Dieselpunk: An Anthology (21 page)

Nothing!

Then…

The sound of several machine guns came screaming out from deeper inside the iron cavern shattering the upper catwalk. Hal peeked up.

Saved!

His Bloody Dogs were returning on the charge, shearing the German soldiers above into bits and pieces. Hal stood up, shoulders slumped, face the color of raw cookies.

One of them looked at Hal in a full sprint towards the exit and yelled, “Move, brother, move! She’s gonna blow!”

That’s when Hal sensed the constant churning rhythm of the whole place pitch up a notch, as if some invisible force infecting the extruder’s innards was squeezing the life out of it. Pressure was building. This whole place was about to be a mountain of twisted junk. They did it, those Bloody Dogs! He joined his boys on the run, each fanning their rifles back and forth, back and forth, felling anyone who got in their way.

Von Slitt smiled apathetically and said, “I should have known you ver not dead. There vas no body, no sign of death. Ent now I know.” His expression went disgusted. “Vie? How could you leave your homeland at the cusp of such greatness?”

Dex’s eyes went down, began peering into a painful past — memories he had buried away. “I didn’t leave,” he grumbled. “I just didn’t stick around.”

Von Slitt went angry in a quiet, menacing way. “Call it vut you vill, but never the less, it is treason. And now, you return to destroy vut you vonce built. That is more than treason. That is a sin against the
Vaterland
. And you…you are a traitor.”

Dex’s eyes went up. A traitor? Against what? Germany — the
Vaterland?
If von Slitt had his way, the
Vaterland
would burn the whole world with his new toy, this iron beast burped up from Hell.

Dex shook his head.

No! The Dreadnought was not some creature from Hell. It came out of his own mind, built up by his own hand. Years he’d spent designing it — patching it together, assembling it into being. Indeed, Dex himself had pieced the thousand parts of it together in a shining new exhibition of man’s greatest technological formulation. No army of man could stand against the Dreadnought; they could only bow to it. And for what? So von Slitt and the
Vaterland
could replace the very idea of God with this piece of unholy idolatry? It was Babylon. It was Babel. It was perfect sacrilege.

Only Hell was next for von Slitt and his legion. But not Dex. No way.

Dex’s eyes went up and there was flame in them. “No…I am not a traitor. Not to God, not to this world, not to man…and not to the Fatherland.” His eyes speared a look of hatred at von Slitt, and he growled, “You are!”

Von Slitt only snickered, unaffected. Rubbing his hands together he approached Dex. “The Iron Cross does not bend. It does not yield. You vill forever be Deutsche. Therefore, you vill forever be a traitor. Because no matter vut new person this is I see before me, you vill always be Dr. Greuber von Slitt.” Leaning forward with the shadows attaching themselves to the lower parts of his face he sneered, “My brother.”

Dex launched at him, snarling like a beast, but von Slitt shielded himself with a thrust of his own, catching the younger von Slitt by the upper region, and sending him sprawling to the ground. Dex growled, shook it off, spun around, but . . .

Von Slitt sighted him with a sudden, menacing gunpoint. There was sadness in his gaze. It lingered. “I had so badly hoped that ven you returned, vee vould be together again, ent vee vould rule this nation, then the vorld. But I see you have made your choice, brother. Ent now I must make mine.” A look of duty soon replaced the sadness in von Slitt’s glare and he said, “Ent now, my brother, I must kill you.”

Dex offered a slow, mournful grin, moving his eyes onto von Slitt’s trigger finger, watching for the tiniest motion, putting all his focus on the sinew under the knuckle, waiting for the tiniest slip of flesh. And there it was.

BAM!

Dex’s final act in life was to throw his right hand up over his face, then wilt down into the lax pose of doom.

The moan of bending iron sounded off through the entire foundry superstructure. In a massive quake, the extruder’s crank-casing exploded like a great iron jack-in-the-box, sending flame across the whole factory. At the forward end of the casing, the iron stop-wall shattered out as the seventy-foot camshaft banged forward like God’s own bullet. Its momentum flipped it forward until it crashed into the Dreadnought’s support structure, a tower of steel and iron. The thing buckled at once, causing the Dreadnought to flinch against itself as if some great fist had punched it in the gut.

Out on the forward platform the Bloody Dogs were taking to the sky. Hal was last. He shot a glance back to see flame and smoke billow out from the beast’s mouth. Then, through it all, he saw the forward length of the camshaft shear away and go banging around the factory like a giant hammer tearing the whole place into a chaotic world of wreckage.

