Roar of Sky

by Beth Cato

  “Those are mighty high stakes indeed.” He glanced back, expression thoughtful. “How’s my father taking this news about Sutcliff?”

  “With proper southern aplomb, my boy.” George braced himself on the doorway to the cabin. “Though do be aware that ghosts apparently have good hearing. There are no secrets in his presence.”

  “An important consideration,” Cy said with a grimace. “Fenris still sleeping?”

  “Yes, by some miracle. And he is alive. I could hear him tossing and turning up there.” Ingrid claimed her usual seat, and felt a pang as George claimed the seat once frequented by Lee.

  The cloudless night allowed the stars to shine in all their glory, with additional ornamentation in the form of diversely colored envelopes and galleys of various airships.

  The settlements of Southern California sparkled in a similar way down below, each town like an island of illuminated cross-hatching. Los Angeles stood out with its tall buildings, though they looked diminutive from on high.

  The Bug gradually dropped in elevation. The bright railway line provided them a guide straight south to Dominguez Field. The empty land that flanked the track resembled a black sea at night, the tracks like a long bridge.

  “The sheer number of airships about is peculiar,” said George.

  “It is,” Cy said. “They look to be small private and commercial vessels, too, not military.”

  They approached their port on the mesa. “The mast for vessels going to and from the hangars is still free,” Cy muttered. “I count only four others vacant besides.”

  “The other nearby docks looked just as bad as we flew over,” mused George.

  “This traffic reminds me of how Seattle looked with the Baranov rush,” Ingrid added.

  “Something’s drawn people here, and I don’t like it one bit.” Cy eased them toward the mast. Boys awaited them to assist in the docking. Ingrid and George remained quiet and tense as the engine noise wound down. Cy rose and opened up the hatch.

  “Hey! You booked a hangar already?” called a faint voice. “Otherwise, you gotta—”

  “We do, we’re in seven. What’s going on? We just flew out earlier today—”

  “We didn’t expect this either. It’s all because of that Excalibur. People from all over are flying west to see it on the approach. Fares are going up, part and parcel of the demand.”

  “I see. I’ll go to the depot to check on our account . . .” Cy’s voice faded as his feet clattered down the steps.

  “All of this hubbub because of Excalibur,” she murmured. “The citadel is entertainment for them. A novelty.”

  “For some of them, I’m sure,” said George, “but I imagine some newcomers are families coming to say farewell to soldiers set to deploy.”

  “Excalibur isn’t even close to California yet. Why’s everyone arriving now?” Frowning, she reached for the newspapers she had left pinned between her chair and the wall, looking at older issues first. “Oh. The citadel was originally due to arrive in Los Angeles two days from now. These people flew here cross-country based on the original estimates.”

  “Where is the vessel currently?” asked George. “I’m behind on the news.”

  “It just left Texas, headed into New Mexico Territory.” Whenever it stopped moving, they had to be ready to intercept it.

  George drummed his fingers on the back of the chair. “Curious, how Excalibur has slowed down so much. I wonder if this delay is Theodore’s doing.”

  “Perhaps in part,” she said, and desperately hoped that maybe, just maybe, the influenza would only make people on board really sick and wouldn’t kill them outright.

  What if Maggie fell ill? What if she died? How would that effect Cy—and Excalibur?

  “We docked? We’re in Los Angeles?” Fenris’s voice was hoarse. Ingrid stood to better see him. He leaned against the pantry on the other side of the hatch.

  “We are. How are you feeling? Did you sleep well?” she asked.

  He shrugged in an apparent answer to the last question. “I feel better, actually. Still tired and achy, as if a titan used me as a footstool, but I can work.”

  “I don’t think that’s a—” started Ingrid.

  Metal banged on the mast deck below, followed by heavy footsteps on the stairs. Cy’s upper body emerged through the hatch. He looked both ways and gasped in relief when he saw Ingrid. “Come inside to the berthing. Away from the windows.” He bounded the rest of the way inside and fastened down the hatch. “Fenris! You’re looking better.”

