The Calderan Problem (Free-Wrench Book 4)

by Joseph Lallo

  Digger tapped his foot.

  “Lovely…”

  “What’s the verdict?” called a voice from above.

  Digger had been a part of a fair amount of subterfuge, but he wasn’t quite a professional. When he heard the voice above him, he looked up to offer an answer. The two men he’d held at rifle point were professionals. Before his eyes had finished moving, they rushed him, yanking the weapon away and knocking him to the ground.

  “Now I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen, Ebonwhite. I’m going to use you as a hostage to get the ship back, then I’m going to haul you and whomever you’ve got up in the ship to Alabaster and get a nice big bonus. So get up off the ground and get moving before—”

  Once again the man’s commentary was cut short by the discharge of a weapon, though this time it was the sound of a rifle from up above. A bullet grazed the gunman’s ear, then a second shot practically parted his hair. The third struck the barrel of the rifle and knocked it from his hands.

  “Digger,” called Gunner from above.

  Digger looked up to find him standing at the railing of the ship, the barrel of his weapon still smoking. “Yes, Gunner?” he replied.

  “Don’t take your eyes off a man when you’ve got him at gunpoint.”

  “I had gathered it was an error in judgment shortly after making it, sir.”

  “Have you learned anything worthwhile?”

  “Only that they had an appointment with one of Alabaster’s henchmen.”

  “I’d suspected such. Pick up the rifle and get things under control again. We’re loading them up. Then you head back where we came from.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be shoving off to keep that appointment.”

  “Moving further up the chain?”

  “Moving further up the chain,” he agreed. “Eventually we’ll get to someone who’ll have answers. Failing that, we’ll get to the snake’s head and cut it off, at which point the answers will no longer be necessary.”

  “And you’re sure you can handle a ship and four hostages alone?”

  “After a few years with my crew? This is liable to be the most peaceful journey I’ve had in ages.”

  “With all due respect, Gunner,” Digger said, fetching the rifle and checking to see that it wasn’t damaged. “If I’ve come this far in the pursuit of answers, I’m going to see it through to the end.”

  “Fine. At least that means I won’t need to keep the whole crew.”

  “Wh-what’s that supposed to mean?” asked the former doorman.

  Digger pointed the rifle at him. “I think it means the first person to give us a reason to be charitable is going to have a much brighter future than the last person to do so.”

  “I’ll tell you where we were supposed to meet!” offered the weakest-willed of the bunch.

  “Well, well, well. A winner.”

  “Wait, wait! Uh… uh…” stammered the other, now fearful that failing to volunteer the information had earned him a bullet between the eyes unless he could come up with something of his own. “My, uh… my brother’s starting work at this new shipyard! I can get you a cheap price on parts!”

  “What new shipyard?” Digger said.

  “I don’t know, someplace up north. A little ways east of Milk Valley. He tried to get me a job! Said they were hiring like crazy! I swear. And I know more! Ask me anything!”

  Digger hefted the rifle and called up to Gunner. “It is remarkable how much more obliging people are once firearms enter the equation.”

  “Why do you think I carry so many?” Gunner replied.

  Chapter 4

  “Wow… What all goes on back here?” Lil said, neck craned and eyes wide.

  A few days had passed and Nita had been showing Lil the sights. The other Grauses had their own ideas of what the crew might like to see, but those ideas were flavored mainly by their own preconceptions about what was most valuable and impressive. Nita had spent enough time with the crew to know that their interests lay elsewhere. Thus, whenever possible, she’d taken them out on excursions more to their tastes, while still giving them a glimpse of all the splendor of Caldera. Because Lita had taken it upon herself to show Coop around, and Butch had struck off on her own, that meant most of her time was spent with Lil.

  Currently, they were backstage in the dinner theater that would serve as the—in Nita’s opinion ill-advised—showcase of the Coopers’ talents for her fellow Calderans. This wouldn’t have been one of the places Nita would have taken Lil if she’d had her way, but if this show were to take place, her younger brother would need to see what Lil could do. Nonetheless, the young deckhand seemed genuinely impressed by the sheer complexity of the backstage workings.

