Terrestrial Undead

Chapter 42

Orla watched Tesla carefully as she gazed toward the cave mouth.
"I thought I would recognise them as soon as I saw them," she mused. "But I didn't. In the end, they found me."
Orla put a metal arm around her. Although she had been delighted at the revelation that 003 had been their sibling Pax all along, it had also agitated her somewhat.
"I wonder where Bell is now? I find one and lose the other. Not to mention the man that had the rest of them killed is in our sick bay."
"We'll find her," Orla assured her, "we have the king now. We can make demands. We'll need to draw a list up. We'll have the vampires released for starters. What else?"
Tesla shook her head.
"It's a lot to take in."
"I know. How about we check in on our new little family for a while?"
Tesla smiled at that, and they headed towards their bunks. As the manhole creaked open, Orla peeked in, spying a furry mass on one of the beds.
"Miu?"
A little head popped up from the furry mound at the summons, and the pair entered, carefully closing the door behind them. As they approached, they could hear a soft mewling, and sure enough three wriggling, furry beans were revealed to them amidst the fluff of Miu's and Nang's bellies. Feeding the hungry parents rations from the freight bay, Orla reflected on the kitten's entrance into the world.
As the airborne ship had shuddered towards the mountains, Orla had found Nang huddled over Miu, sprawled in a corner and panting. Alarmed, she had dragged Tesla over.
"What if she's dying?"
"The best thing we can do for them is land safe."
Orla knew her girlfriend was right, but all the same she had juggled between the bridge, the guns and Miu. As the ship was suddenly thrust backward into the cave, she and Tesla had held the cats between them, and in the silence that followed, Orla wailed a deafening, mechanical scream.
"Her organs are falling out!"
A slimy bundle had slid out from underneath Miu's tail onto Orla's lap, and to her utmost horror, it was moving.
Tesla gasped, and then laughed.
"No, they're not. She's alright. She's having babies!"
Miu and Nang had worked to lick the gore off the squirming thing, and that had indeed revealed a tiny, wet version of Miu herself. Two more quickly followed, and the shocking process was over, leaving Orla stunned and a little queasy.
She was however already very fond of the result, referring to them as 'teeny- tiny Mius.'
When the new parents were fed and nursing their charges, Orla and Tesla decided it was time to face their captive.  They found him in a daze, but his head snapped up at the sound of them coming, wild fear in his eyes. Orla plonked herself in front of him.
"Now I'm hardly going to go around calling you 'your majesty,' so i think you'd better tell me what your real name is."
This was met with churlish silence.
"If you're not going to tell me, I'm going to make something up, and after what we've been through, it's probably not going to be anything nice."
The little man sat up a little straighter, trying to put on an air of importance.
"My name is King Johnathon Arlington." 
Orla let out a single bark of laughter.
"John? Common as arseholes! After all the fuss I was expecting something a little more abstract. Alright John, here's how it is: we've got you good, and we're going to use you to get our lives back on track. If you behave, all the better for you. If you don't, we'll knock you out again. Got it?"
He didn't reply, instead only casting his eyes down like a punished schoolboy. As Orla looked at them, she realised they were the same shade of green she saw when she looked in the mirror, only without the artificial light.
"Do you know who I am?" She asked slowly.
"No. Why should I?" he replied sulkily, not looking up.
"As much as I hate to admit it, we share a last name. My name is Orla Arlington."
Finally, his eyes flicked up again, this time blazing.
"You," he hissed, "back where you're not wanted. Oh, yes, I know who you are, and I know your place, even if you don't. You're a bastard, the spawn of a temptress and a witch! Why do you think you were done away with in the first place? You're not even meant to exist!"
Orla gazed down on John and the pool of spittle accumulating on his chin.
"Very descriptive, but that doesn't tell me much. A Lady Arlington happened to mention me, in relation to her aunt. She called me a bastard too. Who's the aunt?" she asked, and then, swallowing hard, "Who's my mother?"
John was silent again, pushing Orla's limited patience. She knelt down to face him.
"You had me taken away onto an airship and turned into a robot for a reason, John. Now that I've got you, I'm going to find out why, and if you're not going to tell me, then I have no use for you. Believe me, after the shit they put me through on that airship, I'd gladly pop your skull between my thumb and pinky finger, and send your brains to the palace in the mail."
The colour drained from his face, leaving him a similar colour to Orla.
"That woman," he stammered, "Zira Pemberley. The day that succubus entered my court was cursed. She seduced me, and she got pregnant and birthed you, so I'd have to marry her!"
"You say that like you didn't have a choice in the matter," Orla scoffed, turning away and leaving Tesla to ponder over what the king had said.
"But you can't be married to be the king..."
"Precisely!" he cried, gesturing wildly. "I am the eldest, and the throne is my birthright, but married, it would go to one of my brothers. I had to marry her to avoid a scandal. But if she happened to die..."
Orla nodded. "You killed her."
"I did not!" the little man exclaimed, "there are still men who respect tradition within the palace today. I am the eldest, I was born to be King! They knew she had to die. They did it. I can only curse their misguided decision not to kill the child!"
Orla slumped down suddenly, sending Tesla rushing ever to her. Sobs racked her shoulders, and Tesla held them gently.
"Bastard," she spat, "you killed my parents and you killed hers, too!"
"but worst of all," Orla stammered, "one of mine is still alive. Ugh! You're my father!"
"I am not!" The king roared, "I am King of Terrestria! I do not have offspring!"
Taking a deep breath, Orla stood up again.
"Yeah. It's probably best we go with that. You're no father of mine."
With that, she stalked out of the room with Tesla following, and paused on the catwalk, taking in the cave air.
"What a day this has been," she muttered. "I'm glad you're here."
Tesla smiled and took her hand, and they looked out towards the cave mouth together. Although the airship wasn't mobile any more, Faith was still captaining her crew; she had them busy hanging vines, branches or whatever they could find from the top of the cave mouth, hiding them from any airborne eyes that might come their way. They ground underneath them shuddered a little as the guns swivelled, grinding against the ground below them to face the cave entrance.
"This isn't a bad setup," Orla mused. "Gotta hand it to the Cap."
As if on cue, the overhead speakers crackled into life, sending Faith's voice echoing off the stone walls around them.
"Could the Bridge crew come back to their stations for a moment, please? I'd like to set up a plan of action."
"Good old Faith," Orla chuckled, "always does things the proper way."

