23. Hand of the Prophet.
Eyes locked, Cornelius and I descended the steps to the Liftwork's elevators and headed down. When the lift came to a halt Elizabeth seemed distracted and distant. Worried for her, I approached her side. "This is going to work. I promise you. We're going to stop him."
About us Slate's men assumed positions along the railings and ramps overlooking the Hand. "Booker..." Elizabeth whispered, wing blowing through her hair and eyes distant. "Do you think it's possible to...redeem the kind of things we've done?"
"Redeem?" I answered, attention more on the enemy below than her. In the stormy sky I heard a higher pitched sound than the Hand's thrum of propeller...Doberman and Rottweiler. "I don't see much use in that." As the sound grew louder Comstock's loyalists and Handymen looked up from their task of loading cylinders. Lift Cells, I thought, but larger...and the cargo nets were half full.
"Booker...are you...afraid of God?"
"No." I turned to look her up and down. "But I'm afraid of you." She looked at me stricken
Along the railing Slate's Lieutenants marshaled their men, preparing them for the moment of truth. "Get down." I said. "Here they come."
From right and left our gunships banked about the Liftworks in a pincer movement, and before the gunners aboard the Hand of the Prophet could react, Slate's hounds opened fire with their deck guns. Explosions billowed from the Hand's flanks, bow and stern, too small to do any great damage but more than enough to seize the attention of every man on deck below.
With the chop of Slate's hand his squads opened fire, cutting down the deckhands with a rake of bullets. Struck through the back, the lone Handyman teetered and fell over face first, legs collapsing beneath him as an explosion burst his chest. Quickly I joined Slate's riflemen, picking off the upper deck sentries as they moved to return fire. Stung by the noise, Elizabeth covered her ears and turned away.
In two columns we descended to the wharves, cautious to remain away from the thin chain of the railings and the plummet to infinity below. Upon the teak Comstock's people lay moaning and dead. Behind upon the overlook we left a handful of men to provide top cover. Across the concrete we raced for the dock, passing trolleys and nets full of cylinders. Elizabeth jerked to a halt, looking at the corpses about us but more intently the silver containers. "Come on!" I yelled, waving her onward. Instead, she stood rigid as though she'd seen a ghost, drawing Slate's men's eyes as they ran past. Fire erupted from the upper deck. I turned about and threw myself upon her. Machine gun fire raked the spot where she'd been standing.
"What they hell was that!?" I exclaimed, finding myself face to face with the woman as slugs pinged the metal about us.
"It's them, Booker! It's what I saw in...in..."
"What?" I shouted, barely able to hear her over the report of guns and ringing in my ears. "The weapons?"
She nodded, cringing every time a bullet struck. "The tear bombs. The fire bombs."
"Jesus." I said, ducking myself as metal cut the air with supersonic cracks. "They're real?! And how...bad...are these things?"
She reached out and touched one, and inside its crystal viewing portal I could see a brilliant spark. "One...one for an entire city."
"What?!"
"One missile will burn an entire city to the ground. And Comstock must have one hundred here...maybe more!"
A hundred indeed, I thought, unable to believe such a thing. But in the days I'd known her the girl had never lied. A hundred cities aflame...Comstock truly could wreak his revenge. "If he's had them this long, why hasn't he already used them?!" I shouted. Out on the Hand's deck I heard a thumping...heard men scream followed by gun fire...a rotary cannon that was not ours.
I rose, passed by a handful of Slate's men in headlong retreat. Behind them mobile turrets advanced in echelon, cracked visages of George Washington adorning their mechanical facades. How they operated God only knew, but three of them saw me and turned, bringing their eighteen barrels to bear. Slowly the barrels began to spin. "Get down!"
Elizabeth already had...she'd the common sense not to move in the first place. As I dove for the concrete sparks began to fly off the canisters. I heard a tremendous whooshing sound. Suddenly light bloomed on the far side of the stack and a stultifying explosion blew the pile apart, scattering cylinders and us
Moaning where I came to rest, I saw Elizabeth lying face first upon the pavement. My heart stopped. At my side I discovered one of the automatons still upright, though half its face and arm had been blown clean away. Of the others I saw nothing but smoldering piles of debris...the barrel of a gun here, a neck articulation there. One of the eyes kept focusing on me from its detached socket. Reflexively I opened fire, drilling the one lumbering toward me until it hissed, popped and exploded in a crack of smoky thunder. "Elizabeth!" I cried, crawling amid the overhead crack of bullets to her side.
