The Calderan Problem (Free-Wrench Book 4)

by Joseph Lallo

  #

  The sudden shift nearly dumped both Nita and Lil out the open hatch. When the ship came to a stop, it tipped completely sideways. Lil was able to hold tight to one of the lines. Nita lost her grip and tumbled down onto the dislodged crates. They were sizzling now, the burning exterior of the ship beginning to ignite the fuel.

  Without a word, Lil released the lines attached to the bomb and jumped down.

  “I’ll be fine,” Nita coughed as Lil helped her to her feet. “Don’t worry about me! The bomb’s the important thing.”

  “Call me selfish if you want,” Lil said. “But as much as I care about savin’ the lives of the people down there, I care about savin’ your life more.”

  A hoarse voice echoed from the doorway. “A pity that neither can be saved.”

  Their heads snapped toward the sound. It was Alabaster. He was singed, he was bleeding, but he was also armed with a makeshift torch in one hand and his sword in the other.

  “Why ain’t you dead!” Lil barked, reaching for her pistol, only to find the holster torn and the weapon missing.

  It must have been what had been snagged when she was one her way through the cluttered hall that Alabaster had just navigated.

  “You don’t understand, do you?” Alabaster said, stalking forward and dragging the tip of his torch along the crates of fuel to spread the fire. “It is so obvious to me now. I am no mere villain. I am a super villain. I am the villain of his age! I am the very apotheosis of villainy! Fate will not allow me to fail, because this golden moment belongs to me! The very stars have aligned to place us all here and now.”

  Outside the hatch, the jagged rim of the volcano’s caldera rose past them as they continued to race downward.

  “You are to be but witnesses to my greatness! That explains how you were able to come this far. That explains why you have no way to stop me.”

  “Then explain this,” Nita said.

  She reached into her sash, drew Alabaster’s own pistol, and pulled the trigger.

  It clicked empty.

  “Ha-ha! You see! You see!” Alabaster raved.

  “Oh shut up!” Lil snapped.

  A short, sharp bark of a firearm silenced him. Lil had retrieved her birthday present, a single-shot boot pistol, and fired.

  She looked to Nita and shrugged. “I couldn’t think of nothin’ clever like you.”

  Alabaster stumbled back. He dropped his torch and fell against the wall. The fire spread along the floor that had become their wall, and above them the grinding crunch of the grappling hooks on the deck suggested soon their only connection to the Wind Breaker would be the lines strapped to the bomb.

  “We need to go, now!” called Coop from outside the hatch, wrangling the remaining lines. “Things are starting to let go up there! I’ve got to get back or these lines are liable to pull loose!”

  Lil helped Nita onto the bomb, then grabbed the lines. “Go!” she called back to Coop. “We ain’t gonna come this far just to die on account of a failed knot!”

  Coop scurried up his line. Nita and Lil worked as best they could to secure the remaining lines, but every few moments another deck board would break and they’d lose a few more inches of slack.

  “Almost. Almost…” Nita groaned, straining to haul enough of a loose end to tie it tight.

  Time ran out. The grappling hooks let go, and the gondola shifted around them and swung again. It pivoted completely upside down. The weight of what remained of the false Wind Breaker’s gondola now hung solely by the lines lashed around the bomb and the clamp holding it to the gig room’s roof.

  “Why won’t it let go?” Lil cried, stomping angrily at the bomb.

  “I just spent ten minutes trying to keep the clamp from opening,” Nita said. “Now I’ve got to get it open!”

  She swung down the side of the bomb as far as the hastily tied safety line would allow, but she couldn’t reach the release mechanism. Without a moment of hesitation she unfastened the knot and slipped down. Lil didn’t waste breath arguing, she simply undid her own line, grabbed hold of one of the tightly stretched lines straining to hold the bomb, and laced her fingers with Nita’s to give her some semblance of support.

  The engineer kicked aside a block of smoldering burn-slow that had been dislodged in the latest shift. She held Lil’s hand tight and slid beneath the bomb to drive her heel into the release mechanism. It faltered, allowing the bomb to slip a few inches, but refused to let go. She hammered it again, and again.

