Clockwork Secrets

by Dru Pagliassotti

  “I expect its mission was a calculated strategy. The Council was probably hoping to reduce enemy morale by demonstrating that Ondinium’s skies aren’t as unprotected as everyone thought. The fact that the Firebrand was seen fleeing Alzana right after the king’s assassination was unfortunate, though. I’m sure everybody believes we masterminded the coup.”

  “Our allies won’t approve. What will we do if they abandon us?”

  Cristof moved to one side as a lictor hurried past with a stack of ammunition boxes in her arms.

  “Not much. Ondinium is reasonably self-sufficient, and other nations need our ores and technologies too much to put us under any long-lasting embargoes. I expect that as long as Ondinium remains intact, its economy can ride out a few years of diplomatic tension. The Council has always valued national security over international relations.”

  “That doesn’t sound very friendly.”

  “Ondinium has never been very friendly, love.” Cristof gave her a wry but affectionate smile. “The oldest Houses have never forgotten the lessons of the Last War, and they retain a strong presence on the Council.”

  “I guess we won’t be able to call it the ‘Last War’ anymore, will we?” Taya’s shoulders slumped as she watched the now-familiar burst of pre-combat activity around them.

  “Let’s hope this conflict never reaches Last War scale.” He squared his shoulders and cast a defiant look around the open deck. “I’m going to volunteer for repair duty.”

  “Good. They’ll need you.” Taya stood on her toes and kissed him. “I’ll put on my armature.”

  Cristof started to say something, then checked himself. “Be careful.”

  “Always.” She reached into her pocket for the keys and headed below with him.

  * * *

  Captain Amcathra surprised them, however, by attempting to outrun the Alzanans. Taya and Jinian stood at the rail next to a deck gun, watching as the two ships maneuvered to take advantage of the wind while staying out of each others’ firing range. Amcathra allowed the Alzanan ship to chase them inland, over Mareaux.

  “This is my first time visiting the continent,” Jinian said, gazing with interest at the patchwork of small agricultural plots and orchards below them, their colors washed out by the rainy weather. “It is as wide as the ocean.”

  “More people live on it, though.” Taya didn’t understand why Amcathra was taking them through Mareaux instead of hugging the coast. If a ship crashed here, it would kill everyone aboard and devastate the land around the crash site. Alzanan ships, in particular, were prone to fiery explosions that could wipe out miles of good farmland even on a damp, drizzly day like this. And while Taya approved of avoiding a fight, she didn’t see how they were going to shake their pursuer. It wasn’t as though they could hide over southern Mareaux’s flat, rolling fields, and the enemy dirigible had the advantage of being able to fly against the wind.

  Nevertheless, the Firebrand was maintaining a strong lead against “Number Twelve,” as they’d dubbed it. The cook prepared a cold lunch as the chase continued throughout the day, frightening cattle and sheep and startling farmers. One herder lifted a shotgun and fired at them, even though they were well out of range.

  “Your husband is unhappy about something,” Jinian observed, hours later. Taya turned and spotted Cristof huddled in a long oilskin overcoat and dripping hat, shaking his head and gesturing as he spoke to Captain Amcathra.

  “I hope there’s nothing wrong with the engine.” Taya couldn’t imagine much else that would bring Cristof up top in the middle of a rainstorm. She headed toward them, pausing when she reached the forward deck. Captain Amcathra gestured her closer.

  “Your wife is here, Exalted. Let us determine her opinion on the subject.”

  Cristof glowered and irritably tugged his coat collar higher. “Tell him you don’t do nightflights, Taya. Especially in the rain.”

  “I don’t usually,” she admitted, looking from her husband to Amcathra. “Why?”

  “I am planning to board the enemy ship as soon as it grows dark. I would appreciate your assistance in the endeavor.”

  “You mean— capture it? How?” She’d seen Amcathra capture an Alzanan dirigible during the first invasion, but in that case the Firebrand had dropped down from above, unexpected and unseen. They had no such advantage in this fight.

