Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure

by K. M. Weiland

  “What?” He hit the brakes hard, and the jalopy nearly swerved off the road. He leaned his head back and scanned the sky.

  Nothing but clouds.

  She leaned forward, wincing. “Move slowly.”

  He let up on the brake. “If you’re right about this, you’ll deserve Livingstone’s prize all to yourself.”

  They crept down the road—four hundred yards, five hundred, then a mile. He alternated his gaze between the road ahead and the hazy sky that stretched out across the lake on one side and the unplanted fields of gray-green sagebrush on the other.

  When you came right down to it, this was ridiculous. It was like looking for a mosquito smashed onto the Jenny’s top wing. Maybe you’d find it if you looked long enough, but, even then, it’d be nothing but a fluke.

  Jael snatched at his sleeve and pulled his arm, nearly turning the car into the barrow pit. “Wait!”

  “Hey! Let up. You want to wreck us?”

  Still hanging onto his arm, she dragged herself across the seat toward him. Her eyes strained for the sky. “Ssh! Engine—turn it off!”

  He killed the engine and followed her gaze.

  Even without sunlight, he still had to squint against the gray of the sky. “I don’t see anything.”

  She leaned halfway over the top of him and pointed. “There.”

  He followed her finger.

  High above, skating along the bottom of the clouds, something flickered. Halfway across the field, a speck about the size of his thumbnail blinked against the clouds. He squinted harder. He should never have given Walter his field glasses.

  “It’s probably a buzzard.”

  She gave her head a sharp shake. “No.”

  It flashed red and swung around. It didn’t look like a bird circling. More like something swinging.

  It was the wing.

  He thumped the steering wheel. “Hot dog, girl! I do believe you’re right. Let’s get you out of here and find me a plane!”

  They careened back into camp to find Earl overseeing as Matthew and J.W. screwed the new propeller into place. Hitch skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust. In Nebraska, it somehow managed to be dusty even after it rained. He shut off the engine and started to climb out.

  Jael grabbed his sleeve and leaned across the seat. “Hitch. I think Zlo would be having desire for airplane. He would want it for protection and attack, yes?”

  Hitch didn’t have to think about that for more than a second. “Of course, he would. Who’s gonna be satisfied with a dirigible when you can have a plane too?”

  “He would chase after you, I think.” Her eyes sparked with the same excitement that was running all through his body. “If you were only plane he is having sight of—you could lead him to . . .” She gestured with both hands, trying to find the word.

  He didn’t need her to say it. “Ambush.”

  She grinned and nodded. “I would make you take me, but I can hardly walk when I am in nearness to it.”

  He winked at her and squeezed her shoulder. “You’re already a genius. No need to be a hero too.” He slid all the way out and slammed the door. Then he gave caution a good heave into the wind and leaned back over the door, trying to keep a straight face and failing. “You deserve a kiss, but I have to tell you, I don’t want to get myself smacked again.”

  Her eyes flashed wide for a second. Then something that might have been a smile tugged at the edges of her mouth.

  He turned away before she could respond—either way—and jogged off.

  Livingstone had wandered over to observe the Berringers’ work.

  Hitch hesitated. If he told Livingstone about this, the man would want in on the hunt. But if every plane in his troupe went roaring out there right now, they’d lose any chance of surprise. Zlo would just rev those big engines—and that big cannon—and disappear again.

  Better to leave now without saying anything, and let Earl fill Livingstone in after, so he could get the rest of the pilots ready when Hitch brought Schturming to them.

  Hitch angled around to stay out of Livingstone’s line of sight and stopped beside Earl, his back to the plane.

  “Finally decided to get up, did you?” Earl said.

  “I apologize right now for all the times I groused about you being an early riser.”

  Earl looked at him suspiciously. “How’s that?”

  “We found Schturming.”

  Earl’s eyebrows sprang upwards. “That crazy wing idea worked?”

  “Sure did. The plane ready to go?”

