People were running past him, flowing around him like he was a rock in a stream, ignoring him as they rushed to see the commotion, or rushed away from it. The noise level rose as men began to yell, to summon further assistance, and to sound a wide assortment of alarms.
But he had the Rattler raised, and it was still loaded from the day before; its sling of ammunition dangled heavily across his arm and the crank on the right was ready to turn. He shifted himself, adjusted the gun, and kept walking in the ponderous pace which was all he could manage while shouldering so much weight.
Soon, the Valkyrie was in sight.
Lamar was not beneath the unfastened exterior panel, and hopefully he’d finished whatever task had kept him there-despite the fact that he hadn’t had time to seal the workspace behind him. The bay doors were open and the folding steps were extended, though Simeon’s burnished arms were visible, guns blazing return-fire at the small crowd that was surrounding the ship.
Lamar’s pistols joined Simeon’s revolvers, but neither of them could see what they were aiming at without lowering their heads through the open portal, exposing themselves to danger.
Someone at the edge of the festering crowd was hollering, “Stop shooting! Stop shooting! There’s enough hydrogen here to blow this city off the goddamned map!”
And some people were listening. Some guns were sliding back into holsters, or being held silent in hands that were aimed at the bottom of the black-hulled Valkyrie with its sharp silver lettering. But others were caught up in the fright and noise of the moment, and the two men holed up inside the craft were aware that the advantage was partly theirs.
They were shooting blind, and wild, but they were firing from within a heavily armed craft. Even if another ship were to explode beside them, there was an excellent chance that they’d survive to pirate again another day; but the men outside were standing amid vessels that were not so heavily reinforced. The other vehicles were cargo vessels, moving foodstuffs and commercial goods, and none of them featured Valkyrie’s armoring.
One stray bullet, aimed unwisely, could detonate a ship-causing a chain reaction that might not blow Kansas City off the map, but could leave one side of town sitting in a smoking crater, all the same.
If the facts had been any different, the crowd might’ve rushed the ship or fired more readily-and the two men inside could not have held it. But Hainey saw the scene for what it was, and he knew that even with such an advantage, his men couldn’t keep the other men at bay for long.
This also meant that he shouldn’t rev up the Rattler, really, but that didn’t stop him.
He braced himself, spreading his feet apart and using one hand to balance the weapon while the other hand pumped the crank until the six-cylindered gun began to whir-and then he let out a battle roar that would’ve done an Amazonian proud. He bellowed at the top of his lungs, sending the shout soaring over the gunfire and through the service yards, creating one precious instant of distraction to buy his men more time to secure themselves.
Because the fact was, he didn’t want to fire the Rattler for the very same reason that the rest of the reasonable crowd-members had holstered their firearms. The hydrogen was everywhere, and the Rattler was exceptionally difficult to aim when he carried it alone.
A moment of stillness fell as all eyes landed on the captain.
He was a frightful sight. Six feet even and broad as a Clydesdale, scarred, straining, pumping, and flushed with rage-with a two hundred pound gun humming and spinning its massive wheels beside his head, only inches away from his ear.
Everyone was frozen. He’d confused them, and no one yet understood that he planned to make for the Valkyrie.
Except for Simeon and Lamar.
They both understood, and their arms and wrists and guns retreated slowly back inside the craft while the attention had been drawn to the captain…who then, aiming the Rattler low enough that it would mostly strafe the ground, flipped the switch that allowed the machine to open fire.
The Rattler kicked dozens of shots a minute into the dust, into the crowd, into the air when even Hainey was startled by its volume and power and he lurched-almost losing control, and regaining it enough to keep turning the crank. He teetered and leaned, firing as if his arm was automatic too-as if his elbow were a piston.
The crowd broke under the onslaught. Half a dozen men went down, and were maybe dead on the spot. The rest ran like hell, except for a few security men who huddled in a pack and made a point to draw. Hainey swept the Rattler to spray them, since they posed the most imminent threat; his shoulders lurched and leaned as the gun’s kick pounded against his balance.
If he didn’t start moving, and moving swiftly, he’d never be able to hold the Rattler upright more than another few seconds.
His scar-crossed cheek was scalded by the friction and firearm heat, and his wool coat smelled of burning where his arm held the gun into position. He staggered forward, struggling to plant one foot in front of the other and then he hobbled, forward, not fast but steady; and he quit turning the crank-letting the last of the wheel’s inertia throw out another six shots, but otherwise abandoning the lever. It was too much to concentrate on, operating the gun, and holding the gun, and keeping the gun from hitting anything that might explode…while lurching forward under its considerable weight.
Upon nearing the folding steps of the Union warbird, he pivoted on his hip with a heave and assumed a defensive position-aiming the amazing gun out at the crowd, as what was left of it warily circled, understanding now that Hainey was one of the thieves, hell-bent on taking the ship.
Above and behind the captain, Lamar’s voice hissed out. “Sir, give me cover to close that hatch, or we might never make it out of this lot,” he said.
Hainey’s ears were ringing so loudly that he heard only part of it, but he got the gist and reached again for the Rattler’s crank. He turned it, and flipped the switch to feed the last of his ammo into the gun, and it exploded out from under the ship with a rat-a-tat-tat to wake the dead.
