The Game Called Revolution, - [ebook reader 8 inch .txt] 📗

hope she’s having better luck with that arschloch Robespierre.

She was trying to think of a halfway-decent strategy when Tussaud charged in for another volley. Farahilde felt the sting of her curved blade when she failed to fully dodge the attacks. A vertical gash was cut into her left shoulder, along with a horizontal one across her stomach. “Meine clothes! You’ll pay for that.”

She wasn’t expecting a response to her blustering. To her surprise, though, she got one. “Still.”

“What was that? Can you actually talk?”

“Stand still,” Tussaud said in a lifeless voice completely devoid of emotion. One might as well be ordered around by a steam engine, Farahilde thought.

“Why the hell should I do that?”

“Don’t want to…accidentally…ruin your face.”

That made absolutely no sense. Still, Farahilde wanted to prolong this break in the fighting. Maybe it would allow her to think of some way to fight this crazy woman. “What do you care about meine face? I know it is quite ravishing, but... Say, are you that kind of woman? Do I excite you? You should know that as Austrian royalty, I am probably engaged to some prince or another. I’m not of that persuasion, anyway.”

Tussaud shook her head slowly, lethargically. “This one will need to make death mask. Can’t be done properly if face is ruined.”

“You’re a strange one,” Farahilde said. “I can’t tell if you’re a mere dummkopf or a full-blown lunatic. Still—”

But Tussaud was done talking. She rushed at Farahilde, who dove to the nearest wall and grabbed two chairs stacked up against it. Tussaud wasn’t the only strong woman in this fight, and the young Austrian proved it (at least to herself) by hurling both chairs at the enigmatic blonde.

Tussaud sliced the first chair clean in half with a horizontal slash, but the second one belted her right in the midsection, causing her to stagger. Seeing that she was temporarily stunned, Farahilde ran at her and slashed at the French woman’s throat with her gauntlet.

However, at that moment Tussaud recovered enough to leap back out of reach of Farahilde’s attack. The Austrian only managed to break off a portion of the lower area of her mask, exposing the right side of her mouth.

As soon as Tussaud’s feet hit the floor she swung her scythe down upon Farahilde’s head, parting a bit of her hair. Damn! That was too close. An inch more and the greatest doctors in Austria wouldn’t be able to put meine head back together.

Back to the proverbial drawing board, then.

 

***

 

The Ordre’s volunteers were officially out of bullets and bombs. They had dropped dozens of Lefebvre’s soldiers, but not all of those had been mortally wounded, and more kept coming. It was times like this that Pierre regretted the Ordre’s lack of firearms. Sure, they upheld the romantic ideals of honor and chivalry, but couldn’t they do that with guns?

Not that it would have mattered here. They were outnumbered too badly for a few more rifles to make much of a difference.

“They’re out of ammunition. Charge!” Lefebvre yelled, safely out of range of any attacks. Pierre really wanted to go crush his windpipe, but that was not an option at the moment; Lefebvre was surrounded by too many armed troops. Pierre might be able to make it through all of them, but he doubted it. Even if he could, he was unwilling to abandon his comrades.

Lefebvre’s troops heeded his command and ran to the Minuit Solaire II. Once there, they began climbing up the numerous metal spikes jutting out from the hull. Pierre and Victor had pulled up the ramp right after Jeanne and Farahilde disembarked, but that wasn’t going to stop the enemy from boarding them. “Get ready, men! Here they come!” Pierre announced.

At first the volunteers used the butts of their rifles to beat down the first wave of enemy troops. While this was initially successful, the soldiers soon adapted and stationed some of their comrades, who still had bullets left, on the ground to shoot at any man who stuck his head out from the deck.

“Stay back! You’ll literally be sticking your neck out!” Victor said to the volunteers. He was standing on the starboard side.

Lefebvre’s men were now climbing up the airship from all sides. Pierre was on the port side, hacking at upcoming enemies with his broadsword while using his free hand to shield his head from bullets. He imagined Victor was doing the same on the other side.

Half a dozen of Lefebvre’s soldiers managed to climb aboard. They were met by the volunteers, who used their rifles as clubs to attack them. Unfortunately, the volunteers were up against men with military training, and they had to rely on their numbers to hold them off. Pierre knew full well that as more and more enemies boarded the airship’s deck, the odds would continue to move in their favor.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, movement out of the left corner of his eye alerted him to the reality of what he had feared ever since their forced landing: A steam cannon had now joined Lefebvre. One shot from that could end them all.

Celeste poked her head out from the hatch. “I know this isn’t a good time, sir, but the Minuit Solaire II is ready to fire.”

“Sounds like a damn good time to me,” Pierre said as he punched out a member of the Gardes Francaises who tried to outflank him.

“Which direction do you want to fire from?”

For Pierre, that was a very easy decision. “The stern!”

She nodded. “Understood. Just remember that we’ll only get one—”

“Just do it!”

