And the Third Brought Fire

Nix knew it would hurt, in the eternity between being shoved out the door and hitting the ocean. In her panic, she tried to do everything she could to help. She tucked her arms. She pinned her legs together, ankle to ankle. She closed her eyes.

None of it helped.

She hit, and the ocean felt as solid as a wall.

Everything went dark, and the only sensation was a deep, infrared pain.

***

When her eyes opened, the pain felt distant. She could catalog the breaks, the strange way her body felt twisted and deformed, in the same way she had check-listed her way through the sicknesses of spirits. But she didn't wish to. She simply wished to see what happened next.

To her surprise, she was still in the sea - she supposed it made sense on a certain level, but...if she had opened her eyes to see herself in some ship's medical ward, or whisked to Burned York by some contrivance of a friend or ally? She might have understood that better than opening her eyes and seeing the spreading, clear blue waters of the Gulf.

She floated upon her back, bobbing up and down, and with each motion, she felt that distant jarring, that grinding of bone on bone.

The sun was setting.

Her eyes half closed. She wondered what it would be like, to float down into the infinite depths, to be nibbled apart by fish. She wondered if spirits ever wondered about fish - about tiny jaws and snapping teeth.

The sky overhead seemed as infinite and deep as the ocean beneath her. She could see the stars.

Water lapped over her eyes and Nix blinked away the salt sting of it.

And when she looked again, the stars were whirling overhead. The Big Dipper spun on an axis, the tiny sparkles that were each of her constitute starts spreading outwards - like dandelion seeds being blown off the stem by an eager child. The Belt of Orion slipped free and those three brilliant motes swung closer and closer - drifting from the sky, dancing around her nose. They were incredible small, and incredibly bright. Nix remembered reading that stars were other suns - not pinpricks in the curtain of night.

She croaked out a word as she floated.

"Hello?"

The stars continued their wheeling...

And the sea became utterly still. The surface was unto mirror glass, and she no longer floated. Her back rested upon soft sand, which swelled beneath her and spread outwards. Now, her bones did not grind and her wounds did not tug against flesh. She was able to simply lay there, breathing slowly, wheezing. Red stained the water around her - but she did not fear sharks. Not here. The stars were all gone, and there was just an infinite blackness over her head.

Nix licked chapped lips.

"Am I dead?" she whispered.

"No."

The voice was feminine and soft. A pale blue hand reached down, cradling her cheek. It was cold and felt like porcelain, fine and delicate. When the hand drew away, Nix could see the fingers were articulated - gold lines ran along their backs, and each line was notched like a ruler. The fingernails had small rectangular indentations, and there was elegant numbering etched into them. They reminded her of...something. She couldn't remember what. Another hand caressed her hand, gently, and a third and fourth took hold of one of her legs.

"This shall hurt, little Planētē."

Nix knew some Greek and Latin from her time, in schooling.

Wanderer.

It did hurt when the extra hands set her leg. Nix barely had the energy and breath to whimper.

"Who are you?" she sobbed, tears brimming in her eyes.

Those gentle blue hands caressed her, and a figure leaned over her. It was a spirit - but she was like no spirit that Nix had ever seen before. Her skin was brilliant sky blue, and her hair was the shimmering white of starlight. Her eyes glowed blue on black, and her joints and seams were all of gold. The lines of numbers and notches ran along arms and shoulders, shoulders that themselves were oddly arranged. Rather than two arms, she had four, and all four held Nix as she looked into her eyes. Her voice was soft. "Rest, Planētē...help will be coming."

Her hand brushed a strand of Nix's hair behind her ear as Nix whispered through the pain. "I don't understand."

"Hush. Hush." The spirit leaned over. Her lips, cool enough to leave a tingling mark on Nix's brow, were gentle. "You must live. For her. Only you can save her, Planētē. You need only remember what you know." Those gentle blue fingers caressed Nix's belly, her cheek, her hair.

"I don't...I don't-" Nix's voice hitched. She coughed and spluttered. Water was running over her lips as she bobbed in the sea, the evening light dimming. She could hear the distant thundering rumble of death.

The sun returned to her face - blazing bright.

"Goddamn!" The voice, American and male, shouted out.

"Get a net! ...no, lower the boat! Christ and her Clockwork!" The other voice, female and British, was familiar. Nix closed her eyes. She started to sink. The water covered everything as the sun became a distant circle, then nothing but warmth remembered on her face.

