by Nico Rosso
“They’re right over Fort Oso.”
She continued to slow her trike in the air. “That was decommissioned and abandoned years ago. Fort Crane took over that territory.”
“Someone’s down there.” Even from about a mile away he could see the quick winks of flame from gunfire.
“Looks like a party.” She dove toward the action.
He was right with her, patting one of the .44s on his hip. “I got my invitation.”
She unlatched the cover on her Winchester’s sheath.
They descended just in time. The luminous paint on his fuel gage showed he was near empty. The engine even gave a couple coughs on the way down.
Anna glanced over to him. “You gonna make it?”
“I’ll run on foot if I have to.”
They reached the ground about a half mile from the walled buildings. Rubber wheels took over for the propeller fans, digging in the dirt and shooting them forward. Above, the airship continued to circle. Gunfire still crackled at the fort.
Jack and Anna both killed their engines a quarter mile from the fort. Their momentum carried them across the plane for a while, the low scrub looking like dark ghosts fleeing the fighting ahead.
Jack’s cycle slowed to a stop. He swung out the kickstand and dismounted, happy to have blood pumping through his legs again. Anna sprung from her trike, drawing her Winchester. She ran with him, taking a wide path toward the fort. The direct approach was too exposed, but this way had some crooked trees and clusters of boulders to provide cover.
The shooting died down ahead. From the way he’d seen the Man O’ War and his crew fight, Jack suspected they’d won the skirmish at the fort. About a hundred feet from the high wooden walls, he and Anna took shelter behind some tall rocks.
She quickly checked over her guns, making sure they were loaded. “They must be down here for supplies.”
He pulled the quad shotgun from his back and opened the break. Each chamber was loaded with the special high-compression brass shells. He snapped it shut and wrapped his mechanical hand around the grip.
“You want to soften them up from a distance with that Winchester? I’ll get close.”
The high yellow lights at the edges of the fort revealed the aftermath of the shooting out front. Two soldiers lay on the ground. Standing guard by a side entrance were two of the Man O’ War’s crew.
She nodded. “Once you reach the door, I’m coming up. We’ll keep swinging forward.”
“It’s a date.” He leaned in quickly, kissed her, then started sprinting toward the front of the fort.
A shot rang out behind him. The bullet whizzed past and struck one of the crewmembers. The crewman slammed back into the wall before collapsing. The other guard didn’t even have a chance to bring his barrel up. Anna’s second shot streaked through the air, screaming with ether, and dropped him.
One of the fort’s soldiers on the ground was definitely dead. The other groaned and held a wound on his shoulder. Jack dragged him against the fort’s wall before finding the man’s carbine and tossing it into his lap.
“Don’t shoot the woman or the Chinese doctor. Everyone else is fair game.”
Grimacing with pain, the soldier rallied himself, sitting straight and cocking the carbine.
Quick footsteps brought Anna out of the darkness and back to Jack’s side. She loaded two fresh rounds into her Winchester.
He gave her a wink. “Fine shooting.”
“Wasn’t easy.” She winked back. “Got distracted by your rear on the run.”
They took positions on either side of the tall wooden double doors. Jack holstered the pistol in his left hand so he could grip the cool iron door handle. Anna stood ready, so he pulled hard. Both doors swung open, allowing him and Anna to rush in together.
The yellow light was brighter inside the walls. Shots immediately erupted from a high walk, coming from behind a stable and next to a low warehouse. He couldn’t see the shooters, but muzzle flashes were fine aiming points. His shotgun thundered toward the closest shooter at the warehouse. The impact bit a piece of plaster and wood away from the wall. Behind it a man yelled in pain.
Anna fired her rifle at a man on the high walk. The first shot sent him ducking away. The second shot took him off his feet.
More gunfire popped all around. Ether-charged bullets screamed, slamming into the ground and wall behind Jack and Anna. They sprinted to one side, where a thick walled guardhouse gave good cover.
