Washington's Dirigible (The Timeline Wars, 2)

by John Barnes

  “The Old Man’s as good a skipper as you could wish, and he knows the Great George as well as any man, and if she could do what he wanted her to do, she would, but she can’t. Not possibly,” the sailor beside me explained.

  By now the sun was coming up, and we could see that the water was flatter and calmer than one would expect at this time of year, though of course it was no warmer. In the morning light we could see just how much wreckage hung from the sides of the Great George, and the many rents in her fabric where things had pulled away or fallen over.

  “She’s been a fine vessel for all that she flew rather than sailed,” one of them said, “and I hope the King—now that we got the right King—will build more like her, for she’s a majestic thing.”

  We were now just seventy feet or so over the water, and the tail—the end we were at—was sinking just a little more quickly than the nose. The airship came back into trim a minute or two later, but now we were down to forty feet … and the ship continued to sink toward the water. “You men there, hold off with your axes,” Pearson bellowed through the megaphone, “till we know there’s enough gas out of her. We don’t want you sailing off on what’s left.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” the chief of the crew answered. “We don’t want that much ourselves.”

  Pearson nodded and turned back to his preparations. We were barely ten feet off the water, and now he was shouting to the crews aloft, “Bleed her port forward … now hold, port forward … starboard forward, bleed her … now hold—”

  We were working our way down a foot or so at a time, the engines stopped, just drifting ever so slowly on the bare breath of breeze.

  The gas generator touched first, in a great hiss of steam; the ship bounced up just a little, for the buoyancy of the water took up some of the load, but then settled steadily. Steam bubbled and curled around us in a thick, warm fog. “You’re going to have to pay up,” one of the sailors beside me said.

  “You wait till we cut her free. She might take some time before she blows,” one said, and another added, “Hush, listen.”

  There were creaking and thudding noises, and the moan of metal doing more than it should, as the gas generator settled into the sea. It was the kind of sound you heard in sixth grade when they did the old demonstration of heating up a gasoline can and then capping it and letting it cool, but amplified hundreds of times, and it occurred to me that the metal I was hearing buckle and warp was almost two inches thick.

  People on the gondola were whooping and cheering, but the fog from the rising steam was so thick, and the noise from the distorting gas generator so loud, that we couldn’t make out why.

  Then a little whiff of a breeze carried off enough steam so that we could see what they saw—and we cheered, too.

  Floating just two hundred yards from us, the Union Jack waving proudly from her conning tower, was the first submarine in His Majesty’s Navy, HMS Nautilus, and there on her deck was a small man bellowing back and forth with Pearson about arrangements for taking off, first the King, and then all of us. “Captain Jones,” the sailor beside me said. “Him and Pearson don’t like each other much, never had, but they’re the two best captains His Majesty has, and I hope he sees that.”

  “Jones?” I asked.

  “Captain John Paul Jones, that’s him. The man who fought for ten years to get submarine boats built; that one in front of you, the Nautilus, has been to America twice, and once ran a hundred miles without coming up, though I understand half the crew was blacked out by the time they did come up. It’s said he ain’t going to be happy till we have a war that lets him take that gadget out and fight; he’s only half a man till then in his own eyes. But that half is more than most folks’ wholes, sir.”

  Whatever Pearson and Jones were yelling at each other about, after a short while Pearson turned to us and said, “The gasbag crew says we’re low enough, now, so they’ll be coming down off her. Then you cut your lines and run here along that catwalk.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  A long couple of minutes went by; Jones stood on his tower, arms folded, watching patiently.

  Then the crew from aloft emerged from the main tunnel through the body, and one by one climbed onto the gondola. There were eleven of them, and I noted that Pearson counted twice before he gave the order. “Cut the gas generator free!”

  We jumped onto the job with all the energy we had, hacking one line after another. The big piece of metal was still not entirely submerged, and baking heat was still coming off the top surface. For that matter it was still groaning and thundering, and the sailor who had a bet down that the contractions would rupture it wasn’t giving up yet.

