Clockwork Pandora (Heart of Bronze Book 2) Read online

  Clockwork Pandora

  A Heart of Bronze Novel

  Text and Cover Design by Michael J. Rigg

  Original E-Publication © 2018 by Michael J. Rigg

  SkyTrain Publishing

  via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic

  or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval

  without permission in writing from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and occurrences are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover model used for illustration only, and may not endorse or represent the book’s subject.

  Cover design by Michael J. Rigg

  Images purchased through dreamstime.com

  For more adventures in the Heart of Bronze, check out the Steam Rollers Adventure Podcast on most podcast catchers, or visit www.riggstories.com/the-podcast for more information.

  To contact the author: [email protected]

  To listen to the podcast: www.riggstories.com/the-podcast

  Other Heart of Bronze Stories

  Clockwork Looking Glass

  The Steam Rollers Adventure Podcast (audio)

  This book is dedicated to my muse,

  my inspiration, the love of my life forever and always.

  To my wonderful wife

  Melanie Rigg

  Special Thanks

  Leone Moyse

  To Larry and Theresa

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1, Elizabeth Barrens

  Chapter 2, Crash Landers

  Chapter 3, The King of New Cali

  Chapter 4, The Sky Hunters

  Chapter 5, Red Roach

  Chapter 6, Passengers

  Chapter 7, Fallen Angel

  Chapter 8, Cod

  Chapter 9, Turns and Returns

  Chapter 10, A Cuppa and a Chat

  Chapter 11, Pandora

  Chapter 12, A Decent Proposal

  Chapter 13, Scribbler

  Chapter 14, Terminus

  Chapter 15, Resolution

  Chapter 16, Third Time’s the Charm

  Chapter 17, Confrontation

  Chapter 18, The Drop Into Nothingness

  Chapter 19, The Return

  Chapter 20, The Miracle

  Epilogue: The Magis Reclusivi

  Bronze Heartfelt Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  “New Cali” by Scribbler John

  (From The Diaries of Devin J. Menske, a Profile of Strength)

  She hovers on a sea of gold,

  a city of steel and steam and coal.

  The toil of backs sheened in sweat and blood,

  a monument of mystery that escaped the flood.

  Laden with spoils, scaling skies of blue,

  a city on the air, a fortress for the few.

  The spoils of the rich who sought there to flee,

  despite all the cries and impoverished pleas.

  Aloft she soars on a cloud of steam,

  a massive ship city of the ‘industrial dream,’

  a dream that’s a lie built on nothing but hope,

  fueled by the fear of what keeps her afloat.

  So she, our New Cali, continues to drift,

  a city of ghosts on a mysterious lift.

  Thousands of tons of concrete and bronze,

  glide high in the air like a bird on a pond.

  They ask if she'll float there forever and ever,

  for a plummeting city won't come down like a feather.

  Since no one can venture, and no science can say,

  All that can be said is just... "Please stay away."

  Chapter 1, Elizabeth Barrens

  I stared into the sunken, gray sockets of the corpse as she gazed up at me with a silent plea for help that never came. I was lost in wonder at what she had seen in her last moments before the quake pulled her home down around her, and my eyes burned with the threat of tears over the loneliness she must have felt with her last breath. I wondered what her voice had once sounded like, if it was as musical as I imagined it to be.

  I reached up and scratched the stubble of my chin through the thin kerchief that covered my nose and mouth, then flexed my arthritic fingers before removing the kerchief and unfurling it before the dead woman. I risked a sniff of the air and was surprised the smell of death wasn’t as bad as it could have been with the heat and closeness of the place. The desiccated body hadn’t been found by animals, though insects had long ago made off with patches of her papery skin.

  I bowed to her as gentlemanly as my aching back would allow, then I gently draped the kerchief over her face.

  “Rest well, young lady,” I murmured.

  I set about my work ransacking her house.

  The quake happened long ago, and what was left of the California coast that wasn’t under water or ravaged by rogue fires was lost to time, petrified where it died, a testament to times of frivolity, gaiety and the rampant whimsy of a nation trying to make sense of one failed Reconstruction after another. As the Imperial North secretly stole portions of land from Oregon, California, and Washington, and the Republic of Texas sent raiding parties to seize resources from Nevada and southern California, the Confederate Republic simply claimed the west as its own, patrolling the skies over the wastelands with the efforts of airship privateers hired out of Utah and Colorado. California was generally left to scavengers like me.

  The Civil Wars didn’t seem to take much away from this young lady, whose name was Elizabeth Barrens—which I surmised from the name embossed on a padded ledger covered in thick ash dust, found in the remnants of an old roll-top desk. From what I learned of her, in my snooping through her rubble, was that she was a solitary girl, I imagined somewhat chaste by the primness of her home and evidence of modest dress. Her home, although broken by the quake, had once been immaculate. Brocade wing chairs and upholstered settees were framed by crooked walls that once held scores of framed pictures. I picked one off the floor, its broken glass crumbling over my boots. It was oval with an ornate gold frame in a delicate floral pattern. In the tintype image I saw a younger version of Elizabeth with her starch-faced parents.

