Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure (2 page)

Out of the night’s list of featured ways to die, that left drowning. If she couldn’t swim, she was out of luck.

Beneath the Jenny, the white expanse of the man’s parachute spread over the surface of the lake. The man himself wasn’t to be seen.

Hitch dipped low for another flyby and leaned out of the cockpit as far as he could manage, searching for the other parachute. “C’mon, c’mon.”

Taos squirmed around to stare at something ahead of them.

Hitch looked up.

There it was. And there
she
was.

Head barely above the water, the woman dog-paddled a couple dozen feet out from the shore.

Thank God for that anyway.

He resisted flying over her, since his turbulence wouldn’t help her overcome the soggy deadweight of that load of skirt she was wearing. But he waggled his wings once, in case she was looking, then turned around to hunt for the nearest landing spot. So much for a nice encouraging practice run.

A dirt road up past the shore offered just enough room to put the plane down. No headlights in sight, which wasn’t surprising for this time of night. Most folks would be rocking on their front porches, enjoying the cool of the evening after long hours sweating in the corn and beet fields. He shut off the engine and jumped down to dig a flashlight out of his jacket pocket. Calling Taos to him, he started off at a jog, back toward the lakeshore.

The few cottonwoods growing around the water’s edge were young, proof the lake hadn’t been in existence long. Around here, trees—especially moisture hogs like cottonwoods—only grew near water.

He crashed through the brush, Taos trotting behind him, and followed the yellow beam of his flashlight to the approximate spot where the woman jumper might have emerged from the water. A scan of the area showed only white wavelets nibbling into the sand. The water stretched away from the shore, its ripples unbroken as far as the flashlight’s weak beam carried.

He trudged down the beach. His leather boots, laced all the way up the front, sank into the wet sand and left the only footprints he could see. She’d been almost to shore when he had flown away from her. Surely she couldn’t have drowned just a few feet out.

He stopped and swung the light in a broad arc, from shore to trees. “Hey! You guys all right?”

Only the rustle of leaves answered.

If either of them had made it to land, he’d practically have to fall over the top of them to find them in the dark. And if they hadn’t, their bodies wouldn’t wash up on shore until at least tomorrow morning. He stopped. Ahead of him, Taos snuffled into the brush.

Maybe the big question here wasn’t so much where they had ended up as where in blue thunder they’d come from in the first place. He swung the light up to the sky.

The beam disappeared into the darkness. It was a clear night, playing host to a bare handful of big fluffy clouds. The moon was a huge one, just a few days past full. It cast a giant reflection against the lake and sheeted the world in silver. A thousand stars blinked down at him.

Like enough, the stars had a better view than he did of wherever these people had jumped from.

Had it been another plane? He might not have heard its engine over his own, but if it had flown right above him, the moon would have cast a shadow. And anyway, what kind of idiots went parachuting at night?

She had to be part of another flying act. Lots of acts would be coming into town for the weekend show, what with Col. Livingstone in the area. Hitch wasn’t the only pilot desperate to get work for his people by piggybacking on a big circus’s publicity—or better yet, beating the tar out of the competition and earning enough money to expand his own circus into something worthy of the name.

It was just possible these two had followed him out here. He chewed his lower lip. They could have botched it with the flare, since there was no sense whatever in that guy lighting his own partner on fire. What if he’d been aiming at damaging the Jenny the whole time?

That was beyond dirty. Hitch shook his head. To be honest, it just didn’t feel quite right. Something else was going on here.

Even if these two had somehow jumped on accident, that still didn’t explain why Hitch hadn’t noticed hide nor hair of another airplane. He lowered the flashlight’s beam and toed a piece of driftwood. It rolled over, and a crawdad scuttled out.

In the brush upshore, Taos barked once.

Hitch turned. His light caught on a footprint, then another. They were fresh enough to still be wet and crumbling around the edges. They weren’t particularly small, but they were narrow enough they pretty much had to belong to the woman.

He scratched Taos’s ears. “Good dog.”

The light showed the tracks emerging from the lake, as if she were some mermaid who’d grown legs and taken off running. After that, the prints disappeared in the brush, headed through the trees toward the road.

He started after them. “Ma’am? You hurt? I’m the cloudbuster you about crashed into a minute ago.”

The cloudbuster you may have just knocked out of the most important competition of the year
. But he swallowed that back. For now, it was miracle enough she was alive.

“If you want, I can give you a ride out of here so you’re closer to town.” Assuming he could get the Jenny up in the air and back to Earl.

Off to the right, forty feet ahead of him, the brush crackled.

He swung around to follow. But the crackling kept going, headed away from him. Pretty soon, what was left of the trees separated out onto a road. He peered in both directions and listened for more crackling.

Nothing.

“Ma’am?” What was she anyway, mute? “Look, if you or your buddy are hurt at all, holler out.”

A restlessness shifted through him. He should just go. Seemed to be what they wanted after all. Fact of his life: his leaving usually made things better for other people, not worse. Certainly, it had worked out that way for Celia, whether she had ever believed it or not.

“Look, lady, I gotta go. I’ve got folks waiting on me.”

More nothing.

He glanced at Taos.

The dog, a border collie cross he’d picked up in New Mexico five years back, cocked his head and stared at him, waiting. One brown ear stuck straight up; the other flopped at the tip.

In the fine dust at the edge of the road, his light snagged on another set of footprints.

He stopped and knelt. This set was much larger, definitely the man’s. Like the woman’s, a little of the wet shore sand clung to the edges. The strides were long and didn’t look to be hindered by any kind of injury.

He followed them with the light, across the road, and into a hayfield.

