Chapter 1
As Doctor Attacus Sommers slowly came to his mind was quite foggy. He couldn’t remember very much, but something had gone wrong because seconds later he was in more pain than he could ever remember. He also awoke to the sound of breathing that was not his own. It came in measured pulses; metal lungs hissing and clicking in time with his chest. Steam vented softly somewhere above him. The air tasted of oil, antiseptic, and hot copper. His eyelids fluttered, resisted, then peeled open as though pried apart by invisible fingers.
Light stabbed down.
Above him, a cathedral of machinery loomed: articulated arms ending in needle-thin instruments, brass housings wrapped in cloth-insulated wires, pressure gauges trembling like nervous eyes. Tubes ran into his flesh, carrying fluids of murky amber and pale blue. Pistons pumped. Valves sighed. A great engine somewhere behind the walls thudded steadily, a mechanical heart beating on his behalf.
Sommers tried to move. Pain detonated through his body.
He then roared, like an animal with a sound torn from a throat not yet fully healed, and the machines reacted instantly. Restraints snapped tight around his wrists and ankles. Needles withdrew and reinserted themselves with surgical precision. A mask descended over his mouth, flooding him with warm vapor that dulled the edges of agony but did nothing for his fury.
“Release me!” he snarled, his voice raw, distorted by the respirator. “Release me now!”
The machines, obedient only to their programming, ignored him. Fragments of memory clawed their way up from the dark: fire streaking across a night sky, the thunder of rocket exhaust, and the crack of arcane weapons powered by stolen steam-tech. Men in armored coats emblazoned with the sigil that would always be seared into his memory.
The Rocket Patrol.
Sommers’ lip curled into a sneer.
“So,” he rasped, “It appears we did not finish the job.”
A door hissed open somewhere to his right.
The footsteps that followed were soft, careful, and human.
A man entered, thin and stooped, dressed in a servant’s livery stained with grease. His eyes flicked nervously between Sommers’ face and the machinery keeping him alive, as though unsure which was more dangerous.
“Doctor Sommers,” the servant said, bowing his head. “You are... awake at last.”
“How long,” Sommers demanded, straining against the restraints, “How long have you kept me imprisoned in this mechanical tomb?”
The servant swallowed.
“Nine months, doctor,” He replied, “You were gravely injured during the engagement with the Rocket Patrol. Multiple fractures. Severe internal trauma. These medical engines were the only reason...”
“Enough!” Sommers snapped, his voice cracking like a whip.
Nine months.
His anger sharpened into something colder, more lethal.
“And the Rocket Patrol?” Sommers asked quietly.
The servant hesitated just long enough. Sommers smiled beneath the mask, a slow, vicious curve. Whatever the answer, he already knew one thing with absolute certainty: the universe had dared to move on without him, and Doctor Attacus Sommers was unwilling to forgive such insolence.
Sensation returned in stages: first pain, then weight, and then something like ownership. Doctor Sommers flexed his fingers. The right hand responded sluggishly, at least the flesh and bone that still his own. Tendons protested, muscles trembled, but the hand still moved. The left did not. Where flesh should have answered, there was only the muted awareness of pressure that was cold, exact, and artificial. He turned his head just enough to see it: a mechanical arm resting beside him; brass-plated and beautifully obscene. Its joints were engraved with sigils of reinforcement and serial numbers stamped with the mark of his own laboratories. He laughed. Softly at first, then louder, until it dissolved into a cough.
“So,” Sommers murmured, “You let the artisans practice on me.”
The servant flinched but said nothing.
“Tell me,” Sommers continued, experimentally curling the fingers of his living hand, “How did I fall?”
The restraints loosened with a hydraulic sigh. Not removed but merely adjusted for comfort. The machines had determined the doctor was no longer an immediate risk of tearing himself apart and accommodated him.
The servant cleared his throat.
“It was the Skybridge at Calder Rift, Sir.” He replied, “You had nearly completed the ignition sequence.”
Memory surged forward, everything clearer now.
The Skybridge: it was supposed to be his crowning triumph. A lattice of steam conduits and gravity pylons stretching across the rift, designed to redirect atmospheric pressure itself. With it, he would have controlled trade, weather, and more than half the continent. The city governors had begged. The syndicates had paid. The Rocket Patrol had come anyway.
“They were not meant to arrive so quickly,” Sommers said. “Someone warned them.”
“Yes, sir.” The servant confirmed.
“Who?” Sommers demanded.
The servant hesitated again.
Sommers’ mechanical fingers twitched of their own accord, responding to a half-conscious neural impulse. Gears whispered. Servos tightened. The arm desired to be useful.
“They descended through the steam clouds,” the servant said quickly, choosing survival. “Four sky-sleds. Red contrails. They disabled the outer pylons with precision strikes. They appeared to know exactly where to hit us in order to do the most damage.”
Sommers closed his eyes. He could see it now. Lawmen in reinforced coats, brass helmets sealed against the vapor storms, insignia gleaming. They were not just soldiers, but symbols. They had moved like engineers, not brutes, carving through his defenses as though reading from his own schematics.
“They breached the command deck,” the servant continued. “You engaged them personally.”
A flash of heat. The roar of his steam cannon. One patrolman hurled screaming into the abyss. Then... their captain. Tall. Unyielding. A voice that carried even over the engines.
Stand down, Sommers. This ends now.
“I remember striking him,” Sommers said. His jaw tightened. “He should have died.”
“He would have,” the servant agreed, “if not for the pulse charge.”
The word tasted bitter.
“They detonated it inside the core housing,” the servant said. “A directed implosion. It collapsed the Skybridge inward. The shockwave threw you into the primary turbine.”
Ah, Sommers conceded as more came back to him. That was the dark moment. The sensation of being crushed, burned, unmade. Steel teeth tearing through flesh. Steam scalding lungs. Consciousness flickering as his own creation had unintentionally tried to kill him.
“We pulled you from the wreckage hours later,” the servant continued, “The Patrol believed you were dead. They left your body with the ruins.”
A mistake, Sommers thought as he inhaled slowly. The respirator lifted away, trusting him now. He pushed himself upright, inch by inch, as his organic leg trembled. The mechanical one compensated flawlessly, as pistons absorbed the strain his flesh could not. The contrast was to say the least... enlightening.
“So,” Sommers continued, “The Rocket Patrol thinks they won.”
“Yes, Doctor.” The servant concurred.
Doctor Sommers slowly stood. Not smoothly, but he stood. Metal met stone with a solid, promising clang. His living foot followed, aching and imperfect, but still his own. He tested his balance, letting the machines learn his weight while his nerves relearned obedience.
“They took my bridge,” Sommers said, eyes gleaming. “They took my time. They even took part of my body.”
He took a step forward. Then another.
“But they left behind what mattered most,” Sommers added, “They left me my mind.”
The servant dropped to one knee.
Sommers looked down at him, towering now, half-man, half-engine, fury refined by suffering.
“Prepare the observatory,” he commanded. “I want schematics of every Rocket Patrol vessel currently in service. I want names. I want habits.”
His mechanical hand closed into a perfect fist.
“And when I am finished relearning how to walk,” Sommers said softly, “I will teach the Rocket Patrol what it really means to fall.”
