The Calderan Problem (Free-Wrench Book 4)

by Joseph Lallo

  Perhaps it was hunger, anger, or desperation, but the inspector moved with an erratic, random lurch that caused Alabaster to miss twice before Wink reached his feet, climbed his leg, and sank his chisel-like teeth into a very sensitive piece of anatomy. Alabaster screamed in pain, but dared not use the pistol for fear of finishing what Wink had so eagerly started. Instead he stumbled about, clawing at the angry creature. Eventually he tore Wink free and hurled him toward the rails. Wink snagged a piece of rigging and scrambled upward.

  “You horrific traitor to your creators! You bloodthirsty bundle of disease and dysfunction!” He raised his pistol and took shots at Wink. “You would dare assault the greatest mind of our time!? The architect of such masterful schemes that Ferris Tusk himself sought my aid? You don’t deserve the honor of spilling my blood, even if you do hold the distinction of a connection to the Wind Breaker crew!”

  He fired a few more times, achieving little more than emptying the weapon and creating a few more holes in the envelope. His injured arm made reloading the gem-encrusted weapon an arduous task that he completed just as the heavy thunk of metal on wood caught his attention.

  Alabaster turned to find Nita had skillfully snagged the railing with a makeshift grappling hook fashioned from a length of rope and a crowbar. He rushed to it, but she pulled it tight and jumped from the balloon. Without her weight the bizarre vehicle shot upward, and she slid along the rope toward the railing.

  “Get off my ship!” Alabaster growled, heaving at the crowbar.

  Again hampered by his injured arm, he couldn’t quite summon the strength to dislodge the bar before she reached the deck and delivered a punishing kick from between the balustrades that threw him from his feet. Before he could spring upright again, Nita had climbed to the deck.

  “Alabaster!” she cried, scowling at the mastermind.

  It was clear from her expression Alabaster was an unexpected and unwelcome discovery. She pulled a cheater bar from her belt and marched forward.

  “Tell me what is going on here,” she demanded “What is this ship? Where is my real crew?”

  Alabaster backed away. His reproachful expression and smug tone did their very best to suggest that, despite being badly injured and retreating from an able-bodied attacker, he was still quite unquestionably in the superior position.

  “Do not delude yourself into believing that you could possibly understand the nuances of my plans. You may have found your way aboard, but it is too little, too late! This ship shall deliver its payload to the heart of the volcano! Victory shall be mine! My legacy will be writ large in the suffering of your people!”

  “So you’re taking the ship to the volcano. Not while I have anything to say about it.”

  “Then you must be silenced!”

  He raised his jeweled pistol and fired, but she dove aside. Nita lacked the sort of crazed acrobatics some of the other members of the Wind Breaker crew made use of, but she was still a good deal more agile than an injured madman drunk on his own brilliance. His poorly aimed shots bit chunks from the deck as Nita dodged and sought cover, circling around him and working her way closer.

  Alabaster backed away from her as she approached. The realization that his plans could be foiled if she took control of the ship convinced him to devote more care and attention to his aim. His next two shots missed by mere inches, but as he lined up what might have been the kill shot, the cost of his reallocated concentration asserted itself. Retreating blindly had led him onto a section of deck ravaged by one of Gunner’s attacks. The heel of his boot caught on the uneven surface, and he fell to the ground, landing hard on the injured arm. His gun hand slammed into the deck. The weapon discharged and flipped from his fingers.

  “No!” he cried, grabbing wildly for the weapon.

  Tiny scrabbling footsteps raced across the deck, and Wink dove for the gun, snatching it up and waddling away with it. Alabaster reached for his tail, but the dull point of Nita’s cheater bar came down hard on his wrist, forcing it painfully against the deck.

  “You have done some grotesque things, Alabaster. Or at least, you’ve tried to,” Nita said.

  She kept enough pressure on the bar to keep him squirming in agony while she pulled a length of rope from her belt.

