The spirit of a telephone rested in Miss Young's ear as she listened to the dispatch reports. Shots fired. Multiple casualties. Reports that the local mafia - some Cubano branch that had snaked into mainland America under the nose of the Imperial Navy - had gotten involved. She pursed her lips.
Things were not going to go quietly.
She turned to one of the calculating machines that she had been given, her prosthetic fingers clicking quietly against her hip as she thought. "Dispatch the following orders to the naval airbase," she said, her voice quiet.
"Yes ma'am!" The calculating machine said - working through the cipher system that encoded all communications. She hummed quietly, then started to tap at the telegraph station.
Miss Young frowned as she waited.
Her superiors were not going to be happy about this. But...
"She's beginning to actualize," she murmured, quietly. "We need...we need..." She paused, then looked over at the other calculating machine, which had been compiling the reports that their various spies and agents had been gathering over the past few days. She snapped her metal fingers, pointing at the curvier, slightly bulkier spirit. "Give me the report on Maryfort again."
"Okie dokie!" The calculator hummed and flipped through various pages. She picked up one and handed it to Miss Young. She read through it - the transcript of the Hundred and First that had been sending information to the Empire for the past three years, the reports he had gathered from his comrades who had no idea that he was an informer, the additional context put in by technicians who were loyal and had been given the data and given a chance to think and theorize about what it meant. She grinned, slowly.
"Begin a new ciphered order," she said, turning to the other machine. "And remind me, is Captain Horne still in the local airspace?"
"Y...Yes, ma'am!" the spirit said, smiling. "He's not being returned to London for his court-martial until the end of the week."
"Countermand that and put him in charge of the..." Miss Young considered her options. "...the
Indefatigable."
"Um, ma'am, the
Indefatigable
is currently captained by Captain Shriveman," the calculating machine said, sounding confused. "What, um, uh, what rational should I send for his removal?"
"Send it under the following cipher code and you won't need a rational," Miss Young snapped.
The calculating machine wilted slightly under her tone. "Okie dokie..." she said, sounding quite frightened as she turned back to her telegraph. She started to tap away.
***
Nix walked after Zimmerman, her hand on Enterprise...no...on Midway's shoulder, keeping the robed spirit at her side and at pace, despite Midway's shocked expression. "We need to get out of the city," Nix said, her voice firm. "But the trolley stations are going to be watched and then- what are you doing?"
Zimmerman was advancing towards a signifier of just how nice this neighborhood was; A small steam automobile, parked in front of a house that was even nicer and larger than Nix's niece. Nix's stomach knotted. She was still not sure if leaving her niece, her niece's husband, and Rudi behind had been the right decision - they could still be used as hostages, they could be threatened...but Rudi had been hurt, Jessie had been completely unwilling to leave her home, Ed had been totally confused about what had been going on. Leaving them behind to declaim Nix as a traitor and criminal and, thus, be rendered irrelevant to the schemes of the Mechanical Turks all had seemed quite rational at the time, but...but...
Zimmerman hadn't responded.
"I said-" Nix started.
Zimmerman punched the glass window of the car in and reached in to begin opening the door.
"Oh great," Nix muttered.
The front door of the house burst open and a wood paneled, black rubber and fierce little spirit came springing out, furiously hissing and spitting. "What the freaking heck are you doing!?" she roared, her voice shockingly deep for her short stature.
"Nix, deal with her," Zimmerman snapped.
"Oh my god," Nix groaned as Midway shook her head from side to side in slow shock. The spirit of the automobile stalked forward, glowering at the large, broad shouldered form of Zimmerman. Before she could start laying into her verbally - or physically for that matter - Nix stepped between the two. Her voice was soft. "Hey, hey, hey, I'm sorry about the window. She's such a brute..." She slid her hand along the rubbery-smooth cheek of the spirit. Her voice was soft. "I've never met an automobile as sleek and smart as you. Are you a new model?"
The automobile, like
most
high performance machines that didn't require a crew, had an ego to boot. She puffed up her slender little chest as if she was a tire being pumped up and beamed. "I sure am!" She said. "I'm a Bucephalus brand Chariot II, one of the best new steam powered automobiles ever. I was taught to mostly eat corn-oil too, I can run all around town on a thimble. Also, I have
airbags
." She smirked. "And anti-theft devices. I know telephones, and they'll listen if I scream really loud..."
"Amazing," Nix murmured, softly. Her eyes glittered and she smiled. "how long has it been since you've been serviced?"
"Pff, I don't need to be serviced yet, I'm only a few days off the production line - I'm basically perfect!" Chariot II said, her voice dripping with absolutely adorable arrogance.
"Did you now?" Nix asked. "Well, I can still do some little checks, right?" Her hand slid along Chariot II's belly. The automobile squirmed and bit her lip.
