Cipher Hill

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Just go up north, by the tracks.”

  “That’ll do, Clive. Much obliged.”

  The crew paced back toward the cafeteria.

  “Didn’t help much, Donald,” Mack said. “But it wasn’t nothin’. They were sending parts short range, so there’s a good chance the shipyard was right near where he was. And it was near a mine, too. I know for sure there isn’t a mine near either of the shipyards I would’ve thought could churn out somethin’ like the dreadnought. So this is someplace else. Someplace secret. And if Tusk had himself a secret shipyard that could build the dreadnought, that’s just the sort of thing that could keep a fella in power for as long as he must have been in power. And just the sort of thing that’d ruin him to lose.”

  “There’s no place called Feet Kip-her Hill in the fug,” Kent said. “I think that one got twisted in Clive’s head.”

  “He said it was on a sign. If that place is a secret, then they wouldn’t have put up a sign, would they?” Mack said.

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “So if there was a sign, it was pre-Calamity. And if it was pre-Calamity, it’ll be on the old maps.”

  “Good finking, Mack,” Donald said.

  “Unless we can narrow it down a little tighter, it’ll still take ages to find it. Lots of maps. Lots of mines, and lots of old shipyards. ‘Up north’ is still half the fug.”

  They continued pacing toward the cafeteria.

  “I’m all ears if you folks want to pitch in,” Mack rumbled.

  Silence was the only reply. Mack rolled his neck, producing a series of unpleasant crackles.

  “I reckon I’m in for a load of map readin’ then. Everybody, make yourselves scarce. If you ain’t eatin’ or sleepin, be fixin’ the Wind Breaker.”

  Chapter 7

  On the side of the Wind Breaker’s envelope, Lil and Nita dangled from supports and worked on either side of turbine five. The awkward angle meant Nita had to lean on her wrench with all of her weight and prop one foot against the envelope for extra support.

  “Hold it still, Lil. We’re almost torqued in,” she said.

  “I don’t remember it bein’ so hard last time,” Lil said, holding tight to the blades of the turbine with thick leather gloves.

  “The threads are a little damaged, but we don’t have time to fix them. If we can just get it a bit tighter, it’ll be fine. Just a bit more.” Nita groaned. “There. That should do it.”

  Lil released it, then gave it a spin. “No wobble.”

  “Good. That’ll hold until after, then.”

  Lil huffed a breath and shuffled aside until she was more firmly perched on the rigging. “Yeah, until after…”

  Nita joined her. Though she’d gotten more practice in the last few months than most people would get in a lifetime, her skill at navigating the side of an airship’s envelope didn’t touch Lil’s. The deckhand could almost put Wink to shame.

  “Lil?” Nita said, taking a hand away from the rigging to place it on Lil’s shoulder. “I think this might be the first time I’ve ever seen you nervous.”

  Lil offered a fragile smile. “Nah. Been nervous plenty. Most times I just been too busy to show it. I just ain’t never seen the cap’n like this, you know? He was born on a ship like this, or pert near. Ain’t no problem that comes up that he ain’t seen a hundred times. And the stuff he ain’t seen, he knows just what to do besides. But the way he’s lookin’ these days—it ain’t like this is new to him. It’s like this is somethin’ he’s seen, and seen go bad. It’s one thing to go into somethin’ not knowin’ it’ll go right. It’s another to go in knowin’ it’ll go wrong. And when I see the cap’n lately, I see the look of a fella expectin’ things to go south quick.”

  Nita thought for a moment. “Do you remember when we were in Skykeep?”

  “Heck yeah. Me and you really tore that place up, but good. First time we bunked together, too.”

  “We didn’t have the captain with us then. And we had the odds stacked pretty high.”

  “Well sure, but we had each other. And we knew the rest of the crew was gonna come and get us.”

