Skykeep (30 page)

“What the hell is going on?” Kent bellowed,
slamming the door shut on the cell into which he’d crammed all six
guards.

“I believe our crew has just finished cutting
the strings on this balloon,” Nita said.

“You mean we’re flying loose in the wind?”
Donald said. “Why would anyone do that?”

“Guess Cap’n decided if he couldn’t crack the
prison, he’d set it free,” Lil said with a shrug, bracing herself
against a wall. “Feels good to be moving with the breeze again.
This place didn’t tip and swing
near
as much as a proper
airship.”

Kent looked to Nita. “Your friend behaves as
though all of this is
normal
.”

“For us, it is,” Nita said.

“Oh, hey! It’s a week and we’re not dead. You
boys owe us muffins!” Lil said.

“If you and your crew can get his thing down
safe, we’ll owe you a lot more than that,” Kent said.

“We’ll get it down all right, but safe means
different things to different folks,” Lil said. She turned to Nita.
“What do you reckon we do next?”

“I think we’ve got to take the rest of the
sharpshooters out of the equation. And I’d be a lot happier if I
knew where the warden and his assistant were. Not to mention
Ebonwhite.”

“No telling where the warden would be,” Kent
said. “Linn doesn’t keep to a schedule, and with the guard passages
that run through this place, he could have got anywhere before we
finished clearing it out. The assistant warden would have been in
the central tower. They moved Ebonwhite to level one. He’s still
there, unless someone let him out. And to be honest, I don’t think
any of us like him any more than you do.”

“All right. I suppose you and the others
should do what you can to lock up any guards you run into. No one
go to the surface until we work out how we’re going to handle the
rest of the snipers.”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to the surface
at all,” Kent said, grabbing on to a bar from a cell door as the
prison began to roll in the opposite direction. “Unless they want
to go off the edge.”

“Why do you have an inspector hanging on to
you?” Donald asked, clearly having just realized it.

“Long story,” Nita said. “Lil, you and I are
going to level one to check on Ebonwhite. Donald and Kent, I think
you should gather the rest of the inmates onto the middle three
floors. Move all of the guards there too, and stay away from the
outer walls. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, and chances are good
there will be some cannons fired before this is over. We’ll come
down and get you when the time comes to make a move.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Kent said.

Nita and Lil made their way up the shifting
stairwell to an entirely vacant level one.

“Looks like at least
one
person had a
soft spot for Ebonwhite after all,” Lil said.

“Wink, tell me this. Did the captain have a
plan beyond this point?” Nita asked.

Wink tapped his answer on the side of her
mask. The prison was cut free. Captain waited until the guns
couldn’t reach. Captain came and dropped Gunner and Coop on prison.
Prison rifles gone by then. Crew found controls to bring prison
down. Prisoners ran free.

“Controls to bring it down… Well, I suppose
this thing
must
have phlogiston pumps to adjust the
altitude. Unless they were using winches to do it via the chains…
and if that’s the case, there’s no bringing this place down
softly.
Let’s operate on the assumption there
are
pumps. Where would the controls be? … Probably the base of the
central tower… along with all of the remaining armed guards and
likely the assistant warden,” Nita said.

“Well, at least everything we’re after is in
one place. That’ll save us a lot of running around,” Lil said. The
prison shuddered and rocked. “Just as well, too. I don’t know how
much longer this place is liable to stay airborne.”

Nikita was not hurt, Wink tapped.

“Who’s Nikita?” Lil asked.

Wink pointed to the shivering form tucked
under her wet shirt. “Oh, this new inspector’s named Nikita? Let me
guess, Coop named her. That was the name of one of his girls back
in Keystone. Come out from there. Let’s get a look at you,” Lil
said.

Nikita reluctantly allowed herself to be
pulled from her hiding place. Aside from looking almost critically
frazzled, she didn’t seem to be any worse for wear.

“She’s only got half a tail. Is that new or
old? No, wait, I see stitches. Old then. Same goes for the bald
patches. She looks fine to me,” Lil said.

“I think maybe we should let these two stay
behind. It’s going to be messy up there,” Nita said.

Wink reached up and tapped at her mask.
Wink stayed with crew.

