The Flux Engine

by Dan Willis

  If she stayed, she was dead, so she gathered herself and scrambled forward, meeting each obstacle she encountered in real time until she crouched, gasping and bleeding from a dozen small wounds, in the safe zone. Her body began to tremble violently as she realized what she’d just done, and how close she’d come to an agonizing, messy death.

  Robi stuck a finger from her good hand into her mouth and bit down hard.

  Stay focused!

  There’d be time to fall apart later.

  “Robi Laryn,” she gasped, forcing her body to stop trembling. “World’s Greatest Thief.”

  She turned and watched the machinery that still stood between her and the exit. It took a minute or two, but she found the count again. Mustering her inner calm, she moved out with a steady grace that made the rest look easy.

  When she reached the outer edge of the machine, she practically jumped out. She collapsed against a workbench, her body trembling uncontrollably as her reserves of calm ran dry. A fierce pride burned within her and began to sweep the rest away.

  But as she came to herself, she realized that something was wrong. John should have been there. She looked up, taking stock of the room at last. While she’d been in the machine, nothing else existed, so she’d missed the arrival of Derek Morgan. Now he stood a few feet away, the muzzle of his gun against John’s temple.

  “That was the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, a wolfish smile on his thin face. “Now hand over the crystal or I will be forced to shoot.”

  Chapter 31

  The Sacrifice

  Robi froze. Morgan pressed his gun against John’s temple. For a moment the only sound was the chugging of the steam engine and the whirring, clanking sound of the flux engine. She curled her left hand around John’s crystal, anger flooding her. This was the second time Derek Morgan had gotten the drop on her. The man who killed her father. She couldn’t let him get John’s crystal, she couldn’t let him win. She wouldn’t.

  She looked down at the crystal. Even outside the confines of the flux engine it still blazed with light. Whatever it was doing for the crystal engine, removing the crystal had only slowed it down, not stopped it.

  She looked John in the eyes. He knew it too.

  To stop the flux engine, she needed to get the crystal farther away.

  “I’m not going to say it again, Miss Laryn,” Morgan said. “Give me the crystal or I will kill this boy.”

  Robi hesitated. There wasn’t a way out. If she didn’t do as Morgan said, John was dead. If she did, Castle Rock and everyone in it would be destroyed. Her grip loosened on the crystal. Whatever the cost, she couldn’t watch John die.

  She looked back at him, seeking some sign that he would forgive her for the choice she was about to make. Instead, he mouthed a silent word at her.

  “Run.” He moved his lips in exaggerated motions so Robi could see. “Get Hickok. Get out.”

  Robi felt her skin prickle as her muscles contracted, ready to propel her away at a run. It was a little thing, barely noticeable, but Morgan saw it.

  Click.

  The hammer on his pistol fell, but the gun clicked empty. He had forgotten to reload after his battle with Hickok.

  Robi moved.

  Darting away, she dove through a gap in one of the shelving units, rolling to her feet on the far side. Morgan cursed behind her and threw John into a row of workbenches before sprinting after her. Robi’s leap had placed her on the far side of the gyrating flux engine. Morgan would have to go around the other way to catch her. She hoped it gave her enough time.

  Morgan swore as he rounded the far side of the flux engine. Robi didn’t slow down. She put her foot on the side of one of the rib-like support arms that enfolded the whirling crystals and ran three steps up the side. She grabbed the beam as it began to curve and scampered up to the suspended flux tank. Keeping Morgan fixed in her peripheral vision, she jumped to the top of the flux tank. Morgan’s arm whipped forward, and something shot toward her across the intervening space. John yelled but Robi expected a last ditch effort from Morgan. She pulled up short, skidding to an immediate stop.

  It wasn’t quite enough.

  Morgan’s throw had been so fast that she wasn’t able to get completely out of the way. She turned her face as Morgan’s empty pistol sailed by her head. Her arms came up reflexively to protect her head and the tip of the barrel clipped her wounded hand.

