Driftmetal II

by J. C. Staudt

  “Don’t mention it, Detective Inspector. Happy to help. Although I’d be glad to have your recommendation when my number comes up.”

  Sal nodded. “I’m going to keep you in mind, Sergeant Cole. May I?”

  Cole stepped aside to let Sal move past him up the gangplank. Sal greeted the other law-lovers on deck, then went below, presumably to spit more nonsense at this Detective Inspector Jarvis fellow. Blasted law-lovers, I thought. When Sal played the part, he did a convincing job of it. For a second there, I’d almost forgotten he was a two-faced crook.

  When I tried to foresee how Sal might be planning to get us out of this one, I couldn’t come up with a feasible option. He was planning to get us out of this, wasn’t he? I assumed he hadn’t succumbed to a change of heart within the last half hour and decided to forego his hefty financial bonus in favor of going straight. But assumptions, like knives, are dangerous to those fool enough to handle them without knowing what they’re doing.

  My bluewave comm sounded, ringing clear and shrill across the docks. I ducked back into my hiding place and covered the speaker, hoping the dirty law-lovers on the Galeskimmer’s deck hadn’t spotted me. I picked up.

  “Muller?” McMurtry’s voice.

  “Yeah, you can call me that now.”

  “Muller. Listen to me. Whatever you do, don’t go back to the boat. Stay away from the docks. They’re swarming with Civvies.”

  If I could’ve rolled my eyes over the comm, I would’ve. “So I gather.”

  “You’re there already? Are you alright? They haven’t taken you into custody, have they?”

  “I’m fine, Dennel. Where is everyone?”

  “We’re at the hospital. We came to pick up Thomas and Rindhi. But Muller… something’s wrong.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  “Rindhi is in critical condition. Thomas won’t leave his side.”

  “I could’ve told you that from here. What’s wrong?”

  “Are you somewhere safe?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Yingler is here.”

  “Dangit, Dennel. He’s at the hospital?”

  “He’s roaming around the place with a cadre of Civvies at his heels. Get off the docks, and stay away from the hospital. Nerimund will be alright. Find someplace to hide out and wait for my call.”

  “But Dennel, I’ve just made an agreement to—”

  “I’m sorry Muller, I have to go. I’ll call back soon.” He hung up.

  I wanted to throw the comm on the ground and crush it underfoot. Where was that blasted gravstone? If the Civs hadn’t found it yet, it was either well-hidden, or it was gone somehow, and Dennel hadn’t wanted to break the news. I was sure the crew hadn’t carried a dozen bags of gravstone with them into town, unless they were crazier than I thought. And what had Dennel meant about Nerimund?

  I froze up, unsure what I was going to do for the first time in recent memory. My luck was running out. If there was a rock or a hard place to be found, I had wedged my way into it like an unwelcome tourist on a full park bench. I was in a bind, and there was nothing and no one who could get me out of it. No one, that is, except my good pal Sal.

  He appeared on deck a minute later, coming up the stairs behind another individual of similarly upright and ethical demeanor—an individual who I could only assume to be the one and only Detective Inspector Jarvis. The two men shook hands, and Jarvis strolled down the gangplank and took his leave. Sal gave a brief speech to the other constables, and presently a number of them left as well.

  There were only two constables left now. From what I could tell, Sal was doing his best to get rid of them, too. But for some reason, they weren’t having it. I waited a nail-biting few minutes for Sal to work his magic, doing what crooked cops do best—making excuses, fudging details, and running more smokescreens than a cat with a burning tail.

  Sal waited until the two constables had left the jetty before he followed them down the gangplank and came across the dock. I sprang out and nabbed him as he was going by, pulling him in beside the dirigible’s hull while he blubbered about me scaring him half to death.

  “That was beautifully done, Sal,” I said. “How did you manage it?”

  “You have no idea how many backsides I’m going to have to kiss over at the precinct to pull off what I just did. It’s a stakeout, see? They didn’t leave; they’re out at the entrance, waiting for your friends to come back so they can arrest them. I convinced them to set a trap.”

