Prologue

1.

September 21st 1890.

THE MIGHTIEST SHIP IN Her Majesty’s Royal Navy was giving chase. For the first time since she was commissioned, almost seventeen months ago, she was being outstripped. HMAS Sovereign’s engines were being pushed to their limits, but it was still not enough to match the speed of her bastard offspring.

Like a misshapen distortion of Sovereign, the Russian Imperial Dreadnought Imperator Aleksandr II continued to widen the distance between them as they passed the Earth’s moon, pressing on to a point way beyond. Aleksandrite, a revolutionary new compound first discovered by the Russians, was playing its part. On Imperator it powered the engines, while on Sovereign its misuse was the cause of some disastrous sabotage.

Almost imperceptibly Sovereign began to falter and slow while Imperator continued on, undaunted and unchallenged.

As the crew of Sovereign worked in vain to fix the problem, their ugly prey gaining further and further distance, a stowaway on Imperator was seeking to get a message out… Information that would be vital to the British Empire.

Information that was vital for the peace of the world.

2.

CAPTAIN JACOB FOLKARD, FORMER commander of Sovereign, squeezed by the midshipman and softly closed the door behind him. Imperator’s heliograph room was unnaturally dark, and here and there he could see shadowed backs murmuring into pipes from the dark hoods of cubicles. Ahead of him, the heliograph was unmanned. He strode across and, without bothering to sit, began to take in the controls. The setup was markedly different from the one on Sovereign, but if he could just employ a little Russian logic to it… He reached out and flicked a switch experimentally.

The first thing he thought of, in those meagre final moments, was that it all must have been happening to somebody else. That the shot had come from outside, that some drunken officer from Kazakhstan had got overexcited and let off some steam with a bang and a whoop. But no; the shot had come closer than that, much closer, and after a lifetime of realisation the warm, wet patch that had been spreading around his left kidney gave way to a sharper, excruciating pain. He pitched forward onto the controls.

“Ah ah ah,” came a voice from behind him. “Weren’t you listening? He told you not to touch anything.” It was a voice he knew, the inflections, the timbre, all the same but the accent was different. Gasping against the pain he managed to turn himself over to face the man who had shot him in the back.

“I hope you enjoyed your little tour, Folkard. I arranged it especially. Olkhovsky and Utterklo were happy to help. I wanted to show you the very best of Russian hospitality. Hard work and vodka, Jacob. That’s what’ll make you a man.”

It couldn’t be… Before him stood a relic of a man he once knew, the same face, the same voice, but all out of proportion like he was being controlled by a bad puppeteer. His face had hardened and his eyes were wide and maniacally focussed. Folkard noticed that his right arm was bandaged in a stump at the elbow.

“Grant,” hissed Folkard, clutching at his side. “It was you. All along, it was you.”

“Well, yes and no. An exercise in control, if you will,” continued Grant, padding across to Folkard with an insouciant air. “You see, Cyrus Grant isn't here anymore.” Folkard, overcoming the weakness that had begun to coarse through him, reached down for the pistol at his side. If he could just get one shot off… Grant casually took aim and shot Folkard in the thigh and the captain crumpled to the floor.

“We have met several times, Captain. You thought your men had killed me, but my will is beyond the reach of mere mortals now.” He strode over and slowly grabbed both sides of Folkard’s head in his hands, and angled it up so Folkard could look him in the eyes. “The perfect disguise to destroy you and your weak little band of crusaders, righting your perceived wrongs and daring to presume you could meddle with my destiny. I am Vladimir Tereshkov, killer of Jacob Folkard, the greatest mind Russia has ever produced, reborn and redefining the horizons of humanity!”

Folkard looked into his eyes, his strength failing. “Grant,” he whispered. “Are you there, Cyrus?”

In the last moments before his vision blurred, Tereshkov’s face seemed to shift and sag. The eyes were still wide, but this time they were filled with horror and sadness. It was Cyrus Grant’s soft Midwestern accent that whimpered “Captain!” with unrelenting confusion, and then Folkard felt Tereshkov take control again and throw his unresisting head to the floor. He was suddenly and painfully aware that he was not breathing.

He felt the pressure in his temples ebb, replaced with a soothing coolness and an inky blot that swam on the edges of his vision. He tried to close his eyes but could not, and suddenly there came a blinding whiteness in his mind. Images, information, sounds and senses overcame him, crowding out every other thought and memory, every notion of who Jacob Folkard was, is, or ever would be.

The Heart called out to him once more. It is time. Your journey’s end.

The blank void blazed for a moment and started to resolve itself, images he remembered, picked out in pastel shades and bathed in light. That sunny meadow, the apple tree with his little girl skipping around it, in the distance and slightly out of focus. He knew his daughter would be everything he dreamed of. A picnic of fine cheeses, wine and baked bread, ham and slices of summer pudding. It was spring, you could smell it in the air, and she sat on the blanket and patted where she wanted him to sit, right beside her.