Time to go!

He ignited his thruster nozzles and speared a perfectly vertical path towards the sky.

Von Slitt stood over the lifeless body of his brother glaring down with a sense of dark closure. He nudged him with a toe. No response. Von Slitt kneeled down. “Brother, I am…sorry.”

A fist came up in a flash, sending von Slitt sprawling to the floor. His glass eye popped out of his head and landed with a grotesque
doink
while the gun in his hand clattered to the floor. Dizzied, he shook it off and looked up. Dex stood over him, palm forward. His glove — a steel mesh palm sutured together with tight chromium and iron conglomerate material, the butt end of a bullet wedged inside.

“My name…is Dex Puncher.” He leaned down, picked up von Slitt’s gun and thrust it at him. In Dex’s face was a look entirely alien to his older brother — in it was the dread of what must be done. He trembled like a man being ripped into two halves; on one side was duty, the other kinship. He shook his head, lowered the sidearm, and muttered, “Brothers to the flesh.”

Von Slitt nodded through his shame and grunted, “Brothers … to the bone.”

Dex threw the sidearm away.

That’s when the explosion made its way through the floor of the control room, rattling the entire steel world of the Dreadnought. Dex was taken off his feet as the entire tower began wheeling forward. Through the control window he could see the earth’s horizon begin to shift upward, the ground below slowly coming up at them. The Dreadnought was falling!

Dex wheeled around and began clawing towards the side window, as the floor grew even more inclined with the angle of the iron beast’s collapse. He snarled out and made for the cable he had earlier used to swing his way into the command center. Knocking bits of fallen manosaur out of his way he lunged at the cable, but it slid away. The incline was becoming greater. One last shot! He powered forward, kicking with his legs until the cable was in his grasp, and with a surge of adrenaline he propelled himself out the window into open space. His body swung out, came back, and thundered up against the exterior bulkheads, swinging him into a circle. Just overhead he could see the very top of the Dreadnought. He had to get there.

Von Slitt crawled towards the opposite window but shot a look over his shoulder in time to see his brother go slipping through the far view port. He snarled, biting his lip until a rivulet of blood oozed through. Then he dove headfirst through the window, opening his arms, whipping his cape out into a fabric glider that caught the breeze and lifted him safely away. Once free of his toppling beast, he watched through angry eyes as it continued to lurch earthward. Then he spun around and headed for the oblivion of the sky, screaming, “Brother!
Brotherrrr! Vee vill meet again!”

Down below, the British Third Army watched the world darken all around them as the Dreadnought’s shadow crept across the earth in its forward fall. The thing had breached the axis of gravity in its plummet. It was coming down and there was no stopping it.

Col. Blathers’s gaze went up, jaw falling slack. And the words of Dex Puncher came to him in his mind loud and clear: “March slow…stay out of its shadow . . .”

“Jolly good! Bloody hell!” He turned to his cabinet and yelled, “Retreat, lads! Retreat!”

Dex threw an arm up over the top edge of the thing’s head and clawed forward. Immediately, he began sliding down the uppermost surface of the thing, but he looped the cable around the base of the crane and held tight, sneering against the inevitability of the next, and quite possibly, final moments, he rode the thing down and down as it fell.

The belching and screaming of twisting iron, buckling superstructure, snapping bulkheads filled the air as the velocity of its fall grew, and grew some more. And then, in a final surging quake of thunder, the whole thing came to a jolting smash against the ground, breaking into tonnage in an ocean of disrupted soil. Dex was torn from the cable and went falling to the ground. All around him was a cloud of muddy earth exploding into the air. Heaving in relief, he merely sat there hearing the final bits of iron from the Dreadnought come to a rest behind him.

Silence occurred next, hard and genuine, like the lull of a storm, or the dead in past battlefields.

A figure emerged towards him, and then the person became clear, making his way forward. Dex grinned. It was Col. Blathers looking a bit stupefied in his British congeniality.

“Good show!” he blurted, extending a hand. Dex took it in his gloved hand — a serendipitous handshake — and came upright. “I thought you were only here to kill Germans, my good man. But I do believe you’ve killed this damn thing, as well.”

Dex nodded. “It wasn’t me, Colonel.”

