Free-Wrench, no. 1 (23 page)

Coop tipped his head and furrowed his brow in
the effort of thought. “How many fuggers you figure we killed?”

“Aw, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t
kill any. The nice thing about these ships is they tend to crash
pretty slow. And them fuggers are tough,” the captain said, wincing
as Butch yanked free the dart in his leg without warning.

Coop sighed. “That was pretty easy, when you
really think about it.”

Gunner scowled. “Didn’t we
just
have
that chat about tempting fate?”

“What else could they throw at us?”

Wink, who seldom made a sound besides his
incessant tapping, audibly squealed. He hopped desperately for the
hatch below decks until he reached the end of his harness leash and
was jerked from his feet. A few moments later, the sound that his
sensitive ears had picked up became audible to the others. It
sounded like propellers, the sort that might be on a patrol ship,
but wrong somehow. The sound was deeper and less distinct. Then
came the motion. A section of the fug began to bulge upward, like a
bubble forming on the surface of a tar pit. A vigorous churning
appeared around nearly half the dome, at least a dozen propellers
chopping at the surface of the fug. The purple mist slid away from
the top of the bulge, revealing first several strings of serrated
fins, then the gleaming sheen of some sort of metallic cloth.

Two brilliant shafts of light suddenly
erupted from beneath the fug, spotlights of some kind, burning like
lime lights. They pivoted and swept as the thing continued to rise.
It was an airship, but larger than anything they’d encountered
before. When it finally cleared the fug, it was revealed to have
three envelopes keeping it aloft. The main one was an armored and
barbed mountain of a sack, easily five times the size of the whole
of the
Wind Breaker
. The secondary balloons were a bit less
than half the size of the main one, slung behind the main one to
support what was less a ship and more a multitier gun platform.
Cannons and lesser guns utterly ringed the platform, and manned
turrets even spanned along the front edge of the envelope, while
droning fans lined the entire rear half of the main envelope’s
circumference. It was a vicious and predatory thing, a warship
without question.

“Ho-lee hell… a dreadnought…” Coop said, his
jaw dropping open.

“Gunner, slap Coop for me, would you?” the
captain said.

Gunner obliged, delivering a motivating slap
to the back of his crewmate’s head. “Your talking privileges are
revoked.”

“Have you ever seen anything like this
before?” Nita asked once she’d wrestled aside enough fear to
speak.

“Withholding repairs is how the fuggers keep
ships in line. Withholding resources is how they keep cities in
line. The dreadnought is how they keep nations in line. Just
knowing the thing exists has been enough to keep both Circa and
Westrim from forming an army and breaking their hold on us,” he
explained, shutting down the turbines and turning a knob that shut
off the lights. “We must have got our hands on something really
good, if they sent that thing after us.”

“Why did you shut off the turbines? Shouldn’t
we escape?”

“It is faster than us, and there’s nothing we
have that will be able to knock it out before it can knock us out.
Best we can do is run silent and hope it looks the wrong way, then
run.”

They all stood in silence, watching the
spotlights at the forward edge of the dreadnought methodically scan
for the
Wind Breaker
. As it did, the captain spoke orders
just loudly enough to be heard.

“Gunner, how are we on ammunition for the
dart gun?”

“Not much left, Captain. We only had what was
left in the wailer, and what we could salvage from what had been
fired at us.”

“Make sure it is ready to fire. If you’ve got
anything in that collection of yours that might do some good, be
ready to use it. Coop, help him haul up whatever he thinks he can
use. Glinda, you’d best load up on fresh bandages.” They quickly
got to work. “Ms. Graus, how is that repair?”

“Strong enough.”

“Strong enough to take a little more pressure
than perhaps your new boiler was really meant for?”

“For a little while, probably.”

He was silent for a time, the two of them
alone on the deck.

“You done good work for us in these last few
days, Nita,” he said. “It takes a special sort to find a place on a
ship like this. You ain’t perfect, but I think there’d be a place
for you.”

She sensed that, for this moment, he wasn’t
speaking as a superior officer addressing his crew. He was
McCulloch West, the man, wishing to share something that he might
not get a chance to say in the future.

“I never would have set foot on a ship like
this if I didn’t have to… but I must admit that I feel I’ve lived
more in these last few days than in the years before,” she
said.

He nodded. “A ship may cut your days short,
but it’ll make sure the ones you’ve got are filled to the brim. I
call it a fair trade.” He squinted his eyes, and his face hardened.
When he spoke, it was once again with the tone of authority. “That
spotlight is coming our way. We’re made. Go find Lil and help her
feed the firebox. A double load of coal. No slow-burn. I want us
running hot, Ms. Graus. Too hot.”

By the time he finished delivering the order,
a spotlight cast its blinding light upon them. He pushed the
turbines to life. Nita dashed for the hatch and navigated the halls
of the ship. Lil waited near the aft magazine.

“Come on, we need to feed the firebox. A
double load,” Nita said.

“He wants to overstoke? Must be something
real bad out there, huh?” Lil said, running quickly toward the fuel
room.

“A dreadnought.”

She shot Nita a look that seemed wholly out
of place. It was fear. “The dreadnought. I never seen it. I was
always kind of glad about that.”

“What is this overstoking?” Nita asked.

They reached the fuel room and began to load
up. “It was something he used to tell us about. He got in a real
bad scrape on his first ship, years ago. The
Vanguard
or
something like that. A dozen wailers. He overstoked the boiler to
squeeze some extra speed out.”

“Did it work?”

“Well, he’s alive, but he ain’t got that ship
no more, so yes and no.”

They made their way to the boiler and began
to feed in the coal. There was a distant thump, then the ship
rocked violently to the side. The captain’s voice came blaring out
of the speaking tube.

“We are taking fire. Get that box stoked.
Lil, you’ll be on both fore and aft cannons. Keep them loaded.
Grapeshot aft, standard shot fore. Nita, on deck. I want you on
hand for repairs. I’m going to need everything this ship can give
me. I can’t afford to be coping with disabled controls, or we’re
through.”

They finished their current task and Nita
rushed for the deck. The ship lurched aside again, not with the
suddenness of a weapon hit but with the swing of a dodge. She
climbed to the deck to find the dreadnought already nearly on top
of them. Captain Mack pushed his ship to climb, but their heavy
load robbed them of their nimbleness. The dreadnought, for its
size, was terrifying in its maneuverability. The one thing it
didn’t seem to be able to do was climb quickly, so the battle was,
for the moment, a slow race skyward. Mack had been able to keep
them just barely above the main cannons. The attack ship did not
appear to be fully manned, leaving several of the upper turrets
without operators, but at least two were harrying them with darts
that made those of the patrollers and the wailers look like
toothpicks.

“They aren’t aiming for the envelope, and
they weren’t targeting direct hits when we were in range of the
main cannons. They must be trying to recover the cargo intact. The
higher we go, the less likely they are to be willing to shoot us
down,” the captain said as Gunner heaved a sack of weaponry onto
the deck. “Gunner, I want those lights out. Those fuggers can see
well enough in the dark, we don’t need them getting any help. Once
those are out, fire at will. Now’s not the time to hold anything
back.”

“On it, Captain,” Gunner said. He rushed to
the fléchette gun and pitched it down toward the spotlights.

The brilliance of the light made it difficult
to target directly, but a few quick crisscrosses of the approximate
area managed to shatter the glass of the first light and fracture
its workings. While targeting the second one, the fléchette gun ran
dry of ammo.

“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.