  “I decided not to go keel-up today after all. Now, what the hell are you going on about?”

  “This.” Cy pulled a sloppily folded sheet from his pocket. Ingrid hobbled toward him to see. “Saw this posted in the office just now.”

  reward

  for information leading to the capture of

  ingrid carmichael

  suspected of complicity

  with san francisco chinamen

  Ingrid’s jaw dropped. She yanked the paper from his hands and skimmed the contents. “How nice of them to ask that I not be harmed. My goodness, with a five-thousand-dollar reward in the offering, I hope I’m being delivered encased in velvet.”

  Five thousand dollars. That was more money than most folks would see in a lifetime. She felt light-headed and groped her way along the wall to her usual sitting spot on her bunk. She read the sheet again, dry-mouthed. She looked up as the others joined her.

  “You’re named on here, too, Cy. You need to be careful.”

  “I’m also an average-looking white man and therefore a dime for three dozen.”

  The last thing Ingrid would call him was average-looking, but now was not the time to argue over the matter.

  “We need to walk the docks and major rail stations throughout the area,” said George. “See how widely distributed this is. It may be posted in the major papers as well, as deserter notices are.”

  She skimmed the paper again and again, her fingers trembling. Tears burned in her eyes. She just wanted peace. For the world, for herself. She wanted Blum stopped once and for all.

  “Should we leave in the morning?” asked Fenris.

  Cy pursed his lips. “She only went out in daylight a few times, and wore her hood for part of that.”

  “I don’t think we can risk that again, not with this everywhere,” she murmured, shaking the paper.

  “We can’t head out to the boonies,” Cy continued. “Our orichalcum needs to be processed and we need access to other supplies, too.”

  “How soon until we’re in the hangar?” she asked, her throat tight.

  “Another hour, they estimate. The crews are shuffling other airships around.”

  “Very well.” She looked at the men gathered around her. “I’ll stay in berthing for now, away from the windows, and I won’t go beyond the hangar while we’re here.”

  Cy looked stupefied by how readily she had accepted such confinement. “Are you sure . . . ?”

  The presence of George prevented her from snapping her reply. “I’m not sure about much of anything these days, Cy, but we need my braces done and we need to stay here to do that. My question is, can you truly get something made in the next few days?”

  Cy rubbed his beard. “We’re under a mighty deadline to work a miracle, and we’ll work it.”

  “Good thing she has a crew of geniuses at the ready,” said Fenris with a yawn.

  That made both Cy and George smile. “Father, you get to relive your machinery-by-lamplight days,” Cy said wryly.

  “Sounds a mite better than the paperwork-by-lamplight I’ve known in recent years. Show me the schematics you have and this alpha brace of yours. Let’s get going.”

  Cy clapped his father on the arm and guided him to where the project was stored.

  Fenris plopped down on the bunk across from Ingrid. “We ended up with a ghost on board after all, eh?”

  She shakily laughed. “You did overhear us. I’m sorry.”

 
“Beeswax can only block so much.” He shrugged. “Don’t waste your time feeling guilty over it. The ship is small. Not like there are a multitude of places where you can sit and talk.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing you speak critically of the Bug. You are sick.” She still wondered again if his illness was due to the injection.

  Fenris gave the wall an affectionate pat. “That wasn’t criticism, just a gently stated fact.” He stood. “Keep the gun with you, just in case, but Cy might notice it soon.”

  “I’ll talk to him about it,” she said. “Fenris? Since you’ll likely be out on errands soon, can you do me a favor?”

  “Maybe?”

  “Can you please get me some books to help me pass the time these next few days? Some adventures, perhaps—ones that don’t feature swooning women on the cover.”

  “That may limit the available selection, but yes, I can get some books for you. I can get tamales, too. You should try some other than pork—they’re all good. I can’t let you starve in captivity.”

  “Thank you. I think you make a far better prison warden than the fox.”

