Chapter 1: The First Stroke

“We should garrison Mars in order to protect ourselves.” Lord Salisbury, 58 Anno Reginae (1895 in the old style.)

Her majesty’s martian colony: New Victoria in the crown colony of Hellas.  81 Anno Reginae. (1917)

I, Gordon Arthur, have set these words to paper, as much as memory will let, years of twisting memories have made these events more like dreams.  I cannot be certain what befell us on the quarterdeck of that ship. I recall fragments, all uncertain. Yet I know this much: It was the night of the Christmas truce with Germany, when Mark and I, both drunk on brandy, made the biggest mistake of our lives, enacted a mistake whose echo still coils in the corners of my mind, a stroke upon my destiny: Let me in.

I write now, as one might trace a shadow, each recollection is drawn against forgetting, to preserve and ward what remains of myself. Time erodes memory, so I write these words so that they may endure beyond my own recall. If the pattern holds, then maybe these pages will summon the past into being and in their completion, I shall be made whole. Therefore, I must start from the very beginning.

My father was a well-known importer and purveyor of tea in New Victoria, where I was born. My grandfather was a miner and among the first colonists of Mars. During the original Martian Iron Fever, he managed to raise enough money to purchase plots of Jungle in Mare Serpentis, where he tried to make his fortune, though I have heard other versions, some less flattering, and I cannot tell which are true, as blood and imperial ambition seem to haunt our line, like a baptism left unfinished.

I was sent at the age of six to the Imperial school in New Victoria, Mr. Johnson was the educator; he only had one arm, losing the other in a mining explosion, or so he claimed. I stayed at his school until I was in my teens, when I left to take a job at the Aetherdrome as a Booking clerk. Or perhaps I left earlier; my memory is a treacherous thing. Each fragment of the past is a line etched into the sigil of my life as I write now, each word is a stroke that moves closer to the destiny that waits beyond the page.

Mr Johnson had an adopted son called Mark Rake, who was almost two years older than me. He was training as a surveyor, though in truth he was little more than a boy with a notepad and a compass, a question which I cannot answer. He longed for a life of adventure of the type he read about in shilling shockers, with the lurid covers of adventurers battling with natives. Mark already spoke as if was already such a man, recounting tales of his travels beyond the colony. I often found his drunken, boastful tales to be so tiring. I cannot tell if it was bravado or some half-remembered truth. And for my part, I might have embellished what I claim to know.

We would spend hours in the cheap seats of the bioscope, watching the news reels flicker on the white screen, laughing at Charlie Chaplin's comic gestures like the little tramp. But when it came to the news of the war on Earth, with the news showing war propaganda thick on every frame, Mark turned into a different person. His manner would change. This was one of the few times that he fell quiet, later I came to understand that the war filled him with dread. For all his talk of adventure, he feared that he would be enlisted into the Army, and his future would be mud and blood on earth, a long way from home. Like Mark, I was born on Mars. I had never been to Earth, as my father liked to remind me, it wouldn't be long before I would be old enough to be conscripted into the British Army, in a year or two.

Mark Rake, as an older boy, liked to tell me stories of the valleys and mountains in the great red plains and the creatures he encountered. I could not help being interested in what he told me, for I had never left the safety of Colony. Sometimes when he was sotted, he would lower his voice and tell me of a stone made of Vrilium that he had found in long, overgrown Martian ruins.  The great towers of the ruins, long overtaken by the jungle vines, were made with material that no man could build. The imperial men of science debated whether the structures were temples or palaces. Yet no Martian had ever been found, living or dead. Yet, rumours of their existence in the far reaches of the planet in which no human had set foot were persistent.

The stone was etched with astronomical lines unknown to man. To him, it was not just a map; it was an invocation, something that he barely understood himself. Perhaps, too, that was his imagination. He refused to show me, or anyone else, for that matter, the Vrilium stone. I can't say that I entirely believed his story. He was always one for rambling yarns about this and that. However, I could not shake the feeling that he was telling the truth. I had never set foot on Mars beyond the Colony, yet as exasperating as his tales could be, I felt a desire to travel beyond the safety of the Aetherdrome, to traverse the galaxy beyond the red soil of Mars. Yet I could feel its resonance, calling me outwards, to follow its hidden rhythm, revelation and the unfolding of my own ambition.

There was something within me, a restless curiosity to travel and test the chart to see if it was indeed a map of unfathomed realms. For the first time, I understood that adventure wasn't just in tawdry novels, but a desire to follow a path that nobody else has tread.

The loud booming of the one o’clock gun at the Viceroy’s palace marked the commencement of the Christmas truce with Germany on Mars. As its echoes tolled the hour by which citizens of Mars customarily set their clocks. I couldn't say what time it was on Earth; maybe they were three hours behind us or three hours later. I would have to ask my father. He always seemed to know that type of thing. From the great hill of the Viceroy's palace and down to the Atherdrome people swarmed into the streets, children waved imperial flags, women waving parasols here on the rust red world people danced and sang along the broad esplanade facing the Hellas Sea.

