Captain Hink spun the lock on the door and pulled it open. He latched his rigging onto the overhead bar, then stepped out, one foot on the running board.
The wind was cold, the night made of teeth that bit through leather, coat, and wool, digging down into the meat of him.
The familiar hum of the Swift’s fans was absent. But there was another sound in the night besides the Swift. Another airship. Captain Hink closed his eyes and lowered his head, much like the praying man he’d never be. He knew the ships that worked the ranges. Knew the sight of them, the smell of them, and most certainly knew the sound of them.
He didn’t know who would be fool enough or desperate enough to be running at night. Air at night wasn’t favorable to most ships. Neither was seeing the elevation changes of the land. Weren’t enough lanterns for running by night to make much sense. And the wet that came along with the cold this late in the season was sure enough to send a ship down like a brick.
The wind stole away his hearing. Then another pounding explosion from the ship’s guns roared out. Too big a gun for Sweet Nelly, not nearly loud enough for Brimstone Devil. Who was out in these parts, wasting money and black powder firing out charges, looking, he knew, to flush them out?
He caught the huff of an engine, working at idle. The wind cut out the sound again, and he shifted his face so the wind was blowing straight into his eyes.
The distant engine caught, then pushed up strong again. Sounded like they had a wet mule in the firebox.
The Saginaw.
Captain Smith, who had the worst luck gambling Hink had ever seen, had lost his last boilerman in a five-card draw. He’d ended up taking on that Boston boy, who rode the furnace with the kind of subtlety he must have learned from working in his daddy’s slaughterhouse.
But why would Smith be out looking for them? Maybe the crewman he’d plucked from the Black Sledge had sent a flare to call up the next passing ship.
Naw, they’d dropped him from high enough, he wouldn’t be awake for a day at the least.
Hink wondered if Les Mullins had pulled himself off his cabin floor back at Stump Station and talked Smith into a little round-the-mountain look-see.
It was getting to weigh on his conscience, keeping these men at the chase. He much preferred to gun right for them and solve the problem on the clearest of terms—with firepower, or if they wanted the personal touch, fists.
A racket from inside the ship had Hink pulling his face out of the wind.
Seldom was cranking up the basket.
“I’ll be damned,” Hink said.
In that basket was a wolf. Looked common enough, gray fur with black at the head and tipping the ears. Except it was sitting that basket as easy as a conductor sits a train. Ears perked up, and tongue lolling.
Cedar Hunt said something to it, and the wolf held still until he and Seldom pulled the basket into the ship. Seldom gave Hink one last look—a chance for him to change his mind.
“Let the beast go, Mr. Seldom,” Hink said. “You do know we’ll kill it deader than Adam if it does any harm.”
Cedar Hunt pushed his hat down closer on his head. “There will be no need, Captain. Wil, stay with Mae and Rose.”
And darned if the wolf didn’t give Cedar Hunt a glance, then trot off to the hammock and the women.
“Buckle up and hold on to your saddles, ladies and gents,” Captain Hink said. “We’re flying this bird out of here.”
He strode to the prow of the ship and clamped his line onto the overhead, then stomped his boots into the floor belts. Cedar Hunt, Mae Lindson, and likely that wolf got themselves settled as Mr. Seldom secured the door and stowed the basket.
Another gunshot bloomed gold and white against the sky, licking across clouds and terrain alike. Coming from the northwest. Hink waited for the next shot, which would give him a better fix on which way the Saginaw was drifting.
“Captain?” Guffin asked.
Hink held up one finger for silence, then leaned forward to better scan the sky. Another boom roared out, a little farther north. Good enough—she was drifting back up to the stations on the west side of the mountains. All they had to do was ease out of here east-wise.
“Keep her low and slow, Mr. Guffin,” he said. “Due east, easy like.”
Captain Hink pulled the bell line and knew Molly would stoke up the furnace. Not that they needed speed now, but if they were seen by the ship, they’d need to be out of there as fast as this tin lady could scream.
The fans changed their song again, and the Swift made her way easy above rooftops and trees, hugging the side of the valley as she snuck along to the east.
