“So, where you taking me? Somewhere nice, I hope. You buying me dinner? I'm famished.” Geddis had, after several bumps in the road and a couple of slaps to the face, regained his composure. All this really meant was that his mouth was working fully and independently of his brain.

  “I would share my dinner with you, Mr. Geddis, I truly would – but I'm wasting away here. If High Lord Parnell is, however, feeling generous, he may well grant you a last meal. As to where we're going, dear boy, I wouldn't dream of spoiling your surprise. It seems very much to me that you have so few of them left. Driver!” The hatch slid open again, a warm breeze drifted through the window and immediately got beaten to death by the frigid air. “10 minutes, Lord,” came the voice.

  ***

  The sickly glow of the burnt-orange crept towards the car as it eked its way to the edge of the boa. Danielle shut off the headlights, one of which had managed to burn out ten minutes into their journey, and pulled down the sunshade. The light of the festering sun wrapped the car and its occupants in its warm embrace and made them feel unreasonably claustrophobic despite the holes in the roof and the floor, and the general lack of doors. Then it went dark again. The sun faded from view as the sky filled with a blanket of thick, black smog. For the first time in generations, night fell – at least for a few miles. Danielle turned the remaining headlight back to full-beam and continued cruising in silence.

  The car erupted into a chorus of murmurs and speculation as each of its occupants took their turn to offer a theory or passing comment on the sky above them. Sebastian wrapped his left arm around the centre beam of the frame and swung the top half of his body out of the car to get a better view of the sky. He visored his eyes with his free hand and looked towards the horizon. From the centre of the roiling mass of filth, a shape emerged – two, in fact. The first was a large oval that spanned at least a good mile in his estimate; below that ran, for almost equal length, a deeper and far more angular shape.

  “Is it an eclipse?” Sarah asked. “I've read about those. It's an eclipse, didn't I say it was an eclipse?”

  “It's not an eclipse, Sarah,” he said as he swung his body back into the car. “It's an- Ow, bloody hell!”

  “Watch your head, it's dark,” Danielle's said a little too late.

  “Dark, you say? Really?” Sebastian rubbed his head but didn't let the throbbing pain distract him from his train of thought. “It's not an eclipse, it's an airship.” The reactions were mixed but expected.

  “A ship that flies!?” cooed Sarah, who immediately attempted to unfasten her seat-belt so she could have a better look. The seat-belt didn't have eyes, so had a natural advantage in the dark and steadfastly resisted Sarah's attempts to unclasp it.

  “It's too big for an airship,” Danielle said with more than a little authority. “I've seen airships, they're much smaller.”

  “Not this one. I know this one.” Sebastian closed his eyes despite the fact he was already in pitch darkness, and gently banged the back of his head against his seat.

  “Well?”

  “It's Parnell's flagship. It's the Son of Albion.”

  “Parnell!” Danielle exclaimed, almost crashing the car. “How the fuck did Parnell get here!?”

  “Language!” Bosco chided. He attempted to find and cover Harry's ears in the dark.

  “Corelious. He’s the only one that could have organised it on this end.”

  “We keep hearing the name Parnell, but no-one has really told us anything about him. And more importantly, how's he going to get that through the Gate?” Erica asked.

  “Parnell was a soldier in the Great War, one of the few to come home. It changed him, like war does. For all his sacrifices, he saw no betterness in the society he left to defend, so he started another war; in the streets and in the fields, right up to the throats of Parliamentarians as they slept. The Gate, I don’t know. We’re going to have to get a little closer.”

  Cars swerved and changed lanes, sparks filled the air where metalwork met metalwork, though despite the frantic U-turns and J-turns and various other letters of the alphabet turns, every car involved remained right-side up and relatively unscathed by the whole ordeal. The cars all moved away from the shadow in the sky like a giant metal caterpillar. All except one.

  ***

  The truck came to a gradual halt, the various loose pieces of furniture moved slightly in their place. The ornate glass table lamp thought about falling onto the floor and shattering into a million pieces, then it remembered it was glued to the desk, so didn't. Corelious himself stood unswayed, an insouciant look about him that suggested anything short of the driver flipping the truck wouldn't have inconvenienced his considerable frame to any degree. “It appears, Mr. Geddis, that we've reached the terminus.” He gave a nod to his entourage, the rolls of fat on his neck spreading out like ripples on a pond. They saluted, as was their initial response to basically everything, and set about opening the doors and lowering the ramp. A wave of hot air swept in like a SWAT team and started a war of attrition with the cooling units, most of which already strained from overuse.

