by Dan Willis
O O O
The pipe burned Robi’s hand and she swore, jerking it back. Following the big flux pipe had seemed like such a good idea at first, but now she was lost, just as John had predicted.
Damn him.
Of course he hadn’t specifically predicted she would get lost, but Robi was enjoying being mad at John instead of herself so she ignored the facts. About twenty yards down the pipeway, the big pipe had suddenly turned and disappeared through a wall for no reason she could determine. Worse, at least one of the pipes she was crawling over was a steam pipe. She tried going down a level to get away from the blasted hot pipes but they reappeared almost immediately, forcing her to crawl slowly and carefully to avoid getting burned.
Sweat ran in her eyes and the air was thick with moisture. She felt a little bit like she was being cooked.
A rush of cool air suddenly hit her face and she caught sight of an opening in the pipeway. It looked as if the pipes ran along the ceiling of a large room just up ahead. She quickened her pace as much as she dared. Once out over the open room, she could just drop down and continue her search on foot, away from the twice-cursed pipes.
She wouldn’t be sneaking like the daughter of the world’s greatest thief, but she wouldn’t die of heat stroke either. Sometimes practicality had to get the better of pride.
As she passed out of the pipeway a rush of cool air washed over her, raising gooseflesh on her neck and arms. In that moment she doubted anything had ever felt as good. She closed her eyes and reveled in the sensation, taking several deep, revitalizing breaths. After a moment, she opened her eyes and almost cried. There, at the far side of the open space, she could see the big Flux pipe emerging into the pipeway again.
“Thank the Builder,” she gasped under her breath.
Before she could continue her silent crawl, however, someone answered her.
“I’m surprised to see you here.”
The sweat running down Robi’s arms and back turned to ice. She knew that voice.
“I was told you’d been dealt with,” Derek Morgan went on.
Robi looked down, over the side of the suspended pipes. Derek Morgan stood in the doorway of what appeared to be a storage area.
She gathered herself, muscles tightening like the coils of a clock-spring. If she could cross the pipes quickly enough, she might escape. There was no way he could follow her through the pipeways. Of course, he could always shoot her while she crossed the pipes.
But Derek Morgan was not looking at her.
“It’s good to see you,” Hickok’s voice floated up to her.
She twisted around, looking back along the far wall of the room. Wild Bill Hickok tugged at his duster, the boiler suit discarded atop a pile of bodies at his feet. At this distance, Robi couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead. Hickok reached across his body and drew his short enforcer’s sword. Robi wouldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been watching intently, but Hickok winced when he drew the weapon. She remembered his healing ribs and wondered just how fast a Paragon healed.
“I’ve been wanting a rematch,” Morgan said, but he didn’t draw his blade. Instead, his hand dropped to his gun. He drew and fired so fast, Robi wondered if Morgan used some new kind of machine gun pistol. Hickok reeled, spinning his body behind the standing crates. Bullets tore into the wood, but Robi was sure the first couple had actually hit Hickok. Morgan’s gun clicked empty and he dropped it back in its holster.
“You’re looking a bit slow, old man,” he said, drawing his blade at last.
“I remember you running away last time,” Hickok said, emerging from the cover of the boxes. “Nowhere to run in here, I expect.”
As Robi watched, transfixed, the combatants closed on each other. She had a momentary thought of dropping down on Morgan, but as the two titans came together, she put that thought out of her mind. Almost too fast for her to follow, their blades whipped out, ringing off one another again and again. Hickok scored first, slashing through Morgan’s defense and cutting a shallow gash across his chest. Morgan answered with two quick blows that left Hickok bleeding from his left arm. If she tried to interfere they’d cut her to ribbons before she hit the floor.
The fight went on with each man attacking, then retreating, then attacking again. In less than a minute they were both panting and bloody, bleeding from many small wounds. Hickok seemed to be holding his own, but Robi had seen him move faster and more aggressively in the past. His ribs were slowing him down.