Nikita shakily pulled herself up and tapped
at Lil’s mask.
Nikita stayed with crew.

“Well, that’s that then. The crew stays
together,” Lil said. “Now let’s get up there and clear the way for
the rest of it.”

#

Gunner flipped open the bypass valve on the
steam cart as they approached the temporary mooring of the
Wind
Breaker
. They had only just finished hooking it up to the gig
winch when the voice of the captain came bellowing down over the
roar of the storm.

“You boys, on deck, now!” he cried. “We need
to get unmoored and in the air!”

Coop scrambled up the chain and activated the
winch, then ran to the speaking tube.

“Hauling Gunner and the cart up now, Cap’n,”
Coop said. “What’s the hurry?”

“Looks like Lil and Nita didn’t share all of
the defenses. Last bolt of lightning showed a ship deep in the
city, spinning up its blades.”

“Guess them gun operators had to get here
somehow,” Gunner said.

“It’s a heavy scout. It could be trouble. I
want to be moving five minutes ago.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Coop said. He ran to the
opening. “I’m going to get the lines undone. Cap’n says there’s a
scout about to hit the air. You oughta get on guns once you’re up
here.”

Coop sprinted to the upper deck and yanked at
the release ropes, pulling them free from the exposed beams that
he’d secured the ship to upon their arrival. The wind made it hard
to get the slack out. By the time he’d gotten the first rope free,
Gunner was on the deck and lent a hand freeing the second rope.

“Gunner, get on that deck gun. The scout is
on the move. It hasn’t spotted us yet, but it won’t be friendly if
it does,” said the captain.

“Then we’d best hope he holds still. In this
weather, the effective range of this gun is going to be pitiful,
and we’re
going
to run out of ammo if there’s a
firefight.”

“Well, that’s mighty unfortunate, Gunner,”
the captain said, pushing the turbines to full. A distant clap
heralded the enemy cannon firing, and the ruins of a church just
off the ship’s starboard bow burst into a cloud of splinters.
“Because there’s already a firefight.”

The
Wind Breaker
maneuvered low to the
ground, its gondola barely above the roofs of the ghost town.

“If you don’t get up above them, our envelope
is fodder for their deck guns, Captain,” Gunner said.

“Did you kill all four cannon operators?” the
captain asked.

“No, Captain, just one.”

“Then even if both crewmen working the scout
are former cannon operators, we’ve still got one cannon to worry
about. I’ve got to stay low until I know they can’t target us, or
the scout’s the least of our problems. And this low, I can’t put
the cannons to work on that thing.”

A second distant clap peppered the area with
lesser impacts, two of which splintered but didn’t penetrate the
hull.

“They switched to grapeshot. That won’t make
this any easier,” Mack said. “Get to firing!”

“At this range all we’d be doing is wasting
ammo, Captain!”

“Then waste it! If it’s an outside chance at
a lucky shot or no shot at all, I’ll roll the dice.”

Gunner growled and muscled the deck gun into
position. When he had it pointed as precisely as possible as the
distant form of the approaching scout, he began firing. Even in
broad daylight and a dead calm it would have been difficult
tracking his shots until they hit the distant ship, but in these
conditions he based his aim entirely on intuition.

Captain Mack pulled a sharp turn, swinging
the ship aside and dipping the gondola even lower, such that
Gunner’s shots were barely missing the peaks of the roofs around
them. Another shot fell just to their aft, demolishing half a block
of buildings.

Finally, a dozen shots before running dry of
ammunition, one of Gunner’s darts finally found the envelope of the
enemy ship. It wasn’t nearly enough to take it out of the air, but
the escaping phlogiston lit them up as bright as day.

“Coop! Leave your rifle, then run down to my
quarters and bring up
anything
with a long barrel. Rifles
preferred, but at this point we can’t be choosy.”

The scout ship turned, attempting to put the
highly visible leak on its far side, which also meant it couldn’t
use its cannons, but it had drawn near enough that it could put its
own deck guns to use. Scattered shots of the imprecise weapon began
to bite into the hull and thunk into the envelope. Most were
glancing shots, but two met their mark.

