The Zeppelin Jihad Read online

  THE ZEPPELIN JIHAD

  (STEAM POINTE #1)

  By

  S.G. Schvercraft

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed herein are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Series Hero, LLC

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. A Series Hero Production.

  Cover art by Deranged Doctor Design

  First Series Hero Printing, March 2016

  www.serieshero.com

  Author’s Introduction

  I came of age in the ’90s, that holiday from history between the Cold War’s end, and the post-9/11/01 world’s start.

  Collective memory paints that decade as halcyon days of plenty, and compared to the present era of economic stagnation and social decline, perhaps it was. Yet it didn’t seem so shining at the time.

  Sad but true: for the U.S., no worthy foreign enemy also meant no purpose. And this in turn made the entire culture feel rudderless. The period’s casual nihilism was typified by the era’s grunge sound and slovenly fashion, both of which signaled, “Why even bother?”

  Against this backdrop, the photos of 19th century scientists, explorers, writers, and statesmen that occasionally appeared in my high school European history textbook may as well have been examples of alien life. Their neat, formal clothing. Their serious expressions. The sharp confidence in their eyes. It was like these people had something they believed in. More than that: that they had something worth believing in.

  I remember thinking that would be very nice to have. A society that hadn’t lost its way. What would that even feel like?

  It was the kind of idle thought you have while daydreaming in class. Except this one would linger with me enough that I’d revisit the Victorian period in both nonfiction and prose again and again over the next decade or so. My father’s copy of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s biography here; a second-hand copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes there; Niall Ferguson’s history of the British Empire, and Mark Frost’s fantastic novel, The List of Seven, thrown in for good measure. No real agenda or reason to it, just an instinctual return to a time when the West believed in itself.

  This was all somewhat of a guilty pleasure, especially since mainstream culture saw mostly horror when looking at the same era. Part of this is the era’s general attitude towards the sexes and race. Sometimes though it was more specific: King Leopold’s Ghost, a bestselling history from the late ’90s, detailed the barbarism of 1880’s Belgium imperial practices in the Congo. Closer to home, Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City masterfully used the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair to show a darkness existing just below the surface of the late 19th century’s optimism and ingenuity.

  For whatever reason, in today’s culture the existence of any past sin stains not just the entire era, but all of western civilization as well. Yet there developed in literature a workaround from this staining guilt when wanting to write or enjoy a Victorian era adventure.

  If you’re reading this, I assume you already know what steampunk is, but the OED’s definition is nonetheless useful for our discussion: “A genre of science fiction that has a historical setting and typically features steam-powered machinery rather than advanced technology.”

  Serviceable enough. Left unmentioned is that steampunk is often everything we moderns would like from the late 19th century—for me, it’s the age’s confidence, for others it’s the aesthetics or sense of decorum—without all those things we are uncomfortable with. In other words, steampunk is the 19th century set to safe mode.

  And it’s fun, isn’t it? The retro tech, the civilization that believes in itself, the improbable adventures that result from mingling the two, all available in a guilt-free package. What’s not to love?

  And yet . . .

  I wonder if we don’t lose something doing it this way. Some unhappy but necessary bit of truth: all things have a cost.

  Maybe the cost of a confident civilization on the upswing is brutality and chauvinism.

  Maybe the cost of all our modern technology and convenience is weakness and decline.

  That’s an idea I play with here in Steam Pointe, the series you’re about to begin. It’s a little different from the type of steampunk you may be used to. On Steam Pointe, all the steam-powered tech exists contemporaneously with the cell phone, tablet or computer you’re reading this on. But this is less about ornate and antiquated machinery clashing with its smooth and tastefully understated contemporary counterparts.

  Rather, it’s about us meeting this retro mindset. It’s about a people with the same confident eyes as I saw in those history book photos from decades ago, locking with our own modern, less certain gaze.

  This isn’t steampunk as the 19th century set to safe mode. It’s steampunk setting the 21st century to “armed”.

  I hope you like it.

  S.G. Schvercraft

  Wilmington, Delaware

  February 2016

  The Zeppelin Jihad

  (Steam Pointe #1)

  Title Page | Author’s Introduction | Free Book Offer

  1 ~ Coming to Steam Pointe

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  1

  Coming to Steam Pointe

  It felt less like looking out an airplane window than staring through a time warp into 1890. The flight attendant saw the look on my face. “First time to Steam Pointe, miss?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s one thing looking down on it with Google Earth. Quite another in real life.”

  Even at this height, I could see great, gilded smokestacks stabbing into the sky, their dyed plumes painting the horizon surprisingly pleasing shades of violet, orange and red. Dirigible airships hovered here and there like storm clouds.

  The flight attendant shook his head, his perfectly gelled, frosted-tipped hair never moving. “I can’t understand a country where you have to check your laptop, cell phone, and iPod upon entry. I take it you’re here on business? Not many people would consider it a fun escape spot.”

