Wanderlust

by Adam Millard

  O’Connell’s head popped up from the dirigible’s gondola. He was coated in so much dirt and grime that he looked like some sort of subterranean rodent, gawping from its burrow on the off chance there was food passing by.

  “Did you say something?”

  Alcorn sighed and wondered long would he, a respected and very successful detective, receive for murder in the first. “How long? They’ll be in Russia by the time we get this heap in the air.”

  Standing, O’Connell smiled. “Well, that’s where you’re wrong. She’s ready. I just had to tighten up a few things on the deck. It’s amazing how nuts and bolts can just rattle loose, don’t you think?”

  Alcorn didn’t care, although he might once they were up in the air. “So we can go?” His heart was suddenly beating again as if it had been manually restarted.

  “Climb aboard,” O’Connell said. “Make yourself as comfortable as you can, but I will say, she’s not built for fare.”

  “So you don’t have a tennis court,” Alcorn said, climbing the long, wooden ladder at the side of The Mad Knave. “I promise not to tell anyone.”

  Once aboard, Alcorn realised what he’d gotten himself into. Apart from a few wooden and rusty metal crates, the deck was bare. O’Connell hadn’t lied about it being a cargo ship. From what Alcorn could see, there was nowhere to sit down, at least nowhere comfortable.

  “What do you think?” O’Connell asked, a little more proudly than he had any right to.

  Alcorn nodded. “I think this is going to be a very bumpy ride/” As O’Connell walked briskly past him to get to the cockpit, Alcorn had the sudden urge to ask, “How long have you been doing this for? I mean, how long have you been a skyship pilot?”

  O’Connell stopped briefly and began to count his fingers—not a good sign. After a few seconds, he dropped his hand. “Only joking,” he said. “I was born into it. My father was a skyship pilot. Of course, that was back when ships were in their infancy, not like these mechanical marvels we have today. I’d say that—”

  “That’ll do.” Alcorn strode nervously from one side of the deck to the other. “Let’s just get up in the air, shall we. We’ve got a ship to catch.” That was something he’d never expected to say as long as he lived. It perturbed him to think it might be one of the last things he’d ever get to say.

  “Yessir!” O’Connell said, following it up with a mock salute. “Right away, sir!” He strode across to the small room housing the cockpit. Actually, to call it a room was offensive to rooms. It was more of a lean-to, a cobbled together patchwork of multi-coloured wood that looked about as structurally sound as the tower in Pisa.

  Alcorn said a quick prayer, even though he wasn’t, nor had he ever been, remotely religious. For him, it was nice to think that if there was a god up there, he would see fit to take care of even the non-believers—otherwise, that was just favouritism.

  Suddenly, something roared and clattered. Machinery kicked in all around as motors whirred and pressure built. Either they were about to take off, or the whole thing was going to go up in flames.

  Alcorn, all of a sudden, didn’t want to be out on the deck. He rushed across to the cockpit, to where O’Connell was hammering away at switches and levers, so fast that his hands were nothing more than a blur.

  “She’s looking good,” O’Connell said, which was about the best news Alcorn could have expected. “Everything’s ready to go. A few minutes to fill her up, and then off we go.” He smiled.

  Alcorn wished he wouldn’t. His teeth were depressing.

  “I’ve made a few adjustments. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “What do you mean, ‘some adjustments’? Like you gave the steering wheel a lick of paint, huh? Polished the hell out of the brasswork?” Those would have been good because they were the kind of adjustments that didn’t affect The Mad Knave’s ability to remain airborne. Anything else was a big no-no.

  O’Connell must have sensed Alcorn’s trepidation, and so he waved a placatory hand in the air. “Ah, it’s nothing major. Just, remember when you said you wanted to catch up to Poseidon’s Gale.”

  Alcorn nodded. That was all he could do, since no words were forthcoming.

  “Well…I, and you can thank me for this later, left a few things off. Lost a good ton, maybe more. She should reach sixty, now, at least, which means we’ll catch up to that hulking bitch in around six hours, give or take a few minutes.”

