Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure (32 page)

He jogged back to the Jenny.

Earl gave the engine one more wipe with his rag. “You ready?”

“I’m ready. Let’s push her over to the start line.” He ducked to check the steel hook underneath the lower wing.

The first competition of the day would be the handkerchief pick-up. His heart pumped harder, and his thoughts started to clear, like always.

He looked around for Jael. By Livingstone’s rules, if a crew had a performer, he or she had to be in the plane at all times, even if the event didn’t require anything but flying.

She stood behind the wing, eyes on the red-white-and-blue planes taking off. She bent over and rubbed both thighs, like she was trying to warm them up.

“She’s limping again,” Earl muttered.

“What’s this?” Hitch called to her: “You all right?”

She turned and nodded, mouth tight.

“You hurting again? I thought you were past all that.”

“It is nothing.”

“Nothing, my foot,” Earl said. “You should stay on the ground, and we all know it.”

She looked at Hitch steadily. “I will not stay on ground.”

He looked back at her, trying to gauge how fit she was. “If you fall off and break your neck, I won’t be none too happy.”

She smiled, tightly. “There is no worry. I will go whether you say I can or not.”

Earl turned around so she couldn’t see his face. “Not if we tie her up, I reckon.”

Just the thought of that made Hitch’s shins throb. “If she wants to come, she can come. It’s her call.” When it came right down to it, she hadn’t made a bad one yet. He nodded to her. “Let’s go.”

After a few events, it started to feel like maybe Hitch was the one Earl should have tied up and left behind.

They barely squeaked by in the pants race—where the contestants had to land the plane, jump out to struggle into a pair of oversize trousers, then jump back in and fly across the finish line.

They came in a poor third in the handkerchief pickup. It took Hitch two tries to swoop low across the ground and use the hook attached beneath the wing to snag the bright white handkerchief from off its pile of tumbleweeds. The only consolation was that Rick didn’t even attempt the stunt—which seemed like quite the poor showing, considering this was the trick he swore up and down he invented.

Finally, Hitch found his groove in the acrobatics demonstration.

All barnstorming stunts were based on three basic maneuvers—the slow roll, the loop, and the snap roll. Hitch was good at all twenty-six variations. In a clip-wing Jenny with a Hisso engine, he was better than good.

He finished off his last loop with an inverted screech across the field. That was a trick in itself, since it was tough keeping the fuel pumping when a Jenny was wrong side up. Then he screamed around for a perfect landing. He didn’t need Livingstone’s grudging announcement of his name to know he’d won that one.

It was a start. A few more event wins today and most of tomorrow, and that bet was as good as won. He grinned.

“And now for something inimitably special!” Livingstone announced. “Our audacious pilots will race head to head, starting from right here in front of the grandstand, circling around the far pylon, and returning to land before your very eyes, where you may judge the winner for yourselves!”

Hitch taxied around to the starting line—newly chalked in the dust in front of the bleachers.

He leaned forward to tap Jael’s shoulder. “You all right?” he hollered over the engine.

She nodded and smiled. Her eyes still had a pinched look, but her face was all lit up like starfire.

Well, flying
did
fix many an ill.

He lined up next to Rick’s dusty blue plane.

Rick turned his goggled head and gave them a long look. “The way this morning is progressing, I can’t say I much regret my decision to leave your employ.”

“You can regret it later—after I take all the winnings.” And he’d pay Rick off all the same, just to show him that was how folks around here did things.

“Ready!” Livingstone shouted.

The checkered flag fell, and every pilot on the line opened his throttle.

Hitch grinned. This was where the Hisso would prove its worth. He spared Earl a salute as they passed.

And then they were up. He pitched the Jenny’s nose to the sky and poured on the steam. The Hisso, with its hundred and fifty horsepower, hit full speed and tore through the air. He glanced back.

Rick’s plane was the closest—and it wasn’t even in spitting distance.

Hitch laughed. So long as he could make the turn—and he
could
—there was no way they could avoid winning this thing by less than half a mile.

They reached the old telegraph pole topped with streamers, and he tensed his feet on the rudder pedals, ready to drop the left wing in a tight turn.

Out of the clear sky, pea-sized hail spattered the windshield and his goggles. He shot a glance up. Nothing but blue.

Head back down, eyes ahead. The Jenny careened around the pylon.

In front of him, Jael leaned back to see through the cutaway in the top wing.

He circled all the way around the pole and leveled back out toward the bleachers.

The other planes tore through the sky, headed straight at him. He raised the Jenny’s nose to get above them.

Another spatter of hail rattled against the top wing.

And then a jagged gash of lightning smashed into the rearmost of the planes racing to catch Hitch.

The plane seemed to freeze, midair. The varnish on the wings reacted to the spark just like gasoline, and the whole thing ignited. The top wing folded up, the plane’s nose pitched down. It hit the ground, and it exploded.

Hitch stared, open-mouthed.

That’s when
Schturming
dropped out of the sun’s glare and into plain view.

The expanse of white went on and on, for hundreds and hundreds of yards. Last night, it had looked like a cloud. This morning, the sun showed different. White canvas—or more likely cowhide—was stretched against a massive rib structure and swelled tight with hydrogen. Beneath it, on a comparatively short tether, hung a long, ark-like ship, easily as big as J.W.’s mansion.