  I certainly didn’t, not that the FBI cared. Who’d want to be someplace that practiced technological apartheid? Where you couldn’t get something as simple as, say, a hairdryer, instead having to rely on some coal-fired, magnetic, or gear-grinding contraption.

  “Have you explored the island much? I wouldn’t mind some advice on dealing with the natives.”

  “They don’t particularly care for my kind, so I usually stay at the airport guesthouse during layovers,” he said. I’d been given a hurried briefing on island culture by the State Department: traditional as Steamies were, having a gay flight attendant flitting up-and-down their cobblestone streets would have gone over like a pregnant pole-vaulter.

  “Of course,” he continued, as if we were sorority sisters getting our nails done, “they may not like you either.”

  “Because I’m a woman?” I asked.

  “It’s not women they dislike. It’s just that they expect them to be ladies,” he said, rolling his eyes. Then he continued down the aisle, checking for seats that hadn’t been returned to their upright positions.

  The island—“Pointe Island” on the maps—rose from the ocean on sheer cliffs that could have been castle walls. Probably why it wasn’t successfully settled until the 1800’s. Mountains peeked over the horizon, and even at this distance I could see the mining scaffolding that completely encased some of them. Th
ere were patchworks of farm fields like you’d see in flyover country back home, but these were intermingled with perfectly square forests. Trees here were just another crop. Railroad lines, some of them raised and as wide as an interstate highway, crisscrossed the countryside. Cargo ships came and went from the man-made barrier islands that ringed the coast.

  I could make out distant cities, some of them darkly brooding masses as though every building were part of a single, massive factory. Others gleamed whitely in the sun, the Potemkin utopias of 19th century World’s Fairs finally made real.

  Somewhere between these extremes was Boothcross, Steam Pointe’s largest city. Its skyscrapers were laced together with a spider’s web of elevated tramlines. Great Tesla coils were worked into some buildings’ designs, and arc lightning sparked from them like Thor’s hammer. Rising above these were the city’s Faced Towers—four art nouveau buildings linked by a dozen skyways. Each was crowned with a sculpted face of copper that stared in a different cardinal direction. The tallest structures on the island, they were always featured on postcards.

  At the airfield, I checked my electronics into a security deposit box. I’d been concerned they were going to give me grief about the Glock. It was a polymer framed autoloader, after all, and I wasn’t sure if that would get it on the forbidden technologies list. But the customs agent handed it back to me without comment after he’d finished rifling through my bags.

  “Enjoy your stay, miss,” he said, smiling politely. Maybe it was the Steamies’ weird accent—the bastard child of a Central Pennsylvanian dialect wrapped in a Victorian grammar obsession—but the way he said miss made it sound like he was dubious I’d actually qualify.

  There was a small crowd of travelers moving through customs, mostly returning Steamies. Some of the men had worn more traditional western suits, as you might see on the streets of New York. Even so, the occasional pocket watch, handlebar mustache, or dueling scar betrayed their citizenship. The rest, however, hadn’t even bothered trying to mask their nationality while overseas. These men wore dark, three piece suits and derby hats, a look which, though slightly updated with deep blue or crimson shirts and gold cravats, had probably last been fashionable in America when Jack the Ripper was making a name for himself.

  The women wore high-collared blouses and ankle-length skirts. Yet what could have been a stern style was mitigated by bright violets, yellows, and emeralds. Their hair, too, kept them from looking like daguerreotypes of Emily Dickinson. They wore it long, kept in place by jeweled hairbands. In addition to their bags, they collected their pets from the crates where they’d been stowed during the flight. Trained raccoons had first been used here to remove gear obstructions from heavy machinery, and had eventually been domesticated.

  Making my way through stares and whispers from women who had raccoons peeking out from their purses, I eventually made it through customs. A tall man in a dark suit was waiting for me.

  He was maybe 6’4”, with eyes as blue as frozen seawater. I figured he was in his late thirties—about 10 years my senior—but the mustache made him look older. His hands were hitched at his belt, on which hanged a holstered revolver, and sheathed dagger.

  “Mackenzie Hoff, Federal Bureau of Investigations, I presume,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said brusquely, annoyed by the looks I’d been getting. Didn’t these people know it was wrong to judge others? To make them uncomfortable?

  “Hiram Speer, Sensitive Inquiries Office, Boothcross branch,” the tall man announced. He held up his left hand to show me a ring inlaid with a red jewel and I saw that his knuckles were misshapen and swollen, as if repeatedly broken. It made me think he must have been a boxer.

  It occurred to me that I should probably show him ID. “Please, don’t bother showing me your badge,” he said as I reached inside my jacket pocket. “One doesn’t have to be an Arthur Conan Doyle protagonist to recognize you as an American federal agent.”

  “How so?” I asked, prepared to be flattered.

  “The harsh coarseness of your pantsuit combined with an overly aggressive attitude, as if you’re an actress in a man’s role playing your part more for stereotype than for nuance. Also, I received your description over the telewrite, and knew you were a redhead.”

