Looking around the cramped compartment, he saw a hatch in the ceiling. As he clambered up the metal machinery to reach it, he could hear a heavy gait moving quickly toward his location. Someone was coming to find out what happened to the engines…
Emilio crouched down beneath the hatch just as the wheel above him began to turn. He wasn't sure what he was going to do until the hatch began to open and he saw two ankles, clearly male, standing invitingly in front of him. His days on the trapeze made it almost instinctual—he reached out, grabbed them, and gave them a yank.
There was more resistance than he had expected, but he had managed to pull hard enough to send his target crashing to the ground. An instant later, the hatch slammed back down on Emilio's back, but his own shout of pain was drowned out by the heavy grunt that came from the man he had toppled as the metal cover slammed into his shins.
Gathering his wits, Emilio pulled his shield off of his belt and gave it a quick once-over before slipping his hand through the strap.
It didn't look good. The prototype had been built as an exercise in showing off the kind of weapons he might be capable of creating, but it hadn't been intended for battle. “Hold together,” he whispered to it. It was the same tone that his father had used to when trying to convince his terrified son to give a particularly dangerous trick one more try.
The fact that he'd chosen to construct the shield in the first place had come from his boyhood fascination with the legendary warriors of Roman myth, and a quote from Dennis Darby that he had once read where the inventor had stated that technology was always at its best when it was fashioned into a tool to protect mankind, not destroy it. He hadn't bothered to mention that it was always the best for the poor fool wielding it…
Taking a deep breath, Emilio shoved open the hatch, pushing the man's legs out of his way as he launched himself onto the deck. “Il Volano ci sta!”
The downed man made a feeble swipe at him as he passed by. Realizing just how big his fallen enemy was made Emilio feel better about having ambushed him. He gave the fellow a kick to the ribs to make sure that he would stay down for a while longer.
Before he even had a chance to take in more than a quick glimpse of the ship's main cabin, he heard the Irishman's voice. “There you are!” The man was holding Sarah's arms out behind her, and she was clearly in pain.
He could feel the anger rising up in him, but he didn't want to do anything rash. “Let her go.”
“All right, lad.” He shoved her hard, and Sarah careened into the wall.
Emilio considered running to her side, but the Irishman would have none of it. “C'mon, boy! Let's see what yer made of.”
Emilio nodded, and the Irishman returned the gesture. It was only the instant before he fired it that he noticed that the Bomb Lance was holding a weapon.
Emilio brought the shield up as quickly as he could, and breathed a sigh of relief when he felt the shaft bounce off the steel plates.
Emilio narrowed his eyes. “Ora sai la forza del il Volano!” As he looked down, his eyes widened again with surprise—his shield had opened only a quarter of the way. The mechanism had jammed against the panel that had been dented in the last attack. He'd been very lucky that the lance had been deflected at all.
He shook his arm at the wrist, and the device finished opening. “Il Volano!” he repeated, hoping the bravado would cover his fear.
Emilio had avoided activating the shield's other ability before now, but he needed some kind of advantage against the Irishman, even if it was only a mental one.
As he pressed the second control with his thumb, he knew there was a very real chance that if his shield was too badly damaged, it would tear itself to pieces.
He once again thanked God as the device quickly began to spin. After only a few seconds, it had reached full speed. He could feel it wobble slightly as it turned, but for the most part it seemed to be working well.
“No matter what tricks you come up with, that flimsy platter isn't going to save yer guinea arse,” the Irishman said as he reloaded his weapon. “Sooner or later I'm going to skewer you, and then I'm going to laugh while you die.”
Emilio considered charging the Bomb Lance before he could finish his taunt, using the spinning shield to strike his opponent. But if it came to it, he wasn't sure that the weapon could take down the Irishman.
Instead, he weaved around his opponent, using the skills he had been taught by his father to try and keep his enemy on guard. If nothing else, it certainly seemed to confuse him.