  Alcorn liked the sound of that, but there was something niggling at him. Something…important. “What did you take off?”

  O’Connell continued to pull levers and check gauges. Without looking up, he said, “You know, took off a few boxes, the life-ship, some crates, some brass—”

  “Wait a minute. Say that again, slowly.”

  O’Connell snorted. “What? A few boxes, some crates, some brass—”

  “The life-ship? You’ve dropped the life-ship?”

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t believe how much that thing holds you back. I mean—”

  “We’re heading into a storm, toward a giant ship aiming for Russia, which The Mad Knave might not even make, and you’ve decided to leave off our only way of surviving if we hit any trouble.”

  O’Connell nodded. “Yeah, but I told you to thank me later. Right now, I need to get her up in the air, and your constant questions are more than a little distracting. God, you can tell you’re a peeler.” He clicked his tongue and returned to the console in front of him.

  In that moment, Alcorn made his peace with the god he wasn’t sure existed. It was good news that they’d catch up to Poseidon’s Gale before nightfall, but it wasn’t fantastic news that they were, most probably, going to die doing it.

  He thought to himself, It’s funny how things just…happen. How one thing can lead to another, and before you know what’s happening, there you are, Russia-bound, tailing a corrupt copper and some giant with a big dog, just because there aren’t enough fun things to deal with at home.

  Then there was Clem O’Connell, the most exasperating, not to mention filthiest and daftest, nincompoop Alcorn had ever come across. If the journey didn’t kill him, Alcorn was almost certainly going to.

  “Okay, she’s going up,” O’Connell said, though even he didn’t sound sure. When she began to move, swaying slightly, the ground slowly shifting beneath them, he perked up. “Ah, there’s nothing like a smooth take-off. Are you a superstitious man, Detective Alcorn? Well, I am, and a good take-off usually means the rest of the flight is going to be a doddle.”

  Alcorn wasn’t listening. In fact, he’d stopped listening at ‘okay’. He was too busy staring out over London, at the buildings as they shrank below, at the people ambling around, unaware that they were being watched by a terrified detective. They looked like ants. Cliché, indeed, but in his case it was true. They grew smaller and smaller, and the buildings around them began to look like ants too, Alcorn turned to O’Connell, who was smiling back at him.

  “What?” Alcorn said. “Please don’t do that. And, by the way, I know a really good dentist when we return to London. If you give him my name, you might get a good deal.”

  “I saw you,” O’Connell said, still grinning. “You like it.”

  “What are you babbling on about, you silly buffoon?”

  “You were nearly, very nearly, smiling as we were taking off,” O’Connell said. “Admit it. You like it.”

  “Just shut up and make sure we don’t crash.”

  “We won’t crash…a friend of mine, well not really a friend but one of those people that you know through a friend…”

  And on and on O’Connell went, but Alcorn didn’t care. He figured out a way to mute the man and pulled up a small crate.

  I’m coming for you, Thorneye, and it ain’t going to be pretty when I get my hands on you.

  16

  The life-ship chugged along on the clouds. Sergei had decided to fall in behind Poseidon’s Gale and utilise her slipstream. He was a smart guy, it transpired, and once he’d
got the hang of it, a decent pilot.

  “They’re going to wonder where I am.” Cornelia sighed, glancing at the small watch pinned to her lapel.

  “So, people miss a meal,” Sergei said. “There are more important things afoot, like figuring out how we’re going to get back to the ship without being murdered.”

  Abigale stood, stretching her legs and arching her back. They had only been in the life-ship for an hour and already she ached. Visions of her bed, the beautiful, huge bed back in her first-class cabin, ran through her head. She was about to return to her seat when something caught her eye on the left side of Poseidon’s Gale. She squinted, trying to discern the shapes and movement through the wispy clouds, and when she realised what she was looking at, it was all she could do not to scream.