  “Until now I’ve thought you weren’t my problem. You were Rim’s problem, and the fug’s problem. And there were good people in both of those places who could put you in your place. But if you’ve come this far, then you are my problem. And an engineer is nothing if not a problem solver.”

  Nita worked the fingers of her off-hand, flipping the end of the rope into a simple knot. Tying a loop with a single hand was a trick Lil had taught her early in her tenure on the ship, as it was an indispensable skill for someone as likely as not to be hanging from a piece of rigging when the need for a knot arose. She leaned low, putting a bit more force on the bar as she did, and snagged Alabaster’s injured arm to begin binding him.

  In a flavor of underhandedness quite uncharacteristic of him, Alabaster spat in her face. She flinched and recoiled just enough for him to catch her in the ribs with a spindly knee, then shove her and deliver a double kick to her abdomen to launch her aside.

  He was on his feet again in a flash, rubbing his wrist and sprinting for the ship’s wheel. By the time Nita had regained her footing, Alabaster had reached his sword and yanked it free. No longer braced, the wheel spun. Both Alabaster and Nita stumbled toward the railing as the ship turned sharply. Nita struck the railing hard and barely had time enough to dash aside before Alabaster’s swiping sword carved a notch from the railing where she’d been.

  Alabaster’s raw fury kept Nita on the defensive, dodging this attack and deflecting that as he advanced. The frenzy of swiping steel might have been the end of her, if not for the thick canvas and leather of her work uniform and the veritable armor plating she wore in the form of her tool sashes. Even so, her journey this far had cost her most of her larger tools. She’d equipped herself for maintenance rather than arming herself for battle. A bar was no match for a sword in hand-to-hand combat.

  The furious villain delivered a wild swipe that sliced neatly through the rope tethering Nita’s balloon to the railing. It spun away into the sky. Nita pulled the crowbar from where it had bitten into the railing and raised it to deflect the return swipe. Now armed with a tool in each hand, the tables began to turn. Sparks flew as metal clashed with metal. The free-wrench advanced, twice nearly disarming Alabaster with the hook of her crowbar.

  Sensing things were not going his way, Alabaster delivered a final kick to give himself some room, then dashed for the hatch below decks. He shut the hatch behind him and slid the brace in place, then rushed for the bowels of the ship.

  #

  Nita didn’t even bother fighting with the hatch. Chasing a maniac into the cramped lower decks of a ship under his control was a recipe for disaster. Instead she rushed for the ship’s wheel and looked over the controls.

  She was anything but experienced at the wheel of an airship. Captain Mack had put her at the helm only a handful of times, and each of those times the ship was in proper repair and calm weather. Now they were approaching the mouth of the volcano. The breeze was already growing uncomfortably warm, and the constant updrafts were whipping the air into treacherous eddies and swirls that tossed the ship about.

  “Wink!” she called, holstering her cheater bar and grappling with the wheel.

  The inspector trudged up beside her. He’d visibly expended his short supply of fear- and anger-fueled energy. The days of evading the crew of the false Wind Breaker had taken their toll. He stopped at her feet, still clutching the ornate pistol like the spoils of war. Nita reached down and snatched it from him, sliding it into a loop formerly occupied by one of the wrenches that had already been repurposed elsewhere. She then hefted him from the ground and let him clutch her side.

  “I’m going to have my hands full getting this ship turned around. If Alabaster
wants this thing headed for the volcano, then that’s exactly where it won’t be going. I need you to watch for the others. Understand?”

  Wink watched, the inspector tapped wearily.

  Nita spun the wheel in the direction of the turn the ship had decided to take while left to its own designs. This may not have been the wisest choice, as the already sharp turn intensified. The gondola swung wide, and the damaged rigging groaned. Nita spun the wheel opposite in an attempt to correct the spin, but by the time she’d brought them out of it, they had done nearly a full pirouette and were headed roughly toward the volcano’s mouth again.

