Short Mortal Engines Quartet Fanfiction – Don't Kill Me on MoonFest!
Brighton – Hester begins to storm the Pepperpot.
Hester, too, had been waiting for the moon. Perched on a seat on the lower-tier promenade, she had whiled away her time by glancing through her new copy of Predator's Gold, and what she had found there cheered her. Pennyroyal had woven lie over lie, stringing together a completely new story. What little but crucial truth existed within had no hope of coming to light – at least as far as Tom was concerned, and it gave Hester comfort, as well as the sly thought that she'd still get away with what she had done.
As the moon rose, people, loud and rowdy, swarmed out from the underdecks of Brighton to watch the fireworks. Hester shoved her way past them, forcing her way against the flow into a dank and miserable district of slave-barracks and tenements called Mole's Combe. The streets were void by the time she reached the base of Shkin's tower, all except for the startled seagulls that soared and cackled above her head, like white phantoms against the night sky.
Having studied the Pepperpot before her arrival, she had already decided on her best point of entry. Round on the sternward side, there was a small back door, rusty and riveted and swamped by dustbins and sacks and snaky ducts. The only defence against intruders seemed to be a small, brass security camera above the door, keeping watch on potential, unwanted visitors. There was no need for anything else. Prisons don't normally have to worry about people breaking in, and that was the same for the Pepperpot; it needed to keep people in, not out.
Hester crept closer with caution, keeping inside the shadows. She could feel the blood of her murderous father Thaddeus Valentine rushing through her veins as her heart began to race, filling her with his killer strength. She could almost feel Tom and Wren now, feel that they were very close, and that they'd soon be reunited, and be happy. She smiled to herself behind her veil at the thought as she took the Schadenfreude from inside her coat as waited until the next round of fireworks erupted into the sky before she shot the camera from its mountings.
She stuffed the gun backinto her coat, just as a man came out from the door and stood with his hands on his hips, peering up at the smoking wreck of the camera, annoyed and indignant.
"Happy MoonFest!" called Hester.
The man turned. He looked surprised to see the veiled woman walking towards him, and even more surprised when she shoved her knife between his ribs. She thought he died very quickly and heaved his body in the shadows behind the bins and went through the door, closing it softly behind her. She found herself in a corridor, light and loud voices coming from a small guard-room at the very end on the right. They were being unusually loud and Hester thought that she could start singing right there and then and they probably wouldn't hear her: most likely trying to celebrate MoonFest in their own way they can, perhaps sneaking in a few glasses of alcohol on the job. They had to make it some way bearable to be away from their wives and children on the night of MoonFest.
Hester was about to start walking when she thought she heard movement behind her, possibly the door squeak as if someone had come through it. She turned, and the impact was so hard that she was lunged into the wall and then the ground, blood pouring down her face from the fresh gash on her head. She blacked out, but only for a second. Her vision was trembling and doubled, her head ached and throbbed, and her arms and legs seemed to no longer obey her command.
"Happy MoonFest indeed!" the man said, standing over her, the very same man she believed she had just killed outside only moments ago. Blood drizzled from the stab wound in his ribs and he was losing colour. But Hester had underestimated. He'd got back up, came back in and smacked her across the head with his fist, his punch so mighty that Hester thought at first she'd been hit with an iron club. "You picked the wrong MoonFest to kill me, missy! But looks like I've picked the right one to kill you!"
In a disorientated, dazed mess, Hester scrambled inside her coat for her gun, and drew it towards him. The man grabbed it before she could even fire, and tore it from her grasp. He rammed it muzzle-first into the wall, scraping a dusty whole into the wall through the plaster and bending the gun's small barrel sideways. The man didn't look very large and didn't look likely to be that strong, but even so, Hester found herself being hoisted into the air by her neck with only one arm. The man grinned evilly as Hester struggled with both her arms to free herself, her legs kicking helplessly above the floor, moaning and choking.
"When I was younger," the man said, "I used to be a hitman. You know how I used to kill my targets?"
Hester fought for air and continued her pointless effort to free herself, even taking to kicking the man's stab wound, which was bleeding fast. But nothing worked, as if this man, with his powerful hand clasped tightly around her throat, was simply just too tough to die. She continued to panic, knowing that he could, with one easy squeeze, end her life and all that she'd ever known; but he didn't. He kept speaking.
"Well," he said. "I'll tell ya. My favourite weapon was my fists – nice, clean and easy. I made my punch so powerful that I could fracture a man's skull in just one blow. And that's exactly what I used to do!" He laughed an almost hysterical laugh, and it frightened Hester. He raised his free hand and clamped it into another tight, strong fist and drew back. "And it's exactly what I'm gunna do now! Ha! You picked the wrong man to mess with this MoonFest! I'll see you in the Sunless Country! Goodbye, missy!"
Hester closed her eye and steered her head as the man pulled back quickly for the final strike, but it did not come. She squinted her eye open again just to see what the pause was for. The man's satanic grin had faded. His grip around her throat loosened, and she collapsed to the floor, coughing and choking and gasping at the air, stroking her red throat with her hand. The man stepped back and let his shoulder blades fall onto the wall behind him. "Well," he said. "Looks like you're in luck, missy…" He put a hand to his stab wound as the blood gushing from it slowed. "I'm all out of blood." His legs gave way and his back slithered down the wall until he was sitting. He grinned again. "But I'll see you in the Sunless Country, nonetheless," he said. "At some point. I'll be waiting." And with that, he fell silent, and his head tilted, and his eyes stared far, far beyond.
Hester was still panting, shaking, scared at how close she had just been to dying without having saved Tom or Wren. She looked at the powerful, dead man, and then at the gun. How they did not hear any of that in the guard-room, she did not know. She picked up the gun and had an incredibly difficult time trying to bend it back into shape on the wall, whacking it hard against it and trying to soften it with her body heat. Eventually, she managed to recover its original shape. She got up, repositioned her veil and cleared her throat. "Well now," she muttered. "Where was I?"
Leaving the dead man there in the corridor, she proceeded on her way, her gun poised and ready, off to continue her mission to save her husband Tom and her daughter Wren.