Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure

by K. M. Weiland

  “Busted propeller and an engine leak. But this one wasn’t my fault, and you know it.” He looked at Jael. The wind splattered raindrops against his face. “We’re in trouble now, aren’t we?”

  She swiped her hair out of her eyes and held it back with one hand. “Yes. You have no hurt?”

  He looked down at himself. He hadn’t stopped to check if he’d gotten hit or broken anything. Aside from the taste of castor oil in his mouth—and the beginnings of nausea from inhaling too much of it—and cramps in both forearms—and the fact he was still shaking all over and couldn’t get enough air—he seemed fine.

  Jael climbed out of the driver’s seat and slammed the door.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “I am fine.” But she was limping worse than ever. She supported herself against the car as she hobbled around the corner. “We have put marking on underside.”

  “Yeah, I saw the wing. It about took my head off.”

  “The idea was Walter’s.”

  “This Schturming of yours—” He dug around in his brain for the words to describe what he was feeling. “Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t that. Where’d it come from? It’s not German. You’re not German. It looks like it’s been floating around up there for ages. But why? I don’t get it. And these storms.” He raised both hands into the wind. “Past time you brought me up to speed, don’t you think?”

  She opened her mouth, hesitated, then nodded.

  “Doggone it, Hitch!” Earl hollered. “I’m going to have to carve a whole new propeller. I’d like to know how I’m supposed to do that with one arm!”

  “Quit about the plane, will you? Get over here and let me set that arm of yours before it swells up bigger’n Rick’s head.” He looked around at Jael. “Whose car is that?”

  “J.W.’s.”

  “Well, see if you can’t find something in there to use as a splint.” He tromped across the field and practically dragged Earl back. “Sit down and quit carping. Pretend you’re the plane and I’m the mechanic.”

  Earl grunted in pain. “I wouldn’t let you be mechanic on a Sopwith LRT.”

  Jael surfaced from the backseat with a couple plaid shirts and an old buck-bow handsaw.

  Earl huffed through his clenched teeth. “Amputation’s a little drastic, don’t you think?”

  Hitch ignored him. “That’ll work. Tear up one of those shirts.” He took the saw and stomped it apart. The crosspiece would be about the right length to support Earl’s forearm. He shot Jael a sideways glance. “Tell me what happened up there. What is that thing?”

  “You sure you can doctor and think at the same time?” Earl said.

  “You, shut up.” Hitch pulled his knife from the sheath in his boot and slit Earl’s jumpsuit sleeve.

  The arm was already swelling around a crooked bump halfway between the wrist and elbow. Definitely broken, but it looked pretty clean. He would immobilize it now, then let the doc in town set it.

  Jael handed him the saw’s crosspiece. “Schturming is... I don’t know where to be starting.”

  “Who built it?”

  “The glavni—the leaders.” With both hands, she steadied the crosspiece against Earl’s arm. “They made it and they launched it in year of one thousand eight hundred sixty.”

  “Explains the elderly cannon. How come you never updated it?”

  She shrugged. “I have told you. My people they are not trusting your technologicals.”

  “We haven’t got anything as technological as a flying weather machine.”

  “I think maybe they are afraid of that even. They see its power, and they do not trust even ourselves with it.”

  “When did you get on board?” Earl asked.

  Realization hit Hitch between the eyes. “You were born there, weren’t you? So was Zlo.”

  “Yes. All of us there now. It has never landed since one thousand eight hundred sixty.”

  Isolation. That explained things, partly—like why she thought of Groundspeople as practically another race, and maybe even why the descendants of the machine’s inventors had ended up scared of the thing.

  “How’s that work?” Earl gritted out. “You gotta eat, you gotta fuel the thing.”

  “We send down what you called the elevators—so we can gain what we need.”

  “But why?” Hitch started winding the longest strip of torn shirt around Earl’s arm. He overlapped the wraps and kept the cloth snug. “I don’t get it. Why’s it up there at all? It was an early army airship or something?”

