Lily Marin - three short steampunk stories Read online

  Lily Marin - three short steampunk stories

  by Paul Kater

  Published by the author at Smashwords - Copyright 2011 Paul Kater

  License Notes, Smashwords Edition:

  Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. Thank you for your support.

  Contents:

  Lily and the motley crew

  Lily and the avenging angel

  Lily and doctor Drosselmeyer

  About the author

  Books I published

  Lily and the motley crew

  "Lily?"

  The voice made her look up from her improvised make-up table. In the smudgy mirror, which was flanked by oil lamps with cracked leather caps, she saw the outline of the owner of the bar.

  Lily had just sung in his establishment and now she was removing the make-up from her face. "What do you want? And why don't you knock when you come into a lady's dressing room? I could be naked for all you know." She assumed that was what he had been hoping for.

  "Just wanted to bring your pay, Lily, that's all." Part of the man in the shadows became visible for a moment as a hand put an envelope on the table. "I'll get in touch when we have another evening. You're the best, Lily." For a hesitant second it looked as if the hand wanted to come to a rest on her shoulder, but its owner decided differently. He did not know how smart a decision that was. Footsteps moved away from the singer.

  Lily waited until the door closed. "Sure. The best. That's why I sing here and not in something like Albert Hall." She knew she wasn't the best singer in the world, but that was fine with her. She could live her life anonymously and do what she liked. And what she had to. "Speaking of which, I should get moving," she told her hairbrush.

  The singer quickly put her few belongings in her bag, slipped her coat on and with her umbrella in hand she left the bar through the back door. A fine rain greeted her as she walked away.

  "Wonder when there is an evening I won't need it," Lily muttered as she fought the umbrella. She won, so she could walk along under the small portable shelter. Since the start of the alchemists' convention it seemed to rain more than usual.

  She reached her modest home. It was not far away. Lily got out of her dress and washed her face. It was time for action again. The newspaper had told her so, earlier that day. She tied her long dark hair in a tight knot at the back of her head to keep it out of the way.

  As she slipped into the tight black leather pants, she thought of the audience in the bar. Good people, she knew, hard-working folks out for a nice time. And they didn't object to her singing, she thought with a grin. Lily put on the red shirt and buttoned that up. A leather vest went over it and then she buckled up the tool belt, as she called it. Once the belt was around her waist, she checked the tools.

  The dagger was shiny and sharp, the razors in place. The rad-gun, big and heavy, was full as she picked it from the charging unit. The weight of the radiation thrower felt comforting on her hip as it slid in the slightly worn holster. Without looking Lily switched it to standby, so the internal circuitry could warm up.

  She went to get the long coat and put it on. It never ceased to amaze her how light it was, considering how many strands of reinforced microfibres were woven into the fabric. It withstood bullets and had once saved her life from the blow of an axe. After putting on the black sturdy boots, Lily opened the small cupboard that was hidden under her coat rack and disconnected the backpack. It was her pride.

  She strapped the pine wood case to her back; the leather padding settled itself quickly to the contours of her back like the hand of a lover. She tucked the flexible copper tube with the ruby on the end in her pocket, hooked the whip to her tool belt, grabbed the big umbrella and then she was ready. The mask was in her other pocket, she always kept it there, but she would not need that yet.

  As she walked down the streets, none of the few people who were out in the rain paid her any mind. They all just wanted to get home and stay out of trouble and the rain. Lily had opened the big umbrella to keep the downpour away from her. No need to get soaking wet just yet.

  Once she was several streets away from her small apartment she stepped onto the road, where she kicked the heel of one boot against the other. The compact mechanisms in the thick soles reacted flawlessly and raised her up four feet. She started walking again, now with the long strides her artificially extended legs made possible. Walking faster than a regular person was forbidden on the sidewalks, but walking in the street like this usually was a pain, with carriages and cars getting in the way. Good thing there was hardly any traffic now.

  Soon Lily reached the area she had read about in the newspaper. She stopped at the side of the road and put the mask on. It hid most of her face, and contained the special lenses that helped her see clearly in the dark. As she moved the lenses into place, everything bathed in a familiar green light.

  In the area of Hurst Street and Ambly Road, the newspaper had said, a band of vagabonds made life of the people living there very difficult, with muggings, beatings, fires, explosive devices and the like. Several police officers had already laid down their lives trying to capture the thugs. That had been enough for Lily.

  She didn't care much about property, but when officers were dying in the line of their work, like her father and her uncle, that was where she drew the line. She wiggled her toes to make the elevation mechanism slide back into the soles of the boots. She wanted to attract the vagabonds and standing out like that would probably have the opposite effect.

