The Ghost Rebellion (22 page)

“
Poor man,” she said, her pistol still held steady on him. “That must have weighed heavily on you when trying to take Fort St Paul.” His expression switched from tormented to stunned. “Markings of the Mughal Empire, yes?”

It was only an instant, but in that instant the intruder transformed from reluctant thief to trained warrior looking for an opportunity. His grin suggested he might have found one, even kneeling on the ground.

He screwed his eyes shut and flicked his hand against the wooden floor. Eliza managed to catch a glimpse of a ring before the flash of light filled her eyes. She stumbled back a step, and then something struck her. Eliza’s head rung as she toppled over, the back of her skull striking the wooden planks in the floor. His arms were around her waist, and he was leveraging all his weight into her, effectively pinning her to the ground. Though stunned, Eliza allowed her training, her reflexes, and more importantly her time growing up the middle girl between two brothers, to take over.  Her fist connected with something. She hit it again, and again.

“
Ow!” she heard him say. “Ow!
Ow!
You’re…punching me…in the
ear!”
 

As he ground his hips into her own, Eliza swung again. Harder. No, punching him in the ear would not end this fight as a solid hit to his lip or, better yet, his nose. What she did know was this would give him a hell of a headache. Rattling his own skull like this also confirmed that he had not received any of the good doctor’s serum.

However, he wasn’t letting go, and he kept pressing his body into hers.

You. Rotten. Flapdoodle.

Her left hand wrapped around his head and yanked. The side of his face pressed into her chest. Looking down, her vision was still lost in a grey-white haze but she could just make out an exposed face.

“
You wanted this!” And Eliza punched him in the nose. “You could have just talked to me!” Another punch. Not until she knew for certain. “But
you
—
wanted
—
this!”
 

On the third punch, just over his screams, Eliza heard—and felt—the nose give way.

Bringing her knee up, she connected with his stomach. Between the assault on his ear and his nose, he finally released her. Eliza pushed him off, and continued to blink her eyes madly hoping to get her sight back while scrambling about for her dropped pistol. The weapon appeared out of the fog in her eyes, but before she could grasp it, he lunged at her again, this time locking her arms against her side and picking her up. Together, they landed hard against the floor of the study.

He turned her over and leaned close into her. Eliza thrust her forehead up and cracked him on the nose with a solid Glasgow Kiss. If his nose was not broken before, it was now. Between rapping her own head against the floor and that Kiss, the world teetered around her. She could hear the intruder let out a muffled howl of rage. His hands were probably clamped around his nose and mouth, and if he wanted to breathe, he would have to...

Crunch
.

His scream was delicious.

When Eliza’s vision cleared, she saw Vania bearing down on the insurgent. She heard Hindi shouted between them, and they collided into one another. The Remington-Elliot clattered to the far end of the room. Eliza staggered to her feet, sure she was about to see a fellow agent slaughtered before her eyes. He had Vania up against the wall, hands locked around her throat, but he did not keep her there for long. Vania cocked back her arm as much as she could and punched the rebel in the throat. As he stumbled back, she collapsed to the floor.

Eliza drew her second pistol and fired. He jerked back when the bullet hit his shoulder. He looked as if he was to fall right there, but instead he sprinted for the foyer. Eliza took a second shot, but this time the bullet struck only the wooden arch.

“
Dammit,” she swore. Pushing her hair out of her eyes, Eliza turned back to Vania. “You alright there, Pujari?”

Vania let out a little growl of her own. “I was going to ask you the same, Braun.”

There was a slight ringing in her ears. Hopefully, she was just rattled and not suffering a concussion. “I really could use a drink.”

“
What do you think he wanted?”

“
He was making some work for himself,” Eliza said, pointing back to the bedroom. “Papers all over the bed, and this.”

“
A portable æthermessenger?” Vania reached for one of the documents on the bed. “Doesn’t look like anything we don’t know already. These look like notes from Mercury’s Gate.”