An hour or so after celebrating, I found myself perched on the wooden seats in the back row of the Bioscope. The crowd was a motley assemblage including old veterans in uniforms and other Aetherdrome workers, the smell of brandy and pipe smoke and an atmosphere of excitement. The newsreel flickered, and the news actor stood on the stage acting out the day's news. Despite having an empire that now reached the stars, we had not just managed to invent talking pictures; the compromise was to have a live narrator, who often faced scrutiny by the crowd in the form of missiles from the seats, including food and bottles.

Both Mark and I were drunk on Rusketbucket Brandy that smelled and tasted like Fire dung. When the names of the German Generals who had agreed to the ceasefire were solemnly voiced by the Narrator on the stage, the cinema erupted into boos and hisses. Mark started to throw morsels of food at the narrator, until we were both chased bodily from the Bioscope by the red-faced manager.

As we stumbled our way to another tavern, Mark was visibly intoxicated, as his gait was unsteady. At length, he turned to me and said with a strange mixture of despair and defiance, “They will have me, you know.” I could have guessed his meaning; I had heard this before when he was drunk.

I asked him who he was talking about, and he replied, “My father can't keep me out of the Army for much longer; this truce is only for Christmas. They will call me for training on earth, boys my age are already being drafted.” He pulled his coat tight around his body. I’m sure he did this, I'm sure he was wearing a coat, my memory is poor.

There was no joking in his voice when he said quietly, “I would rather throw myself into the void than be drafted.” He laughed then, but it was a hollow sound. “And so, I shall. The Vrilium map, it’s not folly. It’s a summons away from this red jungle.”

Several hours into the evening’s revelry, Mark, flushed with brandy and mischief, proposed with the recklessness of youth that we “borrow” his family’s Aether Runner. His Uncle, a man of considerable means and some reputation within the Colonial Department of the Aetherial Realms, possessed such a vessel. The Imperial, she was called, which was a gleaming marvel of brass and lacquered mahogany, fitted with gravitic sails and an overcharged wood-boiler. She could convey five or six souls aloft in comfort, and, if the gauges were to be believed, attain low orbit within mere minutes. At the time, it struck us both as a most splendid jape, and I entertained no doubt that the Runner would be returned to its berth before a single soul could suspect our escapade. Little did I fathom then how long our actual absence would be.

In no time, we staggered down to the landing field via several taverns on the way. I was dressed in my pea green uniform and cap, and Mark, by contrast, was attired in the gaudy hues of a dandy. We reeled through the half-finished great ceremonial avenues of the imperial capital, stacks and piles of Martian stone lay scattered, scaffolds loomed like skeletal towers, and we pushed our way through noisy crowds celebrating the ceasefire. That thronged the incomplete streets. The sight of the unfinished buildings brought to mind my father’s voice, insisting that the Hun prisoners of war and the Kaiser himself ought to be set to labor on the construction of the new capital when the war was won.

The streets of New Victoria, the capital of British Mars, rang with fireworks and celebration as we staggered down through the streets. Yet further we staggered, the less people we saw, until we reached the hulking Aetherdrome, its vast steel hangar meant for the vast ships of the Empire, yet it lay deserted and its lamps cold and unlit.

The Aether Runner was docked at the Aetherdrome. Drunkenly, Mark tumbled the key to the ramp. It took him several tries before the ramp lowered and we could board, as he fumbled with the landing lamp, muttering and swearing to himself under his breath. I fancied I saw an inhuman figure watching us for a moment, on the edge of my vision, before it melted into the blackness before the gas light. I told myself it was the drink, but something made me believe that it was a lie.

Mark stood behind the ship's wheel, which dwarfed him, and I stood behind, shoveling coal into the black heart of the furnace, while he pulled switches and moved the giant wheel. The Aether Runner steadily climbed into the air, and I sat alongside, mute with excitement. The aether runner responded with a slow hiss and a shudder as we started out into the atmosphere. The colony and our homes diminished rapidly, swallowed by clouds as the craft pressed skyward, towards the infinite expanse beyond.

Mars was a planet of steaming jungles and sluggish, winding rivers. The air clung heavy to the skin, rich with the scent of strange blossoms. Along the shorelin,e the vast oval shape of the Hellas Sea, a deep reddish brown stretched before the porthole, glimmering slightly. New Victoria, the planned capital of Her Majesty’s empire, which I always thought to be so vast, was through the porthole, but a tiny and fragile outpost of iron and stone. 

As our ship clawed skywards through the humid atmosphere, a circle of lights receded below, marking out the advance of European civilization as the city shrank before us. Inside that circle was order and imperial ambition. Every street, every canal pulsed with purpose, a city ritual to manifest imperial destiny. Outside was the fragile edge of civilization, beyond was a planet of jungle and rivers. Along the outer edge of the city, the dim flicker of campfires could be seen. An ever-growing refugee camp. Those poor souls who had fled Earth from the war in Europe now huddled beneath the thin canvas of that settlement, the remnants of a shattered continent. Little did I know then that these people in their tents would drive the colony outwards, forcing the colony to grow. I traced the lines of their campfires onto the porthole glass with my fingers, strokes that would shape the colony's outward growth.

