The Queen turned to Slide. "Now do you see why I want you to do what I want you to do?" Before he could respond, she was snarling at the handmaiden. "Don't just stand there you wretched girl. Hurry, damn it. Summon the rest. I have to dress. I have to select a uniform. Didn't you hear the vampire? The city is under attack."
Slide and Lupo found themselves ignored by the irate flurry that was the Queen and her attendants, and Lupo spoke in a low voice. "If you find a way out of this place, I would considered it a favor if you took me with you. These humans are more insane than most."
Slide grinned at the venerable Vampire. "What did you expect, pal? They're living on fucking Mars, aren't they?"
Story so far: Yancey Slide, Idimmu Demon of the Tenth Continuum, running from a fragmenting backstory, finds himself in a Martian revolution. The workers are rising up angry against Queen Mina and the neo-Imperial Victorians who have established a faux-British Raj on the Red Planet.
Episode Nine
Workers Of Mars Unite!
Across the span of the bridge, mob chaos confronted mounted geometry. As Slide watched from his vantage point on a high balcony of the Turquoise Tower, several thousand workers from the Morlock Foundry, a mixture of humans and red and green Martians, united and marching under black banners emblazoned with the emblem of a crudely stylized clenched fist, swarmed across the final bridge that led into the city of Extrosylvania. At the nearer end of the bridge, a double, line-abreast formation of Red Martian cavalry waited for them. The huge war-thoats
snorted and pawed at the ground, but the plumed and turbaned riders seemed calm and impassive, as though they believed that the throng would, at the last moment, turn and retreat in the face of such an impressive show of force. This was the first time that Slide had seen Queen Mina's troops deployed for a confrontation. He had only previously observed them in ceremonial mode, parading for the colonial Victorians.
The workers were clearly in the motivating grip of a powerful and long suppressed anger, but all combat logic dictated that the strikers from Bolivar Morlock's hellish steel and munitions mills - even though some carried wrenches and spanners as makeshift weapons - stood no chance of breaking through the armed lines and into the city. The show of force arrayed for their benefit was simply too overwhelming, and their only real options were to turn back or be cut down in their tracks. Behind the cavalry, a second formation of Martian civil police, in black and tan uniforms, stood with equal menace, some leaning on the leashes of snarling calots, the tusked and ten-legged Martian equivalent of attack dogs. Behind them a solid, defensive square of red-coated infantry, armed with repeating radium rifles, provided a final, and apparently unassailable bulwark against working class heroics.
Slide knew, however, that uprisings didn't always play out the way they should on paper. He had seen the similar confrontations on the St. Petersburg timeline in 1917, and in New Damascus in 2209, when the Dionysian Bolsheviks had risen against the Tharg, and everyone knew the unexpected outcome in those conflicts.
Lupo the Vampire, who stood beside Slide on the balcony, must have read his mind. "That's always the question, isn't it? Will they open fire on their own kind, or will they mutiny in the final moment of truth?".
Slide didn't like his mind being read by a nosferatu just because the nosferatu could do it. He grunted with irritation. "The moment is pretty fucking close."
"Who was it who said that war is a bayonet with a worker on each end?"
"Damned if I remember, but you can be sure it wasn't one of them." He gestured to where Bolivar Morlock, Sir Richard Barton, Harriot Marwood, Prudence the Kitten, the elderly generals, plus a growing crowd of courtiers, both military and civilian, human and Martian, surrounded the Queen in this moment of emergency, babbling what could only be conflicting advice. Slide and Lupo had both decided that they wanted no part of this and stood off on their own.
Even the babbling ceased, though, as the distance separating the mob and the cavalry was progressively reduced until it was less than a hundred yards, and the mob showed no signs of turning back. A hundred yards became eighty yards, then eighty became sixty. A thoat reared, as though anticipating what was surely going to come, and a calot started barking hysterically and could not be quieted by its handler. The front ranks of the workers seemed to falter for a moment, but then they surged forward again, either having regained their courage, or simply pushed forward by those behind who weren't so precisely aware of the threat that faced them on the bridge. At the fifty yard mark, the cavalry drew their sabers and cruel curved blades flashed under the orange Martian sky. A roar went up from the mob and the leaders began to run forwards, as though impatient to meet either death or glory. An order was shouted, and the mounted troops also plunged ahead. The helmeted riders struck left and right with their swords, but did not achieve the instant rout that might have been expected. The strikers might have been sparsely armed, but, on the confining span of the bridge, their numbers were enough create a problem. Workers by the dozen reeled away with blood pouring from horrible wounds, and others were killed where they stood, but no matter how many times the sabers rose and fell, more pressed forward. Thoats were hemmed in by the press of the crowd, and hands reached for the riders, dragging them down in a mass of hobnail boots, iron tools, and pounding fists.
Urgent whistles blew, and now the civil police moved into the fray. The calots furiously attacked with bared fangs, and policemen with drawn sidearms opened fire. As the first reports of radium weapons were heard on the palace balcony, Lupo glanced at Slide. "Now the shooting starts."
Slide nodded grimly. "It sure does."
He wished he knew the name of the bridge. Whatever the outcome of the head-on confrontation, it would preserved in Extrosylvanian history for as long as Extrosylvania had a history. More workers were felled by the gunfire, but they were also arming themselves. Snarling calots were hacked to pieces. Policemen were effectively mobbed and their pistols taken from them. An eddy of mayhem could not be contained by the balustrade of the bridge. Steel and stone gave way, and two thoats and a dozen of more men and Martians plunged, arms and legs like windmills, to flagstones of the underpass roadway a hundred and some feet below.
"This is getting messy."
"Very messy."
Slide could see the eventual outcome all too easily. The cavalry and the police had failed to put the workers to flight, and were, in fact, barely holding their own. It could only be a matter of moments before the infantry square was brought into play, and orders were given for the redcoats to clear the bridge with withering volleys. As Slide figured it, the only thing holding back such a slaughter was the indecision of the officers at the scene, and the many police and cavalry in the line of fire. He suspected, however, that a reluctance to butcher their own would not remain a delay or consideration for very long.
Those on the bridge seemed to come to the same conclusion as Slide. In the center of the span, a lull had ensued in the hand to hand fighting. The pistols still barked, but both sides were falling back, regrouping as best they could, and using whatever cover the dead and the debris afforded. Orders were being shouted and the infantry were assuming formal firing positions, but then the loud voice of a Martian woman cut through the general din.