  “No.” She frowned with her eyebrows. “Schturming was not made for war. It is for nauka—for science. The makers—they were men of studies. They made Schturming and took their families, so they could fly all across world and study weather. And I think, too, they wanted to protect their families from Groundsworld. They tell us all our lives that Groundspeople are ignorant, greedy, and having no responsibility.” She shot a glance at both of them. “But in this I am seeing now they were wrong.”

  Hitch tightened the wrap over Earl’s break. “You’ve been flying around up there for sixty years. How many people are up there now?”

  “Hundred, more maybe.”

  Earl winced. “All up there in that flying sardine barrel?”

  He had a point. It was a big ship, but not that big.

  “That is being part of why Zlo has taken over it.” She spoke in a low, even voice, as if she had to control each word. “Even in engines, I am hearing that changes are happening. People want to come to ground, and other people are thinking that is wrong and dangerous.”

  “And what’d Zlo want?” Hitch asked.

  She snorted. “Zlo wants everyone else to go to ground, so he can be glavni of Schturming and gain for himself fame and richness. Once, I heard him tell Nestor that he is hating our leaders—even the first ones—for making us stay in Schturming. He was Forager. He saw your world. I think... I think he thought Schturming was like prison to him.” She looked up at Hitch. “When Nestor let him see dawsedometer, he knew what he could do with it.”

  Hitch stopped wrapping. “That was your original mandate, then? Study and learn how to control the weather with the dawsedometer?”

  He’d heard of such things before. During one of the bad droughts when he was a kid, some of the farmers had hired a quack out of Omaha to use his weather machine to bring rain. The whole thing had been hush-hush. Nobody had actually seen the machine: the guy had kept it barricaded inside a wooden tower. A few days later, when it rained in Morrill County to the east, he’d taken credit for it.

  But for somebody to have come up with something like that in 1860—and something that worked, no less—that was more than a bit remarkable. Actually, the whole thing was jaw-droppingly impressive. Nobody’d ever heard of a dirigible of that size and power before the turn of the century. The Huns, with all the hullabaloo about their Zeppelins, had been decades behind the ball. And this one had held up for sixty years without ever touching ground.

  “Weather is always controlling us,” Jael said. “So now we could be controlling it instead.” She gestured to the brown hay field. “There would be rain when growers needed it. It was never meant to do what Zlo is doing with it.”

  Hitch knotted off the last of the bandages and eased the arm back to Earl’s chest. “So what happens now?”

  Jael looked at the sky. “I think he is wanting to take from your world what he thinks he deserves because he has never had it. I think he is making prison of your valley.”

  “A barricade? With the storm clouds?”

  Hard to see what was going on from down here, but it did kind of seem like the dark gray of the clouds was closing in from every direction. At least the clouds were drifting high enough that the visibility wasn’t too bad yet. So far, the rain was only a spattery drizzle.

  “What about your pendant?” Hitch asked. “If you don’t have it, then there’s nothing keeping him right here.”

  She handed him the other shirt. “That is
maybe bad. Because he has no knowledge of that. If he has belief he cannot use dawsedometer anyplace but here, he will not stop harming your town.”

  Hitch slipped the shirt under Earl’s arm and tied the sleeves around his neck.

  Earl settled his arm into the makeshift sling and grunted. “I thought you dropped the pendant.”

  “I think it caught on bottom of korabl.”

  Hitch met her look. “Maybe it did.” He helped Earl scoot back into the passenger seat. “C’mon, let’s get you to a doctor.”

  “And then what are you going to do?” Earl asked. “I reckon Livingstone’s competition is over now. If we’re going to try to fly through that storm to get out of town, we better do it sooner than later.”

  “I’m not getting out. I’m staying.”

  Earl raised both eyebrows. “You kidding me? Just like that?”

  Hitch shrugged. It was hard to explain. There weren’t even really words for how he felt. He’d left before because it had been the best thing for everybody. But this time he might actually be able to do more good for Griff and Nan if he stayed. This time, he couldn’t just skip out. For once, maybe the skills of a wandering pilot might make the difference here.

