Unobtainium 1: Kate on a Hot Tin Roof (28 page)

Kate appeared beside her and Charles was hit with the full impact of Antonia’s cleavage and his ward dressed in a loincloth with her black hair loose around her shoulders. He clutched his sheets a little tighter. ‘Kate? What on Earth are you wearing?’

‘I think I’m rather getting to like it,’ Kate replied, grinning. ‘This was von Auttenberg’s idea of a suitable garment for me. I’m an animal, or a primitive. It
is
Russian sable.’

‘Only the best cavewoman clothing,’ Antonia commented. ‘We do not have time for this, however. We need to escape this place, preferably after ensuring that it is destroyed.’

‘The last part I have in hand,’ Charles replied, ‘if I can obtain and place my devices. Escape may be more of an issue, but I’m told that there are dirigibles moored nearby. We may be able to commandeer one, especially if we can get Moorbridge’s help. If Gantheim is still alive, I should like to get him out too.’

‘Gantheim?’

‘A physicist. He was placed in some diabolical machine in a hut behind the laboratory building and–’

‘It appears that he died of a heart attack,’ Antonia said softly. ‘We thought him alive at first since his body was still moving…’

Charles gritted his teeth. ‘The machine applied electrical current to certain… sensitive areas of the body which likely maintained some illusion of life even after his heart gave out. Drafenberg invented it, but Edel seemed infatuated with its use. You were to be its next victim were I to fail to satisfy their requirements.’

‘I… see.’

‘Given our new circumstances, I feel that I can do so, however. The manner of proof will
not
be satisfactory, but the Count will discover that allowing a physicist access to a fully stocked laboratory and workshop while threatening his friends is not a wise choice.’

Antonia smiled. ‘Please, Charles, explain your plan.’

~~~

Getting into the laboratory building was not as complex a matter as Charles had expected. They simply let Kate loose on the two guards standing outside the door. One died almost instantly as a knife was driven into his throat while the second was stunned with a blow to the head and then strangled. The efficiency and viciousness with which she dispatched the men was a little alarming, but Charles could not fault the results.

‘They gave me some of your equipment,’ Moorbridge said as they made their way down the main corridor. ‘I was supposed to analyse a sword to determine whether it had any special properties.’

‘My sword?’ Kate asked. ‘Curved blade?’

‘That was it.’

‘That will be most useful.’ The sight of a woman dressed in nought but a fur loincloth speaking delicate English after murdering two men was also a little disconcerting, but they had no time to find her more appropriate clothing. Moorbridge was trying not to look too long at either of the women, in fact. He seemed rather more abashed by their state of disarray than Charles was.

‘Very well,’ Charles said. ‘I shall go with Mrs Wooster to get the vapour dispersers. Kate, you can reacquire our equipment with Mister Moorbridge.’

Looking a little reluctant, Moorbridge led Kate to his lab, unlocked the door and handed the keys on to Charles. The room looked like a cross between a metalwork laboratory and a clock factory. Copper and brass rods and gears littered every available space except for an area to the rear which had a forge-like arrangement of cinder blocks in which charcoal still glowed a dull red.

‘Here,’ Moorbridge said, opening a cupboard.

Grinning brightly, Kate took out her sword and looped its cord through her ‘belt’ before checking the remainder of the objects. David Wooster’s ornate rifle was there along with a few shells for it. She hooked it over her shoulder though it would likely be of little use. Charles’s Webley was also there and she took that. It was loaded, but she could see no more ammunition. Well, they had the rifles the guards were carrying if they needed firearms, and
if
they needed firearms they would be in more trouble than something a few bullets might fix.

She did not see her pills anywhere, but then they would likely not have given those to Moorbridge. And there were no clothes, likely for the same reason.

‘All right, that’s everything of immediate use. We should meet with Sharles and Antonia.’

Moorbridge looped the strap of a toolkit satchel over his shoulder and gave a nod, doing his absolute best to keep his eyes on Kate’s face. She had to stop herself grinning. ‘Sir, as I am sure you have been informed, I was created by my father, Alfred Cooper, and kept for his experimentation for five years.’

‘I was aware, yes.’

‘In all that time, the only thing I wore was a collar, and occasionally further restraints. I have grown accustomed to wearing clothes and would not wish to appear dressed thusly on a street in Mayfair, but I am not uncomfortable with this mode of apparel. Indeed, I am partially covered, which is more than I once was. If I can survive the indignity, you can assuredly survive looking at me, given the urgency of our circumstances.’

The mechanic managed a weak smile. ‘I am… unused to such displays of the female form.’

‘As is Sharles, but he copes. If it helps, I believe he tries to conduct himself in the detached manner he employs when performing his science. Perhaps you could think of me simply as a complex machine which is assisting you through this trial.’

‘Madam, I assure you that the day I manage to create a machine which matches you in the slightest way, I shall have achieved perfection in my art. However, I shall attempt to affect a more detached demeanour to save my own blushes if nothing else.’

They found Charles and Antonia walking down the corridor carrying five copper canisters between them. Each of the tins was about ten inches in length and six across, and had a small winder on the side and a vaguely domed top with five holes drilled into it. They looked heavy and Antonia was carrying three to Charles’s two.

‘I am, apparently, stronger than I was,’ Antonia said, smiling rather proudly.

‘Perhaps you’ll be able to make use of this then,’ Kate replied, patting the barrels on her rifle.

‘I’m glad that survived. How many shells do we have?’

‘Uh… six, but if we need to use one we will be in difficulty.’

‘True. Be a dear and put the ammunition in my pockets. I’ll take the gun off you when we have distributed Charles’s devices.’

‘What time is it?’ Kate asked.

Moorbridge retrieved a pocket watch from his waistcoat and flipped it open. ‘Almost three-fifteen.’

‘The guards change at four. We must be ready in thirty minutes if we are to avoid them seeing their fallen comrades.’

‘Then we should make haste,’ Charles said. He held up one of his canisters. ‘This one must be placed in the mouth of the mine and set to trigger first. I allowed for some variance in the timers. I believe some thirty minutes should be sufficient to make our escape. We will detonate the final explosion at four-thirty.’

‘What does the fifth canister do?’ Moorbridge asked.

‘It provides us with the distraction required. It should be most effective.’