"You're trying to distract me from the fact your dumb jerk...friend is...she..." The spirit gasped as Nix's fingers found the sopping wet folds of her cunt. Just being this close to a Technician could have that effect on spirits. She thrust her fingers in and crooked slightly, finding the center of the little car's pleasure. Her mouth opened and the spirit's head rolled back as she moaned, bucking her hips slightly. "Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!" She moaned, quivering as her hips bucked against Nix's questing, thrusting fingers. Nix knew she had limited time. She had to work fast. She leaned forward, kissing the spirit's hard, rubbery nipples, sucking one, then the other as her thumb found the clit and rubbed it. Touching it caused the physical engine on the car to sputter and hiss, then finally start to buzz and click as the rapid boiler-piston system caught and engaged. Zimmerman grunted and nodded while Nix thrust two more fingers, deep inside of Chariot II.
That was enough. The spirit cried out a single note of pure, wordless pleasure and went limp against the garage door. Nix gently lowered her rump to the pavement, kissing her on the forehead and drawing her cum-slick fingers from the spirit's snatch. She smiled. "Thanks, honey," she purred.
"Mmmhm..." the spirit mumbled sleepily as Nix jogged to shotgun, opening the door with her clean hand, absently licking her fingers clean with a quick swipe of her tongue.
"Good work," Zimmerman harrumphed.
"Jealous?" Nix asked, smirking slightly, letting her British accent get just a bit thicker - she had picked up quite a lot of the Yankee's tones in her time in America, but she
knew
that the more educated tones of her youth would irritate the bigger woman. Zimmerman shot her a glower that made Nix think she might have made a mistake - that glower had a certain...edge to it...
Then Zimmerman almost drove the car into its own spirit. The engine sputtered and the vehicle lurched forward a few inches before stopping. The transmission snarled and gnashed.
"Christ and her Clockwork, what are you doing!?" Nix snapped.
"Don't you know how to
drive
?" Midway snapped.
"I...it seemed so simple in the old books," Zimmerman said, flushing as she looked down at the large lever and the clutch and the several peddles down below.
"Get the bloody hell out of the driver's seat!" Nix snapped. Zimmerman shifted her bulk - fortunately, she had brushed the shattered glass out of the way. Nix scrambled over the controls, sat down, and Zimmerman got into the passenger's seat. As she did so, she held her hand back.
"Thompson," she said.
Midway reached into her robes and withdrew one of the Thompson sub-machine guns that they had snagged from the mobsters. Zimmerman took it and checked the bolt, clacking it back and letting it slide back into place with the magazine firmly seated.
"Please, don't shoot unless we absolutely have too," Nix said, throwing the Chariot II into reverse.
The car puttered out, down the road, around the corner - and a shadow fell across it. Nix craned her head, her brow furrowing...and swore.
"Oh hell!" she said.
Zimmerman frowned down at her Thompson, then out the window...at the HMS
Indefatigable
. The massive bulk of the airship loomed overhead - and she was just as powerful, just as deadly, just as modern as Nix remembered from Burned York. They must have gone through a patrol along the coast...and now they were down here. As she watched, the airship shifted its engines and started to skim ahead of them with a low rumbling noise. The nadir turrets aimed down at them - at the city. Nix's eyes widened and she slammed down on the brakes. The car stopped with a squeal of rubber on the road and Makhá smiled cheerfully - amiably, even.
"Why are we stopped?"
Nix frowned. "They're aiming naval guns at us."
"They wouldn't open fire on downtown New Austin," Zimmerman said, her voice confident. "They lack my purpose. They lack my clarity of vision."
Nix slowly turned her head to glower at her. "Zimmerman, can you stop being insane for five seconds?" she snapped.
The belly of the
Indefatigable
opened and a set of parachutists dropped from it. The lightly armored but heavily armed men in bright red and green sailed down and landed with a series of soft thumps, their chutes blowing away as their auto-release catches snapped off and they were able to fan out around the vehicle. Royal Marines were some of the best trained soldiers in the world - and they had weapons to prove it: They carried sleek, deadly automatic rifles that looked as if they had come from the latter days of the Ascension War, rather than modern bolt action weaponry, and their faces were concealed behind gas masks and goggles. Three of them went around to the back, and two aimed at the front, and all of them started shouting.
"Throw the gun out! Hands up! Hands up! Hands up!"
Zimmerman tensed. But Nix hissed at her. "Do it!" Zimmerman clenched her jaw. "Do it!"
"Midway shall see them slain," Zimmerman whispered.
She dropped the Thompson and lifted her hands. One of the marines snatched the door open, grabbed the sub-machine gun and tossed it away with a brusque movement. "Hands behind your head! Behind your head!" He shouted. Zimmerman put her hands behind her head, Nix doing likewise.
Makhá looked concerned. "Should we?" she asked.
"I..." Midway looked from the masked marine to Nix. Nix shook her head subtly.
Zimmerman though, spoke firmly as two marines reached in and began to haul her out of the chair. "You face not merely the wrath of a Radwarden, but also, the terrible power of Midway herself. The finest moment of America on the high seas shall burn your ship to the keel."