Mars remained the red jewel in the crown of the Empire, yet already I sensed the edges of that jewel beginning to crack, like it was alive, with the destiny I sought to manifest.

Outside the boundary, the rest of the planet dark, savage, and unknown, bristling with mysteries, seemed to loom over the city. Looking through the nearest porthole at Mars, I reflected that back on earth, before the colonies of the void had started, the philosophers and men of science had taught that the void was an unbreathable vacuum. It transpired that they were wrong. Out here, man could breathe the aether well enough, though the air was chilly and bitter upon the lungs. I wrapped the pea green coat of my ticket clerk’s uniform around me; it was never made for the cold of the void. The Royal Navy, in its thick woollen uniforms, fared better, but even they still felt the biting cold.

Neither of us spoke for some time, my friend, his eyes fixed ahead. After some time in silence, I ventured cautiously, “Pray, what course are you setting?” The words hung in the fragile air, as if trying not to disturb the quiet that had settled between us.

It was hours before he responded; in that time, he just stood at the wheel motionless, his gaze fixed ahead, words withheld like a secret locked tight. Words were withheld, and the silence grew thick, pressing upon us.

I had noticed that he had pulled a curious object from inside his jacket pocket and was looking at it intently. At first, it resembled a map, but it was no map that I had ever seen before; it shimmered in the light of the cabin. As I moved closer, I could see that it resembled no constellations that could be seen from earth or mars. The markings seemed to be long, bending lines, as if the thing was alive. Now that I have put this on paper, I can no longer say if it was actually a map that Gordon had or a scratch of cloth, but I am certain that it glowed.

At last, he spoke, voice low and resolute: “I am bound for the stars, Gordon, into the very heart of the void.” He said, looking at the Vrilium map, “This is the way home.” My stomach churned, and not just from the drink, but as his words sank in. “The stars?” I stammered. “Mark, don't be ridiculous. My father will be worried sick, and I’ll surely lose my post at the Aetherdrome if they learn of this.”

I tried again, voice cracking under the weight of dread. “We are not explorers! Let’s turn back while we still may.”

Yet as the word left me, I could feel a strange tug inside, urging me onwards, to step beyond familiarity to continue upwards into the great void, beyond all that I knew. A whisper of adventure that called in my bones

My friend's grip only tightened on the giant wheel; his eyes set on the far distance. My protests were swallowed by the hiss of the furnaces as the Runner surged higher, the colony shrinking beneath us. Fate had already answered for me.

The red planet was fast vanishing behind as the Aether Runner continued its trajectory into the thin upper atmosphere. “I think we should turn back.” I ventured. Mark ignored my repeated requests to return to Mars. I assumed it was the drink; he had bountifully consumed more than myself obviously. My intoxication had vanished into the cool, rarefied air of the cabin, leaving me fully alert to peril and the thrill of our escapade.

Again, it was what seemed hours before he acknowledged me with a whispered intonation, he cast a stern glance across the remoteness, I felt a creeping apprehension take hold; a feeling of dread was overtaking me. My heart told me this was no longer a game; something was wrong.

“Mark”, I said more sharply, “You must turn her about.” 

Still nothing.

The stars ahead were wrong, I had no navigation skills, but I knew that much. They did not sit as they ought to. Replaced by clusters of stars, which created an unease in my chest.

“What course are you setting?” I demanded.

At last, he spoke.

“Home”, and his eyes never left the stars.

That word struck me harder than a blow to the face.

“Mars is our home. You’re drunk, you don't know what you're doing.”

He laughed and said, “The map does not point back to Gordon, it never has.”

Something in me hardened.  I had no idea how to pilot a runner or any craft for that matter. Pushing my friend away from the helm, I took control of the navigation wheel. I breathed a fervent prayer to Queen Victoria, Eternal Empress of the Galaxy and made up my mind to save us both.

“Let go of the wheel,” I said.

 I rushed forward, trying to grab the wheel. and tried to push Mark out of the way, he was bigger and stronger than me, and he fought back strongly. With a mighty push, I shoved him away from the wheel. He staggered backwards and hit his head on a bulkhead with a mighty clunk. He collapsed onto the deck, unconscious.

Mark had slumped to the deck, out cold, while the Aether Runner kept hurtling us farther from the only place we’d ever called home. I found myself trying to figure out how to change the course of the craft, when something solid slid from the gloom,at first I thought it was another planet. Then I saw the Roy Navy ensign. The Aether Spire. The faint glimmer of lights. The HMS Minerva. Big. Silent. And far, far too close.

We clipped the side of the cigar-shaped Frigate, scraped along the hull and bounced like a pebble over water. But the runner didn't stop. Before I could correct her course, she slammed into the Aether spire, and we hit the Frigates communication spire. It jutted from the Minerva’s upper deck like an iron spike, all vanes and copper coils humming with stored energy.

Hitting the Aether Spire full on. There was a burst of blue light, bright as lightning, and like the sky tearing open, shapes unfolded within the flash. I saw sparks and metal twists, and felt the ship shudder, grinding screech of metal ripped through the craft. It shook me to my very bones. My hair stood on end, every nerve screaming, and then the last thing I remember was falling forward, collapsing on top of Mark as the world around us spiraled into darkness and chaos.

