Cipher Hill

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “The grappler is attached. If the bombs don’t detach it, then a smoldering, damaged hulk hanging beneath us will drag us down just as surely as a functional one. There’s just one option available to us.”

  He leaned down to the speaking tube. “Attention all crew. Locate and detach the grappler. This is the top and exclusive priority.” He spoke calmly. “I believe, based upon the impact and the resulting angle of the ship, it can be found on the starboard side, slightly aft. When it is free, devote all attentions to disabling the enemy and escaping. We seek escape, not destruction.”

  A few harried acknowledgments echoed back through the tube, followed by a voice with a much different tone.

  “That’s good thinkin’, Tusk,” barked Coop through the system. “Send some folks down here to the grappler. I wasn’t lookin’ forward to havin’ to hunt ’em down in this big ship.”

  Tusk narrowed his eyes. “Correction. Barricade all interior doors leading to the boiler room. Identify the location of ingress for the boarding party and barricade those doors as well. Focus on detaching the grappler externally.”

  “That’ll do me just fine, too,” Coop said.

  Nita spoke next. “Tusk. You’re out of options. You know it. Your men know it. I’ve spent enough time doing business alongside this crew to know that there’s not a corner of the fug where they don’t tell stories about us. No one has gotten the better of us. You’re not going to be the first.”

  “You didn’t strike me as one of the boastful members of the crew, Ms. Graus.”

  “I’m not. I am speaking the truth. If you want to survive, you’ll hand over Lil.”

  “Don’t play games, Ms. Graus. It doesn’t suit you. Just as you know that I would never willingly give up my only leverage over you, I know that you are beyond the point of mercy.”

  “You got that right!” Coop barked. “But you better give Lil up now, because at least that way you’ll be meeting your maker with one less death on your ledger.”

  A ragged, wheezing voice joined in. “He ain’t got me. I’m loose,” Lil said. “But my mask ain’t workin’ like it should. I gotta get outta this fug.”

  “Ah…” Tusk said, sweeping his eyes across the sprawling deck in search of the speaking tube Lil might have reached. “I’d hoped the arrival of your friends would flush you out of hiding.”

  “You ain’t gonna be wishin’ that in a minute,” Lil taunted.

  A shot rang out. It blasted a gouge in the railing near the helm. Inches to the left and it would have struck Tusk. He dropped down, hiding behind the workings of the helm, and tried to work out where the shot had come from. Just as he realized its source, he saw Lil’s form pulling itself up into the rigging above, once again retreating to the envelope. He grinned.

  “Desperation. Good. The noose is drawing tight. Soon I’ll have one fewer crewmember to deal with.” Tusk turned to Mallow. “Get down, supervise the men barricading the doors.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather I—”

  “Follow my orders, Mallow. Our survival depends upon it.”

  #

  Captain Mack played with the dials, attempting to keep the tension on the grappler line while still keeping the bulk of the ship out from under its twin. There was no telling what sort of weaponry could come pouring out. The stress it was putting on both the hull and the engines was clearly taking its toll. The whole steam system was rattling, and he could hear the decking creak and splinter with each fresh gale of wind. Wink clutched the railing behind the controls, ears twitching and sweeping in an attempt to keep tabs on everything that was making even the slightest noise.

  “They’d best work fast,” Mack muttered. “Much more of this tug-of-war and somethin’s liable to give.”

  Wink’s eye narrowed and both ears pivoted to the line that ran up to the ship above. He reached down and rattled out a message. Nikita said Nita and Coop said cut the line. Lil couldn’t breathe. Mask went bad. Needed to get out of the fug.

  Mack raised his voice. “Guns ready. We’re taking both ships up out of the fug!”

  He twisted dials and brought the ship farther aside. He began to follow the ship upward, putting slack on the grappler and easing the stress on both dreadnoughts. The linked pair rose toward the thick upper layer of fug. Gunner took his place along the port side of the ship, carrying a long-barreled rifle with a complex set of optics.

