The Flux Engine

by Dan Willis

  Panicked voices erupted from the younger crewmen.

  “Belay that,” Kest yelled, cutting the commotion like a knife. He pointed at the gunner. “Shut that thing off,” he ordered, then turned to the engineer. “Get a crew down to the capacitor bay! Use whatever charge they’ve still got to keep us in the air.”

  “Shokhlar!” the gunnery officer yelled. “Our nose is up too high, the ship’s belly is exposed!”

  As if on cue, a shot from the city slammed into the Vengeance and the ship rocked like a drunken man. Kest held on but most of the bridge officers were thrown to their knees by the blast. Terrified cries erupted from all quarters.

  “Steady on,” Kest barked. “Give me a damage report.”

  “The shot penetrated somewhere on deck six,” a shaking young lieutenant said, pressing his ear to one of the speaking tubes.

  Hellfire and damnation. The gunners from the city had their range now. Even if they managed to use the capacitors to keep from falling out of the air, they were sitting ducks.

  Kest hesitated only a moment, swearing silently in every language he knew.

  “Give the order,” he told Captain Raff. “Abandon ship.”

  As the alarm sounded, pandemonium erupted on the bridge below. Men and women ran to their escape stations as another round from the city tore through the ship.

  Kest jumped down from the observation platform, then calmly made his way to the stairs.

  O O O

  Robi followed in Hickok’s wake, expecting trouble as they reached the stairs and started down. Before they reached the next level, the ship suddenly bucked like a spooked horse. Robi lost her footing and slammed into Hickok, who groaned in pain as she hit his injured side.

  “What happened?” she said as she regained her footing.

  “We took a hit from the city guns,” Hickok said, his face pale. “We need to get John and get off this thing, now.”

  He led her down to the next landing where a brass plaque proclaimed it to be deck 4 and that there was a cargo hangar to the left. Hickok turned to continue down when an earsplitting alarm suddenly sounded.

  Robi jumped.

  “They know you’ve escaped,” she said, dashing forward to the top of the stairs. “We’ve got to get to John.”

  Before she could take a step, Hickok grabbed her by the collar and dragged her behind him as he went down the hall.

  “What are you doing?”

  “That ain’t the prisoner alarm,” Hickok said. “It’s the call to abandon ship. We have to get off this tub now or we’re going with it all the way to the ground.”

  Even as he said it, Robi could feel the deck pitching under her feet.

  “What about John?” she demanded.

  “We can’t do anything for him,” the enforcer said. “If he’s smart, he’s heading for an escape boat too.”

  “What if he can’t?”

  Hickok stopped just long enough to look her in the face. In that moment, he seemed grizzled and old, as if the weight of years pressed down on his massive frame.

  “If he can’t, then it’s likely he doesn’t need our help,” he said.

  Robi felt a knife turn in her guts, like when the old man died. She looked Hickok in the eye and nodded. It was all she could do.

  Hickok led her into one of the airship hangers like the one where the flux was unloaded, though this one was a great deal smaller. A line of escape boats were mounted up near the ceiling.

  Hickok made for a ladder that ran up to a narrow catwalk above. He put one foot on it and grunted in pain as he tried to rise.

  “Can’t,” he gasped, his face white with agony. He stepped aside and waved Robi forward. “Go get one of those boats loose and float it down here.”

  Robi scampered up the ladder like a monkey until she reached the catwalk. The boats were long and narrow with a small, hand-powered crystal engine at the back and four lifter crystals in brass mountings set into the rails. An equipment box sat under the middle seat with supplies like matches, flares, and a small net for lashing cargo to the side.

  She jumped in the first boat she came to and began turning the crank. The crank turned a heavy flywheel that drove the crystal engine and she had to use both hands to get it going. Once the flywheel was up to speed, she opened the valve on a little flux tank next to the crystal engine and the boat lifted out of the metal clamp that held it in place. Robi stopped turning the crank and pushed gently away from the catwalk.

