Khronos (Hanover and Singh Book 3) (8 page)

“And Noonan? If we are successful, he will have to be convinced to act against the Queen’s own wishes.”

“He is a loyal man,” Smith stood up, “and ambitious. He will not be content to be the Queen’s lapdog forever, Admiral. The Bureau can use such a man. You needn’t worry about Noonan. When the time comes he will choose the right side. For now, we must trust that Hari Singh will leave such a trail that even a blind man could follow.” Smith waited for Egmont to stand. “And if I know Hari, we needn’t worry about him doing anything but his very best in that regard.” Waving at the Lifeguards as they passed, Smith and Egmont walked up the steps to the palace. The guards closed the doors behind them, halving a cloud of steam escaping from the valve in the Admiral’s leg.

҉

His fingers sweating, cramping, slipping, Hari gripped the red rope and risked a quick look down to the frothy scum of the whitecaps churning across the sets of waves on the surface of the North Sea. His fingers slipped another inch. The girl screamed.

“It is all right, young Miss,” Hari shouted, his voice disappearing in a ferocious gust of wind buffeting the airship, lifting the nose of the gassy beast and swinging the girl closer to the labouring propeller. “Truly, you have nothing to fear.” Hari looked up through the shattered window. As the nose of the airship lifted, helped by a second uppercut from the wind, the man on the fissured window pane above and to the left of Hari and the girl, slid down to the dining room deck. Leaping for the nearest table, the man clutched the leg of a fellow passenger oblivious to her scream. Hari looked up at the remaining foot of rope below his sweaty fist. “We will be all right. We have to be,” Hari whispered.

Clattering down the deck and through the open window, a dining room chair clipped Hari’s foot as it plummeted to the sea. Hari followed its descent, marvelling at the tiny gasp of spray as it splintered on the surface of the sea, dismembered and sinking beyond his sight. A second chair followed causing Hari to twist and look up.

“Sorry, Hari. It f-fell f-from my grip.”

“Dieter,” Hari swung as the airship heeled a little more to port.

“Yes, I am coming. Hang on, Hari.” Scrabbling across the angled deck, Dieter clutched at feet proffered by helpful passengers as he made his way toward Hari.

“Dieter, is Luise all right?”

“Yes.” Sliding the last few feet to the bulkhead beneath the shattered window, Dieter poked his head over the sill and stared at Hari. “F-fräulein Hanover is safe. She crawled back to the stairs.”

“Where is she now?” Hari frowned.

“I do not know. She disappeared below deck as I called out to her.”

Hari glanced down at the sea. “Can you pull us up, Dieter?”

“I will try.” Inching his way to the rope, Dieter gripped it with both hands, braced his feet against the sill and slid his back up the deck. He pulled at the rope.

“Yes,” Hari shouted. “Another three feet and I can reach the sill.”

“But, Hari,” Dieter strained, “you cannot let go of the girl or the rope.”

“Keep pulling, Dieter.” Hari’s fingers shook as Dieter inched the rope closer to the window.

“Watch out for the glass, Dieter.”

“The glass?”

“It is shredding the rope.” Hari held his breath as Dieter hauled the rope past a wicked shard protruding from the wooden sill. Slicing into the thick hawser, it pared the rope strand by strand. Hari twisted as the girl started to spin in his grip, her dress twisting and squeezing his fingers, pressing them white and bloodless. “I cannot hold on much longer, Dieter.”

“You must, Hari.” Dieter pulled the rope; the flayed strands tickled Hari’s knuckles just inches from the sill. “If I...” Dieter’s arms shook as he gripped the rope, pulling it up toward his head as he bent his knees, inching his back down the deck closer to Hari. “...then I can...”

“Dieter,” Hari’s arm shook.

“Almost...”

“Dieter. Look at me.” Hari forced a smile as Dieter looked down. “Take the girl, Dieter.”

“What? But I will have to let go of the rope.”

“And grab the girl, yes,” Hari nodded. “That is exactly what you must do.”

“How?”

