“Give me the grinder,” Gunner said. Coop tugged free a weapon made from a ring of gun barrels attached to a box with a crank on one side and a belt of ammunition on the other. The bottom side had a wide clamp, which he heaved onto the railing and tightened up before tilting the contraption in the general direction of the light and turning the handle. With a sound like a row of soldiers firing off their rifles at once, the weapon slung a stream of bullets at their enemy. Barely a dozen shots before it reached the end of its ammo belt, the second light fizzled and died.
Without their lights, the accuracy of the smaller guns suffered, though that was not entirely in the Wind Breaker’s favor. Their focus on disabling the ship rather than destroying it suffered as well, and more than a few darts chewed into the envelope. There was no rupture, but a thin stream of gas escaped from a handful of holes too large to be patched by their improvised self-sealing system. At least one inner section of the envelope was compromised.
“Okay, we’re going to run for it,” Mack said, angling the ship out over the mountains now far below them. “Let’s see just how tough their ship really is.”
The Wind Breaker roared as her rear cannon fired. At this range there was no missing the massive attacker, but despite the direct hit on the envelope, little evidence of any damage, beyond a barely visible plume of green gas at first, appeared. Then it became clear that the dreadnought, though still rising in pursuit, wasn’t rising as quickly. They were slowly but steadily gaining a height advantage. After a minute they were well above the top of the enemy and still rising. Perhaps sensing that their quarry was on the verge of being out of range, the gunners intensified their attacks. A flurry of darts thumped against the belly and side of the ship, with a stray shot whizzing past and lodging itself in the harness of one of the pumps under the envelope. It began to vent gas freely, and The Wind Breaker swiftly started to descend.
“Ms. Graus, the starboard lift pump is hit. That thing is hooked to all of the envelope chambers. I need you to cut off the flow, or we’re going to fall right into the jaws of that monster.”
Nita looked up to the malfunctioning machinery, swallowed hard, and took to the rigging.
Captain Mack swung the ship around. “As long as we’re tipping down, might as well let them have it with both barrels. Stand by, all crew. Big jolt coming.”
She had just reached the broken pump when the order came. It left her with barely the time to hold on tight to the rigging before the guns fired, forcing the already forward-pitched ship to tilt drastically. Anything not tied down, including the crew, tumbled forward. Nita was almost shaken free but managed to keep her grip. She looked down and saw two new green plumes coming from the dreadnought but still no sign that it was on the verge of destruction. Shaking her head, she tried to focus on her work. On the deck of the ship, dealing with the pump would have been a simple task. There were a few manual valves that needed to be closed. Here in the rigging of a ship at battle, it seemed impossible. She could only reach three of the five necessary valves. There was no telling how she would close the others, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it.
“It looks like they won’t be able to target us as well if we are directly above them! I’m taking us over! If we have to come down, maybe we can tear them up on the way!”
Nita finished the three accessible valves and then eyed the remaining ones. There were no two ways about it. She’d never be able to reach them from the rigging. Without a second thought she climbed out onto the broken pump itself, which dangled from its mounting braces and coughed at the gas it was venting. She moved hand over hand until she could reach the valves, then swung her legs up to hook a brace. She reached out with a wrench and made short work of the fourth valve, then got busy on the last.
As she gave it a final turn, she heard a thump from below that was different from the rest, followed by the worrying crunch of wood. The dreadnought had launched ropes tipped with barbed harpoons directly up from the main deck, between the main envelope and the first small one. They bit into the belly of the ship near the stern and yanked downward, swinging the ship forward. Nita’s precarious grip slipped, and she tumbled down to the deck, striking the planks painfully and sliding toward the rear of the ship as the angle became ever more extreme. She picked up speed, knocking free lines of fléchettes, and her eyes briefly met with those of Coop and Gunner as she skated past them. Then, suddenly, there was no deck beneath her.