  As soon as the boat was free, it began drifting downward toward Hickok on the deck below.

  “Good work,” he said as the boat came low enough for him to scramble into. “Now let’s get out of here.” He grabbed the crank and began turning it vigorously.

  “I’m going back for John,” Robi said. She moved to jump out of the boat, but Hickok grabbed her, yanking her back aboard just as the little craft passed out of the hangar into open air.

  O O O

  “What have you done?” Morgan said, disbelief in his voice.

  John could only stare at the glowing fragments and crystal dust left on the workbench. As he watched, the glow faded, taking with it the music that had been his lifelong companion. At that moment, the light from the flux engine faded as well, and the music of its operation began to sour, splitting into fragmented noise as it spun down.

  John had seen Morgan move like lightning, but his action had taken the bald man by surprise. Now he moved even faster, crossing the intervening space in an instant, lifting John by his lapels and slamming him into one of the steel shelves so hard it sent a cascade of spare parts and tools flying in all directions.

  “You,” Morgan gibbered, his face a mask of fury. He grabbed John around the throat, pinning him to the shelf.

  John struggled as the viselike grip cut off his air.

  “How dare you interfere with our destiny?” Morgan growled. “It’s my own fault,” he said as John’s vision began to fade into a red haze. “I esteemed you too lightly. I ignored the danger you posed.” He squeezed tighter as John fought to break his grip. “Now I will rectify that mistake.”

  A roar of noise, louder than anything John had ever heard, assaulted the room. A giant hole appeared in the wall, flinging debris everywhere. Something hit Morgan and the crushing pressure on John’s throat disappeared. Coughing and gasping, John forced himself to his knees. He had to get going before Morgan recovered.

  Whatever had hit Morgan sent him flying over a nearby workbench. It was still too much to hope that the big man had been killed. Even as John managed to pull himself to his feet, he heard Morgan struggling to rise.

  He also heard a chorus of cracking and splintering, and the scream of tortured metal. Shrapnel from the exploding wall had hit the flux engine, bending its delicate arms and lodging in its moving parts. Some ground to a stop while others continued merrily on, smashing everything that came in their range. Beyond the crystal device, the steam engine that powered it chugged and strained against the resistance.

  A pressure alarm whistle sounded and John threw himself back to the ground.

  The steam engine’s boiler exploded, blowing its parts outward through the flux engine, shattering it into millions of shards of razor-sharp glass and crystal. Bits and pieces rained down around John, cutting his exposed arms and back.

  The storm of glass was immediately followed by the sound of tearing wood and twisting metal. John pushed himself back to his feet, grunting in pain as he put weight on his injured leg. As he rose, the flux engine fell. The deck below it had been blown away by the explosion, and the weight of the massive frame tore through the floor, pulling the back wall away with it. Daylight flooded in as the wall vanished and the entire deck began to sag down toward the hole.

  John turned to run. If he could reach the hangar high above, he might be able to grab an escape boat. Before he could take even one limping step, however, the grip around his throat reappeared.

  “There you are,” Morgan said, hoisting John up off the deck. �
�Now where were we?”

  Whatever had hit Morgan shredded his shirt, leaving it hanging in tatters on his gaunt frame. John grabbed it and pulled, attempting to yank him off balance. As it shifted, John saw something that didn’t belong. Just left of his breastbone, a brass ring had been set into Morgan’s chest. Inside the ring was a thick pane of glass that revealed the man’s beating heart beneath it.

  John began to black out but he couldn’t take his eyes off the strange brass ring. As the light outside moved with the trembling airship, rainbow patterns of color shifted across the little round window.

  It wasn’t glass, it was crystal.

  John lashed out with his hand, pressing against the crystal that covered Morgan’s heart. It wasn’t a normal salt crystal at all, it was hard, like a diamond. Channels of power spread through it like spider webs and John could feel where different types of crystal had been fused together into the perfect whole. It was Thurgery beyond anything he could even imagine.