  Lily stepped onto the battered sidewalk. That too bore the marks of the vagabonds. She closed the umbrella and pulled up the collar of her coat. Lily tried to decide which way to go first. A loud bang and a tremor beneath her feet helped her. She walked back to the crossing of Ambly and Lowell and turned into Lowell Road.

  Three people came running towards her. It was unclear if they were the vagabonds or their victims, so she hid in the doorway of the house she was in front of. Some shouting and a few shots later, she heard the bullets fly, it was clear that she had seen victims run.

  Lily counted the seconds. Too long, experience told her. The running folk should have passed her by now. They had probably been in the way of the bullets. The street was silent again, so Lily moved out of the shadows. Immediately she saw the bodies lying in the street. Perhaps, she hoped, they were only wounded, not dead.

  The left glass in her mask, which had heat seeking abilities, did not show any significant cooling down of either body, but that meant nothing: they had been down for only a few seconds. Slowly she folded up her umbrella and hung that from the tool belt. The people on the ground, she found, were all dead.

  The vagabonds had moved on. The street lights assisted the lenses in showing Lily the desolate place that was Lowell Road. Cars and carriages had been blown to smithereens or burnt to crisps, windows were shattered, some had been hastily nailed shut with pieces of wood, and there were many cracks in the pavement. She could almost smell the fear that lived behind the closed windows. A few loud bangs, shots from firearms again, told her where the vagabonds had progressed to, so she started walking. They could not be far; as the vagabonds considered themselves masters in the area, they would not be in a hurry.

  Lily turned into the first street she came across. There a group was standing, as if they had not a care in the world. Most of the street lights here were off. Damaged probably. The light-enhancers in her mask showed her six men, all dressed in torn, ill-fitting suits. In a reflex her hand slid over th
e rad-gun that was under the coat, making sure it was there.

  Four of the men carried handguns, she saw, and at least one of those was a rad-gun. Her coat would take a good beating if they had a shot at her with that.

  In the darkness, the six men did not notice Lily until she was very close. The thick soft soles of her boots dampened her footsteps, which usually was an advantage.

  "Now look what we have here," one of the men said as he saw Lily walking up to the group. Four barrels of guns were pointed at her. "Halt, raise your hands."

  "Wrong. You will raise your hands," Lily said, "and after I tied you up you will come with me. About time that this neighbourhood is freed from the likes of you."

  The men looked confused, despite their weaponry. Lily never changed her voice; the sound of a woman speaking from inside the fearsome attire usually was in her advantage. Now also. As the six hesitated, she brought out her whip from under her coat and made it dance a few times. The four guns flew through the air and landed on the street somewhere, out of the range of triggerfingers.

  As the whip landed in her other hand, she drew the rad-gun and pointed it at the group.

  "Make no mistakes, gentlemen," she said, "I know how to use this and my finger is faster than all your legs combined.

  "Madam, if you allow me-" one of the men said as he stepped forward.

  Lily did not allow him. With her other hand she was very well able to crack her whip as the man learnt. He landed on the pavement. Hard.

  With a flick of the wrist, Lily undid the end of the whip from his ankle. "No tricks. I am here to bring order back to the area."

  Her voice had gotten hard and strong, the way it always did once she became her true self again. The singing bit was just a cover for the daytime, no one should know who Lily Marin really was. The more out of sight she was in her public life, the better.

  "Oh my God," one of the other men said. "It's her. It's the Masked Woman!"

  Lily hated the unoriginal name the press had given her, but it was hers apparently. "Yes. I'm the Masked Woman."

  "Behind you!" the man yelled as he and the other four dropped to the floor.

  Nicely synchronised trick, Lily thought, just before she sensed something wrong. Behind her. She ducked and swivelled round, raising the rad-gun and blasting a round. The rock that had come for the back of her head fell harmlessly on the ground behind her, as the man who had thrown it fell on the ground in front of her. He was with a few more men. Or rather, he had been, as he was no more.

  Crap, there are many more of them, was the first thing she thought. Then it dawned on her that the six she had taken for the gang were possibly a few of the not yet scared people that wanted to go against the vagabonds.

  "Stay put, I'm going after them," she called to the six as the rock-throwers made a run for it, away from her. She saw how they turned left, back into Lowell and heard their footsteps echo away.

  Lily slammed the gun back in the holster as she got up. She estimated where the vagabonds would be going and positioned herself as she reached into her pocket. She pressed hard on the ruby. It slipped into the copper tube. At the hiss from the backpack she braced herself; this was going to be nauseating again.

  The fierce jolt from the pack pushed her upwards. She hoped that she had positioned herself properly, once airborne there was no way to make any changes. The thunder behind her deafened her, the skin on her face that was not protected by the mask wanted to retreat to her neck as she sped upwards. Up and higher she went, over the buildings.

