Dandelion Iron Book One

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  “Hey, skank,” she said to one last pirate dangling off the edge. “I got two bullets left. But you only need one.”

  Wren leaned over to watch the body fall. An intense fierceness lit up her face. She turned. Her eyes fell on me. In an instant, the rage was gone.

  What replaced it?

  Disappointment. A soft kind of hurt. The fighting was over, and I knew from growing up with her, normal life wasn’t something Wren enjoyed very much.

  Chapter Eight

  Profanity stems from what a culture considers the unspeakable. Traditionally, such things had to do with bodily functions and the sex act. I find it interesting that the word “jack” has replaced the f-word. Have males, themselves, become profane?

  —Dr. Anna M. Colton, PhD

  Professor of Sociology, Princeton University

  “On the Nature of Curses”

  Modern Society Magazine

  September 9, 2057

  (i)

  The Moby Dick chugged away, too high for any other attempts to bring her down.

  I knelt by the open cargo door and watched the frenzied scatter of the people in the firelight flickering below. There weren’t just a few outlaws, but lots, like a whole battalion. June Mai Angel had an army. A real army.

  What if she brought that army of Sino veterans into Burlington? Could we fight them? No way. Too many, too well trained, too well armed. We’d need the U.S. Army, and they weren’t particularly interested in the Juniper. President Jack made sure of that during his administration.

  I thought about the razor wire fence I’d seen in Buzzkill. We weren’t states, just territories, and maybe we weren’t even that anymore.

  Dread curled like a snake in my belly as June Mai’s outlaw army disappeared behind us.

  “Can I close the door, Cavatica?” Tech asked.

  I nodded.

  She sighed and hit the steam-powered hydraulics to raise the cargo door.

  Sketchy still hooted and hollered up front. Wren’s disappointment seemed gone. She strutted around the bay like the cock of the walk. “Goddamn, I love machine guns like Sally Browne Burke loves Jesus. Swear to God.”

  “Watch your language,” I said.

  “Excuse me, Miss Morality, for saving your ass while you were such a scaredy-cat. If you hadn’t blown up that Cargador, I’d have to slap you.”

  Tech came over and hugged me. “You did great, Cavatica. You saved us.”

  “Yeah, but she couldn’t make a simple shot to save me.” Wren grinned at my hurt. “Oh, Mama would be so ashamed of you.”

  I hung my head. “Sorry, Wren. I just couldn’t risk you. If I had accidentally shot you I never would’ve been able to live with myself.”

  Wren laughed. “Well, Princess, you were just annoying enough to distract that kutia so I could get her myself. You weren’t completely useless.” Wren marched back to the cockpit but not before checking the holes along the side of the Moby Dick, looking for someone else to kill. She still had one bullet left in the Springfield 9.

  Tech shook her head. “I can’t imagine growing up with a sister like that. You’re a hero, even if Wren can’t see it.”

  I shrugged, still feeling awful. We hugged again, and I made my way to the cockpit seats. I sat down in a seat behind the captain’s chair next to Wren. This time, I seat-belted myself in.

  “You okay, Peeperz?” Sketchy asked into her voice tube.

  The tinny voice answered. “Yeah, I’m okay. It was fun and scary, but maybe more scary than fun. That Triple-X sure packs a wallop.”

  Sketchy grunted in reply.

  I looked over, and Wren was sleeping. That girl amazed me. Here she had just killed a whole passel of outlaws and minutes later she was sound asleep. My heart still jumped about in my chest.

  Hours went by, and the moon rose out of the east, revealing a world of silver sagebrush and blowing grasses. Snow glowed on the north sides of ridges and in gullies.

  We flew over a town, or what was left of it. The moonlight glimmered down on skeleton buildings, salvaged down to the foundation. Siding littered the shadows. Junk piles glowed white, the plastic old and brittle.

  Growing up on cattle drives, I’d trudged through those graveyard towns. Weeds cracked the cement into pieces. Wind slapped the fragments of curtains blowing through busted-out windows. I knew those places were haunted. I didn’t think we had mutants in the Juniper, but ghosts? Sure we did. After the death and sickness of the Yellowstone Knockout’s nuclear winter, those towns lost countless folks. Their ghosts would still be there, pining over the lives they never got to live.