  “This is just the same. We all have our limits, and we all have our strengths. And no matter what happens, whether the captain makes all the right decisions or all the wrong ones, in the end, we’re still in control of our own fates. We’ll still have each other. Maybe there’s something out there the captain can’t handle. And maybe there’s something out there that you and I can’t handle. Or Gunner can’t handle, or Coop, or Butch, or Wink. But to take this ship down, to take this crew down, it would have to be something that all of us couldn’t handle, and all at once.” She squeezed Lil’s shoulder. “And I don’t think such a thing exists.”

  “Yeah… Yeah! You and me, we’re dang near opposites. And Gunner and Coop, dang near opposites too. We ain’t nothin’ but a big pile of opposites. And can’t nothin’ work perfect about a thing and its opposite. So we got it handled!”

  She gave Nita a kiss on the cheek. “Ain’t nobody better with her words than you. … But me gettin’ all fluffed up by your fancy words don’t do the cap’n much good, does it?”

  Nita brushed off her hands. “Turbine one just needs to be balanced. It’s not a job that gets any faster with an extra set of hands. Do you think you can handle it on your own?”

  “I reckon so. Why?”

  “Because I think it’s long past due someone had a chat with the captain rather than just wondering what’s been eating at him.”

  #

  The captain sat in his cramped quarters, a map set before him and a magnifying glass in hand. As in the cafeteria, he’d set out his trusty bottle of ichor to permit him the luxury of some fresh air, which he’d quickly filled with the sweet stench of his cigar. He carefully flicked his ashes into an old mug, rather than risk sprinkling them on his map.

  There was a knock at the door. His teeth clenched tight enough to nearly shear through his cigar.

  “If it ain’t an emergency, it can wait.”

  “I think it is important enough to interrupt you, Captain,” came Nita’s voice.

  “Then get in here and make it quick.”

  He slid a fresh map from its place in storage and unrolled it atop the previous one. Nita opened the door and stepped out of the dense cloud of fug. She slapped the lingering mist from her clothes, shut the door, and gratefully removed the mask.

  “I tell you, even a bit of smoke is better than having to breathe through those masks for days at a time.”

  “Sooner we can get this mess sorted, sooner we can get back over the fug,” Mack said. “So speak quick.”

  Nita took a seat in the only other chair in Mack’s quarters, the one set up on the opposite side of the folded-down plank that served as his desk.

  “That you think you need to set down doesn’t give me much hope you’ll be in and out, Ms. Graus.”

  “Captain, I think you’ll agree that if we are to see our way through this latest challenge, we will need sound, clear-thinking leadership.”

  His eyes slid from the map to meet hers. “You don’t think you got it in me?”

  “I think your behavior has been terribly erratic of late.”

  He shifted back to the map. “You ain’t been to war, Ms. Graus. If you’d spent any time in proper combat, you’d know it’s a damn blessing to have someone steady as me calling the shots.”

  “We’ve faced some truly severe circumstances in the past, even in the short time I’ve been with the crew, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you snapping and nitpicking in quite this way before.”

  Mack heaved a savage breath, more hostile than a sigh by a considerable measure. “You got any idea how many mines there are along the northern mountains?” he said. “Workin’ west to east, I count fifty. Plenty by what could be made to be a shipyard.”

  “I’ve never known you to dodge a question, Captain.”

  “Wish I could say I ain’t known you to press on things that don’
t need pressin’.”

  “You once told me that what you liked best about this crew was that you didn’t need to think about us. An order was as good as a completed task. Ever since this Tusk business started in earnest, you’ve been unwilling to offer the same trust you’ve given us in the past. Nothing is proper unless it’s done in the way you dictate.”

  “There’s business and there’s war, Ms. Graus. Business is a leash. There’s slack enough to tug without too much trouble coming of it. War’s a noose. You pull too hard, you stop breathin’.”

  “What makes a war so different than the countless battles we’ve had?”

  “Because there ain’t no rest without surrender,” he growled. “There ain’t no decency to it. And it’s a thing that someone at the top decides has to happen and everyone below has to live with, or die with.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever been the one at the top before. The one making the decision.”

  “You keep diggin’ where you’re diggin’ and you ain’t liable to find treasure worth havin’.”

  “I’d consider it more of a surgery than a treasure hunt, Captain. Some things are better off removed than left to fester.”