  Rolls of painted canvas lay in careful stacks, each labeled for the scenery they depicted: seaside night, realm of dreams, mountaintop day. Complex pulley systems held wooden props aloft. Runners and wheels served as tracks for sliding set pieces. It was elegant chaos in the way only theater can produce.

  “Looks like you got bits enough here to make a whole city!” Lil said.

  “A city, a farm, a village, a temple. Whatever the story requires,” Nita said. “If this interests you, I can always try to get you backstage at the opera house. This is nothing compared to that.”

  “This is plenty,” Lil said. She tugged at a rope and looked over the knot. “What’d’ya call this knot here?”

  “We just call that a sandbag hitch,” Nita said.

  “Seems like it’d be real quick to release.”

  “That’s they idea. A quick tug to slide something in place.”

  “Wouldn’t trust it with my life, though.”

  “There aren’t very many life-or-death situations on a stage. Except for in the stories.”

  They continued out onto the stage. Since there was no performance at the moment, the brightest lights remained unlit, but there was still more illumination in the playhouse than all but the wealthiest homes of Rim might have. Lil paced out onto the stage and admired it.

  “You said this is a small theater ’round these parts?” Lil said, looking up to the rafters.

  “Most people would consider this a restaurant, not a theater,” Nita said.

  “This here stage’s darn near half the size of the Wind Breaker deck.”

  “And if Nita’s stories can be believed, the stage hasn’t seen half the adventure the Wind Breaker has,” said a voice from beyond the stage.

  Lil turned, startled. Joshua was alone in the center of what was quite plainly an eatery. Rather than rows of seats, there were tables, though the chairs were arranged such that all faced the stage. Joshua sat at the foremost table. Sheets of paper lined with music staffs lay neatly to one side. Heavy sketch paper and charcoal pencils lay to the other.

  “Oh!” Lil said. “Didn’t expect anybody to be watchin’.”

  “If things work out, this place will be standing-room only,” Joshua said, then frowned. “You did tell her to dress appropriately, didn’t you?”

  Nita had donned one of her simpler dresses. Lil, on the other hand, was dressed much as she would have been aboard the ship. She’d availed herself of the Graus’s laundry, so her shirt was as near to white as it had ever been, but otherwise she may as well have been stoking the boiler or standing lookout.

  “Oh sure,” Lil said. “She said I’d have to move all about, so I reckoned I should wear my work clothes.”

  “I would have expected you to choose something a bit more standard for performance, like leggings.”

  “Heck, them things don’t leave folks much to guess about, regarding your bits and pieces,” Lil said. “A girl might as well not wear anything.”

  “That would have been acceptable as well.”

  “You mean me dancin’ around up here without no clothes on? I ain’t that kind of girl.” She gave Nita a nudge. “And here I am thinkin’ you Calderan folk would be too classy
for a place like that. Usually Coop’s gotta go to the rougher part of town to lose his pay in one of them places.”

  “You misunderstand me,” Joshua said. “I meant it purely as an artistic choice. To highlight the grace of form.”

  “Ain’t nobody highlightin’ the grace of my form unless he wants a fat lip,” she said, pushing up her sleeves as though spoiling for a fight.

  Nita placed a hand on her shoulder to settle her down, then turned to Joshua. “She’ll do fine in this outfit, I assure you.”

  “Very well. Is there a particular type of music you prefer?” Joshua said.

  “Oh, you know. Just the regular sort,” Lil said.

  Joshua raised and eyebrow and turned to Nita. “The regular sort?”

  “In Rim, music is somewhat more casually applied,” Nita said. “Most of the taverns and saloons have a small band or a piano player and provide simple tunes to keep spirits high.”

  “I see. Well, let’s start with a simple gavotte,” Joshua said, raising his voice.

