TITLE: Clockwork
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: R/Mature
LENGTH: Approx 90,000 words total
PAIRING: Audrey/Duke/Nathan
SUMMARY: Steampunk Haven. Amnesiac fugitive Audrey Parker hires privateer airship captain Duke Crocker's Cape Rouge to fly her safe passage out of the city-state of Heppa, but they find their escape pursued by police automaton Nathan Wuornos and a deadly mystery enemy.
NOTES: Rabbitt made a list of prompts for possible Haven AUs on Tumblr, including "steampunk AU!", and is therefore almost completely to blame for this. I said I'd draw the thing, I have no idea how this happened.
DISCLAIMER: Virtually everything I know about airships was from reading the Wikipedia entry, although I also looked at enough steampunk art after Wikipedia to conclude This Is Not About Science. In any case, please forgive historical and technological and genre gaffs (I don't actually know hell of a lot about Steampunk, either).

CLOCKWORK

Part 1

1.

The woman of Duke's dreams was apparently called Audrey. Granted, he'd only just met her, in Bar Gull on the inner trading ring high up on Heppa's docking towers, courtesy of barmaid Tracey sending word she might have a potential paying passenger for him. Apart from the fact she was wearing a torn dress and needed passage out of Heppa fast, Duke didn't know anything about his mystery woman, but it seemed they were equal in that, since neither did she.

"So you really don't remember anything?" he pressed, fascinated. "Just woke up one day - hey, who am I? Think I'll go on the run from the police."

She looked irked and clenched her fingers on the edge of the table. Neither of them were drinking, but Duke had ordered a plate of pork scratchings, the closest to food the bar had available. "They came after me," she said. "I had an ID in my pocket with my picture and the name Audrey Parker on it. That's all I know. And, apparently, that I'm really good at punching people."

She narrowed her eyes on that to make it a threat, and Duke inclined his head, surrendering.

There had to be something about women who looked like trouble that Duke found impossible to resist. "I take it you can pay for the passage," he prompted, because some things were non-negotiable, even if his new-found affections were outraged with him. What? He hoped she could pay.

"It depends what these are worth." She reached into her dress and pulled out a large handful of clattering metal tokens and other ephemera. She scattered them onto the table top, then followed them with another handful, and Duke felt his jaw drop.

He reached out to stop her producing anything more. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not here!" Because two of the items she'd dumped on the table already were the sidearm and ID chip of a Heppa law enforcement officer. And yeah, Duke could do something useful with that, not to mention the tokens, but their presence was not exactly something to broadcast.

His passenger-to-be smirked, enjoying his flailing. "I'm good for it? When can we leave?"

"Yeah, it looks like. And when do you want to leave?"

"How about right now?"

Duke hadn't entirely been expecting that. He still had things to attend to on Heppa, not to mention refuelling was kind of essential. He patted the compressed gas canisters next to his chair with a tight smile. He'd been on his way back to his vessel with the supplies when Tracey sent word. "Need another trip out to pick up a last few cans, then we're good. What say you meet me at bay 12-4a in two hours?"

She did not look happy. She said, with annoyed urgency, "How about now?"

Duke frowned at the ripped corset. "What exactly have you been doing, Miss I-Don't-Remember?"

"You can just call me Audrey," she said. "I'm pretty sure that much is right. And running, mostly, is what I've been doing." She lowered her voice. "I told you, they came after me. I'm not paying for any crimes I don't remember doing, so I don't care if it is the police, and I don't care what they have on me."

"Hey." Duke shrugged. "I don't care either, but you're not worth falling out of the sky for. I have to get at least two more canisters after these before I haul anchor, sweetheart, non-negotiable. Call it an hour." He'd have to run, for that. "12-4a, the Cape Rouge. Okay?"

"All right." She scowled, still unhappy. "Can I wait on your boat?"