  Everyone was really quiet until Sketchy pointed down at another ghost town beneath us. Only it wasn’t a ghost town. “You know where we are, Miss Cavatica?” she asked.

  “No clue, Sketch,” I said.

  “We’re over the BUE. The Moby Dick got you home, bless her heart.”

  (ii)

  At first it was hard to find any landmarks, but then I saw the grain elevators and the big carousel. Once I got my bearings, it looked about how I remembered it. The fairground topped the north end of town, Main Street was due south. I had grown up eating funnel cakes and riding around on the carousel at the Kit Carson Fair, and gosh, that old carousel was nearly a hundred and fifty years old. Still going. Juniper tough.

  The bright path of Interstate 70 cut across the land. The asphalt was long gone, burned in the engines of Cargadors. Cook asphalt over a fire to remove the gravel and you’ve got something that, when cooled, will harden into chunks like coal.

  Crush Jones and other salvage monkeys had tried to cover the old I-70 with concrete ’cause they got tired of the pits and ruin of an unpaved road, but it was too many kilometers for them. They attempted to use other materials, and so I-70 looked like a patchwork quilt, some concrete, some gravel, some ground-up bits of plastic.

  In between the highway and the carousel was the town. Or what was left of it. Some houses remained, some houses had been stripped, and their foundations looked like tumbled gravestones. Empty propane tanks and rusted swing sets sprinkled the landscape—playthings for the town kids to use.

  Burlington had never been big, even before the Sino, but now it was just a nowhere place. No traffic on I-70. Only a few trains from Sterling or Lamar, which was the real capital of the Colorado territory. Burlington did have a zeppelin port, kind of. The little shack built on top of the grain elevator wasn’t much of a port, but it was something.

  As we drifted toward the grain elevator, west of the carousel and Main Street, Sketchy tugged on a cord and blasted the steam whistle. At ten o’clock at night, it’d make the town folks grumble.

  It also woke up Wren, but she didn’t speak. She just sat up in her chair, staring. She looked haggard, and truth be told, a little scared. Of what, I had no clue. What could possibly scare her?

  “Flash ’em, Tech!” Sketchy yelled over her shoulder.

  I turned around to see Tech was at the mid-bay hatch with a sapropel lantern. She used the moveable hood to flash out Morse code to Darla Patil, the Hindu woman who worked as the port operator.

  I went to help Tech with the two big mooring cable wheels in the back. They had two more up front. We cranked down the cables and Darla secured us to the grain elevator.

  Tech then fastened the rope ladder to the D-rings and kicked it down through the mid-bay hatch. By that time, Wren and Sketchy had joined us.

  “Well, we’ll stick here for repairs,” Sketchy said, “and we’ll be there for the funeral. We all loved Abigail.”

  I was tired and jumbled enough to ask, “Thank you, Ms. Sketchy, but I’ve been wondering. Mama couldn’t have pre-paid you to pick me up ’cause she didn’t know she’d pass. So what did she pay you to do?”

  Sketchy looked at Wren, and Wren shook her head. “No. Not until after the funeral. Sharlotte’s orders.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Sketchy smiled showing her pink gums. “We’ll be talking again, Cavatica
Weller, oh yes we will be. We’re gonna go on a big adventure together.”

  Her hinting made it worse. “Just tell me a little.”

  Wren gave me a disgusted look. “Don’t you start whining. You almost let me get killed tonight, so don’t be any more of a pain in the ass than you already are.

  “God, I need a drink.” She sauntered away toward Darla’s two-room shack.

  Well, good. I knew the way home. I didn’t need her anymore.

  I turned to Sketchy, “Now that she’s gone, maybe you can tell me?”

  Sketchy shrugged. “I seen what your sister did to them outlaws. I’m gonna keep my mouth shut. And Tech, you will too, right?”

  “Ridiculous,” Tech muttered.

  That ended that. I’d have to wait.

  I started to go when Tech hugged me. “It was so great talking with you, Cavatica. You really are going to be an amazing engineer.” I hugged her back, thinking it was kind of a big goodbye gesture. We’d see each other the next day, but for some reason, I was special to Tech. Despite her tattoos and overalls, she was kind, and I appreciated her gentleness towards me.

  After the hug, I shook Sketchy’s big paw, said goodbye, and climbed down the rope ladder. It was only about three or four meters. Not a big deal after what I’d been through.