Thus, the circle turns again.

NARRATIVE OF GORDON ARTHUR OF MARS - Part 2: The H.M.S Minerva

The more I write, the more I recognize a shape within my confused memories, a geometry that guides my pen and its strokes upon the page. It is as though the tale insists on being written, circle to circle, line to line. I am not its author but an instrument, completing a pattern that was laid down long before my birth. Perhaps the Empress had a hand in its design, a mechanism of remembrance. With the distance of time and memory, my recall of the terrible crash starts with my standing and looking at my own body in the crumpled wreckage. Yet I know that this is impossible. Confounded Confabulations. 

 Flashes of distant memory: the brass grip of hands pulling me from the wreckage, and the chill of the void rushing into the ship. Mark's face white as frost, then darkness.

I dreamed of Queen Victoria floating in her cylinder of aluminiferous ether, suspended as though in the womb of a machine. Her black dress billowed slowly in the fluid. The fluid writhed, alive, pulsing with the rhythm of a heart. Her hands pressed against the glass, her mouth moving, but her wordswere made silent by the substantial dimension of the glass. Her lips moved, forming words, but not sounds; sentences formed ripples in the fluid.

As her words filled, multiplied inside my skull, I knew: the Empress was not merely alive, she was a machine.

Flashes of memory: distorted faces. I felt myself sinking. I could hear the void whispering. Yet I try to remember, remember the best I can, as if time is made of smoke through my fingers, fading and never certain.

I woke, or at least I think I awoke. To the hiss of hydraulics and the hum of something old and imperial. Light flickered overhead. And somebody nearby was shouting orders that I didn't recognize.

I found myself in the cabin of a vessel, the air thick with the smell of oil. Mark was standing over me, with a look of shame and relief on his face, which one only gets after narrowly avoiding a disaster, or perhaps postponed. In the corner, a brass medical Automaton stood sentinel, its polished surface glinting dully in the lamplight, the whir of hidden gears the only sound it made.

Several rough-looking persons were also present, standing near, and a brass Automaton stood to the side of my bunk. 

We had been accidentally rammed by the vast Frigate which did not see our small vessel until it collided with us. Our tiny craft is no more than a pinpoint amongst the stars.

“Thank Victoria that you're awake at last.” Mark sputtered.

I had been unconscious for several weeks; the ship’s Automaton had tended my wounds. Having been dragged from the wreck of our craft with several broken bones and hanging onto life. Mark feared that I might never regain consciousness, and he would be left alone on a strange ship.

I had always had a profound dislike for Automaton. These simple brass humans but without intelligence or wit.

“I hope Sir is well. “Chirped the brass and wood contraption. Before I could give a reply, the contraption was shoved out of the way by one of the men who was evidently in charge, as he was wearing the admiralty blue jacket and loose white trousers of the Royal Navy, left no doubt.

“Bugger off and see to your stations.” He barked at the loitering hands. The voice was a broad Bristol accent and carried so much authority that the automation seemed to hesitate before obeying. He turned to me, then a tall, dark-skinned man, his jaw set like a heart of oak with his hair cropped close. Turning to me, he said

 “Uriah Fleetwood, first mate of this vessel”

“Then we did strike a ship,” I mumbled, my memory trembling back as I recalled the dreadful encounter with the vessel. “But what vessel bears us now?”

“The H.M.S Minerva,” He replied with the sort of gravity that I should salute on the spot.“As soon as you're ready to walk, Captain Tempest has requested that you visit her for tea on the quarterdeck.” He paused, “Aye, clerk, you’ll find little company of flesh aboard her. The Minerva was the Admiralty’s pet experiment, the first ship crewed more by brass than by men. Too few lads left alive to man her proper, so they filled her decks with these wire-eyed bastards instead.”

He gave out a short laugh and said, “Funny aint it, Clerk? Admiralty never fancied the likes of me for the captain’s chair. But they’ll hand the whole bloody quarterdeck to a box of gears on legs without a second thought.”

My thoughts, however, were not on tea or for myself, but for my family on Mars, who must have been worried about my whereabouts. I requested that the ship contact my family and let them know where Mark and I were. Fleetwood’s expression did not change, though his voice carried the weight of unwelcome tidings. “You two blockheads smashed into the Aether-communication spire, clerk. Thanks to your brilliance, no dispatches can be sent until we dock at a Cloud yard for repairs, which could be months. Months! Do you have any idea what that could mean for the empire?”

Thus began my convalescence: days passed before I could sit upright without dizziness, and several more before I might quit my bunk. All the while, Minerva pressed on, her destination and fate as uncertain as my own.

I had not had sight of another human for what seemed an age. My only company was the Medical Automaton, who fussed over me and chattered away in his monotone mechanical voice.

I was unaware of exactly how much time had passed since I first woke up in this room. Feeling somewhat restored and curious as to why nobody had come to visit me for some time, I decided to find out why everything was silent.