"...No, you can not," Duke said emphatically, because he might be in love, but he had only just met her and trust didn't go that far. He'd loved Evi, but trusting her was out of the question no matter how long he'd known her. Audrey was looking around nervously, and it struck him that she didn't have anywhere else to go, anywhere she dared spend that hour. "Wait, what, they're here?" He suddenly clicked to it. "When you say they're chasing you, you mean they're chasing you right now?"

She nodded tightly, fingers playing with the stolen gun inside her dress.

Duke swore quite a lot, thinking about the chances he hadn't already been tagged by the cops, been seen with her by everyone in the damn bar, and that he wasn't in this up to his neck whether he wanted to be or not.

But he was still not planning to fall out of the sky halfway to Callion, and he'd already paid for all the canisters. "Okay," he said, trying to get control of his breathing and his pounding heart. He'd been a fugitive before, but seriously, she had to pick Heppa? Heppa sucked. They had their freakin' automated police force and eyes everywhere. "You go hide in the ladies room for an hour, if that's what it takes, and I will be back when I've loaded up the essentials. And, honey, you'd better be worth this."

For that, she flashed her gun at him in warning, which wasn't the wisest thing to do if you were dependant on someone for safe passage out - and really, he was not obliged to come back. But it occurred to him that what he just said could be read a couple of ways, so he let it go. He shoved his basket of pork scratchings at her and got up, pretending not to notice, as he snuck a glance back in leaving, how she fell on them like she hadn't eaten all day.

Fuckshitdamnit, Duke thought, eying the clockwork cops milling around outside the bar. In the docking ring plaza, there was a casino, and a few store fronts belonging to small-time vendors. One of the cops looked right at him. Duke was taken aback for a moment by the illusion of intelligence and purpose in the artificial features, in the way the officer moved. He was a real high-end job for a police automaton, with actual hair and a face painted up to look almost human, but you could still see the joints around the jaw that allowed movement. He was dressed up fancy, too, like a gentleman almost, or at least a gentleman's clockwork toy. Duke had known Heppa had long since started branching into the upper ranks with their plans to automate the police force, but mostly those Duke had encountered were the stripped-down automata they used for everyday patrolling. The cop's attention moved on from him, and the two standard models with him were both looking the wrong way, so Duke beat it, hauling the canisters with him, uncomfortably conscious of the grating sound they made against the floor as they were dragged.

The advantage of Heppa, far and away above most other city states, was its docking towers. It was hell of a plus not to have to ditch gas or hit ground to make a stop over. Yeah, Heppa was advanced, Heppa was great, apart from all the other ways in which it sucked.

Duke hurried back to the Cape Rouge's berth, where he had to take the canisters across the ramp one by one, rolling them with both hands. He got them stashed and then sprinted back out. With the police sniffing around, best to get the next two loaded, he figured, before he returned to Bar Gull for Audrey Parker. They'd have a lot more mobility if they needed to run.

Unfortunately, the airship supply station covered levels 5 through 8, a fair trek down. The police were still staking out the lifts but they weren't after him, yet, so Duke walked past them as calmly as he could fake. The fancy plain-clothes cop was talking to the vendors - looked like he had a vocabulary that extended to more than stock law enforcement phrases, too - and sooner or later they'd reach the bar.

Duke discovered cops seemed to be a feature on all the levels. A few human ones in the mix definitely meant this was more than routine crap. What even was Audrey Parker, to merit all of this?

They weren't a visible presence as he headed back up through the level 12 ring with the canisters, which made him nervous. As he returned from his ship for the last time, he spotted them coming out of the casino.

Damn. The bar was next. Duke dived through the open door, past a staggering drunk, into the smoke-filled interior. He couldn't see Audrey. He shoved through to the ladies room door and hammered on it. Two women opened it and glared at him, but Audrey emerged from a cubicle behind them. "Come on!" Duke gestured frantically.

"You came back," she said, looking a little wide-eyed. She hadn't trusted him.

"I'm wounded." Duke grabbed her hand. Cops were coming through the main door. There had to be a service door to this place...

