The Morgenshtern was a cathedral of a mothership. With its ornate spires and flying buttresses, the iron chandelier eclipsed the moon, looming over the Cite du Lumiere as an omen of the end times. Only now did the sirens sound. Amadeus gazed out the enormous window upon the burning city, surrounded by cogitators and lobotomized ensigns. Behind him, a colossal clock ticked on endlessly, ensnared by the Devil’s Hour, as a meter of daemonic power.
“Prepare for a full scale assault,” he ordered. “Do not relent.”
He took a seat upon the throne, fist pressed against his chin, watching the gargoyle-drones of flesh and steel take flight; claws outstretched, muzzles as mortars, shrieking and dive bombing the basilicas and salons. They danced madly in a spiraling onslaught, tearing riflemen and grenadiers limb from limb. It was a worthy distraction, almost allowing him to ignore the nagging doubts in the darkest recesses of the skull.
Charles…. Beatrice…. Why can’t I kill them?
He twitched with hesitation. Even now, Amadeus carried out the deaths of thousands. This was no different than Chimay. This would cripple the Imperium and the Entente, allowing him to reach the Machine unopposed and pave the way to the final kingdom.
Amadeus clenched his fists and commanded, “Deploy the legionaries.”
An organ’s fanfare filled the heavens. Beneath the clerestories, he felt dropships tremble and launch from the traceried ports, descending to the open streets, cradling agents of destruction. And yet, he was still lost in thought. His hesitation wasn’t born of sentimentality per se but rather an inability to follow through. As if he was hardwired against ending Victor’s friends. A weakness that could not be tolerated, and yet, he already had Beatrice locked away in the brig. Why? What exactly did he hope to accomplish by holding her hostage? She wasn’t even a threat to his mission. An insect that he couldn’t bring himself to crush. It was infuriating.
“Focus main batteries on the outer turrets. Two o’clock.”
Even in the heat of battle, Amadeus found himself in the heart of anxiety. A verminous voice screamed along the undertow of his thoughts, demanding that he cease the attack. It was distant and wretched, as if his own mind was a prison for another’s soul.
“Increase firepower by ten percent.”
With a tremendous surge of infernal energy, the hell cannons breached the outer walls, granting the Mannequin Legion access to Victory Square. In mere hours, yet another city of man would fall to its broken, battered knees. Amadeus’s lips curled into a monstrous sneer, though he shuddered, feeling a tear trickle down his cheek. Regardless, Lumiere would burn. These casualties would be shadows on the brickwork.
They weren’t real.
#
Empress Johanna rushed to the balcony to see the city aflame. Screams filled the air, punctuated by deafening explosions and sirens. Gunpowder and sulfur choked the horizon as the monuments of wise men toppled in the wake of the Morgenshtern, looming as a behemoth in the night sky, black and stark against the raging flames. In the city below, daemons engulfed and raged against the gendarmeries, roiling in tides of gnashing teeth.
Amadeus had come for Lumiere.
Though she wore no regalia or symbols of authority, only a silk nightgown, Johanna’s heart burned with the rage of nations. She clutched the railing with white knuckles, eying the city as weapons of betrayal conspired to reduce it to ash. The Mannequin Legion should’ve been her vanguard. Her soldiers which breached these marble walls. Not in the name of a madman’s whim but of her own strategic vision. Lumiere was her responsibility now. She marched down the steps, only to encounter her Imperial Guard, clad in violet cloth and plate mail.
“Your holiness,” called a petty officer, “our sensors are detecting an abnormal influx of Infernal energy! Something’s heading this way.”
“I can see that,” she snapped, turning to her men. “Don’t just stand there. Move!” She grabbed the officer by the arm. “Take me to the war room. Now. And get the sappers online.”
Among the spires of the Seaside Parliament, where Debussy had signed his nation away, Johanna surrounded herself with consoles and computers, staring out the tall windows upon the blazing siege. Red lights flashed her in the face as alarms blared in a brass band of emergency.
Somme was already there to meet her. “Your grace—”
“Activate the Verne,” she spat. “Lesser guns, fire at will.”
