Solomon's Compass (Steam & Aether Book 3), page 11
Rip sat on the little padded seat and grabbed the handgrips, peering through the gun’s circular sights. He purposefully avoided the soldiers aiming Mausers at them, focusing instead on the two men in front of Wegner setting up the crude bazooka.
One desperately struck a match, trying to light the fuse of a rocket in the bottom of the tube, but the wind blew it out. He reached for another and struck it when Rip squeezed the trigger, spewing a stream of heavy bullets across the open space between airship and platform.
Both men keeled over, shot multiple times. Wegner dove out of the way and all the shooters dropped flat to avoid the bullets.
The lit match fell from the dead man’s hand, landing near the tube, now rolling away. The fuse touched the open flame as it rolled by, sparking it to life.
Wegner’s head came up, furious. He stood, pulled out a Walther and fired. The shot struck the turret’s bubble . . . and the glass cracked.
“Oh, man. Must be enhanced bullets.”
Rip quickly swiveled the gun and aimed for Wegner, squeezing the trigger again. Bullets chewed up wood as the German dove away from the high caliber, full auto assault.
Then Wegner stood up again, braving several direct hits as he tried to squeeze off another shot. Rip made small circles, peppering the baron with lead, making the pistol fly out of his hand.
For a split second, Wegner looked like he had measles, with bright red spots all over his face and body.
“Ha!”
Rip smiled at his implant’s notification that [General Weaponry] had clicked up a notch.
“I haven’t raised that one in months!”
Movement brought his attention back to the platform as Wegner staggered like a drunkard while yelling at the soldiers. Rip sprayed the platform and everyone ran for cover. He swung to the right, following Wegner, and his bullets lacerated the ropes holding a couple gasbags. The giant balloons popped upward in a sudden bid for freedom, and the entire platform shifted, instantly losing buoyancy.
The dock master screamed now, gesticulating, herding people over to the airships as the platform sank down several feet.
The tube rolled to Rip’s left just as the long fuse finally reached the missile. It shot off in a fiery streak and plunged into a dirigible docked nearby. The missile exploded in the middle and the entire airship ignited a split second later in a giant fireball, evaporating the wooden platform all around it.
Two more balloons popped in the explosion, and the entire city dipped precipitously, tilting over. The second thug who chased Chance and two of the soldiers with long guns fell over the side, yelling. Fire burned the soft wood, and black smoke roiled up in the air.
The charred skeleton of the airship dropped away, flames still licking its metal bones. The cabin looked almost disintegrated, instantly burned to a black crisp. It fell off and floated down, separating from the metal.
Miraculously, the dock master still lived. He scrambled up the now heavily sloping platform yelling out orders. Somewhere a fire squad appeared, four men carrying a hose carefully down the slope. They sprayed burning wood while others stamped out flames with feet, jackets and blankets.
“That’s ingenious,” Rip said. “Water puts out the fire and helps them stabilize their weight at the same time.”
He scanned the frenzied crowd for any hint of Wegner, seeing a couple of men with blond hair but no sign of the German secret agent. Shrugging, he activated the gun’s safety and returned to the bridge.
Powell stared emotionlessly at all the flames and carnage. He reengaged his engines, turning the wheel. The Steel Comet moved forward smoothly and banked away.
As Rip headed for the steps leading out of the bridge, Chance stopped him with a hand to the shoulder.
“You said you had a skill, mate. But I had no idea you could do that.”
“That wasn’t me. That was their missile launcher, and . . . bad luck.”
“It was definitely filled with hydrogen, yeah? That’s why you don’t use hydrogen on airships.”
“It should be safe, under normal circumstances,” Powell growled. “Especially on an enhanced ship. But aye, a missile fired at close range will wreak havoc. And it wasn’t bad luck at all, Mr. Chance. Not for us. That thing was pointed at my ship!”
He spun the wheel again, slammed his foot down on the aileron flaps, and opened up the throttles all the way.