  Below her she saw the gang running. So far, so good, Lily the Masked Woman thought. A splutter from her pack told her that the flight was almost over and she prepared for the smack-down. Landings were unpleasant and she never got the timing right to make her boot extensions break the fall.

  She started to drop. Falling was not so bad. It was the moment of hanging suspended in the air that made her stomach turn a few times.

  "Oh shit," Lily said as a true Masked Woman. She had already spotted that her landing zone was a building. Before the stone masses took the view away, she saw that the motley gang had slowed down and was looking around. Somehow they never looked up.

  Just before the last hiccups and snorts came from the backpack, Lily threw her weight into the straps, trying to turn herself in the least damaging position before she hit the building. She was lucky this time: she slammed into the wall only eight feet from the ground. The coat took most of the impact and she slid down the bricks, landing on her feet. "Oooomph....."

  The Masked Woman shook her head a few times to get her senses back in place, then she ran out of the alley that her short flight had taken her to. She looked left, then right.

  There they were. Blood was racing through Lily's veins now. She had gone through the transformation completely, all traces of the singer had vanished. She now was the hunter, the stone cold killer that stepped in where justice feared to go. She paced towards the group of five, rad-gun in one hand, whip in the other.

  Two of the men carried swords, not an uncommon sight in these parts and hardly anything to be concerned with. The others had a small selection of hand weapons. One of these men aimed at Lily and fired without wasting time and breath.

  The impact of the steel pellet barely stopped her progress. She'd have a nice bruise of it the next day, she realised in a fraction of a moment. Then she fired a blast from her rad-gun and the shooter went down, never to come up again.

  One man stared at the figure in the long coat that came steadily towards them despite the shot from the gun. He almost dropped his gun for fear as a certain area of his pants coloured dark. The two sword-carriers had different ideas. As a trained team they each moved to a side and then charged at Lily.

  She had anticipated that. The rad-gun was holstered again, and her hand came back with the umbrella. Lily flicked a small nob on it and the blade of a rapier jumped from the tip of the folded-up umbrella. She blocked a strike from one of the attackers and dove under a swoop from the other man, then turned quickly and lashed out to the second man with her whip in the same movement. It caught the man's wrist.

  Lily yanked. Not with the minimal strength of the singer. No, she now had command of all her power, the power that had been unleashed when the experimental transformation-ray of Doctor Drosselmeyer had gone wrong and the device exploded, charging Lily with more than a thousand times the level that she was meant to get.

  The man's wrist broke. Lily's ripping was so powerful and the whip's end so sharp that his hand came off. As he screamed and blood spouted from his stump, Lily was already on top of the other sword fighter.

  Her handling of the rapier umbrella was so fast that she was no match for the man. A dozen or more deep cuts in his chest and abdomen sealed his fate. Lily turned to the two remaining men, one of which had fallen to his knees and reduced himself to a snotty heap.

  The last one standing was a bear of a man. Not only was he huge, he also had a rad-gun and a very large calibre fire arm, and both of those were aimed at the Masked Woman. Oh shit, she thought. This could get really painful.

  "Give up," she said, aiming her umbrella at the man. "You're alone now, nobody's going to save you."

  "Who says I need help, bitch?" the man growled.

  Lily saw his finger twitch and closed her eyes. The beam of electrons from the rad-gun hit her straight in the chest and face. The microfibre coat absorbed most of it, but the unmasked skin on her face stung and burnt. It was over soon, though. Rad-guns did not keep up such a power drain for long.

  Lily forced air into her lungs and opened her eyes. She saw stars dancing in front of her eyes, something that hindered seeing. She knew he would shoot the other gun too, but when? Then the crack of a shot reached her ears - the bullet would hit any moment - but it didn't.

  Another shot was fired and again the burning sensation of a bullet didn't come.

  She blinked a few times to make the stars go away and saw the bear of a man on one knee, clutching his s
houlder, blood seeping through his fingers. Blood also came from a thigh. Then she heard the panting behind her.

  The men she had mistaken for the vagabond gang had come up behind her and someone from that group had fired at the last gang member standing.

  With a groan the wounded man lifted his gun, aiming to hurt someone. Lightning fast, Lily grabbed at her tool belt and threw. The man fired the gun, but the bullet went harmlessly up into the air, as the dagger had pierced his forehead and forced him backwards.

  "Dear Lord," she heard one of the men behind her say. "Madam, are you well?"

  Lily turned towards them, ignoring the feeling of pepper under her skin that the rad-gun had left there. "I'm fine. Thank you for coming, gentlemen, and my apology for mistaking you for the gang."

  She turned and walked towards the fallen bear. She yanked her dagger from the man's head which let go of it with a sucking sound. She wiped it clean on the dead man's clothes and tucked it away. Then she turned back to the small group.