Cipher Hill

by Joseph R. Lallo

  Mack nodded. “Butch is going to be below decks, reloading forward cannons. You coach her up on the new charges, Gunner?”

  “They are all prepared for medium range. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Kent? You ready?” Mack asked.

  “Me and Donald are on this here two-seater. Rifles, pistols, and such like,” Kent said.

  “And some of Prist’s goodies,” Donald added.

  “Me and Digger will be in the other two-seater, same equipment, Cap’n,” Coop said.

  “You boys sure you got us some cover in the air?”

  “Nope! But we tried real hard,” Coop said. “I know we ain’t got help, but if folks do what they’re told, we’ll at least have a crowd.”

  “One’s as good as the other for this fight.”

  “Anyone hear from Lil and Nita?” Coop asked.

  “No. Wasn’t expecting to,” Mack said.

  “So we don’t know if we’ll have ground support at all?” Gunner said.

  “We sent the girls to bring it. So we’ll have it,” Mack said.

  “I reckon so.” Coop scratched his head. “Uh… What all are we supposed to do, now that we all did the first bit?”

  “Best case, we’re going to see some sort of big production. A shipyard to beat all. I want you to pick the parts that look important and blow ’em to bits. You see any ships that’re liable to give us or anyone else trouble, you blow ’em to bits. You see things that look like they’ll blow other things to bits when you hit ’em? Blow ’em to bits. I want it so when we’re through, ain’t no one gonna know what it was that used to be down there. I want it so if Tusk is anywhere nearby, he’ll be dead, and if he ain’t nearby, when he hears about what we done here, he’ll wish he were. Without this place to put heft behind him, I reckon we won’t even be the first in line to grant that wish. Just about the only things I don’t want you shootin’ at is the girls on the ground and whoever they brung.”

  He looked over the crew. “That about cover the questions?”

  “Aye,” they replied.

  “Right. Then masks on. Let’s see what sort of a fix I got us into.”

  The humans of the crew slipped on their filter masks. Digger and Coop navigated the precarious mounting ropes of their two-seater. Donald and Kent did the same. Butch slipped below decks and announced herself when she was in place. Mack stubbed out his cigar and slipped it back into its tin. He pulled his own mask into place.

  “Let’s get it done.”

  He spun a valve and the ship drifted downward. The purple fumes rushed over the deck, spreading their rubbing-alcohol chill and chemical sting across the crew. For a time, the ship was in a sea of purple. No visibility at all. Then they dipped into the comparatively thinner mist.

  The captain grinned behind his mask. “You outdone yourself, boys.”

  Below and ahead, the sky was utterly packed with ships. There must have been fifty of them, with more on the way. They were tossed about and aimlessly drifting as confusion reigned. He held the wheel still and raised a spyglass. What ships he could see clearly were woefully undercrewed and underequipped. Most had little more than the captain or navigator alone on the deck and fighting to keep the ship from clashing with the others nearby. The better-staffed ships had a second crewman, but that was the absolute maximum. The way they hung and bobbed in the gusts, they were light on cargo. If he was lucky, most had even gone so far as to ditch most, or all, of their ammunition. In attempts to work out just what they were supposed to be doing and how to do it, most ships had their phlo-lights on at full blast, wonderfully illuminating the facility below and ruining any semblance of night vision that the defenders of the facility might have. If the ships had not been there, Mack would already be dodging fléchettes and barking orders. Instead, he was unnoticed.

  The news wasn’t all good. Not by a long shot. The copious lighting from above revealed a facility larger and more active than any city in the mountains and most cities in the fug. Steam billowed out of massive machines. Conveyors hauled parts from building to building. Stout rails ran from north to south. A huge crane and gantry ran along them, large enough to haul whole ships. Walls at least fifty feet high ringed the place like it was an ancient fortress. Powerful steam cannons lined the walls, each staffed with both a spotter and an operator. Even the vast courtyards between the main facility and the walls were worrisome. There were at least as many ships moored and awaiting deployment as there were hanging in the air above it. The way radiant plumes of green occasionally puffed up from them suggested they were being fueled and prepped for combat. He may as well have chosen to attack an entire navy by himself.

