series 02 01 Conspiracy of Silence Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

  Space: 1889 & Beyond—Conspiracy of Silence

  By Frank Chadwick & Andy Frankham-Allen

  Copyright 2012 by Frank Chadwick & Andy Frankham-Allen

  Space: 1889 © & ™ Frank Chadwick 1988, 2012

  Cover & Logo Design © Steve Upham and

  Untreed Reads Publishing, 2011, 2012

  Cover Art © David Burson and Untreed Reads Publishing, 2012

  Space: 1889 & Beyond developed by Andy Frankham-Allen

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Other Titles in the Space: 1889 & Beyond Series

  Journey to the Heart of Luna

  Vandals on Venus

  The Ghosts of Mercury

  A Prince of Mars

  Abattoir in the Aether

  Dark Side of Luna

  To Ceres by Steam

  Terror in the Clouds

  A Tale of Two Worlds

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  “CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE”

  By Frank Chadwick &

  Andy Frankham-Allen

  In memory of Ron Cronin.

  10th June 1935—22nd February 2010

  “Reverend Ronald Stone has lived with me for years,

  He’s almost appeared in many stories, but

  for reasons unknown he never quite made it.

  Always inspired by you; your strong heart,

  your passion, and your good humour.

  Finally the world gets to meet him.

  Godspeed, sir.”

  Andy Frankham-Allen

  Prologue

  “Treason”

  1.

  “AETHER PROPELLOR SECURED and ventral mast shipped, sir.”

  “Very good, Mister Barry.” Lieutenant George Bedford, acting captain of HMAS Sovereign, the most modern aether battleship in the Royal Navy, took a quick scan of the bridge instruments and engine room repeaters before turning back to the young sub-lieutenant. “At what would you estimate our drop, Mister Barry?”

  Barry had only worn the single thick stripe of a sub-lieutenant for eight months and Bedford hadn’t known him as a midshipman. The youngster had a good level head on his shoulders, Bedford had learned that much about him several weeks earlier when the two of them had dropped half a dozen Saltators—giant lunar red ants—with revolver fire when the monsters had boiled unexpectedly out of the hatch of a cutter on the docking bay. His technical skills were another matter, but they were coming along.

  Barry squinted through the lens of the horizontal inclinometer, aimed out the bridge’s starboard observation blister, consulted his pocket watch, waited ten seconds and took a second reading through the lens. He paused, doing the calculation in his head.

  “I make the drop fifty-five fathoms per second, sir.”

  Bedford nodded; he made it nearly the same. Fifty-five fathoms a second, a descent rate of almost four miles a minute, was a bit steep and on this trajectory would put them down in the North Atlantic instead of the English Channel, as well as scorch the lower hull. “Trimsman, let’s have fifteen percent buoyancy on the lifters.”

  “Fifteen percent buoyancy, aye, sir,” the petty officer answered and went to work on his forest of levers, each controlling the angle of one of the liftwood louvers which covered much of Sovereign’s lower hull.

  “Mister Barry, my compliments to Lieutenant Boswell and he may light the coal boilers at his discretion.”

  “Sir.”

  They wouldn’t have enough atmospheric oxygen for the boilers for another ten minutes or so, but Boswell, the chief engineer, knew that well enough. The sun was still visible above the curvature of the Earth and would remain so all the way down through cloud-free skies. Although it was not yet day in Southern England, the eastern sky would already be pink and the sun would rise full up in the hour their descent from orbit would take, racing as they were toward the dawn. The solar boilers would do until Boswell put the black gang to work, would probably suffice until the last ten minutes of the flight, when they would penetrate the near-permanent cloud and smoke cover over Greater London. No solar boiler yet made would work down under that grey-brown shroud.

  Bedford took another look at the bridge, its gleaming brass instruments and polished mahogany panelling, and he sighed. In an hour, a bit more, Sovereign would be down and secure at Chatham Dockyard and his temporary command would end. There was no chance for a simple lieutenant with eight years seniority to land a permanent command such as this—the choicest command in the fleet, coveted by officers with two more stripes on their cuffs and with the all-important political backing and social standing he lacked. No, he would be reassigned. In the past he had always looked forward to a new assignment, but not this time. After commanding Sovereign, however briefly, no other assignment had the capacity to stir his blood. Damn, she was a fine ship!

  More than that, she held memories. Were it not for his assignment to HMAS Sovereign, he would never have met and befriended Nathanial Stone, and would not now be delivering him to the police for trial as a traitor and saboteur. He would never have met Cyrus Grant, one of the greatest scientific minds of the age, now reduced to confusion and madness by their experiences on Luna. Most importantly, he would never have met Grant’s niece, Annabelle Somerset.

  Annabelle…

  2.

  NATHANIAL WATCHED AS the line of Russian former captives was led to the steam omnibus waiting at dockside. The irony of their situation and his washed over him like a cold wave. Former enemies of Britain, they, along with British personnel, had been captured by the alien Drobates on Luna, and all had been rescued by Bedford’s daring raid, leading fewer than a dozen Royal marines and naval ratings. Now the Russians would be released, amidst much public fanfare, to the custody of the Russian ambassador, who would in turn express the heartfelt gratitude of the Tsar.

