Airship Hunters (25 page)

The scuffle, when it came, surprised them all.

Looking back on it later, Valiantine insisted it wasn’t that the combatants were unaware of the coming fracas, but that each one had underestimated his opponent.

Cabot lashed out in deliberate fury, not unlike his attack on Superintendent Gallows. The lieutenant saw the shock on Awanai’s face; the man had expected a reaction, but not the ferocity of it.

Valiantine hoped he and his partner would once again act in unspoken, unplanned tandem, but Cabot’s lightning fast assault took him unaware. His guess was the younger man himself would never have expected the strength of his own actions.

The bandit’s pistol discharged. Valiantine saw a spray of red around Cabot, who grunted in pain. He dove to the ground for his own weapon, but Awanai fell backward under Cabot’s fists and his booted foot kicked the pistol across the cobblestones and out of quick reach. The lieutenant could not see Cabot’s firearm in the fog.

Awanai’s vicious curses cut through the air, but quickly changed to howls of pain. Valiantine leapt for the bandit’s legs, hoping to knock him completely to the ground, but the melee was too chaotic for him to gain purchase.

He tumbled back onto his haunches, trying to make sense of the scrapping. Cabot was a demon released from a bottle; Valiantine worried for the young man’s soul.

In the blink of an eye, the Colt appeared in Cabot’s hand. Blood dripped from the side of his face where the bandit’s bullet had torn across it. He pointed the weapon at Awanai. Valiantine bellowed for him to stop.

“For them,” Cabot said, and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet entered the bandit’s left eye and exited just behind his ear. The body spasmed, sprawling onto the cobblestones like the dead weight it now was.

Valiantine looked down at the pooling blood underneath Awanai’s head, the man’s one intact eye staring without life up into the foggy sky.

“So many questions,” the lieutenant whispered to himself.

Glancing away from the corpse, he saw Cabot walking toward the doors of the building.

“The answers lie within, Valiantine. Come on. We have more work to do.”

Valiantine, feeling very, very weary, retrieved his pistol and followed him inside the factory.

On the ground floor, they found furnaces and metalworks. Factory men, engrossed in their tasks, did not notice the two agents. The workers fashioned cannon shells, apparently, though the munitions looked odd, not at all like what Valiantine was used to seeing.

The thought of cannons made him twitch even more. He fought with himself, biting his lip until it bled and beating one fist against his leg, slowly and rhythmically.

Finding a stairwell, they stealthily ascended it. The upper floors of the building were almost empty, save for the strains of music that still wafted about. Valiantine couldn’t place the tune, so focused was he on quelling his compulsion to straighten, to clean, to put things to right.

On what they believed to be the top floor of the factory, the stairwell ended in a large, barren room. Massive wood supports extended from floor to ceiling, but otherwise the area was empty; no furniture, and no people.

Across from the agents, was a normal-sized wooden door, set into a wall that appeared somewhat newer than those around it.

The music seemed to be coming from behind the door.

Cabot opened his mouth to speak. Valiantine raised one hand, stilling him.

“No, don’t tell me what Yankee Bligh had to say about doors. Just open the blasted thing.”

Cabot smiled, but that made him wince from the gunshot wound on his cheek.

“Valiantine, damn you,” he said, placing a hand on his partner’s shoulder, “I wasn’t going to say any such thing.”

“Nonsense,” Valiantine replied, stepping toward the door and gripping his pistol tightly. “You can’t help it; it’s a compulsion.”

Reaching out for the latch, he realized his quirks had quieted; he was in action, moving forward and not looking back.

Behind the door was a wooden staircase. They mounted it and arrived at another door at its top. There, they heard the music very clearly.

Opening the door carefully, albeit not slowly, the two agents looked out into another large room. Covered from floor to ceiling in rich, wood paneling of exquisite craftsmanship, Valiantine was immediately struck by the dichotomy between the chamber and the grimy factory below.

The room was occupied by several people, all of them dressed not unlike those in the Luray tower. In one corner, a musical group consisting of horns, violins, cellos, and a few other assorted instruments sat, playing as the people milled about the space.

Valiantine noticed charts on the walls, as well as maps of the United States and one of Mexico. Nearby sat a large table at which four people pored over a map of what looked to be, from the lieutenant’s vantage point, Washington, D.C. Standing silently at attention along the walls, were men dressed like soldiers, clutching rifles.

The room spoke to him, two words only: nerve center.

In the middle of it all stood Gallows, looking none the worse for wear, save for skin nearly the color of milk. Again, Valiantine drew a comparison to the coins’ loss of color and detail.

Even more eye-opening, the man’s bruises were almost completely healed.

“Well, what was it, Carnavon?” Gallows said, not immediately glancing up from the papers he was in the middle of inspecting. “We have—”

“He’s dead,” said Valiantine.

Gallows looked up and into the faces of the two agents.

“Damn and blast,” he wheezed. “Unbelievable.”

“Yes,” a voice rumbled from off to one side. “But it really shouldn’t come as much surprise to us, these two.”

Barnaby Scarborough shut a door behind him, one through which he had just come. Beside him stood Major Wellington. Both men wore the best poker faces Valiantine had ever seen; if they were startled at all by the agents’ appearance in their midst, they hid it well.

“The worst thing we ever did to ourselves,” Wellington told his fellows, “was to not kill them when we had ample opportunity.”

“No,” Valiantine said, finding his voice. “The worst thing you ever did to yourselves was putting us together in the first place.”

“I can see that now.” Scarborough grunted. “Seize them,” he ordered his soldiers, and the black-clad men left their posts to advance on the two agents.

Not waiting to be approached, Valiantine put a bullet in the head of the nearest of them.