Morgan had seen it too.
“What’s the matter, old man?” he asked. “Feeling your age?”
Hickok didn’t favor that with a response but attacked again, driving Morgan back.
It happened so fast that Robi almost didn’t see it. As Hickok slashed at Morgan, his blade went wide by an inch or two. It was all the advantage Morgan needed; he swept Hickok’s blade aside and ran his own through Hickok’s side. The enforcer cried out in pain and went down, clutching his wound.
“Now,” Morgan said, kicking Hickok’s sword away. “Before I have you dragged off to the brig to bleed to death, I want to know where your two friends are.”
The words shocked Robi back to herself. She had no gun and no illusions about her chances against Morgan in a fair fight. She had to get to the Flux Engine and pull out John’s crystal before Morgan figured out why they were here. With any luck John would already be there, but if he wasn’t, she’d just have to figure something out herself.
Maybe, if she hurried, there’d be time to get Hickok out of the brig before the ship went down.
Turning away from the scene below, Robi hurried across the pipes and back into the pipeway on the far side, unseen.
O O O
The crystal chamber was big and every bit of it was occupied. A small steam engine chugged away on one side of the room, providing power for the Flux Engine, but the rest of the chamber was taken by the engine itself. It hung in the center of a massive framework of girders, beams, support arms, and Flux tubes. A glittering chandelier of crystals all moving, whirling, and gyrating as their various gears and arms propelled them.
It was a symphony of sight that nearly overwhelmed him.
Then he heard it.
He closed his eyes and slumped in relief against the door as it broke over him, the music of a thousand crystals all vibrating in harmony. Of course, standing this close, the noise should have been deafening, but John heard it as if from a great distance away, muted and soft. Whatever else the Paragon elixir had done to him, it had almost completely wiped out his crystal sense.
“Are you the help?” a voice said from quite close.
John jumped and opened his eyes. Standing in front of him was a small man with thick, dirty spectacles and a sour expression.
“Are you deaf, boy,” he demanded, “or are you just in awe of the greatest mechanic in the world?”
“Yes, sir. I am,” John said, finding his voice at last. “Uh … the help, I mean.”
“’Bout time they sent me someone,” the man said. “Call me Bertram and get yourself over here.”
John followed Bertram over to a second steam engine that stood farther down than the one driving the Flux Engine. Each of the steam engines was connected to the main drive shaft by a clutch mechanism of some kind, presumably to transfer power if one engine should fail. Normally if an airship’s lift engine lost power, it would drift down gradually as its float crystals lost power. This airship, however, depended on his mother’s crystal to make its float crystals lift more than they otherwise could. If it lost power, if the boost effect ended suddenly, it would overwhelm the lifters. The giant airship would fall out of the sky like a stone.
As they rounded the first steam engine, John immediately saw what the problem was. The second engine wasn’t working. Bertram had its drive piston torn apart and was attempting to fit it with new rings.
“I need you to pry up the shaft while I get the rings on,” Bertram said. “Use the prybar on the table.”
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nbsp; A small workbench on wheels stood nearby and John immediately spotted the yard-long iron bar. He picked it up, considering its heft, then walked over to where Bertram was kneeling over the piston. Without a second thought, John held the crowbar in his hand and punched the little man in the back of the head. Bertram went down like a head-shot hog and lay still.
“Sorry Bertram,” John said. “You aren’t going to need that other engine anyway.”
He tossed the prybar onto the deck with a clang and turned to the whirling array of crystals. The machine was incredibly complex with crystals of all shapes and sizes, all moving within the engine’s field, interacting with each other, merging their harmonies into one massive chorus of sound. Even with his crystal sense diminished by the Paragon Elixir, John could feel the power radiating from the Flux Engine. As he moved closer, the hairs on his arms stood up and the pressure of the muted sound made his ears pop.