I picked her up and cradled her in my arms, wondering why the hell I'd let her follow. This was a fiasco. Behind me Slate's contingent had opened fire on the second wave of advancing automata. Somewhere above I saw the Cavalry himself leading a charge down the upper deck.
Blearily she opened her eyes. "Booker?"
"Oh, thank God." I sighed and pulled her head to my chest.
"What happened? Where are we?" She asked with a shudder. I felt her clasp my shoulder blade.
"Those mobile turrets...one of them detonated a cylinder. What the hell is in those things?!"
"Sunfire." She answered, finally sitting on her own. A bullet ricocheted from the container beside us and I pulled her back. "Can you move?" She nodded and I helped her upright.
Caught in the crossfire between Slate's gunships, men and Comstock's beleaguered forces, I sprinted with her hand in mine for the nearest cover...the Hand of the Prophet itself.
Sirens blared as we stumbled onboard, tripping over the debris of a Handyman whose head was staring skyward in glassy eyed death. A hideous and sad sight, Elizabeth fixated upon him until I drew to me. The din of the propellers changed, and the deck lurched beneath us. The gangway sundered and the airship leapt skyward...the Hand of the Prophet was underway.
Pulling her into the dim shelter of a nearby cargo bay, I scanned the racks of equipment and crates for foes. "I think I found us an airship."
"So, you did." She said woozily, brushing her hair away from her eyes. "Where...where is Slate?"
"Somewhere amid ship, higher, I think. He must be going after the bridge. Elizabeth, are you okay?"
"My head is ringing." She said, palm upon her temple. "The explosion...I must have struck it."
I examined her scalp for blood or wounds, finding a welt beneath upon her crown. She jolted. "Maybe there's an Infirmary upon this thing."
"Booker, I'll be okay." She protested, pressing me away. "We need to stop Comstock...before he does his worst."
"But if he had these weapons before, why didn't he use them?"
"Because..." She answered. "They don't work...not well, at least. Not like they will. They have a tendency to..." She swooned before once more opening her eyes. "They...they tend to blow up before they reach their target...and their potential."
"They're duds and can't hit anything?"
"Not unless you have a lot of them...and..."
"And?" I said, tipping her chin upward, her eyes to my gaze.
Her eyes widened as she looked about the chamber. "Are on a suicide mission."
#
"And you saw this while you were being electrocuted?" I said as we wended our way through the stacks of cargo, many of them the very same cylinders that had exploded upon the ramp. I was still unable to believe, let alone comprehend, what the girl was telling me.
"It's some horrid plan he concocted with the Luteces. Why they agreed to it I'll never know. She never seemed like that type."
"Of mad scientist?" I supplied. "My dear Elizabeth, from everything I've gathered, that woman was the very definition of 'mad scientist.'" With my dizzy charge behind me we took to an open hatch and made our way forward.
Sporadically we heard shouts, followed inevitably by gunfire and the screams of dying men. Coming to a stair down, at its first landing we came upon two dead Columbian troopers and one who should have been dead. Throat torn open, the kid raised his bloody hand to me and croaked, blue eyes asking me for mercy. After all I'd seen in Columbia, I hardly knew anymore what that meant. I looted them for ammo, a tin of water and bandages. As I was about to put a bullet through the kid's skull, Elizabeth stayed my hand. Looking with pity upon the boy, she reached down to cover his neck and in a flash of light his wound was healed. Color began to return to his face and he breathed the breath of life.
"How the hell..." I said, dumbstruck at the girl.
"There...there was a tear." She muttered.
"There was no tear. You just made it...how in the hell did you do that!?"
"I...I switched his wound from a world where...where he'd just died from a gunshot chest wound. Where he didn't...need... his throat anymore. At least one of them lives." Below us the boy moaned. He wouldn't be getting up soon.