“Now hang on. We’re going down.”
The floor tilted sharply, and the Steel Comet rushed for cloud cover below.
28
The airship poked her nose under the clouds and Powell leveled her out, taking a bearing on his compass before adjusting the wheel.
“I’ll get you to Marienberg Fortress as quickly as I can. If they knew y’were coming to the air exchange, they’ll likely know your destination. We can wait until dark before making our final approach. That should give you the best opportunity to get down there without being seen.”
“We can do it during daylight,” Rip said. “We brought along a distraction.”
Powell raised his eyebrows, but Rip refused to elaborate.
The pilot shrugged and said, “Suit yourself. Let me know how you want to approach. That thing sits on a high embankment, with one road leading up to the outer gate. We’ll be there shortly. Should be less than an hour with these new engines. I can see we’re flying faster.”
Despite all the recent tension, Powell seemed genuinely pleased with his ship’s recent upgrades. He smiled at his airspeed indicator, registering healthy speed as they slipped through the cloud bank.
“Right. We’ll get ready.”
Rip met with Chance, the Verez sisters and Blair out in the passenger area. Everyone brought their interspatial satchels, and started digging through them.
“I think I see that thing you wanted in mine,” Blair said. “I’m not sure how to get it out, though.”
“I’ll do it.”
She handed the bag over to Rip and he peered inside. Then he moved near the sliding door and dumped the satchel over. A robot fell out, the size of a small sofa. It had four legs and a rifle on top, set on a miniature turret. Two round eyes perched to either side of the muzzle.
Rooting around in the satchel some more, Rip pulled out a parachute pack designed for the robot, and attached it to the back. Then he retrieved a case of 30-06 ammo belts. Opening the back of the machine, he placed the box inside, in a spot designed to fit the case. Taking the end of the belt, he fed it into the machine gun on top.
About this time, Powell walked out from the bridge.
“What is that thing?”
“It’s a robot.”
“A what?”
His tone seemed incredulous, that Rip would bring something like this onboard without asking for permission.
“This is Wayne Enterprise’s ARD-100, a first-gen battle bot, of sorts. The engineers thought it looked like an aardvark. But, ARD stands for ‘Annoying Robotic Distraction.’ At least, that’s what I told them. I don’t know if they’re going to go for it, though. They’ve grown awfully independent lately.”
“It doesn’t look like it can do much,” Powell snorted, although more out of pique than anything else.
“It’s not really meant to. Like I said, it’s a distraction. I’m also hoping we can build hundreds of these things relatively cheaply. I’m betting they’ll be particularly effective in trench warfare, if we get to that point.”
“Trench warfare? What kind of rot is that?”
“The worst kind. Where I come from, it lasted years and wasn’t broken up until the Americans came in with hundreds of thousands of fresh troops on the Allied side. This world won’t have that option, I think. So, the ARD here should be able to help instead. I hope.”
He gave Powell a lopsided smile.
“Anyway, we’re about to give it a field trial. I’m anxious to see how it works.”
Powell snorted again, but less forcefully this time. He returned to the bridge for another compass reading while everyone else remained in the passenger area, getting ready.
Half an hour later, the pilot stuck his head back out the door.
“We’re going to drop below the clouds so I can get a visual. But we should be close. I’ll pass over and let you do whatever you’re going to do with that metal dog thing. When I swing back around, you can all go.”
He seemed happy with that prospect, and disappeared again. Soon the floor angled down and clouds around the windows cleared away. The countryside appeared below, and Powell banked right. They could see Wuerzburg in the distance. On an elevated spot of ground, as if to guard the city, they caught their first glance of Marienberg Fortress.
The main tower stood tall and wide, stretching 20 stories above the hill it perched on, surrounded by thick walls with smaller buildings all around it. The tower had no windows, just solid stone, making the entire structure look like a fat gray obelisk.
