The Calderan Problem (Free-Wrench Book 4)

by Joseph Lallo

  He added an E to the mix, then began to draw lines.

  “There is a direct connection between the Wind Breaker and Caldera, and a direct connection between the Wind Breaker and any number of ports along the coast. All of those have direct or indirect connections with Ebonwhite through their trade with the fug. Tantalizing though a direct clash with that fool would be, there remains my presently diminished status to be considered. … But there is one place with no official trade with the fug. Lock.”

  He drew an L.

  “The people of Lock are denied contact with the fug folk for past indiscretions. Which means it is a place ripe for harvest by any enterprising fug person willing to shirk the laws of his own people. Knowing my enterprising kinsmen as I do, it is a relative certainty that such a man exists. And such a man would have a ready supply of salt, he would be aware of the comings and goings of the Wind Breaker, as Lock is in essence their home port, and he would be vulnerable to extortion for fear of being revealed to his fellow people as a violator of their laws.”

  He circled the L.

  “There. It takes just a few moments alone with my genius to unravel even the most complex of riddles. Lock is where my return to power shall begin.” He ran his fingers through his hair and straightened his lapel, then slouched a bit. “Just as soon as those dolts finish dousing their brains with alcoholic swill.”

  #

  Gunner, Digger, and Wink drifted swiftly but unsteadily through the sky in a vehicle that stretched the meaning of the word “airship” to its very limits. The thing was tiny, room enough for the pair of them, some fuel, and a small sack of cargo. Even that amount of carrying capacity was achieved only after removing the seats and stripping away some of the outer panels to reduce weight. If there was any less to it, the ship would have been the airborne equivalent of a bicycle built for two. It was so claustrophobic inside that Wink had slipped through one of the open panels to ride between the gondola and the envelope.

  Digger was at the controls, his gangling legs crossed and his hands tugging gingerly at levers and wheels that looked fit to snap if mishandled.

  “Are we nearly there?” Gunner asked. “My legs have been asleep since six minutes after we left Ichor Well.”

  “Don’t blame me,” Digger said. “I’d suggested you go alone. This ship has plenty of room for one person.”

  “The word ‘plenty’ has no business being associated with a cramped, misshapen ship like this,” Gunner said. “It ought to be broken up for kindling and used to fuel a real ship.”

  “The small size and quiet running of this ship is the only reason we are able to use it at all. Anything larger and we run the risk of drawing attention to the well with our comings and goings.”

  Gunner acknowledged the statement with a grunt. “So I ask again, are we nearly there? It’s getting near the rendezvous time on that map.”

  “One of the many things that made me ill-suited for this mission was my lackluster navigational skill,” Digger said. “But if I’m correct, we are only a few minutes away.”

  “Good. Let’s run through this. You’re about the same size as the dead spy, and you’re wearing the closest we could rig up to his clothes, and we’ve got the repaired bag for you to carry,” Gunner said. “All you need to do is get inside and send me a signal telling me how many people are inside and where they are.”

  “And what about if, or rather when, they recognize me?” Digger said.

  Though most fug folk had features difficult for the untrained eye to differentiate, Digger suffered from a clear Ebonwhite family resemblance, and thus would be recognized as someone significant even if he wasn’t already labeled a criminal by his own family.

  “That’s what the scarf is for. Cover your face,” Gunner said.

  “I am not comfortable relying upon a disguise that common courtesy requires I remove immediately upon entering.”

  “You may have to abandon courtesy for this mission, Digger,” Gunner said. “You didn’t really think you were going to start the Well Diggers and not get your hands dirty, did you?”

  “I’d thought my dirty handedness was through once we’d secured the well.”

  “This isn’t even the first time you’ve met with a group of people likely to put a bullet in you if they knew who you were. That’s how we got mixed up with you.”

  Digger released a sigh of resignation. “What is the endgame of this? What do you think we will achieve?”

  “We will find out what they know, why they wanted to learn it, and thus what’s to be done to stop it.”

  “And if we fail?”

  “We’ll probably be killed. Which at least will obviate the need to go on any further missions of this sort.”

  “Ah. What a wonderfully optimistic assessment,” Digger said.

  He took his hands from the controls long enough to tug his scarf into place. The tiny ship and stiff wind meant they dangled and shifted wildly as soon as he let go. Both Digger and Gunner clocked their heads against the walls until he got it under control again.

  “Blast it, if I’d known I’d be doing things of this sort, I would have gotten more practice on this vehicle.” He shook his head and blinked his eyes. “Ah… It seems the wind was obliging enough to set us on course. I do believe that is an airship docked there.”

  Gunner held up the sight from his rifle to look over Digger’s shoulder. Though there was no room in the ship for the rifle itself, he’d brought the sight along to serve as a telescope.

  “Oh… I like the look of those cannons. I think we should amend our plan a bit…”

  #

  Digger stepped up to the door of the shack where the rendezvous was to take place. He was anything but confident, as the entirety of the last few minutes had been spent hastily composing an addendum to an already ill-defined plan. The shack, which was in all likelihood filled with bloodthirsty killers, was at least a familiar design. It was the same sort of quickly assembled building he and the Well Diggers had used as their own meeting places before they’d created a permanent stronghold.

