SteampunX: Episode Three: The Railroad Underground

By Benjamin Jacobson

In the Victorian tradition, SteampunX is a serial novel released monthly.

It’s 1875 on the Columbian calendar. Anowarakowa, the New World, has been at peace for a century. By treaty and vigilance the land has been divided among the English Colonies in the Northeast, New France in the South, the Aztecs in the West, and the League of Ten Hundred Nations in the Midwest.

On the run from a dark legacy, the man called Thunder and a group of fugitive slaves escape through the backwoods of New France. Freedom waits in the city-state of Liberia, if they can put aside their differences and evade capture. Meanwhile the organization known as the Factory has transformed slaves into bio-mechanical zombies and set them like dogs on the path of the fleeing mob.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benjamin Jacobson
• Release date: Dec 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465900388

Benjamin Jacobson

Benjamin Jacobson is the award-winning author of such stories as “A Hatful of Rabbits” and “Brother, Can You Spare the Time?” His short fiction has appeared all over the Internet and even on paper. SteampunX is his first foray into serial fiction.

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SteampunX –

Episode Three: The Railroad Underground

by

Benjamin Jacobson

Copyright 2011 Benjamin Jacobson

Smashwords Edition

Previously in SteampunX:

Teenage twins, Funk and Puck, from the Ten Hundred Nations discover poachers hunting the Birch Stag automaton. Risking their lives, they run to inform the machine’s creator, Thunder, about the trespass of this Buffalo Man. The poachers follow and a battle ensues leaving Funk without his hand and all but one of the poachers dead. Before their deaths the poachers revealed their origin as the Marquisdom of Chartres in New France. In response, Thunder and the twins, Puck and the newly renamed Red Hand, embark on a mission into New France to discover the truth behind their actions, find the missing poacher, Crane, and avert a war between the two nations.

The crew arrives in New France at the time of a cotillion and an uprising. The Marquis denies involvement with the Buffalo Man and asks Thunder’s assistance in harvesting his new dangerous crop, coca. Thunder refuses, but stays for the cotillion to gather information. Meanwhile, Gustave, a house slave, and Jean, a field slave, plot a coup. When the party begins so does the massacre. In exchange for his life the Marquis reveals the truth behind the Buffalo Man, insisting that the Ten Hundred Nations have been attacking New France. Thunder convinces Gustave to spare the Marquis’s life and the newly freed slaves, Thunder, Red Hand , Puck and Isabelle, the Marquis’s captured daughter, head for the freedman state of Liberia.

Puck

Puck knew they were coming, the stumblers. They dropped spoor like an injured animal. The forest was dense with their trail. Every time her group crossed its own path, which was often as they attempted to conceal themselves from capture by the Neufrancaise, the other tracks would sit densely upon their own. She knew they were coming, but she didn’t tell anyone.

Her brother, Red Hand, had found his own distraction with the prisoner, Isabelle, the Marchioness of Chartres. The girl, still clad in her party dress, never ventured beyond twenty yards of him. She hadn't even bothered to attempt escape. Red Hand generally had no time for the games of girls, yet as he showed his usual stone face, he stayed always within sight of the girl.

Isabelle’s former handmaiden, May, committed worse crimes, in Puck's eyes. May had taken roughly to freedom. She tagged along after the Marchioness as the Marchioness tagged along after Red Hand. She offered assistance to Isabelle frequently to navigate a shallow stream or an overgrown path. Puck tried to put herself in May's place. The girl had been under the thumb of a pretentious child for all her life. Suddenly May had the advantage, for not only was she free, but Isabelle was