The Calderan Problem (Free-Wrench Book 4)

by Joseph Lallo

  “You been through the wringer,” she said. “Looks like you took a shot in the leg. You want I should get you down to Butch so she can pull the bullet out once she’s done with the cannons.”

  “I’d rather take her place. I’ve had that bullet in me for over a week. A few more hours won’t kill me,” Gunner said.

  “You sure about that?” Coop said, producing a crowbar to finish salvaging the wailer.

  “There are a host of things with a far greater chance of killing me in the next few hours.”

  “Where’s Wink? And the rest of the folks who were with you? The note said you had the grunts and the doctor,” Lil said.

  “They got a bit farther on their own wailers than I did on mine. If luck is with them, they’re safely ashore.”

  #

  Dr. Prist and Kent had indeed reached the shore of Tellahn several minutes prior. It was not, however, what she would have called a safe arrival. It was at that point that Kent realized the wailer ship didn’t raise and lower itself by pumping phlogiston in and out of the envelope as most ships did. These little ships sliced through the air and rose and fell based upon the angle of the envelope. Once they were out of forward velocity, they were left to the whims of the ship’s set buoyancy. With two passengers, that meant they were falling, and without much choice as to where they fell. Wind and fate conspired to deposit them in the branches of a large tree at the edge of a shoreside town. And there they had remained because the local law enforcement was rather firmly opposed to any other activity. They had thus been trapped like a treed cat.

  “Stay where you are! That ship is a friend of Caldera, and as you have fired upon them, you are enemies of Caldera,” barked a policeman from the base of the tree.

  His uniform, gaily colored and ornamented, had more in common with a circus performer than a constable, at least by Rim and fug standards. His tone of voice and weapon—which was a similarly ornate cudgel—were far more stern and in keeping with the position.

  “My dear sir,” called Dr. Prist. “Far be it for me to contradict the local constabulary, particularly arriving unannounced as we have, but there is rather more at stake than what may appear, from your point of view, to be a small invasion.”

  “That ship’s carrying something that could wipe all of you out!” Kent shouted.

  “I repeat, the Wind Breaker is a friend of Caldera. You are the threat,” said the policeman.

  “We aren’t the ones attacking you! We haven’t done a thing against you, nor do we intend to,” Prist assured him.

  The pointless exchange between a policeman without the authority to change his position and a pair of uninvited guests in a far more literally unchangeable position might have continued for another hour if not for the significant contribution made by Donald.

  He’d made a similar discovery regarding the control of the altitude for his vessel. Without a second passenger, his problem had been opposite that of Kent and Dr. Prist, and without Gunner’s insight into the position and operation of the vent nozzle, he’d taken a more direct approach. He’d blasted a hole in his own envelope with his pistol. This had resulted in a far faster descent. Before the eyes of his fellow crewmates and the assembled crowd, he and his ship came crashing down through the roof of a nearby barn. A burst of hay was followed by a string of angry expletives confirming both his survival and his opinion of the landing.

  The whole crowd, police officer included, rushed to investigate. Kent took the initiative and lowered Dr. Prist down to the ground before joining her.

  “Just what are we supposed to do now?” she hissed, moving unsteadily across the downy grass of the roadside.

  “You! Come back!” called the policeman, realizing they were now free of their predicament.

  “Forgive me for this, but we haven’t got the time for you to get your land legs back,” Kent said.

  He threw Dr. Prist over his shoulder and ran toward the road. One of the spindly spring-driven carriages had been left by a curious onlooker, and Kent jumped into the driver’s seat after plopping Dr. Prist into a passenger seat.

  “Do you know how to operate this vehicle?” she asked.

  “No, but that’d make it the second strange vehicle I’ve had to learn in a hurry. I’m starting to get used to it.”

  He worked his way through all the levers, cranks, and pedals available to him until a startling twang jolted the vehicle into motion.

  “What about Donald?”

  “Right about now I’m more worried about the first people in that crowd to get to him. He sounded more angry than hurt.”

  “Fine, then head toward the nearest cannon,” she said.

  “I don’t know what you think we’ll be able to do once we get there, but since toward the cannon is also away from that crowd, I’ll humor you.”

  They rattled along the road toward the towering cannon not far away.

  #

  Lo, the mighty volcano that had birthed Tellahn, took up a substantial portion of its southeast corner. Every inch of the fiery mountain was put to the best use the people of Caldera could manage. Where it met the sea, volcanic rock quarries harvested the remnants of ancient eruptions and used the heat of the mountain to help speed the creation of sea salt. Beside the saltern stood the nearest of the shore cannons. More importantly, as it was nearest to the steamworks, this cannon also hosted a small facility that, at the moment, was the only thing that might get Nita closer to her friends.

  She hopped off the carriage and dashed toward the cannon. The base of it was the size of a small house, with gears nearly as tall as Nita and connected to a complex assembly for aiming the massive contraption. The barrel extended from one end, held at forty-five degrees and facing the sea. Every piece of the weapon was built from two clearly differentiated metals. Strategically placed strips of purple-blue trith supplemented oiled black iron in configurations as artful as the engineers could manage, and as utilitarian as the artists would allow.