I took her by the hand and rose. "Come on."
#
As we walked, I couldn't help but stare at her. Her explanation had seemed simple but was tantamount to magic. Hell, it was magic, and it was obvious that whatever force had neutered the woman's abilities for so long in Columbia...the Siphon...was losing its grip.
Though fearsome from the first time I'd seen her, it was apparent from the inside that the Hand of the Prophet hadn't been built as a warship. It had only a modest steel framework and the most minimal armor, marking it as a cheap conversion from a liner. Nearly 600 feet long, it was nevertheless big and despite its structural shortcomings Comstock had bedecked its hardpoints with the heaviest guns such a vessel could reasonably mount. Against commerce and pirates, even against some belligerent states, that still made his flagship a formidable opponent. His crew, however, were less than zealots, running at the sight of my barrel and more so the war cries of Slate...whom we could hear from the decks above.
By the heavy load of the motors reverberating through the hull it was clear the Hand had left the Liftworks permanently behind. Its deck angle told me that we were climbing hard. Shortly Elizabeth and I came to a hatch that emerged onto outer gangway, opening it to a vista of twilight Emporia. She reeled at the windswept heights but oddly I only felt a tinge of vertigo...nothing like the nauseating incapacitation from just days before. Now my fears turned on other concerns.
"Where...where are we going?" Elizabeth asked breathlessly with hand upon chest, tugging the jacket about her shoulders.
"I suppose that depends on whether you're referring to us or Comstock's ship. Assuming the latter, how many allies do you think he has outside of the city?"
"I...I don't know. He never exposed me to the reach of the Congregationalists, but I suppose..."
Behind me I heard a thumping, a clunking of a Handyman suit. Elizabeth heard the same and together we turned, expecting Slate. Instead, an oversized backhand slammed me against the bulkhead.
"FALSE SHEPHERD!" The thing bellowed, hate brimming upon his bald face eight feet above me. Lumbering toward where I'd slumped, his articulated arm reared back for a killing blow. Elizabeth shrieked.
Before his fist met the deck boards I rolled away. Splinters of wood shot into the air. "RUN!" I yelled. Back on my feet, I began to sprint...turned to fire my automatic. He was right in my face.
I went flying past Elizabeth and smashed again upon the deck, rolling upward against a metal bulkhead as the giant came after me. Seeing me stunned upon the deck, Elizabeth threw herself to her knees before my wrecked form and shrieked "NO!"
"WOMAN DIE!" I heard the man-thing shout. Elizabeth threw her hands wide, and an open cargo hatch appeared in the deck, edges aflame. The mechanical monstrosity teetered over its edge, arms flailing, eyes suddenly wild as he attempted to regain his balance and not tumble forward. With a scowl Elizabeth extended the hatch a foot farther and down he went. She snapped her hands together and the tear closed with a crack. Below decks I heard a distinctly heavy crash and bellowing groan.
"Are you all right!?" She asked in dread, twisting to my side. Gently she turned my battered head to face her wide eyes. I heard a shear of her dress...felt pressure applied to my nose.
"I'll live." I groaned, opening my eyes once more to see two...three of her. Oddly they all seemed to be dressed differently.
"What...what was that thing!?" She pleaded, scanning nervously about. "Hold this to your nose. You're bleeding."
"I'm lucky that's all that's bleeding." I muttered, pressing the rolled strip of cloth against my bloody nostrils and holding my ribs. Silent for a moment, the wind caught my hair and I began to focus.
"What...what was that?"
"Another Handyman." I muttered, remember the thing's mechanical body...the heart pumping inside a transparent pressure chamber. Of the man that it had once been, only the fellow's head and guts remained, sustained by some arcane art of Fink's butchering physicians. "Same as Slate's but worse." Below I heard roaring...the tearing up of metal in rage. "Jesus, Elizabeth...why didn't you just send him down to Emporia!?"
"Constants and variables...they don't make hatches in decks that lead to a fall. Not in any world I could imagine."
