22. Vox Redux
Elizabeth remained subdued afterward, glancing to me with that hopeful but wary cast women get when something unexpectedly romantic tumbles into their lives. Ever since I'd met this woman, something drove me mad thinking of any harm coming to her. Now that something had, I needed her at my side, sound and safe, forever. As I worried for the approaching gunfire outside, Elizabeth returned to the bedchambers and nursery, sifting the wife's racks for something acceptable to cover herself. Eventually she emerged in an off-white dress with a hem just below the knees, matched by dark lace boots and a bowed ribbon about her waist. The top of it like the former seemed almost a corset, but all white. She produced the same jacket she'd worn earlier, unsullied, and began to brush her hair out.
"You're wearing that?" I asked, wondering where she'd gotten her sense of style...I liked it, but figured she might bomb New York simply for tongue lashing its ladies would unleash upon her.
"I have to be able to move, Mr. DeWitt. I nearly killed myself tripping over...over that hem of Mrs. Montgomery's dress. The rest of these...things...in there...why they're so stiff and heavy as to be unfit for wear by a corpse."
"You didn't think that about the last dress."
"Oh, I did." She set the hairbrush back upon a vanity shelf. "It needed changes. She looked up to me taciturnly. "But it was a gift of sorts and beggars can't be choosers."
I chose not to regale her with that poor couple's fate. With a grumble I ventured inside and garnered a coat for her, a coat she eschewed. "We're a mile over the North Atlantic, Elizabeth. It may be summertime, but you've seen how cold it gets out there. She glanced to the jacket. "I thought you'd lost that."
"Montgomery's jacket?" She asked, still looking to me with that...look. "Down in the room where they disrobed me. I hope you understand...I...I've no desire to return there. It just so happens that...that I might have found the original."
"The original?"
"Well, an original. In the closet." I looked inside. In a pile upon the floor and covered in dust, it wasn't in the best of shape.
I began to walk. "We'll never catch him, you know. He left hours ago and we have nothing to catch him with."
"Then we'll have to use the gondola system, Booker." She turned me to face her, and she was very earnest. "Please...you can't let me turn into...into that."
"My God..." I answered, feeling my brow turn at the revulsion I saw in her countenance. "What did you see?"
She shook her head. "Something...something awful. Something worse than the Tower."
"Whatever you saw, Elizabeth, it wasn't you. You'd never do that."
"That's where you're wrong. It was me. I lived it. I became an old crone, used up...alone. He'd...Comstock...he tortured me...conditioned me for years, and for years I'd held out hope you'd save me. For years. And he died. And I...I grew old and when you didn't come and I came to resent you...I came to hate you. And in my despair and isolation I...I let Columbia's lunatics gain sway. I let them do horrible things. I...did horrible things."
"Elizabeth..." I touched her cheek. "It wasn't real, no more than what I saw was real. And even if it was, I'd never give up." The words churned in my mind, remembering how it had been with Annabelle. For a moment she simply looked at me, the same expression she'd had when I'd first met her.
Treading beyond a frontage of destroyed doors, we emerged to Engels' handiwork...the entirety of the Comstock House's façade had been removed, windows and frames blow out and columns shattered. It might normally have been a scary prospect to linger beneath unsupported heights, but even the overhanging pediment was gone. Somewhere, I figured, it was in the Atlantic. "My God..." I whispered as the wind caught my hair. Elizabeth nudged into my side as we looked outward.
Below Emporia still poured out smoke, a handful of gunships drifting overhead, firing into the more active neighborhoods along its southern flank. High above the Aerodrome hung empty save for the massive length of Engels, smoking, apparently trying to have damage repaired that it had taken the day before. Monument Tower, visible in the waning light, was but a shambles of its former self. Looking to our right I pointed toward the Liftworks and found another zeppelin moored beneath its base...out of sight of Engels. "Comstock..." I said quietly. "By God, he's still here."
"That's the Hand of the Prophet." Elizabeth answered. Slowly we began to walk toward that island.
"How do you know that?"
"I learned a lot of things while they were trying to turn me. It's his flagship." Kneeling in the rubble she found a Broadsider and handed it to me. Warily I looked to her but holstered it.