  Now that I knew where to look, I could see Peeperz crow’s basement, way at the back of the zeppelin. The barrel of the Triple-X machinegun was barely visible. A sapropel lamp lit Peeperz’ little clear-plastic enclosure, and I figured it was prolly really cozy in there, warmed by the steam engine through copper piping. Funny, I had only heard the boy’s voice and not seen him.

  The damage the Moby Dick had taken was as easy to see. Shredded Kevlar flapped over the cracked Neofiber underneath where the grappling hooks had caught hold. Boarding cables still dangled from her. Along the sides, pinpricks of light winked at me from the bullet holes. Nice thing about Neofiber, Tech could melt patches into the plastic. Before long, the Moby Dick would be better than ever.

  The wind gusted sharp and cold, making the two mooring cables creak. Wren stood next to Darla’s shack. I walked across the wood planks to get to my sister. It was the first time I’d ever been there, but I was familiar with Darla. Small town. She was on her way to secure the Moby Dick’s two front mooring cables, but she stopped to welcome us. The light from her lantern flashed off her nose ring and bindi. “Why, bless me, Shiva, but if it ain’t the Weller sisters, Wren and Cavatica. You both have growed up so much!”

  She hugged us. Her sari was soft and silky, and she smelled like incense. “Ah, Cavvy, you’re so big and pretty now. Like a Juniper Parvati.”

  I smiled politely. Yeah, I was big in all the wrong places, pretty in none of the right.

  Darla frowned at Wren. “A Weller girl wearing jeans, it ain’t proper.”

  “Well, my mama ain’t around no more to see if I dress right.” Without another word, Wren disappeared down the ladder on the side of the grain elevator.

  “Sorry about my sister,” I said.

  Darla kept on frowning, though I was sure she wasn’t surprised. Everyone in town knew Wren and her contrary nature. “Wait here just a minute,” Darla said. She hurried into the shack.

  In the meantime, I got my gloves, scarf, and hat out of my backpack.

  Darla emerged and handed me an umbrella. “Sharlotte was here the other day and she left this. She was in a real hurry.”

  “Sharlotte was here? Why?” I couldn’t imagine Sharlotte climbing up the ladder of the grain elevator. And besides, she had too much to do on the ranch to be making social calls.

  Darla shook her head. “Your big sister had a real bad meeting with Dob Howerter. And guess who else was here? I know, you’ll think I’m plumb loco, but I swear on Nandi’s broad back, it was Tibbs Hoyt. They were flying north to Sterling in the fanciest, fastest Jimmy you ever saw. The Celebration Day.”

  I had to clap my surprised mouth closed. Tibbs Hoyt and Dob Howerter. Richest man in the world followed by the richest man in the Juniper. And Sharlotte, right there with them. Most likely, they’d talked about Sharlotte’s mysterious plan.

  Darla laughed at me. “That’s right. I swear to you, it’s the truth.”

  Still I couldn’t speak.

  She laughed some more. “We’ll see you tomorrow at the funeral, and welcome home!”

  Tomorrow … the funeral … for my mama. Didn’t feel real and that was okay. Like I said, sometimes reality is overrated.

  “Thanks, Miss Patil,” I said. “Thanks for greetin’ us so friendly. I’ll give Sharlotte back her umbrella.” My fancy new backpack had a slot that fit the umbrella perfectly.

  “Hey Darla!” Sketchy’s voice called down from above us. “You gonna secure our front end or we gonna have to do it ourselves?”

  “I’m comin’, Sketch. Don’t get your skirts in a bunch!”

  I left Darla to her work and climbed down the ladder. I got a little shaky ’cause of the heights, but then at least it was solid metal, not the like the rope ladder I’d had to scale to get into the Moby Dick. And I’d been hanging off the zeppelin in a battle, so climbing down was no big deal. I was getting braver. My Secondskin gloves were real thin, yet real warm. How I loved modern technology.

  At the bottom, Wren was waiting for me. I was a little surprised, a little wary.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, Wren, are you?”

  Wren shrugged, no smile, just slitted eyes, cool and tough. “Yeah, right as rain. But they were bad, Cavvy. Those outlaw skanks were tough. We were damn lucky we got away.”