"Try a bomb bay next time." I said, upright now upon my elbows. She offered me her hand. Still feeling as though a freight train had struck me, I took her offer and rose to my feet. She was smiling at me. I coughed...managed to grin back.
Down the outer deck I heard a garish clunking sound, much like a steam shovel running up a flight of steel stairs. Forward along the side of the vessel a hatch burst open and our mechanical monstrosity lunged into daylight. "FALSE SHEPHERD!" It howled, temples straining with such anger that I thought he might burst a blood vessel. He accelerated toward us.
"Shit!" I holwed with a roll of my eyes, scrambling from Elizabeth toward my repeater tossed across the deck. It was too far away, I thought...I'd never get to it in time.
"Booker, catch!" I looked over my shoulder to see a sawed-off hog leg flying through the air, caught it in my hand, spun and fired. My slugs blew out the giant's heart and he burst him into a shower of sparks. For a moment I heard his servos whine before he screamed and fell over backward. Slowly his eyes rolled back into his sockets. Of remarkably large gauge, the double barrel was now emptied of two solid slugs. "Nice." I said, still breathing heavily. "Where did you get it?"
She walked toward the wall and retrieved the repeater, checking it for ammunition before handing it over to me.
"I found it." She said, voice yet unsettled.
"You found it." I muttered, taking the repeater in its stead. "Where?"
She shrugged. "There were giraffes."
"Giraffes." I sighed, looking the dead monster over. Above I heard the crack of gunfire and a cry of 'Lay into 'em, boys!'
"Guess we've found Slate." Elizabeth's eyes followed mine. "I think it's time we ended this, don't you?"
#
Negotiating a ladder upward, we arrived at the next deck to find Comstock's command in disarray. Here and there in smoldering piles lay shattered automata, their inner workings sprayed across corpse littered wood. Stepping about the debris laden killing field Elizabeth and I headed for another ladder and climbed, climbed until we alighted on the uppermost level. Heading now aft, we saw Slate and his remaining men in a shootout with a mobile turret and three holdout Columbian regulars.
At our approach the machine turned, dead metal eyes locking upon us as we ducked behind the lower supports of the smokestack funnel. With the Hand underway the wind was whipping through the wires at almost a gale, though I realized now we weren't yet even at full speed. Bullets sprayed the metal beside us.
"DeWitt!" Slate howled as Comstock's troops peppered the machine with rounds. "You finally decided to join the party."
"We were busy!" I shouted, swinging outward to get a volley off. Chastened by my rounds and the new angle from which they'd arrived, Comstock's men fell back along the outer deck. The machine, a Lee turret, was unfazed and continued its inexorable advance. "Cover down on the troopers and I'll draw its fire. And don't shoot me!"
As I turned back, Elizabeth rent a curtain of air. In sepia gray before us a fearsome automaton of Ulysses S. Grant shimmered, unreasonably muscled, with similarly dead eyes. Equipped with a dual Gatling guns to the singular ones the Lee and Washington bore, the thing started to advance, bare teeth gritted, barrels whirling, smoking a cigar. "Holy shit!" I shouted and yanked Elizabeth back behind the funnel.
The world exploded as the pair unloaded upon one another, stray bullets sending us and Slate's grizzled veterans diving for cover. Metal flew, gears wound. A brilliant flash of light followed by an explosion. Save for the breeze all was quiet. Where the machines had once been I saw sparks...heard the pop of melting metal. We'd stopped.
"We surrender!" I heard from ahead. From about the flanks of the command bridge Comstock's men emerged, hands up, gray uniforms covered in grime and gore. Less than troops...these were simply boys fearing for their lives. Slate's men advanced cautiously, obviously wary for a trap. Only nine remaining.
"Face on the deck, Reggie!" Slate cried with weapon in hand. "Same to you, Deacon...Christian. I ain't playin' about."
"We told you, Colonel, we surrender!" One of the kids said as Slate and his men advanced in a skirmish line. "We choose you!"
"You had your chance to do that weeks ago...and you chose wrong. Where is Comstock!?" Slate yelled, punctuating his query with his repeater in the boy he'd called Reggie's ear.