  “No!” bellowed a crazed voice. “I won’t let you!”

  A crate shifted and a battered, bleeding, but adrenaline-fueled Alabaster lurched toward her. Nita kicked one last time, and the clamp finally released. Alabaster dove and the ship dropped away as he grabbed hold of her ankle and held tight.

  Without the weight of the second gondola, the Wind Breaker shot skyward. Lil cried out, straining to keep her grip. All Nita’s weight, as well as the dangling Alabaster, seemed to triple as the ship accelerated upward. Her sweat-drenched hand began to slip. Nita recovered enough to grab her wrist. Lil’s boots scrabbled and scraped across the surface of the bomb. She hauled herself up and, as the surge upward slowed, hooked a leg around one of the lines. This freed up her second hand to finally start helping Nita to relative safety.

  #

  On the deck of the ship, Gunner and Coop had their hands full. Lifelines, and the things they were mounted to, were only ever intended to support the weight of a single person. Even with every line they could spare, the stress of even briefly supporting the weight of an entire gondola had threatened to strip the mounting points from the deck. Every spare scrap of rope on the ship had been called into service to strap and lash the network of tangled cords to anything that might conceivably hold the weight of the bomb and the dangling crew.

  “Cap’n, you gotta get us up over dirt so we can drop this load, or it’s liable to drop itself!” Coop said.

  Captain Mack spun a valve to dump any remaining phlogiston into the envelope, but the gashes sliced into the side of the fabric while they were in contact with the false twin were allowing the precious lifting gas to flow out almost as quickly as it flowed in.

  “The envelope’s bleeding like a stuck pig,” he called out. “We’re not long for the sky.”

  “We should shed some weight,” said Gunner. “Drop the gig, or dump the wailer from the deck.”

  Mack eyed the jagged edge of the volcano’s rim. The ship itself had risen above it, but their cargo was still just shy of clearing it.

  “No time. Coop, how far below the ship is the bomb hanging?”

  “About twenty-five feet, give or take a few,” he said, hands shaking as he struggled to keep one of the repairs from unthreading itself.

  “Let’s hope it’s take a few, because we ain’t got much to give,” Mack said.

  He guided the ship for the lowest point on the rocky rim. The ship shifted and the hanging payload swung like a pendulum. The captain judged the distance, the angle of the ship, their speed, the wind, and a thousand other factors. He was going to have to position the bomb and its passengers perfectly in a narrow notch in the volcano’s rim. This wasn’t threading a needle. He’d done that dozens of times. This was threading a needle at arm’s length, with his eyes closed, in the middle of a windstorm. And if he failed, his crew would only be the first of the lives lost.

  #

  Nita kicked and flailed wildly at Alabaster as she finally grabbed ahold of one of the ropes secured to the bomb. Despite his injuries his grip was vice-like. As soon as she was firmly atop the bomb and able to arm herself, he’d hooked his injured arm through a rope and pulled himself up as well. For a few heartbeats, the three of them stood, crowded atop the burning-hot indigo-colored weapon of mass destruction as it swung aside. Alabaster slid his sword from its cane. He was far, far more interested in success than survival. He swiped the weapon toward one of the support ropes, but Nita’s desperation-
sharpened reflexes placed a wrench between the blade and the rope. The trio tangled. Two women against a badly injured fug person should have been no struggle at all, but Alabaster needed only to nick one of the ropes holding them to the Wind Breaker and all would be lost. It took every ounce of their strength and agility to stay atop the bomb and to keep it from dropping.

  Lil, who may as well have been born dangling from the rigging of a ship, gained the upper hand. She swung around the outside of a rope and came in behind Alabaster, immobilizing one arm behind his back while Nita attempted to wrestle the sword away from him.

  “You cannot defeat the incomparable Lucius P. Alabaster!” he raved. “I am indefatigable! I am indomitable! I am—”

  “Quit makin’ up words!” Lil howled.