Orla, Tesla, Faith, Pax, Juju and Emlyn gathered at the bridge.
"So," Faith summed up, "Our main objectives are emancipation of the vampires, and a total overhaul of government. Supporting objectives are collecting food and other resources, and keeping the cave well guarded. I can set up crew patrols to keep watch and search for food, but the other two are more complicated. We need to find a way to communicate with the city to file our demands. We should probably start with the vampires."
"There are still a couple of escape shuttles left," Pax interjected, "We could send messages via those under cover of night. I think I can get them out of their bays and up and running again."
The group agreed that that could work. Orla had another idea.
"If the shuttles work, we could find a way to infiltrate the printing press and publish all the evidence of John's shenanigans  we've found... prison files, airship profiles and the like. We could even publish his little fling with Zira. A scandal like that ought to get the public's attention. I'm sure we could convince him to write the public a letter."
"Agreed," Faith finished, "Nothing will go unnoticed any more. We'll filter information slowly out into the world at a pace the public can manage, giving them time to accept the King isn't the person they thought he was."

Orla sat in the little buzzing escape shuttle, squeezed between Tesla and Pax. The latter had impressed them all with their engineering skills, having gotten the craft up and running, although it was a little reminiscent of a mosquito and shuddered and whined as it moved. They landed in the outskirts of the city, and there the group split up to complete their respective errands. Orla and Tesla headed to the printing press.
There was only one in all of Terrestria, the jewel in the crown of His majesty's propaganda machine, situated in a tall, imposing building where His Majesty's Daily was written and published for the masses. The two slunk up its vertical side, peering in all the windows. What they were looking for sat high up in the fourth floor, its maw gaping towards them like yet another mechanical monster. As they entered, light combined from the moon and the dimly glowing fluorescent street lights spilled in the window, throwing shadows of the press against the walls and creating an inky forest.
After a bit of prowling, they found the things they needed to get it working, and within a few minutes it came whirring into life.
"Are you much of a journalist?" Tesla asked as she inspected the clacking machine.
"I guess we'll find out." Orla had been thinking over what they ought to write to the public for days, and eventually came up with a rough idea. Soon, they had copies and copies of signed confessions from the King they would filter out in the coming month, the first of which read:

KING JOHNATHON ARLINGTON IMPRISONED, CONFESSES TO MULTIPLE CRIMES AGAINST TERRESTRIA
His Majesty has been incarcerated for multiple offences which will be made public in the weeks to come. Accused on many accounts of unforgivable criminal charges, the most prominent of which being murder, the King has confessed the following and is expected to make further confessions regarding other atrocities:

Attached was a letter written and signed in John's handwriting, recounting the story of Orla's mother's murder as well as that of Tesla's parents. It had taken some time, but eventually the King had complied. It had become apparent over the days following his capture that he was not only clueless, stubborn, and frightened for his own welfare, but he was above all in utter terror of Orla. Her face wasn't conventionally pretty, but looking like a corpse had its perks.
With more copies of their articles than they knew what to do with, they scaled down the building. After a few hours of fixing the flyers to every eye-level surface in the city, they grew tired, and were thinking of heading back to the shuttle.
"We still have hundreds of copies. By now I just want to throw them to the winds."
As Orla complained, Tesla gave her a sudden meaningful glance, and they laughed. Before dawn they were headed back to their hideout, and when the sun rose on Sect 1, the city's streets were strewn with typed papers professing the king's guilt as if someone had skipped through the roads hurling them about like confetti.