Leaving my bunk, I stood with some difficulty and limped towards the door. Having reached the doorway, I found it locked. Hammering on the door with my clenched fists for some time, hoping that somebody would respond. I was greeted only by silence.

“Sir, please return to your bunk”, intoned the Automaton. In my distress, I had failed to notice that the Medical Automaton was now standing behind me.

Before I could reply, it had grabbed me in its stone-cold brass hands and roughly guided me the few steps back to the bunk.

“Unhand me,” I shouted as I struggled in vain against its solid grip.

“Sir, please co-operate. This won't hurt at all”. I felt a sting in my arm, and darkness started to overcome me. My only thought was that the Automaton had injected me with a soporific as I fell limp onto the bunk.

Tiredness overcame me, and I drifted back towards the sullen inkiness of sleep. I knew then in my soul that something terrible had overcome the ship and its crew. As I drifted into unconsciousness, I could have sworn an inhuman figure stood silently studying me from the doorway. Its form was indistinct, either shadow or solid, like smoke from a lantern. The darkness seemed to cover me as the room closed in and yet I felt a voice whispering in my ear, words unheard.

NARRATIVE OF GORDON ARTHUR OF MARS - CHAPTER 3:  Escape

“We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.” Queen Victoria, 1890. 

As I sit at my desk and write my story, each stroke of the pen drinks my life energy from me, the ink glows on the page, pulsing at the lines and circles as if remembering its birth. I can feel the page beneath my hand. When the final circle closes, the glow fades, but some part of me remains within the page, the words shift, and the words rewrite themselves and yet  I am taken back into my own past..

Yet, when I awoke once more from my restless sleep, I found myself utterly alone in the room. A heavy silence hung about the stale air, no sounds of human AC broken only by the faint creak of the ship settling around me. I knew then, with a growing dread that gnawed at my mind, that unless I found a way out of this grey prison in which I had been confined for an uncertain length of time, fate would surely overcome me.

I watched the Medical Automaton with half an eye open, knowing I only had one chance at my plan. The leaden bolster on which I had been laying my head was most uncomfortable and was making my neck hurt.

I stood up from the bunk, making sure I halted not far from it. As the Automaton approached, I remained firm in my resolution that I must escape.

“Please return to your Bunk...”

I replied in the negative that I would do no such thing.

Please return to your......” The Automaton was almost level with my face. I could look straight into its emotionless faux eyes. For a brief second, I was sure I could detect something alive behind the humanlike molded face, a fleeting sentience, then it was gone.

As it uttered its last words, I swung the heavy bolster from behind my back and smashed it straight into the Automaton's spherical forehead, sending it tumbling backwards.

For a moment, it regained its balance and took a lurching step towards me. This time, with the needle in his hand that it must have used to put me to sleep the last time. This time, I feared the sleep would be eternal, and frankly, I was too young for death, having not yet even visited Earth or watched a Test Match at Lord's.

Though I was still stiff and bruised from my accident, moving fast enough to dodge the needle, striking again, I followed through with a heavy-footed wallop to its body, sending the brass monster collapsing to the deck. Before it could recover its equilibrium, I was astride its torso and kept hitting and striking until it stirred no more.

I searched the remains of the Automaton for a sign as to why it had turned on me, any sign as to why it was keeping me in this room. Unscrewing the top of its brass skull and looking inside with a quizzical eye, I only found brass and cogs.

I was never one for giving up. At school, I was always the last one off the Rugby field, even in the stifling heat of the Martian summer: I had to survive, I had to escape, I had to find my friend and return home.

I am not alone in thinking that the Empire was born on the playing fields of England. It was thrashed into me by the Master at my Schoolhouse that failure is not part of the English character neither within the godly spirit of pax Victoria.

I concluded that the room must contain an air vent. After much searching, I found it behind my bunk. I was able to wriggle my body inside; it was very tight and dark.

Distant at the top of the air shaft was a faint light. I started to climb upwards.

Now that I had dealt with the Automaton, I just had to find a way out of my prison, and that would be easier said than done.

NARRATIVE OF GORDON ARTHUR OF MARS - CHAPTER 4: SILENT RUNNING.

I concluded that the room must contain an air vent. After much searching, I found it behind my bunk. I was able to wriggle my body inside; it was very tight and dark.

Now that I had dealt with the Automaton, I just had to find a way out of my prison, and that would be easier said than done.

Distant at the top of the air shaft was a faint light. I started to climb upwards. Towards my escape, hopefully towards safety.

Pulling myself hand over hand up the ladder after ten minutes of exercise. I reached the area of the light. Rather out of breath, as climbing around a Frigate in the dark is not usually part of the job description of a Booking clerk.

Pulling myself onto a small ledge, wide enough for a good sleeping space. The light was coming from behind another air vent. I could hear human voices, engaged in an argument.

“But you're the Captain and a British Officer,” stated a stern male voice, which I recognized as the First Mate.