Well, then. Two parachutes, two jumpers, two survivors. And whether they’d intended it or not: one bunged-up plane.

Two

HITCH NURSED HIS ship back to the airfield north of town. It wasn’t really an airfield, just an empty hayfield some farmer had been talked into renting out for the duration of the show. But even this early in the week, pilots and performers were coming in from all over. He and his crew hadn’t been the first to arrive, and they wouldn’t be the last.

Col. Bonney Livingstone and His Extravagant Flying Circus was one of the biggest in the business. The shows he put on were tremendous spectacles compared to the little hops Hitch was doing. With a dozen planes and twice as many pilots, parachutists, and wing walkers, Livingstone was able to haul in huge crowds and pay out even better purses. More than a few pilots’ ears had perked up when word had gotten around about the big competition Livingstone was staging in Nebraska’s western panhandle.

Below, bonfires speckled the field, bouncing light off the tethered planes. Hitch banked gently and swung around for a landing. As he pulled to a stop at the end of the strip, the sound of singing and the pluck of guitars drifted over. From beside the nearest fire, Lilla Malone waved at him.

He climbed out, snapped his fingers at Taos, and walked over to where his crew lounged around their fire.

“Howdy, handsome,” Lilla said—more to Taos than to him.

He’d found Lilla in Denver some eighteen months back. She wasn’t exactly part of the show, since he would hardly risk her out on the wings or in a parachute, even if it ever dawned on her to volunteer. But it was handy to have an extra person to drive Rick’s car, which he insisted on dragging around from stop to stop. More important, she was as pretty as they came, in a bouncy, sloe-eyed way. Her job was to ride in the front cockpit, waving and smiling, when they buzzed the towns for customers. Then later on, she’d hold the sign, take admissions, and convince folks that if she could survive in that rattling flying contraption, it
must
be safe.

She pushed up from her seat on a blanket, knee-walked over to Taos, and hauled him halfway into her lap. He licked the underside of her chin, and she leaned back, giggling. “You missed all the fun. We’ve already had a dance and an arm wrestling match.”

“Which you won, I hope.”

She looked confused. “I just watched and cheered. But Rick almost won.”

On the other side of the fire, Rick Holmes balanced a tin plate of boiled potatoes and cornbread on one knee. “The reprobate cheated.” He rubbed his right biceps.

“Sure he did,” Hitch said. “Only way you could have lost. Now where’s Earl?”

“Why?” Rick narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t already demolished that new Hisso, have you? I heard it protesting when you flew over.”

“Ran into a little difficulty.” If you could call a hail of bodies
little.

“I warned you not to take it out at night.”

“Gimme a break. I could fly our whole routine blindfolded, much less on a moon-bright night. Had to make sure everything was running smooth before you try that high-altitude jump for Livingstone.”

Rick looked him in the eye. “If you mean you would also probably have demolished the engine at high noon, that’s no doubt true.”

Rick was a bit of a dapper dude, in his pressed pants and embroidered suspenders. He’d greased his dark hair back, widening his forehead in comparison to his chin.

He smirked at Lilla across the fire. “Too much power for our esteemed employer.”

She glanced at Hitch, eyebrows up. She’d never been too fluent in sarcasm.

Hitch gave his head a shake. “Where’s Earl anyway? Crazy stuff just happened.”

“Oh, indeed,” Rick said. “Please tell me it involved discovering a pirate’s buried cache. Because the only bit of news I would be interested in right now is that I’m about to receive the wages you’ve been promising for the last six months.”

Lilla clucked. “Did you forget, darling? He’s told us over and over we’re all going to get paid after we win this show.”

“And if we fail to win the show? Then what?” Again, he directed a flat gaze at Hitch. “The skills I bring to this show are already worth twice what I’m
supposed
to be receiving in remuneration.”

Hitch stopped looking around for his mechanic and turned to face Rick down. “We’re going to win this one.”

“Certainly. Win with two planes, one parachute, no wing walkers, and a demolished engine. Once again, your business acumen astounds me.”

Hitch swallowed a growl. “How many times we going to have to go over this?”

“Yes, please, don’t fight,” Lilla said. “It’s all right. We trust Hitch, don’t we, darling?”

“Don’t we though.”

“If he says everything’s going to be fine, I know it’s true.” She dazzled Hitch with one of her smiles. “Right?”

Sometimes he blessed her for her blind faith. Other times, it turned his stomach inside out with panic. Lord knew owning his own circus was all he thought about when he was lying awake at night, staring up at the underside of his plane’s wing. Part of his reason for wanting that was so he’d be able to take care of his people. These days, they were just about the only family that would claim him, and he would do whatever he had to do to keep them afloat.

But sometimes the knowledge that they were all depending on him clenched inside of him and made him want to whistle to Taos, jump back into the Jenny, and take off into the blue yonder all by himself. He needed their help if he was going to build a circus like Livingstone’s, but the more people he had to take care of, the less free this life of his started feeling.

He made himself nod to her. “Never starved yet, have we?”

Rick clanked his plate onto the ground. “It’s been a narrow margin.” He rose from his crouch and brushed past Hitch. “If we don’t finish choreographing this sensational new act before the colonel arrives, we’re routed even if Earl
is
able to repair that wreck of yours again.”

Hitch watched him go.

“It’s all right.” Lilla retrieved Rick’s plate and offered it to Hitch. They couldn’t afford to let the food go to waste right now. “Rick’s upset because he says we don’t have enough money to get married yet.”

To that, Hitch could only grunt. Lilla, bless her loyal heart, hadn’t been gifted with the most capacious of upstairs accommodations. Still, he hadn’t known how truly cramped they were until she’d fallen for Rick.