  He shut the door. “I need to stick around and at least see what happens. Then we’ll clear out.” He turned to Jael. “This could end up being a war, of sorts. You know that, right? A lot of your people could end up getting hurt.”

  “If Zlo is glavni, they are already hurt.”

  He pocketed his hands. This was dead serious, but he didn’t want her to think it was a threat: “I need to know what side you’re on in all this. Nobody’s going to blame you if it ain’t us.”

  She was watching him, with that deep, searching look. “It is not just your home Zlo puts in danger. If only way to save Schturming is to bring it down”—she lifted a shoulder—“then I will stay with you and help you to first save your home. I think you will save mine too, if you can.” The steadiness in her voice held a daunting load of implicit trust.

  Sooner or later, it seemed he always ended up letting down the people he cared about. But maybe not this time. Maybe this time, he’d not only stick it out, but actually do something useful in the process.

  Take down the flying pirate and his crew. Save the valley. Make peace with Griff and Nan.

  Sure. No problem.

  He straightened away from the passenger door. “All right, then. Let’s go.”

  Twenty-Seven

  HITCH DROVE BACK to the airfield, towing the Jenny behind J.W.’s car. At the end of the runway, somebody had erected a big open tent against the spitting drizzle. Looked like half the town was crammed under it, all of them shouting and shaking their fists. In front of them, Campbell and Livingstone stood on top of something, head and shoulders above the crowd.

  “Don’t know about you,” Earl drawled, “but them being in charge sure makes me feel a whole lot better.”

  Hitch parked the car and helped Earl and Jael out. They all made their way over to the back of the jostling crowd.

  Everybody was hollering at once.

  “I can’t even pay part of eighty thousand dollars!”

  “If they can send rain, they can send hail! My entire crop will be ruined!”

  “They can’t hold a whole town for ransom!”

  “They’ve killed people already! This is war, I tell you! They’re invaders!”

  Campbell looked more like a granite crag than ever. He raised both hands. “Listen to me.”

  The hubbub continued.

  His blue eyes lit up. “Listen to me!”

  Most sensible people would shut up when Bill Campbell talked like that. Most folks here were sensible. Their cries quieted to a murmur. They shifted their feet, restless and scared, but also expectant.

  “That’s right,” somebody dared to say. “You been up there, Sheriff. What’s the score?”

  Campbell kept his hands raised for a full second more. “You all just hold onto yourselves, and I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen around here. Nobody’s getting hurt. Nobody’s losing their farm either, you hear me?” He scanned the crowd, stopping to look a few men in the eye.

  “But what about the ransom?” a woman shrilled.

  “We’re going to pay the ransom.” He waited for the inevitable rustle of whispers, then nodded his big head. “Everybody pays just a little. I reckon we can pay it off without anybody hurting too bad. We’ll figure out what each household pays.” The muscle in Campbell’s cheek jumped, and his eyes flashed. “And if you can afford a little more, well, then maybe you can do that for your neighbors, huh?”

  Must gall him to have to say that. Nothing got under his skin worse than somebody trying to strong-arm him. But he wasn’t an idiot.

  People shifted. They had to know Campbell was right. At the moment, the only choices were pay or fight. Most folks here couldn’t even begin to fight a flying weather machine.

  A man up front raised a finger to get Campbell’s attention. “And what about the rest of it? This thing he wants us to find for him?”

  Hitch stiffened.

  Beside him, Jael inhaled sharply.

  He forced himself not to look over at her.

  Campbell straightened, his wide shoulders spreading even wider as he drew them back. “This thing our friend Zlo wants, it’s some kind of pendant.”

  “How are we going to find it?” the same man asked.

  “Somebody took this pendant from Zlo. We find that person, we find the pendant. I expect we’re looking for someone new to the valley, somebody who don’t quite fit in.”

  Of course, Jael fit in about as good as a coon in a henhouse. The hairs on Hitch’s arms stood up. Not too many people had met her, much less heard her talk, but there’d been enough. And probably at least one of them was rat enough to turn her over.