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day,” said Fenris. He reached up to his bunk and slid out the slender copper length of his Tesla rod. He twiddled with it, frowning, manipulating some setting she couldn’t comprehend. “There. If anyone comes after you, one strike with this and it’ll cause an instantaneous heart attack.”

  She believed him. He’d already used that technique, or something similar, in Honolulu. “That’s about the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day, too.”

  Fenris’s intense gaze lingered on her for a moment, and then he moved to join the other men in their lively discussion of her brace modifications. Ingrid remained in place, the crumpled paper on her lap.

  Amid all her fear, she knew a strange sense of peace that was not provoked by the manipulations of the qilin.

  She was loved.

  Chapter 18

  Wednesday, May 23, 1906

  The chilly presence of the ghost contrasted with the heat of the noon sunlight that sliced through the curved window of the control cabin. Captain Sutcliff stood at the back of the chamber, behind the copilot’s chair. Since he had tethered his spirit to the Palmetto Bug rather than George the previous day, the temperature throughout the ship had dropped several degrees.

  Ingrid leaned forward in her seat as if she could make the Bug fly faster. They had exited Los Angeles in the middle of the night so that they could arrive in Phoenix at midday.

  Having seen the forested hills of Cascadia and the unreal greenery of Hawaii, she had been eager to view the desert southwest. However, after enduring the scenery for several hours, she was less enthused. The color green didn’t exist here. Endless wasteland sprawled to the far curve of the horizon, the hills and rocks in varied shades of brown. She had seen no active rivers since they crossed the Colorado at the territorial border, only dry fissures choked with trees and shrubs that tenaciously clung to life. Even the blue sky seemed bleached of its normal vivacity.

  This, not the lava lake of Kilauea, was Ingrid’s idea of hell.

  Cy’s socks whispered on the tatami as he returned to the cabin and sat across from her. He’d been a bit withdrawn today, understandably sad after having said good-bye to his father the previous evening. George had returned to Bakersfield. He’d volunteered to continue on with them, but his health had already suffered due to long hours of work in the hangar bay.

  Excalibur had reached Phoenix two days before. It had idled there ever since. According to Cy, the rumors as to why had been downright imaginative, and the Unified Pacific had done little to placate the public with its bland statements that all was well. No one believed that now.

  Ingrid could only hope that they could still find Lee in town, and that Mr. Sakaguchi was with him.

  “I’m spying some reflected light far in the distance,” said Fenris. “We may finally be nearing that citadel.”

  Ingrid bolted upright to look out the window, her braces granting her new pep. “Oh. It just looks like clouds to me.”

  “That’s the point. The papers called it the White Cloud Fleet, remember?” Fenris’s voice was still a touch raspier than usual. They could only conclude that he alone had experienced a mild reaction to the vaccine, as he had slept more in recent days and run a mild fever. It was clear he hadn’t contracted the sickness that had now caused quarantines in Atlanta, Little Rock, and Amarillo—all places along Excalibur’s route—and had continued to spread from there. Reports had related gruesome details of boardinghouses with two thirds of the occupants deceased, of babies found screaming with parents rendered too ill to move, or dead.

  If this epidemic was indeed the Chinese attack, then it might indeed prove more effective and efficient than the triggered earthquakes and the technological might of the Unified Pacific.

  “That is the fleet,” said Captain Sutcliff. “Seven Pegasus gunships in formation around the citadel. I am in awe that this project was carried out with such secrecy. The Gaia Project was a mere rumor a month ago.”

  “The captain says there are seven gunships around Excalibur.” Ingrid repeated the words for the benefit of Cy and Fenris.

  “Damn. Ghost has good eyesight. Can he see through that floating chunk of orichalcum?” asked Fenris.

  Captain Sutcliff considered this. “I don’t see as I once did. I believe I am . . . sensing the ambient heat of the kermanite on each vessel. I can tell where the largest piece is on the far side, and that a chain of other strangely large pieces is being utilized to power the craft.”

