Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) (41 page)

“I understand,” she said.

“Make sure you do.” Parker’s
bright eyes grazed Luke before settling on Jessie. “I’ll be blowing the
entrance to the caves. Make sure you’re not inside. Got it?”

Luke clenched his teeth, but
squeezed the other man’s shoulder in a companionable way. “I’m glad it’s you,
Solo. I trust you do it right.”

Parker jerked his head in
denial. “This isn’t right, Bradshaw, and you know it.”

“I know.” Luke’s eyes met
Parker’s, and some sort of understanding passed between the two men.

Whitfield clasped Jessie on
the shoulder, a wordless offer of comfort. “Time to get going.”

“Right,” Luke said.

Whitfield turned, mounted his
horse and galloped off to the north, toward the other outpost.

Parker removed a set of
segmented mirror binocular telescopes from his bag and watched the far outpost
while Luke and Jessie sat together side by side, touching one another in the
dark.

“His Lordship is in position.”

Luke squeezed her hand and
moved beside Parker while Jessie pretended she wasn’t shaking. Pretended her
palms weren’t sweating and her pulse wasn’t firing like explosive cannon
shells.

“All right. Go.” Parker moved
over the cluster of rocks and toward the outpost.

They waited for a few
moments, and then Luke took her hand in his. “Time to go.” Still crouched
behind the rocks, he took her face in his hands and pressed a quick kiss to her
lips. “No matter what happens, I love you. Remember that, Jess. No matter what
needs to be done, I love you.”

Afraid of what he
wasn’t
saying, she could only answer, “I
love you, too.”

The smile he gave her was a
flash of white against the darkness. “Stay behind me.”

Picking up his clockwork
carbine and his bag, he slung both onto his shoulder. He pressed a six-shooter
in her hand, to go along with the one strapped to her hip and the knife in her
boot. “Don’t shoot unless you have to. I’d rather stay quiet for as long as we
can.”

Jessie nodded and followed
him over the rocks as they slowly picked their way down the hill.

Luke paused, crouching behind
a pine tree, and gestured for her to stop. He put his hand on her back and
stared up at the outpost for what seemed like endless minutes.

Jessie’s heart drummed madly
in her chest, and she fought the urge to run, but Luke’s touch kept her still.
Voices sighed in the breeze brushing through the trees, and their prayer
murmured in the sound of a nearby spring as the water tumbled over rock.

Jessie moved back behind
Luke, and pressed her head to his back in an attempt to quiet their voices in
the beating of his heart.

Finally, light flashed
briefly from the northern outpost. Jessie turned her head and light flashed
again, this time from the southern outpost. Luke reached for her and crept down
the slope toward the barracks.

Parker joined them about half
way down the slope.

Jessie whispered a prayer to
her ancestors to keep them safe, and she wished for an answer as she stared up
at the moonless night sky, painted with stars.

Jessie
, said the voices of many, their voices
asynchronous, lending her name an air of menace. A warning existed in that
single word, and she was afraid.

Whitfield crept down the
path. As they passed the barn, restless horses stomped and snuffled, and the
air vibrated with the low rumble of what sounded like an engine.

Black wings of dread
fluttered in her chest, and she wrestled with the idea that her anxiety had
little to do with her father.

She stared at Luke’s back,
and her heart stumbled.

Parker wound the clockwork
carbine he held in his hands and motioned to the entrance to the mineshaft with
his head.

Luke clapped him on the
shoulder and Parker grinned.

Everything was right between
them.

Parker winked at her, and she
knew everything was right between them, too.

She followed Luke, and as
they entered the first chamber of the mineshaft, the noise became louder.
Jessie had grown up with that sound ringing in her ears, the sound of home and
her father. It made sense that her father would have access to a steam engine
to power his experiments, even here.

Her father was here. His
energy existed in the walls, in the noise, in the air.

They came to a low pony wall
made of rock and concrete, and a prison door of steel bars. Luke pulled her
down beside him. “Cover me.” He took the bag from his shoulder and pulled out
two small metal cylinders with hooks at the end. “Be prepared to move.”

He put one of the cylinders
in his pocket and inserted the hook of the other into the lock. He hit the end
of the cylinder with the butt of his knife.

Jessie jumped as the sound
bounced off the stone walls and echoed in the cavern.

Luke took her hand and backed
up several steps. The cylinder and then the lock glowed brilliant red, the
faint hiss of sizzling metal barely audible. There was a pop, and the door
shifted a little.

Together, they crept to the
door. He barely had to touch it before it swung open, both the lock and the
latch burned out. Jessie’s father would have been fascinated by such a
device—a lock pick made of thermite.

She put her hand on the wall
and felt nothing, but what she heard in the emptiness between the cold and the
dark terrified her. Pressing her hand against Luke’s back, she replaced the
dread with the impression of
him
, of
pale skin and sleek muscle.

They entered a rough-hewn
mineshaft, where the walls still bore the scars of miner’s pickaxes. On her
left, standing in the middle of a framed-in area, was a door, and behind it, a
steam engine sputtered and hummed. Luke crouched down and took some small
object out of the pack, which he placed at the base of the door. Shifting his
eight, he kicked it with his foot, shoving the object under the door.

Luke stood and picked up his
bag. He wrapped his free hand around her waist.

“Anything tries to come out
that door, shoot it,” he whispered.

Jessie,
a voice in her head
warned.

They moved deeper into the
corridor, and it wasn’t long before the dark shimmered with the glow of
reflected light. As they made their way down the corridor, the light became
stronger. The end of this shaft was collapsed, but another corridor veered
sharply to the right, and that was where the light spilled from.