  “Once we’re clear of this mist, if the impossible happens and you get a clear look and a clear shot to take out Tusk, don’t bother waitin’ for the order, Gunner. Man’s got to go. We ain’t likely to have two chances.”

  “Ready and waiting, Captain. Ready and waiting.”

  #

  In the bowels of the ship, Mallow and the harried crew tried their best to follow the latest orders issued by Tusk. Chairs, mattresses, spare material for the envelope, anything the crew could gather from the surrounding sections of the ship were put to use and mounded in doorways and hallways. They’d focused their attentions in particular on the doorway through which they could hear the grunting of intruders. The sliding of machinery and the whistling of wind suggested their enemies were still hard at work. The crew knew they couldn’t afford to let them inside the ship proper.

  “Are we certain this is the best course of action?” Mallow asked, struggling to hold up his end of a wooden rack that was joining the barricade.

  “You heard the orders,” one of the other sailors said. “Block the way so the boarders can’t infiltrate any deeper.”

  “It’s just that I am certain I heard one of the boarders suggest that was acceptable.”

  “They’re just boasting. Trying to break our nerve,” the sailor said.

  “It has worked! My nerve is thoroughly broken.”

  “They are trying to manipulate us. Say one thing so we’ll do the other,” a second sailor suggested. “What could they possibly do now? That door is locked and braced, and we’ve got hundreds of pounds of barricade in front of it.”

  “If there’s anybody on the other side of this door what ain’t keen on bein’ torn to bits, I reckon I’d back away if I was you,” Coop called, his voice muffled by the doorway.

  “There, you see?” the first sailor said. “Bluster. It proves they’re out of ideas.” Despite this, he notably pulled a pistol from its holster to have at the ready.

  “It would take a point-blank ship-to-ship cannon blow to breach that door. They’re trapped!” the second sailor said.

  Mallow stared into the middle distance, deep in thought. When the realization struck, he didn’t hesitate. He simply ran, shouting it behind him as he did so.

  “They have cannons!”

  Heartbeats after he rounded the corner to the perpendicular passage, the air split with a deafening explosion. Splinters of wood flew like a shotgun blast, scouring the hallway behind him. They’d turned one of the ship-to-ship cannons around and aimed it at the door. He thought he’d been prepared, but the sound and force of it still knocked him to the ground and shook him to his core. When he was able to shake his head and start to pull himself from the blinking daze, the other sailors were gone and Nita and Coop were standing before him.

  Coop hoisted him to his feet with a grip around his collar and put the barrel of a pistol to Mallow’s chin.

  “Ain’t got time for an argument, so we’ll make it quick. You know why we’re here. You reckon you got a reason we shouldn’t kill you?”

  “I know what Tusk did to Ms. Cooper’s mask and how to fix it!” Mallow blurted.

  “We’re on our way out of the fug. Ain’t no need for it anymore.”

  “I… there were ten people remaining on the crew, excluding Tusk and myself. You just killed two of them.”

  “Eight to go aside from you two, good to know. That it?” Coop clicked back the hammer of the pistol.

  “I was just following orders! Have mercy!” Mallow yelped.

  Coop huffed as though he were a child who’d just had a toy taken from him.

&
nbsp; “It just ain’t no fun to kill a fella once he starts snivelin’. Somethin’ tells me you ain’t gonna cause too much trouble, what with you fixin’ to make a mess of your pants sooner’n raise a hand to me. But I sure ain’t gonna be lookin’ over my shoulder, so…”

  In a well-practiced motion, he clocked Mallow on the side of the head, and he crumpled to the ground. Coop looked to Nita. “I’ll go get Lil, you—”

  “We will go get Lil,” Nita said.

  “I reckon the cap’n would—”

  “Lil is in trouble. If you think I’ll be doing anything until she’s safe, you don’t know the first thing about me. You’d do the same.”

  “Fair enough. But if anybody needs shootin’, I’m the one pullin’ the trigger. Us Coopers got our pride.”

  Chapter 16

  Coop and Nita burst from one of the hatches to the main deck, weapons ready. The deck was somewhat damaged by the Wind Breaker crew’s attacks. It was also completely deserted. Even the helm had been abandoned.