“Yes, sir! She disappeared beneath the hatch. Pierre could only hope she launched the attack before Lefebvre’s steam cannon fired.

The deck was crowded with bodies both friendly and hostile. There was so little room to maneuver that men kept getting knocked off. Lefebvre’s men, as well as the Ordre’s volunteers, repeatedly fell with a thud to the hard ground below. However, the former kept coming, and Pierre found himself with increasingly fewer allies in this fight.

A member of the Gardes Francaises suddenly went flying over his head, missing him by mere inches. He didn’t have to look far to find the source of the airborne enemy. There was only one person he could see clearly in this melee. “Watch it, Hubert! You almost took my head off with that guy.”

The giant stood somewhere between the aft and starboard side. “Sorry!” he said as several enemies tried to gang up on him. Pierre figured that was probably their only chance of beating him.

An explosion of crimson in Hubert’s left shoulder, though, gave Pierre cause to regret that thought. They both looked up to see soldiers with rifles on the rooftops. Damn Lefebvre’s smarter than I thought. He’s got sharpshooters!

More bullets penetrated the giant’s upper body from the rooftop riflemen. Nevertheless, this only seemed to anger him, and he took out this anger on his most immediate opponents. He thrashed, punched, and slammed heads together in a fury which, up to that point, Pierre had never seen out of him. It seemed nothing on earth could stop him.

That is, until another bullet hit him in the leg. Hubert finally succumbed to the punishment and dropped to his knees, at which point Pierre could no longer see him.

Pierre stole a quick glance back at the steam cannon. Super-heated water was blowing out the back of it, meaning it would be ready to fire at any moment.

The sight caused his resolve to drop as several thoughts raced through his head. Where was Celeste? Was this the end? There were still plenty of Lefebvre’s subordinates on board, but somehow Pierre didn’t think he was the kind of man who would let common decency stand in the way of victory.

At least we accomplished our mission; we held off the enemy long enough to give the Commander time to complete hers. I just wish…I just wish we could have had a future together. Farewell, Jeanne. Even if I die here, my memories of you will keep me alive wherever I end up.

 

***

 

“Status?” Lefebvre asked his subordinate who was manning the steam cannon. As he stood next to the steel carriage which carried the nearly one-ton cannon, he couldn’t wait to celebrate his victory.

He could feel the steam emanating from the rear of the carriage. It was incredibly hot, but he didn’t care; what he really felt was the accolades he would receive from destroying the remnants of the Ordre.

“We can fire any time,” the subordinate said.

“Fi—” Lefebvre started to say. His one word was cut short by the sight up the street ahead of them. The strange metal spikes on the rear of the Ordre’s airship had begun glowing blue. This reminded him of something he had heard and quickly dismissed because he didn’t think it concerned him.

After the Ordre returned from their rescue mission in the Austrian Netherlands, he had heard talk of the Austrian airship they had encountered over there. Supposedly it had metal spikes along its hull which glowed blue when they were about to fire lightning at the enemy.

Now, he realized, he was dealing with the same model of airship. To make matters worse, it had not been completely crippled as he had assumed. And it was about to unleash an ungodly amount of voltage on him.

These thoughts bombarded him in the space of a mere moment. “Fire!” he frantically screamed with all the urgency he could muster. “Firefirefirefirefirefire!”

The events of the next few moments occurred too quickly for Lefebvre’s mind to fully process. With a deafening explosion, the steam cannon rocketed its massive shell towards the Ordre’s airship. At that precise instant, a barrage of blue energy erupted from the rear of the vessel. The beams of electricity hurled unrestrained towards Lefebvre, his men and the steam cannon. The onslaught was so intense that it tore large chunks of solid ground from the area directly in front of it, and the sizeable debris went right along with it.

The beams then came into contact with the shell, and, although it was a solid object, it had little effect on the energy currents, and they simply curved around it and kept going.

The shell, too, kept going and within a split-second came into contact with the chunks of the ground that had just been ripped out. The two forces collided, and the shell won, barreling through the debris on its way to the Ordre’s airship.

Lefebvre’s mind took note of all these things, but did not have time to convey them consciously before the barrage of electricity charred his body beyond recognition.

 

***

 

“Everyone, get down! That steam cannon’s going to fire!” Pierre yelled as loud as he could to get everyone’s attention.

“Don’t listen to him!” the enemy soldier nearest Pierre said. “He’s just—” But then steam began rising out of the carriage. “No! Lefebvre really is going to fire on us!”

Everyone hit the deck and tried to grab on to something. Pierre grabbed the deck’s railing and held on tight. Several of Lefebvre’s men actually jumped to the ground below in an attempt to avoid the destruction that was coming, breaking bones in the process.

At that moment he a hum and a faint blue glow emanated from beyond the stern. Please, God—let that be what I think it is. The airship was then rocked by the firing of its strange energy system.

At about that same instant, the steam cannon fired. A tremendous explosion sent him flying across the deck. He tried to hang on to the railing—but it came with him!

Moments