The sound of metal striking
metal reached her ears, and a man’s voice shouted, “I don’t know why you have
to do that in the middle of the night. Why can’t you do that shit during the
day, like a normal person? Bother the day shift people for a change.”

Then the voice of a man
Jessie had mourned for dead. “I work when I work. You don’t like it, complain
to your boss.”

Jessie’s chest tightened. Her
father. Feeling his presence in the walls was once thing, and sensing him in
the air was another, but to actually listen to the sound of his voice was
something entirely different. She resisted the urge to pull her weapons and
charge in there recklessly, and kill every Reb in that room.

Luke put his back to the wall
of the cavern and motioned for Jessie to do the same. He took the bag off his
shoulder and removed a small mirror from his satchel. With his body low to the
ground, he eased the mirror around the corner. He studied the reflection for a
moment, grunted, and put the mirror back in the bag.

He reached for her hand. “We’ll
get him out.”

Jessie turned so she faced
the wall and ran her hand up the side of his neck and into his hair where it
peeked out from beneath his hat. “I know we will.”

Pulling the strap of the
carbine over his head, he handed her the weapon. “I want you to move up as soon
as I’m inside, but no matter what happens, you stand behind that wall. Keep
yourself behind cover, but I want you close. You understand?”

His lips against her skin
made her shiver, but she nodded just the same.

Luke adjusted his hat over
his eyes and pulled the second thermite lock pick from his pocket. His posture
straight and proud, he squared his shoulders and stepped into the lighted
corridor. Strolled up to the door as if he belonged.

Gripping the gun until her
hands cramped, she held her breath. Her ancestors howled in her head, but their
words were indistinguishable, nothing more than jumbled noise.
 
She didn’t want to make sense of their
warnings, didn’t want to hear them. Finally, a voice, clearly defined, rose
above the rest, and spoke a single word.

Jessie.

Her mother.

She bit back tears and the
chant rising to her lips. Panic began to set in, the wings of dread beating in
her chest. Her heart took off like a spooked horse.

Luke.
Come back.

“Came to relieve you for a
time,” Luke said in a southern drawl so natural she was shocked by it.

“Got the new guy in the back
room. You come in with him?” a man’s voice asked.

“Yeah.”

“You poor bastard.”

Luke laughed. “Huh. The key
seems to be stuck.” A heavy thud echoed in the small chamber, and Luke made a
startled sound as metal began hissing and sizzling. “What the hell?” Footsteps
echoed in empty space.

She wanted to watch, and
moved to peek her head around the corner, but invisible hands rooted her to the
wall, and she remained still and silent and small and useless. She hated
herself for that.

The latch popped and a door
slammed. Suddenly, it was if the hands holding her released her, her body under
her own power once more. She slung Luke’s bag over her shoulder and crept along
the wall to the pony wall.

The steel-barred door stood
open, a leather cord dangling from the u-shaped handle. In the dim light cast
by two gas lanterns, one man lay on the floor, and a second one was drawing his
gun.

With a quickness that
startled her, Luke drew his gun as the second guard ducked behind a large piece
of machinery. Gunshots rang out.

The man on the ground began
to draw his weapon, and just as Jessie was about to scream a warning to Luke,
the device in the middle of the room burst to life, shaking and groaning.

Chaos erupted. Luke’s gun was
torn from his hands, as were the weapons the guards carried, stuck to that
piece of machinery as if it were a giant magnet.

A knife clattered along the
floor and stuck to its side. The steel door slammed shut. Objects flew from the
shelves. Something struck Luke on the shoulder, and he spun, but he didn’t
fall.

Behind her concrete wall, she
was safe. She didn’t even feel the slightest tug.

In seconds, the whirlwind of
flying metal ceased, and every man in the room was disarmed.

The man on the ground began
to stand, but Luke kicked him in the face with his boot and he went still.

Jessie’s father bolted for
the door.

Putting the carbine down
behind the concrete wall, she grabbed the leather cord attached to the handle
of the door and yanked.

Pop shoved on the bars above
the metal mesh covering the handles of the door, and Jessie jerked on the
leather strap.

“Jessie-girl, what are you
doing here?” Her father’s eyes were wild.

She didn’t answer. She simply
pulled on that leather strap with everything she had and watched Luke.

Luke whirled toward the
second guard and punched him twice. Lunging, he rammed the guard with his
shoulder and threw him on to the device.

The man shuddered and lay
still.

Avoiding the molten slag, Pop
pushed against the door, and together, he and Jessie broke the magnetic pull.
Once the door had opened just beyond the halfway point, the pull began to work
in the opposite direction, and when Jessie let the door go, it slammed open
with a bang.

Both Jessie and her father
jumped.

Luke didn’t flinch.

Pop turned toward her and
embraced her briefly. “What are you doing here? You never should have come.”

“I had to.”

“No. I never wanted you here.
Not you. You’re all I have left.” He kissed her forehead and took her into his
arms again.

It was the first time since
Gideon’s death that her father had held her.

Luke gingerly walked over to
where Jessie stood with her father. His eyes met hers and the corners of his
mouth ticked up into the lopsided smile she remembered so well from her
childhood. He adjusted his hat on his head. “Mr. White.”

Pop flinched. “Is that… Luke
Bradshaw
?”

“The very same,” Luke
responded, bending to open the bag. He took out a bundle of dynamite and
inserted a small silver rod into it. He did the same for the next four bundles.