  “Figures the cowards would make themselves scarce rather than give me somethin’ to shoot at,” Coop growled.

  They were well clear of the fug, but the storm was still raging. In the distance, the lights of a large and heavily populated city lay ahead on a mountain ridge.

  “I tell ya,” Coop said, peering at the lights in the distance. “These dreadnoughts can really move. I’d’ve sworn it’d’ve been another half day before we got this far.”

  “Lil! Where are you! Are you all right?” Nita bellowed.

  “I been better,” croaked a voice from above them.

  They turned to see Lil sliding down the rigging. One might be inclined to describe her movements as drunken, but Nita had seen Lil after many a night of drinking, and she had never been nearly as clumsy then as she was now. Her mask hung loose from her neck, and her expression was one of hollow-cheeked exhaustion.

  “Heavens…” Nita said. “Lil, you look awful.”

  She offered a weak smile. “You get a couple lungfuls of that stuff in you and see how it suits you.”

  “Where’d Tusk and the crew get off to?” Coop said. “There’s eight or nine of ’em unaccounted for.”

  “Been a bit busy fightin’ to breathe, Coop,” Lil said. “Couldn’t bother babysittin’ the locals.”

  A loud clacking sound rang out from the speaking tubes around the ship. They cautiously approached one.

  “Where you at, Tusk?” Coop barked into it.

  “I sincerely hope you didn’t expect me to stand face-to-face with you for a final showdown. I saved such theatrics for Alabaster, and look where that got him.”

  “Yeah. Doin’ two shows a night back in Caldera,” Coop said.

  “Better’n he deserves by a fair shot,” Lil said.

  “We have the helm of both dreadnoughts now, Tusk. I don’t know what you were hoping to achieve, but it’s over. We’re in control now,” Nita said.

  “You’ve only had a few hours access to a dreadnought, Ms. Graus. Not nearly enough to learn its secrets. Suffice to say, you are not in control.”

  With timing too perfect to be a coincidence, the many engines of the ship raged to life, whirring to speeds not even the nearly intact ship Mack was piloting could manage. The phlogiston pumps started humming, and the altitude started to level out, then gradually decrease.

  “Dang it…” Lil said.

  “There are in fact three auxiliary control rooms in various positions throughout the ship. The crew and I are scattered across them. I am quite certain you shan’t be able to get us in time.”

  “Yeah, this ship’s a coward’s dream. Loads of places to hide,” Coop muttered.

  “What do you think you’ll accomplish?” Nita said. “Do you think you can drag the ship beneath the fug again and suffocate Lil? We’ve got her now, and we’ve got masks to spare.”

  “No, no,” Tusk said. “Lil is far too small a target. No doubt you’ve noticed Secant, the capital of Circa, looming in the distance. I am not so foolish as to keep all my eggs in one basket, but I will freely admit you have smashed up the one that held most of them. Without Cipher Hill in working order, my various plans to start a war are not only unlikely to provide me with the financial benefits I have sought; they could in fact lead to the final toppling of the balance of power upon which I have so carefully perched my own race. A substantial portion of the fleet now lies in ruins. A concentrated attack could force the fug folk to surrender. Unacceptable. The way around it, of course, is to make it abundantly clear that we still have a set of teeth, and a mind to use them.”

  The ship jerked to the side as the grappler reached the end of its slack. With a bit of groaning and complaining from the hull, the ship continued onward, dragging its twin with surprisingly little effort.

  “How is he doin’ that?” Coop said.

  “We design our ships with a considerable safety margin in mind. With the proper knowledge and a correctly sized spanner, our ships can be coaxed into overperforming.”

  Nita shut her eyes and listened. Even through the raging storm, she could hear the steam system shuddering itself to pieces. “This ship won’t endure being pushed this hard for very long,” she said.

  “It needn’t survive any longer than it takes to reach Secant and raze it to little more than scorched mountaintop. A vicious attack from twin dreadnoughts to put the fear of the fug back into the people of the surface. Such fear won’t last forever. But it will last long enough for me to sweep together enough of my other resources to be ready for a contingency plan.”