  Pushing back a wave of blackness, John felt along the channels of power. If he could nudge energy flows to heal a crystal, he ought to be able to break one as well. Using all his remaining will, he pushed the energy flow out of one channel into a dead end.

  With a sound that reminded John very much of the gunshot that had felled Sira, the crystal cracked.

  Morgan’s face went dead white and he cried out in pain, dropping John and falling to the deck.

  Gasping and sputtering, John tried to get up, but he couldn’t seem to make his body work at all.

  His whole frame trembling, Morgan turned onto his side and tried to crawl away, but he had as much luck as John.

  The airship shuddered and began to roll, sending everything that wasn’t attached to the floor sliding down toward the gaping hole in the wall. From somewhere above them an alarm started sounding.

  Morgan grabbed one of the workbenches that was anchored to the floor, as John slid across the rapidly sloping deck toward certain death. He reached for a shelving unit but it was just out of reach.

  “I’m sorry, Mother,” he said aloud as the ship pitched again. He slid to the hole in the wall and through it without slowing. Suddenly there was empty air below him and he fell down onto a broken piece of deck, sticking out where the room beyond the crystal chamber used to be. John landed on his stomach, forcing the air from his lungs, but he managed to hold on as the board bounced precariously up and down over the vast emptiness below.

  It was all John could do to hang on, trembling with pain and exhaustion. If he stayed like this, the stricken vessel would fall to the desert floor and crush him.

  The airship shuddered and the board bounced beneath him, ending in a loud crack. John realized then that being crushed by the airship wasn’t going to be a problem.

  O O O

  “We have to go back,” Robi cried, whirling on Hickok. The enforcer’s face was set and stony. She knew as well as he did that there would be no going back. She’d known it all along but she hadn’t admitted it. John had given them time to escape. It was all he could do. If Morgan hadn’t already killed him, the falling airship would. And there was nothing she or Hickok or anyone could do about it.

  Tears filled her eyes as she slumped down beside the tool box.

  John had been maddening and annoying, always thinking he understood things when he really had no idea what was going on. If it hadn’t been for her, he never would have made it out of that cell in Sprocketville.

  He was good, though, and kind. He listened to her stories about her father and he encouraged her to be like him. He was …

  As Robi’s eyes swept the underside of the crippled and listing airship, she caught sight of something dangling from one side.

  He was … there.

  “John,” she gasped, pointing. He hung limply, little more than a corpse waiting for the airship to roll completely over and pitch him out.

  “We’ll never make it,” Hickok said, trying to turn the emergency boat. They were built to land safely, not for fancy maneuvering.

  No.

  Pulling the mini-prybar from her sleeve, Robi attacked the brass fitting that held one of the lift crystals in place around the boat’s gunnel. It came free, rocking the little boat and threatening to float up and away, suddenly freed from its mooring. But Robi was ready for it. Dipping one hand in the tool box, she threw the little cargo net over it, tying the rest off to form a pouch that held the crystal.

  “Easy, girl,” Hickok said, struggling to hold the boat steady. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I am Robi Laryn, daughter and heir of the World’s Greatest Thief,” she said, putting her foot on the gunnel, “and I’m going to steal that boy from Death himself.”

  At that moment, the board holding John cracked and he fell free of the airship. Without any hesitation, Robi jumped.

  John’s body fell, tumbling slowly in the air, arms and legs flopping akimbo. Robi pointed herself at him, flattening her arms to her sides. She wished the old man could see her now. As John’s limp form grew closer, she opened her arms and legs, shedding some of her speed so she could grab him instead of slamming into him.

  She still hit with too much force, sending stars flashing before her eyes and eliciting a groan from John.

  He was alive.

  Her fingers closed on his belt and she held on as they began to spin round and round as they fell. Robi climbed up John’s body until she could hold him around the chest with her legs, then she rolled them over to catch the wind. They gradually slowed and the spinning stopped. The ground loomed up below her, coming fast.

