Skyshaker: A Steampunk Dystopian Adventure (The Great Iron War, Book 3) Read online

  Contents

  1 – OF WIND AND WIRE

  2 – GUNS AND GADGETS

  3 – PIRATES OF SEA AND SKY

  4 – THE SNAKE

  5 – FALSE FLAG

  6 – COLD TURKEY

  7 – SPENDTHRIFT

  8 – KING OF THE CLOUDS

  9 – TARGET ACQUIRED

  10 – THE SMOG THAT SHIELDS

  11 – DROP

  12 – LIVING CONTRABAND

  13 – THE BLACKEST STREETS

  14 – FINDING FAMILIES

  15 – THE BANKER MOB

  16 – THE HAWK HAS LANDED

  17 – THE GOLDEN HOST

  18 – HELL IN THE HEAVENS

  19 – URBAN MAZE

  20 – AN IRON RAIN

  21 – THE GRAND TREASURER

  22 – A DEBT TO BE PAID

  23 – GRUDGE

  24 – SHAKEN

  25 – FORTIFYING

  26 – THE BATTLE OF THE BLACK BARGE

  27 – THE MECHANICAL MEN

  28 – RALLYING CRY

  29 – THE IRON HAND

  30 – DYNAMITE

  31 – TARGET 001

  32 – UNPLUGGED

  33 – THE WALL IN THE EAST

  SKYSHAKER

  The Great Iron War – Book Three

  Dean F. Wilson

  Copyright © 2015 Dean F. Wilson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Any person who makes any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable for criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The Moral Rights of the Author have been asserted.

  Cover illustration by Duy Phan

  First Edition 2015

  Published by Dioscuri Press

  Dublin, Ireland

  www.dioscuripress.com

  THE GREAT IRON WAR

  In the world of Altadas, in the year 1888 of the Second Era, women everywhere dreamed of a coming desert. Those who were already pregnant miscarried, and those who became pregnant did not give birth to human children. An invasion had begun.

  The newborns had no horns or marks, and so they were loved and reared like all the others. It would take time before anyone realised what they really were, before anyone would call them demons.

  These events were marked by the arrival of strangers claiming to be from a distant land. The people of Altadas called them Pilgrims, but they did not know just how far they had come, nor by what strange doors they had entered, nor exactly what they had come for.

  The first Pilgrims were scouts, but subsequent waves were soldiers, sent by a man who would later call himself the Iron Emperor. He promised his people iron. He gave them war instead.

  They called that year the Harvest, and it became the first year of a new, darker calendar. Sand swept through the great chasms in the sky from where the demons came, the dust of a world that they had dried up. Ahead of the landships went great sandstorms, until the green grasses became an endless red desert.

  In Altadas, steam powers industry, but iron powers war. The abundant metal, idolised by the invaders, and depleted in their home world, became a beacon to the demons, and was the foundation upon which they would build their new civilisation. They called themselves the Iron Empire. Their enemies simply called them the Regime.

  As war began in the east, few among the Resistance knew that their own children were not really theirs. The invaders had mastered a magical technique to control the birth channels of a people they desired to conquer. Thus with one hand they would wield might, and with the other they would use guile, infiltrating and eradicating their enemies, anyone who would dare defy the Iron Emperor, who had brought his people to this promised land.

  Yet iron is more to the demons than just a metal. When broken down into its basic elements, it provides the key ingredient of the necessary sustenance of the invaders. To some it is a drug. To them, symbolising everything they were promised, and everything they were leaving behind, it is Hope.

  As one civilisation crumbled, and a new empire was founded on its remains, there were some who refused to live out their last days under the iron grip of their new ruler. They made a promise of their own: to fight, with everything they had, for the fate of humanity.

  Thus began the Great Iron War.