There was a balcony. He hustled her toward it. At the end of the balcony, another balcony belonging to the adjoining casino was less than three feet away. The drop into the sprawling metropolis of Heppa below was staggering, and the keel of someone else's airship loomed ominously overhead, blocking the light, but the step across was eminently doable. "Can you-" Duke began.

"Already on it!" She was clambering and jumping before he could offer her a hand. Her boot caught the rail in the gap between its raised heel and foot, and she sort of pivoted forward. A casino client in an expensive suit and cravat grinningly caught her and handed her down.

Around Duke, the commotion stirred by their actions was drawing the cops. But they were heading for the balcony, which left time to cut back through the casino before the cops realised what Duke was doing, since these cops were all clockwork-brained automatons.

Duke made the jump less gracefully, and Audrey caught his arm and hauled him forward over the rail.

Then they were running full-pelt through the casino, causing more of a stir. Out of the main entrance and into the plaza ring again, and-

The goddamn cops were pushing out of the bar, faster than Duke had expected, with the plain clothes officer in the lead. Duke shoved Audrey ahead of him. They had to ascend a short staircase, then charge around almost half the outer ring to reach berth 4a.

The Cape Rouge awaited them, bobbing gently on her tethers in Heppa's low-level air currents. Her body was fine carved lightweight wood, shaped at least superficially like an ocean going vessel. A complex net sculpted her air bags to a shape of elegance. She had propulsion from a rear propeller and two side nacelles that jutted out on stubby little wings.

A clamour sounded behind them as the police automata, with their inferior balance, ballsed-up the sharp turning onto the outer ring and fell all over each other. Some things were predictable. The officer came in sight, though, escaping the mistake and the pile-up.

"Go!" Duke bawled, and they scrambled up the ramp. Duke kicked all the fixings off the ramp and tossed a knife to Audrey. "Cut all the mooring ropes. Just cut them! Damn it!" The ramp wasn't built to be disengaged speedily. He reached down and hauled it up and out with both hands, just before the oncoming clockwork policeman could get his foot on it to weigh it down. Duke and the cop both wavered off-balance on opposite sides of the drop, frantically trying to hold back their built-up momentum and staring down at the ramp as it fell to the city beneath.

"You might have killed someone!" the police automaton said, appalled. His voice was low and mellow with the whirr of gears and a slight breathy hiss in it.

"I really hope not," Duke said, sincerely, meeting the guy's eyes in his alarm.

A pistol, sharply raised, moved around to bear upon him. "Stop now, before-"

Audrey must have cut the moorings, because the Cape Rouge moved underneath them. The pistol levelled and fired, but Duke was already hitting the deck. He heard the rear propeller whizz to life below them. Duke wondered if Audrey knew what she was doing. They needed to release more gas into the airbag if they wanted to rise up and clear the rest of Heppa's skyline.

The other automata were clattering up on the circle, uniformed dolls with dull metal faces and crude features. They had guns, too. The officer had stumbled as the movement of the Cape Rouge jolted the platform... There was still a mooring rope attached, close to where the walkway had been, but it was groaning against the pull of the engines as the boat strained to leave. The Cape Rouge was actually rising somewhat by herself, helped by a handy wind current, but more lift was needed.

"Bye," Duke said, waving and ducking down, and the wooden rail saved him from the shots of the police as he scrambled low across a deck that was now too elevated for them to score him from below. He swore as a change in the direction of the impact noises and a distressed whine from the propeller indicated they were shooting at that, instead.

Lift. He needed lift.

He didn't need to install new canisters. There was still a little gas in the old ones, already attached to the base of the Cape Rouge's two airbags. He turned them on and left the remainder of both to drain up into the canvas. A sharp snap and a jolt followed the first tug, indicating the last mooring rope had snapped, and they bounded free, upward into the skies.

Audrey's hands were at the controls, although flapping a little helplessly. "Is it all right?" she asked. "I didn't know what else to do."