  I cut the last line on my side, and the corner of the gas generator under me sank into the water. The chief reached to cut the last line, opposite me, when it parted on its own; the generator floated for an instant, and then the top burst with a boom, spewing flame and glowing metal up into the bag. The chief died instantly as something from the explosion hit him, and he fell onto the top of the sinking generator. The man who had bet it would rupture was thrown into the water; I didn’t see what happened to him after that.

  The airship bounced above us, yanking the catwalks to which we clung this way and that, but Pearson had figured correctly, and it was not enough to lift the gondola. Instead, it swung and twisted as the gas caught fire. Producer gas doesn’t blow up easily at atmospheric pressures, and though the gas pouring out of the cells was blazing, and the airship above us had flames licking through dozens of holes within seconds, it didn’t go off with an explosion.

  We scrambled along the catwalks as Pearson yelled for us to hurry; I was on the port-side catwalk, which had a hole in it, so I was a bit behind the others as I had to jump that hole.

  Then several people were pointing and yelling, and others were shouting for me to hurry. Ten more steps and I would be there—the crews were already cutting through the last of the cables, and the blazing structure, filled with flammable gas, was bouncing on its last couple of cables, eager to float free into the bright morning sky. Eight more steps—why were people pointing and shouting—and I would be—

  Something caught my ankle. I fell headlong on the catwalk, my only thought to get those last twenty feet covered before the lines parted, the rescue sub was right there, I could see the expressions on everyone’s face in the gondola—

  And I heard the deep boom of the last lines giving way. I tried to get to my feet so that I could run and dive to safety, but something still held my ankle, something that would not let go, and when I turned to get rid of it—

  The face could hardly have been more familiar. It was the other Mark Strang, and he was gripping my ankle tightly with both hands, probably getting ready to twist my foot. He must have jumped from his aircraft and been hanging around in the rigging ever since—it wouldn’t have been hard with everyone so busy.

  “Oh, there you are,” he said sarcastically, when he saw me see him. “Well, it looks like this is where we’re going to settle the whole matter.”

  I looked over the side of the broken, swaying catwalk; the sea was now at least two hundred feet below, and the dirigible was still rising. Blue-and-yellow flames were playing everywhere on the framework above us.

  He applied pressure to the foot, just the way he, and I, had learned in the dojo so many years ago. My ankle stabbed with pain, and before I could control the impulse I had flipped right over the side of the gangplank.

  -16-

  My hands caught the side rope, and I twisted my upper body hard, getting some slack in the ankle, letting myself swing out into space over the water, counting on his not being willing to follow me into the void.

  I was right as far as it went; the trouble now was that I was hanging from the catwalk rail with hundreds of feet of absolutely nothing between my boots and the deep blue sea. Furthermore, with the fire raging through it, so many lines cut, and the whole thing rolling because most of the weight had been lost from the bottom, the remai
ns of the Great George were coming apart and tumbling down to the sea rapidly. If I could live through the next ten minutes somehow, the dirigible would probably be returning to the ocean surface … though how fast or in how many pieces was up for grabs.

  His hands were groping for my fingers, and I had no desire to have him start breaking them one by one—and no doubt that he would do that if he could. I grabbed a line running under the catwalk, yanked it hard to make sure that it at least sort of held, and let myself swing out into space.

  It was smarter than I knew. Though I looped out alarmingly into space, and there was a sickening lurch in my stomach, I had in fact gotten on the line used for a quick release on the walks, a little trick Pearson had dreamed up for the event of being boarded.

  It was a great trick; the far end of the catwalk came free, and suddenly the other Strang, too, was dangling and swinging, in huge, dangerous, whiplike snaps, from the still-rising airship.