  “You’re going to attack Secant? Unprovoked?” Nita said.

  “Unprovoked? Oh no. I and those like me have been under attack by the Wind Breaker and its crew. This is an escalation, certainly, but not an unwarranted one. And I have already been making it quite clear that any actions we take are thanks wholly to your meddling. You’ll be the enemy of your own people.”

  “But how exactly do you expect to survive it?”

  “I have my ways. And you’ll find that, unlike Alabaster, I only pontificate on those portions of my schemes that you would inevitably discover on your own. Now if you will excuse me, I have a city to demolish.”

  “Tusk, you listen to me!” Lil shouted hoarsely. “You come out here and you take your medicine like a grownup! This ain’t between you and them folks you’re plannin’ to drop bombs on, this is between you and us. You’re beat! Show your face now and maybe we’ll lock you up instead of puttin’ a bullet in you!”

  Not likely, Coop mouthed silently.

  The speaking tube was silent. Tusk was no longer interested in speaking to them. Nita motioned for them to move away from the tube, lest they be overheard.

  “This is a problem,” she said.

  “I’ll say. That’s Gunner’s hometown. Even if it weren’t for the general principle of the thing, if his old stompin’ grounds get blown up and he can blame it on us, we ain’t never gonna hear the end of it,” Coop said.

  Nita looked to the city ahead, then to the second dreadnought that was now helplessly being dragged behind. “The way I figure it, we have maybe five minutes before this thing will be in position to attack,” she said.

  “Ain’t time enough to find where these folks are hidin’, even if we got the whole crew on it. Ship’s too big,” Coop said.

  “We can narrow it down, can’t we?” Lil said. “Places they can see which way they’re goin’ and such?”

  “That just narrows it down to places with windows. With locked doors between us and the bulk of the ship, we’d have to guess right the first time. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but assuming the hidden control room has all of the same capabilities as the helm, that means they’ll still be able to fire the main cannons fore and aft, and drop bombs.”

  “Yep,” Coop said. “Plenty to make a mess of a city. They won’t have none of them side cannons and none of them deck guns. So the other ship’ll fly rings around it and poke it full of holes. Eventually, the dreadno
ught’ll go down. Just not before it gets done what it’s fixin’ to get done.”

  “Even if we split up and tried disabling all of the weapons, I doubt we’d get to half of them, and if they have a backup line run to any of them, it won’t do any good. We need to take this whole ship out of commission; it’s the only way to be sure.”

  #

  Mack dialed all of the controls to their maximum values and turned the ship against the wind, but the full force of his dreadnought was insufficient to do much more than force Tusk to constantly correct his course. Even that wouldn’t last much longer. The deck to which the grappler was mounted was beginning to buckle.

  “I don’t know what they did to that ship, but it’s more than we can handle now,” Mack said.

  Gunner watched as his hometown approached. “We can’t let them reach Secant, Captain.”

  “We got two choices,” Mack said. “We can try shootin’, or we can try holdin’ it back. If we try to get any cannons worth a damn into position to fire, we’ll either shear off half our rigging with that grappler line or take the tension off the line and they’ll get where they’re goin’ even faster,” Mack said. “Not to mention we’d be takin’ a shot at half our crew.”

  “I very much doubt anything left on this ship will do enough damage to disable the ship before it reaches its target, regardless,” Prist said. “Most of the high-damage formulations are gone…”

  “What formulations have we got?” Gunner asked.

  Prist dug through the bag. “I have formulations six, fifteen, twenty-eight, and three.”

  “And nothing short of blowing the main boiler will keep that ship from attacking the city,” Gunner muttered. “It took a fully tensioned coil box and more than a little luck to finish the last one off. This is impossible.”

  “Guy, forgive the criticism, but you tend to be rather single-minded in situations like this. Always seeking to destroy.”

  “It is combat, Samantha. The purpose is to destroy.”

  “But if it is impossible, as you say, then perhaps we should be expanding our potential goals.”

  The ship shuddered as several of the floorboards beneath the grappler splintered and lifted.