Hang Fire - A Short Story (Age of Steam)

  Cedar Hunt sighted down the length of his rifle, taking aim at the metal contraption bearing down fast behind Rose Small.

  Rose was dazed, her hat had fallen back to rest between her shoulders, the chin strap tugged tight around her throat. A thin streak of blood smeared the side of her cheek.

  Her horse was nowhere to be seen. Cedar knew she was a smart woman and wouldn't have gone running off on foot into the forest on a foolish whim.

  She must have heard Cedar yell. She must, at this moment, hear the metal device puffing and clattering behind her.

  But she turned toward him, not toward the danger.

  And in doing so, put herself dead center in the line of fire.

  Cedar swore under his breath and jerked the rifle down. He bolted across the forest floor, aiming to reach Rose before the matic did.

  Wil, still in wolf form, and Mae Lindson rushed after him.

  Maybe it was the flicker of light sliding like oil down the trip wire. Maybe it was the sudden knowledge that Wil was trying to twist to the side before his feet hit the ground.

  Whatever it was, Cedar had just enough time to pivot and wrap his arms around Mae before the forest floor opened up beneath them and they fell into darkness.

  The Swift fell through the sky like a man tripping off a cliff.

  "Hold her steady!" Captain Hink yelled. He braced one boot against the open door and gripped the overhead bar as his airship screamed down, her tin bones singing, all the steam and power out of her, just like he'd told his crew he wanted.

  Mr. Guffin, at the helm, was swearing in French and doing a surprisingly good job of it. That might have made Hink wonder about the man's parentage, if they weren't currently plummeting to their imminent death.

  Mr. Ansell worked the Swift's wings, keeping them tight, so they could take the fall as level as possible. He was also singing a song he must have picked up while they were out Chicago way. It was a mournful tune that went well with the short, stout man's surprisingly operatic voice. Hink would have enjoyed hearing the whole ditty, but Mr. Ansell only sang when things were going very, very wrong.

  And that was about to change.

  The two airships on their tail were still climbing, still gunning ahead. Heading for the glim fields. Heading for Captain Hink's glim stake.

  Which was another thing he wasn't about to let happen. All the Swift needed was a belly full of fire to bring her back to life.

  "Hit the bell," he hollered to Mr. Guffin. Then, back toward his boilerman who would not hear him through the thick metal door at the rear of the ship, "Molly Gregor, give her steam!"

  Mr. Guffin was tugging on the bell wire so hard, Captain Hink thought he'd break it straight through.

  They needed canons, they needed lift, and by God and glim, they needed steam.

  "Steam," he whispered, "give her steam, give her steam." Every kick of his heart tapped out a beggar's eternity.

  He glanced out the port door. Land was coming up pretty damn fast to make acquaintance of his little ship. And though he'd had more than his share of chances to look his own death straight in both eyes, he was not about to go softly into that night.

  "Molly!" he yelled.

  Then he felt one shuddering thump.

  Chapter 8

  Cedar Hunt's heart thumped hard, trying to beat the breath back into his lungs. He'd landed on his shoulders and hip, but had had enough sense not to tense up during the fall.

  No, the only thing he'd kept tight was his hold on Mae Lindson, making sure that when they did finally hit the bottom of this pit, she fell on top of him instead of the other way around.

  It left him in a position both awkward and pleasant, with him flat on his back and Mae situated down the full length of his body.

  For a moment, he tightened his grip on her and closed his eyes, savoring the weight of her body against his, savoring the pressure of her breath as she inhaled, exhaled, gathering herself.

  He wanted this. Wanted her. But he knew her needs might not match his. Especially with the death of her husband so fresh in her mind.

  Mae shifted, pushing up just enough that she could look down at him. He didn't think she could see him in the inky blackness, but the curse the Pawnee had planted in him did a fair bit of good for his eyesight in the dark.

  He saw her as if she were made of sunlight. Dirt smudged her cheek and jaw, and bits of leaves caught in her hair, her bonnet having dislodged in the tumble.

  She was searching his face, not frightened or worried. No, she was considering him, maybe considering them, together.

  "Mr. Hunt," she said softly. "Are you all right?"

