A steampunk short for Ruth, Steven and Jenn's Dirty Goggles Blog Hop. Enjoy. For rules and to enter, go here. And Ruth has a ton of other helpful info here.
Category: Steampunk
Content: Safe for all.
Word count: 671
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| from Pinterest and altered via Paint |
The Girl in the Glass
by Stacy Bennett-Hoyt
The ghostly image flickered inside the
glass tube as Thinman spun dials and flicked levers.
“What kind of ‘werk is it?” Jasper asked,
picking dust off Thinman’s jacket. The black tailcoat did little to hide
Thinman’s skeletal bronze frame or the steadily whirling flywheels within.
“Sir?”
“What’s its function?”
“None, sir.”
“Explain.”
“It’s a girl, sir.” The mechanical voice
was almost patronizing.
“It’s, … she’s human?” Jasper’s heart
slammed against his sternum, notably lacking the click-whirr-hiss that pervaded the rest of his world.
“I can’t refine the image further, sir.”
Jasper leaned closer, lifting his goggles
to his forehead which forced his black hair into a spiky plume.
There hadn’t been a human on Portalune
since the Exodus. Except for Jasper, of course. Stowed away on the first rocket
to land, he’d been asleep, unnoticed, the night everyone disappeared. Thinman
said war had called everyone home, though the blue-green orb remained
untroubled from Jasper’s vantage.
Pale lips moved inside the dirty tube,
silently pleading. “Where’s the message coming
from?”
A hiss of steam and Thinman rose with a
smooth swish of joints to check indicators and gages. “Triangulating location.”
Jasper thumped his cane impatiently while
Thinman’s inner abacus calculated, click-ping-whirr. “Three kilometers
beyond the Tunnels.”
Fear curled its icy fingers into Jasper.
Evil lurked in the Tunnels, those bloody bastards that had taken his leg. Looking
again at the ghost-girl, his loneliness was suffocating. He loved his
clockwerks and, in their own way, they loved him. But, she — she was warm,
breathing flesh. She could laugh.
He swore and paced the concrete bunker,
cane and metal foot rapping in syncopated time as fear and need warred within
him. He stopped suddenly and swept his top hat from the rack. Drawing his
goggles down over his eyes, he announced. “We have to help her.”
Thinman turned so fast Jasper could have
sworn he was surprised. “But your orders...”
“I know what I said. Set coordinates by
your secondary gyroscope.”
“Affirmed.”
Jasper pulled open a drawer and withdrew a
belt that holstered single-handed crossbow loaded with iron spikes and a
miniature Gatling. He strapped it on and slipped a folding knife into his
garret. Pulling a shotgun off the wall, he thrust it at Thinman.
“Sir?”
“In case of Slinkers.”
Then Jasper strapped on knee-length spats
and picked up two oil cans, praying there weren’t many soggy places along the
way.
He didn’t wait for Thinman but yanked a
torch from the cupboard and strode out with all the inevitability of a man
running downhill. Through Portalune’s concrete halls, gears and pistons flanked
them. They dropped down wrought-iron ladders and across cagey catwalks over
boilers, among smokestacks and down again into the sewers where his path
paralleled row upon row of copper pipe and wire. And everywhere a haze of steam
obscured the dingy world illuminated by yellow flickering lamplight.
The diggerwerk named Bernard crouched at
the entrance to a vaulted brick atrium that extended into darkness. Bernard’s
large iron treads were covered with dried chalky moon-dust from its efforts to
explore and expand the base, retired since the unpleasant discovery
of some pre-existing tunnels and the warren’s vicious inhabitants. Jasper shivered
in memory though it had been years ago.
His torch’s thin beam stabbed the dusty
steamy darkness which replied with angry squeaking. Jasper hesitated. Then, a
creature rushed out of the dark at him. Its lanky hairless body slithered on
short legs. It had long claws, a serpent tail and a reptilian head, and it
stood no taller than his shin.
“Careful, sir. Slinker.” Thinman’s
articulated hand grabbed his arm tightly.
The creature stopped, hissing impotently at
them. “What? That? Slinker’s are much bigger.”
“You were very small.”
“But my leg.”
“Gangrene, sir.”
Jasper turned back and unceremoniously shot the
Slinker which dropped like a wet rag. “Bloody anticlimactic,” he muttered.
“This
way, sir,” Thinman shuffled into the darkness, their way illuminated only by
the tiny torch and Jasper’s desperate hope that the girl in the glass was real and
was still alive.