She was shivering.

How could she be shivering, this close to the equator?

How could...

***

Nix woke to pain. Her body throbbed from her head to her toes. But when she tried to move, she found she could not. She opened her eyes and saw that she was in a small wooden cabin - the deck under her shifting and tilting from side to side. There was a stink of blood in the air, and antiseptic. When she closed her eyes, her head hurt too much for her to sleep again. She groaned quietly. Then she groaned louder.

The door opened.

And none other than Tracy Rhina stepped into the room. She looked quite formidable dressed in a sailor's leggings and simple white shirt, with two colt revolvers hanging off her hips - and that was saying something, Miss Rhina had looked remarkably formidable in her Sunday best with a sunhat. She pursed her lips as she walked over to Nix, then chuckled. "You!" She said, her voice amused. "Have led me to one

hell

of a story."

Nix grinned, slowly. Smiling hurt.

"Thanks," she said. "Thanks for saving my. Thanks. For. Thanks."

Miss Rhina knelt down beside the bed, her hand taking hold of Nix's hand. "The doctor says it's quite bad. Your legs have...well, several compound fractures, your ribs are cracked, your shoulders are dislocated, you have a concussion, and to be quiet honest, it's remarkable you didn't bleed to death. In fact, from what the doctor says, the number of things trying to kill you all seemed to work together to keep you alive - hypothermia slowed down blood loss, for example, and your semi-comatose state meant you didn't exacerbate your ribs." She made a face. "It's still a miracle you survived. Hell, it's a miracle we found you at all."

Nix shook her head. "Not a miracle."

"Oh?" Miss Rhina asked. "Well...actually, the airship that you were dropped from did seem to be listing quite a bit - I think they intended to drop you from higher up."

Nix's brow furrowed slightly. Her brain, thick with painkillers and concussions, tried to grab onto what that might mean. She mumbled. "Thanks, Indi."

"Ah, yes, that was the

Indefatigable

," Miss Rhina said, her lips quirking up slightly. "I suppose she did like you."

Nix mumbled. "S'mone else too."

Miss Rhina cocked her head. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Stars..."

Nix went to sleep again.

Miss Rhina sighed, quietly, and stood. She left the room to get a chair.

***

When Nix returned to consciousness again, there was a babble of voices.

"She's not going to survive that infection-"

"I can go faster! I can! I can!"

"I'm fully aware of the consequences, but we can't just hack her legs off, we're not

savages

."

"London is-"

"I can go fasttterrr!"

"Be quiet,

Mudskipper

."

"I wanna!"

Nix opened her eyes slowly.

She saw that the room now had four people. There was a middle aged black man with a somber, wide set to his features, whose hands were roughened by either hard work or hard washing - and considering he had a blood stained smock that he was wearing, she supposed he was some kind of doctor. There was...a member of the One Hundred and One, she recognized the strange jacket, and the Thompson submachine gun that he had slung over his shoulder. There was a small and slight steamship spirit, who was currently bouncing up and down and waving her hand excitedly. And, finally, there was Miss Rhina, looking quite unruffled despite all the clamor.

"Infection?" Nix asked, trying to move her arms. They were still immobilized and she felt weak as a kitten.

The black man turned to her. He smiled, slightly wryly. "I'm Doctor Francis," he said, simply enough. "I have been taking care of you since we picked you up."

"Are you a technician?" The spirit asked, swarming over to Nix, leaning over and peering right into her face. "Hi! I'm

Mudskipper

, a few days ago, we got to shoot at a speedboat! Also, I can get us to London in a few days, I can, I can, tell them I can!"

Nix smiled and shook her head slightly. "I'm not sure a wooden steamship with a paddlewheel can get us to London in a few days," she said, reaching up and patting the spirit on her yellow-brown, canvas colored hair.

"Mauhhh!"

Mudskipper

whined, the sleek fins on her shoulder-blades that represented her sails unfurling with an annoyed

fwump

.

"And you?" Nix asked the One Hundred and One member. He gave her a fishy look.

"Corporal Tredegar," he said, hesitantly.

"Now..." Nix closed her eyes. "Tell me about this infection."

Doctor Francis sighed. "I'm sorry, but we didn't apply the sulfa drugs as soon as we'd have wished - by the time we had you out of the drink, your leg had already took poorly and...we can slow it down, but the amount of damage..." He shook his head. "You're going to have to lose both legs. One above the knee, the other around the foot."