"It's fine!" Duke gripped her shoulder and pretty much felt like collapsing. Talk about narrow escapes... "Just need to... catch an air current... then we can cut the engine and leave it to the winds." They were rising so fast now, with the gas cylinders he'd left open, that they'd be a blur before the Heppa police could launch anything to catch them. Hiding in the cloud layer had its own risks, but today, he'd take them. He made a few adjustments, tipped his head upward at the clouds they were aimed for, and staggered to the side of the boat to affirm how far Heppa had retreated below.

"What are they?" Audrey asked, sounding more collected now as she took from his limbless collapse against the safety rail that they were safe.

"What?" Duke asked blankly.

"The things in the police uniforms. They're not people. They look... mechanical."

"Oh," Duke said. "Police automata. On Heppa, they couldn't persuade enough real people to sign up for the job of policing this shithole city state, so they opted for manufactured policemen. You ever heard of the term 'stickler for the rules'? You haven't seen a thing until you've tried to reason with one of these guys."

She looked startled by the answer. He wondered where she'd come from, not to have even heard of all this. Or had it just been wiped with the rest of her memory?

Duke groaned as he rose to his feet, aching from muscles he'd wrenched tipping clear the walkway. "I should go check we didn't sustain any damage when that last mooring rope snapped. Then I'll show you to the guest quarters."

He staggered to the back of the boat. Flight was still jerky because they were still moving fast, and maybe he needed to cut off the gas before they rose too high: perhaps there'd been more left in the scrapings at the bottom of the canisters than he'd thought. But he'd do the check first.

As he leaned over the back of the ship, a hand like a vise reached up and clamped around his throat.

His cry was choked off, but he heard Audrey's boots clatter up behind him, heard her gasp as he tumbled backwards to the deck with the police automaton's weight on top of him.

It was the one with the face, hair and freakin' vest and suit pants. Duke lashed out with his fist, scoring a hinged jaw, but only rattled it and no doubt caused more damage to his hand. The cop didn't even pay any attention to Duke's swinging fist, reaching back stiffly to score, on the second try, the pistol holstered at the back of his belt. He pulled it out and levelled it at Audrey. His hand was still on Duke's throat and the world was starting to go bright and spotty at the edges.

"Let him go!" Audrey said. Duke struggled to roll his eyes back to see her. She had a gun levelled, too.

"Put the weapon down," the mechanical man responded, "and turn this airship around."

"You're killing him," Audrey said urgently, "and I don't know how to turn the ship." Duke's hand scrambled at the mechanical face, looking for a joint, for a weakness, but even the mechanisms of the eyes were hard to the touch and his fingers were too weakened to do any damage.

But the officer considered, and the grip loosened, allowing Duke to heave in air. "Audrey Parker, you are under arrest as a fugitive. I have orders to return you to Central Command on Heppa. Privateer captain Crocker, I require you to turn this vessel around. You will cooperate?"

"They really fed you a dictionary, didn't they?" Duke said, and tightened the muscles in his left arm and leg in the moment before he released the saved-up energy in a burst, rolling and trying to buck the police automaton off him. It didn't quite work - they tussled together for a moment, the weight of the clockwork man heavy on Duke's back - but then a bullet pinged off metal somewhere and his opponent jolted.

"That won't work," the automaton told Audrey, annoyed. "In fact, a ricochet would be more likely to harm-"

The distraction was enough to let Duke break free, scuttling on hands and knees. He hadn't safely been able to carry a weapon on Heppa, but there was one stashed next to the safety ropes on the starboard side, only a few feet away. He drew it, but suddenly a metal arm was there, fingers clamping agony around his bicep, numbing the hand he'd wrapped around the gun. "I have no wish to kill you and be forced to bring this airship back to dock inexpertly at the risk of more damage to citizens and infrastructure."

So the automaton was stuffed, too, Duke thought, through the pain in his arm. He didn't know how to fly the Rouge and nor did Audrey. Well, hell with him. "You should have thought of that before you started jumping onto other people's boats!"

"Your cooperation wouldn't be unreasonable in this situation." The cop managed to sound a fraction exasperated.

