A Christmas Evening Vigil
~or~
Crystal Without a Chime
Book Two of the Iron Angel Series
by
Robert C. Roman
Smashwords Edition Copyright © 2010 by Robert C. Roman
ISBN: 978-1-936394-47-0
Cover art by Dara England
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~DEDICATION~
To my students, who inspire me, to my mom,
who supports me, and always to the Ur-Goth, who keeps me sane,
humble,
honest with myself.
Also: Magical Rainbow Unicorn Horses, Assemble!
Prologue–Battle
General Peyton March rushed to correct what might be the biggest tactical blunder of his military career. The enemy wasn’t where he thought they were, and instead of springing a triumphant ambush, his troops spent the last hour waiting for an attack that didn’t come. At the end of the hour, his crystal device chimed. His Quartermaster, left behind with the administrative staff, screamed out a request for reinforcements and then went silent.
The only hope remaining to March was a forlorn one. Two young officers, one a line officer and one an engineer, were ordered to hold the repair bay. Sebastian Cole was a product of a Pennsylvanian military academy; he would hold the garage or die trying. Leigh Abrams, estranged daughter of the Headquarters Manor’s owner, looked to be a brilliant young engineer. He would gamble on them holding their own in any fair fight.
But the fight wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even close. March had taken all the working Mechanical Men, taken all the human combat troops. The pair had some office clerks, who would run for the basement bunkers at the first sign of trouble, and a bare half dozen mechanics, none of whom were combat trained. They had no functional Mechanical Men. Instead, they had the dregs that were sitting awaiting repair. With cooks and clerks and mechanics for troops, broken machines for weapons, they were trying to hold out against a full Battalion of Central Powers troops.
David Abrams, owner of the Manor that housed March’s headquarters unit, had a Mechanical that might make a difference. It was a prototype, a huge thing that towered over even General March’s command mechanical. It was also drastically flawed; it crippled Abrams the moment it was activated, and now it was chained in the back of the Garage, as dangerous to Leigh and Sebastian as it was to the Centrals.
March’s only hope was to return before the Centrals completely demolished his Headquarters and stole away any chance of the American Expeditionary Force remaining in the war. Sebastian and Leigh’s only hope was that they found a basement to hide in. Failing that, he hoped they died quickly. Central Mechanical Men could be vicious.
Distant thunder sounded through the crystal device connecting March to his Quartermaster, followed by the sound of Mechanical feet clanking across the floor. March turned to his aide de camp, orders spilling from his mouth.
“Have Painter take one squad and head for The Line. Send him with orders for Shaw to close whatever hole these bastards came through, then get back here to reinforce me. All other units, return to Headquarters. Flank speed, don’t spare the Mechanicals.”
“Yes, sir!”
March wished there was more he could do, but all he could do now was watch, and wait, and pray.
Chapter One–Aftermath
Leigh Abrams was trapped in a nightmare. She was alone in the dark, her life flashing before her eyes.
It hadn’t been much of a life. Her mother had been a picture in the hall and an angry grimace on her father’s scarred face. Her father had been a taskmaster, visiting only to savage her efforts to please him. The Sisters of Saint Francis had been solicitous, but by the age of twelve she had retreated within her own mind, convinced no one cared.
When she returned to her father’s manor after her military training, she became a pawn in another of his endless political games. To General March, she was an irritation. To Lieutenant Sebastian Cole, she was a curiosity, a fellow officer who wasn’t a fellow at all, but unmistakably female. Her mind, drifting in the dark, latched onto the image of Sebastian grabbing her, pulling her out of the line of fire, risking himself to make sure she lived.
As an act of caring, it hadn’t been much, but there had been little enough caring of any kind in her life. The image of Sebastian standing firm against the hordes of Blitzmen and daVincis, placing himself between her and machines bent on killing her, settled firmly into place somewhere in her breast. She clung to that thought as the lightless metal tomb enclosing her rocked to the sounds of fire and death.
***
Lieutenant Painter watched General Robert Shaw stare across the field of battle. A grim smile decorated the general’s lips. Lieutenant Painter was no coward. He didn’t fear the height of Shaw’s rickety wooden observation tower. He ignored enemy snipers as unworthy of his consideration. He still shuddered at Shaw’s smile. Anyone might. Shaw’s face was thin, cheeks and eyes sunken. His lips were pulled back to expose shining white teeth even when he wasn’t smiling. Two wounds, faded with age but never healed, exposed the cheekbone and jaw on the left side of his face.