But their stalemate wouldn't last long. If the villain fired again and missed, Emilio would have to try to take him down, no matter how horrible the outcome might be.
To make matters worse, he could hear that Sarah and the old madman were fighting somewhere nearby. She sounded as if she needed his help, but the moment he glanced away would be the moment that the Irishman would strike. It wouldn't take much to find a gap with a shield that he now realized was far smaller than it should have been. The ancient Romans had constructed theirs larger, and he should have as well.
From out of nowhere, something whizzed by his head and slammed onto the ground only inches away. His glanced over and saw it was the silver globe of the Frenchman's cane.
The Irishman had been distracted more thoroughly, and Emilio lunged toward him, forcing him back.
“Mr. Muphee was wight,” said the Frenchman's voice from somewhere disturbingly nearby. “You are a twue nuisance!”
Somewhere on his forehead Emilio could feel a rogue bead of sweat forming and he shook it off. He had a hard time imagining what would be worse: dying from being momentarily blinded by sweat or being forced to tell everyone in the afterlife that it was a single drop of perspiration that had killed him.
“Your fwiend is not ze only one who can make zings spin!” he heard the Frenchman say.
The words reminded Emilio of another problem: the shield's rotation was powered by a small spring that would quickly unwind.
“You may soon wish zat you had let us thwow you out of ze balloon.” The Frenchman said to Sarah, and let out a short, nasty laugh to punctuate his words.
“Then pardonnez-moi, Monsieur,” she replied, “while I try a different option.” And then Sarah appeared in front of Emilio, flying through the air, and crashing straight into the Bomb Lance. The Irishman didn't fall, but instead managed to fire his weapon straight up into the gas-bag above them.
The old Frenchman let out a terrible screech. “Aiiiieeeeaaahh! Don't puncture ze balloon you fool, or we'll all fall out of ze sky.”
Emilio's attention was instantly focused on the ridiculous spinning cane in the mad Frenchman's hands as he moved it toward Sarah, intent upon attacking her with it while she faced off against the Irishman.
“Look here! Look here!” Emilio shouted. There was no doubt that his shield would at least make an effective counter to the cane.
“Oh, is zat your device?” The Frenchman seemed disappointed.
“My wheel,” he said, lifting it slightly, “is better than your stick.”
“Look awound you boy,” he said, raising up his hand. “I build so much more zen just toys.” Emilio realized that he and Sarah had both traded one weapon-wielding opponent for another. At least this one might have slower reflexes.
From somewhere behind him there was a crash and a thud. A moment later he heard Sarah scream.
“Sarah, you good?” Emilio yelled over his shoulder.
There was no response for a few long seconds, “I'm fine…mostly,” she said, obviously in some kind of discomfort. But even just the sound of her voice brought him a wave of relief. “But I could use your help when you have the chance.”
Le Voyageur had no intention of giving him one, and poked at Emilio with his buzzing stick.
Emilio deflected it with his shield, and as they struck its surface, the spinning blades stopped for a moment. He lifted the shield away, and they started up again the moment they were back in the air. “The power is
spring?” Emilio asked.
“What are you saying?” the Frenchman sneered in reply. “I can baw-ely understand your tewwible Engwish.”
“You use a spring?” He spoke slower. He may not like the man, but had to admit that he did have some respect for his skills.
“Oh my boy,” he chuckled in reply, “Ze fawces at work here are quite beyond your imagining.”
As the two of them danced around each other, Emilio discovered that the shield was getting easier for him to maneuver. But if the gyroscopic force of the spinning disc was putting up less of a fight, that also meant it was slowing down.
Feeling both tired and desperate, he intentionally stepped in and lowered his guard, trying to present himself as a target too irresistible for the Frenchman to resist.
The old man took the bait and swiped at him, managing to catch the edge of Emilio's coat and shredding the fabric.