  Ingrid didn’t contain her surprise. “That’s right. T.R. described how the kermanite was rigged aboard, back before you joined us. You could guide us straight to the engine room on board! Why didn’t you mention this during all of our plotting over the past few days?”

  Sutcliff’s expression became rather dreamy. “I didn’t know. The closeness of my goal seems to have increased my sensitivity to kermanite all around.”

  She repeated the relevant information to the others.

  “That will prove useful, if we can get on board. If our spectral soldier can find a way to do that, then I hope he shares right away,” said Fenris.

  The current plan was to find Lee and Mr. Sakaguchi while conducting reconnaissance on Excalibur, and, if possible, seize an opportunity to infiltrate the citadel and retrieve Maggie while the crew was largely incapacitated. If she would help them sabotage Excalibur while they were there, then all the better. Ingrid wasn’t betting money on that outcome, though. It sounded like Maggie would need an awful lot of convincing.

  “A way will open for us,” Sutcliff intoned. “I have come this far. I am blessed in this mission.”

  Ingrid arched an eyebrow. “Blessed, other than the fact you were crushed to death by a falling building?”

  “Life is finite. I’m looking toward immortality.” His tone was gentle in a way that unsettled her. Sometimes she almost preferred the brash, arrogant, easy-to-despise Sutcliff to this newly enlightened one.

  Cy slipped into his copilot’s chair with a sharp intake of breath. “Look at that thing.”

  Past a rocky mesa curved like a saddle, Excalibur hovered several thousand feet above the ground. It truly did resemble a castle keep constructed of rounded towers and turrets, its matte-white paint allowing scant reflection from the intense sunlight. Even at a distance, Ingrid could see mooring masts that crested it at various levels, and the broad doors that allowed access to the holds.

  Closer still, white-painted airships maintained their positions to guard Excalibur. The nearest gunship flew toward them. Lights flashed along the hull.

  “What does it mean?” she asked. The sequence repeated again. She needed to acquire a book to learn this language, even if she never became a full pilot herself.

  “A clear message of ‘Stay away, or we’ll shoot,’” said Fenris. “I would like to offer a message as well—”

&n
bsp; “I’ll handle the reply without your contribution, thank you kindly,” said Cy, already working at buttons along the panel. Fenris aimed the Bug in a southeasterly direction, skirting far around the designated perimeter.

  “Are the Pegasus gunships there to prevent civilian ships from attempting to dock, or to stop anyone from fleeing the citadel?” asked Ingrid.

  “Both, I imagine,” said Cy. “I hate to think of the hell that has occurred on board, with so many sick and dying. Some men would try to flee. Some always do. But others would maintain the presence of mind to know that escapees might spread the illness to their parents and wives and children—some of whom are probably waiting to see them in Los Angeles, not that far away.”

  Ingrid glanced at Sutcliff, surprised he had no comment. He looked lost in thought, one hand pressed to his mouth as if he might be ill himself.

  She returned her focus to the window as the Bug began to descend.

  “That’s Phoenix?” she asked, skeptical.

  “Yes, and quite the bustling center of civilization it is, too,” said Fenris.

  Phoenix proper looked like scarcely more than a village, its streets bare dirt and buildings no more than two floors in height. An especially large canal cut to the north, to high mountains in the distance. A few sizable mountains squatted right near town, the vivid red of their rocks bold against the sun-weary dirt. Patches of agriculture were a surprise against the brownness of the desert, the way a hiccup might interrupt a sentence. A scrub-covered mountain range clustered to the north.

  “The town doesn’t look like much, only about five thousand folks, but it is civilization for this valley. Maybe, without the war and so many men lost this past decade, the west would’ve been settled more. There are a lot of places like this out here, places of promise that’ve withered on the vine,” said Cy. “Fenris, look for a tin roof with ‘Cortez’ painted on it. That’ll be our dock.” He’d had the foresight to call from Los Angeles to find a dock willing to reserve a mast for the Bug—and he promised a rather exorbitant payment for the privilege.