Shaw’s voice matched his face; echoes of a handsome man overlain with horror. “The Hun and his machines are retreating. We lost a few of our Franklins, but the forges and machine shops will have most of those up and running before dawn.”
Painter had no goal beyond delivering his message and leaving the vast section of The Line held by the 54th, but he felt obligated to respond to Shaw. “What cost to your men, Sir?”
Shaw’s smile twisted. He lifted a pair of field glasses to his eyes with his left hand. His right never set down his heavy pistol, never even moved to holster it. After a few moments spent examining the trenches, the General spoke. “Your question does you credit, Lieutenant, but your concern is misplaced. I saw no incendiaries on the field this day.”
The answer confused Painter, but he stamped down hard on his curiosity. Questions might produce answers, and answers took time. Instead, he extended his message to Shaw without a word. Glancing away from his field glasses at the sound of paper rustling, the General shrugged and returned to his review. “Read it to me. My eyes aren’t what they once were.”
“Yes, sir.” It didn’t occur to Painter to disobey a direct order from General Shaw, no matter how trivial the command. A few moments with his trench knife and the envelope surrendered its contents, a simple document bearing the signature of the American Expeditionary Force Commander, General March. Painter read dutifully through the salutations, watching General Shaw’s expression grow more and more impatient behind the glasses. He hurried to the meat of the missive.
“Brigadier Shaw, my Headquarters Company has come under assault by Central Mechanicals in at least Battalion strength. Your lines have been penetrated. I will deal with the incursion; find and seal the breach. Signed, General Peyton March.”
If Shaw was surprised or upset by the news, he hid it well. His voice was dead as he dictated his reply. “Take a message back to March, Painter. Tell him my boys just beat off a Hun attack and were stretched thin before that. We’ll find his breach, we’ll seal it, but he needs to find us proper reinforcement, or—” Shaw broke off, a snarl contorting his face.
“Take the message, boy. I was wrong about our losses. We’re going to lose at least one troop, and we’ve only gained half a dozen to show for it. Take the message, and pray March can scrape up some reinforcement.” With that the General was gone, leaving his field glasses behind to climb down the steep stairs, still never dropping or holstering his pistol.
Curiosity overcame Painter. Before he left, he picked up the field glasses and peered in the direction Shaw had been looking. Wending their way back toward Shaw’s command post were three squads. One guarded a single AEF soldier, his antique blue uniform covered in gore. The other two bracketed a short squad of soldiers in Prussian uniforms. After a moment, Painter felt his gorge begin to rise. Killing enemies was bad enough. What the 54th did was something different, something to turn a man’s bowels to water.
Every one of the Central Power’s soldiers bore what looked to be mortal wounds, but still they walked. Painter did not count himself a coward, but no sane man could stand and face a nightmare.
***
Capricious Jones dreamed.
Deep within her armored belly, she could feel her daughter resting, hear Kay’s restless muttering. Kay’s panic had ebbed enough that she slept, but Cap kept up a soothing string of murmurs culled from her own waking dreams. It might help when Kay was rested enough to awaken, it might not. The important thing for now was that Kay was safe, so Cap dreamed.
She dreamed of a time when she was still flesh and bone and blood. She dreamed of a time before she was a mother, before she was an Engineer. She dreamed of a time after her parents went away, when Gramma Jones was her only family.
Gramma Jones’ voice was a soothing singsong that tried to lull Cap to sleep. She fought it; the old woman’s willow switch was merciless, and the lulling quality of her voice was no excuse for failing to hear her words. Her accent, a strange mix of the places she’d been sold over the better part of a century, was hard enough to follow when Cap was awake.
“Now, everah part o ta world, tay got tay own knowlash.”
The heat from the great cast iron pot didn’t help. Cap was supposed to be washing the potatoes she’d found growing out in the woods, but her hands kept slowing as Gramma’s voice washed over her. The willow switch twhipped across the space between them, and Cap’s knuckles burned as she recited.
“Every part of the world has its own knowledge.”
“Tat’s bettah. You learn ta way ta educated talk. Tat’s good.”
“I suppose. I still don’t see why I got…I have to learn to talk like a White.”
Thwip. “Look wit yowah eyes, gull. Teh Man in teh shack, what he?”