The thrum of eleven jet packs grew from overhead and down came his Bloody Dogs. Dex nudged a chin at them and said, “It was them.”

Hal landed, thumbing off the jetpack and making his way to Dex. They shared the look of men after a day’s work, grinning and patting each other on the shoulder.

“What’s next, brother?” Hal asked.

Dex looked around at the battlefield. Behind was a mountain of wreckage — a monument to a man and his feeble endeavors. Thunder would be returned to its home — in the sky. Glancing back at Hal, he merely asked, “What time is it back home?”

Hal scratched his head. “Home? It’s evening time.”

“Mmm, evening.” Dex turned to the colonel with a grin. “I’m sorry, my friend, but we’ll have to leave the cleanup to you.”

Blathers huffed and puffed and said, “I’m not touching the damnable thing. We’ll leave that to our German prisoners. It’s their mess.”

“Fair enough.” Dex turned to his boys and declared, “Bloody Dogs, let’s saddle up!”

They began flipping switches, thumbing toggles.

Blathers stepped forward with a quizzical expression. “Where are you going, my good man?”

Dex secured his harness through its buckle and looked up. “The hunt ain’t over, Colonel. But don’t worry, where the world’s freedoms are threatened by tyranny, where the flames of hope are dampened by the forces of evil, you’ll find us there, hands open to the oppressed, fists closed to their oppressors. Because that’s what we do, Colonel. We’re Dex Puncher and the Bloody Dogs!” With that, he punched his nozzle ignition and blasted off into the sky, followed in screaming kind by his men, each leaving a contrail of smoke like javelins piercing upward — angels returning to their kingdom.

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Changing of the Cogs

By Frank R Sjodin

A visit to the subterranean engineering levels of Gethmisca is said to have a profound effect on the destiny of the visitor. Laboring engineers excluded, of course. Their lives are predestined from the moment they pass their placement exams. As for myself, the grinding cogs beneath the city, whether spun by the hands of fate or the choices of men, sculpted my life’s history during my first visit.

In those days I was serving as secondary aid to Jules Condon, Gethmisca’s voice. I’d spent half my young life aspiring to the position, but it was due to circumstances beyond my own wit and diligence that I claimed my title. I had been elected as tertiary aid days before the secondary aid met the mighty Zarr Campaire, who was so offended that Condon hadn’t met him personally that he imprisoned the entire diplomatic entourage. Condon’s primary aid, hand-picked by the voice himself, was not an option for visiting the depths of the Shaking City. Only elected officials were allowed down to the city’s roots, and only on the Guild’s request. I was the only aid available to accompany the voice as he received council from the men and women who kept the city running.

Like most citizens, I was terribly curious to see the legendary machinery that funneled power from shifting tectonic plates into manageable electricity. Laypeople used to joke that the Guild only offered tours to politicians to ensure that nobody capable of comprehending the machinery ever saw it.

The engineer who accompanied us down the entry elevator was a paragon of stereotypes: short, seemingly hairless, and so deeply encased in safety equipment that his voice was the only indication of his gender. He lifted his visor to greet us, but never removed his helmet, goggles, or gloves. Condon, despite his sensitive and disastrous pride, did not seem a pittance offended.

The voice rattled on about the state, the Continental War, and the traditions of neutrality esteemed by our political faction. Everything he said would have been predictable news, even to the most uninformed of citizens. The engineer politely nodded and grunted.

Condon held the engineers in exceptionally high-esteem. He had served in public office for half-a-lifetime, yet had never seen the cogs. The Guild has always held powerful influence over domestic policy, but rarely did it express opinions concerning foreign policy, so it had little desire to advise diplomats. Condon claimed that politicians openly considering the first foreign alliance in Gethmiscian history was the only reason the Guild demanded a chance to advise him, and only to reiterate isolationism.

The only advice we received in that elevator concerned safety equipment protocol. Between the inane speech concerning political rehash and repeated safety warnings, I’m sure my impatience was obvious.

The elevator depot was a series of airlocks and storerooms overflowing with helmets, padding, goggles, visors, and heat-suits. We passed a mess hall where plain-clad engineers waved to us, calling out their patriotic sentiments towards the Shaking City. Our guide mentioned that our visit had been much anticipated, and would hopefully quench the rampant rumors of war. Condon assured him that Gethmisca would have no part in any wars while he led negotiations.