  She flinched as something cracked in her hand and John’s crystal spun from her grip, bouncing off the flux tank with a chime-like ring. It sailed over the workbenches, hit a shelf and landed on the deck at John’s feet.

  She shot him a horrified look, but he waved her on.

  “Go!”

  She held his gaze for a half-second, then scurried up and into the pipeway. Her hand throbbed with pain where Morgan’s pistol had hit it, but she climbed despite the pain. Her brain screamed at her to go back and help John. She still had the derringer, but Hickok had shot Morgan with his big pistol and he’d shrugged it off. As likely as not, Morgan wouldn’t even notice her two little bullets.

  There was nothing she could do to help John now.

  Tears welled up in her eyes and she blinked them away furiously.

  Stop that.

  There might still be a chance. If she could free Hickok quickly enough, he might be able to take Morgan by surprise.

  If John could hold out against Morgan that long.

  She scampered along the pipes, ignoring the scalding heat from the steam lines and the sharp corners that tore at her clothes and her flesh. In less than a minute, she was back in the storage room where Hickok and Morgan had fought.

  She dropped to the storage room floor on cat feet, and took cover behind a wooden crate. She was shaking and covered with sweat and grime. Her arm and shoulder hurt and she bled from a dozen wounds. She’d never pass for a lost crewman if anyone saw her.

  She ducked out from her hiding place and checked the room. The only things around her were the stacks of boxes, a stain of Hickok’s blood on the floor, and the enforcer’s discarded boiler suit.

  Robi grinned.

  People wearing boiler suits were always dirty and sweaty.

  “Thank you, Hickok,” she said, scrambling into the heavy coverall. Her arm obeyed her stiffly when she tied up the legs and arms to make the oversized garment fit her. The crystal that pierced her right forearm must have hit something important; her fingers were slow to move and she couldn’t move her pinky finger at all.

  A wave of cold swept her. She depended on the use of her hands, for climbing and lock-picking and all manner of delicate work. What would she do if she lost the use of it?

  Stop it.

  Get Hickok, or the rest doesn’t matter.

  Cradling her injured arm, Robi made for the door and ducked out into the hallway. A smear of blood on the otherwise clean floor led off to the left and Robi followed it.

  Alarms suddenly sounded throughout the ship, followed immediately by yelling and the sounds of running feet. A door in the wall suddenly opened, hitting Robi in the shoulder. The force knocked her against the wall and she felt herself slip down the wall to the floor. Stars swam in her vision for a moment and when it cleared, someone was standing over her.

  “I’m sorry,” a man’s voice said. “I didn’t see you! Are you all right?

  She looked up into the face of an older man with grey mutton-chops under a thinning head of hair. His face was broad and blackened by soot and he wore a boiler suit like Robi’s.

  “I got you pretty good,” he said, pushing her hair back with a rough hand. “You’re bleeding. Best get down to the infirmary.”

  Robi pushed his hand away and struggled to her feet.

  “No,” she said, swaying as dizziness fogged her brain. “I’ve got to get to the brig. The engineer’s mate was locked up for being drunk and we need him back at his post.”

  It was an easy lie, the kind the old man drilled into her until she could utter them fast
er than the truth.

  “Well, if you’re sure you’re okay,” the man said, turning away toward the sounds of running and shouting.

  “Wait,” Robi said, grabbing at his shoulder with her good hand. “I must be more rattled than I thought. How do I get to the brig from here?”

  The man’s face split into an ugly expression that he clearly considered a smile.

  “Ha,” he said. “I bet you’re a good little girl, ain’t ya? Not the kind to get locked up.” He laughed at this and pointed down the hallway. “Go to the stairs and up two floors. You can’t miss it.”

  With that, he turned and disappeared down the hall. Robi waited till he was out of sight, still shaking off the effects of being brained with the door, and then she ran. The old man had made her run everywhere for years. You can’t expect to make a quick getaway if you don’t practice running.