"I am here, Cornelius. How convenient you arrive with the False Shepherd...and my wayward daughter in tow." The words had come across a public address above, booming across the deck in what had become an uncomfortable silence save for the whipping wind. "I shall assume that is no accident. I want you to look down."
"Look down?" Slate asked before creeping toward the windswept railing. "Why?"
"Do as I say." Suspiciously Slate and his men craned their heads outward, Slate's jacket caught by the still slipstream. "That is your Emporia below. I believe most of you and your traitorous band hail from Southside and Shantytown, and by your brazen assault I am compelled to hold your families hostage. I assume that by now...that from the course of your attack on my flag, that you suspect what we carry?"
Slate's gray eyes turned upward toward the speaker. "I do. What do you want, Prophet?"
"I want my daughter. Have her join me on the Bridge."
The Bridge, I could see, jutted between two wings just forward of us. Off to our flank I could hear gunfire...saw a Vox gunship spiraling downward in flames to the streets below.
Cade glanced toward Slate. Fearsome in his powered suit, he regripped his popping hot repeater uncomfortably. I noticed that all of them were splattered with gore. "Smell like a trap." Joshua said. That feeling pervaded us all.
"Stand back..." I said, pushing Elizabeth aside. From behind the funnel I strode forth, weapon in hand. "I'm ending this."
"No!" Elizabeth cried with a flash of her hands. Step by step she flanked us, coming to stand before the stair up to the bridge. The woman glared at me hair disheveled...at all of us before staggering upon the handrail. The battle of the bots had done her no good. "This is between me and him!" Slate, his men and the vanquished Columbians looked on.
"Elizabeth...you are walking into a trap!"
"Booker..." She said, trying to focus upon me before retesting the wrought iron handhold. "I need to do this."
"Elizabeth..." She eyed me again before turning the hatch open. With a glance over shoulder and pause, she walked in.
Behind me Cade had come up the steps. With a raise of my arm I held him back. The Bridge was a large wheelhouse, with the Captain of the vessel looking at us in terror. Blond and lanky, the conning officer beside him retained his composure, but at Elizabeth's approach his hands quaked visibly upon the wheel. Still wearing his same dark coat, Comstock stood beside the Captain, eyes trained upon the approaching woman. Through his white beard and mustache a smile appeared, and at that moment seemed almost fatherly.
"Well, come in child. I don't bite." His folksy delivery froze her in her steps. Despite her earlier insistence at putting an end to her 'father,' she seemed in scant hurry to do so. "My, oh my, how you have grown."
"Tell me, what am I?" She asked, hesitant in her final steps. "I know you are not my father. Your wife…she was not my mother. But you…you must know."
Beside the trembling, gray haired Captain, Comstock gently took her hand. "Look at you, child, you're a mess."
"Let go of her!" I shouted, advancing my gun in hand. She stymied me with a quick, harsh admonition.
"Elizabeth..." He said, casting an eye upon me. Everything I've done, I've done to keep you safe."
"Safe from what?" She responded warily, keeping her distance.
Raising his arm overhead while holding her with the other, he spoke as a preacher. "The seed of the Prophet shall sit the Throne...and drown in flames the mountains of man." He smiled and seemed to take pleasure in her awe...ours too. "Why, you ask? The answer is in Scripture...'For the Lord saw the wickedness of Man was great, and he repented he had made man on the earth.' Rain...forty days and forty night of the stuff, and he left not a thing that walked on the face of the earth alive. He gave his rainbow in the firmament as a promise he'd not do so again, but you see my friends, even God is entitled to a do over. As we are in the heavens, we shall honor his bond...for this time his wrath shall be not be with water but with fire. And what is Columbia if not another ark for another time?" He was smiling at her, brushing her hand with his, absolutely, unequivocally insane.
"But the Archangel revealed something else...' Beware Prophet...beware the False Shepherd, Booker DeWitt!" He looked me squarely in the eyes now, and a hateful scowl turned his mouth. "For he shall be as a wall between her and destiny."
"Why?!" She cried, still too close to him, a moth to his beckoning flame.