By the time we were fully equipped, Condon and I could have easily been mistaken for apprentices. Our buckles and seals had been re-adjusted multitudes by the gearmaster; who I reminded myself must not be confused with a cogmaster. Our suits sagged and pinched in all the wrong places. There’s a proper method of composing the body while donning a heat-suit that I’m still ignorant of today. The gearmaster assured us we would be safe in the event of a major quake, so long as we followed proper safety-chain procedures.

When he ushered us into one of the tertiary shafts, we were greeted by a blast of air so hot that I can only describe it as smelling like heat. Our proper tour guides were there to greet us and introduced themselves curtly. Chief Manager Aor wore no visor and extra-thin gloves. Chief Cogmaster Broman’s size made him unmistakable. Chief Designmaster Timin was thin and twitchy. The patches and symbols littering their gear were indistinguishable from those on our own suits. They must have indicated qualities of the suit rather than the status of the wearer.

Even a tertiary shaft is a terrifying and foreign place to citizens like I who had never been deeper than the upper medical levels. The high ceiling is a nest of cogs, wires, twisted steel, and quake-netting. There are no floors. A web of cable catwalks form an imperfect swaying grid by which engineers move about the shaft, and flexible ladders drop below to several similar layers of grid. Chains, cables, ropes, and latch-links hang everywhere, most attached to safety harnesses on working engineers. A sapling forest of steel rods extend into the ceiling and down the shaft. Broman told me that the rods numbered ninety in that particular shaft. They were rotating very slowly, creating an ominous grinding sound that engineers call Gethmisca’s True Voice. Ironically, Condon was tickled to hear it.

“
He’s whispering now, but he’ll roar during a quake. He’s quick to yell at his children. Keeps us from getting too proud or lazy, gotta remind us he’s still in charge now and then.”

Aor laughed at her own joke. She was the most verbal of our guides, explaining the general workings of the shaft while deferring to the others only for highly technical matters. As she described the purposes of the rods and the materials of their construction, I began to realize the truth of the jest concerning visiting politicians. I had thought of myself as well-educated in the sciences, but I soon realized how little I knew of science compared to the depth of knowledge that even an apprentice engineer must hold.

As we took another elevator to the mid-depth levels of the shaft, Broman attempted to explain the series of complex junction units that branched tertiary and secondary shafts from the primary pit. Condon asked if there were a model we could see, as rumors described. Aor regretted that the model had been crushed during a quake, and sufficient resources were never allocated towards constructing another.

Two light tremors hit while we descended, but the elevator seemed to sway even less than the upper levels of the city do during a tremor. Condon and I remarked on the stability of living underground, but the engineers laughed.

“Foreshocks like this wouldn’t even be noticed up top. But sure as sunset, when the main shock hits there will be less swaying down here than atop the tower. You’re less likely to lose your footing from rock and sway here, but the tower is infinitely safer. No need for padded suits there. Our gear is the safest in history, but every quake over rating seven still injures roughly ten percent of our force. There’s a reason we built the hospital just above ground.”

Condon took “safest in history,” as his cue to discuss Gethmiscian superiority. He began by comparing our military technology to the rumored developments of the Trekkar and Campaire armies.

“Even if these Trekkar armored units can withstand a direct hit and still function, that’s a direct hit from
Trekkar
artillery. Thanks to your Guild’s constant innovations, our guns have always outclassed theirs in range and power. Don’t get me started on the zarr’s super-cannon. Camparian engineers still seem to think they can add range by adding length to the barrel!”

“
I was hoping you may have some updated intelligence reports concerning our disgruntled neighbors.” Though Aor’s voice was friendly, it made me aware of another advantage of her gear. We had no way to accurately judge facial expressions under shaded visors, and the din of machinery and foreshocks degraded all speech to a variation of shouting. Condon’s strongest negotiating techniques were based on telling people what he thought they wanted to hear, based on their non-verbal reactions. Unless the engineers spoke explicitly, there was no way for us to gauge their reactions, attitudes, or mood. They only communicated the words they spoke.

“
Your faction has assured the people that we have nothing to fear from either army, since both fear our stockpile of technologically superior weaponry. However, this does not change the fact that both nations have over eight times as many soldiers as we do, while our territory is the only thing geographically separating their armies. It will only be a matter of time before their hatred of each other outweighs the neutrality of Gethmisca.”