Hari willed the muscles in his fingers to tighten their grip on the rope. Swinging his feet, Hari drifted beneath the window sill. The girl beneath him screamed as she bumped against the hull, screaming again as she slipped out of the shadow of the airship and back into the wind.

“I will swing her up to you.”

“Hari?” Dieter’s fingers quivered around the rope.

“One...”

“I am not ready, Hari.”

“Two...”

“Hari?”

“Three.” Hari bent his arm upward, tugging the girl closer to the window as he swung her small frame in an arc toward Dieter. “Take her,” Hari called out. “Grab her dress.”

Letting go of the rope, Dieter reached out for the girl, her dress billowing in the wind beneath the window. The rope snapped taut against the wooden sill as Dieter’s fingers closed on the girl’s skirt. Heaving her inside the window, Dieter threw himself to the deck barely avoiding the brass stand as it cleaved the screws from the deck, bolting out of the airship as it lanced toward the sea.

“Hari,” Dieter yelled as Hari dropped beyond the window, falling out of sight and beyond the shadow of the airship.

҉

Reeling under the impact of a shower of stone shards, Stepan slipped onto the street as the side of the building sparked from a combined volley from the Polyphase rifles. Shaking his head, Stepan pushed himself to his feet and darted toward a broken cart in the middle of the street.

“Don’t wait for me, Vlad,” Stepan shouted. “Just keep going. Get to that wall. Over there.”

Vladimir hesitated by the side of the cart. “Kapitan...”

“Run,” Stepan charged toward the Poruchik, flinching at a second volley of charged particles igniting the wizened stalks of hay strewn about the cart, now blazing in the street. Shoving at the Poruchik’s massive frame, Stepan pushed Vladimir past the cart and down a side street looping back to the gates to the Severnaya Dvina Shipyard.

“Kapitan,” Vladimir slowed by wooden doorway bridging the walls either side with a heavy stone plinth. He dragged Stepan inside the doorway. “There’s a barricade at the end of the street.” Vladimir caught his breath. “I saw movement.”

“The metal kind?” Stepan pressed Vladimir up against the thick wooden door. “Like the ones behind us?”

“How many, Kapitan?”

Stepan flicked his head around the doorway and back again. “Two – their controllers and a squad of riflemen.” He moved to give Vladimir more room. “Can you open the door, Vlad?”

“Already tried,” Vladimir shook his head. “Locked, bolted and likely sealed with cupboards, chairs, whatever they can throw at it.”

“The windows then?”

“We’ll be seen.”

“Then we have but one option,” Stepan took a deep breath. “And I don’t like it.”

The corner of Vladimir’s eyes wrinkled as his cheeks creased into a lopsided smile. “It’s always a pleasure, Kapitan.” He held out his hand.

“We’re not done yet, Vlad. But,” Stepan gripped Vladimir’s hand.

“Are we going to run? Take our chances with the barricade at the end of the street?”

“Yes. But before we go,” Stepan squeezed Vladimir’s hand firmly and then let go. “I want you to know, they were going to give you a command. A submersible of your own,” Stepan chuckled. “Of course, they were concerned about your height.”

“Concerned? The Imperial Russian Navy were actually
concerned
?”

Placing his palm on Vladimir’s chest, Stepan twisted around the doorframe.

“Close?” Vladimir whispered.

Stepan looked up at Vladimir and dipped his head briefly. “Ready?” he mouthed.

“Go,” Vladimir pushed Stepan onto the street.

Running on each side of the street, Stepan and Vladimir ducked the first charged volley from the riflemen. The blast from each rifle searing and scorching the stone walls of the old buildings lining the side street. Vladimir risked a glance behind them as the clank and whine of gears pitched higher, echoing down the street.

“They are close, Kapitan.” Vladimir darted to the other side of the street, slapping Stepan’s back and pushing him to the opposite side. “Keep switching, it will confuse the controllers.”

Stepan careened into the wall, stumbled, and sprawled onto the street. He rolled onto his back as the clank, whine, clank of the emissary closed on him. Lifting its great sword in two massive metal hands, the emissary swung the pitted blade down toward Stepan’s chest.

“Kapitan,” Vladimir slid to a halt. Turning, he ran back toward Stepan.

