The War to End all Worlds Pt. 04

"Top of the morning, my boughise friends!" he said, his voice high and clear. He snapped his Telsa pistol up and fired a streak of blazing energy into the chandelier overhead. It whistled down and smashed into another table. "This is a redistribution of the wealth to the hard working proletariat and working class of the world!"

An Austrian with more balls than common sense pulled a pistol. Sharpe sprang off the table, knocked the pistol aside with his sword, and then clubbed the Austrian to the ground with the butt of his pistol. The man groaned as he fell and Sharpe shouted over his shoulder: "Get the Martian! She'll be in Steerage!"

Oliver ducked back into the corner, seeking to fade away. But then I felt his planning – and I wanted to cry out, to tell him no. But I knew that any distraction would be as lethal as shooting up a flare. And so, I bit my tongue as Oliver watched the three pirates starting towards the exit that he was hiding beside. The majordomo was gone – he had found a place to hide, while the gusts were screaming and rushing about in a wild panic. A few other men were trying to get weapons out – a few harsh cracks rang out. Bullets slammed into the ceiling.

The pirates stomped past Oliver. Oliver waited until the last of them had gone by, then sprang forward. Over the screaming and the shooting, the sound of him grabbing the man's rifle, then yanking upwards so that the flat edge of the barrel pressed to the man's throat was lost. The two other pirates kept running forward, rushing towards the elevator. Oliver held back, wincing as the man kicked at him. Then he felt the man stilling. Oliver yanked the rifle over his shoulders, checked the chamber with a practiced flick of his wrist and twist of the bolt.

Is he dead?

"Just out cold," Oliver hissed. "Get outta my head and keep my damn family safe, white boy!"

I forced my own hands up, grabbed Tjen's fingers, then pried them off. I felt her gasp quietly and then I opened my eyes, to see that Corrie was looking at me with wide, nervous eyes.

"Is daddy coming back with food?" Oliver's son asked.

I shook my head. "No. Hear that?" I asked, scrambling to my feet – and then slamming into the ground. My knees didn't seem to want to work. I groaned, trying to get my arms under me as Tjen bit her lower lip.

"I do hear the gunshots and the screaming – distantly," she said. I could hear it too – it sounded like a dull roar above our heads. I could hear doors slamming in the corridor. Then a large hand closed around the scruff of my neck, hauling me to my feet. I wobbled and shook my head slightly as Yelan hefted me up. She continued to hold me the instant it became clear that my knees would not work. "We need to get you to safty." I said, looking at Corrie and her children. Corrie and her children nodded.

"Where?"

I flopped my head to the right. "Next room over? They're looking for the Martians."

"Why are they hunting for me?" Yalen asked, swinging me around so that I was looking into her face.

"Okay, just Tjen," I admitted.

A rattling crash came from down the corridor – and a sound of screams. I could picture the pirates kicking in a door. They were moving fast, it seemed. I gulped, then closed my eyes. "Yalen, Tjen. Go. Run. Get out of here, I can't help."

Yalen snorted, then flung me over her shoulders. I watched Corrie as Yalen sprinted for the door. Tjen said: "Do not fear! As we won't be here, they won't harm you!"

And then we were out in the main corridor. Yalen immediately sprinted away from where the crashing had come from – giving me a perfect (if upside down) view of the pirates. The two of them were both getting ready to kick down a door. On seeing us, one shouted: "There they are!"

The other swung the rifle around and fired. But Yalen flung herself around the corner, so the only thing that was struck was the wall behind us. Wood shavings filled the air. Tjen, then, knelt beside my head and clapped her hand to my temples. She closed her eyes, focusing – and I felt life surging through my limbs. My fingers could move. I wriggled slightly just in time for the first pirate to come around the corner. He had clearly expected Yalen to be much further than she was. He grunted as his throat was grabbed by a single large hand, his eyes bulging as Yalen lifted him off the ground with ease. She threw him – timing it perfectly, so that he smashed into the second pirate as he came around the corner.

I slipped off her shoulder as the two pirates groaned. I scrambled to my feet, grabbed a rifle, then slammed the butt into one of the pirate's jaws as he tried to get up. He sagged back to the ground – and to my shock, both vanished. The only thing they left behind was the crack of displaced air. I gaped.

"W-What?"

"I do not know," Tjen said. "But more are coming!"

At the end of the corridor, I could see the elevator door had opened.

Oliver stood there. His lip was split and his nose was bloody, but he still looked defiant. A Tesla pistol was pressed to his cheek, mashing it around the bulbous tip of the barrel. Standing behind him, looking quite incongruously tiny against the larger man, was Captain Sharpe. He grinned and the rest of his pirates emerged from where they had been crammed into the elevator. Their rifles were ready and they flanked their captain.