“
I’ll have plenty of time to lead peace talks.” I doubt they took Condon’s boast lightly, as his cease-fire negotiations had brought the Continental War to a standstill in our region for seven seasons. “After all, whichever side makes a bold move first takes the greatest risk, just like in games or duels. The cost of capturing the Shaking City will keep either side from attacking as long as their numbers remain similar.”

The engineers voiced no reactions to Condon, so I offered a counterpoint in hopes that they might express their leanings.

“An unexpected first move has won many a game! Our history and opposed ideology to both Trekkar fundamentalists and the despot zarr make any Gethmiscian alliance highly unexpected. Unfortunately, neither side has offered acceptable terms for any such alliance.”

When the engineers inquired about those terms, quakes began as if the Fault himself were angered by the idea. Surprisingly, the elevator did not halt! It slowed to a cautionary speed. Conversation continued as if nothing had happened. Professional politicians have a way of hiding our distress during conversations, though I’m sure Condon was as unsettled as I by the force of the quakes.

“Their terms are dangerous and insulting,” Condon sounded casual despite his shouting. “The zarr would demand that we pay a token tribute and allow his army to be quartered inside the city. Not only that, he has expressed desire to move his super-cannon to the tower’s peak! He boasts that when complete, it will out-range our guns so greatly that it could fire upon us from Thelsan, or preferably fire deep into Trekkar lands from atop our tower. If he desires to place his most powerful weapon here, his endgame clearly involves possession of the city.”

Finally we had a readable response from Aor. “A perch on the tower would increase the range of any cannon, to some extent. If his estimates are accurate, putting his super-cannon here would remove the Trekkar as a threat to both ourselves and Campaire. Still, allowing his men inside the city has the same consequences as surrendering to him. He won’t mount the cannon here without sending his finest, most loyal soldiers to operate it. Gethmisca would become a nation held hostage.” Everyone nodded in agreement as the elevator doors opened.

Despite the quake, dozens of engineers still labored in the shaft. When I asked why they took such a risk, the designmaster told me it was simply because someone must. I cannot repeat his explanation in a rational fashion, because I scarcely understood it myself. As he spoke, I watched engineers sway and bounce on the cable catwalks, some dangling from nothing but their safety lines. They were spraying rods with coolant and lubricant, wrenching massive levers and locking them in place, and shifting massive clutch mechanisms. It was marvelous to behold.

Since our safety lines were not properly linked to this level, we had
no choice but to stay in the elevator until the quake subsided. Con
don and I both fell several times, unaccustomed to the added weight of our gear. None of our guides so much as staggered, though they constantly shifted their footing and handholds. I once had to use my safety line to pull myself to my feet, and Condon settled for letting the pads of his suit protect him as he sat on the elevator floor, rather than struggling to rise simply to fall again.

Conversation, however, continued onward to Trekkar alliance offers. Their priest of Reason had twice offered us terms of allegiance, but after learning what a Trekkar divination ceremony entailed, no politician in Gethmisca could honor the priest’s good faith.

“Any day they could pull two livers out of some Camparian prisoner and declare it a holy sign to invade our city no matter the cost in lives.” Condon and I both described reports of the Trekkar religion, including how it decided matters of justice, family, and state irrevocably.

Aor spoke for the Guild. “We would no sooner condone allowing Trekkar forces enter our city than we would the zarr’s crack troops. But what of their terms?”

The Trekkar’s first request was simply that we hold our fire and let them pass through the Gethmiscian Desert unhindered. However, they refused to pay the traditional toll and swear the eternal pact of non-violence against Gethmisca Tower. A few generations ago one of their enemies had sworn the pact. Their faith forbid signing any treaties their foes have ever signed. The pact of non-violence held little value to the Trekkar anyways, since it was not ordained by their god nor written in blood. I argued that if we could convince them to sign a treaty they found acceptable, they would be far more likely to hold to their words. The worst it would cost us was a needle-prick for the negotiator. Condon and Aor laughed when I told them I would gladly volunteer.

The second Trekkar offer went beyond peace, calling for an alliance of minds and arms. We would receive a squad of their armored mobile-cannons, as well as complete design schematics for the machines themselves. No Trekkar armed forces would enter our city, but we would aid in constructing a quake-resistant fort for them, halfway between the Shaking City and the zarr’s nearest base. In return, all they asked was that we send a hundred soldiers to bolster their new fort and allow their priests of Logic access to the city’s lower engineering levels.