“No,” Stepan rolled to one side as the emissary’s sword dug a deep furrow in the packed-earth street. “Run.”

Vladimir hesitated. At the sound of splintering wood, he cast a quick glance at the barricade. Two men clad in brown sheepskin tunics and long black shirts, kicked aside the wooden crates in the middle of the barricade, while a third, a woman, slammed a cylinder into the rear of a long-barrelled gun.

“Puckle gun,” Vladimir turned and ran toward Stepan.

The second emissary crossed the street behind its partner, clanking toward Vladimir as Stepan rolled back toward the wall, thwarting successive strikes from the emissary’s sword. Vladimir ducked beneath the emissary as it raised the sword for a fourth strike. Pressing his hands beneath the emissary’s grip, he pushed upward, straining as the emissary began its downward swing of the sword. Stepan rolled away from the wall, scrabbled to his feet and tore down the street as the second emissary clanked alongside its partner.

Arms shaking with strain, Vladimir let go of the emissary’s hands, ducking low between its legs he slipped through them, the sword missing him by a hand’s width. He looked up at the squad of riflemen readying their Polyphase rifles with a feverish cranking of the charging handles. Vladimir turned toward the second emissary. Its sword held high in its left hand, the emissary swung with its right, slapping Vladimir in the chest with the back of its hand. The Poruchik flew into the wall, slamming into the stone like a sack of flour, the air escaping from his lungs like a punctured airship. Vladimir slid to the street, crumpled and still.

Stepan stalled by the side of the last building in the street before the barricade. He stared at the men manhandling the Puckle Gun, priming the cylinder, aiming the barrel down the street and turning the handle. The first bullet blasted out of the barrel with a crack of gunpowder and a cloud that hid the gunners and masked the emissaries from view. Stepan pressed himself against the wall as the men burned through the first cylinder, scrabbling behind the powder cloud to fit the second, and then a third cylinder. The metallic pling and thud of the square rounds impacting upon the emissaries’ bulbous brass plates continued as the controllers used them as a shield while the riflemen retreated.

Stepan stooped to look beneath the cloud. Spying Vladimir, eyes open and clutching his chest as he lay against the wall, Stepan waved. Vladimir’s smile pierced the breaks in the cloud of gunpowder from the Puckle Gun as the gunners fitted a fourth cylinder, pushing the riflemen, the controllers and their emissaries further and further down the street. The distant clank of the emissaries, as they moved beyond range and out of the street, replaced the dull ring of lead impacting upon metal. The gun fell silent. The powder cloud dispersed.

Stepan peered through the thinning cloud at the lithe, swinging gait of a female soldier as she waved at the gunpowder with a gloved hand. Stopping in front of Stepan, the soldier lifted her head, smudging her forehead with lead and soot with a mock salute. Staring, she slipped her hands between her sheepskin smock and the leather bandoliers crisscrossing her chest.

“Kapitan?” the woman cocked her head and stared at Stepan. “
Kapitan
of what?”

“I am in the navy,” Stepan held out his hand. “Kapitan Stepan Skuratov of the submersible division.” Ignoring Stepan’s hand, the woman continued to stare. “It is customary to shake hands with an officer.” Stepan waited.

“Not my custom,” the woman shrugged. “You can put your hand down now,
Kapitan
.”

“Who are you?” Stepan lowered his hand.

“I am Lena Timofeyevich,” she turned to nod at the men cooling the barrel of the gun with ladles of water from a wooden pail. “These are my men.”

“Timofeyevich?” Stepan squinted at the woman’s dirty face framed with long black strands of hair escaping a clumsy knot tied on top of her head. “I have heard of you.”

“No,” Lena shook her head. “You have heard of my father.” Turning away from Stepan, she began walking toward Vladimir. Stepan followed.

“Ah, yes, your father. I remember him,” Stepan muttered. “You are a Cossack.”

“
Da
, of course.” Lena tugged her hands free of the bandoliers. Stopping by Vladimir’s side, she crouched down to inspect his chest.

“I am all right,” Vladimir lifted his hand to ward away further inspection. Lena batted his hand to one side with a swift slap.