  The ship made a sudden shift that propagated down the lines and caused all three of them to falter. They turned their attention for the first time in too long to where exactly they were going. The jagged black stone of the volcano’s lip raced toward them. They would not clear it cleanly. Lil abandoned her grip on Alabaster. She and Nita wrapped their arms tight around one another with one of the support ropes between them. Alabaster watched the approaching wall and, for once in his life, was speechless.

  The bottom edge of the bomb bashed into the lip and swung back. Nita and Lil swung forward but held tight. Alabaster launched forward flailing through the air and disappearing over the lip. Ropes snapped. The bomb went one way, Lil and Nita the other. The next few moments passed in flashes and bursts. Flipping through the air. Tumbling to the ground. Rolling down the slope. Sliding to a stop. And finally… stillness.

  #

  Nita was the first to regain some measure of her senses. There wasn’t a muscle or bone in her body that didn’t ache. They had tumbled quite a distance from the mouth of the volcano, but even so, some combination of her time in proximity to its molten heart and the tumble down its side had left patches of her leather-and-canvas uniform charred and burnt. All the same, aside from some sharp pains in one shoulder, she seemed to be relatively intact.

  She scanned the mountainside. The fact that she was not at this moment suffocating amid a torrent of fug meant the bomb hadn’t fallen back into the mouth of the volcano. Her clearing vision eventually spotted it, deformed but not ruptured, at the end of a long trench of churned-up stone some distance farther along the mountain.

  A shadow passed over her, and she squinted upward to find the Wind Breaker dropping down to a relatively level patch of mountain not far off. In lieu of an anchor, they heaved down the wreckage of the wailer. Coop slid down the line to the ground and dashed to Nita.

  “You okay? Where’s Lil?” he blurted, the two questions mashing together into a single outburst.

  “I don’t know,” Nita said muzzily, still trying to shake free some cobwebs.

  Coop placed two fingers into his mouth and produced the most piercing whistle Nita had ever heard.

  “Lil Coop! Chastity, dang it, speak up!” he called.

  “There!” Nita said.

  The smaller deckhand had landed atop a pile of black gravel not far away, but the coating of dust she’d earned during her tumble made her hard to spot. Nita tried to dash to her side, but after a few steps it was made clear that her head wasn’t quite up to the task of navigating the uneven mountainside at anything above a walk, and a pain in her ankle suggested she’d aggravated an old injury.

  “You okay? Lil, speak up!” Coop called.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. Quit hollerin’. What happened?” she muttered, rubbing a knot on her head.

  “You went a couple of rounds with the mountain and the mountain won,” Coop said.

  “That ain’t the way I see it, what with me on my feet an the mountain just sittin’ there. There ain’t no pile of dirt that’s a match for a Cooper. Even if it’s got a fire in its belly.” She shook her head, then looked to Nita. “Come here, you.”

  Lil pulled Nita into a hug that caused them both to wince in pain. “Ain’t it good to be a crew again? Even for a minute?” Lil said.

  “Life had become rather dull without the Wind Breaker to spice it up.”

  The gig lowered to the mountainside and Butch hopped out, moving surefootedly to the girls to administer first aid. Each was prodded and probed and every yelp of pain cataloged for future treatment.

  “So what happens now?” Coop said. “The bomb’s not in the fire. Heck. It ain’t even leakin’. That trith is a heck of a thing. You girls are safe. We missin’ anything?”

  “Where’s Alabaster?” Nita said, her eyes shooting open.

  Coop snapped his fingers. “That’s right. Me worryin’ about Lil here pushed it right out of my head. We spotted that fancy getup of his on the other side of that hill over yonder. Gunner’s got a rifle on him, just in case.”

  The group moved with a degree less urgency until they found the motionless form of the fug man. He was a good deal more twisted and broken than either Lil or Nita. The Wind Breaker crew formed a circle around him and peered down.

  “You reckon he’s dead?” Coop said.

  Butch reached down to check, but Alabaster’s eyes shot open, and he released a long, raking cough.

  “You… can’t defeat… Lucius… P.…”

  “We know your dang name! What does it take to kill this guy?” Lil said.