  And at the north and south extremes of the facility, looming larger than half the buildings, were dreadnoughts. A single one, ragged with age, was enough to keep half the nation of Westrim in line out of fear of its raw power until the Wind Breaker had knocked it from the skies. Now there was a pair, gleaming and new, waiting to attack.

  “Listen up!” Mack called. “We drop in from above, out of the tangle of ships. First targets are anything that might shoot at us, second targets, anything belching steam. We ain’t lettin’ up until there’s nothin’ left to hit.”

  #

  Coop wrestled with the controls of the two-seater ship as it separated from the Wind Breaker.

  “You got them big fat canisters Gunner gave you?” he called, blinking water from his eyes.

  “I think? What are they?” Digger said, reluctantly taking a hand from the grip of the fléchette gun to dig through the bag.

  “Heck If I know. But I reckon if Gunner and Prist worked on ’em, they’re liable to blow a hole through just about anything. Just throw ’em at somethin’ that looks important. The fléchette gun’s just for ships and the folks usin’ ’em.”

  They plunged down below the crush of misguided ships. As just one of dozens, they didn’t immediately draw fire. Digger cast his eyes over the facility.

  “This facility… it is massive… I don’t know where to start. I honestly do not see how I was recruited for this. I am not a fighter!”

  “Just throw a dang canister!”

  He heaved a red-marked canister. It disappeared into the rain-soaked facility below.

  “Did you throw it yet?” Coop said.

  “Yes! I think it was a dud!”

  One of the gunners finally spotted them. Spikes began to hiss by.

  “When this whole thing’s over, Gunner’s gettin’ an earful.”

  Below them, a red flash was followed by a rush of orange flame consuming the top of the building below.

  “Huh. Never mind. Huck another one. I’ll see if I can’t keep us from gettin’ poked full of holes.”

  #

  Captain Mack watched Kent and Donald as their ship split off and they began unloading their weapons.

  “How quick can you get your shots off, Gunner?” Mack called back.

  “As fast as a rifle, but three times longer to reload,” Gunner replied.

  “That’s fine. Them little ships are easy enough to lose in the fleet them boys pulled together, but we ain’t so lucky. I’m only bringin’ the Wind Breaker down long enough to drop some bombs, then back up above the other ships. You got that long to take your shots. At least until they wise up and wrangle the spare ships.”

  “Plenty of time, Captain,” Gunner said. “Samantha, let’s go with formulation seven.”

  Dr. Prist pulled her hood a bit tighter and clicked open a case to select the proper shell.

  Mack watched ships below him jockeying for position. Each of them was horribly undercrewed, which, when combined with the overcrowding, was a recipe for collisions. He spun the wheel and feathered the throttle, using the swing of the gondola to tease just a bit more maneuverability out of the trusty Wind Breaker. When a proper opening seemed ready to appear below, he threaded the needle and charged out into the open. In moments, all nearby wall guns shifted in his direction.

  He had the good fortune to
have found his way to the air above a storage house, a target ripe for bombs. He pulled the lever for the gig winch. Bombs rained down. Chest-thumping explosions brought the walls tumbling down.

  Up close, there was no doubt in his mind this was the shipyard responsible for arming the fug. Easily half of the grounds within the massive wall that ringed the place was occupied by completed ships. Crews were fleeing the factories and workshops, rushing to the ships. If they were lucky, there wouldn’t nearly be enough pilots among them to make this veritable fleet a threat. But Mack knew better than to trust fate to keep him safe. He eyeballed a mooring tower across the way and fired the port cannon. The attack clipped the base of the tower, and it collapsed across seven of the ships.

  “I’m waiting, Gunner,” he barked.

  “Firing!” he cried.

  The portable cannon released its shell with a sharp crack. Halfway across the courtyard, a purple-black smear splattered against a workshop wall. Vapor poured off the wall, then vast holes opened, as though the wall were an ice cube melting under boiling water.