"Come on, be a good laddie," Sharpe said. "Or this fellow gets it in the neck. No offense, but it's part of the glorious revolution."

"None taken. Laddie." Oliver muttered.

Sharpe sighed. "I could explain the inevitable nature of the historical dialectic, but..." he shrugged. "Throw us the Martian, Mr. George."

I peeked around the corner. "My father never liked communists," I called out. "He was unimpressed with your December Revolution."

"Not many people do," Sharpe said, sounding entirely unruffled. "Though it wasn't my December Revolution. I'm not a soviet, or a Leninist. I'm Anarcho-Utopian myself."

I made a face, then cocked my head. "Okay, my father did lean somewhat along those lines. Though he did always describe himself as a socialist." I glanced to the left and saw, to my pleasure, Yalen had taken the hint.

She was gone.

"Who was he?" Sharpe asked. "No, wait, sorry, I don't care. Give me the Martian, or-"

"Don't shoot my husband!" Corrie shouted from the doorway. She didn't do anything as foolish as sticking her head from the door, but she did thrust out the leg of a bed with a sheet tied to it, waving it around. "Please, he's got nothing to do with this!"

"I won't shoot your husband, marm, if this George fellow hands over the Martian!" Sharpe snapped.

A green arm lashed out from the corner, blinding fast. Yalen sprang past several of the pirates, bowling them over with her raw bulk. They hadn't even realized she was there – she must have made a long circuit around the corridors – which connected in a curved grid, after all. And so, she was able to loop her arm around Sharpe's neck, in the same way Sharpe had grabbed Ollie. Yalen grinned, her tusks glitning as her three other arms plucked rifles from shocked pirates. She held them by their stocks and aimed them in every direction. Since she didn't seem to know where the triggers were, the effect was somewhat lessened. But not by much.

"You now have a Martian with hands on you," Yalen murmured.

"That's right, greenie, I do," Sharpe said, unruffled and utterly confident.

And then, with a crack, Ollie, Sharpe and Yalen vanished – in the same way the pirates had arrived.

The other pirates didn't wait. They vanished as well, leaving the corridor as empty as they had started.

Corrie screamed. "Olliiiiie!"

The realization hit me like a brick to the gut. That fucking Von Sebottendorf had said 'get the Martian', with an assumption there had been one Martian with me. Tjen. But Sharpe couldn't have known there would be both a Red and a Green. Sebottendorf's own secrecy had bit him on the butt...and stolen Oliver from his family. All of this rushed through me as I started to run. I ran not towards Corrie – though I did shout over my shoulder: "I'll get him back, Mrs. Law!"

And then I came to the cargo hold. Tjen was right behind me, her voice thick with alarm: "What is your plan, Gipp?"

"Bad!" I said, lifting the rifle and smashing open the metal cage protecting the cargo controls. My elbow pressed the open button. Wind screamed as the elevator started to lower down – the cargo crates rattling as wind rushed past them. Several tumbled off towards the distant, dark water of the Atlantic. I sprang from the lip to the bottom of the elevator, thinking of nothing but Yalen and Ollie as I landed. The wind caught at me and I crouched low – Tjen landing next to me. I looked around, desperately, for the pirate's ship.

And...

Gaped.

The pirate's ship was almost the size of the St. Louis. It loomed in the air, cutting through it like a great wallowing whale. Lights shone on it from the St. Louis, search lights used by the crew now that they knew they were under attack. Those lights illuminated it in pools of stark white light, revealing the unpainted steel hull of a great sea-going liner. It looked like it had been built at the tail end of the European Golden Age, and had been only a fraction finished before red weed and black smoke choked that golden age dead. The pirates had filled the skeletal hull with buzzing flying machine engines – stolen and affixed to the hull on great struts, giving it eight vast wings, each one tipped with an engine that could move on a gimbled pivot, giving the huge ship far more maneuverability than I would have expected. The top bristled with stolen weaponry – there were machine guns and rocketry pods and even a single ominous heat ray. I could see Yalen and Oliver on the deck, being dragged towards the makeshift bridge that sat before what would have been the smoke stacks if those had ever been added to the hulk.

The engines whirred and dropped the vast shape past us – and I saw that there was golden lettering on the prow, mixed with red stencils that had expanded the original name into its current one.

INDUSTRIA

TITANIC

The converted sea-ship dipped below the St. Louis and swung ponderously to take it away. It was rushing by underneath and I forced myself to feel no fear as I leaped. Horror clawed at my belly. And then my feet hit the deck and I rolled, tumbled, and caught on a rusted guide rail. Tjen landed like a cat, about ten feet aft of me. She didn't even stagger. And above us, the St. Louis floated away, towards Berlin.

