The Flux Engine (16 page)

Just as Kest began thinking that the sound would go on forever, it changed, shifting from ear-splitting noise to a single, harmonious tone. It hung in the air for a moment, that perfect lingering sound, then a rushing noise filled the ship as the resonators locked together, projecting their individual tones down upon the earth below, all three concentrating on a single point.

As the sound waves converged, the earth was torn asunder, opening up into a black crack that grew wider and wider. The
Vengeance
pitched and bucked as the resonators continued discharging their power. The fissure in the ground yawned wider and suddenly surged up, as if some vast monster below was trying to thrust free of the confining surface of the world.

With a long, trembling shudder and the faint echo of ringing crystal, the resonators ceased, their energy spent. On the plain below, however, the earth continued to rise up, pushing into a cone-shaped pile. A ruddy orange light suddenly appeared in the smoking black crack at the summit of the burgeoning mountain.

“Withdraw to a distance of fifteen miles,” Kest said, slipping off his ear muffs.

“You heard the man,” Raff yelled, startling the bridge crew back into action. “All astern, right now, and get those resonator booms stowed.”

Everyone on the bridge leapt into action while Kest, Morgan, and Sira kept their eyes fixed on the growing mountain. Fire and smoke erupted from its top and a river of liquid rock began running down its near side.

The deck of the
Vengeance
shuddered as the engines once more began driving the outboard propellers, dragging the airship backward and away from the frothing mountain.

“Most impressive, my lord,” Sira purred.

“Not yet, it isn’t,” Kest replied, keeping his eyes on the mountain. At his words the towering pile of rock and dirt began to swell and bulge, heaving in and out as if it were breathing. “More speed, Captain.”

“That’s all she’s got,” Raff called over the noise of the bridge.

“Then give her some altitude!” Kest yelled back. “We’re still too close!”

Captain Raff yelled something in return but his words were swallowed up in an abrupt roar that threatened to deafen them all. The new mountain exploded, hurling dirt, rocks, and molten lava high into the sky. The force of the blast slammed into the
Vengeance
, pushing her and turning her in the air as if she were a toy. Three windows on the observation platform shattered, spraying the bridge in shards of glass. Kest felt a razor-edged piece trace a line of fire across his cheek as he turned his head from the blast.

The next thing he knew he was lying on the floor. Alert sirens were wailing as his hearing gradually came back and he rolled onto his back and sat up. Morgan was up, of course, and he extended his hand to help Kest. A large shard of glass protruded from Morgan’s left bicep but that didn’t seem to bother him much. As Kest rose he could see through the forward windows and the open space where the glass had been on the observation deck. Below, the new volcano was spewing lava and ash into the air in earnest, covering the nearby land in darkness. A column of fire rose straight up from its center, burning a hole in the roiling cloud above and lighting it in an eerie, orange light. Blue-white spears of lightning arced down from the roiling cloud of spreading debris, lighting up the scene of destruction. The surrounding hills were blackened and bare, every tree and blade of grass torn away by the force of the blast, leveled for as far as the eye could see.

“Come about, Captain,” Kest yelled over the din as chunks of burning rock began to pelt down on the
Vengeance’s
hull. “Get us out of here.”

Chapter 17

Castle Rock

For the first time in her life, Robi actually felt like she was in prison.

It was frightening.

Sure, she’d been locked up in lots of places, jails, cages, storerooms, and even once in a root cellar. But all those things had one thing in common. All of them had a way out. There were locks that could be picked, windows or bars that could be wiggled through, stupid or inattentive guards, or better yet, someone bribable. Compared to those, however, the tiny cell aboard the airship
Desert Rose
was an impenetrable vault. The mechanism holding the door shut was simple enough, a pneumatic piston under the floor slid the door back and forth in a metal track, locking into position with several hundred pounds of steam pressure. Like all prisons, it had a weakness, the boiler. If the ship lost steam pressure, the door would slide open easily. Unfortunately that also meant that the airship’s lift engine would fail and the whole thing would come hurtling out of the sky like a stone, cell, prisoner, and all.

Robi had always been able to control her circumstances in the past. She was charming and pretty, the kind of girl most people didn’t see as a threat. Except for Wild Bill Hickok. He’d looked her over with his cold, icy-blue eyes and taken her measure straight away.

He and his intelligent flying prison gave Robi the creeps.

Footsteps sounded along the narrow hallway outside her cell. She hoped it was John, finally coming to talk to her, or even the old engineer, but the heavy tread sounded of hard-soled boots; that could only be the enforcer.

“Good evening, miss,” he said, stepping into view, sweeping over her and the cell with a practiced gaze. “You’ll be happy to know we’re coming up on Castle Rock.”

“Oh,” Robi said, trying not to sound nervous.
Damn his eyes.

“I checked with the authorities and they tell me that you ain’t wanted for anything here in the territory of Desert Star, so once we dock, you’re free to go.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” Hickok nodded.

“What about Derek Morgan?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm. “What about his boss, the man pulling his strings. If you want him, you’re going to need my help.”

Hickok laughed.

“Missy, I’ve been finding dangerous, hard to find men since before you were born. I think I can handle this one without your help.”