“
I think finding anything here is wishful thinking, but that?” she said, motioning to the communication device. “A little treasure trove, this is. Pristine condition. Looks like Featherstone took right good care of it.”

“
How does this help us?”

“
Æthermessengers are equipped with an internal log that can be accessed. Portable ones, the memory bricks are smaller.”

Vania inclined her head. “You know how to operate one of these things? These contraptions are quite complicated.”

 “
I am in love with a clankerton. You tend to pick up a few new skills in such a relationship. All we need are his most recent messages. Say the past month or so.”

“
You think he was using this to talk to Jekyll?”

 “
Only one way to find out.”

Turning the æthermessenger to face her, Eliza went to power up the device when a rattling boom echoed through the skies of Bombay.

“
Eliza?” Vania asked.

“
Wasn’t me.” She went to the window and studied the plume of smoke reaching up to the sky. “Knowing my ‘things that go boom,’ that explosion did not have the concussive strength of ordinance the Ministry uses.” Eliza walked to the far side of the bed and found her other pounamu pistol. Holstering it, she made for the door.

“
But wait, aren’t we heading back to headquarters?”

“
You’re going back to headquarters with that,” she said, pointing to the æthermessenger. “R&D should be able to access the memory. Might be able to find out what was being shared between Featherstone and Jekyll.”

Vania called from behind her. “Wait, where are
you
going?”

“
Oh my dear Vania, in your time with the Ministry, you should know this is what we do. When others run away from the explosions, we run toward them!”

Chapter Nine

In Which an Archivist-Turned-Agent Loses Himself in a Fit of Passion

Wellington, Strickland, and Thorp were thrown backwards as the spitting, snarling sphere of blue-white electricity punctuated the space in front of the Army & Navy building, releasing rebels around the plaza in wave upon wave. Wellington sat upright to see soldiers of the Ghost Rebellion drop to the ground and roll back up on their feet. Unlike an æthergate, the electroporter deposited its contents in a singular wild burst of light, energy, and power, and in a flash, insurgents filled the courtyard before them.

Two soldiers directly across from the
Bombay Bug
were first to fall. Trained, perhaps experienced soldiers, ill-prepared to face an army appearing out of thin air. This was one of many reasons Director Sound had chosen to keep æthergate technology under lock and key in the London Archives. Such an advantage could be exploited for far more nefarious purposes. That, however, was not Wellington’s primary concern. Only a handful of people knew about Atlantean technology, but the amount of people who knew about electroporters? An even smaller lot. Far smaller.

And the Ghost Rebellion had in their possession an electroporter.

The Army & Navy building itself suddenly shook with a concussive explosion from the inside. The central command burst from the back sending dust and debris high into the sky. Some of the separatists must have appeared directly inside the building itself. A show of remarkable accuracy that Wellington had never seen before.

“
Bloody hell,” Thorp yelled before shouldering the Mark V. “Right then, let’s fight a little fire with fire.” He threw another switch near the rifle’s trigger, and a small kickstand extended from the middle of the barrel. Thorp propped the rifle’s end on the edge of the
Bug’s
front-left wheel and took aim across the causeway. “If you don’t have a pair of sunspecs,” Thorp said as he slipped on his own, “you might want to close your eyes.”

Wellington heard the whine of the Lee-Metford-Tesla’s generators, and screwed his eyes shut just before hearing the muffled thud of what he knew to be a concentrated plasma blast. He opened his eyes just in time to see the blast impact with the separatists, sending bodies flying in every direction. This explosion was only a pause for the Ghost Rebellion though, and they began their assault anew, peppering the area with rifle and handgun fire. As bullets zipped through the air, Wellington yanked Strickland behind the
Bug
, screaming for Thorp to take cover just before a Gatling opened up on them. They heard a swarm of bullets angrily ping off their motorcar’s bonnet. Suddenly, Wellington wished they had more than a set of pistols and a single modified rifle to call on.