  “… You Calderans and your turns of phrase…” Mack stubbed out the remnants of his cigar and lit a fresh one. “You remember when I told you just how I ended up actin’ first mate for the first time?”

  “I believe you told me you walloped the current first mate with a sock filled with silver victors and began issuing your own orders. Which is also how you got locked up for a while.”

  “Yeah, well, the folks who were doin’ the fightin’ back when that happened weren’t the sort to let a couple lumps from the navy keep ’em from settlin’ their differences once and for all. When I got out of lockup and became a proper first mate, the same troublemakers found themselves an icy island north of Westrim and just a bit too far east for the Circa navy’s tastes. We were always getting called up there to get the Circa ships to stand down. As dumb and troublesome as the island squatters were, they were still Westrim folks, and we defend our own.

  “You get sailors on a ship, always starin’ down the same sailors on the same ships across the way, it starts to get personal. It was a cold mornin’. Rain was freezin’ soon as it hit the props. Treacherous. Miserable. And the lot of us were out there on account of the fools on the ground and the fools across the way. The breeze kicked up, blowin’ in from the east. The Circa ships started driftin’ our way. Old stunt, lettin’ the wind nudge you over the border, actin’ like you didn’t notice. The cap’n gives an order. Warning shot. Low and wide. Just enough to wake ’em up, let ’em know we ain’t fooled. So I passed the order along. Warnin’ shot. But I was sore. So I told our boys to make it a close one. Make sure the message got across.

  “I don’t know if the order got worse and worse as it went down the line, but by the time the cannon fired, it clipped the figurehead off the lead ship. That wasn’t a warning. That was an assault. And the Circa boys answered. Quick as you could drop a match into some tinder, all the ships on all sides were unloadin’ everythin’ they had. When all was said and done, Circa lost two ships. Westrim lost three. Ours was the only ship still in the air after that one, and six of our men had been killed.”

  Mack looked up from the map. “This ain’t a game, Ms. Graus. This is a battle that’ll grind and grind and grind. And you let folks start to make up their own minds, you let ’em far enough from what you ordered, things go wrong. If the noose is startin’ to chafe you, I reckon that still beats the alternative.”

  There was a furious knock at the door. Mack narrowed his eyes.

  “You folks hog-pilin’ me?”

  “Captain! Check the Hollows!” called Kent from the other side of the door.

  “What’s that?” Mack said. “Get in here and say that.”

  Kent threw the door open, thumping the back of Nita’s chair and causing a choking swirl of fug to briefly curl inside.

  “I nearly forgot it,” Kent said. “When we were in the Ruby Club, some bloated windbag named Barnum claimed their old fire tender had a ‘bloody hollow accent.’ It strikes me now, he meant an accent from the Hollows!”

  “Well why didn’t you say it, you lousy fugger?!” Mack snapped and began to rummage through his collection of maps.

  “It didn’t occur to me. And it still sort of doesn’t,” Kent said. “We are looking for a shipyard. There are no shipyards in the Hollows. There isn’t much of anything in the Hollows.”

  “I’m sorry, I’ve clearly not spent enough time in the air. The Hollows?” Nita said.

  “It’s a patch of the fug,” Mack said, selecting a few of the maps. “The Thicket just tapers out to that patch where the wind keeps the fug heaped up extra high. It’s true we ain’t seen nothin’ to suggest there’s a shipyard down there, but extra thick fug is a good way to keep something hidden from the air. … Nothin’ with a mine here. Farther north…”

  He selected a new map. “What was that nonsense Clive was sayin’? The name of the place?”

  “Something about feet,” Kent said.

  “Feet Kip-her Hill,” Nita said. “It was too odd of a name to forget.”

  Mack tapped his finger on a line in the legend, then found another rolled-up map. “You reckon that’s a halfhearted shot at readin’ Fort Cipher Hill?” he said.

  “That could be it!” Nita said.

  Mack unfurled the appropriate map and swept his eyes over it. “Well dang…”

  Fort Cipher Hill wasn’t just present on this map, it was the entire map. Clive hadn’t been joking when he’d supposed the place was the size of Fugtown.