  The cannoneer sat anxiously in the seat of the weapon, surrounded by levers and wheels. His spotter displayed a similar level of uncertainty and unease from his seat behind the operator. The airships were still far to the east, placing them outside the field of view and targeting range of the weapon. Thus, if not for the sound of the cannon firing farther up the coast, they wouldn’t have known the ships were coming at all. Now that they knew, there was little to do but wait for instructions. And as Nita was the first person to arrive since the blast to the north had split the air, they began interrogating her even before the carriage had rolled to a stop.

  “What do you know about this?” called the spotter. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, but I mean to find out.” She turned and held up her borrowed field glass. “They’re damaged, but I can’t tell how badly. Can you see the ship with your telescopes?”

  The spotter worked at a handwheel, causing his chair to rotate independently of the cannon, but it clanged to a stop at the end of its range well before his largest optics could be brought to bear on the ships. Abandoning them, he pulled out a smaller and more traditional telescope.

  “Which ship? There are two,” he said.

  “Two? But the cannon fired. If there was still an enemy ship, it should have kept firing.”

  “There are certainly two ships. One if them is passing over the perimeter battery now. The other should be well within range of the cannons.”

  “Tell me how the one with the red envelope looks. Does it look like it will be able to land safely?” She turned and held up her field glass again. “They’re over land. I don’t know why they haven’t started coming down for a landing.”

  “Slow down, slow down,” the spotter said. “Which one with a red envelope?”

  “The Wind Breaker. You must know the ship. It’s the only one you’ve been instructed not to target.” She climbed up the side of the cannon and snatched a small rendering of the ship from where it h
ad been wedged beside the controls for the main optics. “This one, right here!”

  He looked to the rendering, then held up his telescope again, sweeping back and forth between two points in the sky.

  “… Which Wind Breaker?”

  “Give me that,” she snapped, snatching the telescope from his hand.

  She raised it to the sky and sought out the nearest ship. The superior telescope gave her a much better view, but it didn’t help her much. The damaged rear rigging had caused the gondola to tip upward, concealing the deck of the ship and thus the state of the crew. A strange patch of twinkling blue had coated a portion of the envelope and several of the turbines. Someone, the angle and glare from the crystals concealed all but the general form, was hard at work chipping at the jagged patch of blue. The ship, at least in the very short term, did not seem in danger of dropping from the sky. Then she shifted to the other point in the sky much farther away.

  “… There are two Wind Breakers.”

  “I told the commander this would be a problem. How will we know when they arrive if they are the ship we are to allow through or simply a ship of the same class. We all know how the people of Rim can’t abide making things unique. It’s all copies of copies and other such drudgery.”

  “The Wind Breaker is unique. I embellished it myself. There isn’t another ship in all of Rim that could be confused for it. I need a closer look. If it’s Captain Mack and the others, they need my help. If it’s someone else, they’ve got some explaining to do.”

  “I’d offer the main telescope, but I can’t angle it correctly.”

  “No. I need a closer look than that.”

  “How can you—”

  Nita pointed to a small structure not far from the shore. “I need a decoy,” she said.

  “A decoy… one of the target decoys? What are you going to do with it?”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  “You don’t have the authority to use that equipment.”

  Nita couldn’t afford a long argument. Having asked nicely once, she decided to take matters into her own hands and deal with the consequences later. She hopped down from the cannon and dashed for the carriage to fetch some coil boxes, then rushed for the building near the water with larger than average pipes leading back to the volcano and the steamworks within.

  Nita came to the door of the warehouse, a fairly small building for what it supposedly contained. It was locked, but a swift blow from one of her larger wrenches solved that problem. She threw the door open and rushed inside. The cannoneer and spotter, eager to stop her from doing whatever it was she thought she was doing, sprinted after her. She shut the door and braced it with the very wrench that had gained her entry. The men responsible for the cannon beat uselessly at the door, but it held firm. She turned to investigate the contents of the warehouse in the dim light that filtered through the ill-fitting slats of the roof.

  As the purpose of the cannons was to shoot down enemy airships, which until recently meant all airships, there was value in being certain that the operators had the skills necessary to strike their targets. Having no airships of their own, the solution was to create decoys that could be set in motion and sent into the skies to serve as training targets. Caldera, again until recently, hadn’t had any way to acquire or produce phlogiston, making airships of any reasonable size or efficiency unfeasible, not that the largely isolationist populace had spent any effort puzzling out how to build one. Like nearly all their most difficult problems, the Calderans had turned to the mighty Lo for a solution. And as always, it had provided the answer.

  She found a hose and hooked it up to a steam outlet on the wall, then coupled it to the base of a large wooden crate packed with brightly colored silk. She spun the valve and steam straight from the heart of the steamworks whistled through the hose. The silken contents of the crate bulged upward and began to unfurl, brilliant yellows and reds blooming forth like a flower. Soon the bulging silk reached the ceiling. It continued to fill, billowing out to fill most of the available space within the warehouse. Nita dropped down to avoid the scalding-hot fabric.

