Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences (35 page)

“All men are. Present company excepted, of course.” She smiled, pulled her knit cap onto her head. “Now let’s go out there and find us our worthy opponent.”

A signal flare ascended into the early morning sky, and the dozen mini-zeppelins created a chorus of turbines and propellers, rising into the black-purple pre-dawn sky.

The rapturous scent of lavender lingered in Kuro’s memory. They flew west in a loose formation, watching the terrain below for movement. The silence inside their own craft was deepened by the winds and light snowfall.

“There. There’s a boat crossing English Bay.” He saw the lights of the vessel when she pointed. A flag of dense white smoke flew from above its sole smokestack. His brow knotted. “What are those things sticking out of its sides?”

There were four large protrusions on its port and starboard gunwales, two astern and two near the prow. They looked almost like squat barrels, striped with bolted-on iron bands and cables.

“Could that be the gunboat that Campbell warned us about?” Kuro asked. “If we fly too low, they’ll just shoot our zeppelins out of the sky.”

“I love the way you say ‘zeppelin,’” she said. “They’re still close enough to shore. We’ll get the other blimps to land with us at the water’s edge. That lake’s half-frozen already; with this cold, we can show Amboy that he’s not the only one with mechanical tricks.” She motioned for Kuro to take the stick for a moment as she sent out on her heliograph landing orders. The snowy eastern lakeshore didn’t offer much room, but the mini-zeppelins all managed to stake down without trouble.

“Get the hoses into the water! Work those pumps!” she shouted from the cockpit, their henchmen scrambling to obey. With the autumn dawn sleeping in late, they were forced to plan their assault by lantern-light. Stepping out of the zeppelin, the narrow belt of shoreline sand was packed and hard beneath his boots.

Hoses plugged into ports on the mini-zeppelin balloons, leading to waist-high brass and iron welded boxes, which fed cannon-sized tubes that the men were dipping into the water. The lackeys toiled in pairs at the see-saw pumps protruding from the boxes sides, causing embedded needles and gauges to flutter wildly. “The hydrogen converters are experimental Usher technology, a pet project of my uncle’s that Roderick carried on after he died. Half-science, half-sorcery. A chemical reaction inside those cauldrons converts the hydrogen to a hyper-freezing agent, which gets pumped out of those hoses there,” She explained to Kuro.”It was intended for the moat we dug around the monastery, but it should cover this small lake too. At least long enough for our purposes.”

Sure enough, even as she spoke, the calm lake surface began to crystallise. Kuro watched with amazement as a sheen of ice began to freeze around the submerged tubes along the shore. The henchmen looked up at her excitedly from their contraptions. “Not yet!” she shouted back. “Keep pumping! Get the ice firm enough to support your fat arses!” The taut zeppelin chambers began to deflate as the hydrogen drained into the converter boxes, into the solidifying lake.

Beverly picked up a few stones of varying weight, threw them and watched them skid across the ice surface. None broke through.

“The boat has stopped moving!” shouted a henchman. “It’s stuck in the ice!”

Her smile was triumphant, vapour escaped her lips with a relieved exhale. “The low air temperature should help keep the ice in place, yes?” she said, raising her eyebrows to add the question mark. Kuro shrugged. She and he both looked over his heavy suit of armour. “Well, for most of us, at least.” Beverly shouted back to her crew, “OK, that’s enough, lay off the pumps! Charge the gunboat before they get free! Recapture that boy!”

Scharnusser’s henchmen powered up what Kuro recognised as Edison-Wesson rifles, rapidly spinning the cranks bored into their stocks. Three dozen men stormed from the beach onto the lake surface, yet most of them skid, slid, and fell on their arses as soon as their boots hit the ice.

“And this is what happens,” Beverly sighed again, “when you don’t prepare properly.” She turned to Kuro. “The Gatling is in our cargo hold. I’ll aim, you feed the bullets.”

“With deepest respect and apologies, I cannot help you with this weapon.”

Beverly straightened as if she were just slapped in the face. Kuro did not care for her posture or expression. “What?”

“A true Samurai does not use guns, in any form. It would be a dishonour I could not bear.”

He’d seen fury before in her face, but had never seen it directed at him; it was unsettling. She stepped up to him, her nose nearly touching his. “Damn your honour, we have a duty to our boss, to
my
murdered uncle.”

He felt the heat of her rage, felt Hideo’s disappointment in contrast. “I apologise, Miss Beverly. Perhaps one of the men can—”

“Let’s get something straight, Chinaman—” and coming from Beverly, the insult cut him to the quick. “—you
serve
me, and I don’t take kindly to problems with my tools in the field. Are you a problem, or a solution?”

Kuro forced back the bitter bile building in his throat. “I thought you understood my way, Bev—”

“Just go get onto Zachary Amboy’s boat,” she snapped. “If the father is on-board, then your duty is to kill the son before his eyes.”

Kuro felt his own jaw set now with anger, the give of Hideo’s neck beneath his blade tingling in his brass hand. “I will find the Amboy child and deliver the Australian back to Master Roderick, as ordered.”

I will harm no child,
Kuro pledged silently.

Neither moved for a long moment further, each sculpting the cold frustration between them. Beverly finally broke eye contact and singled out the nearest of Scharnusser’s henchmen. “You two! Come help me with the Gatling gun.”

The treacherous ice surface threatened to upturn him countless times, but Kuro managed to hold his balance and cover a sizable distance across the lake. The morning sun had finally begun to stir, adding grey and hue to the shadows, but still withholding its warmth. Soon, the boat was close enough for him to read the name,
Sheila
, stencilled across the rear hull, just above where the icy crust had frozen to its iron and timber.

