Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences (36 page)

“What is it?” Campbell growled. “I’ve got three tasks to—hold on—
Yah!—two
tasks to dispatch here, mate. Is it urgent?”

“Possibly.”

“A pleasure to see you again, Agent Hill,” Beverly said.

The man answering to “Hill” cocked his head to one side, his eyes blank. “Have we met?”

“Oh, her. You’ve met her before, Brandon. I said the same thing. I’ll explain later. Watch out for the Chinaman.”

“Samurai are Japanese, Bruce,” Hill quipped.

Kuro liked Hill already.

The two Ministry Agents charged them. A flurry of steel and sparks ensued.

One of Agent Hill’s knives glanced off of the Samurai shoulder plate; Campbell grabbed Kuro’s right forearm with the Tesla knuckles, coursing painful voltage through his body. “I know you feel that!” the big Australian shouted, before he had to duck Beverly’s steamsword.

Kuro was vaguely aware of Captain Amboy shouting from the bow, his voice cracking as he hollered at the shore, “You want to play with cycle guns? Try a Gatling cannon!” Two of his men, with Amboy stooping to lend his own strength to theirs, worked a massive crank on the cannon apparatus.

The ensuing booms were unsettling, each cannon blast coming less than a second apart. The deck shuddered with each shot. Kuro’s attention was focused on the Tesla knuckles and spinning knives before him. It was difficult not to marvel at the gunship’s main cannon retrofitted with a cycle of barrels, which spun and fired with precise, high-speed timing. Amidst the fray and the lingering burn of the Tesla jolt, he revelled of the battle thrill in his chest.

Meanwhile, the ship continued its odd, four-legged crawl across the lake ice, getting closer to the lakeshore, while continuing to discharge eight-pounder shots. Dawn’s clouds glowed enough now to light the whole scene clearly. The Usher Gatling men fled their post, just seconds before their weapon was blown to fragments. The
Sheila
cannonmen then rotated the gun platform just slightly to focus their destructive fire on the staked zeppelins. Cannonballs spit from the barrels at high velocity, pelting the narrow beach. Amboy’s son jumped up and down with each hydrogen explosion, cheering as each blimp collapsed in a heap of smouldering aluminium, hemp, and wood. Violent eruptions of sand and splintered wood burst all across the shoreline. He and his father seemed oblivious to the battle raging on the deck. Usher henchmen versus Amboy crewmen, Ministry Agents versus Samurai and Scharnusser.

“Bloody crazy Yanks,” Campbell muttered through gritted teeth, his electric fists clamped around Kuro’s blade. “Hey Zack, you want to—” But his shouted request would never finish. The ship’s rear leg suddenly stumbled and broke through a weakness in the ice; the craft tipped abruptly backward, turning the deck into a slide. The combatants staggered, fell, and slid into each other, changing the game like the tipping of a chessboard. Kuro caught Brandon Hill in an awkward embrace. Campbell fell into a risqué position on top of Beverly, but she flung him away.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Amboy’s voice could be heard over the commotion. Battle roars turned to shouts of alarm. The boy’s high voice rang out clearly over the rest. Ice around the boat shattered and flaked.
Sheila’s
other three legs continued to pump, but only squeaked and slid, alternately finding thin ice and water, their multiple joints struggling to adjust to the slippery, unsure surface.

Kuro momentarily lost his opponents, his balance, and his focus, sliding and slamming hard into the stern railing, only vaguely aware of Brandon Hill climbing free. He shook his head, trying to clear the daze, struggling to track the Ministry agents, distantly expecting to feel the burning dig of a bullet or blade into his flesh at any moment. The ticking of his arm sounded thunderous in his head. There was a new timbre to the shouts that cut through his haze, the foreign words making sense again as clarity returned.

“Don’t hurt him!” Was that Hill’s voice?

“Hold on, hold on!” Campbell’s voice. No doubt.

Kuro looked up to his left. Beverly held Amboy’s son in her arms, her pistol against the boy’s temple as her steamsword lay hissing with heat next to her leg. The boy’s face looked just as frightened as on the evening when Kuro and Hideo had stolen him from his father’s island.