Audrey had given up on the gun and she moved in now to grab the officer's gun arm, forcing it down with her weight. "Let's face it," she panted in the mechanical man's ear. "You want him alive and you want me alive. You're not going to use that anyway."

The automaton dropped the gun and used his free hand to shove her off, instead. But they were all three of them grappling close-quarters, now, and Audrey was fierce for a little blonde slip of a thing. The cop's mechanical body was strong and tough, but only as strong as the weight his joints could support, and his fight was hampered by his unwillingness to risk inflicting serious damage. Between them, Duke and Audrey managed to hold his shoulders and wrestle him to the deck. Duke was definitely going to have bruises where parts of him bounced off the metal body. He caught his hand in the brush of hair on the lifelike head and bounced the metal skull off his deck as hard as he could. The cop's face froze eerily.

"Is he unconscious?" Audrey asked.

"Rattled his mechanics," Duke panted, reaching for the dropped gun on the deck. "Damn things. Shit! Get back, quick... I know how to deal with his kind." He got to his feet with the pistol in hand even as the police automaton stirred and rolled up.

Duke leaned down to ensure he was met directly with the click of a pistol inches from his glass eyeball. "Maybe this won't kill you, since magic at least partly gave you 'life', but it stands a good chance of destroying the delicate mechanisms that allow you to think. Which will get you out of my hair."

The clockwork lawman's jaw gaped, then snapped shut. His eyes widened. He blinked, then met the threat with all the artificial lines of his face set tense and tight. It was so oddly human... Duke's finger tightened reflexively on the trigger as he tensed in response.

"Don't! Don't do it!" Audrey struck his hand, and a shot fired, but screeched off the automaton's forearm where it braced on the deck next to his head.

Duke swore. "I wasn't going to, but you nearly did."

In that moment, the automaton had looked entirely too real.

He looked, now, intensely relieved, even though a panel was shattered on his arm and some small cogs and screws had scattered on the deck.

"Fine, fine, fine," Duke said. "I'm not going to... kill someone... for doing their job. We'll ditch it in Callion." He pointed the pistol back at the eye of the lawman. "If you behave. Or else I change my mind. Cuffs, now." The automaton took them out, clumsy with his damaged arm. "On you. Quicker! Or I swear I use this anyway, because my arm fucking hurts, and my neck fucking hurts, and I-" He narrowed his eyes at the damage the bullet had done. "I guess you don't have that problem."

The cuffs clicked into place and Duke deflated with relief.

"Throw the keys over here," he ordered.

Audrey snatched them up without needing to be asked.

"And now?" the automaton asked warily.

Duke leaned in to scramble through the officer's pockets, removing the contents. "Over there," he panted, pointing at the back of the deck. "I'll think it over. Don't bother trying to escape over the rail."

"The fall would kill me just as effectively as it would either of you," the automaton pointed out, as he shuffled backwards, keeping his eyes on Duke and the pistol, and added, "I'm not likely to seek that."

Audrey knelt to scrape up the items Duke had tossed on the deck, as well as the little pile of screws, cogs and broken metal from the cop's arm. She held up a wallet. Loose change fell out, Heppa's monetary tokens, and other junk disturbingly like the things you'd find in anyone's pockets. A fucking handkerchief, of all things! Audrey pulled out an ID card. "He has a real name." She looked around, but the automaton had settled himself at the stern, on the low bench there, and with the ever-present noises of the wind and the boat in flight he was probably out of earshot.

"Weird name," Duke commented, falling to his knees next to her, exhausted by the desperate fight. "Wuornos?"

"Nathan," Audrey said. "Detective Wuornos. I told you that you couldn't kill him."

"I wasn't going to-" Duke protested again, then he said, "huh," and picked up another item, a locket with a photograph of an older man on it, grey-haired and grizzled. "Keepsakes...? It's almost like he's human. They must have really moved on with the technology on these things since I lived in Heppa."

"Or the magic."

"Do you... know about magic?" Duke asked, all of a sudden hit by a funny feeling about that question.

"I don't know," she said wryly. "I don't remember."