Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus by P.C. Martin Page A

Even now we were being made the targets of these deadly projectiles, and again and again I heard a high sizzling sound rush past my ears, followed by a dull explosion as the bullets made contact with solid resistance. Holmes swerved the Widow about with such animation and violence, I felt as though I were on a ship at high seas in the middle of a hurricane. Willing myself to keep my eyes off the buildings and curbs we skirted so narrowly in our dizzying dance all over the street, I attempted to target the airship with my rocket-launcher; twice my projectiles flew wide of their mark, and as I painstakingly took aim a third time, I heard Holmes' voice shout at me, though I could not hear his words above the wind rushing in my ears.
    Holmes suddenly swung his long arm and whacked me soundly on the side of my head. I turned at once in surprised protest; though Holmes' eyes were turned to the road, his finger pointed fiercely at the hood of the sidecar. He shouted again, and this time I understood his words.
    “Pull the lever, Watson! Now, now, now!”
    I searched for a lever, and found an unfamiliar knob in the sidecar's paneling. I pulled it hard, and to my amazement, a huge Gatling gun emerged from the sidecar's hood. A pair of long-handled levers slid out of matching crannies on either side of my seat, and beckoned me by their very novelty to fondle their gleaming mechanisms. I had had some small experience upon the battlefield with weapons of this sort, but, knowing Holmes' penchant for tinkering with and remodeling the innards of all of his contraptions, I was unsure how the gun would react to my handling.
    Fortunately, at speeds of more than 80 miles per hour, on the heels of armed criminals in a magnificent dirigible, I had not much time for hesitation. Twice I heard the clink of metal ricocheting off my mechanical arm, as their massive bullets sang perilously close to their marks, shattering on contact, spraying shrapnel every which way. Fixing my gaze carefully, and bringing the huge gun's firing range within my line of vision, I awaited Holmes cue, and when it came, I braced my fingers around the levers, and set the machinery in motion.
    I became dimly conscious of two things as my destructive monster peppered the air before us and our wheels crunched over the irregular debris occasioned by our bullets, and those shot from the Rajput rifles; first, that for all the recoiling effects upon the Widowmak'r and its sidecar, I might have been firing a stationary revolver at 300 rounds a minute, for we lost not a moment of our speed, nor felt even the slightest tremor of whiplash. Secondly, I was aware that it was not by any effort of mine that the whirling gun continued its repeated firing. It fired away merrily by its own volition, until I ascertained that a simple command grip on the left lever served to both halt and commence the process of firing, while the action of the right lever adjusted the direction in which the nose of my weapon pointed
    Can I describe the sensations which traversed my being at that moment? We had left the streets lined with darkling factories behind us, and, having strayed from the narrow road, found ourselves once more sailing over hilly pasture-land in pursuit of our target. The countryside, luminous now under the glowing moonlight and reflections of the vehicular lamps, afforded the Widow greater agility of movement. The dirigible before us disappeared briefly from sight behind a low ridge, as we traversed a depressed stretch of ground; Holmes turned the Widow abruptly northward, away from the dirigible's course, and traced a path up a knoll. I glanced around to locate the airship, but our progress took us around a hill which hid the ship completely from my view.
    In our long years of association, I have come to trust Holmes' methods, though I admit that for the merest instant I feared that Holmes had finally doomed the chase to failure, and resigned himself to retreat. But my fears were