“Criminently.” The wind ripped Hitch’s voice away from his own ears. “It’s a dirigible.”

Twenty-Four

HITCH HAD HEARD of dirigibles. They’d been big news during the war, bombing London and all that. But this was the first he’d seen of the beasts.

A double row of round windows lined the long side of the ship. On the back end, two massive propellers churned, thrumming like very big, very off-key bass fiddles. The ship’s bottom flashed egg-shell blue, the color of the sky. No wonder nobody had spotted it before. It blended right in.

It sank lower and lower, right over the grandstand. People scattered just as if they were being blown away by the propeller blast.

All around Hitch, the racing planes kept screaming right on toward the pylon. He was the only one facing the field, so he was the only one who could see what was going on. None of the other pilots probably even knew the rearmost plane had gone down.

The Jenny pitched her nose one degree too many toward the ground, and his hand on the stick came back to life. He hauled her nose up.

In the front cockpit, Jael leaned forward and clenched the rim with both hands. She shot him an agonized look over her shoulder.

All right. So
Schturming
had come to them, just like they’d hoped. Now the trick was to keep the thing here long enough to get Zlo off, without getting anybody else electrocuted. His heart pounded its way up his windpipe.

First thing he had to do was move out of the way before Zlo or one of his buddies spotted him. Otherwise, he and Jael would be the next ones to end up toast.

He hauled back on the stick, slammed the throttle forward, and screeched skyward into the protection of the sun’s glare. Then he banked wide around the end of the field and swooped in low to land behind the rows of parked motorcars. The Jenny didn’t exactly blend in, but she’d be a whole lot less conspicuous there than she was in the air. With any luck, the dirigible’s propellers would be running too loud for anybody to hear his own plane growling.

He cut the engine and jerked his safety belt loose.

Even before the plane stopped rolling, Jael squirmed around in her seat. She groped for his shirtfront, eyes wide. “What is it we are doing? We should fly to it!”

“Not yet!” He had to shout to be heard over the thrum of the big propellers. He jumped out and grabbed her arm to half-help, half-haul her out. “They’ll stick around for a little bit. They’ve obviously got something in mind. No sense buzzing around and getting ourselves shot out of the air like that guy back there. First, we find Earl and figure out what they’re doing.”

And when and if Hitch went back up there, Jael was staying firmly on the ground—even if he did have to tie her up. No way he was going to risk her jumping out of the cockpit again.

“C’mon,” he said. “And keep low!”

He hustled her through the motorcars, running bent over. In the bleachers ahead, people were screaming, fleeing.

One grizzled farmer in overalls shook his fist. “The Huns! The blamed Huns are invadin’!”

Hitch scanned for Griff. He’d be in the thick of the melee somewhere, trying to keep order.

Instead, Hitch spotted Earl.

Earl wasn’t scrambling. He stood with his head hung back, staring straight up past the brim of his ball cap, open-mouthed. He was probably slavering over the kind of engine that could power those monster propellers.

Schturming
kept right on dropping. By now, its sky-blue bottom was only a couple dozen feet off the ground. From this close, the thing looked like the hull of a pirate ship, planked and weathered—but without the barnacles. On the narrow end at the prow, two barn-sized doors split open and revealed a cavity with twenty or so men standing inside in ranks. Zlo, in his long coat and bowler hat, stood at the front. The eagle rode his shoulder.

Here it was then. Wouldn’t be any kind of a surprise if these guys pulled Tommy guns and started mowing everybody down.

The propellers cut out, and the whole ship bobbed. In the booming silence, the screams and the stamp of running feet suddenly sounded tinny and small.

At the near end of the bleachers, Hitch stopped short. He crouched in its shadow and pulled Jael down after him. Earl was still staring, so Hitch took advantage of the all-around shock to stick two fingers in his mouth and whistle, loud and sharp.

Earl twitched his head around.

The durn fool was going to get himself fried for sure. Hitch motioned him over.

Earl came running and ducked around the corner to join them. He skidded in the dust and sat down, his back to the bleachers. He looked at Jael. “Okay, sweetheart, so you’re not crazy.”

She stared past him. “The
glavni
, the Enforcement
Brigada
. To be able to do this, Zlo must have finished with killing them all!”

Up above, Zlo took a megaphone from his lieutenant in the red coat. “I give you greetings, Scottsbluff! You are wondering who I am and what I am wanting. So I will tell you. I am Rawliv Zlo. I am master of
Schturming
, and that makes me master of you. If you do not as I say, I will destroy your city, your farms. I will bring floods, and I will bring hail. And lightning. The storm you saw last time I was here? It is but nothing. Can you understand that?”

People stared and murmured. The screams became low-pitched wails.

A man with hulking shoulders—Campbell—pushed through to stand at the front. He looked grim. “What do you want?”

“I want what you call ransom. And, oh yes, I want my
yakor
.”

Hitch looked around at Jael.

She shook her head. “Then he does think I still have it.”

Oh, great. Hitch scowled. “What’s he going to do when he finds out it’s somewhere between here and Cheyenne?”