  In the subsequent fighting which had nearly cost all of them their lives, the Russians had done nothing to help while Nathanial, with a captured Drobate electric rifle, had held a long, dim tunnel against an alien horde, and had done so nearly alone and with little expectation he would escape with his life. Now British soldiers helped the Russians into the steam omnibus, showed them every courtesy, while a quartet of hard-eyed constables marched purposely toward Nathanial, o
bviously intent on taking custody of him from the two Royal Marines who guarded him.

  Nathanial had at least expected to be met by some sort of government official, have the charges explained. Instead a black police four-wheeler loomed behind the constables. Were they really simply going to pack him up and cart him off to prison with no further ado?

  Nathanial looked for any sign of his friends. Captain Folkard, who had relieved himself of command of Sovereign after the disastrous events on Luna had played themselves out, was nowhere to be seen on the dock, but Nathanial spied Annabelle making her way to him on the arm of Lieutenant Bedford, both of them limping. Bedford had suffered a nasty sprain of his ankle on Luna and Annabelle… Months earlier Annabelle had lost her right leg above the knee and now wore a mechanical limb designed by Nathanial and built using Drobate technology over the course of the last few weeks. It seemed to serve her well, the only bright spot in this uniformly bleak scene.

  “Is this Stone?” the leading constable asked.

  “Of course it is,” Private Jones answered, bristling slightly. “And what of it, then?”

  “It’s all right, Private,” Nathanial said. “It is clear enough they are here for me. If you gentlemen would be so good as to give me a moment to take my leave of my friends, I would appreciate it.” He addressed this last to the leading constable.

  Instead the man gestured to his assistants. “Seize him and put him in the van.”

  “No! Just a moment, please!” Nathanial entreated but to no avail.

  Two constables pinned his arms to his side and pulled him toward the black carriage. A few yards away Annabelle cried out and broke free of Bedford, reached out to him. The leading constable made as if to stop her but Jones’s rifle was suddenly in his hands at high port.

  “Touch the lady, friend, and you’ll be chokin’ on your teeth,” Jones growled and the constable took a step back.

  “Nathanial,” Annabelle said and thrust something round, flat, and metallic into his hand, “take this and remember—never lose hope.”

  The constables pulled him away and he saw George Bedford comforting Annabelle as the doors on the back of the van closed and plunged him into darkness. He looked at his hand and saw a small gold watch, gleaming dully in the faint light which entered through the overhead ventilator. He recognised it as the pocket watch her father had given her—which contained on its inside a daguerreotype of her deceased parents; the only thing she retained from that former life.

  Never lose hope.

  Chapter One

  “Broken, He Returns”

  1.

  IT SHOULD HAVE been good to be back home, but as the steam-powered omnibus chugged its way across Putney Bridge, Nathanial reflected on how unmoved he felt about his return. He had been away for almost two years, his work taking him further from Surrey than he would have expected. The initial trip to Arizona, to work with Doctor Cyrus Grant on redesigning the prototype aether propeller governor, seemed like quite some distance. After all, at that point, although having travelled well throughout the United Kingdom, he had never left the land of his birth. Of course, that fateful voyage to meet and work with Grant was destined to be the first very small step in a much larger journey. And now, having left Putney early 1888 fresh of mind and full of ideas about his future, he was returning home at the tail end of 1889 tired and defeated, with a mind to curl up under the table in his lab and just let the world carry on without him.

  He glanced up at the polluted sky, and the dirty snow that was falling. He was away from London, and thus the taint was minor, but even then he could see it was spreading. When he’d left Putney there had been no sign of such airborne soot, but now, the rapid growth of industry in London was spreading outwards, casting the surrounding counties in dirt and grime.

  As usual several boats floated on the Thames either side of the bridge, although the majority of them were west towards Mortlake, away from the tripods that dredged the Thames nearer the city in the opposite direction. Several boats moored alongside the embankment by The Star & Garter. Nathanial smiled briefly as a few memories of youthful peccadilloes in the company of Josiah Hawksworth fluttered into his mind. He wondered if Josiah still spent most of his time boating on the Thames. Much could change in two years. So, so much…

  Nathanial lowered his head and buried himself deeper into his thick coat.

  The omnibus turned onto Windsor Street, but Nathanial looked up at the High Street, which was unusually quiet. Halfway up the High Street was Fairfax House. Part of him felt like alighting now, visiting the house he grew up in—a certain comfort would come from such an event—but instead he remained in his seat while the omnibus continued up Lower Richmond Road. He pulled the cord that dinged the bell, notifying the driver that he wished to alight. As the omnibus came to a halt, the conductor mounted the steps and reached the top deck just as Nathanial removed himself, with some difficulty (it was incredible how even the simple things became a task of some effort when you lost the use of one arm), from his seat.