  “Lovely,” he muttered to himself. “Just one door…”

  He tightened the scarf around his face and knocked on the door. A small eye-level slit slid open.

  “What’s the password?” barked the man behind it.

  “Password?” Digger said, his voice stricken.

  He cursed himself for not anticipating the simple security measure. There’d not been anything to suggest a password in the fallen spy’s things. Digger’s’ mind raced, but he knew every second of delay was another nail in his coffin.

  “Raincoat,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster.

  “That’s not the password,” the man growled.

  “Yes it is,” Digger said. “Open the door.”

  “It isn’t the password.”

  “Look. I’m here in the middle of nowhere with a sack of goods I stole from the middle of The Thicket. Do you think I would risk my skin and survive all of that just to come here with the wrong password? The password is ‘raincoat.’ Now open the door.” When in doubt, always appear to be the one with the answers.

  “It isn’t! I’ve got the password right here, and that isn’t it.”

  “Either you didn’t get the latest password, or you stupidly lost it. Either way, something’s been botched. Now open the door and let me in.”

  “New password?”

  “Yes! Alabaster sent it out, along with one of those stupid calling cards of his, because heaven forbid someone not know he’s the one making the stupid decisions.”

  “He would do a thing like that,” the doorman muttered. “How do I know you ain’t lying?”

  “Because I’ve got a sack of goods that you are supposed to collect from me!” Digger said, getting more into the role with every moment. “I did my job. You want to be the one who didn’t do his?”

  “Tell you what. You just leave the bag there and we’l
l collect it once you leave.”

  “You want me to leave a sack of things that I risked my life for outside the shack of a fool who misplaced the updated password? Not on your life.”

  Behind the shack, a telltale rattle of a mooring chain suggested Gunner had reached the airship.

  “What was that sound?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” Digger said, desperate to keep the attention on him. “Get this door open so we can get on with this. Have you ever been in The Thicket? I can’t believe you would keep me out here when you are the one who neglected to take note of the new password!”

  #

  Gunner worked his way, hand over hand, up the mooring chain.

  “I don’t know how those Coopers make this look so easy,” he grumbled beneath his breath.

  He reached the end of the chain and hauled himself up to the railing of the ship. A swift scan revealed no lookouts on the deck, not uncommon for the fug folk, who made it a point to run their ships on a skeleton crew. Gunner hopped onto the deck and stalked, low as he could manage, toward the hatch to the lower decks. He held his pistol at the ready, fully loaded and hammer cocked. As he moved, he took note of his surroundings. The ship was stripped down, made for speed. Despite the fact that it was waiting for someone who might not even arrive, the boiler was running hot, burning fuel. The ship was ready to move at a moment’s notice.

  “They wanted to leave in a hurry. Someone is waiting impatiently for that bag of garbage…”

  Gunner put his ear to the hatch. No voices, no footsteps. He worked the latch slowly and eased the hatch open. Inside, the cramped corridors of the ship were dark, the better to serve the vision of the fug folk. No matter. A lifetime on a ship provided a man with an intuition for layout and structure. If this ship was typical, there would be only two crewmembers and the inspector. The engineer would be in the belly of the ship, tending to the boiler and keeping it at the optimal temperature. Readied as it was for immediate travel, the captain or skipper should have been at the wheel awaiting travel orders. That he wasn’t there meant two things. The crew wasn’t as well trained as they might be, and the pilot could be anywhere.

  “Pitiful dedication to duty and procedure…” he murmured.

  The question now was, just how poorly trained or badly behaved was the crew? In his time under Nita’s tutelage regarding the operation and repair of a boiler, it had become clear that a ship moved fastest when the boiler was at its highest pressure. And a boiler at its highest pressure was one lapse in concentration away from becoming a bomb. While a pilot or navigator could afford to abandon his post and receive little more than a reprimand, an engineer faced a stiffer punishment. Since the ship was in one piece, the engineer was probably still at his post.

  Gunner followed the pipes running along the walls, his ears trained upon the creaks and pops of the ship swaying in the wind. He heard, buried amid the low-grade din, the distant thump of plodding footsteps. Someone was on the move. He placed his steps more carefully, timing them with those of the unseen crewmembers moving along a parallel hall.

  The openings between the ship’s rooms and hallways lacked doors, or even curtains. As he plodded forward, the likely layout of the ship tracing itself out in his mind, he realized both his own steps and those he was mimicking would reach the boiler room at the same time.

  He quickened his pace, endeavoring to move as quietly as possible. From just around the bend came the telltale crackle and hiss of a well-fed boiler. The sound of the footsteps was growing sharper. It was now or never.

  Gunner burst into the cramped boiler room. Here the green glow of phlo-lights joined the red of burning coal and the blue of burn-slow. Dials, knobs, and meters covered the walls, attached to a network of pipes and tubes. These knobs had the engineer’s full attention. By the time he realized someone had entered the room, he had just enough time to widen his eyes in shock before Gunner’s pistol was pressed to his nose.

  “Mouth shut tight,” Gunner hissed. “This is a brand new coat, and I’d hate to make a mess of it.”