Again time slowed. She had slipped off the back of the gondola, past where the missing railing should have been. Now she was falling toward the dreadnought below, flipping end over end. Darts whizzed past her. With an odd, resonant thud she smacked into the main envelope with enough force to knock the wind from her lungs. It sent her back into the air, striking it again where its slope was steeper. Now she was skidding directly toward one of the slicing propellers. She flipped over, fingers grasping madly for something to hold onto. Finally she found a support rope leading down from the top of the envelope. She was moving too fast to get a firm grip, but she slowed herself enough to avoid being launched into the blades of the propeller when she ran out of envelope. Instead she was dumped into the rigging and thrown violently from strut to rope to chain, then finally down to the deck below.
She coughed and fought to regain her breath, her mind not yet recovered enough to appreciate the miracle of falling from one airship and landing on another. She swept the deck around her with blurred vision. Either because of its hasty need to launch, or simply by design, the ship operated on a skeleton crew. Each fug person rushed to follow orders bellowed through megaphones from a helm near the fore end of the main deck. The crew was so busy they had not yet noticed her.
Reason wormed its way slowly back into her mind. They wanted the stolen cargo back. That was the only reason they hadn’t decimated the Wind Breaker. Chances were very good they would have no such qualms about killing a stray crewman. If she wanted to survive, even for a few minutes more, she was going to have to get out of sight before they noticed her. And if there was any hope of getting the stolen medicine back to her mother, she was going to have to find some way to help the Wind Breaker get away. Stumbling to her feet, she rushed for the nearest hatch to the lower decks.
#
“We lost Nita!” Coop said.
“Is she dead?” Captain Mack asked.
“I don’t know. She might have ended up on the dreadnought.”
“Then she’s dead either way. Looks like she got that leak fixed before she went, but we lost a lot of gas. We’re going to have to bleed some altitude, and we can’t stay up here or those harpoons will get us. I’m taking us aside.”
He guided the rapidly descending Wind Breaker to port, swinging down behind the main envelope, then out and away. Gunner scrambled to reach the sack of weapons that had been thrown about the deck by the attacks. It had become lodged in the mounting of one of envelope struts. He fished out a blunderbuss and took aim at one of the propellers as they swept past. Pulling the trigger unleashed a cloud of pellets. At this range the bulk of the blast met its target, causing the motor to vent steam and sputter to a stop. Though there were no fewer than eleven other propellers still functioning, it was heartening to know that the ship wasn’t indestructible.
Their drop began to level off as they cleared the side of the craft. The bad news was that this left them at close range and in good position for the dreadnought’s deck guns. The good news was that they were now close enough for Coop and Gunner to target the crew with their pistols and rifles. Firing from ship to ship didn’t allow any real accuracy, but by maintaining a constant hail of bullets on the way, they managed to keep the enemy gunmen in search of cover. It led to something of a standoff, because they knew that if they attempted to escape, Coop and Gunner wouldn’t be able to keep the enemy gunners busy.
“I’m going to slow her up,” Captain Mack said.
“I’d advise against it, Captain,” Gunner said between shots. “I’ve only take
n out three of their guns and none of their gunmen. If we fall back, the forward guns could fire on you and the helm.”
“I don’t figure on there being guns there for too much longer,” Captain Mack said. He leaned to the speaking tube. “Forward cannons loaded, Lil?”
“Good to go, Cap’n!” came her reply.
He smiled. “Firing starboard cannons.”
Firing a shipboard cannon at point blank range is not typically done for quite a few reasons, all of which were perfectly illustrated in the following moments. The blow was devastating, instantly reducing a stretch of the gunship’s hull to splinters. Shards of former ship flew in all directions, some pelting those enemy crewmembers lucky enough to be spared the primary blast, much rebounding back and scouring Coop, Gunner, and the captain. The gunship shuddered to one side, the Wind Breaker to the other, and then they crashed together, dislodging or damaging most of the guns and leaving the starboard side of Captain Mack’s ship badly damaged. The explosion knocked all three crewmembers on the deck to their backs, and there they remained, motionless.