  “I reckon I can work that out,” Coop said, pulling the pistol from his belt.

  “No,” Nita said. “Butch, patch him up.”

  “You sure about that, darlin’?” Lil said. “This is the second time he’s tried to kill just about everybody he could. Nutjob or not, you give a fella enough chances and he’s bound to do what he’s aimin’ to do.”

  “This is Caldera. The laws are unyielding. If we kill him now, we’re murders. He has to stand trial.”

  Coop scratched his head. “If them’s the rules…” he said dejectedly, holstering his weapon. “What about the other one?”

  “There’s another one?” Nita said.

  “Sure. Butch did a number on him, but I reckon there’s enough left to toss in jail.”

  “Then he gets a trial too.” Nita craned her neck, cringing as she discovered yet another reminder of her trip down the mountain. “It is going to take a bit of work to get this ship fit to go back home.”

  “No doubt. Matter of fact, we’d best get to that airfield of yours before we lose so much phlogiston we can’t make it,” Coop said.

  They hauled the deliriously muttering Alabaster onto the gig, then piled in and began to rise back into the belly of the ship. Lil looked at those around her, then smiled.

  “It’s good to have the gang back together.”

  Epilogue

  Nearly three weeks had passed since the events over the volcano. It had taken half that time to repair the ship sufficiently to depart, but that had been the least of the tasks. The lives of the people of Tellahn had been spared the ruinous scheme leveled against them. That much was certain. The nature of that threat, and the reason it had come so perilously close to success, was now the topic of discussion. And the discussions were heated.

  While the council debated their decision on just what actions were to be taken, the Wind Breaker remained in the airfield and its crew remained the guests of the Graus family. Captain Mack, Nita, and Mr. Graus spent most of each day in fierce debate with the rest of the council. The rest of the crew simply waited. Today, it seemed, they would reach their final decision.

  Lil paced, eyes distant and head low, into the estate’s dining room. Though still stunningly decorated as a matter of course—this was Caldera after all—it wasn’t set for service. Right now it was more of a display room until the next major banquet like the one that had welcomed them here so recently. That the welcome wasn’t looking quite so warm anymore was weighing heavily on her mind. She took a seat in one of the union chairs from their welcome banquet, now set along the walls.

  After Lil had a few mo
ments alone with her thoughts, a figure appeared in the doorway.

  “There you are,” said Nita.

  Her friend was still in her official garb, a stately dress of embroidered silk that made her look every bit the diplomat. Nita clutched a carved box under one arm.

  Lil looked up, her expression anxious. “Did they make a decision?”

  “No. But it should be any moment,” she said, stepping into the room. “Dr. Prist and the grunts are already getting themselves together to leave.”

  “It doesn’t seem good for us, does it?” Lil said, shoulders slumping a bit.

  “The council makes some valid points. The Wind Breaker’s exception to our defenses made us vulnerable. Having happened once, it could easily happen again. And there were other things. The trith on the bomb was a result of all the trade you’ve been doing since the beginning. But at the same time, you and the rest of the crew risked life and limb to save us. And you’ve illustrated that the cannons aren’t enough to keep us safe. All it takes is a single ship to make it past and we are potentially defenseless. We’ll need airships, which means we’ll need phlogiston, as well as the expertise to build them. And that means we’ll need access to Rim.”

  “It’s a pickle all right,” Lil said. “Leave it to us to muck things up. Here you Calderan folk were, bein’ all artsy and happy. And then here comes the ol’ Wind Breaker and next thing you know, you’re lookin’ to build a navy.”

  “It was going to happen sooner or later. We could have done far worse than to have you all as our introduction to the state of the world we’d turned our backs on.” Nita stepped up to her and held out the box. “Here, I want to show you something.”

  She opened the lid, and a tinkling, complex song began to play. Amid a polished silver-and-brass interior made to look like the stage of a magnificent theater, two delicately crafted figures rose. They were each fashioned of the same metals, human forms too stylized and laden with jewels and inlay to have an apparent gender. They were merely dancers, one spinning on one toe in the very center and the other moving in a slow circle around it.