  Now working with a bit more care, she eased the ship into a slower turn. Even this took all her limited training, as the violent winds perpetually threatened to haul them off course again. A full minute of battle with the ailing airship eventually placed the turbulent updrafts of the volcano behind her. Ahead, the true Wind Breaker was approaching. Nita could feel the first flutter of relief in her chest when she detected a panicked message being tapped on the massive monkey-toe wrench strapped to her back.

  Guns, Wink warned.

  Nita ducked just in time for a pair of rifle shots to hiss through the air where her head had been. Wink abandoned his post at her side and dashed for the rigging. Nita pivoted around the helm and swept her eyes across the deck. Alabaster had returned from the lower decks. He was now joined by the pair of crewmembers that—unbeknownst to Nita—represented the entirety of his surviving crew. All three were armed with rifles, Alabaster’s sword once again sheathed within his cane. Nita’s mind raced. She’d never survive long enough to get the ship down safely. At least, not while outnumbered and outgunned on the ship’s deck.

  The fragments of a plan formed in her mind, and she acted upon them as they arose. First, she spun the wheel again, putting the ship into yet another spin. The crewmembers stumbled aside as the ship tipped, each firing another shot that came nowhere near its target. While they tried to recover, she rushed toward them. By the time she reached them, she had her crowbar in hand again. A precise swing hooked the leg of one of the crewmembers as she passed, yanking him from his feet. She continued forward and disappeared through the hatch they’d emerged from. The dark, cramped interior of the ship was no less of a threat than it had been before, but it was officially the safer option.

  When she wasn’t met with a hail of bullets upon stumbling into the darkened hall, she braced the door and charged forward. Moving through the twisted, damaged halls of a ship so very much like the one she’d called her home for several months was eerily like a waking nightmare. It creaked around her, Alabaster already fighting to correct the course. The air was heavy, hot, and wet, steam rushing from broken pipes and filling the hall with a haze. Behind her, the hammering blows of the crew attempting to batter their way through the braced hatch spurred her forward. That she’d not yet encountered another foe within the ship convinced her there weren’t any others left lurking in the halls.

  She worked her way downward. Nita of all people knew that while the controls might have been on the main deck, steering an airship like the Wind Breaker was all about routing steam to and away from the proper turbines. And that meant that with the right training one could exert just as much control over the ship from the boiler room as the helm. While she had the barest bit of training at the wheel, she’d lived and breathed the steam system of the Wind Breaker.

  The boiler room was right where it should be, though a single glance confirmed that this was indeed not the Wind Breaker she knew. The original fug-made configuration was in place here, a purposefully complex arrangement of superfluous valves and junctions that she’d gone through a great deal of trouble to simplify in her role as ship’s engineer. No matter. She’d grappled with this system once before. She could do it again.

  Wrenches danced across pipes, tightening some valves and pinching off others. The ship began to turn, turbines above her grinding to a stop while others spun dangerously with the rerouted steam. Buried as she was within the bowels of the ship, she had no way of knowing where precisely it was headed anymore, but as long as it wasn’t moving in a straight line, she had a fighting chance of keeping it clear of the volcano.

  Two quick blasts echoed from the deck, then the hammering of boots above her rushed across it. The crewmembers had blown open the hatch and were on their way. The boiler room lacked a door. If she were to attempt a standoff, facing down two rifles with a single pistol would ensure it was a very short one. Better to retreat to the one room she was certain would have a good heavy door to barricade.

  She rushed through the halls, past familiar rooms in unfamiliar configurations, and finally came to the gig room. All the way she could hear the pounding steps of the crewmembers directly behind her. When she reached the gig room, they were near enough for her to hear their labored breathing. She dove into the gig room and slammed the door. It unfortunately braced from the hallway side, but as the Wind Breaker’s counterpart of this room had been host to her own quarters, she’d worked out fairly quickly that jamming something between the door and the frame made it devilishly difficult to open. The spike of her spud wrench served the purpose just fine. No sooner was it in place than the door shuddered against its frame as both crewmembers attempted to reach her. She dropped to the ground in expectation of the application of the rifles to blast through the door as they had with the hatch above, but no shots came. Instead they continued to hammer and thump at the unforgiving wood without making any progress.