  Keeping her mind on her work, Robi shook out the cargo net, wrapping it around her back, then over John. Once the net was in place, she bunched up the end, laced it through itself and tied it off.

  She grabbed the lifter crystal from where the net held it, pulling it close.

  “John,” she said, shaking him gently. “John, I need you to wake up. Just for a minute, John, please.”

  He groaned and his green eyes fluttered partway open. She pressed the crystal against his hand, closing his fingers around it.

  “Remember what you did to the wireless machine?” she said. “How you made the crystal work when you touched it? I need you to do it again. There’s a crystal in your hand, John, make it work.”

  “Can’t,” he croaked. “So tired.”

  The ground was coming up awfully fast.

  “John,” Robi said, holding his face close to hers and trying to get him to focus his eyes on hers. “Look at me, John. If you don’t do this, you’re going to die.”

  A small smile crossed John’s lips, as if he didn’t really consider that a bad thing at this point. She had to motivate him better.

  “John,” Robi shook him violently. “If you don’t make this crystal work, I’ll die.”

  John seemed to stir at that, his eyes focusing on her and then on their surroundings. She felt his hand grasp the crystal under hers and suddenly the lifter crystal began to glow faintly, pulsing with light.

  “That’s it, John,” she said, her heart nearly skipping a beat as she looked over his shoulder at the ground.

  He groaned and his face contorted into a mask of concentration. The crystal suddenly flared with blinding light and shot up out of their hands. It jerked to a stop at the edge of the net and suddenly Robi was pressed against John as the net took their weight.

  John cried out in pain and Robi remembered his injuries.

  “Get off,” he gasped, his face pale. She wiggled around until his weight was on her instead.

  After a long moment, John’s breathing became more regular and his face less pain-wracked. Finally he opened his eyes and looked around.

  “Did you jump out of a perfectly good lifeboat just to save me?” he asked after a long moment.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s … that’s … insane.” He said it seriously, but his mouth turned up in a smile.

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

  John looked at her, still smiling.

  “Told you,” he said.

  Then he did something she never would have expected. Without prelude or warning, he leaned down and kissed her. Robi was so shocked she didn’t know what to do. It would be impolite to punch a wounded man, especially one who’d tried to give his life for her. Somewhere nearby, a massive airship crashed to the ground with an earth-shattering boom—but she didn’t hear it. With no other course open to her, Robi did the only thing she could. She put her hand behind John’s head and kissed him back.

  Chapter 33

  The Hero of Castle Rock

  John hurt everywhere.

  He floated, weightless, and still he hurt. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to move, it hurt when he opened his eyes.

  He recognized the inside of Doc Terminus’ coffin-like rectification chamber. The sound filled his ears and he felt the sting of its many arms as Doc directed them to his injuries, probing wounds and dosing him with alchemical serums. He passed out.

  O O O

  He didn’t know how long he spent in the surgical machine, but the next time consciousness drifted back to him, he was being carried on a stretcher under a cloudless sky. Robi’s face swam into his vision and he tried to smile. She looked up and spoke to someone but her words seemed tortured and twisted into meaningless sounds. A moment later she withdrew and the round, pug-nosed face of Doc Terminus replaced it. He said something incomprehensible, then something bit John’s arm and everything faded away.

  O O O

  When he finally came to himself, John opened his eyes in a small room with a broad bank of windows along one wall. A map of the territories dominated another wall, flanked by a sturdy desk, overflowing with papers. He could feel the regular thrum of an airship engine vibrating up through the bed. He’d never seen this room, but he guessed it must be Hickok’s cabin aboard the Desert Rose.

  John tried to sit up and was pleasantly surprised to find that he could. He pulled back the covers and found his ribs tightly wrapped with bandages. His leg was similarly bound and he winced as he swung off the bed and put weight on it.