Chapter Two

“Boarded!”

1.

A row of grim-faced men crowded close, squinting at Nathanial over the sights of their carbines. They were very clean, Nathanial thought, which he admitted might be a queer first impression for a normal chap, but he had not bathed in nearly two weeks. His hair was oily, and his scalp itched. A thick ginger beard crusted his chin and jaw, while these men were clean-shaven. Their blue coveralls were pristine, their carbines shiny and well oiled. His clothes were dirty and stank like some wild animal.

Annabelle had disappeared not long after the ships had hailed. Nathanial could only wonder where she gotten herself to, but he was glad she had chosen that moment to hide. If there was to be violence, he hoped she would have the good sense to stay hidden.

Two men emerged from the airlock. One was a tiny fellow, perhaps in his sixties, small-boned, with a sharp patrician nose on which perched a pair of spectacles. His lips were thin and bloodless, and his skin had the papery look of one who had crossed the threshold into old age. With him was his near antithesis; a large, broad-shouldered Irishman with bright yellow hair, florid skin, and an energy that made the room crackle with his presence. A grin split the Irishman’s face, while the little man remained reserved.

“Be back ’round in a moment,” the Irishman said, and he left, motioning for two of the men to follow him. The little man nodded, almost imperceptibly. Nathanial got the impression that the man’s every movement was microscopic, so one had to pay strict attention to the man to know what he was thinking or doing.

He spoke.

“You’re English,” he said.

Nathanial nodded. “I am. And you’re clearly not. Belgian? Austrian?”

“You’re in restricted space, and by a standing order from your mother country, you’re to be held in custody until such time as agents will be sent from Earth to retrieve you so you might stand trial.”

Nathanial held up a hand. “One moment, sir. Am I given to understand that I am being taken prisoner by Her Majesty’s Royal Navy? If that is the case, where are your ship’s colours? Why are these ratings not in uniform, and furthermore, why is a foreigner clearly in command?”

“Know much about the Navy, do you, sir?”

“Suffice it to say, I’ve become well-acquainted with them as of late, and I am in the employ of the British Government. I also know my rights as a Crown citizen, and it doesn’t involve my being arrested without knowing the nature of my crimes.”

“I’ve just explained them to you.”

Nathanial laughed. “And you truly expect me to believe such rubbish?”

“It matters very little to me what you believe, sir. I can detain you by right of law and by right of arms, and I am doing so with both in mind.”

A nervous tremor passed through the armed men. Nathanial took their measure. One held his weapon incorrectly. Another’s hands shook. These were not soldiers. Some of these men had never so much as held a gun before in their lives. He could not say what this was about, but Nathanial knew what it was not. If he did not acquiesce, one of these nervous men might get even more so, and the consequences could become catastrophic. The men had taken him in front of the viewport, after all. Any stray gunfire would spell the deaths of every man on board.

“Let me get my books, then.”

The small man shook his head. “Your flyer will be towed and your belongings left on board. They will be sent with you back to Earth when you are retrieved by the proper authorities.”

A shot rang out, and Nathanial’s blood ran cold. The men were frightened, now, making him tense. When a bullet from an errant gun did not pierce his chest, he let out a long, protracted sigh. Two men dragged a furious Annabelle onto the bridge. The Irishman followed, chuckling at her antics.

“Found her easily enough,” he said. “Really, if you’re planning to hide from us, stay out of sight of our telescope.”

2.

The cutters were small ships, smaller even than Esmeralda, equipped for crews of five, though as many as ten or even twenty could be housed comfortably for short journeys. Such flyers were not long-range vessels, which left Nathanial wondering where they were headed. Unless he missed his guess, they were deep in the aether, with no planets for days or even weeks. A larger ship, perhaps, like Sovereign, could be patrolling the aether, yet, as he’d noted earlier, these men were not Royal Navy. And what was this foolish business about restricted space?

A storeroom was cleared and turned into a makeshift prison cell, with two armed guards posted outside. Nathanial sat on the floor, scratching an itch on the back of his head. Annabelle paced the tiny bit of floor available to her. She was dressed much the same as she had been when Nathanial had last seen her, but he knew from experience that she had her derringer and knife secreted in places beneath her skirts that would be improper for a man to search. The gunshot he had heard earlier had come from one of the men sent to fetch her. She had leapt on his back suddenly, and the man had squeezed off a shot before the others, the big Irishman included, had wrestled her to the ground.

Now she looked more like a caged animal. Gone was the generosity and industry he had witnessed in their journey from Mercury. Truly, the old Annabelle had returned, and, he had to confess, much of his old vigour was returning as well. The veil of doom was lifting from his shoulders just as the twin stones of anxiety and boredom were crashing down on her, as they often did when she had no external incidences to engage her.

“Where do you think they’re taking us?” she asked for the eighth time.

“We won’t know until we get there,” he said.

Annabelle clearly did not like this response. “What if they decide to kill us?”

“They could have done that already. They have a specific destination in mind, and I, for one, am curious to see what it may be.”

“Even under arrest?”