  He smiled at the concern in her voice, though she wouldn't see it. "I'll be limping off a bruise. Not much more. And you, Mrs. Lindson?" He gently brushed a loose lock of her hair away from her face.

  At his touch, she took in a breath, her lips parted, her gaze still searching for his features in the dark. "I'm right as rain," she said, maybe a little surprised at her own admission.

  Cedar didn't know if he should reply, or give in to his want and kiss her.

  Before he could decide, a blast drowned out his words and the world around them shuddered.

  Chapter 9

  The Swift shuddered. Another heavy thump rolled up through the airship's floorboards hard enough to rattle Captain Hink's teeth. Molly Gregor had fired up the boilers. They had steam!

  Captain Hink let out a whooping yell, and leaned out the port door to get a bead on the airships ahead and above them.

  "Mr. Seldom," he called out, "ready the canons."

  Mr. Seldom already had the nine-pound Napoleon loaded and ready to fire.

  "Headings, Captain?" Mr. Guffin at the helm was no longer swearing in French, or any other language.

  "I'll take the wheel, Mr. Guffin," Hink said. He pushed away from the door and held tight to the interior skeleton of the Swift as he jogged toward the front of the ship. With each slap of his palm against her tin bones, Hink could hear the sweet song of the Swift, as eager to fly as he was to take her high above the clouds.

  "Canons, Mr. Seldom?" He called back over his shoulder.

  "Ready, Captain."

  Mr. Guffin pulled his boots free from the floor bracers and scurried back to man the starboard guns.

  Captain Hink took the wheel and stomped his boots under the bracers. He latched a safety line from his harness to the rail above his head. "Looks like we've got a couple vultures come to pick our glim claim. Let's make it clear they're picking on the wrong edge of sky."

  He tugged the bell wire, telling Molly, back at the boilers, to give him every drop of steam they had.

  "Hold what you got, boys," Captain Hink yelled. "We're burning the blue."

  The Swift was a small ship, crewed by just the five of them. But she was the fastest, lightest glim trawler in the Cascade Range. Wasn't a ship that could outrun her. Wasn't a ship that could out maneuver her.

  And the glim jumpers just ahead of them were going to find out she was a damn sharp shot too.

  No matter how much a man equipped a vessel to make it otherwise, there were three things that would kill an airship dead as stone: a hole in her envelope, a fire in her hull, and a break in her boiler.

  Captain Hink brought the Swift up hard and tight behind the closest ship. She was a big brute of a craft. He didn't recognize the colors she was flying, but knew the flags on the ship just ahead of her: the Iron Draught, Les Mullins's boat.

  A chill snaked Captain Hink's spine. Mullins had been sniffing around his business a little too closely lately. To find his ship jumping Hink's claim was more than coincidence. Man had a grudge.

  Well, Hink was happy to oblige the settling of that grudge.

  "Mr. Seldom!" he yelled as he spun the wheel, broad siding the Swift and exposing a clean shot to the first ship's envelope and hull. "Fire!"

  Chapter 10

  The blast came from far above where Cedar Hunt and Mae Lindson lay in the pit.

  "Ro
se," they both said at the same time.

  Cedar quickly pushed to his feet, helping Mae do the same. He stared up at the narrow opening nearly two stories above them. This hadn't been some kind of hole dug for trapping animals–it was too deep. Nor was it an abandoned well–too large. It was most likely a mineshaft that had lost its roof.

  Whatever it was, there didn't look to be any easy way out of it.

  "Rose!" Cedar yelled to the young woman he'd tried to save from the mechanical device before the forest floor had swallowed him whole.

  In the tick of silence, wild thoughts pushed through his mind. Was she alive? Had his brother, Wil, found some way to save her? Had the explosion that shook the entire forest killed them both?

  The Pawnee curse deep in his bones pushed at his reasonable mind, the beast wanting out. Wanting to kill. If Wil were dead, if Rose were dead....

  No. Cedar held tightly to his sanity, to his humanity. Giving in to the beast would be easy but it would do him no good. He needed a man's thoughts, a man's reason.

  He needed to get himself and Mae out of this death trap.