~~~

Urgent knocking roused von Auttenberg from his slumber and he pulled himself upright in his bed. ‘Come!’

A lieutenant whose name the Count could not immediately bring to mind burst in looking flustered. As he did so, he saw Nachtigall sitting up beside von Auttenberg, the sheets falling away from her breasts as she reached for a cigarette. The lieutenant looked sharply up at the ceiling.

‘What is it, Lieutenant?!’

‘There is smoke pouring out of the mine, sir. The two female prisoners, Barstow-Hall, and Moorbridge are missing. There are several men dead…’

‘Get men to the mine, as many as possible, but I want the prisoners found. Do you understand? Find them!’

The door slammed behind the poor messenger as he bolted off to comply with his orders. ‘Do you wish him made an example of?’ Nachtigall asked, her tone bland.

‘If they are not recaptured you will have him, Maria. Put on your clothes, it is time to go to work.’

‘They have run to the mine? That seems… short-sighted.’

‘Quite. We will take the hunt elsewhere.’

~~~

‘The smoke device seems to be working,’ Moorbridge commented as they hid just inside the perimeter fence and watched guards running for the rear of the compound.

‘Of course,’ Antonia replied, ‘Charles built it. I believe we should make a break for it.’

‘In a second,’ Kate said. ‘The guards at the gate remain in place. I will deal with them.’ She unsheathed her sword and slipped out of cover, moving quickly through the dim light.

There was moon enough for her to see quite clearly, but she doubted the same was true of the guards. Still, she needed to be quiet about this and she padded silently around to the nearest man, keeping low and then rising in a sweeping spring which drove her sword tip in through the right side of his abdomen and out through his left shoulder. His companion heard the sound of metal cutting bone and turned, seeing little but a dark shadow before Kate turned and ran her blade through his throat. His eyes widened, his body shook and twitched on the end of Kate’s sword, and then she pulled it free and he fell.

The others were with her a second later, apparently having anticipated her swift dispatch of the guards. ‘We should move,’ Antonia said. ‘The smoke has fooled the soldiers, but I am not so sure about the Count and his lieutenant.’ As if in answer, there was the whistle of a bullet passing her head followed by the sound of the shot. ‘The woman! Go! I’ll deal with this and catch up.’

‘Move!’ Kate hissed, almost pushing the two men towards the gate.

‘But,’ Moorbridge began, ‘we
are
the men–’

‘Trust me, Moorbridge,’ Charles told him as he picked up the pace, ‘our female companions are far the more capable under these circumstances.’

Antonia dropped to one knee and calmly snapped open her rifle as another shot whistled past, this time at chest height. A single round went into the right barrel and the breech was closed, and then she raised the weapon to her shoulder, taking aim. The darkness was throwing Nachtigall’s aim off; bullets sailed past Antonia in the night, each one marking her position. Antonia counted five and then there was the pause as the woman firing had to stop to reload. Kate saw the rifle swinging back up to her opponent’s shoulder, but she fired first.

Then the huntress turned, rising to her feet and starting off after the others. A hundred yards behind her, her chest a shattered ruin, the woman known as Nachtigall fell to the dirt.