  “Sergei!” she said, stumbling toward the cockpit. “Look!”

  The Russian pulled the life-ship slightly to the left, to better see what Abigale was pointing at. “Mudak!” he said. “They’re coming after us!”

  On the left side of Poseidon’s Gale, three of the life-ships were loose, drifting across the void toward their vessel. Abigale could see the large man on the nearest ship, his armoured dog howling at them from the rear. On the ship just in front of the big man, the sunlight reflected from the peeler’s monocle as his ship spluttered and faltered toward them. In front of the copper, the third ship contained the ticket master.

  What are you doing here?

  He hissed and growled, and even though he was furthest from them, Abigale could see the dark drool daubing his chin.

  Like the madwoman…

  “This is bad, yes?” Sergei asked, and then confirmed, “Yes, this is bad.”

  “Can you outmanoeuvre them?” Abigale asked.

  Cornelia had seemingly fallen into a state of shock and simply glanced across at the approaching ships, wearing a blank expression and a pallor which suggested she was about to be sick.

  “I can try, but these ships aren’t known for their ability to evade, and there are three of them.”

  In other words, the answer was no.

  Abigale un-holstered Big Daddy. She dropped to the deck of the life-ship, slipping the satchel from her shoulder. She grabbed the box with the rounds and flipped open the cylinder. Two shots remained, so she filled the empty slots and closed Big Daddy up.

  “What are you doing back there?” Sergei called. “They’re getting close.” He sounded very concerned.

  Abigale stood and pulled the satchel over her head once more. It contained everything,—absolutely everything, she needed. Losing it in a sky-battle was not an option. “Okay,” Abigale said, pointing Big Daddy toward the Neanderthal in ship one. “Sergei!”

  “Yes!”

  “Try to keep her still. I’m going to try to take out the big guy.”

  “That sounds like something you should definitely do.”

  Abigale faced Cornelia, who had become, if it was at all possible, even whiter. “Corny, I need you to lie on the deck, and stay there until I say otherwise.”

  Nothing. No response.

  “Cornelia!”

  She snapped out of it. “They’re going to get us.”

  Abigale placed a hand on the terrified girl’s shoulder. “They’re not. I won’t let them. Just lie down on the deck and don’t move. This is going to get messy.”

  Cornelia nodded and took a deep breath, as if she knew it might be her last. She slowly lowered herself down onto the deck of the life-ship, muttering incoherently. Once she was safely down and out of sight of the approaching ships, Abigale turned back to the big man and his…It’s a wolf! She could see it clearly, now. It was much easier to discern when she wasn’t running away from it.

  The rumbling of the nearing ships was almost deafening, and Abigale had to focus really hard just to remember what she was doing. With six rounds in the chamber, she knew she couldn’t afford to be careless. She had more in her satchel, but there might not be time to reload, not once the ships were upon them.

  The trick was to keep them as far away as possible, which Sergei was working on, though not well enough, it seemed.

  Something slammed into the side of the ship, and Abigale stumbled backwards, almost dropping Big Daddy. When she snapped her head across to the front of the ship, she saw the ticket master glowering back from his own vessel, black goo slavering from his mouth, and eyes white and very, very creepy.

  “I thought he was further away than that!” Sergei said.

  “Well, obviously not!” Abigale called back. She leapt across the deck, clearing the cowering Cornelia’s head by the merest of margins. The other two, the peeler and the giant, were a little way off, still, but getting closer with each second that passed. “Keep him close!”

  “Don’t have much choice,” Sergei said. He was struggling to keep control over their own vessel as the ticket master’s ship continued to slam into them, buffeting them like flies in a hurricane.

  Abigale knew she had to shake him off, and fast. She came level with the zombie ticket master’s craft and trained her gun toward his face. He snarled and growled, flicking his tongue out maniacally and smearing drool about his lips and chin. For an instant, Abigale felt sorry for the man, or rather what had once been a man. Something had taken him and was using him. It wasn’t his fault, and that didn’t make Abigale’s next move any easier.