In another ship the successful hits would
have meant a slow death without repair, but the
Wind Breaker
had been so frequently repaired, and hardened against attack so
frequently, that most sections of the envelope had a thick layer of
tar beneath the surface. It cost them some maneuverability, but it
also made the skin at least moderately self-sealing. A dribble of
phlogiston painted them as a target just as visible as their foe,
but they weren’t in any danger of dropping out of the sky anytime
soon.

“They’ll be able to target us from a hell of
a lot farther now,” the captain said.

“They won’t have to if we take too many more
hits,” Gunner said, shouldering a rifle and pumping a few rounds at
the enemy ship.

“The prison is dead ahead now. I’ll take us
below it and bring us up on the other side, evasive maneuvers all
the way. Keep us alive until then.”

“Aye, Captain,” Gunner said, dropping an
emptied rifle and reaching for the next weapon.

The captain flipped a few levers and twisted
a few valves to haul the
Wind Breaker
up into the air. Just
when the whole of the ship was free of the sheltering roofs of the
deserted town, a sound stopped the collective hearts of the crew.
It wasn’t something as simple as a roll of thunder or a blast of
cannon fire, though both of those were in no short supply. This
sound was altogether terrifying. It was a grinding, sputtering
whine, the sound of blades dropping down from their full speed.

“Damn it! We’ve lost three turbines,” Mack
bellowed.

“I don’t see any hits on the equipment,”
Gunner said.

“Then I guess the old girl misses her
engineer,” Mack growled. He fought with the wheel to keep the ship
on track, but they were losing speed by the second. “I’m down to
the left and center turbine. Just keeping her on course is going to
be rough. Someone get down below decks and get this fixed.”

Coop popped up from below decks with an
armload of weapons. “There’s an awful lot of steam rushing about
where it ought not be down there, Cap’n!”

“So I noticed, Coop. Get down there and fix
it!”

He dumped the weapons beside Gunner. “That’s
Nita’s thing, Cap’n. I don’t know half of what I’d need to—”

“You are a deckhand, Coop. When the right
crewman for the job isn’t available, that means
you
get it
done. Now get it done!”

“Aye, Cap’n!” Coop said, sucking an edgy
breath through his teeth before hopping back down through the
hatch.

“And when you’re done, haul up some more
guns!” Gunner called after him. He then turned his head. “Captain?
What do you suppose the odds are that Coop is about to blow us all
to scalding hot fragments?”

“About even money that the scout ship’ll do
it, I’d reckon. So keep firing!”

#

Coop rushed below decks. The halls were
quickly filling with steam, which had the mixed blessing of making
it very easy to narrow down where the problem was but very
difficult to actually navigate. Fortunately Coop had stumbled
through the ship in a bleary haze of half-sleep or drunkenness
enough times that he was an old hand at finding his way through
blind groping. Before long the thickening cloud of sweltering steam
was joined by a worrying hiss, and then angry shouts.

“That you, Butch?!” Coop called, stumbling
aside as a successful attack splashed against the
Wind
Breaker
’s outer hull
.

Their cook and medic shouted something
agitated and incomprehensible. Her form was vaguely visible through
the haze, and she was gesturing vigorously at a jet of steam
whistling out from the elbow joint at one end of a pipe.

“Yeah, Butch, I see it. You reckon it’s a
clog?” Coop said, scratching his head and whipping the torrent of
sweat from his eyes.

Butch responded in the affirmative. She’d
fetched one of Nita’s many scattered tool kits and shook it
urgently at Coop.

“How d’you reckon I should get it
unstuck?”

If Butch knew the answer, she certainly
didn’t share it. Coop scratched his head again and fell back
against the wall as a crackling slap signaled yet another solid
blow. With little in the way of intuition and virtually nothing in
the way of understanding, Coop tackled the problem with his usual
tact: brute force and persistence. He took the heaviest wrench from
the tool kit and began to hammer violently at the offending pipe.
In his experience, extreme violence was usually enough to coax
things into submission, animate or otherwise.

A dozen good hard whacks and as many dents in
the pipe later, something solid rattled along the inside. The
escaping steam reduced to a trickle, and the ship tipped under the
force of suddenly revitalized turbines.