  There were no images of the young lady with a young gentleman, though her home was replete with young men tucked within the pages of several leather bound romance novels on the shelf in the broken drawing room. I found one framed image on the crushed spine of a once grand piano, a portrait of Elizabeth as she might have appeared days or weeks before the quake, sitting atop a horse at some fairground. I tucked the small, silver framed image, along with the family portrait, into my canvas day bag. The frames clacked against the can of soup I scrounged from the kitchen.

  I opened one of the romance novels to a page in the middle, and was reading about a woman’s tentative steps into the stables of her estate, hoping against hope that she would find “Renaldo” bare chested and glistening with the sheen of hard work, when I heard something outside. I quickly closed the book and tucked it into my bag before making my way to a window shaded by dust and grime. I licked my thumb and rubbed a spot clean on the glass so I could see.

  The street, if one could call the crooked dirt road mottled with the flotsam of disaster a street, was vacant and bathed in the hot white light of mid-morning. Near the window through which I peered was the bicycle that brought me here. It was propped neatly against an upright hitching post at the end of the walkway. Granted, the r
oof of the house had caved in, the same as the few other standing homes on this block, leaving it to look no different than any other quake-ravaged home. There was nothing remarkable about it…except for the obvious bicycle.

  Movement caught my eye and I looked to see the bobbing head of a black nag. Another horse followed, then another. I strained to see the riders, though I knew the options for who they might be were limited.

  “Damn.” My voice was a whisper, but I still startled myself, suddenly iced with fear that somehow the Texans would hear me. I glanced once more to the bicycle and cringed. It was too late for me to try and run out and kick it over to make it look like any other wasted item in this part of Old Santa Barbara. My eyes quickly danced over the interior of the house. The grit and shambles of broken items made it hard to read my footprints in the ash dust. Still, I had to find a place to hide.

  I glanced back through the window. The Texans were closer and I could make out their assembled uniforms. All three—now four—wore long coats painted with the pale dust of travel. Their rank insignia and markings were Confederate in origin, as was the red flag on the sleeve of their leader, but many of the patches were covered with strips of green cloth tied at angles. The leader sported a stained green scarf around the goggles perched atop his slouch hat, a military technique used to keep the sun from flashing on the lenses. Two of the other men similarly covered their lenses to prevent an identifying flash, the third apparently unconcerned as his goggles hung around the neck of his hatless head.

  All four of the men looked like they had traveled far without rest. My hand immediately went to the canteen at my hip. It sloshed about half full of tepid water, certainly not enough to share. I wondered how much water was in the military canteens hanging from their belts. Then my eyes moved to the short twin-barreled Winchester Gearboxes strapped to their backs, the silver Colts in the holsters on their hips, and the black bandoleers of ammunition across their chests. My eyes widened at the hatless man, who wore a black vest under his duster, crisscrossed with chains to multiple pocket watches. Tiny skeleton keys hung from the chains. In fact, the man was entirely adorned in the keys, from cords and chains around his neck, from the green garters on the sleeves of his coat; he even wore a key-shaped tattoo on his left cheek.

  These men weren’t simple bandits. They were witch hunters. Some called them the Glass Cavalry, others Greencoats. Whatever name they adopted for themselves, they were known far and wide as vicious and selfish bounty hunters who didn’t bother with treaties or warrants or borders. They were formed in the Republic of Texas, and hired by Confederates and Imperials alike, licensed raiders, and the only people in the Americas who could brandish weapons without a Corporate Ident.

  Though I wasn’t a witch, I may as well have been one. If they saw me, they’d declare my very existence in this abandoned hell some form of witchcraft. The Keymaster would wave his baubles at me and nod, then the others would shoot me, cut off my head, and burn my parts in the dusty street.

  One of the men laughed loudly and pointed up the street. Their captain nodded. It was the bicycle the other was pointing at.

  The leader growled deep in his throat. “Check it out.”

  I turned and moved quickly from the window. There was no place to hide. The outer rooms were open to daylight, their closets smashed. The bed in a guest chamber lay crushed under the weight of the fallen attic loft. I could never get under it. The largest pile of wreckage in the room was under the crisscrossing beams of the ceiling, one of which impaled poor Elizabeth and left her to rot. It was there that I dashed, trying desperately to will my boots not to clatter on the messy floor as I dropped to my hands and knees next to my lady.

  Outside, the cavalryman’s spurs jangled and I could hear his heavy boots on the broken wooden porch. I panted as I scrambled into a dark crack, a makeshift mahogany cave of fallen beams and a toppled bureau that covered Elizabeth’s lower half. I pushed against her papery body, whispering my apologies as my hand used her bony leg for leverage while I pulled myself deeper into my hiding place.

  The front door bashed open as I tucked my legs under me and pinched my eyes shut. I struggled to slow my breath as I heard the spurs and boots crunch their way inside.

  “Hey!” the hunter called. “That yer gearwheel outside?”