  At the top of the second set of stairs a brass plaque on the wall pointed to the brig. Robi didn’t slow. She burst through the outer door and into the waiting room, where two men in military uniforms stood, weapons at the ready. They flinched when she came in, pointing their weapons in her general direction.

  Robi paid them no mind.

  “Quickly,” she gasped, leaning over a desk and pretending to be winded. “There are two saboteurs in the engine room! Morgan needs your help subduing them.”

  The soldiers hesitated a moment, unsure what to do. Apparently their orders didn’t allow for much independent thought.

  “Hurry!” she said. “Before they … before they,” she pretended to be out of breath and waved a vague hand at the door.

  It was all the impetus the soldiers needed. The one closest to the door gripped his weapon, then ran out the door, along the hall, and vanished down the stairs. The second man didn’t move.

  Robi straightened up, reached into her right sleeve and pulled out the little derringer. She leveled it at the second guard’s face just as he turned back from watching his companion disappear.

  “Move,” she said, directing him over to where Hickok stood behind the bars of his cell. As soon as the man came within reach, Hickok grabbed him in a choke hold and held him until he went limp.

  “Not bad,” Hickok said, letting the unconscious man slide down to floor. Robi stepped over him and began to pick the lock.

  “You can do that left-handed?” Hickok asked. She nodded as the lock clicked open.

  “Robi Laryn,” she said. “World’s Greatest Thief.”

  Hickok opened the door and walked out shakily but under his own power.

  “I thought you’d be half dead by now,” Robi said, leading him to the door. He handed her an empty phial of Doc Terminus’ Liquid Stitch Emergency Wound Closer.

  “I keep this in my boot for just such an emergency. Where’s John?”

  Robi’s heart dropped down in her stomach and lay there like a lead weight.

  “We got the crystal out of the machine,” Robi said. “But Morgan caught up with us. John’s giving us time to escape.”

  “Like hell,” the big enforcer said, picking up his gun belt from a peg on the far wall and slinging it around his waist. “Morgan wanted me alive. Chances are he wants John too.” With practiced ease, Hickok ejected the spent shells from his gun and began loading it again. When he finished he spun the cylinder back into place and holstered the weapon. The whole procedure had taken less than a second.

  “Okay,” he said, loosening his sword in its scabbard. “Let’s go get John.”

  O O O

  Rafael Kest stood on the observation deck as the Vengeance emerged from the cover of the canyon. Sunlight shone over the mountains behind him and lit up the towering spire of Castle Rock in the valley below.

  He’d ordered the capacitors charged over an hour ago. His plan had worked perfectly. All was ready.

  “Deploy the emitters,” he ordered.

  Men saluted and began relaying his orders to the weapon master and the helmsman. The giant ship shuddered as the emitter booms were run out somewhere below and behind him.

  He clasped his hands behind his back as he waited for the lights on the gunner’s board to turn green, indicating that the ship was ready to fire.

  A flash of light caught his eyes as the sun reflected off something. A moment later a giant crystal shell tore past the Vengeance and slammed into the canyon wall.

  “They’ve seen us,” he calmly announced to the captain. “It will take them time to get our range. Is the weapon ready?”

  “Yes,” Raff said as the gunner’s board clicked over to green.

  “Excellent,” Kest said, turning to look one last time on the city of Castle Rock. “Fire.”

  O O O

  “Go!” John yelled before his mother’s crystal had come to rest on the deck by his feet. Robi didn’t want to leave him, he could see it in her eyes even at this distance, but what choice did she really have? She held his gaze for a moment longer, then scampered up the pipes and out of sight, as nimble as a monkey.

  The crystal pulsed with red light as he reached down for it. The moment he touched it, his mother’s song burst into his mind with cacophonous force.

  The crystal trembled in his hand and the song seemed to get louder and more jubilant. As if it knew him.

  Relief flooded through him. He’d been afraid the crystal would be muted, or worse, silent, but this song vibrated through him as if it would shake the massive airship apart.

  There was only one explanation for that. The crystal was still tied to the flux engine.