  Each of us hung perhaps fifteen feet below the body, which actually was no refuge but at least had more things to grab on to in the event that what we were holding on to gave way. I shinnied up that dancing, whipping rope a lot more eagerly than I’d ever done at COTA, or in gym class for that matter, and over to the side of me I could see the other Strang just as eagerly climbing the broken catwalk.

  My rope and both catwalks hooked to a long, thin truss on the bottom of the gasbag itself; it was probably a safe bet that whoever got to the other guy’s anchor point first would be able to cut the line and send the other guy to his death in the ocean far below.

  I was climbing as hard as I could, and so was he; we both knew the stakes. I had a slight edge for just two reasons—I had known that I was going to be swinging out into nothingness and he had been surprised by it, and also a rope tied solidly to a truss is much easier to climb than a slick catwalk that was intended to carry a few sailors, walking very cautiously, on its surface.

  I got to the top first and began to swing along the truss like a kid on the monkey bars, being careful not to look down because we had been rising all this time, and I knew perfectly well that every dizzying swoop was now high above the cold sea. In just a few swings I was at the top, where his catwalk hung, ready to cut the line—when I realized that I was not wearing preprepared Crux Op gear. I reached and found neither knife pocket nor knife. Moreover, the pistol in my shoulder holster had been emptied at this clown’s aircraft, and I had no more ammunition.

  I tried hanging by one hand and pistol-whipping him as he approached, but though I could make him keep his distance, I couldn’t deliver any kind of an effective blow with the pistol. And the moorings of the broken catwalk he hung from were unfortunately quite solid on this end.

  Just to be annoying, I suppose, he was grabbing at my feet and legs, and trying to slam one of my knees with his .45, which told me it was as useless as mine. Meanwhile the vaguely sulfurous stench of burning gas—there was all kinds of contamination in the producer gas here—was getting thicker, and my arms were getting tired.

  I went to switch hands, tucking the pistol into my holster before I did so, and just then he swung at me; I lost my .45 (or his, depending on how strict you are about property rights) as it tumbled from the holster. I fought back with my feet and reached behind me to take a big swing back; the combined motion must have been what sent the Colt out of its holster and down to the sea below.

  I was gratified that it smacked his shoulder on the way; it wasn’t a terribly hard blow, but it was solid, set him back a second, and made him grab on to that catwalk and cling to it with both hands again, at least briefly.

  That instant gave me a chance to at least try the butterfly nut on the little gadget the catwalk attached to; it didn’t turn easily, but I got it half a turn loose before I had to kick at my counterpart again. The trouble with fighting a man who is below you when you’re both swinging free is that there’s so much “give” in both of you that very few blows, even hard stomps to the face, land with any force.

  On the one hand, if he climbed up higher, he might be able to get hold of my foot or leg and stop me from kicking him; on the other, the higher he climbed, the harder I could kick him.

  At that moment, he came up with something—he threw his automatic straight up between my legs. It was a good toss—it hit right where he intended—but there wasn’t much force in it, for the same reason neither of us had been able to land much of a blow. Still, it hurt like hell and made me double up and gasp.

  Unfortunately for him, throwing the automatic had upset his balance, and it took him a moment to grab back on to the ladder. When he did, he grabbed one rung higher, putting his fingers in range, and I got my foot down on top of his hand and began to grind his fingers with my heel. He didn’t have enough grip to let go with the other hand and grab at my foot, so I was able to keep working at his hand for quite a while, feeling the hard little knucklebones rolling around under my bootheel.

  But again, in that position, there was only so much I could do. The force I could apply was excruciating, I’m sure, and I was wearing off skin, so that it must have stung like crazy, too, but the fact was that I couldn’t actually break the hand unless I stomped on it, and to stomp it I would have to pick up my foot—at which point he would get away from me.