  The air went up to a balmy minus ten, and Corelious began to feel a little light-headed. “Please excuse me, Mr. Geddis. This is most unbecoming of a man in my position, and I beg your indulgence. Please avert your eyes.” Geddis summoned the energy to stare at the desk in front of him. The muscles in his neck took the time to remind him that they still existed and that they hurt incredibly and if he could just hurry up and die, that'd be fine by them. Corelious took several icepacks from one of the many refrigerated cabinets that lined the walls of the truck and stuffed them down his shirt and trousers with a degree of dignity that didn't often come with stuffing things down your trousers. “All finished, Mr. Geddis. Now, if I could ask you to stand.”

  Geddis placed his hands on the desk. The very act of rotating his wrists sent a shooting pain up his arms and deep into his elbows – he didn't know what his elbows had to do with it, but they were involved now. His muscles and his joints creaked and groaned as he tried to stand. Then he fell over. Of course, now would be the time for him to regain a modicum of feeling. The floor was hard and cold, and somewhat serrated to prevent the sort of falling over he’d just done – the image of grated cheese passed from one side of his mind to the other. He blindly flapped his arms around until he felt a hand brush past the chair, which he seized upon and used to shakily pull himself up. His laboured breath condensed into ice clouds above the peak of mount chair. And then he fell over again, and then he screamed.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Where's my fucking leg!?” His voice was horse from the cold. He pushed himself up into a seated position and flopped with his back against the desk. Frantically he pawed at the area below his right knee as if he might have been mistaken.

  “You'll have to forgive me, old boy, I get very forgetful at times. I instructed our mutual friend, Doctor Sykes, to inform his men to use low-calibre ammunition in your apprehension. I discovered, much to my dismay, that low-calibre is a relative term – quite nebulous, really. Unfortunately, we couldn't save your leg. However, one may argue that you got off lightly for high treason.”

  Geddis sat with his left leg curled up to his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around it, so it wouldn’t wander off like the last one. To anyone that didn't know he was there, he'd have just looked like a pile of washing. “Gentlemen, kindly escort Mr. Geddis to our rendezvous. And do be careful, he's quite fragile.” Corelious chuckled to himself and wobbled down the ramp and out into the sweltering heat.

  Each guard grabbed the pile of dirty washing formally known as Geddis under one arm, lifted him off the ground and carried him outside. Corelious pressed a button on the side of the trailer and the ramp retracted, which was followed by the doors gliding shut and locking in place. The large, flat-fronted truck that pulled the trailer, and indeed the trailer itself, already filled the surrounding air with a bilious dense smog, but they now redoubled their efforts as the cooling mechanism started pulling the temperature in the trailer back to its lowest possible point.

  Geddis flicked his head back and managed to shake the blanket off, the ice crystals that formed in his hair and beard turned to water and quickly evaporated. It was as dark as, he wanted to say night, but that phrase hadn't made sense for longer than he'd been alive – with the exception of a hastily arranged circle of lights. The lights were bright beyond anything he’d seen, and each shone into the sky and surgically pierced the darkness. The heat was stifling and nearly all of it was coming from above him. Not just heat, but a downdraught that rustled his hair and the blankets he so desperately tried to shrug off. “Isn't it wonderful, Mr. Geddis?” Corelious bellowed. He stood back by the truck, his hand hovered nervously near the button. “It's very warm over there, you see. Please don't think me rude.”

  The high-pitched whirring of the collective of industrial-sized fans situated above the engines filled the air. Geddis wanted badly to stick a finger in each ear, but he was still being held limply off the ground by his escort. The heat dissipated, but didn't cease its oppression. What did happen is that the smog that surrounded the ship rose in massive plumes of ash and filth until the full majesty of the Son of Albion was revealed. Geddis knew of it, of course he did – he'd even overseen the construction of some of its armaments. What he’d never done, however, was physically see the Son of Albion outside of some sketches hastily scribbled on a pub napkin. He hadn't even been made aware of its completion, let alone its deployment. And now here it was, parked directly above his head.