  “But we beat them,” I said. I couldn’t quite believe it, but we did.

  “Only ’cause you made that shot with the Torrent 6. If you had missed, they’d have killed us all. Then ate us, I guess. That’s what they’d said they’d do. Sure were a lot of them.”

  And that was the only confession of fear I would get. But come to find out, that wasn’t what was scaring my troubled sister.

  Wren fell silent as she pulled on her own parka, then her fur-lined leather work gloves. Adjusting her cowgirl hat, she strutted off toward Main Street.

  I followed until I realized she was going into the Chhaang House Hotel and Tavern. I had to stop. A girl my age couldn’t go in there. But I couldn’t stay out in the cold, and nothing else was open. Not Antonia’s General Store and Feed Shop, not the Colorado Courier, which was the local newspaper. Sheriff Lily’s office was also closed, but I figured if Wren went into the Chhaang House for a whiskey, the sheriff’s office wouldn’t be closed for long.

  Main Street used to be nice, like an old town from the Old West. But after the Yellowstone Knockout, the nice had been stripped down, leaving only cinderblock structures. The town women had tried to pretty up the place, with flowerbeds and window boxes, but the buildings on Main Street still looked like a collection of two-story bomb shelters patched up with leftover siding, drywall, and plywood. The street begged for pavement, but instead it got a muddy collection of gravel and bits of ground-up plastic carted out of Denver stores.

  I paced around on the sidewalk, then I laughed at myself. I’d stunned Wren to trick the police, and I’d used a bazooka to free our airship during a fight with pirates. I had enough shakti to go into a bar. Maybe I could be a shining example of sobriety to the women drinking inside.

  Or I could walk home. The chill breeze and darkness didn’t make that idea very appealing though. Besides, what was waiting for me at home? A dead mother and a scowling older sister and mountains of chores.

  All my fretting suddenly didn’t mean a thing, ’cause when I heard Wren yell, “Pilate!” I ran through the doors. Pilate was a carnival of a man, a close family friend, and a Catholic priest. Kind of. He’d been a chaplain in the Sino, but he said the war shot most of the holy out of him.

  Folks either loved him like biscuits or hated him like flour weevils.

  Including me. Love and hate—that was Pilate.

 
(iii)

  The Chhaang House Hotel and Tavern was packed to the doors with cattle hands, travelers, and town women. The place was jumping, fireplace blazing, booze at the bar, johnnycakes and sausages on the burner, and even a three-piece band—an upright bass, violin, and guitar. Only two men were there, Old Man Singh, owner, operator, and fry cook as well as Pilate, who was hugging Wren and grinning.

  When Pilate saw me, his hazel eyes took on a twinkle and his grin widened. Though he was older into middle age, his boyish face and long, dark hair made him handsome, but then he was a Roman Catholic priest, so that didn’t matter. Or it shouldn’t have.

  He gave Wren a last squeeze and then let her go. In the flickering light of the tallow candles, I noticed something that filled me with wonder. There were tears on Wren’s face. Real big tears. She caught me looking and wiped them away, quick. Why would Wren cry hugging Pilate? I’d have thought Wren’s tear ducts were drier than a Wyoming oil well.

  Pilate wrapped his big, strong arms around me. The way he smelled—cigars, coffee, and man—brought back memories of him coming to visit our ranch. Pilate would never stay for long. He’d pop in, wow us, and pop out, always on the move. Always a real mystery. He was part traveling priest, part soldier, part sheriff. He’d served three extended tours in the Sino as a chaplain, though he’d fought more than he’d prayed. He was born a New Yorker, yet had found a home in the Juniper.

  I stepped back and took him in—cowboy tall and lean, all in black, from his polished black boots to his black suit coat. His hair was black as mountain soil, and long, more rock star than priest. A white plastic priest’s collar winked from his throat. The collar was the only color on him. In a holster at his side hung a sawed-off Mossberg & Sons G203 quad cannon, otherwise known as a Beijing Homewrecker. Four barrels loaded with 20mm grenades can do all sorts of things, none of them very nice. Pilate said his Homewrecker was one confused weapon. It didn’t know if it was a shotgun that wanted to be a grenade launcher, or a grenade launcher that wanted to be a shotgun. A bandolier of ammunition dangled from the back of his chair.