“Yeah, and...” replied the voice of a woman. She was a plump woman wearing the Blue Tunic and trousers and gold shoulder braid of a captain in her majesty's Royal Navy. She had a pair of oversized optic glasses perched on her nose and her vivid red hair, coupled with a voice tinged with the distinct tones of Bristol, which lent a particular warmth to her authority. She was puffing on a pipe, ever present between her lips, and was sending wisps of smoke into the air.

“Maybe you can think of a daring plan to get us out of this pickle....” He was obviously very annoyed.

“So! Because I wear the captain’s braid and petticoats, you believe I must harbor some ingenious stratagem to save us all? “Replied Captain Tempest, her tone obviously unamused.

“If only we could reach that Air Vent in the ceiling.” Said the First Mate, frustration evident in his words.

“Oh indeed,” said the captain, perfectly composed, “As if only my Imperial Prince would fall from the sky and rescue us and rescue us from this stinking hole.”

When I looked through the vent, it looked down on what was indeed a small prison cell, or in the parlance of the Royal Navy, a Brig.

I was enthralled to come across other humans and British people at that; I called out with delight. The Captain and the First Mate stopped talking and looked up at the vent,

“Hello, is somebody there?” called Captain Tempest.

“Hello...” I called back, “It's m,e Gordon Arthur...” I was still trying to remove the vent grating, but it wouldn't budge. Shoving it with my elbows, but it stayed firmly attached.

“Who?” Said a confused captain, looking at The First Mate for confirmation.

“One of the boys from the accident....” Stated Mr. Fleetwood.

“Do you have my friend Mark with you?” I shouted to the captain.

“No, we haven't seen anybody since the Automatons separated us from the rest of the crew a week ago. ”

I told the captain and the mate that I was unable to remove the grating and asked them what I should do next.

“If you could find a way to the ship's main passageway and let us out of this brig, that would be splendid.” Captain Tempest. “Oh, and watch out for the Automatons; they appear to have gone barmy.”

I tried pushing and shoving the grating one last time and concluded that I had to find another exit. My only option was another climb into the unilluminated belly of the ship. I was starting to feel like Jonah was trapped inside the whale.

After a climb of no more than a few minutes, I was able to leave the ladder and enter an access hatch. Finding myself inside the cavernous Gasbag of the Airship.

Stepping onto a metallic gantry that swayed gently with the unfaltering motion of the vessel. Suspended in the middle of the balloon, below only sepia darkness.

As I reached the middle of the walkway, I was intensely mindful of my footsteps sending out a pounding rhythmic vibration into the silence of the ship. Moving onwards towards the far exit.

Finally, I pulled the lock, unable to unfasten the heavy door. Shoving and pulling with all my might, but to no avail. In my mind, I made another application to Queen Victoria for safety. I heard a faraway voice calling my name from below the walkway, and it was calling me to leap over the side. “Jump....Jump.... Jump.” The voice called.

Following the voice, I plunged over the side of the walkway, sailing through the gloom like a fish plucked from the ocean. I dived swimming in the air, my arms and legs milled in wild circles. I fell without grace.

With a thump, I sank deeply into a pile of wadding and other waste matter that had been haphazardly heaped under the walkway. Lucky for me, as I lay under the rubbish, I could hear the thack thack of a thousand bees attacking the cardboard that offered me scant protection from the virulent stingers.

A while later, a hand pulled me from the tangle of cardboard and other garbage on which I had found myself entrapped. The face before me was familiar; it was my great friend Mark Rake, whom I had not laid eyes on since the accident that brought us onto this ship. I made silent thanks to the immortal Victoria for keeping him safe.

“Gordon,” he explained, his voice trembling with earnestness that belied his composure. He gripped my shoulders with his hands, as if to assure himself that I was made of flesh and not a phantom.

“Mark,” was all I could mutter, for the sight of him struck me with a relief that propriety forbade from showing in an outwards fashion.

Around us, the garbage of the H.M.S Minerva lay in deep piles of broken crates and other detritus, forming a labyrinthine refuge. Mark, now not dressed in his dandy finery, but in a cast-off navy uniform, regarded me with measured calm, His eyes sharp and curious, flicking from corner to corner of the room.

“I kept myself hidden here since the automations seized control,” he murmured “The garbage room offered me an excellent vantage point and a measure of safety. One must learn the disposition of one's enemies if one hopes to endure aboard this vessel.

And yet all was silent onboard the Minerva as it made its journey away from Mars to its destination, only known to the automation controlling the helm. As we slowly made our journey, only once did we come across a cadaver. I knew from my time working at the Aetherdrome that a Royal Navy frigate like the H.M.S Minerva had a crew of at least a dozen English souls.

“They are alive” I whispered “The Captain and first mate” I told Mark how I had come across both locked in the brig.

“Fear not,” he replied, even the most fearsome brass sentinel cannot outwit a gentleman versed in the very perils chronicled in Blackwood's Monthly Magazine. Yet here we tread, as if lifted straight from its pages”. He paused and looked around, “One can but wonder what wonders lurk behind the next corridor”. I couldn't help noticing that, despite his bravado, during our conversation, Mark kept his hand over one of the pockets on his blue tunic, as if trying to assure himself that something precious was still within.

