The Flux Engine (13 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s for the best.”

A look of stunned shock washed over Robi’s face.

“You son of a bitch,” she shrieked again, kicking and flailing as Crankshaft half-dragged, half-carried her away.

As the sounds of Robi’s curses faded below, Hickok turned to John.

“I gotta admit, I thought you’d take her side,” he said. “I know you weren’t together long, but I thought you’d become friends.”

“I am her friend,” John said, not really feeling it at the moment. “That’s why I had to keep her from getting hurt.”

A strange, self-satisfied smile drifted across Hickok’s face as he crushed out the remnants of his cigar.

“You’re smarter than I gave you credit for,” he said. “And I always thought you were a bright boy.”

“Thank you?” John said uncertainly, not really sure what to say.

“I’m impressed,” Hickok said. “You wanted to do right by your friend, so you did the thing that’s best, even though it hurt her. That takes more than brains, kid, that takes guts. I like a man with guts.”

A disapproving noise issued from Sylvia’s speaker box.

“Did either of you think that what’s really best for her may not be safety?” she said.

“It’s not just her,” Hickok said. “I wasn’t kidding about people out for revenge, they destroy everyone and everything around them. We don’t need that kind of trouble.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Sylvia said. “As usual.” There was a note of irritation in that addendum. “But you will have to face the consequences of your actions, especially you, John.”

John wasn’t sure what that meant.

“Haven’t you ever heard that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?” Sylvia said.

John looked at Hickok but the enforcer only shrugged.

“Uh, what?”

A burst of irritated static emanated from the speaker box.

“Men.”

Chapter 14

Distress

John slept fitfully in his narrow bunk aboard the
Desert Rose
. Hickok had showed him to a cabin so small that it was little more than a closet. The lone bunk was recessed in the wall with storage cupboards above, drawers below, and a thick squishy mattress that was deceptively comfortable. Despite that, however, his excitement over being aboard an airship, and his worry that Robi might get loose and kill him, conspired to keep him awake far into the night.

Finally, after listening to the rhythmic rumbling of the engines for at least an hour, he gave it up and got out of bed. Doctor Shultz always said a warm glass of milk would do the trick and at this point John was ready to try anything. It was too dark in his little cabin to get dressed properly, so he settled for pulling on his long shirt and padding barefoot out into the passage. The hallway was narrow with glowlamps mounted on opposite walls every ten feet or so. The lamps stood dark and inert, rendering the corridor almost pitch black. A lone streak of light, from some source farther along the passage, gave just enough light to see, illuminating a glittering scraproach made of a washer and a broken bolt as it scrabbled along the baseboard on legs of copper wire.

John shivered, instinctively shying away from the tiny unnatural creature. In his sleep-deprived state, he couldn’t remember which way led to the galley from his cabin, so he turned right and hoped for the best. He hadn’t gone more than a few steps before a familiar voice came drifting down the corridor.

“Just a brain?” Robi said.

“Afraid so,” Sylvia’s tinny voice responded.

“So much for appealing to your sense of sisterhood to get out of here.”

Robi sounded tired.

“Damn it!”

And still irritable.

“I’m still a woman,” Sylvia said, sounding a bit hurt. “I just have a different sort of body than most.”

That was an understatement.

“I still feel,” she went on. “I get happy and sad. I get bored and laugh and even love.”

“It must be strange,” Robi said. “Tell me,” she said after a pause. “What was he like?”

“Who?”

John wondered too.

“Ben Franklin. I mean he’s the one who … who …”

“Put my brain in a jar,” Sylvia finished. “He was amazing.” There was a burst of static that sounded remarkably like a sigh. “I met him near the end of the war for independence. He was one-hundred and seventeen then, but he didn’t look a day over ninety. Flirted with me something fierce, with my husband standing right there and all.”

“You were married,” Robi gasped. “Then why did you … you know.”

Sylvia paused for a long moment and John didn’t think she was going to answer.

“I was dying,” she said. “Consumption. Most of us who became brainboxes were dying.”

“I’m sorry,” Robi said. “I shouldn’t have—”

Before she could finish, the airship suddenly lurched violently, and John was thrown into the side of the narrow passageway. Bright colored stars exploded before his eyes and he slid down to the floor of the passage as it jerked and shifted around him. It took a minute for his eyes to focus again. When they did, he found the passage had stopped jerking about. He could hear the chugging of the steam engine much louder now, beating almost twice as fast as before.

Something had caused them to change course and put on speed.

“What are you doing down there?” Hickok’s voice washed over him from the darkness of the corridor.

“I hit my head when we changed course,” he said, lurching unsteadily to his feet. “What’s going on?”