Half a mile, a mile. Coming on three, Hink started to think they might have done the near impossible and picked the devil’s pocket.
“Captain,” Lum Ansell shouted. “Captain, sir! We got a hawk.”
“Where?” Hink checked the windows for a hawk-class ship. Unlike the Swift, which was built for height, and speed in climbs and dives, a hawk wasn’t so much built for glim harvesting. Hawks were built for disabling other ships, ripping them to shreds, taking their glim, and scavenging anything of value.
Not a friend of any station, not a friend of any harvester or pirate, hawks weren’t nothing but killing crafts, bristling with edges and flame and guns.
“Port side,” Guffin said. “She’s lighting her arrows.”
“High damn it all,” Captain Hink said. He gave it a second or two, just enough time to decide if it was the kind of situation to stay and fight, or the sort of thing that a smart man ran from.
He hit the bell three times. “Give me every ounce she’s got, Molly Gregor,” he said, though he knew she couldn’t hear him.
“We’re gonna outstrip her, men. Mind your heads and keep your hands on the controls. The road’s about to get rough.”
“Bad, bad idea,” Guffin was saying. He was so against it, he’d forgotten he was cursing by the alphabet and was instead just repeating “bad, bad idea” over and over again.
Seldom jogged back to the cannons, laying the lines so he could load two as fast as possible. Without orders, Mr. Hunt stepped up and took over preparing the port cannon for fire, freeing Seldom to man the starboard gun.
The bell from the boiler room rang a sharp three hits. Molly had her stoked up hot and ready to ride.
“If you’ve got it, hold it,” Hink said.
Then he hit the full throttle. The engine surged like a river breaking a dam, a tornado’s worth of roar pushing through her.
The Swift shuddered, riding to the edge of rattling apart, shaking so hard and flying so fast, she was screaming. The tin bones she was strung upon screeched like a choir of angels with the devil’s hands around their throats.
Captain Hink aimed her up. Straight up. Such a harsh angle that his boots slipped the straps, and he had to do some serious holding on to keep her on the track.
“Captain,” Lum Ansell yelled, his bass voice rolling over the scream of the ship. “Captain! The hawk!”
“I see her, Mr. Ansell,” Hink hollered. “I reckon she sees us.”
The hawk did indeed see them. Hink knew it because she lit up like a bonfire, torches on long rigging poles, on cannons, on heavy artillery arrows caught like a hundred fireflies suddenly warming up at once. The familiar angle of her prow, built just like an anvil, came into view and he knew exactly which ship they were up against. The Bickern.
“It’s the bloody Bickern!” Mr. Guffin said. “We’re gonna die.”
“Where’s your faith in the goodness of my decisions?” Hink yelled.
“You ain’t no angel, Captain,” Guffin said.
“Damn straight I’m not. For that you can thank your lucky cards.”
They were so close to the ship, Hink could make out the full shape and bulk of her. Three times the size of the Swift, she was an old northern war vessel revamped for hunt and scavenge. Carried two boilers, and a long open-deck wooden hull that resembled a sailing ship and would do just as
well to land on water as on the ground, with that big balloon above her.
He’d heard she’d gone ironsides, but he was close enough to see the nails in her hull, and knew it wasn’t true. Wasn’t a man who had found a way to put wings on an ironside and get it off the ground.
Still, she was a beast of a ship, and likely carried fifty crew members. But that didn’t mean she was slow.
Or that she was a bad shot.
The Swift shuddered and rocked as arrows shattered against her skin. The tin-coated canvas wouldn’t easily catch fire, but if they shot for her underbelly, here where the cabin was made of wood, they’d be smoking like a ham in a smokehouse.
And if they let loose those cannons, the Swift would be in a world of hurt. She couldn’t hold up to many direct hits.
Captain Hink ran her straight for the Bickern, fast as she would fly. And the Swift was the fastest ship in the western sky.
“Mr. Seldom, Mr. Hunt,” Captain Hink yelled. “Ready the fire.”
