?”

“Don’t know, brother.”

Camp McCluster was not what they expected. Strip trenches that looked to have taken a million man-hours to cut webbed through the fields of it like the veins of the earth. Muddy men blotted them, often too congested together to fit. But they made do. The British were like that. Survivors.

Hal pulled the Holt 75 to a grumbling stop, causing several British eyes to glance up. They looked like egg whites in a sea of grey. Dex plopped down and stood at the trench looking over the soldiers. He pointed to one man and said, “You there, where can I find Colonel . . .”

The beret on Dex’s head blew off as if a tight spiral of well-directed wind had blown it away. Then a distant rifle report sounded like a crack on the horizon.

German sniper.

The men of his troupe unleashed eleven weapons and shattered the wind with the yowling of gunfire. One of his men snapped an eyepiece up to his face, scoped the grounds, shot, collapsed the eyepiece, and looked up at Dex. “Got him.”

Dex nodded, went back to addressing the British soldier. “Col. Blathers. Where can I find him?”

The British soldier pointed a finger due south and mumbled, “Um, um, um.”

“Got it. Thanks, pal,” Dex said. He saddled up, and they were off.

The headquarters was nothing more than a wooded covering over a large area of dugout trench with oak support beams set in the mud. Dex had to duck to enter. When he came upright and looked around, he found there were makeshift desks with intel officers buzzing about them. Muddy papers. An operator on a phonograph system popping code on his tac-set. At the back of the shanty was a tall man, well-weathered, and a bit combat-fatigued, brandishing colonel’s stripes on his British uniform. He was currently jabbering away with a major and two captains.

“Bloody frogs, those French! They should hold that position down!” he blurted in mid-discussion, a quite royal charm to his accent. “It seems they do like playing rugby with the Germans — back and forth across the muddy, bloody pitch a day at a time. With rifles, I might add.”

“Yes, Colonel,” the major replied. “Indeed I believe they’ve used the term ‘football’ in reference to us, something in which I find no humor.”

“Bloody hell, I say! This is French mud, French rain, and French toil that we deal with. A ferry straight home across the channel would do for me.”

The major nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Col. Blathers softened — or rather, hardened — and said, “Of course then we would leave the French to open our rear doors for the bloody Germans, wouldn’t we?”

“Afraid so, sir.”

One of the captains stepped forward and said, “Colonel, sir. We have something. Straight from British top.”

“Yes, Captain, what’ll it be? Another flank maneuver across the St. Pierre, or, God willing, an offensive across the goddamned Somme?”

“Mmm, not likely, sir. It is a most interesting package, though.”

“Its nature?”

“Film, sir. Celluloid. Taken from one of our dirigibles over enemy territory not a week ago.”

“Film?” the colonel grunted shifting his eyes up, interested. “A reconnoiter of sorts?”

“Exactly, sir. It was retrieved by our ground crews. Unfortunately, whatever the dirigible was filming, apparently shot it down.” Then, somberly: “Men were lost to attain it.”

“I will have to go back to Primary to view it. Have my man bring my auto, immediately.”

“Aye,” and the captains were off.

Dex took the moment to move forward. “Colonel.”

Blathers looked at him over an ill-maintained handlebar moustache. “Who the bloody hell are you, sir?”

“Name’s Dex Puncher,” he said, putting a large gloved hand forward.

The colonel’s eyes diminished into slits. “Are you with the Canadian brigade?”

Dex blinked. “No, sir. American.”

The colonel’s face opened in surprise and he glanced at Dex up and
down. He found Dex to be a good-looking chap, appearing quite ca
pable of combat with his leather cargo vest, utility belt, dual revolvers, and shin-high tie-up leggings. His beret had a fairly fresh-looking bullet hole in it. But what seemed to impress the colonel most was the hand extended towards him and the glove it wore. Very large, almost unmanageable in a handshake, but with a palm made of the strangest silver-grey material. Very hard. Very cold. The colonel did not shake, only regarded Dex with scrutiny and blurted, “The bloody Americans are here? It’s about time. Where are the rest of you?”

Dex withdrew his gloved hand and pointed up towards the Holt 75 where his boys were huddled comfortably. He said, “There.”

Blathers’s scrutiny grew. “Eleven? I see only eleven! Where’s the other million or so?”

Dex found a logical tone and said, “This is all we are.”

“What the bloody hell, then? This is a war, man. Couldn’t you have at least brought a baker’s dozen?”

“We were eighteen.”

The conversation came to an abrupt silence. Col. Blathers looked him in the eye, and a flash of pitiful understanding came to him. “I do see, my good sir. What do you want?”

“To offer our services.”

“You’re obviously not American military, then.”