Lamar leaped over the steps, landing with a grunt and a slide on the ground beneath it; he recovered immediately, and took a mallet to the pried-apart rivets that affixed the panel into place. Soon the hatch was sealed and he was back up onto the steps, saying, “Sir, stop firing and hop inside. Simeon’s got the stair lever and we’ll seal ourselves up. Do it fast,” he begged.
Hainey tried to say something back, but he didn’t think he could make himself heard so he gave up, quit firing, and almost fell backwards on the steps-his weary muscles collapsing under the gun.
Simeon caught it in time to keep it from crushing the captain or knocking him back down into the service yard unarmed; but he yelped when his hands touched some overheated part and the sizzle of burning skin and hair made the cargo hold smell like a charnel house. Lamar helped the captain lift himself up the last few steps, and no sooner had the stairs retreated and the bay doors closed than a trickle of bullets came fired afresh at the hull.
They pinged as if they were being shot at a very big bell.
“Sir, are you all right?” Lamar demanded.
To which Simeon said, “I’ve burned my hand!”
“And I never call you ‘sir,’ now do I?” the engineer said as he patted down a place on Hainey’s jacket where an ember was glowing, eating its round, black way through the fabric. “You’ve set yourself on fire!”
“It’s…the…Rattler,” he wheezed, hoping he’d heard everything correctly. His ears were banging as if someone was standing behind, smashing cymbals together over and over again. He waggled his head like he could shake the residual sounds out of it, and he climbed to his feet. “Simeon, your hand?”
“I’ll survive,” the first mate said unhappily, examining the puckering pink of the burn as it tightened and wrinkled across his otherwise coffee-dark skin.
“Find something and wrap it up. We’ve got to fly this thing, we’ve got to fly her out of here, before those idiots out there breach the
hull, or blow up our neighboring ships-or scare up some help. If we can get airborne now, we can shake or bully our way past the security dirigibles…if they’ve even got the balls to chase us,” he added as he stumbled into the bridge, leaving the Rattler lying steaming on the cargo hold floor.
“Way ahead of you,” Simeon said. He’d already opened one of the packs that Hainey had thrown aboard, and taken out his only clean shirt. Using his teeth and his one good hand, he tore off the sleeve and began to bind himself. Lamar helped him hold it, and tied off the makeshift bandage.
“This bird is loaded up to the gills, ain’t she?” the captain asked with wonder.
After they’d braced the bay doors from the interior, Simeon and Lamar joined him on the main deck, looking out through the windshield where the sheriff and a pair of deputies were joining the fray down front.
“She sure is,” Simeon agreed. “Between the three of us, I think we can fly her all right,” he said.
“We’d better be able to, or else our goose is cooked,” Hainey observed.
Then, from behind a door that no one yet had opened, came a strangely calm voice-the kind of voice that’s holding a deadly weapon, and is fully aware of how it ought to perform.
“Your goose is cooked regardless, Croggon Hainey.”
All three men turned and were stunned to see her there, standing on the bridge with a six-shooter half as long as her forearm-but there she was, Maria Isabella Boyd, Confederate spy and operative for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
The captain recovered fastest. He let the unscarred side of his mouth creep up in something like a slow smile, and he said to her, “Lady, mine and yours, and everybody within a half-mile of this bird…if you don’t put that thing down.”
She ignored the warning. “Disarm yourselves. Immediately. All of you, or I’ll shoot.”
Hainey held out a hand that forbade his crewmembers to do any such thing. He said, “If you shoot, we’re all dead. You don’t know the first thing about these ships, do you?”
Maria faltered, but not much, and not for long. “Maybe not, but I know plenty about what happens to a man when a bullet sticks between his ribs, and if you don’t want the knowledge firsthand yourself, you’d better set your weapons aside.”
“You see,” he said as if he hadn’t heard her, “We’re surrounded by hydrogen-three quarters of this craft is designed to hold it, and this bird is all full up right now. Do you know what happens when you start firing bullets around hydrogen?”
He could see by her eyes that she could guess, but she was unconvinced. “Those men outside have been firing at you for fully five minutes now. Nothing has exploded yet.”
“This is a warbird, lady. It’s armored on the outside, to the hilt. Inside, everything is exposed-there’s not much to protect the interior from the tanks, because ordinarily, the people who hang around in the bridge know better than to yank out their guns and make threats. And did you notice,” he added, because the clouds that covered her face were unhappy with understanding, “how careful they were? All those men down there-all those guns. Between them, they didn’t fire twenty shots total. Do you know why?”
She hesitated, then said slowly, “The other dirigibles.”
“That’s right,” he confirmed. “The other dirigibles. No armor. Not like this bird.” He kicked at the floor, which rang metallically under his feet. “One bullet and they could be blown sky-high.”
“What about that…that…” a word dawned on her, and she used it. “That Rattler? You could’ve set off a chain reaction, killed hundreds of people instead of merely the ten or twenty you’ve otherwise dispatched.”