  The Son of Albion was a large wooden frigate, of the type that was said to have existed centuries before, when the ocean levels were higher and the surface of the water was less on fire. Some historians argued that the ocean level had always been that low and that on fire, and while Parnell agreed in principal, he didn't really care too much about the finer details. What he cared about was how much he enjoyed the depictions of these ships in his paintings, so when it came time to build his flagship, this presented his engineers with a lot of interesting problems – all of which Parnell also did not care about.

  Every inch of its hull was covered in a thick metal plate that, while mostly smooth and shiny, bore numerous large dents where it had shrugged off volleys of artillery fire or perhaps a low-flying mountain. Mounted along each side of it were four large nozzles that looked like they'd come off a hand-drier from the pub toilets – these were the source of the heat and rot that filled the air. They twisted and turned, their movements microscopically precise, as the Son of Albion adjusted its bearing using the lights far below it. The ship hung from an armoured balloon almost twice its own length. Parnell had been against it, mainly insisting that it ruined the aesthetic – but even after having half-a-dozen executed, the remaining engineers still insisted that it was necessary.

  The Son of Albion didn't need the balloon to fly as such, it just needed it so it didn't burn its fuel in the time it took to make a pot of tea. The ingenious thing about the balloon is that it was fed by the excess of heat produced by the engines and weapon systems. This meant that rather than spend innumerable hours attempting to make everything more efficient, the engineers called it a design feature and drew a line under it.

  Five small self-propelled, circular platforms dropped from the railings and buzzed around it like bees around a hive, a bright red glow emanating from below each of them. Each platform was shaped like a thimble and provided enough room for a single person to comfortably stand and operate the searchlight mounted on the handrail. Two such platforms broke from formation and descended towards the middle of the lit area in ever-decreasing circles, like those seeds that Geddis couldn't quite remember the name of. “Oh, you'll enjoy this, Mr. Geddis.”

  Corelious braved the temperature to come closer to the centre of the circle. The icepacks had rapidly begun to melt the moment he left the safe harbour of the trailer, and had gradually worked their way down his trouser legs, giving Corelious the appearance of doing a little jig as he kicked them away while he walked. The cradles landed softly on the soil that may as well have been dust, and both men alighted their craft. They were dressed identically to Corelious' own guards, with the exception of a dark blue sash around their left arm. He approached the nearest of the cradles and placed an elephant-sized foot onto the comparatively dainty step. The cradle shuddered and tried valiantly to remain upright, its onboard gyroscope feeding data to the engine to keep it balanced. His guardsmen looked at each other and gave a shared and familiar sigh of frustration. Geddis tumbled to the ground. The dirt was soft, but it was course and cunning, and found itself in places he'd rather it not have. He spluttered meekly as a trickle of dust worked its way down the back of his throat.

  The guards approached the teetering cradle and grasped the railing opposite Corelious in an attempt to act like human ballast. This righted the cradle but also pulled it much closer to the ground, and they now ran the risk of choking the engine with dust. The remaining guards took up position behind Corelious – each thrust a shoulder below one of his dinner plate-sized buttocks and pushed. Both Corelious and the cradle groaned in unison as he wobbled onto it. His entourage released their hold and the cradle more or less rose to its intended height, kicking up a cloud of dust as the engine increased its efforts to keep the tremendous weight aloft. “Watch this, Mr. Geddis.” He pressed the recall button on the small control panel and the cradle rapidly ascended at the same trajectory as before.

  “My turn, is it?” Geddis said. He angled his head and watched the cradle as it disappeared. “How tall do I need to be to ride?” The blue sash returned to his cradle, and intentionally or unintentionally, it didn't matter to Geddis which, kicked sand into his face as he passed. The guards retrieved their charge from the dust and rolled his limp form onto the platform. “Seat-belt?” he coughed. “Seat-belt,” the blue sash repeated as he pressed his boot down on Geddis' chest to stop him from rolling off the platform.

  The blue sash watched as the cradle ascended with significantly more grace and speed than the one that came before it. “There has to be a better way to do this,” he said.

  “I know, right. We said tie him to the anchor chain.”

  “He is an anchor,” the second guard added.

  “Complete and total one. My ride’s here.” The blue sash pointed to the lone cradle that spiralled towards him out of the fog. “We don't get paid enough for this shit,” he muttered as he hopped onto it.|