At first the whirling arms and turning spindles that drove the crystals were too much to process. It just seemed to be one massive, undulating, churning mass. Worse, his mother’s crystal was in there somewhere. If he concentrated hard, he thought he might be able to hear its individual song underlying the cacophonous melody of the Flux Engine.
John closed his eyes, trying to focus on the one sound and shut all others out. Before the Paragon Elixir, he could have done it easily, but now it just hovered there on the edge of his senses, teasing him like a child holding a bone just out of a dog’s reach. He abandoned his attempt and swept the structure with his eyes. Crystals whirled and moved so fast they seemed little more than blurs. A few, mounted on the larger rings or gears, moved slow enough to get a good look at, but none of them were his.
He closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration. When he opened his eyes he just stared. If he wanted to find his mother’s crystal, he was going to have to figure out a way to shut down the machine. If he did that, he wouldn’t have long to find it before the great airship fell out of the sky. Maybe a minute.
The steam engine and the transmission that connected to the Flux Engine were armored, their sensitive parts covered to prevent tampering. Worse, the steam engine’s controls required special tools to operate, tools John was sure were locked in an ironbound strongbox clamped to the engine’s side. The box had a series of concentric rings embedded in the front, and each movable ring had numbers etched on it. To open the box he would need the code, a code that Bertram undoubtedly knew but was in no condition to supply. If Robi were here, she’d have it open in seconds, bus she was still conspicuously absent.
John looked back at the whirling array of crystals and spared a moment to worry about Robi.
Then he saw it.
Burning with a bright red light, it sat at the very center of a halo of sparkling crystals, a north star in a galaxy of swirling lights.
It was in the exact center of the moving arms and whirling gigs and churning gears. If John reached in anywhere near it, he’d lose a finger at best, his arm at worst.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” a cold, familiar voice broke upon him.
He whirled, hand dropping to his pistol.
A woman stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame with her hip cocked, enhancing the lines of her lithe form. Chestnut hair spilled down over shoulders and framed a lean, angular face. The face was beautiful, but the smile was turned up, giving it a look of cruelty and her hand, like John’s, rested on her pistol.
“Hello, Sira,” John said, then he jerked his pistol free of the holster and fired.
Chapter 29
Full Circle
John’s first shot tore into the door jamb above and to the left of where Sira’s head had been. She seemed to move almost before the shot hit, darting to the side and jerking her own gun free of its holster. Her movements were graceful and fluid with that unnatural swiftness Derek Morgan had exhibited when he fought Wild Bill in the ruins of Fixer’s shop. She returned fire and John heard the bullet buzz like an angry bee as it passed his head so close the shock wave burned his ear.
His brain screamed at him to get moving and John dodged right, away from the Flux Engine. He didn’t think Sira would risk hitting it, but he didn’t want to take chances. With his luck, she’d put a bullet right through his mother’s crystal and kill them all.
Firing on the run, John ducked behind a row of storage shelves loaded down with spare parts and crystals. His shots missed the fast-moving Sira.
But she wasn’t moving as fast as before.
A tray of crystals exploded as Sira’s bullet tore through it, showering him with glittering shards.
Sira darted from behind one of the Flux Engine’s structural supports and dove behind a coal bin. John unloaded his gun at her but didn’t get close. Sira fired back but he saw her aiming and took shelter again, ejecting the spent cartridges from his pistol.
She was definitely moving slower, or rather he was moving faster.
“Hooray for Paragon Elixir,” he muttered, scrambling to reload.
John jammed the cartridges into his gun and spun the cylinder back into place. He came up from cover, ready to fire, but Sira had not been idle. As soon as he moved, she fired, the bullet tearing through a jar of powdered flash crystal. It burst out of the broken jar in a shower of burning particles.
John yelped as flaming embers hit his face and neck. He dropped to the ground, swatting at his neck, and rolling to prevent his clothes from catching fire. He lost his grip on his pistol and it spun away, clattering across the deck. Forcing his watering eyes open, he scooped up the weapon as the sound of running feet reached his ears.