Nix closed her eyes and made a face. Bloody hell seemed too light. Fuck seemed to be wrong, around someone as sweet as the

Mudskipper

seemed to be. So, she simply said: "Ah. I see."

Doctor Francis looked grave. "The sooner we-"

Nix lifted her hand. "First," she said, firmly. "Miss Rhina - they took Midway."

"Who?" Miss Rhina asked, her brow furrowing. Nix sighed, slowly. She laid her head back, closed her eyes, then let it all out. She told them about Makhá - about the realization that a spirit and a machine didn't have to be something with gears and wooden panels and chains. About how spirits could be the interactions between many things and many places. About how she came to realize that Enterprise had not been the actual carrier - but instead, she had been the complex human effort that it had taken to bring Enterprise and her fellow carriers to that lonely Pacific island and enact the largest air battle the world had ever seen over open oceans. When she finished, the room was completely silent.

"That's impossible," Corporal Tredegar said, flatly.

"Why would she lie?" Doctor Francis asked, his voice dry.

"Listen-" The Corporal bristled.

"Did you say

Warsaw

?" Miss Rhina snapped.

Nix nodded.

"Hell. Hell!" Miss Rhina started to pace back and forth, using her arm to gently push Corporal Tredegar out of her way. "My last story involved the cult of the Silent."

"The...the...the

what

?" Corporal Tredegar asked, looking like he was one more unexpected sentence away from bursting into furious shouting.

"The Silent Cult believe that there is a fourth Lady," Miss Rhina said, flatly. "The first being the Fortress, the second being Colossus, the third being Trinity. They call the fourth the Silent Lady - for she has been buried and deliberately forgotten, by the Reich, by the British Empire, even by the Americans, because they feared her power." She snorted. "From everything I've found, there's nothing supporting this. The Reich was losing the Ascension War entirely because they

lacked

Ladies of their own. They created no godhead and faced the Empire, which had one, then two, then three." She pursed her lips slightly. "But if the Mechanical Turks are heading there..."

Nix closed her eyes. "Where are we right now?" she asked.

"That's none of your business," Corporal Tredegar snapped. Before Miss Rhina could speak, he held up his hand, palm flat, shutting her up. "I'm here to make sure that you two Limey broads don't run off with the spirit, or do anything stupid until the Captain has something to say about it."

Nix opened her eyes. "Do you have the ability to craft prosthesis?" she asked, quietly.

Tredegar blinked, then glanced at Doctor Francis. Francis pursed his lips.

"We may," he said. "Considering where we're going."

Nix clenched her hands. She forced a rebellious loop in her belly down by tightening her hands until...well, her knuckles didn't turn white, as her ability to grip and hold things felt utterly destroyed. The dislocation, she was sure.

"Amputate," she said. "Everything needs be."

"Well, even if we do, those arms-"

"Amputate them too," Nix said, firmly. "You can make a prosthetic in a few days, I do not have time for dislocated arms."

"Marion..." Miss Rhina whispered, sounding shocked. "You-"

"We don't. Have. Time." Nix bit the words out. She had to hurry them along - lest she lose her nerve. "We have to

stop

them."

The corporal looked as if he hadn't seen her until now. Doctor Francis was frowning, his lips pursed. Miss Rhina looked appalled.

Mudskipper

clapped her hands, her eyes shining. "You're gonna be half spirit!" she said, excitedly. "Hooray!"

Nix gave her a smile - since the alternative was to start screaming.

***

The mechanics of augmentation was well known - the basic theory had been created during the latter days of the Ascension War, when the number of battlefield casualties with missing limbs who had then survived to get home had gotten higher and higher. The machines themselves were intricate and articulate enough to form spirits - those spirits then would ensure that the body did not reject the intrusion of implants into their flesh. They would use their magic to wed metal and man into one harmonious whole. The spirits tended to keep a distance from the person bearing their augmentations, though...there was something haunted in their eyes, furtive in their mannerisms.

Nix had spoken to one - and learned the truth.

They knew, thanks to how intimately they were wedded to humanity, what mortality meant. And for a spirit...that knowing was terrifying. They kept a distance because they wished to avoid the

pain

. The pain of knowing when their human had died. This was why many augmentations were passed down - some were almost a century old, kept alive and ticking through long care.