  “After it is dark, I would like you to fly up to the enemy’s gondola and fasten several climbing ropes to it. My lictors will wear ondium rescue harnesses and climb up the ropes to the ship. If any of my crew should fall, I would like you to retrieve them.”

  “I can do that,” Taya said, firmly. “Just let me know where you want the ropes tied.”

  “And I’ll wait here, as always.” Her husband’s expression was dark.

  “You are our most valuable cargo,” Amcathra pointed out.

  “Liliana’s your most valuable cargo.”

  “The Alzanan principessa may be politically important, Exalted, but I value your life more highly.”

  “Cris— I’ll be all right, and think of how useful it will be to take the crew alive. If they have any idea what happened to the Indomitable….”

  “I know, I know,” he growled. “All right. Do what you need to do, Janos. Just don’t expect me to like it.”

  “I seldom enjoy that expectation, Exalted.”

  An hour later, Amcathra selected the boarding party: himself and three others.

  “I want to go, too,” Jinian volunteered, stepping forward. “I am very good at climbing ropes and I have no fear of heights.”

  “You are not a lictor.”

  “Your caste encompasses bodyguards and other security forces, does it not? I am the equivalent of a lictor in my own country.”

  “Neither are you a sharpshooter. A few days of training with the exalted does not make you an expert.”

  “I can use a needler, and I have more skill in hand-to-hand combat than any of your soldiers. You wish to take the crew alive, do you not?”

  “You would be a security risk.”

  “You do not trust me?”

  “You have not been trained—”

  “Let her go, Janos,” Cristof interrupted. “She’s perfectly competent, and — I apologize, Jinian, but I need to speak the captain’s language here — she’s not a politically significant individual or a trained crew member, which makes her more usefully expendable than you or any of your lictors. Or my wife.”

  Taya winced, but Jinian nodded, unoffended.

  “Is that an order, Exalted?” Amcathra inquired.

  “If you want to take it that way.”

  “Very well.” He turned to Jinian. “You will ascend last.”

  “Thank you, Captain. And you, Ambassador.”

  Later that afternoon, Taya and Jinian stood in the mess hall, keeping dry and sipping tea.

  “I don’t think Captain Amcathra knows what to do with foreigners like you and Professor Dautry,” Taya said. “Ondiniums respect the chain of command, but you two are always disagreeing with him about one thing or another.”

  The Cabisi woman shrugged.

  “He is not my friend or commander, so I have no reason not to argue with him as one equal to another. Besides, it seems clear to me that he enjoys debate. I expect he considers it ‘functional’ to evaluate the worth of his ideas by the reactions of those around him.”

  “Maybe….” Taya had never considered arguments ‘functional’ before.

  “Perhaps that is why he chooses to serve your husband, who is not afraid to disagree with him, and seeks to retain a navigator who regards his country with skepticism. He appreciates the challenge of diverse viewpoints.”

  Taya slowly nodded. She supposed that, for a lictor, debate could be seen as a form of combat training— a way to discover weaknesses and test strengths before split-second dec
isions were needed. It seemed like an uncomfortably competitive way to live though.

  When the sun dropped low on the horizon, Jinian, Cristof, and Taya stood on deck, squinting through the rain.

  “Are you sure you want to be up here?” Taya asked her husband, who stood with one hand locked on the rail. “How do you feel?”

  “Other than weather aches, vertigo, and an intense fear for your life, I feel just fine.”

  “Oh, Cris….”

  “Would you mind if I held on to you for a while?”

  “Of course not.” She stood next to him as he laced his fingers through hers.

  The rainy day offered no colorful sunset; just a swift plunge into a cloudy and moonless night. Scattered lights on the ground indicated the presence of farmhouses. On deck, lictors stood poised by each of the hanging lanterns. Another lictor made adjustments to the unlit kerosene spotlight next to the ship’s raked-back prow.

  Amcathra studied Number Twelve, murmuring to Lieutenant Imbrex. Then, at last, he lowered his field glasses.

  “Douse lights!”

  The lictors sprang forward and the lanterns went out. For a moment there was still a glow of light belowdecks, and then that vanished, too.