  Lil stepped back, startled, as a string quartet began to play a midtempo melody. The musicians sat in a narrow recessed pit between the main dining room floor and the stage. The angle made them completely escape Lil’s notice until they’d begun to play.

  “You gotta warn a body if you got folks hidin’ in the floor with instruments,” Lil said. She held her arm out and backed Nita up a few steps. “You better get back from the edge. These folks are liable to get a look up your skirt.”

  “I apologize if you were caught off guard. But you may begin showing us some steps whenever you feel comfortable,” Joshua said, taking up a pen and watching expectantly.

  Lil looked about. “Ain’t there gonna be more people?”

  “I may call in a dance troupe if I think the routine calls for it, but I’d prefer to get a sense of any uniqueness to the Rim style of dance.”

  The deckhand fidgeted uncomfortably. “I don’t know how you folks do it, but I ain’t much for dancin’ unless there’s a whole mess of folks on the dance floor, and even then I usually wait till I had a few. If I ever saw a person alone on the dance floor, I’d figure they had a few too many.”

  Joshua set down the pen. “I don’t understand. Nita, you praised Lil endlessly for her grace and agility. How precisely has she illustrated these qualities?”

  “It isn’t… how do I…” Nita said, searching for the proper words.

  She looked about the stage for a moment. It wasn’t so different from the deck of the Wind Breaker, in a way. A bit cramped, and hung above and all around with ropes and rigging. A thought came to mind.

  “Stop the music for a moment. Come up here, Joshua,” she said.

  He joined the women on stage. Nita looked high up into the rafters of the lofted ceiling above. A single pulley hung from a hook affixed to one of the rafters. It was one of the few bits of hardware not currently put to use holding up this piece of equipment or that bit of scenery.

  “Lil, do me a favor and fetch that pulley, would you?” Nita said, pointing.

  Lil peered upward, then gave the rest of the stage a quick survey. “Sure thing, darlin’. Mind if I get a boost?”

  “Not at all.”

  Lil took a few steps back. Nita crouched and laced her fingers together. Without so much as a word of warning, Lil took off at a run directly at Nita. She planted a boot in Nita’s hands and sprang up and over her head, practically tossed by Nita’s lifting hands. She struck a sturdy support beam just behind the curtain and rebounded off to snag one of the loops of rope above the stage. A sequence of swings, leaps, bounces, and springs took her effortlessly to the catwalk. From there a running start and dive to a suspended rope swung her perfectly up to pluck the pulley from its hook. She released on the return swing, soared the entire width of the stage, hooked the support beam, and twirled back to the ground.

  She marched up to Nita, barely fatigued, and presented the pulley.

  “There ya go, darlin’,” she said, brushing a dislodged lock of hair out of her face. “Now are we gonna get started?”

  Joshua’s mouth hung open, his eyes darting as though he were doing calculations in his head.

  “Such fluidity. Such presence. Such stage awareness and sureness of expression.” He marched around the stage. “This isn’t a dance! This is poetry. I’ve been envisioning this all wrong. No, no. You are… you are a feather on the breeze! This needs to have verticality, it needs to have width and breadth!”

  He turned and approached Lil, placing his hands on her shoulders. “Chastity Cooper, for you, we shall need a much bigger stage.”

  #

  Gunner squinted into the distance as the wind picked up. He’d seldom had the opportunity to be at the helm of a ship built for this kind of speed. The Wind Breaker was fast, but it was built for distance, not for sprints. This ship was another matter entirely. Its sleek, dart-shaped envelope sliced through the air effortlessly. Two oversize propellers accelerated it to a speed easily double what even a lightly loaded Wind Breaker could manage. Even after having taken the time to deflate and stow their ridiculous little two-seater craft on the deck of the vessel, they were still on track to reach their appointment with time to spare.

  He checked the instruments. Even they were superior to what the Wind Breaker could boast, giving him not only an indication of his direction and a fair approximation of the speed, but also an indication of the temperature and pressure of the system. Both were running a bit high.

