It was time for Sullivan to play his final hand.
He needed to get real close for this to work. He was too big and slow to get past that three-foot razor blade without losing a limb. He needed a distraction. The man in glasses had reloaded his pistol and started shooting again, diverting Rokusaburo's attention long enough for Sullivan to hiss, "Fritz. Take the sword again. Then get back." The German nodded quickly and moved in.
The Fade charged in one way, going grey, just as Rokusaburo swung through him, and Sullivan dove straight at the swordsman. Superbly trained, the sword was already coming back around in a killing arc.
They collided. Sullivan took every bit of Power he had and let it all go at once, channeling it through his body, increasing gravity's strength, bellowing at the world to pull them down under the strength of fifty Earths. The swordsman gasped as the magnificent force crushed down on him. He fired his own Power, and Sullivan could feel his own hammering like bombs against a bunker as the two magical forces slammed together. The floor beneath splintered and exploded, and the two dropped through, hitting the next floor down without even slowing, blowing through landing after landing, ten stories in an ever quickening cascade, until they crashed through a series of pipes and into the concrete of the foundation.
Still Rokusaburo's Power held, invulnerable, struggling, taking the impossible force. The foundations cracked and turned to powder under the pressure, but Sullivan kept pushing. The walls bent. The lights crackled and died. Sullivan could feel something burning beneath the swordsman's clothing, some other alien source of Power that he was drawing upon to sustain his invulnerability. Then finally, inexorably, he felt his enemy weaken. Rokusaburo screamed in frustration. His Power flickered like a flame deprived of oxygen, and then it was extinguished.
The full impact of Sullivan's Power hit him then, and Rokusaburo was just gone, replaced by a sudden pressurized red mist that instantly coated the entire basement.
Sullivan lay there for a moment as the world returned to normal. It took a few seconds before he could breathe again. He slowly pulled himself out of the dripping crater, and spit a mouthful of blood that he was relatively certain was his own. His Power was gone. He'd never felt so tired. Gradually realizing that he was bleeding, he mashed one big hand against his torn arm, but the blood just leaked between his fingers.
The Japanese sword was twisted like a pretzel and embedded in the floor. The damaged boiler was hissing and screaming. It hurt to turn his head, and he was certainly no boiler mechanic, but all those gauges breaking and steam shooting out like that had to be a bad thing.
A grey shape fell through the broken ceiling and the Fade landed softly next to the indentation. He took in the majestic mess in awe, then looked down at his shoes in disgust and kicked away something that had probably been one of Rokusaburo's more elastic organs. He paused long enough to pick up a piece of the broken sword. "Souvenir," he explained with a smile, then noticed the hissing boiler. "Come, my large friend. I believe this building is going to fall down on our heads very soon."
Sullivan didn't know if he could trust the German, but he was too tired to argue.
Chapter 6
I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball. The harder you grip the bat, the more magic power you use all at once, the more you can swing through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got, muscle and magic. So now they're talking about banning us Actives from baseball because we're not fair, not sporting? Hell, I hit big or I miss big. I am what I am and I live as big as I can.
– George "Babe" Ruth, interview after hitting his
200th season home run, 1930 New York City, New York Billionaire industrialist Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant had many offices, but the one that had the best view was at the top of the relatively new Chrysler Building. Not only did he like this particular office because it enabled him to look out over the city, which he considered his personal fiefdom, but he also found the building aesthetically pleasing. It was pointy.
His favorite pointy building had briefly been the tallest building in the world, before the Empire State Building had been completed. He had a suite there as well, but preferred this location because from this position he could watch his fleet of trans-Atlantic passenger dirigibles docking at the Empire State, or his cargo airships landing at the industrial pads closer to the ocean. It made him feel like a child with a model train set.
Cornelius stepped away from the window as a servant brought him the morning paper. He took his place in a comfortable recliner and opened first to the obituaries, as was his daily custom, to see if anyone he disliked had died, but sadly the announcements held no joy.
On the bright side, that meant that his most hated enemy was still suffering and wasting away under the curse of the Pale Horse. His spies had confirmed that he had taken gravely ill, and he had not been seen in public in almost two years. The thought made Cornelius smile as he turned the pages. He still owed that foul Harkeness a favor, but whatever it was would be worth it.
The Times spoke of more war in Asia as the Imperium annexed another bunch of islands he'd never heard of, Herbert Hoover looked like he was going to be trounced by Governor Roosevelt (not that Cornelius minded, since he had donated plenty of money to both sides), and more general lawlessness and moral decay around the country. Most of the news was old hat for a man who had informants everywhere, but one item caught his attention.
"Well, I'll be…" he muttered around his morning cigar as he studied the photograph. It was a grainy shot of one of the Imperium's new tri-hulled, super-dirigibles, taken over some Dutch colony. It would look like a big blurry blob to most viewers, but he recognized the design because it had originated amongst the Cogs employed in his engineering department at UBF.
He disliked Cogs, just as he disliked all magical people, himself and immediate family excluded, but he had grown fabulously wealthy from their brilliance. Every Cog was already a genius in their own way, absolutely fanatically brilliant at something, but then they could occasionally use their Power to push them over the top, to achieve the most brilliant of all creative achievements. The Imperium's new Kaga-class flying battleship was a perfect example.
Nine hundred feet long, with three separate hydrogen-filled hulls, each hull cordoned off into ten separate armored chambers, the Kagas were the biggest thing to ever take to the sky. Hydrogen was far more dangerous than helium, but provided more lift. The Imperials had asked for hydrogen in the specifications probably became the main source for helium in the world was unavailable to them in Texas. With the redundant mechanical and magical provisions, the Kagas would be virtually indestructible, with armaments that outclassed the best dreadnoughts of the Great War, but with four times the speed, its own parasite air force, and a virtually unlimited range.
The picture was a bit different than the blueprints he had seen, more bulbous. The Imperials had added a few things that he did not recognize, but that did not concern him. UBF had been paid to provide the hull and engine design. His eldest son had arranged the deal while serving as the ambassador to Japan, may God rest his soul.
The government had forbidden the sale of superscience to the Imperium as part of the embargo, but Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant knew that laws were to keep the lower classes in line. Whereas, he did what he wanted, but did so in secret to avoid the hassle of know-nothings' petty harassments. The embargo forbid UBF from the construction of any warships for a foreign power. Cornelius was currently overseeing the construction of the Emperor's personal flagship at the UBF plant, but since it was officially a diplomatic and scientific vessel, it was perfectly legal. The warships, like the Kagas, on the other hand, were quite illegal, but with the economic slump, the Imperium were the only people with money to burn.