Nathanial shrugged. Unless they had fallen into the hands of the Germans or the Russians, he was certain he could talk his way out of their predicament. His importance to the interplanetary efforts would be currency enough to buy his and Annabelle’s freedom, regardless of what phantom law they might have inadvertently broken. If they had broken any at all. Briefly, he wondered if perhaps groups independent of sovereign nations had gotten their hands on liftwood supplies or found a way to build an aether propeller, but he quickly discarded the line of thought. The notion of it made him want to laugh. Aether pirates! Sounded like some fanciful bit of dribble for the penny dreadfuls.

His musings were interrupted by a sudden shaking of the hull. At first it was merely a vibration, but before he could think two thoughts in a row the vibration had become a rumble. Annabelle lost her footing, catching herself on the storeroom wall. Shouts from the crew rang out. Nathanial could hear them scrambling to keep the cutter on course.

“What’s going on?” Annabelle shouted above the din.

“Aether vortex!” he replied. “A very big one, from the feel of it!”

In his time on HMS Sovereign he had experienced just such an anomaly, where the aether streams of Earth and Venus had met and reacted violently. The resultant “storm” could have destroyed Sovereign had it not been for his improvements to the design of the aether propeller governor. He recalled being afraid then, even though the chaps under Folkard had been particularly adept at navigating its outer edge. Still, the buffering the ship had received was nothing compared to what he was feeling now. Part of that had to do with the overall size of the ship. Sovereign had carried two cutters roughly the same size as this one in her belly, but that was only a portion of his concern. This vortex was definitely larger, and by turns more violent.

The roaring became a screeching. Annabelle clapped hands over her ears and screamed, though the noise she made was drowned. Visions filled Nathanial’s head of the cutter ripping apart and their bodies floating free with the debris. He closed his eyes and drew his knees to his chest, where he sat with his head covered by his arms. His insides felt gelatinous, sloshing about inside his abdomen.

Moments later, the screeching subsided, reduced to a roar, and so forth until all was silent again.

“My God!” Annabelle whispered. She was shaking.

The door opened a moment later, and the Irishman stuck his head inside. “Everyone here all right? No one shaken apart, or the like?” He was grinning from ear to ear.

“Hale and hearty,” Nathanial said. “Did your pilot try to fly us through an aether vortex?”

The Irishman chuckled. “Not a’tall, not a’tall. A beauty as big as she, we would have been torn apart. No, we passed a good four hundred statute miles from its horizon, at the least. Hell of a racket, though, even at that distance, wasn’t it?”

Nathanial’s jaw fell open. “Four hundred?”

“At the least. You should see her. She’s enormous.”

“I should like to, if I could.”

“You might, at that, once we get where we’re going.”

“And where would that be?”

The Irishman winked. “Ah, now that would be telling, wouldn’t it?”

3.

What seemed like hours passed. Conversation reached a lull, and Nathanial nodded off. When he woke he became aware of a new vibration in the cutter’s hull. Annabelle was wide-eyed and staring at him for confirmation. Something buffered the cutter to his left, and then shortly to his right. A lurching sensation gripped his stomach.

“We’re settling into dock,” he told her. “Don’t worry. Unless these men are incompetent, our worries are over.”

Or just beginning, he thought.

4.

The Cutter settled, and the slight sense of movement one felt when a ship was traversing the aether vanished. A curious, yet all too familiar feeling replaced it: gravity. Nathaniel felt his limbs grow heavy again for the first time in weeks. He cocked an eyebrow at Annabelle, who began casting her gaze around the hold as if she was seeing it for the first time.

Before Nathanial could wrap his head around this newest revelation, the Irishman reappeared at their door, the two armed guards were with him. They had no brig, he said, and so Nathanial and Annabelle would be left here, under guard, until something more permanent could be arranged. Food and water would be provided, and trips to the cutter’s toilet would come every two hours, whether they were needed or not. Nathanial tried to engage the man in discussion, but the Irishman was having none of it.

“Save your breath,” he said. “You’ve still got the Juggernaut to talk to. Anything you want to say can be said to him. In the meantime, I suggest you get yourself nice and comfortable, and don’t entertain any thoughts of escape. A guard will be posted outside the ship.”

The door closed. Annabelle waited a beat or two before turning to Nathanial. “The Juggernaut?” she asked.

“I’m familiar with the name,” Nathanial replied, but he did not like what he knew. “Doctor Henry van den Bosch. He’s a Dutchman who makes his home in Austria. He works for King Franz Joseph, but he presses nations all over Europe to advance the sciences. ‘Coerce’ may be a more appropriate word. ‘Bludgeon’ would be another. His tactics are said to border on the grotesque, or so goes the rumours. Were it not for his tireless ambition to see science flourish in the coming century, he would have likely been done away with long ago.”

Annabelle nodded. “If he’s anything like Uncle Cyrus, I think I can weather his outbursts.”

“I daresay he’s something of an order or two of magnitude worse than your uncle. Many reputations have been destroyed because certain persons were unlucky enough to cross the Juggernaut.”

“Is he really so bad as all that?”

Nathanial shrugged. “I suppose we’re about to find out. The important question, at least to me, is what is he doing out here, in the aether?”

“It must be a project of some kind.”

“Yes, but what project?” Nathanial raised his hands to demonstrate his helplessness. “I’m afraid I’m currently at a loss.”