  “She’ll hold together, I reckon.” Earl cradled his splinted arm and winced. “Where is it anyway?”

  “Keep your voice down.” Hitch shot a glance over his shoulder.

  Livingstone was already looking their way.

  He turned back. “If I’m going to do this right, I need to do it by myself. I’m faster that way and a whole lot less likely to get noticed too soon. I’m going to try to sucker Schturming into following me. Ten minutes after I’m in the air, you tell Livingstone to head out and meet me at the Bluff. I’ll lure it there, and if he’s got enough pilots waiting for it, we can maybe maneuver it into crashing against the crags.”

  “You have thought this thing through, right?”

  “Of course.”

  Earl glared at him. “Of course you have.” His arm must be bothering him. He always got extra cranky when he wasn’t feeling well. “And in all your thinking it through, I’m sure you spent a nice amount of time remembering that if you get this plane shot out of the sky again, all our plans are going to go up in smoke. You lose with Zlo, you lose with Livingstone, you lose with Campbell. And even if they don’t scalp you amongst the three of ’em, you’ll still be stuck here for a good long time. Now, are you telling me you’re sure sticking your neck out for this little hick town is what you want to do?”

  If he thought about it, he probably wouldn’t be so sure. So he didn’t think about it. “I’m sure.”

  Earl’s grunt didn’t sound too surprised. “Right. Just so we’re clear.” He jutted his chin. “Watch your tail.”

  “What?” Hitch turned in time to see Livingstone approach.

  The man had a gleam in his eye. “Did I have the good fortune to hear you have accomplished the impossible in discovering our quarry for us?”

  “Look, it’s just a one-man mission to start with. Earl will tell you about it.” He eased past Livingstone. “We send any more planes than mine out there, and we could end up with a sack full of nothing.” He pointed at Matthew. “You want to give that propeller a heave when I tell you?”

  Livingstone stepped a few paces away and snapped his fingers at one of the kids hanging around the planes. “Rally the pilots. Tell them I want them in the air in five minutes. We’ve found the sky beast.”

  Hitch turned on him. “You send twenty planes screaming out there, and Zlo’ll see us coming a mile off.”

  “Piffle.” Livingstone turned away, headed for his own plane. “You overestimate yourself, as usual. You’ll need help, and we must stick together.”

  “And it’ll look better in the papers, I suppose?”

  “Now you’re catching the vision, old boy.” Livingstone gestured to Earl as he passed. “Since that arm unfortunately keeps you from any useful assistance, why don’t you drive on down to the farmhouse and telephone the gentlemen of the press at the Star-Herald and the Courier?”

  Earl watched him go, mouth open. Then he looked at Hitch. “I know we’re supposed to be nice to him. I know I told you to be nice to him. But I hope you win all his publicity away from him, just for the principle of it.”

  “I’ll settle for beating him to that field. If I can get enough of a head start on him to get Schturming to think I’m the only one, it might still work.” Hitch clambered into the rear cockpit. “Let’s go!” he shouted—and Matthew spun the engine to life.

  Thirty

  ON A FULL tank and with minimal headwind, Hitch gunned the Hisso for all it was worth. The p
rop chewed through the air and spat the miles back out behind them. He flew low, staying beneath the cloud ceiling and coasting over the ground. He kept one eye on the road, as a guide back to the correct field, and another on the sky. As he cut across the lake, the Jenny bounced a little in the air currents. And then—there she was.

  The amputated wing fluttered, a red blot against the clouds. Schturming’s keel separated itself from the gray as he raced in close. The wooden planks and their flaking blue paint materialized through the haze. He passed beneath the silent propellers and headed for the bow, where the cargo doors were located.

  Over his head, the huge ship swung gently on its cables. High above, the envelope melded into the clouds. She was barely moving, just letting the wind take her. But she must have had some kind of engine running because a heavy thud reverberated through his chest, audible even above his own engine.