  The engineer obeyed, raising his hands. Gunner spun him around and gripped the man’s arm tightly, wrenching it behind his back and leveling the pistol over the man’s shoulder.

  “Did you say something, Richard?” remarked the remaining crewmember as he stepped into the doorway and directly into the pistol’s sights.

  “Not a sound and hands where I can see them. I’m afraid I need this ship in one piece, and a gunfight in a boiler room is a sure way to blow it to bits.”

  The pilot, stunned, held his ground. “… If you’re not going to shoot, then why should I listen?” he said.

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t shoot.”

  “… And if you shoot, the boys down below will come running just as surely as if I’d called them. You haven’t thought this through, have you?”

  “In my defense, operations such as this are prone to improvisation.”

  “Don’t toy with him! He’s got a gun!” the engineer said.

  “Your engineer is a smart man,” Gunner said.

  “I know you. Ebonwhite’s been circulating sketches. You’re Gunner, the lunatic with the guns.”

  “I wouldn’t have worded it quite the same, but a fair assessment. What else do they say about me, I wonder?”

  “That you’re a murderer. That you’re dangerous with a gun. And that you’re worthless without one.”

  “Ah,” Gunner said. “Nice though it is to have earned a reputation, it would be nicer still to have earned an accurate one.”

  He took a step back, releasing the engineer and planting a boot in the small of his back. The man stumbled forward. Gunner rushed after him, shoving him along until he struck his fellow crewmember and all three of them tumbled into the narrow hallway. Gunner swung his pistol in two quick swipes, thudding it against the head of each of his opponents. The blow left them dazed. He backed away, gun trained on them, and snatched some spare flexible tubing from the boiler room.

  “And to think people wonder why I carry such a heavy pistol,” he said, holstering the weapon to free his hands for a swift binding and gagging.

  #

  “Sure it’s possible they sent a new password, but why would they?” argued the man behind the door.

  Digger, having kept the argument going for so long, had become genuinely invested in it.

  “Because suppose someone came along and learned the password and tried to sneak in,” Digger said.

  “I suppose… wait a minute,” the man said. “If there was a new password, how would you learn it before us? We only got here a day ago.”

  “I… er…”

  “We’re going to get to the bottom of this…”

  Engines of the ship whistled to life, and it strained against the mooring chains, rotating slowly toward the cabin. Digger grinned. The door of the shack opened, and out stepped the man who had been doing the arguing. He was armed with a sleek rifle and held it like he was a seasoned professional.

  “Okay, whoever you are, you stay right where you are,” he said, lifting the tip of the weapon toward Digger.

  “No, I think you should stay where you are. Because my associates and I have taken control of the situation and we want some answers.”

  “Your associates? What associates? There’s me and my partner, plus the two up in the ship on our side. All I see is you.”

  The ship continued to turn.

  “I’m giving you this opportunity to cooperate before something unfortunate has to be done,” Digger said.

  “You aren’t even armed,” the man scoffed. “Pull down your scarf. Let’s see that face.”

  “Don’t be so sure I’m not armed,” Digger said, revealing his face. “A wise man once said there’s a better place to have a weapon than in your enemy’s face.”

  The man squinted at him. “Well, well, well. You’re that rogue Ebonwhite. I should have figured. Leave it to an Ebonwhite to speak
in riddles. But I’ll bite. What’s better than having a gun in a man’s face?”

  “Having it behind his back.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you trying to trick me into turning around?”

  The engines of the ship started to slow.

  “No, I certainly am not,” Digger said, grinning wider.

  His villainous counterpart began to form another snide statement, but the deafening thump of the ship’s cannon firing drowned it out. The rifleman flinched, unprepared for the booming report. Digger on the other hand, had been told by Gunner to expect it, and thus was in position to capitalize. He rushed the startled man and seized the rifle.

  “Hands up,” Digger shouted over the ringing in his own ears, rifle in hand. “Your friend too, or the next shot from that ship will leave that shack in a thousand pieces. Both of you get out here where I can see you.”

  The pair complied.

  “The quicker you give me answers, the quicker this’ll all be over,” Digger said. “Now this bag is full of assorted nonsense associated with the Wind Breaker and its crew. We know it was Lucius Alabaster who ordered its collection. What we want to know is why.”

  “Feh. You already know more than us,” said the doorman.

  “You’ve got a cannon pointed at you from the rear and a rifle from the front, so I’d really consider cooperating if I were you.”

  “This is how this sort of thing works!” the man insisted. “Alabaster hired us to show up here and wait for two days. If anybody showed up, we were to ask him the password. The correct answer earns him a seat on the airship until we got back to The Thicket to shut him up, then back in he goes. After that we all head on our way. Anyone else shows up, they get a few bullet holes and get dumped in the lake north of here. No one ever said what would be in the bag or why it even mattered.”

  “And where were you all going to go?” Digger asked.

  “Another place in the middle of nowhere to drop the bag and pick up our payment.”

  “Were you going to meet with anyone?”

  He hesitated. Digger raised the rifle.

  “If it’s anything like the last time, we’d meet a big, overdressed grunt who’d poke around in the bag and decide if we get paid or not.”