  1 – OF WIND AND WIRE

  The airship ascended into the heavens, vacated by any angels who might have dwelt there in ages past, and the crew aboard the vessel looked down at the vast sea below them, and to the vaster desert ahead of them, gradually vacated by men. The demons who now resided there might be monstrous when faced upon the ground, but from the heights of the clouds they looked smaller than ants, and many aboard the Skyshaker felt that they might be just as easily crushed.

  Rommond locked himself in his new quarters, which were smaller than those on the Lifemaker, which were in turn smaller than those at Dustdelving. It seemed that the longer the war waged on, the smaller his room became. One day it might just be big enough to sleep in, six feet deep beneath the reddest sands. His new room was not decorated with paintings or given character by books. It was bland, almost mechanical, and it was there that he plotted and planned, winding up the springs of his mind, that he might unleash them with greater force upon the enemy.

  “I guess he's not coming out,” Jacob said to Taberah, who leaned against the railing of the airship, her fiery hair flailing in the wind. They were never so happy to feel fresh air upon their skin.

  The Skyshaker had two modes: cruising, where the gondola, which housed the crew and cargo, could hang from wires and chains from the massive cigar-shaped balloon known as the envelope; or crusading, where the gondola was pulled up until it docked with the balloon, allowing the vessel to be pressurised with oxygen tanks, and granting the captain the freedom to elevate the airship to even greater heights. One mode was designed for peace; the other was made for war.

  Yet though the Great Iron War showed no signs of ending, most of the crew enjoyed this brief respite as the Skyshaker drifted through the air, propelled by a large steam vent at the rear, and a propeller made into the gondola, and guided by a massive tail-fin, which was turned this way and that with ropes and cogs.

  “Perhaps you should go see that he's okay,” Jacob suggested to Taberah, who was periodically glancing at the cabin that Rommond had sealed himself in.

  “I doubt he'd want me to,” she replied.

  “Your relationship with him is odd,” Jacob remarked, not that his was any better.

  “Sometimes we want different things.”

  “Sometimes you want the same thing,” Jacob said. “Wasn't that the original problem?”

  If glares had force, she would have pushed him overboard. “Well, he didn't want you involved with us. Maybe I'm coming 'round to that point of view.”

  Jacob gently tapped her bulging belly. “A bit late for that.”

  * * *

  The Last Sea was far below them, and far below it was the ruined hulk of the Lifemaker. As Jacob watched the crashing waves, he could not help but think of those who went down with that leviathan of a submarine; he thought of Alson, who died as she lived, and Cala, who found death just as exciting as life.

  Jacob noticed that every so often his hands trembled. He grabbed the rail more tightly. He still felt a little off since his encounter with Cala, and her forcing him to consume Hope.
He was not sure if it was just that his nerves were rattled, or if the drug still pumped through his veins.

  Luckily, Doctor Mudro was not hard to find, with a perpetual halo of smoke around him. He stayed on the top deck, where he could enjoy smoking the leaf more freely. Jacob called him aside, and the smoke trailed behind the doctor like ethereal wings.

  “Can I get some more of that Greenshield?” Jacob asked, and he thought he sounded a little too eager, a little too desperate. He could almost hear his voice more clearly, and he did not like it.

  “Oh no,” Mudro said, “I couldn't do that. Greenshield can become just as addictive as Hope itself. I gave you the maximum dose. You'd need at least a week before it's out of your system.”

  “I'm finding it hard to concentrate.”

  “That's natural.”

  “This isn't natural,” Jacob said. “I feel on edge.”

  “You've got to let it work its way out of its own accord. You can't rush that process.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Depends on the person. A few days. A week. Sometimes a month. It depends on how strong your willpower is.”

  “And that's the same when going cold turkey?”

  “There's no other way to do it,” Mudro said. “There's no magic spell to make the lust for Hope go away.”

  “Do me a favour,” Jacob replied. “And keep this between us.”

  “And the boy.”

  “And Whistler, yeah. I wish he hadn't seen me like this.”