Confusion twisted Cap’s face. “He’s the overseer.” The switch twitched, and she scrambled to connect the dusky-skinned man to the day’s lesson. “He’s White?”
Thwip. “He Spaniard, gull. Spanish?”
“The Spanish know metals, steel most of all. Gramma, I don’t understand.”
“What you not knowin’, gull?”
“You told me the Somalis had the knowledge of metals.” Gramma ignored her, tossing more herbs in the pot. Cap scrubbed at the potato, careful not to damage the skin. Dirt in the food was bad—wasted food was worse. “Did you tell me the Guineas had the knowledge of metals?”
Whip, whip, whip, the switch twitched. “Did ah?”
Cap went silent, concentrating on the next potato in the sack. Nothing could set Gramma Jones on a tear like telling her you weren’t sure. Certainty to her was the saints and apostles all rolled into one. Not knowing was bad, but being uncertain was unforgivable. Cap wrestled with her memories, prodding at them, confirming her suspicion.
“You did! You told me the Guineas had knowledge of metals, but you told me the Somalis had the knowledge of metals.”
“You know tat, gull?”
“Yes.”
“So you know what ah know?”
“I know some of what you know,” Cap temporized.
Gramma’s cackle was a thing of endless fascination and terror for Cap. Fascination, wondering what would set it off and how such a loud sound came from such a small, wizened old woman. Terror because when she laughed, she seemed to lose all control of her hands, which waved any which way. With one of them holding a ladle dripping steaming stew and the other still holding the switch, Gramma’s cackles were dangerous to be around.
When she wheezed to a stop, she wiped her eyes with a knuckle. “You quick, tat true. How can you know if I know?”
“Gramma, two people can know the same thing.”
Whip, whip, whip. “Can tey?”
Cap focused on the potato. It was the last one in the sack. Gramma would take paying attention to work as an excuse for hesitation. Once the potatoes were gone, she would get no reprieve; her answers would need to fire back as fast as Gramma could ask the questions.
“It’s like words. Two people can know the same words, but they come out different when they say them. Like you and I. So yes, two people can know the same thing, but the people make the knowledge different.” She paused just a moment, a question percolating to the top of her mind, popping out before she could think about it too clearly. “Does the knowledge make the people similar?”
“Tat be teh puzzle, gull. Tat be teh puzzle.”
***
To say that Capricious dreamed was not to say she slept. She had slept years, waiting for her daughter. Now her flywheel spun, her pilot light burned bright, and her Engines were never far from ready. In the back wall of the Garage, she’d found the feed line for her fuel. Now she sipped at the witch’s brew of refined naphtha and jellied alcohol, which kept her bunkers topped off at all times despite the occasional burn to keep her flywheel spinning.
In the aftermath of battle, she ignored her surroundings to concentrate on her daughter. Now that Kay slept, Capricious became slowly aware of the remains of hundreds of Mechanical Men that lay littered across the floor of the Garage and Courtyard beyond. Only a bare hundred had been her work. The remainder was Men who had fallen defending her daughter and the Men they had protected her from.
Scattered in amongst the metal wreckage were the still forms of mortal men, the mechanics who had worked in the Garage prior to Kay’s arrival. Before Cap recognized Kay, she saw them obey her, assist her, and even fall defending her. Cap wished she could do something for them, but while her control of her weapons was fantastic, they were still weapons. Her hands were fully articulated, but their size made them clumsy working on a human scale.
As she pondered the problem, she increased the gain on her outer stereophones. The sounds of battle in the distance, fierce since she awoke, had died down to a steady, occasional rumble of artillery fire. The battle had a winner. Idly, Cap wondered whether it had been her daughter’s defenders or those who sought to kill her daughter. If it was the former, she could get her daughter medical attention. If the latter, she would deal with them as she had dealt with the others. Her gun, Ipapa, twitched at the thought, yearning to be used. As she calmed the cannon, she recited Gramma’s lists of peoples and proficiencies to her daughter. When David Abrams had killed her, Cap feared she would never be able to pass those on to little Kay. Now, though, she could and did.
Voices in the courtyard ended Cap’s dreaming. A moment later, she saw two men round the corner. One was an older gentleman in a uniform. Stars adorned his shoulders; he was likely in command here. She did not know him. The other she recognized. It took all her will to keep Ipapa from firing. David Abrams, her murderer, had that effect on her.
