Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology (26 page)

Winnie picked up the pipe, and slid the plunger in and out. She didn't dare blow into it now, for fear of alerting Stone. Resolving herself, she looked up at De Falco and asked, “Will you teach me how to command your mechanical men?”

As the night progressed, Joshua grew worse. After the first plans were discussed, he withdrew, clenching his eyes shut and covering his ears with his hands, huddled and rocking against the wall. When Winnie asked him what was wrong, he removed one hand from his ear, keeping his eyes closed, and tapped, “Ants.”

Winnie held up the illuminator and searched, but found nothing. “I don’t see any ants, Mr. Sayre.”

“Ants inside me,” he responded.

Winnie was quiet for a long moment, unsure of how to respond. Finally, she said, “Those aren’t real ants.”

“I know,” Joshua said. “Could stop real ants.”

For all his intelligence and skill, Joshua’s demons went beyond muteness. Winnie was so used to communicating in code that it had been easy to forget that. She had to admit, her own fears and worries felt a little like insects crawling up her spine and under her skin, too. If she couldn’t filter out these feelings and selectively blind herself to the desperation they faced, she could see herself overwhelmed by despair.

For all she knew, Joshua lacked that emotional control.

She sat down beside him, and said, “Just focus on what we talked about, Mr. Sayre. Focus on what we need to do when we get aboard the airship. We’ll follow the plan, and we will be okay. Just focus on what needs to be done.”

It did not work immediately, but over time, he seemed to get better. At some point before dawn, after their limited preparations were complete, fear had temporarily given way to discomfort and rising frustration within the confines of the storage room.

Joshua's illumination device had been tied up with salvaged wires to Grace's arm, hidden by her sleeve. If Stone didn't look too closely, and if she kept her arms folded, and if it didn't come loose, then perhaps the bulge wouldn't be noticed. Winnie hadn't recognized so many ifs when they formulated their plans earlier that night. Now that it was too late to change anything, the potential failures loomed.

The darkness and silence that followed seemed to help Joshua. At one point, Winnie thought he had fallen asleep. The respite did not last long. Outside, they heard male voices and the sound of equipment being moved. Winnie checked the pitch-pipe tucked inside her skirt under her own blouse. It didn't feel very secure, but she didn't know how to improve on it. She found herself entertaining a futile hope that Stone would forget about them, leaving them locked up as he fled with the mechanical men in the airship, and that they'd be able to escape or be rescued by the other workers on Monday morning.

In the darkness, she heard a message lightly tapped on the floor. “Scared.” Joshua was awake.

“Me, too.” Winnie answered in kind, tapping softly on the floor

“It’s worse when I’m scared,” came Joshua’s response.

She didn’t know how to help him. “Focus on plan. We will be okay.” In spite of her words, her own terror was rising. In a few minutes, they could all be dead.

A key rattled in the lock, and the door swung open. Stone and two other men stood at the door, silhouetted by the faint light of early dawn through the skylights. Stone trained one revolver on the group, his second gun tucked into his neatly pressed trousers, and commanded them to exit the storage room one at a time.

A swarthy, bearded man with a scarred face and a large, curved knife at his waist roughly checked De Falco's coat for hidden weaponry.  Grace kept her arms folded, carefully concealing Joshua's illuminator. She looked more frightened than deceptive, an effect augmented by the very real dread on her face. The third man—a short-haired fellow in a long coat and with an almost military bearing—looked them over with a focused stare, but did not act as though he noted anything amiss.

They were marched, under the constant threat of Stone's gun, up a set of stairs and outside onto a raised platform behind the building. An airship was moored at the platform, bridged by planks that slowly rocked and heaved as the airship swayed in the early morning breeze. Winnie and her companions were forced across the terrifying, makeshift gangway into the airship, where they were met by a fourth kidnapper, a youth no older than Joshua, who directed them through a door into a storage hold behind the main cabin.

The space was not much larger than the room in which they'd spent the night. It was filled with food and crates of equipment and paperwork taken from the factory. More importantly, it contained the mechanical men.

The door slammed shut behind them. It bore no lock, but there was no other exit but back through the main cabin. De Falco moved to the machine he referred to as “Emilio” and opened a panel on its back. Winnie and Grace worked together to loosen the wire ties on the illuminator, retrieving it from Grace's sleeve. Winnie handed the bundle to De Falco, who, with Joshua's help, connected it with the wires to the mechanical man's engine. It couldn't power the entire machine, but it would work as a silent, makeshift starter. Emilio had enough fuel for perhaps three minutes of operation.

Muffled sounds of argument penetrated the door, followed by bumps as the planks were pulled back into the main cabin. Joshua’s eyes darted back and forth, his jaw quivering in a mechanical motion He moved unsteadily to the wall, and pressed his ear close to listen. As he did so, he pressed the heels of his palms against his closed eyes, as if to block out the sight of the room.

De Falco kept a wary eye on the door as he finished the wiring and began cranking the illuminator. “Did any of you see any other guns?” he asked.

Grace shook her head, her eyes never leaving the door. “I forgot to look.”

Winnie said, “I only saw the knife the big man carried.”

“Let's hope, then,” De Falco said. “I don't expect they'll leave us back here unguarded for more than a few minutes.”