Thumbing the hammer back, John jumped out from behind the shelves, bringing his pistol to bear.
Sira was there, right in front of him as he emerged. His finger tightened on the trigger but she reached out and smashed his hand. His pistol went spinning away and she raised her own weapon.
Two could play at that game.
John brought his left hand down hard on Sira’s wrist. She didn’t lose the weapon, but it went down and away before she could shoot him in the chest again. Instead, the bullet tore through the meaty part of his thigh. Pain lanced through him and suddenly his leg wouldn’t support him. He fell with a cry, slamming his back into the shelves and sliding down to the floor.
He expected to get a bullet through the head before the stars swimming in his vision cleared, but when he could finally see again, Sira simply stood over him, smiling.
“I thought I killed you already,” she said, her gun pointing at his chest. Her finger ran around the trigger guard of her pistol, caressing it, as if drawing out the suspense gave her pleasure.
“Takes more than that to kill me,” John said, trying to keep his voice from cracking.
Sira’s face split into a wide grin and she jammed the toe of her boot into his injured leg.
The pain went from a throbbing ache to a raging inferno and he screamed. After what seemed like an eternity, the pressure eased and John clamped his teeth shut, cutting his scream into a more manly growl of pain.
Sira’s smile turned into a pout.
“Wow, you really are tough,” she said, her voice low and sultry and dripping with sarcasm.
John gasped in pain but the red haze that had gathered around his vision when Sira stepped on him cleared. Sira moved away, slipping her gun into its holster. She stepped back and brought her heel down hard on John’s lost pistol. There was a ringing crack as the firing crystal broke, rendering the weapon useless.
“Did you really think you could beat me?” she said, the heels of her boots thumping on the deck as she came toward him in a slow, steady walk that accented the femininity of her hips. “Did you think you could stop the force of a thousand years of prophecy?”
John shook his head to clear it. He’d hit it pretty hard on the shelf when he went down and he reached up to feel the lump on the back of his head. As he did so, his hand brushed the metal haft of a tool protruding from the shelf. Sira had som
e need to explain her actions to him. He decided to keep her going.
“What are you talking about, lady?” he said, covertly wrapping his hand around the thick shaft of metal. “What prophecy?”
“This land was stolen from my people by the Lantians,” she said. “They drove us from our—”
John didn’t wait for her to finish. Whatever her reasons for wanting to destroy Castle Rock, a city full of people, they weren’t good enough. Moving with the speed of a striking snake, John whipped his arm forward, sending a short length of metal rod spinning right at Sira’s face.
Even caught by surprise, she was fast. She hurled herself to the side, bringing her arm up to ward off the blow. The rod missed her head, but struck her arm solidly, hard enough that John heard the bone crack.
Sira screamed, not so much with pain as with fury. She reached for her gun with her wounded arm and gasped in pain, her face turning white.
Cradling her wounded arm, she reached down with her left hand and drew a slender, wavy-bladed knife from her boot. John hauled on the shelf, trying to pull himself up despite his wounded leg. He barely managed it before Sira rushed him, slashing out with the knife. Taking a staggering step to the side, John threw himself toward a workbench. The knife bit into his bicep, tracing a line of burning pain across it as he managed to avoid most of the strike.
“You’ve grown since last we met,” Sira said as John rolled over the top of the desk.
The knife slashed out again, hitting him another glancing blow across the shoulder, and he could feel blood soaking through his shirt … She slashed across the desk again, forcing John to lean back to avoid the knife. It thunked down into the top of the workbench, sinking in over an inch.
“Not bad,” she said, wrenching the knife free with an almost casual twist of her arm.
He had to end this quickly and decisively or next time she would be jerking her knife out of his corpse.
Sira’s hips suddenly shifted, gathering her strength for another explosive burst of movement. John saw it coming. He flung himself across the workbench again, rolling to the far side on his back as Sira dashed around it. Her knife flashed out again and he felt, rather than saw, it slice through the air just above his head.