  “I ain’t the historian I might be… but from the size of this, and where it’s placed, it must’ve been the walled-in capital of this place or that, back before the Calamity…” Mack said. “Backed up against the mountain, good for defense. Here’s the iron mine. A lake nearby. Not so far from The Thicket. This place could keep to itself and just let the world go by. And think of what the fuggers could make of that place… Get the rest of the crew together in the galley. This is somethin’ we all need to see.”

  #

  Not long after, the entirety of the crew was gathered around a table. Some were still breathless from their sprint from other stations.

  “What is it, Cap’n?” Coop said. “I was just loadin’ up the charges. Darn near dropped one when you called for us.”

  “Been talkin’, been thinkin’, been searchin’. If I’m right, we found what’s been givin’ Tusk his teeth, and we might need more than the usual load of charges.” He unfurled the Cipher Hill map. “That’s what we’re after.”

  Gunner looked over the map. “Captain… you don’t really mean to suggest that this city is a shipyard now.”

  “It’s near enough to what Clive described. And if it is the place he worked, it’s also the place that built the dreadnought. A place that large, probably half of the rest of the fugger fleet got built there, too.”

  “It fits,” Nita said. “We know Tusk built that false Wind Breaker and sicced Alabaster on Caldera because he was trying to start a war. No better way to benefit from a war than by building the fleet that’ll fight it. And he was able to throw together a temporary shipyard to build the false Wind Breaker awfully quickly, but it would have been simple enough if he’d had a main facility elsewhere.”

  “Having his own private navy is a great way to keep anyone in the know afraid of him,” Gunner said.

  “But is this everything? Is it all he’s got?” Nita wondered.

  Mack thumped the table. “It’s enough. It’s enough to knock his teeth out. It’s enough to teach him who he’s dealing with once and for all. But only if we can take it out. This map is pre-Calamity. They’ve had a hundred years and more to spare, to fortify it and build up a fleet of ships. And us with just the one crew.”

  “You reckon we can do it, Cap’n?” Lil said, uncertainty in her voice.

  “It ain’t a m
atter of if we can do it,” he said slowly. “Like I said. The fuse is lit. War’s declared. Either we come at this on our terms, or it comes at us on its terms.”

  “So what do we do?” Coop said.

  “I don’t know yet,” Mack said. “I need some time.”

  “Captain, we don’t know how short this fuse is,” Gunner said. “He’s already got an assassin after us. If he decides to unleash the cavalry…”

  “I said give me some time. Back to your stations. Get this ship ready. Ready for anything.”

  “… Aye, Captain,” Gunner said.

  One by one, the crew left him to continue their tasks. Soon it was only Mack and Butch. He sat down and cast his eyes over the map. His mind drifted back to the freshly dug-up memories of his time under his old commander, Captain Dahl. He thought of the lessons he’d learned. Proper military tactics.

  After a moment, Butch stepped out from behind the counter at the head of the galley and sat beside him.

  “Been a long time, Glinda…” he said. “A long time since the last time I planned an assault. Got the voice of Cap’n Dahl in my ears right now. And you know what he’s sayin’? He’s sayin’ you’re a fool. There ain’t no way to win this one. This is a fight you don’t start.”

  He felt for his tin of cigars, then hissed under his breath. “Damn mask… How’s a man supposed to get his thoughts in order without a cigar?”

  He reached into another pocket and revealed the ichor flask and uncorked it. The fug pushed back, leaving clean air in its wake. As soon as he was able, he pulled the mask free and replaced the lingering fug fumes with the scent of brandy-soaked cigars once more.

  A few long puffs did little to lift the weight from his chest. “This is what a little good luck will do to a man, Glinda. After a hard life, once the light starts shinin’, a man’s quick to forget that night’s never far off. Survive what fate slings at you for long enough and you’re liable to think nothin’ can touch you.” He took another puff. “And nothin’ makes lady luck more ornery than actin’ like you ain’t afraid of her.”