The desk sappers glanced at each other nervously but obeyed. As they typed in a handful of codes, pulsing surges and static shrieked in Johanna’s ears. Out the window, she watched gun turrets send shells streaking into the sky, into tiltrotors and dropships. This was a duel of commanders, of world leaders, and she would triumph.
“Channel all auxiliary power to the Verne,” Johanna said. “Take aim. Eight o’clock.”
Somme took a step back. Crimson light radiated from the mothership’s bridge like the eye of a cyclopean beast, burning with a lust for carnage. Slowly, the Verne stirred from its passive state as the train cars began to align on the encircling tracks. Tons of iron slammed and locked into position, quaking the city to its foundations—though cumbersome, its long barrel took aim, meter by meter, inch by inch.
“Target locked, your holiness.”
“Fire!”
#
A direct hit. Amadeus glowered from the bridge, flanked by monstrous devices and drones, viewing the city from far above. The Morgensthern quaked in the wake of raw force as the Verne’s barrel smoked with neon vapor. Power was shut down in the lower decks as the mothership began to scream, as steam shrieked from open wounds in steel ducts. He clenched the arms of his seat, feeling the vessel tremble from spire to keel.
What was that—?
The guns of Lumiere continued to bombard the mothership in a barrage of contrails and rockets, battering its hull with mortar and missile. What was happening? He was invulnerable. Nothing could wound him. Slowly, the threat of failure began to sink in. With gritted teeth, Amadeus launched to his feet and came to the window’s edge.
“I want every gun we have,” he said, “to fire on that cannon.”
His minions obeyed, only shells to bounce off its steel. Not a dent was made. Not even as torrents of leads rattled against the engines and railway tracks. It was absurd. Nothing could match the Morgenshtern. Was this a glimmer of defeat? Would brute force not win this battle? He gripped the railing like a child about to throw a temper tantrum.
“Ready the disintegrators. Turn it to ash.”
Still nothing. Amadeus screamed, his face burned with scarlet wrath.
“My lord,” cried an ensign, “batteries are down thirty percent—”
Amadeus tore into the poor soul’s throat, ripping out his windpipe and the cables tied to his lungs. The fiend dragged a tactical drone from weapons control and threw him into the commander’s chair, only to march down the hall. He still had a few tricks up his sleeve. A band of legionaries joined him with baroque rifles at hand—automatons bound his service.
“Prepare my fighter for deployment.”
The longer Amadeus seethed, the more a wayward thought festered in his mind. If he wanted to find Edgar, let alone activate the Machine, then he’d need to comprise a few things. It wasn’t a loss. Rather, a demonstration of a different kind of strength. Then, as if on a whim, it hit him. Why destroy Johanna when he could negotiate? He already did with Somme. It was a strange epiphany, one that made the great generals of history roll over in their graves. One that made him all the more dangerous. Though he seethed and simmered, Amadeus wasn’t opposed to different means for the same name. Extinction or attrition, it mattered not.
The blast door jerked open, and Amadeus ventured into the hangar. He mused over what craft would best suit the mission at hand. A sudden blast shook the Morgenshtern. Stray bits of latticework clattered to the steel paneled floor. On a whim, Amadeus chose a tiltrotor of flesh and steel, stripped of its wetware computer, replaced with a one-man cockpit and control panel. The board was set long ago, but the pieces were still in motion. The ignition was hit, and Amadeus took flight among his rogue squadrons, howling into the night.
#
Johanna watched the Morgenshtern spark and tilt in the night sky, groaning as a heavenward calamity. The hideous red lights along its starboard shuddered on and off as engines whined and droned, compromised yet still floating among the spires and smokestacks.
“Did we get it?” Johanna asked.
“Seems so,” Somme nodded, “although I’m not exactly certain.”
The city was still aflame. Johanna gazed down into the city streets, watching the streets crumble into heaps of rubble under constant mortar fire. The ear-shredding grind of stone against stone filled her ears as age-old columns and pediments collapsed in heaps of rubble. Great libraries had caught fire, centuries of literature destroyed in a holocaust lit by a pretentious warlord. One who claimed to know every work by the synopsis but had never felt the smoothness of a leather-bound tome. It was the ultimate arrogance. Even she shed a tear in the wake of such destruction. Such lore was meant to be hoarded by the elite, not outright destroyed. And yet, she kept calm. Then came a second alarm, louder than the first. Johanna turned to her sappers and technicians as they stuttered and skimmed sudden alerts.