  "Rose!" Mae called. "Are you there? Rose?"

  Nothing broke the silence except for Mae's stuttering breathing. She was afraid. Afraid Rose was dead.

  A shadow crossed over the mouth of the pit, and Cedar suddenly realized he didn't know where his gun was.

  A voice called out, "Mr. Hunt? Mrs. Lindson? Are you down there?"

  Rose! She was alive.

  "Yes," Cedar said. "We're fine. Are you all right?"

  "As much as," she said.

  "Wil?" he asked.

  She hesitated. Rose wasn't the kind of girl who sweetened up bad news. They'd all seen plenty of pain living this far out west. Wasn't any kind of balm that words could give the truth.

  Cedar's heart took to hammering at her silence. Was his brother dead? He couldn't lose him again so soon when he'd only just found him after all these years.

  Finally, she said, "He's...he's been hit."

  Chapter 11

  "Hit him again, Mr. Seldom!" Captain Hink ordered.

  His second had unloaded one shot directly into the unknown airship's envelope, but she was a big enough brawler to need another hole or two to send her back to land and away from Captain Hink's glim claim above the clouds.

  Mr. Seldom reloaded the nine-pounder in record time and aimed it out the port door, close to point-blank as they could get without scraping hulls. The blast from the canon was sweet music to Captain Hink's ears as he gave the Swift all steam and steered her out of the other ship's range.

  A spray of bullets nicked the hull, but a bullet or two wouldn't do much to an airship built out of tin.

  Captain Hink laughed. "Give me your eyes, Mr. Guffin."

  Mr. Guffin, on the starboard side door, pulled his breathing gear away from his face and swung out to the running board, harness line clipped to the side bar, hand on the deadman's grip.

  After a heartbeat or two, he swung back in. "She's black-plumed, Captain! Boilers are going to have to throw a lot more than smoke to get her down soft."

  "Nice shooting, Mr. Seldom," Captain Hink glanced over his shoulder at the Irish. Mr. Seldom gave him a one-handed salute, already busy wetting down the canon for another shot.

  "You bringing her back around for the other buzzard?" Mr. Guffin asked, chomping at the bit for his chance to fire off a round or two.

  Captain Hink gave it a moment of thought. Wasn't much in his nature to hesitate over anything to do with his ship, his crew, or his glim claim. But Les Mullins's ship, the Iron Draught, posed a bit of a puzzle.

  Hink had long suspected Mullins was tangled up with an old enemy, General Alabaster Saint. And Captain Hink had long suspected General Saint was the lynchpin behind the glim pirate trade that was a growing problem since the end of the war.

  But if Mullins was one of Alabaster Saint's spies, then that meant he knew Captain Hink was a US Marshal. Might even know that he was out here trawling the glim fields under pretense to find the pirates, the men they answered to, and the plans they had for stockpiling glim.

  "Captain?" Mr. Guffin asked again. "Orders?"

  Chapter 12

  "Rose," Cedar ordered, "make sure Wil's breathing."

  "He is, Mr. Hunt," Rose said. "But..." she moved away from the mouth of the pit, so that all Cedar could see were branches and the sky beyond.

  "Rose!" he called up again.

  "Sorry," she said, leaning back over the pit. "His leg is hurt. He won't stand on it."

  "What hit him?" Cedar asked.

  "That old rusted bucket of bolts I was chasing," she said. "Had some kind of safety on it. When I saw you and Mrs. Lindson take a tumble down into this pit, I hit the thing with a stick and knocked a valve free. Whole thing went up with an almighty pop. Not much left of it to salvage, though there might still be some use out of its little boiler. It's a clever thing, really, though I don't know what it was doing all the way out here in the nowhere of Oregon."

  "Rose," Cedar said, both happy to hear her in good spirits and wishing she'd get back to the matters at hand. "We're standing at the bottom of a pit."

  "Oh. Right. Sorry, Mr. Hunt. You see anyway up out of it?" she asked.

  "No tunnel to either side,"

  "Are you sure?" Mae Lindson, beside him, asked. She couldn't see through the darkness of the pit.

  He could. The Pawnee curse in his blood had some uses.

