Lily Marin - three short steampunk stories by Paul Kater Page A

always kept it there, but she would not
need that yet.
    As she walked down the streets, none of the
few people who were out in the rain paid her any mind. They all
just wanted to get home and stay out of trouble and the rain. Lily
had opened the big umbrella to keep the downpour away from her. No
need to get soaking wet just yet.
    Once she was several streets away from her
small apartment she stepped onto the road, where she kicked the
heel of one boot against the other. The compact mechanisms in the
thick soles reacted flawlessly and raised her up four feet. She
started walking again, now with the long strides her artificially
extended legs made possible. Walking faster than a regular person
was forbidden on the sidewalks, but walking in the street like this
usually was a pain, with carriages and cars getting in the way.
Good thing there was hardly any traffic now.
    Soon Lily reached the area she had read about
in the newspaper. She stopped at the side of the road and put the
mask on. It hid most of her face, and contained the special lenses
that helped her see clearly in the dark. As she moved the lenses
into place, everything bathed in a familiar green light.
    In the area of Hurst Street and Ambly Road,
the newspaper had said, a band of vagabonds made life of the people
living there very difficult, with muggings, beatings, fires,
explosive devices and the like. Several police officers had already
laid down their lives trying to capture the thugs. That had been
enough for Lily.
    She didn't care much about property, but when
officers were dying in the line of their work, like her father and
her uncle, that was where she drew the line. She wiggled her toes
to make the elevation mechanism slide back into the soles of the
boots. She wanted to attract the vagabonds and standing out like
that would probably have the opposite effect.
    Lily stepped onto the battered sidewalk. That
too bore the marks of the vagabonds. She closed the umbrella and
pulled up the collar of her coat. Lily tried to decide which way to
go first. A loud bang and a tremor beneath her feet helped her. She
walked back to the crossing of Ambly and Lowell and turned into
Lowell Road.
    Three people came running towards her. It was
unclear if they were the vagabonds or their victims, so she hid in
the doorway of the house she was in front of. Some shouting and a
few shots later, she heard the bullets fly, it was clear that she
had seen victims run.
    Lily counted the seconds. Too long,
experience told her. The running folk should have passed her by
now. They had probably been in the way of the bullets. The street
was silent again, so Lily moved out of the shadows. Immediately she
saw the bodies lying in the street. Perhaps, she hoped, they were
only wounded, not dead.
    The left glass in her mask, which had heat
seeking abilities, did not show any significant cooling down of
either body, but that meant nothing: they had been down for only a
few seconds. Slowly she folded up her umbrella and hung that from
the tool belt. The people on the ground, she found, were all
dead.
    The vagabonds had moved on. The street lights
assisted the lenses in showing Lily the desolate place that was
Lowell Road. Cars and carriages had been blown to smithereens or
burnt to crisps, windows were shattered, some had been hastily
nailed shut with pieces of wood, and there were many cracks in the
pavement. She could almost smell the fear that lived behind the
closed windows. A few loud bangs, shots from firearms again, told
her where the vagabonds had progressed to, so she started walking.
They could not be far; as the vagabonds considered themselves
masters in the area, they would not be in a hurry.
    Lily turned into the first street she came
across. There a group was standing, as if they had not a care in
the world. Most of the street lights here were off. Damaged
probably. The light-enhancers in her mask showed her six men, all
dressed in torn, ill-fitting suits. In a reflex her hand slid