  Gunner leaned down to shout into the speaking tube. “Everything all right down there, Digger?”

  “Er… It’s… a bit of a handful… There is a reason I delegate most of the more complex labor back in Ichor Well.”

  “Cut the airflow down on the firebox, and we should drop back down into a safer range.”

  A few moments later, the gauges started to look a good deal less worrisome.

  “That’ll do. Now that we’re on our way, I don’t suppose our boys gave us any decent information before we tied them up and left them?”

  “Not really. One of them confessed to a laundry list of crimes that, while heinous, don’t really apply to our present situation. Another assured me he could get me a great deal on a new ship, since he knows about a shipyard that’s just getting started.”

  “It was a bit much to hope for anything worthwhile. Say what you will about the enemies we’ve made, they don’t make things easy for us.”

  “Tremendous.”

  “Should I stay down here?”

  “Do you think you can manage navigating a ship this size?”

  “I’m sure I can muddle through.”

  “This isn’t a ‘muddle through’ sort of ship. Well-made as the fuggers’ equipment might be, this ship is teetering on the edge of catastrophic failure. Too sharp a turn and it’ll tear itself apart.”

  “… I believe I’ll just stay here.”

  “Wise decision.”

  “Tell me, Gunner. How far does this go?”

  “The fuel is a bit low, but we could probably cover half the continent.”

  “That’s not what I mean. We’re heading for one of Alabaster’s henchmen. He’s not going to be the end of the line. How far up the chain do we go?”

  “All the way to Alabaster.”

  “And what then?”

  “Then we politely dissuade him from further harassment.”

  “Is this how you always deal with these situations?”

  “There isn’t a handbook for criminal ensnarlment.”

  “But you’ve got enemies like this.”

  “Plenty of enemies. I don’t think it’s fair to say any of them are quite like Alabaster.”

  “Do you make a habit of hunting down the people who are after you?”

  “To continue our business, it serves us best to be left alone. Until Ebonwhite, most of our enemies have been the sort that would run off after a few poorly placed shots or spin into the oce
an after a few well placed ones. Ebonwhite is different. I don’t imagine we’ll be able to shake him, and even if we did, he’s not a man, he’s a position. The person to replace him is just as likely to keep up the hunt as he.”

  “Perhaps not just as likely. You did kill two of his boys, in his mind.”

  “Even so. Ebonwhite is a man better left avoided, and for the most part he’s not going to upset his organization to come after us unless we are presenting a clear and dedicated threat. But Alabaster is two things Ebonwhite is not. He’s enough of a lunatic to destroy himself and everything else in pursuit of his goal, and he’s completely unburdened by obligations other than petty vengeance. We’re a bunch of rats and he’s a blind terrier. He’ll follow our scent through a briar patch and a thousand other hazards if it means he’ll eventually get his jaws about us. That’s not the sort of man you leave be. That’s the sort of man you… disabuse of his prevailing notions.”

  “Do you suppose…” Digger trailed off.

  “Speak up, you’re competing with the boiler.”

  “So far the only real trouble we’ve had back at Ichor Well has come from Alabaster. Do you suppose if he’s… dealt with, we won’t have any more problems to worry about?”

  “Digger, you’re in charge of one of the two most valuable facilities in the world. You’ll always have something to worry about.”

  “That… that has become quite evident.”

  Chapter 5

  The most prosperous human settlements in Westrim—the loosely defined “nation” that predictably occupied most of the western side of Rim—had been established on the broad tops of a chain of mountains. These mountains had given Rim its name, as they elevated the edge of the roughly circular continent around most of its circumference. Westrim occupied the lion’s share, laying claim to everything from the four o’clock to twelve o’clock portion of the continent, the remaining slice making up a nation called Circa. The city of Lock fell somewhere near seven o’clock. It clung to the top of a particularly sheer cliff, giving it direct—albeit precarious—access to the sea on one side. Similar access to the fug was available on the other, but it had been shut down by the fug folk for accumulated indiscretions.