  "I'm sure," he said to her. Then to Rose, "I want you to go back to the Madders and get a rope. Our horses are tethered just due west, outside this stand of trees."

  "There's rope on my mule," Mae said. Then, louder, "Rose, there's a rope on Prudence. Should be long enough to reach us."

  "I'll be right back, then," Rose said. "Hold tight."

  Cedar was going to tell her to be careful, but there was no need. Other than getting a bug in her bonnet to chase after the metal contraption, Rose was one of the most level-headed people he knew.

  "Don't worry," Mae said. "If Wil hurt his leg, I have comfrey and other herbs that should help ease the pain."

  "Thank you," Cedar said. He held some hope that Mae's healing spells might have more than a good chance to mend Wil's leg.

  He wanted to pace, the beast inside him anxious and angry at being trapped, but instead, he searched for his rifle. Found it on the ground not too far from where they'd fallen.

  "Mae," he said, wondering if this might be his best chance of telling her his feelings for her. His real feelings. "I need to tell you something."

  "Yes, Mr. Hunt?" she said. "What is it?"

  Chapter 13

  "It is our corner of the sky, men!" Captain Hink said. "Let's give 'em hell!"

  "Aye, that, Captain!" Mr. Guffin shouted from the starboard door of the Swift.

  "Mr. Ansell, ready the wings," Captain Hink said. "We're about to make Mr. Mullins regret jumping our claim."

  "Aye, Captain," Mr. Ansell answered in deep baritone.

  Captain Hink knew he didn't have to tell Mr. Seldom what to do. His second seemed to be one step ahead of Captain Hink on most things and wasn't one to spare a word for anything but the most pertinent information.

  They were climbing, running due north toward their stake in the glim fields high above the clouds. If they kept this heading, they'd hit the glim in just a few minutes. Les Mullins's big brawler of a ship, the Iron Draught, had changed headings so that she too was running northward. Toward the glim. Hink's glim.

  The Swift was fast, but the Iron Draught had the guns to blow the smaller airship's tin bones to dust.

  It took a crazy-headed man to run down a ship that outgunned him and out-powered him three to one.

  Captain Hink just happened to be that kind of crazy-headed.

  "Ready the canon, Mr. Guffin."

  "Ready, Captain."

  Captain Hink adjusted the breathing gear so it buttoned to the lower edge of his goggles. "Brace for it, men!" He hit the bell wire, two long rings
, one short. Code for glim.

  He knew Molly Gregor would bail in the last drop of glim they still had.

  Glim. Wasn't a rarer thing in the world. It made fire burn hotter, crops grow stronger, and was said to extend a man's life well beyond his God-given years.

  And it most certainly did its part to keep airships in the sky.

  Behind him, he heard his crew latching harnesses to side beams, and buckling breathing gear tight.

  Ahead of him, he saw the Iron Draught, a wood, leather, and canvas open-hulled airship with a big balloon of an envelope, crewed by a dozen men and women. Men and women set on stealing his glim stake.

  The Swift seemed to pause, wings snapping out to steady her for the drive they were about to take. Captain Hink could feel the shudder of glim vibrate through her bones like an exhalation of pleasure.

  And then they bulleted forward, straight at the Iron Draught at ramming speed.

  Captain Hink aimed at the bigger ship's envelope.

  Gun fire blasted smoke and fire from the ship's hull, aiming to tear the little Swift to bits. But the Swift was made of tin, light, fast, and armored. She could take a hit or two.

  And she did.

  "Hold," Captain Hink said, though his men couldn't hear him over the sound of her tin bones singing. Just a little closer. Just a little more sky to go.

  Captain Hink ripped off his breathing gear. "Now!"

  Chapter 14

  Now, Cedar Hunt knew this was no time to hesitate, and yet he did. Mae Lindson had recently lost her husband. She was still grieving that loss. Cedar could see it in her eyes, could hear her sorrow when she slumbered at night.

  Standing here, in a pit they could not climb out of, seemed a strange place to admit his feelings for her.

  "Mr. Hunt?" Mae asked. "Cedar?"

  His heart surged at the sound of his name on her lips. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard against his need for her. To put his arms around her, to kiss her as a man should.