Together, we made our way cautiously out of the Garbage Room and stealthily crept towards the location of the Captain and the First Mate. Suddenly, we heard gears; we both flattened ourselves against a bulkhead, hearts pounding. I am certain it was two automations. Yet I saw them clearly, or at least I think I did. Their brass limbs in precise steps.

As one intoned in its mechanical voice, “Corridor clear. No irregularity observed.”

We waited unmoved as they passed, their gazes unaware of our existence. We remained motionless until their cadence march faded into the distance. Yet the presence of the enemy made us more aware that we must proceed with the utmost caution.

It was with some relief that Mark and I reached the Brig in which Captain Tempest and the mate were held captive. Looking around, I believe that we had gained our destination so easily without being beset by the minions of our adversary and relatively unscathed.

Upon effecting the release of the Captain and the Mate from the confines of a most ill-ventilated Brig, where they had, it transpired, been incarcerated for several days, we were met with a tale so strange and lamentable that, for a moment, even the most iron-stomached among us were struck dumb with astonishment.

“It commenced,” said the captain, drawing thoughtfully on her pipe, with a voice hoarse from prolonged confinement and no doubt an indulgence of the circling smoke from her pipe, “with an unfortunate incident involving a midshipman by the name of Roberts.”

“A troublesome fellow?” I inquired.

“Imbecilic,” the Mate supplied with unseemly glee, he said while leaning carelessly against the cold iron bars of the brig with his arms crossed, showing off the intricate tattoos on his forearms.

“He attempted to regulate the ship’s Aetheric Spire,” the captain said, his countenance darkening. “The very one in which your craft was damaged, as we had no way to send dispatches because of the damage.”

“Regulate?” I echoed.

A most ill-advised improvisation,” the Mate supplied. “In his folly, he tried to fix the Aether Spire by forcing a manual synchronization,” the Mate explained, delighting in the retelling. “Jammed a conductor straight into the Aether manifold. Like trying to patch a phonograph needle into a cathedral bell, a maneuver for which the housing was neither designed nor inclined.”

“A reckless enterprise” the captain said sternly, he countenance darling behind the wisps of pipe smoke “The Aetheric Spire is connected to the ship’s resonance grid, tampering with it destabilized the entire system, when Roberts tried to re-jig the system it caused an aether flair to shoot from the spire which the automata read as the ship being boarded by a hostile force. According to their infernal logic, we were under attack. And so they did what they were built to do: protect the vessel. In their logic, the ship’s crew were that hostile force.”

She said nothing further, and for a while the only sound was that of the humming of the ship. Later, she said, “When the quarterdeck is ours again.” In measured words, “I held command over this frigate for nineteen years. And in less than nineteen minutes, I was reduced to a prisoner within her hull. Those clockwork imbeciles will recall precisely under whose flag they serve.”

“And the crew?” I asked.

The captain folded her arms, the brass trim of her greatcoat catching the dim light of the brig.

“The crew did what they could,” she said grimly. “Some took to the service ducts to regain control; others tried to reroute power through the secondary conduits. Brave fools, all of them. But the automata were faster; they know this ship’s arteries better than any soul aboard.”

She paused, exhaling through her nose. “We lost two in the vent ways. Mister Mills vanished entirely. And Ensign Moore was last seen attempting to reason with the Analytical engine .” She shook her head. “A noble effort. Pointless, of course.”

With no time to waste and armed only with the keenest blades the galley could offer, these being fish knives and a boarding hook once employed for roast beef, we made our way toward the quarterdeck. We held no clear notion of what monstrosity might await us there, be it rogue mechanism or something far more profane, but we were resolved to reclaim the vessel. Come what may.

We ducked our heads so as not to bump our heads on the ceiling. The passageway is made up of pipes and valves. Smells of oil.

Before we had gone far, a bell started to ring, shaking the ship with each chime.

‘What's that?’ Mark asked

“The warning bell,” Replied the Captain, “The Automatons know we are coming.”

The bell’s echoes had scarcely faded when the ship’s speaking trumpet crackled into life, out of the static came a strangled, barely human voice.

“Do not approach… for God’s sake, do not approach…”

The tannoy crackled again, and through the static came a sound not of words but of wings — a droning that seemed to seep from the very walls.

“What in Victoria’s name is that?” whispered Fleetwood, his hand already on his @@weapon

From the ceiling vents above us poured a glittering cloud of brass-and-copper insects, each no bigger than a sparrow but alive with electric fury. Their bodies pulsed with faint blue light, their wings a blur of razor motion.

The swarm descended in a furious storm, a living fog of clockwork stingers. Captain Tempest snatched her pipe from her lips and barked, “Down!” as we threw ourselves against the bulkhead. The air sang with the sound of tiny blades.

I swung my arm wildly, catching one mid-flight. It shattered like a glass bauble, scattering cogs across the deck. Mark stamped another into the floor with a crunch, his face pale in the flickering light.

“Maintenance drones,” Fleetwood shouted over the din. “The ship’s cleaning itself  and we’re the dirt!”

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the swarm withdrew, drawn back into the vents with a metallic sigh, leaving the corridor littered with fragments that twitched and died.