A half-hearted volley traded between the Usher lackeys on the ice and a trio of shipboard riflemen at the stern railing. Two henchmen lay prone, bleeding on the ice, but the exchange was otherwise mostly ineffectual.

Fortunately for Kuro and the Usher men, the boat’s bow and its large primary cannon were safely frozen forward, away from the advance on foot across the water. Kuro could see a flurry of activity on-board, with clusters of men working near the four round barrel-like protuberances spaced around the hull. A thick flag of white smoke billowed skyward from the lone stack. A shot caromed off of his brass forearm, sparking away to chew a hole in the ice at his feet. He felt nothing from the hit, but still startled and fell, sliding forward. He heard Beverly shout his name from the beach. Once he’d slid to a halt, he looked back to see her running across the icy lake top for him, leaving the two henchmen behind to finish assembling the Gatling on its stand. He waved to show he was unhurt, but still she pressed forward.

Kuro was momentarily overcome with humility, watching her display of selfless concern. “No, Beverly,” he murmured, far too softly for her to hear.

A great staccato of machinery came to life from the
Sheila
. Kuro looked back to see compartments unlocking and sliding open in the four round barrels on the gunwales. Long, jointed limbs of wood and iron unfolded from within, touched down roughly on the ice coat that had ensnared the craft. Kuro then realised what the protruding barrels truly were: shoulders for legs that Amboy had appended onto his gunboat. The crew could be seen working intently; the boat’s four limbs began to stamp with alarming strength upon the frozen lake. He spotted young Percy Amboy, their former captive, among the three crewmen working the rear portside leg from the safety of the deck.

First one, then another, then another of the
Sheila’s
legs broke through, scattering massive, misshapen plates of ice across the black water around it.

“Shit.” He’d heard the word countless times from the labourers at the Scharnusser camp. Common as the word was, it seemed appropriate here. In less than a minute, the gunship had sprouted four limbs, transforming to a great, walking beast. Its squat stance reminded him slightly of the komodo dragons his former lord had kept as pets in his homeland. The Japanese man watched wide-eyed as the massive, mecha-creature struggled to rise out of the water.

The Gatling gun awoke from the shore, its circle of barrels spinning, adding its red-hot fire to the discourse. The intensity of its attack was a stark contrast to the riflemen’s scattered exchange.
Sheila’s
crew hunched low to avoid the lead storm. Kuro watched a heavyset man moved faster than his girth should have allowed to shield Amboy’s junior, watched him cut down in front of the child.

More Ushers fell from return fire, even as a few managed to scramble from the ice up onto the deck. Kuro pressed on, drawing nearer to the boat, watching now as the integrity of the ground at his feet began to compromise and crack. He was aware of Beverly rushing behind him, catching up. Young Amboy pried his horrified stare from the bloodstained corpse of his saviour, locked eyes momentarily with Kuro.

The boat was using its limbs and internal steering to affect a slow revolution, turning around, cracking the ice that had held it. The ice squeaked and fell apart beneath his feet; jagged fissures spread outward from the
Sheila’s
heavy footfalls on and through the surface. Five feet of water rippled now between the nearest rim of ice and the corner of hull behind the rear port leg. Kuro drew his
wakazashi
short sword in his left hand, hit the last piece of solid footing, and leapt from the edge of the world, hitting the gunship’s hull, landing in the numbing embrace of the cold water. His short sword blade stuck and held true in the wood between the slats of the ship’s iron plating. Two short meters up, a rifleman stuck his head out over the rail, grinned down at the Samurai. That common word came again to Kuro’s lips.

The Gatling’s deadly scrawl travelled the gunwale with a thunder of sparks and noise; its trajectory passing just over Kuro’s head, sending the rifleman back to the deck. Using the wakazashi and the grip of his brass hand, Kuro began to ascend the outer hull the short distance to its deck railing. He chanced a look back, spotted Beverly on a small island of broken-away ice just behind him, her dozener pistol firing up into the
Sheila
.

“Go, Samurai! I’m right behind you!” she shouted. One of the embattled Ushers already on-board tossed a rope over the low sides for them, then turned and locked arms with one of the Amboy crew. Beverly leapt from her frozen plate just as it split and sank, catching the dangling rope. “Go!” she shouted, and the two of them climbed up to scale the railing at the same time.

Once on deck, chaos embraced them.

Beverly pointed to a man mostly obscured by his trenchcoat, goggles, and hat, holding the wheel steadily, positioned just behind the bulky cannon platform. Crewmen swirled around him, either fighting invaders or working to keep the ship moving. The boy they’d come for cowered wide-eyed around the man’s feet, watching the carnage on the level below.

“Amboy,” Kuro said.

“Father and son,” she replied.

The
Sheila’s
legs pulled the massive body upright, back out of the water, taking steps on top of the sturdy ice shelf, edging its nose toward the shore. The deck lurched with each stride, as if they were daring the frigid bay underneath to take them to its murky depths. Kuro could hear the Gatling still rattle its deadly report, but now Amboy had rotated his vessel nearly enough that his gunners were excitedly prepping their own weapons.

A number of Ushers had gained access to the deck by now, evening up the numbers against Amboy’s Spartan crew. Not far from where Kuro and Beverly had boarded, Bruce Campbell was squared off against three henchmen, clearly enjoying the crackle of Tesla knuckles on his hand. A similarly-dressed man stood next to him, not quite as tall, twirling knives dexterously in both of his hands. He kicked his nearest foe overboard and looked up to see them.

“Bruce?” the bladed warrior said, his mouth a deep frown.