  Far below, the broken end of the catwalk whipped around; I saw planks breaking loose, saw them flung out end over end into the bright spring-morning sunlight, and watched them tumble down toward the Channel below. We were higher, now, maybe at four hundred feet, but I did not think we would rise farther—

  Until I realized we were rolling. The dirigible was rotating on its long axis; the loss of the last half of the catwalk must have just tipped it far enough so that the top was now heavier than the bottom. As I hung there from the truss, the starboard side came around and began to press against me, harder and harder, until it scooped me up, tilted me over, began to lift me. Gingerly, I put my feet on the surface.

  Scant feet away, the other Mark Strang was doing the same thing. Behind him, I saw a curtain of blue-and-yellow flame rise, as the rising gas flowed through new vents, and new fires caught. The surface shuddered underneath us with great ripples, as, twice, pockets of gas blew up in low-velocity explosions, and the pressure wave traveled the length of the ship.

  “We end it together, eh, as we began it?” he said. “I just want you to know you’re a fool before you die.”

  “All right, I’m a fool,” I said. “So now try to kill me.”

  “You’ve spent your time fighting for things that won’t make you happy. What everyone wants is power, power over himself, power over others, the ability to get what he wants.”

  “Sure, that’s why you’re enjoying having Marie be a slave,” I said. “It must make you feel great to have her give you a thousand-yard stare and say things she’d never say naturally.”

  That must have struck the target, at least a little, because he came after me then, in a neat T-stance skip that I recognized because it’s exactly the one I use. His foot lashed out, my thigh countered, my foot thrust, he gripped it and turned, I dropped into the Crab and thrust him backward, and he did an inside turn to bring his hands to my throat just as I brought my elbows up to rake his teeth. We spun away from each other, staggering awkwardly on the fabric-covered surface of the aluminum keel, seeing if we could lure the other onto the softer, unsupported fabric nearby.

  He was a little more injured, and perhaps with his drinking habits he might be a hair slower. Neither was enough to make the difference. To use my martial arts skills on him was like using them on myself; we knew each other’s tricks deeply, viscerally, and we could no more surprise each other than you can tickle yourself.

  I was looking, as hard as I could, for rubble I could throw, but until seconds ago this had been the undersurface—nothing loose was available. I backed toward the main interior tunnel entrance; maybe if I could fight him down there—

  “You love to pull the trigger,” he said, as he pursu
ed me a step at a time. “You kill and it makes you feel good. Or if it doesn’t, it’s only because somebody has shamed you into feeling differently. But the truth is that you kill, and you like to kill. Ever had a woman and then killed her while you came, Mark? You and I are the same guy, we have the same nervous system, and I’m telling you, it would make you glow—”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t done that to Mom yet,” I said. Maybe if I could get him mad enough, it might make him miscalculate.

  Or it might make him faster and stronger than I was. There had to be a difference between us I could use, a difference bigger than the little bits of skin missing from his left knuckles.

  “You know,” he said casually, “I’ll probably do it to all of them sooner or later. You get that way when you begin to have real freedom, you know, and I’m not far from having it.” He took a long side step that might have been a lead-in to a flurry of punches if he got a little closer.

  I took a countervailing side step to put myself out of reach. It brought me almost to the edge of the hard keel, to where the canvas bulged. I saw more gas flare and burn behind him and noticed that we were beginning, very, very slowly, to sink downward. “Must be wonderful to have that kind of freedom,” I said. “Freedom to enslave, torture, and kill people you love. Gosh, why didn’t I ever think of it—”

  “Because you never had a chance to learn, which is why you’re a fool,” he said, implacably, and closed in on me again. “You haven’t found out that after all the sentimental warm fuzzy stuff, the only reason people will give you all the sweet talk and hugs—and don’t misunderstand me, I know we need cuddling as much as we need sex—the only reason people give you affection is to get what they want. Romanticizing it doesn’t make it any different. That’s what it’s for. If they cuddle you and hold you, it’s because they’re getting something for it, even if it’s just to congratulate themselves on how well they’re doing it … and that’s why they do it. It has nothing to do with you.” He took a big jump forward, and I skittered back.