  The steady flow of steam filled the silk more and more, until finally the pressure against the roof was too much and the weak slats and beams gave way. Wood rained down on all sides, and what was now clearly a balloon leaped upward to continue filling, now unrestrained. As it pulled away, it revealed the rest of the crate’s contents. Inside was another length of hose, this one attached to something within the inflating silk itself. A small propeller lay loose inside, beside a gear train with two sockets. One was on the outside, the other inside.

  Nita took the propeller out and tightened a few nuts to affix it to the outer receptacle. The inner one was just the right size for a coil box. She clicked a box in place and dumped the other one into the crate. The crate was treacherously small for what she had in mind, but then she’d had no illusions of this being easy. She stepped into the crate as the massive silk balloon, now visible in all of its glory as a gorgeous assortment of colored fabrics, filled enough to begin to lift it from the ground. With her weight, the slightly lighter-than-air vehicle slammed back to the ground, and the steam continued to pour into it. Gradually the chains affixing the balloon to the crate started to rise again, thus dragging her along with it.

  The hose pulled free and flipped madly about, but within seconds she’d left it well below her. The tube from within the envelope began to leak scalding water, so she hastily tossed its end over the side, then faced the problem that in all honesty should have been addressed before she’d begun.

  “Steering…” she murmured, looking over workings that clearly lacked any consideration of a pilot or passenger.

  She pulled an adjustable wrench from her sash.

  “How hard can this be?” she said.

  #

  “Captain! Are the cannons loaded!” called Alabaster as he worked his way back down the rigging.

  The captain, at the end of his wits, visibly shuddered at the sound of the mastermind’s voice.

  “The cannons that haven’t exploded are still loaded because we’ve yet to have anything but our backs to an enemy.”

  “Fire them. Both. Simultaneously.”

  “If we use our weapons, we could be identified as—”

  “Did I ask you for your opinion? Fire the cannons!”

  “For what possible reason? If we turn to face the Wind Breaker—”

  Alabaster, uncharacteristically, chose actions rather than words. He pulled the jeweled revolver from his belt and held it to the captain’s face.

  “I am familiar with the basic operation of an airship, so I have just two questions for you, and then you are relieved of duty. Where are the controls for the cannons?”

  The captain looked Alabaster steadily in the eye, pointing out the controls without shifting his gaze.

  “The one merciful aspect of the entire sorry enterprise is the certainty that you won’t survive it, Alabaster.”

  He ignored the comment. “And the control to drop the ichor?”

  “There.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  With that, Alabaster calmly squeezed the trigger and the captain fell motionless. Alabaster stepped over the fallen captain’s body and approached the ship’s wheel. It was jerking to and fro, largely at the mercy of the badly damaged workings of the rest of the ship. He gripped it tight and muscled the ship back into a course toward the volcano. The green fields and magnificent little cities of Tellahn stretched out below him. With his injured arm, he reached out and tugged both cannon controls. They thumped, sending their contents arching upward and outward. The recoil snapped a piece of temporary rigging and nearly sent him tumbling down the pitched deck, but he held firm. And as a reward for his aimless cannon blast? The crust of crystal formerly encasing several turbines shattered, falling away in a few large chunks and a fine blue powder. He felt the ship accelerate.

  “I almost wish I
hadn’t killed you, Captain. With you dead there was no one to witness my brilliant solution.”

  Alabaster basked in a few moments of smugness before his lips tightened and his eyes squinted in the brightness of the sun. A huge, brightly colored balloon loomed ahead. It was still a fair distance away, but closing fast.

  “I had been told that this island doesn’t have any airships. Obviously even this was a piece of blundering buffoonery. Someone fire upon that balloon, would you?”

  No one leaped to serve him. After a quick scan of the deck, he determined that there was no one to obey the order.

  “Egad. Am I the only one left?” He tugged the megaphone from his belt. “Are any of you fools still alive, or am I running this ship myself?”

  The only reply were the muffled shouts of the two remaining crewmembers below decks as they frantically tried to keep the ship from falling to pieces.

  “Of course. The curse of competency. Any task of appreciable challenge is left to me.”

  He grasped the top of the ornate cane he’d holstered in his belt like a sword. After a sharp twist, he withdrew a long, thin rapier from within. He jabbed it down through the spokes of the ship’s wheel and drove its tip into the decking to lock the wheel in roughly the correct orientation, then trotted to the nearest deck gun.

  “How I hate sullying my fingers with such boorish weaponry,” he grumbled. “At least the artistically obsessed people of this backward culture are foolish enough to present themselves as bright and obvious targets.”

  Alabaster clicked a fresh chain of spikes into the deck gun and levered it into position. The balloon was drawing closer. He smiled as he saw Nita angling its propeller housing with one of her many wrenches to steer the “vehicle.” He would have the honor of ending her personally. How delightful!

  Unfortunately, the gun mount was, like most of the rest of the ship at this point, rather badly damaged. It stiffly resisted as he tried to take proper aim. This annoyance quickly became secondary to the rabid squeal coming from behind him. He turned on his heel and drew his pistol. Wink had left his hiding place and had a look of utter ferocity in his eye.