  He slowed the Jenny to try to match pace enough to stay hidden beneath the ship. The Hisso choked a little at his tight hold on the reins. She’d stall out completely if he slowed her to under forty-five miles per hour, and from the looks of Schturming’s hull racing by overhead, the dirigible wasn’t going anywhere near that fast. He would run out of cover in less than a minute.

  A few drops of oil spattered against the forward windshield, and one splatted back against his cheek. Apparently, Earl hadn’t done such a great job with the oil leak. They’d filled it up last night, so Hitch would have enough oil to last him a while yet. And as fast as this job was going to have to be finished, it probably wouldn’t matter anyway. In the meantime, it just stunk worse than usual.

  He was only going to get one chance at this. If Zlo and his mugs didn’t take the bait first thing, it’d be too late to get Schturming turned around to face Livingstone’s ambush—such as it was. That would be the end of that.

  Just a few more seconds and the Jenny would outstrip Schturming’s meandering pace. He glanced to the left. Out across the lake, two dozen planes tore toward him, their gaudy colors silhouetted in the silver water. Great. With throttles wide open, they’d be here in less than a minute. It was now or never.

  With a whoop, he gunned the throttle, shot out in front of Schturming’s prow, and lifted the Jenny’s nose to the sky. As soon as he had enough clearance, he flipped her back over and around—headed straight for the bay, where they sure enough couldn’t miss seeing him.

  The doors stood wide open, a gaping hole in the lowest level of the ship’s front end.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news was that several burly, whiskery, rather astonished men wearing bowler hats and long coats were standing in the hole. Even before the Jenny bobbed into view, they had their arms extended, mouths open, pointing straight toward Livingstone’s horde.

  Their attention switched over to Hitch in a flash. Their open mouths got even rounder, and they started scrambling to close the doors.

  In the two levels of portholes above the bay doors, faces—some of them women and children—stared out at him. Bringing this thing down was the top priority, but somehow he had to do it without endangering all these folks.

  From the looks of things, there would be only two ways to bring this beast down. Either force her to ground from the outside—which hadn’t worked out so well yesterday—or bring her down from the inside.

  That would mean threading the needle to land in the big bay that seemed to run down the length of the ship’s lowest level. And then what? He’d extract himself from the wreckage and pummel two dozen guys? Great plan. Except it really wasn’t a plan. Earl was right. He seriously needed to work on his thinking-things-through skills.

  At any rate, the door slammed closed too fast for even a botched crash landing and left the Jenny skidding straight for a solid wall.

  His battle scream turned into the real thing. He fought to pull the Jenny’s nose into a sharp turn to swerve away from the doors before he slammed into it. The Hisso screeched all the way.

  “Just do it!” he hollered into the wind. “I’ll apologize later!”

  If the Jenny had really been a woman, she would have crossed her arms and poked her nose into the air. Only at the last second did she deign to duck her propeller away from the doors. The wheels barely cleared Schturming’s hull.

  Far away at the stern, the two vast propellers started inching into motion.

  He leveled out and looked around just in time to see Livingstone’s private flying corps howl in, headed straight toward him. He looped up and over in an Immelmann turn and matched speed and direction with them.

  Livingstone’s plane—white fuselage, red wings, blue engine cowl and tail—dropped into the airspace next to his. Livingstone grinned through his mustache and took his hands off the stick long enough to clasp them together in a victory shake.

  Durn fool.

  Hitch clenched his teeth. But then again, under the circumstances, it was just as well they were all here. He sure wasn’t going to be bringing Schturming down from the inside today. The trick was going to be getting all these glory-hungry boomers to somehow work together. And he sure as Moses wasn’t the ideal person to show them how to do that. Neither was Livingstone, come to that.

  In front of him, Schturming strained ponderously forward. The propellers were taking their sweet time getting under way—and no wonder from the size of them. If she couldn’t move, she couldn’t maneuver. That gave the pilots a precious few minutes to hold the upper hand.

  Fine. Great. Then what?