#
Nita was thrown against the wall of an one of the dreadnought’s internal hallways as a cloud of splinters left her scraped up and thanking her lucky stars that she’d kept her goggles in place. When the cloud settled down, she saw that the hallway ahead of her was now missing, replaced with rushing wind and moonlight. The damage revealed something else, however. Until now she’d seen precious little of the dreadnought’s steam system. Unlike the cheaply and minimally built Wind Breaker, the dreadnought was clearly a war machine, meant for battle, and thus meant to withstand attack. The vital workings were hidden deep inside, where even a blast like the one she’d just narrowly avoided could not reach them. In the shattered remnants of the hall, however, the splintered back wall revealed stout steam pipes. She followed what little of them she could see. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to give her an idea of where the boiler was. If there was one thing that could destroy this ship in one fell swoop, it was the boiler.
She doubled back and found her way down the stairs, dodging into side halls whenever the rare crewman appeared. A few twists and turns took her into the depths of the ship, where enormous pipes hung in exposed runs along the walls, leading her directly to the boiler. It was massive, as it would have to be in order to get a behemoth like this moving at all, let alone with the speed and agility it had demonstrated. The boiler approached the size of the ones back at home; but just as the ones the fug folk had built for others were unnecessarily complex, that same brilliance had streamlined the workings of this one to be manned by a single fug person standing on an elevated platform at one side of the room like the conductor of an orchestra. He worked like a man possessed, eyes scanning dozens of meters, pulling levers to dump bins of fuel into chutes and twisting valves to regulate pressure.
She climbed onto the catwalk and crept low behind him, though with his level of distraction she could have been beating a base drum without drawing his attention. It wasn’t until she’d slunk two steps away that he finally turned to inspect the sound of her footsteps, and when he did he received a wrench to the side of his head. He crumbled quickly to the ground, and she was left at the controls of the massive ship’s power supply. Cranking open some valves and tightening up others, she began dumping extra fuel into the firebox and manipulating the water flow. In essence, she was gathering together the sum total of what she’d learned about how to keep a boiler from blowing—and doing the opposite. One by one, though, safety valves and other fail-safes triggered.
“They do know how to build a good boiler when they want to…” she grumbled.
“We are receiving irregular power to the turbines. Get them regulated, now!” came an order from a clearer and much more elaborate version of the Wind Breaker’s speaking tube. “Main Engineer, report! … Report! … Secondary Engineer, report to the boiler, and bring two guards.”
Nita looked around desperately. There wasn’t much time left, and it was clear that no amount of standard tinkering was going to get this boiler to explode. She felt around her equipment, searching for something that might do some good. She’d lost a good deal of tools during her fall. Finally her fingers came to rest on an oddly bulging pouch. She pulled it open to find the exposed coil box. As the footsteps of the engineer and his guards began to echo down the hall, an idea came to mind. She leapt down to the floor of the chamber and sprinted to the firebox. Once there she hauled it open, loosened a few screws on the coil box, and threw it inside, slamming the firebox door shut after. She then commenced bashing madly at any connected pipes she could reach.
“Stop right there!” cried a voice a few moments later.
She turned to the doorway to find two guards with weapons raised.
“Go ahead,” she replied. “Fire your weapons in the boiler room. Nothing would make me happier.”
“That’s the Calderan! How did she get on the ship? Best not to kill her. Grab her and bring her to the captain,” the engineer said, climbing to the catwalk and beginning to undo her sabotage.
#
On the Wind Breaker, the crew had all survived Captain Mack’s desperate attack. Butch had made her way back to the deck and was now busy rousing the dazed captain, who’d been knocked back from the controls by the force of the blast. His face was covered in tiny scrapes, and one lens of his glasses was cracked, but he was otherwise intact. He stood and took the controls again.
“On your feet, men. We might still get out of this,” he ordered.
