Steampunk Romantic Suspense
Date Published: April 10, 2026
Clara looks for love in an alien city of lust. Can Cressida’s passion
save the love of her life?
Automaton engineers Clara Wheeler and Edmund Blake travel to the moon with
spiritualist Cordelia and her automaton lover, Adam, along with Home Office
Agent Harry Kincaid. Clara has a suspicion their chaperones, the lusty
Lunarians Pamela and Burton, are not the beautiful technologically advanced
benefactors they seem. Clara fears the pair are hideous monsters, killing
humans to possess their bodies.
Cressida Troy, now the Empress of Space, Nil Ilson, has sacrificed her
humanity to marry the Lunarian emperor, Mon Ilson — perhaps the most powerful
witch of them all. As their visit to the lusty city progresses, both in and
out of bed, Clara learns more than she wanted. She fears the experiment to
open a portal to the other side risks not only the destruction of the
Lunarians, but of humanity as well.
I am very old, sometimes new, and my changes are looked forward to.
I am mostly silver, and occasionally wear a ruddy hue, but I am hardly ever
blue.
I am brightest at night, and control the oceans with all my might.
And bless toiling farmers with my pearly light.
What am I?
Embarrassingly childish doggerel I know, but I enjoy composing riddles. They
also afford a distraction from troubling thoughts. The puzzles can be complex
and obtuse which I relish, or simple and obvious. The former irritates Edmund,
my fellow Lovelace Protocol engineer exceedingly. He accuses me of showing
off.
In the circumstances this one was far too easy to solve, and Burton Sobel, my
Lunarian guide who’d become my lover, didn’t even bother saying
the solution. He condescended to give me a reassuring smile as he tightened
the buckle of my seat belt.
In desperate need for a more substantial diversion, I looked up into his
handsome face with an obvious invitation. Taking the hint his lips quickly
claimed mine with a passionate kiss. I returned it with enthusiasm, and felt
instantly guilty, for I was simply using him. I needed him on my side if I was
to solve the Lunarian riddle.
“Don’t be concerned,” he said after a long moment. He had
mint green eyes, and his unwavering regard was disconcerting. Did he know what
I was up to, I wondered. “I will look after you. I promise.”
“Thank you,” I told him, and snatched another kiss. I had to be
sure I’d won him back after my beastly accusations. Though I believed
them to be true, for the moment I must deny them. “You’ve been
very kind. I’m quite recovered. I apologise for my wild
imaginings.”
“Don’t dwell on it,” he said, and kissed me again.
“It’s been a difficult few days.” He gave my hand a squeeze
before pushing himself away to check on my fellow passengers.
Difficult indeed. The two automatons, Jack and Jill, my colleague Edmund Blake
had been ordered to take to the Moon had broken their Lovelace Protocols and
tried to kill Miss Cordelia Warrington, one of our fellow passengers.
I watched Burton glide gracefully toward the others. Like all Lunarians he was
preternaturally beautiful, and that observation made me rehash my fears about
them. Why did they look like us? If, as the rumours went, they came from the
planet Mars, how was it they resembled humans in every respect? If Mr. Darwin
was correct, that species evolved over time by accidental mutation, and the
successful alteration selected by nature, how could two species separated by
the gulf of space be so alike?
Not only that. Why were they so good-looking? Every Lunarian I had met, and
granted that was precious few, were striking in their attractiveness. The
observation was not mine alone. Even The Times declared them “diamonds
of the first water — exquisite, flawless, and as radiant as the Koh-i-Noor
that graces our Sovereign’s crown.”
What aspect of impartial nature could select so handsome a race? Was that
selection natural at all? I thought not.
That was not the only aspect that caused me discomfort. It was their
character. Noted again by newspaper columnists who had the opportunity to meet
them, the people from the moon were always polite to extremis in private,
their behaviour in public impeccable. To me they were just too perfect.
That they had first come to the attention of the general public with a
dazzling display of raw power — destroying hundreds of airships and navy
vessels in an instant. That dramatic appearance had saved the empire from a
sneak attack by our European foes. The Queen’s wholehearted embrace of
them, natural enough I suppose as they had come to us in our hour of need,
worried me. The officious manner in which Her Majesty’s agents had
press-ganged Edmund and me into our current situation further deepened my
suspicions.
If that wasn’t enough, what I had surmised in the last few days
terrified me. It seemed their leader, Mon Ilson, was a powerful witch who had
mastery over life and death. Apparently, Mon Ilson was immortal. Our mission
was to bring automatons to the moon so he could experiment on transferring the
soul of a dead man into a machine. This was impossible, I was certain, however
it seemed he could harness his magical powers to make the transfer possible.
The dark conclusion of my fears and surmising was that I suspected that Mon
Ilson was transferring the souls of Lunarians into the bodies of humans he had
killed. Not that he should choose only ill-featured victims, but he selected
only attractive people to kill. It seemed to make his crime more perverse, if
that were possible. My thread of reasoning was absurdly simple, like my silly
riddles. No wonder Edmund scoffed and thought me eligible for a darkened cell
in Bedlam or Coney Hatch. He had pulled at each strand, and my surmises had
unravelled — at least in his estimation — into a messy pile of yarn. He
seemed unaware that his infatuation with his Lunarian lover may have biased
his criticism.
Nevertheless, I had entertained the notion that I was the victim of a crazed
delusion, but Mr. Frasier — Cordelia’s contact in the spirit world —
had given me some hope. Discovering that there really was a spirit world was
yet another assault on my scientific creed. That I now relied upon a dead man
to seek out the souls of those foully murdered by Mon Ilson to prove my claim,
made me further doubt my sanity.
Madness aside, my assertion that the Lunarians intended to subjugate all of
humanity, employing the military and industrial might of our Empire to
accomplish it, was as clear to me as water. What galled me most was the
betrayal of our sovereign, Queen Victoria. Willing or unwilling, weak or
wilful, it seemed to me she had become a partner in this most diabolical
crime, and it saddened me deeply to think it.
So, what was I to do about this?
I looked about the cabin. We were a strange collection: three women, two men,
and one automaton. First was Miss Cordelia Warrington, a spiritualist who was
to play a crucial role in a bizarre and outlandish experiment. She and Mr.
Frasier, who I must insist is real as all my hopes rely on him, were to
contact the soul of one Fritz von Wellen, and by doing so allow the Lunarian
emperor to magically conduct him into the brain of an automaton. It was
ludicrous to be sure. To deposit an incorporeal soul into a head filled with
copper and brass ratchets and gears is simply preposterous.
“Doesn’t your soul, an incorporeal entity, reside quite happily in
a vessel of flesh and blood?” Burton had reminded me with a
condescending smile. “How is brass any different?”
I had bitten my lip. “Touché,” I replied. I suspected the
experiment was simply the camouflage of the real task — the transfer of
Fritz’s soul into the body of a recently murdered human being.
About the Author
Aussie Mikala Ash used to be a mild-mannered training & development
consultant by day, and a wild sci-fi and paranormal adventure writer by night.
Now she is a brazen full-time writer and nature photographer who is
concentrating on having among other things, “… bags, and bags of
fun!” Mikala can be found on Facebook and on Twitter.
Publisher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok: @changelingpress
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