  Nita turned her head to the gig itself and the space above it. There she saw the answer to the question of why they’d not fired their weapons. It was a capsule-shaped object as large as a pair of bathtubs stacked one atop the other. A single glance was all it took to identify the thing as a bomb. Furthermore, the crate she’d tipped aside as well as a dozen more half-empty ones were labeled “Burn-slow.” This was a very dangerous place for a stray bullet. The hammering continued, but if Nita’s instincts were correct, in very short order they would have larger concerns.

  The pipes running along the walls were already shuddering far more violently than they had been before she’d put wrench to valve in the boiler room. A system like this did not like to be unbalanced, and at the moment the port side of the ship was receiving twice the pressure it was designed to. Soon the rattle of the pipes was louder than the hammering on the door, and shortly after that the hammering stopped entirely as both crewmembers realized if they didn’t take corrective action, there wouldn’t be enough pipes left intact to spin the turbines.

  Once they were gone and the threat of interruption was not immediate, she approached the bomb. The material of the casing had a distinct indigo hue. She ran her hand across it and gingerly tapped it.

  “Trith? But… how could they make their own trith? And so much?” she mused. “And what purpose could there be to drop it into the volcano?”

  The pipes began to ease their rattling, and she could feel the ship shifting. Judging from the brimstone-scented air rushing between the cracks of the trap door beneath the bomb, if they weren’t directly above the intended target, they soon would be.

  “Questions for later,” she asserted.

  She climbed atop the bomb, trying for the moment to set aside the thought of just what it was she’d perched upon, and looked at the release mechanism. It was complex, and most of the workings were hidden behind enclosures she’d have to remove. No telling how long it would take. Before she tackled it, she’d need some insurance. As tempting as it would be to try to put the burn-slow to use somehow, she decided the best choice was to use the crates. She pried a board from the top of one, leaving the nails protruding from the corners, and hopped down to the hatch to hammer it into place as though she were barricading a door against an angry mob. A springy sound drew her eyes to the ceiling. Across the room, a pin attached to a cable running along the ceiling shot up from a mechanism obscured by some crates. Chains rattled and loosened. The hatch beneath her sa
gged and strained against the single board she’d hammered into place. They were opening the bomb bay doors, or at least they were trying.

  “That’s not a good sign…”

  #

  “You’re sure she’s on board,” Lil said, rocking uneasily from foot to foot.

  “Who else would ride a steam balloon to intercept an airship?” Gunner asked.

  “Me, for starters,” Lil said.

  “And me, for seconds,” Coop said.

  “Well then it’s either Nita or one of you two,” Gunner growled. “And since you’re here, then that just leaves the one option, doesn’t it? Now get your mind on the job!”

  Gunner had been busy. He and the deckhands had muscled the wailer over to one side of the deck and cobbled together a hose to run steam to its mechanisms. They’d then bolted it down and powered it up. Now Gunner was awkwardly astride the device, aligning the false Wind Breaker with one of its grappling-hook launchers. Coop manned the matching launcher that they’d salvaged and installed some months earlier. Each aimed off the port side of the ship, which Captain Mack was bringing to bear on the enemy ship.

  Burning-hot wind rushed up from below, bringing with it choking fumes. Each member of the crew donned their goggles to keep the stinging air from their eyes.

  “Call out your parts now,” Captain Mack ordered.

  “Me and Gunner hook up our twin over there and pull ’em tight,” Coop said.

  Lil pulled her rifle around from behind her. “And I keep an eye on the deck and make sure we don’t have no surprises.” She raised the weapon and sighted down the barrel. “It’s just Alabaster on deck right now. The way this hot air’s got him and us shakin’, I’m havin’ a heck of a time keeping him in my sights. Every time I get him lined up, it takes all I got to keep from just pullin’ the trigger.”