  Near the front of the tent, Rick looked over his shoulder. His gaze landed on Jael, and he scowled, obviously thinking.

  Speaking of rats.

  Hitch caught Jael’s elbow. “Earl shouldn’t be standing around here with that arm. Why don’t you see if maybe the doc made it out here yet to treat casualties?”

  She nodded, her face pinched and white. She turned to guide Earl out.

  Earl stood fast. “The arm’ll wait. I’m here, so I’ll stay and hear the rest of it.”

  The thickhead. Hitch glared at him.

  Earl glared back, then finally got it. “Ah, right.” He faked a wince. “Ow! Yeah, I need a doctor. Pain’s kicking like a horse.”

  Hitch patted Earl’s shoulder. “Hang in there, old buddy. You’ll make it.”

  They turned to go, Jael with one hand on Earl’s back and the other supporting his good elbow. She looked at Hitch and inclined her head in a thank-you.

  Folks in the tent were back to yelling.

  Toward the front of the crowd, J.W. brandished his battered hat. Even in the shadows, the sunburn atop his bald head flashed. “Now, listen here! I don’t hold with turning over no innocent person.”

  “Stealing a pendant ain’t exactly innocent,” Campbell said.

  “Stole it from a man who’s trying to kidnap an entire town! I don’t know about the rest of you all, but I ain’t taking the word of no man like that.”

  Hitch opened his mouth to back him up. Out of the pay or fight options, fight was looking a little better all the time. But then he saw Rick again and snapped his mouth shut. The less attention he drew to himself right now, the better. The last thing folks here needed to be remembering was his new wing walker and her strange way of talking.

  Across from J.W., on the other side of the tent, Matthew caught Hitch’s eye. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, maybe realizing Hitch’s conundrum. The Berringer boys, at any rate, wouldn’t have a hard time figuring out where Jael had come from.

  Matthew faced Campbell. “How do we know this man Zlo will honor his agreement even if we pay his ransom?” His calm voice carried all the way through the tent.
<
br />   “We don’t!” J.W. hollered. “And the rest of you, including you”—he poked a finger toward Matthew—“and you”—a second poke, at Campbell—“can pay this ransom if you’re fool enough to. But I ain’t giving one red cent into that crook’s sweaty palm. Put a shotgun in my hand and I’ll shoot the goldurn thing out of the sky before I’ll pay for the privilege of living on my own farm!”

  The whole place erupted—half the people shaking their hats and roaring in agreement, the other half shouting in dismay. J.W. kept right on yelling, even though nobody could hear him anymore. His face went even redder than his sunburn, and he jabbed his finger in his neighbor’s face like he was about to start swinging punches.

  Livingstone stepped forward, both arms extended. Except for the spattered mud up past his boots onto the knees of his jodhpurs, his white suit was still immaculate.

  “Good people!” he shouted. “This is not a time to panic! This is a time for iron nerves, steely resolve, and steadfast action. Believe me when I tell you, you are not alone in this battle.”

  That got some of the folks—if not J.W.—to quiet down a bit.

  “I regret that the simple joys of the airshow I intended for your pleasure should have been destroyed by so heinous a disaster. But I am glad that I and my stalwart pilots are here in your moment of need!”

  That shut up even J.W.

  “Now, listen.” Livingstone hooked his thumbs in his suspenders. “In the face of this crisis, we must abandon the frivolous pursuits of showmanship.”

  Hitch almost rolled his eyes. For Livingstone, the show always went on.

  “Instead, we will combine our skills and the horsepower of our many flying machines. We will face down this threat from above. We will not be content to sit on our laurels and wait for the enemy to come to us. No, sir! We will hunt down this sky beast.”

  The crowd started murmuring again, but this time they were calmer, maybe even a little hopeful.

  “And to show the sincerity of my intent,” Livingstone said, “I will personally dedicate the entire purse from our competition as an incentive for the man who finds the beast.”

  Everybody started cheering and clapping.