  I was stunned by his rudeness, but all that came out was: “I’m strawberry blonde.”

  “Of course you are,” he said evenly. “Shall we?” He turned on his heel and walked away without asking if he could help me with my bag. Back home I wouldn’t really have expected an offer. But it surprised me that a Steamie wouldn’t do so. The implication seemed to be that I wasn’t worthy of such consideration.

  I’d imagined the streets would have been filled with carriages and hansoms, and while there were some of those, Speer showed me to his car. At least “car” was as good a word as any. Less of a mouthful than “ornate, rolling furnace.” I rode shotgun as Speer released some levers. The car whistled like a locomotive, and we chugged into traffic heading for downtown Boothcross.

  “I received the primer regarding your errant terrorist,” Speer said. “We haven’t found Mr. Mohammad Talib as yet, unfortunately. But I had some of our men target likely information founts.”

  “Have you increased security around here?” I asked. “Talib’s cell blew up three movie theaters before fleeing the States. He’s more than capable of doing the same thing to one of your opera houses, model zeppelin clubs, or whatever else you people have around here.”

  “Talib was using electronic detonators—mighty difficult to requisition on Steam Pointe,” Speer replied.

  “Our intel says he got here by stowing away on a cargo ship carrying helium. Would have been easy to smuggle some detonators too, huh?”

  “Yes, I’m aware of how easily he escaped you all. But I expect he’ll be running to ground rather than leisurely seeding bombs around town. We have posters up. Given how visibly he stands out from most Pointers, he’d be a fool to show himself. Most of our citizens go around armed, after all.”

  On the sidewalks, men walked confidently in their fine suits and canes, ladies in their elaborate dresses and gloves. However colorful their clothing, the people themselves were decidedly monochromatic.

  “I guess he would stand out here,” I agreed. “A grain of brown rice in a sea of salt.”

  “Best watch it. By that metaphor, yours is a rather salty complexion, too. Besides, if you have a grain of brown rice in a container of salt, or vice versa, then by definition you have an impurity. Wouldn’t it be better for all concerned if that impurity were removed?”

  “The natural world is full of blending. It makes things better, stronger. Combine iron and carbon, you get steel.”

  “Doesn’t that depend on your components?” Speer asked. “Gold, for instance, doesn’t react with most metals. When it is formed into an alloy, the more base metal that is included, the less valuable the whole. Other elements are quite dangerous when brought together. Take hydrogen and chlorine, combine with water, and you have hydrochloric acid. Carbon, hydrogen, chlorine, and sulfur can form mustard gas. Iron oxide and aluminum give you thermite. What kind of reaction do people like Mohammad Talib make when introduced to a civilized society?”

  I ignored the disgusting racial jab. “With that kind of knowledge about chemistry, you’d be on a terrorist watch list back home.”

  “Land of the Free, indeed,” Speer said with a smirk. “Look around you. Engineering and Chemistry are our gods, and Pointe Island is their temple. I’d say as between hard sciences, and Female-African-Sodomite Studies or whatever it is American universities teach these days, we made the correct choice.”

  We passed the rest of the drive in silence. Given our countries’ bad blood, maybe it was inevitable we’d be at one another’s throats.

  Steam Pointe’s seed had been the chemists, architects, mechanics, and engineers that Lincoln secretly turned loose on the South during the Civil War. The Experimental Munitions Regime
nt. Warrior scientists, they were good at killing Confederates. Horrifyingly so, as it turned out.

  They offered a glimpse of 20th century warfare, and mid-19th century America recoiled.

  Before Congress could have them hanged, the officers and enlisted men of the experimental unit collected what family they could and fled the country they’d fought for. They had settled here, making a nation in their own image. Isolated on this island, their descendants—along with what few immigrants they thought worthy—remained frozen in time, socially and morally Victorian, even as the industrial sciences they practiced continued evolving and mutating, like bacteria in a Petri dish. The whole thing was like a vast uncontrolled experiment in parallel social development. Men like Hiram Speer were one of that experiment’s results.

  We pulled into what looked like New York’s Flatiron Building had it been trimmed in jade and brass: the Sensitive Inquiries Office HQ.

  Once inside, Speer led me down into the building’s bowels. “You mentioned leads. How did you drum them up?” I asked. They hadn’t cell phone intercepts, cameras on every building with facial recognition software, or any of the other standard counter-terrorism tools afforded by modern society. The island was a black hole to any intelligence apparatus geared towards signal intercepts. It was why, the FBI and NSA figured, Talib had come here.

  “Simple,” Speer said, leading me down a gaslit hallway. The doors we passed looked thick enough to hold off invading medieval armies. “We have only twenty-six Arabs in all of Steam Pointe, fifteen of whom are here in Boothcross. None of them are citizens, so naturally we didn’t need a warrant to search their residences. Of those fifteen, three were found in possession of pro-jihadist books or pamphlets.”

  “Like what? A Koran?” I asked.