Thirty Days Later: Steaming Forward: 30 Adventures in Time Read online

  “What are you staring at, dear?” Sparky asked without taking her eyes off the controls of the Raptor-class air yacht as they ascended across Loch Shin. She was amazed at how well the small craft still handled despite all the crazy adventures she and Drake had already had in it. And it still came together neatly and air-worthy as ever despite being hauled up from London on the train.

  “Those animals — over there — they look like yaks,” Erasmus pointed below the Peregrine to a small herd of the shaggy creatures grazing languidly.

  “They’re Highland cattle, but the Scots sometimes just refer to them as hairy cows. You’d want a coat like that too if you had to survive the Highland winters.”

  “How do you suppose they would look at night covered in that foxfire concoction you brewed?” he quipped.

  “Just about the time I think I really know you, you surprise me with the things that come out of your head,” McTrowell chuckled.

  “Darling,” Sparky implored Erasmus, “could I convince you to stay here out of sight with the Peregrine? I’m afraid you’re just a little too British for these parts and I don’t fancy explaining the airship.”

  The Chief Inspector considered the potential perils of the situation. He handed her his police whistle. “Use this if you get in trouble. And I mean my definition of trouble, not yours.” He affected a stern and concerned expression to emphasize his point.

  She reached up under the tartan arisaid covering her blouse and skirt, and tucked the whistle into a pocket. “Yes, dear.”

  Sparky rapped sharply on the cottage door. “Hello, is anyone home?” she called, putting on her best impression of her Auntie Catherine’s accent.

  The old man who opened the door eyed her suspiciously. “What do you want, lass?”

  “My name’s Spar … er, Czarina McTrowell.” She waited for the significance of her last name to sink in. “I’m searching for the man who murdered my father.”

  “He’s not here,” he replied, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

  “I apologize if I implied that he was. He’s been seen in these parts, hiding in barns during the day and moving at night. I, um, a scientist friend of mine devised a way to track him. If you’ll just put this in your barn just inside the door where it will be seen?”

  “How is this blanket supposed to catch him? Is it some kind of trap?”

  “No, but … when he uses it and then moves on, he’ll leave a faint trail that glows in the moonlight. We’ll follow the trail.”

  “We?”

  “My fiancé and I.”

  “One man and a small slip of a lass like you don’t seem hardly enough to catch a murderer.”

  “It will have to be,” she replied stonily.

  The cottage’s occupant stood staring at her without taking the proffered blanket. “What did you say your father’s name was?”

  “Adam McTrowell.”

  “McTrowell, you say?” He nodded and took the blanket. “Do you have more of these? I could give them to my neighbors and save you some time.”

  “Oh, thank you! That would be very helpful.”

  “And this murderer will leave a glowing trail like a will-o’-the-wisp?”

  “Exactly.”

  “We were fortunate that so many of your clansmen were willing to help with the distribution of the horse blankets,” Erasmus commented to Sparky as they launched the Peregrine for the sixth time that day in the dim fading light of sunset. The wind at the edge of Scoury buffeted them with bitter cold and challenged their handling of the little airship. “I had expected the task of distributing them to take at least two days. Shall we return to Inverness for some well-deserved sleep?”

  The airship pilot replied through chattering teeth, “We should get back south toward Loch Shin. The full moon is tonight. If he moves, we can catch him.”

  “You are exhausted. Are you sure flying at night in your state is safe?”

  “Tonight we own the night and the sky. Annunziato Venator doesn’t stand a chance.”

  He could see it was futile to try to dissuade her.

  “There!” Drake shouted, pointing at a tiny dot on the ground that looked like a firefly from the air. Sparky banked the Peregrine to come back toward the faint glow.

  “Do you see any more?”

  “Yes. Stay on your current heading,” he replied. “Wait, what is that?”

  “I can’t look now. What does it look like?”

  “It’s a light following the trail, but it looks like a flame, maybe a torch.” The Chief Inspector watched for a moment longer. “Dear, I think you had better bring the Peregrine around for another pass. You need to see this.”