~~~

‘Stop!’ Kate snapped and the two men halted on the track. ‘There’s something–’

The something stepped out of the undergrowth, lumbering slowly but with purpose. Easily six inches taller than Kate, he was human, more or less, though his face was a twisted, grey parody of a human’s face and his body was a grotesque mass of muscle.

‘What is that?’ Charles said, stepping back from the man.

‘They call him Franz,’ Moorbridge said. ‘One of Drafenberg’s earliest experiments with the necromensch formula.’

‘He’s mine,’ Kate said. ‘Get to the airship and get it going. I’ll be there with Antonia soon.’

‘The largest of them!’ Moorbridge called out as he took as wide a path as he could around Franz.

The huge man seemed happy with the arrangement, doing nothing to stop the two men. Instead, he managed a lopsided grin as he swung a huge gun from across his back. It still had a bipod attached to it and the belt feed was a little twisted, but Kate imagined that it would not be good for her if he actually got a shot off. She took three steps closer as he straightened the ammunition and swung her sword as he raised the gun to fire. He blinked as the gun dropped away from his unfeeling hand and Kate yanked the blade free of the bone it had half-severed.

Roaring, he swung at her head with one, meaty fist, hitting nothing but air. She slid around his arm and drove her blade into his chest. He staggered back and she paused, regaining her centre and lifting her sword up above her head, the tip pointed towards Franz’s face.

‘I do not wish to continue hurting you,’ she said. ‘Step aside.’

Either he did not understand her, or he was just too stupid to realise that he had lost. He charged at her, his good arm rising to strike. Kate moved at the same time, her blade swinging, an arc of silver in the moonlight. Franz’s head lifted from his shoulders, hitting the ground just after his body.

‘I see you found someone to play with too,’ Antonia said as she ran up.

‘It seemed rather like killing an animal,’ Kate replied. ‘He was too stupid to realise he was done for.’

‘Men can be like that. We had best catch up to ours. Who knows what kind of trouble they will have got into without us?’

~~~

‘Why are we taking the largest?’ Charles asked as they climbed the steps up to the gondola of what he could only describe as an airborne battleship. It was actually clad in metal which looked a lot like adamantium, which suggested a large mass. It was sculpted into a shape not unlike some sort of large, predatory fish, and the tail was enlarged with some form of venting which Charles did not recognise.

‘I had a hand in its design,’ Moorbridge replied. ‘It has a greater degree of automation than is typical, and the navigational computer is second to none for its size. We will be a trifle undermanned, but we should be able to operate it better than the smaller ones, and it is fast and durable. Since we do not know exactly how big your explosion will be, I determined that being far away, in an armoured vessel, might be advisable.’

‘Sound thinking. I must say I’m surprised that the ladies have not caught us up.’

‘Miss Felix had Franz to deal with.’

‘Not a great inconvenience.’

‘And we ran all the way, as my aching lungs will attest.’

‘Kate has remarkable speed on foot. However, she may have waited for Antonia… Ah, there they are, sauntering along as though they had no cares in the world.’

Which was actually untrue; they were walking, but at as fast a pace as possible, and checking behind them as they went. No one seemed to be following, but there was still the possibility.