  I heard the creak of leather as he drew his iron, winced hard as the crunch of his feet drew closer. I glanced up from my dark cover to see the bright red paisley kerchief covering Elizabeth’s face and nearly gasped out loud. I quickly reached up and snatched a corner of the cloth, pulling it toward me with a snap of my wrist even as the Greencoat’s boots edged closer. Had he seen it?

  “Well… Whadda we got here?”

  I pinched my eyes closed for a moment and opened my mouth. I was about to call out my apologies when he spoke again.

  “Hey thar, sweet thang.”

  I blinked and saw a knee touch down next to Elizabeth’s shoulder. I could almost smell the hot road dust and whiskey on the man as he leaned down over the woman’s torso, his leather gauntleted finger poking at her deflated bodice. “Shame you ain’t fresher,” he grumbled. I blushed on Elizabeth’s behalf while also gritting my teeth at the man’s vile effrontery.

  “Such a perty mouth too.” The gloved finger traced the lips of her gaping mouth frozen in what now appeared as a silent scream for help from the violation of the Greencoat’s presence.

  From outside came a yell, “Well? We ain’t gonna make Old Bakersfield by nightfall if we don’t keep movin’!”

  “All right!” the man near my makeshift cubbyhole called out. The volume of his voice rattled the wood around me and I hoped I wouldn’t be crushed should it suddenly shift.

  “Anything?” Came the call from outside.

  “Hang on, damn ya!”

  I blinked and watched as the fingers continued to intrude into Elizabeth’s mouth, moving slowly in and out over the dried husk of her tongue. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, nor comprehend the selfish thoughts of the bandit performing the deed, until I heard a slight moan escape his lips.

  “Hank! Get yer ass back out here!”

  Ignoring his compatriots, Elizabeth’s abuser continued the poking motion of his fingers inside her mouth. His moan turned into a low grumbling, “That’s it. Come to papa.”

  I was about to close my eyes to the grotesque scene when I heard a muffled crack from within the woman’s mummified skull. My eyes narrowed as I watched Hank’s other hand cover the woman’s eyes and nose, then push down to force her jaw apart as his other hand broke her mouth apart like a child’s balsa wood toy. The gloved hand with the probing fingers retracted with a small pale object that glinted. A gold-filled tooth!

  “We’re leavin’ yer ass here!” I heard a horse complain and a spur jingle outside.

  That was enough prompting for Hank to quickly stand with the tooth and clambor his way back outside. “I’m comin’, damn you all!”

  He didn’t bother to close the door behind him, which was fine by me because it made it easier for me to hear them move along. I swallowed hard and continued holding my breath until they were some ways off, then I looked up to Elizabeth, her ruined beauty now even more spoiled by the man’s treatment of her corpse. Her jaw hung askew from the rest of her dried skull, her frozen gray eyes now pushed in to blacken her chalky sockets. My chin puckered to hold back my tears as I patted her leg, waiting a few moments more before crawling out of my hidey-hole, then slowly rising to my feet. I cracked my back, flexed my sore arms, then re-covered what was left of the poor woman’s face.

  I moved to the door and peered out, carefully craning my neck to catch the ass ends of the horses making the turn east near the end of the ruined street. I rubbed my shoulder, checked the sling of my day bag, and gave Elizabeth’s home and final resting place one last look, gave her a nod of apology, then slipped out, quickly moving across the dusty street, turning the way the Greencoats had come, toward the shore.

  Toward home. br />
  Chapter 2, Crash Landers

  The sun shone brightly overhead, bathing the field and abandoned farmhouse in a warm, late September light.

  Kevin didn’t see promise in the day, though. He finished relieving himself behind a tree, grunting and grumbling at the near-impossible feat of buttoning up his trousers with his one good arm and hand, then he popped his neck and sighed. He drew a deep breath, then turned and limped his way down toward the creek.

  Since jumping out of the Mystic Lady two days ago, Kevin and Maggie Tarnish had been doggedly trekking across farmland and dirt roads in the direction of the column of black smoke that was once a pirate airship. To Kevin it seemed closer than it was. Now it seemed they would never catch up to it before the smoke dissipated and their trail dried up.

  He stopped several paces from the edge of the creek and watched his young wife attempting to clean out an old whiskey bottle by sluicing it with water. Maggie’s dyed purple-black-blond locks drooped on either side of her face, and though the cute cat whisker tattoo on her cheek drooped in a perpetual frown, and her blouse and torn skirt hung on her tiny frame like rags.

  Kevin lifted his whiskered chin. “What did you find, Mags?”

  Maggie gasped and glanced over her shoulder, almost dropping the bottle into the creek. She sputtered out, “Oh! Kevin! Land o’ stars, love, you’re like t’ send me t’ the sea!” She gestured at the creek, which was so shallow Kevin could see schools of minnows bobbing in an out of rocks from where he stood.

  “Doubtful that little thing would carry you to the sea, darling. Besides, we’re too far inland for that to amount to much for miles.” He scratched at his scalp, pushed back his long dark hair, and nodded to the bottle in her hand. “Not much of a canteen, but I guess it’ll do us, hm?” He nodded to the creek. “That will probably parallel us for a spell, then swerve southward, looks like.”