Oberon

Dovetail reeked of coal smoke and oil: a miasma thick enough to chew. Overhead, iron walkways crisscrossed the skyline like spiderwebs, their joints protesting the unrelenting foot traffic and the weight of courier automatons. Beneath the streets, pistons hissed in syncopated rhythm, the city’s pulse driven by heat, pressure, and the tireless churn of gears.

In the back room of a launderette nobody used, I hunched over the transmitter, checking signal strength while the automaton’s guidance system cooled on a long folding table behind me. We had been using the abandoned business as a staging site for months. It was the perfect spot: quiet, innocuous, and close enough to the Ministry’s towers to matter. The transmitter coughed to life with a whistle that set its brass mouthpiece vibrating in my hand.

“You saw her?” I asked, keeping my voice low enough to hide the tremor.

Jasper’s reply crackled through the receiver. “Same red gloves. Same stiff posture. She still walks like she’s counting every step.”

“Plenty of women wear red gloves.”

“Yeah? How many of them order cherry phosphate with a dash of absinthe?”

That silenced me. Lenora never did anything by halves. She once said sweetness without bitterness was just a lie in fancy packaging. Absinthe had always been her signature, even back when we still believed we were doing something noble.

I turned to the automaton beneath the canvas tarp—Oberon, as I’d taken to calling him, though Jasper never liked the name. We’d built him from salvaged brass: broken airship ribs and the wreckage of battles long forgotten. Man-sized, though broader through the shoulders and hips, our model could handle assaults by land or air without strain. Calibrating his spine alone had taken weeks. The Ministry’s schematics left no room for nuance—only force.

Oberon’s chest concealed his greatest secret: a crystalline core, harvested from Project Skywarden before the whole thing went south in a handbasket. The core had been part of Lenora’s original design, one of the last pieces she touched before vanishing behind the Ministry’s locked doors without so much as a goodbye.

Most assumed she’d died in a lab fire. I never believed it. The Ministry kept issuing classified memos, and the autopsy report skipped more than it explained. They never recovered a body.

I unlatched the tarp and pulled it back. Oberon faced forward, motionless. His eyes—twin lenses of smoked glass ringed with brass—reflected the low gaslight without blinking. But even in repose, his soldier-like posture hinted at a readiness, a wariness.

Jasper showed up two hours later, stinking of motor grease and stale beer. He passed me a roll of schematics without a word. I scanned them and dropped the bundle beside the automaton’s cranial access plate on the table.

“She’s working for them, Max,” he said. “I saw her badge. Level Six clearance. She strutted through the Central Gates like she owned the place.”

“Or like she had no choice.”

“You still think she’s on our side?” He whistled through his teeth. “Poor deluded bastard.”

Lenora had never chased power for its own sake. But if the Ministry had an inkling of what she’d hidden in her old designs, they’d have torn the city apart trying to find it. I studied the automaton again. Unlike the Ministry, we hadn’t built a weapon, not exactly. Our prototype was a scalpel, meant for precision, if the hand guiding it knew where to cut.

Oberon still needed an operator, though. Jasper assumed that meant him. I hadn’t corrected him about that. Or Lenora.

Jasper hunched over the workbench, adjusting pressure valves and checking connection points, while I buried myself in the receiver’s circuitry. We worked in silence until the transmitter finally gave its first clear signal. Oberon lay on the table, his frame gleaming in the lamplight.

We didn’t speak for the rest of the night. Talking about Lenora always soured his mood, but seeing her again after all this time must’ve been like seeing a ghost. His pale face and shaking hands told me everything I needed to know. When the Dovetail Express shrilled its boarding call and wan gray seeped through the soot-streaked windows, I allowed myself a sigh of relief.

Jasper stood at the breaker panel across the room, shoulders sagging with exhaustion. He retrieved a metal case from behind the wiring and carried it to the workbench. His fingers trembled as he keyed in the arming sequence.

Nothing happened.

“Damn it!”

Jasper tried the sequence again, checking each connection point. Nothing.

With no other option, he pulled a small key from his pocket, inserted it into Oberon’s neck, and activated the emergency override.

Gears meshed, clicking in sharp succession behind Oberon’s chest plate. His limbs spasmed, and his smoked glass eyes lit with a faint amber glow. Heat rose from his joints as steam hissed along his spine.

“Worthless heap of scrap,” Jasper muttered. He snatched up the calibrator from among a pile of scattered tools. “Six months of work for this?”

“Try checking the remote diagnostics.” I grabbed the transmitter and headed to the workbench. “The recalibrations might have skewed them.”

As Jasper tossed the calibrator aside, spitting curses, the automaton sprang upright. Brass fingers locked around his wrist, snapping bones with a muffled crack. Jasper’s scream tore through the room. Oberon seized his throat and slammed him onto the worktable. Wood groaned beneath the impact. Tools scattered. Before he could gasp for air, Oberon dropped a forearm across his chest, pressing down until his ribs snapped.

“Those are Lenora’s codes,” he gasped, eyes locked on the transmitter. “You’re one of them!”

“She sends her regards, by the way,” I said.

“Our mission was to destroy the Ministry,” Jasper choked out, still fighting Oberon’s grip.

“With what? Salvaged parts and righteous indignation?” I watched his face twist as the pressure rose. Agony or betrayal? I didn’t know. Didn’t care.

“What did they offer you?”

“A purpose.” I shrugged. “A future that doesn’t end in a pauper’s grave.”

Oberon re-adjusted his stance, crushing Jasper’s throat. As his body slackened, Oberon assumed a more neutral position. Now he looked like a soldier at ease.

After a hasty clean-up, I opened his control panel, replacing Ministry schematics with resistance hideout coordinates.

The receiver crackled with calls from cells across the city in no time. A woman in the northern district requested updates. A man by the harbor waited for deployment orders. None of them knew their leader was cooling beneath the floorboards.

I called back a week later and told them we were good to go.