  “Okay. You’re not actually as terrific as I thought you were.”

  “It was the best I could do, Mull. How was I supposed to know they’d be searching your vessel when I got here? I expected to find you and your shipmates clinking glasses, and instead it’s a jolly old tit-fest with all my favorite co-workers in attendance. Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “… I forgot.”

  Sal shook his head. I could see his urge to facepalm growing stronger, but he spared me the slight. “You forgot. Alright, then maybe it’s best that you not complain about how I performed under the circumstances.”

  “You just set a trap for my friends. How does that help, exactly?”

  “Muller… I’ve come to expect more from you. You’re way more resourceful than to lose hope at the first sign of trouble. I got them off your boat, didn’t I?”

  “Excuse me if I’m a little on-edge. We’re supposed to make an important delivery in a few hours, in case you’d forgotten.”

  “We can pull this off, Mull. Take the boat and make the delivery without me. Then pick up your crew and get out of the city.”

  “There are a couple of major problems with that plan,” I said. “First of all, you’re the only one who knows how to get to the warehouse.”

  “I’ll give you directions.”

  “Fine. But your guys are all over the hospital, and my shipmates are trying not to get collared. For all I know, they already have been.”

  “I’ll bluewave in and call off the dogs.”

  “Great. But there’s still one more thing. I don’t know where the gravstone is.”

  Sal lifted his eyebrows, giving me the kind of look people get just before they hurl on your shoes. “How can you not know where it is?”

  “Because your law-loving butt-buddies searched the entire ship and didn’t find it. Or so they said.”

  “You didn’t plan it that way?”

  “If I’d planned any of this, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Sal went whiter than the seagull crap scattered along the pier. “Do you realize that if I don’t deliver on this deal, Trudy’s going to kill my family? She’s going to kill my wife, and she’s going to kill my kids, and she’s going to find my sister and my parents, and both my uncles, and all three of my aunts, and kill them too.”

  I grimaced. “Calm down. No one’s gonna kill anyone. Well… I might kill some people, but that’s not the point. For crying out loud, Sal! What did you do to that woman?”

  He looked at the ground, fidgeting. “I tried to get out.”

  7

  I stared at Sal for a long time. He was a man I had trusted—that is, I’d trusted him as far as I could’ve thrown a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound tithead with a crooked sense of loyalty. On second thought, I hadn’t trusted him so much as I’d found my uses for him. But he had never let me down. Not in the old days. And he’d been living this double life of his for a long time. Long enough that I wanted him to keep on living it, in case there was ever anything else I needed him for.

  “She made all those threats because you wanted to go back to your mundane life of law-loving and bootlickin’?” I said. “The nerve…”

  “I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that sounds a little over the top,” Sal said.

  “I’m not agreeing with you. I meant the nerve of you! How could you even entertain the idea of puckering up for the cheeks of justice?”

  “I wasn’t always this way, you know. When I joined the Corps, I wa
s a fresh, level-headed young lad with high hopes and big dreams.”

  “Mutton-headed is more like it. You were suffering from a lifelong bout of insanity that only a good dose of hustling could cure. Once you heard the siren song of the criminal underworld, you came to your senses. I’m glad I never knew you before then, or we would never have become friends. I’d have karate-chopped you in the throat the second I saw you.”

  Sal was in no mood to be teased. “I want out, Mull. You don’t know what it’s like, having to wake up and face your children every day, posing as this honorable man when you’re really a miserable degenerate.”

  “I enjoy being a miserable degenerate. If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.”

  “Don’t make light of this. I’m trying to make you understand where I’m coming from, but you can’t seem to. The pressure is just too much. It’s not worth it anymore.”

  He was right—I couldn’t understand him. So I made my best attempt to raise his spirits. “Cheer up, Sal. This is just a phase. You’ll get through it, and you’ll realize it was worth the struggle.”

  “I won’t. It’s true what they say; crime doesn’t pay.”

  “Whoever said crime doesn’t pay wasn’t any good at it,” I said.

  “There isn’t much that does pay unless you’re good at it.”

