The Remarkable Rift

The Illyrian Connection

Jeremiah reached over to the control board and examined it while the others focused on the three dead bodies, transfixed as they'd been upon seeing the vortex outside. A few seconds later, Jeremiah turned a familiar-looking dial and they heard a whirring sound around them. A new glow bounced around them as lights turned on in the recesses of the massive ceiling and steadily grew in intensity. After two minutes, they'd turned fully up and the great hall in which they stood was now visible.

Everyone took an instinctive step further toward the center when they saw that the crimson smears were not limited to the control area. In some places, it looked as if buckets of dark red paint had been merely thrown at the walls, and over in one corner Jeremiah recognized some bones glowing pearly-white beneath the bright glare from up above. One of the bodies shifted positions as van Killen touched it and he recoiled back, but regained his confidence upon realizing that it had merely been gravity doing its work. Jeremiah stepped back and crouched beside him, examining one of the corpses. It was wearing what appeared to be some sort of jumpsuit, but most startling of all were some of the symbols and paraphernalia sewed into it. "I want you to find out how they died, Mortimer," Jeremiah whispered, too quietly for the others to hear. "I need to know what killed them."

While the apothecary examined the bodies, the captain straightened up and walked out into the center of the hall, turning his gaze toward the mighty series of connected engines that dominated the open space. There were lights twinkling from within, and he supposed that the dial he'd used for the overhead lights must have also turned on things deep in the heart of the machine. But as he stared, he began to get an image in his head, a very dangerous, heartless, treasonous image. "Armythius, Elric, have a step back and tell me what this looks like to you."

The others stepped back almost to the opposite wall and craned their necks, struggling as much as they could to see the entire array as one enormous unit, rather than as a series of interconnected engines. "It looks like..." Marina began, but trailed off.

"Does it look to you what it looks like to the others?" Jeremiah asked cautiously. "Armythius?"

"I don't want to say, sir," Rigstock piped in with a squeak.

"Speak, man, there will be no punishment or record of what you share."

"Well, Captain Rixon, it looks...well, somewhat like a clock, methinks."

"Any clock in particular?"

"The Benjamin Clock. It looks like the Benjamin Clock at the heart of Steam City. Begging your forgiveness for saying, sir."

"We were all thinking it," Marina interjected. "But why would the Tesleyans arrange their engines to look like the Benjamin Clock?"

"I'd had an inkling in my mind since we first started exploring this outpost," Jeremiah admitted. "The layout of everything seems to mirror the geography of Steam City, from its living quarter to its docking bays. They even have an aquavactrum mounted into a supply room, like the water reservoirs in the warehouse district."

"Are you saying the Tesleyans were trying to recreate Steam City?" Vastes asked, incredulous.

"At first," the captain went on. "But then I noticed the insignia on those bodies. Mortimer, can you tell us about them?"

"They're M13," van Killen responded. "A special division of the Exploratory Sub-Committee, meant to carry out scientific explorations into Barboro Territories. This one over here carries the phoenix patch, indicating he's a sub-commander in the least."