The veranda's remaining stone railings stopped any further progress. The Liftworks were at least two miles distant. I looked about for a transport of any kind. "You summoned a hurricane...I don't suppose you can summon a zeppelin now, can you?"
"I...I can't." She answered, and by my immediate displeasure she had to know I found her answer preposterous. To our left I heard a horn and saw two gunboats rising from below, bound for the combat down Emporia. One trailed red banners, the other a Columbian Star. Upon its deck I saw a grizzled old eyepatch wearing grey.
"Step back." I said and fired off a burst with the repeater. Slate was yelling at one of his men, and as the sound reached them, I saw their heads swivel. After a few seconds both vessels began to veer. I smirked, glancing downward at Elizabeth's astonished face. "You're the daughter of a prophet, girl. You ought to have a little more faith in yourself."
#
Doberman came alongside Comstock House with its men prepared for a fight, rifles and deck guns bearing upon us as the gunship's mooring lines arced across the Prophet's outer balustrade. Amongst Slate's hardened gray soldiers, I was surprised to see Joshua Cade. Taking Elizabeth by the hand, Cade helped the girl across the thin abyss between the boat and stone. "Praise be God, you alive."
"Who's this one?" One of the soldiers asked, face confused as his hair.
"Miss Comstock..." Cade answered. "Seed of da Prophet." Too late to advise caution, I braced myself for what might come next. Like Joshua, Slate's men seemed near taken aback.
"I only wish that weren't the case." She said, glancing warily toward me.
"I think General Slate want to see you."
"General?" I muttered. They laid no hands upon us, and unlike our first meeting it was apparent we weren't prisoners. Cade led us up a flight of metal stairs to the wheelhouse. When we came into the presence of my old squadron mate, he looked somewhat different than I remembered the day before.
"Booker DeWitt. So, you've survived. And with Comstock's girl, none the less."
"I'm...not Comstock's girl." Elizabeth said indignantly. The old cavalryman cocked an eyebrow.
"General." I said with a tip of my head.
Hearing my intonation, Slate smirked before tossing his gray locks toward the skipper. "Cast off. We've a battle to join." Below the neck his body was strapped into a machination of sorts, a metal skeleton that seemed to move with his will. Considering how badly the man had been wounded before, I supposed it beat a wheelchair. He noticed our examination. "A modification of Betterman's Handyman suit, specifically for invalids and nearly dead soldiers."
"It suits you well."
Slate huffed. "I'm not as decrepit as I look, DeWitt, and soon as my lung and spine get right, I'll be shed of it. For the meantime, it's been helpful." He studied her then me. "Downs' men have taken the Lower Quarter but Walthorne's loyalists have them pinned down. We're on our way to break the stalemate."
"For which side?" I asked.
"For our side." Slate answered back. "If we can use these gunboats to our advantage, we might just be able to get some of Comstock's men to switch loyalties...least enough to blast that damned Red ship out of the sky before we commence to shooting the hell out of one another again."
"Maybe you should take your fight to my Father himself." Elizabeth chimed, voice bitter.
Slate's lieutenants turned their gaze. "How is that possible?" Slate answered. "The Hand's long gone and the Oracle of the Atlantic with it."
"It's not." I pointed toward the Liftworks. "Look closely...Comstock's got her moored beneath the Lutece plant. They're looking for something."
"By Jove, they are." Slate said, rising unconsciously from his makeshift throne. "What do you suppose it is?"
"No idea." I answered, wishing we could just take Doberman and get as far from Columbia as possible. "Fink's lift cell cache, maybe..."
"Weapons." Elizabeth asserted. "A new type of weapon based on the tear machinery. The Lutece Cell."
"A weapon...based on Lutece Cells?" Slate responded. "How do you know that, girl? Last I heard you'd been raised in a cage."
With a cautious glance to me for reassurance Elizabeth approached him, surrounded now by his commanders and the flight crew. Men were peering in from the hatches and portholes, eager to see not only this manifestation of their faith but simply a beautiful woman. Their adulation didn't go unnoticed, for the eyes of men got at the girl. She forced herself to attend their leader. "I...it's something I saw...in a vision." A murmur ran through the gathered men, something like awe. One could have heard a pin drop.
"So, you carry the sight like your father." Cornelius replied levelly, in his gaze seeing both the rejection of such things arcane and a steadfast belief in them.
