Age of Aether

Ten: The Great Clanker Battle

The Great Clanker Battle, as it came to be known, began with a sneak attack in the early morning.

The Nazi Iron Scallops — a fleet of very large submarine transports — had run silent, creeping along the continental shelf up to New York harbor.  Although Hitler had only recently seized power in this world, he had not been idle in the intervening years.  Using money acquired through several sympathetic banking dynasties — including the Veerspike family — he had secretly built the largest fighting force the world had ever seen.  Machines and airships and submarines of all kinds had been forged in factories deep in the wildernesses of the world.  There, they had accumulated and waited for just over a decade.

It was this fighting force that Hitler now brought forth.

Under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, the Iron Scallops had landed.  Then, pulling up the shore docks, the great submersibles suddenly opened their scaly metal tops. 

Out poured Clanker after Clanker after Clanker …

The Nazi swastika of this world was slightly different — it was rounded and fit inside of a red circle like a gyre.  But the horror that it represented was every bit as recognizable to Ben Bantam.  This modified swastika was emblazoned upon every Clanker.

The Clankers themselves were basically tanks, but they walked on two iron legs.  This enabled them to navigate any terrain.  And each had several guns that were capable of shooting projectiles for several miles.

The Nazis didn’t hold back; the second they landed in New York, they began firing upon buildings, upon dirigibles, upon the Manhattan Sky Way cars.  The tubes of the Pneumanet were smashed to bits.  The Nazi Clankers burned everything in their path.  Millions died within the first hours of their arrival, and the Manhattan skyline was a horror of orange and billowing black smoke.

It was into this mess that Rachelle and Bantam’s Growler descended from the Phlogistonian.

They were on the ground in no time, immediately wondering whether the aerotel might have actually somehow been safer.  The Nazi Clankers were everywhere, stomping horses and people into the sort of thing you never want to see.

But then — the American Clankers arrived!

Pouring out at once from a single canyon of buildings, Clankers emblazoned with the stars and stripes blasted away gloriously at their dark Nazi foes, destroying many in the first wave of the counter attack. 

One American Clanker nearby was hit and tipped over.  When it did not rise, Bantam and Rachelle ran to it.  Inside, the pilot was dead, hit by shrapnel.  But his Clanker itself was still operational.  Respectfully removing the soldier, Bantam and Rachelle worked together to operate it. 

“My ex-fiance once showed me how this works,” Rachelle explained.  “Sorry to bring him up.  Those levers there operate the legs.  And this here, this fires the cannon.”

“Okay, I’m on legs, you’re on cannon.  Cool?”

Rachelle looked confused. 

“Are you alright with that?”  She nodded.  “Great!  Let’s go!”

Their Clanker rose from the ground.  Bantam worked the legs such that it ran right into the middle of the battle. 

As the the fighting raged on from morning to afternoon, Bantam and Rachelle destroyed at least twenty Nazi Clankers.  Rachelle was a crack shot on the cannon and Bantam was brilliant in maneuvering the Clanker in such a way that they avoided being hit, as well as positioning Rachelle for the kill.

Bantam rallied the American Clankers on several occasions when all seemed lost, boldly racing his out into the middle of the battlefield while Rachelle fired at the Nazi lines, destroying their leading units.