“Trouble,” Hickok said, pushing past him. “Go get dressed, then meet me up in the galley. That’s behind you,” he added, before moving off down the hall.

John went back to his cabin and, after fumbling about in the dark for a few minutes, found the valve for the glowlamp and opened it. As the flux flowed through the open valve and dripped on the crystal, a ruddy light began to permeate the little space. His possessions amounted to the clothes he’d had on his back when Hickok had deputized him, and even those weren’t his. Robi had stolen them. After a few minutes of struggling in the cramped cabin, he managed to dress himself. He looked in the mirror and ran his hand through his hair with no visible effect. Satisfied that he was as presentable as he’d ever be, John turned off the glowlamp valve and made his way to the galley.

Crankshaft was already there, standing by the central table in a long, coal-stained nightshirt and muck boots. A soft cloth had been thrown over the table and the gun locker stood open on the wall. Five rifles were laid out in a neat row on the velvet cloth along with two shatter guns, and several boxes of ammunition.

“You do know how to load a rifle, Johnny,” he said by way of greeting. It wasn’t a question.

“Uh, yeah. The Thurger I was apprenticed to showed me.”

“Good,” Crankshaft said, tossing him a box of cartridges. “Come help me make sure these are all ready to go.”

John moved to obey, picking up one of the rifles.

“What’s going on?” he asked as he pulled the spring rod out of the magazine.

“Sylvia picked up a distress call,” Hickok’s voice suddenly filled the galley. He rose up out of the stairwell carrying several gun belts over his shoulder. He was dressed but had replaced his usual sword-and-gun belt with one that boasted two pistols. “I just talked to the Doc,” he said, tossing the belts on the table beside the rifles. “The Homestead’s under attack.”

“Who’d be fool enough to attack the Doc?” Crankshaft said. The note of open disbelief in the engineer’s voice made John wonder just who this Doctor was.

“Don’t know,” Hickok said, picking up one of the gun belts and settling it over his shoulder so it ran diagonally across his body. “Doc’s on his way here so I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

As Hickok picked up a second belt, John noticed that they weren’t traditional gun belts at all, but bandoliers. Each one settled over one shoulder and ran to the opposite hip, with a holster just under the rib cage. The second one held the enforcer’s short sword in a scabbard, attached, hilt down, on his back. As John watched, Hickok wound a long black thread around the lip of the scabbard then tied it off around the hilt of his sword. The thread was strong enough to keep his sword from falling out, but weak enough to break the moment Hickok pulled on it.

With the sword secured, the enforcer threw the bandolier over his shoulder. He wore his regular guns backwards and high on his waist, cavalry style. One by one he drew them, checking their loads with a precision born of practice, then returned them to their respective holsters. Then he checked the ones in the bandoliers. The entire operation took less than twenty seconds.

Satisfied that he was sufficiently armed, Hickok tossed one of the remaining belts to Crankshaft, then handed the last one to John.

“You know how to use one of those?” he said, nodding at the pistol sticking out from the holster.

“N-no, sir,” John said, unable to keep the quiver of anxiety from his voice.

“Well it ain’t a lifter engine,” he said, pressing the belt into John’s trembling hand. “Just point it at whatever you want to go away and pull the trigger.”

“Yes sir,” John said. He stood there for a second, feeling the weight of the flux pistol. It seemed bigger than he thought it should be, but having never actually held one, he had no real basis for comparison.

“Well, don’t just stand there, Deputy Porter, strap her on.”

John obeyed, threading the belt through the brass loop on its opposite end, then buckling it tight, before tying the thigh strap. The holster hung low on his leg, western style, unlike Hickok’s, but John was in no mood to complain.

“You’re going to need this, too,” Hickok said.

John looked up to find the big enforcer handing him a shiny silver badge. The sword and gear of the enforcer brigade was stamped on it over the word “‘Deputy.”.’ Quickly, John pinned it to the front of his waistcoat.

“Now Doc Terminus is a friend of mine,” Hickok said, inspecting the rifles. “He’s the one who patched you up,” he said to John. “I don’t know what the trouble is, but whatever it is, you let me handle it, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” John said.

“I want you with me up on the quarterdeck. Reload rifles as I shoot and keep your head down. Crankshaft will cover us from the bow with the shatter gun.”

A burst of static from the speaker mounted in the room announced Sylvia’s presence. “We’re almost there,” she said. “You should be able to see the Homestead in a few minutes.”

Hickok tucked two of the flux rifles under his arm, then retrieved a pair of field glasses from the gun locker.

“Let’s go,” he said.

The three of them stepped out into the pre-dawn light. Frigid wind whipped around him, making John wish Robi had stolen a coat to go with his vest. Hickok mounted the steps to the quarterdeck above, depositing his rifles by the rail. John hurried behind, placing the remaining rifles by the first two and stacking boxes of ammo near them.