  Sparky did as Erasmus suggested, flying as slowly as possible. Tempted though she was, she dared not descend for fear that the sound would alert her prey. The ethereal scene that unfolded below looked like a dance of insects. The firefly’s luminous trail flitted with relative purpose. The path of the torch more resembled that of an ant or bee. It followed the firefly at a discreet distance before veering off to another faint light, probably the cottage of another clansman. The ant was joined by another. The pair of ants picked up the firefly’s trail again. Half an hour later, one of the ants veered off, collecting another before rejoining the pursuit.

  After an hour of this dance with the ants gaining more forces, the firefly’s light disappeared. Venator must have ducked into another barn. The ants closed in. The firefly reappeared, glowing more brightly and really flying this time. Venator had not been clever enough to realize the trap of the horse blankets soaked in foxfire, but clearly now understood that he was being hunted. McTrowell opened the throttle on the Peregrine. Drake was puzzled, “Are you not going to follow the pursuit?”

  “I know where they’re driving him,” McTrowell replied through clenched teeth.

  “Where?”

  “Kearvaig at Cape Wrath.”

  “Well, you Scots are certainly a poetic lot.”

  The Chief Inspector surveyed the assembled clanspeople, the light of their torches and the full moon reflecting off the polished blades of freshly sharpened claymores. He had no doubt they intended to truly make it a hunter’s moon. “My dear, this is not the way.”

  “These are my people and we will have our due.”

  “He has committed at least a dozen crimes since we flushed him out of that barn a month ago: the stolen horse, the barn burned to cover his escape last month, even the dead dog. I will walk right into that shieling and arrest him.” He produced his manacles to emphasize his point.

  She looked at his restraints and shook her head. “That is the law; it is not justice.”

  “I am a sworn officer of Her Royal Majesty. I cannot stand by and let this transpire.”

  “Then do not. Walk away.”

  “You know I cannot.”

  “If it will assuage your conscience, I can have my cousin Graham here,” she pointed to a mountain of a man who was testing his skills with his broadsword as easily as Drake would wield a foil, “carry you away.”

  They stared implacably into each other’s eyes by the light of the Blood Moon.

  The Rise of the Dragonfly

  by Anthony Francis

  “If she’s expelled, I resign,” Dean Navid Singhal said. The Chancellor’s eyebrow raised, but Navid stood his ground. “The cadet was acting on orders, and besides, this is Liberation Academy. We’ll not hand out discharge papers the moment a student awakes in hospital.”

  “No, no, of course not,” the Chancellor said, lifting her glasses and drawing a hand over her face. “Any accused must have a chance to acquit themselves; therefore, a disciplinary hearing must be called — if it should be called. Acting on orders, you say?”

  “Yes,” Navid said, his steely gaze betraying none of his nervousness. “I asked Cadet Willstone to investigate some, ah, malfeasance, and her unauthorized flight has the hallmarks of her bold style. Unfortunately, prior to her report, the crash rendered her unconscious—”

  “Th
e crash put her in a coma!” the Chancellor barked, dark eyes boring into him. Rumor had it she’d been a nun — and her legendary glare could make even a Dean feel like a scolded schoolchild. “Why, sir, did you send a cadet investigating in the first place?”

  “Ah, that,” Navid said — and smiled confidently. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  Jeremiah Willstone’s eyes opened slowly. A wood slat ceiling sloped away overhead.

  After a few relaxed breaths, she looked around. She was in a gown, in bed, in hospital. Perhaps a dozen beds in the ward, less than half filled, mostly with older patients, sleeping silent, many with spiderwork scars over them — Lichtenburg figures, the kind left by early blasters.

  She knew this. This was a veteran’s ward — a coma ward.

  Jeremiah sat bolt upright. The room swam. Comas could last for years. Frantically she searched for a mirror, and found one in the shiny surface of a Mechanical nurse rolling towards her, seeking in the distorted reflection of her face the answer to the question: “How long?”

  “You have been un-con-scious for thir-ty days.”