"I've been a fool..." He said, caressing her cheek. "I've sent...mighty armies to stop this rebellion...rained fire on you and them from above!" Again, he looked at me. "I did all of that to keep you from her, DeWitt, when all I really needed to do was tell her the truth."
Elizabeth was still looking at him, perplexed. "What do you mean?"
"Ask him, child." Comstock said, brow furrowed. Suddenly with force he captured her disfigured hand. "Ask him what happened to your finger?! Ask DeWitt." At his assault she pulled away, but he yanked her back to him.
"Let go of me!" She exclaimed and commenced to struggle. At the outburst the Captain and Helmsman shied away until they were firmly against wheelhouse's panes of glass.
"Ask him!" Comstock yelled anew, wrestling against her attempts to pull away. "Ask the FALSE SHEPHERD! Tell her! Tell her, FALSE SHEPHERD, tell her the TRUTH!" In his grasp for all her power Elizabeth seemed helpless...her eyes full of fear.
Forward I strode and drove my Triple R's butt into the side of the old man's skull, sending him sprawling to the deck. As he looked up, I saw his white beard and mustache stained with blood from the impact. "She's your daughter, you son of a bitch...and you abandoned her!" I bellowed as I hovered over him. "Was it worth it...did you GET WHAT YOU WANTED!? Tell me! TELL ME!" I felt Elizabeth grasp at my arm, crying aloud my name.
Stunned, the old man staggered from deck to where I'd sent him, climbing the lacquered wood of the helm. "It is...finished."
"Finished?!" I threw down my gun and grappled him by the throat. "Nothing is finished! You cut off her finger...you lock her up for her whole life and you pin it on ME!?" I slammed his head against the steering wheel and throttled his scrawny neck until his eyes rolled back in his head. In my clutches he gargled and went limp. Beside me I saw motion...saw the Helmsman lunging for a lever. It was a brass handle I now saw to be labeled 'BOMB RELEASE."
My eyes widened.
Before he could touch it bullets burst the man's chest and he fell over backward, twisting about before landing with a thud upon the deck. I turned to find Cade and Slate, weapons smoking and trained upon the Captain. Behind them the remainder of Slate's survivors were piling in, stricken to a man by the scene. Elizabeth knelt beside the Prophet, suddenly drawing her hand back from where he'd slumped against the wheel. "He's...dead. You...you killed him." She whispered, hand at her mouth.
"Last I heard that's what you wanted me to do, storm girl." I hissed and kicked Comstock's dead hulk to the deck, feeling myself shake.
From his wreckage she'd turned back to me. "What...what did he mean? You tell me, what me what did he mean about my finger?"
Like a man looking at himself in a mirror I saw myself now, almost from outside. Slate's survivors were still piling in, gaping. "I don't know. I...I just assumed you were born with it...I don't know." I felt my head shake. "I swear to you...I have no idea of what he was talking about."
"Yes, you do. You...you just don't...remember."
"No, I don't!" I retorted, my anger turning swiftly from Comstock's corpse to the decapitated angel of Columbia but a few miles away.
"It's the tears. Memory is affected when you...you cross them...that's why you can't remember."
"Since when the hell did I cross a tear?" The conviction in her eyes hadn't changed. "Okay, then I'll prove it to you. We'll end this...end it all and destroy the Siphon. The answer is behind one of your tears, you just have to open it. With the Siphon gone, you can do that."
"Destroy the Siphon?" She said in disbelief. "It's the entirety of the Tower, Booker! How are we gonna do that?"
I cleared my throat, glancing toward the man Slate and Cade had shot dead upon the floor. "You need something destroyed?" I motioned toward the release handle. "I think I might have an idea."
"You're saying we use the weapons?" Elizabeth asked, the mere thought evoking revulsion. "They don't even work!"
"They worked well enough." I looked to his expired corpses. "Comstock was going to use them on South Emporia."
"You cannot do that!" Slate responded angrily.
As he rose a sudden light burst the air about us, a shearing the sides of the bridge in blinding brilliance. The men's eyes widened, and Elizabeth had a terrible countenance. "I'd suggest you don't try to stop us."