“I know what he looks like.” Robi smiled and tapped her forehead with her long, slender forefinger. “I’ve seen him. I bet your psychic could pick up his trail, maybe even find him if he had what’s locked up in my head.”

“Maybe,” Hickok said, then he banged on the bars with his knuckles. “But I fought with him, so I think I already know what he looks like. Open her up, Sylvia.”

The muffled hiss of a steam piston issued from beneath the floor and the cage door slid aside. Robi had to restrain herself as the desire to leap from the cell washed over her. She took a breath as Hickok stepped back from the opening, then she stepped calmly out.

“I meant what I said,” Hickok said. “Once we dock, you’re free to do as you like. If you want to come with us to the Prophet, I won’t stop you, but I ain’t making you any promises.”

A burst of static issued from Sylvia’s speaker box. “You’d better get topside, Bill,” she said. “Something’s happened.”

Hickok’s hand seemed to drift involuntarily toward the hilt of his gun as he looked up at the box.

“Trouble?”

“I don’t know,” Sylvia’s voice returned, sounding frustrated. “The frequencies for the Etherium Telegraph are overloaded and it’s bleeding into our private band. It’s as if every station in the Alliance is trying to send messages all at once.”

“Have we heard anything from the Prophet?” Hickok said.

“I don’t think so,” Sylvia said, “but there’s so much interference I can’t be sure. What I do know is that there are seventeen airships headed into Castle Rock at the same time. The dock master is having trouble directing all of them.”

Hickok swore and darted away toward the front of the ship. Robi hesitated a moment. Emergencies were good times to look around and see what people kept hidden, but after three days in that tiny cell, she yearned to be outside. She turned and followed Hickok. The hallway led forward past several doors and an open cargo area, ending in a steep, ladder-like stair with gleaming brass rails running upward.

Without slowing, Robi hauled herself up the stair to an open hatch and then out onto the top deck of the airship. A blast of cool air, smelling strongly of smoke and salt, hit her and almost drove her back. It pulled at her hair, sending it flowing out in long streams behind her and Robi could feel the darkness of incarceration being peeled away by that cleansing wind.

She reveled in the feeling for a moment, then moved to the forward rail. Hickok was already there, pointing down over the side at something she couldn’t see. John stood next to him, hanging on to a round signal box, the kind used to send messages with flashes of light. A momentary burst of anger burned through her as she saw him. Since the day of the attack John hadn’t come to see her, not even once. She wanted to be angry, but the pure joy of freedom stripped it away. She was still mad at John, but she’d have to punish him appropriately later.

Robi moved to the rail, standing on the other side of the enforcer from John. Below them a vast brown plain stretched out, dotted occasionally by green farms where the ground had been aggressively irrigated. Roads ran along the ground, like the spokes of a great wheel, all running to a tightly packed city on the shore of a green lake so big it seemed more like a land-locked sea. Elevated train tracks ran out from the city into the lake, heading for a massive plateau of rock that thrust up out of the water almost a thousand feet, like some tall island. The top of the plateau was flat, except for a slender turret of rock that rose upward from its center, like the watchtower of a medieval fortress. It was supposed to be the solidified magma plug from a long dead and gone volcano but it seemed too perfect, as if sculpted there by some giant hand.

This was Castle Rock, the city in the middle of the Great Salt Lake, and the home of some of the most advanced, and wealthy, crystal growers in the Alliance. If there was a place in the world to find out about John’s missing crystal, Castle Rock was it.

The
Desert Rose
closed on the city quickly, flying over the shore-side city below and across the water, making for the plateau and the spire at its heart. As they approached, Robi could see the great lifts where whole train cars were raised from the tracks below to the city above. On the pillar, she could see the pilgrim’s walk, a stairway spiraling around the shaft of stone leading to the building at the top, a temple dedicated to the Builder. Below the temple were several rings of other buildings, some carved into the rock, others sticking out, supported beneath with delicate looking buttresses. Roofs of red and blue tile shone in the sunlight over banks of glittering windows. Most of these were the homes of Castle Rock’s rich and powerful.

Hiro had told Robi of those houses and the riches they held. She’d been to Castle Rock before, but only briefly. She’d never had a chance to scout out those wealthy homes. Maybe now …

No.

For the first time since his death, Robi had a chance to find her father’s killer. Nothing would distract her from that goal. Not even the vast wealth of Castle Rock.

A burst of unintelligible static drew Robi away from the scenery. Hickok had his head pressed against one of Sylvia’s speaker boxes mounted on the forward rail and John was staring fixedly over the side at something below.

“What?” Hickok yelled.

Another burst of static issued forth and Hickok looked up.

“Make for Jane’s place,” he yelled back, then turned to John. “They’ve closed all access to the upper docks. We’re going to a private dock down there,” he pointed over the side. “Point the light at that ship.”

John adjusted the signal light to point at a massive cargo hauler that hovered below them. As soon as he finished, the light began to work on its own, the shutters opening and closing as it flashed its signals in Jefferson cypher. Robi noticed that one of Sylvia’s mechanical eyes was mounted to the front of the device, allowing her to control the signals and to interpret any return reply.