“The tower used to have windows, a hundred years ago or so,” Chance said. “Somebody filled them all in and they put up a new stone exterior. Solid this time, like a thick façade. The walls around the whole place will make it tough for us to even get close to the tower. They’re tall. And thick. They’ll be difficult to breach. If you try to go in the front, you’ve got the guards to deal with. And some doors in the wall fit for Goliath.”
Rip said, “We’re not going in the front, remember? That’s the ARD’s job.”
He kneeled down and opened the back of the robot once more, this time flicking a toggle switch into the “On” position. Vacuum tubes lit up and hummed. The two circular eyes mounted above the gun snout flickered to life, glowing bright red.
Rip closed the back panel and pulled open the ship’s sliding door, letting wind flow into the cabin. He waited a moment as Powell altered course a final time and brought them closer to the target. Then he grabbed the chute’s pull cord and kicked the robot out the door, all in one motion.
The metal creature dropped several feet before the parachute puffed open. It descended on the field below in front of the fortress. Servos whirred and its red eyes scanned the area, gun snout twisting to the right and left.
A line of guards streamed out the fortress gate, guns aimed up in the air.
Its eyes glowed an even brighter red when they started shooting at it.
29
The ARD-100 plopped to the ground, landing on all metallic fours in a field. A short fiery flare burst from its rear, igniting the silk lines and chute behind it. Rip wanted to keep his modern parachutes under wraps for as long as possible, and so had insisted his engineers figure out a way for the ARD to destroy it easily. The flames quickly consumed everything, leaving no trace of the cloth behind.
The robot’s head swiveled, gun aiming in all directions. It focused on the distant gate and the sound of soldiers heading this way. It traipsed through the grass, red eyes scanning above the foliage.
Soldiers and the bot met about halfway to the fortress. One young man spotted the ARD out in the field and shouted a warning to his colleagues. They all opened up with Mauser long guns, bullets pinging off metal.
The robot focused on this unfortunate soul, lining him up in its sights. Its snout burped, shells spewing to the grass in a shiny arc. The soldier went down.
The bot marched confidently forward, turning its head and finding another target, a soldier close by. Its gun spit out a string of rounds again, the belt feeding it flawlessly.
The remaining soldiers yelled warnings and took cover. Those closest to trees rushed to hide behind them. Others dropped down flat on their stomachs, trying to aim and fire while prone. But even men with clear shots found their bullets simply bouncing off the metal machine, if they could even hit it.
The ARD’s head swiveled and it dispatched three more soldiers in quick four- and five-shot bursts, conserving ammunition.
It ignored those it could not see, passing by one man hiding behind a tree nearby. He made the mistake of shooting at it from close range after the bot passed his location. The ARD-100 did not stop. It simply swiveled its turret and gunned the man down as it continued tromping toward the gate.
When it hit the road, the robot’s speed picked up over the flat and unencumbered surface. An ox drawing a cart heading in the opposite direction bolted, the animal completely spooked. The bot’s head swiveled, eyes tracking the harried farmer holding onto his hat as the cart bounced across an open field. It decided this was not a threat, and thus not a target. The muzzle swiveled back toward the looming gate and the walls surrounding the fortress.
A few straggling soldiers ran toward the gate, too, but at a distance. They dared not run close to the machine, but duty impelled them to at least keep it in sight. Heedless of the danger, one man stopped and fired another shot, lead pinging off the ARD’s rear. The turret swiveled to return fire, but he quickly ducked behind a bush. The bot marched on.
Those manning the gate needed no warning from their colleagues. They watched in horror through Zeiss spyglasses as the bot dispatched the soldiers sent after it, and as it continued heading for them. When the machine came within a hundred yards or so, someone had the presence of mind to order the gate be shut, and a shout went out to those on the wall.
The fortress gates were huge three-story metallic slabs, requiring giant chains with foot-long links and pulleys the size of dinner tables to open and close them. The entire clockworks system was controlled by something resembling a ship’s wheel, with handles spaced apart every eight inches.