Joshua, eyes still clenched tight, lowered one hand to drum on his leg. His hand quivered, the unsteadiness forcing him to communicate with his entire palm. While this forced him to message at a rate no slower than an average telegraph operator, to Winnie each letter and word arrived with almost unbearable slowness. “Too heavy want throw us out over Kansas”

De Falco looked at Winnie, unsure if he'd understood Joshua correctly. Winnie confirmed it with a somber nod. De Falco said, “I guess that settles it, then. It's life or death.”

“Life or death? What's going on?” asked Grace.

“Just stay down and stay safe,” De Falco told her.

Winnie watched Grace's expression harden. She knew the look. It usually meant they were about to get into deep, deep trouble, and there was no chance of talking Grace down.

Grace stared at De Falco, and with a voice of glassy calm said, “Mr. De Falco, if these men truly mean us harm, then there is no staying safe, and I am not sitting this out. I mean to be married tomorrow, and God help these men if they get in my way.”

De Falco seemed about to protest, but Winnie shook her head in warning.

The engines of the airship began to rumble, and the floor pitched slightly. They were moving. Winnie had never been in an airship before, and under any other circumstances, she would be thrilled by the adventure. De Falco struggled to get Emilio off its mount. Joshua and Winnie assisted while Grace watched the door.

In spite of their careful efforts, the heavy mechanical man landed harder than expected as they set it on the floor. The noise wasn't loud against the drone of the engines, but it resounded against the floorboards, and would certainly be felt through the gondola. It would not be ignored.

Stone had been careful not to leave the control panels inside the storage cabin, but they would not be necessary. Winnie pulled out the pitch-pipe, and adjusted the slide to the E note—Emilio's frequency.

“Now,” De Falco urged Winnie, as he touched a control to start the machine. Joshua's device ignited the kerosene burner, and the internal engine whirred to life without a sputter.

Winnie blew a staccato sequence of dits and dahs through the pitch-pipe. The mechanical man raised one arm over its head. On Winnie’s whistled the command, Emilio maneuvered next to the door. It stepped heavily but with surprising speed.

As Winnie blew the code to stop, the door swung open, and Stone stepped through, angrily pointing his gun at De Falco.

On Winnie’s command, Emilio's arm swung down, smashing Stone's forearm. The explosive report from his revolver drowned out the snapping noise from his arm. Smoke from the discharge filled the room as the gun clattered to the floor. De Falco lunged ahead, but Stone reeled backwards out of reach, back into the main cabin.

The plan had been for Emilio to pin Stone against the wall, but everything was changing too fast for Winnie to keep up. Frantically, she commanded Emilio to pivot and charge through the door at Stone. Stone’s right arm hung uselessly at his side. As he backed up against the front window of the gondola, he drew his second revolver with his left hand.

Winnie ducked back behind the wall into a crouch. Stone fired four shots at the advancing machine. Two shots hit metal, the third struck the floor, but on the fourth, the wall erupted next to where Winnie huddled.

Behind the wall, she heard Emilio's heavy footfalls stumble, a window shatter, and a rapidly fading scream. 

Winnie tried to stand, but pain arced through her back. She fell to her hands and knees. “I think I've been shot,” she blurted in surprise, her voice barely audible in her own ears over the sudden howl of wind through the cabin.

De Falco plunged through the smoke and into the main cabin. Grace retrieved the fallen revolver and followed.

Joshua rushed to Winnie's side, making a low, keening sound like an animal. He fell to his knees, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes.

“I’ll be fine!” Winnie wanted to tell him to focus on the plan, but there was nothing left of the plan. “As soon as we’re home, I’ll be fine. Just help them!” She punctuated her words by tapping “help” on the floor with her hand.

At Winnie’s words, Joshua lowered his hands and he stood. With a cry, he charged through the swirling smoke and into the main cabin.

On the other side of the wall, the struggle continued. A gun fired twice, and glass shattered. Winnie crawled through the door, her back stinging with every movement, shoving the pitch pipe into her lips to command Emilio’s aid. She was just in time to see Joshua tackle the youngest of their kidnappers, forcing him to drop a large wrench. The man with the long coat, his face bloodied, lay prone at De Falco’s feet. And Grace, just to the side of the door, held Stone’s smoking revolver. The bearded man lay collapsed on the floor as he cradled his bleeding hand.

Stone and Emilio were nowhere to be seen, but the giant glass window and guardrail to the fore of the cab had been smashed.

As rapidly as it had begun, the encounter ended. Wind blew through shattered windows, clearing out the smoke from the gunshots. Grace persuaded Joshua to release his captive. Under De Falco’s watchful eye, and Grace’s unwavering gun muzzle, the two functional crewmembers piloted the airship back to De Falco's laboratory.

The stitches in Winnie’s back itched as much as they stung. Stone’s errant shot had sent a small fragment of wood from the wall into her back. By mid-afternoon, she was unsure which was worse: the wound or the stitches she desperately wanted to scratch. 

“I still can’t believe you are going through with this tomorrow, after all we’ve been through,” she said.

Grace’s tiny bedroom was even more cramped with the two of them, but it would be the last night they’d suffer that problem together. Grace sat in her nightclothes, inspecting herself one last time in the mirror. Aside from lack of sleep, she was none the worse for wear. “After what we’ve been through, there is no way I’m not going through with it.”

Aunt Emily knocked on the door, and poked her head through. “There are two callers downstairs: Mr. De Falco and that mute boy.”

Grace laughed. “I’m in no state to be receiving guests tonight, even those two.”