“Beverly,” Kuro said softly.

The Ministry agents stood silently nearby, holding their empty hands out to plead calm. The Ushers and Amboy crew around the deck were stock still in place, not daring to move. Ice sculptures for this moment in time.

It was the laughter—the wild cackle of a madman—that grabbed Kuro’s attention away from the tableau.

Zachary Amboy, holding tight to the wheel during the slide, chortled and guffawed at the grey sky above him, then retrained his gaze upon Beverly holding his son. The vacant anger in his grin set a profound disquiet upon Kuro’s soul.

“You will let him go, you know,” Amboy said, laughing.

“Does he deserve more mercy than my uncle?” Beverly shouted, pulling back the hammer on her dozener pistol. “Mikael Scharnusser sends his regards from hell!”

Percy, held tightly against her, sobbed, calling out for his father.

“He’s only seven,” Kuro pleaded.

“Quiet, Samurai,” she hissed, her anger feral.

He swore silently in Japanese, his affections for her reeling amidst the peril and horror of her threat to the child. Campbell and Hill had both inched almost imperceptibly closer. Zachary Amboy was still chuckling quietly, madly, coming down the slight companionway from the bow.

“Beverly, we’ll die here if you do this,” Kuro said. “There will be no honour in these deaths.”

“We have as many men as they do. Don’t be a coward. My family will be avenged…” and Beverly said more, but he’d stopped listening. He allowed a momentary sigh, squeezing his eyes together wearily, then reopening them.

It was a precision strike that he’d have performed in younger days with unthinking, easy confidence, when his sword hand was still flesh and bone. Yet, even with the clockwork uncertainty of his artificial forearm, Kuro moved quickly, flicking his katana tip in close, inches from the boy’s face, nicking Beverly’s fingers and knocking the pistol from her grasp. It fired once over Percy’s head, eliciting a scream from the boy. Shouts sounded out from all around the deck. Beverly clutched her bloody fingers, her expression plummeting from surprise to pain to anger.

Percy wriggled free, sprang toward the security of Bruce Campbell’s knee. Beverly scooped up the steamsword and lunged, but Kuro stepped in the way, easily parrying her strike with his katana. She roared frustration and rounded on him.

The swords locked in an aggressive kiss, her strength and push driving him back; he locked in a stance, rounded his blade free, stepped back toward her. The two exchanged heated blows, sparks and heat flying from each parry. Each knew the others moves intimately from their monastery courtyard practices, although neither had ever seen such ferocity and strength from the other. Beverly’s sword had always been cool; Kuro’s had always been made of wood.

The boat lurched as it found its footing and clambered up to walk the ice again, its systems running automatically, a crewman on the wheel deck now, driving them toward the shore. The Ushers and Amboy crew had not returned to their own skirmish, still entranced by the duel, but had backed away to give the swordfighters berth. The boat’s rocking was gentler this time; everyone managed to remain upright.

“Anyone else feel like we’re eavesdropping on a lovers’ spat?” Campbell asked no one in particular. One of Amboy’s crewmen tried to push past Campbell, who shoved him roughly back into the crowd. Someone responded with a punch, and the temporary calm was utterly shattered. Shouts of surprise and alarm swelled around the decks like turbulent waters preluding a storm.

Kuro and Beverly continued to circle, strike, and counter, unheeding of their surroundings. Their swords drew them in close again, their faces close, their eyes locked, their feet fixed firmly near the railing, neither saying a word. Beverly’s hair whipped forward, brushing the Samurai’s face through his helmet.

Kuro felt a warrior’s instinct to turn around and face a new danger, but dared not take his focus from Beverly’s smouldering blade. “Here goes nothing,” he heard from behind, the Australian drawl unmistakable.

Something large, hard and muscular slammed into him, thrusting him up against Beverly, taking them hard into the railing, momentum spinning them up and overboard. All three of them—as Kuro realised Campbell was with them—hit the ice hard. Beverly skidded a few meters away. Kuro’s heavy armour shattered the ice, plunging him into the frigid waters below. He did not have long to react to the needles of pain surrounding him as a large hand grabbed the Samurai by his arm, and pulled him up to the surface. He lay on his back next to Campbell for two quick breaths, knowing that anything longer would be fatal.

