deactivate in the corner – sacrificed by Coppertracks to care for the dying pilot. The dead mu-body was speckled with flaking brown where the rust of the radiation sickness had eaten away at its shiny shell. Hardarms was – if it were possible – in an even worse state, his entire body a quilt of raw brown-and-red metal, the hardened armour of the steamman knight eroded by the final advances of the gravity warp poisoning.
A faint light pulsed behind the knight's vision plate as he noticed the three newcomers ushered in by Coppertracks. 'The male softbody I recognize from my sharing of cables with King Steam. Oliver Brooks of the race of man, halfling child of an Observer. The older female must be Molly Templar, which makes the younger… Purity Drake.'
'You know me, then?' said Purity.
'My sovereign knows well the part of you that is awakening with the land,' said Hardarms. 'As he knows your two companions here, from our last time of troubles.'
'Well, this latest time of troubles we're suffering seems to be going from bad to worse,' said Oliver. 'Has Coppertracks told you of our news sheets' reports of the rout of the RAN and the New Pattern Army inside Quatershift?'
Perhaps it was a side effect of his radiation poisoning, but Hardarms seemed hardly disturbed by Oliver's information. 'Of course, Oliver softbody. When I saw the destruction of the steammen army it was obvious that no force of the race of man could match our adversary. Not if every nation in the world poured its resources into a single regiment and marched against the Army of Shadows as one.'
'Did the king speak of me?' said Molly. 'Did he speak of the fate of the Hexmachina?'
'The god-machine is a cousin of the people of the metal,' said Hardarms. 'King Steam knows the Hexmachina has been locked in stasis, sealed away in the deep bowels of the world by our foe.'
'And he's not worried by that?' Molly had to restrain herself from shouting. 'I threw the Wildcaotyl back beyond the walls of the world with the Hexmachina's power. You can't count on me to save you all this time…'
'You are a knight without a steed,' said Hardarms. 'A duellist without a sabre. His majesty asked me to tell you he understands how frustrating that must be for you.' Hardarms stretched out and took Molly's hand, pressing something into her palm out of sight of the others. Molly looked down. It was a gold ring, etched with lines so thin she could barely see the complex patterns that had been engraved on it.
'For Lord Starhome,' whispered Hardarms as Molly bent down to catch the whisper from the knight's voicebox. 'You will know how to use it when the time comes.'
'Your sympathy is all very well,' said Molly, hiding the ring away in her pocket, 'but your army has been exterminated too, and Jackals now lies defended only by militia with pitchforks, fencibles who fire two training shots a year and a couple of RAN cadets in training ships.'
'And I wish that were not so,' said Hardarms. 'Just as I wish that a tool for slaying gods had proved more effective against a mortal foe. But wishing will not make it so. Wishing will not bring either of our nations victory in this fight.' Hardarms leant over to retrieve his satchel from a table next to his bed, removing a sheaf of papers. 'And I also wish I had better news to bring to you than this…'
Molly took the papers being proffered. She winced as she felt the steamman's pain swelling up inside him. How could he bear it? Every sensor along the length of his body was flaring in agony. Molly forced her gaze down onto the papers and saw images of a large sphere that seemed to be made of rust-coloured iron, accompanied by commentary pencilled in by the hands of the king's councillors.
'The images are from the new observatory in Mechancia,' said Hardarms. 'Real-box pictures enlarged from our largest telescope.'
Coppertracks trundled over to handle the pictures, scanning them with his vision plate in fascination. 'I have never seen the like of this before.'
'Oh, but you have,' said Hardarms. 'Every time you glance up at the sky and curse our baleful new moon swinging in orbit around the Earth.'
'This-' Coppertracks looked again at the images '-this cannot be Ashby's Comet? Where is its ice, the rubble, the-'
Hardarms extended a weak manipulator arm towards the ceiling. 'Burnt off, fallen away. And that which remains beneath is what we once mistakenly thought was a comet. As you can see, our foul new satellite is an iron moon.'
'Then, dear fellow, Ashby's Comet was never a natural phenomenon?'
'And its path around Kaliban and back to Earth no random accident of celestial mechanics,' said Hardarms, his voicebox losing volume as he spoke. 'King Steam's scholars have revisited all our theories of astronomy and can come to no conclusion save that this iron moon is some monstrously sized tool of the Army of Shadows.'
'But the Army of Shadows appeared well before the iron moon was captured by our world,' said Molly. 'I saw the enemy in my vision from Kyorin. The slats were crossing the celestial darks in shells that ride beams of light all the way across to our home.'
'I have no answers for the iron moon's presence or intent,' said Hardarms. 'But I don't need to see its corroded red alloy to know that fell, evil moon was created above Kaliban by our enemy. See here the last image taken at the observatory before we left for the Kingdom of Jackals and mark it well.'
Coppertracks held up the final image, a snapshot of a long silver thread extruding from underneath the iron moon down towards the bottom of the picture. 'Like the thread from a spider.'
'And growing longer each day,' said Hardarms. 'Extending down towards our world's surface! King Steam's scholars believe the enemy means to use the cable to anchor the iron moon to our world, somewhere towards the Army of Shadows' stronghold in the polar wastes. The iron moon is slowing, now. Soon, the moon will orbit no longer, but will be joined to us in a stationary position.'
'Anchored to what end?' asked Purity.
'None that is good,' said Hardarms.
'A lifting room!' exclaimed Molly. 'I cleaned enough vents in the capital's pneumatic towers to know what you can use a cable like that for. You run supplies and material up and down its length.'
'A lifting room that can travel high into the heavens and beyond,' said Purity in disbelief. 'Now there's a thing for one of your novels, Molly.'
'Such a colossal undertaking,' said Coppertracks, allowing a tone of wonder to sound from his voicebox. 'The minds that are capable of such a feat of engineering… we must appear as savages to them.'
'They may have arts that are not yet known to us, brother slipthinker,' said Hardarms, 'but it is they that are the savages. I have seen these slats. Bestial things with no sense of living within the harmony of the great pattern. They have no code, they have no honour. They are naught but a dark flame that will burn all of creation to stay afire.' The knight extended a trembling manipulator hand out to Coppertracks and the steamman bent close to hear the warrior's whispered words.
'How can we fight them?' said Molly, the desperation of their pathetic little cannon put into perspective against the incredible might of such an enemy. 'How can we fight creatures that can construct moons out of iron and craft bridges between the celestial spheres themselves?'
'With what makes us alive,' said Hardarms. 'With passion and imagination and the compassion we feel for our fellow living creatures in the great pattern. With what makes us different from them; and with her.' The dying steamman warrior pointed at Purity. 'That was the message King Steam asked me to relay to you three softbodies. That you will save us, Purity Drake, and that you, Oliver softbody, are the key.'
'But I'm a nobody,' said Purity. 'I've a price on my head. I could barely survive an attack by a couple of slats.'
'You are Jackals!' Hardarms' vision plate briefly flared with his old light. The steamman seemed to shrink back in his bed. 'Pray – the Loas grant that be – enough.' At last he fell silent, that great steamman warrior, Hardarms, captain of the Pathfinder Fist; the visor above his darkening vision plate slid down to seal his skull in the final reflex of a creature of the metal.
Purity looked at Coppertracks. 'What did he whisper to you?'
'He gave me his true name for his funeral rites,' said Coppertracks. He looked at Molly. Had his keen vision seen her receive the ring from Hardarms? 'And he said that we should not trust Lord Starhome. He is only partially a steamman and his systems will revert to feral ways with each week he spends outside the Chamber of Swords beyond the civilizing influence of the people of the metal.'