“What now?” she snapped.
“Enemy fighters, they’re—”
The shriek of industrial machinery carried from far above, a hideous cry which only gained volume as it descended, as the shrill shriek of a dive bomber reverberated within the war room, punctuated by the howls of hell. Gunfire filled the surrounding bunkers with the clatter of steel against steel until the outer bastion was a quagmire of corpses.
Rising from the acropolis, a gunship reared its ugly head. It was forged of flesh and sinew, its blades orbiting a singular sphere of stitches and pale skin, stretched to a militant degree, grafted with iron bits and apparatuses, intent on one thing—to kill. Johanna and her entourage took cover behind a pillar, deafened by rapid fire. It was a mannequin tiltrotor, a fighter craft designed to be cheap, expendable, and lethal. Piloted by an electrical impulse and central processing unit, the drone was one of many, circling the perimeter like a starving buzzard. Then the guns stopped. Something had blasted the tiltrotor out of the sky. The stench of gasoline and charred flesh filled her nostrils as it fell to the streets.
“Empress Johanna,” a voice broadcasted over the speakers, “it has been some time.”
An interceptor of similar design had taken the tiltrotor’s place, its blinding lights bearing down on the Empress and her entourage. Against the warnings of her subjects and sensibilities, Johanna clenched her fists and stepped out from behind the pillar. She fettered her fear, staring the fiend down, eying the cooling chambers of the hollow turrets.
“Not a negotiator, are you?” she scoffed.
“Political power comes from the barrel of a gun,” Amadeus said. “I’m sure we can both agree on that.” There was much Johanna wanted to say. To list the atrocities he’d committed and cities he’d burned to the ground on a bastardly whim, and yet, she knew that her hands were stained with as much blood—the blood of her own people. “I’ve come under diplomatic pretenses,” the fiend continued, “as difficult as it may be to believe.”
Johanna could’ve sworn she’d misheard him. “Excuse me?”
“You have something I need,” Amadeus said, “and I have something that may interest you.” He sneered. “Ever heard of something called the Machine?”
Johanna turned to Somme who still cowered under a desk. Something felt off about the doctor. As if he was terrified of them both in equal measure.
“What of it?” she asked.
“Something exists beneath your city. Something you’ve failed to notice or weaponize. An artifact capable of shattering the world. And reshaping it in our image. The Machine is all this and more. And I’d be willing to share its power with you.”
Amadeus’s words flooded her mind with the promises of power and delusions of grandeur. Her lips were about to curl into a yes, but something stopped her.
“Why?” Johanna asked. “Why should I trust you? All you’ve done is bring ruin to the world. You’ve betrayed my trust at every turn. Your raw power is the only thing keeping me from ending your miserable life. At least I kill for a purpose beyond my own ego—”
The guns began to turn, and she clammed up. “I encourage you to choose your next words carefully,” Amadeus said. “They may be your last.”
“Is that all you can do?” Johanna snapped. “Threaten and beat your chest. Go ahead, open fire. Kill me and everyone else in this room. Burn the city to the ground. One day, you’ll find yourself alone in a world of your own making. And it will be worse than any hell.” For a fleeting moment, she remembered why she fought—a state of enlightened absolutism. “You can promise me the world, but I assure you, my kingdom has no place for you.”
Amadeus opened his mouth as if to retort, but nothing escaped his lips. Clearly, he hadn’t considered that Johanna would refuse his offer. For whatever reason, the fiend took flight without spending a single bullet. He’d given away more than he’d intended—a diplomatic blunder. The existence of the Machine was tantalizing, and if it lay under the Imperial capital, Johanna would look into such matters with keen interest. Perhaps this was the divine providence the specter of her ancestor referred to. Her chance to be worthy of remembrance, to claim her place among the kings of old. Moments passed, and the Morgenshtern departed in full retreat. The Devil’s Hour had abated, and the daemons along with it. She smiled with smug satisfaction. It had been too long since she’d tasted victory, however pyrrhic.
“Doctor Somme,” she said. “Are you familiar with the Machine?”
“Painfully familiar….”