  “I’m very impressed with you, John,” Morgan said, his voice quite close.

  John’s senses snapped back into focus and he faced Derek Morgan. The bald man stood over Sira’s corpse, just a workbench’s length away. Morgan glanced over his shoulder at the hole where Robi had vanished. “She’s very impressive too.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against a workbench.

  “I like you,” he said. “You’re tenacious and creative. You use your head. Too many folk today just go along to get along, but not you. You know what you want and you go get it.” He pointed down at Sira’s corpse.

  “Then there’s this,” he said, shaking his head. “It’d take a rare man indeed to get the drop on Sira, but you did.”

  “What do you want?” John asked.

  “I want you to work for me,” Morgan said with no trace of humor. “I could use a man like you, someone who gets things done.”

  “You want me to come with you as you murder thousands of people?” John said, barely believing what he heard. “No thanks.”

  Morgan’s expression didn’t change.

  “You think we want to kill people?” he said. “Do you realize what we could do with the geoform weapon? We could tear down any city in the Alliance. We just want what’s ours, John. That’s why we warned Castle Rock that we were coming, to give people a fair chance to get out. If they don’t leave, well, that’s not our fault.”

  “Their deaths will still be on your hands,” John said.

  Morgan seemed suddenly weary and he nodded.

  “True enough,” he said. “But my course is set, John, and those people are going to die no matter what you and I do here and now. Taking that crystal out weakened the flux engine, but not enough. It’s still glowing.”

  A chill ran down John’s spine. Morgan was right. As long as the crystal was close enough to the flux engine, the airship and its weapon would be free to act, to destroy Castle Rock and everyone still in it. His mother’s crystal pulsed in his hand, its pure, clear music whispering to him now, promising him the connection he had sought so long. Somewhere, out there, in the wide world, his mother waited for him. Her crystal was the map, the tether that would lead him to her.

  At that moment, the steam engine that drove the flux engine chugged faster and the whole lattice began to whirl and glow. Somewhere below them, the volcano weapon was preparing to fire.

  “Tick tock, John,” Morgan said. “You can’t beat me, but you can join m
e. I’m not a violent man when I don’t have to be. I want what we all want, peace, order, life without fear. Me and mine, we’re going to remake the world, make it better. I could use your help, John.”

  John stood there, unmoving for a long moment before he spoke.

  “You’re right,” he said at last. “I can’t beat you.”

  He tossed his mother’s crystal on the wooden surface of the workbench. Then reaching out with all the speed the Paragon Elixir had given him, he snatched up a discarded hammer from the workbench and brought it down with all his force. It slammed into the workbench so hard that his mother’s crystal exploded into a shower of sparkling particles.

  Sorry, Mother. I can’t let people die just to have you back.

  Chapter 32

  Falling

  Kest kept his eyes fixed on Castle Rock as the Vengeance fired her main weapon. The beam lanced out, striking the city, just as two massive shells from her guns caromed off the airship’s forward armor. Kest held up a spyglass and focused on a gun emplacement atop one of the city’s smaller towers. As the beam from the geoform cannon washed over it, the gun’s crew was driven to their knees. An instant later the tower gave way, spilling the gun and her unfortunate crew into the Great Salt Sea below. The beam from the airship began to move toward the center of town, tearing up buildings and shattering the mesa as it went.

  He felt the shift before he saw it.

  The airship beneath his feet began to pitch upward. In the glass, he saw the beam lift up, away from the town, striking out to the salt sea beyond and sending up gouts of water.

  “Hold your trim,” he barked at the gunner. “We’re out of line.”

  “I can’t, my lord,” the frantic gunner called, leaning on his helm with all his strength.

  “Engineer, what’s happening?” the Captain demanded. “Report.”

  The Vengeance was listing badly now and Kest had to grab the handrail to keep his footing.

  “We’ve lost power from the flux engine,” a gray-haired veteran reported. “The ship’s drifting on the charge we’ve got left.”