He shrugged. “I was lucky, and they weren’t. And my men were all right, inside this bird. Even if the yard blew sky-high around it, and this bird took enough damage that it’d never fly again…they’d have made it out alive. And now that I can tell, just by looking at you, that you have a fair understanding of our mutual peril, it looks like we’re at a bit of an impasse.”
“We’re at no impasse. You’re going to disarm and I’m going to hand you over to…to the authorities,” she argued.
The captain sneered. “And which authorities might those be? Your old Rebs? I heard they threw you away. You want to barter me,” he said. “You want to bring them the last of the Macon Madmen, that’s it, isn’t it? Well. I’ll let you send the lot of us to hell before I’ll let you do that,” he said. He pulled his small firearm from the holster around his hips, and he aimed it right back at her.
“You’re a madman, sure enough,” she breathed, but she didn’t sound particularly frightened.
“I believe we established that.”
“I don’t want to kill you, or your crew, or anyone else down there. And I’d prefer not to die today, if I can arrange for it.” But she didn’t lower her gun, and the barrel didn’t display even the faintest quiver of uncertainty. She was buying herself time to think, that was all.
“Then we’ve got ourselves a problem,” Hainey told her. “What would you like for us to do? Open the bay door and let you go back down? You think they’d let a lady leave, just like that-or do you think that the moment we crack the door they’re going to fire up inside this thing just as fast as can be?”
“But you said…the hydrogen…”
“Look at them out there,” he told her, using his gun to briefly point at the windshield, and the sheriff, and the deputies, and the reassembled gathering that was picking up the wounded and the dead, and hauling them away. “They’re losing their reason. You know what that is, out there? I bet you don’t, Belle Boyd, but I do, as plain as I know you’re too smart to shoot. That out there…that’s not a crowd.”
“It’s not?”
“No. It’s a mob. And it doesn’t have half the brains of two men together, and they are going to kill anybody who tries to come out of this bird, lickity-split. So here’s what’s going to happen now,” he said, and he changed his mind, and put the gun back in its holster instead of pointing it at the woman in the doorway. “Me and my men are going to lift this Valkyrie up, fly her off, and if you don’t make any trouble for us, maybe we’ll set you down safe.”
“How chivalrous of you.”
“We’re gentlemen through and through, we are.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. Her gun didn’t believe them either.
Outside, hands and hammers were beating against the Valkyrie’s hull, hoping to pull it apart a piece at a time if it couldn’t be breached. Hainey heard this, even through the buzzing in his ears, and he said to the spy, “Call it professional courtesy if you want, or merely my personal desire to surprise you. But if we don’t move this ship somewhere else, and fast, not a one of us is walking away from it. Do you understand me?”
He nodded his head at Simeon, then at Lamar, who cautiously stepped away from him and went to the consoles where they might best make themselves useful. Hainey said, “Keep your gun out if you want, I don’t give a damn.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I don’t. Because now you know you’ll die down here with us, if you don’t let us fly. And once we’re in the air, you’ll die if you cut down any given one of us. So keep your gun out, lady, if that’s what makes you feel better. Leave it out, and leave it pointed at me, if you please. I don’t mind it, but I think it makes my crewmen nervous-and nervous crewmen can’t steer worth a damn.”
8. OUR PLAYERS ARE COMPELLED TO COLLABORATE
Hainey swung himself into the captain’s chair and snarled when a hail of bullets struck the windshield-chipping it here and nicking it there, but barely scratching the foot-thick swath of polished glass. He found the thruster pedal and pumped it with his foot while his hand searched all the logical spots for a starter switch. His fingers fumbled across the console, feeling into the nooks and slots where such switches tended to be located, and finally he found a red lever so he pulled it, and the burners fired at top power, and top volume.
Behind the dirigibl
e someone who had been standing too close to the engine mounts screamed and probably died as the craft howled violently to life.
Simeon adjusted himself in the first mate’s chair and reached overhead for the steering and undocking levers; he tested the former and yanked hard on the latter, and somewhere beyond their hearing a hydraulic clasp unfastened and began to retreat into the body of the ship.
Lamar busied himself by bounding back and forth between two secondary crewmen’s chairs, adjusting settings and turning dials, and the captain asked him, “We ready to fly?” to which the engineer said, “As ready as we’re going to get.” And he cast Maria Boyd an anxious glance.
She held her position by the crew quarters door, but her gun was at her side now and she caught him looking at her, she met his stare without a waver. But no one had time to stare, really. On the Valkyrie’s underbelly men were taking kerosene torches to task, trying to find a place to cut where the metal would split enough to do damage. And the hammers were joined by crowbars, and by pipes, and by anything else hard and reckless, and the sound against the hull was like hail.
Maria said, “They really will kill us all, won’t they?”
And Hainey replied without taking his eyes off the console, “Sure enough. They’ll never give you the five minutes you’d need to explain yourself; they’ll pull you out of the bird and pound you flat, just for being inside it in the first place. Now take yourself a seat.”
“Is that an order, Captain?”
He said, “It’s a suggestion you’d be wise to heed. We’ve never flown a bird this big before, and it might get rough.”
“You’re asking me to trust you enough to quit holding you at gunpoint.”
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