“Over there,” Crankshaft said, moving beside Hickok and pointing.

John looked over the rail, his eyes following Crankshaft’s outstretched arm. Rolling hills of grass spread out below them, monotonous in their featureless regularity. As John looked, however, one of the hills moved, sliding sideways between two of its fellows. A moment later a puff of black soot issued from it, tracing a dark streak across the lightening sky. Something glinted in the light, above the moving hill, and John squinted hard, trying to bring it into focus.

“Here,” Hickok said, passing John the field glasses.

With the aid of the glasses, John could see the moving hill better. It wasn’t a hill at all, but a grass-roofed building sitting on a round platform with a yard and a garden surrounded by a picket fence. The sight was surreal since below the house and the fence were eight massive steel legs that moved everything above it like a giant spider. The gleam in the sky turned out to be an airship, hanging in the air a fair distance from the spider-house.

Why weren’t they moving in?
John wondered.

A second later John had the answer. As the spider-house turned to move around a stand of scrubby trees, a massive anti-airship gun came into view, jutting up from the platform behind the house. It flashed, firing with enough force to push the entire platform, and a black eruption of smoke appeared just short of the airship. Whoever they were, they were keeping just out of range of the massive gun.

“Looks like the Doc’s keeping them at bay,” Crankshaft said from the other side of Hickok.

“Look closer,” Hickok said. “Pour it on, Sylvia,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Bring us in right over top of the Homestead.”

The
Desert Rose
shuddered beneath their feet as Sylvia complied with Wild Bill’s orders. Trying to hold the glasses steady, John peered hard at the spider-house. Flying all around it, like gnats, were tiny flying vehicles. They were cigar-shaped, with barrel-like tops positioned over a long, thin steam engine. Two men sat on each of them, one facing forward, obviously the pilot, and a rear-facing man firing a Gatling gun. Two counter-rotating propellers in the aft drove the machines forward as they raced around the Homestead, raking the platform and the house with fire from their guns.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Crankshaft said. “Who are they?”

“Air pirates,” Hickok said.

John knew about airship pirates who raided homes, airships, and towns on the southern fringe of Alliance territory. It was strange to find them so far north.

“Damn hillbillies,” Hickok muttered. He turned from the rail and picked up a rifle, feeling its weight and checking the sights and the flux valve.

“They’ve seen us,” Crankshaft said.

“Won’t they run away now?” John asked, squinting through the glasses.

“Not likely,” Hickok said. “Get down behind the rail.”

John handed back the field glasses and did as he was told. Crankshaft passed him one of the shatter guns, then picked up the other and headed to the bow. Hickok moved back to the rail and braced his hip against it, raising the flux rifle to his shoulder.

“When I say Gun, you pass me a rifle and take the one I have,” he said. “Keep reloading unless we’re boarded; if that happens, defend yourself with the shatter gun.”

“Y-yes sir,” John stammered. He raised his head to peer through the stiles of the rail. A group of the cigar-shaped flyers had broken off their attack on the Homestead and were heading straight for them. With their guns facing the rear, no bullets raked the
Desert Rose
, but if one overflew them, all that would change.

Hickok’s rifle boomed as the crystal hammer hit the flux charged cartridge. The weapon kicked and John could hear the ring of the crystal slug buried beneath the crack of the weapon. Out over the rail, the air pirates kept coming. Hickok swore and adjusted his sights before firing again.

This time an air pirate slumped over the controls of his flyer and it dropped rapidly out of sight. The enforcer fired three more times, scoring only one more hit before the cigar-shaped craft overflew them.

“Down!” he yelled, ducking behind the central smokestack that rose up from the middle of the deck.

The gunners on the back of the flyers cranked their guns, raking the deck of the
Desert Rose
with a hail of bullets. A thunderous boom from the bow heralded Crankshaft’s entry into the fight. A second later there was a second boom and a cloud of steam as the boiler tank of one of the flyers exploded, pierced by the shatter gun’s shot. Screaming from the burning steam, the doomed craft’s gunner leapt free of it as it disappeared over the side. The slightly scalded man landed on the deck and rolled, coming up with a pistol in his hand.

A pistol that was no match for Crankshaft’s shatter gun.

A second blast caught the air pirate full in the chest, sending him backward over the rail through a cloud of red mist.

“Gun,” Hickok shouted. John had been so mesmerized by what was happening in the bow, he’d forgotten his job.

He grabbed a loaded rifle from the deck and handed it to Hickok, accepting the empty one in return. John fumbled with the ammo box, fishing out the glowing cartridges and feeding them into the rifle’s magazine.