  “A month!” Jeremiah said, horror tingling down to her very toes. She was fighting self-replicating monsters that could possess everything from a rat to a person — godknows how large a colony could have grown in a month! She hopped down. “I must report to Navid at once!”

  “Please re-lax. You may be weak. You might fall,” the Mechanical said, firmly taking her arm just above the elbow and trying to guide her back to bed. “I have call-ed a phy-si-cian. She will be here short-ly.”

  Jeremiah grimaced, quickly glanced over the Mechanical, then reached up with her free arm, feeling just above its elbow joint. She found what she wanted, clamped her fingers, squeezed and twisted — and the Mechanical’s entire forearm came away in her hand.

  “Hold this,” Jeremiah said, plopping the forearm in the Mechanical’s other hand. She whirled to action, as was her habit, but the room decided to join in, and Jeremiah grabbed the Mechanical for support. Quickly, though, she found a satchel she presumed was hers. “Ah.”

  “Please do not in-jure your-self,” the Mechanical protested.

  “I’ll risk injury,” Jeremiah said, extracting her cadet blues, “to save the world.”

  Mere moments after the Chancellor’s departure, Navid’s door burst back open, Professor Dyson storming in without the courtesy of a knock — therefore catapulting him into the middle of a most confidential conference … with Navid’s most extraordinary former student.

  “She looked infuriated! You’re playing a dangerous game, Navid,” Dyson said, striding forward, even as his voice lost steam. “Mark my word, you’ve brought the Chancellor’s eye down on you, and it … will have repercussions … throughout the department …”

  Dyson’s mouth fell open, and Navid smiled, savoring the moment. Then, introductions.

  “No doubt it will. Professor Dyson, good to see you. We were just discussing whether to take you into confidence,” Navid said, extending his hand towards his other, more spectacular visitor. “I believe you’ve already met Commander Willstone … back when she was a cadet.”

  Dyson stared openly at a future Jeremiah, decked out in a full gold Expeditionary tailcoat … with great brass dragonfly wings protruding from her back. Wordlessly, she let the brass wing covers fold back … and the great faery wings unfurled into a gossamer rainbow.

  “Ah yes,” Commander Willstone said, smiling sidelong at Navid: she had to be loving this. “Professor Dyson, Foreign Biology, ah, 301, wasn’t it? Taking your class has served me in good stead, though it did leave me with a touch of xenophobia. Still, good to see you again—”

  “Time travel,” Dyson said, staring at her outstretched hand. “Not possible.”

  “I assure you,” Navid said, glancing at a wizened finger on his mantle, “it is.”

  “Willstone, I just saw you in hospital not two days ago,” Dyson said. “As a cadet—”

  “And shall see me as one again,” the Commander said. “Come out of there — cadet!”

  Jeremiah froze. There was no way that brass-winged impostor could have seen her in this priest-hole Navid had shown her; yet even in the camera obscura projection from the pinhole, the strange creature seemed to be staring straight at her. Reluctantly, Jeremiah stepped out.

  Dead-on, the thing was worse: a not-mirrored mirror, older — and those wings!

  “What were you doing skulking back there, cadet?” Navid said sternly.

  “Sir, practicing discretion, as you advised, sir,” Jeremiah said, on autopilot, her eyes taking in the both of them, jealously noting their close collegial distance around Navid’s desk! Clearly her mentor trusted this … this doppelganger more than her! “I — I don’t understand—”

  “Stay calm, Cadet,” the impostor said, raising her hands, even as she stepped forward and brass wing covers bobbed, but, God, that face, more lines, wings of faery fire, erupting from that tailcoat, and they’d called her Commander — gently, her twin said, “Please, little Dragonfly—”

  Hearing a name she only wrote in her own diary, Jeremiah integrated all the facts at once. Her little stunt had washed her out of the Falconry — but in some desperate future, she had found another way to get wings — by betraying her body to Foreign monsters!