Each reloaded, peering around opposite sides of the eight-foot-square structure. Unwelcome bullets buzzed past them like hornets at a picnic.
She ducked back as a bullet chipped the wall near her. “You see the Man O’ War? The detection device is buzzing away.”
From his angle, there was only the stable, barracks, and what could be an infirmary. And at least six crewmembers with ether pistols and conventional bolt-action rifles. “Just a choir of assholes.”
Movement in the infirmary drew his eye. Glass windows revealed several men near the long tables full of technology. One man towered over the others. The Man O’ War. He stuck close to a smaller man, pushing him to hurry. It was Song.
Jack tapped Anna and waved her over to his side of the building. “The doctor’s in there.”
He fired his shotgun at a crewmember trying to run to a better firing position. The man flew backward, head over heels, then landed motionless. Using his pistol to keep the others pinned down, Jack gave enough cover for Anna to peer out toward the infirmary.
She painted the picture for Jack as he fired. “They’re collecting things. Song’s pointing to what he wants and they’re stuffing it in a crate and a canvas bag.”
“What about the flying boat? That’s their only way of getting back to the airship.”
“Haven’t spotted it.”
The shots lulled for a moment and he scanned the area for the boat. “It must be in the clearing at the middle of the fort.”
They shifted to the other side of the guardhouse. This time, Anna laid down the covering fire with her Winchester as Jack reloaded. A man shouted briefly, then fell silent.
She kept the rifle to her shoulder. “That’ll learn you to stick your foot out from cover.”
Jack snapped his pistol and shotgun shut and looked over the central opening of the fort. “Still no boat.”
She glanced up. “Oh, hell.”
Charged with white heat, his muscles pushed him to run. She was with him. They sprinted away from the guardhouse as the sky opened up with an unholy thunderclap. Half the guardhouse exploded.
The metal boat hovered a dozen feet in the air. At the prow, the gunner racked the handle back on the swivel gun’s breach. The empty shell pinged out and he slammed a fresh one into the weapon.
Jack and Anna both fired as they ran, sending a tangle of bullets into the air. The gunner ducked and the man at the tiller steered the craft away at a hard angle. A blast from Jack’s shotgun punched a hole the size of a grapefruit in the side of the boat. Neither man was hit, though.
“The ether tank.” Anna slowed her run to fire off two quick rounds. One popped a hole in the metal hull. The other barely missed the gunner.
“Believe it, I’d love to put a hole in that tank.” The boat would either be grounded or rocket off out of control because of the venting gas.
The boat continued to twist through the air, making a slippery target. Just when Jack had drawn a bead on the tank and was ready to pull his shotgun’s trigger, more shots crackled from the ground.
The other crewmembers slowly converged on Jack and Anna, forcing them to take cover behind another long building. As he slid against the wall he caught a last glimpse of the boat lowering toward the crewmembers.
Hands steady, Anna reloaded. “They take off and we can’t chase them. Not when our engines have empty bellies.”
Steady gunfire kept them pinned. It was only a matter of time until the swivel gun roared again. He glanced around the wall and saw the gunner readying
the weapon. More troubling was Song and his equipment being loaded into the boat, followed by the Man O’ War.
Jack came back around the wall and nodded for Anna to move on. She started a crouched run and he followed. The swivel gun fired and the spot where they’d been erupted with flame and debris.
Anna stopped running and Jack knocked into her. They struggled to stay on their feet, both supporting the other.
“They’re expecting us to come out the other side,” she whispered.
“I see what you’re getting at.” He slung his gun and laced his fingers together to create a foothold.
Anna climbed up his body and to a high window on the wall behind them. She swung open the wood frame and climbed into the building. Jack leapt up and grabbed the bottom sill. He hauled himself up, Anna helping get him over the edge of the window.
They stood on a small loft in a storehouse. There were two doors facing the central part of the fort where the boat hovered. One of the doors had been shattered by the swivel gun.
Jumping down from the loft, they hurried to the intact door.