  The propellers were the big enemy here. If he could bring them down, he could bring the whole thing down. He split away from Livingstone, headed toward the tail end of the ship. Luckily, for the moment, the cannon’s track around the envelope hung empty.

  Movement caught the corner of his eye, and he winced. That hadn’t taken long. He turned to look.

  It wasn’t the cannon at all. Somebody was running on top of the envelope.

  He swung in for a closer look. A walkway—made of a different material from the rest of the envelope, judging from its slightly darker color—ran the whole length of the gasbag. Cross-hatched railings guarded either side.

  Huh. Missed that in all the excitement yesterday.

  The man stopped in the center of the walkway and lifted a megaphone. An eagle circled his head.

  Well, well. The dirty buzzard himself.

  Hitch dove low, wheels centered over the walkway, and opened the throttle. The front half of the plane blocked him from seeing anything, so he kept her straight on faith alone.

  Zlo failed to appear mangled in the propeller—which was probably for the better, since that would surely have wrecked Earl’s repair job for good. When Hitch shot clear of the envelope, he looked back over his shoulder.

  The bird had plunged down the port side. For a second, Zlo lay spread-eagled on the walkway, only to bounce back up. He leaned over the railing, shouting at his men through the megaphone.

  Whoops, went and made him mad.

  The cannon, on its track, trundled into view around the front end of the envelope. Almost before it stopped moving, orange flashed in its mouth. The ball ripped directly through the opening between Hitch’s port wings. Way yonder too close for comfort.

  He spun the Jenny around in another Immelmann turn, headed straight back for the dirigible. A cannonball was untold times faster than he was. But he was probably that much faster than the cannon itself. The safest place in the sky right now was directly behind the thing.

  As he crossed over, Zlo followed his motion with his megaphone.

  Right over the top of him, Hitch slacked off on the throttle. That cut the engine noise just enough for him to catch the bare outline of two bellowed words.

  “—weather now—”

  The first dash of rain hit his forward windshield like a handful of pebbles.

  Oh, great. His throat tightened. That stupid dawsedometer. And Livingstone wanted Hitch to think it would be a good idea to add that to his show?

  Since ye
sterday, Zlo had seemed content to leave the worst of the storms along the borders of the valley. Now, the wind grabbed the Jenny. One minute, the air was smooth as glass. The next, it yanked the plane like a dog on the end of a chain. The fuel got jerked out of the carburetor, and the engine sputtered for the longest second ever. Hitch’s head snapped back, his vision blacking around the edges.

  Then, just like that, the wind released the plane back into smooth air. He resettled his feet on the rudder pedals—and the wind smashed into him again. A torrent of rain washed over the windshield and peppered back against his face, too hard and needle-fine to feel damp. The roar of the rain against the wings thundered even above the engine chatter.

  A crack of lightning lit up clouds that had gone dark purple. This was not good. Not good at all. The wind by itself was enough to do him in. If Zlo somehow managed to conjure hail, that would be about as lethal as if he started firing grapeshot out of that cannon of his.

  All around, the planes scattered. They’d been willing enough to charge in and help start the storm. But they weren’t about to stick around during it. The dirigible might be able to weather the turbulence, but the biplanes were sitting ducks out here in the weather.

  The Jenny’s stick had a mind of its own and kept trying to pull right out of his hand. He clamped it in both fists and gritted his teeth. Truth was, he had to get out of here too. Even his modified Jenny with its reinforced frame wasn’t any kind of match for a crazed airship captain with a magic weather-maker.

  He turned his head and squinted through the deluge. The rain, at least, had swept away the oil splatters and shined up his goggles.

  Had to be a way to keep this day from being a total loss. He could always crash the Jenny into the envelope. The whole thing would probably blow up. The leather skin would melt away and the spars would crumble. Whatever was left would plummet to the ground. He grimaced.

  Noble, but maybe a tiny bit extreme, especially considering all the supposedly innocent people in there.