  Taya grabbed the rail and tightened her grip on her husband’s hand a split-second before the Firebrand tilted, dropping into a tight, descending spiral.

  The lights on the Alzanan ship were still lit, clearly revealing its position above and slightly behind them. Minutes passed as it continued to approach. Suddenly, a bright spotlight snapped on, its piercing beam transforming the light rain into a silvery veil.

  “Carbide? No, that would be insane….” Cristof fell silent as Taya hushed him.

  The breeze around them changed, and then the creaking of the ornithopter’s wings stopped, leaving only the chug of its steam engine. Number Twelve continued motoring forward, its spotlight moving up, then down, to the right and to the left in a limited arc. As the dirigible drew closer, Taya heard movement on the Firebrand’s deck. She squeezed Cristof’s hand.

  “Time to go,” she whispered.

  “Wait.” He found her face with his fingertips and kissed her in the darkness. She gave him a tight, fierce hug before heading to the foredeck.

  Number Twelve was almost overhead, the illumination from its gondola and searchlight providing Taya with enough light for her mission. Amcathra handed her three coils of heavy, looped rope with grappling hooks attached to one end. The other end remained loose on the Firebrand’s deck. Taya fastened the coils to her armature, bounced up and down, and added another two counterweights to her belt. Captain Amcathra, the other three lictors, and Jinian were busy adjusting their ondium rescue harnesses as Taya finished her check and climbed up onto the rail. With a kick, she was in the air.

  Rain streaked her goggles and the dangling ropes threatened to tangle her tailset. Fly up to the gondola and fasten several climbing ropes to it was easy for Amcathra to say. Cursing the rain that blinded her, Taya rose behind the dirigible and advanced until she was parallel to the vast expanse of its envelope. When she was confident nobody had seen her, she dropped, keeping pace with the dirigible until she was under the envelope’s swell. She kicked up her tailset and let her legs swing down. After a few failed attempts she hooked her boot through the gondola’s access ladder, locked her wings, and pulled her arms free. Grabbing a rung with one hand, she loosened the first coil of rope with the other. The noise of Number Twelve’s engine and propellers was deafening.

  With her flight feathers tapping the envelope over her head and the darkness and rain making it impossible to see more than a foot or two ahead, Taya crept through the supports along the length of the gondola and hooked two of the grapples where their loose ropes wouldn’t drag across a window. So far, so good. She took a deep breath, uselessly wiped off her goggles with her wet leather sleeve, and clambered down the back of the gondola, her wings buffeted by the wind.

  Captain Amcathra had asked her to attach one of the grapples to the flag line and support poles beneath the command gondola, near its trap door. Sweating despite the chilly winter drizzle, Taya swung beneath the gondola, hooking her legs around the braces and struts, and released her grip. Hanging upside down, she swung the grappling hook up. A miss. She tried again. One of the metal tines caught the flag line. She wrapped the line around her wrist, freed her legs and fell, swinging wildly beneath the enemy ship.

  The rope pulled tight and the flag line bent. Taya pulled herself up, grabbed the flag line’s support pole, and secured the grappling hook around a stronger metal support.

  Done. She wrapped her legs around the rope and slid down as she thrust her arms into her wings. With a twist, she kicked the rope aside and let herself fall into the night.

  The Firebrand was still hidden somewhere in the darkness below, so Taya quickly straightened, afraid that she might end up flattened on the ornithopter’s deck. She flew away from the dirigible on a horizontal, turning only when she was sure she was clear of both ships.

  Number Twelve’s searchlight was her only reference point in the rainy night. Taya strained for a glimpse of the Firebrand. There— a glint of reflected light on one of its silver-plated wings. She flew closer until she spotted dark shapes clambering up the ropes.

  The first lictor reached the control gondola; that would be Captain Amcathra, who’d chosen the most dangerous entrance for himself. As Taya circled, the other boarders reached the gondola. Two crept over its top to the access ladder leading to the envelope’s inner framework. Jinian and a lictor would use that accessway to reach the engine gondola. The other two lictors found secure places to wait, readying their needlers.