  “Trrraitor!” she screamed, drawing her Kathodenstrahl and firing in one swift motion. Her future, Foreign-infected self caught the aetheric beam with one hand, then, raising the other, aglow with the horrible light of some Foreign power, she released—

  —a bolt of energy, which caught the cadet amidships. She crumpled, Kathodenstrahl falling from her hand, but the elder Jeremiah darted forward, catching her younger self in those wing covers, cupping them like a cradle, slowly lowering the cadet to the ground.

  The Kathodenstrahl sparked as its tubes cracked, and Jeremiah cursed.

  “Blood of the Queen,” she said. “Don’t remember breaking that one—”

  “What in God’s name happened to you,” Dyson said. “Some Foreign infection—”

  “Symbiosis, with the Burning Scarab,” Jeremiah said. “Advanced creatures, if I do say so myself.” Examining her own younger head, she smiled. “Good to see you at last, Dragonfly.” At Navid’s puzzled look, she said, “I rarely get a chance to look at myself.”

  “What about in the mirror?” Navid asked curiously.

  “Mirrors don’t reflect X-Rays or aetheric flux,” Jeremiah said, turning her younger face back and forth with a strange wonder. “They’re no good, at least to my Scarab eyes. I’ve never really gotten a good look at myself … at least, not from the outside.”

  “Scarab eyes? That’s deeper than symbiosis,” Dyson said. “Sounds like parasitism—”

  “Whatever it sounds like, I didn’t know it was in my future,” Jeremiah snapped, even as she carefully cradled her younger head in her older hands. “Gentlemen, I’m afraid I must attempt a memory purge. Fortunately … I know this brain inside and out.”

  And before Navid could speak, power surged between Jeremiah’s fingers. Her younger head twitched, her cadet body bowed, then relaxed into her older hands — but the whole room seemed to flicker, shifting subtly, becoming unfamiliar — an eerie sense of jamais vu.

  “Did you perceive a shift?” Dyson asked, turning. “As if everything rearranged—”

  “Temporal heterodyning — erasing those memories changed something. Commander!” Navid slammed his fist down, wincing at the jolt to the prosthetic finger he’d gained on his time travel misadventure. “You’re far past cadet! Must I continue to chide you for recklessness?”

  “A calculated risk. A small temporal shift is better than a nasty paradox,” Jeremiah said. They helped her lay her younger self out on the sofa, then turned to business. “Sir, we’ve tracked another incursion of the gear plague, gathering here, or perhaps about a month back—”

  “I had you investigating it,” Navid said, “but you, for some reason, stole some wings—
”

  “And crashed them,” Jeremiah said distantly. “I … recall. That’s why I washed out—”

  “You did it for the cause,” Navid said. “What did your younger self have to report?”

  “I … don’t remember,” Jeremiah said. “Oh, bugger me! I think I just erased it!”

  “We could check in on her compatriot,” Dyson said. “The Lady Westenhoq—”

  “I have a better idea,” Jeremiah said, standing. “Why don’t I check in on myself?”

  “Jeremiah,” Navid warned. “Recall you warned me about meddling with the past!”

  “I’ll be discreet.” Jeremiah tapped a date on her springback bracer. “Back in a flash.”

  The hooded figure advanced on the fallen cadet’s prone form. Within the steel mask, what was left of its face smiled. Yes, yes, this was the one that they’d sought earlier, the human with the strange signature, the mechanic with the needed skills, the cadet they suspected—

  With a dazzling flash, a second copy of the cadet appeared, shouting, “Not so fast!”

  —of being a time traveler. Within the steel mask, the figure said: “Oh, bollocks!”

  The cadet, in full Expeditionary garb, leapt forward over her fallen self, planting her legs astride those broken wings and unslinging a long thermionic weapon with a great brass bell on the end — a blunderblast! The hooded figure darted aside, firing its shockgun—

  —but the blast was absorbed by copper shields, filigree ovals flipping before the cadet even as gossamer blossomed behind, no, not shields, wing covers, so familiar, that filigree, even as wings charged with power — the aetheric power of that Foreign scourge, the Burning Scarab!