"Not sight...' She said...closed her eyes and shook her head. "A tear, or something like it."
"Like your father." He smirked.
She opened her eyes. "There is a way to turn them into weapons...terrible weapons that...that can burn...incinerate entire cities. Like bombs."
"Lutece cells, turned into bombs..." Slate repeated, brushing his soot-stained face with his hand. "And you think this is what he intends...to destroy Columbia with these weapons?"
Elizabeth shook her head. "The people who fight against him? Of course, but there are others upon which his enmity is set."
"The mainland?" One of Slate's blond troopers supplied.
"The Mainland." Slate clarified. "And D.C. soon as he can. Has to be. It's all the son of bitch ever talked about in our private councils. He despises Congress...Roosevelt most of all. Who knows where his ire will end?"
Uncertain as to what she was talking about, I opened my mouth. "Will you help us stop him? Whatever he is doing, it can lead to no good."
Slate eyed me and placed a hand behind himself, hydraulic pistons hissing. "For old time's sake, DeWitt...maybe." His gray eyes turned to Elizabeth, regarding her accoutrement. "But for revenge, hehe…absolutely. You take after your mother." He reminisced, for a moment sincerely sad. "She was a saint and didn't deserve what he did to her." He glanced about to his men. "They'll do it for her."
A turn of the helmsman's head caught Slate's attention. Following the issue of orders he scattered his men back to their posts, and followed us out onto the outer deck.
"So, you know?" He said simply. "About Lady Comstock."
"That she wasn't my mother?" Elizabeth whispered as we alighted upon the starboard gangway. Just below eye level now Emporia flowed by. In its many buildings and frontages I could see pale faces looking out toward us, desperate faces terrified at the portent we presented. Occasionally one of the children pointed our way. None of them were waving. "We saw her say so through a tear in the tear room..." Elizabeth said, looking about toward the men diligently manning the rails. When again she spoke, she did so with discretion, voice barely loud enough to be heard above the rushing wind. "I've...no idea who's child I am. Lady Comstock, we..." She looked to me. "She accused Rosalind Lutece of..."
"Of being your Mom?" Slate interrupted, checking his repeating rifle and counting one by one the magazines in his leg pouches. "I highly doubt that. Fitzroy didn't kill her, you know. Comstock did. Then he had the Luteces murdered to cover it all up."
"He had the Luteces killed?" She said in shock. My father!?"
"Yes, because Zachary had wrung her neck himself. It took me and my officers years to slice through his lies, but eventually we got to the bottom of it. Maybe that's why they ousted me...killed my friends...tried to have me killed too. Said I was 'jealous' because Comstock wanted to claim he was the great commander of a massacre. No, it was because I'd discovered their dirty little secret." As he spoke Slate seemed to despair. "Now they've destroyed this place in an attempt to keep those crimes from becoming public knowledge." Slowly we inched past a building, its five stories still smoldering from a recently concluded battle. "Look at what's become of our White City."
"It's not all white." Elizabeth intoned, stirring the railing with her fingertip. "Have you been to Shantytown?"
At her question he turned, elbows set upon Doberman's railing to the grind of oiled metal. "Why do you think I'm with these men? When I was down, after the years I'd helped keep them down for Comstock and Fink and Marlowe, they were the only ones who stood by me. Most of the men I'd called friend..." He gazed toward the south, where the battle between the Vox and Walthorne's regulars was raging. "They abandoned me. Then I saw myself for what I was...a useful, vainglorious fool. I was the problem."
"And now whose side are you on, General?" I asked, exchanging a glance with the girl as I did so.
"On the side that keeps the most people of Columbia alive. Particularly my people, but we're all Columbians, Booker. Time we started acting like it."
Looking ahead, I scanned the Liftworks and Shantytown beyond. "Where do you think the best place to put in will be...atop the building?"
"That's what Cade and I concluded. These ships...they're small fry compared to the Hand of the Prophet and by its big guns we'd get shredded. Better to come in from their blind side...the docks. That way they won't know were coming. When we're ready, Doberman and Rottweiler will run a distraction round the other side of the factory. Comstock's still got his most fanatical with him...he may be a Prophet, but he's not a god. This will be his end."
"And if they've posted lookouts?"
"We'll make it look like a hasty scout...not like we're dropping off troops."