  The sound of the Alzanan engines changed as Number Twelve began to turn, its searchlight still scanning for the lost Firebrand. Taya dropped lower.

  Minutes passed like hours. Finally the trap door over the engine gondola opened and two figures lowered themselves onto the top of the gondola.

  Taya shot forward, flying as close to the three lictors on the command gondola as she could. As they looked up, startled, she rocked her wings. One of the lictors waved acknowledgement. She turned, returning to the engine gondola and repeating the signal.

  Trap doors were thrown open and a heavy boot shattered a gondola window as the Firebrands attacked.

  Taya swept around in a tight arc. The engines, the rain, and her leather flying cap made it impossible to hear what was going on inside the Alzanan ship, but she saw that the soldier manning the spotlight had withdrawn. She kicked up her tailset, threw back her wings, and hit the searchlight’s metal support bracket boots-first, backbeating to stay aloft. Bracing one foot on the searchlight bracket and the other on the open windowsill, she slid an arm out of her wings to grab the searchlight and peer into the gondola. Heat radiated from the searchlight’s metal canister and warmed the side of her face.

  Now she could hear the shouting and gunfire. The lictor who’d entered from the top was on the stairs, firing down at the gunners and crew, while Captain Amcathra had rolled into the doorway of the control cabin with a needler in each hand, one pointed out at the crew and the other covering whoever was at the controls. The third lictor had broken through a window and was braced on the outside of the gondola, firing inside.

  A stray bullet buried itself in the windowsill close to Taya’s shoulder. Folding her wings, she climbed over the hot searchlight to the top of the gondola.

  The Firebrand was on the move, sweeping forward and rising with all its lanterns lit once more. The ornithopter’s gunnery deck was open and lictors manned the deck guns. Taya dangled one leg over the side of the gondola and used her foot to torque the searchlight as high as possible to keep its beam from blinding the Firebrand’s crew.

  Behind her, Number Twelve’s engine coughed and died, its propellers slowing, then coming to a full stop. Jinian leaned out the engine gondola’s window
and waved.

  The Firebrands had taken the dirigible.

  * * *

  “Close your eyes,” Taya directed, steadying her husband as he gingerly edged onto the horizontal rope ladder strung between the Firebrand and the dirigible’s engine gondola. Inside the gondola, Jinian and the Firebrand’s chief engineer reached out and took Cristof’s arms from her, steadying him until he was inside. He opened his eyes with a sigh of relief and gave her a grateful wave.

  The Firebrand’s wings were docked as the ship floated next to the Resolute, secured to it with a network of ropes and grappling hooks. Lictors swung back and forth between the ships, scavenging the Alzanan vessel’s weapons, fuel, and supplies. The surviving captives — eight of the ship’s ten crew members — were being questioned by Captain Amcathra, with Liliana’s assistance.

  The Firebrand’s boarding party had escaped relatively unscathed; one lictor had sprained an ankle in her leap through the trap door and Amcathra had taken a bullet graze across his ribs, but the others bore only minor cuts, scrapes, and burns. The Alzanans, caught by surprise, had been quickly demoralized after the first soldier had been killed, and when their engines had sputtered out, they’d surrendered with weary resignation. Much to Amcathra’s annoyance, the Resolute’s captain had promptly put a bullet through his head rather than fall into enemy hands.

  Seeing that her husband was safe, Taya joined the chain of crew members passing goods from the Alzanan ship to the Firebrand’s deck. She was tired and the rain hadn’t stopped, but nobody was going to get any sleep that night. Amcathra wanted the captured vessel stripped and destroyed by dawn.

  At last there was nothing left in the command gondola worth keeping; they’d even pried off the searchlight and hauled it back to the Firebrand for inspection. Lieutenant Imbrex and the quartermaster began inventorying the pile of loot, evaluating each item’s weight against its utility.

  “Lieutenant Imbrex wants to know how much of this we need to take with us,” Taya said, returning to the group inside the Alzanan engine room.

  “All of it,” Cristof said, looking up with shining eyes. “Can we bring the entire engine on board?”