The other soldiers paused, looked back to their commanders. The Trio glanced at each other, then back to the intruders.

Scarborough scowled, his neutral expression cracking. “All right, Lieutenant! All right for the moment. Damn Carnavon and his inability to stay in one place for any sizeable amount of time...”

The Executive Director scowled all the more. After a moment’s reflection, he spoke.

“Ah, well. Gentlemen, to our compatriot.” He bowed his head and raised one hand. The band stopped playing. “Inventor, architect, explorer, visionary, a singular man in all respects. We owe him much, and I shall mourn him.”

It was difficult for Valiantine to credit the demonstration, as surreal and dream-like as it was. He sensed sadness, yes, and resignation in the words, but also a small spike of thrill that Awanai—the Trio referred to him as “Carnavon” as if it were his real name—was no more. Why did it seem like they were moving in slow-motion?
Perhaps
, he told himself, the gas,
the “vox” the bandit referred to, is making them lethargic, somehow
.
And, as their lack of security indicates, sloppy.

In a flash of insight, he guessed the constant music might exist to stir them, to keep these strange people alert.

“Are you finished?” he asked the Trio, repressing his musing. “Because you’re going to answer our questions now.”

One of the soldiers lifted his rifle. Cabot shot him down in the wink of an eye.

The Trio did not respond. Valiantine continued.

“How many airships are there?”

Silence.

“The coins?”

Scarborough chuckled low in his throat, mockingly. “Altered upon our arrival, as all of our metals were, seemingly. We did not realize it at first.”

“Who is hunting you?”

“Why, our enemies, of course,” the big man replied. “Yours, too, unfortunately for your world.”

“Dammit,” Cabot spat, “what does that
mean
? Where are you from?”

The Trio shifted, coming together in a single line, shoulder to shoulder, as if one massive figure.

“Elsewhere,” Wellington said, his face deadpan, but his eyes dancing.

“Talk!” Valiantine shouted at the top of his lungs. “God damn you,
talk
!”

He raised his pistol and felled an approaching soldier, then another and another. Someone screamed, but he kept on shooting. Return fire from somewhere in the room splintered the wood paneling behind him, the bullets tearing past him, ripping at his coat and hair.
At last
, he thought,
I’ve prompted them into some
action
...

“Up and out!” he heard Scarborough bellow above the din.

The room began to vibrate, the motion coming from deep within its wall. Underneath their feet, the floor danced, or seemed to.

“Vox release!” a voice yelled. Gas issued forth from the walls or ceiling, Valiantine couldn’t tell which. He recognized it instantly as the vapor from the meteor. Items began to float toward the ceiling; he swore he saw boots and bodies lifting up from the floor.

As if to deny him the vision, the people in the room ran away from its center, reaching for doors, disappearing from view. The Trio was already gone.

Cabot shoved Valiantine out the door through which they entered the room. Though sorely desiring nothing more than to get his hands around Scarborough’s throat, the lieutenant saw the sense in flight; he felt the effect of the vapors immediately and knew there was little they could do to fight it.

“They’re destroying the building!” Cabot shouted as they ran. “And us with it!”

They tumbled down the stairs and into the empty fifth floor of the factory. Not pausing in their flight, the two men flew down the stairwell, trying to reach the building’s main doors.

Around them, the entire structure shook and swayed, its bricks and beams vibrating as if made from paper.

They shouted warnings to the men in the foundry, but saw the metalworks were already abandoned. One giant bowl of molten, liquid metal began to tip as they watched, spilling its glowing contents out onto the surrounding floor and work stations, setting everything ablaze.

Valiantine and Cabot tore open the factory’s doors and ran outside, hacking and coughing from the thick air they’d just left.

Loud, echoing booms exploded in their ears. Pieces of wood fell about them, narrowly missing their heads and limbs. Attempting to put some distance between themselves and the building, they finally turned to witness the structure’s great, darkened windows shatter in a spray of glass and metal.

Looking up, Valiantine saw the top of the factory separate from the lower section and rise into the sky.

“Valiantine...” Cabot said, stumbling backward.

“Good
God
, Cabot!” the lieutenant shouted. “We were inside it!
We were inside the thing!
”

The giant wooden airship hung in the air over the crumbling building for only the span of a heartbeat or two. Turning in space, it floated over the edge of the factory’s roof and toward the two agents.

Before he could yell to Cabot to run, it was upon them.

The great, wide hull dipped down and blanketed the space immediately above their heads, blocking out what little sun could be seen. In almost complete shadow now, Valiantine looked all around searching for sanctuary from the sure death that came at them from above.

Trees. His brain registered
trees
. His fingers brushed at Cabot’s sleeve, but he did not solidly connect as he wished to. Something in his brain told him his partner was also moving, so he continued to run, imagining the airship to be inches from his head.

Diving underneath the clutch of scraggly trees, he got behind a tree trunk and dropped to his knees, praying it could withstand the weight of the onslaught. Cabot was suddenly next to him, slapping his arm, telling him he’d arrived, too.

Branches above their head cracked and snapped like gunshots. The entire tree shook and vibrated. The shadow of the airship retreated.

Then, gunshots exploded all around them.

Cabot returned fire at the shooter. A yell informed them the Treasury man’s aim was good even under such arduous circumstances. Valiantine looked out past the tree and saw a wall in front of him; the side of the ship, no doubt, hovering only a few feet off the ground.

The lieutenant reached into his pocket and pulled out an object, the canister he procured from the attempt on the President’s locomotive, still wrapped in his handkerchief but no longer smoking. In a flash, he twisted the metal pod, producing the smoke or vapor from it once more. The time had come for him to return the Trio’s property.