Robi shuddered. Hickok’s airship was way too smart. Mechanica weren’t supposed to be smart; they were supposed to be predictable, circumventable, trickable.

“He says he doesn’t care that you’re an enforcer,” Sylvia’s voice squeaked from its box, barely heard over the rush of the wind. “He refuses to alter course.”

Hickok let out a long string of swear words artfully crafted into nearly complete sentences, then yelled into Sylvia’s voice box.

“Drop the gun.”

A shudder ran through the
Desert Rose
and she slowed a little as if there was suddenly more drag on her. There was a clank of metal, as if something had locked into place, then Hickok smiled. Robi knew that enforcers were always better armed than they seemed. In this case, she realized, Hickok’s ship had a belly gun, a large caliber weapon designed to strike other airships or targets on the ground.

A gun controlled by an intelligent ship, capable of assessing threats and responding on her own.

It was official: Robi liked Sylvia the woman, but Sylvia the airship—terrified her.

“Now you tell that fat son of a whore that if he doesn’t stop blocking the approach lanes, I’ll blow him out of the sky and we’ll see how well he floats,” Hickok yelled.

Sylvia started clicking away but before she got even half the message sent, the cargo ship began to veer away. Apparently the sight of the gun had settled the argument.

“Finally,” Hickok said. “Pull in the gun and take us down.”

“What was that about?” Robi asked.

“Darned if I know,” the enforcer said. “It’s like everyone’s gone crazy. I’ve never seen more than two or three airships come in at one time and now suddenly there’s twenty all wanting to land at once.”

“It looks like there’s at least that many wanting to take off,” John said, looking over the side.

Robi looked at the main skydock, built just to the side of the lifts where cargo movement would be simplest. At least a dozen airships were pouring smoke from their stacks indicating their readiness to leave. A quick scan of the city revealed more plumes rising from private docks.

“Something’s got them spooked,” Robi said.

“What?” John said.

“Must be whatever’s jamming the telegraph,” Hickok said.

“I thought Sylvia said she couldn’t make sense of it,” Robi said.

Hickok nodded, sweeping his arm toward the city. “I bet they can’t either. Whatever’s up, it’s just rumor and half-truth at this point. No one knows what’s really going on, but everyone knows enough to be scared. That’s when people are the most dangerous.”

“My father used to say that in confusion, there was profit.”

“This isn’t confusion, Miss Larin,” Hickok said. “This is panic. You ever see a herd of razorhorns stampede?”

Robi had to admit she hadn’t.

“It happens fast,” the enforcer explained. “Something spooks them and suddenly they’re off and running, a ten-ton juggernaut with hundreds of feet and not one thought but to run. Builder help anyone caught in their path.”

“What’s your point?” she asked.

“People are just the same,” Hickok said.

“Don’t people pull together in a crisis?” John asked.

“Sure, when it’s something they can see or something they can fight. How do you fight a rumor?”

John shrugged.

“Exactly,” Hickok said. His guns were tucked into a red sash he wore around his waist and he tugged them experimentally, making sure they were only held loosely. “Now, when we land, stick close to me,” he said. “If anyone asks if we know anything, just say no.”

The buildings below had grown as they approached. Now Robi could see the airships hovering at their docks, like pent up racehorses waiting for the trumpet to sound so they could go sprinting into the sky. Sylvia appeared to be making for a small, well-kept boarding house on a normally quiet street.

“I’m liking this less and less,” Hickok said, watching throngs of people running up and down the streets. “John, go get one of the shatter guns and buckle on that pistol I gave you.”

“Do you think there’ll be trouble?” Robi asked, not sure she believed such a thing was possible in such a great city.

“I always expect trouble, kid,” Hickok said as John hurried aft. “That’s why I’m still alive.”

“How are we going to get through all that?” Robi looked at the throngs below.

Hickok turned to her and she would have sworn those icy blue eyes actually sparkled for a moment as he smiled.

“There’s a trolley running up to the spire not two blocks from here,” he said. “That’s why I picked Jane’s place.”

“Sure it is.” Sylvia’s voice carried a distinct note of disapproval.

By the time John returned, Sylvia had brought the
Desert Rose
down over the city, slipping up next to a dock outside a sturdy green building. A sign above a set of saloon doors at the end of the dock read;
Jane’s Boarding House, Reasonable Rates by the Day or the Week. Board included.

As they drew alongside, John dropped the docking clamp in place and Sylvia extended the gangway. No sooner had Hickok stepped off the airship, however, than a stocky man with a flux rifle appeared from the saloon doors. He wore a plaid shirt and simple denim pants that accentuated his wild, unkempt hair and beard. Dark, malicious eyes stared out from below bushy eyebrows and his teeth glinted yellow behind a crooked smile.

“I’m Big Mike Johnson,” he declared in a loud voice. “I’m commandeering your ship as of now. Anyone who doesn’t want to get shot had better—”

Robi never found out what those who didn’t want to get shot should do, because at that moment, Hickok whipped out one of his pistols and shot Big Mike in the foot. The man howled in pain and collapsed to the dock, dropping his rifle in the process.

“You shot me,” he screamed as Hickok stood over him.