"And then we'll be able to go?" Elizabeth had been listening, hanging unconsciously near me. Slate's brow furrowed and he looked upon us intently. "To New York?"
"To Paris." I corrected. Looking up to me, she smiled.
"Paris. That's a new one." Slate observed. Before long his turned to gaze outward across the war zone that had been Emporia. "You'd better get ready, DeWitt. Ask Cade for weapons if you need them. It's gonna get bloody."
#
If the Hand had posted sentries, we didn't see them on our approach. Both Doberman and Rottweiler came in high from the sun, its corona gleaming golden amongst the remains of the previous day's front. From the outside the Lutece-Fink Liftworks appeared as a long red building with an arched glasshouse atop its length, a glasshouse ideal for lookouts and one Slate's pilots studiously avoided by mooring on the far side.
We'd been through the Liftworks days before but from below. This approach provided a new vantage to see its true scale. What Elizabeth and I had experienced as a single loading platform, the 'slip,' we now saw to be one of ten, each flanked by expansive dockyards that faced Emporia. Doberman put down amidst a surround of crate stacks while Rottweiler alighted just beyond them. Together the gunships deposited some twenty men. Alongside Slate, to a man they were all raring for a fight.
Slate was a sight to see, all geared up inside the Handyman armor. Looking at his mechanical monstrosity, I wondered what my old friends at the New York Pinkerton office would think. A strikebreaker's dream, I supposed, before wondering what they'd say had they encountered him on the other side.
Elizabeth was quiet as we walked, whether from her ordeal, unsettling vision or our admission I couldn't tell. Casually I loaded my Broadsider. Lacking ammunition for the Russian. I arranged the acquisition of another Triple R from Cade. The weapon had done me well. I expected it would do so again.
Slate and Cade seemed to know the factory, for the landing we'd taken to led straight back to a bank of elevators. Through the gaps between the Liftwork's various sections I could see the grey black cigar of Comstock's flagship hanging below, along with men crossing gangways in armor similar to what Slate had adopted. I didn't want to think what they might fight like with repeaters.
"What is it?" Elizabeth asked as we queued behind Slate for the lift.
"Down there...that's the Hand." Not only could I see now Comstock's men at work, I could see some of Fink's unlucky Handymen at work beside them...along with some of the damndable automatronic soldiers. Slate and Cade stopped at my side, the veteran garnering a look for himself.
"They don't seem to know we're here. Good." Slate said before tromping alongside us.
"They've got us outnumbered and outgunned."
"Perhaps but we've Doberman and Rottweiler to stir up a commotion. We'll hit them from the back and they'll never see us coming."
Just ahead of us Elizabeth had been talking to Cade. Cornelius regarded them sadly. "Paris, eh?"
"Yes." I said, seeing her bashfulness at the black man's attentions. She had that way about her, now that she was in the world for all to see...the center of attention. The center of it all.
"I warned you, Booker, you can't take her."
I still had my weapon in hand and didn't take kindly to threats. "Cornelius, or should I say General...you and I go back a long ways. For old times' sake, I wouldn't try to stop me."
"That's not what I mean, fool. You don't just think these islands float here under giant balloons, do you?"
"I've had an education on the matter." I answered tersely, wondering by her offhand glance toward us if Elizabeth had heard.
"Lutece cells require power...and to lift this city's foundations requires millions of them. See all of those abandoned stacks? Those old coal plants?" Edmonton's words came back to me. "That's right, DeWitt...this place used to be fired by coal until Comstock alienated the homeland and hauling it up here became exorbitantly expensive. Luckily a new power source made itself available."
The look on my face must have been priceless. My eyes flashed to the girl. "Elizabeth."
Cornelius nodded. "You pick up fast, kid. Rosalind Lutece found herself with a lot of power to dispose of when that girl became a young woman. Comstock saw an opportunity where one hadn't existed before."
My brow furrowed. "Edmonton was right then...he's been using her as a battery to float his damned folly."
"A folly home to over a million people, DeWitt. And what do you think is going to happen to Columbia when you spirit her off to the land of nookie and that Siphon runs dry? Hell, the city's already lost altitude since you sprung her."
I looked him over. "Well then, Cornelius, it seems to me like you either ought to start building more power plants or learning to swim."