  “Your luggage, sir, if I may,” the conductor said.

  For a moment Nathanial just looked at the conductor, who was surely only a few years younger than he. He blinked and nodded. “Of course,” Nathanial said, and allowed the conductor to retrieve Nathanial’s luggage from the deck. Only the gentry and their ladies rode the upper deck of the omnibuses, the cost for such a privilege being more than the working class could afford, and, for all his sins, the now-infamous Professor Nathanial Stone, ex-government employee, was, at least outwardly, a gentleman. As such a person, the conductor was more than happy to assist the gentleman in the sling, with the expectation of a healthy tip, of course. Riding an omnibus was like spending a night in a swanky hotel, Nathanial mused, aside from the soot.

  Once safely on the pavement, he fished into the pocket of his waistcoat, careful not to disturb the broken pocket watch, and handed the conductor a sovereign. “May she bring you more luck,” Nathanial said, and received a puzzled look in return. Nathanial smiled sadly beneath his cloth mask, and went to doff his hat, only to remember he did not possess one. Instead his cold hand found a mass of dirty and wet ginger hair, sodden by the slush that passed for snow in London Town.

  “Thank you, sir,” the conductor said, and hopped back onto the omnibus which chugged away, billowing a trail of smoke in its wake.

  Nathanial readjusted his sling, making sure the wrist of his right arm was at least a little comfortable, before picking up his Gladstone bag, thankful that it was only his right arm that had been so badly damaged in the…scuffle…at Chatham Convict Prison. The resident medical officer at the Dockyards had seen to his wrist yesterday; the damage had been done, Surgeon-Lieutenant Marter had claimed, and all they could hope for now was that it set in a way that would not be too prohibitive for Nathanial. If only the wrist had been seen to earlier, Marter carried on, then perhaps something more could have been done. If only! As it stood, Marter expected that forever more Nathanial’s right wrist would remain weak, ultimately giving into a form of arthritis. Not the best news for an inventor who used his hands so much in his work.

  Nathanial looked down the Upper Richmond Road, gratified to be away from the pollution of the city, and removed his goggles and the carbolic-soaked cloth mask. Although the air in Putney was far from clean, it was not so dense than one needed the usual respirative protection.

  He turned back to Putney Lower Common, and smiled sadly. So many years had been spent playing on the common when he was a child, before his genius made itself known and study became the order of the day. Simpler times, when all he needed to worry about was fishing for tiddlers in the streams. Times long gone.

  He had received a telegram in the early hours of the morning, a response to the one he had sent last night from Governor’s House at Chatham, telling him to meet his mother on the common. It was not a place he wanted to visit, since that was also the location of All Saints’ Church, the parish of which his father was reverend. Alas
, he could not countenance keeping his mother waiting, and so he crossed the road to Putney Lower Common.

  He should never have sent that telegram! Rather he should have returned home without notifying his mother. She meant well, of course, she always did, but even on his best day Nathanial would never have sought such attention. And this was most certainly not his best day.

  The common was fit to bursting, seemingly occupied by every denizen of Putney Parish, although of course Nathanial knew he was exaggerating. Even the common would have trouble holding in excess of thirteen thousand people, but enough people had decided to attend that such a claim was being tested. A bandstand had been hastily erected near All Saints’, where local musicians, led by All Saints’ organist, Mister Dancey himself, were playing. Mrs Biddick, known throughout Putney for her ability to carry a melody, was singing. The lyrics drifted across the air to where Nathanial was standing, casting his mind elsewhere, to a small untidy lab on the planet Mercury.

  Oh, promise me that you will take my hand,

  The most unworthy in this lonely land,

  And let me sit beside you in your eyes,

  Seeing the vision of our paradise,

  Hearing God’s message while the organ rolls,

  Its mighty music to our very souls,

  No love less perfect than a life with thee;

  Oh, promise me! Oh, promise me!

  Nathanial sniffed, blaming the cold air for the tear that fell, which he promptly wiped away with the back of his hand before anyone noticed him.

  Mrs Biddick stood before what looked to Nathanial like the mouthpiece of one of those telephonic machines, a cable running down the length of the pole. He prided himself on his ability to spot the smallest thing, and he followed the cable to a device that sat in the tree nearest the bandstand. It seemed to be fashioned on a telephone earpiece, only of a size big enough to place a man’s head inside, should one wish to do so. If he remembered correctly, the thing was called a loudspeaker, a device similar to the one patented by the German inventor Ernst Siemens some twelve years ago. He remembered reading about the failed attempts to make a similar device for use aboard naval craft, but to the best of his knowledge nothing had come of it. Even the crew of Sovereign, the most advanced aether flyer ever built, continued to use the tube to pipe commands throughout the ship. It was this loudspeaker which enabled the dulcet tones of Mrs Biddick to carry over Putney Lower Common. She had moved on from Oh, Promise Me and was now signing a new song, one of which Nathanial was unfamiliar, to which several people before the bandstand were dancing.