“Song’s already in the boat,” he noted. “We’ve got to be pinpoint accurate.”
She glanced about her surroundings with a frown. “Not enough light for my prismatic sight.”
“You could hit the ones off a dollar bill at fifty paces without it.”
The smallest smile cracked her stern face. “There’s only a boat full of shooters and a swivel gun. No problem.”
She threw the door open and started firing. He stood in the opening with her, letting loose with both his pistols. One crewmember fell from her bullets. Another from Jack’s. Song was seated in front of the ether tank, so it was too dangerous to try for it.
The crewmembers had been aiming at the far end of the building where Jack and Anna were supposed to be. They swung their weapons around and opened fire on the doorway.
Ducking back inside, Anna hissed in frustration. “Not so easy with Song hunkered down smack in the middle.”
“At least that’ll keep the Man O’ War from sticking around until we’re dead. He wouldn’t risk his prize getting hit in a shootout.”
She and Jack slid along the interior wall, away from the door, then ducked behind some crates. The swivel gun boomed, blowing the door and the frame back into the building. Debris rained down on them. A small fire started burning in a corner of the storehouse.
He spotted a glass-globed fire grenade mounted to the wall. The chemical retardant sloshed inside for a moment before he threw the device toward the fire. Anna fired her pistol, shattering the glass and spreading the chemical over the flames. They sputtered and suffocated before flickering out completely. The room stank of sweet vinegar, but at least it wasn’t a blazing inferno death trap.
The shooting quieted outside. He and Anna peeked through the latest hole in the wall. The boat rose up, carrying Song, the equipment, the remaining crew, and the Man O’ War. That big son of a bitch was the only one standing. Hands on his hips, he glared down at Jack and Anna. Daring them to keep fighting.
But the boat was fast and Song was quickly out of sight. It would be too easy to hurt him if the bullets started flying again. The Man O’ War’s glowering face disappeared with the rest of his craft, gliding from the yellow light of the fort into the black sky.
Anna growled, “I’d love to smack that smug look off his face with the butt of my rifle.” She kicked a shard of wood in frustration. It flew across the room and clanged against a small metal tank.
Jack hurried to it, picking up the two-gallon container by its wire handle. “Tetrol.” There were several other tanks on a shelf. “We’re not out of the fight yet.”
He picked up another tank and Anna filled her hands with more tanks as well. They cautiously scanned the sky before exiting the building through one of the giant holes blasted by the swivel gun. They ran for the side entrance to the fort.
A white light flickered to Jack’s left. He dropped his tetrol tanks and drew his pistol on it. But there was no whiz of a bullet or another shot. The light came from inside the infirmary, beyond the glass windows. It flickered on the end of a small rod on one of the long tables.
Anna squinted at it, too. “Is that fire?”
“Looks electrical.”
She set her tanks down and walked cautiously toward the infirmary. “Like the kind of thing a scientist like Dr. Song could do.”
“Do you think it’s deliberate?”
“I’m not counting it out.”
“Wait here,” he told her. “Gonna get that wounded soldier.”
“Good—he can wire for someone to come clean up.”
Jack hurried out the side entrance and found the soldier where he’d left him. To the wounded man’s credit, he still kept watch and swung his carbine toward Jack before he recognized him.
“You’re Jack Hawkins, right?”
“No other.” Jack helped the man to his feet and supported him as he walked back into the fort. “And that there is Anna Blue.”
“The Anna Blue? She-devil-man-hunter?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Reading too many dime novels.”
The soldier replied, “There’s nothing else to do out here. Just me and Newell guarding this place.” He paused. “Now it’s just me.”
Anna kept his mind off it. “I thought Fort Oso was decommissioned.”
“It’s just storage now. Odds and ends, tech stuff no one knew what to do with.”
Jack added, “Except Song.”
Anna pointed toward a small building where all the telegraph wires converged. “Get a message out to your superiors. Tell them what happened.”