Hink pulled hard back and the Swift’s nose shot straight up, exposing her belly to the hawk as he yelled, “Guffin, Ansell, hard to port!”
Guffin threw the levers, pulling in the wing sails, and Ansell hammered gears and valves to change the speed of the fans.
A blast of cannons cracked apart the night.
Hink hollered out a whoop. The Swift was still in one piece, still flying, turning such a sharp angle toward port that everything not strapped down slid hard across the floor and slammed into the walls.
“Mr. Seldom!” he called. “Fire!”
The ear-breaking racket of the twelve-pound Napoleon filled the ship.
“Hard starboard, hard starboard,” Hink yelled as Guffin and Ansell hurried the levers and gears and Hink muscled the wheel.
The Swift, that beautiful, graceful ship, spun like a ballerina on toe-tip, cresting the top of the Bickern, and leaning down to put the port-side cannon in range.
“Fire, Mr. Hunt!”
The captain glanced toward the man to see if he would follow orders, but needn’t have worried. Mr. Hunt handled the gun like a veteran of the field, and the blast and roll of smoke that filled the cabin proved it.
“Right on target,” Guffin yelled. “Two direct hits.”
“That’s all we have time for, boys. Let’s bat the stack off her.” Captain Hink shot the Swift straight up again, counting on speed to get her out of the Bickern’s reach.
But the ship rocked like she’d been slapped.
“We’re hit!” Hink yelled. “Seldom?”
Seldom was already running, his breathing gear in place as he took the mid-ladder to the top hatch. The slim man scampered out for a climb to get the best look at where the damage was done and if the envelope of air and steam above them would hold.
Hink had his hands full keeping her out of a free fall. “Losing power to the port fans,” he yelled. He hit the bell for Molly to beat her on the back—they needed to slow, and slow fast. The ship stuttered as the starboard fans stalled.
“Sails, Mr. Ansell!”
Mr. Ansell had moved from humming to singing. He had a deep, operatic quality to his voice, which Hink would have appreciated if they weren’t plummeting to their deaths.
The ship shook as the sails unfurled. Hink clenched his teeth, waiting for the horrifying sound of the sails ripping under the strain of their fall.
Another cannon blast roared out.
Not what they needed. Not at all what they needed.
The Bickern pounded up behind them. And so did the Saginaw.
The sails held. They could glide her down, but they’d be dead under the other ships’ guns before they touched earth.
There had to be a way out of this, a card he hadn’t played.
“Looks like we’re going to have to finish this fight on land, ladies and gents. Strap in tight, and I’ll try to put our back to a wall.”
The hills were coming on fast, darkness in the darkness, as he struggled to keep the Swift’s nose up and into the wind. He’d come out of worse situations with his bones in order.
Okay, maybe not.
The trees were rushing up awful fast now.
“We need lift,” he yelled.
Seldom squirreled down the ladder and hooked gear to the overhead. “Envelope’s torn up, so’s the rudder and port engine.”
“What does that mean?” Cedar Hunt asked.
“It means you’d better start praying for miracles.” Captain Hink didn’t have time to say more. The ship was making a pained wail, her voice mingling with Ansell’s song as she dove toward her final meeting with the Almighty Himself, hot enough to burn feathers.
Cannons shot off again, searing the sky with an explosive round. The Bickern didn’t want to scrap them, she wanted to end them.
And then the woman, Mae Lindson, stood right up beside Captain Hink, boots spread to take the tilt of the ship, no harness, and not holding on to anything. Just standing there like a copilot looking out across a calm sea.
She was glassy-eyed, as if caught in a fever, half whispering, half singing some kind of prayer as she stared out the windows.
Folks all have a different way to say howdy to death, he supposed, but he’d rather kick death in the eye than go out singing a little ditty.
“Mrs. Lindson, you’d better hold on—”
She reached up and clamped her hand on his shoulder. With a harsh word that wasn’t made of the King’s English, she wrapped her other hand around the overhead bar. A shock of lightning whipped through him.