  I thumbed over my shoulder. “Half your co-workers are evidence against that.”

  Sal frowned. “In this case, I hope you’re right; maybe they missed something when they were searching the boat. Something you’d be able to find if you snuck over there and gave it a good look yourself.”

  “I can only hope your cohorts are as inept as I’ve given them credit for. I’m willing to bet Sable and Dennel didn’t have a chance to hide all that gravstone before the Civs swarmed in. If I make it to the Galeskimmer, I’m shoving off. This might be my only chance to get her airborne again without a whole mess of law-lovers on board. I think you ought to tell me where that warehouse is now. Then take your car and meet me there.”

  Sal wrinkled his mouth, deep in thought. “Well, I’ll have to draw them off you. But if you can shake them, I can duck out and head for the warehouse. They won’t miss me.”

  “Don’t you worry about me, Sal-pal.”

  “You know I hate that.”

  I grinned.

  Sal gave me directions and tipped me off about a few stations and lookout towers along the way so I’d know what to avoid. Then he brushed himself off, straightened the collar on his jacket, and took a deep breath. “Wish me luck.”

  I nodded. “Wish it back to me.”

  Sal strode away down the pier, aimed at diffusing his own trap, if he could manage it. If he couldn’t, the Galeskimmer and I were in for a good screwing. I clung to the shadows as I made my way to the boat, looking as suspicious as I possibly could. Not that I had any choice in the matter; I’ve always found mustaches to be characteristically suspicious.

  Once on board, I already felt better about my prospects. The gravstone had to be somewhere around here, and I suspected the Civs had been too busy massaging each other’s egos to notice they’d overlooked it. However, after a quick search of the most likely places, and a more thorough search of the less obvious ones, I was beginning to think I was qualified to apply to the academy.

  When I entered the captain’s quarters, I found that Sable had left something behind. Something the Civs had missed altogether. There, on the tall shelf next to the door, stood Nerimund. But it wasn’t Nerimund the way I knew him. It was a wooden statue that looked exactly like Nerimund, complete with knots and grain lines running over his skin.

  I tapped the statue with a finger. Nothing happened. It seemed Nerimund had locked himself away in a dormant state of some kind. This wasn’t a mundane statue or a wood carving; I felt the warmth beneath the surface, flowing through the wood like water, and somehow I knew he was alright.

  I considered bluewaving Dennel, but I’d had a vision of them hiding in the dark of some storage closet while Yingler and the Civs pawed through laundry bins and shelves of cleaning supplies. I had no way of knowing whether the vision was something I’d dreamed or if it had been another one of the medallion’s strange manifestations, but I didn’t want to risk it. Until Dennel called back, I had no choice but to assume the worst.

  Satisfied that I could find no sign of the gravstone anywhere on board, I circled the boat and unhitched all the mooring lines, then creaked up the steps to the quarterdeck and took the controls. I didn’t have a crew to rig the sails, and the turbines would make too much noise until I was far away, so I would have to rely on the clinkers to bear me aloft.

  I flicked the switch and heard them whining softly into motion below. I touched my finger to the release button, bracing myself for the sudden gain in altitude. But when I pressed it, the ship jolted like a bad set of brakes and settled to rest on its haunches. Fantastic. I needed a major hiccup like this in the moment that would’ve been my glorious getaway. Thanks, Leridote.

  I slammed the button with a fist. The deck shook and came to rest again. I grumbled to myself as I shut down the clinkers, jogged down the steps, and grabbed Sable’s toolbox.

  A minute later I’d shimmied my way beneath the ship to inspect the cylinders and the two driftmetal side runners. Nothing became immediately apparent to me; everything seemed to be functioning as it should. But the noise had apparently attracted some attention.

  “Need a hand?”

  I poked my head out and found myself staring up into the crotch of a graying civilian dressed in coal miner’s denim and a herringbone flat cap. “No thanks,” I said, escaping the unpleasant view and resuming my work.

  “Name’s Barnaby. Mine’s the biplane across the way there. Thought I heard a commotion over this way. I know a few things about boats and whatnot, so I just figured I’d drop in and take a gander—see if there was any way I could assist you.”