  “I wish I hadn't,” Mudro said. “I've seen enough Hope addicts in my time. They line the streets of Blackout. I could make the statue of Mabraldan invisible, but I can't make those addicts disappear.”

  “Well, that won't be me.”

  “Let's hope not. You've got to have a reason to fight through it. A reason to live.”

  “You mean, I've got to have what the others don't,” Jacob said. “Real hope.”

  “And do you?”

  Jacob took some time to respond. He saw Taberah leaning against the rail, edging closer to where Whistler stood, staring out at the clouds that roamed with them. Jacob smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”

  * * *

  The sea still simmered below them, and the sky seemed to open up even more above and around them. The Skyshaker kept at a steady height, but the shifting clouds made it seem like the heavens were always changing, making way for this royal barge, this vessel bought with Treasury loans, heading straight for the Treasury's own haven: Blackout.

  Jacob paid little attention to that objective. Perhaps it was the change in air pressure, but he felt frequently nauseous, as if he was having his own kind of morning sickness. He tried to blame it on the breeze, on the creaking deck, even on Karlsif's food. He did not want to think about blaming it on the drug.

  Whistler strutted up to him and hung his arms over the rail. He clearly did not have any fear of heights. In some ways, he looked more at ease, more at home, in the sky.

  “Hello there, bunk-buddy,” the boy said, nudging Jacob and greeting him with a grin. Everyone, bar a select elite, were sharing bunks, and almost sharing the same bed, given how cramped the conditions were. Whistler had traded his bunk with another crewman in order to pester Jacob a little more. Unsurprisingly, with his love of heights, he got the top bunk. Unsurprisingly for Jacob, with where he felt in the food chain, he got the bottom.

  “Don't the clouds look funny?” Whistler suggested. He pointed to one of them. “Doesn't that one look like a horse? Maybe we fly, and the clouds gallop.”

  Jacob crouched down near the rail. “Yeah, an interesting thought.”

  “Are you okay?” Whistler asked.

  “Yeah,” Jacob said, clutching his stomach. Sweat formed on his brow, as if there was a little galloping cloud there, dropping down a steady stream of rain.

  “You don't look okay.”

  “Well … I guess I've been better.”

  “Have you been worse?”

  Jacob chuckled. “Yes, I've been worse. Half my hangovers were worse than this.” They might have been worse, he thought, but they didn't last this long.

  “She was crazy,” Whistler said, with a tremble in his voice to match the tremble in Jacob's hands.

  “Yeah, she was,” Jacob acknowledged. “She's gone now though.”

  “For good?”

  Jacob thought about Cala locked inside the Lifemaker as it descended for a final time into the deeps. He did not know how long the oxygen would last. She might have regretted sabotaging the air tanks then. Yet he knew that she did not care for regrets. He was not sure what she cared about. Perhaps nothing at all.

  “For good,” he said in time, wishing he had not delayed, thinking that his pause might in some way give Cala that extra gulp of air. Who knew what damage she could do with just a single breath?

  “And you?” Whistler asked.

  “And I what?”

  “Is she gone from you for good?”

  “She's just a memory now.”

  “What about … the Hope?”

  “Just another memory.”

  “A bad one.”

  “Yes,” Jacob said with a sigh. “A bad one. A bad trip.”

  “Well, I'm glad it's over,” Whistler said, hanging back over the rail, his faded cap almost slipping from his tangled mop of red and brown, like fire and earth mingled in a messy frame.

  Jacob forced a smile and placed one of his shaking hands into his pocket, to hide it from Whistler's eyes, and to hide it from his own. He felt the handful of coils there. Five of them. Just five. In the frenzy to escape the Lifemaker, and with Hope coursing through his veins, clouding his mind, he had left behind his comforting crate, his well-earned fortune. As his trembling fingers toyed with the coils in his pocket, he could not help but wonder if he had abandoned one addiction, only to find another.