Beverly’s steamsword arced down from above, missing by less than a second as the men rolled apart, carving a channel into the ice where they’d just been. Kuro was soon on his feet, sliding, leaping at her with an off-balance katana counterattack. Bruce scrambled on all fours until he was a safe distance from the combatants, the treacherous surface refusing the purchase of his numb fingers. The
Sheila
continued its fast-paced tread across the thawing ice surface, moving away from them where they’d fallen, bearing quickly down on the shore. More and more Usher henchmen were pitched over the rails as it stepped onto the narrow beachhead, reflecting the turn of the deck battle in Amboy’s favour.

Kuro breathed heavily, watching Beverly for some sign of emotion, but her face was void of all but anger. Her eyes saw him, but were as lifeless and mechanical as his ticking arm, as if she’d retreated somewhere deep inside, leaving her body to function as a remorseless war automaton. Her breathing was coming as heavy as his, the vapour mingling with the rising mist from her steamsword. Hideo had been right. He knew the path they had chosen led to dishonour and darkness. Kuro understood now, but refused to die by his own hand. He would die for what was right.

End of pause. They fought across the lake’s slippery surfaces, leaping from broken ice plates to sturdy shelves to half-submerged sheets, each as watchful of the treacherous, brittle footing as they were of their opponent. The sulphuric scent of her sword pommel’s boiler was strong in the air; it hissed with each steel touch of blades. Three grunts of effort from Beverly, three strikes, eliciting three parries and three steps back from Kuro. She chewed her lower lip, immersed in focus, again reminding him of their morning practices.

It was a crack in the ice that finally betrayed him.

She grunted with three forceful high strikes, driving Kuro back. His foot broke through a weak patch in the ice, plunging his backward step into the frozen watery void. He flung his arms up, off-balance, his left boot submerged. His brass arm flung in front his chest, just in time to shield the piercing thrust of her steamsword. The blade tip drove easily through, skewering gears and cords, protruding far out through the other side of his forearm. Kuro pulled his right foot free, adjusted his footing, and fell forward into his arm with a deep-throated cry, the super-heated swordpoint driving unchallenged through his armoured breastplate. Steel dug through cold steel and leather, then flesh and bone beneath.

Beverly gasped, her cold resolve dropping away to panic, awareness dawning of what had just happened.

Kuro had taken numerous glancing sword blows and cuts in battle before, had even lost his arm and endured the surgical attachment of a brass prosthetic; but nothing had been like this. The scalding pain was unlike anything he’d ever experienced, radiating from a core deep inside his breast. Smoke rising, the pungent scent of scorched flesh assailed his nostrils. His right arm remained stuck before him, unable to move, unable to pry the smouldering steamsword from its lodging inside his ribcage. Beverly’s hands let go of the pommel, went to her face in horror, her mouth open in a silent scream, tears falling freely to the surface of the ice. Before her, the Samurai fell to his knees, the sword still lodged in his arm and his torso. Blood flowed freely beneath the cloth and steel of his armour, running crimson rivulets into the ice.

“What have I done, Kuro?”

She fell to her knees to meet him, touched his skewered brass forearm, gently pulling to unsheathe the hot blade from his chest. The katana remained fixed in his grip, but both swords fell uselessly away as the dead arm slumped to his side. She pulled the helmet from his head and touched his face, already gone as pale as the frozen surface below. She leaned her forehead into his.

“What have I done?”

He dropped the gauntlet from his left hand, weakly touched her hand on his cheek. “I have been felled by the most worthy of opponents,” he wheezed, pulling his head back to look at her, to truly see her one final time, her face haloed against the rising sun. “This…is…an honourable death.
Arigato,
Miss Beverly.”

He struggled to forge a bloody smile, grateful for the compassion returned to her eyes.

A good memory to take with him to the other side.