“
Don’t suppose the
Bug
possesses armaments of any kind?” he asked Strickland, who was looking rather pale.

A shake of the head was all Wellington got in return.

He dared a look around the corner of their vehicle, and that was when he saw Thorp sprawled across the ground, his white linen suit stained with a sheen of beige dust and five bullet holes running up his torso. Wellington took stock of where they were pinned down. Across from them, a group of British soldiers by the storehouse’s door had taken cover near a stack of crates. Behind them, there was a small detail locking down the aeroport. He could not hear the airships any longer on account of the gunfire, but he could see they were gaining altitude. Separatists were still mowing down anyone still standing in the plaza. He caught sight of what could have been the remains of a squad taking shelter in a simple hardware store. Those men would not last long, so Wellington knew that he had to move.

“
Thorp is dead,” he told Strickland. She looked wildly about, but did not look like she would panic. “We need to help those lads across the way. Stay here,” he said, handing her the Ricky he had pocketed. “Eight shots. High velocity. Make them count.”

Strickland nodded quickly. Wellington recognised the sweat across her brow and neck as not coming from the heat. He gave her a reassuring nod, then crouched low and belly-crawled over to Agent Thorp’s body. He was not familiar with the Mark V upgrades, but at first glance he could deduce enough to access the basic workings. The kickstand was new, and within seconds of stabilising the rifle, he loved the subtle addition. His first shot took down the separatist leading a small group towards their position. They immediately scattered, but not before Wellington felled another in their number. He then flipped up a new feature of the Mark V—a telescopic sight. Earlier models offered such an accessory as optional, but this had to be one of the upgrades. He had just slipped the bolt back into a firing position when he caught sight of a head peering from around a corner. For his pains, Wellington sent the man a bullet.

Through the scope, Wellington could see intermittent flashes coming from the windows of the Army & Navy building. Perhaps the lads still inside were putting up a fight.
Well done,
he thought.

When he pulled away his attention from the scope, he saw the separatist walking down the middle of the causeway. Even from this distance, Wellington could see in the man’s eyes nothing but malicious intent of the darkest kind. The lines in his face appeared as carvings across dark wood, and watching him approach, he felt himself grow colder. Over this man’s shoulder was a large backpack, connected to a series of tubes and valves that would have looked more at home in a laboratory than a battlefield. Wellington would have assumed it was one of those Havelock battle suits but instead of a Gatling, this separatist wielded a hose in his hands.

And he was alone. None of his compatriots were in sight.

Wellington returned to the Mark V’s scope, and in the magnified view he watched the separatist turn a valve from where he held the hose. Bright blue flame poured out of the spout, covering the ground six feet in front of him. Wellington half-expected the man to be incinerated as he disappeared behind this wall of fire. However, when the flames dissipated, there he stood. The hardware storefront wherein the British soldiers had taken shelter was now engulfed. With a weapon of this kind, their protection had become a death-trap-in-the-making.

Wellington flipped the charging button on the transformer, and went to line up the fire-slinging madman in his crosshairs. He was about to fire when more insurgents ran past the flamethrower, using the chaos as their cover.

With heavy smoke casting shadows and obscuring possible sightlines, Wellington tugged free from Agent Thorp his belt. Once the belt was secured about his own waist, he then fished out of the dead man’s pockets several Firestorms.

“
Strickland!” he called as he threw the Mark V across his back. “Get back into the
Bug
and wait for me in the cockpit.”

She peered around the corner. “Are you sure?”

“
No, not really,” Wellington said, scampering over to her, “but I’m having a thought.”

He followed the engineer into the safety of the armoured vehicle. Setting the Mark V aside, Wellington settled into the uncomfortable driver’s seat. “Prime the boilers, if you please.”

“
Yessir,” Agent Strickland said as she began opening valves and flipping switches on the passenger’s side. “Shouldn’t be long.”

“
We will drive the
Bug
closer to the hardware store and rescue those held up in there. With their help, we should be able to hold position until reinforcements arrive.”