Nix had helped cheer up many an augmentation spirit, and she felt a queasy sense of unease that went beyond the damage to her flesh, the distortion of her body, and into the question: Was it right to bring a spirit into being just for herself?

Fortunately, she didn't need to consider it long.

The...amputations...came and went in a hazy, dreamlike fog of painkillers and anesthetic. She was left sickly and bedridden, warmed only by the visit of

Mudskipper

and Miss Rhina - though Miss Rhina didn't do more than sit and watch, her eyes blazing bright in Nix's feverishness. Then the restless dreaming saw Nix carried in a dreamlike haze through corridors. She would blink and the wheelchair and her weak arms - not removed, yet? - jouncing as the wheels ran along rough wood. She blinked, and saw a gangplank heading down into a crude looking settlement. The distant rumbling of strange engines, and the jeering sounds of spirit's voices clamored around her ears.

The surgeries that came were another nightmare haze. She saw people looming above her. Soft voices. Quiet voices.

Then there was a long period of sleeping, waking, drinking a little, eating a little, sleeping once more.

When she opened her eyes, she felt as if she had been asleep for centuries. Nix sat up in bed, groaning quietly. Her arms settled to either side of her and she felt the faint, strange

tug

of metal against her skin. She lifted one hand and saw the fingers - articulate metal, glittering and elegant. She flexed her hand slowly, feeling the gears and clockwork moving inside of them. The arm had been sculpted to look remarkably similar to a human's frame - the material was top notch. She bit her lip slightly. "How the hell..." She whispered, then looked around the room. It was a room as crude as her hand was sophisticated: Wooden panels, no glass on the window, a small oil lamp providing light.

Nix swung her legs aside and saw that while her hands were the most modern kind of prosthetic, her legs were somewhat more crude: Metal stumps that attached to almost gazelle shaped metal poles that flexed and rebounded under her weight. She bounced experimentally, feeling the pressure against her thighs. She stretched her arms and groaned quietly. Her body ached, but she could stand. She could...she walked forward a step, wobbled, took another, back, then forward, then back again.

She could walk.

"Bloody hell," Nix whispered.

The door to her room opened and Doctor Francis stepped in, carrying a tray. He started, seeing her standing up. "Don't stand up immediately, girl," he said.

Nix sat down again.

"You're still in recovery," he said, shaking his head and frowning. "The spirit of your augmentations is easing it as much as she can-"

"She's doing a damn good job," Nix said, smiling.

Doctor Francis clicked his tongue, then started to instruct her on the simple facts. How to keep clean. How to avoid repeat infections. What to do if her implants were damaged. She listened and nodded, then said: "Tell the spirit...thank you. I know she won't want to see me. Just. Tell her."

Doctor Francis nodded. "I understand," he said. "I mean, I don't understand. I don't know how these spirits work in the slightest. But I'll do it." He smiled, slightly. "Do you want me to say you're still on the mend - the rest of the Congress is ready to beat down the door."

Nix's brow furrowed. "...the Congress?"

Doctor Francis chuckled. "Welcome to Roanoke. Home of the New Continental Congress."

***

The town of Roanoke was nowhere near Roanoke Island - Nix could tell that much from the balmy weather and the tropical temperatures. It was built within a secluded harbor on either an island or some part of the mainland America. It was, also, the home to every brand of American rebel that Nix had ever heard of: There were Hundred and First, flashily dressed representatives from distant Vejas, Cubano cartel soldiers, Midwestern forters like Maryfort, a few First Natives, and an elegantly dressed Chinaman wearing a British style frock coat, collar and silks. The whole of them were gathered when Nix walked into their meeting room - the only stone building in the mostly wooden depot. The majority sat around a conference table, covered in maps and diagrams. The air smelled of stale cigarette smoke and bad coffee.

It smelled of empire.

"So, this is the crossdressing dame who fancies herself a Wrenchman, huh?" A man in a white and black checkered suit asked, twirling a small cigarette between his fingers.

"This is Marion Nixon," Miss Rhina said, nodding and gesturing to Nix. Nix frowned at the man in the checkered suit.

"Is that what they're wearing in Vejas?" she asked.

"Lady Luck prefers us to have style, what can I say?" the man asked, grinning at her.

"Lady...it's a hydroelectric dam!" Nix snapped.

"And it's damn lucky we got her, innit it?" The man asked, shrugging.