Instead of simply batting away the old man's attack, Emilio turned, bringing the shield straight down onto the cane. “Sacredieu!” the Frenchman shouted as it was ripped from his grasp.
The buzzing blades stopped as they hit the floor, and Emilio stamped down onto the cane with the heel of his shoe. The wood shell shattered, freeing the spring inside. The coiled metal wriggled frantically as it unwound like a dying snake, spewing an impressive number of pins, cogs, and a puff of black smoke.
“Cos'è?” Emilio stared down at the object. In an instant he was so fascinated with the shattered technology that when a shadow rose up over the pieces, his first instinct was to tell whomever it was to get out of his light.
“Watch out!” Sarah screamed, and some instinctual part of Emilio reacted, allowing him to dodge just as the steel spanner came hammering down where his body had been. But he wasn't fast enough: the blow he received was only a glancing one, but the contact of metal against flesh sent a spasm of pain out across his shoulder and back.
Emilio spun with the attack, barely managing to keep his balance, and realized that Francis the engineer had come back from his nearly unconscious state.
There was some blood on the huge man's pants where the falling door had struck his legs, and it was a maddened look that stared out from behind his grizzled beard and bloodshot eyes. Francis was clearly very upset at having had been hurt by Emilio.
When he opened his mouth to try to reason with the man, he heard le Voyageur's voice instead of his own. “Kill him quickly, Fwancis. We have much work to do.”
The engineer nodded and stepped forward with a look of anticipation on his face. There would be no dancing away from this attack. Emilio barely had time to lift up his shield before it caught a blow so furious that it bent one of the metal plates and sent a spasm up his arm. The shield was spinning, but the wobble was clearly worse.
Emilio tried to catch his breath, but another blow came down, then a third and a fourth—each one more impossibly powerful than the last.
Somewhere nearby he heard Sarah yell out. It was a sound born of fury as much as of fear, and the fact that Emilio was torn between saving himself and protecting her meant that he was either more heroic than he realized, or that his feelings for this girl were, against all sense, deeper than he knew. If he could somehow survive the devastating assault he was under, perhaps he would be given a chance to figure it out.
Maneuvering the shield as he went, Emilio took a step backward with each attack. The ceiling was rising out of the edges of his vision—he was getting close to the wall. But running out of room was hardly his only problem. The damaged shield was beginning to disintegrate under the relentless attacks. The spinning mechanism had jammed, and the metal panels were twisting and buckling, barely able to hold together under the stress.
“Stop toying with him, Fwancis.” The old Frenchman's tone made him sound like an angry parent.
“Yes, sir.”
As the next blow came, the burly engineer shifted his motion halfway through the attack, allowing his weapon to come up from underneath just as Emilio lifted up the shield to protect himself. The spanner caught the underside of the platter and tore it to pieces.
Emilio watched in terror as his creation disintegrated, the spinning plates flying apart, violently propelled in different directions by the force of the spring he had used to power the shield.
The plates zipped in all directions around the room, some of them pinging off the floor, the others making loud whispers as they tore through the fabric of the balloon.
Emilio, now defenseless, tensed himself for the final blow, but instead of hitting him, Francis dropped his wrench and grabbed his neck as if he had been stung by something. For a moment, Emilio thought that his opponent had simply been grazed, but then a stream of blood gushed out from the engineer's throat.
Emilio stepped to the side as Francis stumbled towards him, but the engineer managed only a few stumbling steps before he let out a stream of strangled gurgles and crashed to the deck. He kicked only twice, his last breath escaping in a wet hiss.
“Some help, please!” Emilio looked up to see that Sarah had been pinned to the deck by the unconscious Irishman, and that she was desperately trying to struggle free.
Shaking the broken remains of his shield off his arm, he ran to her side. “Get him off me.”
“Yes.” He stuck his hands underneath the Irishman and rolled him away from her. The Bomb Lance tumbled over and let out a moan. That meant he'd be waking up soon, and Emilio didn't want to get caught off guard again.