  “Splendid!” Prist said. “We certainly seem to have found the proper balance of acidity and viscosity.”

  Mack shook his head. “Doctor, I’m glad you’re on our side. Headin’ up. Everybody reload.”

  Rising into the crush of ships was twice as dangerous as dipping down, as Mack’s view was obscured by the envelope, but by now he knew his ship well enough to know where it would fit and where it wouldn’t. He focused on picking his next target and avoiding the lines of spikes flying at the ship from the walls.

  Just before he made it to the cover of the chaotic cluster of ships, he spotted a ship approaching from the southwest. Something about the small size and the high speed suggested this wasn’t some confused pilot hoping to profit from an evacuation. This was a ship that knew what it was getting into.

  “Gunner. Past the walls. Southwest. I don’t like the looks of that one.”

  “I can use the launcher or I can use the deck gun, Captain. I can’t do both.”

  “You reckon the doctor is up for some target practice?”

  Prist froze. “Captain, I haven’t shown a pronounced aptitude for ballistics.”

  “Doctor, so long as you don’t put any spikes in one of our ships, there ain’t nothin’ you can do that wouldn’t help.”

  She nodded and shakily approached the fléchette gun. “Don’t say you weren’t warned, Captain.”

  #

  “Quickly, Mallow, quickly!” Tusk barked, watching the smoke and flames rising from behind the facility’s walls.

  “What are we going to do, sir? There are so many ships! And this place is already taking so much damage.”

  “What we see here is chaos, Mallow. And the antidote for madness is a steady mind. Get me into that facility!”

  Mallow shakily eased the throttle to full and tried to ignore the sounds of battle ahead. “I honestly thought once I’d started working for you I’d flown into my last battle, sir.”

  “If you reach a lofty enough position in this world, you’ll always be dodging bullets.”

  They sliced through the air, jostling other ships as they heeded the call for evacuation. There were still hundreds of yards to go before they reached the walls when the first spikes began hissing by. Mallow glanced back to Tusk, but he seemed utterly unaffected by the knowledge that they were under fire.

  “Inside, you’ll find two dreadnoughts in ready-to-run condition. Pick one and land directly upon the deck. Don’t bother waiting for crew to moor you. Ram the rigging, for all I care, just put us in a position to board that ship as quickly as possible.”

  The sounds of battle soon eclipsed the sound of the ship’s engines. The lines of spikes hurling at them from somewhere among the press of ships were erratic and inaccurate, but through sheer volume a few tore the envelope and punched their way into the hull of the gondola.

  “I count three hostile ships,” Tusk said. “Unless they’ve been aggressive in their recruitment, the crew must be stretched thin. Hence the poor showing by whoever is firing on us.”

  “They’ve hit us more than once, sir. That’s a better showing than I’m comfortable with.”

  As they drew nearer, the number of successful strikes from Prist’s unskilled assault increased. The ship was getting sluggish, the controls no doubt damaged by now, but just ahead was one of the massive dreadnoughts. Its main envelope was easily as large as those of the rest of the ships floating above it combined. Said envelope was ringed with a catwalk servicing huge engines. Two smaller envelopes, each still larger than the main envelope of a normal ship, flanked the first, holding up a many-decked monstrosity of a gondola.

  Mallow misjudged the distance between him and the ship, and as such was very nearly at full speed when they struck the net of ropes attaching the first of the secondary envelopes to the deck. He lurched forward and struck his head on the wheel, then dizzily throttled down.

  “We’re… sir?” Mallow said.

  The door was open, and Tusk was already climbing down the rigging. Mallow heard him shouting at the smattering of crew, then a thundering voice.

  “All unauthorized ships, leave the area immediately! All gunners, target all ships who fail to leave the area. I don’t care who they are, if they are in the sky over this facility, I want them shot down. To all flight-trained crew: I want fifteen-person crews on each of the dreadnoughts. The rest of you, two-person crews on completed ships. And load all ship-to-ship weapons with abrasive rounds!”