The speaking trumpet hissed once more, and the voice, now half-mechanical, groaned: “Do not… come any further…”

We froze for a moment as the Captain Tempest said: “It's Roberts”, said the captain, “by Victoria, he's still alive.”

In the darkness, for a moment, I thought but I could not be certain that I saw an inhuman figure, watching us, crouched on a pipe. I called out to it partly in fear, and ‘What are you?’ It didn't acknowledge me in any way, almost as if I didn't exist before it faded into smoke. It flickered in my vision, as if something half remembered a dream, perhaps the danger was never there, perhaps I am the danger.

As we cautiously approached the door, the whirring and clanking grew louder, a metallic opera of menace.

The speaking trumpet sparked into lif,e “Do not come any further, or you will be forced to become one with the ship as I am.” The voice this time was more machine than human.

We exchanged worried glances, then the mate's boot struck the door, once, twice, then the Seel failed. The door gave way, like a bone breaking, and the air beyond the threshold changed as the door swung open to reveal what had become of Roberts.

NARRATIVE OF GORDON ARTHUR OF MARS - CHAPTER: REBORN

The quarter deck is a giant bubble; the ship's wheel is in the middle. Open to the void, reinforced dome, port holes on the sides. Signal vanes, antennae, and the Aether Spire rise here, bristling like a forest of copper and iron. At least that's how I think I remember the Quarterdeck. Perhaps the memory twists to suit my fear.

The quarterdeck was a chaos of brass arms writhing across every surface, each movement precise and efficient. Midshipman Roberts, the spark of this disaster, was in the middle of the machinery; what remained of his body was interwoven with the vessel. Pipes pulsed where his veins had been, his chest glimmered with a light that beat in time to the ship's engines. Around him, the air hummed with a low blasphemous hymn, as if the Minerva was chanting in worship.  Every movement, every pulse, every fragment of memory was a stroke in the sigil of my life, the consecration of my ambition, written in flesh, steel and fire.

His eyes flickered like a miner’s lamp amid the cables, still moving as if steering the vessel with mechanical intent, with a mind that wasn't entirely his own

Before we could react, the automata struck in a wave armed with bayonets. One metallic arm swung like a pendulum, shattering a control console with a deafening crash. Another arm whipped past, catching the Mate in the shoulder and throwing him against a wall. Sparks erupted where wires had been severed, and the smell of burning circuitry filled our lungs.

Mark rushed to the side of the Mate, pulling him to his feet, as he and Fleetwood started to hack at the automation as it charged towards them, the mate drove a boarding hook through its chest.

We four lunged into the fray, knives flashing. Wires screamed as we severed them; each strike was desperate, each a gamble, against the thing that once had been part of the crew. Every swing, every strike, felt like a betrayal, and yet there was no choice: the creature that had been Roberts would kill us if we faltered.

As we found ourselves, almost forced from the Quarterdeck by the savageness of the defense, two figures emerged from the shadows where they had been hiding: a young Aetherman, barely more than a boy, clutching a wrench, and an engineer from the aft, goggles cracked and covered in grease, gripping a pair of pliers as if it were a sword. Their courage steadied our retreat, as the automata lurched towards with bayonets flashing.

As I looked up, I had to scrunch my eyes: for an instant, I could swear his body started to flick between human and brass. One moment he was in the human form of Roberts, next he was a machine and then both at once, which made my vision reel.

Roberts let out a strangled stream between human and metal with his last breath as the Engineer severed the last cable connected to the former crew member's body. Without warning, the ship convulsed violently, like a whale flexing its ribs, a living thing beneath me. The world shattered. The quarterdeck erupted in pandemonium. Robert's cry still echoed as the Minerva convulsed, the deck heaved, brass pipes split, and steam erupted from the walls.

We were flung like puppets, Fleetwood hurling against the bulkhead, Mark spinning across the deck, Captain Tempest and the Engineer clinging to a rail as the ship bucked beneath her. The young aetherman tried clinging to my legs, but was flung violently across the deck, smashing into a porthole.

The stars outside the portholes melted and twisted like spirals and into shapes that were too vast to comprehend. Time was torn apart as the H.M.S Minerva leapt forward in the void

I felt myself unmoored in time, falling in all directions at once. Unstitched as the void was pulling me apart, thread by thread.

When the world steadied, we found ourselves in an unknown stretch of the void, unfamiliar stars beyond the portholes. And then, silence, or perhaps there never was silence, only broken by the Aetherman screaming in pain

The crew lay broken and bruised, or at least that’s how I remember it. Beyond the porthole,s new stars gleamed, strange constellations. The H.M.S Minerva had leapt forward into the void, but nobody knew where.

The ship steadied at last, the groans of her hull fading. We staggered to the portholes.

Mark whispered, “Where… are we?” or perhaps it was my own voice, I cannot entirely be sure, or maybe I have half remembered the word to suit my own version of events, or am I remembering a memory of a memory. 

Outside, the stars were not the ones on our charts. Not Mars, not Earth, not any colony known. 

Thus, the circle is sealed.