Two men ran to the wheel and strained, desperately pulling it clockwise. It turned reluctantly. The giant doors groaned and moved slowly inward, gradually squeezing out space between the fortress walls and the outside world.
The ARD-100 seemed to sense what was about to happen, and picked up its pace. Metallic footsteps tromped faster down the road. It shot at random soldiers running inside, missing two but winging one fellow who fell down with a bullet in his thigh. He scrambled behind the wall and out of the line of fire, crying like a baby.
The two soldiers working the wheel spun it faster, grunting and sweating in the exertion of closing two doors weighing several tons each. The space between them shrank as the doors continued pulling inward, the metal shrieking now in protest.
Somebody yelled, “Schneller!” as the bot came close. The men, sopping wet with sweat, redoubled their efforts.
The doors groaned, like a living thing goaded to move. The gap between them narrowed to three feet.
Another soldier stepped out to aim his gun at the charging bot, but its turret burped before he could even line up his shot. He dropped to the ground, inside the walls. The ARD-100 scurried through the door just before the crack grew too small, climbing over his dead body.
It stopped and servos whined as it turned to the right. The doors slammed shut behind it. Men ran away, dropping their guns and racing for cover. It spat out lead, picking some off, killing anyone who could not hide fast enough.
The bot proudly traipsed inside the wall now, metal feet clanking victoriously on cobblestones, head swiveling this way and that. Somewhere, an alarm bell tolled, and an eerie siren wailed from atop the windowless tower.
Troops poured out of barracks, strapping on pointy helmets and grabbing Mausers. Officers shouted, urging people toward the gate, rallying men to the fortress’s defence. Hundreds of billeted soldiers shifted into high alert, pouring out to the streets.
Men and machine met at an intersection between buildings. The bot, coming from the direction of the gates, squatted in the middle of the main street, picking targets and shooting methodically. A mass of soldiers from the barracks, unprepared for the carnage awaiting them, scattered in confusion. Several went down, easily picked off by the ARD.
Finally an officer arrived on the scene and started shouting orders. The men took cover. He sent several up to the rooftops of nearby buildings. The ARD’s easy targets disappeared. Now the muzzles of many guns poked out of windows and over ledges. A few returned fire from the safety of cover.
Seeing nothing else viable to shoot, the bot traipsed forward, heading for the tower and ignoring the occasional bullet ricocheting off its metal body.
30
Powell came about in his arc, flying over the walls of the little town surrounding the tower. Rip stared out the open sliding door and smiled at the havoc his robot played with the defenders. He saw men and horses racing away as the little bot hosed the streets with bullets.
Slowly the tower came into view, its rooftop closer to the airship than all others. Rip tightened the straps on his parachute as Powell lined up their path to cross directly over it. He looked at the others.
“Get ready.”
Liza said, “We’ll go first, Ripley.”
He nodded and stepped out of the way. The Verez sisters smiled at him as they approached the door, dressed in tight black body suits.
“Still not entirely sure what those outfits are for, yeah?” Chance said, moving out of the way awkwardly, a parachute pack bulging off his back.
Rip said, “Remember our experiments? This is how they’ll get past the silver. The suits are lined with a thin layer of flexible lead sheets. They’re kind of heavy, but it’s nothing the girls can’t handle.”
“But . . . I thought we were going to use a lighter box.”
“This is better than a box, Bobby. Plus, it will offer them additional protection after we get inside. No telling how much silver is in that place. I do have a couple spare boxes in the satchel, just in case. But I seriously doubt we’ll need them, unless these suits they’re wearing get shredded up somehow.”
Hilda said, “You are ssso smart, Ripley. Thank you for our suits!”
Blair, standing behind the sisters, rolled her eyes at the flattery. But she no longer seemed as jealous, Rip noted.
He said, “You can thank the guys at Wayne Enterprises for designing them so quickly. Also, Mr. Stoffman the tailor for putting them together. Now, are you ready? We’re almost over the roof.”