Reaching out his hand, he pulled Sarah to her feet. “You were amazing!” she said. “But where did you learn how to move like that?”
Emilio was shocked that she would be impressed. “Il circo.” If anything, he had moved like a wounded slug, and his lack of confidence had almost allowed the Bomb Lance to kill her.
Sarah looked up at him, and in an instant, Emilio found himself as entranced by her gaze as he would have been by any machine. The world became suddenly silent, and Emilio could feel himself leaning, pushed toward this girl by an instinct he had not felt for a very long time.
Just as his lips were about to reach hers, there was a loud tearing sound. The ship jerked downward, and they stumbled into each other's arms.
“Heure d'aller,” came a voice from across the room. Emilio looked up to see that the Frenchman had slipped on a leather harness of some kind and was standing near the open stairs. “Good-bye, young lovews. I hope zat you will embwace ze passion of a shared death with the zame enzuziazem you showed fighting me.”
“You're not leaving me here to die with them, you crazy frog!” the Irishman said as he stood up and stumbled across the room.
“Muphee! If you wish to live, grab ze deceleratuer and follow me.” Pulling a pair of goggles down over his face, the Frenchman threw himself out of the ship and vanished into the wind. Murphy pulled another pack off the wall and began to strap it on.
“We need to stop them!” Sarah yelled as the ship lurched again.
The two villains tumbled out of the ship and into the sky.
“Too late,” Emilio said, pulling himself out of Sarah's embrace with no small feeling of regret. “Follow me.”
The two of them ran toward the control platform and sprinted up the ladder.
The view out the thick glass window was not a comforting sight. The ship had already lost a great deal of height, and they were floating somewhere over the unforgiving outline of the city…but where? He looked around desperately for something familiar, and saw the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge standing less than a mile away.
With that landmark to guide him, the buildings underneath him became familiar. If they were in Queens, that meant he could try to take them home.
Emilio looked at the controls and dials, trying to make sense of the forest of brass in front of him. He had disabled the engines, but their descent had given them speed, and the propellers could still give them control.
“Hold on!” he yelled at her. An instant later, he could feel her arms wrapping themselves tight
ly around his waist as he grabbed one of the long levers. It wasn't a random choice exactly—more of an educated guess. He squeezed closed the release, and gave it a pull.
The ship swayed frantically in response, and Emilio felt the floor trying to slide away underneath him.
After a moment, he eased it back. They were heading in the right direction, but the balloon was losing lift too fast. They needed to drop ballast.
His eyes scanned the controls for anything familiar. Near the top was a horizontal lever under a sign that read “Détachez.”
“What's in English?” he said to Sarah, pointing at the word.
“Um. Undo! Pull apart!”
He nodded and grabbed the lever. It pulled up halfway, and then stopped. For a desperate moment he didn't know what to do, until Sarah's hand reached out and pushed it sideways.
As it pressed down into position, there was a series of clicks in the room all around them.
For a moment, nothing happened, and then a series of small explosions made both of them jump with shock.
As the booming faded, there was a single instant of silence before the struts began to snap apart, each one breaking with a distinctive “ping” followed by the tearing of fabric.
“Is that good or bad?” Sarah asked. Before he could answer, the bottom of the gondola fell away. Instantly, a cold wind began to roar, although they were still protected by the control panel's window. And the balloon, freed of the gondola, except for the small bit of metal they were standing on, lurched back up into the air.
The only other remaining pieces of the ship were a single bank of propellers and a small engine that poured out greasy black smoke through a pipe. It was clearly meant to allow for some control of the ship in an emergency just such as this. “Mi dispiace, cittadini,” he mumbled as he imagined the damage the falling gondola might do to the unsuspecting citizens below.
Turning his attention to the controls, he grabbed the wheel, using it to try to control their progress as they crossed over the city. Then there was another unhappy tearing sound, and they began to fall again.
Hearts of Smoke and Steam Page 12