***
“As you can see, General March, my Masterpiece has exceeded all expectations. It destroyed the enemy’s attacking forces while taking almost no damage.”
General Peyton March remained silent. He’d been silent from the moment he returned to his command post and seen the awful carnage wrought by the Central Forces Mechanicals. Most of his staff had escaped by hiding in concealed basements. His quartermaster and a few orderlies had died horribly at the hands of one of the enemy’s DaVinci reproductions.
Now March looked about the scene of the heaviest fighting, and his stomach clenched. He’d long since become inured to the scent of burned gunpowder and oil, and even the smell of death was an old companion now. The sheer savagery here was enough to shock even an old battle hardened soldier like March. He looked down at David. The Engineer’s blind eyes let him rest serenely in his wheeled chair, and for the thousandth time today, March nearly lost control of his temper.
It wasn’t Abrams’ fault the Central Powers commander had lured him away from the depot. It wasn’t Abrams’ fault the few young men in this garage had been forced to put up a defense worthy of Leonidas. That fault rested squarely on General Peyton March’s shoulders, and he would carry it until the day he died.
David’s supercilious whine interrupted March’s grief. “My nurse tells me there is a terrible mess here. Shall I get my service Mechanicals to clean it up? I’m afraid most of it will wind up in the dump if I do. They’re still quite indiscriminate.”
March snapped. His voice was heated as he leaned down into David’s face, hoping the man could feel his anger, since David’s eyes had been lost long ago to his ‘Masterpiece’. “You insufferable, pompous little ass! You will not speak of my fallen men as so much garbage to be thrown in the rubbish heap. They will be accorded full military honors. You are not invited to the funeral, and I will have you ejected if you try to attend.”
David replied, but March didn’t hear any of it. Someone in the Garage was responding to the sound of his raised voice. A pained whisper flowed through the garage, but he could neither see the whisperer nor make out the words. Waving the troops escorting him forward, he dashed in, heedless of danger from unexploded ordnance.
In a matter of seconds, he found the source of the whispers. Lying twisted, half under the wreckage of one of the Mechanicals he had commanded, young Sebastian Cole, commander of the defense of the Garage, struggled to rise. March called his bodyguards over and had them lift the Mechanical chassis off of the young Lieutenant. When they did, March stifled a gasp. A jagged piece of steel shrapnel was sticking out of his back. It had obviously severed his spine. Cole didn’t realize; he kept trying to turn himself over, trying to rise.
March knelt next to him, pitching his voice so the young man could hear over his obvious pain and disorientation, “Cole! Don’t get up, you’re injured. The corpsman will be here soon.”
“We held as long as we could, sir.” The boy erupted in a fit of coughing. The blood soaking Cole’s uniform and hands made it hard to see that he was coughing up more. “We held….”
“You certainly did, son. Quiet now, the corpsman will be here soon. Corporal!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Run, do not walk, back to my Command Mechanical and bring the corpsman back. If you see one sooner, you bring them instead.”
“Yes, sir!” The soldier holstered his seventy-five caliber Smith & Wesson as he ran. The big guns were hell to fire, but they would knock down most line Mechanicals.
When Abrams opened his mouth again, March nearly shot him. For an endless moment, he stared at the silent cripple. It was only when he realized his gun was out of the holster, cocked, that he knew he’d best get away from the doctor, and quickly.
March’s own thought careened back into him like an Australian boomerang. Sudden hope flaring, he looked up to the crippled old man. “Doctor Abrams! I know most of your research has been into Engineering, but don’t I recall you had a medical degree?”
David’s voice was aloof. “I do. What of it?”
“This boy needs medical attention immediately!”
“Even were I so inclined, I am incapable.” In explanation, Abrams held up the carved wooden prostheses that ended his arms.
“Dammit, man, I’ll be your hands. We could save this boy. My corpsman might not make it in time!”
“You would probably kill him at any rate. We should leave. The unexploded ordnance alone makes this a poor choice of dallying places. Nurse?”
Abram’s nurse, a dark, busty woman perpetually concealed by a broad hat and veil, stepped from the courtyard to guide his chair from the wreckage. Before she reached him, March heard something from deep within the Garage. He watched with fascination as the huge Mechanical walked toward him. The gleam of steel showed where Central weapons had violated armor of flat jet, but the thing still moved with the oily grace of an Arabian Raqs Sharqi dancer.