“Charlotte,” breathed Folkard. He began to smile.

3.

TERESHKOV WATCHED THE LIFE fade from Folkard’s eyes. He felt something he had not experienced in a very long time—so long ago that, at first, he wasn’t sure what the feeling was. He continued to look at Folkard’s eyes, only distantly aware of the sound of shoes on the metal grating of the gangway behind him. Remorse? Was that it? No. But something similar. The loss of something, something familiar…

Like a part of him was missing. But what was it? The Heart? No—he could no longer sense that intelligence, the mind of that ancient being which had been his companion for so long. There was a face. Strong, handsome, yet oddly feminine, too. Long dark hair. Annabelle!

Tereshkov let out a sneer. Annabelle Somerset, Grant’s niece. These were his feelings, not Tereshkov’s. He had long ago given up any emotional attachments on Earth, although it seemed that at least one had somehow beaten him to Imperator. All he had was science, and his path to glory. He refused to be fettered by the weak sentiment of Cyrus Grant.

He stood back and glanced at the midshipman behind him. “Store that somewhere. I am sure Madame Moonsinge will have use for it. If nothing else it will give her something to do.”

The midshipman saluted and reached down for the body.

Tereshkov put it from his mind. He entered the heliograph room fully and sat himself down. There would be no message sent to the British Navy, but there was a Russian flyer nearby, not far from Luna. In perfect place to relay a message back to Russia. One last message to the frantsuzskiy korova who sought to control him.

He laughed at the ignorance of such a notion.

No-one controlled Vladimir Fedorovich Tereshkov—he was master of destiny!

4.

“LET THEM SEE POWER!”

Kapitan-lejtenant Petenka Trushkin appreciated nastavnik Tereshkov’s sentiment, but he did wonder, once again, why the kapitan allowed him such free access to the bridge. As first officer one of Trushkin’s main duties was the management of personnel on Imperator, and that now included their unexpected guests, Klopstock and Miss Moonsinge, as well as Tereshkov. Except Kapitan Merkushev seemed to treat Tereshkov as his own personal guest, one afforded polnaya svoboda deystviy; unlimited access to all areas.

Trushkin attempted to ignore Tereshkov’s presence by focussing his attention on the British attempt at a blockade. In the aether it was a pointless exercise when there was no need to follow a straight line to reach your destination. But in this instance, continuing on a straight line would serve as an example to the British Navy. With all due thanks to Tereshkov they were standing in the most powerful ship ever built on Earth; only one ship even came close, and they had left that dead in the water three weeks ago. The blockade consisted of four aether flyers, and only one of those a naval battleship. The rest looked like civilian flyers, no doubt enlisted from the miners who worked the asteroid belt. Trushkin imagined that other naval flyers were on the way from Mars, but it would take them four weeks to travel from that world to the asteroid belt, a week longer than it had taken Imperator to travel from Earth. Even the mighty Sovereign could not hope to reach the asteroid belt in double that time. Imperator was powered by aleksandrite, and the minds that controlled it ensured it could be matched by no other vessel.

And not only in speed.

“Prepare the forward guns!” Merkushev ordered. “Target the Navy battleship and blow it out of the sky!”

For a tense few moments all was silent on the bridge, the crew all waiting.

“Canon is primed, Kapitan.”

Merkushev smiled. “Let them have it!”

Trushkin could feel the vibration long before he saw the rings of green light stretch out from a point above the viewing glass at the front of the bridge. It was as if Imperator herself was trembling in fear at the awesome power about to be unleashed. Every eye on the bridge watched as the rings of lights shot out, racing across the black of the aether, shattering the smaller asteroids between them and the Navy ship until they hit her square amidships. There was no sound, but Trushkin could imagine the screams of over a hundred men as their ship erupted around them, the remains left to drift, some colliding with the civilian flyers either side of it.

An example of the true destructive power of aleksandrite.

“For the glory of the Tsar!” Merkushev said, and cheers rang out all over the bridge, the crew raising imaginary cups. Soon there would be celebrations throughout Imperator with real cups filled with real drink. But there was no cheer from Trushkin; he was an Officer of the Tsar, and with that came duties he would perform without question. But he was also a man, and as a man he would mourn the loss of life on that British ship. Men who were doing their duty to their country. Very few of them really deserved to die.

He could not deny Imperator’s crew their moment of celebration, though, for this was a great day for the might of Imperial Russia, and neither could he deny the words he heard come from Tereshkov’s lips, drowned by the sound of cheering.

“For the glory of me.”

5.

October 8th 1890.

Message begins.

Large Russian vessel designated Imperator has breached asteroid field stop. Attempted blockade resulted in critical damage to HMAS Tartarus stop. Source of damage believed new Russian weapon stop. Request immediate assistance stop.

Message ends.