  I stuck my head out again. “Thank you, Barnaby. No—” I stopped myself short. “Actually, yes. There is one thing you could do for me. Just hold your horses there, partner. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  I finished checking the rest of the clinker arrays, cleaned up my tools, and tested the lift again, but the Galeskimmer only gave me more of the same troublesome trembling. Barnaby followed me around the whole time like a lost puppy, prattling on about how good he was at fixing things, sounding like a real know-it-all. I would’ve bet Sal’s entire family that my racket had woken the whole neighborhood by now. From time to time, I saw people peeking out of their windows and looking through their spyglasses at me from the decks of nearby ships.

  Somewhere amid Barnaby’s rambling, I concentrated on trying to remember what Dennel had said over the bluewave earlier. I think it’s safe. We put it underneath. When I realized I’d checked the two side runners and not the middle one, I almost kicked myself. Of course. Dennel, you magnificent, ingenious son of a gun.

  “Barnaby, stay on deck while I go below,” I told him. “I’ll come up in a minute.” Chisel in hand, I scrambled down the steps and threw myself onto the floor of the crew cabin. I jammed the chisel into the space between two planks and pried open the access hatch to reveal the cold, silvery runner below. When I stuck my hand into the cavity, I felt the rough touch of stone.

  A long time ago, boatbuilders had discovered the perils of losing one runner in mid-air and having their whole streamboat swing sideways from the other one. As a countermeasure, they’d started adding a third runner—a thin strip that ran straight down the ship’s spine, just beneath the keel. I would never have thought to hide the gravstone along the third runner. Fortunately for me, it seemed my companions were cleverer than I was.

  It took me some brute strength and a few precious moments to tear away the first few chunks of gravstone and set them on the cabin floor. Dennel and the others had managed to stow them down there in what must’ve been quite a hurry. It was almost as if they’d been meaning to hide them down there before we got
into this predicament…

  I’d said it myself when we first stole the gravstone from Gilfoyle’s warehouse: carrying gravstone on a ship that flies on driftmetal runners is a bad idea of the most monumental kind. This was the reason why; any direct contact between the gravstone and the runners could make for a complicated flight. But Sable and her crew—I didn’t know yet whose idea it had been—had used the disruptive magnetic properties of gravstone on driftmetal to hide the goods while simultaneously keeping the Civs from flying the boat away and impounding it. It was a delightful and dastardly scheme, and I was thoroughly impressed. Even more importantly, it had worked.

  I crawled through the access hatch and into the tiny space beneath the cabin floor. The rest of the gravstone was anchored to the runner, chunks lined up like soldiers marching double-file. I began to pry them off and lift them into the cabin, one by one. I was most of the way done and I’d worked up a decent sweat by the time I remembered Barnaby and my plans for him.

  I went above and explained my predicament—that is, an alternate version of my predicament, unburdened by the bothersome limitations of the truth. Barnaby eagerly accepted the task I gave him, and I watched him amble down the pier and out of sight. He was a good fella, Barnaby was.

  I went below and resumed my work. I’d just finished removing the last chunk of gravstone from the runner when I heard footsteps on the deck above. I closed the hatch, then drew Rindhi’s pulser and began to creep up the stairs. When I saw that Barnaby had returned with the constable I’d sent him to retrieve, I shot them both. I had been hoping my little ruse would work; turned out Barnaby was as gullible as I’d pegged him for.

  I bound both men; hands and feet with rigging lines, mouths with handkerchief gags. Now that I had the hostages I needed, I could get going. The Civs had a distinct disadvantage when it came to dealing with the likes of me: they played by the rules. No self-respecting law-lover is going to open fire on a ship holding one of their own—let alone one with an innocent civilian on board.

  The bobby squirming around on deck was one of the men I’d seen onboard earlier, so it seemed Sal had been unsuccessful in convincing his cohorts to abandon their stakeout—or else he hadn’t even tried. Since there was no other way around it, it was time to spring their trap.