  2 – GUNS AND GADGETS

  The Skyshaker was a much smaller vessel than the Lifemaker, but it was just as ornate. When the engineers waited for essential parts, Rommond turned them into artists, giving the airship its many flourishes, which were as much an affront to the Regime as Rommond's own survival, for he taunted them with culture. They would not just see the barrel of a gun—they would see a golden barrel, with swirls and floral motifs, and they would know that art did not weaken the people, as they claimed in their many sermons, but that it strengthened them.

  Jacob wandered the ship, peeping his head through open doors, being hunted out of parts of the vessel he was not supposed to be in. It was just as much a maze as the submarine was. Jacob wondered if Rommond asked for that as a feature, to make it harder for an enemy to take over, or harder for a troublemaker to explore.

  Jacob was in awe when he saw the engine room, with its many great furnaces, twice the height of man, with many times the heat. Boulder was there, shovelling piles of coal into the fire, feeding it, nursing it, yet never wholly taming it. The flames spat and licked, singeing Boulder's already well-singed clothing, tasting him. The sweat poured from him, as it always did, and he hurried back and forth, a perpetual worker, toiling when others rested from their toils.

  “Need a hand?” Jacob asked.

  “Always,” Boulder replied, wiping his brow with his oil-soaked handkerchief.

  Jacob grabbed a shovel and began loading up one of the starving furnaces, which gobbled up the little black nuggets and belched out its industrial fumes—the ugly unseen core of the otherwise pretty vessel.

  “So, I guess this is how we fly,” Jacob remarked.

  “The balloons make us float, laddie, but this fuels the propellers and the sail.”

  “Why didn't you use diesel like the Lifemaker? It'd save all this work.”

  “We would've if we could've,” Boulder replied, wiping soot on his shirt, which could not wholly contain his rotund form. “That there,” he said, pointing the blackened handle of his shovel to the largest furnace, “is what makes us our steam. And steam's goin' out o' fashion, mark my w
ords. But diesel's new, and what's new's what everybody craves. It's a kind of Hope to us engineers, so it is. The Regime controls most of the oil wells now, but they haven't made much use of 'em, thank God. They don't have the brains like Brooklyn. The General got his supplies from the biker gangs that roam Altadas. Paid a pretty penny for 'em too, as those bikers'd rather keep that stuff for themselves, so they would. He put almost all of it on the Lifemaker, because it guzzled diesel like this furnace here guzzles coal. He needed it down there, and some of us thought we might be down there for good, that we'd have to come up only to restock and refuel. The Hopebreaker's the same. Diesel engine. That's what makes it pack a punch, but our supplies are low, and Rommond wants to keep his landship in service. So when it came to finishin' off the Skyshaker, we knew we couldn't go with diesel engines. It was back to good old-fashioned steam. The old reliables, as they say.”

  He wiped his brow again, as if talking was just as much work. He left it just as grimy as it was before, replacing one oil with another.

  “I guess we all run on steam,” Jacob mused. “Food for fuel.”

  Boulder patted his beer belly, and his enormous sideburns quivered as he chuckled. “I prefer me some ale.”

  They worked for another hour, before Boulder shared a beer with him. He was a jovial man, devoted to his work, and when he was not working, he was devoted to his drink. He quaffed it like the furnaces gulped down coal, and he stole himself away from his swill only long enough for a hearty, chesty laugh. It was almost a sin for such a friendly persona to be locked away, mostly alone, in the bowels of the ship, but he never complained about it. The machinery was all the company he needed, and from what Jacob had seen, there was enough of it to befriend the entire crew.

  As the beer flowed freely, and Boulder topped up the furnace between each swig, the engineer began to grow a little tipsy, and was a lot more loose-lipped than he was before. The topic soon focused on Brooklyn, who appeared to have Boulder's eternal admiration. It seemed that he was constantly looking to raise a glass to him, but could only raise it to his ghost.