The soldier steadied himself, pulling away from Jack to stand on his own. “What did happen?”
Jack said, “A foreign mercenary showed up with a kidnapped American citizen, stole some technology, and flew off before Jack ‘Iron Hand’ Hawkins and the she-devil-man-hunter could stop him.”
Anna cocked her head to one side to ask, “You got all that?”
The soldier nodded and made his way toward the telegraph building.
Once he was gone, a little light flared in Anna’s eyes. “I like your ‘Iron Hand.’”
“It likes you, too.”
They approached the infirmary. Inside, the white electrical light still flickered. The door hung open from the Man O’ War’s hasty exit. There were no beds for the sick, just rows of tables and crates and shelves. Mechanical scraps littered every surface. Whatever was left behind had been overturned or thrown onto the floor.
“Ain’t a doubt this is a message.” She stopped by a table. “Song knows how to catch our eye.”
Next to her was a five-inch green glass cylinder, scored with thin ridges. Balanced on the top was a bright silver dollar.
“So what’s he trying to say?” asked Jack.
She pocketed the silver dollar and picked up the cylinder. “Grooved like a phonograph recording.”
“I don’t see any players.” But one piece of technology did stand out. A hand-cranked machinist’s lathe lay on its side on the ground. “This might work.”
He righted the sawhorse-sized device and Anna brought the cylinder to the central jaws. After a small adjustment they got it to fit.
“Of course it’s going to work,” she said. “Song got it ready for us.”
Instead of a chisel or hard awl locked in the tool rest, a thin needle and a glass sphere lined up with the edge of the glass cylinder. On the back end of the needle was a roughly shaped cone of thin brass.
Anna motioned Jack toward the lathe’s crank. “Get her started so we can hear it.”
“It’s more than sound.” The white light still flickered on the end of the rod. Leading to the metal base were two wires strung into a piece of copper half-submerged in a glass beaker. He picked up the whole apparatus, feeling the slight tingle of electricity, and moved it to a closer table, lined up with the glass sphere on the lathe’s tool rest.
The lig
ht focused through the glass sphere, then into the cylinder. A hazy green image of Dr. Franklin Song appeared on the opposite side, projected onto a tall wooden crate.
Anna muttered, “Lord …”
Jack started turning the lathe’s crank. Song moved, slowly and choppily as if alive in the room. Jack worked the device faster. Song’s voice rang tinny from the small cone on the needle. His image turned to them and spoke.
“This is life or death. For me, for you, for all of us.”
Chapter Ten
* * *
“THE PRICE OF my mind. The cost of my curiosity.”
Like a spirit trapped between the dark of death and the light of life, Song’s image flickered. He had recorded the message in a room, probably a cabin in the airship. There was a dim image of a porthole behind him and a table with mechanical equipment. He spoke, hushed and a little nervous, glancing at what must be the door to his cabin.
“I never should’ve tinkered with the Man O’ War technology. But how could I stay away from one of the most important technological developments in human history?” He seemed to get himself back on track. “The rogue Man O’ War is Guillaume Charron. He stole my notes regarding how to improve the energy transfer between his implants and the batteries. He must’ve tracked the telumium to my lab. But he couldn’t decipher the notes, so he stole me. If I don’t help him, he’ll kill me. If I do, he’ll kill us all. And if I let him kill me without doing his bidding, some other scientist without a conscience will take over. My adaptations would make him the most powerful Man O’ War, the pinnacle of the warrior. Nearly unstoppable. It has to do with the energy reflection from the battery back to him” Again Song took a breath and refocused, glancing at the door. “That’s why I put the bounty on my own head.”
Jack nearly stopped cranking the lathe. Anna took a step back.
“I don’t know how you’re going to catch us without an airship of your own, but if you’ve made it far enough to see this, you’re proving what I’d heard. You’re the best out there. I knew I couldn’t hire you outright as security. There was no time. Charron had my notes; I knew he’d take me before you found me. But there’s still a chance. The money is yours if you save me.”