I coughed as Tjen dragged me away from the side of the railing. I sat up as biting cold wind shirked by us. My skin felt clammy, then freezing as my teeth started to chatter.

"Where is the rifle?" Tjen asked.

I groaned. "In the Atlantic."

"It will be very ineffective against pirates from there," Tjen said. "But I suppose we cannot help it. Let us get inside before you freeze to death."

"Good thinking," I said around the chatters.

The two of us hurried along the decks. Most of the platings were nothing more than unfinished cat-walks that moved over yawning emptiness. The inside of the ship had crude struts and bars that were attached to what finished bits of construction had been there to create rooms for the pirates – including large cables that reached towards something that had to be a bridge, as each of those cables terminated at one of the wing spars. We did not go for the bridge. Instead, we rushed towards a stairwell that led into what looked like crew cabins. Once out of the wind, I started to warm to somewhere close to 'alive.' I could hear faint conversation, echoing from inside the ship.

I looked at Tjen.

Tjen's brow was furrowed. "Something is here. Something powerful. I can sense it."

"Tripod?" I whispered, rubbing my hands together.

"No. It is something of my people," she whispered.

I nodded. "Something involving appearing and disappearing?"

Tjen nodded. "There is a legend of a man who appeared on Barsoom – who fought the Tripod builders. He had great strength and strange ways. The Tripods forebad us from speaking his name, but my Aunt called him J'onn. J'hon J'onzz."

I slowly looked at her.

"It is the Red Martian version of, ah, as you Americans might say, John Smith? It is a bit of a jape, I admit." She smiled, nervously.

I shook my head. "And now it's being used by fucking sky pirates in league withVon Sebottendorf. The KKK, communists, who'se this guy going to throw at us next, the Marx Brothers?"

"I love them!" Tjen whispered. "Are you eagerly anticipating their next holovid?!"

"...later, Tjen," I whispered back, peeking around the corner of the sky-pirate base. The corridor I saw led past rooms that looked like they were made for private life. There were skimpily clad women in pictures pinned to walls, tools, pieces of clothing, even some weapons. We stole past it all, hearing the distant sound of conversation. I saw the corridor led towards an open door that looked as if it led into a large ballroom or meeting room or something. I could see a lot of pirates, their backs to us. I looked around, then spied a service ladder. I pointed it out to Tjen, and soon, the two of us were scrambling up.

We came out onto a catwalk that was used to maintain and service the crude search lights that provided the illumination for the room. It had clearly been only fractionally finished, leaving the pirates to add flooring and walls. They had been somewhat slapdash about it, leaving the skeletons of a fancy ballroom to serve as the bottom of a pile of rust and scrap. There were thirty pirates, all of them looking quite scruffy, and a large dais. There stood a tied up Yalen – glaring daggers at Captain Sharpe – and Oliver, who only had his wrists bound.

Next to them was Captain Sharpe himself. He was tugging off his gloves, his voice pitched high.

"So, Mr. Law," he said, sounding cheery and slightly higher pitched. Was he actually fifteen? My brow furrowed as I craned my head to watch. "You are captive of the dread sky pirate, Captain Sharpe. How do you feel?"

Oliver just glared at him.

"Well, unfortunately, the needs of the glorious revolution for the liberation of the working people of the world requires that only willing hands serve here. If you turn us down, we'll make you...what is the phrase?" Sharpe rubbed his chin. "Ah. Yes. Walk the plank."

Olive continued to glare at him.

"The articles are simple. You fly with us, help us raid the oppressor capitalist class and ferment communist revolution," Sharpe said, smiling. "The alternative is you take a long drop to a sudden drop in the Atlantic."

Oliver sighed, slowly. "Well, given those options..." He sighed. "Fine. I'll ship with you."

"For now," Captain Sharpe said. "That's what new crew always think." He tapped his temple. "Don't worry – we've got ways to make sure you stick." He paused. "But there's one more thing you have to know, before we know if you can sign on..."

Sharpe reached up. His fingers worked through the ponytail, which floofed outwards, spilling around his shoulders. The men were chuckling – though others were taking off hats to reveal their own long, well kept hair. A few were undoing buttons on their shirts, relaxing themselves. My brow furrowed...and then my eyes widened as something loosened underneath Captain Sharpe's vest

"So?" Captain Sharpe asked.

Olive gulped, then...shrugged. "I don't see a problem."

"Very good!" Captain Sharpe said, her breasts small but quite noticible underneath her vest. Her hands went to her hips and she grinned. "Welcome to the Titanic, Ollie. The name's Darren Sharpe."

TO BE CONTINUED