  She pulled the trigger.

  The ticket master’s head flicked back as the dart thumped into his forehead. His ship drifted across, away from their own. It was such a perfect shot that it took Abigale by surprise, and as she watched the ticket master lose control of his vessel, she felt pangs of guilt and sorrow stabbing at her. Then, he was gone, down somewhere on the deck. The life-ship, no longer under his un-dead control, began to fall from the sky. She didn’t have time to consider what would become of the ticket master, though she had a pretty good idea, as the two remaining crafts were hot on their tail.

  “Does this thing go any faster?” she called to Sergei, but if he heard her over the engines of the three life-ships, he didn’t show it.

  She rushed to the rear of the vessel, once again avoiding Cornelia, who was doing a really good job of staying down. The ships behind were so close that Abigale could make out the individual teeth of the big man’s chainsword as he waved it angrily in the air. The ship with the copper in it was gaining on them. A terrified grimace was etched upon his face, as if an air-battle was the last thing he wanted to be doing.

  Abigale didn’t think it would help, but before she knew what she was doing, she said, “What do you want?” She kept the pistol trained on the copper, as she wondered why he wasn’t aiming one back at her. The only explanation was that he didn’t, in fact, have one. Of course, why would he if he hadn’t expected her to have one either. He didn’t really need one, not with Gulliver backing him up.

  “The Configuration!” the copper screeched. “You have a piece of something he wants.” He flicked a hand across his shoulder toward the big man.

  Comprehension hit her so hard that she almost lost her balance. They weren’t trying to kill her. At least, that wasn’t their primary intention. They wanted the very thing she’d been hired by The Guild to steal, which meant they were affiliates of the wizards. Talk about police corruption.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Abigale called back. “I don’t have anything!” It was true. She didn’t have the first part of the triptych. It was back in London, hopefully, locked in Octavius’s safe. It hit her that if the wizards were so intent on getting the final three pieces, they would stop at nothing. Octavius wasn’t safe at all.

  The peeler’s vessel bumped the back of their gondola. “Look, he’s not going to stop until he gets it!”

  How his monocle was still in, Abigale didn’t know.

  “Just come back to the skyship, and we can discuss this like adults, Abigale Egars.”

  There was something in the way he said her name that caused the hackles to rise upon
her neck. He wasn’t offering her a good deal. He was offering her a quick death at the hands of Hercules and his whirring buzz-sword.

  Thanks, but no thanks.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” the peeler screeched as Abigale levelled Big Daddy. “You can’t shoot me! I’m an Inspector of the Metropolitan Police Force!”

  Abigale shrugged. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could come between her and Russia. She would die if it did, in the most agonising fashion. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”

  She pulled the trigger, and even though the Inspector did everything he could to dodge the speeding bullet, it hit him square in the chest. He slumped unconscious over the life-ship’s steering wheel, dragged it to the left, and as the craft dropped through the clouds, Abigale closed her eyes. She didn’t need to see what became of it.

  Sergei guided them back into the slipstream of Poseidon’s Gale, in an attempt to put some distance between them and their final pursuer. However, the big man seemed to know exactly what they were going to do before even they did and shifted over to the right, equidistant from Sergei’s craft and the skyship. Abigale didn’t know how that chainsword of his functioned, but he did something with his thumb and the contraption buzzed into life. The armoured wolf howled as if in joy and leapt up onto the side of their craft for a better view.

  “Erm, Sergei?” It was barely a whimper, and there was no way the chef-cum-pilot would have heard it. Abigale was on her own back there, and for some reason, she didn’t think Big Daddy would prove as effective against the big man as it had against the others.

  Gulliver yanked down hard on the steering wheel and the life-ship surged across at great speed. Abigale braced herself for the inevitable impact, which came less than three seconds later. She tottered backward, grabbing onto the side of the ship for balance. Their rival life-ship clunked along the side, thumping into them repeatedly, relentless and hungry.