Then, all he could hear was the woman’s prayer, lifted and harmonized by a dozen women’s voices. All he could see was her eyes, soft, brown, warm as the earth turned on a summer day. He tasted wildflower nectar on his tongue, smelled rich honey.
And then he somehow fell all apart and was strung back together by that prayer. He found himself stretched out in a familiar shape, wearing wings and an engine with tin skin that feared no storm nor sky. He wore the Swift as if he were a part of it, as if he were the beating heart to a machine that trod the air.
Hink was a questioning sort of man, but he was not going to question this.
She was dying, his ship. Plummeting to her death. He wasn’t going to let that happen. Mae Lindson’s song that echoed through his veins wasn’t going to let that happen.
Captain Hink knew how to trim the wings, he understood the wind as if he had been born to it. And he knew he called out commands to his men. He knew that they answered, just as his own hands fell to the wheel and steered her steady, over a landside he could see beneath him as if he had eyes in his feet.
The gunshots didn’t mean anything. He could flick the tip of a wing, and never be touched. But there was only so much the wind could give him. He needed a place to land, a safe place, a hidden place. Somewhere nearby that the other birds wouldn’t see.
There was a crack through the mountains that led to a canyon. Most ships didn’t bother with it, being too narrow to land in, and nothing in the canyon worth landing for.
It would be perfect. A safe place to make repairs. A safe place to rest.
Hink steered toward the narrow slit in the mountainside, an act of suicide on a bright and sunny day, and a handshake with death at night with a crippled ship.
“You won’t make it, Captain,” Guffin shouted from somewhere behind the woman’s song.
“Like hell I won’t.” Hink laughed.
The Swift pushed her way on, the wind laying the sky on her back, and pushing her belly up, up. Foothills, trees, scraping the hull. Hink gritted his teeth. There’d be more to repair, landing gear fouled. But he could make it. She could make it. All he needed was one good gust of tailwind.
“Wind,” he said. “Give me wind.”
And it was there for him, wind rising, warm as a blessing, lifting his wings, pushing the Swift just a little faster, aiming at the notch in the rocks, as his crew cursed and prayed and the Swift beneath him, around him, responded to his every command.
br /> Captain Hink could see the path as clear as if it were lit by a hundred gas lanterns. He steered the little ship straight and true through the crack in the mountainside, and out to the canyon beyond.
The Swift tucked wing tight, and slid down, like a feather on a string, toward the little hollow hidden from above by the overhang of rocks.
Easy as thumbing a button through a hole. Hink called orders to ready for landing on the broken gear. Like a blind man on a well-practiced route, he and her crew brought the Swift down, a little hot, but without more than a rattle or two before she was set, solid and true, on the earth again.
The prayer, the women’s voices, the taste of honey, and the feel of the ship upon him stripped away.
Captain Hink blinked hard to get his bearings.
Mae Lindson was no longer touching his shoulder. She was standing in front of him. No, she was falling, fainting. Hink let go of the wheel and reached out for her, but Cedar Hunt was there, and caught her up before she fell.
For a moment Cedar Hunt stood in front of him, more wolf in his gaze than Captain Hink had seen in the wild beasts themselves. He suddenly wished he had a gun in his hand.
“She saved your life,” Cedar Hunt snarled. Then, “Don’t touch her.”
He strode away past Rose Small in the hammock to the wolf, who was on his feet, ears tipped back and head down, staring at Hink with the selfsame killing eyes as Cedar Hunt.
Maybe they really were brothers.
Hink looked over the crew members. All three men looked a little rattled and were taking a hard pull on flasks of hooch. Mr. Seldom lifted his in a sort of salute toward Hink, then took another generous swallow.
Hink patted his jacket for his own ounce of courage.
“What kind of a cow patty landing was that?” Molly Gregor asked as she stormed out from the boiler room bringing with her the smell of soot and oil and hot wet metal. She took in the sight of Cedar Hunt laying Mae Lindson on the floor and then leveled a blistering glare at the captain.
“What did you do to her?” she demanded.
Hink tugged out a flask of bourbon and took a long swallow. He’d need it to put a calm in his voice.