The Wind Breaker, without him active at the controls, had veered toward the gunship and now butted against it. He tried to steer it away, but dislodged rigging from the larger ship had become entangled with the support belt for his turbines, holding the ships together. He eased the controls in and out, causing the ship to tug away bit by bit, but as he did the remaining crew of the dreadnought wheeled over a pair of strange contraptions.
“Boarding hooks, men! On your feet!” the captain ordered. He reached for his pistols.
“Keep your hands raised. You’ve got three rifleman targeting you right now.”
He turned to find his counterpart on the dreadnought standing on the deck, speaking through a megaphone.
“You really impress me, Captain West,” said the enemy captain. “No one has dared to assault anything concealed by the fug in a century. We have kept the dreadnought on standby constantly for decades, but this is the first time under my command that we have had to use it. Again, I applaud you. I’m inclined to believe that it was through little more than an overabundance of raw gall and foolishness that you achieved this, but I doubt that any amount of daring could come so close to success without a keen mind behind it. And no keen mind would place all of its eggs in a single basket. For instance, I am not sure when or how you inserted one of your crew onto my ship, but we’ve found her.”
He signaled and the guards hauled Nita out into view.
“Again, the mere ability to insert her convinces me that you have tricks up your sleeve. In a moment, my men will board your ship. They will search it, and they will recover all that you have stolen. You will also tell us of any information you have been able to deliver to anyone else through whatever means. If you cooperate, you will be allowed to live, and, in time, your fees will be paid and your life will continue. Men, deploy the boarding hooks.”
“I really wouldn’t do that,” Gunner said, his voice slurred from his own brief trip into unconsciousness. He had in his hand what was either a shotgun sawed down to the size of a pistol, or a pistol modified for firing shot. “The last time I fired this, I nearly broke my wrist, but I’m confident that with it I could kill three of you in one shot without aiming.”
“I reckon I could take a few myself,” Coop said, sitting up and raising his own pistols.
“And I’ll mop up what’s left,” Lil said, emerging from the hatch with her stolen rifle.
“Captain, please. For your own sake and theirs, I beseech you to
get your crew under control,” the enemy captain said.
“I’d say they are following my standing orders just fine.”
“Perhaps your infiltrator can reason with you.” He turned to Nita. “Explain to him what you’ve seen, that nothing he can do can destroy this ship.”
He placed the megaphone in front of her mouth. After a steadying breath, she spoke: “Captain Mack. I am not going to plead for my life. I understand that what we do, we do for the ship. But promise me one thing. When this monster goes down, find a way to get the medicine to my mother. And tell her that I’m sorry.”
Captain Mack nodded. “We’ll do that, Ms. Graus. You can count on it.”
“What do you mean by that? Your tampering didn’t do anything to the boiler,” the enemy captain said.
Fate, in one last showing of its fine sense of humor, chose that moment to finish the work Nita had started. The loosened and damaged coil box finally succumbed to the intense heat of the overfed firebox. The nontrith components gave way, allowing the phenomenal amount of power stored in the coiled spring to burst free. A ribbon of nigh indestructible material unfurled in an instant, punching easily through the walls of both the firebox and the water chamber. Its sturdy structure thus compromised, the boiler began to vent superheated steam. Forced upward by the escaping vapor, the whole of the house-sized boiler thrust through the decks, crashing through them as if they were gingerbread and continuing unimpeded through the envelope above. No matter how secure and well-engineered the design, the sack of gas couldn’t withstand such massive damage.
The explosion sent the crew flying and threw Nita to the deck along with the captain. The dreadnought continued to splinter and crack, the fore end drooping as the envelope lost the ability to hold it aloft. The secondary envelopes, still intact, held firm to the aft of the ship, and the damaged craft began to come apart. Captain Mack pushed hard at his controls, turning the Wind Breaker away from the disintegrating dreadnought. Lil madly scanned the decks of the two halves of the sinking ship. Finally, on the deck of the falling fore end, she saw Nita, clutching a piece of rigging.
Free-Wrench, no. 1 Page 18