He was so mesmerized by its sinuous sway that he didn’t register the thing’s huge spear as a weapon until he was well within its reach. When the spear pulled back, he threw himself protectively over young Cole, shouting his men to cover as he did. He heard the spear whistling through the air, heard it impact with flesh and metal. He glanced up to see David Abrams, chair and all, flung into the wall of the Garage by the flat of the spear’s blade.
The thing came to a halt then, its feet still in the area of the Garage not covered in carnage, its spear tip sinking at least a foot into the cement floor. The huge Mechanical sank down to its haunches, a thick hatch sliding out from its belly as it did so. When the hatch was no more than six feet above the floor, it flew open, forming a ramp from the belly of the machine to the floor. A female body in the tattered remains of a Women’s Army Corp uniform slid out, shedding a thick coating of jelly. By the time the woman stood, the jelly had sloughed off enough for March to identify the woman.
“Lieutenant Abrams! Come here, I’ve a wounded man!”
The young female Lieutenant stood. Her movements were ever so slightly off, like a woman walking in a daze. As March had noticed, her uniform was in tatters. What he hadn’t noticed was the strange headset that covered both ears. He would ask about it later; if she had saved the young man who had given so much to follow March’s orders, he didn’t care if she put her corsets on her head and called herself the queen of garters.
Without speaking, she knelt beside Cole’s still form, her hands swift and sure as they moved across him. At one point, she rolled the boy half over, and March was relieved by Cole’s hiss of pain, horrified by the girl’s lack of reaction. After a few moments, she met March’s gaze. Her eyes were dead, her voice flat when she spoke, “No conventional procedures will save this soldier. Do I have permission to experiment?”
“Can you save him?”
“I do not know. That is why it’s called an experiment. His next of kin is unavailable. Do I have your permission?”
“If there is a chance to save this young man, you have my permission to do whatever you need to.”
The faintest hint of a smile flashed across her lips, and her hands blurred as they emptied her supply belt onto a clear space on the floor beside Cole. Her voice was distracted when she spoke, and it took March a moment to realize she was issuing orders in a rapid fire monotone, assuming someone would follow them.
“Bring me five gallons of water, as close to boiling as you can make it; as many clean towels as you can find; a camp stove; a welding apparatus, the one in here will do if you can find it; one gallon of Mechanical diesel; one cup of pectin, one gallon rubbing alcohol.” While she spoke, her hands were still moving. One alternated between working a compact hand pump she had attached to his mouth and pressing on his chest. The other rapidly divested him of his clothes. When she realized no one was moving, she looked back at March. Her expression was still muted, but her expectation was still clear.
“You men heard the Doctor! Move!”
“It would help if someone could work the breathing pump, Sir.” Lieutenant Abrams’ voice bordered on insolence; if she saved the young hero under his command, March would find a temporary loss of dignity a small price to pay, especially since no one else was around to hear.
“Just show me what to do.”
***
Leigh looked across the desk at General March. Her father’s desk, just to her left, remained conspicuously empty. The general was reviewing records, filling out some paperwork as he did so. The reading glasses he wore while working made him look grandfatherly. Secretly, she hoped the impression wasn’t false, but life had taught her to put little faith in hopes. Her legs itched with the unfamiliar feel of trousers. Physical discomfort was an old friend to her; she bore it without comment or movement.
Nearly an hour after she had arrived, March looked up with a start. He put the paperwork down with painstaking precision, returning his attention to her only once his desk was returned to the precise organization he preferred.
“Young lady…No. Lieutenant, have you been sitting there this entire time?”
As happened so very often, Leigh was uncertain what she’d done wrong. “Yes, Sir.”
“I am unaccustomed to young officers that can make themselves as unobtrusive as you can. I would make you my personal aide, but for the fact that I cannot spare an officer for that task. Until we receive reinforcements, I am forced to do without much staff at all. If only Charles had been able to make the bunker in time.”
“Charles, Sir?”
“Our former Quartermaster. You wouldn’t have known him.”
“I met him, Sir. He seemed quite a nice older gentleman.”
A harsh bark of laughter forced its way from March before he swallowed it. “Nice old man? I’m sure Charles would have been pleased to hear you say that. He’d cut quite a swath through the local girls. He’s been doing that for as long as I’ve known him, and I met him when he was forty years old and already the bane of the young women of Washington. Still, he was a good man in a fight, and a better man with a requisition. I’ll miss him.”