  Mallow made his way woozily to the deck, where Tusk had finished addressing the other ships and had turned his attention to the crew.

  “I see the ships are being readied,” Tusk said, addressing the ship’s de facto captain.

  “When what seemed like an invasion began, we immediately started stoking the boilers,” the captain said.

  “Well done. How long until we’re able to depart?”

  “The boiler is nearly to pressure. The engines will be strong enough to move us in just a few minutes. They’ll be at full power in an hour.”

  “Fine. I want us in the air as soon as possible. And the same for the other dreadnought.”

  “What are we going to do?” Mallow asked.

  “We are going to use the mightiest ships in the fleet to crush the Wind Breaker. This is a rare instance where brawn is all that is called for. Now get below decks. We will need every spare hand to crew this ship.”

  #

  Kent’s eyes went wide as the wall guns all began firing at once, each targeting one of the unsuspecting ships that were now desperately attempting to leave the facility.

  “They mean business, Donald!” he called to his fellow grunt.

  “Shooting their own. Makes me sick,” he said, heaving another of Prist’s canisters through the window of a huge factory building as they whisked past.

  “We’re doing a bit of that ourselves,” Kent reminded him.

  Donald scoffed. “I don’t fink so. These guys work for Tusk.”

  “But we’re—”

  Kent’s comment was swallowed by the crunch of a hull as a large cargo ship fell from the sky and split open along one wall. All around them, envelopes were bursting like soap bubbles, releasing all of their phlogiston in massive, brilliant plumes.

  “Never mind. I’m with you. I won’t lose any sleep over putting these fellows in their place.”

  A handful of the ships from the courtyard were in the air now, filling the air with spikes fired from their deck guns. With each of the ships that either successfully withdrew from the area or was shot down, the number of decoys keeping them safe reduced. This meant that the gunners on the ships had little trouble spotting and firing on Kent and Donald’s ship.

  Their spikes were the fragile, paste-filled ones that had poisoned the Wind Breaker’s engines. They did little damage to the envelope, but each time a dose of the gritty sludge they carried reached the engines, a horrid squeal rang out and started the ship on
an unsettling wobble.

  “Better get to heaving those canisters a little faster,” Kent said. “I don’t think we’ll have a ship much longer.”

  Chapter 13

  Gunner squinted through a cloud of vapor from one of the rounds he’d delivered point-blank into a ship whisking past. The stuttering hiss of the massive steam guns along the wall was continuous. Chattering thumps of fléchettes peppered the hull of the gondola. He glanced up. One of the turbines was venting steam in a way that suggested it wouldn’t be spinning much longer. Two healthy gashes in the side of the envelope were spraying bright plumes of gas. They weren’t dead in the air, not by a long shot, but if the fight went on like this, they wouldn’t last much longer.

  “Captain, we’re taking too many hits,” he called.

  “Ain’t gettin’ the altitude we need,” Mack called. “Somethin’ let go down in the Wind Breaker’s belly. Pressure’s droppin’ in the pumps. The phlogiston isn’t flowin’.”

  “I’ll see if I can do something!” Prist said, dashing to the hatch and hurrying below decks.

  “The focus is too tight on us,” Gunner called, abandoning the portable cannon for a deck gun to harry the wall gunners. “Too many of the cover ships are down or gone!”

  He forced one of the wall gunners to take cover. The two on either side redoubled their efforts. Wood splintered and crackled. Gunner gritted his teeth and kept the pressure on. Just as his weapon ran short of ammo and he would have to relent and reload, the flow of fléchettes from the wall tapered off. Gunner didn’t stop to question his good fortune, he simply clicked in a fresh chain of spikes and took aim again.

  The wall gunners had pivoted and now were aimed down, tracing lines along the ground in the field beyond. At first he thought they’d lost control of their weapons. Then he realized there was something moving rapidly toward the facility in the field.

  “What the hell are those?” Gunner called out.

  The ship lurched upward as Prist’s below-deck tinkering restored the pumps and gave them some extra height. Mack wheeled the ship around and gazed down at the field. His eyes practically sparkled.